The superbowl doesn’t generally wreck your neighborhood and kill many of your neighbors. Common sense would dictate that you find out enough to make sure that you and your sister won’t be next to die.
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Having played the game before reading the reviews, it’s something honestly I wish I would have skipped. The heavy handed way things were dealt with was way too much to deal with. Unless our MC literally woke up from a coma before the game started, they should have known about Prodigal and the actual war her actions brought. Hell even the coma would have sparked more information then we’ve shown.
2/10 would not have a mass murderer in my head again.
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How, exactly, would you ensure that? Moving isn’t an option. And while they may have known about the Death Wave in general, they might not know the specifics behind it. After all, what would the MC do with that knowledge? Fight supervillains who would do the same thing in the future?
The MC lives in a world where superpowers are the norm. The Death Wave was tragic, sure, but the MC probably sees it as similar to a tornado - it happened, it sucked, but there’s nothing they can actually do about it.
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To put it short and sweet we (the MC) are being told not shown. It is as if the MC is being dictated on how to play; rewarded for socialism and tossed aside if the MC has an independent personality.
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Again, you’re jumping the gun here. You’re assuming nothing can be done before the MC even attempts to discover what happened. The MC doesn’t have to do anything concrete once they discover that Prodigal is dead. The point though is that self-preservation and an interest in the well being of your sister should motivate you to discover why so many of your neighbors died at the minimum, and that means learning about Prodigal.
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So there’s something I’ve been wondering–does the game actually let you import a save where the PC died at the end of Herofall? I can’t import the saves where BM destroys the world (for obvious reasons), but I’ve never gotten the ending with Victon killing me, so I can’t check for myself, and not knowing is driving me crazy.
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Sigh… It seems Zack didn’t understand (or don’t want to) the criticism that people are giving to his game
Time to move on from this serie, while the first is one of my favorite series this one is bad and the writer will insist on the same thing I didn’t like in this game.
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Well, that’s disappointing. I hoped that he wouldn’t just dismiss all criticism in this way… Maybe it’s just overstated rebuff of the critique for PR reasons or something? Maybe? I mean it could be possible…???
Look at my slowly dying hope for the series…
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We’ve absolutely no evidence that he’s lumping the valid criticisms in with the hate. It sounds very unlike him.
If you read further down on that thread, he says
Nope, there’s been straight up homophobic and transphobic hate. And real discrimination is in your face. But not everyone will understand that! Excited to expand the story beyond the origin story --Z
I really don’t want to go digging for specific comments he’s referring to. It’s easy for us, on the forums, to assume he’s referring to us, but he doesn’t read the forums. He’s likely referring to the public at large, and the comments on other platforms to his games, and they’re nowhere near as moderated as we are here.
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I certainly hope that is not the case. Zack is a very talented writer and if his stories become less important than the message it is supposed to spread, I really cannot see it as a good thing. If I want to be preached to, I would go to a church. I pay money for entertainment mainly for the entertainment. If it wants to pitch a moral message at me, fine. Just not all the time to the point of incredulity.
I would imagine that there were some transphobic and homophobic reviews, this is the internet after all. Dismissing all criticism as such is definitely a worrying mindset.
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Do you happen to know if ZS has addressed/been made aware of some of the secondary issues unrelated to the core message of the game that have been brought up in this thread?
I saw the post he made about fans disappointed with Jury, but there were also a lot of people who disliked the prodigal MeChip and the clear plot hole that represents; or some of the other problems with continuity that have been addressed here, but I didn’t see those issues brought up the Facebook page.
I’m totally fine that he doesn’t read the forums, I’m just curious if CoG in an official capacity has relayed some of the calmer-headed points made here.
ZS certainly doesn’t have to change anything based on the feedback left here, or anywhere else for that matter, I’m just wondering if CoG as a company forwards feedback made on the forums to authors.
I dunno if you’re the right person to ask, but I figured even if you aren’t you would know who to ask.
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I know for a fact that CoG does relay messages from the forums to authors. We also know that Jason is reading this thread. CoG want their games to be as successful as possible, they will be taking into consideration everything that we’ve said, as well as all of the other feedback, and the sales figures etc, when it comes to the writing of the next game.
I wouldn’t expect him to directly respond to anything on facebook though. I sincerely doubt that he’s lumped all of the criticism about social justice issues into “people are just being homophobic/transphobic” and I’m sure he’s aware that there are GBLTQ people who’re bringing up these points. The negative feedback he is referring to will undoubtedly be people actually being homophobic/transphobic.
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Oh, ok, thanks that answers my question!
I’ve read enough of the app reviews to have seen actual -phobic comments, so I can see where ZS is coming from that a lot of the feedback can feel like personal attacks – since some of it actually is. I totally respect any author’s choice to read or not read reviews and comments on their work since the Internet can some times be an ugly place, that’s why I was curious if CoG sent feedback.
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And there’s a contact email on the game itself, too - so who knows what kinds of direct messages may have gone through there, or any of the author’s social media platforms, too. Even if they’re filtered out, just knowing vitriol was thrown at you can be very disturbing, especially when it’s over sensitive issues.
I think deciding the author’s comments about hateful feedback are in any way connected with this thread is possibly assuming a bit much. We have no way of knowing what comes to the author’s eyes, or when.
And we havent see him adressing any of the valid criticism, he keep taking only about the “bad backlash”.
Every place this game has been released, it had the same criticism and yet we don’t know anything about if he will adress it. He only keep saying he will continue with the discrimination propaganda.
If you think it only here that people are criticizing the game, just look at Steam (it is one of the few games in the Neutral category), Google Play (it is the game with lower reviews of all game he had written), etc.
@Fiogan I’m not saying he was talking about this thread, I’m saying he only sees that kind of criticism and don’t adress the valid ones.
And what he says ti rebuke those bad criticism, only reinfioce the valid criticism about the forced agenda of the game.
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i actually posted a comment on the Heroes Rise Facebook page, and ZS rapidly responded. There is some anti-trans and anti-gay comments that I’ve seen before, some of which directed at ZS.
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I would appreciate it if we didn’t refer to it as LGBTQ propaganda. It’s definitely fair to say that you believe it had an overt focus on it that wasn’t advertised for the game, but the word propaganda is associated with negative connotations and sounds like we’re trying to brainwash you or something.
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Referring to the content of ZS’s games as “LGBTQ+ propaganda” is offensive and inappropriate to this forum.
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And yet he said nothing about the real problems. I don’t have much confidente when he only says “i will try to improve”.
@jasonstevanhill very well, I’m sorry if I offended anyone, it was not my intention. I will change it.
I don’t know the author, so I can’t say how it’s going there. I just know that one time, I did a public performance. Our team (and I, specifically) received a LOT of really awful, hateful, vitriolic feedback. It was actually regarding a similar issue . . . and I was just in shock. I couldn’t even THINK straight about feedback for a couple of weeks, because I was so surprised by the force of the anger. It was hurtful.
It didn’t exactly put me in the right frame of mind for responding to other feedback - even positive feedback - right away.
And as @FairyGodfeather and @LanaRose have both mentioned, Sergi has responded to feedback before.
And perhaps most importantly, I think perhaps discussing the author and his practices is less the point of this thread (or any thread on the CoG forum) than discussing the story itself.
Edit: To clarify, I don’t find that people on the forum are being vitriolic - we’re well-moderated, as @FairyGodfeather pointed out, and most people are very thoughtful and considerate here even without the assistance of flags. My sincere apologies if my post came off that way.
My point was that we have no way of knowing what other, much harsher criticisms and even hate-speech may have come to his ears by other means.
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