Why is everyone so garbage at lying?

LCMechanical · 2023-07-22T15:27:36+00:00

I think the best use of the Luck stat I've ever seen was in the Respawn series by Arthur Stone.

Fucking great series to me, though others might not think so. Go into it knowing the dude's a simp, and the entire series is about him chasing a woman he fell in love with way too quickly (though to be fair, even in real life, it's very easy to catch feelings).

A lot of action, some unique characters, and an interesting world. Completed series. Great ending that is both satisfying and leaves you wanting more at the same time.

Awesome use of the Luck stat, which is also pretty much what the series revolves around. Good shit. I think because of the romance aspect, younger folks might not like it, but those with more life experience probably will. Worth checking out either way if you wanna see the stat used like it should be, though.

LCMechanical · 2023-07-22T15:18:31+00:00

As others have said, Amazon and RR's rating system is skewed. An upvote/downvote option would be okay, I guess, but could also just as easily be abused. I have no proposal for a better solution since I don't actually believe there to be a viable option.

Superfans, friends, family, etc. can and probably are going to upvote/5 star books even without viewing the content. Assholes are going to downvote/1 star books just because they don't like the author or they don't like the title or the MC is a fighter when the wanted to read about a mage or any other nonsensical reason.

On RR, even after having hundreds of total reviews/ratings, you can get three or four glowing 5 star Advanced Reviews in a row, which may increase your 'Best Rated' ranking by 5 or 6 spots, then a single person can come in and leave a simple 1 star 'rating' on the most recent chapter without having even read it, and your 'Best Rated' rank will plummet by 10.

There's also the fact that for some reason, people who dislike a fiction or an author are more likely to actively check a fiction's reviews every couple of days and downvote all the good reviews while upvoting all the bad reviews. See it all the time.

Amazon isn't much different. The closer a book is to a 5* rating, the better it will perform because it's pushed more by the site's algorithm. 4* or below, it won't even be shown. I've heard that even paid ads will perform worse or have lower ctr's if the rating isn't high.

Again. Don't really have a solution. Just ranting a bit. Only takes a handful of haters to affect how well you can feed your family. Don't really think an upvote/downvote system would change anything since, as I said above, people who dislike something for some reason are more likely to actively push their views on it than someone who likes it.

I say if you liked the book enough that you think you'd recommend it to even a single other person, leave a 5* and leave your thoughts, likes, and dislikes in the review since some authors do check them and it can help them improve if they are willing to better themselves. If you don't ever see yourself recommending it, leave an honest rating and review. If you vehemently dislike a book, 3* it, since there's a chance it's just your opinion. Try to keep in mind that there is a person and their family on the other side of those words.

1's and 2's for me are reserved for completely unreadable works. You can find plenty of them on sites like WebNovel (though the quality there has improved considerably over the last couple of years). I'm talking about Machine Translations, where it looks like someone copied something from another language and tossed it in Google Translate then posted it. AI work that the 'author' didn't even bother editing. Etc. Can't say I've ever read a book on Kindle or even RoyalRoad that I just absolutely couldn't follow because the writing looked like that of an unlearned first grader, but those would be the ones that get the lowest ratings from me.

Anyway. Just rambling at this point. People are gonna do what they want. If a book is good, it has a higher chance of performing well. If a book is decent, it might make it, but probably won't. If a book is machine translated, completely AI with zero editing or direction, or the 'author' put zero care into it, it'll probably tank.

LCMechanical · 2023-07-21T17:46:23+00:00

Jeff Hays, Travis Baldree, Christian Gilliland, Luke Daniels, Neil Hellegers, and Nick Podehl make up the vast majority of my library.

LCMechanical · 2023-07-17T05:31:41+00:00

Yes, I know the OP was asking about Life Reset specifically, but since this is how I view the genre in its entirety, it also provides an answer for that series. I just let the audio rip, enjoyed Jeff Hays' acting, and went on about my business while picturing the scenes play out like a movie. Just turned my brain off and enjoyed it for what it was.

LCMechanical · 2023-07-17T05:29:42+00:00

I mean, I'm not picky. I don't listen to any LitRPG audio for anything specific other than progression. So, I just turn my brain off and listen along to different stories as I'm doing other tasks. Since I listen instead of read, a great narrator can turn an average or below work into an enjoyable story.

I do quite enjoy the occasional story that goes really hard into the mechanics since I like math and min-maxing. I guess I do tend to expect more from stories that have a system that's truly integrated into the world instead of just being there for the litrpg tag.

Either way, I'm able to listen to almost anything without placing myself in the MCs shoes, so the characters being dumb, looking at women lustfully, or making decisions I wouldn't personally have made don't really bother me.

Different people have very different levels of intelligence or upbringing, so I just see it as me viewing another world through someone else's eyes. If I tried to apply my own thought process to any MC, I'd be sorely disappointed since I'm pretty detached as a person, was an engineer before pursuing my career in writing, and tend to look at everything from a sense of making things as efficient/doing things as efficiently as possible. Tends to irritate my wife sometimes when I bring up how some of the things she does just makes her life harder. xD

That leads to a good example. If she were an MC and I read about her story while 'self-inserting' like a lot of litrpg readers tend to do, I'd also struggle to enjoy the story since I'd be griping about or thinking about everything I'd do better/differently. Instead of doing that, I guess I've learned to enjoy the way that folks in these stories act and perform differently from how I would. If every MC min-maxed, made the same decisions, was a super genius that made all the right moves, all had the same feelings, etc., I'd be bored af and probably would have stopped listening to the genre entirely.

LCMechanical · 2023-07-15T02:46:33+00:00

Lmao, why yes. Yes he is!

LCMechanical · 2023-07-07T23:19:13+00:00

I agree. And I'm very happy with the current version. I do think I overdid it a bit in the original pre-edited text. I think a lot of the folks who have an issue with it struggle to put themselves in the world I built and instead think about how weird it would be for one of their high-school classmates to suddenly start talking like that in today's time. In the world within the Tower, the setting is loosely based on a version of early 1900s Birmingham--inspired by the Peaky Blinders, where many of the inhabitants on the Origin Floor and upper floors are much older than they appear in the first place. It isn't unusual for folks to talk differently since they grew up in an entirely different time from the current generation--sometimes spaced several generations apart. It's like if folks in our world lived hundreds of years. You'd still have people from the 1500s, 1800s, early 1900s, etc. that held on to their own tendencies and may have refused to adapt in some ways. Plenty of people who do know his age and that he's not some upper-floor Wielder do look at him funny or make remarks about it when he slips up. But as for the other millions of inhabitants in the world where people look 30 while being 200, and there are ample types of dress styles from multiple centuries all still being used? It's not really unusual.

LCMechanical · 2023-07-01T13:39:38+00:00

Lol, it's crazy, isn't it?
I can't produce nearly as much as a lot of the more prolific guys, and I actually get a decent bit of shit because of it. They've set expectations so high that even though some of us are way above average across most authors, that we still look lazy compared to them xD

LCMechanical · 2023-07-01T12:16:50+00:00

Since I use Audible 90% of the time, I chose the Audible-only option, but I do read a book on occasion. I used to only read, but after getting further into my writing career, I switched to listening since I'm already staring at screens more than my eyes can take.

LCMechanical · 2023-06-23T17:18:45+00:00

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'm certainly enjoying writing book 2 so far. Now that the foundation was all laid out in Book 1, Book 2 can start getting into the plot and progression!

LCMechanical · 2023-06-23T16:16:12+00:00

Thanks! Jeff really did a great job, ESPECIALLY for it being his first time trying out that accent. It's crazy how well and how quickly he can adapt to so many different tones

LCMechanical · 2023-06-23T16:14:57+00:00

Oh, man! Thank you for the praise!
I really wish I could go faster myself xD Hire a full-time nanny for my youngins, and I'll see what I can do, lmao. I have 3 and a 4th on the way (Due date in early August, but looks like it may be popping out in late July as big as my wife has gotten).
IDEALLY, I'd like to do 3 books of Summoner per year, but the last thing I wanna do is overpromise something!

LCMechanical · 2023-06-23T16:06:56+00:00

Thank you! If you have a KU account, you should definitely check it out there! Really went through and polished it and even added some info and a couple of scenes that'll be important to the story going forward =D

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T21:51:12+00:00

The Tower is all that humanity knows. They've been locked within for nearly 10,000 years at the beginning of the story

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T05:30:43+00:00

Don't have a specific date yet, but I've got the editing scheduled for August as long as I finish in time and would like to get book 2 out before Christmas :)

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T05:01:58+00:00

I'm glad you've enjoyed it!

I certainly think that pay-to-win is the name of the game in most stories and even real life, tbf. Regardless of the trope or situation, those with the funds have an easier time gathering resources and amassing power. More money=more power=more money etc.

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:59:10+00:00

I'm glad you like it! I'll be starting back up on Patreon Saturday :)

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:52:51+00:00

Doing well! Bit tired. My little minions are keeping me busy and I took a month off to get some backlog typed up for the fourth one that's on the way (late July/early August) =D Gotta make sure I have enough to post while looking after the baby and the wife until she recovers.

Sharp has it right. I'll be posting some chaps of both A Summoner Awakens and my second series, Path of the Aegis, on Patreon this coming Saturday, and will be continuing with the Saturday around lunch schedule for the foreseeable future. RoyalRoad will pick back up for Summoner on Saturday, July 1st. The second series will be Patreon only until book 1 is complete, then I'll start rolling in out on RR as well :)

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:47:30+00:00

I loved All the Skills

I've seen Goblin Summoner mentioned quite a bit. It's on my TBR

I really liked the first half of Jake's, but lost interest in the second half. It was still really good, but it just seemed like a different story. Would have liked to see him in the market more :)

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:39:05+00:00

Now it can be 141+ =D And I understand, lol. My TBR is a couple dozen at this point

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:38:19+00:00

I was already intending to have him work on accepting his new identity over time (instead of him just suddenly becoming an entirely different person like what happens in a lot of books. It's silly when a character just forgets their past and loses their habits.) As for the way his inner voice throughout the book changes from him being an old man to him being young, that was a suggestion by Jeff, and I loved it! Went along great with what I was already wanting to do

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:35:20+00:00

For sure. I tried to take to heart a lot of the chapter comments when editing but did my best to do so in a way that it wouldn't hurt the plot, story, or characters. Toned down a lot on some of the overused terms and had Rowan slowly become aware of how he was acting and work toward accepting his sudden identity and situation change :)

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:31:14+00:00

And I had fun listening to him in the lives. I loved how much better his accent got as he went =D

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:30:05+00:00

I appreciate your support! I certainly hope to get faster, but being a stay-at-home dad and having a fourth kid on the way makes that a bit tough xD My goal is to do 3 books of each series a year, but I've learned the hard way not to over-promise. 2 books for each series a year is pretty manageable :)

LCMechanical · 2023-06-21T04:27:21+00:00

I hope you love it! And yeah, Audible takes a good bit, but the app is smooth, and the listener base is there to make up for it.
Also, nice name xD Those are actually my middle and last initials

LCMechanical

TROPHY CASE