December ES: The House of Silk and Flame

The Story Library is of no use here. It isn’t really an issue connected to the fleeting nature of Exceptional stories, because they no longer vanish if you do not claim them the way they used to. Furthermore, I have already started the story.

My problem is that the story is present for me, but it is in Arbor. I cannot reach Arbor because the card refuses to drop. My post was to complain that this is bad design, to be able to be booted from a story in this way, and having to rely on RNG to get back to it. Consequently I have now mostly lost interest in this story due to being unable to play it for several weeks. I did not know that pottering around in Arbor would get me kicked out after a few actions, having not interacted with that location before, I thought I was merely playing the story.

Drop them a note at FB. I’ve found myself excluded from continuing stories in the past; they’ll fix it for you.

It really does seem like a flaw in the design. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone unfamiliar with Arbor who didn’t realize they were in a normal non-ES game area that can boot you out by following its normal rules.

Well that card finally decided to show up, and after that wait it was… underwhelming.

The usual arcane ES that left me scratching my head as to what the hell was going on and why I should care. That I am used to, but also the tired old thing of not really being involved in the story, just being the person who accompanies the protagonists and for some reason tells them what decisions to make (I am getting really tired of that one). If the story is mechanically fun to play, I can live with these things, but this was one of those ‘click to see the next bit of the story’ ESs with very little interactivity or exploration. This was so dull I couldn’t wait for it to end.