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File 131205523908.png - (61.34KB , 500x500 , cirrquestdis.png )
40905 No. 40905 ID: 89de88

This is the general "say a thing at Cirr in relation to quests" thread now, so if you have any comments, criticisms, complaints or otherwise let me know here.

QUEST-SPECIFIC DISCUSSION THREADS:
The World Is Mine: >>346287
Defective: >>326221

OLD THREAD: >>331563
Expand all images
>>
No. 40906 ID: 89de88

The old thread is dead, may it rest in peace, and also outdated. I sure learned a lesson about listing/depicting quests in the OP of my thread.

I know my sins are many, but my biggest sin of all is an astounding lack of updates recently. At the time of posting, I have valid reasons that I can't update with as much frequency as I could in my halcyon days of university, but this isn't a problem I can necessarily fix so easily.

The main issue I am running into is that The World Is Mine is meant to be a session quest. This decision was inspired by the success of Bungee Grapple Adventures, my first foray into the wide and terrifying world of session questing, where a block of updates are posted within some window of time in theoretically rapid-fire succession.

But that's the thing. With the low requirements needed per update with BGA, I was rattling out updates every 15 minutes tops (sometimes 10 on a good night). With The World Is Mine, I put effort into things (it might not look like it in the finished product but oh believe me I try, much as I fail) and take on average one hour every update (which has been steadily dropping, but not by a lot, pretty much maybe 50 minutes per update if I'm in the flow).

Now, this wasn't so bad back at university. I could arbitrarily say "Okay I am going to start updating at 6 PM and stop when I am literally incapable of thinking at 2 AM or something" because normal people hours were some mythical thing that didn't necessarily apply to me all the time. This would also mean I'd get 8 to 10 updates done in a session, or sometimes more if I didn't have to vary the backgrounds much.

Now I find that unless I keep a constant vigil, and definitely ensure I do not have to do anything the following morning, I can only hope for at best 3 or 4 hour sessions where I am usually distracted (due to a variety of things) and am lucky to get 2 or 3 updates done.

So, this long, rambling chunk of text aside, really, I want to ask you guys, the readers, what you would prefer me to do out of a list of options.

1. Change nothing, watch readership dwindle due to lack of a product, claw at face and wail in dismay as all dreams shatter and all stories die

2. Run TWIM on a schedule, one update per day, incredibly slowly but at least running

3. Ignore TWIM in favour of other almost-daily quests, please indicate which (not Resonance)

The future of Cirr quests depends on your input!
>>
No. 40907 ID: ca501e

Well, I definitely don't want to see TWIM die, it's my favorite quest. Thus I pick choice 2.
>>
No. 40908 ID: 277aac

Schedule!
>>
No. 40910 ID: eba49f

One update per day isn't actually that slow for a quest. I think that would be fine.

I like TWIM for its mixture of Mad Science and Lovecraft.
>>
No. 40913 ID: 6a5a08

Casting vote for 2
>>
No. 40918 ID: 7889cb

I'm always for rapidly dishing out a lot of updates. but I'm rather fond of TWIM, so I dunno. you could always switch to a quicker, less-detailed style, if that's something you'd want to do- it's worked out pretty well for some other quests.
>>
No. 40919 ID: 6f81a0

Why not just resurrect one of the three or four general Cirr discussion threads you already have? This is really no better.

Personally I don't like anything about TWIM. Bring back Defective or Resonance or abandon something new.
>>
No. 40934 ID: ce4a4d

You know that I want Defective but hey, it's apparently never going to win.

Also, why update Cage?
>>
No. 40937 ID: 89de88

>>350719
Please point out these numerous general quest discussion threads, because as far as I was aware I only had the one and it was filled with Resonance stuff. Didn't want to give people the impression I'd be returning to that quest any time soon.

>>350734
The plan has been to run the next thread of Defective after this thread of TWIM, which is why I was asking what to do with regards to the current thread of TWIM.

Just because you don't like a quest doesn't make it true for everyone else.
>>
No. 40957 ID: ce4a4d

"Ignore TWIM for a while and run someone else" WAS a voting option, wasn't it?

I dunno what the probably-a-proxy guy was actually complaining about, but a peek in the catalog mode and you did already have
>>329635
>>346287
>>331563

:pinkiepie:
>>
No. 40961 ID: 89de88

>350757
Oh. Uh. I stand corrected. Yeah, you were right, that was a voting option, and if there's strong enough consensus I am prepared to put TWIM on a shelf in favour of more Defective. I've had the opening posts for thread 3 ready for literally months now.
>>
No. 40996 ID: 89de88

Sorry, guys. I figured that in the end it was best to put TWIM to sleep until I can run it properly like I used to.

If I'm going to update a quest daily, it might as well be the other one people have been asking me to run again. Defective coming up pretty soonish.
>>
No. 43245 ID: 1d0e20
File 131664942607.png - (3.07KB , 16x16 , faviconstrangelights.png )
43245

So apparently Strange Lights is a thing again. It's now officially a thing because now there's a favicon.

Also this is a discussion thread for Strange Lights discussion as well as other quests, so if you're wanting to berate me for gratuitous alien nudity/wondering why I'm doing this instead of Defective/trying to figure out what the fuck, discuss here!
>>
No. 43246 ID: f70e5e

form what i can make out from the Gekehs rant, the fist are those blue guys who show up from time to time. they probably found some way to change the nature of there existence sometime in the distant past. it also sounds like the first have been meddling in the affairs of other races for some time. possibly making them from scratch or shaping there development. the Gekeh hate the first and want to destroy them and all of there works. but it might be more than that, they mentioned that your people would birth the first. it could be that the first draw some sort of power from the existence of the races they make. or it could be they reproduce by inducting members of the races they have made.
>>
No. 43265 ID: ec0bf5

"You are born of the First. You are one of the First. You would birth the First." They're just saying that they have to exterminate every one of them or else they will reproduce and come back.
>>
No. 43266 ID: aa2f16

>>351262
No, I'm pretty sure that just means they'd keep breeding and being an insult with their very existence.
>>
No. 43267 ID: f70e5e

well damn. anyone else got a guess?
>>
No. 43268 ID: 1854db

I didn't think it was that hard to figure out.

The Eldest are the 'strange lights' aka 'false gods'. The first race to reach the Medium and attain the power it holds.

The First are the Deikail. The first species the Eldest created.

The Gekeh were competing with the Eldest, and have a huge grudge against them since they lost the race.
>>
No. 43269 ID: f70e5e

I think there is more to it though. the "you would birth the first" means that the motivation for targeting the species the first altered/made might not just be spite.
>>
No. 43270 ID: 786012

>>351262
It could also be a way to say "you pests will just breed again if we don't exterminate you". But, yeah, let's not discount the possibility of you (your species) being a major threat to Gekeh.

For now, though, look around. There's got to be something interesting here.
>>
No. 43329 ID: ec0bf5

>>/quest/351876
Uh... New Guy. The resolver isn't coming to help us. It's coming to RESOLVE our LIFE.
>>
No. 56295 ID: 9e3c3d

So after trying to run a session yesterday I realised I had committed the greatest error of all. I somehow assumed my audience was psychic and completely able to tell, after a year of spotty and sporadic updates, that no this time I was serious it's going to be a session like the times of old no really guys come back D:

So! While I was disheartened to realise that actions have consequences and not updating forever means people don't expect my quests to update ever again (a perfectly valid conclusion to make, fuck I suck at this), I'm trying something new.

Tonight, starting at 10 PM my time (GMT + 1), which is 9 PM GMT, I will session a quest as best as I can until I drop. If anyone has any particular requests go ahead and post them, but I'm defaulting to BGA. This is chiefly because I think I can finish it with one or two good sessions.

That is all!
>>
No. 61984 ID: 0f60d7

I am sure you are all thrilled at the notion of me starting another new quest, given my track record so far of finishing less than half the things I start.

But fear not! This weekend, along with assistance from people I shall not name, I will be running yet another experimental one-shot! And it will end on Monday at the very latest! I'm mercy killing it if it gets to Tuesday and it's still not over, see.

There is no defined start time yet other than "Saturday" which is probably the worst day to pick given people do have lives outside this board, and the title, what it's about and what exactly will be involved are all GRANDMASTER ULTIMATE HIGH ULTRA SECRETS.

So, yeah! If you have nothing better to do this Saturday, this is a thing that'll happen.
>>
No. 61987 ID: 34cbef

>>61984
must be about aliens
>>
No. 61991 ID: 7bc990

>>61987
Well, yeah. Some things are just never going to change :B
>>
No. 69880 ID: f2c20c

Cirr, why did you retroactively turn one of the characters I cared about most into one of the characters I hated the most?

10 Updates could've stayed as its own separate thing. This doesn't improve anything, dammit!
>>
No. 75503 ID: 96c896

>unstoppable force kills everyone in a race except for one survivor
It's the fucking Demiurge, isn't it. That's what it did every time it restarted the universe. The dreamwalker race must be the most recent universe's race, not yet wiped out for the restart. They have the unprecedented ability to go find the survivors of previous universes.
>>
No. 75505 ID: 96c896
File 137725036529.png - (37.96KB , 800x600 , brighter.png )
75505

I noticed a thing in the bottom right of the Otherworld title image, with this apparently higher contrast laptop screen. Here's a brighter version of it so the rest of you can see it.
>>
No. 76745 ID: 68ac42

feed me, baby. One update, all I ask.
>>
No. 85249 ID: 2b4635

Man I sounded like such a dick back in aught-eleven. Anyway making a new thread seems sort of redundant when there's already one here and people complained (three years ago) that I was clogging up questdis with too many threads so resurrected for an announcement!

After suddenly coming back and updating a quest or two at least once a day for a few days my situation has suddenly and drastically changed! I can't afford to devote any time to any major quests now because I have to spend the rest of this month shortening my lifespan panicking over deadlines that I never knew I had for my PhD work. I estimate five mental breakdowns at minimum! granted I'm sure most people will point at The Limit of Flesh and claim it to be evidence I'm already in one right now

Sorry to once again raise peoples' hopes I might be a consistently updating quest author and dash them to the ground again! This new heavy workload was quite a sudden revelation for me and it sort of directly affects me being able to wrap up three years of my life spent doing research into getting a qualification out of it, so, well, priorities. My bad!
>>
No. 85250 ID: 8b533b

Well, that's disappointing, I'll admit. I was quite enjoying limit of the flesh! (And didn't see it as some kind of horrible mental breakdown, either).

I hope you'll be able to pick it up again when the horrible academic deadlines have passed. In the meantime, good luck with those.
>>
No. 85253 ID: 9ddf68

>>85249
no offense Cirr but I'm not all that surprised. Don't get me wrong I love your stories but you tend to spend anywhere between a week to a month of constant updates then disappear for 2 to 3 months and then reappear usually focusing on a different quest or even a new one. So I'll just do what I normally do, sit and wait until you come back, oh and uh, good luck with the PhD work, I hope the mental breakdowns stay as close to 0 as they can, those things suck.
>>
No. 86939 ID: 447d8d

RIP my Bamboo Whateveritwas. Started acting strange in a way that made it unusable (any detection of the pen at all was also detected as pen down, and no pressure sensitivity even a little).

Well, it was a good run, I guess. Quests will resume when I get a new tablet, whenever that ends up being.
>>
No. 86972 ID: e44232

>>86939
So you got through your PhD work alright? Congratulations! I'm glad to hear you'll be back soonish.
>>
No. 86976 ID: 447d8d

>>86972
oh, no, that's going to be happening til April and even then it won't finish, wheeee
>>
No. 87095 ID: 447d8d

new tablet so yeah that's fixed now
>>
No. 87544 ID: ae94eb

Holy crap The Limit Of Flesh is freaky. Like, even more so than usual for Cirr. What are you smoking?

Anyway, this thread looks lonely so I'm going to use it for actual discussion:

>>/quest/598952
>My reproductive system is more of an elaborate immortality mechanism. I produce a single clone of myself when subject to fatal stresses and traumas with my entire neural state compressed and transferred to it.

I wonder, could this be what happened to Culya? Who knows what sort of modifications she got while in the coma. Even of it's something more complicated like the time travel theory, I think this is a worthy line of investigation.

I also don't understand why everyone is baying for AXON's blood so quickly. It may be creepy and ruthless, but it seems a lot more rational than the XV things. Its plan may be to Culya's benefit, and pointless antagonism is just idiotic in any case, as Culya's recent maybe-death should highlight.

Also a meta question, to Cirr: what is the most interesting part of using interactivity, in your opinion? To be honest you seem to take a rather unorthodox approach; almost all of your stories have protagonists with well-defined, independent personalities, and the plot tends to rely on events outside the players' control. They just feel like roller coasters - very interesting roller coasters, don't get me wrong, but the interaction elements seem rather superfluous to the story.
>>
No. 87545 ID: 4c5cf2

>I also don't understand why everyone is baying for AXON's blood so quickly. It may be creepy and ruthless, but it seems a lot more rational than the XV things.
I'd say it's a matter of motive, and culpability. AXON seems to have made a conscious choice to take the actions it did, whereas the swimmers seem rather less in control of their actions, or able to make informed decisions. I find it a lot easier to hold a single intelligence responsible for its actions than a virus or uncontrolled instinct.

As as to the second point, I think I could actually make a case that AXON is less rational. He makes conclusions and points that aren't backed up by the facts he provides, and makes arguments with glaring holes in them. The swimmers, by comparison, are crazy, but at least they're consistently crazy. We may not understand or buy into their logic, but they follow it.

(Unless everything AXON has said or done in our presences is part of some deliberate act to manipulate us, of course. Then, yes, it's more rational, but that only makes it easier to hold it responsible for everything).
>>
No. 87556 ID: cc93be

>>87544
>what the fuck is wrong with you
I'm not sure! I recently thought the same thing not too long ago. Not unrelatedly I uh haven't updated that quest since. I'm not sure I'm going to be updating it again. Kiiiind of not sure if I should perhaps maybe just request it be swept from the records.



>what is even the point of using interactivity if you ignore suggestions
I'm bad at quests and should probably consider other mediums. Really, though, I end up mostly incorporating ideas in suggestions I like into things in less direct ways. Someone say 'clearly they're trying to do X' and it's better than what I was doing? Welp, now that's rewritten.

Seriously, though, I'm, uh, giving quests a long break while I work on other projects off this site.
>>
No. 87558 ID: 4c5cf2

>on user interactivity
As someone who takes a pretty active interest in the different ways that players get to interacts with characters and stories around here, I'd protest as labeling this approach as bad. Sure, better developed characters mean we have less direct agency. But that also means we have a more developed character to try and interact with and try to understand and/or develop. There's a similar trade off with a more rigid or well defined plot or setting to explore, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It's different, but still something interesting to explore (and the apparent groundhog day loop we seem to have in this case gives us more room to explore the facility / plot we're being led around by than we might have had).

>just request it be swept from the records
Please don't? I don't know if I speak for everyone, but I at least found it interesting, and would be sad to see it nuked.

It kind of seemed like you were just running with things for a while without worrying about 'aahh what am I doing' or 'what will people think', and I think the result was something better for that. It would be kind of disappointing to see that erased.

Good luck with whatever your other projects of the moment are, though. If and when you feel luck mucking with quests, you know where to find us.
>>
No. 87560 ID: 9ddf68

>>87556
>maybe just request it be swept from the records.
don't see why, the story (while a little messed up) is pretty good overall. Besides didn't you start this quest when you were going through a stressful time in your life and mostly just wrote this to vent? that's what I got form this post anyways >>85249.

Guess what I'm trying to say is I don't really think it's a bad quest and truth be told I do like something that messes with the head every now and then. If you don't want to continue it then that's your choice as the author but I think you're being a bit hard on yourself when you say it should be wiped from the records. I mean I at least enjoy it, and I haven't really seen or heard anything from people saying they hated it.
>>
No. 87568 ID: ae94eb

>>87558
>As someone who takes a pretty active interest in the different ways that players get to interacts with characters and stories around here, I'd protest as labeling this approach as bad.
Oh, certainly it's not bad! I do quite enjoy his stories. It's just that I don't think that model is well-suited for the medium. It presents him with a Morton's Fork; either he incorporates suggestions more directly and makes the story way more boring, or he doesn't and people get frustrated and confused. Neither option is ideal. Like, Reformation? Typhon will just straight-up ignore commands half the time and it doesn't seem like there's anything people can do about it. The theme of the story seems to be an arrogant and selfish man having to come to terms with his flaws and his stupid decisions coming back to bite him. In any other medium that would be an excellent story to discuss, but in a medium where players are supposed to interact every step of the way it gets weird. People will inevitably make smarter decisions than Typhon, and those must be ignored to maintain narrative integrity. I just feel like Cirr would be more at home in a traditional webcomic environment, maybe doing the Homestuck thing of incorporating clever speculation if he really enjoys that part.

>Kiiiind of not sure if I should perhaps maybe just request it be swept from the records.
What? Noooo! D: It was really interesting visceral horror. I feel like you've been telling the same story over and over again (Defective and Catalysis are the most prominent but your other stories share a lot of the themes too) while continually refining it, and The Limit of Flesh is the apex. It's incredibly disturbing, but at the same time I can't look away. I want to know what happens next.

I am a bit sad to see you say you're taking a sabbatical from questing just when it looked like you were coming back. Your quests are fascinating and I very much look forward to them. But if you need a break you need a break.
>>
No. 87657 ID: cc93be

; w; thanks guys you're all great and amazing for putting up with my bullshit

Yeah I won't ask for it to be removed, I don't know, I just had a fair bit of pretty highly negative response from various places for the previous update (with good reason, to be fair) and I guess I was like "shit man what if the people who only know me by my dumb little pg-13 flash games saw this" and panicked. There are certainly elements in the quest I wouldn't dream of including in anything I did offsite.

Back to interactivity talk, though, I do really really struggle with the fact that taking every best suggestion usually means a main character just storms through effortlessly making no real errors or mistakes because things tend to go too predictably. I think this is where characters botching actions or random new upsets started showing up in my quests in an effort to make things more interesting. Less of a "this is a story of a character who always did the correct thing and said the correct thing to solve every problem forever and has as much personality as a blade of grass" scenario.

As for every quest being the same quest, yeah I guess I like certain themes too much. Reformation was sort of supposed to almost be a highlights quest that'd incorporate things from every quest I'd ever done but that is not so much what it became. Come to think of it I don't know how many quests I have that do _not_ have a protagonist that was created artificially. Sinter and Culya weren't, pretty sure everyone else was.
>>
No. 87658 ID: 35909f

>dumb little pg-13 flash games
Oh wow you have other stuff? I did not know this. Would you mind providing a link?

As for The Limit of Flesh, well, why did you make it? What is the story you're trying to tell, the themes you're trying to explore? It seems to me like a kind of biological horror, forcing us to confront the ugly, disgusting, and animalistic aspects inherent in life and our own biology while hopefully finding some sense among the madness. I don't think that's a theme pursued very often, at least not with this much fervor, so it's novel at the very least.

(And, I'm asexual so I know I'm not a good judge of this, but I really don't see how anyone but the most niche fetishists could find anything in that quest truly arousing. I'm usually very dubious of claims of artistic nudity, but I am willing to believe that is the case here. Everything just seems so purposefully repulsive and wrong; even the protagonist is constantly disgusted by the sexual things going on. It might be a good idea to tone it down a little, maybe make it less rapey, but I think it does work to highlight the nauseating insanity of the themes.)

>I do really really struggle with the fact that taking every best suggestion usually means a main character just storms through effortlessly making no real errors or mistakes because things tend to go too predictably.
Maybe we're reading different quests, but I don't usually find this to be too big a problem. You can always ramp things up, make finding the "right" decision more difficult, make it so there isn't an objectively "right" decision in the first place, format the story around making interesting choices (like a visual novel) rather than just right/wrong ones...there are a lot of things you can do to counter the hyper-competence you'll inevitably find among experienced or smart players. But purposefully warping suggestions to go wrong feels like cheating to me. It gives off the impression that you view suggestions as a nuisance that you're grudgingly working around, and that just isn't a pleasant experience for anyone. There's also the fact that, from the player's perspective, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how the protagonist interprets suggestions, as well as what will work and what won't. Their actions appear to produce totally random results, which will inevitably frustrate them and make them believe their actions are meaningless.

To be honest I don't really care about railroading - I'm not a player myself, and I have faith that you're a better writer than me and know what you're doing - but the suggestions really seem to be dragging you down, and in turn they drag the story down. If it's absolutely necessary that the protagonist makes a bad decision to continue the story, don't appropriate a suggestion to do it (as you did with Culya telling AXON exactly what she planned to do with the satellite), just make it part of a cutscene. You might still get people who say "why didn't we get a chance to do anything grr arg", but it's lesser of two evils.

At least you don't do the thing where you try to have your protagonist do or say as many suggestions as possible in an attempt to please everyone. It seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice it's incredibly jarring and shatters any pretensions of a consistent protagonist or coherent narrative structure. (See Bite Quest for an example of this.)

You're right about the blank slate protagonist issue, but well, that's sort of a necessary concession of the genre. (Lagotrope makes a decent attempt at a middle ground in some of his quests; I'm not sure how well he succeeds, but you can take a look at that.)

Have you read Weaver's quests? I feel like he's the best author I've seen at properly utilizing the medium, but even he slips up sometimes. NanQuest is a good example of making the puzzles really freaking hard to confound experienced players, and DiveQuest manages to work while still having a protagonist who's more than an extension of the players' will. Maybe you've seen it already, but he also has a tumblr post of general questing advice, here: http://tgweaver.tumblr.com/post/58014258870/the-most-important-advice-i-can-give-when-doing-a

Basically, to be honest, I think you are a very good video game writer, in that you make strong, atmospheric, and/or tactical stories with clearly defined branching points, but quests, at least from my uninformed perspective, seem to be a subtly different medium. The higher rate of constant low-level activity requires a different skillset and mindset, and perhaps a different kind of story as well.

But I am just one not-very-well-read guy who knows next to nothing about art, so take everything with a grain of salt.
>>
No. 87660 ID: 4c5cf2

> I do really really struggle with the fact that taking every best suggestion usually means a main character just storms through effortlessly making no real errors or mistakes because things tend to go too predictably.
Well, there are few main ways to mitigate this. The first is that even if a character makes the right choice, they can still fail. Even if "take the shot" is the best option, you can still miss. People are fallible. Although how you balance this is more complex. Going with mechanics and dice allow for failures, although if it's not well implemented it turns the quest into a frustrating crapshoot. If you go pure narrative you have to somehow balance character competence versus situation versus what you want to allow happen.

The second option is obfuscation. If the players and/or character aren't fully informed, they can't make the best choices all the time. Frankly, I feel this fits pretty strongly with your story telling style, if you aren't sort of doing it already. You don't have to worry about derailing the 'best' path so much if you keep us ignorant enough of the big picture that you can rely on us making some less than optimal choices. (Which would probably mean fewer or later infodumps and/or baddies / crazies making speeches explaining things. And/or misinformation, but I'm pretty sure you already provide plenty of that in most your stories).

Then, yeah, there's just not letting us go places you don't want us to. Deus ex fleshmonster (or whatever) certainly does the job, as does the age old the character refuses to do it for personal reasons. (And cue us having to learn how to actually get them to cooperate with us).

>I just had a fair bit of pretty highly negative response from various places for the previous update
I did find it kind of hilarious how muted our own reaction was. We're tied up in the middle of a cannibal orgy and we just kind of went "oh, well, this isn't good" and proceeded to talk options and plans with little to no freaking out.

Even Cluya seemed somewhat nonplussed by this. I mean, yes, she's disturbed, but it felt like "Oh, fuck, I'm in hell. I guess I should have have seen that coming". Like she's just running out of emotional energy to react to all the horror.

>>87658
>There's also the fact that, from the player's perspective, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how the protagonist interprets suggestions
I would mostly object to this part of your analysis. There is a rhyme or reason to it- the player agency and character 'person-ness' slidebars just aren't where you're accustomed to finding them. Just because we haven't figured out all of how the character thinks, or how to get them to do things, doesn't mean there's no logic there. (And I think there is evidence of players getter into her head, better. The suggestions not to kill the red swimmer infant, for example, didn't just tell her not to do. There was a lot of trying to justify it in a way people thought would make sense to her. And the decision to try and help Sui was almost entirely along emotional rather than logical lines. We seem to get a stronger response appealing on that front).

I'll point at Jukashi's rather excellent discussion of how quest / character interactions can differ. >>70351
Although he mostly discusses the interaction side of things. There's also the question of how developed or defined the character is in their own right- everywhere from blank-slate puppet to preexisting person with their own ideas and beliefs who will argue with you and refuse to do certain things (well, if the player-character interactions direct argument).

You mention Lago's quests, and yeah, they are kind of on a weird place on the scale. Polo's the master of talking with her suggesters without admitting they exist or that she's talking to them. You get characters with established personalities and their own ideas you can question them about extensively who we generally somehow still have a high degree of control over, instead of having to fight or cajole or convince them into doing things. (Although it varies. Alison and Story certainly started out more blank slate than the Asteroidverse characters).

>Culya wasn't an artificial protagonist
Baring the next horrible revelation. :V
>>
No. 87662 ID: 9ddf68

>>87660
>There's also the question of how developed or defined the character is in their own right- everywhere from blank-slate puppet to preexisting person with their own ideas and beliefs who will argue with you and refuse to do certain things
going to have to agree with this. I've always saw characters in two categories, blank characters and developed characters.

Blank characters to me are characters that have no personal goals or any real will of there own and pretty much do whatever the questers tell them to do and as the story progresses they start actually developing a personality based off our suggests. I mean with Alison if we were more aggressive in the beginning she would have turned into something completely different then who she is now but instead we made her become the voice of reason in a world where only survival mattered. I like blank characters because it feels like your actually playing and it's always fun for me to see them start to take on a life of there own as the quest goes on but the main problem I see is that they almost always tend to turn out the same no matter the situation with only minor differences.

Developed characters on the other hand are characters with there own personal goals and have a free will of there own of sorts. I personally like Cirr's quest because almost all of his characters are Developed which to me means that we are fighting against the character almost as much as we're helping them. I think Cirr is really good when it comes to us interacting with Developed characters as well because while they usually lesson to our advice they also fight us when we ask them to do thinks they don't want to do or are unsure of which I always felt let us develop a stronger bond with the character. In almost all the Cirr's quest we're also always an outside force which I think works well as that makes us in our own way a separate player from the main character and gives them a reason to not always follow our advice. I mean if I had a bunch of people following me around all day telling me how to do everything I fairly sure I wouldn't do EVERYTHING they told me to do either. Then there's the part where we build trust with the character so they lesson to us more and every time we help they become more willing to hear us out but every time we fuck up they lesson to us less. I mean it's so much more satisfying to have a character actually try something after us arguing as to why the character should do it instead of simply doing it because we told them to and make our mistakes have so much more weight to them as not only did we mess up but we also weaken our relationship with the character.

Both types of characters have the strengths and weaknesses and I always look forward to when Cirr runs a quest because I feel he makes developed characters really well. I mean that part with Clair telling AXON her plan to escape didn't really piss me off, it just told me I have to be more careful when telling Claire what to do because she isn't perfect and like most people tends to be prone to mistakes, especially when stressed.
>>
No. 87665 ID: 3d58f9

>>87660
This is good stuff, but
>I would mostly object to this part of your analysis. There is a rhyme or reason to it- the player agency and character 'person-ness' slidebars just aren't where you're accustomed to finding them. Just because we haven't figured out all of how the character thinks, or how to get them to do things, doesn't mean there's no logic there.
I'm afraid I must object to your objection. :p This could just be because Cirr's quests tend not to make it past an introductory stage, but I still don't feel that this...gameplay mechanic, I guess? is very clear. I get the impression that this may be what Cirr is going for, but if so he needs to spell it out explicitly and let players get a feel for it before the really important decisions have to be made, like a game tutorializing a complex or unintuitive mechanic. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that Culya would rattle off her motives when that suggestion was made, or that it would have such drastic consequences, for instance. And with Typhon, it felt a bit like he changed midway through; at the start he seemed pretty cooperative, then suddenly when the stakes amp up he's all SCREW YOU I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN WAAAAH out of nowhere, pretty much. And maybe I'm just slow, but it genuinely doesn't feel like there's a pattern to what will be accepted and what won't with him. (I mean, I guess suggestions that require him to swallow his pride and be pragmatic get ignored, but that category covers almost every smart suggestion ever, again giving a railroady feeling.) That's what I mean; it feels difficult if not impossible to predict the result that actions will take. The game mechanics are very opaque, which is a quick recipe for frustration. Giving players a better idea of what's expected of them and the ways in which the quest's structure is different from the norm from the outset
would go a long way, I think.
>>
No. 87679 ID: 350a50

I don't have a lot of verbose advice to throw at you, because I'm incompetent at most creative projects I undertake. I can tell you the things I enjoyed and why I enjoyed them.

I enjoyed Bungee Grapple Adventures because it was fun, lighthearted, and simple. Short and sweet.

I enjoyed Defective because the protagonist began as a blank slate, which we the players have helped shape throughout the story. The players being a real (and very vulnerable) element in the story also provides an interesting twist. We're forced to prioritize between guiding and helping the protagonist and protecting ourselves. The World is Mine has similar elements of direct player involvement, though of the two Defective is my favorite because of the player-created protagonist. Designing something yourself always makes it feel more important.

I enjoyed Reformation for the same reason I enjoyed How to Be an Overlord: it's a neat blend of mechanical and free-form, based around building up a new faction in a world gone insane in an attempt to improve things. There are some of the same things that made me like Defective as well, with the various little minions we created that became more individual. Even should you ditch the quest forever, if you ever made it into an actual video game I would be all over it.

That's just my two cents.
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No. 87686 ID: f488ee

>>87665
Yeah, I'll give you Typhoon. He seemed to predetermined to be a stubborn, arrogant ass about some things until he got knocked down a peg or few (which kind of makes sense for an arrogant warlord / physical god / whatever the hell you want to call him). Early installment railroading, no two ways about it. More under control later, but still occasionally doing his own thing. (Which sort of makes sense since in-universe we're explicitly his subordinates. Still, yeah, it's a weird line to walk).

Culya, though, I'm not sure it's the same thing. I mean, she's hardly the first character to not execute a suggestion the way we wanted, or to say something aloud we intended to be internal reasoning. Or to say that one terrible thing only one person suggested. People fuck up under stress, and characters don't parse disjunct suggestions seamlessly.

And I don't think it's fair to expect that all mechanics (especially interpersonal ones) be made transparent to the player. There was nothing in Tozol Quest that told you there was a trust mechanic that affected how much Penji listened to suggestions versus did her own thing, for example. Or there's been quests that punish readers for not reaching a consensus on a suggestion (the character reacting with confusion or indecision instead of going with the narrow majority). Very often there's no explicit stated warning this can happen ahead of time.

Functionally, there's nothing wrong with having us learn how things work by doing, or from our mistakes. And heck, if Cirr is worried about players making the right choices too often? He should keep some mechanics behind the curtain. Our ignorance fosters interesting mistakes.
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No. 87693 ID: 3d58f9

>>87686
>Our ignorance fosters interesting mistakes.
And that would be the dilemma; weak and fallible protagonists do make for interesting stories, but they also make for frustrating gameplay. In an interactive medium, you have to balance these things. It takes a very niche player willing to take tons of curve balls to participate. It also fosters a sense of apathy, I think; if the author's just going to pick whatever makes the best story, then it doesn't really matter what you suggest, things should work out okay regardless.
>she's hardly the first character to not execute a suggestion the way we wanted
This line of reasoning assumes you are already familiar with Cirr's quests and gameplay mechanics, though. Newcomers would be more confused, I expect.

And opaque mechanics are like the biggest no-no in game design. I don't know if you TV Tropes, but it talks about it under "Fake Difficulty"; basically, it's not really fair to punish players for something they weren't aware even existed, especially if said mechanic makes the results of a given action unclear or a crapshoot. This is doubly true if it deliberately goes against the conventions of the genre and what players have been conditioned to expect. (Have you read Jukashi's quests? He's still finding his feet and tends to do this a lot, and you would not believe the outrage from players; he actually cancelled one of his quests because of it, I think.)

Again, I think this model is certainly feasible, but players need more of a safety net and a longer time to get accustomed to it before throwing them in the deep end.

>Or there's been quests that punish readers for not reaching a consensus on a suggestion (the character reacting with confusion or indecision instead of going with the narrow majority).
Dear god, really? That sounds clever in theory but awful in practice. You don't have control over what other people suggest, so such a model punishes people for things unconnected to their own actions. And it would be incredibly easy for a sudden influx of new readers (or trolls) to shatter any attempt at coherent strategy, which I imagine would breed a lot of resentment and anxiety over every single suggestion. It also discourages people from playing simply because more voices actually leads to a higher chance of failure rather than having neutral impact at worst; I certainly wouldn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Sure, you can discuss things in theory, but that's going to clog up the thread, things will get heated really fast, and at least in my experience quests tend to update pretty quick during sessions, too quick to really come to a consensus. Plus if a consensus isn't reached everyone's going to walk away unhappy, since no plan gets implemented.

But as I said, quests aren't videogames, so maybe there's more to it. I dunno. Opaque mechanics are just a particular pet peeve of mine.
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No. 87706 ID: 84e89a

I think this discussion is starting to get way way beyond me, but someone wanted to know about my dumb flash games so here's a dumping ground of my incomplete abandoned projects to go with my incomplete abandoned quests.

http://cirri.al/
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No. 87707 ID: c9f2af

>>she's hardly the first character to not execute a suggestion the way we wanted
>This line of reasoning assumes you are already familiar with Cirr's quests and gameplay mechanics, though.
Characters executing requests in a manner that doesn't exactly match player intent is far from unique to Cirr. There's room for interpretation and quibbling over what exactly one might want to count as that, but it's far from uncommon across many quests.

Intent has to be interpreted, understood and filtered through both the author and the character. There's always going to be room for transmission error, even before we get into authors deliberately messing with us, or characters having personal reactions / motivations / ideas / beliefs that influence or colors them.

>Fake Difficulty; basically, it's not really fair to punish players for something they weren't aware even existed
It would be unfair to unfairly or disproportionately punish players that way. As far as I can see it, there's nothing wrong with expecting players to learn from experience as opposed to laying out the rules up front. It's fake difficultly if it's game-breaking and stupid. It's not if the meta-game of learning the rules through play is an intentional part of the game. The author can provide teaching moments, clues to understand what's going on, and it's up to the players to figure it out. Before the stakes get too high and the consequences really hurt.

I suppose one can disagree on the merits purely from a game design perspective, but this gets more into what one wants from a game than what choices a game designer can make.

>Jukashi's quests stuff
None of his quests are dead to to player outrage, to my knowledge. (Battle Quest died due to collaboration issues, The Sword is probably dead to age, Polokoa is running, and Lunar and Undermind are waiting for new threads when that finishes, eventually).

He has an amazing ability to worldbuild and magnify scope, which makes his stuff fascinating but yes, very complicated and very big very fast (I mean, look what an april fools parody one-shot turned into!). If there's a problem with outrage, to my mind, it would be that Lunar Quest's reader-base is very large and enthusiastic and is somewhat unwieldy when it comes to dealing with complexity or subtlety. Or worse, when a decision is actually divisive. The playerbase seems to express rather more outrage when they become divided on an issue than at the introduction of new mechanics.

>That sounds clever in theory but awful in practice.
It's... unusual, yeah. It makes sense in a certain context- if the readers can't agree to a certain margin, or are actively fighting tooth and nail, the author is just parsing that. It's usually more to punish infighting than simple disagreement, though. It can be frustrating when it comes out of left field, though.

>>87706
Ah, yeah. Sorry. Started to wander afield into more general quest-theory, here. Hopefully it's somewhat reassuring to see disagreement over how to interpret what you're doing? Better *Blah blah game theories* than *bleh you're terrible*.
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No. 87709 ID: 84e89a

>>87707
All this talk and interpretation of my actions as a quest author has put me into a weird situation where now even I'm not sure what the hell my intent was. I feel like I'm on the sidelines guessing with the rest of you.

...probably an argument for characters acting based on suggestions more clearly in future, then.
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No. 87718 ID: 3d58f9

>None of his quests are dead to to player outrage, to my knowledge.
The Sword did; check the discussion. Basically, he permanently locked off a major plot branch because people voted wrong at a specific juncture, and there was a lot of hullalaboo over whether or not it was clear they were supposed to vote, if the correct one was even an option, and if he really tallied the votes correctly. I seem to recall him saying he killed the quest because he didn't want to put up with all the confusion and negativity.

Battle Quest is a little different; reader backlash wasn't the reason it was cancelled, but it was definitely still present. To be honest I have to agree with them; the challenge was basically a symbolism puzzle usuing highly unintuitive and probably purposefully obtuse interpretations, and readers were supposed to figure it out in a short period of time. They guessed wrong, and as a result were the only side to fail their turn. People got pretty livid about that.

Honestly, I think the problem is more Jukashi being a harsh GM than anything else; it was disproportionate punishment for a single action. He was viewing quests like a video game full of pass/fail states, when I think he should have instead looked at it like a branching visual novel. http://moacube.com/blog/how-to-make-player-choices-interesting/ has some interesting stuff on this; basically, every choice should be viable and lead to equally interesting content. I believe this philosophy is especially important - but also easier - in quests, which I view sort of like visual novels where I will only ever get to see one path. I suppose it depends on what story you're trying to tell, but drastically limiting the plot based on a single wrong choice is a pretty dire violation of those good-faith principles.

...Ahah, sorry, I'll stop now. You seem to know more about quests than I do; to be honest, I tend to just look at a few authors' spheres and don't read much outside of that.

And ooh, other Cirr stuff! I'll have to take a look at that.
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No. 87719 ID: c9f2af

Yeah, I'll admit I wasn't around when The Sword was running. Read it in the archive, and completely ignored the dis thread. Missed that drama, I suppose!

I had fun bandying around quest/game theory ideas for a bit, even if we didn't agree on much. It's kind of a pet interest of mine, and it's interesting to see what bits matter to other people.
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No. 88425 ID: 2eac65

>>87718
Wait, where did Jukashi say that?
>>
No. 88587 ID: 49ce39

>>88425
...Hm. Link to the discussion is http://tgchan.org/kusaba/questdis/res/33889.html but I can't find much. He basically just disappears after the kerfluffle. I could have sworn he said he canceled it because it got too annoying or something, but that's vague so maybe he was referring to something else. I think the fact that the story ended shortly after people complained about it is more than just a coincidence, though.
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No. 88589 ID: 687279

This is the wrong discussion thread for this, but IIRC, he stopped updating it because it was just going to be a boring slog of rescuing the goblins until victory.
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No. 91197 ID: 487d94

Okay so. Here's the situation. You might or might not have seen me update a quest a bit as of late and then just fall back into obscurity again. I am honest to god totally surprised anyone reads my shit these days, much less suggests for it. I know enough over these past few years that I never seem to end questing, only cease for some amounts of time, and that inevitably I come back to it despite all else, no matter how long the absence.

But this is kind of shitty from the perspective of a reader so I'm just kind of asking here now that if I only come by and update a quest here and there sporadically, is there a quest you'd rather I'd be spending my update time on? I yet again think "man I want to start another quest" but this is just the worst of all outcomes because it just ends up in another lifeless husk for our resident grave keeper to intern for all eternity a few months to a year.

What do you want to see happen? I doubt me starting a new quest is wanted by anyone but me. What quest do you want me to focus on? Fragments is so early in that I feel no one really wanted that to be the one I came back to.
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No. 91198 ID: 82c018

>>91197
I vote for The World is Mine or Reformation.
>>
No. 91206 ID: 78a595

>>91197
I've kind of come to expect the spurts of productivity. Sure, there will be stretches with no Cirr updates, but then you get a bunch, and you've always come back.

Is that a bad thing? I dunno. I mean, the obvious selfish answer is "would I prefer more updates all the time- yes". But interesting quests die all the time- the medium is kind of about enjoying what you have when you have it. I find myself hard pressed to complain much over frequency or consistency, in comparison.

So I guess the simple answer as to why I read your shit is I find it interesting.

>What quest do you want me to focus on?
I'd say, honestly, run what you want to. If focus or motivation is an issue, don't force yourself to do what you don't want to.

Personal preference, though, I was really digging The Limit of Flesh. I loved what an insane mess it was- one that somehow seemed to up the stakes and dump us in a worse situation every other update. And the reader reaction was fantastic- we didn't freak the fuck out, we didn't roll with the madness and start shouting lewd things. We calmly walked across the boiling, living floor, trying to make the best decisions we could with insufficient intel. We refused to take the bullshit AI seriously. We were dumped in the middle of an h-game and reequipped our shirt. It had the feel of a genre deconstruction. What happens if you take a ridiculous fetish scenario seriously.

Plus, hey, groundhog day loop. I'm a sucker for those.

I'm actually cool with Fragments, too. Sure, we aren't very far along yet, but it's just starting to get interesting. It started to hit me how much freedom we had to mess around when I got us gender bended on a whim. Virtually unrestricted shape-shifting and person-hacking could do all kinds of things. (I'm actually more interested in getting to mess around than learning what the hell is going on, in contrast to most your stories).
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No. 91207 ID: 9ddf68

>>91197
>You might or might not have seen me update a quest a bit as of late and then just fall back into obscurity again. I am honest to god totally surprised anyone reads my shit these days, much less suggests for it.
I'm honestly use to it. I love your work as all the quest I've seen you make I find interesting and all have a bit of this surreal feel to them which always draws me in and while yes you do disappear for months to years at a time when you do come back I've notice you usually run pretty consistently for about a week to a month before disappearing again and you always come back. Honestly the only thing that I find annoying is that whenever you do disappear and come back to a quest that you've already started I have to go back to the archive and reread everything just to make sure I remember what's going on and all the little details. Although that complaint is miner as I have said before I do like your quest.

As for what quest you want to do... I say run whatever you want. If given a choice the only thing I would ask if for your inactive periods between updates to be shorter or when you do start updating a quest you run a bit longer but I don't really know how busy you are and it's mostly just me being selfish so don't feel a need to push yourself. I'd rather you take your time and make what you enjoy then rush out something that's crap/mediocre just because you felt the need to meet a schedule.
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No. 91209 ID: 350a50

>>91197
I'd like to see Reformation, Defective, or TWIM continue.
>>
No. 91211 ID: e114bc

I'm ok with anything.
>>
No. 91224 ID: a47a3e

>up the stakes and dump us in a worse situation every other update.
did you mean: every quest I've ever touched

Seriously, thanks for the feedback, guys. I made that last post with low expectations and once again I am amazed to hear that people have any interest in my drip feed. Well, I can probably at least aim for a more frequent update schedule than Dresden Codak.

Hm. Reformation and TWIM seem to be the most wanted aside from just "please update quests". I need to go ponder for a bit.
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No. 91225 ID: a47a3e

Whoops forgot my hat I mean name
>>
No. 91236 ID: 09fbce

>>91197
Wouldn't mind a continuation of The Limit Of Flesh.
>>
No. 91285 ID: daf998

Fragments or Limits of Flesh. Fragments in particular for its deliciously Max Payne-esque narration, not to mention an interesting take on sci-fi noir.
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No. 91376 ID: 1d157d

Oh woah, you're back! (Shark Game is super fun, by the way.)

I admit I would really like to see you finish something or at least continue a longrunning quest, even if that may be a bit selfish. Reformation, TWIM, and Defective would be my candidates in that case. All your quests are interesting though.

...I would also be okay with a Limit of Flesh continuation, provided the rapiness is toned down a notch. Though I trust you're not doing it for purely banal reasons, it was getting to be a bit much. Devote some time to other aspects of body horror maybe? http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Burgrr_Entries seems like it might provide some good inspiration, and something you'd like regardless.

And I'm sorry I don't suggest much! I'm not very good at it, but do know that I'm still reading. If you aren't getting enough suggestions, maybe it would be a better idea to switch to a webcomic or light novel format? You could possibly use one of your new story ideas to test the waters, and you can always switch back if it doesn't work out.
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No. 92217 ID: 9ddf68

so now that you finished this chapter of Reformation are you going to go back on brake, start the other quest you wanted to start, try to move on to some other quest people asked for, or just keep on going with a new thread for Reformation?
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No. 92220 ID: dca590

Breaks will probably always be frequent and unannounced because I'm a terrible person sometimes.

I don't think I can start any new quests until I finish some I've started, so I guess more Reformation will be coming soon. Maybe even later today!
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No. 92224 ID: 9ddf68

>Breaks will probably always be frequent and unannounced
yeah kinda why I asked... Thanks for the heads up though.
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No. 92235 ID: 350a50

>>92220
I look forward to it.
>>
No. 92265 ID: 556f64

It's up! >>/quest/650491
>>
No. 92704 ID: 556f64

RIP my ability to focus on one thing at a time. It died years ago but I will never forget I had it.

Completely and totally unrelated to any currently running quests, here is a combined drone and kobold name generator. It's a long story. The story is that Dylan wrote a kobold name generator based on porting code by Squeegy that was Toady One approved in its output. If these names are meaningless to you don't worry (although I'm willing to bet most people here have at least heard of Toady One.) Years later I gave a more specific drone name structure and he won the race to make a generator for the names and I lost.

Also I keep forgetting this exists so I'm putting this link here for my own convenience too:

http://www.tgchan.org/drones.php

and if you want kobold names, http://www.tgchan.org/bolds.php might be right for you!
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No. 92706 ID: 518b46

I dunno, I said ported, I think 'wrote' is too generous.

Copy, paste, fix syntax, eventually fix array indexes because php hides errors.
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No. 92999 ID: 1d157d

Hey, Cirr -- speaking personally, your sporadic updating is a bit tricky in the context of an interactive medium. It's unfeasible to check for updates every single day for months, so I usually only notice after the updates have happened... but because your update periods only last a few days, I've usually missed it and can't make suggestions. An off-site form of notification might be helpful here. Weaver would use his tumblr to alert people to new updates, which I found helpful (since he had a similarly sporadic style) -- would something similar be possible for you, do you think? You do have a Twitter, which could work.
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No. 93006 ID: e114bc

>>92999
There's a widget for that sort of thing.
>>/meep/24283
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No. 96365 ID: b8cb04
File 144929451744.png - (333.09KB , 1000x994 , 02f.png )
96365

>>96364
>>
No. 96434 ID: 5ad4a7

>>96433
The suggestion box is too small to see the entire captcha, if it requires more than the checkbox.
>>
No. 96435 ID: a22f87

>>96434
yeah the trick I found is just pick the pictures that show up the most, like if you see a lot of pictures with trees or signs pick those and you'll usually be right. That's how I do it anyways.
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No. 96440 ID: cf91e4

>>96435
It doesn't help a heck of a lot when you can't see the top row at all.
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No. 96473 ID: 5ad4a7

This doesn't really feel like a quest.
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No. 96490 ID: 5ad4a7

WELP I guess that confirms my suspicions. It's just porn.
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No. 96496 ID: 2260e4
File 145017062336.jpg - (10.19KB , 268x256 , grey_alien2-268x256.jpg )
96496

>>96490
ayy lmao
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No. 96497 ID: c9f250

>>96490

It's a quest that has porn in it.

...just like some of the ones on this site
>>
No. 96501 ID: 5ad4a7

>>96497
Okay but I mean the consensus was to get away from the dude that kidnapped the main character and said he was going to use her as breeding stock. Instead she sticks around a little after busting out of her restraints, and during the confrontation she says she kinda wants to fuck the guy now. Then there was a second vote, and again the consensus was to escape, but we get a close-up of their genitals right up next to eachother, and she's even more into it, at which point the suggesters go "Well, if you really want to fuck the guy go ahead"

So uh, yeah... there are quests with porn, but it doesn't seem like there's much quest here. There's little information presented to give us much idea of what the rooms even look like so that people can make informed decisions on how to escape, instead the focus is on the sexual situations, like we're not even meant to escape. If this is really supposed to be a quest then the premise and tone need to better match the content. I mean this is essentially a prison breakout quest in theory, where we're controlling a psycho who has committed crimes against life itself, but she's also naked and horny for no apparent reason?

At what point does porn in a quest take over and make it porn with quest elements?
>>
No. 96503 ID: cf91e4

While seducing your captor does make sense as far as a plan goes; Dolphin dick is not my thing.(wasn't expecting it; and even though I had a little giggle when I picked "stamina". Didn't expect it to actually pertain to that)
Neat format, would prob work for other quests too. Good luck on this one. I'm out.
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No. 96505 ID: c9f250

>Okay but I mean the consensus was to get away from the dude that kidnapped the main character and said he was going to use her as breeding stock. Instead she sticks around a little after busting out of her restraints, and during the confrontation she says she kinda wants to fuck the guy now. Then there was a second vote, and again the consensus was to escape, but we get a close-up of their genitals right up next to eachother, and she's even more into it, at which point the suggesters go "Well, if you really want to fuck the guy go ahead"

I think the formatting has mislead you there. There was the update where she broke free, and then there has only been one more update. Cirr split the suggestions across both pages there, where two were "no", one was wrong, one was "get more info before deciding", and one was a weak yes.

So there's only been one update where having sex with the guy was a serious option. I think it makes sense to ask "are you sure" now that the power structure of the situation has changed so much. If there's a no now it will stick.
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No. 96508 ID: a22f87

huh, it looks like Cirr deleted the quest and his post here related to the quest
>>
No. 96509 ID: b61260

Uhm, is some part of this conversation missing?
>>
No. 96511 ID: 5ad4a7

>>96505
>that was one update, not two
Oh. Yeah, that was confusing. I guess that's not as bad, but I still feel like it was a bit forced. Also, genitals in the face, not appreciated.

>>96508
Oh well. I guess we'll just move on.
>>
No. 102056 ID: 7f3288

Hello all.

So my last interaction with this board directly was to throw hateful bile at a regular contributor to the board for little to no reason. It's unlikely that RML is going to read this, but if she does, I'm sorry for what I said. It's about this time I could start throwing excuses around like "I wasn't feeling great that day" or "I'm going through some things", but it doesn't matter if these are true or not. It doesn't change the fact that what I said was completely unnecessary and completely out of line. Jabbering at the administration wasn't really helpful either.

I don't know if I'm going to return to questing or not any time soon so I figure I should apologise as well to any remaining people who still felt any investment in my works. I'm sorry. I've completely fallen off the wagon, laid low by uncertainty in my future and a long recovery from food poisoning at this time of typing. I'd like to promise any sort of updates in the future but every promise I've ever made on this site, I've broken.

I need to become a better person altogether before I pick up updating quests again, I think, if I haven't already burned away the last remaining planks and ropes of the bridge I have to this community with my childish actions.

This post probably didn't need to be made, feels vaguely attention seeking (probably IS attention seeking), and is going to just feel awkward a few months or later down the line, but I'm trying to clear my conscience and make up for past faults at this point in time.

If I come back to updating quests I'll probably start over with a new discussion thread. This one's been going for a good five years.
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No. 102064 ID: a107fd

>>102056
A certain amount of attention seeking is acceptable, even appropriate. I, personally, look forward to your further quests and other contributions.
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No. 102129 ID: 505f10

>>102056
Good luck being a better you; that's what everyone should strive for in a way. I legit hope you are successful at it.

Ive hurt some people myself by speaking out when mad, and it would be hypocritical of me to not forgive you when i would like them to forgive me. (I did it 5ish years now? Its been a while since then; still no luck)

Either way, keep on keeping on.
>>
No. 102133 ID: 350a50

>>102056
I used to be a real shithead. I like to think I've improved, so here's cheering you on to improvement too.

I for one will still be here waiting for your quests to return.
>>
No. 102150 ID: a788b7

>>102056

whens fragments
>>
No. 103229 ID: d11344
File 147258345067.png - (61.21KB , 1024x576 , 1620-shot0-1472417479.png )
103229

I guess some people might care about this sort of thing! I made a game for Ludum Dare 36.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=1620
>>
No. 103230 ID: e6365c

>>103229

Oh my god that is really cool!!! So cool.
>>
No. 103232 ID: 398fe1

>>103229
I managed 4 settlements. Dead Trees are too hard to dodge, I think.
>>
No. 103238 ID: af6e04

Aww yeah gamedev is my jam! I played it and it's pretty cool. Held my interest a lot longer than most 'run to the right avoiding obstacles' games I think mainly cause of the visuals. Your art style is super cute and the snow/flame particles make things look really nice and dynamic. I like how the lizard folks jump in excitement when you show up. Only issue I had was that the jumping sound got REALLY grating after a while.
>>
No. 103244 ID: d11344

>>103238
Yeah I wasn't happy with it but I'd already used my time budget for figuring out sounds so I just went with it, next time I'll give more time to sounds!
>>
No. 103315 ID: d11344

>>103295
>>103296
Following on in not Slinko's questdis thread:

Okay so I should own up to asking Dylan to purge The Limit of Flesh, and discuss why that happened. People probably already know this but I did the same thing with my tumblr quest (that I deleted the posts advertising for) due to setting up the wrong pretenses and going directions people didn't really want to go, which I'll come back to soon.

First: if you're really gonna miss The Limit of Flesh I have a botched archive job that has the full text and full images (but no thumbnails) in a zip file so grab it while it's hot, I dunno when I'll next reorganise my Dropbox and break all the links again: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ywyfgiam6hu2mc7/The%20Limit%20of%20Flesh.zip?dl=0

Second: I've been paranoid for a long while about all my even slightly NSFW drawings being online. As people have proven to me time and time again, once you post anything to the internet it leaves your control and can come back to haunt you at any time, and I've been paranoid for years now that someone I know is gonna come across my weird perverse drawings and confront me about them, and I have no idea how that will end up.

Yeah, it's classic paranoia and anyone I know who would both a) care and b) care enough to confront me would be someone I should aim to cut out of my life, but if it was, say, the potential employer for Cirr's Dream Job He Doesn't Know He Wants Yet, then, well, problems result.

This was half the reason I asked The Limit of Flesh to be killed. The other half is the next point.

Third: I feel like shovelling my own fetish bullshit into other peoples' faces is basically awful. Not enough and not consistently enough to not have tried to make two "lewd" (terrifyingly perverse) quests, but enough to feel bad about it a lot. When I kept realising every update I was writing for The Limit of Flesh was getting less and less suggestion-influence and more dumb fetish bullshit that was when I realised I should probably kill the project and let it die, because "Cirr writes and draws a quest where the protagonist no longer has ANY input over their situation" is fun at most for exactly one person, and when it's not fun for the audience it stops being fun for me too.

Basically I think while some quest authors have found great success recently (well, this year and the last) with quote-unquote "lewd quests", I should probably stay far far away from anything more than the probably gratuituous amounts of nudity in something like Reformation, which also haunts me from time to time in the unnecessary amount of nudity it has.

...also the fact that anyone bothered to scrape bits and pieces of that quest sans images makes me a little confused about the entire thing but we probably don't need to return to such as cirr's weird procreation related fetishes having likely predictable and awful consequences for the protagonist oh god why am i writing this in a public forum WHY DID I START THIS QUEST ON A PUBLIC IMAGEBOARD and that's why it will probably remain dead
>>
No. 103323 ID: 3abd97

>if you're really gonna miss The Limit of Flesh I have a botched archive job that has the full text and full images (but no thumbnails)
Oh, neat, thanks. I figured you still had the art, but since you'd taken it down yourself and all, that just asking you for it wasn't an option.

>...also the fact that anyone bothered to scrape bits and pieces of that quest sans images makes me a little confused about the entire thing
To explain myself a little (and maybe make you less paranoid someone is stalking you):

The big reason I found this quest interesting because of the way the suggestors reacted to it. We were for all intents and purposed dumped into what could have very easily been an h-game. And where h-games will sometimes have options to not trigger or avoid porn, there's never the option to demand you be given your shirt and your dignity as a person back, and start actively working against the lewd scenario and telling the AI overlord he's an idiot and pointing out the flaws in his plan (which was so satisfying, even if he gassed us for it).

That's one of the things I love about quests as a format. I'm a sucker for those times when readers react to or influence a story in unusual or interesting ways, or when they get to do things other mediums don't normally allow.

Of course, if we were fighting against the scenario, that left you in the unenviable position of pushing the scenario we were fighting against, and I can see why that would have left you uncomfortable.

Also there was a time loop. I'm a sucker for time loops.

I'm also kind of an obsessive archivist. I long ago learned I need to save stuff I'm interested in before it eventually dies. Of course, I don't get everything in time. My scrape ended up being sans-images since whups, the internet archive doesn't pull images when it scrapes this site (probably due to however the robots.txt exclusions are set up). I figured this was sort of a fitting irony- if my interest really persisted for the reasons I was giving, I shouldn't technically need them.

>cirr's weird procreation related fetishes
Also, one of the things I like about this place is how we can be a lot more casual about that kind of thing, and it makes me feel a little sad when people are made to feel ashamed in spite of that. Which does makes me root more for something like this than I might otherwise.
>>
No. 103327 ID: c9f250

Is plan 'try a different name' dead already?

Honestly all you would need to do is take a bit of time to set out a plan for the next couple dozen updates without stressing yourself or getting too hung up. You're perfectly capable of writing a story in a fucked up situation without forcing anything on the main character; the progress you did make in limit of flesh is proof of that.

Or make a quest where the protagonist is into that; nobody is going to call you a bad person. Except you; stop stressing so much.

Is my name field stuck on that? Eh whatever. I don't think I can process the context to address everything from that point of view, but I can say: It's your life. Other people aren't going to stop you. Don't flinch when there's no punch.
>>
No. 103328 ID: 398fe1

I agree that forcing it on us is bad.
>>
No. 103330 ID: d11344

The problem with doing lewd stuff under a different name:

1. I can't disguise my art style to save my life
2. (TLOF specific) People already know Cirr started TLOF
3. Doesn't address the fact that if I ran a new lewd quest with a protagonist more open to these things it'd just end up not great for the audience and turn off a lotta people
>>
No. 103333 ID: a222f8

I think the main problem with TLoF was not that it was a lewd quest, but that it was forced on the protagonist.

That's not to say weird fetishes are inherently bad: The problem lies more in the difference between "character is sexually assaulted by tentacles" and "character accomplishes quest objective and takes a well-deserved 'rest' in the tentacle pit."

The character in TLoF reacted to everything with "Ew, gross!" which made it clear the situation was forced on her, rather than "Maybe later, we have work to do."
>>
No. 103334 ID: d11344

>>103333
Yeah I was skirting around saying that in point three but that was another reason everything felt increasingly bad and I should probably have never run the quest at all like that
>>
No. 103336 ID: cc08c7

>>103333
I never really saw TLoF as a lewd Quest myself to be honest, at least not in the traditional/current sense. It seemed more like a regular Quest with lewd elements, mainly because the character was basically resisting all the weird shit going on around her. I know it was supposed to be one now but I personally never really noticed...that or I'm way too used to this stuff now.
>>
No. 103339 ID: c9f250

If you're worried about it being found, then it doesn't matter if a couple dozen people see through your disguise. Just don't put it on the wiki.

"quest where Culya keeps getting tied up while navigating through weirdo land" and "quest with perv main character" are both perfectly fine options. As far as I can tell you only got so conflicted because you kept second-guessing whether anything prurient should happen to the main character. Work the decision into the character's attitude and if you want to do things differently switch to a character that appreciates it, either in that quest or a different quest. I don't think you did anything you need to regret except for screwing up the pacing on that tumblr thing. Half-written updates you scrapped don't count.
>>
No. 103342 ID: d11344

So sometime around the past few months when I wasn't a doctor yet and I was frazzled by work and the end of my thesis, I, uh, cleared out all the asks in my tumblr ask blog and turned off asks.

Seeing as answering some questions might be a nice way to ever have a reason to draw again I've turned them back on, I'm sorry if you asked a question and didn't get it answered but if you remember what it was please ask it again!

http://cirrsk.tumblr.com/

After that experience I don't think I'll be closing it off without warning and deleting the queue again like last time. A lot of this way of using tumblr at all was, and is, still sort of foreign to me.

...incidentally while I'm being open about things, I never actually wiped Rain Quest, I just changed the URL. I wouldn't visit it, but it's archived after discovering this year the cost of some of my deletions in the past.
and if you do in fact visit it prepare for NSFW right as soon as you hit it and a shining example of why I ended up dropping the fucking thing: http://rainquestthing.tumblr.com/

Still working on that being a better person, I guess.
>>
No. 103343 ID: d11344

addendum to previous post still frazzled by work and trying to make changes but i should probably do something with my spare time that isn't watch youtube videos and pine about my student days
>>
No. 103344 ID: 3abd97

>If you're worried about it being found, then it doesn't matter if a couple dozen people see through your disguise. Just don't put it on the wiki.
In case you weren't aware, 99% of quests on the wiki weren't put there by the author. Documenting and cataloging quests to make it easier for readers to locate threads is largely a reader-driven endeavor.

(And not wiki-ing something doesn't necessarily stunt the audience. From the irc chat I know there are people who disdain the wiki entirely and operate entirely through the catalog).
>>
No. 103345 ID: c9f250

>>103344
The wiki will say what I want it to say! *cackles with power*
>>
No. 103363 ID: d11344

>>103342
having actually checked my tumblr inbox for the first time in a year I didn't wipe the asks, I wiped the rain quest suggestions, so sorry on that front, but oh god this queue is huge

might prioritise the newer ones and slowly go through the stack
>>
No. 103463 ID: 2c70ae

I have an update for Station written but I'm not going to be able to draw it for another few days

is it ok with you guys if I post it with some incredibly awful stick figure ipad doodles and replace those images later
>>
No. 103466 ID: af6e04

Fine with me!
>>
No. 103467 ID: ba506f

>>103463
it's your quest, do what you want. But yeah I won't mind.
>>
No. 103478 ID: 398fe1

That was less horrible than I expected.
>>
No. 103485 ID: 2c70ae

>>103478
what, the art or the content?
>>
No. 103487 ID: 398fe1

>>103485
The art. I mean you said stick figures but instead we got black and white lineart.
>>
No. 104231 ID: d3c670

hi so I dunno if I should even write this, I guess it can be left here for posterity

so I'm bad at updating usually anyway but I've been going through a bout of depression/anxiety that's actually been significant enough to be diagnosed (moderate, though) and even while I've been stewing here wondering how many years I'll be able to do the whole questing thing ever again, I haven't been able to bring myself to ever update.

I'm sorry for the stories I've thrown to the wayside over years and years. Maybe one day they will all be finished but it's likeliest they won't be. I hope you enjoyed them as they happened or what little of them did happen, though, and I do want to continue them. I won't have forever to work on them, and I don't know when I'll stop or what will make me stop, but the fact that anyone has liked them at all is pretty damn amazing.

Thank you for reading, I hope to get back to updating as soon as I can, once I work things out.
>>
No. 104232 ID: 665ed8

>>104231
You write interesting quests, while I morn the death of each one almost as it begins they are generally fun and interesting rides while they live
>>
No. 104234 ID: 350a50

>>104231
If you ever need something inspiring to think about, just remember one thing:

Theo got his happy ending.
>>
No. 106557 ID: 188451

Yo Cirr. My brother was interested in starting some type of smallish project to help him learn/test some coding skills. I used your shark game as an example since I watched you code a bit of it on stream a while back, and he seemed interested in it. Would you be alright if I tried to put him in contact with you to discuss it or whatever? Any preferred way I could set it up?
>>
No. 119687 ID: 6cd068
File 151625428924.jpg - (410.50KB , 852x1024 , bird1.jpg )
119687

if Atoll dies as well i'm going to be mildly perturbed
>>
No. 119833 ID: 7c55ee
File 151658890062.jpg - (46.41KB , 600x751 , cbird2.jpg )
119833

>>
No. 125912 ID: b1b4f3

I wonder if there's an in-universe reason why Zu is worth 10 ichor instead of 80. Maybe it's because that's the hp he got from the rez and if we managed to kill him without triggering Unending, he'd be worth the full amount?
>>
No. 125913 ID: 2e0f31

>>125912
Most of his ichor was already dropped in the form of minions, so there's less missing than it would seem. The remainder is probably the cost of doing business with ichor, dispersed too finely to recover.
>>
No. 125915 ID: d2de35

mother of god this thread is over 7 years old

what happened
>>
No. 125916 ID: eed41f

>>125915
Makes a fella feel old looking at stuff like that don't it?
>>
No. 125917 ID: b1b4f3

>>125913
Oh yeah that's true, we already GOT a bunch of his ichor by absorbing slain minions.
>>
No. 125923 ID: 06fdc0

I unironically hope Formation turns into a slinko quest where most problems wind up being solved with hugs, romance, and protagonists peeing their tezakian stretch pants
>>
No. 125933 ID: ee2ded

>>125923
That's the thing, Cirr quests usually take place in the most grimdark of settings. But the best outcomes have usually come when the MC rises above the grimdark and works to nurture the best in the people around them.

See: Bungee Grapple Adventures, Defective, Through the Chaos

Not to say that it is always the solution, but Cirr quests tend to lean more towards nobledark than grimdark. The world sucks, you are probably doomed, the universe is dark and uncaring. But if there is no good in the world save for what you make of it, then damned if that good doesn't shine all the brighter for it.
>>
No. 125935 ID: b67388

Speaking of old Cirr quests, anyone else wondering if our old friend 'Red' from TWIM was Imperium?

>>/questarchive/462011
>>
No. 125936 ID: b67388

>>125935
I can never quite remember how to link the archive. Is it possible to add it do the FAQ on the home page?
>>/questarch/462011
>>
No. 125946 ID: 7efe6b

I don't like the last update in terms of how unrealistic it was.

- Digging a hole would take a long time. Considering that we were at a shouting distance, I was under the impression that the pursuers were a very short distance away.
- Digging a hole would produce a lot of noise.
- Digging a hole would displace a huge amount of soil. Not an amount that you can quickly spread around and no one would notice.
- Camouflaging the hole would take a long time, especially for an effective camouflage.
- When pursuing a person, it's usually done through an art of tracking, otherwise you're just running in a random direction. So either they were following the soroi tracks, or they used other means, such as smell or sound. But whatever the means were, they would've led them to the hole. If the tracks are lost, then the area is usually scouted until the trail is found again, or the hiding place uncovered.

So altho I like the resulting new friends, there's so many issues that I have to close my eyes to...
Dunno. It kinda doesn't fit the grimdark atmosphere.
>>
No. 125947 ID: b1b4f3

>>125946
Man it worked don't complain.
>shouting distance
Loudspeaker.
>digging is noisy
Not really?
>displace a lot of soil, camouflage
I think Calliope was in charge of that, and she is exceptionally talented at engineering.
>the pursuers were tracking
Yeah and the trail vanished suddenly, or they were pursuing by sight and this was the last spot they were seen at. Because of this, they spread out in a search pattern.

>grimdark
I don't think this quest leans far enough in that direction to expect everything to go wrong.
>>
No. 125948 ID: 575ec0

>>125946
I thought it bizarre myself. I was expecting an encounter with zealots.

It bothers me that he people hunting these two seem to only half-heartedly pursuing them, while also appearing to be religious wackjobs. Doesn't really fit.

Of course, perhaps we were spotted and these two were allowed to escape and corralled to us. Maybe sacrificing people to ichor creatures is a thing. Maybe they wanted to see whether we were friendly or vicious, and just so happened to have two heathens on hand.

Or maybe Cirr just wants to do some story instead of jumping into another fight immediately. Who knows.
>>
No. 125950 ID: 7f3357

Enough people made it clear that they wanted to avoid conflict that I took the statted up conflict I had and threw it away, lest I be accused of railroading

jesus christ i literally can't win with you people
>>
No. 125951 ID: ad51b8

>>125950
I wouldn't have minded a fight, I just wanted to hide because we had two noncombatants with us and I don't know anything about what was chasing those 2. If it came to a fight I would have just shrugged and winged it.

I don't mind the outcome we got either way and look forward to see what happens next.
>>
No. 125952 ID: 06fdc0

>>125950
oh no, i hope my post in the disc thread here didn't stress you out, Cirr!
>>
No. 125954 ID: afdebc

>>125950
I thought it was nice to have a plan go unexpectedly right. That's not usually the way things go!
>>
No. 125956 ID: 575ec0

>>125950
>Tries telling story
>Alters story to appease readers

That's a bad enough idea as it is (You literally can't win), but doesn't that also partially defeat the spirit of quest? Our actions are supposed to have consequences. If you go throwing those consequences out, doesn't that diminish the gravity of both our previous and all future decisions?

You presented us with a dark gritty fantasy and we went full hug-quest in classic tgchan style. That should throw us straight into hardmode.

I mean we just picked up a full-on Kill or be killed lunatic and basically told him FUCK THE POLICE OUR WAY IS THE RIGHT WAY NO MATTER WHAT. Which means now we don't have a choice but to help literally everyone, lest he gets it in his head that we are merely powerful people acting about our whims, causing him to stick to his worldview and either leave or murder us in our sleep.

We have decided to FIGHT AGAINST THE WORLD FUCKING ORDER. Zu doesn't exist in a vacuum, this world presumably shaped him, so logically this same world has shaped infinitely more monsters like him. If we get away with bullshit like this, that weakens both Zu's character and the world as a whole.

We went full retard, Cirr. Please, give us the chance to experience what that really means. It could make for a great story.

In the meantime, we can just chalk this last update to dumb luck and move on.
>>
No. 125957 ID: afdebc

>>125956
The story being altered by player choices is the entire point of collaborative storytelling.

It seems disingenuous in the extreme to criticize an author for adapting to his player's decision ("they're attempting to hide, so...") and then go on to say how he should have adapted to his player's decision ("they spared Zu so...").

There's not a lack of consequences- you just didn't get your preferred or expected consequences yet. That's not defeating the spirit of a quest as an interactive medium, that's just not getting what you wanted.
>>
No. 125958 ID: 7efe6b

>>125950
I know. I could easily see that you had planned for an interesting battle. But suggesters... look, they will always try to avoid conflict. This is standard for /quest/. You already know this.

You're the GM. The quest author. You set the rules, and you should enforce them when necessary. Write the quest the way you want to.

You want to keep suggesters happy, right? Let me give you a tip. The only thing suggesters want... is to be included. As long as you demonstrate that their suggestions were considered, that's more than enough to disprove any accusations of railroading. When a suggestion breaks logic, here's two options you can do:
A) Explain why their suggestion is illogical or why it might result in an extremely bad outcome. For instance, "The party considered hiding, but the pursuers were too close to be able to dig a hole in time."
B) Try to go with suggestion anyway, but have it fail for obvious reasons. For instance, "The party started digging a hole, but the pursuers caught them in action. Prepare to fight."

I think option B would usually be better. Unless there's missing information, in which case option A would be better together with presenting this missing information.
>>
No. 125959 ID: 0d45a9

>>125958
>>125956
Sometimes the suggestor collective goes against you, if you want certain actions advocate for them in suggestions better, instead of complaining that you didn't get what you wanted. This is collaborative, remember.

The quest is still getting started. I highly recommend you wait, and wait to see the effects of our actions play out in full instead of blaming the author because the immediate effects weren't to your personal liking.

Our actions so far may have consequences further down the line, Zu may turn on us, the two bird we picked up may cause issues, etc, etc. Avoiding a fight now does not mean avoiding consequences altogether.
>>
No. 125960 ID: 575ec0

>>125957
>The story being altered by player choices is the entire point of collaborative storytelling.

You misunderstand.
Yes, that is the point of collaborative storytelling, In-quest. His decision was an external one though. The events that took place were based on our reactions as readers/players instead of the choices our characters made.

>>125959
I'm not complaining that things didn't go my way. I think the collective made sub-optimal choices, but that's fine. Sub-optimal choices are Fun. They make for fantastic stories later.

The purpose of my post was to urge the author not to allow the heart of the story to be broken by the tyranny of the collective. I am all for being part of the story, but I don't think parts of it should be bent or sacrificed to satisfy our whims.
>>
No. 125962 ID: 0d45a9

>>125960
"heart of the story" & "tyranny of the collective", we're one combat and three(I think) decision points in, are you seriously arguing this? There simply isn't enough data yet to determine what the supposed heart of the story is from the updates so far, and two decisions to be friendly isn't enough to conclude any theoretical tyranny either.

To go onto the quest itself rather than harping on: We're resource limited and vastly out numbered, conflict avoidance here, esp options that gets us resources and allies, isn't just conflict avoidance for conflict avoidance's sake. Conflict expends resources that are limited to us and not to them, so it's playing smart. Even a temporary ally can do work that lets us get set up and a base established easier.
>>
No. 125963 ID: 575ec0

>>125962
It's not about the details of the quest itself righ-
Sigh. Fine. I'll drop the pretext.

THIS
>>125950
>Enough people made it clear that they wanted to avoid conflict that I took the statted up conflict I had and threw it away, lest I be accused of railroading
>Enough people made it clear, lest I be accused of railroading

Is what I'm angry about. Not the goddamn quest itself.

Do you remember mid-game Coxxwette? When RML was publicly considering abandoning it because it had drifted so far from her vision that it wasn't fun for her anymore?
I do.
I also remember a big fuck-all wall of belligerence aimed at her by non-other than our beloved author right here. It was a big deal. Not only was he banned but it affected him such that he was moved to sincerely apologize later.

Thing is, the thing RML did to get herself in that situation, is the same exact thing Cirr just did. If he continues, he'll probably end up in that situation himself.
Cirr, more than anyone else, should fucking know better.

Cirr's one of my favorite authors here. I very much enjoy his quests. Likewise, If I happen to be invested in one of his quests and it just stops, it feels extra shitty.

I fear that if
>>125950
becomes a pattern, then this will quest will just end up as another extra shitty day.
>>
No. 125964 ID: 395c02

>>125963
the thing is that your current posting in this thread is much more likely to bring about a sudden abandonment of the quest than the suggester collective doing something different from what cirr hoped for
>>
No. 125965 ID: b1b4f3

Probably shouldn't stat out a combat until the combat is guaranteed to happen IMO.
>>
No. 125966 ID: b67388

>>125965
You've never run a game before.
You have to account for everything the players may or may not do. Otherwise you're left with nothing prepared for whatever they do that you weren't expecting.

>>125959
This, very much. Not all consequences are immediate, be they positive or negative. naileD needs to stop complaining when things don't go as he expects.
>>
No. 125967 ID: b1b4f3

>>125966
I understand what you mean, but this isn't a tabletop. You can wait until it's time to write the update to hash out the details, like combat stats.
>>
No. 125970 ID: b1b4f3

Alright let's get some shit in this thread that isn't just criticism. I'm gonna do my best to analyze Zu's abilities in the context of him being our ally.

Passive: Predator: Always know which enemy target has the lowest health.
Redundant with Scanner 3 present.

Passive: Shardbearer: Immune to chaos attacks, treated as friendly by mindless chaos units.
I kindof doubt we're going to face any chaos units, but their absence from Scanner's territory listing *is* strange. Maybe the Soroi won their war somehow, and the smarter ones managed to infiltrate other territories?

Passive: Unending: When ichor falls to 0, if ambient ichor available, heal up to 10 ichor pulling from the unclaimed stock at any range.
Could be useful, but like I said in the thread we'd like to avoid dying whenever possible.

Active: Shape: Create a new minion for 5 ichor, to be placed within 2 hexes. (1 action)
Definitely useful. Could be used to block enemy paths or set up a fighting force, and though the minions involved kinda suck they are effectively free since they leave their ichor behind when "killed", which can be reabsorbed. That is something very important so I'll reiterate: minions are expendable unlike all of our other units, and the ichor spent on them is recovered after death unless an enemy ichor unit absorbs it instead.

Active: Consume: Deal 3 damage, and restore ichor equal to damage dealt. Double this damage if used on allies. Can target up to 3 adjacent units. Can only be used on ichor units. (1 action)
Only useful to reclaim minions imo. Zu will not want to bite his allies, and we're not likely to be facing very many ichor units from here on.

Active: Shaping Pull: Can force-move any ichor creature up to 5 hexes. Can force-move through own units, but not through enemy units. (1 action)
Still a very useful ability, despite ichor-based enemies being rarer in the grasslands. We could use this to shove Render into an enemy formation to wreck face(though not through enemy units still), or pull an injured unit out of danger. We might even be able to push Barriers around? I wonder if he could use this on himself to move faster? Oh, and he could use this to move his minions around faster. If we DO wind up fighting more ichor-based enemies this is fucking OP as hell. Any unit within 10 hexes can be brought into range of all our other units' attacks. On the first turn, using one of Scanner 3's turns to mark the target, that's 14+8+4=26 damage. It just gets worse if we can summon some minions ahead of time and Scanner can double attack on that round. Or if the enemy is 5 hexes away, Zu might get in a hit as well for another 8 damage.

Speaking of which, he is also a capable melee unit, with more single target damage than Render on a double attack round, and a huge health pool. Sadly he doesn't have anything similar to Render's sprintslash.
>>
No. 125972 ID: 0d45a9

>>125970
Blimey, I hadn't considered all that. No wonder Zu was effective as a lone unit for so long.
>>
No. 125973 ID: ad51b8

>Active: Consume: Deal 3 damage, and restore ichor equal to damage dealt. Double this damage if used on allies. Can target up to 3 adjacent units. Can only be used on ichor units. (1 action)
>Only useful to reclaim minions imo. Zu will not want to bite his allies, and we're not likely to be facing very many ichor units from here on.
he could us it on barriers as well if needed.
>>
No. 125980 ID: b67388

>>125973
Can it also restore ichor to heal Zu, up to his normal max health, even if the target is not ichor?
>>
No. 125982 ID: b1b4f3

>>125973
>use it on barriers
Hmm, barriers cost 1 ichor and have 10 hp. Calliope's healing ability already smells of infinite ichor, this is just another thing like that huh? I guess maybe Calliope is subconsciously able to draw on ambient ichor.
>>
No. 125990 ID: 9bb347

>>125980
It would only cause damage, I imagine. The ichor gain comes from material removed from the target, maybe it would be useful on Chaos creatures if a way of excluding colours could be found?

>>125982
Given the behaviour the bubbles had on Zu's minions and the fact that they are well, bubbles of ichor, they probably contain very high pressure air.
Because of this the barriers must be getting part of their strength from the counter-force of all that air. Maybe the barrier ichor would also rather flow to other bubbles than an ichor tool strong enough to puncture it?
If we find some tubes a blowgun could also be made for Calliope, in case we encounter something that can resist an ichor bubble popping or isn't a target we want to paint the ground with.

Hit points in this smell of safety margins to me, self-healing must be a result of manipulating non-structural material. Given that Scanner and Zu can both work at a distance we have some basis to develop external ichor manipulation.
>>
No. 125991 ID: b1b4f3

>>125990
Excluding colors? Are you implying ichor is merely chaos material that's been purified?
>>
No. 125994 ID: b67388

>>125991
No, we encountered chaos creatures in Reformation that had corrupted ichor and were mixed in with it.
>>
No. 126012 ID: 7efe6b
File 153946851884.png - (29.97KB , 642x676 , sprintslash.png )
126012

I'd like to suggest an update to Render's Sprintslash skill.

The skill currently has an elaborate description of how you can move up to 5 hexes with each hex dealing more damage. But if you can just move back and forth, then you can pretty much always guarantee a 5 hex move, no matter where the enemy stands, and it would be the same if the skill just dealt static 10 damage.

So to make the skill a bit more situational, I'd like to propose the following penalty:
When moving with Sprintslash, consecutive turns and turns for more than 60 degrees reduce the bonus damage.

This would be logical considering Render needs to build up speed for maximum damage, while sharp or consecutive turns reduce speed.

Attached some damage examples.
>>
No. 126014 ID: b1b4f3

>>126012
Render could be surrounded or some other obstacle in the way preventing the 5-hex move.
I kindof agree though, him being able to "sprint" in a tight circle like that is weird.

It didn't matter at all during the fight since when he did it he would've been perfectly capable of attacking twice, for MORE damage even.
>>
No. 126791 ID: b70ae2

Considering Formation is supposed to be a NSFW quest, are there any guidelines / restrictions in regards to making lewd suggestions?
>>
No. 126803 ID: b1b4f3

Well that's the first time I've seen a quest thread get locked without any announcement.
>>
No. 128988 ID: 317977

this ancient thread is still the dumping ground for all misc Cirr quests including Station

you're welcome, >>/quest/928847
>>
No. 130989 ID: c4002e

Thus confirming my desire to update TLoF stems from sickness of some kind, I'm now in a hospital ward with suspected appendicitis.
Sporadic updates to return hopefully sometime in the near future. Lemme know which of my one thousand quests you'd rather see updates to!!
>>
No. 130990 ID: 18e3d4

TWiM
>>
No. 130992 ID: b1b4f3

Resonance
Formation or Reformation.
>>
No. 130993 ID: 8d4593

I for one was enjoying Another Island.
Even if the current next things to do were fairly obvious.

Also, Salikai would be nice.
The main character had finally become jaded enough to just drop whatever melodrama fell on her and call the instigator retarded. It's great. Someone get Sisirri some cigarettes. Like a lot of cigarettes. I want to be able to read her voice in the same timbre as my long dead, but very emphysemic grandmother.
>>
No. 130995 ID: 0fae41

Station or Salikai so you can pull more cameos out of the fridge
>>
No. 130996 ID: 422cea

I'd like us to return to the original Defective storyline. I want more cyborg salamander things.
>>
No. 130998 ID: f2f490

Salikai and Another Island for me.
>>
No. 130999 ID: 864e49

Vessel, Another Island, Atoll, Salikai, The World Is Mine
>>
No. 131000 ID: 91ee5f

>>130989
>Lemme know which of my one thousand quests you'd rather see updates to!!
Reformation, Formation, Catalysis, Salikai, and Another Island.
>>
No. 131002 ID: e6f10c

While I would like The Limits of Flesh to continue, since I have to choose otherwise I’d pick Atoll or Station.
>>
No. 131003 ID: c4002e

Hospital update: it's not appendicitis but diverticulitis. I knew shunning the sun was a bad move.
I'll run through the feedback properly when I get out of the hospital. It's looking most like Formation or Another Island are the ones that gel both with what people want more and what if be most interested in continuing.
>>
No. 131004 ID: 2df440

I’d actually vote for salikai or station
>>
No. 131006 ID: c4002e

Hospital update: being discharged with antibiotics to rest up and heal at home, no surgery required thank god.
Not sure when quest updates will resume (but hey what's new 🙃), thank you all for your unbelievable patience with me.
>>
No. 131026 ID: 8d4593

I wish your ass a timely recovery.
May your bowels never burn again.
>>
No. 131649 ID: ba56e6
File 157630595020.png - (111.90KB , 680x454 , 1575599071554.png )
131649

>>
No. 131652 ID: 2aa5f0

>>131649
I am legitimately confused on what this is from.
>>
No. 131655 ID: 7dcd1e

>>131652
Bug Fables, came out the other week
>>
No. 131658 ID: ba56e6

>>131652
>>131655
Saw Cirr was also a backer in the credits. Thought I'd give a shoutout.
>>
No. 131659 ID: 9842dc

Well I did really love the game and totally forgot I backed it for some reason so it was a very nice surprise.
also whee nice fanart
>>
No. 131662 ID: ba56e6

>>131659
Not my fanart, of course.

Sure hoping a sequel isn't out of the picture, considering the stuff I've heard about the publisher screwing over the devs.
>>
No. 135515 ID: e22e69

I just wanted to say that I really like Vessel and All Else is Noise so far ::]
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