My brother and I were '
cuates' - Spanish word for, erh, "twins" who are of opposite gender. I don't know what's the word for that in English, sorry.
Back to the point, we both loved board games. As small children we used to spent a lot of time playing, you know, RISK, Monopoly and a game called 'Tourist'. When we grew older our likings on those board games changed, though not at all - we began playing Merchants & Marauders, Settlers of Catan and many others, but specially we loved Wargames since the moment we discovered them because those were the ones we thought were just the best. We even joined a Wargaming group, and proposed once to try Brytenwalda's Wargame out. It was pretty cool, by the way.
Our love for such games which contained an immense quantity of strategy and action and adventure became so big that we both decided to give it a go on creating boardgames and Wargames of our own. We sure noticed it would not be an easy task, and so we began 'Modding' the one and only game for us of all time: RISK. We searched on the Internet for variants to the rules and we changed some of them; we also draw a lot of pictures and illustrations, and even began taking a little course of how to make small plastic figures at home; we did a hell of a research over the years taking every single piece of information with us... Our proyect took 3 years to complete. Damn 3 freaking years. My brother was very proud of our work, and so was I, when it ended up being a RISK + Empire TW + Wargaming + D&D + Monopoly beast.
But well, what does this have to do with your Mod, Gabrilduro?
You have been saying a lot of times that you (and your team; but specially
you) have worked very hard to create this Mod for free, and that it kinda lets you down -that you feel dissapointed, exhausted; that you don't feel motivated to continue- when you recieve a "bad" review from another community member. "Bad" between quotation marks because, from my point of view, every comment which points out a big or small flaw out here is just taken as "comments based on nonsese", calling the speakers "haters" or "trolls".
Now I'd like to emphasize what you've said: not feeling motivated to continue.
Going back again to the story of my brother and I, I can tell you that him, you and me are pretty similar: we're 'Mod' makers; you make Mods for M&B while we did the same for a board game. Practically the same, really. Now, we also felt like you did: sometimes we didn't want to continue our work because, like you, we did not feel motivated (because we were lazy as ****) or because we found a big problem we thought we couldn't solve out. Also, not a single time our relatives praised our work, but instead told us we were just "wasting our time", and that we "were old enough to leave games like those behind and find a (********) job or smoething else". We heard that kind of comments almost everyday, spcially from our parents, instead of the kind of comments some of your followers have expressed liking your work and such.
However, our love for this little hobby saved us and our proyect many times. I talked to my brother many times telling him we couldn't just give up and leave our proyect half-finished. We felt the same way, and everytime we thought we could not continue, for this or that reason, we told ourselves: "Well, **** everyone! We're gonna finish this and play it, even if it's only us who do".
We didn't give up, despite of the aforementioned nor despite my brother's disease, and I didn't stop when he left. At tthat moment I felt terrible and threw everything away. That was a hard blow, and I never thought I'd be working on our proyect again, like, ever.
Nonetheless I am. And that's for two reasons: one, my brother's "we did a fine game, *****"; and two, my love for board games.
That's my point here, and I'm sorry for making this such a long text: if you really love your work, the only motivation you need to continue is
that, and no more.
You don't need to ask for your followers to praise your work everytime, nor ask them to give your work a high rate on thir or that page.
If you really love your work, if you have passion, you'd continue despite whatever happens, that being either trolls or haters or whatever.
That's what I did, and what my brother would've done and told you if he was still around.
I must clarify I don't hate your work, nor you, nor any of your team members.
I really liked 1755OF, though I would've liked to see more varied American Indian tribes, and maybe a few tweaks here and there. I also liked 1776AR, but felt something was missing. And when I played 1860OA, it was clear to me that the Mod wasn't really worked on - not as the ones before.
I understand: you might not have had the time to work on your latest Mods as when you did when yu released the first, and that you could've experienced some problems which held your work back. I know, because it also happened to my brother and I; with school and parents and a lot of things going around which made it very difficult for us to work.
But I repeat, if you really loved your work and did not worry about anything else (ego, trolls, etc.), you could've achieved anything you wanted and not leave things as they are right now.
Take this as a tip from one Modder to other - that's the intention.
Thanks for taking your time to read my wall of text.
And sorry for the foul language!
