Important: Pausing June Billing + Other Concerns

Hey, all. Less fun post this time but it's important so I'd appreciate taking the time to read it.

First off, I will be Pausing June's billing tomorrow. I know I said I wasn't planning to and I do feel I could get two months of content done in the coming weeks but... it's probably not wise lol. Especially since I'll actually be losing some time soon to a family event. So June will effectively be May and hopefully it's the last time a month gets cancelled for a while. I'll refund any old patrons who get charged on the first days of June but any recent newcomers I'll assume were supporting for the old/May content. I'm hoping that'll be fair!

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Moving on, I've gotten some concerns/complaints about the polls. Namely, characters not having a fair shot/being put up against much more popular characters. That was my bad with Mythra but I do want to stress this was only happening as I naively considered everyone as having a fair chance just by being in the poll. I simply wasn't considering character popularity because of this. As an example, here is how the May General Poll was decided:

Returning from April poll (character who received a lot of votes): Brighid, Scarlett, Franziska

My pick (character I personally have an interest in drawing but otherwise wouldn't find the time): Momiji

Random from patron suggestions: Selphie, Mythra

So... blame me for not thinking about the fairness of the polls but I do want to show I wasn't setting up bad match ups on purpose lol

Looking for solutions I feel I do need to preface this with the fact that ultimately I can't please everyone and there will be patrons who decide the subscription isn't worth it one way or another. That can't be completely avoided but I can at least try to mitigate issues as they come up. Given that, here's a few ideas I am thinking about to improve the upcoming months:

1a - CATEGORY CHANGE

The first main change will be to change the categories from Persona and General to General A and General B and Persona A and Persona B. Though perhaps Persona having multiple categories is a bit much...

Polls will move to google forms under this change as Patreon polls are clunky and are too much to manage given the higher tiers getting 2 votes.

Anyway, the goal of this change should be clear: doubling the amount of winners per month means more characters get art. Simple.

The A categories would be for the popular characters. The heavy hitters. Or in Persona's case, the main cast.

The B categories would be for less popular or minor characters.

I'll do my best to gauge where characters stand and may ask the Discord for their thoughts on upcoming polls before posting them officially.

Here's an example on how the polls could look:

General Poll A: Mythra, 2B, Tifa Lockhart, Morrigan, Nami, Samus

General Poll B: Kat, Brighid, Katalina, Franziska, Scarlett, Selphie

Persona Poll A: Haru, Chie, Makoto, Naoto, Ann, Fuuka

Persona Poll B: Kanami, Chihiro, Hifumi, Yuko, Lisa (P2), Labrys

These are just ideas but I think polls like these would be fairer than the last few that have gone up. Tifa, of course, would probably have an advantage in any poll but at least her opponents here would all be in the same ballpark. It's just an example anyway, Tifa has already won... I talk about that more below though

There is perhaps a few glaring issue with this. For one, the Persona A poll is very limited. Going with main casts there's what... 12 possible girls? A few more if include fanart favourites but... Margaret, Elizabeth, Sae and Kawakami have all won already. Of course the polls could retread but I imagine that'd quickly prove more annoying.

The second issue is that unchanged, this would double my workload which honestly isn't feasible right now. This leads to...

1b - Getting rid of the A/B Format

Unfortunately, if I make a big change then something else has to give. So, while there will be more winners, each will get just one main artwork. To be honest, I've been considering this anyways as I feel the A/B format has... sometimes worked but other times not so much. Not everyone will agree but I feel spreading the art out to more characters will make everyone happier as far as the polls go.

That said, I still don't want each character to be "one and done". I'll make a point to draw each more than once... it's just they'll each get one full artwork with everything that entails.

2 - Consolation Sketches for Close Races

Going forward, I'll try my best to fit in sketches for characters who barely lose in a poll. Said characters will always be put into the next poll but I understand it still sucks if it feels like a character barely missed out. I know this isn't a perfect solution but it's the best I can do really. At the end of the day these are popularity polls and sometimes a character just won't win.

3 - Bonus Polls (Time Permitting)

It's been about a year for this patreon and some of you who have known me for a while probably have realized one thing about the polls: no Rise. Hopefully it's clear why that hasn't seemed like a good idea haha. That said, you could still argue she's missing out on the type of art the Patreon brings. So I'm considering, when I have time, to introduce new polls to vote on characters I already draw a lot or are generally popular. These will probably be more specific that the regular polls.

Ex Poll: Summer Rise, Cowgirl Tifa, Yasogami Mitsuru, Kaine eating wonderbread, etc.

I'm not going to go and make a poll for every artwork I do but here and there it might help patrons feel more involved.

4 - Exclusive Content

This one is mostly for the Super Number Fan members which I'll call Tier 2 for simplicity. Originally, when B pieces were introduced they were patreon exclusive and only Tier 2 members got alts. Around December, B pieces started getting posted publicly and thus the alts were made available for all patrons. Since then, NSFW content was meant to become the distinction between the tiers but I don't draw a whole lot of it and I like showing it on my NSFW twitter when I do lol...

Thus, the tier has become a bit of a de facto tip jar and not much else. I think a lot of people are perfectly fine using Patreon like this but it's not what I intended for the tier so going forward I pledge to:

a) Make all NSFW content visible early for Tier 2 patrons. This won't be a huge timeframe, say 1-2 weeks, but enough to feel you're getting early access

b) Get more Tier 2 exclusive content done. You've seen this a bit already with Lili and Yukari but it'll hopefully develop further.

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Ok, so that's it for the wall of text... sorry about that. I'll finish with asking that if you have any concerns or criticisms, feel free to contact me in whichever way to feel most comfortable. I'm going to assume things are alright unless I'm explicitly told because I worry much more about the art side rather than the business side. At the very least I'll listen to what you have to say.

~84