I quickly went to check but the Sixth Coil is closed for good.
If any permanent activity got added, I didn’t see it.
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I really enjoyed that (I especially like how the Coil is segmented so you never see all of it until the end, very effective writing).
Now all I need to do is spend my renown. How many urchins do you reckon make a gang? I have enough for 140 
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It’s going to be readded once the event is fully over.
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It’s over, and now I feel happy and a little bereft, as always. I love these Estival events.
The good:
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very successful at making something that felt special enough to be an Estival without going the apocalypse route again (well, probably not, at least), and with a very different tone. I especially enjoyed the way it was a massive event wrapped around an even bigger secret but at the heart of it was something quite small and personal-scale; I’m left dwelling on complex, mixed emotions rather than an adrenaline rush, though it did have excitement and adrenaline too.
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Cool characters that I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing at other events and/or showing up as potential companions. Loved the Cackling Mechanic, even though I had supported the Tortoises. The poor Striped Officiant at the end, stuck dealing with Walter the Rhinocerous!
. I feel a bit melancholy about the Tiger Keeper, I wish we would have had a chance to talk with him afterwards, try to understand him in some way. Even though his ending was what he chose, more or less, it feels rather tragic. -
Really liked the bits where there was a non-available option for how it would have gone without your allies, really gives a sense of how overwhelming and impossible this would have seemed to the tigers, unable to ask for help
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Lines I was fond of: “The judges are seriously debating awarding the win to the Jovial Contrarian, who has not shown up at all.”
And " In any case, as far as rewards go, it is better than eternal imprisonment." -
On the mechanical stuff, I think they did a good job making the information and rewarding feel fair and reasonably non-stressful, with things you needed to do to not miss out on rewards clearly marked and a decent ability to catch up on things at your own pace if you were late to the party. They’ve really gotten this element down by now.
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I liked that by the end, there was a sense of bonding and unity like other Estivals have given me, but this time it was with all our neighbours in the Neath instead of just with us Londoners, a tentative new bond was formed tracing its way through a world of tensions and suspicious. And the shame of the Tigers and the sorrow of what happened with the Tiger Keeper gave it a nice melancholy tinge that makes it feel like something was broken, but maybe will mend stronger. Feels like something new.
But there was also a fair bit in pacing and mechanics that I felt worked a lot less well than other Estivals, a lack of motivation and urgency, frustration and helplessness, whereas past ones have had slow or frustrating bits, but only a day or two here and there. Not the storyline, I definitely feel like this one worked just as well as all the Estivapocalypses at being engaging, just how the mechanics and info were done.
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Little sense of the stakes for the player for the contests, what we would get or affect from one faction winning over another. We didn’t have a good sense if the winning factions would determine whose secrets we learn more about, different rewards or post-festival activities for the player, a change in the situation of the factions in the Neath, what characters get an emotional arc fulfulled etc. It could be any of those things or none, so does it really matter who wins?
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Lack of info about current standing in the contests. From official sources, all we could tell is which faction was ahead, not how close they are or which one is in last place. So there’s no strategic reasons to switch sides to help your second-favourite have a chance to win when your favourite has no chance, or to make an extra push when things are close. And there’s no feeling of progress. A tracker within the game or a way to investigate the standing periodically would have helped.
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Didn’t feel like player could make a difference.
-For half the contests, the team that was ahead when I first checked stayed ahead the entire time, so it seemed like they were too far ahead to have much chance of changing things, and there was nothing to shake things up. And even the ones that did change, with no info on how things are going, it didn’t feel like my efforts were really making that difference.
-the clues, as I complained about before, required so few players to reach confirmed status that I didn’t manage to contribute to verifying a single one even though I was quite active the whole event (in one case submitted a clue within 8 minutes of the new clue search being posted, to no avail). That’s one of the major chances for participation, limited to a really small group of lucky players. I found that a really weird choice.
-Supporting your team felt limited. The options there were were fun, but choices on strategy would have helped feel like you were making a difference in absence of progress tracking. Sabotaging other teams, choosing to spy on other teams or play fair, or several progress types to contribute to with different actions. Or reasons to change teams, like goals where if each team reaches X something is unlocked (even just a little extra character development), or eliminating the last place competitor at some point. Even just a wider range of items you could give to the efforts could help create a sense of choice of what and how much to sacrifice, or just focus on actions. -
An extremely trivial complaint: in the coil, the descriptions for what the Imagination champion was working on didn’t seem very imagination-focused, so the Bohemian Sculptress landed up doing a lot of things that seemed well outside their wheelhouse, even though the Parabolanosity of the situation means they could have come up with specific imagination-based tasks that would have made more sense .
Still, a great and engaging story, which is what this is ultimately all about, and a lot of fun challenges and cool new elements. Thanks, Failbetter, for a great Estival! (And sorry for the novel, all!)
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And that’s a perfect reason for having those options there, well spotted.
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I also really enjoyed the event overall. The story was beautifully told and the art for the Seventh Coil was absolutely terrifying.
It had some odd pacing as these group events tend to, but I didn’t really have a problem with it. It would maybe have been nice to get a few more hours between the end of the tournament and opening of the coil so we could turn in the clues without feeling like we were falling woefully behind.
Otherwise, no notes! Thanks, Failbetter.
Oh, it IS a little odd knowing that the Tiger Keeper is Alex to see him eternally captive now.
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Yes, I can’t help reading some meta-meaning into that …
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Yeah, I was thinking about Alexis and Lottie the whole last stretch of the event. And ashamed tigers…
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Yeah. We’ve all been here way, way too long.
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Is there a poll for how people chose to view the end of the rescue? (madness, love, detached curiosity, hunger)
Every Estival from the first one was a big fun. Every time it is experiment in new format, new story, new faces and activities. Every Estival change something in Fallen London, unlike other festivals.
This time it was big clue hunt, but after finding 21 clue searching for the others wasn’t so motivated. For me it would be nice if the reward for searching depended on the number of clues found: most powerful item for all clues, lower quality - for all non-Fate and non-Ambition and so on.
This time it was good timing for all players in all time zones. There were no problems with overloaded servers (at least for me).
Thank you, FBG, for a great story!
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Wait, how do we know that? He doesn’t wear a fez in any of the Weather Factory videos I’ve watched. Are the 6th and 7th coils in The Mansus? Is Lottie a giant tiger-snake?
When AK was with FBG, he used the Tiger Keeper as his “persona,” so to speak. In addition to being his avatar on these forums, he also occasionally used that character to speak directly to players in-game. Enigma is the best example; there’s also at least one case where a “bugfix” storylet was presented as the Tiger Keeper literally popping up out of a hole and fixing something.
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Oh, I forgot another good bit: A clue for Nemesis! I still feel like it was pretty light compared to both the amount and the personal-ness of content for the overfavoured ambition end, but it was still exciting to get a moment!
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What was the Nemesis clue?
I had to skip a clue or two. I cannot get into Concord Square (the constables blackballed me because of my choices in the “Spinning of the Wheels” storyline) so I couldn’t look at the Khanate’s special lights, for example.
I thought it was a well-engineered storyline. However, I felt the ending was a bit flat. And…well, it’s unlikely we’ll be visiting the Sixth Coil again, let alone the Seventh.
If you were a regular player while Alexis was still at Failbetter, you would know about his connection to/use of the Tiger Keeper. But no, he doesn’t wear a fez now or anything like that, and I don’t think Lottie ever worked for Failbetter.
Lottie was a Producer at FBG. Pretty sure that’s where they met, actually.
But I think we’re digressing. Probably not the topic mods want to wake up to on Monday morning.
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Maybe not, but they’ve surely expected it? And we’ve all been very civil so far.
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I thought the Sixth Coil will be the permanent feature? The Seventh will stay sealed but isn’t the Fifth the embassy?