[quote=Andropov]I can’t seem to find the train to the Century Expedition - I activated it, it said something about going back to the study - the Feast of the Exceptional Rose was on and I forget about it for a while now I can’t find the train.
[…] Collapse[remove]11 February, 1895 (Ladybones Road)[Permalink]"An Exceptional Story: The Century Exhibition!"
[…][/quote]
Are you sure you’ve unlocked the story?
The above snippets don’t come from unlocking the story, but from playing the teaser storylet which promoted it’s introduction. Anyone could play this storylet (i.e. not only Exceptional Friends). It indeed directed you to your Study to unlock the story there. The game tells you:
Then, in your Study, there was a storylet called "Investigate the burglary at the Century Exhibition", which is only available for Exceptional Friends. Had you played it, you would have seen a message telling you something like: "You’ve unlocked this month’s Exceptional Story. You can play it at your leisure". Then the next step (which you can play anytime), is to take the cable car at Watchmaker’s Hill.
If you’ve indeed unlocked the story inside your study as I’ve described and you have no option to take the cable car at Watchmaker’s Hill, then this is a bug you should report to FBG support. If you’ve just played the promotional storylet and didn’t go into your study to start the story then you’ve never unlocked it.
Or perhaps it shouldn’t be so tricky to unlock them properly? I presume the reason we had the thread on exceptional stories and where to find them is precisely because people are losing access to stories they have paid for.
Not everyone wants to play them at once. Some people, including me, don’t want to play a substantial chunk and then let it lie and fade in the memory. Some people want to play all the stories in a season together. People play this game in all kinds of ways.
And though House of Chimes is apparently off the table permanently, there was never a problem when all you had to do was swing through there.
[quote=Meradine Heidenreich]Or perhaps it shouldn’t be so tricky to unlock them properly? I presume the reason we had the thread on exceptional stories and where to find them is precisely because people are losing access to stories they have paid for.
Not everyone wants to play them at once. Some people, including me, don’t want to play a substantial chunk and then let it lie and fade in the memory. Some people want to play all the stories in a season together. People play this game in all kinds of ways.
And though House of Chimes is apparently off the table permanently, there was never a problem when all you had to do was swing through there.[/quote]
Some comments:
I agree completely the it should be less tricky to unlock, given that every month there are a few posts from people who are confused as to why they can’t play the previous month’s story which they apparently never actually unlocked.[/li][li]I don’t see how the new "Exceptional Stories and where to find them" will change things. This is just describing how things have been since there were seasonal hubs (which means for the past 6 months), and obviously some are still confused by it.[/li][li]You don’t need to play "a substantial chunk" of a story to unlock it. Just to start it. This is because being an Exceptional Friend is a monthly subscription and you can only get the new story in that same month. It’s not a system in which anyone subscribed is eligible for this story whenever they choose (even a year later). I’m not arguing if this is best, just that that’s what the subscription means.[/li][li]Having Seasons indeed confused some people, who believed that they can play all 3 stories whenever they want (or, at least, until the season ends). However, these are still 3 separate stories, just linked with a common theme. Each must be started in its own subscription month (though you really don’t have to advance in it at all).[/li][li]The House of Chimes was really no different than the current system. There was still a promo universal storylet announcing the new story, and playing it the game told you to go to the House of Chimes to unlock the new story, exactly how the promo storylet of the new stories today tell you to go to your Breakwater-House/your Study/etc. to unlock it.
@dov
I see we disagree on what "a substantial chunk" is. For me, the palaver with the arm was too much; not in the sense of too many actions, but in the sense that it lays out the exposition and the problem, which really need to be fresh in the memory for the story as a whole to make sense and be coherent and enjoyable. (I’ve actually started saving exceptional stories off line because trawling the diary for the bits works so badly.)
And as far as I recall, House of Chimes was a couple of screens at most. Simply having access, of course, identified you as an EF. So a simple, elegant solution has been given up in place of something people find hard to navigate.
Plus, as I mentioned in my first post above, changes in the coding can result in properly triggered stories becoming unavailable. That’s not satisfactory for the player, and it’s unnecessary work for the support desk. edited by Meradine Heidenreich on 2/28/2017
[quote=Meradine Heidenreich]@dov
I see we disagree on what "a substantial chunk" is. For me, the palaver with the arm was too much; not in the sense of too many actions, but in the sense that it lays out the exposition and the problem, which really need to be fresh in the memory for the story as a whole to make sense and be coherent and enjoyable. (I’ve actually started saving exceptional stories off line because trawling the diary for the bits works so badly.)[/quote]
I haven’t played yet this month’s story so I can’t comment on it specifically. But in all the Exceptional Stories that I remember from the past months, it only took a singe action inside the seasonal hub to unlock the story. (now, it sometimes required 3-4 actions to unlock the seasonal hub itself, which might be the source of confusion. But this had nothing to do with the actual monthly story).
I agree that if you unlock it now and play it in 6 months you might not remember the context. As I said, I’m not arguing that the current system is ideal. But FBG have chosen a subscription method in which each story is tied to a specific month. They could have made it so that you have to complete it in a given month and that’s it, but they know some people will take their time and some will want to level up or get items/qualities before progressing. So they made it that you have to start it in that particular month.
The alternative is that people can come a year later and claim that since they used to be an Exceptional Friend the year before they should now be able to start those older Exceptional Stories for free. It’s a valid approach (i.e. use some quality to track in which months you had been an EF), but this isn’t the model that FBG are using. Therefore, since you have to start the story in the given month, then by necessity you’ll be missing some context if you only continue it after a few months (especially since the journal system is really bad).
The House of Chimes was actually often worse. You had to have a long conversation with someone there before unlocking the story. Only in the latest of stories it was one or two actions to unlock.
[quote=dov]
I haven’t played yet this month’s story so I can’t comment on it specifically. But in all the Exceptional Stories that I remember from the past months, it only took a singe action inside the seasonal hub to unlock the story. (now, it sometimes required 3-4 actions to unlock the seasonal hub itself, which might be the source of confusion. But this had nothing to do with the actual monthly story).[/quote]
In the case of the March story, Meradine is actually correct. You first have one branch to activate the story. Then you have two linked must urgency storylets. The the second of the two is actually a substantial piece of content on its own as it has several branches, looping and a tracker quality. And then you are linked to yet another storylet. This one isn’t must urgency and, in principle, you can Perhaps Not out of and leave it for later but most people are probably not up on the nuance of urgency and would probably feel they have to play it straight away. By the end of it, you really do have a rather substantial bit of content you have to get through just to activate the story.
Is there a date for when the Century Exhibition will be available to buy for Fate? I’ve completed the stories prior to this but didn’t renew my subscription in time to play this one.
Haha, lovely one! Waste of AP, but mostly to check everything out to make sure I didn’t miss anything! Well, I can spend many hours in a museum (RL) and enjoy every bit even if it consumes my energy!
After the Wind is released and before heading back to the exhibits for means of help, there was another option that required Investigation (?) level 30, but didn’t picked it. Coffee didn’t kicked it and I thought that option will advance the story, not the other one.
I fear this may be a terribly silly question, but … having just finished both The Century Exhibition and the Twelve Fifteen from Moloch Street, where is that "Study" of mine where I can examine the evidence? Having finished the first story of the season right after it came out, I dimly recall there being a storylet in my Lodgings, but that is no longer there. All I am seeing is the three-item trade-in storylet, but that is telling me to go examine the items in my study first.
EDIT: I ended up contacting FBG about this. It was indeed a bug, and they squashed it in record time. edited by Arandia on 3/16/2017
(Apology in advance for replying to a thread this late, but I am slowly trying to catch up on my ES.)
I liked the story very much, but this has been my first season of EF, so I have very little to compare with.
I enjoyed exploring the exhibitions, and I was very touched by the result of visiting the Rubbery exhibit. Somehow I missed the Khanate’s one, I don’t know how that happened, so I didn’t get to see how they would help me with scaring the Wind of ages, but the whole ordeal of taming it was very well done.
The little snippets of information were interesting enough that I didn’t mind sinking all my AP into seemingly endless carousels.
I’m looking forward to more Stories and you can look forward to me replying to more dead threads! Win-win \o/