My major issue is the erosion of trust.
Preface this by saying I like Tak, a lot. He's one of my favorite devs to talk with here because he's informative and seems friendly. I'm mostly disappointed in the decision but I think anytime a decision has come to a vote, Tak has went opposite of how I voted so I had a hunch it was going to come to this. Maybe I should have used reverse psychology.
I just don't understand how I'm supposed to justify spending more money on a developer that has abandoned two projects. Sometimes a decision to abandon is justified (poor health, etc) but the only justification I see here is that it's Tak's choice. It's the equivalent to being a child and asking why and getting told "because I said so."
I'm not gonna harp on the design of the new girls in the college VN. They are in progress and will most likely change a bit more before anything resembling a release is ready. Look at how many redesigns the Stardew Valley NPCs went through, some look nothing like their original forms.
Any VN's success mostly comes down to luck. Sure, you can bolster your chances with technical skill, good writing, etc, but the largest factor is luck. You need the right eyes on it, the right wallets to open, and the right mouths to spread. There's plenty of absolute garbage VNs that pull in bank and really good VNs that sputter along financially or eventually get abandoned.
All I know is, around a week ago, Tides was still viable because Tak was looking for testers for the spiced up scenes. Now? Not so much. I would think that a decision this important would need more time.
Yeah trust or lets call it belief in my case is gone. People who say this is normal behavior are crazy imo lol.
You cant create this big (wannabe at this stage) epos, intending to spin this big story over three games - all connected - hype everyone for this setup and than just go "Nah, fuck it, i'll make a college romp now".
This whole decision making proccess is so incredibly fickle and this wasnt even his first learning project anymore, thats was the spice pirate. He should have learned these lessons already.
I suspect he will lose drive and motivation with the new college game quickly too if it doesnt become a immediate economical hit which imo is unlikely in general with new avn development at the moment.
I know this feeling of losing steam and interest in a story youre writing, getting new ideas and prefering to work on that ... thats (and other reasons lol) why i would be a shit writer who wouldnt get things done and at this point it feels very likely that Tak is the same which is bad. Waaaay too erratic and jumpy to get something this big done without losing interest.
Yeah his private life was part of this decision but he knew about these changes already when he started to create tides, didnt he?
I wonder what % of all of you complaining actually supported the game instead of just freeloading and playing for free I mean I guess you reap what you sow you didn't support the game which lead to it getting canceled and now the dev has to make a game that will appeal to more people actual paying customers. University games are extremely popular with the devs level of writing and quality I think he can easily pull it off even if the market is saturated with them more people are bound to try it out and drop some money over some niche pirate game that is for sure make no mistakes and anybody saying otherwise is delusional almost all the top selling AVN on steam are university/college games they make money for a reason.
How can you blame that on the viewers if Tak never tried to monetize ToS in the first place? I subbed when he realeased chapter 2 (he did that for free) because i couldnt stand him releasing such a high quality game for free (while i pirate other games where devs are more greedy ...).
But thats the thing, he never even tried to earn money with ToS or to make it economically viable. Not just the patreon setup, his dev decision leaned towards his own passion and fullfilment instead of appeasing usual avn demands (like how he went with softcore).
He a) never reached the point of constant updates/content to see if ToS even is able to get some steam and b) never tried to earn money with it on patreon with giving it out free and uses that as "justification" to switch games again.
And now he intends to make a new game with every patreon-related (and annoying) money making mechanic involved.
Its like managing a orphanage, realising its not really making money and deciding to instead become a loan shark now.
