Losing Bundles of Oddities

Fallen London
1

I have a suggestion for the writers of the game. I don’t see a “suggestions” forum, and I’m not sure if this is the right place for it - if not, please help me out and direct me to the correct location.

For storylets that give you the “opening a bundle of oddities” quality, I don’t think there should be a “try this again” button. Only “onwards.” The reason being that if you click “try this again,” it goes directly back to the storylet, skipping the part where you actually open your bundle. I did this a few times before I realized what was happening. Whenever you finally click “onwards,” you do open a bundle, but only one, and any others are lost. (I suppose you keep the “opening” quality throughout the repeated attempts, so you will eventually need to play the associated “opening” storylet, but for some reason “try this again” is a higher priority for the game engine.)

I’d be willing to bet a lot of players, especially new players, are losing a lot of their rewards because they don’t realize how it works.

2

Yeah, I did this too the first time. But you only do it once before you never do it again, haha.

3

It’s the big blue flag on the left of your screen that says feedback.
More specifically here: http://feedback.echobazaar.failbettergames.com/forums/25389-suggestions?lang=en

4

Aira, you can only actually have one Bundle of Oddities at a time, so you haven’t lost any by clicking ‘Perhaps Not’. That button essentially does nothing here.

I agree that it’s confusing. I don’t think it will change soon, though, because Fallen London is going to be transferred to the Storynexus platform. That means that tweaks to the current interface are probably not a high priority.

5

[quote=Flyte]Aira, you can only actually have one Bundle of Oddities at a time, so you haven’t lost any by clicking ‘Perhaps Not’. That button essentially does nothing here.

I agree that it’s confusing. I don’t think it will change soon, though, because Fallen London is going to be transferred to the Storynexus platform. That means that tweaks to the current interface are probably not a high priority.[/quote]

Yes, I realize you can only have one bundle at a time. That’s the problem. Once you get a bundle, you should open it immediately, so the next time you perform the same action, you can get another one. But the way the interface is, if you finish an action, get a bundle of oddities, and click “try this again” instead of “onwards,” you skip opening the bundle (so you still have it but haven’t gotten the reward for it) and then do the same action again, the reward for which is another bundle - but because you already have one, you can’t get another one, so you lose the contents of one of those bundles.

For example, you’re fighting off the rats who have infested your apartment and select the option to locate an L.B. hoard. You succeed, and as part of the result you are now opening a bundle of oddities. You want to grind this particular storylet, though, so you click “try this again” to get more. You repeat the storylet, but you still haven’t opened that bundle of oddities. You succeed again, and again get the message that you’re opening a bundle of oddities. Maybe you keep clicking “try this again” until you’re out of actions. Let’s say you use up 10 actions and they all succeed. By this point, you should have opened a bundle of oddities 10 times, and each time gotten a random number of items (in this case, Proscribed Material). However, because the game skipped the part where you actually open the bundles, you still only have ONE bundle. You’ve lost NINE of the bundles because they were never opened.

Nigel Overstreet, thanks for that link. Somehow I never realized that Feedback button was there. I think I saw the blue and white out of the corner of my eye and subconciously assumed it was something to do with Facebook.

Flyte, I don’t think this is an interface problem. It’s just that the priority of the game engine puts the repeated storylet at a higher priority than opening the bundle of oddities. I use Storynexus myself and I’m confident it wouldn’t be too difficult to fix. Right now, I believe that clicking “onward” when you’re opening a bundle of oddities directs you to the Opening storylet, whereas clicking “try this again” just repeats the last storylet played. I think all they have to do is mark the Opening a Bundle of Oddities storylet as the highest priority (Must), so that it will be played before anything else, no matter what. Very easy to fix, if I understand what they’ve done properly.