A Year in Review/State of the Game (Patreon)

Hey all! We've recently passed the anniversary of the patreon page's launch, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how things are going and talk about some of my plans for the future.

I'd like to start out by saying that I'm still blown away by the level of support the project has gotten! I can't thank you all enough for the support you've given, and I hope the project continues to meet your expectations! Overall, I don't really think there's a lot to report on about the patreon page, I at least feel that things have been running very smoothly for the past several months. There are just a few things I'd like to touch on relating to scene suggestions.

The Monthly Poll

As the page grows in size, the number of people who can make suggestions for the poll also increases. Thus far, the number of people who actually make a suggestions in a given month has still stayed below the limit of how many scenes can be in the poll (25), but at this point there are more than enough patrons eligible that we could pass that point. Just as a reminder since it's been a while since I last brought this up, I track scene suggestions as a queue, or technically three queues, one for each eligible tier. Each month, I add suggestions into the queue in the order they're approved, with any returning scenes that were in the previous poll added onto the end at the end of the suggestion period. In the event that there are more than 25 total suggestions, I'll create the poll by going through the queue starting with Seniors, then Juniors, and finally Sophomores. Any scenes that don't fit into the poll for that month will be left out, but they'll start the next month at the top of their tier's queue already.

But, that's just a reminder of something that's already in effect! More importantly, there are some slight changes I want to make to the suggestion approval process. The first is a very simple, minor change: rather than accepting suggestions right up until the poll goes up, I'm going to make the 20th of the month the deadline for making a new suggestion. That way, I have decent amount of time to get back to you and potentially workshop the scene if it can work but some changes are needed. There have been a few times where people have made a suggestion right at the last minute, and it puts a lot of pressure on me to make a call on whether or not to accept it in a very short amount of time. Cutting off new suggestions a few days before the poll should prevent situations like that.

The next is something I actually want your input on before I officially make the change. Currently, whenever a suggestion is rejected, I always give an explanation as to why and try to give specific reasons. But, some of you who have been pledged for a while may have noticed that recently it's been taking 3-4+ days for me to get back to you about a suggestion when it used to be only a day or so. I've started to feel a little overwhelmed with how many suggestions I have to go through most months, the delay comes from needing to give all of them in-depth consideration but not wanting to take too much time away from working on the game. However, I almost always know after the first time reading through a suggestion whether the scene will work or not. It's pinpointing exactly why and where there's an issue with the scene to give as feedback to the suggester that takes time when I'm not sold on a scene. Basically what this boils down to is: Would you be alright with me rejecting some scene suggestions without elaborating on why it won't work? That would save me some time, and I can only think of one time that my initial gut feeling was wrong after more carefully considering an idea, but I also understand that doing so could be frustrating or disappointing to people making the suggestions, especially if multiple get turned down in a row. And to be clear, I wouldn't never give feedback if this change were made, I would definitely still try to, it's just that sometimes it's hard to come up with more specifics than just "this feels off".

The last 'change' is another very minor thing that I've actually already been doing for a few months, which you may have noticed with new scenes in the poll. Frankly I probably should have been doing it this way from the start, but I'm no longer giving exact dates to any scenes that aren't tied to specific existing events. This is purely to protect me from myself and is a direct response to accidentally stacking a ton of scenes on Thursday without thinking about it ^^; . So in the polls most scenes will just be listed as "Week 2" or "Before the end of the week" instead of a specific day going forward, and once I've settled on a day it fits best for an accepted scene I'll update it in the publicly available list.

And that's all for the polls! Let me know if you have any concerns about the two changes I've made, and definitely tell me your thoughts on the proposed change to scene suggestion rejections either in the comments or on discord! For that matter, if you have any qualms with how the patreon is run that I haven't addressed, please bring it to my attention!

The Future of the Game

On to the next order of business: Keeping you up to date on my plans for the game! It's not really a secret that this current update has really been dragging on- we've recently reached the highest dev build count for any update. I touched on this recently in the ekas thread so I won't retread why development has been so troubled, but rest assured that it's finally close to completion!

But, on the subject of Day 5, I'd like to be candid about a big source of stress for me relating to the project. Originally, Day 5 was meant to be a lull/break in the week, the first completely average day after Wednesday covered the last bit of introduction to the game with clubs. However, because of that, I kept thinking of it as a good place to put scenes that weren't really tied to anything specific, and so it actually ended up being on the same level of complexity as the first two days. This was just poor planning on my part that I've already taken note of to avoid in the future.

The real issue with this, is that since Friday and Saturday are planned to be fairly large as well, Saturday moreso with both the party and a trip off campus, now the entire first week will be very content heavy. My fear is that since that level of complexity to each day has become the norm for so long, when we get to week two and most of the days are actually 'average' as intended, it's going to give the impression that I've started rushing to finish the game. I've mentioned before, but I don't think I've brought it up in a long time, that my intent is for individual days to be a fair bit less dense than they've been during Week 1, and for content to be more spread out over time. It's not a perfect measure of everything happening, but for a truly average day my target is 5 vore scenes as the limit, to give an idea. Ironically, Wednesday is the best example of an average day right now even though I consider every club day as a special occasion where things will be more complex just due to the three club scenes ^^; . I just want to make sure I set expectations ahead of time to avoid any potential confusion or disappointment down the road. 

With that out of the way, I'd like to touch on my long term plans for the game's development to keep you guys in the loop! First off, my goal is to have the first week finished by the end of this year! The fact that Day 5 has now pushed all the way into April may make me end up overshooting that a little bit, but I'm very determined to complete the next two days by the end of 2021! It'll be a very important milestone because, by the version numbering system I've set up, when week 1 is complete we'll have officially reached version 1.0.

There will likely be an extended break after I finish week 1, partially a true break for me to recharge and partially just a break from dev builds/new content while I handle preplanning and nailing down the details of the week. But once things start up again, my goal is for it to only take ~2 months for a full update! That would be close to a full week every year if it pans out. With better planning in advance, most days being 'average' length as established above, and accounting for having writing assistance from the start, I'm very optimistic that I can get things moving much faster than they have been. Though that said, that is a goal and ~3 months is probably the more realistic expectation to be safe ^^;

I'll leave things off on that glimpse into the future, I feel like I've probably rambled on long enough! Thank you all again for your support, I'm eager to repay it by getting more of the game into your hands! And of course, please let me know your thoughts on any of the information I've put forward here, I love to hear your input!

~Osmium <3