Firstly, no offense but regardless whether saying it as a principle or not, you've been pretty much implying in both of your previous 2 posts that he "really should have focused on the VN aspects of the game rather than the contracts."
Only way for that to happen would have been for him to completely abandon all the actual gameplay aspects and just solely focus on the VN mode (and that's not happening, given he's found the suitable system for his contracts).
Secondly, I think you're getting yourself a little bit confused here with the terminology.
The game is split into 3 following segments:
1) Main Story & Main Events (as the name says, the events in those headers in "Journal")
2) Girls' lewd/free-roam events (a.k.a. Luna/Gracie/Isabel/(and in the future) Cordia events)
3) Contracts (a.k.a. Wilfred's Contracts) though this gameplay system is also implemented to Main Story/Main Events with the missions
Free-roam are the girls' lewd events content (where MC roams around the DeLuca mansion going around the rooms to access these girls' events). It is not what you're referring to (which I'm assuming are contracts).
Not sure what you mean exactly when you're referring to "new free roaming is a superior version of cheating with mods, more intuitive, more fluid and without the risk of damaging the save file progress" but ever since v0.07 released last year, this thread has had many people coming to the thread with the posts
"I can't access the Ombra mission. I used mods."
"Can't begin the Ombra mission, can't talk to Wilfred at all. I used cheat before."
Now you may not have experienced the issue while using the cheats/mods, but several people (stopped counting when numbers rose and rose but at least 10+ people, even close to 20 maybe) have experienced their saves being screwed over by using cheat mods.
So that risk is always there (whether it's to lesser or to greater degree). If people still wish to use cheat/mods to jump over the contracts, then that's their decision, but they also gotta deal with possible consequence of their saves being corrupted.
Lastly, it's not like Hopes said every single update will have Wilfred's Contracts in it (and no, next update will not have Wilfred's contracts content).
Also, Hopes intended for the gameplay system in Wilfred's contracts to naturally transition to the main story, and he did that; first time was the Ombra mission, and then we had the Gracie Team missions against the Bonanzo Family in v0.08.
As someone who didn't really like the first version of Wilfred's Contracts of the game, I'm actually quite satisfied with how everything turned out.
To further reiterate, as Carta said previously, while it's different from VN aspect, it's still content.
Just not the content you (or people who only want the VN part) expect/want.
So even if you dislike it for possibly eating up development time for VN aspects of it (though I highly doubt it would as much as it did for v0.07 development), it is what it is.
Full experience is his full vision of the game, and that will always come as priority (which yes, includes the contracts system).
No, I did not say the dev should focus on the VN part. In fact, I said
I HOPE HE DOES NOT attempt to develop the VN mode right now,
and wait until either the game is finished or almost complete. Read it again.
I did not had any problem with cheat mod and many people did not have either, HOWEVER, I never contested your claim that some people DID have problems with cheat mods. Makes absolutely no sense to point it out, as if I was arguing against it.
I NEVER SAID THAT THERE WAS NO PROBLEM!
HOWEVER, it would be 1 billion times faster and easier, to fix such issues, such as
correct the code line that does not recognize stats over a certain threshold OR
create a mini guide of what NOT TO DO, in order to avoid bugs.
Such as "
DON'T INCREASE STATS ARTIFICIALLY, WAIT UNTIL STATS ARE REQUIRED, THEN PURCHASE ONLY THE AMOUNT REQUIRED THROUGH THE GAME'S SHOP"
Didn't took me more than 20 seconds to write a fix, that the developer took months to fix it. What method was faster? That's my point entirely.
He over spent his development time into something, that could've been dealt faster and easier. Instead of PROGRESSING THE STORY CONTENT, of which is
still stuck on the same spot after YEARS of nothing.
I hope I won't have to write in caps and use bb code again in the future, heck I don't even want to keep this conversation alive.
So if you want to reply, at least do me a favor to reply about what I actually said. Not whatever you're doing.
I don't know why I have to say this, but... Whatever.
When you start the game you have 3 modes to choose.
1. Normal story mode, with all contracts fully working as the part of the game.
2. Free roaming mode, where contracts do not work/matter, plus a big stack of cash to buy required items, in order to advance in the story fast.
3. VN mode, still not developed.
Free roaming mode, was developed recently. It replaces the need of the old cheat mod entirely, to bypass the grind of the contracts part of the game.
My point was, using cheat mod, already net a very similar result, of which was bypass the contracts without needing to grind them. I can't be any more clear than that.
In that sense this task was redundant because the dev, choose to pursuit a path, that somewhat had been covered, and neglected the story progression as a collateral consequence.
Yes, the newest free roaming mode is better and safer than cheat mod, but in my opinion, he should've progressed the story instead. That is MY opinion. You may disagree and that's alright, but I do not find justifiable the years of wait, for no story content update.
That said, what is done, is done. The dev will do whatever he wants to do. It's his game, and the past cannot be changed.
However, as I said, I believe it was the wrong decision, and that is all that there is to it.
And also depending on how he did structure the code, now he'll have twice the amount of work in the line of code, because he'll have to feed both the main story path and the free roaming path. I really hope he did it properly and will be easy and quick, but who knows. That may or may not further impact the story progression of the game, we'll see.
