>>
|
3994a2.jpg
Glitter Sea
3994a2
>>133308
>look at the immense amount of shit we have absolutely no idea about.
There's a lot of mystery in Dead Dust, so there's a lot of territory to cover; and a lot of groundwork to lay before said territory can *be* covered. It's a long quest and I knew it was going to be a long one when I first started it. That isn't to excuse instances where I've gone a long time without updating, and various points where I could've handled the pacing better, but at the same time, your principal frustration here seems to be that so many mysteries haven't been figured out yet. The only thing I can really say to that is that it's by design and that these things won't remain unresolved forever. (I suppose your response to that might be that it's poor design, but even if that's the case it's a design we're locked into unless I drastically revamp my plans for the quest.)
>That’s all Dead Dust is frankly, a whole load of questions with about three relevant answers in two years of running.
I'm sorry, but I think the length of time the quest has been running is kind of an irrelevant point -- we all know questing is a notoriously slow medium, which is exacerbated by the fact that none (or at least most) of us are doing this as a career or even as a side gig. Questing is my hobby, and as such it gets pushed to the backburner when I'm busy with real-life concerns, as well as when I simply need a break from it. That's going to mess with the pacing, unfortunately.
>Taking things from the top, lewds honestly just don’t have a place in Dead Dust
As I stated in an earlier post, I'm sympathetic to this view, and for a good while have felt some unease or worry about including lewd content. However, I've received so much positive feedback about the sex scenes (and the exposition done during them), including from people who have stated outright that they don't have any interest in lewd content, that it convinced me to stay the course in terms of delivering that kind of content.
>completely cucking us out of screwinging the hot sharkish thing is a bit of a dick move
It's unfair to call the lack of sex with Roz a dick move on my part, considering that I didn't take any steps to prevent it from happening. (I also take umbrage with the notion that any narrative decision a quest author makes can fairly be considered a dick move.) From what I recall, there was very little in the way of suggestions to get intimate with Roz, despite there being ample opportunity to do so. I don't think that means people didn't want to get down and dirty with her, but it does mean that, for whatever reason, they chose not to do it. (Perhaps because of Penny's reluctance? But even that was influenced by suggesters.)
>But getting back on track, I’m frankly baffled you didn’t back out of/delay the sex scene with Omen after the level of debate the idea of sexing her for information sparked
That was because the strong majority of feedback I received in response to that controversy basically said, "hell yeah, go for it". Granted, I recall most of that was in discussions on the Discord server, rather than here, but since you're on the server you might be able to look it up if you'd like (I believe most of it was in the quest discussion channel, although some might have been in DMs as well).
>and I’m honestly just confused on how and why you thought people would focus on both the lewds and the information at the same time
Similarly, I received a lot of feedback saying that this strategy worked well, including from people who have no interest in sex scenes (as I stated earlier). I was skeptical as well, but when I have a majority of people saying that it works great, I'm apt to listen to them. (Maybe there's a discussion worth having about how much I should listen to feedback about these things?)
>Giving your protagonist actual superpowers a year and a half into your story is a bold move, especially when the existence of superpowers much less Penny having them wasn’t hinted at in the slightest, and even more so when said superpower is absurdly useful in the story.
>Like, I am legitimately curious as to why you thought giving Penny invisibility was a good idea. It obviously opens up a lot of possibilities both lewd and story wise but it goes completely against the normal and downright vulnerable Penny we’d known for a year and a half, and again even if you planned this all along I don’t recall any sort of real foreshadowing to this.
As >>133322 pointed out, there have been some (admittedly subtle) hints, at least in the sense of suggesting that Penny is special in some way. I suppose you're right, though, that there wasn't any major foreshadowing (that I recall, anyway) hinting at the existence of the blades. Maybe there should've been, but I had always intended it to be a surprise, both for Penny and for the audience; significant plot/backstory details required for it to be thrust upon her unexpectedly, rather than being something she gradually discovers about herself. (Granted, there are ways to both foreshadow something and still maintain surprise, but in this case I simply didn't even think to do it, and I'm not sure how I would have done it.)
>I also dislike what Blades existing seems to imply for the world, but I’ll be honest and say I skipped most of that particular spiel.
I don't mean to be dismissive, but if you dislike that aspect of the quest, I don't think you're going to be happy with the quest long term no matter what I do, short of redesigning the quest on such a fundamental level that it'd become a new quest entirely. I guess to use a crude analogy, your complaint here is akin to saying you liked Clark Kent more before you found out he was Superman. (Not that this is a superhero quest per se, but hopefully you get what I mean.) The blades are an integral part of the quest's concept itself and can't be divorced from it without completely changing the quest in terms of its core concepts and themes, and wiping out an enormous chunk of the backstory and setting.
>You know what I hate as well? Leaving off the cliffhanger of Penny basically kicking the bucket to go into a flashback chapter that reveals the only mystery that had any substantial clues to it!
Are you sure it revealed that mystery? I suppose I can't blame you for disliking the cliffhanger aspect, though, since that's a matter of personal taste.
>I know that Siobahn (I’m calling her Penny from now on) is supposed to be a bitch, but saying the suggestors are stupid basically every time, even if it’s in character, just feels like it’s you, Teegee, doing the insulting.
This surprises me, honestly, because that really wasn't the feeling I was going for, for the most part. Maybe a few curt responses here and there, but as far as I remember I never had Siobhan call suggesters stupid outright, so I suspect you're reading too much into it. Regardless, I'm sorry that you got the impression that I'm insulting suggesters. I don't believe that bad or stupid suggestions really exist, and I certainly don't want anyone to feel bad about any suggestion they posted. That being said, I don't really know how to resolve that issue, since the only alternative is to stop writing in-character, or I guess to never write protagonists with snarky attitudes.
>Especially when it comes to the characters thinking they’re human, cause that joke got grating real fast.
While I've made jokes about it on Discord, the whole "characters believe they're human" thing isn't itself a joke, it's an important plot detail. I'm sorry if it got grating.
>And then you go and do the exact same thing you did with Omen and try to mix (really good this time, i’ll admit) sex with a ham-fisted info dump mixed in. I already went over my main problems with this strategy before so I won’t repeat myself, but I do honestly wonder why you tried this again after it went so poorly with Omen.
Again, I've had a lot more people tell me they thought it was fine, or even worked great, than I've seen people complain about it. It was enough that I ended up ignoring my own doubts about it multiple times (which maybe I shouldn't have done).
>So, in the end, my personal take on matters is that you should drop chapter -1 since it’s rotten from its core and pick up from where thread 2 left off
To do what you're asking, I'd have to scrap Chapter -1 AND declare Chapter 1 non-canon, and start over from where Chapter 0 left off. I have no way of explaining why without delving into a shitton of spoilers, though.
>and provide hints and clues rather than more god damn questions.
I've been providing hints and clues at pretty much every opportunity to do so, but maybe they're too subtle. As for avoiding more questions, do you really think that's possible without doing a flat-out lore dump? I could explicitly spell out the meaning of every event as they occur, but that'd leave people with very little to speculate and theorize about.
>I know Dead Dust is both something special and can most certainly be fixed.
You say that, but you've also spent the majority of your post telling me, in effect, that the core of the quest and everything I have planned for it is bad, and that really only the initial premise is worthwhile. To be clear, I'm not putting words in your mouth, but that conclusion is the logical consequence of many of your complaints, when considered in the context of what I have planned. So, fixing it according to your complaints would mean scrapping the majority of my plans and ideas for the quest and making it into, effectively, a totally different quest -- one I'm not sure I would actually have much interest in running.
|