They might not make sense for you, but for me and a lot of people here they do. It is not only me who have this opinion.
And I disagree with you on this, there is nothing more to discuss.
Good to know the game point was all about societal injustices, I fooled myself thinking it was about heroes, it will not happen a second time.
Heroes fight injustice. Its a game about heroes and social inequality in the hero world due to different powers. Something heroes would fight for. I know you’re not the only one with this opinion and what I’m talking about is addressed to them as well. This is a game about a socialy oppressed powered human on a tv show and was never marketed as something else. Its still a super hero game weither you want it or not. Its not personal but you’re taking this as if I was trying to force you to like this game or buy it. Why would I care about any of this? I just dont see why everyone say its not a super hero game when it clearly is.
I care because you and others are dismissing the opinion of the majority of the people i this thread.
I remember heroes fighting villains, not fighting for the underrepresented issues.
It was not marketed as a socialy oppressed person, it was marketed as a hero story in television. Wherever you agree with me or not, it is not a game about heroes (See how easy I can dismiss yours claims too?).
What specifically do you look for when giving feedback on what works and what doesn’t? You seem to be involved in a lot of different betas, and the one time I tested a title I wasn’t totally sure what type of feedback was going to be most helpful and what wasn’t looked for.
Outside of the general thought that the game can be heavy-handed – is there anything mentioned on this thread that you would consider feedback that in a perfect world would have been addressed in Beta?
The thing is that I feel like most peoples here would bash the game even if it wasnt about heroes. It could have been about anything and the same issues would have come up. Because this game is not showing the mainstream vision of heroes and focus on the social aspect and bring up social justice, you dismiss it as not a hero game. But its a game about super heroes. No matter what the moral end up being, its a super hero game because the characters are exactly that. Its like saying that a sci-fi game is not sci-fi because it doesnt take place in space and talk about economy instead of war. It would still be sci-fi like this is about super heroes.
Almost everything heroes do is to combat injustice. What’s the big DC superhero collaboration group? The ‘Justice Leauge of America.’ Superman protects those weaker and less capable than him, Batman fights crime, etc, etc, et-freaking-cetera. This game wasn’t marketed as ‘HULK SMASH’, and yet that’s what you seem to think it should have been/was supposed to be
The main problem is that the game seems to favor characters that are societal, and thats just bad balance, not that stat highs and lows have consequences, that’s expected, but it should exist some more wiggle room especially for decisions more at the beginning of the game and how the thing with Miss Boss ends is just favorism for a specific character trait. And is by the way not really… forseeable? At least for a bunch of people.
That the game has a strong focus on discrimination alone is nothing bad, but the fact that we get very often told how our character has to feel, at least one time not even in correlation to the actual character traits we played at is very immersion breaking. We are not even made to feel what our character feels, we just are told about it. And that doesn’t really seems like good storytelling.
And then there are many other “small” things like a lack in character interaction, despite some really interesting NPCs, what really is a bummer. That the character doesn’t really get much oppertunity to actually do heroing, and that the TVshow part of the story wasn’t played at much neither, instead it was the same clique nonsense we already had and which may got lampshaded how nice it would be to change those dynamics, but really getting into it was hardly possible, because - again - not enough character interaction for my liking.
All those things alone make no bad game, they don’t even make a mediocore game, but together, it’s pretty disappointing. I most likely will buy the next installment, alone for the fact that already the heroes rise games got better with every new part, so there is still hope. And it’s nice to hear that you enjoyed the game. But none of that changes my dissappoinment.
Or it is because we all thought we were having a game were our character would fight against crime and villains instead of complaining about discrimination bullsh.
No it’s not a superhero game because it has nothing to do with fighting crime/villains and saving people, it is a game who wants to enforce the writer vision on everyone and he just tacked a few hero parts to false market it as a hero game.
I agree with @Urban. The game was marketed as a tv show for the new MC to take place in. It was also marketed in a way that had us believe that it was a “Redemption” for the tv show. Instead, it focused more on discrimination among LGBT and Ani-powered super heroes. I said it once and I will say it again, this reminds me too much of a super powered version of the 1960’s civil rights movement. Now, I’m all for a revolution, for Ani-powereds, but seriously, forcing me to care? That’s wrong. In the few choices I had to act like I didn’t care, I almost always got punished, and got no reward. In a lot of games, you can be “Evil” and suffer some disadvantages and lose some things you might normally get if you were “good”. but regardless of your choice, you almost always got something beneficial. That’s not the case with this came. It attempts to force us to care about ani-powereds like somehow just because we share something, that somehow means I care. No. There are multiple people who share a common problem, but do they care? No. Sometimes they’re only in it for themselves, or themselves and the ones they care about. Does this game let it happen? Nooooooo. It could have done things a different way, but didn’t.
I can only hope that Sergi will find some way to change everything, but somehow I doubt that.
Those points are good! I do think we will see more character interaction in the second game though. Right now its mostly characters getting kicked out of the show but I dont think the show is that big of a thing in the full planned story. I cant really speak about the stats because I already said that it seem logic that a less vocal minority that is already oppressed would be voted out because they are just not interesting enough compared to the rating others would bring but something really could be done to allow personal characters to progress.
My main problem is peoples saying its not a super hero game. Because well… It is…
I’m sorry, but it is not.
A reminder to discuss the game and ideas, not each other. Discussing different people’s opinions of the game is fine. Discussing different people in the thread is not. Dismissing people from the thread is also not acceptable.
I’m thankful for the various people who’ve pointed out flaws in how they viewed the advertising for the game, versus (ha) their opinions of the game itself. Good points for those of us who hope to publish games in the future and will be coming up with our own advertising copy (so, Hosted Game hopefuls such as myself).
@Shockbolt Maybe we should start a thread, ‘What Makes a Good (or Helpful) Beta Test’? I’d be just as interested in the results as anyone, to be sure. And the instructions in this thread were my original guideline for how to beta test Choice of Games well.
Specifically, with this game? The three main issues mentioned in this thread, I think, seem to be 1. The stats weren’t balanced, I wanted to play a (however) kind of character and it wasn’t really possible. 2. The advertising presented ‘Powered Heroes On Television Wheeee!’ and the game is ‘MC With Weird Powers Faces Discrimination, Takes Care of Powered Sister with Serious Health Issues in Low Income Neighbourhood’; and 3. The game forces you to make narrow choices with Miss Boss and Transfer, for instance that didn’t fit my character and that was frustrating.
If I misinterpreted or misstated any points, I’m open to correction.
For a beta tester:
The ideal thing here is to say, “I was trying to play a character with traits A, B, and C. I found I was blocked off from being C in this scene and this scene - I would have liked this different option, or I didn’t like when my character had to think that one thing. Oh, and then you made me do D in this scene, and it was out of character.” I know I submitted some feedback to this effect with this game, and most others I’ve beta-tested. (Usually it has to do with, “Can I please have an option that does not involve hitting, blasting, scheming, annihilating, or otherwise forcibly dealing with that character”, or sometimes it has to do with how my MC views other characters. In this game, it was often the latter.)
Beta testers don’t see the advertising, so I don’t know how beta testing could have directly addressed this issue.
When frustrating scenes come up, mention to the author that you don’t like them, and why. (I’m in the middle of significantly reordering one of my scenes right now because two people told me it was boring, and why they found it boring. I’m glad they did!) Then the author can sort and adjusting according to taste.
And every author has a different way of interacting with feedback. I’ve beta tested games where almost all of my suggestions were implemented, and games where nearly none of them were. And that’s the way it should be - my suggestions might be helpful, or they might go in a direction the author chooses not to pursue. Sometimes authors respond to give more direction, or feedback, about beta responses, sometimes not. It just depends.
I’d love to talk more about beta testing in general, and hear what some of the other authors and beta testers on the forums think, but probably on a new thread!
I would very much like to see such a thread happen 
It’s also pretty annoying that the game treats trying to make life better for you and your sister as “bad” or “evil.” The game gives us all these reasons to not care about the big picture–your sister is ill, you come from a bad neighborhood, you’re not even aware of major events such as an evil president, etc–but then punishes you for playing a character that follows that path. Why set up such a situation if you’re not going to let us explore that option?
@FairyGodfeather Good to see you’re still around! I hope life is well.
Have you had a chance to play Redemption Season yet?
@Sammysam Your reply to @cyanide was very eloquently expressed. I’m in total agreement with your list of critiques.
@cyanide, @urban: Whether or not Redemption Season is a superhero game that centers around fighting discrimination or simply a game about fighting discrimination with superheros as window dressing I believe is a matter of what a player’s expectations are going into the game. Different people with widely varying expectations of what a “superhero game” is supposed to be like can very legitimately come away with markedly different feelings about the game.
@Fiogan It’s no one beta tester’s job to report all potential issues with the game. So please don’t take the comments you’ve read from others here personally. People are simply trying to understand where the breakdown they perceive occurred. Either the beta test team wasn’t large or diverse enough, or the author ignored the feedback he received in order to stay true to his muse. The latter is absolutely his prerogative, but if he doesn’t take his audience’s feedback into account he may well end up driving a very large portion of them away.
I have to say that making Miss Boss’s life depend on the MC’s thoughts on social activism really, really rubbed me the wrong way. There is no objective reason why your thoughts on social activism, one way or another, should have any influence on your ability to save Miss Boss from falling to her death. Sergi may not have meant for it to come across that way, but It feels as if the author put his own finger on the scale to specifically punish those characters who aren’t played the one true and correct way. I hope it’s just a bug that the beta testers missed and as a result was never reported.
That’s really interesting. I’ve never really had to beta test anything but ‘open betas’ where feedback was more on mechanics and the like. I’m not a numbers person; I’m more inclined to pay attention to story than battles. And I love that you had something to say on dealing with situations where there’s all these options to hit the enemy and none that’s non-combatant. I love great fight scenes and I’m here for non-gratuitous violence, but I really love creative use of powers in ways that aren’t combat oriented and I feel a lot of games should implement something like that for players who don’t like taking a violent stand. MGS comes to mind on a few occasions just because I’m pretty sure there’s an achievement in one of the games centered on getting through the entire story without killing anyone/sneaking through it. Undertale also comes to mind with it’s entirely Pacifist run.
It’s good to get insight on what beta testers do, especially in games like this where it’s a lot to do with story and I can’t help but think that’s it’s hard to please everyone, even with a diverse beta tester pool. And it’s hard to try to please everyone while staying true to your story. I commend Zachary for being able to make a story that’s staid true to who he is as a person (and how incredibly inclusive he is; it’s not an easy feat and I hate that it’s such a big risk in today’s society to even think about including non-binaries and non-binary pronouns. Heroes Rise actually was the first time I’ve ever seen the pronouns even used). He’s a great writer, even if our vocal minority in this thread have put in a lot of criticism for this latest installment in the series.
When you beta test do some of the producers/authors ever reply to any feedback that you give them? Do some of them set up some kind of rapport with their testers, provided they don’t have like a hundred or even twenty? Or has your experience noted that most of them don’t and you kind of have to find out if they took your feedback or not in the next build of the game?
I think this is inherently the problem. I think a lot of people here have felt they’ve been punished in a way for making certain choices in the game where they should be able to play multiple different types of characters with varying degrees of Pros and Cons. It seems to me anything that’s not swayed toward being socially active in representing Underrepresented Powers has a far heftier list of Cons with maybe a few Pros in the mix.
I think it’s balance. In a Choice of Game, balance is everything to the player and everything to the story. This kind… of… reminds me of Mass Effect 3, in a sense, where it’s deeply eschewed that a lot of Renegade choices come off as far, far, far better in the long run and that Paragon choices seem to punish the players for trying to save everyone. At least, that’s how I felt because I’m a sucker and I play the Paladin, Inherently Good, Captain America type of character (which makes romancing the assholes all the better ahahaHAhuh).
Reading through the thread, I think that’s what I’ve been seeing a lot of in people’s views of the game. It’s a bit unbalanced and favors one side a little to heavily without giving option to anyone else. @Fiogan pointed out that there was literally no options to play a Showboat-y, in it for myself/the prize kind of character, which I think the first Hero Project provided (correct me if I’m wrong). Of course, they’re both different characters and I think this recent MC seems a lot more subdued and mellow than the trilogy MC.
Regardless, I feel really put off by playing the MC as ‘keeping his head down’ because I don’t feel like I’d enjoy myself, as much. However, this is just the beginning of the series and I’m hoping that, while there’s been a lot of consequences for caring more about yourself and JK and less about being the head runner of a social issue that it’s going to feature a lot more options in the second and third episodes. I’d really love to see how the world would change if this MC really felt strongly about giving himself and JK a better life (omg worst typo in the existence of this world) by any means necessary.
But yeah, I feel like this episode seemed more like a set up to the others and I’m hoping that’s what it was and that we, as the audience, can get a lot more choices in how we play this MC. And I know someone said the ability to change animal forms willingly reminded them of Beast Boy… but I had a thing for Beast Boy in the comics and >> << I’d definitely be all for that - even if we somehow turn red or green. Aha. >> <<
