Which would you prefer? That we listen or remain faithful to our vision? No wonder Dev's get frustrated at times. I like to read this thread as it's not going to change my story, but can affect the way I think about how I develop the characters or how I use dialogue. Having said that I'm not going to go against my own preferences so I'm not going to fall into the potholes of humiliation, mc's with little dicks, black guys with monster dicks, and so on and so on. I'm more than happy to take feedback (except on the subject of American English v English English) and that feedback may, or may not change the way I do something based on the feedback, not on whether it comes from a paid Patreon follower or otherwise. I find these threads useful as a way of getting me to look at my stories from different angles and I believe that's good.
I described two extremes I’ve noticed among developers who publish their games on f95 on their own.
In response to the claim that they do it to get feedback, I pointed out that feedback from regular f95 users is often completely ignored, and only feedback from patrons is taken into account. What I meant is that these developers tend to use f95 more as an advertising platform—hoping to gain additional patrons here—rather than as a source of feedback. The logic is that the game will end up here anyway, so they might as well take the initiative. That’s generally fine—it's their choice. But it’s simply a reality one has to accept.
The second extreme—which may or may not accompany the first—is when patrons start fully dictating what will or won’t be in the game. Developers run polls, constantly ask what patrons want to see next, what needs to be changed, and so on. And this tends to affect the final game in a negative way. I’ve read that something similar happened with
Gothic 2. The developers interacted very actively with players and significantly changed their original concept—the devs wanted a new main character since the hero of the first game had died at the end, but the players wanted the original protagonist back, so the devs decided to “resurrect” him. Then players kept demanding all sorts of things—dragons, pirates, etc. All of this had a negative impact on the final narrative—the story of
Gothic 2 is much less compelling than that of the first
Gothic.
As for what I think is the best approach: before making a game, you need to have a fresh idea—an experience you want to offer players, something they haven’t been able to experience before. And before you start development, you should outline the story from beginning to end. In other words, when you begin making the game, you should already have a general understanding of how the story will conclude and what ideas it will contain. What feelings do you want the player to have when they finish your game? But during development, if some aspect receives a lot of negative feedback, I think you should listen. That is, if the criticism isn’t directed at your core concept but at how well and consistently you’re executing that concept—then that kind of criticism is useful and worth taking into account.
It’s great that you personally care about the feedback here and that you’re making the game as a personal passion project. I really liked the vibe and the premise of your game about swinging on vacation — a light, stress-free adventure. I genuinely like your concept, but I can see that the visuals are struggling a lot — as I mentioned, pubic hair sticks out through the swimsuits, the women’s buttocks look masculine and generally non-sexual, and so on. I think my feedback is fairly constructive, and if you manage to fix these issues, that would be great — I think both the game and the players would benefit from it.
