This post has been edited because the maker found out they were way too optimistic with Episode before.
It seems the quality of featured stories have decreased since the story “Haute As Hell”. They have. Though they just released a new story. Of course it’s all petty romance, what else would it be? But they put in lots of gem free choices… THAT MATTER. A little. There are many more non-gem choices that actually exist and do stuff! A couple things. And they also have the option at the start of the story of whether you would rather date girls or boys. This already happened in the Demi Lovato stories, but they stopped using it until now. There are mistakes with it though, where they call the female love interests boys (they did that in the new story when you choose the free option to leave the love interests in jail, your character says “The boys will be fine” even if you chose for them to be girls. They made the bad boy/girl and the golden boy/girl climb into your window WITH PERMISSION! Instead of the main character awkwardly repeating “No go away” without actually doing anything. Then I thought about it for a minute, and started to wonder WHY DIDN’T THEY JUST GO THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE? Episode romanticizes people climbing through your upstairs window.
What do you all think? Feel free to agree or disagree with this post!
To your overall question, is Episode improving? my short answer is: no.
My slightly longer answer is: no, in nearly every way possible they are doing the opposite.
My Hella long paragraph answer is:
I can appreciate the points you’ve made, truly. But I don’t feel like it’s an improvement. I don’t feel like they’re actively trying to better themselves or make themselves be an app people aren’t ashamed to have on their phone.
Adding that someone climbs into your window with permission doesn’t change what’s happening. There’s so many impressionable children who read this (in fact, impressionable children are the ones who read all the featured stories) and no matter what way you word it, girls are now out there fantazing about a boy climbing through their window.
Putting in more choices that don’t cost gems - to me, I don’t see this as an improvement, but I bet a lot of people actually would. My problem with gem choices is that they never feel like they’re worth it. The “bonus” scenes you get from them feel like a rip off. That’s what I think they need to work on, not adding in more choices that don’t cost gems.
The warning about sexy stuff makes me cringe! I know the most recent story is supposed to be a “parody” but hello?? If we were doing that in our user stories, would it make including sex scenes ok? Not really. So rather than being a parody, it feels like they’re mocking us. Like they’re tuping away saying “haha, we can include sex with bad boys and all you community authors can’t”.
To be honest I thought there was still a large number of user stories offering a choice of sexuality, and tbh, I’m not happy with how they’re including it in their more recent stories. It feels like an after thought a lot of the time. Like they write a story about a bad boy, and think it’s going to be easy to change that to a bad girl to include everyone, but sometimes it just does not work. Now they’re just ripping off people who want same sex love interests too! How about the start writing stories where the MC is gay? So that it feels like they’re actually highlighting pride instead of just throwing it in to label themselves diverse? Oh wait! They did do that! And then after like 4 episodes, they stopped advertising it and it seemingly fell into the shadows of the app.
And since I mentioned diversity, let’s open that door… I get they’re expanding limelight and that it’s sort of become standard to have every new story a limelight one that includes CC, but if they really want to show they’re upholding that lil old diversity promise they made, especially for showcasing different races and cultures, they’re going to have to start taking away CC and start writing stories about Muslims, Indians, Asians, Africans, etc, etc.
Is Episode Improving?
The answer shouldn’t be given just for their stories, I mean lets not look for only their stories,for me I stopped reading what episode features or they make for like 5 months now so for their stories I don’t know if they improved. The Answer
For me the answers is Yes the answer doesn’t apply on their stories since I stopped reading their stories but I gave this answer for their updates like they are updating Limelight’s feature to the better,speech bubbles styles and they are also updating more things for the writers to write more easily. They are working hard to update anything that would make more people start writing or reading. I mean if we look at Episodebefore & after the difference is clear and it shows clearly how Episode Improved .
… show they’re upholding that lil old diversity promise they made, especially for showcasing different races and cultures, they’re going to have to start taking away CC and start writing stories about Muslims, Indians, Asians, Africans, etc, etc.
I think in some ways, maybe they are, but in a lot of ways, they’re not focusing on the important things like putting actually good community stories on the featured page rather than things like FaLlInG fOr ThE bAd BoY
They’re doing all these outfit and feature additions but there are still no good ways for users to communicate on the app other than fanmail, still very cliche stories shoved into the readers’ faces and bad gem choices that are unfulfilling and boring.
I do think they’re moving forward with the times, by making all their new stories with LGBQT options but are they doing it for the right reasons? I feel like they’re just doing it now so they don’t get the backlash of not doing it.
I feel like the ‘featured stories’ page isn’t as good as it could be. It is always the same stories and you see a lot of similar authors on there(don’t get me wrong they are good stories, and they’re good writers who deserve to be noticed). I am just finding it hard to see new writers getting a chance, and (if you’re like me) you kind of lose the momentum of writing when only one person has read your story and it has been up for a week.
Gem choices are (i feel) just a way to make money, 20 gems is too much for once choice and if you don’t choose it you can lose out on a good scene. So it’s either pay to buy gems, or lose out on some time in the episode. Promoting this for community as well is just
I think the permission scene is just stupid. The whole no sex is stupid especially when a lot of featured stories have multiple sex scenes in. IMO there shouldn’t have to be a filter regarding mature scenes, but i feel like that is an unpopular opinion (and it’s easy for me to say being that I am older than 13) but why can’t some episodes stories not be catered to their older audience? I am curious to what the ratio for >16 to <16’s are
Adding the stuff the community ask for is a big plus though, and it is good that they listen to us… Occasionally.
(this is just my opinion so please don’t take offence)
Is Episode improving or is the bar just so low now because we’ve been starved for even the most basic sign of decency from their featured stories?
My guess is the latter. Giving readers the choice of who to date is nice, but not representation. It doesn’t count if you can avoid seeing any LGBTQ+ people on your screen entirely with one basic option, just like how having a customizable character whose default appearance is a person of color but whose culture and experiences with race are never mentioned in a sea of non-customizable white people isn’t racial diversity.
Updates do not indicate or dismiss the constant ignorance to the community and mis-representation of minority groups. The bad has outweighed the good so many times, so no, they haven’t improved. They are still in the same position as before. They aren’t talking updates. This is about them as an app, as a whole. So no.
I think Episode has improved on somethings and not others.
Featured Stories: As the Original Posted stated, choices are starting to matter in Featured Stories. I recall like a long rant by one of my Senpais about how she spent like 50gems on a choice that didn’t matter. I don’t read the featured stories but I do stalk posts about the featured stories, and there is progress there. For stories like Instant Princess and such… I’m a little off-put by Episode because even though the story got ‘less’ reads than they had hoped, it is still a story with a diverse cast (which is what the community wants?) — So Episode replaced it with another story to appeal to people who wanted CC, why not have both? Like… addicted readers will read both? I’m assuming there isn’t a cap on amount of featured stories. Perhaps it was financial reasons not to have both? I do see a flaw in my reasoning where having a diverse story and a non-diverse story with a similar plot seems odd.
I would also like to bring up that the Episode Diversity Standards weren’t upheld, and I’m still waiting for 2018’s Diversity Standards (I guess 2019 would be preferred now…) - progress was made, but not enough to satisfy me.
I think newer Featured Stories have improved in directing and diversity of characters quite a bit. The stories themselves are fairly one-note and not as interesting as older ones. But it was nice being able to make some options without gem choices
However, I think the biggest thing that Episode has improved on is the platform they provide for people to write. The Writer’s Portal is just something so unique to Episode itself, and it’s growing better to allow the community to tell their stories in their own way. And I think that’s a wonderful thing in itself! While the featured stories may not be as special as we’d hope, the community stories are truly the gems of the app.
I know that the topic is about their stories but as I was saying you can’t really decide the answer based on their stories. Episode as a whole is about everything they make even the updates, we can’t ignore it, if we are talking about improving they’re improving somethings. For me I stopped reading the featured stories for months now but as Im reading the other comments it seems that they are changing somethings also I mean at least they are improving and changing its better than nothing
And the updates are nice, but that doesn’t prove they are improving as an app as a whole. I said before: The bad has outweighed the good so many times, so no, they haven’t improved. They are still in the same position as before.
Updates do not indicate anything.
The stories themselves are fairly one-note and not as interesting as older ones. But it was nice being able to make some options without gem choices 
While the featured stories may not be as special as we’d hope, the community stories are truly the gems of the app. 