I have played FL for several years, occasionally with days between plays but more normally several times each day; first lured in by the resident ocelot, I have spent several hundred dollars on Exceptional Friendship (and more on Nex/Fate before that); I was a high-tier backer of Sunless Sea, wherein you may find Ewan’s Way adjacent to the sun’s entry. All of which to say: I’ve been here a while, and a strong supporter and customer. Stats have long been capped, every item I wanted acquired, most items on the usual ‘what to do when you run out of content?’ lists ticked off. I would often log into these forums, and tried to be an active and helpful member.
And so: I thought it might be worth a brief note explaining why FL became in the end a source of irritation rather than pleasure, and what has led me to the point where I have cancelled my Friendship and do not expect to play again for years, if ever. A small element is the usual grindiness: top-level characters have little to do that’s new or interesting. But that’s common to many games, and understood. The key element: Notability. A game mechanism that actively punishes any failure to devotedly grind in a given week, rather than simply having one fail to advance. Worse: one that requires very significant time, effort and expense to conquer - I’ve been Notability 15 for a long time - and equally strenuous efforts to regain if ever lost.
I’d dropped a couple of times from 15 to 14 in the past; pleas - not just from me! - for a ‘pause’ mechanism to allow a character to go into hiatus fell on deaf ears. OK, annoying but manageable. And then this last time… fell to 14, spent several weeks trying to regain enough Making Waves (48, I think, with maxed BDR), and falling just short every time when Time arrived. I realised that there was nothing enjoyable for me currently in FL and in fact it was a source of frustration and annoyance; worse, that there was no way to simply pause - it was an all-or-nothing choice to maintain a character for whom Notability was an important part of his personality, or abandon that character and leave**. So: I walked away about two weeks ago, and have not regretted it. There’s some significant sunk cost regret, sure: the biggest regret, though, is simply that it felt as though I was being punished for any lack of slavish diligence rather than being valued as a player or even as a customer. With luck, this’ll be helpful feedback - it should not be a surprise to FBG, but I hope that at least it’ll be a datapoint for one vanished player lost to them.
(I’ll try to remember to log in again in a week or so in case there are any Qs. Otherwise, though: hearty thanks to the many of you who gave help, friendship, moments of delight, well-crafted visiting cards - it’s been a trip.)
[**Do I think that everyone should have this same attitude to wards Notability? Maybe not; it may be that my character and I were outliers. I’m not aware, though, of other games or mechanisms that translate a hiatus into active harm rather than just failure-to-advance: it feels punitive and unfairly so, and a mechanism to force lever-pressing. I’m a behavioural neuroscientist by day :) and I recognise the signs of a Skinner box.]