Ren'Py What a Legend! [v0.7.03] [MagicNuts]

4.70 star(s) 464 Votes
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hablat

hablat

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Jul 24, 2017
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isabel95 said:
Yet, despite this ridiculous monthly compensation and the huge crowd of people paying for his work, his update speeds have been declining steadily (I seem to remember him promising a new update every 3 months in the beginning of Being a DIK, now its more like 6)


[...]there's clearly a worrysome trend going on in this industry.
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So I said it before as an angry rant to people complaining that it's taking so long, this time I'm going to flip it on its head... I think these projects are a first for a lot of these devs. It's so so easy to underestimate the time anything will take in a project especially with so many moving parts. And as Magicnuts has said, throwing money at the problem doesn't always solve it.

Think of it this way: Building a house can take 20 people 1 month. 40 people gets it done in 2 weeks. 60 people it goes back to taking a month. Not always does adding people help, and in some cases it can detract. If they hire Jimmy the Intern to do some of the art and he comes back 3 weeks later with the art in a completely wrong style or some other mistake... Add 3 additional weeks to the workload because it needs to be fixed.

On top of that I think there's also the pressure. You mentioned DPC has 13.5k supporters. That's 13,500 people who weigh on his shoulders every time he makes a render, writes a scene, programs a minigame. 13,500 people who it might feel like he's disappointing and it can cause a crippling bout of perfectionism, imposter syndrome, all sorts of stuff. I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but I'm also saying as outsiders peering in we aren't privy to everything going on.

DPC releases meaty updates. What a Legend has full character arcs released in the updates and they're not small either - in addition to it being hand drawn (I'm sure there's an argument to be made for 3DCG games rendering every scene frame by frame vs. paperdoll systems maybe evening out time spent but that's a whole other thing). Yes, they skew to go longer... but it's not like they all start falling off. I believe these should be treated as a case-by-case basis.

Magicnuts is very transparent and gives frequent updates. Correct me if I'm wrong they also said this update was larger than the last? So the time it's taken isn't really that bad imo. If they keep backsliding and taking an additional month every update with no increase in quality, size, or anything like that... Sure. But this is literally the first time this has happened. Let's not start frothing at the mouth and beating good devs with sticks because we scheduled a day off work to jerk off to a release that never came.
 
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moskyx

moskyx

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Jun 17, 2019
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isabel95 said:
Guys, you can pretend like these criticisms are invalid and those people are just random jerks jealous of someone's success, but the undeniable fact at this point is that there seems to be an inverse relationship between patreon subscriber count and update release speed. These are not isolated examples anymore, it seems to happen to every single successful game dev on here - as soon as they have established a decent following, their ambition to push their game forward seems to decline. Even the ones that are very transparent and ambitious (to which I definitely count magicnuts) don't seem exempt from that.

Look at the most popular dev on here, DrPinkCake, with his 13,564 patreons. He gets so much money per month by now he is more than able to make this game his fulltime job and hire people to speed up the process on top of it. Yet, despite this ridiculous monthly compensation and the huge crowd of people paying for his work, his update speeds have been declining steadily (I seem to remember him promising a new update every 3 months in the beginning of Being a DIK, now its more like 6)


So yes we can't really complain about this if we don't pay money for it and yes, it's very understandable for fans of a game to defend the dev (especially when he is giving us a great content for free), but maybe don't discard this criticism so easily when there's clearly a worrysome trend going on in this industry.
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No, look, you can't just paint all successful devs as lazy mlkers. You can't just come to a thread (here I'm not talking about you especifically, but in general) and post some shitty assumptions just because some infamous dev abused of the system without at least been informed of how this game's dev are approaching development, how they communicate their progress and setbacks, how they treat their patrons, etc. Well, of course you can, but you shouldn't. That's not fair at all, that's not criticism but plain hate, trolling or a total lack of intelligence and maturity to being able to build your opinions on a topic. Pick your favourite one.

Back to your message, all I can see in your examples is people working their asses off to offer a quality product. Do you think BaDIK updates are worse now than the first ones when DPC wasn't as followed as he is now? I don't think so, it's actually the opposite: bigger updates, with more and better renders and music and new gameplay elements and coding solutions, and a remarkable shortage of bugs. Not to mention the branching in BaDIK's case, which neccesarily means an increasingly amount of work on each update to tie every path up in each release. And of course it takes more time to produce than the first chapters (that were probably released while having a buffer of already made renders that sped up the next release). Fortunately most people can see those efforts and that's why they keep gaining supporters over time even though their releases are 'slower'.

And again, what's the actual problem in them earning money for a good work? Why would they rush an update to release it one month before (at best) just to please those crybabies who think 'they are earning too much' instead of investing that time on improving the game to satisfy all their actual backers? Also, because I know it's the next arguing point, earning money doesn't magically translate into having more time to work on their game or growing an extra arm, and there are tons of reasons why devs are reluctant to hire people to help them that basically can be reduced to 'more people working on a project like this doesn't equal to bigger and faster updates, at all'.

Tl, Dr: you see a worrying trend of laziness all around, I see a nice trend of people supporting quality games and devs trying to work their bests to match those expectations (something the most successful ones tend to accomplish more than not, that's why they are successful devs). But if it's really annoying you, maybe stop playing games under development and wait for them to be finished, and don't look that much at dev's finances
 
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j4yj4m

j4yj4m

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Jun 19, 2017
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To me this whole discussion seems slightly besides the point anyway. We are still talking about a 2D game and Chestnut seems to be drawing fulltime already. That basically means that there's realisticallly no good way to speed things up without losing quality - certainly not for the money WaL! is making.

It's a totally different question compared to 3D games, where it's much easier to share the work. In case of WaL! we really aren't talking about the question whether they should or should not speed up their work, but whether it's realistically doable at all? And the answer to that question is simply "no" at this point.
 
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D

destroyerofassholes

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Oct 23, 2019
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y'all are way too defensive.

it is a trend that most porn developers kinda crap out over time.

and it is also a fact that this update is pretty late. yes, wal is pretty good and so are its devs. these facts aren't mutually exclusive. saying "man i hope this doesnt become a trend in this game too" doesn't equal "bruh fuck this game.".

sure there are dumb complaints but some of you are almost willing to commit homicide over a porn game.

many of you can't even seem to accept that...the update is late. that's not intrinsically a red flag, but i've seen people pretty much deny it being late as a defense mechanism or some other bs.
 
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hablat

hablat

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Jul 24, 2017
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destroyerofassholes said:
and it is also a fact that this update is pretty late. yes, wal is pretty good and so are its devs. these facts aren't mutually exclusive. saying "man i hope this doesnt become a trend in this game too" doesn't equal "bruh fuck this game.".
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I don't think most of us arguing in defense of the devs are going against people who are just saying "It's late, I hope it doesn't become a trend". More of the fatalistic statements that boil down to "it has been so it will be".

Comments like:
These devs went from "promising" with a $300 Patreon to the new slacking, full of excuses "ICSTOR" within 3 updates...
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Of course they will milk this month too. Thats how these things work.
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It's a little disingenuous that you're moving the goalposts after the ball's been kicked. If you're genuinely taking the stance and making the statement you said, none of the arguments are against you. Just shrug 'em off.

And yes, I'm a bit defensive because I know what creative burnout is like and constantly being shit on despite doing your best. Creative work is both highly valued and undervalued often by the same people who don't understand the effort it can take. I don't doubt the devs already feel shitty for the release being delayed and then coming to a thread where people start attacking their character saying they're milking... Constantly dealing with that I wouldn't be surprised they'd drop the game even if they were making bank. Money isn't worth your peace of mind.

Anyway I've said my piece 3 times, I'm dropping it.
 
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Blades1138

Blades1138

Active Member
Jul 29, 2017
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destroyerofassholes said:
y'all are way too defensive.

it is a trend that most porn developers kinda crap out over time.

and it is also a fact that this update is pretty late. yes, wal is pretty good and so are its devs. these facts aren't mutually exclusive. saying "man i hope this doesnt become a trend in this game too" doesn't equal "bruh fuck this game.".

sure there are dumb complaints but some of you are almost willing to commit homicide over a porn game.

many of you can't even seem to accept that...the update is late. that's not intrinsically a red flag, but i've seen people pretty much deny it being late as a defense mechanism or some other bs.
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See, there's no problem with valid criticism. The problem is we're seeing the same negativity again and again, which is neither constructive nor does it contribute anything. The bad part is that it's more likely to demoralize the devs, rather than motivate them.

Would all of us like to have played this update sooner - of course. But the time it's taken to create it tells me one thing only - that the quality and length of the update will be there. As a bit of a perfectionist myself, I can very well understand the time it takes it takes to do this.

I'm fairly sure the play time would be close to that of two updates made 3 months apart. At least for me that is, because I don't skip over the text just to see the pictures. For those that do - well this isn't that kind of game anyway, because a lot of the enjoyment comes from the humor in the script. For those that want to get 'lengthy' updates over short periods of time, there's plenty of games that feature grind and repetitive mechanics to pad out the game play, something which is not featured here.
 
FlamesOfVengeance

FlamesOfVengeance

Well-Known Member
Jul 16, 2019
1,529
1,783
Blades1138 said:
You and everyone else with a specific fetish think they make 'every game better'. Couldn't be further from the truth though.
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That's exactly why every single one of these very specific kinks should be optional. I'm not saying that pregnancy content should be shoved down everyone's throat. It's just good to have for those who like it. Those who don't want anything to do with it can freely ignore it in-game and move on without feeling like they missed something. It's really not that hard to understand.
 
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whichone

whichone

Forum Fanatic
Jan 3, 2018
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BlacxXanderz said:
Ok, maybe this will make you shut up and wait for few days. I'm just member of MagicNuts discord's and here's the game progress.

View attachment 1405261
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lol nah, they'll just moan that "only" 3 bugs were done. :WeSmart:
Completely disregarding the fact that they have no idea how complex those bugs were, or that 6 items have been removed from the "Total polish" list. :ROFLMAO:
Trust me, you can't please those people.
Certainly not with facts that do not fit their agenda.
 
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4.70 star(s) 464 Votes