Changes to "Attending a Party"

When you’re attending a party (after accepting &quotA Polite Invitation&quot), you now have an unlimited deck, a handsize of 3, and no way to discard cards.
There’s no mention of this in the patch notes.

I believe there is a new patch today. The non-discardable cards make the party much worse, since you can no longer get favors consistently.

The other changes include (taken from Reddit which lists Discord as a source):

[quote=Reddit] Balmoral has been adjusted; it’s now 5 time remaining for 4 collated research (was 4 and 3) specifically targeted at tuning down the Bombazine option a bit

  • Nadir is now infinite deck with hand size = lodgings size

  • Expedition Supplies for strong-backed labour now yields 3 supplies (was 5)

  • SBL (Strong-Backed Labor) is much cheaper in London

  • There are now darkness/light cards in Burrow and Balmoral
    [/quote]
    Hopefully the patch notes will be posted here soon.
    edited by menaulon on 1/19/2021

If you’re going to make the cards at Attending a Party undiscardable, at least give us a full hand, according to our residence size. 3 cards is dreadful!

Welp. Time for me to ignore the party invite.

Agreed completely!

The reliability was the only reason to play through the Party for characters who don’t need Personal Recommendations anymore. With three cards, it can easily become almost worthless, particularly if you need Hell favours. I was happy that they didn’t change it with the Heists, which have also become rather frustrating. A pity they continued with this, and I definitely hope they won’t reduce the card count in Nadir to three, as that would be all but catastrophic.

It’s still an okay card-based source of MW, for those who need to grind Notability. And at least the 25% of a Docks favour doesn’t rely on drawing a particular card. But yeah, overall this change suuuucks.

Polythreme is essentially unplayable with a three-card hand. I’d hate to see other areas with non-discardable cards rob us of the hard-won advantages of a five-card lodging.

Indeed. Nadir in particular would be highly frustrating.

Perhaps if enough of us give negative feedback, a higher (ideally lodging hand sized) card limits might be implemented?

[quote=Sir Reginald Monteroy]
Indeed. Nadir in particular would be highly frustrating.

Perhaps if enough of us give negative feedback, a higher (ideally lodging hand sized) card limits might be implemented?[/quote]
According to the same (third-hand) patch notes, Nadir is now infinite deck, lodging-sized hand. So it’s already technically possible. And I’m pretty happy for that change to the Nadir–it was a pain to store up cards because it’s practically a reflex for me to draw them.

The one benefit of the Nadir having a limited deck was that you could make sure you only had one card, significantly improving the chance that you would get repeat draws of cards you wanted as they filled up your hand with junk. This is fine, but it’s not really beneficial.

[quote=fungo maddens]When you’re attending a party (after accepting &quotA Polite Invitation&quot), you now have an unlimited deck, a handsize of 3, and no way to discard cards.

There’s no mention of this in the patch notes.[/quote]

Oh no, this is terrible! With the wrong cards in the starting hand, since they can’t be discarded, it’s almost impossible to get Society / Hell favours out of the Party. Oh well, another card to discard in my deck :( I thought the goal was to optimize decks…?

Also, I echo the wish that patch notes will be posted here soon; not all of us are on Discord or Twitter…
edited by theonie on 1/19/2021

[quote=PSGarak][quote=Sir Reginald Monteroy]
Indeed. Nadir in particular would be highly frustrating.

Perhaps if enough of us give negative feedback, a higher (ideally lodging hand sized) card limits might be implemented?[/quote]
According to the same (third-hand) patch notes, Nadir is now infinite deck, lodging-sized hand. So it’s already technically possible. And I’m pretty happy for that change to the Nadir–it was a pain to store up cards because it’s practically a reflex for me to draw them.[/quote]

I can confirm that the Nadir had lodging-sized hand today. Good that it’s not been an oversight but an intention; three card limit would really hurt there.
It would be nice if the lodging-sized limit was reintroduced into the party and perhaps the heists as well. As others already said, it needlessly diminishes the usefulness of expensive 5-card lodgings and also makes the parties far less useful, basically discardable unless you really go for the MW.

Another area to put on the growing “never go there” list.

It does kind of make sense when you think of it as a… party…
On the up side - this means you won’t need to spend opp cards to draw cards there. But I’ll miss the favours: Hell.

I much prefer the fact that the party does not take away or need your opportunity cards. And they’ve added so many new ways to get favours, I don’t really think this hurts anyone so much. All Tier 1-3 Professions give 2 Favours each, and the A Visit card also gives two different favours for each option, as opposed to 1 before. So I don’t think we should want for favours, still plenty of sources out there. And with just a bit of luck, one can get favours from the party AND get favours from the (still available) opportunity cards.

The complaint isn’t so much that this change makes Favours harder to get; rather, that it reduces the profitability and reliability of the Party so much that endgame players will now find the card not worth playing and discard it instantly, to use those actions on something better.

[as the Lab shows, there is no limitation in Storynexus that prevents Failbetter from making an area infinite-draw and also its cards discardable. So this has to be interpreted as FBG either intentionally making the Party much worse, for …reasons???—or, they didn’t fully appreciate how much worse they were making it. Either option is not great, IMHO]
edited by hwoosh on 1/21/2021

The complaint isn’t so much that this change makes Favours harder to get; rather, that it reduces the profitability and reliability of the Party so much that endgame players will now find the card not worth playing and discard it instantly, to use those actions on something better.[/quote]

I would really think about when was the last time I have visited the party. Im kinda sure that I have always discarded the card the last half year.

Since Helicon House was rolled out, I’ve avoided it entirely unless I REALLY needed Society Favours for some reason. It used to be fairly profitable in comparison with other endgame actions, but now it’s decidedly lower-tier.

The complaint isn’t so much that this change makes Favours harder to get; rather, that it reduces the profitability and reliability of the Party so much that endgame players will now find the card not worth playing and discard it instantly, to use those actions on something better.

[as the Lab shows, there is no limitation in Storynexus that prevents Failbetter from making an area infinite-draw and also its cards discardable. So this has to be interpreted as FBG either intentionally making the Party much worse, for …reasons???—or, they didn’t fully appreciate how much worse they were making it. Either option is not great, IMHO]

edited by hwoosh on 1/21/2021[/quote]

Yes, exactly! I am an endgame player - a little behind with the railway admittedly but still! - and until now I always played the Party card as it was a pretty reliable source of Society and/or Hell favours and MW. I understand that FBG might want to reduce the value obtained from the Party but this is really unplayable.

Did anyone really think 5 opp cards and 6-8 actions for a few favors was a good deal? Sure, you get slightly fewer favors now, but the 5 extra opp cards probably more than make up the difference. This also feels quite more natural than the way things were. It’s a party.