I might need to finally make a wiki account for this.

...

...does our wiki even need an account for editing it?

>>325682
Nope. Just need one when uploading images.

A rule of thumb I follow is thus:

Only start a quest if you know how you're going to end it.

That way, you have a goal to work towards, and it helps avoid quitting it before you finish it.

>>325687
That is a solid rule of thumb.

I'm not someone to just change an article. I'm not known here. I would rather give you my ideas for improvement, and let you decide if it's right or not.
In this advice article, I feel it needs to be said, so I'll let you decide where and when.

"The first thing you need to know about a quest is that it isn't something you tell to others. It's cooperative story telling. You may be laying the groundwork for the story, but it's the observers that influence how it goes. How much you let them have a say is up to you, but without any, you will not be doing a quest, but writing a story."

Thanks for your time.

>>325859
This is both very important and surprisingly easy to overlook.

Stickying this so this thread is not simply re-made again just because people forgot/never knew it existed.

Links to older threads in the OP title image make browsing so much easier.
like this http://www.tgchan.org/kusaba/quest/res/160101.html#160101
Otherwise I have to go into the wiki and search the previous threads down. Simple thing that makes reading the quest easier and more enjoyable.

Also a link to the /questdis/ thread in the op would help too.

The author should set up guidelines for what goes in /quest/ and what goes in /questdis/. A good one to start with would be:
All suggested actions go in /quest/. All reasoning, counterpoints, questions to other players, or non-suggestions go in /questdis/. Backlinks from a suggestion post to the reasoning behind it that is in the /questdis/ thread keeps the /quest/ thread very clean and clutter free. No walls of text in between updates.

To put a backlink to another board, click the backlink in thread A to put it in the message field. It should look like this ">>123456". Then take that and insert the target board, /draw/ /general/ /quest/ /questdis/ /tg/ to make it look like this >>/target board/123456 . Then cut/paste that into the message field in board B. This will create a backlink to the post on board A.

An unrelated tip is to copy a long message you are about to send in case tgchan rejects it for some reason and it was cleared out of the message field when you hit the back button. *copies*

Let's try to be careful about what we add to the article. It's already pretty long, and it doesn't need extra paragraphs that aren't actually advice.

Might be a good idea to toss some basic tutorial stuff in there too, ideally on a separate page. Here's how to snazzily quote suggestion posts. Here's how you properly link to other threads (particularly of the discussion and other chapters flavors). Here's the post limit you need to keep an eye out for when you're going to need to start another of yon chapters. Need to edit that post you just made? Etc. etc.

put a link to this on it
http://tgchan.org/wiki/Plot

A question to the quest authors out there. What resource do you use to draw for your quests?

>>327756
Personally, I use good ol' MSPaint and a tablet. It's simple, yet versatile in its simplicity. I've toyed with the thought of putting an MSPaint tutorial on the wiki.

(My art sucks because I'm lazy, not because of the program I use.)

>>327756
I use Illustrator.

... to the extent that you can call it using Illustrator, with how infrequently I update. :<

>>327756
On those few occasions when I have briefly ran a quest, I have used MSPaint and Fireworks.

Handle With Care is done in Photoshop; single illustrations too. Dungeon Game is done in Illustrator, a tool that proved to be quite suitable for questing. Once you learn how to handle it, naturally.

All my quests are done with a fully legal probably copy of Photoshop CS4.

Anonymous 2010/06/22(Tue)15:14 No. 18199 ID: d560d6
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>>327756
I absolutely swear by Flash 2 as a tool that got vector editing right with its clever CSG-like brush shenanigans.

I used to use it with tweaked lines and fills, especially before the tablet, but these days I find it a lot faster to just make everything out of brushes, even if the lines aren't as steady.

Sai Painter 1.1.0

I use GIMP.

But I don't recommend it, as it takes a while to get used to it.

I'm concerned about railroading players. But I have no interest in running an ultra-vague setting or amnesiac / schizophrenic protagonist. I feel as though I'll still be accused of railroading if I tried a "choose-you-own-adventure" style that details or outlines possible choices. I also feel as though I can't really control anything, which of course means that building satisfying characters and arcs becomes sort of moot. Thoughts?

>>328037
It's only railroading if you ignore the majority of suggestions. Even then often players won't mind a bit of railroading if they get what they want to happen done anyway.

Here's a tip: Don't make your first post an OOC explanation of the plot or that you're new or something. Let your quest speak for itself. The more OOC stuff you put in, the less immersive it is.

Focus on world building, giving the players something to do. As long as the quest maintains it's own internal logic and doesn't devolve into a nonsense quest, you're set.

Is it possible to create a text-only Quest, or are these generally very poorly received?

>>330662

There are some malcontents who don't like them, but some of the best quests are mainly text quests. GolemQuest, in particular, comes to mind as being an excellent example of a successful, well-received, well-written text quest. As long as the writing is good, the story fun, and the quest engaging, IMO it'd be fine.

>>330662
I think the above poster slightly misrepresents the issue. Text/not text is a fairly contentious debate in our community, and a text quest turns off a fair number of readers.

You will get readers that will enjoy your quest, assuming it's good, and they will be pretty loyal, but you will generally have less readers than with a drawn quest (depending. I mean, some drawn quests get almost no readers).

People who spend a lot of time doing the art for their quests will also generally not read text quests.

Golem quest is a pretty good example of a popular text quest and seems to one of the better quests on the board. I don't know about this "some of the best quests are mainly text" business.

>>330674
Only a very small minority of text quests are really incredible. Text quests take a lot more effort to reach the same level as an arted one, hence why I want to finish Gearheads ASAP.

>>330662

Some of us have too short of an attention span to read text quests (myself included).

Getting back on topic, for those of you who run long-running quests, how heavily do you plan ahead, and how much do you ad-lib? For something like Tozol, the players have enough agency that I'm guessing Test is running it pure tabletop RPG style and "just" simulating an environment which is ticking along to Marcus' schedule to some kind of inevitable ending; something with a more directed and segmented narrative like Journey, however, seems to have been largely determined in advance---that Lucid had planned out the high-level sequence of events before posting the first thread. Dive seems somewhere in-between; it gives the impression that some of the chapters have been impulsive additions rather than intended from the start, like #21, but then each chapter itself is more of a tightly self-contained mini-quest that most because of time and perspective skips between them.

I think Steven Brust (author of the Vlad Taltos series) has a theory that works for quests.

"The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book (quest) to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool. Guys who like military hardware, who think advanced military hardware is cool, are not gonna jump all over my books, because they have other ideas about what's cool.
The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff."

Corollary: This works in both directions. For best results, suggest things that the author will think is cool.

>>330924 I will assume my quest is 'sufficiently long running' and answer for anyone who cares:

It seems like you are conflating different sorts of planning aheads: For BiteQuest, I started with the main character, map, metaphysics of the world, personalities, abilities and statistics for the wizards as well as the timelines for their schemes, the non-wizard antagonists (Heartsbane and Ashleigh), and "girlfriend" rescuable characters.

I planned the sequence of events that would happen in the world if no player input occurred at all. I then planned little scenes that would occur in certain places if the players went there. (the blood cottage, a few more that have been avoided, Ovriur, the subsequent towns that were eaten if he wasn't dealt with, fatasaurus rex) I never really planned a narrative flow or anything like that - I let the player encounter the scene without any sort of predetermined outcome and extrapolated events accordingly as the player made the timeline deviate more and more from the base, "no Spikesby" timeline. So, I planned extensively, but I didn't plan like you're saying Journey was planned, with some events and narrative twists predestined to occur.

Heartsbane, for instance, was originally intended to be an antagonist that would repeatedly appear to mock Spikesby for the futility of his actions and his deviation from the purpose for which he was created. I never expected the players to attempt to recruit him for a suicidal attack plan in defiance of the Wizard he serves - which is exactly the sort of thing he would go for. So, all of the subsequent Heartsbane scenes got pretty much entirely nixed.

>>331013
That sounds like what I was hypothesising for Tozol; when I say "inevitable ending", I don't mean that there's only one possible outcome (choo choo), just that a clock is ticking (Marcus' actions, Q5 reinforcements or nuke-from-orbit) which means the world state will progress toward a narrative end point regardless of what the players do.

I have tried to start quests in the past, but find myself unable to attract readers after a day or two, which is frustrating and, since I feel like my brittle husk of a thread is unwanted I'll just delete it to keep the board clear.

I've considered that part of my difficulty comes from my preference to focus on characters in comparatively mundane circumstances. Still 'genre' circumstances, but never the featureless void / magical tea party that I see a lot of quest writers doing.

I've tried cold-opens with the intention of building things up, and hot opens into action sequences. But the responses I get don't seem to give much 'interaction' with anything, and tend to just be a response of "next..."

I've read the wiki article; but can any writers or readers suggest how they grab and keep readers?

>>331938
This is a hard question. Personally I seem to have gotten readers in my early quests because I was one of the only games in town and in my later quests because they were ridiculous/I spent a month talking about how I wanted to do it on IRC.

It would help, perhaps, if I knew more about the quests in question. I mean, if they were text quests, that's going to turn away a good bit of your potential readerbase away automatically and probably cause the entirety of the remainder to be somewhat skeptical.

Also, if you're not already an established author, you're going to usually get significantly fewer posts than quests by established authors unless you have really nice art or an extremely unique concept. You will probably go through a period of time after the novelty of a "new quest" goes away and before you garner something of a readerbase where the quest is being kept alive by as little as one suggestion between updates; you'll need to hold steady here if you want the quest to have any long-term viability.

>>331938
>I've considered that part of my difficulty comes from my preference to focus on characters in comparatively mundane circumstances.
I certainly noticed that Drawfag Quest picked up a lot once it went from apparently-mundane object hunt to thwarting an evil scheme. Although, strictly, it'd be more accurate to say that suggestions badly dropped off as the mundane part dragged on with ladder-hunting after some initial enthusiasm. There was a bit of a lull before confronting Greentechmarine, too, which was a bit unexpected. It didn't help that I started responding to suggestions laying out a plan and then that person and others changed the plan, so for a moment progress was thwarted. (This is really horribly common because the time dilation effect of quests murders everyone's attention span. Even batch updaters like Weaver aren't entirely immune since anything depending on a prior update session is subject to lossage.)

>I'll just delete it to keep the board clear.
Well, don't do that. If it's really hated it'll fall onto lower pages and eventually the graveyard anyway.

Reka 2010/08/22(Sun)07:20 No. 22153 ID: 932552
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>>331940
I would agree. KaraQuest squeaked by with one or two suggestions a post at first. It was only much later when things began getting all crazy that I actually started getting a good amount of responses. The important thing is to not get discouraged.
You're new. People don't really know what to think about you. Keep plugging away and rolling with the punches and eventually you'll develop fans.

If there's only one suggestion, go with it. Unless it's a really bad suggestion, in which case you can still respond to it - preferably with the character themselves explaining why it's bad, but it's not required. If you have no suggestions at all, go down a quick list of what might be wrong: Is there no obvious suggestion? Try prompting people with a list of possible options and character thoughts. Is the next suggestion too obvious with nothing much else to do? Just go ahead and keep posting reactions until you get to the next decision point - people would usually rather watch a cutscene than get pulled around on a leash.

But the most important thing is not to get discouraged. A lot of people go through this rough patch until they find their identity, even if that takes awhile. Don't give up!

>>331938
What the above have said is right. It also depends on when you're updating and how often you drew updates.

I mean, I was an established author but some of the Cromanticar chapters had me sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone to suggest something. Same with Karen's Heart, same with some of the Bite Quest chapters. I mean, go look. There are whole sessions where it's just been me and one guy. If you keep at it, more people will see it. Besides, some people are always reading and not playing, but if you kept going they'd probably start. If I knew which quests were yours I could possibly offer you more direct advice.

>>331938
Mainly patience and interesting things to play with. Many suggesters enjoy a creation sequence, and if you use that to exposit the world, even better. experimentation, too. But as bitequest said, even the best sometimes have to sit and play with one dude. Don't give up!

Running a one-on-one Quest for a pal via e-mail: bad idea or worst idea?

Has anyone tried something like this before?

>>333090
At that point it's probably indistinct from just like RP or something, is the thing.

Could certainly still work!

>>333106
Well, it'd still be an image-based pseudo-adventure-game -- just with only one suggester.

I was thinking of opening it up to a few more people, but most of my friends probably wouldn't be able to get into the right mindset.

>>333090
>>333133
I've done something similar before with friends, but just to pass the time, not for a long term game. sounds interesting, do it. I mean, if it doesn't work then at least you'll know. Depending on your friends, may want to add a lot of humor they will enjoy, since its a one-on-one.

I'm looking to pick up a Graphic Tablet(thingit) sometime soon, and I'm wondering what you guys use.

Any suggestions for good tablets for quest-mspaint-art or general doodles?

>>335944

I use a Wacom Bamboo. I got it for $70 at Best Buy. It hasn't let me down.

http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/bamboo_pen.php

>>335944
Wacom is the best brand to get. They're the only ones that seem to care about product durability.

Bamboos are the cheapest, and pretty reliable, albeit generally small. If your blood is a bit more rich, I hear good things about the Wacom Intuos line, but most of it seems to be extra bells and whistles. I use a Bamboo and it serves me very well.

Another vote for the Bamboo. Great little tablet.

Be careful: the Bamboo Fun is a different product. Last I knew it cost more and came bundled with some useless crapware.

I didn't think the Intuos was that much more expensive than the Bamboo, and it's a better product. I love mine.

A small Intuos costs around three times as much as a small Bamboo, which is what I have. Can't say I'm thrilled, since it's god damn tiny, but it beats the hell out of a mouse.

My small intuos was ~120 bux and had a significantly larger drawing area than the small bamboos I saw.

Cheapest Intuos4 is 230 USD for 6.2" x 3.9"
Cheapest Bamboo is 70 for 5.8" x 3.6"

'Course, these are what's available now. The Bamboo I use is a discontinued model. Basically the same price and active area, though.

>>335954
For what it's worth, the exact model of mine is a MTE-450A, and I think it was all of £50; seems to have held around that point in the UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wacom-Bamboo-MTE-450-K-DE/dp/B000QUQDXM

I haven't really had much experience running quests, but I've been thinking about the readership and how it related to the quest genre.

From my experience, basically there's two axes of quest success- Idealism and Complexity. In fact I think we can make this an alignment system for all quests- Idealism, Neutral, or Realism versus Simple, Neutral, or Complex.

Complex quests are like Golem Quest, where you have to remember every detail, and where the player comes up with all the stuff. Conversely, quests like, oh, say, Sandwich Quest are the epitomization of simple.

And on the sliding scale of idealism versus realism, well, I guess you already know what's going on. Here, it mostly applies to characterization, so I suppose all those cute anthro quests with lovable protagonists fall on the Ideal side whereas quests with grittier, more hardcore-dark bits fall on the Realist side.

Quests change, of course- but that by itself doesn't really lend itself to making better quests.

The problem is, the two axes really tend to counteract each other. In other words, a quest either tends to focus on the crunch of complex combat and hardcore logistics, like Golem Quest, or it appeals to those who want a daily serving of cute and happy, light fluffy quest, like for example Trap Quest, or Amorphia. You really can't have both in equal amounts at the same time- you can flip between the two with wellmade transitions but you're either focusing on one or the other. Even quests that work both in equally, like most of Shot's quests, flip between the two axes in attracting readers between fight scenes and non-fight scenes. Same with Brom's quests, or anybody else's quests. Really, it's kind of an axiom of writing itself- you can't be developing character and running a hardcore battle at the same time, I guess.

That's basically the entire quest spectrum right there, in my vastly uneducated and probably simplified opinion.

Does this even go here? This is basically my personal theory behind all quests, and I'm not even sure if it's correct.

>>337398
>In fact I think we can make this an alignment system for all quests
Wow. That's the worst idea I've heard all month.

>>337398

>Here, it mostly applies to characterization, so I suppose all those cute anthro quests with lovable protagonists fall on the Ideal side whereas quests with grittier, more hardcore-dark bits fall on the Realist side.

That has nothing to do with idealism or realism. That just has to do with cute or dark. Those are not even remotely the same thing.

>Really, it's kind of an axiom of writing itself- you can't be developing character and running a hardcore battle at the same time, I guess.

You most certainly can, it just requires actual writing ability.

>>337414

>>337493
The advice parts were good.
I really hope the examples given were tongue-in-cheek because that is some of the worst Raymond Chandler-wannabe writing I've ever read, and I've read Jim Butcher and Glen Cook.

>>337518
I agree. The basic principles the guys is trying to get across are good, but the style in which the guide is written is junk. You can tell he's a very weak writer.

How to OP:
1) Make sure your image will produce a thumbnail that is immediately recognizable. The most reliable way to do this is to have your quest name in big letters.
2) Put your quest name and chapter as the Subject. That way we can ctrl-f it.
3) Use your handle for the 'name' field unless there is a good reason not to. Even if you want to use the character's name for the rest, using your own name for the opening post can help clear things up.
4) Remember that the OP will be visible for the lifetime of the thread and beyond. If you use '???' for the name or title, remember that it will still say '???' a year from now when someone finds it in the archive.

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

In being a poor example of a quest author, I've learned the following. If you don't have a lot of self-motivation, stick to one quest. If you have more than one quest, your sparse updates would be spread across all your quests, slowing all of them down.

If you get an awesome idea that you absolutely have to do, write it down. Then, when you reach a chapter end or something, you can do the idea. It may be frustrating to have a huge pile of ideas you're sitting on, but that's better than a million dead or half-dead quests. It would also give you time to expand upon those ideas before you share them with the world. Alternatively, you might realize in hindsight just how dumb an idea actually is before putting it out there.

If nothing else, having only one currently updating quest eliminates the question of 'which one do I update?' letting you skip to 'how should I do this update?' which can be a task in itself for non-motivated people. It is for me, at least.

I still haven't figured out the 'how to make yourself do it' bit myself yet, so I can't help out there. Hopefully, this little bit of advice helps someone, though. I probably could have used it earlier.

>>341091
Seconding everything said here. Coming from a guy with a dozen half dead threads, yeah, stick to one, even if you have more ideas.

>>341104

i see, so we need more commitment... hey, maybe with this tip, i can stop being a troll-fag :D

I'm not sure if this is really the place to ask, but: Does tgchan block you from reposting the same image multiple times? I've been giving some thought to doing a text-based quest using pictures of the various characters to mark who's 'in control', but like I know 4chan bitches you out for repeating images.

>>341323

yeah, it does.

>>341323
You can use the same talking head over and over, though, which might suit your purposes: >>/meep/13334

It's also a convention to put an @ or something in the subject line so that updates can be more clearly picked out from suggestions.

>>335954
I use a Bamboo Fun and I like it. That comes from a person who was forced to use a Trust for a long time. That one was absolutely horrible.

I'm actually using a Bamboo Fun with a broken stylus. I was lucky I used SAI to draw the first panels of Executioner, because I'm drawing with the eraser.

About quests, I'm not experient with them, but I already learned some useful stuff about writing.

>>341404

( =c=)9 just keep at the quest thing, you'll get better, i believe in you

Okay, so I'm thinking about running a writequest, but I'm having a really hard time deciding on perspective. The current idea is to have one 'main' character that's largely a blank slate until defined by the readers; narration would be in the form of 'you see x, you do x,' and so on. However, when switching to the perspective of another character, narration would switch to 'I see x, I do x'. Is this a good or bad idea? What are people's thoughts in general on perspective?

>>341920
Sounds somewhat interesting. I don't think you need to worry about people being like "Why does the perspective keep changing? FUCK THIS" and then stop reading or anything.

...But by writequest, do you mean a textquest? please no

>>341949
The plan is to do text without images, if that's what you mean. Are text quests really looked down on that much?

Honestly, I'm just trying to play to my strengths; I've been doing various creative writing stuff since forever, but I can't draw for shit.

>>341993
ANY drawing helps. just a map or something. ESPECIALLY on the first post. it makes the whole thread more eye catching which draws more readers.

>>342030

Read: the most vocal elements of this board have the attention span of small children, and will rail endlessly against anything that takes more than a couple of minutes to read.

There are about 12 long-term quests going on, three of them are text only, both of the most popular text only quests have about ten regular players, with the third having maybe five regular players. Seven of the other quests are a combination of shitty art and/or crappy writing, and have six or seven players each (almost all the same players). The remaining two long-term quests have pretty decent art and writing and have ten or so regular contributors.

Everything else on the board is crappy one shots (designed to be crap, apparently), or ideas that are aborted when the author realizes just how small the audience is here.

So in short: do what you want, fuck the whiners. There are not enough of them to count for anything, and they know it.

>>342035
Quit it.

>>341993
You can try a text quest if you want. Just be aware that you're likely to get less attention than quests with art.

>>342035

>There are about 12 long-term quests going on, three of them are text only, both of the most popular text only quests have about ten regular players, with the third having maybe five regular players.

I like how you go out of your way to harass the image quests for having shitty art and/or writing, while conveniently skipping on mentioning that all but one text quest have just as shitty writing (at best) and no art at all.

>Everything else on the board is crappy one shots (designed to be crap, apparently)

a crappy one-shot is superior to millions of words of prose shittier than you'll find on Fanfiction.net.

Why do image quests make you so angry? Were you molested by someone putting forward a modicum of effort?

Better question: why are people derailing the advice thread with this shit when there's a perfectly good thread for text vs image quest arguments over here? >>/meep/13522

>>342049
Good question. The best I can figure, he's being extremely hostile to image quests because he wants to run a quest, but can't draw and is justifying why he himself should run a text quest instead. This is pretty hilarious since he has demonstrated that he can't write for shit either. Hilarity should ensue.

>>342040
If you want an actual audience 4chan.org/tg has more people, and janitors that are friendly to everything but furry porn. If you want to run a furry porn quest I guess this is the place.

>>342047
Hey man, I know it's been a while but Blood Quest was also the other good text quest on this board, not just Sammy. So you've got like two. Still text quests are kinda shit man, writers fuck up the purple prose so often, what's actually fucking happening gets lost in metaphors and bullshit and the audience can't fucking react properly.

>>342103

> janitors that are friendly to everything but furry porn

>>342103
Unless you can do a drawing in like 60 seconds like Weaver, doing an image quest on 4chan is problematic.

Plus the obligatory trolling, spam, bullshit, etc.

But hey, if you can manage it, go for it.

>>342121
...Yeah, you haven't been back there in a while, have you?

>>342151
I must not have come back at the right times, because I've only seen text quests.

>>342153
That's cuz all the image quest authors left to tgchan. Quests are officially protected now, though. Hatin and spamming gets ya banned.

>>342171
Atlas Hugged

>>342171
This doesn't really alleviate the problem of "if I can't run in session format I can't run on /tg/."

>>342199
Yes, there's that.

So umm...I want to do a Quest but I can only writefag. And I want some of the attention of doing it on normal /tg/ if I do.

>>345478
And I want free money forever and a house that doubles as a secret laboratory/lair. Isn't it fun to want the unrealistic?

Considering the userbase here is a tiny fraction of that on /tg/ you are unlikely to ever get that sort of attention even if you had the greatest art and writing skills known to humanity. It's just not a thing that is possible. If it's a text quest, people will minimise it on principle. If you want the level of attention you'd get from /tg/, well, why not go to /tg/?

>>345478

nope, not gonna happen

Did we ever make a point about not having things like "First time doing a quest! It probably won't be very good, and please disregard the crappy artwork!" in the OP of a quest? Maybe it's just a personal pet peeve, but why would you undermine your first quest? First impressions are important, and making your opening line a warning about how bad you're going to be is a terrible way to start.

>>346827

I think a truthful disclaimer is fine. In fact I wish more quests opened with a truthful disclaimer that they're going to be shit and have shit art.

(Let's not just troll art quests again. Shit writing is even more prevalent.)

>>346886

If they're going to be crap, and the author admits it... why would I want to read it?

No, I'd discourage self-flagellation. It just lends itself to a negative start to a quest.

>>346918

There are plenty of people who will tolerate crap as long as it is in a flavor they like. Furries. Transhumanists. Hipsters (though they claim it is ironic). Twilight Fans. I could go on but my point is made.

I thank authors whose first line is "this is going to be shit" for letting me know in advance to hide the quest and its discussion thread.

Although if they really wanted to optimise the process they should not start in the first place, since their aim is so low and they clearly neither care about their quest nor want anybody else to.

this community can be a harsh place, critique and simple mockery are common (these are actually among the reasons I like the site)

this isn't deviant art, people will say when you suck.

I think a lot of people at first (myself included) are afraid of receiving a heavy backlash of hate over poor quality

fortunately for me all my hate was located in the Anon thread and I didn't seen it until weeks after

>>347028
Criticism and mockery are two completely different things. One is focused on identifying flaws so that someone can understand the critic's opinion and improve, the other is focused on being hostile and rude for the sake of being hostile and rude.

Unfortunately, many people commit the latter as if it were the former, because they think bad things deserve to be called bad, even if doing so only serves to be needlessly unpleasant without being useful, or there isn't actually anything wrong with the subject apart from the speaker's personal preferences.

>>347028
>>347038
And some authors receive neither criticism nor mockery nor positive comments and fade away.