- Aug 30, 2017
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Ren'Py Seeds of Chaos [v0.4.08] [Vénus Noire]
Why hasn't the pace of development improved over the last years? You say mistakes were made in early developments, but I don't see why only a little improvement happened over time. You now have a bigger team, with better experience, who supposedly learned from their mistakes, and more resources. Has the team simply gotten complacent? It's been 7 years and it's still a slog.Let me put it that way.
You make a game. You make a crucial mistake during the development phase of the game and 2 years into development, and you are saddled with certain mechanics or plot-lines that are unsustainable in the long run. Your options are as follows:
1. Continue as you were, basically dooming yourself into eternal development.
2. Scratch everything, and start from zero.
3. Wrap up haphazardly and move on to a new game.
4. Correct course, attempting to bring a satisfying conclusion to what you already started, vowing to not repeat the same mistakes moving forward.
Now, nr 1's natural conclusion is usually the game being abandoned. Eternal development is incredibly taxing - a story must be seen to its conclusion, otherwise you get burned out. If the developer is mad enough to keep going regardless... Well it's not particularly fun to watch anyway. I think Yandere Simulator is a good example. I admire the tenacity, but like, damn.
Nr 2 is a fantastic way to alienate your playerbase and bankrupt yourself. Unsustainable or not, people LIKED what you did, and supported it. Removing it will not be seen favourably. You can check Saria Reclaimed to see how his recent rework is working out.
Nr 3 has its advantages. Just... Cut off and move on. Leave whatever story lines you have unfinished and just move on to the next game. We see it all the time, particularly with triple A games.
Was that an option? Yes. Now, I'm just a writer, so I don't set the course of the ship. Personally, if we went that route, I wouldn't be satisfied with the end product. I hate blatantly unfinished games.
Which leaves nr 4 - compromise where you can, and try to make the possible product out of the things you've already put in place. Is it going to take long? Yes. Are you going to bang your head against the wall every time you have to deal with a old mechanic that doesn't really support the current vision of the game? Many fucking times. Will you have to deal with people asking month, after month, after month, "Are you done yet?". Very much so!
But you do it anyway, because you believe the end result will be good. And if you don't plan to make something good, then why the fuck do you get started on it in the first place.
Now, as for act 2. Will it be smaller in scope, with less characters, and less freedom of choice? Preferably not. There's a lot in Seeds of Chaos Act 1 that can be shaven off, without really detracting from the core experience. It will present itself with its own brand of unique challenges, but we are hopeful things will go better this time.
Every release brings us closer to the finish line. The game doesn't expand anymore - it just fills up where it has to fill up.
Alright, rant over, had to get it off my chest
You said you would cut down on the next game, with fewer characters. But if you do so, the consistency would be considerably off. The game already introduced a wide array of characters. No longer meeting those characters would only make the plot disjointed.
- Nov 15, 2022
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Ummm, I dearly hope I am misunderstanding your intended meaning here - but surely Act II will not, or is not planned, to feature the same # or even more characters?
You do understand where things went wrong with Act I, right?
- May 1, 2021
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Don't expect another full reply. Rein doesn't normally write such long posts. He normally just occasionally chimes in with quick corrections, or jokes, or on very rare occasions a snippet of information. It is generally regarded as a bad idea for developers to actively engage in debates with their player base.
But I would propose it the pace of development has improved simply because they are more focused and are following a roadmap instead of everyone just just working on whatever they feel like. It's just that even with the improved focus and work flow they still had a mountain of content to work through.
They team is only so big, and from my understanding they are all working day jobs in addition to this project. Still each update contains on average about 50-60 thousand words and dozens of new and updated art pieces. So I have a hard time agreeing they are developing at a slow pace. It wouldn't be very reasonable to say they should do even more work. You could argue that they could be less verbose and just get to the point and so spit out even more content per update but I can't help but think the quality of the game would suffer if they did that.
I've played a lot of "in development" porn games and for the vast majority of them when I reach the end i just kinda go "well that was kinda fun," and I move on and almost never go back to check on them. I like to think I'm not terribly unusual in that regard. The reason we get upset about the pace of this game is because it is good. We want more, and unless you are invested in some of the side content that is still in progress you aren't getting more. And that is frustrating. But if they reduced the quality to finish the game faster we would all be more likely to just shrug our shoulders and move on when we got to the end.
The obvious simplification here is presumption that "players" and "developers" are separate circles on this Venn diagram. Although sure, the overleap tends to be minor (given the number of the latter is relatively low)
(a separate issue is that developers aren't all that universally great at coming up with solutions either, as evidenced by many, many games in existence with their own shares of problems they've failed to address in satisfactory manner)
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- Feb 6, 2023
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- Aug 28, 2017
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i saw your list and found it interesting that your S tier is pretty much mine as well. but after that it gets quite chaotic
Xzaratl should actually be A tier, since futa isn't my cup of tea. but she is so darn adorable one of the rare cases of people you can blindly trust, even though you don't really know them.
p.s. every character that is missing from the list isn't added because they have too little character or screentime of their own to really form a opinion about
- Oct 4, 2022
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- Apr 26, 2017
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Curious. DOn't remember doing a tiermaker for Seed of Chaos before.
- Feb 6, 2023
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Yeah, It's my personal opinion and theirs screentime. For example Andras is top A cause all his encounters with Alexia and dialogues are glorious and Xztlara in top B cause she needs more duo content and not just threeways. Again it's personal opinion.
I definitely agree that Alexia and the futa succubus need more content. I always thought that activating that route would enable Alexia to kinda run amuck with her own futa fking other characters and doing self-play around the castle. I also figured she'd spend much more quality time with her, because it seems she is pretty open to her from the start, especially with the permission from Rowan. Reason I thought she'd go a bit crazy with the new toy was because during one of her scenes, she seems to be really enjoying the heck out of it, so I thought it linger for a long while lol.
Quick and dirty tier list of the girls imho. I tried to keep S tier for the elite elite, but that shouldn't downplay my appreciate for the A listers at all, it really only starts to drop off heavily in C tier, though there is of course a drop for A to B, bigger than S to A.
Hold on one god damn minute I know you didn't put Cla-Min in D tier. The second wife deserves at least be put in B tier. Also can you send me a link to this tier list I would like to make my own tier list of either the characters or the girls either one works. Thank you
- Dec 30, 2023
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- Apr 23, 2019
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So... when do we get to see more of Skordred? He seemed to be an important potential supporter for Rowan, but in the end he has just faded in the background.
I think the general idea is no? I mean he can be a tsundere gay sub for Rowan; we have a fairly detailed sub already with Draith who also has hooks with many different characters.
- Apr 23, 2019
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Yeah, but outside sex scenes he had ties to the former demon lord, could help building tunnels and warmachines, arrange meetings with other dark dwarves....
Look forward to more romantic dates with greyhide X rowan
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