Improving leveling, other stuff (mainly money)

Cheers James. I'll make a thread over there at some point today. I don't know about mind control at the mo, but there is going to be bimbofication which counts I believe.

Lord Arioch

Nah, man, thanks for taking the time to write this up. :)

Lord Arioch

I do like the idea of adopting some gameplay elements out of DnD 3.5 edition. That's a solid system to analyze and use as an inspiration when creating your own game. However, I don't think you're going to see a big hike in patrons until you get a lot more meat and bones to the game itself. The interactive part of the game is what is going to either make or break this game for people. I won't go on this topic for long since I've seen several well written responses below in the comments section. But I do agree that until this game gets up and starts getting into that epic high fantasy feel like in dnd games or even other similar rpgs or ARPGS even. I think you're probably safer going the MUD route for your development. Otherwise you'll be years trying to craft a game by yourself. Take a look at some of the classic isometric rpgs like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Those are two examples of games that took a lot of people a fair amount of time to complete. Admittedly, I would love to see more games like that but I know that asking for that is a bit too much in this case. Its not that I don't believe that you could do it. Its that I believe that without a developing studio with a whole team of developers it would take so long that the game would likely not see completion for the next 5 years or more. I think you could probably supplement meaningful artwork to paint a vivid picture at appropriate times and places for this story. A solid MUD-like interface can be every bit as compelling as the more visually oriented games out there. I think you're doing pretty good considering a lot of those game patreons out there are lucky if they can even attract $100 a month. The ones that do well just become well known. But you're building a different type of game so you're going to have to set your own pace and make a name for yourself in your own style. Let the gameplay sell the game for you anotherwords. I may have went on a bit longer than I intended here but keep up the great work!

lightningshifter

Oh, and that dramatic drop has to do with the fact that you're doing the pay immediately thing. If someone pledged last month and cancelled, they were considered a Patron till the end of the month. The bonus being you got the money, as under the old system they could pledge and grab and drop before paying anything. But expect a drop at the start of each month. Just compare your first day of last month to the first day of this month to measure actual growth. And you're doing awesome at like 26% growth PER MONTH. Revenue also seems to have increased 22% over last month. So no need to gripe. Just plug away! That's great growth, you're doing something right. :) (In comparison, Akabur is down 5% vs last month; SR7 is up 5%; and Oni is up 11% in revenue.)

Dinker

Hey! We've already talked a little bit but I thought I'd pipe in cause I've seen some things and in the comments that I consider, frankly, bad advice. <br><br>First off: You're doing great! I looked you up on Graphtreon and you've been building moment steadily. <a href="https://graphtreon.com/creator/LordArioch" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://graphtreon.com/creator/LordArioch</a> <br><br> Secondly, I'm not at all shocked that you haven't seen a sharp uptick in patrons, yet. I personally support more than a couple H-games on Patreon. I only support games that are games. At the moment Seeds of Chaos is a very pretty linear story told in Ren'Py with some bits and bobs at the end of it. There's not really any gameplay yet and without that and without you being a 'known' quantity (like Akabur, Oni and Sunsetriders7) you can't expect people to be dropping any amount of money when they don't know your timeframe for development or the quality of your finished product. <br><br> Make game stuff, just lots and lots of game stuff. Where you can hope for a steadier and faster (but not meteoric) uptick in patrons is when about a third of the gameplay is done. When the game is a meaty experience and people can talk about it and enjoy it. <br><br> I mean consider that you've been here since February, if I'd been here since then and been pledging $5, I'd have paid $35 bucks right now for Seeds of Chaos. I wouldn't say the game as it stands is worth 35 bucks retail. But the more content and gameplay that gets added, the better and better your value proposition becomes. So, patience! Perseverance! And keep plugging away! <br><br> Finally, some people have suggested gating the games releases behind a higher tier of support. That's asinine in my opinion. If the first impression you want people to have is not your current, best effort, then how are you supposed to impress them? Once the game does have some more gameplay and especially if you gate the releases, you can expect your download link to be shared out on 4chan or other sites within a couple of days of release. Heck, I think sunsetriders7 mentioned that one time he had all of the art assets ripped off of a new release of SU and put up on 4chan within 5 minutes of dropping the download link. <br><br> Engage with the community and other creators, make friends, see if you can't get some creators who you enjoy (not necessarily ones that are popular, but who create content in line with SoC) to do some cross-promotion with you. <br><br> I would suggest always making the current build free, $1 patrons get the behind the scenes posts. Higher tier patrons get to participate in polls on what's next with the game and have discussions in exclusive posts about long term planning and direction. <br><br> The only way to grow the game is to get people excited about it and get people talking about it. Gating the game behind a higher initial pledge is gonna screw you right now even if it works out later. <br><br> Also, talk to your artists, and talk to other artists that you find on H Foundry and other places. 550 for a two character scene with background sounds insane to me. I don't care how good it looks. (And frankly, it's alright graphically, but nothing to write home about.)

Dinker

$100 dollars is very cheap. Average asset cost has been around 150-250, and there's around 40 unique assets in the game, so do the math. That also does not include design work, concept art, promotional art, UI art, music, sound effect packs, or other business expenditures I have had to cover.

Lord Arioch

But you have many patrons, it gives more stability, than if you'd have only a couple of people pledging the whole big amount! And, honestly, I can't understand how you could spend several thousands, as you say. Do artists take that much for their art? I ordered a commission several months ago to one top level artist, he made a super hot realistic picture and sent me it in .psd with each element on different layer. I was very pleased and it costed me around 100 bucks. And I thought it's a lot. But thousands... don't understand... Maybe you just overpaying them?

Artem

Is there going to be an level of Mind Control, i.e. full blown mind control, corruption, or anything like that if so you could advertise on <a href="http://www.hypnopics-collective.net/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.hypnopics-collective.net/</a> the game fans there actually back games pretty well.

Thanks LMF, those are mostly my thoughts as well. For what it is worth, re:stats/equipment/etc. all the coding has to be done now, so using / adding those only require simple functions. Like you say, this isn't a doom and gloom post, development continues, and I'll still make this game even if it has to be just text from here on. I've been putting out releases on time for a few months now, my plan is just to buckle down, keep doing that, and see how things shake out.

Lord Arioch

Thanks Sukaiko, I appreciate the support. Going to restructure the tiers later to incorporate the $1 dollar idea, so that is one thing. The higher value ones, I have some reservations on. A sex scene would require a payment of around $550 dollars (my cost), so I don't really see anyone wanting to pledge that. The OC / event ones are more viable, but for the OC one, I could only really do it in months where I didn't have Keidi doing sprites for me, which makes it difficult to manage. All good ideas to think about though. :)

Lord Arioch

I need the NPCs/BGs for the castle, but after that, what money does come in will mostly be focused on sex scenes if things don't improve.

Lord Arioch

Thanks Mel. I've reached the point where I can still add content without waiting for art though at least, which helps a lot.

Lord Arioch

I'm suprised about the lack of growth you mention, since your main page is really well done and everything important is clearly visible. It seems like all you need is a lucky moment or a bump of someone popular to fully get it running. It's probably just a matter of time and maybe because the game is still so very early in development. No doubt it's a really tough financial situation for you, but more art might be exactly what you need, as you will need visuals to attract more people Once there is really a game to play, then I've no doubt this is going to be really successful. It's a really vicious circle. You need money to pay for art, but you need the art to make more money There are two other ways I guess could work as well. I highly agree with inquisitors88's third point. Giving $1 backers access to an older build, once higher backers get the newest version, is something many creators do. Giving more incentive to pledge at least $1 should bulk up that front a lot, while easily advertising the game by itself. Then you could also create some high tier pledges, which would obviously need attractive rewards like wishing for a specific sex scene, custom npcs/companions, creating an event, etc.. All of these would require you putting some work into discussing the terms with these backers, but I believe it could actually pay out for you. What you would need to think about is, if you consider doing this, is whether or not you limit the higher tiers, like most creators do and whether or not a patron can pledge in the same higher tier repeatedly with rewards. Personally I'd suggest limiting higher tiers to decrease your own workload and making it a one or two time chance for each patron. I hope you'll get the needed support soon.

Sukaiko

Sad to hear things aren't going as well as you want. You have a good product that is quite a bit different from whats out there. The type of game you are creating is of necessity very art resource heavy. As John Smith suggested you should reuse any resources you can.

Quality art definitely is a major draw for Seeds of Chaos but it would probably be pragmatic to initially focus most of the budget on art for sex scenes and then later focus on adding other things like background art and game-play features

While some patreon projects seem to draw instant success, you really can't count on that. I have noticed ones such as yours that seem to focus on a story driven experience seem to take a while to build up and become successful, which is a shame. The only way to build your patreon base is to continue putting out regular updates and prove you can do what you're planning to do. The Patreon for Starship Inanna took a considerable amount of time to get to where it is. Unlike others you unfortunately decided to rely on commissioning artists for your characters and backgrounds. While it gives the game a lovely high quality vibe it's extremely expensive and hard to get going if you yourself are incapable of producing the required artwork. Personally I feel your game is only now getting to the part your patreon page describes. While the whole prologue was well done it didn't do much to showcase the goals and features you laid out which to be honest sound incredibly lofty for a pornographic indie game. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a large amount of people simple sitting on the fence to wait and see if you can actually deliver what you have planned before they put money toward it. While I had faith that the game would be good based on the visual style prologue I really question whether you can actually manage to pull off all these rpg stats, skills and equipment you seem to have planned for the game. It personally seems to me like you might be biting off way more than you can chew and I think the game would have been plenty interesting without such complicated mechanics. There is no magic solution to your funding and I wouldn't suggest you put yourself further into debt to fund the project. I think for the time being you should continue working on the game focusing on the key features you describe but simply exclude the artwork for the time being. Right now I think you need to at least prove you can do what you plan to do. If you can do that I think the money will slowly follow. Also while I understand this specific post was necessary to update people and I don't think there was anything wrong with it. I think if I were to see several of these doom and gloom posts talking about not earning enough money I would most likely write off the project as something that will probably fall through in the future and be abandoned. The people working on Chronicles of Lonvenholm thought they had enough of a game to show what they had planned to get people to pledge. Unfortunately it seems they got discouraged and now the project is in limbo. To me and I imagine to the people who were interested what they had was nice but it only showed the tinest ounce of the lofty features/goals they had set, much like your own project. I think the important thing is for you not to get discouraged and to continue working on the game as best as you can until it gets the financial support it requires.

I'll be reusing art as much as possible, for example, the ruined village and forest backgrounds will be used again for visitible places in Rosaria. In general releases are probably going to be spread out more now anyway, as I don't want to release builds to the public until things are looking a bit more professional, post-prologue.

Lord Arioch

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions. I did post about it on LoK, but it hasn't really gotten any attention. If you wanted to say some nice words over there, I'd appreciate it, thread is here - <a href="https://legendofkrystal.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&amp;t=6551" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://legendofkrystal.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&amp;t=6551</a>

Lord Arioch

Hi, I just decided to contribute after playing the game yesterday and being absolutely astonished by how good the game was! I have never given money to hentai games but this is just too good to pass up. Here are a few pointers - 1) Are you on The Legend of Krystal forums and consistently updating it with info? If not your doing yourself a disservice, the guys over there seem to be very passionate about supporting good creators and I am sure you would get some new patrons by being there. 2) I only found this game by chance! I searched for another game but this came up by accident! Such a good accident. Normally I know about a lot of the porn games available but not this one, again this links back to needing more advertisement and blogging. I would suggest Legend of Krystal Forums again 3) Giving $1 should provide access to latest build, and $5 should provide some sort of cheats or something extra. Those not paying should get builds that are a month old. Not many people are willing to give $5 but many would be willing to give $1 if you provide the latest build. I hope to God that you succeed with flying colours this game is unbelievably good and I can clearly see that you are passionate about it, hopefully more and more people will see that too. I'll try to tell people on different forums. Good luck :)

You could still release it for free but release it by versions similar to how Reepyr has his(?) Patreon set up. You can leave the finished Prologue as a demo. To save money, you could also reuse art, I can't help but notice the profile picture (in Inventory) being different from the VN side. I much prefer the VN pic of the main char over it. I could only see this particular instance however so it may be of little effect

John Smith

Thanks Rakesh. It'd probably be too difficult to do what you suggest, as it isn't always that clear cut. Money gets spent on whatever I need at moment, for example, right now that is castle NPCs and castle room backgrounds. I will say that, by far, the most money has been spent on non-sexual art, and it is not even close. Also, I think it would turn out a lot worse for MxM fans, as I want to keep the ratio around 2:1 straight to gay, and if statistics bear out about sexuality, allowing the backers to determine what I work on would probably make it more somewhere between 5:1 and 9:1.

Lord Arioch

Hi, that are sad news, I wish you the best for you and the project in future. Anyway speaking for myself I would be willed to spend if I would know the money would go specific into art which cover my interests. In my case that would be general / non sexual art or gay themed art. In the opposite I’m not very willed to spend more money for more boobs. Maybe you could collect more money if people have an influence for which art it is used or you find a way to collect money for specific scene. Best wishes, R.

JulikBerlin