Finding It Hard To Mod SOMA...

[WALP]

You know, I worked my ass off on Surface, it has monsters from Soma's beta content as well as Penumbra reworked and added in, incorporates a wide variety of new encounter styles, features a fun sci-fi story, open level format, and a dynamic soundtrack that I spent an immense amount of time coding and it's sitting at three stars on Steam right now, and a 6 on ModDB. And yet, I'm somehow finding myself spending this weekend working on a new custom story. Why? Why should I waste the time, the cynic in me says.

Well, because every once in a while, I go onto Youtube, and there's somebody playing through Surface, and they're excited, and they're smiling and saying it's awesome and fun, and that they're excited about where Soma modding's going. There is a receptive audience out there, a lot of people that want to see new, interesting experiences in Soma's engine, and if one is bubbling in your mind, than there'll be plenty of people who will be more than willing to play it. To be frank, while I do respect Fuga, it was a little too up-its-own-ass for me (no offense intended, WALP, ), but the screenshots for your stories all have me quite excited, along with the goofy voices, it looks like the kind of irreverent fun that's right up my alley. Sure, it can be disheartening to see the laziest mods on the most subscribed list, but that's how it was with Amnesia's first years too, but eventually, passionate stories will rise to the top.

none taken, and I get exactly what you mean by "up-its-own-ass".
Learned a shit ton of stuff from making FUGA, and if I get to finish something again, you will likely find it being a 180 from what FUGA was. Honestly I think most of the popularity that FUGA is getting simply comes from the fact that it is at least technically something complete, which there has really been a hunger for in the SOMA community.

For Surface I did not play it all through, simply because I found the encounters and difficulty of it frustrating and unfair, so I only got about 15-20 minutes in.
That, and the lack of voice acting probably made it look a little more amateurish despite the work behind the scenes, at least from my point of view. I suspect not everyone took the difficulty of the mod as nicely as I did, hence the down votes.

I am not saying you should have gone for a FUGA easy approach, but I think that if you want higher difficulty gameplay it also needs a good amount of testing, adapting based on testing and giving the player a fair presentation of/preparation for the challenge rather than pure trial and error (at least trial and error is not my cup of tea). Hence even though FUGA was too easy for the majority, I don't regret making it that way since I was not willing to put in the sheer amount of time testing and perfecting that would have required.