Liberation Day: Community Feedback V1.00 / V2.00 Announced

Agreed...I wonder if what they did with Sunrider Academy was meant to be a test run of romance options and how to best implement it.

Sound like probably the best way to go to me.

I'll check out that thread.

And to reply to your....reply:

In my case, I blame the execution and somewhat misplaced priorities as the root causes for a lot of the disappointment. Here's my 2 cents on the matter:

1. The short story length: In the grand scheme of the entire story, the story segment of LD is the right length for this chapter of the Sunrider saga. It really isn't long with regards to the main storyline, but it is the perfect (or near perfect) length for this chapter. What made the shortness painfully obvious was that it felt rushed and incomplete. To be honest, there really isn't much to add on to this segment main plot wise, since it's basically about a new antagonist, the different factions settling their differences, and banding together to liberate a planet (add a bit of distrust in between all that). However, knowing that this was a short segment, they could have used the opportunity to elaborate more on the new villains, or add some more slice of life and interaction between the characters. What are the individual characters' feelings now that they're in the homestretch? How are their feelings and interactions with each other ebb and flow with the seeds of distrust and hidden motives? The character development alone with the setting that was presented can add lots of substance and hours into the story.

2. Forced romance: Don't want to keep beating the dead horse, since this is arguably the number one killer for LD. I also disliked it like everyone else, especially since the heroine is 2nd to the bottom - if not the bottom - of my waifu list. But now that I've calmed down and looked at the bigger picture, I actually don't find it to be bad at all. Why? First of all, I personally think that there was ample development to justify the romance; In fact, the development started in MoA. Also, I'm starting to see this forced romance as part of the "common route" and not the actual branching heroine romance route. That being said, I'm thinking that a lot of the bitterness stem from the misunderstanding that the individual heroine routes branch off in LD when they actually don't until further down the line. People were teased a lot about the possibility of romancing our chosen waifus, but they mistakenly believed that that would happen in this installment (possible misinterpretation of the way it was hyped and marketed perhaps?). In addition, although the development of the romance in MoA already alluded to the inevitability of the coming forced romance in LD, the setup of the choices in FA/MoA didn't help buy the players into the romance, which brings me to my next point:

3. Choices seemed useless as they seemingly do nothing: Another of the arguably main factors which killed LD. The way I see it, in the grand scheme of things, LD is only one, long, linear segment of the common route. If you've played Japanese VNs with long common routes before, LD is like that long segment of slice of life events between a choice we just made and the next one. It was only blown up, expanded, and turned into a stand alone chapter of the saga. In Sunrider's case, FA and MoA presented us with a bulkload of choices that eventually gave us the impression that these choices will affect the plot of LD. In essence, we are lulled in the belief that everything we did in FA and MoA would affect LD, when in fact, they won't since LD was already designed to be a linear chapter for the sole purpose of advancing the story. It would have been better if some of the choices in FA and MoA were moved into LD, or if they created slice of life/character development events in LD with choices that could affect the next series. That way, the number of choices would be close to equal among the three installments, and LD will be brought into the fold along with FA and MoA's storytelling progression. In effect, we wouldn't be thinking that our decisions in FA and MoA would affect LD, but instead, think that our decisions in FA, MoA, AND LD would affect the next chapter of the story. I believe this would have made our choices still seem to have a purpose, and would have also made the forced romance more tolerable since it would make us think that it was an event we have to trudge through for character/plot development and not the end-all-be-all result of the waifu wars.

4. Japanese voice acting:When I first heard the news, I was actually excited since a masterpiece such as Sunrider would get some recognition in Japan. And whenever I entertain myself with Japanese anime and VNs, I avoid English dubs like the plague because they are absolutely horrible, sound forced and unnatural, and they could not capture the characters' emotions. However, in this case, I've been skeptical about having Japanese VAs. You see, the writing in Sunrider is unique because it adopts tropes/situations/cliches in Japanese anime/manga/VNs, but puts Western quirks and twists to it. It may be weird and stupid to some but for me, it's refreshing and I love it. If you've read a lot of Japanese VNs before, you might be able to relate. But here's the rub: Despite everything, Sunrider's writing style is still predominantly Western. The same reason why English dubs are terrible in anime, Japanese VAs aren't well-versed in Western culture enough to be able to capture its quirks and emotions. If you want Jap VAs who are good enough to be able to do it, then you're possibly looking at well-known veterans and pros. As far as I know, to voice a game in Japanese is extremely expensive. I've read that the voice actors/actresses alone could cost about 50% or more of the entire cost to make the game if it wasn't voiced. And I also know a game that a Western company had to localize to the West without the voices because acquiring the license to use the voices for the game costs about 2-3 times the amount of localizing the game by itself. In LD, all but one or two of the VAs aren't even known. That said, I don't claim to know how much LiS spent for the voice acting, but I can fathom that it's expensive regardless. The point is, for me, the Japanese voices aren't working out particularly due to how unique Sunrider's writing style is and at this point in time, an unnecessary expense.

In conclusion
As I pointed out, the execution of LD was what disappointed a lot of people. LiS should've invested a bit more into adding actual substance to LD and made it in such a way that they are able to get readers to come and buy-in to the way LD's story was playing out. Somebody in the Steam forum posted that having Jap VAs was still too early and I agree. A wiser allocation of funds could've helped flesh it out or give LiS the flexibility to execute the story better (a part of me would still love to have the original english VAs fully voice it. They were actually really good ). I still enjoyed LD because the foundation of an engaging, gripping story that I've come to love from Sunrider is there, though only barebones.

I still have high hopes though because after all this, Samu-kun and his team are listening to us and are learning. I really hope v2.0 doesn't disappoint because my biggest worry right now is the loss of a bunch of backers, leading to the possible discontinuation of Sunrider. I know they're still more than capable of delivering the quality of story we've come to love. They just tripped a little, that's all.

Now, I still loved the English originals, but I can't really fathom putting Japanese voice-overs as a bad point. To me they worked, and even better than the original English, specially for Chigara and Icari, which were extracted directly from Japanese archetypes. I doubted about Ava's, but she performed spectacularly, and even Asaga improved a hundred-fold by the end. I can only slightly protest about Sola, but even in the end I don't see any western quirks or anything in Sola. I simply can't see that as the problem.

To be honest, the main problem of being Japanese voiced seems to be that obsession to being fully voiced; hundreds or games are partially voiced, and here trying to go for fully voiced only ate most of the budget and limited the size of the game. Considering MoA had 0 voice acting in the dialogue, I think people wouldn't have minded having a partially voiced game instead of fully-voiced.

I really liked the JP voices too. I don't really understand why people have a problem with them. I don't really think they broke the budget, it was actually a very slick production.

People are completely off base about the JP voices being more expensive than the ENG voices.

There's pretty much only one place in the USA you can record anime voices: Dallas, Texas. Maybe Los Angeles.

How much money would it cost to fly every single Eng VA in MoA to Dallas? Sure, a small number of the VAs already live there, but others live in Canada, Australia, and other parts of the United States. Plus, we would have to fly the core Love in Space team to Dallas to oversee the production. So we're talking about buying about roughly 3 international plane tickets, 4 domestic tickets, and about 7 hotel rooms for a week, on top of paying everyone, hiring an audio engineer, and renting a studio. (Not happening with our budget)

But there are other studios you can record at instead of Dallas, right? Well, yes. But that doesn't change the situation that everyone's spread out across the world, and still Dallas would be best because that's where the majority of anime ENG voice actors live.

Well then, why not hire multiple studios for each VA? Well, that would be expensive as hell, and the core team would then have to fly across the globe to oversee multiple recording sessions, so that's obviously not possible.

Then why not just do what you did in MoA and get the VAs to record at home and then email it over?
This has multiple problems. Then you basically have to digitally clean up and normalize everything because everyone's recording with different microphones, in different rooms, with different software. Sure, if it's just a few hundred lines for just the battle voices, this is feasible, but when it's over 2000 lines, that's just impossible unless you hire a full time audio engineer. (And almost nobody will do this cheaply because this is essentially the definition of hell from a recording stand point.) Also, is the core development team going to go on a world tour to visit everyone at their homes to direct the recording session?

Or we could just hire Japanese voices.
All eroge seiyuus live in Tokyo and can reach any recording studio we rent by public transit. Rent one studio. Fly the core team to Tokyo for a few days, come back with all the recordings, all cleaned up, mixed, and just ready to be dropped into the game folder to automatically work. (Yes, it was literally amazing.)

It took us just 10 days to get the JP voices running for the ENTIRE game, while it took over 4 months to get just the MoA ENG battle voices working because of the huge number of issues caused by contracting people across the world to record at home and not being there to direct.

The only other realistic alternative was to recast the entire ENG cast by selecting only VAs who lived in Dallas to record, but I'm sure this would have pissed off the fans anyways. Also, ENG VAs generally have less experience with eroge than Japanese seiyuu, so if we were going to start fresh and stick with the cast for the rest of the franchise, we obviously wanted VAs with experience. Given only those two options, I decided recasting an entirely JP cast was the superior choice.

The real situation with ENG voices is actually worse than that, because the VAs sometimes don't even deliver the voices. If you haven't noticed, a lot of other VN Kickstarters through 2015 have disclosed contract disputes with ENG "recording agencies." From what I can gather, these "agencies" aren't really real... which honestly makes me cautious about approaching them.

Another big head scratcher for me is why the hell anyone thinks I was trying to sell Liberation Day in Japan? Why would the Japanese buy Liberation Day when the first two games aren't in Japanese? I got a JP cast because the MoA VAs couldn't come back so we were going to have to completely recast anyways, not because I wanted to sell the game in Japan lol.

The real things which contributed to the time crunch were actually conventions and Kickstarter deadlines. AX is the biggest trade show for visual novels, so you need to align your product release dates so that you can make the biggest announcements when AX hits. Second, if you have a Kickstarter, you have to deliver when promised or else your backers get angry real quick. In any matter, I don't think the production of Liberation Day was rushed or that we ran out of time. Sure, there's a time crunch, but all games have time crunches... It wasn't any worse than any of our other games, and a lot better than MoA.

Well, honestly I think one of the things that did us in was a huge misunderstanding during our beta test process.

I legitimately thought all this time that we were making an indie Japanese tactics RPG game with some VN elements. Basically, we spent the majority of our time analyzing the huge game play analysis write ups that our beta testers provided, and devising new units, strategies, items, and balance which will appeal to them. We didn't receive much feedback regarding the story during the beta test, certainly nothing on the level of Drath's gameplay analysis posts, so it never even occurred to us there were issues with the story. We heard some vague comments and grumblings from Marx, but we couldn't really figure out what he was alluding to.

We all liked J tactics games, so we thought this was cool, and put a lot of effort into making larger and larger battles with more and more unit types since that seemed to be what the testers cared about.

I was actually concerned there was too much story, because all the tactics RPGs I've played never took the player away from the game play as much as Liberation Day and made sure to breeze through the plot so that you could get back to the gameplay soon.



Likewise, I wasn't really concerned with the lack of choices, since most of the JRPGs I've played didn't have many meaningful choices and mostly had linear story lines.

I was shocked to discover on release day that people actually skipped most of the gameplay by playing on waifu mode, and breezed through the story in just 3-4 hours. Well, yeah, it's to be expected that the game would be short then, because you essentially took a tactics RPG, skipped all the tactics RPG, and just read the story.

It's a pretty stupid reason in hindsight, but this time I think it was just a dumb misunderstanding caused by a bad feedback loop between the developers and the beta testers where the testers talked 80% about the game play, and then the developers thought that people want 80% of the game to be about the battles and figured the story should just be short and to the point so that they can just go back to the battles.

It was a pretty costly mistake too because the game flopped, but I think we can survive. I really hope that next time, an entire product doesn't collapse just because of some dumb misunderstanding.

Corr you lot have been busy, thanks for getting your thoughts down people.

Something I just want to pick up on as a tester of betas 11/12 is this feedback loop that Samu-kun mentioned. The issue with story related feedback is that we were never given access to the full story (for obvious IP reasons) by the end of the beta program which meant it wouldn't be productive to analyse it until we have seen the whole thing (either through a final beta release or the full game prior to launch) as betas are subject to change in nature. Moving forward either more of the story needs to be reflected in the betas (scripts, documentation, full story for the entry prior to release) or you need to pick out external personnel to read and feedback on your ideas - Not saying this is what has to be done but more taken into consideration if you do want to pursue this more next time, otherwise betas will mostly feature technical feedback by default.

I would say that after having some time to think about the story of Liberation Day I think the most glaring issue seems to be that it is written with future installments in mind so while the player will play through and think of the experience so far, the development team and writers think of the full written experience where they have access to information we do not know yet. This is something I do not really know how to fix because while it is essential to know where your story is going it is always essential to scale the writing for each new addition so that they flow from A -> B -> C rather than A -> C, it is more a writing skill rather than that which can be actively described.

Personally I enjoyed Liberation Day, sure there are areas that can be improved on and I hope this feedback will help LiS grow but I don't feel it deserves the beatings it is currently getting on Steam. I shall eagerly await to see what you have in mind for V2.00.

On why I didn't submit much input storywise:

I'm primarily a turn based fan as I've stated on many occasions and that's still what I feel most strongly about and what I feel most qualified to do (as I've been a tester for HoMM5 and ToEE and my main role then was also on balance and bugfixing). So yes, as a result most of my feedback is on gameplay. It's not that I don't care about the story or the characters. I've said before I enjoyed Ava-Kayto's flashbacks and that it really touched me. I also really like how Ongess was written/handled. I can tell you when I found out that basically
at the end of Liberation Day with no way out of it, saw the bad Steam reviews and then saw Vaen's post on forums mentioning me, I honestly broke down and wept because I felt like a goddamn failure; failure to do anything that mattered at all in-game, failure as a tester and in no way a hero. Laugh at me all you will but that's how invested I was.

I did say that you should have lengthened the game when I realized that beta 11 was the 2nd last beta. However I prefer to leave story comments to VN fans as:
1)I might not understand the VN market well enough, so my suggestions might actually be counterproductive and I don't want to give stupid suggestions that might jeopardize your work
2)Story is a subjective thing. Different people prefer different styles of writing. It really depends on who you're trying to reach.

By beta 12, I was too caught up fixing bugs and going through game mechanics to even pay much attention to story. You know the deal. 2+ weeks of testing, going through bug after bug after bug, looking at various new features and 5 patches, which is honestly the craziest beta testing schedule I've done. I came home from work every day and plonked my butt down in front of the computer trying to help iron things out. 85 threads and 400+ posts say we weren't idle. Mostly input was from Magpie, but Histidine, Marx, truebeliever, bailong, saotome, stevethepi and myself, amongst others all helped out too. In other words, I was too distracted to focus on story (Feb was also a very busy month for myself) and the real bomb which was the ending was NEVER seen by any tester.


But as you ARE asking about story input, I will try to write what I personally feel now. Again I submit this with the disclaimer that I DO NOT know if this is truly what all VN fans want (I cannot speak for them AT ALL). It is only what I as a reader would like to see. If this isn't appealing to you or to others, kindly ignore everything below.


You said before you wanted to keep the ratio between VN segments and battles fairly even. I think that's a good balance actually. I thought you had that in mind all along.
Have a strong storyline with MULTIPLE branching options, some trivial stuff on exploring the ship and chatting to various crew members as before, maybe some simple puzzles even (do have a look at my mod, but don't make it that difficult lol, it's too complicated if it stumps a Physics masters student ) and have romance (seems like that's what a lot of people want). I've seen you do romances before in Sunrider Academy and I'm confident you can pull it off. Most importantly you MUST make sure that whatever option is picked, there is immediate and strong feedback on the consequences. Subtle might have been ok in the past, but right now we're in damage control mode so please make it as blatant and as obvious as possible.

1)have decisions that entail CP again (the only significant decision in the past was the Legion). Expecting at least 5 decisions that use CP for a game. Squeeze that in, wherever it may be.
2)have options that only come available with a certain level of affection being reached. Personal quests for characters. I'm sure you've played RPGs with those.
3)have your morality axis affect how others perceive Kayto and his interactions with them. Will Kayto be known as someone who does what's right? Or someone who would sacrifice anything to achieve his goals? This should be reflected in conversations and result in different further options (maybe being able to get closer with the Union or Alliance).


If you've played Choose Your Own Adventure books or the more advanced ones called Gamebooks (Lone Wolf, Way of the Tiger, Blood Sword, etc) you'll know that these emphasize having the reader be an integral part of the story, making choices and seeing how they turn out. The appeal of these, besides having a good combat system was always the thrill of adventure and feeling of being in control of your own destiny. Of course later on, many RPGs refined this. Pillars of Eternity is a shining example of choice and consequence and freeform exploration.
When you railroad the plot into total, complete and irredeemable failure, you convey a sense of helplessness to your audience. You convey the message that all that they did before didn't matter. The slate is wiped clean and you're starting with a set of new heroes after this one. Yes I'm probably wrong to think so after reading your words later (but the explanation for how and why they survived better be 200% logical and 1000% acceptable, or you really would be better off just leaving them
- also bear in mind what is acceptable reason to you may NOT necessarily be acceptable to others). Also if there had not been such a commotion on Steam, did you really honestly think it would have been acceptable to leave everyone's fate unknown till 1-2 years later. Most people would have lost interest by then.


Unfulfilled Kickstarter goals after 3 games:
New Game+
Character Epilogues (I know this will be done later... but your initial promise was all done in 3 games)
Explore and Trade (this is a BIG one)
Faction Influence (another BIG one)
All Hail the Emperor (I know this will be done later... but your initial promise was all done in 3 games)

Yes you delivered the trilogy, but it was not a complete saga, and you did not fulfill all stretch goals.


Anyway at the end of it all, I just want to say that despite whatever dissatisfaction I have, I will endeavor to stand with you all. But please make it easier for the testers to defend you. Let's just try to move forward and salvage what we can, together, as I do feel you have good ideas, you build up emotion really well and provide keen balance to battles, Vaen is a great coder and I want to see you all grow as a game company.

I've probably said too much, too bluntly... If you were offended, I apologize, but at this point, I'm past caring about sugar coating my thoughts.


P/S - btw, this is the best Steam review IMHO: steamcommunity.com/id/Negatist/recommended/358750/
And yes I know Mirilene more or less said the same as well lol

Spot on from Drath, we want to defend you and help break down decisions to consumers where appropriate but the ball is in your court now to decide how the next chapter will play out. Getting through this in a positive manner and taking into account how people feel will allow the company and the community to grow. You have such a brilliant range of team members and personalities on board as well as an interesting product, I know you will pull through and deliver.

I want to stress though Drath that at least tester to tester you have in no way being a failure and without your gameplay inputs there was the potential for much more negative reviews, heck you were the one who previously inspired me to try harder with my flaggings.

I say this for all the testing team, when we came together we each put forward something that made the product that little stronger and that little better, remember that even though release has been a little shaky that we have all achieved through playing a part in its creation - take pride in that. Honestly it's been one of the more enjoyable projects I have committed to and I hope we can all continue working together for future ones.

Forgot to mention this earlier, but: if we gave the same kind of feedback we do for story as we do for gameplay issues, it risks ending in a story that literally got "written by committee."
(some might also describe such things in terms of interfering with the creator's ARTISTIC VISION™, but I have got no use for people treating the vision as sacrosanct)


Wait, that was the intended reaction of the LD ending (especially for what is functionally a season finale)? Damn, I've been mentally placing Sunrider in the wrong genre all this while...

(I haven't watched any mecha anime. Don't watch much anime in general)


My theory is falsified...

I'm a JP VN lover myself, been reading a lot of JP VNs for years now, I'm currently an editor for a fan-translation group that is now working on translating 2 JP VNs into EN that Sekai Project is planning to localize to the West soon, and I've also written a fanfic or two. So, speaking from the POV of a VN lover here (or just me perhaps), your suggestions for the story are actually really good. I approve!

Then again, I'm also under the assumption that possibly half of Sunrider's fans aren't really acclimated to JP writing style of VNs, so looking at it from a Western standpoint, your suggestions are still solid, for me at least.

samu-kun, i think you make only two failure except ending cliffhanger(or publicity of 4th sunrider)...

1.) less time of overall game length that regardless player uses waifu mode.
90% of problems point are branch of this.
Dissatisfaction with the linear plot, japanese VAs (i enjoyed it, that is not best but feel enough good), no choice.... etc
They did not actually important. users are only seeking reason of game length is shortened.
many players want to at least 15~20 hour experience to $25 game.
that is seem to greedy from japanese(i am japanese and price of the game is generally more expensive), and LD is no problem for me.
however many english users is not.
and if player believe it is stratgy game. only 10 map with no skrmish is terrible.

2.) less hentai, ecchi.
perhaps you know. and unfortunaly chigara isn't popular character... (i like she
I'm sure if this time's forced romance is sola or something popular character. peoples excite.


samu-kun, you made sunrider academy.
that have enough (in fact, it is not seem to enough from japanese. however not bad) game volume and experience except replay the game.
(club management game is too long after common route. it need to extended common route or make short of after common route length. only lengths and It should never be shrink text volume)
peoples minimum required of that game volume and experience.


and last one.
beta tester are only beta testers.
perhaps they don't request plot change, extend plots, make new battles, and more...
anyway, they can't request to change base structure of the game itself.

What gets me is you say you thought you were making a tactics JRPG...but your patreon page literally says copy and pasted word for word "Love in Space is creating Visual novels" I mean how can you not expect some hatred that you designed your game to be a JRPG. Also in my entire life of very extensive experience ive never come across a game RPG, FPS, VN , tactics, or any other game that had too much story. I dont wanna see you guys flop I love sunrider, its just that MOA/FA are short but nobody really cares cause they are free and full of choices. Then you release LD for an actual price tag and its short of course people are gonna be upset why wouldn't they be. Ive played several VNs in my life and they usually take me days to finish easily 30+ hours some of these cost only slightly more than LD. way less if you consider i funded close to 200 dollars on patreon so to get a game i beat in 4.2 hours it was basically a slap in the face.