How do you rate FLINT? (POLL)

Fallen London
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I intentionally excluded Flint from my recent Exceptional Stories poll due to its size and pricing. However, during the last weeks I saw a few posts on the forum questioning whether it really deserves its standout prominence among the Exceptional Stories - so I thought having this poll might be interesting!

As to my own thoughts:
The content: totally worth it. Without spoilers: in Part 1, you have a long talk with the Bishop of St Fiacre’s, steal something from a restaurant, and meet someone in Watchmakers Hill. In Part 2, you travel to four different locations (Apis Meet, the city of Caution, the Bleeding Forest, the Grey Vineyard), all of which are worth spending a lot of time in (especially as you won’t be able to return to three of them).
How interesting you find all that is, of course, totally down to your own taste. Some people argue that Part 1 is boring - it didn’t feel to me that way. Especially the restaurant part was fun. And Part 2 is really huge! Some slightly spoilery advice here:[spoiler]

  • Play (and read!) absolutely everything in Caution, it’s so delightful! Stock up on the unique supplies you can get there - there’s a small side-quest in the Bleeding Forest which you won’t even see if you haven’t at least 8 Little Comforts.[/li][/ul][ul][li]The Bleeding Forest alone has almost as much content as some Exceptional Stories. With high stats, you’ll be able to leave very soon - but don’t. I counted 15 opportunity cards, all with several options - I spent days in there to record all possible results and still missed one or two.[/li][/ul][ul][li]How much you can do in the Grey Vineyard depends a bit on your earlier choices. Generally, for me this place was mostly about atmosphere. Savour it, be aware that your adventure is almost over - and contemplate whether you should Do Something Foolish.

The money: the current price is stiff, all agreed. But let’s not forget that the whole of Flint was originally available for the price of a single monthly subscription. That was the opposite of stiff, that was almost a giveaway! It’s always a matter of being in the right place at the right time…
I wouldn’t be surprised for Flint to see a discount over Christmas, and for the price to drop in the future. It definitely shouldn’t remain that high forever.
edited by phryne on 1/2/2017

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I really enjoyed Flint. I played it fourteen times in a row on my previous account. I suspect this makes me an outlier though.

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I really liked it. I haven’t replayed it but might in the future, if I could afford it.

I think it was said at the time that some of the locations will be used in future content though. So hopefully we will get to see Caution and the Bleeding Forest in a different context.

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I really liked the lore of it. But I’m pretty neutral on the actual arc of the story and honestly kind of negative on the choice structure. There were a lot of branches that seemed to exist just for the sake of having branches, without any particular meaning behind them. On the other hand……a bunch of bees used me as a hive……so I can only get so mad at it.

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I felt that Flint II was truly the mystical adventure that it promised to be. The new location wasn’t just a location, but a real place. It had a feel, and an aesthetic (both visual and textual), that gave the impression there was a full and deep world that we got see a small but significant part of.

The best way I can describe it, is that the Neath felt larger after I returned. The other overseas locations are single location, and that all there is to see is either seen or directly implied. Flint felt less self-contained, like there was a whole world as big as London itself in the background, even though we didn’t encounter it.

I am also partial to psychedelic mystery tours. The medium of computer gaming needs more of those.

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I almost would’ve expected it to be discounted for Hallowmas if it was to be discounted at all, just so people could get the complete &quotHeart’s Blood&quot set. But it would make an excellent Christmas present indeed.

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I very much enjoyed Flint, but as on the survey card afterwards, I’m giving it a 4/5 here. While it was a great experience, it was much more of an adventure than a story. The plot felt like an excuse to visit new locations; the atmosphere and writing were excellent but the story was very bare-bones, with the Plot only visiting sporadically towards the end and a vague conclusion. I plan to replay it after going NORTH to get all the rare items, but I doubt I’d return to it otherwise.

To quote Alexis Kennedy in [REDACTED], “It’s been called baggy, and that’s fair: I think if you look closely you can easily see the way in which it it was written in sudden bursts over about three months.”

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I think you got this exactly right.
Flint has lots of content, but it’s almost all in (cool) locations and atmosphere. Very little actual story.

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I played it quite recently, taking a big break in the middle (yeah, got stuck in Apis Meet and couldn’t work out how to go on).
For me, the second half was way more enjoyable than the first (too much like other ES stories). There was a real sense of exploration and places strange and alien about it. I spent several days in real time in each of the overzee locations, especially the forest and the garden. Now I am looking forward to replaying it to explore all the branches I didn’t take last time. However, full and very steep price for a replay is a bit much for me, so I’ll be hoping as mentioned upthread for a discounted opportunity at some point.

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Flint was my favorite story, even though I didn’t even do everything it had to offer.

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[quote=Robin Alexander]Edit: low whistle I admit this was a very large story, with a lot of content and a great reputation, but . . . if we look at how much fate we can buy per package, as well as how much fate is needed for each story, I’m not sure - over a year on - we can justify £20? It’s around £6 to replay other stories, as well as £5 for EF stories, and so it feels a very steep price as of this moment in time . . .

I’ve always thought releasing EF stories for free or an even lower price, after a year, would be a great way to both attract new players (who in turn often bring RL money) and to free up the Fate page, but this is a story that might justify always being fate-locked, as it is remarkable and something else entirely, from what others are saying, but I think the cost is a bit much here. People already paid to play this story, yet are getting charged the cost of four stories to replay something over a year old and already played once . . . not sure if it’s the same cost to ‘new’ players, who are playing it for the first time, but it seems far too high for people who’ve played it before and considering a year’s past.

Yeah, I can definitely see why that’s putting people off buying it 0_0
edited by Robin Alexander on 11/9/2016[/quote]
That’s a good point. Given that resetting other Exceptional Stories costs 20 Fate less than buying the for the first time, it does seem odd for Flint to cost the same amount. Given that Flint has several different instances of getting different rewards for replaying and making different choices, I bet a lot more people would be willing to go back and get everything if it cost, say, 90 Fate to reset.

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I heard a lot about Flint and was very curious about it (yes, I wanted to see more Elder continent content, we don’t see enough of it, and yes, I am necroposting), and so I bought it as my first ever piece of paid content in FL, which seems to have shaped my experience with it in a very different manner that other people here, mainly because I have no idea what other exceptional stories look like. I was a bit disappointed by it, and I attribute this to a few things.

First, the hype. This is a story known for its size, and for its price point of 120 Fate. It is exceptional among the exceptional stories, to the point where it gets an ad/mention in the snippets on the right of the FL user interface (were those called “London stories” or something like that? I don’t remember); it even gets a zee port that is entirely locked until you buy the story. It is advertised as huge, and it might be; I don’t know how it compares to a normal ES. I just think that after all this hype (I waited for months to buy it), it would have had to be absolutely phenomenal to land for me.

Second, the story itself. I agree with the comments that say that it’s a vehicle for the places; the result is that it never actually feels big to me. The first part of the story centers around a hostage situation, more or less; still, I never felt that I was running out of time. The second part centers about our excursion to and intrusion into the prison of the Snuffer equivalent of a saint; at no point did I feel that that entity was actually important. The exploration is nice, but the stakes feel low.

Third, FB’s voice has changed over time. Some people are complaining about the writing of Firmament, but I personally like it. It succeeds, for me, in bringing a sense of gravitas to the situations and places we see. With its “shall all be well” choice, I think Flint aims for gravitas too, but it doesn’t hit because I’m used to something else now; the language is too different.

That’s also why I feel that some of the places feel so small while being so big: FB didn’t necessarily write places in the same way back then, and you can feel they’ve improved in that regard. Caution is my main example: it is big. There are a lot of options in it. But that’s too many options in one room, compared to a few options in many rooms. You see that you have a lot of choices there, but not much of a place to explore; it feels more like being in one room with 20 buttons to press (that’s still many options!) than exploring a place.

In conclusion, I found Flint not bad (if sometimes a bit rough around the edges, ahem Caution), but a bit disappointing. It is big, but I feel like it doesn’t really feel like it for a variety of reasons. While it’s advertised as huge, I feel like it was not the most appropriate expectation to have while going in. It has other qualities. Still, I think FB has vastly improved since then (not to criticize AK! The writing in Sunless Sea is pretty good, and he has also vastly improved since leaving FB); storylet-based fiction is an otherwise rather little-explored corner of game design, and I found that Emily Short’s blog (who works at FB) is one of the main sources on how to do it well. FB had to, in great part, figure it out themselves.

That’s probably not the entire explanation for my feelings towards Flint; this is the only ES I’ve played, but I’ve also bought Flute Street; in many ways, it felt as big as Flint, while being much smaller. I think the duration of the actions plays a role.

Anyway, this was very long. If anyone read this in full, thank you. I have one closing question: I am planning the purchase of my nest ES. Which other ES is good for learning more about the Elder Continent?

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You might try The Exile’s Chalice. Or House of Silk and Flame, which is set in Vesture (north coast of the Elder Continent) and also briefly features Arbor.

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