May/June Roadmap

Interesting! I hadn’t thought about outfit slots, and now that I have I don’t think I’m bothered by the notion. Those are a convenience that provide no in-game benefit, they just save you some actual time. And they weren’t even a thing for a while…

Hey, @theentireforumordangworldforallicare - Anyone know offhand when outfit slots were first added? It was definitely after Sunless Skies’ release (when I started playing), but that’s about all I have. Back when it was just the four and you had to decide if you were smarter in the morning or evening.
And when did they add the rest and ability to buy more?
(How the hell long have I been playing this?)

They could, you know, make better games. Not butcher Mask release like they did, for example.

  1. Thank you for presenting a proposition against which I can sharpen my rhetorical claws.
  2. No, that sounds silly. We (by which I mean everyone else, I’m poor) should just buy a dozen extra actions every day. Otherwise the Earl and Lady White will never be able to afford to correct the spelling on all the island’s signs. Nobody likes seeing a ‘g’ sitting in the middle of a word that doesn’t need one.

Also, I didn’t play Mask. I don’t care for the genre, so as a sober, rational and honest man I cannot and must not weigh in.
Fortunately, I am a dishonest and slightly intoxicated madman, so I condemn your slander and counter by pointing out that they are a really small team engaged in something deceptively difficult, especially considering just how severe their (my?) drinking, collectively, has become.

Now, just because your criticism is generally “fair” and reasonably “polite” doesn’t mean that… that… Oh my word! Did you see what @ladysaphobyron just did?

[quickly ducks out]

5 Likes

Yeah, I’m going to come out strongly in favor of FBG’s fallen london business model.

There’s plenty of actual unethical F2P games out there. Games with lootbox mechanics that make their money off gambling addicts, pay-to-win games where you have to spend money to keep up with your opponents or else you get crushed, games that promise you a free story but hide the conclusion behind a paywall.

FL does NONE of this. Gambling mechanics are rare and none are explicitly pay-Fate-to-spin, there’s no “limited time only, pay now!” (even fate-locked items from festivals are guaranteed to come back around, there’s no “pay now or miss your chance!”), there’s no PVP so there’s no “pay money or else your neighbor kills your base with his P2W army”. Heck, there’s even a reasonable separation between free and paid stories, you rarely run into the case where "we hooked you with the start of the story, but the conclusion is paid!.

Paying for action refreshes is “if you liked this game, you can pay money to play a bit more of it”. That’s totally fine. Exceptional Friendship is “if you liked this game, for $7/month you can play it twice as much, plus have an extra story”. Also fine. They also sell vanity stuff - stuff that has no impact but that people just like to have (endless numbers of companions that are cute but not Best-in-slot, extra outfit slots, stuff like that). Also fine! Like Valve selling hats or whatever.

7 Likes

This is one thing I really appreciate with FL. The only examples I can think of that occur are Secrets Framed In Gold (and the “hook” for that one is just “you buy a painting”) and maybe the Aunt storyline, but that one has a pretty clear resolution for non-paying players.

3 Likes

As someone who has spent exactly twice on action refreshes, for me it’s a festival thing and for ME reads the same as being a fatelocked item from the same festival. I’m willing to do an action refresh if that’s the difference between reaching an item I wanted or not. (For instance, one of the two times was during Fruits of the Zee last year, about a month or so after I came back to the game, after some years away. I wanted a zeefaring vessel from the festival, so it was worth it to me, especially as I didn’t particularly want any other fatelocked items from the festival that year.)

I can’t imagine doing it regularly though.

3 Likes

And of course, action free action refreshes are available: An Invitation to Linger, Darkdrop Coffee, and Magnificent Feast.

6 Likes

Personally, I have never been tempted to use Fate for action refreshes. I’ve always felt comfortable just waiting for them to come back naturally; I reserve Fate for things that cannot be gotten any other way.

(I’ve used Fate for action refreshes a couple times, but that was a unique circumstance. I was reporting live from Winking Isle; some people had sent me Fate gifts, and as I was the only person who could explore the new content, I felt pressure to finish quickly and pass on the card. The point being that this pressure was entirely external to the game itself.)

7 Likes

I’ve missed a few dozen messages in this thread, but reading the most recent I understand we , as a community, took this particular discussion in a wholly different direction?

3 Likes

Yeah, just imagine those poor, dumb, lost, addicted, gormless, suffering souls who would have a fit of impatience during a grind and slam that “20 actions for 10 fate” button. I’m glad I’m not one of them!

/o\

3 Likes

Okay so, hear me out: The operative words here are that relative to other F2P games Fallen London is, indeed, quite ethical in the sense that you:

  1. Can access most of the content without paying like… I believe $500+ total in DLC to access the entire game’s story (Destiny 2). And that was 4 months ago. I haven’t even checked how much The Final Shape costs.

  2. As much as I’ve complained about the grinds they are, by and large, NOT luck based and again NOT dependent on paying vast amounts of money for uncertain return (any game with lootboxes). You know what you’re getting with actions: More chances to click textboxes in the text-based narrative driven game. You do NOT know what you’re getting with lootboxes, and that’s why they’re gambling and not “surprise mechanics”

  3. The game, and I must stress this part, does not deceive you into a relationship with a character only to reveal that character is not interested in a relationship with you (Fate/Grand Order. Specifically, Summer Suzuka Gozen. And if that combination of words makes absolutely no sense to you, ignorance is bliss. Please trust me on this. The FL devil “romances” cost absolutely nothing but actions, and essentially function as a “devil psychology tutorial” for dealing with other Devil characters going forward. The example I am citing is specifically a character marketed in advertising as having a romantic interest in you, and when fully romanced via tedious resource grinding mechanism is revealed to not be. There are unethical gaming marketing prices. There are straight up unethical companies, like Blizzard Entertainment. And then there is a game that catfishes the player using a fictional character because one particular writer has an incomprehensible complex about the character he wrote but still wants her to sell in a gacha.

I know the examples above sound unhinged, but what I’m trying to say is: There are legitimate criticisms to be had about FL. And frankly what I heard about Mask of the Rose has turned me off actually giving it a shock. But as others have said, the primary selling point of FL has always been the writing quality, and that at least is largely free and limited only by your patience to engage with the content. Is it the best programmed game? No, but while I can’t speak for others I mostly come to read something weird every month and something really weird every couple of months. The grinding is just something to kill time. But the actual content in the game isn’t gated by more money than a good restaurant meal should cost.

And by all the Gods of the Zee, THERE IS SO MUCH WORSE OUT THERE ON THE F2P MARKET

6 Likes

Captain BS (hehe, that sounds funny but I do not mean it that way), Could you please explain how Blizzard is unethical. I played Diablo and Diablo II for ~10 years and played Starcraft II a LOT also. I paid the ~$60 for each game and played them for many years with no further expenditures needed and I never felt they were the slightest bit unethical. I do not even recall the ability to spend more money on these games than the original price to purchase the game. What am I missing that makes Blizzard unethical?

When I think about unethical business practices, I come up with the following:

  1. Selling products/services that are known to be defective and/or to not meet safety and environmental standards.
  2. Making false or misleading claims about what is sold.
  3. Causing severe harm, such as environmental damage or addiction (differentiating between things that are inherently addictive such as nicotine vs. things that people can developed an addiction to).
  4. Charging inordinate amounts for necessities or otherwise exploiting vulnerable people.
  5. Concealing harm caused by use or production of what’s sold.
  6. Mistreating of employees.
  7. Intentionally or negligently breaking laws.
  8. Practicing discrimination.

So far as I know, FBG doesn’t do any of these.

Of course, not being unethical does not equate to being ethical. Although FBG does get points for creating a game welcoming and representing a wide range of races, genders, etc.

10 Likes

Yes, that’s great! And pretty important to me, personally, so thank you FBG.

5 Likes

From a gameplay perspective, the real money auction house in Diablo 3. From a business perspective, pervasive sexual harassment, and union busting.

To your point, there weren’t any gacha or micro transactions in StarCraft, nor in Diablo up through 2. Those elements certainly have been in the Diablo games after 2.

4 Likes

Wait, ALL of those are things the Masters do, and who is responsible for them?
Right, FBG.

I must reconsider my position on the matter.

7 Likes

Hey hey hey the Masters don’t practice discrimination! It’s one of the very few bad things they don’t do, but let’s not pretend the Masters aren’t the foremost proponents of equal rights in the British Empire.

5 Likes

Well, equal rights for all of them, and separate, lesser, equal rights for all the humans.

5 Likes

I think they just have trouble telling humans apart.

6 Likes

Come now. Failbetter’s games tell stories, and stories need villains. Enter, the Masters.

4 Likes

I think @billycosmos was joking :p

I always assume worse. It is a sensible course of actions after those meanness FBG did with Noman.
Considering murdering of Khagan (via Crackling device) and Piracy (via Fabulous diamods) grinds, I was right.