You know, you could just wait for a longer period of time before catching up on updates.
I do agree that inconvenient navigation can be a problem, but you can solve that by bookmarking specific pages and using your web history.
edited 23rd Feb '13 2:07:37 PM by Scardoll
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.Forgive me, but your reasoning seems rather petty. GC updates at a consistent pace, but since it doesn't follow thriugh fast enough on significant happenings ffor your taste it is somehow bad?
I agree that the archives could do with adding page names and such, but I really don't see how this qualifies it as bad.
We have a thread
for listing the webcomics that you have given up on. I'm certain some of the people there have given up on some webcomics for pacing problems similar to your own. This does not make any given webcomic bad; it just defines your (and their) own taste. If you want webcomics more in line with what you are looking for, I suggest heading over to the recommendation thread
.
Also, I'd like to remind everyone that there is a TV Tropes forum policy about no complaining threads. Please try not to let this one devolve into one, or it will be locked.
edited 23rd Feb '13 2:55:38 PM by TotemicHero
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)You can't really compare web comics to other mediums. Not even print-only comics. From my understanding of web comics such as Gunnerkrigg Court and Girl Genius is that three pages a week is a typical update schedule. Is it slow? It can certainly feel that way sometimes, but it still works.
So no, I don't think webcomics have a problem updating. I don't think webcomics update in a way that makes them "wait to be printed". Good webcomics don't even go in to print until after they're already online. Yet from what I've seen, they are just as beautiful online as they are offline. Plus, there are ways to work around slow update schedules, if that is really an issue for you (i.e. Archive Bingeing). But there are other factors that make a webcomic good, and update frequency is hardly the most prominent.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?Not every webcomic updates a page at a time. Meaty Yogurt and Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki are two that spring to mind as updating chapter by chapter.
So did Freak Angels. And you can hardly complain about Homestuck's update schedule.
Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.![]()
,
I know, but the only real complaint about why Bad Webcomic Is Bad is simply because it doesn't update fast enough, or completely enough for one person.
Which is hardly a good way to condemn something.
Pacing-wise, the only thing a printed collection accomplishes is the effect of reading the comic less often. I do that instead. This is why Gunnerkrigg Court, among other comics, isn't on my bookmarks list. I don't feel compelled to check every update or two.
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

Gunnerkrigg Court is a bad webcomic. I like the story quite a bit, aside from a few things the illustrations are very good, I like the characters for the most part, and I'm very interested in seeing where things lead. Yet it is a bad webcomic, because it updates one page at a time, without variation or care about what is on the page, there are a lot of updates where nothing meaningful happens (or if something meaningful happens you won't realize it until years later), the updates come relatively slowly, and if you are a newcomer, there is a minor issue about the navigation being a bit inconvenient due to the site layout. Not a problem when the archives are relatively small, but when I started Gunnerkrigg Court, it was somewhere around 1000 comics, so it adds up with each page.
Here's what I realized: Gunnerkrigg Court is a print comic that just happens to be published online.
The above issues I had are not problematic in print comics. The updates never come one page at a time, so you can digest a full issue without having to wait and at one sitting; the pages don't have reason to stand on their own, so lack of progress or a punch line in a single page is not problematic; even at one issue every two months it could come out faster than it currently does; and for most people, flipping a page much more intuitive than navigating a website.
And Gunnerkrigg Court, I actually still read. Erfworld, I stopped reading shortly into Book 2, some webcomics, such as Misfile and Megatokyo, I gave up on trying to catch up with, and some, like Girl Genius, I never even managed to get into. No matter how much I like the story or how much I'm told it is worth it, trying to read what appears to be a print comic online is quite difficult for me, and can easily put me off from something I would like otherwise.
This is not a problem that is exclusive to webcomics. Trying to read text-heavy books is also easier with hardcopies than with .pdfs, for example, but .pdfs don't have update schedules, can be printed, can be navigated more easily than most webcomic sites, and generally aren't as difficult to get in print where I live, and as such webcomics are where it becomes most apparent. What is good in print is not necessarily gonna be good on the computer.
When I ask around, people generally say that the problem is with me, not with the comics. While I admit that it is possible that I have a shorter attention span on the computer than away from it, my efficiency in using that time is worse as well. Either I am very bad at using the internet, or the presentation of the material poses a genuine problem.
So, does anyone else have this problem? Did anyone else give up on a webcomic they liked because of this, or only manage to catch up with it by using printed collections? Does anyone else get frustrated with comics they like simply because it feels like they are being written with an eye towards getting printed? Or is it just me that feels annoyed by this?