Fallen London is no fun anymore

Fallen London
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Recently I have become disillusioned with Fallen London and frankly fed up with it. And its because of the introduction of these World Events. The fundamental problem I have with them is that they are one time flash events. They arrive without warning and are far too often over before I (and I assume many other players) can participate in a meaningful way. I have seen several come and go that I can’t be a part of because I have to work or they started in the middle of the night my time and were over before I woke up or got off work.

And when one isn’t madly dashing around in a frantic effort to participate in those one is involved in extremely tedious, long term grinds for uncertain goals and rewards. If you have just begun a multi-day grind like the Khanate or the Hurlers when one of these flash “must participate” events happens it will be over before you can finish the grind. Or you have to abort it and lose all the time and effort put into it for a chance you might get in on the event early enough to do anything there. This is something that I know has been complained about before and there has been no real effort to address this by FBG. A simple minimum length of time before something is gone would go a long ways here.

And if, like I have had to, one isn’t able to dedicate hours each day keeping up now you are quickly completely lost in regards to what is happening. I have no clue what the censored is happening anymore and am tired of feeling like I have to be running a full speed 24/7 just to play this game now. I want to be able to play as I have time at my own pace without being locked out of big parts of the game for doing so. I have a job and other things I have to do in the real world and I feel like this game now punishes players for that.

PLEASE slow the pace down!

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You must have not played other games, including browser-based games, which require you to sign in at a specific time to get a reward, or take part in some world or alliance-based event or war.

Fallen London is refreshingly relaxed compared to those, albeit the RNG gods can be cruel at times and I wish the devs show a bit more love to non-Fate players like myself.

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Being one of those who complained about this before, I can feel you somewhat, though I think it’s not as dramatic anymore. Some of the first World events were definitely over too fast, but well, they were trying out something new.

I think that’s an exaggeration. Most of the world quality events are repeatable, meaning they’ll happen again. The one exception is the Summer event, and I thought this year’s went a lot better than last year’s:

I thought they addressed this quite well in this year’s summer event (Museum) compared to last year’s (Grand Clearing-Out). The pacing was a lot better, and you weren’t really punished for missing out on one of the stages. Yes, if you missed the whole event, you probably haven’t gotten any of the special rewards. But I feel like I could live with that if it had happened to me. And maybe it’ll return at some point in the Waswood Calendar!

Yes, you will sometimes miss out on stuff. I have (the Crocodile Hunt during the recent Museum event was the first time I’ve been able to participate in a Zee-Creature hunt. I missed all of the Lifeberg and Crab events).

But I don’t think you ever miss out on really important things. Earlier this year there was something about an Urchin war that I think everyone felt was completely underwhelming. I don’t remember the specifics, but I kinda took a look at it and decided “not worth it” and returned to what I was doing at the time.

I have felt like that a few times, but in general I think it’s manageable. If you’re a completionist you’ll probably feel harder about this, but I really don’t think you miss meaningful things (the exception was last year’s Clearing-Out, but that was the first World event they did. This year’s was far better paced).

The bigger problem for me is constantly having to look out for information about what is happening. Like, I cannot imagine playing this game without constantly referring to the wiki, or taking a look at these forums (or Discord) several times a day. And even then you miss things because sometimes FB are just a tad lacklustre with announcements (they always have been though). But I don’t think that’s something that’s going to change.

TL;DR: I don’t think you need to feel stressed by the game. That’s not worth it. If you feel like that, maybe just take a break. Everything will still be there when you return. :smiley:

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You’re right, I DON’T play those kinds of games. Specifically because of those kinds of mechanics. I see FL as moving in that direction.

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I did the Waswood Calendar. The “event” consisted of a single action that gave me some item. That was it. No replay, no making any choices, just handed me some item. I haven’t bothered with it since.

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I do agree that these flash world events have fundamentally shifted the game for me in a way I don’t like, enough to have sent a “please don’t do this” e-mail to support about it when they started, one of only two such e-mails I’ve sent in my 6+ yrs of playing (the other being one protesting the “let’s freeze all outfits for every activity” misstep).

Not only do I easily miss them due to work and no in-game notice that is functional (I missed both crabs and lifebergs their first iteration) but I find them asymmetric in favouring the UK timezone rather than mine on the west coast of Canada. If I’m lucky enough to hear on some forum that one is happening (always after work, of course, as I don’t have time to hit the forums in my quick morning run) I might get an action or two in for the (second version of the) event but it is guaranteed to be over by next morning etc. So I feel like the game plays quite differently now depending on where you are located in the world, rather than being more of an “even playing field” where all players have mostly the same shake at development.

Some of the last festival events were like that: I could do them but I always felt behind the curve, with no ability to really initiate discovery of anything; for example, by the time I got on to play, every clue counter that I came across was already maxed at 100+ status, so I had a distinct “late the the game” vibe. And that completely sums up my experience of these events: I miss them or I catch the tail end and feel like I’m late to a party that is just ending. It is a new feeling or inflection to the game for me that was never there before, and it does make me feel like I have a completely differential experience to folks say in the UK (who are sympathetic around these things but also like “oh don’t worry about it, you’ll get to do another one later” – all true, and I get it, but it is a different sort of feeling that the game didn’t used to have for me).

That said, I have no issue with festivals that are on a known schedule. There I can plan if I really care a lot to be available, etc. And only one of them (the summer festival) seems to have a real world-time component to it. This recent summer festival was excellent and great fun, despite having that “late to the party” feel with clue hunting etc., but the pacing was fine enough for me to get through, particularly with respect to last year’s version.

For me personally these flash events detract from the game more than add to it, but I think Phryne’s assessment was correct, at the end of the day it isn’t that meaningful. But it has changed the nature of the game for me, relative to years before.

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I feel like that is a very important point. I’m situated in Europe, so close enough to UK time. But they really should find a way to make things work for all timezones - or if that’s impossible, at least for those timezones with the most FL players.

Personally, I don’t mind being late to the party so much - as long as I get to play all the content in my own time, I’m fine. I don’t need to be live when a clue is unlocked etc. But I guess that for some players this experience is very important and everyone should have the same chance to contribute, no matter where in the world they are!

All that said, World Qualities are still relatively new and will probably be further tweaked and reviewed by FB. I still feel that they have potential, but tuning them right is a very fine line - if they get it wrong just a little bit, a lot of people will feel like having a door shut in their face.

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I think that’s right and I applaud FB for trying new innovations, so I hope they can tweak this to be more equalized for those of us way behind the time curve. In that vein, two things I can suggest might help:

  1. Don’t show the world quality at all, since that counter just shows me how many people got there before me and is partly what gives rise to the feeling of being late to the fun. Similarly, don’t show status counters that depend on how many other people got there first. With each of the clues from the last festival, for example, the progress counter was just deflationary for me. I’d get to a clue and rather than feeling some sense of accomplishment, it felt more like I was coming across the detritus of some huge hoard that had already swept through and looted the place. If the counter was just how many of 10 or something that I’d personally found, it would have contributed more to a feeling of accomplishment with each clue found. As it was, I imagine the counter was a great experience for the first hundred folks (UK timezone, of course) who contributed to it but a bummer for those of us sleeping through (literally) the chance to contribute to it.

  2. Don’t make rewards scale according to progress on the world counter. For the second lifeberg event, my experience was that I saw it mentioned on the forum so I was able to participate, but the last posting on that thread was something like “oh the rewards are now not worth it and I think I’m going to sit out the rest of the event” so I was left knowing that everyone else had gotten better stuffs than I was able to get and in fact that the EPA was now relatively a hit (for an end-game player) rather than an opportunity. Of course I did it for the fun of the experience, but it is still annoying to know that others got different things just due to their physical location.

Not sure if those would “detract” from the world-quality experience of others, but they’d at least equalize things a bit more.

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I think the lifeberg rewards were scaling with Zee Peril, not with progress. So they actually decreased when it moved regions after 24 hours, not when any progress threshold was reached.

The crab hunting rewards actually increased as the crab population dwindled.

The “progress” bars in the first stage of the Museum were quite different, though. (Sphinxstone, Optics, etc.) Those basically represented pools of resources that everyone was trying to grab. Once the bar reached 100%, that resource was depleted and you couldn’t get any more rewards from it. The “optics” rewards were particularly valuable, so that got depleted very quickly.

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I think the main issue is if the things just don’t last long enough? I agree that it’s silly to log on and see that the event is already done. But I thought they addressed it with the recent events. They’re timed so that they’re long enough that someone who logs in in any timezone will get to participate. I’m in the US and I got to play everything in the exhibition construction process. If I wanted to explore around on my own I could, or if I wanted to search the internet for a how-to guide to getting all the clues I could do that too. None of the sections were even close to closed by the time I checked in on them.

As far as I remember the last lifeberg and crab event was like that too, they realized how fast those go so they increased the duration, and then everyone got to do it. There weren’t any different rewards for early people vs late people, I thought? No unique items from any of the crab hunts or anything.

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I think it would help greatly if timed events had a guaranteed and clearly communicated duration, not dependent on player actions. It’s no fun to spend a bunch of time filling mirrorcatch boxes, only to find out you can’t turn them in because too many people have got there before you. But if you didn’t bother to get lots of boxes, then the event wouldn’t have finished as fast. So you just end up stuck being unsure if it’s even worth bothering.

I appreciate the certainty of knowing exactly how long I have to accomplish something, so I can budget my time appropriately. (The time also needs to be long enough that people aren’t penalized for living in the wrong time zone, or just not playing every day. I completely missed the sunlight event years ago because I happened to be asleep at the time.)

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No unique items, but the lifeberg did drop different rewards that were flavorful for the different ships it might have recently eaten in the different region. The EPA was also lower when it moved to the sea of voices, but I’m not sure if that was based on the location or if the balance was just adjusted. Or maybe just based on the usefulness of Khanate-themed items compared to Polythreme items. Khan coins buy Crackling Devices or whatever

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THIS!! Events should last weeks, not days or hours. Solving mysteries is a big part of the game. A proper mystery takes TIME to solve, not a sudden resolution in the first page or paragraph.

Also we have an in-game newspaper. Have articles in there for some days before the event starts. “Our intrepid reporter has heard rumors of a new museum coming/the Foreign Office negotiating with a new port/the Special Constables are worried about something.” Another article when the event starts and updates over the 2 or 3 weeks the event runs. “The Museum construction foreman says the project is behind/on/ahead of schedule.” We shouldn’t have to be checking outside of the game for news about events IN the game.

Another option (that I know people are going to hate) is capping how much any individual can contribute or (preferably) give diminishing returns by player. As each individual adds more what they individually get in return diminishes while someone else who has just started contributing still gets the full rewards until they have hit some amount. I realize that is more work for FBG but it would help make for a larger community contribution instead of an elite few doing everything (which is part of what it feels like now).

If these are supposed to be community events they need to be set up to encourage more people to participate.

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Also, I appreciate the irony of “missing sunlight because I was asleep”. :scream:

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Yeah, I agree that there should be a guaranteed minimum length of time in which you can start the event, and it should be at least a week. It’s fine for stage X to last for 24 hours, but start the 24—hour timer when I start stage X. Don’t punish people who happen to be busy the day something starts.

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Oh, yeah, I remember missing the sunlight event. That was real dumb back then, and probably contributed to me dropping out of the game for a few years until they finished Seeking.

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Some of the last festival events were like that: I could do them but I always felt behind the curve, with no ability to really initiate discovery of anything; for example, by the time I got on to play, every clue counter that I came across was already maxed at 100+ status, so I had a distinct “late the the game” vibe

As a UK-based player, I only managed to contribute to the clue counter for the two items that were based on having completed a particular ambition, so I suspect the 100+ status experience was pretty general.

There was an urchin war?

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The “announcement” of the urchin war was so low-key that you could have easily have missed it. Almost like they didn’t want people to know about it. Honestly, you didn’t miss anything particularly worthwhile

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What is the name of this sunlight event?

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A fading wash of sunlight

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