Rant on:
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F95Zoners being shunned aside, 'cuz ya know, many here are playing the game essentially for free...
Opinions here will generally be ignored, but hopefully there are a few patrons watching this thread that pass along bug reports and such.
What bothers me is that, with this kind of money coming in, you'd think that it'd be worthwhile to update the game engine at this point. There are currently around four dozen significant female characters in this game. Significant in that they are either working with you (Talia, Roulette, Catwoman), or are available for hire (Villianesses) that you can have sex with, or that you can capture/acquire and end up in rooms/cells.
The problem with this game isn't the lack of characters, I think we are at the opposite extreme at this point. The problem is that since so many characters go through the same general 'wash, rinse, repeat' progression, it gets repetitive really fast.
Some of the dialogues are actually quite interesting (Wonder Woman, for example), but since all characters are shoehorned into the 'rule of three' progression -
I.E.: talk to her a few times, then watch her dance three times, then strip, then 3 handjobs, 3 blowjobs, then vaginal sex 3 times and anal sex three times with a couple of costume interludes thrown in, at which point the gal is a huge slut that asks what nickname you should use.
It tends to lessen the impact of each character's storyline and background. One particular example that I find slightly annoying is Vixen. Vixen pretty much states in her earlier interactions with you that she wants to jump your bones, or something along those lines, but we are STILL forced to follow the rule of three with her. Which drags out the game unnecessarily in her case. Multiply that by 3-4 dozen other characters also following the 'rule of three' and it gets really grindy...
Add to this that once characters are introduced, if the content isn't there out of the gate, so far we often don't see the 'followup' content. Note the number of characters that don't have all of their associated Meta Bordello art for the relevant assignments completed.
I, along with a number of you here, was really looking forward to more Mercy content this update. Mercy's story is a bit more convoluted, which makes it kind of unique in this framework, but that story has been put on the backburner for multiple updates now. I get that it was delayed for good reason, I don't mind it getting pushed back a month, but this game has been in development for many years now...
Which brings me back to why I linked the graphtreon tracker in this post. If this was some obscure developer that had say 50 or less regular patrons and was raking in less than say $1,000 a month, or worse yet just doing their game for free, I could more easily 'give a pass' to neglected content. But for the money we are talking here, this is essentially 'full time job' income, and it SHOULD be worth it to the developer to just buckle down and tackle the game's issues in earnest.
Sure, other highly popular developers are also guilty of this (not naming names), but I'm sure that the software bugs are slowing down development, and multiple people have commented in this thread that the developer really should re-build things from scratch and use more up to date backend software (the Fungus thing holding the game back).
And, while I don't mind new characters being introduced, there really should be a strategy in place at this point where for every new character that is introduced, at least two existing characters get their Meta Bordello content completed, etc. Sure, Cassie and Donna had leash scenes added in this update, but the leash scenes are probably the easiest to do, due to the 'nekkid chick walks around' formula.
And sure, I get that the art here is hand drawn, but as the fanart thread has shown, it's possible to fill in a number of blanks with just minor edits to the existing sprites ingame, for now at least. And I get that SR7 is following his muse so to speak, but then I come back to the graphtreon thing... Other artists could be brought onboard to help fill in those gaps for now via photoshop editing tricks and such, until SR7 is ready to give said scenes the 'full treatment'.
Not me though, I have enough on my plate. I just edit the sprites for fun when the whim strikes... I have my own things going on. Plus prolific is NOT a term I would use to describe my artistic efforts. Others are MUCH more prolific than I am, it takes me years to get anything done...
In any case, I just really think that the developer(s) need to take a month or two to port over the existing content into an updated framework. I personally think that, as I've said before, moving it over to Ren'Py would solve a few things, but it would require learning how Ren'Py animations and such work. If I was raking in that much cash for a game, it'd be worth MY time to take the time to learn, but that's just me.
Plus then, other people could help in your 'bug killing' quest due to their own familiarity with how Ren'Py works. Unity is a 'locked' framework, so it's a LOT harder to try to fix things on the 'release' end. I get that 'locking things down' helps discourage unauthorized distribution of the ingame art, but it's almost trivial to extract the sprites from SU at this point if you have AssetStudio. See the fanart thread...
It's a cash cow, I get it, but if the bugs are getting so bad that you are spending a lot of your time bug hunting/killing, instead of on developing the story, it's time to update your framework.
I've said much of this before, but I feel like it needs to be said, often, until the developer addresses these issues in earnest.
Maybe someone will pass this along. Mainly I just needed to get this off my chest again...
Rant off
