Loitering creates a conflict of interest

Fallen London
21

[quote=Anne Auclair][quote=Grenem][quote=Anne Auclair]I rather like the penalty as it actually makes you feel like you’re doing something shady and not the least bit respectable. It also makes sense that the person who planned this questionable loitering gets slightly more benefit.
edited by Anne Auclair on 1/24/2016[/quote]
Does it? planning to loiter isn’t precicely rocket science, i don’t think. A good plan shouldn’t increase the benefit.[/quote]
I meant that the person who plans the loiter knows a bit more about what’s going on and so gets more out of it, while whoever they’re bringing along is just doing a job. When you’re loitering I imagine you’re actually doing some really low level spying and casing, just as coffee is really low level socializing, sparring is low level fighting, and playing chess is a low level intellectual workout. People don’t like being spied on or robbed, so its not surprising you get a few funny looks.[/quote]
You’ll note, however, that for all the other ones the &quotcompetent&quot one learns less, not more. If sending the invite makes you more competent, why are you getting the better loot?

I know this is a silly discussion, but i really do think this is a silly bit of gameplay.

22

I actually think that there are two different reasons that you’re overlooking:

  1. As mentioned up-thread, this is something that can be handled player-side. There are a large number of asymmetrical social actions in the game and I suspect this was intentional to force it to be handled player-side. In other words: to force greater involvement from both players in what they do and don’t involve themselves in. It encourages a “good-neighbor” policy, where people are encouraged to accept less profitable actions in order to gain goodwill towards their own invitations later. In a related, if unconnected point, I suspect it helps with retention when more experienced players can make magnanimous gestures towards the less experienced. This is also one of the reasons forums do so much to foster retention.

  2. It encourages players to make multiple alts and, thus, to experience more of the game. If writing and production staff are the largest part of operating costs, then it makes sense to want players to get as much of that experience as possible. The more options and choices a player gets from an alt the more of an investment that player will have in the world of Fallen London. This investment helps encourage Exceptional Friendship and the purchase of Fate.

The next bit isn’t really a reason, it’s just related to something Nanako said earlier in the thread:
I really don’t think the game can be meaningfully separated into social/nonsocial or single/multiplayer segments very easily. The amount of effect that social actions have on the single player experience defies that separation. And the needs that are created in single player are the engine that drives the social aspects of this game. Particularly with the Exceptional Rose coming up, I don’t think that there is justification to thinking of them less as linked, but still separate, systems, but, rather as entangled or overlapping systems.
edited by MrBurnside on 1/25/2016
edited by MrBurnside on 1/26/2016

23

[quote=Grenem]You’ll note, however, that for all the other ones the &quotcompetent&quot one learns less, not more. If sending the invite makes you more competent, why are you getting the better loot?

I know this is a silly discussion, but i really do think this is a silly bit of gameplay.[/quote]
It’s not competence, it’s the fact you’re the person with the plan. You’ve staked out the place, time, and purpose of the loitering. What you learn helps you towards some very specific goal, while what your partner learns only helps them in a general way.
edited by Anne Auclair on 1/24/2016

24

Multiplayer coordination problems are harder – requiring more skill and communication to coordinate, and perhaps more interesting for it – if they are not straightforwardly tit-for-tat. If there’s some risk involved, which there is in the case of accepting an invitation to loiter suspiciously. Your best reason for accepting that invite is in the hopes that the favor will be reciprocated, in which case it becomes an equal transaction for both sides. In digital games, computers can always ensure that transactions are equal, but this isn’t necessarily the most interesting thing to do. A lot of Failbetter’s multiplayer mechanics are based on the idea of trust, collaboration, and betrayal (which has to be a possibility for trust to feel meaningful, and not simply automated). Similarly, other multiplayer games leave space for backstabbing, betrayal and so forth – the designers of World of Warcraft have talked at length, for instance, about why they chose not to completely, efficiently automate the division of loot in dungeons and raids. They could have done so; they left it up to players instead, with the possibility of strife, bickering, betrayal, and crime. This philosophy goes back a long way in multiplayer online game design. Not all games have to be about conflict and trust/betrayal, but if that’s the kind of game you’re interested in, then you have to leave some jagged edges that aren’t perfectly equal and automatic.

I’m sure we could think of more complex multiplayer interactions around Hastily Scrawled Warning Notes, with betrayal and Constables and Shadowy challenges and so forth; this particular social interaction is extremely minimalist (and dates back to the very early months of the game, I think) but its potential lopsidedness is definitely something I’d keep. In other words, there should be a &quotconflict of interest&quot – if anything needs patching, it’s the fact that the conflict isn’t clearly stated and that players might not know that inviter gets 2, invitee gets 1.
edited by metasynthie on 1/24/2016

25

To echo Mr. Burnside, there are many social actions in this game which give lopsided rewards or else skew probabilities heavily in one player’s favor. Enough that I would conclude that this is a deliberate design choice. Inviting an acquaintance to dinner and treating your sweetheart to an evening also give much more to the inviter than the invitee. Like other posters, I strongly suspect that this is to encourage reciprocity. I would also hazard a guess that this also recognizes that the inviter needs an added incentive to go through the effort of picking out a contact and initiating the action. A player who merely passively accepts whatever invitations gains less than one who is actively making new contacts and forging new connections.

26

I think this was raised up a few weeks ago at the feedback forum and I do agree that loitering should be less punishing than the other stats. I think making it the same as its sibling invites like Chess and Sparring is good enough IMO, that is somewhat luck-based and stat-based yet without getting MW or Connected loss.

Then again, Criminal activity are quite menace inducing. Just getting favors.

Anyways, while we’re waiting for FBG to look on it. I think the best “band-aid” is to invite the player for coffee. It won’t restore Connected:Society but at least MW isn’t that hard hit.

27

The person who sends the request doesn’t get any shadowy cp, unless i’m mistaken?
you get zero by sending them

28

Another thought has come to mind.
Why the Making Waves penalty at all, for anyone involved?

IT seems to be established that Making Waves is gained from doing things that are interesting, not merely respectable. As i recall, there are quite a few opportunities that cause you to gain both Making Waves and Scandal simultaneously, because even offending high society gets you noticed.
And perhaps more to the point, it can be gained from heists - there’s a precedent for gaining it from criminal activity. In that context it might be interpreted as infamy more than fame, but it is nevertheless being noticed.

Back to loitering, the concept of being seen associating with criminals or doing suspicious things, it certainly makes sense to damage your reputation in society. But it is also a scandalous thing to do, so why should it make you less famous?

I would propose that, rather than penalising MW, loitering should give Suspicion to the players involved. It is, after all, SUSPICIOUS loitering, no?

29

[quote=Nanako]Another thought has come to mind.
Why the Making Waves penalty at all, for anyone involved?

IT seems to be established that Making Waves is gained from doing things that are interesting, not merely respectable. As i recall, there are quite a few opportunities that cause you to gain both Making Waves and Scandal simultaneously, because even offending high society gets you noticed.
And perhaps more to the point, it can be gained from heists - there’s a precedent for gaining it from criminal activity. In that context it might be interpreted as infamy more than fame, but it is nevertheless being noticed.

Back to loitering, the concept of being seen associating with criminals or doing suspicious things, it certainly makes sense to damage your reputation in society. But it is also a scandalous thing to do, so why should it make you less famous?
[/quote]

I agree. It doesn’t make sense either.

But I’ll try to play Devil’s advocate. All MW gains seems to revolve on one thing: being seen with other people in public. Loitering seems to be the opposite of this.

[quote=Nanako]
I would propose that, rather than penalising MW, loitering should give Suspicion to the players involved. It is, after all, SUSPICIOUS loitering, no?[/quote]

Don’t give them ideas :D What if they add Wounds to Sparring and Nightmares to Chess?

30

EDIT: I didn’t notice there was a second page, so you may find my babbling dull.

I don’t understand what’s disturbing about an unbalanced social option. You can straight up poison another player and lie about what you’re doing. I’m not sure why you’re okay with that but not okay with an &quotunfair&quot positive trade that both players agree too. Maybe boxed cats and photographer investigations are more convincing comparisons for you, since those are also &quotpositive&quot actions that many people don’t want to receive.

It should be different from the equivalent social actions, just for variety’s sake. It should be accessible by anyone. It should have relatively minor effects. (This design succeeds on all of these fronts.) I’d need to put in more thought about how attractive the option should be to players at different stages. (I’m not sure whether this design hits the right spot at high levels.)

It should make it easy for an experienced player to help out a newbie. This is where I don’t like the Waves choice, since it puts POSIs into an awkward position. (Awkward delays and/or conversations that make newbies feel guilty or confuse them with mechanics they don’t need to care about.) But that’s an issue with the specific penalty, not inequality of benefits.

It would be very easy to justify most choices with flavor (especially as it doesn’t need to be called Loitering if I’m starting from scratch), so that wouldn’t be a major factor.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 1/25/2016

31

[quote=Pyrodinium]
Don’t give them ideas :D What if they add Wounds to Sparring and Nightmares to Chess?[/quote]
Well nightmares to chess wouldn’t make much sense unless you were playing with Scintillack pieces. And given how common and hard to remove, nightmares is, i think that would be a bit punishing.

Wounds for sparring though, would make a lot of sense, i’d definitely approve of that. I can barely remember the last time i got wounded, i pass all dangerous checks blindfolderd and with both hands tied behind my back nowadays. More wounds would give more reasons to buy sips of hesperidian cider from other users too <3

32

[quote=Nanako]Well nightmares to chess wouldn’t make much sense unless you were playing with Scintillack pieces. And given how common and hard to remove, nightmares is, i think that would be a bit punishing.[/quote]It makes more sense when you consider the whole A Game of Chess dream/nightmare sequence.

33

The person who sends the request doesn’t get any shadowy cp, unless i’m mistaken?
you get zero by sending them[/quote]
I was doing the second chances -> CP conversion. 5 second chances -> average of 26 stat points. OFC, I forgot to factor in the action to cash in, so it might be closer to about 7.7 stat points per action.

34

Suspicion replacing MW drop from loitering would be neat if you ask me, but probably not everyone will agree.

If you are getting stuck at Big Score (that’s the most painful plateau this game has, anyway), I suggest people just ignore grinding Casing via Big Score and instead stick to Stealing Painting for Topsy King for Casing nowadays - you get 1 extra CP of Shadowy per action, which adds up to an extra 20 CP of Shadowy per 30 CP of Casing, the check is easier and failure less punishing.

35

[quote=Nanako]To everyone else reading this thread, i ask you to try the following thought experiment for the moment.

Assume there was no existing social action for Hastily Scrawled Warning notes, and that you were tasked with designing it. How would you implement it, from scratch? What would you base the decisions on?[/quote]
I would ensure that this action involves actually hastily scrawling a warning note.



36

[quote=Nanako][quote=Pyrodinium]
Don’t give them ideas :D What if they add Wounds to Sparring and Nightmares to Chess?[/quote]
Well nightmares to chess wouldn’t make much sense unless you were playing with Scintillack pieces. And given how common and hard to remove, nightmares is, i think that would be a bit punishing.

Wounds for sparring though, would make a lot of sense, i’d definitely approve of that. I can barely remember the last time i got wounded, i pass all dangerous checks blindfolderd and with both hands tied behind my back nowadays. More wounds would give more reasons to buy sips of hesperidian cider from other users too <3[/quote]

Just because you aren’t suffering from removing certain menaces doesn’t mean that it’s okay to apply said rule to other players. Using that logic, I can handwave your issue with Suspicion because that’s unsporting.

37

I’ll actually go in to say that I find Nightmares now one of the easiest to remove as a POSI and Scandal the biggest pain. And the suggestion of adding suspicion is particularly a problem because you’re punished if you hit the menace area too often.

38

I’ve been a serial loiterer for a while and have exchanged many loitering encounters, including with Nanako. The main reason for doing so was to supplement my shadowy grind as there aren’t so many interesting stories at that point. (I was constantly equipping the talkative rat for the War of Assassins/COC grind and the Affair of the Box one.)

I only sent loitering invitations to people who approached me to help with their menaces. It was a mutually beneficial exchange as those players were generally pre-POSI and not so keen on connected society. Also, I didn’t initially notice the imbalance until I sent a few to my alts as loitering is indeed such an unpopular thing. Since then, I’d been careful to let my fellow loiterers know about this and they didn’t seem to have any problem with it, though Nanako did comment that it didn’t seem fair. Since we both invited the other for loitering, it evens out in the end.

Nanako - if you think I owe you some loitering, please go ahead and send them along. I don’t keep track. (Well, I could always go through my email notifications if I wanted to, but this is just a game and I’d rather just do the right thing by you and make sure everyone has a good time.)

The imbalance is that the sender will receive 2 notes as long as he already has no more than 22, together with the MW/Connected: Society penalty. (Has anyone calculated whether the penalty is equal for both sender and receiver?). The receiver will get just 1 note, as long as he already has no more than 11.

I think it’s right to keep this imbalance, mainly because of the risks involved. The sender will need to spend an action to initiate the invitation, and has no control over when the action is accepted, if at all. So yes, he could waste an action only to have it cancelled at no action cost to the receiver, or have it accepted at a crucial point before TTH and lose enough MW to suffer a penalty to his Notability as well. The receiver can choose exactly when to accept, and (drunken clicking notwithstanding) won’t have the TTH/MW/Notability problem.

I don’t see the receiver cap of 11 to be a problem as the receiver can always use up the notes before accepting the invitation. The sender cap of 22 is fine as it stops people from spamming the loitering invite too much. I think this sender cap also applies for chess, sparring and coffee.

P.S. I have recently achieved an Invisible Eminence and won’t need to loiter for a long while. I will merely control things from my lair using my new found proteges.