You could alternate between preset options and free votes for each story, or each page. Up to you though.

yeah i agree both has their good points :3

I really don't want to give preset options, those tend to be too leading >_<

also it forces me to come up with different viable options XD

Ok.
Though i do notice that many people go right for" Put your supple hole on daddy's long meat...blah blah blah" From the first panel, not even waiting for a story to appear.

yes, but funnily, it didn't win XD

Anyhow, I have seen many people wants preset options. I will have to give it some thought

Well I say got with both. If no one has a complete idea go with things as they are.

I think it would be kind of neat if you provide a number of options that each could drive the story in different directions. Say 3-5 different options for actions that people can vote on. Something like that would still have user input, but also allow you to guide the story in ways you would like it to go while allowing people multiple options to express what they want to do.

I feel that would be more limiting than me picking one suggestion. The other option someone said is to have a selected group of guys make up the options and the rest vote. I'm not really into that either XD

Hmm, I think even if you went the route of picking suggestions all of the "thises" would still make it similar to voting as the more thises there are the less unique options given by people for you to choose from. :x

I will have to give thought to this.

I agree with stuart
For exploring i think it should be free but with everything else like talking to people it should be options

As per general idea i'd let the people offer suggestions and you pick them,but page by page should be controlled by the creator. My humble opinion of course.

So far it's all made by public vote. I want the input that makes the story change and evolve.

I say let people vote on "types" of options that you have ideas for, and then you guide the story the way you want based on the chosen type option type. Give us the options for actions like "silly", "aggressive", "sentimental", "sensible", "lack of common sense", and when one of those is voted upon, you guide the story in the voted direction with your own details and stuff.

That or have you choose the best suggestion out of all the ones we suggest. We could keep going with the current method too, but I wanna see what you'd like to do with the stories. >.>

Part of my fun doing these stories is me having to adapt them to your votes, so me picking the options you can vote feels against it. Weird thing is, this is what so far everyone is saying, so I will have to give it some thought

It might be that everyone's saying this because we all remember the "piss in pot" scenario. XD

Well, in retrospective, it was really out of place, but we survived it. XD

I just read through other people's comments, and I kinda like Stuart and dogman1040's ideas.

So feel free to ignore my first paragraph-thing up there.

We give you options, you pick what you think would be best for this story. After all the times you've let US choose I think that would be fair. You throw out stupid ideas like "pee in pot". Drama llamas whining about not having the freedom to vote and/or didn't like that their option was not chosen should remember that this is free entertainment and they should be blocked.

I wouldn't mind being surprised by a choice of yours. Heck, we might really like it!

Like a game-novel? would work =P

Honestly, I'd pref if you just picked them. You give us MORE than enough freedom with each page :3

Plus, in all honesty, I didn't care too much for Monster Forge :/ (I did enjoy some parts, but overall, I just felt kinda meh about it ><)

Probably because in each battle, we had the freedom to choose from 3 cards, and almost ALWAYS 99% of everyone had chosen "the one card we should play" :/

The next time I try to emulate a card-game like something, I will think long and hard on the mechanic. I did enjoy the fact of drawing hot hot wrestling. XD

I think we all enjoyed you drawing the hot hot wrestling

Well I mean, I liked the story, I just disliked the lack of freedom (we can only choose card a b or c, we can only choose a few sex things to do). There just wasn't too much freedom :/

hence me having to rethink the mechanics to enforce more options but making the rules simple and fair

=p

I wouldn't mind trying again a few games down the road, now that we know about things like 'you can talk in monster form' and 'Caesar will let us seduce the opponent'

hehehe

well, I try to be open minded here, as I said more than once; If I plan to enforce my POV, I would be better doing a story with no voting involved XD

I like it when we choose but i wouldn't mind you choosing them.

I like the current system, but agree with Polar about this last story. I like that things can go in completely random directions, but this time people didn't do anything remotely unpredictable.

Okay, a few things. Long post ahead.

On the topic at hand, just combine the two. Come up with three preset options, and one "Other", in which case the reader comes up with something. And whatever gets the most votes wins. Simple, easy, effective. As long as the preset options are something that the readers would think to do as well, to avoid every single person choosing "Other".

On another note though, while I'm here, I think it'd be better if there was a bit more sex. Just a bit; I mean, I love the balance between drama, action and sexy in your stories, but considering what these Interactive works are made for, at a certain point you just go, "Okay, can we get to the sex part already?". I'm mostly talking about a Simple Story here, but Monster Forge did it a bit too. Waiting 50 pages for something to happen, with one page a night... Yeah. It gets boring, in terms of sexy. Not to imply I don't love these things, and not that there's plenty of sex already! I just think that you should either post more often to get things going, or try to make it a bit more interesting in terms of what 'the story's all about', you know what I mean?

One last thing, before I go: I like user choice, but having us decide every little thing's a bit... Tedious. A lot of times, it's not too bad- but with prompts like "Oh, you should go see your father, he has something for you" and then asking "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO NEXT?"... Yeah. To make the story go faster for everyone's sake, it might be better to make the really obvious decisions yourself.

All right, I think that's it. Love the Interactive Fictions, love your art, love you. If this sounds like complete drivel, you don't need to bother replying.

First of all, I love that the guy right next to your comment asks for less sex XD

Now, let's tackle this part by part:

The me giving options is showing to be the most popular vote so far. I always avoided this because:
a) it's easier - I don't have to come up with options -
b) I want you guys to come up with the original stuff I didn't think about. Me having to change what I had planned to accommodate to the votes is what keeps this game fresh for me to do every day.
But with so many votes, I think I will have to review my opinions and maybe give it a try.

Now about the sex. Simple Story was -in my mind- meant to have on page 5 a big daddy donkey raping the shit out of FJ. It's called "A Simple Story" because that's what I had in mind, something quick and dirty to play around with the people that felt left out of the Monster Forge game. If sex delayed is because the votes didn't go for sex, and I decided for good or bad to let you guys take the sex initiative. (Fun side note, now that Fred takes the initiative, sending him to sleep won over sex). I know what you mean that the waiting can become dull. I was surprised that sex got so delayed, and that even if some complained about the drama, the big votes went to pushing it more. (Heck, if I hadn't decided to have Gruff beg for cock, I'd probably still be drawing rimming) XD

And now, the last part: I know, sometimes I finish a page and I'm like "Well, not many choices here". I know it can be tedious, but I don't have the time to draw 2 or 3 pages of the same comic and post them one after the other.
As you said, waiting a day for every action can be boring, but if on top of that, you found out the page doesn't leave room for at least some little action, I think it would be worst.

Again, I can't post more often, because sadly, I don't live off my art yet, and I can't go drawing this at work, so I can't update it every 8 hours. If/When I find a way to live off commissions and making porn products, I might have the chance to give more time to this.

Thanks for the support and the fact that you care enough to give me your honest opinion.

lol, I was one of the few who actually voted for the donkey wincest... hell I think mine was the first vote/sugestion for voting for that one...

Should be based on Morality rather based on the perverts who constantly vote for the character to be gay and be a submissive bottom.

It would not only work better for a story but be more respectable.

Or just choose the top 2 and blend them a bit, to add morals and to add what people want.

I don't think it's perverted for the character to be gay, submissive or bottom.

According to your page you belong to a BisexualFurs group, so I think you at least agree that sexual preference is independent from perversion.

Being submissive is an acceptable trait for any character. Most classic fairy tales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty have main characters that have submissive written all over themselves.

As for morality, well. morals is about the capacity of someone to differentiate good from evil; and the meaning of good, evil and what morality covers or not is highly dependent on culture and society.

I don't believe sex by itself to belong to any side of morality. Sex is not good or evil. Cheating is evil, but not sex by itself.

I also believe that you can tell a story with or without sex. And that sex doesn't need to take away from it.

I am really hard trying to view this without thinking you are calling gay perverts, non respectable and immoral.

To be honest, I really don't mind either way. Because either way, we get a story started, yes? So whether you pick a bunch of pre-selected options or we the readers choose, we'll definitely end up with a story. So I'll put in my vote for "Indifferent".

Can't you just take suggestions from users, and then pick the ones you think are best and then make a poll? That way you can hand-pick without <i>feeling</i> like you're actually hand-picking. :3

Thought the idea is great, it has one big flaw.

Time.

Making people vote, then picking by myself then making a poll will have time issues:

1) Makes you guys vote twice for the same page.

2) Makes me set up a poll and link you guys to it

3) Makes each comic take 2 days, 1 for the voting, 1 for the poll.

This is the main reason why the vote system is with you guys commenting on each other. Otherwise it would be a great idea.

Even though, I really appreciate you gave thought to this. Thanks

.........

I thought this whole issue was with the selection of the next IF's starting point.



disregard me, I suck cocks

huh, I was JUST thinking about doing poll, yet I have a slightly more handy solution... might fix some problems but cause some others... instead of YOU picking things up, why not make it a race? pick only the 5 first actuall votes more or less, then make a poll with those (polls are not hard to make, really) it already is kinda a race to post first, the first votes are more likely to get voted, instead of maybe better thought and more appealing votes that will be post later... this will give some order to it, and, you know, lots of people do that to give free art and stuff, first post first served and all... then edit the comment on the pic to include the poll link...

fuck, what would I give for edit comment options... anyways, this will totally fix that problem I saw in some pages in wich, even tho one of the votes got more voting that others, it didn't win for some reason... sometimes this happen cause other people won't vote over some other guy's comment but instead will make his own comment saying the same thing some other guy said a couple of comments (or maybe a lot) before him... make this a contest, other artists do that kind of thing, like "first to post a pic of my homepage reaching XXXX pageviews, will get some free art" this is free art, requested by voters!

I say that you pick what you want to do, since you'll be the one drawing if. I'm sure we'd be willing to give suggestions, though. : P

Both ways have their merits. I actually like the vote system, though there are times when I want to strangle some people (Who are getting noticed!). I would say, stick with votes, with the option of hand picking things. Perhaps have a counter, and say "I will pick by votes, but have 5 times where I can override those votes and choose something myself."?

Voting has the advantage of simply showing you what most people think should happen. But if there's one that you think is a good idea that you want to go with, I say go for it. Let votes matter, but not decide, as it were.

I quite agree. At times the votes are quite good, but occasionally I would prefer if you vetoed some really dumb suggestions and go for the second most popular choice (or made up your own). I have run some RPGs and I know how much work can go into them, having to think up 3 or so options every day would get tiresome very quickly. The "theme" choices, where you just put out some emotions (silly, serious, perverted) might be a good compromise.

The major flaw with the voting system in place now, as I'm sure has been pointed out, is that whoever comments first or second is most likely to have the winning suggestion, just because once those ideas gain some traction, it becomes difficult to find other competing ideas due to the long string of nested replies. Also, a comment submitted late in the day has almost no chance of winning the popularity vote, even if it's a great idea, because no one will ever read it. So I strongly support a new direction.

But I agree with you on the flaws in what's been suggested so far. If you pick the multiple choice options for us to vote on, or pick the "best" suggestion from the pool of submissions regardless of popularity, we're not really driving the story (which from the sound of it, takes out some of the fun and challenge for you) and if you choose a suggestion at randomly, things might get out of control if people submit random bullshit.

So here's a slightly different proposal. I think it would require a two-day cycle instead of a one-day cycle because of the way I've structured user input, and because I suspect most FA users log in just once a day (though you could poll your watchers to find out if that's true or not.) Here's how it would work: before the story begins, you ask your watchers to "sign up" if they want the chance to contribute. On day one of the cycle, you draw the next page and write the story up to that point, and leave a big blank area for multiple choice. You then choose 3 users at random from those who enlisted. These users become The Chosen. You would send them a note to let them know they've been selected, and they would reply with their suggestion for the multiple choice. Give them a deadline to respond, and if they miss it, they miss their chance.

On day two of the cycle, you revise the page to include the multiple choice suggested by The Chosen. You then open voting to everyone, and everyone may ONLY vote for one of the multiple choice options presented to them. The Chosen may also vote, with the same restrictions in mind, either to influence the vote their way, or maybe because after seeing the multiple choice, they may change their minds and want to vote for someone else's suggestion instead.

The next day is day one of the cycle again. You would tabulate the votes, draw the next page and repeat until the conclusion.

Because The Chosen would be constantly changing, so would the types of options that are available to us (at least, so I think.) And that means unpredictability. As an option, you could include yourself among The Chosen, either routinely or as needed or desired, submit your own idea, and not tell anyone whose ideas are whose. If you did this, you wouldn't be driving the story any more than the rest of us since your choice could be outvoted the same as any other choice.

There are still a few flaws to this model, but they're all easily remedied I think:

(1) It doesn't give you an excuse to draw every day. But for all I know, maybe you'd appreciate the break. If not, you could always draw something unrelated to the story on off days, or you could run two separate stories concurrently but give the art in each one your full attention since you'd draw them on alternating days.

(2) The Chosen submit ideas so similar to each other that the multiple choice doesn't appear to offer choice at all. That's your discretion, of course. If two ideas are the same, you'd simply have two choices instead of three, and if all three are the same, that option wins by default. If this happens a lot, you could increase the number of readers in The Chosen to 4 or 5.

(3) The Chosen fail to respond in time. If just one fails to respond, you still have two options to offer your readers. If two fail to respond, the singular response wins by default. If none respond at all, you'd either have to write the next page without user input, or put the story on hold for another day to select a new group of contributors. This could cause problems if you're running two stories concurrently as mentioned before, but you could solve that by putting it on hold for two days, or if you're submitting ideas too, as mentioned earlier, your idea simply wins by default.

As you mentioned, the flaw that actually worries me, is losing the 1-day cycle.

This comics are born from (among other things) me forcing myself to draw every day.

But also, the problem is that the story goes slow already. If I had the time, I would be doing this 2-3 times a day. I tried to, and I failed at it with work and life on the middle. 1 page a day is already slow for me, and if I went to 1 page every two days, well, stuff would get really slow.
This is sadly (so far) non negotiable. I would rather give the options myself and let people pick from mine and add their own suggestions, or leave the system untouched than go for a 2-day-cycle.

Nevertheless, I really really appreciate you took the time to come up and detail this system, and to think it through and how to strengthen it's flaws. I really do.

The Chosen idea is interesting too, and I will have to give it thought.

Again, thanks for caring :3

You should form an Electoral College which will decide what the best options are. People can apply and must be nominated and voted for based off their previous suggestions (not just based off of amount of votes for each opinion, but how intelligent, persuasive and generally good the idea is, especially if it comes into play and should have been followed earlier on but did not get majority vote ).
Of course, you can appoint people to the EC at any time, and can take people off the EC if they suck. There should be like five to ten people on the EC maximum, and each will put forth an opinion and the EC will vote on the best one.


...Of course, this is probably far too complicated for furry porn.

The main problem about an EC is that they have to be quick and ready.
So people has time to vote.

This would make people to be ready to vote when the page is out so others can vote as well.

Thanks for the idea, I will give this one some thought too.

I say, on the next one, you should exercise your personal opinion on best suggestion more. Maybe take the voting as advice, but advice you can freely ignore if you think a better option has been presented.

If we don't like it, switch back next time. If we do like it, then success.


(Personally, after Monster Forge, but before the next game, I'd like to see you do some pin-up sketches of your favorite monster suggestions that didn't make it to the game. I'm curious about your personal favorites )

This is interesting too :D

I'd say stick to the current system, but if you spot an idea that is just brilliant, yet didn't get as many votes, pick it for the awesome at your discretion.

Merge pages that only leave absurdly obvious choices (where you just know everyone will do just -that-).

And as suggested by the very first guy who commented here, if really necessary for a certain page, provide X preset choices.

I think you should give it a try and pick the best suggestion in the next interactive fiction :3

Hmm... perhaps choosing between both strategies would be nice. So, the stupid actions can be explained by a majority of votes, while the witty ones won't be overlooked, too!

Keep the open-endedness of suggestions in comments, but you pick which wins.

Maybe you want to decide most turns on number of votes, and that is fine, but if you want to decided one turn based on awesomeness that is fine too. It is your game after all and there is no law which says you have to be consistent. Just make it clear the artist's decision is final.

i vote you pick it will keep us from pissing in pots of soup again

I don't think someone said this specifically, so if they did my apologies: how about you choose, not counting votes but whichever feels the most creative or well thought out? Something that I always felt (so far) was that I'd get here when the next page had been up for hours already, and so there were a bunch of "^^this!" votes for things that I might not really agree with. Depending on how long it takes you to draw a page, you might already be done with it by the time I'd see it and make a suggestion. I ended up trying to every day if I had some clear path writing as detailed an action as I could think of, and may be just my imagination but it seemed that you did a couple of them.

I had thought a few weeks ago that if you had 3-4 options of which way the page could go and made us choose that it'd help with that, since the ^^THIS's would be everybody's contribution. However, I realized (seems confirmed above) that this would be a lot more work for you and maybe less fun. I remember you really being happy when we let the tentacle monster rape our clothes instead of taking the clues for the other way out, because you hadn't considered it.

Personally, I enjoyed the more story related ones over the card one. I don't think I commented ever on it, other than to say things like >SAVE DADDY. :D

also lol @ page 5 donkey daddy rape above.

I say we pull out options from a virtual hat.

> Read for Typos. None found




You should just take 4-5 of the ideas people leave that you like, then have a vote between them

just out of curiosity, why are you so into counting my typos? XD

Because its fun ^_^

for you :P

I actually had issues with someone that started to nitpick all my stories for grammar errors and would tally scores and be all "Congratulations, this page is the one with the biggest amount of mistakes yet!"

He managed singlehandedly that I would appreciate less people offering corrections XD

I hope that didn't come out in a bad way ¬ ¬

it's just that I got someone doing this to me in a hurtful way on purpose, and when another guy came to defend me, things got ugly and I ended up with a lot of insults on my pages >_>

So, I'm more touchy than before to typo criticism XD

How about "Suggested Options" and at certain time in the story, you have "Viewer Voting", like it is now. That way you won't have to deal with all of those different choices ALL of the time.... only sometimes....

How about selecting an outcome randomly like a raffle? People are free to vote for what they want or for someone else's idea, but the popular choice won't necessarily win. That way, if a lot of people vote for the same thing, it will increase the chances for that idea winning but there's always an opportunity one of the more independent ideas to win.

I think, if the new one is anything like the others(the non MF ones) You should give free choice, up to and including, the point where it starts dragging on, or gets TOO ridiculous

Hrm, You could liven it up by taking the first few suggestions and put them into an off-site poll -> http://twtpoll.com/

Also, that site does simple surveys... so you could have people respond without other people reading it.

Thanks for the site-link. If I go with polls, I might try it :D

I dunno, I'm not really creative at all, but how about a cross between a new and the old..
If you find something hilariously funny, you choose something that isn't the top voted.. Or you get an idea and say "screw you guys, I wanna do THIS"..

And... come down hard on us dorks that can't comment properly; only count the longest thread.. if 50 people say "DO THIS" in their own comments, but five people go "Do that" and make it a thread - you apply the vote of the longest thread.. or the thread with most votes.. since people have a tendency to go non-votey in threads..

Or just do something awesome! Cause that's how it's gonna end up ^.^

This is selfish of me, but I prefer it when we come up with the options.
(Mostly because my choices have been chosen, and that just leaves me tingly with self-importance)
Although it would be more structured if you picked, it would, by the mere fact that it's just one person coming up with it all, be marginally less creative.

But the system you've suggested, where you read through our comments and pick the 'best' suggestion, interests me.
Mainly because I'm very curious about what you idea of 'best' would be.

I think say You should pick your favourites. To my intense shock, I've started becoming more interested in the story of these than the sex. Sex is still super hot and fun, but their isn't quite the same amount of tension in the close race between suck or rim as there is in say Fighting Dad and deciding to attack or hear more about a brother.

Beyond that, interesting but well reasoned choices and dialogue usually get passed over in terms of votes becaause they're TL;DR and not at the top and stuff.

Popular vote is okay because if it were a pizza then we'd always be getting cheese, and thats decent everyone can like cheese.. BUT SOMETIMES PIZZAS SHOULD BE BACON, AND MANGO. and to do that sometimes you have to ignore a majority.


I dunno. These are always fun. I don't always vote but I always enjoy the results.

Wow, that's exactly what I thought!

I'm deciding for a compromise here.

Winning vote stays, but I will try to pay attention to the extra comments and use them more.

if you can hide the votes that would be great. my main complaint is the first few votes get all the "this"es so someone with a great idea who comes in late has no chance.

i would say We vote per usual, but you retain the option to over ride if you see something you like.

It would be dangerous, once a comment is hidden you need an admit to unhide it, so I could lose the vote count or something.

try this one picking the best and if we complain too much change it back

I would be happy with a list of choices to choose from, to be honest. I also feel the same as one comment from above that said that, after all the times that you have allowed the public to make the decisions, I (and others) would have nothing against any ideas that you yourself might have. If I was to throw in my two pennies, however...

A new city provides a new direction and way of life for a young student of the arts. In trying to find his way through the world he'll have a chance encounter with a capitalist mogul and, from there, a plot ensues.