Look I'm not saying DeLuca's gameplay system is perfect, but doing it only once and getting everything in that one try would make no sense for MC to have stats at all.
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I mean why even bother with the gameplay at all in that case? The player's MC is meant to grow stronger after initial failures in these contracts and do better in their retries of them with better equipment or stats at the shop (as I said before, and saying it again lol).
Because it's not a 90's RPG, maybe? And fiction is not equivalent to MedFan, too... And since you don't care about logic when doing a contract several times, then you can't use this argument to say that getting all stuff/stats required to do the next mission isn't logic... Once you gave up about logic, you can't choose to apply it only on the parts that suits you.
If you only look at above example with logic, it won't make sense, but all players accept it because it's part of the game's structure, not because it's something logical.
That's the major difference between "realistic" fictions and heroic fantasy or other magical universes...
I'm no expert in coding, or even ren'py but what Hopes said was pretty clear (and this was at least 3 months or so ago): there is too much change of code with the overhaul with these Contracts and previous saves are just NOT compatible at all to continue, and everyone will need to start again. And sure there were few people disappointed with it but everyone basically accepted it and moved on (perhaps you should have asked Hopes himself this question back then).
I like this game, but I'm not a fanboy however. I can't check, discuss about and follow ALL games. Period. But I'm a coding expert - not with Ren'Py, neither with Python, true, but it's now 35 years since my first code line, on dozens of OSes and languages. Code porting is even one of my specialties.
BTW, it's possible however... Several games I play NEVER broke the savefiles during the WHOLE development process, up to the "Completed" status... Both with RPGM or Ren'Py.
I repeat again, I'm annoyed to restart the game, and annoyed that devs NEVER take this into account - but as a professional, I also know that devs are rarely aware of what end user really want, I have to deal with that daily. That's why I expressed my opinion here, and to be honest and near rude, the only person I want to listen to is the developer. Everything else is sterile: you're a fanboy, that's OK and I don't mind, but obviously you can't accept criticism about this game - even if constructive - and this discussion won't have any effect but wasting time.
Cause if I drop the game just cause I get a even a bit annoyed with it, well I'd imagine there would be whole bunch of great games out there in this site that I'd be missing out on just because I got impatient with them.
Or you may wait until they're completed. If they are completed one day... But currently, on the around 60 games I follow, only a dozen are completed, at least the same amount are abandonned (or not updated since six months or more). A majority are under development: I'm happy for you if you're able to fully follow 30+ games. I can't, and I don't even WANT to. I have too much things to do IRL for that.
However, you should not forget that, since the game is currently under development, we all are
de facto beta-testers. I believe it's normal to let know what is bad: bugs, of course, but also continuity problems, mispellings, ergonomic issues, mechanics issues, and so on. At least, that's why I expect from my own beta-testers: tell me EVERYTHING that is/seems wrong, then we'll sort them with priorities and maybe give a budget to solve some of them.
There are things that I do wish improved with the DeLucas contracts (Which I already posted about to Hopes), but I just don't think "making them once 100% playthroughs" or "save import" would be any of them. For me, they just feel like waste of Hopes time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.
Considering the awful amount of people asking for "last full saves" on each update for each game, I think that a quick jump to new parts and save imports are on the contrary very importants - as external modules of course, since these tools don't really need to be in the final version, so they don't need to be included in the main source code.
You have your old saves. Start this master editing. Share them here when you are done.
I'm not the dev. I don't have enough spare time to enter within the code of both versions and compare them - that's an easy thing when you write both, it's just painful when you didn't. That was not a really clever remark... Excepted if you pay me my usual price to do it, of course.
