I'm still new to ToT and bowei in general but here the hate is way stronger than any defenders. I can totally understand the frustration but some are totally overreacting. So idk if I am white knighting already in their eyes. I'm really interested in where this strong investment comes from. Like the emotions are very strong (on both sides), the accusations grave and the language harsh despite the subject matter being just a basically free to play porn game.
I've lurked the net quite some time already from obscure textboards to well and lesser known imageboards, forums and social media and I know my specimen but everyime I set foot in a new community I want to understand the general demographic.
Like are these just 4chan tier autists you don't have to pay no mind or redditor soyboys who indugle in consoomerism /coomerism too much or just wierd normies. And so far my observations press me to assume it's more of the first category
I more compare this to the whole Pokemon Sword and Shield debacle where there are autists on both sides especially since there as this community is in an overall stagnant zone where it started off decent, Koda grew lazy, people got pissed but by then there has already been a community that blindly defend those decisions while on the other hand there are the pissed off people who take at every chance to bash the hell out of Boda's decisions becoming more annoying (hell one person apparently got depressed because of the delays
). Many people get bored, while the harshest defenders leave for better healthier pastures leaving a new generation of people doing the same electric boogaloo but with a different flavor. A great example is GearlessJoe one of the people here who was the most critical of Boda eventually deciding to give it a rest. Now it's a pattern of Boda revealing something cool, people look at it with complete hopes/cynicism, it gets delayed multiple times, people start talking about the pateron bashing the hell out of people who pay, one of the Pateron pledgers comes from the woodwork and tries to clap back only for the voices of the f95 people shout them down, while the reverse happens on the discord server where there are mods in both areas who end up deleting some of the discussions for whatever reason whether it makes sense or not. the product gets released if at all, people coonsoom, give their thoughts, then the cycle repeats. I just stay here just to randomly spark discussion, bring in my own 2 senses (even if what I have to say is often so long that you could turn it into a script), and generally lurk more than bashing boda at this point.
But I'd say that a part of that also comes from Koda's overall behavior as he often comes off as a lazy disingenuous ass that's easy to pick on often being compared to yanderedev. He knows he's the problem but never truly changes only getting worse. Bowei is better but not by much with tracing and plagiarism allegations on top of passively dealing with Koda's problem like how he doesn't want Koda to add extra things to his side projects and often tries to make it impossible only for Koda to do it anyway accomplishing nothing and wasting everyone's time. With how passive Bowei is about Koda, it's extremely easy to get the impression that he's mooching off of the slowly shrinking patron money.
Plus this is also a game that originally filled a niche that was often neglected or given much attention. So starved of that content, many want this project to flourish and not falter like many projects that attempted to fulfill that niche. Even then, the competitors don't really fill that niche the way Boda's works does (despite most of the competition are better with better devs behind the wheel).
And just like the Pokemon Sword and Shield decacle, there are people who try to make sense of this coming up with crazy theories, talking about things they have no complete understanding of, theorizing the possible mental issues of real-life people, Talking or acting like their word is objective fact to law, grandstanding, misrepresenting of arguments, stereotyping from both sides, moderators coming in threatening for order only for the voices to preemptively shoo them off, the spreading of misinformation, and assholes, assholes everywhere I'm an asshole you're an asshole the next person who posts after me is an asshole. It's a mess that's both entertaining and sad.
