You are absolutely right. But that's not MrDots' problem. This developer has made massively bad decisions in the past that are now falling on his feet.
It starts with the game DMD. This game, even if many people don't want to hear it to this day, was not originally planned to be the pure vanilla game that it ended up becoming. Rather, it is planned with many routes that should also include sharing content. The vanilla stuff was just planned as one route of many. To this day I still know exactly what tags it was once labeled with: MMF, MFF, sharing, swinging. In fact, that was the reason I was interested in this game in the first place: the prospect of variety. And it wasn't just me. The development took forever and almost only vanilla was made. Of course the fans asked. and they were told crap. It was always said that the vanilla focus would be the first step in order to create the basic foundation. everything else would come later, later, later. Then came the interruption in development, Melody was created. A great game that I still appreciate to this day, by the way. In the meantime, the chatting fans have withdrawn more and more from DMD because they have simply lost patience. Instead, militant vanilla fanboys appoached and there were more and more of them. and they put a lot of pressure on them to drop all the other plans. with success. DMD original plans were changed. And over the years the psiel has been bent, more badly than rightly, into the direction it is today. Until years ago there was a huge dispute in the discord, with the result that MrDots finally decided for the vanilla fans. I was there too. I actually decided back then to join the forum and convince MrDots not to make this mistake. I can still remember the conversations with Jeff Steel very well. Who knows, you might even find the late comments here in the threat if they haven't been deleted. Of course I wasn't successful. With the consequence that the sharing fanbase, the original fnabase, has graciously turned its back on MrDots. and since this day all threats to all MrDots games are virtually dead. About as much is written there in a year as is written in 1 day in threats to money, successful games. which is a disaster. Consider that MrDots once had several thousand patreons. So DMD has been altered beyond recognition. And the fairy tale is still told today that the game was supposedly always planned that way. But that's what it really is: a fairy tale. The game was planned differently, it had a completely different fan base. Back then, MrDots alienated and drove away their original fan base. Many people still haven't forgiven him for that. But okay, so be it. It's the past. You can't change it.
MrDots finally decided on vanilla. So far so good. As I said back then, this is a hopelessly oversaturated market with strong competition. In order to be able to assert itself here, a developer must score points with outstanding quality in order to be successful in the long term. If not, he'll just get lost in the crowd. But in the end, did he deliver? No he did`not! And that's the crux of the matter, which is why fans are now running away from him. This is exactly the situation I warned Jeff Steel about years ago. What happened?
Let's take a look at DMD in detail:
The game is full of dialogues where the player's ear is literally chewed off. Dialogue, dialogues, text walls that hardly ever come to an end. These make up what feels like 80% of the entire game. The team simply has a terrible writer who is unable to keep texts concise, to the point and interesting. MrDots once promised to focus on content featuring all female LIs, at the expense of other content that was once planned but never produced. Did he deliver at the end? Not really. No matter which route you play, 90% of the time you only see the same content: scenes with D and father. The rest feels like side content. No matter which route you play, you almost only see D/F. It's the only route that is really worth playing. When you play Georgia, soon you realize that you still mostly only see the same scenes. Then play the other LI. Things are getting worse rather than better. The individual routes have such minimal differences that it's simply not worth going through these text walls again.
The next bis problem is plagiarism. This started from part 2, but from part 3 it reached its peak. And I won't even mention part 4. I don't know if that was the first scene. But at some point of the game you saw doggy sex between Graham and Olivia on the beach. A great scene, really. But almost without exception, every doggy scene later in the game is a copy of this very scene! Only the woman and the camera angle were changed. The posture was always the same, as were facial expressions and animation. And the same applies to other scenes in the game. And so it goes on practically until the end of the game. From part 3 onwards, the vast majority of all lewd scenes were mere copies of scenes that had already been shown. There were hardly any great, truly unique scenes left.
Last but not least, various story elements that were mentioned at the end of part 2 were no longer taken up at all. For example, D never finished school. The relationship with Graham, because of which they both moved in the first place, wasn't even mentioned later. These are just examples. The game ended with tons of story holes.
What I want to say is:
the game was never developed with the varied routes that it was actually planned with. That's probably MrDots the biggest mistake. But it also never become a really good vanilla either. Because a lot of story content was never fully developed and the focus was exclusively on D/F content, but this almost only consists of copies of already existing scenes, at the expense of all other LI that were neglected. This way a game is garbage. That's right, the game is garbage. People download it because it's so big. They are amazed with anticipation: "This must be something great". It is partly true, even as long as you play the D/F route only. Players start this route and are thrilled. Next they restart and try the Georgina Route. And see over 80, more like 90% or more, of the same content. They are surprised and try out the other LI. And things are getting worse there, not better. Then they are so disappointed that they drop the game. Anticipation disappointed, the game is more illusion than reality. That's sad but true.
Now let's get to sunshine love:
First of all, SL suffered greatly from the DMD failure. On the day DMD threat start to run downhill, it also took SL with him. Although SL is a much higher quality game, it has received relatively little attention. The threat is just as dead as DMD's has been for many years. Updates haven't changed much about that.
Nevertheless, I gave the game a chance at some point. and at first I was really excited. Actually I can't say much negative here. Here the text walls are not as bad as in DMD. Yes, there is a lot of chatter, but much more to the point. The story is largely well told. And all LI got story and lewd scene content, mostly from unique scenes. Of course it could have been more. But it's good as it is. Fact is: the game is wolrds better than DMD. Really! Here the developer seems to have learned something from the mistakes of the past. The game scored points almost everywhere where DMD massively disappointed me. I liked it so much that I even considered joining MrDots' patreon again. So far so good.
But then part 3 came. And here I really thought I was suddenly playing a completely different game. First of all, the part is quite short, compared to part 2. The point for the cut is not well taken. Part 3 hardly has any content. But the disaster is the endings. An ending should actually be the climax of a game. They usually are supposed to be amazed and make the player think, “It was worth it.” But that's not how it is. The endings are played with short, succinct text. And the little existing sex there are is short, boring scenes that aren't even animated. These endings are nothing, neither sexy nor dreamy. You think to yourself, "is that it?". And suddenly I felt like I had DMD. SL, which was a really great, varied game before part 3, suffered a huge drop in quality in part 3.
Get to the point. MrDots ruined his first game, DMD, with massive poor decisions, listened to the wrong guys thus alienating his original fanbase, and also did not satisfy his new fansbase that he had decided on, because in the end a run-of-the-mill game came out that disappears without a word in the mass. and then disappointed all with SL, which also couldn't maintain its great quality at the beginning until the end. And now the team is surprised that their patreons are running away? And on top of this, we are now presented with the Fantasy collection, with dialogues and story, as well as unique sex scenes that are really well done and come across better than almost all of DMD's content combined, which proves that taboo content is MrDot's true talent, exactly what DMD should have been originally. However, with vanilla he clearly reached his limits, as that is not his true talent. Now this team is really trying to win back the fan base that was alienated years ago, in order to fill the gaps left with his last 2 games, which ended up being disappointing, because of which his fans completely rightly left him? It's clear that this doesn't work
Rather, MrDots should finally leave his Generation Z filter bubble and face the truth: he made the wrong decision back then and only chose vanilla for economic reasons, but therefore for a genre that doesn't really suit him, where he cannot maintain the quality until the end. Then he should create a new team, under a new name, and finally start to develop games with content that really suits him and his team. That's what he has to do if he's going to take this path. because he will not be forgiven for the decision of the past. He completely destroyed his reputation among sharing fans years ago. And he won't get it back under the same name.
Or he finally gets new people in his team who really like vanilla and
know how to do it right,
especially sensible writers. And finally
delivers a game that impresses with its quality
from start to finish.
But it doesn't matter which path he takes, his goal is the same: In the end he has to finally deliver quality. He would have had to do that with SL after the disappointment with DMD. But he doesn't, part 3 is garbage that drags the game down. It's no wonder fans are running away from him. If he doesn't manage to impress with quality in his next game and stick to it until the end, he will lose the rest of his fans too.
