So Jenny beat the runner-up by twenty points!
I wonder who could have predicted this result, or at least given some sort of early indication that this would be the margin we would encounter.
>.>
<.<
(thank you everyone who took the time to indicate their voting intentions in the straw poll! it seems that, for once, the polls were right.)
[quote=Professor Sketch][quote=Grenem]
Yes, but in the real world there’s bitterness and bad feelings when your candidate loses, and unless your party is completely incompetent, there’s some token victories for your side. Even if you don’t get a president, you usually get someone into a position of power. Fun trumps realism, unless there’s some very important reason for realism to win, and having lost resources to achieve nothing is not fun. In this case, there’s not, unless you have some better reason than "realistic" or "it’s supposed to be a gamble".
I might disagree if this election was close, but it sounds like it was a landslide, as far as these things go, and my only option ever was to either make 100000 alts or roll over and accept jenny’s victory. Getting crushed by the least moral candidate because, and i quote from memory, "ninja prostitute nun" is unfun even before the fact that it’s a net loss. as it stands, i am considering celebrating the next election with free wounds for everyone. at least then the suffering will be shared.
edited by Grenem on 7/18/2016[/quote]
So your complaint is essentially that you no longer find it fun to participate in competitions when you lose?
This was a one-time story, and quite a good one at that, which you were able to take part in and help decide the outcome. It was a fun piece of content, made for you to play for free, which gave you great items just for participating in the very first step. You weren’t losing resources to achieve nothing - you were spending resources to read an excellent story that you had the privilege of participating in and even deciding how it ended. And if you refuse to treat it like a story, then you’re still just being a sore loser. When you lose a race, do you complain about having wasted all that energy and breath for nothing? My candidate lost, too. I spent resources, too. It was all terribly fun, I got to read a great story that any players joining after this last week will never get to experience, I was given special items for just placing my vote, and then I was even still given rewards by my candidate at the end despite us losing. You did all the same. The only difference is you decided none of that was worth the resources.[/quote]
The freebies were nice, I won’t deny that. The election, though, was an exercise in complete frustration.
The difference is, I find it immensely frustrating to be competing against the majority of the community, and it didn’t feel like anything i did could slow the tide. The fun part about seeking is you know going in- you’ll be throwing resources down a well, and you will not be compensated. If all three factions had similar support portions- say, 30%, 30%, 40%, it could have been fun. but even if that was the case, it doesn’t feel like it was- it wasn’t on the forums.
Half the community is enamored with Jenny, and the other half is split between two factions. I enjoy competitions where i stand a chance. If I lose by a small margin, fine, that’s fun, i knew that could happen. But it didn’t feel like that, it felt like an all-encompassing flood of pro-jenny support and like i was outnumbered by a vast margin.
When I run a race, it’s one of me versus one of them, so i can be a gracious loser. when i feel like i had no shot- like the game was inherently unfair, and i wasn’t informed of this- i get irritated, frustrated, and then outright angry. When I cannot do "my best" because effort is capped, it stops being a competition and starts being a popularity contest. And I can’t enjoy those, because by their very nature, they are not really competitions where you can change anything.
I should have known better than to get involved in a popularity contest, but i thought it would be fun and that all three factions were equally loved and terrible. nope. Jenny, for whatever reason, became excessively popular even as she was revealed to play dirtier than the other two put together- possibly multiplied together.
it doesn’t help that jenny is the only "a bad person" candidate- [not to say the others don’t have their flaws, they do. but the contrarian is only guilty of making someone angry enough to die who plausibly has choking fits from "naked ankles", and the bishop just made a stupid mistake. neither of them poison you and blackmail ex-customers who almost certainly paid for discretion.]- And there’s enough of those in real life. Sure, the others have bad ideas, but not only do they mean well, but they know what they’re after. What I wanted was three moral individuals with immoral backers. three people i could believe meant well, despite their ties to less-than-perfect factions. What I got was two, and jenny.
I didn’t get to decide, the jenny mob did, and it didn’t feel like anything i did made a difference in deciding. The story was good enough to make me care, but not good enough to make me enjoy it when it was futile- the caring just made it worse- and being ultimately powerless didn’t help. then i was left feeling utterly betrayed by the new revelations, which seemed to be a pretty active act of sabotage for the contrarian’s campaign from the revolution. the problem is, helping vote on a X, Y or Z isn’t really deciding at all. either you win, and get what you want, or you lose, and it’d be exactly the same if you never participated.
Ultimately i’m just… left feeling frustrated and numb and irritated.
the payout is a net loss, and that means that i should have stayed out of the election. nothing i did made a difference, or at least not anything much. But when the most fun option is completely ignoring the main part of a festival, i think something is wrong. I know, it’s free, therefore i have no right to complain or dissent from the majority’s "this was wonderful". But it wasn’t fun for me, and the fact that they either didn’t do the math on the payouts, or did but decided the loss was fair anyways, makes this festival one i will avoid in the future, take the freebies and ignore.
[also- is it confirmed they’ll change candidates for next time, or just suspected?]
edited by Grenem on 7/18/2016
I’ll be very, very surprised if it’s the same three candidates next year, especially given we’ve been told we’ll be able to suggest nominees.
I think grenem’s just saying its not fun to campaign when you already know your side has lost.
My congratulations to Sinning Jenny and her supporters as well.
I stood with the Bishop despite the overwhelming odds because - if I ran away right now, how am I going to hold my grounds when we’re confronting even worse adversaries? But London could certainly prosper under Jenny (hee hee), and I have no complaints if that’s the case. To fellow losers, whether you supported Bishop or Contrarian: commiserations, better luck in next elections, and reservations of "I-told-you-so"s in the worst of scenarios!
Funny thing is, The Contrarian himself even had the view of “huh, I lost. Well that was fun anyway!” and it’s the perfect view imo. Yeah, I, we, knew from the beginning Jenny would win, but it was an interesting race besides. We learned more about each candidate, had some more uses for various storylets like flash lays, those sweet gifts at the start, and it was such a huge impact on the community for the brief period! Sure it got rather spirited, but it was a good show of how much people put into this game!
We’ll get a chance to determine who’ll run for mayor next year. I’m not sure which method will be used to do this, but I’m willing to bet it’ll be a card ingame with a list of individuals FBG can use to make fun election content. That method will reach more of the players than requiring people to go somewhere else to vote, and will be easier than strictly drawing suggestions from forum threads. Jenny may or may not be on said card; we’ll have to see both whether I’m right about there even being a card and whether her winning this year excludes her from the next year.
That said, even if we didn’t get a change of candidates I’m sure a lot of Jenny-supporters would change vote just to see what happens when the other candidates win. There are no wrong choices here, just fun content to read, and we like seeing new content. I can’t say for certain, but Jenny will probably have an unofficial vote penalty for the next year (maybe two) since she won this year and longterm players will be more interested in seeing other candidates ascend to mayor. If I’m wrong and we end up with three years of Jenny in a row with a fourth one probably on the horizon then I will change my ship to a Yacht and host a party for everyone not interested in the elections anymore.
[quote=Grenem][quote=Professor Sketch][quote=Grenem]
Yes, but in the real world there’s bitterness and bad feelings when your candidate loses, and unless your party is completely incompetent, there’s some token victories for your side. Even if you don’t get a president, you usually get someone into a position of power. Fun trumps realism, unless there’s some very important reason for realism to win, and having lost resources to achieve nothing is not fun. In this case, there’s not, unless you have some better reason than "realistic" or "it’s supposed to be a gamble".
I might disagree if this election was close, but it sounds like it was a landslide, as far as these things go, and my only option ever was to either make 100000 alts or roll over and accept jenny’s victory. Getting crushed by the least moral candidate because, and i quote from memory, "ninja prostitute nun" is unfun even before the fact that it’s a net loss. as it stands, i am considering celebrating the next election with free wounds for everyone. at least then the suffering will be shared.
edited by Grenem on 7/18/2016[/quote]
So your complaint is essentially that you no longer find it fun to participate in competitions when you lose?
This was a one-time story, and quite a good one at that, which you were able to take part in and help decide the outcome. It was a fun piece of content, made for you to play for free, which gave you great items just for participating in the very first step. You weren’t losing resources to achieve nothing - you were spending resources to read an excellent story that you had the privilege of participating in and even deciding how it ended. And if you refuse to treat it like a story, then you’re still just being a sore loser. When you lose a race, do you complain about having wasted all that energy and breath for nothing? My candidate lost, too. I spent resources, too. It was all terribly fun, I got to read a great story that any players joining after this last week will never get to experience, I was given special items for just placing my vote, and then I was even still given rewards by my candidate at the end despite us losing. You did all the same. The only difference is you decided none of that was worth the resources.[/quote]
The freebies were nice, I won’t deny that. The election, though, was an exercise in complete frustration.
The difference is, I find it immensely frustrating to be competing against the majority of the community, and it didn’t feel like anything i did could slow the tide. The fun part about seeking is you know going in- you’ll be throwing resources down a well, and you will not be compensated. If all three factions had similar support portions- say, 30%, 30%, 40%, it could have been fun. but even if that was the case, it doesn’t feel like it was- it wasn’t on the forums.
Half the community is enamored with Jenny, and the other half is split between two factions. I enjoy competitions where i stand a chance. If I lose by a small margin, fine, that’s fun, i knew that could happen. But it didn’t feel like that, it felt like an all-encompassing flood of pro-jenny support and like i was outnumbered by a vast margin.
When I run a race, it’s one of me versus one of them, so i can be a gracious loser. when i feel like i had no shot- like the game was inherently unfair, and i wasn’t informed of this- i get irritated, frustrated, and then outright angry. When I cannot do "my best" because effort is capped, it stops being a competition and starts being a popularity contest. And I can’t enjoy those, because by their very nature, they are not really competitions where you can change anything.
I should have known better than to get involved in a popularity contest, but i thought it would be fun and that all three factions were equally loved and terrible. nope. Jenny, for whatever reason, became excessively popular even as she was revealed to play dirtier than the other two put together- possibly multiplied together.
it doesn’t help that jenny is the only "a bad person" candidate- [not to say the others don’t have their flaws, they do. but the contrarian is only guilty of making someone angry enough to die who plausibly has choking fits from "naked ankles", and the bishop just made a stupid mistake. neither of them poison you and blackmail ex-customers who almost certainly paid for discretion.]- And there’s enough of those in real life. Sure, the others have bad ideas, but not only do they mean well, but they know what they’re after. What I wanted was three moral individuals with immoral backers. three people i could believe meant well, despite their ties to less-than-perfect factions. What I got was two, and jenny.
I didn’t get to decide, the jenny mob did, and it didn’t feel like anything i did made a difference in deciding. The story was good enough to make me care, but not good enough to make me enjoy it when it was futile- the caring just made it worse- and being ultimately powerless didn’t help. then i was left feeling utterly betrayed by the new revelations, which seemed to be a pretty active act of sabotage for the contrarian’s campaign from the revolution. the problem is, helping vote on a X, Y or Z isn’t really deciding at all. either you win, and get what you want, or you lose, and it’d be exactly the same if you never participated.
Ultimately i’m just… left feeling frustrated and numb and irritated.
the payout is a net loss, and that means that i should have stayed out of the election. nothing i did made a difference, or at least not anything much. But when the most fun option is completely ignoring the main part of a festival, i think something is wrong. I know, it’s free, therefore i have no right to complain or dissent from the majority’s "this was wonderful". But it wasn’t fun for me, and the fact that they either didn’t do the math on the payouts, or did but decided the loss was fair anyways, makes this festival one i will avoid in the future, take the freebies and ignore.
[also- is it confirmed they’ll change candidates for next time, or just suspected?]
edited by Grenem on 7/18/2016[/quote]
I’m probably forgetting some stuff, but just offhand –
The Bishop is a violent person who feels his ends justify any means, and wants to invade Hell and get hundreds or thousands of people permanently killed (we’re directly told this by the game in the fate-locked story with him) because of his own personal religious beliefs. He’s willing to moderate his rhetoric in public to gain power, but that doesn’t change anything but his actual rhetoric, which is a bit odd for someone who portrays himself as the most righteous and morally upstanding. There’s also the attempt at stalking and public humiliation of the soulless, which puts him more in line with Jenny (and could cause public violent targeting of people who are innocent of no worse than poor judgement or desperation).
The Contrarian is a self-centered person who is willing to align himself with bigotry to make a point (arguing against the rights of Clay Men, as all us partiers are so often reminded) and murderous Revolutionaries because he thinks he can moderate them for a sort-of-revolution which presumably would also result in many deaths, but not actually make the light go out. (Whether this makes him better or worse depends on your perspective and how much you’ve heard Spacemarine9 rather effectively pitch the Liberation of Night.) Not only that, but he didn’t keep the faith of his own nebulous "embarrass everyone" cause once it got hard, as it might predictably get when one voluntarily associates with scary murderers.
Jenny is a blackmailer, who apparently believes everyone can be corrupted, and/or is already corrupted (how you interpret that, I expect, depends on your POV on her). This makes her not even as bad as anyone who’s played through end-game Shadowy content. She can be paid to poison people with a kiss, apparently, during the Feast of the Rose, in a way that doesn’t permanently kill anyone (likely kills no one at all) and in Fallen London is essentially a minor inconvenience. If you’ve ever sent boxes of rats to someone, you’ve done worse, since you weren’t even participating in a festival or at least doing it for someone else with a possibly legitimate grievance! :)
Compare the Bishop and his mass-death-happy goals and the Contrarian and his mass-death-happy-friends.
In other words, Jenny has the morals of a standard Player Character, except she is also, as you quoted, a badass ninja prostitute nun.
There’s an interesting implication to this: perhaps Jenny won not only because she was in many peoples’ minds the coolest choice, but because she’s no more morally corrupt or scary than we’re used to being ourselves. Many players blackmail without a second thought during item conversions alone! But I expect most players might not want to invade Hell, most players have probably spent an unusual amount of time literally flirting with a certain couple of devils, and I’ve seen lots of players really opposed to the Liberation or anyone who might be enabling the Liberation ("knowingly or not" contributing to the Great Work, even if the Contrarian doesn’t want the light to outright go out).
Regardless:
Consider that some of what you’re saying feels a little unpleasant. "The Jenny Mob" is really rather unnecessary. Why characterize your fellow players this way simply because they liked things you didn’t, and won out? Surely, if your favored outcome had occurred, you would not enjoy this same characterization applied to you.
Also, when you say utterly betrayed, it sounds like you’re saying the writers betrayed you by writing a story that undercut the Contrarian’s campaign. (I might have misunderstood this!) Yet, the story written for Jenny made you feel she was objectively the absolute worst and most immoral candidate, which matched what you seemed to previously feel about her (due to the Feast’s poisoning; again, apologies if I misunderstood). This seems a little strange. Plus: Can you really say the Contrarian’s story didn’t match his long-established characterization? Or the Bishop’s?
Although I’m sympathetic to mechanics complaints or feeling unrewarded after so much effort was put into defeat, I find it hard to see the story or other players morally or artistically at fault here. But then, I did love the story myself.
edited by thedeadlymoose on 7/19/2016
In point of fact, Lord Mayors aren’t traditionally supposed to serve more than a year anyhow, so I expect Jenny won’t be an option next year.
edited by Teaspoon on 7/19/2016
I doubt Jenny is going to be running next year - in game suspect she will gleefully hand off the office before fleeing in the other direction.
Personally (and I supported Jenny), I think I would most enjoy this festival in coming years if the winning candidate could not run more than once. I’m happy seeing the losing candidates show again if FBG has stories they are excited to write for them.
Or at least, I wouldn’t want to see the winning candidate run twice in a row, and not at all unless FBG had an "attempted comeback" story they were really excited to write for that specific character.
It would make certain companions permanently unavailable in theory, but in practice, I think the old ones could always be added under a Fate lock, either supporting a new candidate (if, say, the Bishop wants to back a new candidate and sends the Dauntless Temperance Campaigner to help) or just in a "where are they now?" sort of way.
And there’s no reason FBG couldn’t sell last year’s campaign posters along with the new ones, next year.
[quote=thedeadlymoose]
Also, when you say utterly betrayed, it sounds like you’re saying the writers betrayed you by writing a story that undercut the Contrarian’s campaign. (I might have misunderstood this!) Yet, the story written for Jenny made you feel she was objectively the absolute worst and most immoral candidate, which matched what you seemed to previously feel about her (due to the Feast’s poisoning; again, apologies if I misunderstood). This seems a little strange. Plus: Can you really say the Contrarian’s story didn’t match his long-established characterization? Or the Bishop’s?
Although I’m sympathetic to mechanics complaints or feeling unrewarded after so much effort was put into defeat, I find it hard to see the story or other players morally or artistically at fault here. But then, I did love the story myself.
edited by thedeadlymoose on 7/19/2016[/quote]
I feel betrayed because they left me without all the information- giving half now and half after i’m too far in to change gears isn’t something i like, and more than that, they had entirely imbecilic action from febuary- it’s not a polite joinup, it’s a hostile takeover, or an attempt thereof. The others just had an extension of their current status, but the Contrarian had a revolutionary takeover attempt. It didn’t feel in character or wise, and felt like a diabolus ex machina. [In other words, it felt like only the contrarian had a nasty revalation there- the other two are both entirely reasonable, or an extension of last round’s revalation. I could be mistaken, again, but it felt like they were going back on what they said last time.] it’s not really fair to anyone, I’m probably biased and i’m aware of that. His back and forth was in character, but the second half felt not like a willing transfer of power but a hostile takeover.
But I’m still annoyed- I started complaining about the rewards for campaigning- i think- though i may be mistaken, i was mostly reasonable and calm at that point. Most people said, "Well, that’s the price for campaigning and getting a say." But, the thing is, 215 echoes (compared to the cash in, which isn’t good in-and-of itself) for a say that didn’t change anything is not a fair price. ultimately, if it had been one vote per person, the results would not have changed, because the most votes went to jenny. Then it would have been 0 echoes for the same results.
This contest was not fun for me, and i am aware that’s not most people’s opinion. I’d like, though, if the participation reward is actually no worse than the rewards for sitting it out. as it stands, my vote did nothing, which is fine, i guess, but ultimately i’d have been much better sitting it out even without the burn-out. I hope next time participation is going to be actually worth doing, at least in echoes, even when your faction is getting curb-stomped, as opposed to simply sitting it out, so that next time around, when i refuse to let myself get this attached, the festival is actually a festival and not just a echo grind or a freebie followed by "festival? what festival?"
[or this time, but it seems unlikely the card results will be based on your campaign efforts, or that they’ll change the payout.]
I’m sorry, I’ve been a bad sport about this and i’ll try to stop, but i’m still sore about the optimal choice being to sit out the festival, if your side is certain to lose. it just doesn’t feel like good game design- you want your festival’s main event to be profitable, and worth playing. I could, of course, be completely delusional on this.
edited by Grenem on 7/19/2016
I could see spending 215 echoes if you were a Campaigner burning Favours in High Places and/or Blackmail Material for Short Stories. I personally just did investigations/flash lays since I don’t like spending resources on festivals if I don’t have to.
How in the world did you manage to spend 215 Echoes on the Festival? I got through the entire thing and only ever spent at most 12 or so when I was impatient.[/quote]
Level 20 is 19 [election item A] and 19 [election item B]. Each election item is worth 10 echoes. 38*10 = 380. the final payout for actually supporting someone at lv. 20 is 165 echoes. 380 - 165 = 215 echoes.
I’d like it if next time, when i know not to get invested, it’s still profitable or at least not a net loss, to use my election items on campaigning.
Otherwise, I’ll want to tell all new players the downsides of campaigning actively(1)- that they might want to just try the stories and turn in the items for echoes. [Edited for less threat-like]
[also, i made the mistake of writing short stories too early, and that really does get that expensive, but that’d be fine. sub-optimal play taken knowingly is perfectly fine, and i did know. i assumed the fanbase was balanced in preferences when it wasn’t, but that was my mistake. Jenny may have deserved to be popular, and to win, i just didn’t know that she was going to be far more popular. The only legitimate complaint i have is that it effectively costs more to participate than it rewards you with.]
(1) I.E, don’t be surprised if your faction loses- 2 factions out of 3 will. don’t expect to get more echoes from doing this than turning in items. there’s no new text exclusive to high campaign numbers, or wasn’t last time. The only reason to campaign, unless you’re getting bribed, is to increase the odds of your party winning- which is a good reason, but if you don’t care, or don’t care that much… well, it’s a decent amount of echoes you can get from those items.
edited by Grenem on 7/19/2016
Alright, that’s enough. You’re under no obligation to enjoy any given content, and to say so, but I think we can call your objections well and truly registered at this point, and threatening to disrupt future festivals if they don’t conform to your desires is really not on. Let’s move on, everyone.
[quote=Professor Sketch][quote=Grenem] i assumed the fanbase was balanced in preferences when it wasn’t, but that was my mistake.
edited by Grenem on 7/19/2016[/quote]
Could you please stop insulting the community? You could have easily made it through much of the entire thing without spending nearly as much as you did, or even spending a single echo, but you did, and you blame your mistakes on other people. Stop. It’s rude.
edited by Professor Sketch on 7/19/2016[/quote]
That wasn’t meant to be a insult. I assumed, going in, that no faction had a huge lead on the others. i was mistaken. there is nothing wrong with that on the community’s end, i just went in with the wrong set of assumptions. I’ll edit it out if you want.
Alright, that’s enough. You’re under no obligation to enjoy any given content, and to say so, but I think we can call your objections well and truly registered at this point, and threatening to disrupt future festivals if they don’t conform to your desires is really not on. Let’s move on, everyone.[/quote]
You’re right, that is a threat- i didn’t realize it at the time. I would tell my past self that, because that is what I should have told myself at the start of the festival. Still, I shouldn’t be babbling about it, and should be more careful and less outright "don’t play it, it sucks.", and more "this is what the last festival was. if you actually care who wins, go ahead and campaign, but the echoes seem to be better for turning the campaign materials to echoes instead. Don’t get too invested in the election, either, this is just a game."
i’ll shut up now.
edited by Grenem on 7/19/2016
Watchful shoes were the one attribute increasing clothing I didn’t have. That alone, everything else ignored, made it worth it.
I probably spent close to that. I think I wrote seven or eight stories, fueled by a lot secrets and even a few favors in high places for one. I also never failed to buy campaign resources as well as always taking the (fairly cheap) options on the cards. I never really turned any of it in for echoes, most went to my Profession as a Fixer and the stuff I couldn’t use I stuffed into opposing other fixers – usually to lower my menaces so I could go do some more Flash Lays.
I might be more like 150, but could be 200 pretty easily.
That said, I had a blast. Most fun I’ve had throwing my money down a well as fast as I possibly could since . . … well, since ever.
Okay, now I wish I could give the Bishop AND Grenem a hug
I personally hope they keep the after election reward as is. The joy of the process (and any deals you make along the way) should be enough.