[li]In spite of my ardent fascination for unbridled verbosity, I am attempting to play peacemaker here and steer the conversation back to its purest intent; which ostensibly is to address the fact that the game would benefit from an officer who can raise the Pages stat, at least to 100, if not 150, as the game no longer appears to need over-balancing of the Pages stat…[/li][li]
edited by SouthSea Rutherby on 3/6/2015
Hadn’t checked this thread in a couple days, but I agree that arguing over intent is the first step to getting into personal attack territory. In general, that’s pretty much what personal attacks usually seem to be comprised of - disagreement or dissatifaction with others intent compared to one’s own.
As Rutherby has mentioned - why wouldn’t the game benefit from an officer who raises the Pages stat through training? Especially if the choice was to address an imbalance that no longer exists?
I’d like to say I too feel that, personally, it’d do good to have all surgeons train your Pages instead of your Hearts, both for lore (as MisterGone nicely explained in the form of each stat’s in-universe description), balance (Poet background no-brainer), and symmetry reasons.
That’s just my uninformed opinion, though - for me to consider it more than that, I’d need to know the dev’s reasons (or lack thereof) behind their choice.
Still on the uninformed opinion level, I wouldn’t agree on making different officers of one same job train different stats (Mascots not included). I do really like the small difference between the trainings of the gunnery officers though, and I’d like if the small difference were expanded to the other jobs in the same form of different rare outcomes.
[quote=Mr. Mister]I’d like to say I too feel that, personally, it’d do good to have all surgeons train your Pages instead of your Hearts, both for lore (as MisterGone nicely explained in the form of each stat’s in-universe description), balance (Poet background no-brainer), and symmetry reasons.
That’s just my uninformed opinion, though - for me to consider it more than that, I’d need to know the dev’s reasons (or lack thereof) behind their choice.
Still on the uninformed opinion level, I wouldn’t agree on making different officers of one same job train different stats (Mascots not included). I do really like the small difference between the trainings of the gunnery officers though, and I’d like if the small difference were expanded to the other jobs in the same form of different rare outcomes.[/quote]
I agree with this as well. Overall, I think a few new officers might fix this, though I understand they’re still ironing out some of the other non-gunner professions. ;)
[li]
In fact, you could say that Tentacook and Bandacheff already do that, in a way: one can give one point of terror, while the other won’t but has quite the recruitement price.
[quote=MisterGone]Hadn’t checked this thread in a couple days, but I agree that arguing over intent is the first step to getting into personal attack territory. In general, that’s pretty much what personal attacks usually seem to be comprised of - disagreement or dissatifaction with others intent compared to one’s own.
As Rutherby has mentioned - why wouldn’t the game benefit from an officer who raises the Pages stat through training? Especially if the choice was to address an imbalance that no longer exists?[/quote]
I never intended anything to be taken personally. My entire point could be shortened to: (1) don’t assume it was on purpose (as much of your argument was laden with questions like "why" and inquiring as to the "reasoning") and (2) as you so thoroughly explained, yes, humans incline towards symmetry. Your link to humans being "built" for symmetry was really my entire point. Our brains like symmetry because it is easier to process. That was exactly what I was getting at. I never said it was a product of "delusional thinking" but the fact is that "cognitive traps," by definition, are patterns of thought where we substitute automatic reactions for analysis. That is precisely what you are saying: that the game is better if it more symmetrical because humans like symmetry. As you boiled it down, "[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]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." "Natural sort of common sense" is not an argument. It is an assumption that the position is correct.[/color]
Obviously all sorts of art, in probably every medium, lack symmetrical elements, or even predictable elements. But as to the actual merits of the question, I don’t see why Pages should be so particularly easy to increase, as they tend to get used for the most challenges as well (particularly repeatable challenges like autopsies of zee beasts). Those challenges tend to produce even more fragments which raise stats even faster.
I certainly agree that the current state of affairs is awkward because it means that Poet is the "best" background once you are acting with full information. That said the game is so hopelessly unbalanced for an informed player that my only response is "who cares." For example it becomes quite obvious that you should never choose Correspondent, and eventually you always chose Rival to pass down the Memento Mori.
In any case, once you’ve played even a little, the value of Secrets-for-Stats is just irrelevant. It’s not a thing that anyone needs to bother doing much. Is the game inappropriately hard because you can’t raise your Pages through officers? No. Does the game need to be easier? I hardly think so. If anything I think FB should remove all secret->stat transactions and replace it with a different sort of system that involves more emphasis on story progress and less reward for fighting zee beasts.
Which would be solved if only the seed and the uncovered tile qualities were preserved, but not the locations’ names and their discovered status.
The one "issue" I can think of with both letting surgeons train yo Pages and doing the above, is training a dinasty of corresponcdence-poet-explorers that, on each life, rediscovered all locations, trained only Pages, and passed it onto their Correspondent, until you get a breed that can start with 100 pages without needing to be a poet. But, then again, you can kinda do this already with any other stat, the only difference being that the pages increase would make each dinasty member’s run more fruitful.
[quote=Mr. Mister]
The one "issue" I can think of with both letting surgeons train your Pages and doing the above, is training a dinasty of corresponcdence-poet-explorers that, on each life, rediscovered all locations, trained only Pages, and passed it onto their Correspondent, until you get a breed that can start with 100 pages without needing to be a poet. But, then again, you can kinda do this already with any other stat, the only difference being that the pages increase would make each dinasty member’s run more fruitful.[/quote]
That’s the problem: currently, you can do this with any stat except pages. Which is unbalanced, now that secrets are so easy to acquire.
[li]
Without delving too deeply into the debate so far, I’ll make a handful of observations.
1: If Failbetter have somehow overlooked that they haven’t made any high-level Pages-training officers, I’ll eat all of my hats. One might argue that there’s balance issues re: officers, stats, backgrounds and legacies, but I don’t for a moment believe that the devs are unaware of this fact.
2: It would be surprising indeed for our ships’ surgeons not to train the one stat explicitly associated with healing. I agree that Pages makes sense too - especially as it’s the stat used for anatomising defeated zee-beasts - but Hearts is surgeon territory, through and through.
3: Given that literally every recruitable cook - which is, I grant, only two (four if you count their evolutions) - boosts Pages, they’d make as much sense as Pages-trainers as anything. After all, I’m not sure how much I’m learning about keeping my crew healthy and happy from listening to the Poissonier talk about the necessity of being consumed, or the Outcast burble about the depths of the zee.
I’ve half-convinced myself with these suggestions, but I’m mostly being facetious. FBG have more resources than I do for testing these things. It’s easy to think up ways to make things more complicated, and sometimes even to make them simpler! And certainly I have a strong fancy for symmetry myself - I should show you my gaming spreadsheets sometime.
Rather than plain healing, I believe Hearts is more associated with self-healing, or regeneration. Regarding how all cooks boost pages: it’s not the main boosted stat (that’s also hearts), and I wouldn’t personally find it as lore-consistent if it were.
Cooks can make you healthier over time.
Ah, but the Hearts stat is also used to "bandage the wounded" if the ship’s engine explodes. And all doctors give bonuses to the Hearts stat.
Personally, I think it’s a little of each – healing and resisting terror – with a hearty meal and medical care.
[li]
[quote=South-Sea Rutherby][quote=Mr. Mister]
The one "issue" I can think of with both letting surgeons train your Pages and doing the above, is training a dinasty of corresponcdence-poet-explorers that, on each life, rediscovered all locations, trained only Pages, and passed it onto their Correspondent, until you get a breed that can start with 100 pages without needing to be a poet. But, then again, you can kinda do this already with any other stat, the only difference being that the pages increase would make each dinasty member’s run more fruitful.[/quote]
That’s the problem: currently, you can do this with any stat except pages. Which is unbalanced, now that secrets are so easy to acquire. [/quote]
No, that’s not the problem. You can do precisely what Mr. Mister described by raising Pages through creation of Monstrous Almanacs.
The full extent of the "problem" is: "With one limited and minor exception, Pages cannot be trained by officers despite the fact that other stats can be so trained."
Let me just quickly say that it would be nice to raise pages somehow. If you are not going to let the officers train the captains, perhaps a punitively expensive course at the College would do.
But you can raise pages, and the other stats, in your study now. I don’t find it too difficult to find the Outlandish Artefacts and Secrets for the Monstrous Almanac and, as it sells in Venderbight, it doesn’t take up hold space for long and I can keep creating them.
Also if you really want to raise Pages as fast as possible, you can buy the artefacts necessary for 1050 echoes, which is only a pretty small amount more than it sells for.
Alternatively, you can
exchange Scintillack for them in Varchas.
I’m still relatively new to the game, and I think the suggestions sound like a good idea. I mean currently, I’m mainly focused on veils and iron, particularly as passing on money to the next captain makes getting started back up much easier. With that being said, I don’t see any good reasons any more why to leave the pages stat without a trainer.
I’ll second what Mister Gone says about 1000 echoes not being chump change. Currently, I AM able to consistently bag 1000 echoes on my first foray out into zee…but that’s only because of poking around on the forums and reading up on the suggestion to go to
Avid Horizon as the first stop. Then I make sure to circle all the way out to Irem, Empire of Hands, and Aestival
Usually, however, I seem to die before making it back from my second voyage out…even before I can drop off my very first captivating treasure.
edited by Clovermite on 3/28/2015
[quote=Clovermite]I’m still relatively new to the game, and I think the suggestions sound like a good idea. I mean currently, I’m mainly focused on veils and iron, particularly as passing on money to the next captain makes getting started back up much easier. With that being said, I don’t see any good reasons any more why to leave the pages stat without a trainer.
I’ll second what Mister Gone says about 1000 echoes not being chump change. Currently, I AM able to consistently bag 1000 echoes on my first foray out into zee…but that’s only because of poking around on the forums and reading up on the suggestion to go to
Avid Horizon as the first stop. Then I make sure to circle all the way out to Irem, Empire of Hands, and Aestival
Usually, however, I seem to die before making it back from my second voyage out…even before I can drop off my very first captivating treasure.
edited by Clovermite on 3/28/2015[/quote]
Stats aren’t going to help that. Stats have very little influence on your ability to make money or survive.
The main factor in your ability to make money and play well is your knowledge of the world and stories, and knowing what to take where and when.
[quote=grisamentum][
Stats aren’t going to help that. Stats have very little influence on your ability to make money or survive.
The main factor in your ability to make money and play well is your knowledge of the world and stories, and knowing what to take where and when.[/quote]
Fair point. And to that note, I DID finally make it past my second voyage last night with my eight Captain. I setup a few heirlooms and even upgraded to the corvette before dying to a mutiny because I thought I’d experiment with
sailing off the west edge of the screen past the dawn machine. The +50 terror put me up to 100 instantly.
I immediately died to a mutiny. The sad thing is, I think I’d done this before on like, my second captain, and had just forgotten. Oh well.
But back on topic, I still like Mister Gone’s suggestions - both on pages and hearts.But as has been discussed here and elsewhere, that probably just comes down to a preference for symmetry. I am really enjoying the game so far, it is rather unique, and I can understand why, even outside of preference differences, the developers would be hesitant to fiddle with the balance on the stats in case it causes unexpected issues.
edited by Clovermite on 3/29/2015