Usually it looks like, “I don’t like this, cater to my desire.”
“I don’t like that your vampires aren’t like these vampires.”
“I don’t like that your werewolves aren’t these werewolves.”
“I don’t like that your werewolves have similar stats to your slime creatures.”
“I’d like it if you made your sequel about the vampires I love in this other fandom.”
“I didn’t like that you didn’t make the game about the MC’s past, make the sequel about the MC’s past.”
Etc., etc.
Glad I found this thread again, I’ve been looking for it all night. Sorry for the delay in response time. I have 234 responses to get to even though I only had 14 yesterday.
I agree that honesty and constructive criticism is important, but if someone comes to me with critiques about my work in a disrespectful way, I will just outright ignore those critiques partially out of spite because I’m a petty bitch. Luckily I can only name one time when that has happened I’m pretty sure, and it wasn’t even on my regular forum page. Personally I don’t believe in the phrase “brutally honest”; I think it’s just an excuse for people to be rude while claiming they’re “right” about something.
Constructive criticism should always be respectful, just as the response to that criticism should always be respectful. That’s just my take on it though.
If it has useful information, I don’t really care about the form it’s given in. It’s going to be much, much worse when it becomes a product to be sold, so you can always treat it as a training arc in terms of dealing with critique.
Being nice is all well and good, but most people won’t be nice when they actually have to buy a book and it isn’t up to their liking. So, I think, it’s important to just deal with it and take useful parts into consideration. No critique or reviews is often worse than some - it means no one gave a shit about your work.
Given the current climate, honestly I think sometimes providing feedback may also require a necessary step back from the reviewer — at least, in the category of ‘is this harmful/stereotypical/etc etc’
Like is this genuinely harmful/something that I should call attention to vs this is something that isn’t for me and I don’t have to consume this and move on in my life
For example, let’s say an author decides to make a person of color as a werewolf. The knee jerk tendency I’ve seen in a lot of circles is to say that it’s racist to depict POC that way given the baggage of how the West has largely depicted and treated non-white people. Following this train though, are we saying that only white characters may be depicted as werewolves?
Like POC furries exist. There are POC horror fans, monster fuckers, and what have you who would probably appreciate a werewolf that is also non-white.
Which imo I think should call into question now of the treatment of the character in terms of the author’s writing. Is there an emphasis on the more bestial nature (especially if it’s codefied as something racial)? If there are white characters, how are they treated vs non-white characters? Etc. Etc.
Like I get that asking for nuance can be a lot, but it’s something that I think should also be given consideration as readers looking to give feedback. In a time of competing needs in terms of representation and the like, sometimes it helps though to think what the author’s intended message is (along with who the intended audience is) before typing away
This reads like paste. If I may ask, which HG game(s) are you in authorship of? I thought I was hoity-toity, but clearly I’m not. Apologies for not recognizing your forum name.
I guess I don’t know. His or Her’s first paragraph felt like paste while I was reading it. I think I understand? Don’t show off a works in progress, except to explicitly showcase only a specific thing.
Agree to disagree I suppose. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’ve actively changed things in my own game due to feedback before, and it’s helped me realize what to do and not do in future games too. I feel like there’s a huge difference between:
“This scene was absolute dog*** and I can’t believe it was put in the game because of x, y, and z.”
Compared to:
“imo, this scene was completely out of place and just didn’t really work because of x, y, z.”
I’m not saying people have to coddle others, or even follow it up with anything nice to say at all, but at the bare minimum I’d say being respectful is important for most people to actually take in any valid criticism. Society has cultivated a desensitized people who feel comfortable saying anything over the internet because they don’t have to face the fact that there’s another person behind the other side of the screen, but just because that’s the way things are, doesn’t mean we as individuals have to tolerate or contribute to that fact.
But I feel like I may be taking things off topic here a bit now, so I digress.
Are all your werewolf characters black people? Are all your black characters werewolves? Is your one far east-asian-descendent character called Cho Chang?
Don’t try to force fit feedback. Other than the high- mid- low-level feedback system, feedback also needs to be specific, especially for people like me. For example, “why did A do X and not Y”.
Edit: With all that is going on, there are certain rules to be followed when giving feedback. This applies to everyone, neurotypical or neuroatypical alike (and I am one of the latter):
Be constructive. Don’t try to pull the person down. Saying something is bad without justification or any ways to improve is not being constructive.
Be truthful. Telling lies won’t help the person to improve.
Be tactful. Telling the truth may hurt the other person’s feelings if done in a curt manner.
Be specific and have clarity when communicating. This is one of the key principles of communication.
Target the action, not the person. From what I know, this can be a huge problem for very popular works like Wayhaven. The author has the free will to decide what to do or not to do.
Above all, please treat others like how you would want to be treated. It is unavoidable to step on others’ shoes, but be sure to get rid of the dust when doing so.
Finally, as both a reader and an author (in this case, of Maverick Hunter Scandalous Mission), sometimes it can be difficult to see things through both perspectives. i also want people to follow these guidelines to their best. Being an author is hard. The pressure to succeed is real. The relationship and connection between author and reader is difficult to maintain. Especially for someone like me, who plays Hannah’s works and then goes on to create something based of it.
As for seeking closure, this is perhaps the hardest, since I tend to overly focus on one particular thing and have a black and white viewpoint about it, even more so when it comes to personal matters.
It’s pretty cut and dry to me, don’t be a dick, but be firm about your criticism. It would be nice to have one but sadly, people can’t behave or sanely react to things without getting psychotic. That’s the internet for you though…
And when we did get a conversation started and were regularly discussing it, the thread got closed down to end any critical feedback of it. And that really sucks, because my husband finished his first LT run and has started his second, where he’s had quite a few comments to share.
Agreed. There are other threads that are not so stringent on the type of feedback allowed. You may be shouted down for having the wrong opinion (looking at you AMR), but you can still voice it if you have enough backbone. But that’s the problem, really–if you’re offering valid feedback on something, you shouldn’t have to worry you’ll be shouted down and attacked for having the wrong opinion.
Agree with both of these. TSSW b2 kind of turned me off for a couple of reasons, but even the two ROs I previously loved felt overly bland in that one.
My biggest problem with Jun(ko) is that you don’t get an option not to be sickeningly in love with them. The character is completely unappealing to me, but I can get why others might like them. But when you force my MC to be in love with a character I find nauseating, then yeah, I’m going to have a problem. Especially when said character enslaves my MC and crosses a ton of lines. I can find such things appealing (I love playing yandere VNs because of this), but not in this case. And Mannerkol is just freaking boring and cartoonish to me. Had there been a way to a happy ending of sorts with him, I would probably have made an MC for him. But hard pass on the misery. I get why others want to romance him, because so many people like pain and horrible (to me) endings.
Shitpost. It has to be a shitpost. The only thing my MC wants to romance Mira with is a spiked baseball bat.
Circling back to the main point of the topic, and how the above (minus the Mira stuff) ties into it…
I hate any RO that is forced on my character. In any form of IF, even if it’s a VN, then I want the option to have my MC choose who they want to be with. If it’s a “one romance only” kind of game, I cut bait and run if I don’t like the RO and can’t get into the MC’s head or shape the MC in a way that works for me. But in CoG, I expect to be able to have a choice of some sort. SoH didn’t give that, which is one reason why I detest Jun(ko) with an undying passion and why I quit playing the game.
Wayhaven–on the LT–is guilty of this, too, and after seeing how N is handled with a MC who refuses to begin a relationship with them, N is sliding onto that list of ROs I hate. There was a scene with the MC and N where the narrative forces the MC to think all this worshipful stuff about them, and you have a choice to realize you’re in love or not. Choose “go back to researching” and you get another page stuffed with “I can’t concentrate because N is so perfect and great!” followed by an option to “give into your feeling” and kiss and begin a relationship. Like, dude, the MC just literally skipped over the “I’m in wuv” crap and you’re shoving this at her? My husband said his UwU MC will now avoid N at every opportunity and refuse the relationship until it’s shoved down her throat (which, really, that’s what was being tried). I doubt it’s intentional, but it ends up seeming like N is a psycho yandere or something with the pushiness.
