Completely disagree man. Completely. Remember they are charging people on Patreon for as high as $30 a month. There are currently more than 1500 paid members. Even if they all only pay the minimum of $3 a month, that's a LOT of money. No animations will just be scummy behavior.
Well that's a take I don't think I've seen before. So just to make sure I'm understanding your position correctly, you think animations = higher quality game? I don't necessarily agree with that. I think (besides sex animations) most animations just look clunky and are a huge time sink. I'm just having trouble understanding "a lot of money" = "animations are to be expected". Maybe in a traditional game sense, that'd make sense but I don't think that applies to VNs. I just don't think animating a character flipping someone off in a dramatic way is anything anyone asked for and just wastes time.
I think our disagreement might stem from how we each view animations in regards to VNs.
(Or are you specifically talking about sex animations because if you read what I said carefully, I'm not talking about those) I personally view most animations as a time sink with no real added benefit. I don't necessarily see them as "higher quality" if a VN has them. I'm usually playing VNs for the characters. Couldn't give a shit about the bells and whistles as long as the characters look good and the writing is pretty good, which Summer Heat has both of.
Just to make it clear. This is just my general stance based on devs who get too fixated on animations. I'm not talking about Summer Heat and its animations/process because I have zero information on what's going on currently. I've just been chilling out and I'll gladly wait until the update comes out since I don't usually have time to play much anyway. That being said, in relation to Summer Heat and its Patreon:
If the money they were getting was going towards equipment or hiring more help that could somehow eliminate that time sink then I could see how "I'm paying this much money so I deserve animations because I perceive that as higher quality". However, that's usually not the case. A lot of devs choose to keep things small or even just solo. Even with more help, I've seen devs who just don't know how to manage people and updates still just come out at the same pace it did before. As for equipment, I've seen devs just get more and more ambitious with the animations instead of actually using the higher-scaled equipment to reduce time spent on making them. Point is, I've never really seen more money = more efficient animation creation.
If Patreon members actively voted for animations or voiced that they wanted more animations then I can totally see how that makes sense but if they didn't then I'd say what's truly fair for the people
donating money is to not waste their time on something they don't want. Unless it's something that Patreon members actually want, it just seems like a waste of money based on time for them. If I were donating, I'd rather just get the updates quicker with the same, high-quality render stills than wait a few more months every time for animations I'm likely to not care about. Eventually, those extra months add up to "Do I donate $30/month for 5 years until this game is completed or do I donate $30/month for 7 years or longer until this game is completed"
Patreon is a really weird business model. People start to get the wrong idea that they're deserved anything if they "pay" money to a creator on Patreon. It's not how that works. The creator doesn't owe the person donating anything. It's a donation to a dev, etc. you like so the creator can continue working on stuff. It's literally why it's called Patreon. "Patron" - "Artist". That being said, the person donating isn't obliged to donate on the highest tier amounts and more usually than not are just donating or a specific game the dev is making. So I think to be more fair to the people donating, it'd make more sense to just get the updates out quicker than worry about animations. You're not guaranteed a product in any way you imagined it but at least get your "money's worth" in this sense by not having to wait a decade for the game to be completed. I've always just seen Patreon as a way for devs to take it full-time and devote more time into it. I already like the game, it doesn't need to be "better". I just don't want to be an old fuck when it's finally finished.
At any rate, you had a new opinion I hadn't seen before. No hard feelings, man. I just wanted to explain my stance on animations in VNs because I eventually got so sick of a particular dev taking longer and longer due to his obsession with turning it into some "high quality masterpiece" with all the animations, etc. that I just lost all interest in the game and stopped donating on Patreon long before then. Peace.