Excellent reasoning Sir Frederick!
That’s highly debatable. In fact, given that the Princess is likely human (just… changed), and Feducci may well not be human at all, I think he might have the better claim to being a monster.
One could also argue at length as to whether a nonexistent entity can be classified as a monster.
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 6/20/2018
During the current election I can’t stop thinking about this:
Feducci’s as human as you or I. Well… perhaps more so than I, but that’s hardly the point. He’s from the Elder Continent and thus immortal, and has the peligin eyes expected of a former monster hunter, but neither of those things preclude humanity. If anything, they enhance it, like a fleck of gold in a painted sky.[li]
If faction cards really have had their frequency increased and it’s crowding out the actual election card, maybe the election card could be changed to one of those always-available storylets? Then people could get the more-frequent favours and cash them in immediately. On the other hand, that’d also greatly tilt things towards people who have been playing longer and have the money to just dump cellars of wine down the election’s throat twenty actions at a time.
edited by Amneiger on 6/21/2018
[quote=Lady Sapho Byron]During the current election I can’t stop thinking about this:
For some reason, I seem to associate the chef as the Jovial Contrarian. It just seems like something he’d do. In my own reality of course.
I joined FL about a year ago, and, having participated in every festival, I must say this version of the election by far the best of them all:
- actions more profitable than the box grind / orphan chowder,[/li][li]free money for new characters and free higher-tier items for more advanced ones (one of mine has gotten herself kicked out of the Uni, and implications are hard to come by),[/li][li]a stream of favours, extremely helpful no matter what it is that you grind (even scraps, apparently!),[/li][li]a fun career progression that doesn’t hit a wall (I only wish the initial free career levels were explained better),[/li][li]and, of course, the writing - supporting, undermining, talking to the candidates, polls, different reputation actions for different careers, even those that use the same favours.
Whoa.
As for it being luck-based – here I am with six characters, one created during this year’s FotR and four newer still, all in the upper teens of their careers halfway through the first week. It is small consolation if you’re bizarrely unlucky, but the math does in fact work.
I wonder, will slandering/heckling/otherwise disrupting the candidates affect their chances in the polls just as your election career advancement will aid whoever you support?
I doubt it. It seems more like a roleplay choice than anything that is being tracked.
I imagine if there was a way to hinder their campaigns it would cost reputation as well so that it would balance out mechanically.
[quote=Sir Frederick][quote=Akernis]I have to give them that I like these ongoing polls. I find the current one particularly entertaining:
[spoiler]
"Were they trapped in a burning building - really burning, incandescent, in fact - which of this years candidates would you rescue first?"
Jovial Contrarian - ‘He’s likely to stay in the building out of bloody-minded temperament, while everyone else rushes for the exit.’
Heh, I could actually see that happening.
[/spoiler][/quote]
See, I voted Contrarian in that one, because, with his wheelchair, I thought he might need some assistance managing the stairs.
Also because the Princess probably set the fire and Slowcake’s unlikely to be harmed by it, but that’s by the by.[/quote]
I also voted Contrarian on the basis of his wheelchair. It’s a pity that you can’t actually say that’s why.
[li]
Drat. I thought about changing careers and entered the storylet to get another look at the other careers again. I then perhaps-not-ted out of it but still lost 10 reputation. Be careful with that one, guys.
You might want to call support about that, it might be something they would want to know about.
[quote=Vryl][quote=Sir Frederick][quote=Akernis]I have to give them that I like these ongoing polls. I find the current one particularly entertaining:
[spoiler]
"Were they trapped in a burning building - really burning, incandescent, in fact - which of this years candidates would you rescue first?"
Jovial Contrarian - ‘He’s likely to stay in the building out of bloody-minded temperament, while everyone else rushes for the exit.’
Heh, I could actually see that happening.
[/spoiler][/quote]
See, I voted Contrarian in that one, because, with his wheelchair, I thought he might need some assistance managing the stairs.
Also because the Princess probably set the fire and Slowcake’s unlikely to be harmed by it, but that’s by the by.[/quote]
I also voted Contrarian on the basis of his wheelchair. It’s a pity that you can’t actually say that’s why.
[li][/quote][/li][li]
[/li][li]You could always debate him relentlessly after choosing to back him! He even likes that! "Ah yes my loyal supporter Vryl, come tell the unwashed masses how you approve of my reforms!" "No, I’m only voting you because you’re handicapped and I feel bad for you" "What a cad, our Vryl! Don’t be shy, we both know the REAL reason why you’re here is because you believe I’m the best man for the job!" "That’s a rotten lie and you know it! Sir, ARE YOU SLANDERING ME?"[/li][li]
[/li][li]
[quote=Aniline]I joined FL about a year ago, and, having participated in every festival, I must say this version of the election by far the best of them all:
- actions more profitable than the box grind / orphan chowder,[/li][li]free money for new characters and free higher-tier items for more advanced ones (one of mine has gotten herself kicked out of the Uni, and implications are hard to come by),[/li][li]a stream of favours, extremely helpful no matter what it is that you grind (even scraps, apparently!),[/li][li]a fun career progression that doesn’t hit a wall (I only wish the initial free career levels were explained better),[/li][li]and, of course, the writing - supporting, undermining, talking to the candidates, polls, different reputation actions for different careers, even those that use the same favours.
Whoa.
As for it being luck-based – here I am with six characters, one created during this year’s FotR and four newer still, all in the upper teens of their careers halfway through the first week. It is small consolation if you’re bizarrely unlucky, but the math does in fact work.[/quote]
No, I am sorry, but I have to disagree with you here. While I love the creative aspects of this year’s festival, as always, I do not think that mechanically it’s been executed very well so far. I’ll try to explain my reasoning within spoiler tags for those interested.
While I understand the reasoning behind the faction card frequency increase, I think it is doing the festival a disservice. The gripe I have is that any progression regarding the election so far, from raising your election carreer to even being able to find out anything deeper about the candidates and their relations, actually is locked behind a wall – wall of being able to draw a single Abundant-frequency card in a deck that has been inflated by other twelve cards (with the faction cards effectively being doubled). There is no way around that one card, no matter how much grinding you’d be willing to do – except paying 15 Fate, which even for myself is a little bit too much for simply forcing a card draw.
The thing is, if you are an enfranchised, long term endgame player, you don’t have very much novel stuff to do. Apart from the monthly exceptional stories (delightful, but seldom repeatable), I’ve come to look forward immensely toward every seasonal festival, only for the break from the routine. I genuinely enjoy doing something different than grinding echoes for the Cider, and I imagine many other players in a similar position do as well.
For the last few months, with the exception of the Feast and other seasonal events, my routine pretty much consisted from flipping cards, getting favours, turning them in for rewards and shipping orphans to the tigers, simply because I’ve done most the other stuff. (Also, all that stuff I’ve done has given me a lot of cards that again make drawing any particular one that much less likely.)
So now, for this festival, what I‘ve been presented with is… almost exclusively being able to obtain even more favours, even faster than usual. And each favour you obtain effectively takes two actions to proces, if you don’t chance upon a conflict card. Thus, your actions get depleted that much faster and you have fewer of them usable for refreshing cards, e.g. via the Finishing School. I may get to the point where I start automatically discarding any and all favour giving cards on sight, only hoping to draw the Reputation card. I probably need not say that will make the process even more frustrating…
Make no mistake, the election has been insanely profitable with the extreme stream of favours incoming. This is no doubt a great opportunity to achieve a lot of stuff, such as renown grinding or even straightforward money grinds.
That is all completely election-unrelated, however, and none of that actually helps you take part in the festival proper. Even if you’d be solely relying on favours for reputation gain, the rate at which you gain favours is disproportionately higher than the rate you can actually turn them in for reputation. That could of course be improved by raising the Reputation card’s frequency to Ubiquitous.
Since I‘ve started counting, I’ve flipped 180 cards (most of them on my main), not hitting Further your reputation card once. Is that bizarrely unlucky enough for you? Or could it be that at least for endgame players with fat card decks, the frequencies are unbalanced? Either way, it’s been way more frustrating for me even than the notability madness of last year’s Hallowmas, and no, my BDR was nowhere near high enough to be able to obtain everything.
To end on a positive note, as always, I enjoy all the new text, images and story tidbits we’ve been given immensely. I only wish I could actually enjoy these facets of the festival more instead of being flooded with what I’m doing all year round anyway, except incomparably more frantically.
All that said, I still think people at Failbetter are doing a marvellous job producing delightful games, and I of course understand a lot of their capacity is right now focused very much on Sunless Skies, which I look forward to playing, and the website redesign, which is quite understandable as well. So kudos and thank you for all the hard work!
edited by Aardvark on 6/21/2018
Aaand, just to demonstrate how the RNG works, within 5 minutes of posting my tally, I’ve drawn the card in question 4 times across my two characters.
The general points still stand, however.
One thing that might help would be if the card was somewhat like Slowcake’s Amanuensis, in that it was possible to use more than one of the options on the card for each draw. Possibly while combining it with a higher card frequency.
I’ve been doing okay reputation-wise because I have an unholy amount of Favours in High Places lying around, but I imagine it’s kind of hellish to try to build reputation through regular favours or making waves.
It just needs to be more frequent - and discardable, I have no idea why they made it non-discardable. Think Peckish cards frequency, maybe a tad less.
Honestly, I assume it’s non-discardable to prevent people from accidentally discarding a rare and important (if you care about the election) card. But yeah, making it more frequent would solve that problem, and I know not everyone is interested in the election, so they’d be able to get it out of their hair that way.
Also, re-instating the cases next week? Lots of people were waiting for those to grind case notes. I am not one of them but I would feel more involved in the elections if they gave me something to actually do.
As Sir Monteroy said, great text, great depiction of London (and is it my idea, or is the feel more modernized?)but little to do election wise.
i literally have not seen the card once. I cannot participate because it’s not letting me participate. Got plenty of faction cards! My favors are full up. But I can’t do anything with them.