Mr Eaten: Afterparty

Fallen London
41

Well, I’m glad that the reckoning won’t be postponed indefinitely, but I have to express some sadness and doubt at the current turn things have taken.

Mr Eaten content is supposed to be dangerous. It’s supposed to be damaging. It’s supposed to be frustrating. It’s supposed to be a costly spiral down into hell that the player pursues entirely on their own volition, gaining nothing but knowledge. It’s not supposed to be undertaken by a casual player. It’s not supposed to be taken by anyone, really, but god bless those dedicated idiots who do.

Now, I can see people complaining about Fate they’ve spent on the island. Or in the quest at all, really, which is why I think that the options at the midnight carnival are potentially dangerous (especially the ‘sacrifice your destiny’ one, as it’s a viable option, and people may have things to say about it if they choose to leave the quest later on). People complaining about real-world money are dangerous, especially to such a small company, and I understand that. But SMEN doesn’t do this, for the most part. I think Winking Isle needs work in its design, but everything else, I have nothing to complain about. It’s punishing, it’s difficult, it’s slow, and it’s glorious, because your character is struggling through a mire of insanity and betrayal and pain to an end they are not guaranteed to reach.

And I feel sad for you, Alexis, because from what I understand, SMEN is your own brainchild and thought experiment, and things aren’t turning out like you’d envisioned.
edited by Laluzi on 12/10/2013

42

I wish I could see the insanely punishing version. I’m a glutton for FL punishment. And I’d hate to agree with ‘needs work’ when all I heard was ‘glorious suffering’. But agree AGREE with the rest.

43

The problem with Winking Isle in design was that it encouraged people to refresh actions with Fate, and then often gave them nothing to show for it. That will upset even the most level-headed of players, like NiteBrite, although they’ll have the good grace to admit that it was their own choice to do it. But people don’t like spending Fate on nothing. It could send less calm ones on the legal warpath, even though Legal Threat Guy was actually just a (insert choice word[s] of your liking here). I think the action cost, combined with the heavy factors of things that could go wrong, were a little too much, unless there was some way to prevent people from using Fate there. Because no matter what you say, people are still going to do it, and they’re still going to complain no matter how much they were warned, apparently.

It’s neither here nor there now, I suppose. But while it was gloriously punishing, and very, very much an experience of starving yourself on a blasted speck of rock for no purpose other than your own insane pilgrimage, the way it was built was rather dangerous, as it turned out.[li]
edited by Laluzi on 12/10/2013

44

[color=#009900]
[/color]All of the K&C content still seems to be up (betraying people for their tokens/turning in your waxwail knife). (And I see you’ve turned your interest towards things better for your blood sugar. What kind of cake?)

45

[li]
Definitely, I wouldn’t backtrack on any other Eaten content. The Carnival may have had a few leery options, but the balance of punishment and reward has been about just perfect till now. Like a succulent serving of poisoned meat with just the right amount of spice.

46

I do rather like the idea of storylines that are absolutely terrible choices - there are a few of these in Fallen London, and Mr Eaten was the big one. I liked the idea of it.

That said, the vast majority of the love in recent months appeared to be going into the Mr Eaten content. (This is probably because Failbetter are working on Sunless Sea, but Alexis is updating Seeking on his own time.) Basically every new update added a grind with a smattering of new storyline for the regular players, and for the Seekers they got some new and bizarre development on top of that. It was ridiculously punishing, yes, but there’s really not a lot to do at the upper levels of the game, other than wait for the opportunity card that lets you advance the few storylines you haven’t done yet. The Eaten stuff gives you a long-term goal and intriguing locations like the subverted carnival and the Winking Isle. It delves into a mystery that we’ve been held at arm’s length from, so it’s not like the Jack storyline where you could investigate Jack from the outside or, very unwisely, become Jack. There’s no outside to what happened to Mr Eaten - if you want to know about how a Master could be killed, you have no choice. It’s the storyline with the cleverest new mechanics - having an object that you have to pass between players! - and the ridiculously convoluted goals just so happen to give you several goals to be working on at once, instead of just grinding the same storyline over and over again to get the one resource that’s still relevant to you.

I’d be quite pleased if the candle phase was pulled out and turned into a more sedate, high-level Watchful storyline, and Seeking the Name came back simpler and more direct when going for the throat.[li]
edited by merusdraconis on 12/10/2013

47

I strongly hope to see a resolution here. A slow descent into tortured madness is my overarching goal with this game. In more ways than one.

48

I was thinking about this, and my favorite bit of SMEN so far is getting St Beau’s, so maybe a very self-contained way to revise SMEN would be to put all the lore there and make it a single trip for people to learn the Name, with some medium-onerous entrance and exit requirements.

Mere noodling, I know, but for whatever it’s worth the Carnival is the bit I’d hate most to lose.

49

I’d like to pitch in my request for the Carnival to stick around too; that was the part of my slow descent into insanity I’d been most looking forward to.

50

My character retired from the Search some time ago, but Beaus’ was pitch-perfect content. The perfect accompaniment at that point to all the warnings as to the dangers and consequences of what you were doing was the systematic destruction of any reason for doing it. Having someone point out that all your reasons, whatever they were, boiled down to nothing much at all was superb.

51

Oh please don’t remove Seeking entirely! I missed this recent winking isle thing, but overall it has been one of the most entertaining aspects of this game. If winking isle wasn’t working by all means remove or change it, but everything else so far has been quite fun, and making it easy would take away the point of it.
I would be fine if it were updated less often and more focus were given to other reocurring stories, but don’t remove what’s already been done please!

52

I HORSE HEAD YOUR PILLOW.

Not enough pain, not enough paaaain.

53

I adored the carnival too. One of the things I’ve actually enjoyed most about the SMEN plotline has been the slow, atmospheric slide into depravity that your character goes on - the fact it’s grindy only adds to the pleasure. I didn’t mind losing all my lodgings and building them all up again, for example - it felt like a logical step in the game, and penance for the choices my character was taking.

I also really liked the idea of the Winking Isle, and all its nasty little tricks. But I’ll admit that I haven’t been talking much about SMEN on here lately, because - although everyone on here is very lovely - I was put off by the exclusivity of it, and the idea that I, the player, might have to take part in a RL popularity contest of sorts to get the card, rather than my character slowly working their way towards finding it themselves. I think those of us who are at a high level of SMEN are more likely to be very invested players, and therefore more overemotional towards the game, hence the upsets, and perhaps a certain level of hysteria - the idea that if you miss out, you miss out forever, is a pretty tough one to take.

I really, really hope that SMEN will return, because it is amazingly fabulous, but I wouldn’t be sad to see it return to a more ‘in game’ feel rather than relying on interactions between players outside of the game. Either way though, I think Alexis should be proud of the storyline; it’s the highlight of FL, as far as I’m concerned.
edited by Lady Red on 12/10/2013

54

+1 to all the talk of Beaus’ - I’m something of a lapsed player but came back recently because I’ve been lurking the Mr Eaten threads and got curious. I was hoping to start on Beaus’ this week so it was a real shame to see the card suddenly lock today.

It’s understandable if you think SMEN is too much of a risk, especially for a side-project, and it does sound like Winking Isle is harsh to the point of sucking some of the appeal out of it but really, it’s not like you haven’t gone out of your way to warn us what we’re getting into :).

55

I don’t know…I most certainly would not want the Eaten story to be contained to the carnival. I think the candle mechanics were brilliant, especially how each one seemed to signify another terrible deed.

I think my favourite is still St. Arthur. That repeated bashing-your-skull into the wall for seemingly no gain, that slow spiral into insanity that so many people already mentioned, the beautiful prose, I adored every minute of it. Not to say Beau’s wasn’t an equal masterpiece; it definitely was.

Even Cerise was perfect, in my humble opinion. Like a way of saying &quotYeah you’ve destroyed yourself, now how about your friends?&quot And the fact that the token thievery was only open to other seekers made it perfectly fair. I mean, hey, you were warned from the start.

Destin’s, as scattered as it was, also had a great path going there with eating your reputation. I’m not even sure if that was painful enough, but still good.

All in all, I would miss any part of SMEN if it was taken away. I even thought the idea of Winking Isle was awesome (I was waiting for the day I’d be able to sacrifice my 8th-tier goods; I was hungering for it!) and perhaps the only thing &quotwrong&quot with it was the insane action-eating rate. Aside from this, the leery Carnival option I mentioned, and recently the Fate/Enigma trade on the Rat of Glory, there’s been practically no other part of SMEN that has called for the devouring of Fate (which, as far as I’m concerned, is the only thing any player has the smallest smidgen of justification to complain about).

How might Winking Isle be improved in the future? Maybe the player can be cursed with a living story that has to be waited away, similar to Irrigo, so that actions and Fate are of no concern. I can see the calling card causing some trouble, so perhaps the Isle can be left as the Seeker’s ultimate destination (it’s what I sort of expected, really, travelling NORTH with the Dilmun Club or summat).

So, pardon my long blab, but I feel that SMEN simply derailed a bit at the end there, and the mechanics otherwise require very little modification. I rant this with such passion because SMEN has been my favourite part of this incredible game thus far, for all the reasons just stated, and to see any inch of it hacked off would be a very harsh blow indeed to my already-stained soul.
[li]

56

How many people actually made it to the Winking Isle? I’m a little confused about how all hell broke loose so quickly — I logged out on Saturday, and by the time I came back on Sunday Alexander Feld got St. F’s candle, NiteBrite was catatonic (or recovering from being catatonic), and some jerk was threatening a law suit. I’m a bit sad to have missed the mayhem, really.

I’ll echo everyone else and say that SMEN content has, so far, been amazing. It’s the main reason I still play the game. It’s the only game that I’ve ever played that makes genuine (and good!) art out of long-term social interactions, and it’d be a real shame to see it go or be significantly de-fanged. But, you have to do what you have to do to keep bread on the table.

It does seem like a lot of the recent anxiety was due to a perceived acceleration in the storyline. Given all of the warnings about players not being able to finish the story despite their best (worst) intentions, and given the time-sensitive nature of St. Destin’s Candle, there was a sense that players needed to act immediately or get left behind. I think it made us all a little crazy, possibly including Alexis.

57

I greatly prefer this drawn-out process of gathering the candles, each one more painful than the last, and each one giving more of the story. I’ve enjoyed all of the SMEN more than anything else in the game, and after stopping playing for a while, the developments in SMEN are what drew me back in. I’d like things to go as close to Alexis’s original plans as possible, but maybe have the Winking Isle tinkered a bit. I think the story would lose some of its mystery and power if we cut it short or made it simpler. Even as things hit the fan, they’ve stayed interesting. We still don’t even know what Cyriac’s option was, and we were speculating to figure out the proscribed material quantity. We all had ideas, and we supported different verses, and it would be painful to mess up a few times as we test our ideas, but we would persevere, as we Seekers tend to do. I enjoy the dedicated &quothardcore&quot players we’ve become through Seeking and I’d hate to see that go.

EDIT:

I agree with Scrum on this. I’ve been meaning to grind stats and work towards an Overgoat for a while, but I’ve felt like I’d get too far behind in Seeking. I’ve just now popped away to Hunter’s Keep to work on Watchful while everything’s on lock down. With how often new content has been coming out and the fear of the Isle being temporary (kind of like Hallowmas and a few Destin options), we all were too worried we’d miss something if we worked on anything else or hit any snags.
edited by Malgorath on 12/10/2013

58

Same feeling here. The social part has its good and bad parts. This is the one I didn’t appreciate.

59

I like the points about the exclusivity and potential time-limitedness making things emotionally fraught; if the stakes need to be lowered a smaller amount to make SMEN not a risk for Failbetter, then addressing those mechanisms strikes me as potentially useful. I was talking about if a much larger scaleback is envisioned.

But we, of course, are extremely niche players and already have shown ourselves to be somewhat unbalanced by doing this in the first place, so I have every confidence that Alexis will take this with the proper amount of salt–no pressure or presumption is intended.

60

Concur. (It would never occur to me to distinguish Nex and Fate; one becomes t’other as noted). No opinion either way on whether refunds should exist here but - given that they were offered - I would have not paused in Dolan’s shoes to consider which variety of in-game currency I’d used.

[li]