It's kind of ironic that everything people warned Mad King about in regard to his plans came true.
The side stories were dropped after development time was wasted on them, the sandbox never really worked out as it should have and just made for boring players out of their minds.
We could be so much further in, if he had just concentrated on telling his story as he does now, without all the overambitious bullcrap that wasted so much time.
Hi,
I do take into consideration the feedback from players. You can see that this has happened from the first months of development until now. And there were quite a few. For example, recently on Patreon, there was a poll for choosing between the old mechanism of pledge vs subscription as the player's opinion matters. Their votes made a difference as I changed that according to the results.
Related to the sandbox, Vis would have been the perfect game if it was in an open world. At least this is what I have in my head and to daydream, something with a similar mechanism as Mass Effect or Dragon Age. I experimented with it, and with the required investment. I even commissioned an artist to change the city view and deliver digitally drawn art to increase the overall quality, but sadly, he didn't deliver it. I've met all the difficulties that could I could possibly meet during that project and that is why I put it on hold. If I wouldn't had started it, I would have never learned of those difficulties and I would have never gained the experience.
I am all for listening to feedback and implementing but at some point, I have to make my own decisions and learn from them. Because maybe there will be a time when there will be no advice and I will have to rely on my experience.
And in the end, I must state, again, that Patreon along with forums like f95, are the birthplace for content creators and that means that not always things will go smoothly with the creation