I’ve recently realised that while the Fallen London engine tracks the vast majority of player qualities, some are not tracked in a way that the player can access. These include, as far as I can see:
Living Story subscriptions
Seasonal keys (the qualities that make seasonal content available)
Bazaar’s questions
(To a lesser extent your location. although of course you can always see that by looking at the top where it says "Welcome to…")
Are there other qualities like that? Do we know why that’s the case? In the case of Bazaar’s questions - age and gender - this is clearly due to privacy and there is something to be said for not cluttering the interface with duplicate information that can be otherwise inferred (i.e. the location and the season). But in the case of living stories and K&C qualities I would very much like to be able to see what qualities my character has.
Has FB addressed this in the past? Made their views known? Is their much point in lobbying them to include this information?
ETA: Removed K&C bit per comments below edited by genesis on 12/3/2015
Seasonal Keys are never given to us, rather the quality locks on the cards are added and removed manually.
Source: All requirements are now displayed to us and I’ve personally seen the Key of Seasons quality requirement before. edited by Cecil on 12/3/2015
You can see you Knife and Candle form in the Myself tab, under the Major Lateral category. (I usually just expand them all and then search the page for whatever I’m after)
There’s others, there’s an invisible quality in Flint Part 1 that might be a living story that hasn’t fired for me. And likewise an invisible quality in Lost in Reflections.
By invisible quality I mean, I got a message for it and couldn’t subsequently find anything in my qualities.
So here is a scenario (admittedly not a mainstream one) where it would be very useful to understand what living stories will trigger and when:
I join K&C which subscribes me to "A discrete delivery" living story that delivers 7 iron knife tokens and a Sense of Urgency every week. If I then withdraw from the game completely (losing all knife tokens and my Participant quality) but re-join some time later you do not get the subscription text again. I.e. you are only ever subscribed to the living story only once the very first time you ever join K&C. But then when do you get your discrete delivery? Every week from the original subscription or every week from your rejoining? If you could just go into your profile and see what living stories you are subscribed to, when you were subscribed to them and what their delays are that would be a very easy question to answer and would help you to plan.
Incidentally, the name of the living story "A discrete delivery" is used on the Wiki and on various blogs but I have not seen this phrase anywhere in the game engine itself. This leads me to suspect that living story qualities did in fact use to be in the game but then were removed. Not an improvement, in my opinion…
"A discrete delivery" is the title of the message you receive when the living story activates. If you’re subscribed for email notifications for in-game messages, this is the title of the email.
There’s Luck, which is invisible and everyone has at 1 – but it’s a quality that works much like other qualities in StoryNexus. Cecil, what are the invisible qualities in Flint and Lost in Reflections?
Correction: everyone has it at 0 and it’s not invisible! Thank you, NiteBrite. edited by metasynthie on 12/3/2015
You do get a quality for your K&C form it just shows up in a strange place, like major lateral or something. K&C moon league gambits give you an unlabeled curiosity item with no hover text. Your name written in silver ink is the invisible prize token delivery quality (paraphrased name). Everyone has 0 luck not 1 so it’s not invisible, rather it’s just at 0.
The only thing that has me stumped is how does the K&C 24 hour repeat moon duel lockout work. It knows who you’ve fought -and- it times out. I suspect it’s some kind of messageless living story but which quarter it tracks with eludes me. I like to think living stories are all quality based, but it’s hard to say for sure. Your current location could also be thought of as a quality that you have but don’t see in your inventory (ex. The quality "you have been moved to spite"). edited by NiteBrite on 12/3/2015
Assuming Fallen London works like other StoryNexus games (which is not always the case) Location does not really work like a quality (you can’t test or check it) it’s just a category for storylets and cards to go into.
Of course, the implementation here could be different.
[quote=metasynthie]There’s Luck, which is invisible and everyone has at 1 – but it’s a quality that works much like other qualities in StoryNexus. Cecil, what are the invisible qualities in Flint and Lost in Reflections?
Correction: everyone has it at 0 and it’s not invisible! Thank you, NiteBrite. edited by metasynthie on 12/3/2015[/quote]
The challenges against your Luck check are invisible, that’s possibly what you’re thinking about, I got told that in a bug report a bit back but wasn’t sure if I was supposed to keep it under wraps but I guess the cat’s out of the bag now.
Also. Each Luck challenge locks with Luck 1. So even if you managed to get the quality you couldn’t mess up FW terribly or anything, because you couldn’t do luck challenges anymore.
Regarding Flint and Lost in Reflections respectively:
A Moment in Time and whatever the quality attached to "You have investigated July’s roost." is.
Oh, regarding locations. I’ve meticulously checked every single location change including in Fate content. Each time the alt text only says "A thing has happened!" which is notable because it’s possible for qualities to not have alt text.
What is notable is that each location does have an image attached to it.
And that the Nadir has different alt text when moving to it.
I think I recall one fate location having alt text. But I can’t recall which for the life of me.
It’s also notable that each location has their own image, so somewhere along the way that’s manually set.
Parabolan Panther content has a sudo-location which is actually just a quality that moves you into a autofire storylet. edited by Cecil on 12/4/2015
Ah yes! A Moment in Time is an interesting puzzle. I suspect that it’s a new tool that is intended to be used generally and not limited to this story. In fact Flint has introduces a number of new tools that feel like they are laying groundwork for wider use (for example, I believe opportunity cards that auto-fire on being drawn are new and probably would be used elsewhere). But, yes, it’s unclear whether AMiT is a living story or not. I suspect it might be and it would reset either when TTH comes or just a week later. But of course to test that you’d literally just have to get to that point in Flint and just sit there for a week…
I think areas (aka locations) and settings are handled differently than other qualities – or rather, they’re not qualities at all but different kind of property that’s adjusted separately from quality changes.
As for those qualities in Exceptional Stories, I think they vanish from your profile because they’re set to 0 as part of a storylet, for instance…
[spoiler]
The “Exploring July’s Roost” quality changes as you do things in that section of the story, and increases as her Clay Man gets closer to breaking in on you. The text “You have investigated July’s Roost” is not a description of a level, but rather a “change description” that’s used only when a quality changes. That particular one is the description for when the quality changes to 0, so you only see it when you lose that quality, at which point it doesn’t show up in your profile because it’s at 0.
Moment in Time seems to be another great new shortcut method kind of like “Intoxicating” – it gets set to 1 when you enter part of a story where you have the opportunity to do a thing, for example when you go into the Vineyard or the Dish & Spoon; in those locations there are branches that require Moment in Time 1 but set it to 0, so that you can only do them once. Previously, this would have been handled by a more specific quality that just indicates whether you’ve done a particular thing yet or not – but Moment in Time is more flexible. For instance, you could have multiple branches of that sort that all use up your Moment in Time, in which case you’d have to pick which one to do; or there could be ways to get more Moments in Time to allow you more of those opportunities. You could think of it like an inversion of “Time Passing…” qualities that give you choices that “use up time” – but Moment in Time is more atomic, not part of a big carousel, so potentially more flexible.[/spoiler]
That’s a shame about all the Luck storylets being locked at Luck 1 – I had fantasized about an uber-powerful item that gives Luck +1, but it might be too game-breaking. Failbetter has gone as far as to say that changing Luck is against Storynexus best practices, I guess, so it’s not surprising that they’re taking their own advice. :D
metasynthie, are you sure AMiT gets set to 1? I was just very carefully clicking through Dish & Spoon and didn’t see AMiT ever get set to 1 in any way that’s reflected on the profile.
Specifically:
When you enter Dish & Spoon you get this text: “Your ‘A Moment in Time’ Quality has gone!” and when you fight very vigorously indeed you get the text: “You’ve done something that you won’t be able to repeat for a little while”, which to me look like you’ve gained the quality. But even if, as you say, the second text refers to setting AMiT to zero I still don’t see when it would ever have been 1…
It gets erased (if it existed) upon entering part of a story where it’s relevant, then gets added to you when you do something “timeworthy.” The locks in the Dish & Spoon require you to NOT have it, I think? And then I believe it gets erased again when you leave the Dish & Spoon, so it only shows up in your qualities list after you do something timeworthy. Drat, I’m going to have to pay closer attention when I next encounter this system.
An alt is currently sitting in D&S having just gained ATiM and nothing is showing up in the properties list. I am going to leave him there for a week for SCIENCE. I am also relatively (but not 100%) sure that it’s not (explicitly) cleared when you leave D&S (ETA: at least when you leave by… not the front door. You just get the area change text, as far as my notes show me) edited by genesis on 12/4/2015