I have a prototype for an rpg but it just feels like I'm getting nowhere and the end seems infinitely far away. I just feel so far from having good art, good story, good mechanics, etc. I'm also not feeling like I'm getting anywhere in terms of getting people interested in playtesting or collaborating with me. I have someone making sound effects for me sporadically and I am grateful for that but that's only one area out of like 10 other things (character design, animation, UI design, 3d modeling, vfx, music, marketing, good game mechanics, character writing, story writing) that are all mandatory for success, all of which I am feeling completely inadequate at (some are better than others but all of them have serious problems I don't know how to improve in any way) I don't really have a ton of good ideas that fit everything perfectly, I don't have enough design sense to tell what is a positive character design or writing change to make which is why I've gotten nowhere recently. I don't really know how to get better and how to move forward either. Showing people bad versions of things doesn't seem like the way (people have gotten mad at me for doing just that and not improving enough, even when I implement some changes it is always tiny incremental improvements when they expect massive leaps from the vaguest of criticisms) but reading a lot of random stuff doesn't feel like it's helping me either (it mostly has just increased the number of things I have to consider for every potential idea). And now I am out of ideas for how to change things that fit every little thing. I'm probably being too hard headed about this but I'm not really seeing what direction to go? All I can really tell is that my current art isn't really good enough and I was too lenient with letting problems with my story and art and everything else slide so I can't really do that anymore, I shouldn't show stuff off unless it's a big jump ahead of what I had before in all aspects. I'm feeling like I can't get anyone to help or playtest (without spending tons of money) until everything is absolutely amazing. But at the same time I feel like it will be impossible to get to that point without other people which kind of leads to a catch 22 where I can only convince other people to help by proving that I don't need anyone else's help. The people I've seen for art and 3d modeling charge prices I can't afford ($50 per singular animation frame or singular rock prop is just way too much for me to pay, like I just can't pay thousands of dollars for each individual character or set of random scenery props. This is probably extremely entitled and choosing beggar ish but I feel like if I was charging $50 for anything (singular sprites and random props) I've made I would be seen as delusional? Maybe the gulf between me and "good artists" is just way too large for me to ever cross?). Free art and models just don't fit 100% for what I want either (None of the art fits perfectly and has enough animations, and if they don't 100% match the art style of everything else then that will make people leave immediately since if I can see it they can see it 10x worse, people already say that the styles for the sprites don't match even though I used the exact same process for all the character and enemy sprites, and they even nitpick the text having infinite resolution versus the sprites having finite but relatively large resolution) The thing that kept me working on this thing for a year was the idea that some day someone would be interested in it but it's feeling more and more like that day will never come? Like even if I finally make that good character design and fully animate it there are just 20 other things that are hard requirements for me to do to make the game good enough for anyone to really care. Like maybe they don't click off because the character design is bad anymore but then they click off immediately because the UI isn't perfect, and then I fix the UI and then they click off immediately because the game mechanics are not understandable without text and then I spend several years flailing around doing things and still there are more reasons for them to click off immediately. I also feel like if I give up on this idea, I can't make anything else because making something different is not going to change the fact that I am still bad at art and animation and writing and UI design etc, all of which are extremely hard requirements nowadays, the fact that people are always getting on me for having bad animation, no story, etc just tells me that a game idea that doesn't lead into a compelling character based story is not going to work (and the same for a "small scope" game, people have told me that stiff animation is not a valid small scope thing so I have to have high numbers of sprites for everything and art beyond a standard I can make currently). A "good story" is pretty fundamentally a very large scope thing to make too? Even when I think about other game ideas they are all so much worse than what I have now? They don't have any good story attached to them which is a necessity to succeed, and they are also not fast paced exciting game ideas either. Most of my other ideas are turn based but a lot worse in terms of immediate excitement (people have already told me that my current idea is way too mathy and complicated so my other idea of something more chess like just has zero chance of success I guess?). I'm just not interested in really simple games at all so I'm feeling like what I want has basically no overlap with what other people want? Maybe the problem is with the places I've been showing this but I don't really know where that would be or if there's anyone with low enough standards to care about my game even in its very ugly phase of development. Some places I've done are better than others but none of them have translated to anyone giving me any kind of feedback from playtesting outside of one or two people months ago. I also can't really spam places too much