I was going to stay out of this thread since this project is in prelim phases while other members of our team are hard at work on Destiny 2, but it seems like we need some clarification here.
I'm the lead editor and project co-lead on Destiny 2, and intend to be the lead editor for Destiny DC on the project kazenadama has been scouting for. We're looking for people who have the experience to do what we need for that project without tying up our D2 programmer until that project is done. The things we've seen from the existing thing being worked on simply doesn't suit what we need, based on our experiences with the codebase in D2 and the similarities they share. We aren't just rejecting all help, we just know what we're up against and what tools are required; things like hex editing doesn't really suit what we want to use in the long term. We're trying to build a second team so we can work on these projects in tandem, as we want them to be consistent.
As for not having a public discord, there's a reason for that too, and that's because it's my call. We're currently not at a point on either project where we want to publicly show things off; I don't have any interest in performatively showing off progress until I feel we've gotten enough done and at the quality standard we're aiming for. There's also the fact that we all work full-time jobs and do not want or need added pressure from anyone else; nobody is entitled to know our specific progress on any project until we feel ready for it. This is a personal decision and one I think is for the better, because I'm not into feeding unrealistic expectations, and timelines or deadlines we cannot meet. I understand people want to see progress, but I care far more about the quality of our work than just showing bits of progress; it tends to be illusory when working on games of this scale.
All that said, we're doing this for free. On our own time. If our pace and progress doesn't suit anyone and you'd rather follow someone else's project, it's not our place to stop anyone. I'd rather keep quiet on what I do and let our eventual work and efforts speak for themselves. These, for me especially, are passion projects. Destiny DC is my favorite game of all time, and I know it pretty well forwards and backwards—it's an experience I want to be able to share with people in the absolute best form it can possibly be, and I want it to feel as close to an official release as possible when that time comes. Taking donations isn't going to make us move any faster, and I don't really have any interest in taking anyone's money because this is a project I've wanted to do for years out of pure love for the games (and because taking money for something like this feels incredibly dubious, imo).
Again, this is something we do because we want to, and it's a thankless sort of job with how much text there is; the script and skit text alone is over 185,000 strings of text, which is more than double Destiny 2's script and more than D2's total strings, in general. These are slow moving things that take time, and we don't implement and test every string of text as we translate them.
My apologies if this comes off kind of harsh, but it's a bit frustrating to put time and effort into projects you're passionate about, only to get pushback for not going as fast as people would like. If it's really that necessary to show we're working on it, it's not out of the realm to provide proof of concept screenshots, but as as I said at the start, DC is still in preliminary/planning phases for a multitude of reasons.
