Feedback: The Aftermath and Thoughts (Patreon)

So first: Let me thank everyone for the feedback. I want it. For those of you who are still holding back, I want to hear from you now as well as in the future. While I appreciate some of you wanting to avoid hurting my feelings or discouraging my project, it will only get better with an honest assessment. I have never done this before and maturation comes from evaluation and learning from one's failures.  So please check in and feel free to share your thoughts now and in the future.

That being said...onward to the future.

In the wake of the feedback and an, almost universal, agreement of the annoying repetition of things; I attempted some changes. My initial thoughts and work over the past week began to center around a more linear game. In this regard, the game began to read more like a visual novel. The problem, as some of you who read my recent comments, was that it became too linear. If I had begun the game with multiple characters, I could break-up the monotony of the linear game with multiple branches for each character. While that is doable--and a long-term goal-- the game would be extremely linear until I got to that point. While it lets the writing shine better...shit was boring af for real!

While I still have that version as a backup, I really wasn't liking where it was going. Thus, I returned to the original version and did some changes:

What's New:

Change 1:

V0.4 will hopefully be out in a few days. Stats have been removed from the game. In short, this seems like a hybrid ground for those who did not like the grind and wanted more story or linear play. Thus, you don't have to grind out 5 or 10 attendance points to trigger an event now. Things will gradually unlock in the order they did before, there's just no minimal points required in addition to the event criteria. For example, you don't have to clean the bathroom 5 times now before finding something. If you completed the prerequisite for it, the next time you clean, you should find the item you're looking for. Several people suggested this and after testing it a few rounds, it doesn't seem bad and I honestly don't miss the stats personally.

Change 2:

This also means that the old format remains generally intact. I found that I like the multiple options and the freedom to wander around and do what you want rather than simply click through the VN story mode.  However, now there is one major change: responses after selecting an choice are now randomized. For those that found it monotonous to read the same text each day when you "skipped class," the new system will have 2 potential choices when selecting this; each with a 50% chance of being selected. For example, if you wake up and state that you want to skip class, choosing this will randomly select between Path 1 or Path 2 conversations/dialogue. Path 1 may have a general statement about feeling lazy while Path 2 may have a conversation between Zack and Braden about something completely different. This may lead to 2 completely different reasons for skippping class that day but won't alter the story much. In some cases, one of these paths may have another random selection. Major events in the game will not be randomly selected. If they were, it would throw back that grind mentally that people generally disliked. Thus, when they are needed, major events will trump the random options. Also, obtaining items will trump the random options. These random options are simply to break-up the monotony and hopefully increase the desire to repeat events just to see what other options there are. While I have not implemented this in the entire game (because it's going to take some time), I have implemented it starting in Chapter 2 only. (Chapter 2 will pick-up right after the events that ended in v0.31. You can also start the game now and skip directly to Chapter 2 to prevent having to replay the entire first part of the game every time). Because it takes time, I wanted to make these changes starting in Chapter 2 and then see how the community was responding. If it seems smoother, than I can simply go back to make the additions to smooth about Chapter 1. There's also nothing saying I can't include 3 or 4 potential responses for some choices as well, increasing the random selection even more! At this point, I'm just doing Chapter 2 as a test. 

In short, these two changes seem like an more simplistic way of fixing what I already have done without changing the entire interface of the game and potentially bugging things all to fuck.

On the downside, this will probably slow down game production but, in my mind, I'm ok with that because I feel like it will expand the game in additional directions that the typical VN format does not allow. 

So When's the New Update:

I am working hard to get the new update launched within the next few days. While I have diligently launched my last few updates on the 1st of the month, I can't promise that right now but it shouldn't be too far off. Because of the impact of the feedback this month, I have switched gears several times and the holidays destroyed several potential project work days. However, I want to have the Chapter 2 changes in place so that you guys have something to evaluate these changes on.

Let me know your thoughts. What do you think? Questions? 

Thanks for reading this long af post! 

-Aaryn-