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Post by admiralcheese on Mar 20, 2016 12:08:43 GMT -8
Can't go much worse than his first meeting with Icari at Kendo Club, who is wondering how in the world Asaga's still in charge of it despite not being the most FURIOUS KENDO STUDENT. Uhhh... It's not like she cares or anything!!!!! *Cue wingding eyes*
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Post by worstwaifu on Mar 20, 2016 12:16:38 GMT -8
Unfortunately, that's something she says after she somehow lacerates him heavily with a shinai, giving him a scar that makes him the heartthrob of the school.
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Post by admiralcheese on Mar 20, 2016 12:20:45 GMT -8
Unfortunately, that's something she says after she somehow lacerates him heavily with a shinai, giving him a scar that makes him the heartthrob of the school. Maray naturally starts shipping them immediately when she's not gushing about her Yaoi stories.
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Post by planguy on Mar 20, 2016 12:53:46 GMT -8
While I liked Sunrider Academy the state of Liberation Day indicates that as much effort as possible must be expended on the core series if it is to improve.
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Post by ryanxwonbin on Mar 21, 2016 20:52:48 GMT -8
Started Sunrider: Mask after seeing Liberation up a few days ago and beat both games today. Enjoyed it a lot for the most part, and just wanted to post my thoughts if it mattered.
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Gameplay: Played on Captain. Very well done. I spent a good chunk of my time trying to see what was best for my units. Get Flak up high because of enemy missiles and nukes? Try and get Seraphim to double attack? Increase Liberty/Bianca for better buffs/debuffs? The combination and different way to approach battles had a lot of avenue and I am grateful for a cool tactical game. My only complaint might be that for the most part a lot of battles were just starting in the frontlines and smashing every enemy before they can get a turn. They were very few missions like the defense mission where you can't use missiles and can't use Liberty for a few turns that could have made the battles much more interesting. The big complaint I would have is the lack of heroine choosing for a VN style, harem game.
Music: Astonishingly good. I don't know who made the music but I am very surprised a kickstarter indie game managed to get such good scores. The style of the songs were very fitting for space epic wars.
Lore: Absolutely fantastic. While the lore on worlds, the Alliance, Pact, and neutral worlds was pretty good, I have to give praise to the depth of details on the space battles. Big capital battleships, cruisers, ryders, gunboats, kinetic weaponry, laser weapons, shields, nukes, jamming... There was so much detail on the part of the science fiction that I adored. I love reading about the units most of all. How Alliance infantry ships are fitted with kinetics to battle PACT battleships while PACT infantry are mainly focused on melee combat and lasers since Alliance lack shields. How Alliance battleships have railgun cannons and to counteract this Pact uses medium assault cruisers with kinetics to combat the behemoths. Frankly I just wish there was a book or something detailing all the units the forces in the game use so I can just get deeper in the lore of space warfare.
Characters: I felt like Asaga was overly-cliche and couldn't really like her despite being one of the main heroines. Chigara too felt cliche and I was disappointed she was the railroad for Shield's love interest. Her apparently becoming mad and psycho bitch at the end does give some hope for the future. I thought Icari was well-written on the time you try and get her, but her tsundere jokes got old way too fast and she became very shallow as the game went on. Claude... I just feel iffy. She was funny but her plot twist kind of made me go "Ugh..." from the fact that her voice already spoiled she was working with the Prototypes and the whole God thing makes it feel really tacked on to try and make a character interesting. I definitely felt that Ava, Sola, and Kryska were the best written. I enjoyed Ava's frank relationship with Shields and the way they interacted made me question whether I wanted them to be in platonic love or the sexual kind. I thought Sola was going to be boring but her backstory and loneliness resulted from it was actually very touching. I do dislike that Sola sort of stopped interacting with Shields and just became Asaga's clutch on Liberation though. Finally, I really liked Kryska's character in her loyalty to the Alliance and her eventual struggle to be with her comrades or fight with her ideals. The part that made me really like her was in the ending where Kryska decides to go on trial with the Alliance, showing that despite she grew as a character to fight for her comrades, she also didn't simply abandon her principles and the idealism that she held for a cliche "everything I thought about my nation was wrong and they're actually evil!" crap.
Fontana, Grey, and Cosette were also very well-written and had various layers of depth to their character. Kuushan (Or whatever the new PACT admiral is) was also very interesting and I wish I could play the installment to see what she's like. The prototypes were eh, which I will get in to with the story/ending.
Story/Ending: I think the story was middle of the ground fair until Liberation where suddenly plot twists come up with the prototypes and the sudden love bickering. I don't know how much the writers borrowed from the anime Gundam 00 and Macross... But the similarities were way too striking. Frankly I just couldn't care for the prototypes and Asaga's jealousy because these were things that were hamfisted in Gundam 00 and Macross that I felt like I was reading a cross from the two series; on two aspects I disliked when I watched the respective shows. I definitely did not like the railroad to Chigara's relationship, though I suppose it would be too hard to make multiple routes and then create another game following those routes. I liked the ending for the most part. I dislike super cliche happy endings and the fact that the whole Alliance/PACT friendship ended with old hatreds fueling again, Crow making his appearance, PACT bringing back a legendary commander, and Shields having to reform his army once again all keep me interested in a next installment.
At the end, I think the biggest problem is the sudden tone change once Liberation Day starts. You have a simplistic story about a small, elite group of people from different backgrounds trying to free their home. It wasn't the best and most original story but it was backed up by a cast of great characters, world exploration, political machinations, the small decisions you have to make (Such as letting diplomats and children to die to start a war which had me thinking for an hour on what to do), and the motivations of petty humans. This suddenly changes to a love spat by Asaga who turns mega bitch, the traitor dilemma, genetics and superhumans, and a world-altering god. Suddenly the game seems to want to use mega plot twists as the driving entertainment rather a consistent story.
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Overall, tl'dr closing thoughts: The gameplay was great. Music was fantastic. I loved the lore on space battles most of all. I couldn't fully appreciate the entire story and characters mainly because of Asaga and Chigara being overly-cliche heroines and the vast similarities of the story to Gundam 00 and Macross. It's a shame the better written and more interesting characters were side characters to Asaga and Chigara as the main heroines.
8.5/10
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Post by Drath on Mar 21, 2016 21:35:39 GMT -8
My only complaint might be that for the most part a lot of battles were just starting in the frontlines and smashing every enemy before they can get a turn. They were very few missions like the defense mission where you can't use missiles and can't use Liberty for a few turns that could have made the battles much more interesting. Yea that's a pretty valid complaint which I think has been mentioned before. It doesn't matter how strong an enemy's AoE rockets are if said unit can be taken out fairly easily in turn 1. Suggested solutions include attack restrictions/unit restrictions as you've mentioned, having a good deal more units than can be taken out in a turn, having cloaked enemy units which cannot be attacked and starting out being ambushed/surprised resulting in enemy forces getting to move first. Different mechanics/units/mission objectives are always welcome IMHO but depending on what is requested, it may or may not be difficult to implement in Renpy. The more productive line of thought would probably be if I wanted to see something, I'd work on modding it in myself to check for feasibility. I also still think we're getting it too easy in Lib Day by having 2x the amount of resources in MoA, multiple orders per turn and an overpowered Drawfire (largely because of excessive hate), amongst other buffs we received on transitioning from beta to release, but it's more or less flogging a dead horse at this point. Music:Astonishingly good. I don't know who made the music but I am very surprised a kickstarter indie game managed to get such good scores. The style of the songs were very fitting for space epic wars. MoA tunes were mostly from Jamendo artists, which include Arnaud Conde, Marc Teichert, Celestial Aeon Project, Epic Soul Factory, etc innomenpro.com/forums/index.php?topic=404.msg6544#msg6544I believe a few of the Lib Day tunes were done in house (not completely certain on this), though quite a good number are still from the above artists. Lore:Absolutely fantastic. While the lore on worlds, the Alliance, Pact, and neutral worlds was pretty good, I have to give praise to the depth of details on the space battles. Big capital battleships, cruisers, ryders, gunboats, kinetic weaponry, laser weapons, shields, nukes, jamming... There was so much detail on the part of the science fiction that I adored. I love reading about the units most of all. How Alliance infantry ships are fitted with kinetics to battle PACT battleships while PACT infantry are mainly focused on melee combat and lasers since Alliance lack shields. How Alliance battleships have railgun cannons and to counteract this Pact uses medium assault cruisers with kinetics to combat the behemoths. Frankly I just wish there was a book or something detailing all the units the forces in the game use so I can just get deeper in the lore of space warfare. On additional lore, you can find a bit more in the wiki ( Sunrider gamepedia), including things like the origins of humanity, the Alliance-Imperial War, etc. From time to time you'll also see various lore questions answered by Samu-kun on his twitter and on the old Hyperspace forums.If you are a Patreon subscriber, $5 gets you the Sunrider: Veniczar novel which fills in details from PACT's viewpoint and expands on new characters like Alice and Kuushana. Oh and welcome to the forums. It's always good to see new people around
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 22, 2016 4:01:02 GMT -8
Nice review. I would agree on a lot of things though I'm open to accept Chigara's railroading if it's important for future developments.
And honestly, I'm really the only one that felt that the battles music of Lib Day was a slight downgrade respect MoA? I mean, they were still very good, but the one they choose for most "normal battles" ("driving the top down" in 7.2 and "Danger" here) is probably my least favourite battle theme. The new one (I think is called "Hero of Justice"?) is a lot better, but still feel both are used way too much.
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Post by worstwaifu on Mar 22, 2016 4:49:56 GMT -8
While I liked Sunrider Academy the state of Liberation Day indicates that as much effort as possible must be expended on the core series if it is to improve. I wouldn't worry about that. Any more work on a spinoff like Academy would probably be an unofficial fan project undertaken by one nutter in her spare time to kill time at a security job.
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Post by methebest on Mar 26, 2016 19:40:08 GMT -8
I hated the railroading, I might have been fine if it had been with one of the girls I find more interesting than Chigara.(which is most of them.) The ending did a decent job of returning to the status quo.(kinda) And i understand why they wouldn't want to let us choose a girl when they are planing on make more squeals due to how it'd require more writing as we go on, but they really needed to have it be more neutral.
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Post by sehanine on Mar 29, 2016 20:15:11 GMT -8
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to post or if what I'm about to say has been beaten to death, but... First, LibDay, in and of itself, is a good game. Yes, it's short. It's clear that the creators were on a mission to tell a specific story, and they did that quite well. The gameplay was also very enjoyable, even on the Ensign setting that I used to see what everyone else was all upset about. I plan on playing through again on Captain with some flags from FA/MoA changed to see what, if anything, they affect. What set people up for disappointment, IMO, is the existence of Sunrider Academy. I *loved* Academy; I put around 55 hours into it somehow, playing a new game for each girl's route. The stat management was fun and the H scenes were good, both in terms of art/description and internal consistency. In short, they all made sense to me; the H in LibDay, in comparison, was actually kinda jarring. I know that Academy was kinda fan service whereas LibDay was a more serious milieu, but given the tone of the story it might've been better to leave the H out entirely (as much as I know that it's ostensibly eroge and people would be upset if you had). What I'm trying to say is that I think people were expecting *everything* that was in FA/MoA and *everything* that was in Academy all stuffed into one game that would take upwards of 60 hours. Somehow, I myself believed that LibDay might have been such a thing, though in retrospect it wasn't realistic given the timeframe and size of the team. So, when LibDay ended up being a good, short VN with awesome battles but without (holy God) a different route for each of 8 (or more?) different girls and possibly additional routes/H scenes for threesomes in addition to other character-building scenes, people were disappointed. I'm really sorry that people weren't okay with the first ending; having played Academy and knowing much more about Maray than anyone that skipped it (did anyone skip it? go play it now!), it was kinda touching. I don't think that the original ending should have been quite as much of a downer as it was regardless of whether or not people knew that more Sunrider games were forthcoming, but that's a matter of taste. The Empire Strikes Back's ending is about the correct amount of negativity for me, and you kinda built back up to that in the 2.0 ending. Speaking of: I understand that 2.0 was rushed out to placate the aforementioned disappointed fans, but I worry that some plot choices that maybe weren't entirely decided were rushed, the big one being Claude. I did appreciate the choices included in 2.0, even if their presence was incongruous with the format of the rest of the game which had fewer choices that seemed to make a bigger difference. As an aside, it might've been better to have an option when starting a new game of whether or not to customize all of the flags/import a save or just use a default set of flags (or randomize them?). It's cool that it can be done, but anyone new to the series is, first, going to be confused and, second, going to be disappointed when many of those flags have no affect on LibDay itself (even if they do/will in future games). It's possible that I just haven't played the game enough or that I'm not noticing small details, but it didn't seem to me that a lot of those choices mattered; a few, very obviously, did. Finally, on Patreon you (at some point I think I started addressing the developers directly; sorry for any confusion) mentioned that the next game would have less gameplay and more H scenes. I think we all agree on the more H scenes part (provided they fit with the story), but I really do like the gameplay in Sunrider. In fact, I'd prefer that choices made within girl's routes actually affect the gameplay the way it does in, say, Persona: give them stat boosts/additional moves/whatever based on route progression. In addition, if you feel like making a truly massive game, I'd love playing the mammoth creation that I mentioned at the start of my post: give us stat management a la Academy + girl routes + FA/MoA/LibDay combat. Have the stat management be things like morale on the ship, supplies, discipline (as in military discipline, not BDSM (not hating, just clarifying)), etc, and again, have it affect the spaceship/ryder combat. I know that it would be a long development cycle and it's tough to keep backers interested, but I'd love to play it. Finally: thanks. I love Sunrider so much that I started to write fan fiction (that I'll probably never finish). - Sehanine/Russell Edit: I remembered one other thing that I wanted to say. Sunrider seems heavily inspired by Mass Effect, and that is a good thing. For everything that people pick apart about what Mass Effect did wrong, it did so, so much right, particularly in terms of atmosphere (the sound design in particular was outstanding). The ship map in LibDay is tacked on, there's no question, but the way that you used it in FA/MoA was correct. Even if there's no plot effect to which order you interact with crew members, it's still nice to feel like you have options and it also kinda recalls the feeling of walking around the Normandy. Similarly, the galaxy map and the music that you used for it in FA/MoA were cool.
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Post by planguy on Mar 29, 2016 22:35:15 GMT -8
Wait, was the lesson that the developers learned "Include more H-scenes"? Alright, checked the Patreon and that looks like it was the lesson they took.
"It's still too early to say anything concrete but we are going to make a game with not as much game play and more HCGs. I hope it'll also be much longer than Liberation Day, I'm hoping we can make a game longer than Sunrider Academy this time."
For the love of god please reassess that lesson. People want choices, they weren't upset by a lack of HCGs. They want actual romance routes.
Is there hurt feelings amongst the developers? Do they think that people are ignoring their carefully constructed battle system? Do they think that people just want HCGs and they are going to bow to the lowest common denominator? I think people want a mix of a good battle system and an engaging story where your choices matter. Like, you decide if you trust a character or not. You decide if Kayto is attracted to someone or not. Of course there are plot events that happen no matter what but the choices and views that Kayto can have or hold should be up to the player.
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 29, 2016 23:57:49 GMT -8
Wait, was the lesson that the developers learned "Include more H-scenes"? Alright, checked the Patreon and that looks like it was the lesson they took. "It's still too early to say anything concrete but we are going to make a game with not as much game play and more HCGs. I hope it'll also be much longer than Liberation Day, I'm hoping we can make a game longer than Sunrider Academy this time." For the love of god please reassess that lesson. People want choices, they weren't upset by a lack of HCGs. They want actual romance routes. Is there hurt feelings amongst the developers? Do they think that people are ignoring their carefully constructed battle system? Do they think that people just want HCGs and they are going to bow to the lowest common denominator? I think people want a mix of a good battle system and an engaging story where your choices matter. Like, you decide if you trust a character or not. You decide if Kayto is attracted to someone or not. Of course there are plot events that happen no matter what but the choices and views that Kayto can have or hold should be up to the player. Eh, Samu-kun has always said that he believes the fuel to more sales in Steam and everywhere for Visual Novels is sex... and he's not actually that wrong, looking at the market (unless you have a previous anime adaptation). Samu-kun has tried to do what he wanted, he got a big flop and basically criticism from everywhere, so now he's probably going to try what the market has showed it wants (which now is that they want Academy 10 times more than Liberation Day) to minimize risks. I mean, I don't agree either, but from the point of view of a game developer it's a reasonable reaction.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 30, 2016 5:23:36 GMT -8
Wait, was the lesson that the developers learned "Include more H-scenes"? Alright, checked the Patreon and that looks like it was the lesson they took. "It's still too early to say anything concrete but we are going to make a game with not as much game play and more HCGs. I hope it'll also be much longer than Liberation Day, I'm hoping we can make a game longer than Sunrider Academy this time." For the love of god please reassess that lesson. People want choices, they weren't upset by a lack of HCGs. They want actual romance routes. Is there hurt feelings amongst the developers? Do they think that people are ignoring their carefully constructed battle system? Do they think that people just want HCGs and they are going to bow to the lowest common denominator? I think people want a mix of a good battle system and an engaging story where your choices matter. Like, you decide if you trust a character or not. You decide if Kayto is attracted to someone or not. Of course there are plot events that happen no matter what but the choices and views that Kayto can have or hold should be up to the player. Eh, Samu-kun has always said that he believes the fuel to more sales in Steam and everywhere for Visual Novels is sex... and he's not actually that wrong, looking at the market (unless you have a previous anime adaptation). Samu-kun has tried to do what he wanted, he got a big flop and basically criticism from everywhere, so now he's probably going to try what the market has showed it wants (which now is that they want Academy 10 times more than Liberation Day) to minimize risks. I mean, I don't agree either, but from the point of view of a game developer it's a reasonable reaction. Disagree there big time - LibDay's failure disproves this. There's a difference between "sex" and "sex for the sake of having sex", the latter of which feels so shoehorned that it ruins enjoyment of it - LibDay looked to many like the latter, and it got lesser marks as a result. Again, people want a story with some agency to it - it's not "Academy 10 times more then Liberation Day" so much as "Half Liberation Day (battle quality) and half Mask of Arcadius (engaging story with player agency)."
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 30, 2016 5:43:03 GMT -8
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to post or if what I'm about to say has been beaten to death, but... First, LibDay, in and of itself, is a good game. Yes, it's short. It's clear that the creators were on a mission to tell a specific story, and they did that quite well. The gameplay was also very enjoyable, even on the Ensign setting that I used to see what everyone else was all upset about. I plan on playing through again on Captain with some flags from FA/MoA changed to see what, if anything, they affect. What set people up for disappointment, IMO, is the existence of Sunrider Academy. I *loved* Academy; I put around 55 hours into it somehow, playing a new game for each girl's route. The stat management was fun and the H scenes were good, both in terms of art/description and internal consistency. In short, they all made sense to me; the H in LibDay, in comparison, was actually kinda jarring. I know that Academy was kinda fan service whereas LibDay was a more serious milieu, but given the tone of the story it might've been better to leave the H out entirely (as much as I know that it's ostensibly eroge and people would be upset if you had). What I'm trying to say is that I think people were expecting *everything* that was in FA/MoA and *everything* that was in Academy all stuffed into one game that would take upwards of 60 hours. Somehow, I myself believed that LibDay might have been such a thing, though in retrospect it wasn't realistic given the timeframe and size of the team. So, when LibDay ended up being a good, short VN with awesome battles but without (holy God) a different route for each of 8 (or more?) different girls and possibly additional routes/H scenes for threesomes in addition to other character-building scenes, people were disappointed. I'm really sorry that people weren't okay with the first ending; having played Academy and knowing much more about Maray than anyone that skipped it (did anyone skip it? go play it now!), it was kinda touching. I don't think that the original ending should have been quite as much of a downer as it was regardless of whether or not people knew that more Sunrider games were forthcoming, but that's a matter of taste. The Empire Strikes Back's ending is about the correct amount of negativity for me, and you kinda built back up to that in the 2.0 ending. Speaking of: I understand that 2.0 was rushed out to placate the aforementioned disappointed fans, but I worry that some plot choices that maybe weren't entirely decided were rushed, the big one being Claude. I did appreciate the choices included in 2.0, even if their presence was incongruous with the format of the rest of the game which had fewer choices that seemed to make a bigger difference. As an aside, it might've been better to have an option when starting a new game of whether or not to customize all of the flags/import a save or just use a default set of flags (or randomize them?). It's cool that it can be done, but anyone new to the series is, first, going to be confused and, second, going to be disappointed when many of those flags have no affect on LibDay itself (even if they do/will in future games). It's possible that I just haven't played the game enough or that I'm not noticing small details, but it didn't seem to me that a lot of those choices mattered; a few, very obviously, did. Finally, on Patreon you (at some point I think I started addressing the developers directly; sorry for any confusion) mentioned that the next game would have less gameplay and more H scenes. I think we all agree on the more H scenes part (provided they fit with the story), but I really do like the gameplay in Sunrider. In fact, I'd prefer that choices made within girl's routes actually affect the gameplay the way it does in, say, Persona: give them stat boosts/additional moves/whatever based on route progression. In addition, if you feel like making a truly massive game, I'd love playing the mammoth creation that I mentioned at the start of my post: give us stat management a la Academy + girl routes + FA/MoA/LibDay combat. Have the stat management be things like morale on the ship, supplies, discipline (as in military discipline, not BDSM (not hating, just clarifying)), etc, and again, have it affect the spaceship/ryder combat. I know that it would be a long development cycle and it's tough to keep backers interested, but I'd love to play it. Finally: thanks. I love Sunrider so much that I started to write fan fiction (that I'll probably never finish). - Sehanine/Russell Edit: I remembered one other thing that I wanted to say. Sunrider seems heavily inspired by Mass Effect, and that is a good thing. For everything that people pick apart about what Mass Effect did wrong, it did so, so much right, particularly in terms of atmosphere (the sound design in particular was outstanding). The ship map in LibDay is tacked on, there's no question, but the way that you used it in FA/MoA was correct. Even if there's no plot effect to which order you interact with crew members, it's still nice to feel like you have options and it also kinda recalls the feeling of walking around the Normandy. Similarly, the galaxy map and the music that you used for it in FA/MoA were cool. OK... I'ma gonna critique a few things here. Whether or not the story was done "very well" is very much debatable, because they very much didn't stick to the same story they seemed to be telling - it was far more constrained then past installments and appeared streamlined to a fault. Ironically, this was what became Mass Effect's downfall as well - continued linearity that ultimately was seen as having stifled what the game originally was. First off, I really disagree on what the disappointment was - it wasn't Academy that really set LibDay up for failure; it was Mask of Arcadius and even First Arrival. LibDay was far more linear then either one and was complained as having far less depth then either of those. People felt like focus was shifted to art, battles and even VO's over the story itself. The forced romance was perhaps one of the bigger issues given that a lot of people actually feel things would have worked better without it, and that NOTHING ELSE HAD TO CHANGE regarding the bond with Chigara so long as they could opt out of it being a sexual relationship. Nobody would have minded waiting to pick a love interest - they just minded being arbitrarily forced down that path for a series that had largely advertised itself as "choose your waifu" complete with character polls. The issue wasn't that people were expecting "everything" from FA/MoA and Academy - it's that they felt LibDay had taken NOTHING AT ALL from those three in terms of story and balance. It's not that they wanted more - it's that they felt what they got was less then even a single stand-alone title in the series had to offer. And no - God NO, it was not that people didn't know about Maray. You didn't need to play Academy to know about Maray - just the short flashbacks in MoA (which is free and thus easily viewable) are enough to get the gist of her character. It was simply seen as anticlimactic and abrupt. Also, that thing with the choice flags is another issue in and of itself - they hardly seemed to matter outside of certain benefits in the store being available or not. Having it be randomized like some kind of stat-system seems the wrong choice because it just trivializes it further. That... just sounds worse. What everyone really seems to want is more BALANCE. "More H scenes" without good story to back it up is going to make them fall apart, and less battles is going to just make it another VN. And while your idea on a more massive title isn't bad, it's probably beyond what the dev team could hope to accomplish - especially given that LibDay didn't likely bring in as much money as they hoped. What I think people want is something that balances combat and story - because if one gets more focus then the other, it's going to feel lopsided. Edit: The thing with bringing Mass Effect up though is that you need to consider how, even though it got "so, so much right", it still completely FLOPPED in the eyes of many simply because the final ending it all built up to was seen as being severely lackluster. If the one thing you do wrong drowns out everything else done that was good, you're going to want to address it in some way.
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Post by KnightOfXentar on Mar 30, 2016 9:11:37 GMT -8
Played on Captain...My only complaint might be that for the most part a lot of battles were just starting in the frontlines and smashing every enemy before they can get a turn. They were very few missions like the defense mission where you can't use missiles and can't use Liberty for a few turns that could have made the battles much more interesting. not really. For a majority of people the combat was "too hard", cases like yours, that considered it "too easy", are rare. if you really consider captain "too easy" then go ahead and play Admiral or Space Whale... Eh, Samu-kun has always said that he believes the fuel to more sales in Steam and everywhere for Visual Novels is sex... and he's not actually that wrong, looking at the market (unless you have a previous anime adaptation). Samu-kun has tried to do what he wanted, he got a big flop and basically criticism from everywhere, so now he's probably going to try what the market has showed it wants lol, that was not the issue. Problem was downgrade of quality in Liberation Day compared to Mask of Arcadius: same game developer, same universe, same units, same characters, but somehow they managed to make worse story without any interactivity and much shorter game? Seriously, how did they manage to make paid game to be shorter and worse than "free" game? There was never an issue with sex... in fact Mask of Arcadius had none and yet everybody loved it!
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Post by Blackhead on Mar 30, 2016 10:31:40 GMT -8
Eh, Samu-kun has always said that he believes the fuel to more sales in Steam and everywhere for Visual Novels is sex... and he's not actually that wrong, looking at the market (unless you have a previous anime adaptation). Samu-kun has tried to do what he wanted, he got a big flop and basically criticism from everywhere, so now he's probably going to try what the market has showed it wants (which now is that they want Academy 10 times more than Liberation Day) to minimize risks. I mean, I don't agree either, but from the point of view of a game developer it's a reasonable reaction. Disagree there big time - LibDay's failure disproves this. There's a difference between "sex" and "sex for the sake of having sex", the latter of which feels so shoehorned that it ruins enjoyment of it - LibDay looked to many like the latter, and it got lesser marks as a result. Again, people want a story with some agency to it - it's not "Academy 10 times more then Liberation Day" so much as "Half Liberation Day (battle quality) and half Mask of Arcadius (engaging story with player agency)." "Sex for the sake of having sex" works pretty well as long as you let the player choose who he gets to f*ck. Writing an engaging story on the other side is far more demanding for developers. It's not a surprise that a major part of th VN industry pursues the "sex sells" concept, most prominently the nekopara series as an example. Academy had a generic school setting, laughable conflicts, is in its nature far more simplistic than the main game (regarding every aspect: gameplay, story etc.) and yet it is far better received than LibDay, and close to MoA (FREEWARE-GAME). The effort-reward ratio for h-heavy games is much better in general, and I have no doubt that Sunrider's ratings will shoot up if Samu decides to take the "h-approach." (As long as he pays attention to a few simple rules for creating h-games.) If you feel like going full sellout you can even consider siscon options + harem endings, and it WILL work. You WILL sell a shitload of games. If you believe that all the professors, analysts and literature experts out there didn't like the game because of its writing - then I have to disagree. (More girls + more route/sex options + a more cheerful ending initially, and it would have worked out fine. The main plot + gameplay is fairly irrelevant to most people.) People also claim that somehow "quality was downgraded", which is overall not true. LibDay is an improvement in almost every possible aspect (art/CGs, battle, voice acting), story length is equal to FA/MoA individually. Only exception where quality was arguably downgraded is writing, and even here most complaints don't come from "quality issues" but rather "people didn't like the direction" the story took. That's a big difference. -Know your target audience.-
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 30, 2016 10:58:35 GMT -8
Blackhead explained my point better than I could. Simply, MoA was free, Academy was not yet a lot of more people were disposed to pay for it a lot more than they ever did for Liberation Day.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 30, 2016 11:36:31 GMT -8
Disagree there big time - LibDay's failure disproves this. There's a difference between "sex" and "sex for the sake of having sex", the latter of which feels so shoehorned that it ruins enjoyment of it - LibDay looked to many like the latter, and it got lesser marks as a result. Again, people want a story with some agency to it - it's not "Academy 10 times more then Liberation Day" so much as "Half Liberation Day (battle quality) and half Mask of Arcadius (engaging story with player agency)." "Sex for the sake of having sex" works pretty well as long as you let the player choose who he gets to f*ck. Writing an engaging story on the other side is far more demanding for developers. It's not a surprise that a major part of th VN industry pursues the "sex sells" concept, most prominently the nekopara series as an example. Academy had a generic school setting, laughable conflicts, is in its nature far more simplistic than the main game (regarding every aspect: gameplay, story etc.) and yet it is far better received than LibDay, and close to MoA (FREEWARE-GAME). The effort-reward ratio for h-heavy games is much better in general, and I have no doubt that Sunrider's ratings will shoot up if Samu decides to take the "h-approach." (As long as he pays attention to a few simple rules for creating h-games.) If you feel like going full sellout you can even consider siscon options + harem endings, and it WILL work. You WILL sell a shitload of games. If you believe that all the professors, analysts and literature experts out there didn't like the game because of its writing - then I have to disagree. (More girls + more route/sex options + a more cheerful ending initially, and it would have worked out fine. The main plot + gameplay is fairly irrelevant to most people.) People also claim that somehow "quality was downgraded", which is overall not true. LibDay is an improvement in almost every possible aspect (art/CGs, battle, voice acting), story length is equal to FA/MoA individually. Only exception where quality was arguably downgraded is writing, and even here most complaints don't come from "quality issues" but rather "people didn't like the direction" the story took. That's a big difference. -Know your target audience.- ... OK - now I'ma gonna rant a bit, here; If the sex stuff comes across as too blatant, it's not gonna matter who it is or how many choices you give; it'll get rejected. Bad options can be as bad as no options, after all. So again, I hold to saying that "sex" in games is different from "sex for the sake of having sex". Plus, Nekopara is kind of a... well, extremely bad example to use - that's a VN where the entire point is exploitation/fanservice as opposed to something with actual story with it, the latter of which sells as well or more so. Fate/Stay Night being the better example. EVERY OTHER GAME in the Sunrider series was received better then LibDay was, so that's about as moot a point as you can get. Plus, consider that Academy is an entirely different genre of VN (hentai-parody) and thus tailored to an entirely different audience then the main games (serious sci-fi fantasy) were, and that many fans would buy it for comedy-relief and for the characters as opposed to just "sex = sales". And by your own admission ("close to MoA"), it didn't surpass MoA. Something I've learned after so long in gaming communities - if they feel the game is very good, money isn't a factor; the fact that MoA was freeware is a big contributor to it doing so well, but not THE biggest contributor - that would be the quality of the product itself. The "effort-reward ratio" in sex-inclusive games is determinant on the RELATIONSHIP that accompanies the h-scenes unless you are going for full-on mindless fanservice for parody-level comedy, which in and of itself is closer to a "fad" or a different genre entirely - again, looking at Fate/Stay Night, Muv-Luv and so-on for examples of this blending done right. You will see a "shitload" of BAD games, probably - at the cost of pride, reputation and whatever premise you were going for. Hell, games like "Ride to Hell: Retribution" which had sex-scenes in every few levels with a bunch of different girls, was rejected as tasteless garbage - there has been nothing but evidence AGAINST that kind of belief you have. Now, if your series was ALREADY built around that kind of shameless-objectification premise, like Nekopara was, it's one thing - gutting a pre-existing premise to shoehorn it in... not so much . Then I must stress that you must be ignoring just about every single person on these forums and on Steam to even have such an opinion, let alone maintain it . You could have as many girls and sex options as possible and it will still get shot down if they are done tastelessly for the theme/setting you are using - games like Sakura Spirit got away with it because the entire setting, from start to finish, is rather expressly based in that kind of over-the-top non-serious parody-comedy that most "ecchi/hentai" games are based in, but more serious games like Fate/Stay Night, Grisaia no Kajitsu/The Fruit of Grisaia, G-Senjou no Maou/The Devil on G-String and the like require you balance this stuff out so that the storytelling (the key part of VN's and one half of the formula for JRPG-hybrids like Sunrider) isn't compromised by it. LibDay itself should be undeniable evidence to that because even Chigara fans (with a few exceptions like vaen) were put off in varying degrees by how the romance were handled. No - maybe if you weren't so keen on ignoring the story side of things, you'd see that most of those complaints were about a downgrade in WRITING QUALITY because of misplaced priorities. I mean, you're basically arguing that if a game looks and sounds good that it excuses the plot being shit. That was Mass Effect 3's mistake with it's ending, and look how that turned out. Or in short - "Overall" = "you ripping the quote out of context." And story length was at least a bit shorter then FA and MoA even on an individual basis, while story quality was seen as a sharp drop-off because of the lack of agency in the game. The direction being shifted to a linear setting when it was originally closer to a choice-based VN - that IS something they regard as a downgrade in quality because it's taken as going back on the original premise of the games, reducing the impact of prior choices and events. I'ma also going to be a bit rude and say; "Of of course you'd say all this, though (points to thread name) - you weren't playing Sunrider for the story to begin with!" Or in more polite terms - "The story may be irrelevant to YOU, but judging by the response so far it's very hard to take that "story is irrelevant" argument seriously." Or in blunt & rude terms - "I don't think you know the target audience yourself." (readies boxing gloves) OK - hit me with your best shot.
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Post by Nemjen on Mar 30, 2016 11:45:22 GMT -8
I was under the impression that Neko-Sunrider-Para was going to be a thing... It is coming people.
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Post by 白龍 on Mar 30, 2016 11:48:53 GMT -8
Mm, I'll throw in a piece of gold in a sea of flames. Story: Really, once you have me on board as a fan there's nothing you can publish that I won't love. I love cliches, I love tropes, I love character archetypes. What's so great about character archetypes is that it's everywhere and you can easily fit characters into preordained boxes. More choices, less choices, I don't really care. I'm here for a story, for all the story. Less choices just means I don't have to reload and replay a scene with a different choice as many times. More choices just means I have to go back and replay each and every choice and I end up forgetting what was the original choice and just rolled with whatever seemed to be the community choice. To me, choices only matters if they lead to a significant amount of moar stories. If all I get is an extra scene or an epilogue scene, then I don't really care. There's a reason why I always go for the true ending, because that's the main story the author is telling me and that's the one I want to hear the most. Music: Frankly I was quite surprised at how wonderful the music was for a indie company. The ever glorious chorus in the background, the sharp violin, the deep bass, the high mezzo soprano... It all comes beautifully together. The only times where I heard such glorious music are from music halls, opera, and big budget movies. I never would have expected it from a game. The atmosphere it sets up for you is simply exhilarating. Gameplay: I was ever so slightly let down when they took out the close-up shots of units firing and receiving damage. But, it's not like I wasn't putting them on "skip" mode already so I'm good. My only complaint would probably be the performance issue but there's only so much you can do with renpy. All in all, I really liked the gameplay. I must have played it half a dozen times on captain while it was still in closed testing, each time I was determined to set a new turn # field wipe record. Switching over to SW, it was like a slap to the face but all in all it was still fun. Also, it multiplies the play time by at least 1-2 fold. I'm not going to talk about getting my money's worth (since I'm giving 20$ a month for this), so I really don't know if the gameplay and the hours of gameplay is worth the $25 on steam... But if you're concerned about hours, just play it on a higher difficulty. End Comments: I don't know anything about "fixing" the game, or what "most people" want, or what the "lesson" learned is. I loved the game in 1.0, and loved it even more in 2.0 but that's just my opinion. My opinion is but 1 in the how many multiple digit number this game has sold. And I really hope the developers are able to make their story, their dreams for this game come true. I don't believe in critiquing story or the # of choices. (I know, they still have to make money but still, this is just my opinion.) Why? Because I came here to read a story written by the authors and creators of the game. I came here to read their story, not a story I wanted or a story that fits what I had in mind but theirs. I came expecting a story that will entertain me, and it did. If I wanted a story that'd fit my presets, I'd just save the $25 and go write my own. Or read something else more similar.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 30, 2016 12:03:54 GMT -8
Mm, I'll throw in a piece of gold in a sea of flames. Story: Really, once you have me on board as a fan there's nothing you can publish that I won't love. I love cliches, I love tropes, I love character archetypes. What's so great about character archetypes is that it's everywhere and you can easily fit characters into preordained boxes. More choices, less choices, I don't really care. I'm here for a story, for all the story. Less choices just means I don't have to reload and replay a scene with a different choice as many times. More choices just means I have to go back and replay each and every choice and I end up forgetting what was the original choice and just rolled with whatever seemed to be the community choice. To me, choices only matters if they lead to a significant amount of moar stories. If all I get is an extra scene or an epilogue scene, then I don't really care. There's a reason why I always go for the true ending, because that's the main story the author is telling me and that's the one I want to hear the most. Music: Frankly I was quite surprised at how wonderful the music was for a indie company. The ever glorious chorus in the background, the sharp violin, the deep bass, the high mezzo soprano... It all comes beautifully together. The only times where I heard such glorious music are from music halls, opera, and big budget movies. I never would have expected it from a game. The atmosphere it sets up for you is simply exhilarating. Gameplay: I was ever so slightly let down when they took out the close-up shots of units firing and receiving damage. But, it's not like I wasn't putting them on "skip" mode already so I'm good. My only complaint would probably be the performance issue but there's only so much you can do with renpy. All in all, I really liked the gameplay. I must have played it half a dozen times on captain while it was still in closed testing, each time I was determined to set a new turn # field wipe record. Switching over to SW, it was like a slap to the face but all in all it was still fun. Also, it multiplies the play time by at least 1-2 fold. I'm not going to talk about getting my money's worth (since I'm giving 20$ a month for this), so I really don't know if the gameplay and the hours of gameplay is worth the $25 on steam... But if you're concerned about hours, just play it on a higher difficulty. End Comments: I don't know anything about "fixing" the game, or what "most people" want, or what the "lesson" learned is. I loved the game in 1.0, and loved it even more in 2.0 but that's just my opinion. My opinion is but 1 in the how many multiple digit number this game has sold. And I really hope the developers are able to make their story, their dreams for this game come true. I don't believe in critiquing story or the # of choices. (I know, they still have to make money but still, this is just my opinion.) Why? Because I came here to read a story written by the authors and creators of the game. I came here to read their story, not a story I wanted or a story that fits what I had in mind but theirs. I came expecting a story that will entertain me, and it did. If I wanted a story that'd fit my presets, I'd just save the $25 and go write my own. Or read something else more similar. I think it's more that people felt LibDay's story didn't fit the presets of it's own series (MoA & FA).
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Post by Blackhead on Mar 30, 2016 14:25:13 GMT -8
"Sex for the sake of having sex" works pretty well as long as you let the player choose who he gets to f*ck. Writing an engaging story on the other side is far more demanding for developers. It's not a surprise that a major part of th VN industry pursues the "sex sells" concept, most prominently the nekopara series as an example. Academy had a generic school setting, laughable conflicts, is in its nature far more simplistic than the main game (regarding every aspect: gameplay, story etc.) and yet it is far better received than LibDay, and close to MoA (FREEWARE-GAME). The effort-reward ratio for h-heavy games is much better in general, and I have no doubt that Sunrider's ratings will shoot up if Samu decides to take the "h-approach." (As long as he pays attention to a few simple rules for creating h-games.) If you feel like going full sellout you can even consider siscon options + harem endings, and it WILL work. You WILL sell a shitload of games. If you believe that all the professors, analysts and literature experts out there didn't like the game because of its writing - then I have to disagree. (More girls + more route/sex options + a more cheerful ending initially, and it would have worked out fine. The main plot + gameplay is fairly irrelevant to most people.) People also claim that somehow "quality was downgraded", which is overall not true. LibDay is an improvement in almost every possible aspect (art/CGs, battle, voice acting), story length is equal to FA/MoA individually. Only exception where quality was arguably downgraded is writing, and even here most complaints don't come from "quality issues" but rather "people didn't like the direction" the story took. That's a big difference. -Know your target audience.- ... OK - now I'ma gonna rant a bit, here; If the sex stuff comes across as too blatant, it's not gonna matter who it is or how many choices you give; it'll get rejected. Bad options can be as bad as no options, after all. So again, I hold to saying that "sex" in games is different from "sex for the sake of having sex". Plus, Nekopara is kind of a... well, extremely bad example to use - that's a VN where the entire point is exploitation/fanservice as opposed to something with actual story with it, the latter of which sells as well or more so. Fate/Stay Night being the better example. EVERY OTHER GAME in the Sunrider series was received better then LibDay was, so that's about as moot a point as you can get. Plus, consider that Academy is an entirely different genre of VN (hentai-parody) and thus tailored to an entirely different audience then the main games (serious sci-fi fantasy) were, and that many fans would buy it for comedy-relief and for the characters as opposed to just "sex = sales". And by your own admission ("close to MoA"), it didn't surpass MoA. Something I've learned after so long in gaming communities - if they feel the game is very good, money isn't a factor; the fact that MoA was freeware is a big contributor to it doing so well, but not THE biggest contributor - that would be the quality of the product itself. The "effort-reward ratio" in sex-inclusive games is determinant on the RELATIONSHIP that accompanies the h-scenes unless you are going for full-on mindless fanservice for parody-level comedy, which in and of itself is closer to a "fad" or a different genre entirely - again, looking at Fate/Stay Night, Muv-Luv and so-on for examples of this blending done right. You will see a "shitload" of BAD games, probably - at the cost of pride, reputation and whatever premise you were going for. Hell, games like "Ride to Hell: Retribution" which had sex-scenes in every few levels with a bunch of different girls, was rejected as tasteless garbage - there has been nothing but evidence AGAINST that kind of belief you have. Now, if your series was ALREADY built around that kind of shameless-objectification premise, like Nekopara was, it's one thing - gutting a pre-existing premise to shoehorn it in... not so much . Then I must stress that you must be ignoring just about every single person on these forums and on Steam to even have such an opinion, let alone maintain it . You could have as many girls and sex options as possible and it will still get shot down if they are done tastelessly for the theme/setting you are using - games like Sakura Spirit got away with it because the entire setting, from start to finish, is rather expressly based in that kind of over-the-top non-serious parody-comedy that most "ecchi/hentai" games are based in, but more serious games like Fate/Stay Night, Grisaia no Kajitsu/The Fruit of Grisaia, G-Senjou no Maou/The Devil on G-String and the like require you balance this stuff out so that the storytelling (the key part of VN's and one half of the formula for JRPG-hybrids like Sunrider) isn't compromised by it. LibDay itself should be undeniable evidence to that because even Chigara fans (with a few exceptions like vaen) were put off in varying degrees by how the romance were handled. No - maybe if you weren't so keen on ignoring the story side of things, you'd see that most of those complaints were about a downgrade in WRITING QUALITY because of misplaced priorities. I mean, you're basically arguing that if a game looks and sounds good that it excuses the plot being shit. That was Mass Effect 3's mistake with it's ending, and look how that turned out. Or in short - "Overall" = "you ripping the quote out of context." And story length was at least a bit shorter then FA and MoA even on an individual basis, while story quality was seen as a sharp drop-off because of the lack of agency in the game. The direction being shifted to a linear setting when it was originally closer to a choice-based VN - that IS something they regard as a downgrade in quality because it's taken as going back on the original premise of the games, reducing the impact of prior choices and events. I'ma also going to be a bit rude and say; "Of of course you'd say all this, though (points to thread name) - you weren't playing Sunrider for the story to begin with!" Or in more polite terms - "The story may be irrelevant to YOU, but judging by the response so far it's very hard to take that "story is irrelevant" argument seriously." Or in blunt & rude terms - "I don't think you know the target audience yourself." (readies boxing gloves) OK - hit me with your best shot. Sharr, man. I can tell that you feel very passionate about Sunrider's story and that you try hard to convince me (and others) that it was writing indeed that ultimately led to LibDay's downfall, and why prioritizing h-scenes only, is inconceivable and would never work, but you're so wrong that I can't help but to find this conversation incredibly entertaining. I said that focusing on the girls + h-scenes are key to monetizing the game properly, and a way more obvious and easier choice than to write an amazing story. It's no problem at all to transition from the Sunrider we have now to a more fanservice oriented game. Why? Sunrider of all things.... IS already very much a fanservice oriented game... (implementation in story doesn't even matter much to target audience.) You're right when you say that there will be some sort of backlash from Sunrider hardliners (for ex. people here on the forums.) But that stands in no correlation to the huge sales this product would produce. Nekopara vol. 2 has 98% positive reviews on steam (2410 reviews....) despite so many people calling this game out for the shit it is, (To quote my old swedish SC2 buddy, and now popular streamer Forsen, while playing nekopara: on stream "Oh my god... I can't... It's like a fucking Harry Potter novel of pure autism" ) it has one of the absolute best ratings around. Attention is attention, your reputation is irrelevant if you want to sell a game. (and that's what we're talking about) In the end people that despise your game don't even bother to review it negatively. (like you can see on nekopara.) I'll give you some sick foreshadowing now, should Sunrider 4 take the full-sellout "h-approach" it will become the best received and best sold Sunrider game ever. Maybe 3000 positive reviews, and 2 negative ones: 1. negative by vaendryl: "Damn you Samu... so many good gameplay ideas and nothing implemented, everything replaced by boobs..." 2. negative by Sharr: : " I feel like the anal penetration of the various heroines was definitely a misplacment in priorities. I also believe that Chigara blowing off Shields was utterly out of character, a more platonic kiss on his dick would have been enough." As for me - You wouldn't see any negative remarks. I would have abandoned the Sunrider via. escape pod long before this game's release. Don't take things too seriously, wish you all a good night.
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Post by 白龍 on Mar 30, 2016 15:21:21 GMT -8
... Pffft
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Post by sehanine on Mar 30, 2016 16:32:48 GMT -8
Whether or not the story was done "very well" is very much debatable, because they very much didn't stick to the same story they seemed to be telling - it was far more constrained then past installments and appeared streamlined to a fault. Ironically, this was what became Mass Effect's downfall as well - continued linearity that ultimately was seen as having stifled what the game originally was. Does anyone have a plot map for Sunrider? There are a lot of flags, but many of them don't seem to really do anything, yet, apart from a few lines of text shortly after the choice that sets them. Any tips for searching the script without reading through the entire thing would also be useful. The point of my question is that I don't believe that FA/MoA really had more meaningful choices. They did, however, have more choices for how Kayto responded to things (the next few lines of dialogue), and, of course, the flags persist through to LibDay and presumably beyond. When I say that they told the story well, I just mean that it was reasonably well-written up to the 1.0 ending. I don't disagree that there weren't many meaningful choices; I just don't think there were ever many meaningful choices in Sunrider. The exceptions being: 1) Whether or not you destroyed the Legion 2) Whether or not you obtained the Wishall and 3) Whether or not you used the Wishall to save Cosette. I still haven't done my second playthrough of LibDay, so I may be missing some. If there were more significant choices in FA/MoA, please remind me. Academy had four different endings depending on the route that you chose and various other smaller changes based on events (such as the student council election). Apart from one of the choices that I mentioned earlier (do I really need to use spoiler tags here? I'm only using them because everyone else seems to), there's only one ending to MoA. The choice in question at the end of MoA, as far as I can tell, makes one graphics change and branches between two scenes that don't otherwise affect the ending of LibDay. This is why I say that the existence of Academy set up expectations for LibDay. Without it, there isn't much basis to be disappointed about a lack of romance options because there were never any to begin with. I know that the FAQ for LibDay had a question, "Can I do my waifu?" and the answer was something non-committal, so I guess there would have been expectations regardless, just no precedent. If you haven't, read Samu-kun's Steam post on 2.0 regarding the voice acting. In short, he said that it took about two weeks to complete and didn't really take much development time at all. Most of the focus was on the combat system and battles. As far as I can see, the "everything" that I mentioned boils down to a route for each girl presented, the combat system, and branching paths. From what I've read, yes, that is exactly what people were expecting. With regard to flags, you're correct; some of those flags did make certain items/ships available in the store. It's plain where my interest lies given the fact that I'd forgotten about it. Randomization of flags was off the top of my head, though it doesn't seem much worse than just setting the flags rather than playing the previous games. Fair enough regarding Maray, but Academy made me more attached to her character than FA/MoA. I agree about balance between story and combat; that's why I suggested having the romance progression affect combat (and maybe vice-versa? you let a girl's ryder get trashed and lose affection? ha!). I'd like to think that Love in Space is growing, and while expectations for LibDay were a bit higher than they should have been, I don't think that larger projects are beyond them; again, it'd just be a long development cycle. Out of curiosity, has any other developer done anything on the same order of complexity as Sunrider's combat system in Ren'Py? While Ren'Py has a lot of tools (and you can use Python itself with it), I don't know that grid-based tactical combat is something it's suited for. Yeah, I hated ME3's ending, as well, so much that I tweeted at the dev team that, once the choice was presented to me, my response was to turn around and shoot the kid in the head. I like to think that they later added that option based on my feedback (even though it was a bad ending). I'm not saying to copy Mass Effect; I'm just saying that it had awesome setting and atmosphere and stealing it is not a bad thing. Thanks for the reply! - Sehanine
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 30, 2016 17:18:05 GMT -8
Whether or not the story was done "very well" is very much debatable, because they very much didn't stick to the same story they seemed to be telling - it was far more constrained then past installments and appeared streamlined to a fault. Ironically, this was what became Mass Effect's downfall as well - continued linearity that ultimately was seen as having stifled what the game originally was. Does anyone have a plot map for Sunrider? There are a lot of flags, but many of them don't seem to really do anything, yet, apart from a few lines of text shortly after the choice that sets them. Any tips for searching the script without reading through the entire thing would also be useful. The point of my question is that I don't believe that FA/MoA really had more meaningful choices. They did, however, have more choices for how Kayto responded to things (the next few lines of dialogue), and, of course, the flags persist through to LibDay and presumably beyond. When I say that they told the story well, I just mean that it was reasonably well-written up to the 1.0 ending. I don't disagree that there weren't many meaningful choices; I just don't think there were ever many meaningful choices in Sunrider. The exceptions being: 1) Whether or not you destroyed the Legion 2) Whether or not you obtained the Wishall and 3) Whether or not you used the Wishall to save Cosette. I still haven't done my second playthrough of LibDay, so I may be missing some. If there were more significant choices in FA/MoA, please remind me. Academy had four different endings depending on the route that you chose and various other smaller changes based on events (such as the student council election). Apart from one of the choices that I mentioned earlier (do I really need to use spoiler tags here? I'm only using them because everyone else seems to), there's only one ending to MoA. The choice in question at the end of MoA, as far as I can tell, makes one graphics change and branches between two scenes that don't otherwise affect the ending of LibDay. This is why I say that the existence of Academy set up expectations for LibDay. Without it, there isn't much basis to be disappointed about a lack of romance options because there were never any to begin with. I know that the FAQ for LibDay had a question, "Can I do my waifu?" and the answer was something non-committal, so I guess there would have been expectations regardless, just no precedent. If you haven't, read Samu-kun's Steam post on 2.0 regarding the voice acting. In short, he said that it took about two weeks to complete and didn't really take much development time at all. Most of the focus was on the combat system and battles. As far as I can see, the "everything" that I mentioned boils down to a route for each girl presented, the combat system, and branching paths. From what I've read, yes, that is exactly what people were expecting. With regard to flags, you're correct; some of those flags did make certain items/ships available in the store. It's plain where my interest lies given the fact that I'd forgotten about it. Randomization of flags was off the top of my head, though it doesn't seem much worse than just setting the flags rather than playing the previous games. Fair enough regarding Maray, but Academy made me more attached to her character than FA/MoA. I agree about balance between story and combat; that's why I suggested having the romance progression affect combat (and maybe vice-versa? you let a girl's ryder get trashed and lose affection? ha!). I'd like to think that Love in Space is growing, and while expectations for LibDay were a bit higher than they should have been, I don't think that larger projects are beyond them; again, it'd just be a long development cycle. Out of curiosity, has any other developer done anything on the same order of complexity as Sunrider's combat system in Ren'Py? While Ren'Py has a lot of tools (and you can use Python itself with it), I don't know that grid-based tactical combat is something it's suited for. Yeah, I hated ME3's ending, as well, so much that I tweeted at the dev team that, once the choice was presented to me, my response was to turn around and shoot the kid in the head. I like to think that they later added that option based on my feedback (even though it was a bad ending). I'm not saying to copy Mass Effect; I'm just saying that it had awesome setting and atmosphere and stealing it is not a bad thing. Thanks for the reply! - Sehanine 1 - The fact that they don't affect the story itself outside of upgrade-choices in LibDay (the sole exception being the Legion choice and whether or not Cosette is spared) was a big complaint, though. This wasn't quite the case with FA or MoA - again, that bit was in fact more close to Mass Effect in that the consequences were more moral-based then effect based. Not to say there weren't choices that didn't have narrative impacts - what you do at Versta in FA (give the Alliance an excuse to build-up forces early or force them to wait until possibly too late, making them more or less prepared as a result) and Ongess in MoA (whether or not the Alliance keeps Ongess as a permanent foothold or promises to return it to independence) is arguably shown as determining how well the Alliance does in the war. So no - I'll be disagreeing with you on there having never been any meaningful choices in Sunrider. 2 - Academy was also set for an entirely different kind of theme; romance-comedy/parody. Yes the relationships had more serious themes and elements in them, but a lot of it - especially Asaga's - was also trope-worthy hentai-comedy. Academy wasn't set to more serious overall tone that Sunrider has and was also constrained to just one game. The main series is spread out over several different "chapters" in a way more akin to Mass Effect where there is a larger overreaching story that you have a degree of agency in, whereas Academy is styled more like Fate/Stay Night where there is a very divergent branch - Academy is more character-driven, whereas the main series was meant to be more story-driven. Point being that it's not just the ending - it's how you get there, and Mass Effect (the first two games at least) proved that if the journey has a satisfying degree of agency that romances and moral choices don't really need to dramatically impact the ultimate ending. LibDay tossed out the formula that made the past two games work - any and all pretense of agency and moral choice were tossed out for what many found a painfully linear plot that was shorter and gave less player agency. So again, I say NO - FA and MoA were what LibDay was expected to match up to in terms of story, and trying to use Academy is pretty much a strawman argument; the outcome would have been the same if Academy never existed. Hell, there are people who DIDN'T play Academy yet still felt LibDay failed compared to the other two. Yes, I've read that - I was talking about how OTHER people said it was the VO's on top of art and battle. Read the Steam reviews to see that - a LOT of them thought it was VO's. 3 - IDK if you've noticed, but that kind of "multi-route romance near the end" was an expectation LONG BEFORE ACADEMY EVER WAS MADE, dating all the way back to First Arrival - it was even in the original kickstarter that this would eventually be a feature, though it was never promised when. So long as it comes eventually, it was not something people dieheard required to be part of LibDay specifically - hell, it doesn't even need to be every girl. Plus, people weren't demanding we get a girl this game - they were demanding we get a choice in whether or not they go all the way with the only available girl in the game. So long as LibDay wasn't the last game in the series, they would not have minded getting no girls so long as they could opt out of one they didn't want - hell, split the "routes" up half-and-half between the next two games or whatever. It's kinda exactly NOT what they were expecting - at least not instantaneously - and it wasn't something that would have made LibDay a better game if the rest of the story failed to support it. 4 - That seems a little extreme to balance... and if anything, it makes it look like you were the one who expected things to be more like Academy . As for others, IDK - I really don't keep up lately. 5 - But that in turn is the point - the main Sunrider series was already like Mass Effect in that it drew people into the narrative without needing to conjure up a dozen different endings for every little choice. Just the moral-interactions and character conversations were enough. It's not stealing it that was the problem - it was that people felt the same mistake that crippled Mass Effect (story linearity suddenly becoming a thing) was being repeated.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 30, 2016 17:42:56 GMT -8
... OK - now I'ma gonna rant a bit, here; If the sex stuff comes across as too blatant, it's not gonna matter who it is or how many choices you give; it'll get rejected. Bad options can be as bad as no options, after all. So again, I hold to saying that "sex" in games is different from "sex for the sake of having sex". Plus, Nekopara is kind of a... well, extremely bad example to use - that's a VN where the entire point is exploitation/fanservice as opposed to something with actual story with it, the latter of which sells as well or more so. Fate/Stay Night being the better example. EVERY OTHER GAME in the Sunrider series was received better then LibDay was, so that's about as moot a point as you can get. Plus, consider that Academy is an entirely different genre of VN (hentai-parody) and thus tailored to an entirely different audience then the main games (serious sci-fi fantasy) were, and that many fans would buy it for comedy-relief and for the characters as opposed to just "sex = sales". And by your own admission ("close to MoA"), it didn't surpass MoA. Something I've learned after so long in gaming communities - if they feel the game is very good, money isn't a factor; the fact that MoA was freeware is a big contributor to it doing so well, but not THE biggest contributor - that would be the quality of the product itself. The "effort-reward ratio" in sex-inclusive games is determinant on the RELATIONSHIP that accompanies the h-scenes unless you are going for full-on mindless fanservice for parody-level comedy, which in and of itself is closer to a "fad" or a different genre entirely - again, looking at Fate/Stay Night, Muv-Luv and so-on for examples of this blending done right. You will see a "shitload" of BAD games, probably - at the cost of pride, reputation and whatever premise you were going for. Hell, games like "Ride to Hell: Retribution" which had sex-scenes in every few levels with a bunch of different girls, was rejected as tasteless garbage - there has been nothing but evidence AGAINST that kind of belief you have. Now, if your series was ALREADY built around that kind of shameless-objectification premise, like Nekopara was, it's one thing - gutting a pre-existing premise to shoehorn it in... not so much . Then I must stress that you must be ignoring just about every single person on these forums and on Steam to even have such an opinion, let alone maintain it . You could have as many girls and sex options as possible and it will still get shot down if they are done tastelessly for the theme/setting you are using - games like Sakura Spirit got away with it because the entire setting, from start to finish, is rather expressly based in that kind of over-the-top non-serious parody-comedy that most "ecchi/hentai" games are based in, but more serious games like Fate/Stay Night, Grisaia no Kajitsu/The Fruit of Grisaia, G-Senjou no Maou/The Devil on G-String and the like require you balance this stuff out so that the storytelling (the key part of VN's and one half of the formula for JRPG-hybrids like Sunrider) isn't compromised by it. LibDay itself should be undeniable evidence to that because even Chigara fans (with a few exceptions like vaen) were put off in varying degrees by how the romance were handled. No - maybe if you weren't so keen on ignoring the story side of things, you'd see that most of those complaints were about a downgrade in WRITING QUALITY because of misplaced priorities. I mean, you're basically arguing that if a game looks and sounds good that it excuses the plot being shit. That was Mass Effect 3's mistake with it's ending, and look how that turned out. Or in short - "Overall" = "you ripping the quote out of context." And story length was at least a bit shorter then FA and MoA even on an individual basis, while story quality was seen as a sharp drop-off because of the lack of agency in the game. The direction being shifted to a linear setting when it was originally closer to a choice-based VN - that IS something they regard as a downgrade in quality because it's taken as going back on the original premise of the games, reducing the impact of prior choices and events. I'ma also going to be a bit rude and say; "Of of course you'd say all this, though (points to thread name) - you weren't playing Sunrider for the story to begin with!" Or in more polite terms - "The story may be irrelevant to YOU, but judging by the response so far it's very hard to take that "story is irrelevant" argument seriously." Or in blunt & rude terms - "I don't think you know the target audience yourself." (readies boxing gloves) OK - hit me with your best shot. Sharr, man. I can tell that you feel very passionate about Sunrider's story and that you try hard to convince me (and others) that it was writing indeed that ultimately led to LibDay's downfall, and why prioritizing h-scenes only, is inconceivable and would never work, but you're so wrong that I can't help but to find this conversation incredibly entertaining. I said that focusing on the girls + h-scenes are key to monetizing the game properly, and a way more obvious and easier choice than to write an amazing story. It's no problem at all to transition from the Sunrider we have now to a more fanservice oriented game. Why? Sunrider of all things.... IS already very much a fanservice oriented game... (implementation in story doesn't even matter much to target audience.) You're right when you say that there will be some sort of backlash from Sunrider hardliners (for ex. people here on the forums.) But that stands in no correlation to the huge sales this product would produce. Nekopara vol. 2 has 98% positive reviews on steam (2410 reviews....) despite so many people calling this game out for the shit it is, (To quote my old swedish SC2 buddy, and now popular streamer Forsen, while playing nekopara: on stream "Oh my god... I can't... It's like a fucking Harry Potter novel of pure autism" ) it has one of the absolute best ratings around. Attention is attention, your reputation is irrelevant if you want to sell a game. (and that's what we're talking about) In the end people that despise your game don't even bother to review it negatively. (like you can see on nekopara.) I'll give you some sick foreshadowing now, should Sunrider 4 take the full-sellout "h-approach" it will become the best received and best sold Sunrider game ever. Maybe 3000 positive reviews, and 2 negative ones: 1. negative by vaendryl: "Damn you Samu... so many good gameplay ideas and nothing implemented, everything replaced by boobs..." 2. negative by Sharr: : " I feel like the anal penetration of the various heroines was definitely a misplacment in priorities. I also believe that Chigara blowing off Shields was utterly out of character, a more platonic kiss on his dick would have been enough." As for me - You wouldn't see any negative remarks. I would have abandoned the Sunrider via. escape pod long before this game's release. Don't take things too seriously, wish you all a good night. ... No. No, I really think that's you. Hell, If I'm honest... I'm only doing this 'cause I kinda pity you at this point. You have close to 200 reviews where people say the story is what made the game feel off to them - with even the positive comments criticizing it, and loads of people saying that REMOVING the sex-scene would IMPROVE LibDay... and you actually are trying to pretend it's not true? That's not a difference of opinion - that's ignorance of fact. Plain and simple. See... again, LibDay shoots that claim full of holes. If "it's no problem at all to transition from the Sunrider we have now to a more fanservice oriented game"... then why did LibDay fail? If people just want fanservice, they wouldn't have minded being forced through the Chigara thing because they would know more was coming - instead the vehemently rejected it in spite of knowing something different would come later. Why? Because people are not that stupid. If the game was that way from the start, they'd expect it and you'd have a different audience Again, yes it very much does stand in correlation - just having sex-scenes doesn't do anything unless you have narrative reason for it in the story. In more light-hearted, comedy-blended games like Majikoi or NobleWorks, you can get away with things like that because that's part of the genre - romantic-comedy. Sunrider is closer to Mass Effect - science-fiction fantasy, with romance being a smaller mechanic. Everyone who got LibDay also tried out MoA and FA beforehand because it was free - and they ALL LIKED IT BETTER. Even people who'd never played Academy felt LibDay lacked compared to MoA and FA, and neither of those games had any romance like LibDay did. Fanservice has been more a part of Sunrider as opposed to the focus, and changing that is just going to make the game, to be honest, either laughed off or shrugged off in favor of something different. Nekopura is, again, set in an entirely different genre then Sunrider, is published by a big-name developer, is a single title and is start-to-finish set in a comedic-hentai narrative. Literally everything about it narratively and setting-wise is different from Sunrider. Trying to use that as an example is not only the biggest strawman I've ever seen, but it begs the question of if you even know what "differing genres" even means. "Abundant sex and fanservice" doesn't create lasting impressions - "well-implemented and well-executed sex" does. Nekopura never tried to play itself as more then it was; a hentai-objectifying VN. Sunrider is not and did not, so your example is moot at best and completely wrong at worst. Again though - if that were the case, LibDay wouldn't have failed. Nobody would have asked the Sex be REMOVED/OPTIONAL there if that were the case. Nobody would have asked for more story over sex or asked that the romance be paced better if that were anywhere near true. They would have just waited for the next game with no fuss. Now for the obligatory rude remark; to me, the only thing this "foreshadows" ... is that you shouldn't ever go into marketing. Because if you try to make "Sunrider 4" like Nekopura... people are going to go "why don't I just get Nekopura? What's unique about this?" It's not that I was taking it serious - it's just that at this point... well, honestly speaking, I feel like at best you just don't know the first thing about what made people like this game... and at worst that you simply think with your genitals when it comes to believing what makes an RPG good. I don't think it's that I'm too serious - I just don't think people are idiots like you seem to believe.
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Post by Xechran on Mar 30, 2016 19:21:20 GMT -8
LibDay-letdown is probably better described by the folks who felt it, right? Count me among them, despite 55 hours played so far.
Lets back up a bit and look at MoA, which included a forced romantic entanglement with Ava and made the story stronger as a result. Forced romance can work, both within the genre and within the Sunrider series, if it is done well. Chigara's was not, even though we saw it coming from MoA. A few things could have made it work though; longer pace, player agency, the ability to side step.
The game needed a few side missions between mission 2, the ion-storm ambush, and the Cera missions to flesh out the new direction for Asaga and put the issues Kayto was having into better perspective. Asaga's change is unnaturally abrupt, and its only in the 2.0 content that you're informed that she could pick up on the Prototype hive-mind. Her internal monologues could have been fleshed out by remembering things Chigara has done or said. Like how she could hear Arcadius in her mind ever since the Wedding Crash. And foreshadowing through her by letting us see the hive-mind machinations through her "imagination" running wild, only letting us know later on that she wasn't imagining things.
Kayto broke down in MoA, at least in my play through. In MoA it culminates with him sending Ava to fire the Vanguard, but some scenes showing his issues weren't wrapped up tidily would have gone a ways to justifying his turn to Chigara as emotional support. Lingering issues and regrets probably make sense more readily on a 'Legion sparred' run. Either way Kayto needed some friction, some conflict, with the rest of the crew. There are mentions to the dark clouds hanging over the captain, but you're only told of them. Some conversational choices here where he was snappy at people questioning his direction or defensive of his past choices could have shown that within the narrative and created distance between him and the rest of the girls. Highlighting that distance would make the new 2.0 ending even better, as they wouldn't just be glad to see him alive - but welcoming HIM back. Which is already true to a degree, just not felt strongly.
But how can side stepping Chigara work in this context? Well, maybe it was the wrong way to describe the choice I had in mind. Create a path where he is indecisive or just unwilling to commit for whatever reason. This path could turn Chigara into another one of his long list of regrets because, as with Ava in MoA, he didn't reach out until is was too late. He finally steps up to the plate and commits to her while she's mind-jacked by the Prototypes, saving the day with a kiss! Love conquers all huzzah! Oh... Fontana you fabulous bastard...
If I could choose, I would use the side missions pre-Cera to introduce the new PACT girl, Kuushan was it? Introducing her there allows a little less monologue at the end as well. The scene between her and Fontana felt a bit odd as they spoke for the reader's benefit rather than each others. From Grey, "We're making final preparations for the liberation of Cera, but our supply lines are getting hit by this odd force... (pirate flagged PACT units from FA/MoA with Ceran ships?) Handle it. I wont over extend our front and expose our fleets" etc. You could use this as a chance to meet unknown pilot-kun. Have him working with Kuushan having swallowed the PACT propaganda about the exploits of the Sunrider and its vile captain. Use him as a vehicle to press Kayto on his past decisions, like the diplomats, Ongess, Ceran pirates etc.
While this is all possible, it requires a great deal of work. Read as, requires a great deal of time. And Samu addressed that one, they focused development on changing the battle engine was it?
The battles don't get by unscathed either. Even though I skipped through them nearly all the time, the MoA animations did add some feel to things. Forgivable as this likely requires a great deal more work to put in place. The assault guns could have used a broader variety of sound fx. The new one is fine for the CGBs but seems out of place for the capital ships, where I prefer the old one. And I have major issue with one aspect of balance, draw fire. I mentioned in another thread I feel it should be rebalanced in some way, like only working as a chance for adjacent units.
More Icari/Kryska fan service shower scenes don't fix the issues I have, btw. Nor would other random HCGs. Echi is fine with a point and a purpose. Its the difference between a movie with sex in it and porn. I dont want "random guy is here to fix the cable" plot.
edit: Should also mention I'm ok with an Empire Strikes Back bad guys win ending if the immediate issues are resolved. 1.0 ends with Luke having jumped off the ledge.
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Post by planguy on Mar 30, 2016 19:38:08 GMT -8
Ava's "forced romantic entanglement" is backstory. Past Kayto isn't a character that you really get to decide what he does. Ava is the old flame character and childhood friend that you can reignite a romance with. Present Kayto's choices should be up to the player, not dictated to the player.
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Post by 白龍 on Mar 30, 2016 19:39:02 GMT -8
You call that a big name developer? >_>
Nekopara huh..? I hate that VN as much as I hate cute cat girls. ... ... I-it's not like I like them or anything! I hate them! They're so stuupid! Stuuuuupid!
But no seriously I hate it. ... ... ... ... Ahh, it's so adora- ?! ... What are you looking at.
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Post by Xechran on Mar 30, 2016 19:54:21 GMT -8
Ava's "forced romantic entanglement" is backstory. Past Kayto isn't a character that you really get to decide what he does. Ava is the old flame character and childhood friend that you can reignite a romance with. Present Kayto's choices should be up to the player, not dictated to the player. Its still presentation by dictation. The only difference being present Ava turns Kayto down, the player gets no choice in the matter as I recall? As such the point stands, its a romantic entanglement forced onto the player that is acceptable not only because of the outcome, but the presentation itself. In your case, you accept it because it was presented as a past event and therefore a fait accompli. It can be done and there is more than one way to make that work.
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