Aye…I was afraid of that.
Not going to lie… I am not very enthused about this, any of it.~sigh~
I think it’s a great idea. My first thought was why not just disallow using a second chance the second time around, but adding the player choice and the idea of diminishing returns works way better. Likewise with the idea of capping the number of second chances one can have.
[color=#009900]Soft cap on second chances: we might increase or remove this, once we’ve seen how the new mechanic pans out. But yes, it’s meant to be very hard to use second chances to back out five or six times in a row…[/color]
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[/color]
[color=#009900]Op cards: it’ll probably work this way: track as per storylets, but you do lose the card as well.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Go Back / Perhaps Not actions cost: this will work the same way as it does right now, which I think means 0 actions.[/color]
Go Back / Perhaps Not has always consumed one invisible action for me. That is, I won’t see a an immediate decrease in my candle, but if I use Perhaps Not 20 times in a row the game will tell me I don’t have enough actions to do anything and if I reload the page I’ll see that my candle has in fact gone down.
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]Go Back / Perhaps Not actions cost: this will work the same way as it does right now, which I think means 0 actions.[/color][/quote]
I just verified that it does incur the full action cost. The GUI doesn’t show it at first, but the action(s) is/are lost - which can be verified by reloading the page.
I used to think that that was an inteded part of the real cost of the trick.
I started playing a few months ago, and my impression for most of the changes that happened since then is this:
Choice for own storyline? Away with it!
Ways to avoid horrible cards that are nothing more than a waste of actions and resources? Nope!
Mechanics that ease the permanent Menace-dance? Heresy!
Sometimes I’m seriously asking myself wether I just came too late to this game.
As a future Theorem Hunter that considers himself unlucky I’d be very grateful to be able to reliably keeping my death score at 0. It’s a little quirk of mine, as it’s the only menace-related area I never visited and my character is proud of that.
Tl;dr: if this SC change becomes effective I really hope their cap is removed.
[quote=Thorbimorbi]I started playing a few months ago, and my impression for most of the changes that happened since then is this:
Choice for own storyline? Away with it!
Ways to avoid horrible cards that are nothing more than a waste of actions and resources? Nope!
Mechanics that ease the permanent Menace-dance? Heresy!
Sometimes I’m seriously asking myself wether I just came too late to this game.[/quote]
Does this change in second chances make a huge difference for menaces? I didn’t even know about this exploit until recently, so I didn’t use it during early gameplay. I assumed the change was targeted more at impossible theorem grinding and other high-level activities.
You can still discard cards though, unless I’m missing something. The only non-discardable nuisances I can think of are the Merry Gentleman and eyeless skull cards, the latter being easy to avoid. But it’s entirely possible I’m wrong. That said… I’m not sure I’m a fan of the more set storylines, but it hasn’t affected me since I’ve already gone through them. I hope you can enjoy the writing and art anyway, even if the shifting gameplay mechanics aren’t your favorite. :(
[quote=Huey]
As a future Theorem Hunter that considers himself unlucky I’d be very grateful to be able to reliably keeping my death score at 0…[/quote]
The failure doesn’t teleport you to death, it just gives you lots of wounds. You should be able to avoid death by the standard tricks (avoid triggering the must storylet that fires when you have 8+ menaces).
Try using your other tabs.
edited by Theus on 10/5/2015
Some conflict cards are non-discardable. So are several Nightmare cards. Also the Cherry Man card (which some find useful, and it’s certainly better now that it gives Favours: Criminals).
Oh, and when SMEN was active there were a few nuisance non-discardable cards there.
[quote=dov]Some conflict cards are non-discardable. So are several Nightmare cards. Also the Cherry Man card (which some find useful, and it’s certainly better now that it gives Favours: Criminals).
Oh, and when SMEN was active there were a few nuisance non-discardable cards there.[/quote]
I have never encountered the SMEN cards or Cheery Man (joined too late and picked a different side), and I don’t think I’ve seen non-discardable conflict cards. Interesting how much different choices affect the deck.
Nightmare cards are non-discardable, but why wouldn’t you want dreams? I suppose it’s just a matter of preference. I’ve only ever been annoyed by the Merry Gentleman (who can, fortunately, be banished with a goldfish and enough laudanum). And of course in the Nadir and at zee, but there wasn’t a way around that (I don’t think…).
[quote=MissCrumpet]
Nightmare cards are non-discardable, but why wouldn’t you want dreams?.[/quote]
Menace dream cards don’t actually give you dreams, just Nightmares. There are usually identically-named discardable dream cards which do give you dreams but those are not the menace dream cards.
ETA: scratch "identically-named". There are identically-named dream cards but those are not the same as menace dream cards.
edited by genesis on 10/6/2015
[quote=genesis][quote=MissCrumpet]
Nightmare cards are non-discardable, but why wouldn’t you want dreams?.[/quote]
Menace dream cards don’t actually give you dreams, just Nightmares. There are usually identically-named discardable dream cards which do give you dreams but those are not the menace dream cards.[/quote]
Sorry, I specifically meant the dream cards you get when you have nightmares<5. Over 5 gives you the annoying nightmare cards and Merry Gentleman, so you want the goldfish and laudanum. But I’m being confusing and this is off topic.
I wouldn’t really miss the Second Chances exploit. It’s useful, but I would rather have a system that all are aware of and don’t have to sift through old threads or wikis to learn about.
[quote=MissCrumpet]
Does this change in second chances make a huge difference for menaces? I didn’t even know about this exploit until recently, so I didn’t use it during early gameplay. I assumed the change was targeted more at impossible theorem grinding and other high-level activities.
You can still discard cards though, unless I’m missing something. The only non-discardable nuisances I can think of are the Merry Gentleman and eyeless skull cards, the latter being easy to avoid. But it’s entirely possible I’m wrong. That said… I’m not sure I’m a fan of the more set storylines, but it hasn’t affected me since I’ve already gone through them. I hope you can enjoy the writing and art anyway, even if the shifting gameplay mechanics aren’t your favorite. :([/quote]
Don’t worry, I still love the writing.
But there actually is no other way anymore to get rid of undiscardable cards than to remove the conditions that spawn them (I even asked on the forums about that a few weeks ago). For example, I sat on the "Crime or Punishment?" card for three days or so, because I wanted to trade my Criminals Favours for Shadowy, and the the card wouldn’t show up.
My reference to Menaces was more of a summary, because "Mechanics that ease the permanent Menace-dance, the grind-elongating failures (think Thefts of a Particular Character) and the costly failures (Return to the Palace Cellars etc.)?" seemed to long and snaky a sentence.
My post was mostly fuelled by annoyance about the wrench that this will throw into my plans for stealing Bazaar Permits for the lodgings, because my Shadowy is not yet high enough to reliably use Gang of Hoodlums, and failures on Thefts result in much higher action cost to bring up casing again. So now I will probably have to farm Second Chances in addition to Casing, and that is not something I look forward to.
Also, a feeling of "Older players had it easier", but that might be just my imagination.
Edit: I find it hard to call the old behaviour an exploit, it still had the action cost, only the counter would not refresh properly.
edited by Thorbimorbi on 10/6/2015
Out of curiosity, since the net effect of a lot of these new changes seem to nerf things like the Nadir (or theorem hunting) for higher-level players, might some of these places therefore get a buff?
Re: the rest of discussion–
While it’s true I have felt demoralized by some recent nerfs, and it’s also true that though I am a higher-level player, I am newer and therefore don’t really know how much easier it was for older players-- I’m not sure I agree with a lot of the statements here.
Take Crime and Punishment. I actually agree with the people who dislike the change to it. However, what about all the other cards that were buffed or had added fun storylets due to the Criminals change? Hell, besides the conversions thing, Favours represent a massive buff to Connections that classic players didn’t have. Several companion cards were buffed, as was the Criminals card itself.
How about the recent change to Zailing? This both added new fun options (that older players didn’t have) and significantly decreased the required grind (which older players dealt with for years).
Also: A recent thread reminded me that Making Waves used to only gave you a chance to increase Notability, and players used to lose one Notability a week!
I imagine this particular redesign of second chances was also partially made to make things easier for the writers to design interesting scenarios. Plus, failure text in Fallen London is often very entertaining. It’s kind of a shame to miss it, both from the writers’ perspectives and readers’ perspectives.
And, I mean, this isn’t the same as removing the "creative second chance use" altogether. Which wouldn’t even have been unreasonable from a design perspective.
As a newer player, I do somewhat second the ‘older players had it easier’ feeling. It’s a minor point and I’m obviously going to keep playing.
sputters and nearly chokes on her tea "Older players had it easier"?! Pshaw, I say! Faff and twaddle! We ‘old-timers’ had to suffer through the era of a paltry 10 actions A DAY. Yes, that’s right! We also had to walk barefoot on cobblestone to get to the Bazaar, uphill both ways, in a wax-wind storm!* All of you Johnny-come-latelies and your cushy, regenerating 40-action candles don’t know how good you have it!
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- This is probably not true, but you weren’t there, now were you, tenderfoot?
edited by Lady Taimi Felix on 10/7/2015
- This is probably not true, but you weren’t there, now were you, tenderfoot?
Eh. I agree that there have been some very nice buffs over time, from lots of new content to the increased action limit. That being said, I’ve played a few online games and this one gets more nerfs to established content than any other I can think of.
I think the goal is better story flow, less grinding, and forcing the players to access more of the content, which are all laudatory, but the number of epa nerfs, from fidgetting writer to hunter’s keep to the cave of the Nadir, and so on (it’s a pretty long list) do give the impression that I’d have been better off starting this game earlier.
[quote=thedeadlymoose]I imagine this particular redesign of second chances was also partially made to make things easier for the writers to design interesting scenarios. Plus, failure text in Fallen London is often very entertaining. It’s kind of a shame to miss it, both from the writers’ perspectives and readers’ perspectives.
And, I mean, this isn’t the same as removing the "creative second chance use" altogether. Which wouldn’t even have been unreasonable from a design perspective.[/quote]
It’s for just this reason that I go far out of my way to fail a lot of fate content. Because just that, it’s more content. A particular favourite would be
this when educating a Rubbery Pupil.
I’m amongst newer players (I never saw the pre-nerf Nadir or Hunter’s Keep, and the Fidgetting Writer had a nerf in the past?), and I personally love this change. It’s a brilliant fix to a sticky problem, plus the old method has always seemed… unfinished/patchy/buggy. I wasn’t even sure it was allowed (let alone possible) until I saw people talking about it.