Balance Discussion: Y U NO Train Pages, Surgeons?

Sunless Sea
1

So, I’ve been thinking about this for a bit, and want to throw it to the crowd to see what everyone else thinks. But really, it’s simple:

[b]Why don’t Doctors/Surgeons train the player in the Pages stat?

[/b]Like, I seriously don’t understand the reasoning behind this decision.

You have 5 stats in the game - Hearts, Veils, Pages, Mirrors and Iron.
You have 5 Officer types in the game - Cooks, Mechanics, Surgeons, Navigators, and Gunnery Chiefs.

Gunnery Chiefs train you in Iron. Makes sense.
Navigators train you Mirrors. Makes sense.
Cooks train you Hearts. OK, I suppose that also makes some sense.
Mechanics train you in Veils. This makes less sense until you realize that Veils directly ties into running your engines quieter.
Surgeons train you in P- No, they ALSO train you Hearts. What?

I mean, Surgeons are going to be (along with Engineers) probably the best educated Officers on your ship. So them being pages trainers would make the most sense out of all of them. They’re passing on various esoteric knowledge they’ve picked up to you.

Then there’s the fact that one of the three doc’s in the game . . . DOES train you in pages. The Plausible Surgeon, only available if the player starts as the Natural Philosopher, can train you in pages up to 50. Making this one of the most reliable ways of at least initially raising pages, but only for one of the 5 available starts (6 if you start wreathed in shadows, I guess).

Past that without a trainer, raising pages is REALLY difficult. It’s best done through a number of events scattered throughout the game, the easiest of which to access is only available for the character with the highest base pages state - the Poet. One of which has the possibility of lowering your pages, and this is the eventuality that can be repeated endlessly if you hit it (so if you’re not paying attention, you can easily dumbify your Captain very quickly).

Just added was a new Study Item that raises pages, but you need to not only save up the secrets to trigger it, but also grab Outlandish artefacts, something that can only be done reliably in the late game by hunting zee monsters. So this is a method that new starting players can’t really take advantage of, even if they wanted to. Especially since at the start, there’s way more incentive to burn secrets to train, rather than saving them for larger goals, as skill checks are what get you past certain story gates.

This means if you’re not a Poet or Natural Philosopher, you have very limited ways of raising your pages, and yet, that’s one of stats that you’ll need to raise the most if you want to see all of the game’s content.

Ultimately, not having Surgeons train the captain in pages results, in what I can see, several Balance issues and inconsistencies:

#1 - It makes the Poet and Natural Philosopher starts the only real choices on who to pick as a character if the player wants to maximize their potential with a captain.

NOTE - Most players want to maximize their potential. Roleplayers who want to roleplay are generally a much smaller subset of players rather than people who want to at least somewhat try to make their character, &quotThe Best&quot. While plenty of people do some degree of both, and I’m not saying every one’s necessarily a min-maxing munchkin, it should really always be assumed that players will look for the best advantages they can, and at least statistically, always choose those options.

In effect, the lack of a pages trainer really makes this game have 1 or two background options - Poet or Natural Philosopher, with a heavy bias toward Poet. This is when the game presents the player with 6 potential choices. Hence, it’s encouraging the lack of choice, which diminishes the point of even having the choice in the first place.

#2 - It’s DEEPLY Inconsistent with the general training mechanics presented to the player.

It follows a natural sort of common sense that if you have 5 stats, and 5 types of characters that can train the player in stats, that all 5 would be able to train you in all 5 stats. The fact that this is generally not the case except in a theoretical 20% of player’s games (and then, of mitigated usefulness since Plausible Surgeon only raises it up to 50) is very weird at the least.

#3 - It artificially raises the importance of the Pages stat over the other four.

Don’t get me wrong, Pages is good and getting secrets faster is great. But the rate of exchange between pages raised and fragments isn’t so amazing that it would make a trainer in the stat game-breaking balance wise. The calculation on pages to fragments per secret is: 300 - 0.5 x Pages (rounded down) = Fragments required per secret.

So if the player were to raise pages to 100 through training, from either a 25 or 50 start in the stat, then they’re potentially removing either 38 fragments needed per secret, or 25. At 100 pages, you still need 250 fragments versus the starting non-poet player’s 288. That’s 75- 50 secrets spent to gain either a 38 or 25 fragments per secret advantage. At best, that’s one more successful challenge at dissecting an Angler Crab or two Jillyfleurs (after visiting Visage) not needed per secret.

As for checks that require pages in the game, they’re somewhat less common than other checks, and often have VERY high values, so they’re pretty tough for everyone but the poet. Again, this gives Poets (or training Nat. Philosophers) better access to more areas MUCH more reliably than any other Captain.

I’m not talking about speed of access either. There are lots of places that, say, a Street Urchin has access to more quickly than other captains because of their boost to Veils, but other captains can eventually get there through training or Officer Swapping et cetera. But due to the lacking ability of reliably raising pages, there’s a real chance some captains won’t even get to see the story at all. I’m definitely thinking of a certain major story in a certain Coral Locale right now, which is skill locked by needing decent pages before you can even get to the interesting part.

#4 - Events that lower pages are now 1000% worse than any event that may lower another stat.

I’ve lost some stats at various points in the game. It’s always a blow. When it’s pages, it’s so much greater in impact that it’s very frustrating, and I’m a pretty patient person. A less patient person is bound to take it as a much greater blow and hate it a LOT more, and get genuinely angry with the game.

#5 - How does it even make sense that the 3 primary surgeons in the game raise Hearts of all things?

I mean, Hearts is supposed to be essentially, the skill of empathy and talking to other people. Of encouraging them and raising morale, while showing that you do care about them. Of honesty and open communication.

The 3 surgeons that raise this value of open communication and empathy are: A completely neurotic psychopathic zealot who has gone half-mad after a deeply disturbing series of events, a dying taciturn woman who says little and always seems impatient with other people, and

a nearly dead, deeply traumatized girl who likely can’t communicate well due to severe physical damage

Those sure don’t seem like experts in empathy and morale to me. At least the cooks, while weird, all seem affable in their own ways. I can buy that French Chef Mum-Ra is probably teaching me something about meeting other people’s tastes. I also buy that just learning to communicate with something so alien as a Rubbery Man would teach the captain about better communication and empathy. Those make sense. Hearing how the Haunted Doc had his eye gouged out, or lessons from Lady of Lacking Bedside Manner (seriously, &quotBrisk&quot is referring to her attitude) . . . not so much.

So yeah, am I wrong here? Am I crazy for thinking Surgeons should raise Pages instead of Hearts? I don’t mind if they raise Hearts for the ship. That makes sense because having a surgeon aboard would be very reassuring to morale. But as to what they teach a captain? When there’s such a huge hole in the training situation here?

Does everyone agree? Disagree?

Does anyone have an answer as to why this decision was made? Or why it seems inconsistent even in the game, with the Plausible Surgeon actually being a pages trainer?
edited by MisterGone on 3/3/2015
edited by MisterGone on 3/3/2015

2

There’s not a hole in the training situation, you can train pages in your study.

Basically everything ever rewards outlandish artefacts, and you can buy 7 in Khan’s Shadow for 1050, while the almanack itself sells for 1000, so it’s pretty trivial to cover that cost.

Also I believe there’s a surgeon you’re missing.
edited by WormApotheote on 3/3/2015

3

I pointed that out actually, the problem with the Almanac option is that it’s only really tenable for the late game.

Either you buy the Artefacts for 1000 Echoes or you hunt for them. Early players, the ones most likely need to raise Pages the most (if only to gain access to stories), and who gain lots of secrets from exploration are stuck with that as their primary option, and they’re very likely to:

A) Not know where to find a place to purchase Artefacts.
B) Not have the money to purchase the Artefacts.

1000 Echoes becomes fairly trivial later in the game, but getting secrets gets tougher (until you’re capable of Hunting Lorn-Flukes anyway).

This is exactly why this is more of a balance issue in my mind. The Study option is good for a mid-level (maybe) to high-level (definitely) player. It’s still way tougher to accomplish for people who start out.

Also, I’m pretty sure I got all the docs/Surgeons who can actually train you:

Brisk Campaigner
Haunted Doctor
Plausible Surgeon
Scarred Sister (I put this one in a spoiler in the my main post, with vague language for those that are tempted, but now I guess the game is up for spoiler clickers)

The Lady in Lilac doesn’t really count in my mind since she is temporary boon, meant for terror reduction.

edited by MisterGone on 3/3/2015

4

1000 echoes is fairly trivial in the early game once you know where to look. And if you don’t know where to look, you probably shouldn’t be focusing on leveling a stat that makes it faster to level your other stats later, since you’ll probably die before then.

I’d suspect the difficulty in raising pages early on though is intended, though, on the grounds that pages is disproportionately valuable early on, so making it difficult to acquire early on makes the choice of what to get early on more meaningful.
edited by WormApotheote on 3/3/2015

5

So then at what point of the game is echoes not trivial? Certainly not late game.

But OP this is why I like the pages start the best. You get the one officer in the game who can raise it and you have learn from your past +5 pages. Try it some time.

6

Actually, the Pages officer comes with the Mirrors start - the officer you get for starting with Pages raises Mirrors!

7

[quote=WormApotheote]1000 echoes is fairly trivial in the early game once you know where to look. And if you don’t know where to look, you probably shouldn’t be focusing on leveling a stat that makes it faster to level your other stats later, since you’ll probably die before then.

I’d suspect the difficulty in raising pages early on though is intended, though, on the grounds that pages is disproportionately valuable early on, so making it difficult to acquire early on makes the choice of what to get early on more meaningful.
edited by WormApotheote on 3/3/2015[/quote]

Except, as I pointed out, the effect of pages on Secret Accumulation is fairly limited. If the player has 25 Pages, they need 288 Fragments for a Secret. If they’re a poet and at 50 pages, they need 275. That’s a difference of 13 fragments &quotsaved&quot. At that rate a Poet is getting one &quotfree&quot secret only once they’ve gained 22 secrets from Fragment collection compared to the non-poet player. Pages doesn’t really get super beneficial for fragment saving til it hits 100, where you’re saving on 50 fragments per secret gained, so you’re getting one &quotfree&quot secret for every 7 you obtain compared to the base, non-Poet captain.

But then, the whole point of this post was the lack of reliable methods to raise pages to that point . . .

Pages is certainly not disproportionately valuable from that angle in the early game. It’s primary value then is in accessing a couple specific story lines that are great boons early on.

Specifically,

Port Cecil, and it’s primary story, which pretty much requires at least 50+ pages to reliably unlock with any degree of speed barring some VERY favorable RNG.

Also, I definitely disagree that obtaining 1000 Echoes is trivial in the early game. It is if you’re a highly experienced player who knows the general island placement and what enemies to avoid and generally how far you can go on the Steamer’s fuel tanks, and a couple strong starter trade routes. Sure. But at that point, you’re certainly not a new player, and you’re not ever going to be in the &quotEarly game&quot for long.

When I first started, I went through 6 captains before I could scrounge together the 1250 Echoes required to get that Townhouse and Will. Let alone begin collecting heirlooms to start putting aside money for future generations. Granted, I was suffering from the power-saver laptop issue, and dying a lot because I couldn’t effectively navigate well in a monster encounter, but still, it took some time to learn how this game flows and how to handle its dangers effectively since I went in blind and didn’t resort to any videos or guides.

To that point, early players have a BUNCH of other stuff on their list for that 1000 Echoes that likely have higher priority. The townhouse and will for one. Being able to upgrade to a better ship that doesn’t get torn apart like tissue paper in a whale’s sneeze for another. I never even begun to feel like I could make economic headway in this game until I had a townhouse, a will, and a Corvette.

Maverick -

Like Sir Tanah-Chook said, the Poet’s Officer is a navigator that raises mirrors, and the Philosopher’s Officer is a Surgeon who raises pages (to 50). Which is one of my points above - the sheer inconsistency and confusion as to why the rest of the Surgeons don’t raise pages like the Plausible Surgeon does.

And yes, I’m aware of the event that raises your pages. I didn’t want to spoil it above, but it’s one of the events which can that I was alluding to. In fact, it’s the best one for it, but it’s only available to the Poet, and that I feel is one of the big reasons (of many) that the Poet gets a lot of preferential treatment when valuing all of the possible choices the player has on their &quotpast before becoming a sea captain&quot, which ultimately, I feel, devalues the other choices by a lot. This in my mind, is poor balance, hence me bringing this up for discussion.
edited by MisterGone on 3/3/2015

8

Even that starting officer only raises Pages to 50 – half of what other officers can give you. There was a time this was for balance reasons but that time is long past – we need a better way to raise pages than just spending thousands of Echoes. An officer would help with that.

[li]

9

I’d have to disagree with this almost entirely. You don’t need any trading to get the first 2500 echoes. You can do it in about 2 hours, just exploring, in no more than 3 trips to zee. Yes, you need a little experience to know that forging out far beyond London is actually a good idea, but you need nothing more than port reports, strat info, the salt lions, and a curious mind to interact on some of the islands and get stuff to flog to the scholar, and a little luck in finding the island to drop your first officer. Do Tomb colonist to Venderbight. Sell the training book. Return to London. Buy all the fuel and supplies. Explore. Done.
The biggest hurdle, talking to friends who are playing this, is knowing that it’s ok to push out way beyond London.

10

I’d have to disagree with this almost entirely. You don’t need any trading to get the first 2500 echoes. You can do it in about 2 hours, just exploring, in no more than 3 trips to zee. Yes, you need a little experience to know that forging out far beyond London is actually a good idea, but you need nothing more than port reports, strat info, the salt lions, and a curious mind to interact on some of the islands and get stuff to flog to the scholar, and a little luck in finding the island to drop your first officer. Do Tomb colonist to Venderbight. Sell the training book. Return to London. Buy all the fuel and supplies. Explore. Done.
The biggest hurdle, talking to friends who are playing this, is knowing that it’s ok to push out way beyond London.[/quote]

I just started a new Invictus character and my first trip back to london had scouted 9 tiles and had 1149 echoes and a neathbow piece to turn in. Which was moderately lucky (Avid Horizon not being waaaay in the east) but not exceptionally so.

No trading whatsoever.

Knowing islands and what options to pick is somewhat important but that’s probably the first knowledge you should focus on acquiring, certainly before you worry about maxing stats for the sake of maxing stats. (And pages isn’t that helpful on its own, I’ve currently gotten exactly nothing out of my extra pages from starting as a poet, which just gives you 5 percent more secrets. Its very valuable in the long term, but for a new player not so much. I picked Poet so I could drop off the navigator at Frostfound, since this captain is going to die soon.)
edited by WormApotheote on 3/3/2015

11

I’d have to disagree with this almost entirely. You don’t need any trading to get the first 2500 echoes. You can do it in about 2 hours, just exploring, in no more than 3 trips to zee. Yes, you need a little experience to know that forging out far beyond London is actually a good idea, but you need nothing more than port reports, strat info, the salt lions, and a curious mind to interact on some of the islands and get stuff to flog to the scholar, and a little luck in finding the island to drop your first officer. Do Tomb colonist to Venderbight. Sell the training book. Return to London. Buy all the fuel and supplies. Explore. Done.
The biggest hurdle, talking to friends who are playing this, is knowing that it’s ok to push out way beyond London.[/quote]

Isn’t that all just kind of proving my point though?

Talking to friends who are playing, you’re finding that they’re taking a more conservative approach to exploration. That they don’t want to venture out too far at first. That the big, scary, zee is intimidating at first. Much was the same with myself. And it seemed every time I did venture out further than what I knew at those early stages, I found a new hyper-deadly hazard for my tiny little vessel with its tiny little crew, and I either limped back to London with almost empty tanks and holds, or didn’t make it back at all.

When you’re starting out, you don’t know where exactly to expect islands. I got a request in one of my early games to collect Strategic Info at Demeaux Island. I had no idea where that could be. I went out to the entire line of the first section of eastern cells, and it wasn’t in any of them (so it had to have spawned in the 2nd line east in that game), but I ended up going south, and running into trouble that killed me.

Saying &quotWell, the player should go really far out and with Port reports and do these specific things&quot is assuming prior knowledge that you have, and the new player won’t. Heck, due to randomization, it’s probably 2-3 games before they start figuring out the &quotgeneral&quot locations to things, if only because there’s no way to know how the map spawns in stuff until you’ve seen it do so a few times.

Early game players without experience are VERY different from Early game players with experience. With experience, you know what to do - I start with Poet, so the Tomb Colonist needs Wine - that nets me around 200 Echoes. Sell the book, another 50. Try to hit at least 10 ports on that first voyage. Another couple hundred. Et Cetera, et cetera. - - it all adds up to prior knowledge giving a huge boost.

But fine, I concede. You and Worm are correct - IF the player is experienced, they can probably net 1000 Echoes in their first couple of voyages starting out, and I suppose that for this player base, they’ll have a way to raise pages reliably whenever they want now. If they’re dedicated to the cause of doing so.

Because the whole point on this point was ultimately the question of whether or not having the Almanac negates the need for Surgeons to train pages.

Compare - It’s the early game, and you need: A better ship of some kind, Better weapons and equipment, and if starting fresh, a house and a Will. All really to just &quotset up&quot.

You also want to increase pages, because it’s better to increase it early when you’ll get more benefit out of it (since the fragment savings over time is what really makes it good in that sense, so the sooner you get it, the better).

Now you have a choice. Take the money and secrets you can earn early on your first ports and explorations and blow them and 1000e to raise your stat, or set up your basic gear, Will, equipment et cetera? Which has priority? Especially since you likely also have an officer or two to start training your other stats, tempting you to spend your secrets with them. Something you know you kind of need to do as well, and they’re right there to do it!

Do you just spend the secrets with them? Spend the money on better stuff for survivability? Or do you put off upgrading your character, make sure to spend half your accrued funds so far just on Outlandish artefacts, and put off your other necessities just to raise this one stat in a method that’s far more specific, time consuming and delaying of gratification than simply [i]talking with an officer?

[/i]That’s the thing. The Monstrous Almanac works, but it’s a huge inconvenience compared to all the other methods. In the early game, you have other priorities, and an inconvenience on raising a particular stat pretty much guarantees a delay in raising that stat for (I’m going to do something dangerous and assume here) more players than not. It would take a player completely dedicated to simply this one task and who is very knowledgeable of the game to make the choice to avail themselves to the Study items early on.

Getting a Townhouse and will has, I’m guessing for most, higher priority. Getting something that isn’t a pea shooter is probably higher priority for most. And certainly the other officers offer so much more convenience and reliability, lulling you into spending your secrets with them by the pure virtue of being there to spend secrets on.

So even the experienced player, for whom obtaining early game money is less of an issue, is now narrowing the probability of using the one reliable method to raise this stat - merely because it’s more of a hassle and less immediate than other methods, and certainly the primary method I’m guessing most players use to train - talking to their crew.

The Almanac for pages is a great supplement, and it’s a great stop-gap solution. And it’s great that it’s part of an ambition. But it doesn’t address the fact that it’s the only truly reliable method in the game to raise this stat, and compared to the other stat training, that this is a hassle, super inconsistent, and just really weird.

Because the thing that really bugs me (aside from overvaluation of the Poet Past and the inconvenience and it throwing balance a bit out of whack), I really don’t understand the why of this. Was there an earlier build where page accumulation proved to be too good? Then why wasn’t the solution to alter the values on the stat rather than eliminate training options? Was it intended to inflate the value of the stat through relative rarity of increasing it? Why? If that’s the case, why can the Plausible Surgeon still raise pages, but no other Surgeon can? He doesn’t have a complicated story and is pretty quiet, I’m not getting answers out of him, so why? What makes him so unique? Is FBG subtly scolding us to say no to drugs, stay in school and acquire esoteric knowledge in between learning Iambic Pentameter and basic Cephalopod Biology, revealing their pro-generalist education, anti-specilized education bias?

Why?

12

No idea why but there has never been an Officer that raises Pages, except the Plausible Surgeon. I am sure it was asked for in the early beta but nothing came of it and I don’t remember any discussion of why.

To be honest as an experienced player I am very happy to have the study option now. I can stop worrying so much about dropping pages picking up a certain Port Report or spending time hanging around Gaider’s hoping for a specific SAY event to counteract that loss.

Though I also didn’t go out of my way to raise pages by picking a poet background. I prefer to take one that has a more general use, normally Urchin as I like being able to sneak past things :).
edited by reveurciel on 3/3/2015

13

oops thanks

14

I’m pretty sure the Magician raised Pages at one point, though that was probably many months ago.

I feel like Failbetter must have made a conscious choice about Pages, but I agree with MisterGone that it just feels frustrating not to be able to increase it like all the other statistics. Plus, at game’s end, keeping 50% Pages = keeping your map = losing a lot of secrets? It feels quite punitive, really.

Notwithstanding all this, I almost always choose a Poet, for the same reason I choose Intelligence when playing D&D-like games. I like pretending to be smart! (And so, probably, do a lot of Sunless Zee-ers, and maybe Failbetter saw this in their gameplay data and said, “Let’s make the other stats more attractive by making Pages less attractive”?)

15

[quote=lady ciel ]No idea why but there has never been an Officer that raises Pages, except the Plausible Surgeon. I am sure it was asked for in the early beta but nothing came of it and I don’t remember any discussion of why.
[/quote]

I believe there was a time (before the game was properly balanced) where having a high pages stat made it too easy to gain secrets – in the early stages of development, you could only get so many secrets without a massive amount of grinding. Now that the game is officially released, however, secrets can be bought and sold, so having a high Pages stat is not game breaking; it’s just a benefit of the stat that it may save you some time or money on secrets, whereas other stats have other uses.

Personally, I see no reason why there shouldn’t be an officer who raises Pages – it would balance out the stats better and make them more fair, enhancing a lot of storylines in the game.

[li]

16

[quote=Drakesden]I

Notwithstanding all this, I almost always choose a Poet, for the same reason I choose Intelligence when playing D&D-like games. I like pretending to be smart! (And so, probably, do a lot of Sunless Zee-ers, and maybe Failbetter saw this in their gameplay data and said, &quotLet’s make the other stats more attractive by making Pages less attractive&quot?)[/quote]

If that’s the case, then they had good intentions but opposite consequences.

Making pages harder to obtain makes them rarer, and thus makes them more attractive and increases demand on them. That’s just how humans work - take it away, now we want it more!

17

[quote=MisterGone]Because the thing that really bugs me (aside from overvaluation of the Poet Past and the inconvenience and it throwing balance a bit out of whack), I really don’t understand the why of this. Was there an earlier build where page accumulation proved to be too good? Then why wasn’t the solution to alter the values on the stat rather than eliminate training options? Was it intended to inflate the value of the stat through relative rarity of increasing it? Why? If that’s the case, why can the Plausible Surgeon still raise pages, but no other Surgeon can? He doesn’t have a complicated story and is pretty quiet, I’m not getting answers out of him, so why? What makes him so unique? Is FBG subtly scolding us to say no to drugs, stay in school and acquire esoteric knowledge in between learning Iambic Pentameter and basic Cephalopod Biology, revealing their pro-generalist education, anti-specilized education bias?

Why?[/quote]

I think you’re falling into one (or more) cognitive traps.

  1. Assuming there is a &quotwhy&quot or actual intent. Obviously, there was a human who sat down and coded what officers train what stats. But surgeons not training pages may have just been an oversight. Probably they copy/paste the template for each officer, and they make changes to the code based on that officer, but forget to change type of stat raised by the secret interaction. This happens all the time in programming, particularly small teams.

(Solely by way of example: in one game I played recently, two Steam achievements were granted upon achieving the conditions of just one. Why? Because the programmer copy/pasted the event code and forgot to change a reference in the second. The point is that it’s silly to assume there is any intent behind any particular detail in a work.)

  1. Seeking symmetry. As you outlined in your original post, it would be nicely symmetrical if each of the five groups of officers (not counting mascots, obviously) each trained one of the five stats. I admit, it seems appealing. 5 stats types and 5 officer types; 1 stat type for each officer. But is there any particular value in that besides calming some inner anxiety? Does it actually make the game better? Beyond calming player anxiety and desire for symmetry, does it actually make the game more meaningful or fun? And by &quotfun&quot - I don’t actually mean the desire to max every stat in the most efficient manner possible.

Ultimately, there are a lot bad habits and expectations that players bring to games. It’s fine that a niche game like this doesn’t cater to those, but more or less forces players to abandon them. Placing any real importance on stat pumping is indisputably one of those things that needs to be let go.

18

Considering that the lack of Pages trainers has been here since the very beginning of the Early Access release, it’s pretty clearly not a bug.

19

[quote=grisamentum]

I think you’re falling into one (or more) cognitive traps.

  1. Assuming there is a &quotwhy&quot or actual intent. Obviously, there was a human who sat down and coded what officers train what stats. But surgeons not training pages may have just been an oversight. Probably they copy/paste the template for each officer, and they make changes to the code based on that officer, but forget to change type of stat raised by the secret interaction. This happens all the time in programming, particularly small teams.

(Solely by way of example: in one game I played recently, two Steam achievements were granted upon achieving the conditions of just one. Why? Because the programmer copy/pasted the event code and forgot to change a reference in the second. The point is that it’s silly to assume there is any intent behind any particular detail in a work.)

  1. Seeking symmetry. As you outlined in your original post, it would be nicely symmetrical if each of the five groups of officers (not counting mascots, obviously) each trained one of the five stats. I admit, it seems appealing. 5 stats types and 5 officer types; 1 stat type for each officer. But is there any particular value in that besides calming some inner anxiety? Does it actually make the game better? Beyond calming player anxiety and desire for symmetry, does it actually make the game more meaningful or fun? And by &quotfun&quot - I don’t actually mean the desire to max every stat in the most efficient manner possible.

Ultimately, there are a lot bad habits and expectations that players bring to games. It’s fine that a niche game like this doesn’t cater to those, but more or less forces players to abandon them. Placing any real importance on stat pumping is indisputably one of those things that needs to be let go.[/quote]

That’s an interesting response. Analyze the intent of my arguments rather than addressing the arguments themselves.

  1. Well, as it’s been noted by the Worm who glorifies, the &quotlack of why&quot due to oversight is such a low probability that it approaches near-zero. This game has been under Early Access development and open scrutiny for several months now, so there is more time for such issues to be brought up. I doubt in fact, that I’m the first one to bring this up. I’m guessing I am reopening an old discussion (as I guess with many of my discussions) because I only started playing this game once it was released, and I’m a latecomer to the party so to speak.

However, IF it is an oversight, then what I’m doing can be considered as something of a service, since I’m drawing attention to said oversight and hopefully the developers will see it, realize it, and fix it as it was unintended.

In either case, I’m not falling into any &quotcognitive traps&quot on this point. I’m either discussing a point of potential contention, or I’m alerting others to an error (albeit in a very wordy manner).

  1. Seeking Symmetry in art is not a trap or a problem of thinking. If I were seeking symmetry in nature, then that would be one thing and I’d agree with your point. That’s something neither I nor no human controls. Art is a different matter entirely.

Humans like symmetry, we’re built for it in fact. Symmetry has become one of our prime informers as to what makes something seem aesthetically pleasing in a number of forms. As this is the case, seeking or wanting symmetry in a work produced by humans - i.e. something that humans can make symmetrical and are not incapable of altering themselves - is not delusional thinking nor cognitive trap. The developers can make this aspect of the game more symmetrical. It would likely seem more appealing if they did so to a larger percentage of their player base. Since at least some of the job of product development is to figure out what their player/consumer base wants (and/or needs) and to hopefully deliver on these expectations to appeal to them and a larger audience in order to generate more appreciation, sales, and financial security for themselves, it is in their interests to do so, whether they realize that or not. Ideally, they would want this for purely aesthetic reasons themselves, because presumably, they are ALSO humans.

This informs the question of &quotwill this make the game better?&quot.

Yes, it would. Since humans like symmetry, something that is more symmetrical will be viewed as being &quotbetter&quot by humans. Unless you’re actually a robot, then yeah, it’s better.

I’m not talking about power grinding or stat pumping here. Not really. I’m talking about how there is a discordant element within an apparently ordered system. The player is free right now to stat pump any of their stats if they so well choose to do so - Veils especially, as one of the trainers can bring that as high as 150, 50 over the norm for many of the rest (this too seems a problem to me if viewed entirely on symmetrical grounds, but it is of less import than the lack of Pages trainers). However, Pages is more difficult and obscure, and so as a result, throws the system in place a bit off balance. It results in making Poets far more appealing, as I’ve stated above. This in of itself seems to be against the intent of the developers, because if they wanted to have everyone be a poet before they became a captain, then that would have been the only back story in the game.

Instead they offered the player a choice. The problem is that due to this issue, the choice becomes less appealing and thus narrows to the point of a false dichotomy over the long term of the game.

My anecdotal experience is that I started several games, trying out all of the backgrounds and legacy options (the salvager, pupil etc). I discovered that picking Poet was the best, and that picking Correspondent was terrible, undermined by the fact that it breaks the early game secret accumulation aspect of the game. Plenty of others have noticed these results too, and I’ve noticed that most experienced players seem to pick Poet more often than not based on them talking about their experiences of the game. Whether they realize it’s because of the advantage it provides or not.

There is an imbalance here. Whether Failbetter decide to do anything about that is entirely up to them. I’m merely a messenger on that regard.
edited by MisterGone on 3/6/2015

20

[color=#990000] looms ominously over the thread

If you’re arguing about the nature of your arguments rather than the content, you’re at risk of becoming personal. It is possible to avoid the temptation, but fairly difficult.

Consider that a statement with intent, directed at all, and not anyone person in particular.

On the subject of symmetry, you should see my ears. Completely different heights. Makes glasses look ridiculous.

ceases looming [/color]
edited by babelfishwars on 3/6/2015