You want the honest truth?
As a writer, the only person's opinion you should care about is your own.
If you enjoy your work, then that is all that should matter. Why write a story that tailors to everyone else's taste if it doesn't even entertain you?
Who cares if people dislike it? Who cares if everyone shits all over it? As a matter of fact - the fact that you're even getting any attention at all is far more than most receive.
I remember a particular review I had received on my story where one user decided to go absolutely ballistic and wrote - I kid you not - an entire essay on my story to explain how horrible it was.
I'm talking at least 500 words, but probably more like 1000. The review was removed for how toxic it was but I kept it for my own motivation. See below if you have the time to actually read it.
I dropped this here. Honestly, everything aside from the character creation has been a slog; I was hoping that nightmare mode might improve the story but.. whilst I like the weak to strong dynamic, it feels very poorly executed here to the point that the MCs are so weak that it's just frustrating to read. The only way for them to survive is to literally hope for luck as the author 'AuthorSME' wrote in his A Tail's Misfortune, "luck is for the weak and the strong make their own fate." The only way for them to get stronger is to rely purely on luck, there is no ability for them to be considered skilled or talented. I just can't respect or like characters who have no ability beyond pure chance (even the idea of dumping all points into luck stat is still a choice and not as bad as this.)
The only character I find remotely relatable is Ashley. Trevor and Garett come off like Robots and Samantha is just straight up annoying. I don't even want to know these characters.
The world setting doesn't interest me. The seeming lack of originality in the classes puts me off.
All in all this seems like a very boring, frustrating read. I can't help but feel you've wasted your time writing this (and mine reading it, but I only have myself and my stubborn attitude to keep reading hoping it'll get better for that.) Only 69 readers this far in. I wanted to like this, really I did. But it's just so.. bleh. It's like every terribly generic fantasy isekai JP web novel combined, taking away anything interesting or unique, throw in some random teeny bopper/child 'humour' (spikey hair gel? Really? That's funny to you?) and somehow came out as less than the sum of it's parts. And I'd know, I've read hundreds of them, from Death Mage who doesn't want a Fourth Time to Slime Datta Tensei and everything in between, for some reason my mind's drawing a blank on JP webnovel names because I've read thousands of novels by this point and most of them were a 6, maybe a 7 at best because of their generic (and thus forgettable) nature.
My point is; what is this man. What are you doing. Come on. This is like a bike with training wheels, the only people it appeals to are people who have never read anything before, your concepts are that basic. Though for such a person, you'd need to explain what the stats are etc, because they wouldn't know, so you don't even really hit that reader demographic.
It actually frustrates me to see that, you have the dedication to write hundreds of thousands of words; but THIS is what you do with it. It's like Thor using Mjolrnir to roast a chicken and just like said chicken after being hit by Godly Lightning, it's inedible.
Most authors write some 20k-30k words with an extremely interesting premise, but give up because they think they're not good enough writers or their story didn't go the way they wanted. I've read stories that have literally given me goosebumps and made my heart race, with less than 10k words before the author vanished; you have no idea how irritating, frustrating and all manner of negative emotions come to mind, it is when the novels that do get enough content to be at a point of binge reading, that this is what gets put out there. It's like going to a high class restaurant and they've hired a teenager from McDonalds to cook the meals. Your novel is the frozen, microwaved meal that's still cold in the middle; when there are Chefs who can blow people away with their cooking who are unemployed or working at a fucking Lobster Shack or Hooters just to make ends meet.
This is somewhat unfair to you, but you're part of a much larger problem and I'm so fucking fed up of the repeating cycle of somehow trash novels being the ones that could have provided days of entertainment, vs the actually good and unique novels that get dropped or go on Hiatus with an hour or two worth of binge reading.
It's like, you know when you go on Twitter and someone says something asinine like "we need to stop pollution!" and they somehow get thousands of retweets, but the guy with the tweet that actually proposes solutions and holds elected office where he can make an actual difference only gets like 80 retweets; it's exactly like that. It's like no one cares about anything real, with actual substance to it, they just want the basic platitudes, the surface level comments. Your novel is like the surface level comments with no real substance that somehow keeps getting retweeted and shared by people. And yeah, that's probably really harsh, but again, you're just part of a MUCH larger problem. I think what the problem really comes down to is like, a writer's form of Dunning-Kruger syndrome. Dumb people thinking they're smart and thus somehow succeeding in competition against actually intelligent people who second guess themselves and can actually analyze risk, so because the dumb people don't have any foresight for risk, they just go ahead and take reckless actions that somehow work out. Bad writers thinking they're great, whilst the great writers are too nervous and unwilling to get their works judged negatively so they just stop writing altogether to "rewrite" or go on "hiatus" and in the end, ALL OF US lose. The stories they keep in their minds are the ones we'll never get to read and I find it depressing and aggravating.
I'll note that this was at a point in my story that I had released around 150+- chapters, with very few readers and almost no comments. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote with next to no feedback, no response, no encouragement - just posting day after day hoping for a single comment or like.
To say that my heart was shattered upon reading this review would have been an understatement, but I was also kind of happy.
I was happy that someone could be so invested in my story that they would hate it so much.
I was happy that they accused me of taking away from the good authors, of stealing the thunder when there was absolutely no thunder I had stolen in the first place. Because compared to the results I had achieved at that time, the fantasy within this person's mind of my success was far beyond anything that I had actually achieved.
And I found that funny.
At the time I read this review, having written hundreds of thousands of words on my story, I legitimately considered quitting - for the first and only time.
But then, I realized something.
Why do I write?
Why did I create my story?
Was it for other people to read?
Was it for other people to like?
Perhaps that was a part of it - but that wasn't the real reason.
It was because I liked writing.
I enjoyed the content I wrote. I loved my characters, I loved my world, I loved everything that I had done.
This review was written after this user had read only 13 chapters of my story, which told me that he was only reviewing how bad my writing was at the very beginning. And without doubt, some of his points were legitimate. There was plenty of room for improvement. But how else are we supposed to improve without failing first?
He said many things. He talked about how generic the story was, while also talking about how he hated the characters and couldn't relate to them whatsoever (Two things that I find completely opposite, since my characters were originally designed to be somewhat demented as a means of not being a generic story).
He talked about how my novel was "The microwave meal that's still cold in the middle." Aka - garbage.
But most importantly - he asked me one question.
My point is; what is this man. What are you doing.
It actually frustrates me to see that, you have the dedication to write hundreds of thousands of words; but THIS is what you do with it.
Even now, after years have passed, after I finished my story following 1.5 million words, 18 volumes spanning 487 chapters, and after starting a new story with the immense amounts of experience I had gained, these words still hurt.
But damn, they motivate the hell out of me.
If the haters don't motivate you, then what can?
There is nobody so passionate about your writing than the people who hate it. So don't despise them. Embrace them. And prove them wrong.
-Dubstheduke
