COMMUNITY CONSULTATION: Journals

[color=00ffff]Since the last community consultation thread was so useful, we’d like to ask for your feedback on another topic. [/color]
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[color=00ffff]We’re considering making improvements to the journal in Echo Bazaar. What do people think would make the journal experience easier to use, more functional, and more attractive?[/color]
edited by Chris Gardiner on 7/24/2012

[ul][li]The capacity to edit the customisable elements of past posts.[/li][li]An index, structuring our posts by (for example) month and year.[/li][li]A text search.[/li][li]The capacity to add tags or similar metadata to posts.[/li][li]Perhaps some ability to print items or qualities to our journals at any time, as we currently can when we first acquire them?
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Maybe it’s because I play in Chrome but I can’t edit my titles and I’d like to.

The ability to have an option to just automatically “journal” certain types of posts. Dreams, ventures, ambitions. I’m finding as I go a long that I don’t always realize how much I wanted to keep something until it’s already too late.

~MF
A Lady with a lack of ink

The ability to add things to the Journal after the event…
Right now, my journal doesn’t contain much of value, because it’s a long trawl through it, looking for anything specific. I’m at cap and have been for most of the last year, barring periods when the cap was raised. This means that for me the majority of the game went past long before the ability to echo content into the Journal existed. As such, I’m only capable of adding recent content. Even then, that gets buried amongst the refresh spam, so I need to delete that on a regular basis to have an even vaguely useful Journal.
So, what would make the Journal more attractive would be for there to be a full index of everything capable of being added to the journal, and as we progress through the game, it tracks what we’ve had and allows us to revisit it. Much like a lot of other games do with automatically updating journals/logs/bestiaries etc. If there was then an index of this, set up by category and location, we’d be able to dip in and out and see what we’d done. It wouldn’t be a manually updated journal - more the game letting us reread anything that we’d already seen.

Or I’d like the ability to replay any part of the game at any time so that we can go back and look at something six months later - including the things that are currently once only! That would be a slower method of our being able to check things, but require less actual changes.

[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook][ul][li]The capacity to edit the customisable elements of past posts.[/li][li]An index, structuring our posts by (for example) month and year.[/li][li]A text search.[/li][li]The capacity to add tags or similar metadata to posts.[/li][li]Perhaps some ability to print items or qualities to our journals at any time, as we currently can when we first acquire them?
[/li][/ul][/quote]

Seconded! Especially the “index” features: I often record in the Journal that I deem significant, and I even try to record multiple-action storylines in order, avoiding to record different action happening in between… And then, I never re-read them in the Journal because I’d have to scroll pages and pages just to scrap up a tidbit T.T So, be it a chronological organizer or a tag system, everything that allows to search for a specific event or storylet would be appreciated ^^

I really do wish I used the journal more often. There’s the occasional super awesome story that I put there, but there’s many others that I don’t. This is partly due to laziness combined with not wanting to flood my twitter feed with journal posts… sadly, not much can be done about this, as there’s already an option to post to journal without tweeting about it. Though, perhaps we could enable an option to automatically post notable storylets (Those that can only be done once).

I agree with the others that a way to search through the journal might be nice. Months from now I’ll probably still remember the time I threw a physician out the window in the Empress’ Court and got banished for it, but by then it would be a daunting task to go back through all my journal entries to find it. Perhaps also allow us to get the same link that gets posted to twitter and facebook, so we can link others to it (For instance, I was recently talking to someone over instant messengers about the game, and wanted to show them an interesting storylet I did recently)

Another thing that may be nice would be if we can share more information about ourselves in our profile. Currently, we show our equipped items and current lodgings by default, one quality, and one item. However, when I’m checking the journal of a friend on here, I might be interested in seeing how they are coming along in the game, maybe what they might need, those kinds of things. It would be nice if we can share all of our main qualities and menaces. Perhaps even let people peruse our qualities as they will, though we should be able to turn this on or off as we please, as some people may not be as open as me. Maybe even allow that for inventory as well, I know I for one would like to be able to show off not just that I’ve written a novel or a poem, but that I’ve written six different kinds!
edited by Urthdigger on 3/6/2012

I tend to use my journal currently to record key events in my time at Fallen London.

Generally that’s large chunks of text from key stories, start and end mostly. Any time one of my qualities jumps a whole level (up or down).

Sometimes I wish more stuff was journalable, gaining key items for example. Not all qualities changes are either. Suggestions above to allow editing, tagging and searching would all make the journal more useful… There could be tags for stories for example, so http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com/Profile/REALJimBob shows my whole journal, then http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com/Profile/REALJimBob/MysteriousBenefactor shows all my journal entries that I’ve tagged as being from that story. While manual tagging is great, I’m going to forget sometimes - it would be even better if FBG came up with some standard tags (story, location, quality, etc.) that would be automatically applied when journalling those kind of events.

The ability to free-form journal would be handy. I’m not sure I’d use it myself much, but I could easily see those persons to like to be a little more immersed into their character choosing to almost tell their own story through it.

Not sure how easy it would be, but the ability to retrospectively journal some things might be handy. I know I can reminisce about my Ambition, I might choose to push some of those historical entries into my journal (at the correct timestamp). If I can do it for my Ambition, why not for other stories?

Actually, I’d like to know if I’ve journal’d a fact before, perhaps just a message on the echo screen so I can unclick it.

~MF
A Lady sorting

It would be nice if echoing a storylet result would include the accomplishments/qualities/items that came from that storylet. As it is we can put these in separate echoes, but it would be nice to have them together. That way if when we decide to look back a few months later as our memory of the original events gets a little fuzzy, it is clear which accomplishments are linked to which stories and we aren’t left wondering whether two echoes happen to have come from the same event.

I also like to be able to re-examine story chains I’ve already finished to appreciate the writing quality and humour, and perhaps notice nuances I missed the first time. And of course to appreciate the story again once my memory of the original reading starts to fade. With the current journal system this can be difficult since they are in chronological order and echoes from a story that we took a few weeks to finish might be spread apart by many pages. A tagging system, as suggested by previous posters, is a good solution. Another possibility to consider is adding the ability to create user-definable sections in the journal, and allowing us to choose which section each echo goes in.
edited by Kaanyia on 3/7/2012

[quote=Kaanyia]It would be nice if echoing a storylet result would include the accomplishments/qualities/items that came from that storylet. As it is we can put these in separate echoes, but it would be nice to have them together. That way if when we decide to look back a few months later as our memory of the original events gets a little fuzzy, it is clear which accomplishments are linked to which stories and we aren’t left wondering whether two echoes happen to have come from the same event.

I also like to be able to re-examine story chains I’ve already finished to appreciate the writing quality and humour, and perhaps notice nuances I missed the first time. And of course to appreciate the story again once my memory of the original reading starts to fade. With the current journal system this can be difficult since they are in chronological order and echoes from a story that we took a few weeks to finish might be spread apart by many pages. A tagging system, as suggested by previous posters, is a good solution. Another possibility to consider is adding the ability to create user-definable sections in the journal, and allowing us to choose which section each echo goes in.
edited by Kaanyia on 3/7/2012[/quote]

This. So very much this. The ability to echo the results of an action would be my biggest request.

Honestly, I don’t think the chronology problem is all that dire–if we could simply click and drag journal entries to rearrange them, or choose to have the journal display itself in reverse chronological order, either would satisfy me on that count. I strongly approve of the idea of tags and similar metadata, though.

Also, it’d be nice not to have a 140-character limit if you won’t echo to Twitter. I’ve had to truncate the title of more than one journal entry I was not echoing anywhere but my journal.

Results of actions as combined with the echo would be fantastic, as then we won’t so much have to use the header text to note that and be able to use the valuable characters to remind ourselves what the story thread was (for example, a certain dream level, or story-line)

If we’re tagging the results, wouldn’t it also be good to have it show what it was the result of? There are two parts to every action - the intro and the result.

Basically, something to replace the wiki that’s now defunct. Automatic journaling of what we do, combined with a way to go back and look at it afterwards.

On the left of our ‘Myself’ tab, we have a list of all the qualities - ‘A Bringer of Death’, ‘Embroiled in the Wars of Illusion’, ‘Uncovering Secrets Framed in Gold’, and so on. A lot of these are associated with story sequences, and it would be nice if they were also associated with the actual journaled text of the storylets that got me there. A lot of these used to be wikied, but the Fate ones never were; I have only vague memories of what ‘Uncovering Secrets Framed in Gold was’.

I don’t really use the journal, because if I’m enjoying a storyline I don’t want to consciously have to click on things to ‘echo’ it to my journal - I just want to enjoy the storyline. I agree with MLG, basically - I’d like each storyline I’ve played through to be accessible in my journal in an orderly fashion, so I can read through the text again and enjoy it. This is particularly important for storylines where there is a gap - like the tattoo parlour or the missionary looking for her husband - as by the time the next set of content appears, I don’t remember what the first part of the story was. And I think this is essential for storylines I’ve paid fate for and can’t replay, as well. (Because, obviously, I could have copied and pasted the text into a Word document as I went along - but I usually think of doing things like this after the fact, and it would be much neater if the game itself basically did this for me!)

For a game of this kind, where the emphasis is on the text and the clues, that’s pretty much essential.

I agree with Lady Red and MLG. It would be a very nice addition to have previous storylines recorded. Perhaps it would be possible to link it to qualities, so that you can see all the stories that increases your quality for a storyline and then also use these qualities as tags? This way it would be possible to add the journal feature for content retroactively (take the university storyline as an example: Everyone who’s finished it gets the common part 1-25, and then you get access to 26+30 or 27+40 depending on whether your current quality is 30 or 40).
edited by Malt Jones on 3/9/2012

[quote=M_L_G]Basically, something to replace the wiki that’s now defunct. Automatic journaling of what we do, combined with a way to go back and look at it afterwards.

On the left of our ‘Myself’ tab, we have a list of all the qualities - ‘A Bringer of Death’, ‘Embroiled in the Wars of Illusion’, ‘Uncovering Secrets Framed in Gold’, and so on. A lot of these are associated with story sequences, and it would be nice if they were also associated with the actual journaled text of the storylets that got me there. A lot of these used to be wikied, but the Fate ones never were; I have only vague memories of what ‘Uncovering Secrets Framed in Gold was’.[/quote]

I find the wiki is updated quite frequently, and in fact I update it often with things like the challenge points for actions. The fate ones were never put on the wiki for a reason: Failbetter Games wishes for fate options to have an air of mystery about them, the spoilers of all spoilers, the knowledge that it’s something good, but you’re unsure exactly what. For this reason, various websites such as both wikis (The wikia one and the wikidot one) have been asked not to post Fate content.

I suspect that I’m asking for rather more than most people when I say this, but what I want out of the Journal, as long as you’re redesigning it, is for it to be a replacement for the wiki text dumps that you object to. So, what I actually want in clearer terms:

  1. An option for my journal to be self-updating.
  2. For the self-updates to my journal to log the text of storylets and cards that I personally have seen, including the failure/success/rare success results, provided I have seen them.
    2a) Much lower on the list of priorities, although it would be pretty darn nifty, to tag the first sightings of each story result with the date on which it was first seen. If it’s too much work, disregard this entirely.
  3. For this self-updating data to be organized by location (e.g. a list of all that I have seen in Ladybones Road, a list of all that I have seen from my inventory, a list of all that I have seen on the Broad Unterzee, etc. …
    3a) … except in those instances when the storylet is part of an ongoing storyline, in which case I’d rather like them to be organized separately by storyline, with a note regarding where they appear (so that I can, for example, look back on my experiences hunting my nemesis Scathewick more readily). I understand that this might be a pain in the ass for every story, so even only for the really big ones (Ambitions, SMEN when I get around to it, and so on) it would be lower on the list than a log of what I have seen by location.
  4. That this journal be visible only to us, so that it doesn’t become a content dump replacement for the Internet- if we want to echo snippets of content, let us do THAT to our Twitter/Facebook page. That and refreshes are all I use the functionality for anyway, so I’d prefer to only be able to echo individual storylets or sidebar bits of interest to social networks, and have a PRIVATE journal for my own reference. After all, I don’t want other people reading my journal!

Basically, I want my journal, should I so desire it, to BE a journal of what I’ve seen in Fallen London as a whole, a way to look back at all I’ve experienced in sequence, to chart my trips through Ladybones Road or my encounters with rats in my lodgings. It shouldn’t be hard to add a bunch of seen/not seen flags to a player’s personal data, I would think. (If I’m wrong, do tell me.) I use the wiki for exactly that reason- to look back on all I’ve done. If the journal already did that, then I’d be OK with the removal of game content from wikis!

[quote=vdate]I suspect that I’m asking for rather more than most people when I say this, but what I want out of the Journal, as long as you’re redesigning it, is for it to be a replacement for the wiki text dumps that you object to. So, what I actually want in clearer terms:

  1. An option for my journal to be self-updating.
  2. For the self-updates to my journal to log the text of storylets and cards that I personally have seen, including the failure/success/rare success results, provided I have seen them.
    2a) Much lower on the list of priorities, although it would be pretty darn nifty, to tag the first sightings of each story result with the date on which it was first seen. If it’s too much work, disregard this entirely.
  3. For this self-updating data to be organized by location (e.g. a list of all that I have seen in Ladybones Road, a list of all that I have seen from my inventory, a list of all that I have seen on the Broad Unterzee, etc. …
    3a) … except in those instances when the storylet is part of an ongoing storyline, in which case I’d rather like them to be organized separately by storyline, with a note regarding where they appear (so that I can, for example, look back on my experiences hunting my nemesis Scathewick more readily). I understand that this might be a pain in the ass for every story, so even only for the really big ones (Ambitions, SMEN when I get around to it, and so on) it would be lower on the list than a log of what I have seen by location.
  4. That this journal be visible only to us, so that it doesn’t become a content dump replacement for the Internet- if we want to echo snippets of content, let us do THAT to our Twitter/Facebook page. That and refreshes are all I use the functionality for anyway, so I’d prefer to only be able to echo individual storylets or sidebar bits of interest to social networks, and have a PRIVATE journal for my own reference. After all, I don’t want other people reading my journal!

Basically, I want my journal, should I so desire it, to BE a journal of what I’ve seen in Fallen London as a whole, a way to look back at all I’ve experienced in sequence, to chart my trips through Ladybones Road or my encounters with rats in my lodgings. It shouldn’t be hard to add a bunch of seen/not seen flags to a player’s personal data, I would think. (If I’m wrong, do tell me.) I use the wiki for exactly that reason- to look back on all I’ve done. If the journal already did that, then I’d be OK with the removal of game content from wikis![/quote]

This, but I’d like there to be the private content record like vdate asked for (plus I’d like to emphasize that I’d like records of choice options text, not just storylet and result text) as well as a journal that can be read by others that we can post to.

I second practically everyone else in pleading for some form of tagging system. “Just” (quotation marks because I suspect this is not a trivial programming task) the ability to add user-defined metadata to echoed entries, and to then be able to view everything thus tagged in the journal, would be astoundingly useful.

What I would adore would be custom tagging, plus automatic tags for linked, named storylines, e.g. Intimate of Devils, Secrets Framed In Gold, etc. Particularly if you could back-date this so that it showed up on all our existing journal entries… there are so many that I’ve echoed for later enjoyment, and can now barely remember where they came from!