As I've continued writing Shapeshifter, I have only grown increasingly annoyed at my past chapters and the sheer lack of forethought (or proper thought in general) put into them. This has made trying to create a sensible/proper/realistic world increasingly hard, frustrating, and some times not fun. As such, I have decided to rewrite the story from scratch.
As such, I will now make sure I have a good chunk of the world and system developed enough before I really get the rewrite going (and don't make rash decisions about how the system works without considering the consequences just because something felt like a good idea). On the positive side, I already have a bunch of quite useful stuff made, which at least gives a good foundation, though a lot still needs to be changed. A few examples of this are:
- Using gods from actually mythology has been scrapped, and 110 gods have instead been made (mainly just their name, epithets, and domains, but more will gradually be added)
- Base stat gain has been removed from items and replaced with a more proper effect system.
- The shapeshifting skill is being given a complete rework to allow for it to be used in far more interesting ways (intended to tie into a number of plot lines).
You should also find that Frank hopefully acts more realistically (and intelligently), since it's easier to imagine how you'd explore a system that has been made, rather than explore one that's being actively made as you explore. If that makes any sense. I will also aim to actually have some plot lines and hopefully also character arcs in mind from the start or whenever characters I know will be important are introduced.
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The intent is for me to write all the way to chapter 8 before posting anything, after which the first five chapters will be posted. I will seek to keep three chapters in backlog at all times, such that I can edit them while writing the next chapters, hopefully helping everything to make more sense and flow better together. Until then, I will be posting the rewrite on my discord (https://discord.gg/T6sUE6Yz8C) where people are welcome to either give feedback or just read along.
I'm currently unsure if I'll be uploading it as a new story or if I'll be replacing the existing chapter with the rewrite. The pro for replacing the chapters here is the follower count. The pro for making a new story is it being a clean slate free of all reviews. I'm currently leaning towards making a new one, but I will be including a poll at the end for you guys to share what you'd prefer. If I do make it a new story, I will be keeping everything here up.
If the decision it to make a new story, I will be posting one final update here at that point to let anyone who still cares know.
Thank you guys for sticking with this mess of a story until now, and sorry to all those invested for dropping this version.