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I don't know how I'm supposed to introduce myself, but... Hi, I'm here because I'm tired of CoG and the people here seem a hell of a lot more tolerable.

Welcome! Did anything in particular prompt your emigration? At any rate, congrats on finding the only good IF site.

*stamps passport*

Glory to CYStia. Cause no trouble.

It's been a long time coming, probably since the staff pulled the shit they pulled on Avery if not before. There was one time a mod/CoG staff edited another user's post in the politics thread and pretty much mocked that user for not having the Right opinion. There was that piracy shit storm and I'm sure there's other things as well, but those usually come to mind first thing.

The breaking point was a little thread about romance stigma in video games. That thread made me realize how little the community cares about quality storytelling and only really cares about the 'romance'. Authors, whether they're writing for CoG or HG, are pretty much forced to add romanceable characters that feel like walking tropes. I feel stupid for expecting better considering there are HG authors and long dead WIPs that have done better.

Passports still exist?

Yeah I noticed that was your last post there.

I chalk it up to a lot of these people that desperately need their waifus in everything due to not getting or having any similar relationships in real life.

I should have been a lot harsher. I think escapism and how they define it has a lot to do with it.

I was genuinely interested in about how the thread would turn out, but apparently sexism and cishet white males are the problem. It wouldn't have anything to do with actual time constraints, money, ESRB/PEGI ratings, and other potential limitations. Nope, not at all.

The bitching about Cyberpunk's romances is what pissed me off more than anything. For a community that'll whine about not having trigger warnings for suicide, there weren't any flirty dialogue choices for a man that's obviously suicidal. Maybe I'm a sociopath, but when someone clearly needs help, flirting with them isn't something I'm concerned about.

I would think not wanting to flirt with a suicidal person would make you less of a sociopath since you're not taking advantage of their mental instability for your own personal gain.

Unless of course one holds belief that the only way to save this suicidal person is by fucking them. Lol.

Yeah, I don't know if they actually played the game or if they paid attention beyond, "Me want snoo snoo!" But the game explicitly stated that the character had tried to kill himself and it should be blatantly obvious to anyone who knows what depression looks like, especially suicidal depression. The relationship would've been unhealthy for both parties that early in the quest line anyway.

Well there are people that threaten to kill themselves to emotionally manipulate someone into staying in a relationship and will follow through with those threats if the person doesn't. I think we'd all be surprised by how many people might actually believe that though.

Actually, hooking up with suicidal people is a time honoured pastime for only the highest quality sort

I'll just go pick my body bag up from the dry cleaners. UwU

Because the sex is limited edition?

Oh yeah I've heard that from other CoG users. That the only reason anyone offers to beta read is because they want to force authors to include their designer waifus, and that you basically can't get published without a certain number of beta readers so you have to give in to them.

You'd think those people could've at least shifted their obsession to the entire line that exists for romance and adult games, but CoGites just be that frustrated and horny I guess. A lot of them don't strike me as a bunch that would be very good at relationships IRL.

Well anyway, enjoy your stay. Rating and commenting on a few stories is a good way to develop some status once you're settled in btw.

I have thought about offering to beta read in the past. I'm not sure if I'm glad I never did or if I really should've. People can get touchy about feedback and I wouldn't consider myself good at giving feedback anyway. Then again people usually aren't clear about what they're looking for in feedback.

"[...] in theory with COG and Hosted Games vs Hearts Choice the focus should ideally be ‘…and romance’ for the former and ‘romance and…’ for the latter." Copypasta'd directly from a post in that thread. I mean, if you're frustrated and horny, that's why porn, erotica, and Skyrim mods exist. I'm not an expert on relationships, but from the general IRL human interaction I've experienced, people like being treated with compassion and respect. I try to hold the same standards with fictional characters.

In regards to your other post, you'd think so. I expected to get hit with the banhammer since I think Laguz was one of the people that flagged my post. The staff unflagged my post without me editing it into some kind of coddling bullshit. Shit was hitting the fan when I posted and the thread's been locked since September of 2019. Maybe that's the reason I wasn't banned or suspended?

Thanks.

Pretty sure Laguz got permabanned even before 2019 or maybe that was the same year he got banned since he was getting into it with Jason for not being "progressive" enough and was attacking even his fellow alphabet people. Lol

Meltdown Penguins tends to be pretty shrill though, could have been her since she likes to accuse people of being toxic when she's not begging for 2000 euros for a new laptop.

EDIT: Guess he's not permabanned. Just banned until September 9, 2022.

One of the stranger CoGite behaviors is the way they keep getting banned for years, then immediately come crawling back ready to lick Jason's boots once their sentence is up.

All that time and they don't just find some other hobby or a different place to hang out?

They need to go to rehab at that point.

The LGBTQIAlphabet+ community will attack anyone not cishet if they hold any view that doesn't conform to the hivemind's standards. The extremists run the show and anyone who doesn't submit and obey gets excommunicated from the church.

Laguz was the most vocal and he seemed particularly triggered after I posted. I think it was more than one person because iirc, you have to get at least three flags on a post for it to get hidden. He was temporarily banned before, but got hit with it again after Jason pretty much told him to shut the hell up and move on. He forgot it's illegal to criticize the staff.

Sounds like a gaming laptop, probably Alienware, and quite frankly an overpriced piece of shit. Any gaming laptop is. You could build a desktop that costs just as much and is ten times better. It's not that difficult, but it does require at least two brain cells. Also, jobs pay money. But so do simps and who am I to judge how people choose to spend their money?

Lol, Laguz. I don't think I ever saw them interact with anyone without immediately puking all their severe emotional issues right in their lap. That's one I'd probably feel sorry for to some degree if they weren't so committed to being a twisted up little goblin creature peeking out of its damp burrow to shriek and hiss at all the rest of the world, rip out the throat of the occasional innocent traveler, and then cringe and retreat at the first light of the sun.

Romance is just one of those things that, like....there's a time and a place and it depends entirely on the story you want to tell. But this falls more into the general category of "philosophical" writing disagreements a lot of people here have with CoG, unrelated to all the drama. The major one being that writing deliberately generic things according to a dictated formula is for cucks.

Hey, when you've got a victim card you're supposed to whip it out and make sure everyone knows how oppressed you are. Membership ain't free. You don't have to insult the pygmy goblins...

Ugh, those guidelines are probably why most of their official games suck. I'm not a novelist, but I don't think they have to follow guidelines like that when they're getting published? It's so formulaic, I can read the free chapters and regret buying whatever I'm halfway through it.

The marketing is just as bad if not worse. In the design world, those bullet points are supposed to be unique selling points that tell a customer how your product is different or superior to a competitor's product. Instead you're always guaranteed to see something like, "Play as a man, woman, or reptilian shapeshifter!" or, "Play as gay, straight, or bi!" and a list of plot points. Why? Because nothing is fresh or new, most of the stories feel like the same shit with a different coat of paint. At least with HG I can tell the difference between authors based on how they use ChoiceScript. I'm probably biased though.

What are the restrictive guidelines you mention for official games that make them suck?

This reminds me that @Avery_Moore promised to show us this legendary list of guidelines and then the complaints she got about breaking them with the Lawless Ones, but then she didn't of course because she's pretty flaky and lazy.

Not as bad as all these CoGites who keep showing up and then never doing anything though I guess.

I know it's possible to be a good enough writer to work around them, obviously you manage that, but it sounds like the Hosted Games culture may actually be worse if an author really has to include a love interest with heterochromia and wolf ears or whatever just to get through the beta reading process.

Or I'm not sure how all that works actually, but there has to be a reason the forum produces all these timid betas that constantly require input and permission to proceed every step of the process.

I mean just look what they did to Mara.

Oh yeah, I was going to do that, wasn't I?

I know it's possible to be a good enough writer to work around them

I don't think there's really a "them."  The only solid rule that I'm aware of that the official line must have male/female/nonbinary choice for the main character.

There are guidelines that various editors follow to varying degrees, such as "at least three options are preferred rather than two" which are not hard-and-fast rules, but recommendations, and "make all endings awesome."  And there are style guidelines, like "use punctuation at the end of choices" and "use first person in choices even if the story itself is third person."

But maybe Avery is privy to other stuff.

The guidelines I'm referring to: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D0tAZeLkjTz54a54KxI1EYNO96IpduYE9coLgPkxs98/edit

Could be outdated, but that's the only guidelines they've given public access to. I did have part of a long post typed up, but I've lost all interest in it. I'm shit at expressing myself and I don't have the patience to spend a week typing up a post and worrying about it living up to my standards. Judge me how you will.

I do always think the way they're advertised is a little cynical and depressing, or at least really speaks to priorities.

"Plot? We don't give a shit, and we know you don't either! The most important thing here is you can play madlibs with pronouns, and also a variety of sex dolls tailored to the preferences of YOU, the reader, will be provided! And we all know that's the only reason you're here, so show me some ID at the door, give me $12 and you can go upstairs."

Which games are you thinking of there?

It's how every single game is presented in the store. A list of bullet points and one of them, the most important one, is always first.

Gender and sexuality choice is definitely first on the list, but I don't know that a fair reading of the long list of plot and adventure elements that follow every game suggest that a shit is not given for plot or that the emphasis is on characters as sex dolls.

Every one that I can see focuses on meaningful decisions you can make and elements of the adventures to be had.  But I agree that the gender/sexuality choice is put in a position of importance at the top.

I see you're going with the "pretend to take everything said as completely literal" tactic, well played.

@Gower If you're doing Q&A again though, one actual serious question I had was at what point was the category for discussing other IF games removed from the forum, and was this a decision by the admin team or just Jason?

I still see it there in the drop-down menu as of this morning.

At this point I think Jason's just making up new rules that completely contradict the old rules. :p

I mean...if there exists a section for other games...how about just tell the guy to put it there and then forget about it? Why the embarrassing angry grandpa rant about how the no good kids these days don't understand SERVER COSTS?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want him to stop doing these things, because I find them very funny. But I recognize there are a lot of other people who get a lot out of CoG and would like it to be run like a normal business. Too bad for them he just doesn't seem to want to do that.

The only thread that's really active is the otome games thread. There isn't much of a point in the category being there since the only active thread could be tossed in its parent category. I feel like it exists for passive aggressive reasons.

You'd think Jason would at least be interested in improving ChoiceScript. Implement a save system as requested on many occasions, so that authors don't have to waste their time with developing one. Actually support the script command instead of shutting people up when they show genuine interest in it. Why does it exist? Why is it even mentioned in the wiki?

I'd imagine that Dan set up the categories, considering Jason seems to dislike the existence of every topic that isn't directly related to making him money.

Lol, that means Jason would hate the entire existence of the forums considering the lowest pricing for Discourse is 100 USD a month. I really want Jason to include AdFly links in every post he makes now, and require all of his staff to do the same.

Thought your name looked familiar, been getting a lot of visits from CoGites lately.

I see you weren't banned, so I guess it was a case you just got annoyed with something specific and just left.

 

I'm surprised I haven't been banned already. I'll probably still lurk around over there on occasion, maybe post something if the topic interests or irritates me enough to bother. But I quit caring if I got banned after I posted in that trans discussion thread.

A trans discussion thread on CoG seems like a honeypot designed to get people banned tbh.

Good luck, have fun!

Thank you.

Hi and welcome! We are more interested in quality of writing and creativity than actual content.

Feel free to write about anything you like :)

Thank you and good to know, hopefully I can find the motivation to write something sometime. In the past I did want to write something with ChoiceScript, but I don't think I've ever really trusted the community and I'm tired of the general lack of self-awareness. As anyone reading this thread can probably tell, lol.

The worst part about the forums over there is that there are interesting threads, but they're either ignored by most of the users and die a quick death, or they're drowned in posts that contribute nothing. I enjoy talking and reading about good writing and design. I just get tired of feeling like I'm repeating myself ad nauseam and watching others do the same.

Same shit, different day. Internet drama isn't what it used to be.

Welcome aboard!  The forum here uses antiquated software, and it's easy as hell to get lost, but there are some mighty fine folks around here.  Best part is, you don't get banned simply for having an opinion.

Unless your opinion is, "Annoying Endmaster looks like fun!" ^_^

Having an opinion and acting on that opinion are different things. Hopefully anyone that thinks that is safe as long as they aren't impulsive. ;)

It's loads of fun when someone else is doing it.

Antiquated, maybe. But it's different from the usual Discourse forum and looks better than the average phpBB forum.

Edit: I wish there was a like post feature though.

Honestly I can't stand Discourse, like I really can't see the appeal at all. It's hideous and cluttered and annoying to navigate, and the "Mods! This user said something I disagreed with!" button is a terrible feature.

Looking at a Discourse forum is like looking at a modern home. I've never seen one I'd want to live in. Some of the features are nice to have, bookmarking posts for example. In a way I like how NaNoWriMo's forums are organized, by category with the subcategories listed beneath them as a kind of overview. It's just annoying that you have to unhide the categories you want to see and get notifications for all new posts created in those categories. I'd prefer a pop out sidebar over the header bar. Overall, not worth the minimum 100 USD a month to me since I would prefer a lot more freedom with the design.

Flagging would be okay if most people weren't thin-skinned, spineless, and would use it for shit that's actually serious. People usually make things worse on themselves by trying to get mods involved anyway.

I like it when people flag before things get serious.

I haven't come across a lot of situations in which someone requested a mod to help with a thread and made things worse for themselves. 

Although, now that I think of it, I have heard of at least one forum where summoning the same mod thrice can indeed lead to making things worse for the summoner.

Intfiction also uses Discourse, and I had random posts across a few threads flagged into oblivion by some deranged person and her friends who were also harassing us in our Discord at the time. It's a silly thing to give mentally ill people that kind of power over the normal folk.

When I say serious, I'm talking about posting videos of abuse, threatening to find and kill another user, etc.

Requesting a mod to help with a thread is a good way to generalize it. Besides, I wasn't specifically talking about the CoG forums.

Forum name and mod please.

I don't think I saw this in this thread, but you could get the browser extension for some updated visuals, if you so desire.

Oh yeah, I forgot this was an actual newbie thread, we were just hanging out and bitching.

https://chooseyourstory.com/Member/?Username=bradindvorak

You can get it there from Brad's profile and then go to yours to turn on dark mode and get some other features. It'll let you do multiple quick saves of games and mess with some other stuff from a dev panel when you're reading, too.

While you're there you could also even read one of Brad's games and comment on it. I have good feelings about you and your edgy Satan name, Lux. You're totally going to be the first person who showed up here to bitch about CoG who goes on to actually do something of value, I can sense it.

You might as well do all your complaining about CoG here, I'm going to add it to the 2 Minutes HATE archive eventually.

Welcome to the site! Enjoy your time here

This is also a place that you can contribute to, like CoG. I see you've been doing some reviewing, which you should definitely keep up.