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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deset Gled" data-source="post: 6134171" data-attributes="member: 7808">I have to disagree with you on this point.  The pacing of the overall story has slowed continuously over time, with the latest story arc being the slowest.  Consider the comic counts across the different eras:Dungeon Crawlin' Fools (First Gate arc) - 121 comicsNo Cure For The Paladin Blues (Second Gate arc) - 179 comicsWar and XPs (Second Gate arc) - 182 comicsDon't Split the Party (Third Gate arc) - 187 comicsCurrent storyline (Third Gate arc) - 215 comics, and we're still not within striking distance of a conclusionIt's undeniable that the storylines are getting more stretched out.  And while we're getting a lot more side development of main characters, we're also getting more and more tangential storylines with increasingly extraneous characters .  For example, Therka's (the half-orc girl) subplot and the large amount of screentime given to Enor and Gannji (the bounty hunters) have entirely zero importance to the main plot and only a passing relevance to, well, anything.If we end up with three comics of dream sequence for each of the characters in a trance (the same time Roy got), we'll have 12 comics of fantasy.  That's literally 10% of the length of the first published novel, all in pure imagination.  And at the rate comics have been released in the past year, 12 comics could take 12 to 18 weeks.  The fact that people realize things are slowing down doesn't make them impatient, it makes them perceptive.I think you may be over-estimating the speed that the comics have been released at.  If you were to go back six months in time (as you would suggest as an reasonable break time), you would only go back to comic 864.  24 comics.  It took that entire time to have Belkar and Durkon encounter Malack; that's not a lot to catch up on.  If you go back an entire year, you only get back to comic 853.  35 comics.  That's in the middle of the Order's battle with the guild.  And V has been in that friggin' hole for the entire time!  You have to go back to February 19th 2012, 39 comics, to finally get back to the strip where the Order found the pyramid.  I'm all for appreciating the artistry of what's being presented.  But in order to do that, it has to actually be presented.  I fear we're reaching a point where that just isn't happening any more.  Look, I'll be happy to admit that this is a free webcomic, and I have little right to complain about it at all.  I want to give Rich credit for the medical issues he's faced and the time he must have needed to fulfill the Kickstarter obligations.  But by any measure, OotS has been moving along at a snail's pace for a long time now.  You can't just blame the audience as being impatient or unappreciative when they point it out.  At this point, I've spent a lot of my time reading OotS, and I've spent real money on multiple occasions to support the it.  It's fair to say that I'm invested in it, and will almost certainly read more.. eventually.  But at what point does taking a "break" from the strip have the same effect as quitting it?  I've taken breaks of a couple of months from OotS before, but never an entire year.  If a large chunk of the reader base were to put the series on hold for the amount of times the party has currently been inside the pyramid, would the strip be able to sustain itself?  Was the Kickstarter enough to keep the strip running autonomously, after you factor in all the expenses it generated?  And at what length of a break will people like me lose the emotional investment and stop supporting the comic altogether?</blockquote>

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