[quote=Skinnyman]You’re comparing something that requires, on average, 40 cards with something that requires 800+ or 128 Flit cards favouring the Urchins.
Extreme card flipping (very exhausting) can yield a bat in 4-5 days, but we all know how cruel can RNG be sometimes! :([/quote]I am. I’m more interested in the mechanism for obtaining the item than the scope of it. I presented two previous cases: the Location in Heart’s Desire and the Ray-Drenched Cinder for the Cave of the Nadir. The mechanism for both is luck-based, and the former, like the Bat with Attitude, is based entirely on opportunity cards. Is this on the same scope as a Location? Of course not. But it’s obtained through the same gameplay mechanic: opportunity cards.
I’m fine with Flash resets. It’s my typical gameplay loop anyway, so this is a fun variation on that. I’m reasonably confident I can catch up by next Tuesday, and I’m reasonably certain of it within two or three weeks. It’s also let me raise a particular dream quality to 15, which will come in handy in the near future (and which is handled nicely by being strictly optional).
[quote=Skinnyman]Only because it has been done and we know how to do it. Any new player pursuing this ambition can plan and start drawing the card for this Bat since day 1 or 2. [/quote]That’s the issue, though. Are we to tell future Nemesis players, "You’re going to want to buy a Sulky Bat; you’ll need it later" straight out of New Newgate? That strikes me as needlessly artificial.
[quote=Skinnyman]And besides, I’m guessing that it will take few more months before the 3rd part of the conclusion. During this time, I bet one third of London will be scandalous! :) For Flash Lays, of course.[/quote]The next update of Nemesis has been teased as "Very soon" in-game. One may observe on the announcement that the Ambition updates that there is a very reasonable potential timetable potentially hidden under the redactions: 3 weeks of Nemesis, 1 week break, 3 weeks of Feast of the Rose, 3 weeks of Bag a Legend, 1 week break, 3 weeks of Light Fingers, and 3 weeks of Heart’s Desire.
Furthermore, Ambitions have been treated as "written": from the AMA, "I’ve written the Nemesis conclusion and I imagine we’ll be announcing who wrote the other 3 soon enough." There’s a case to be made for Nemesis finishing on a timescale of weeks rather than months. [color=rgb(26, 26, 27)]
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And I hesitate to treat Flash resets as the standard for judging how easily an item can be obtained. It’s a niche strategy, and one I suspect is not widely disseminated outside of the community. Even on Reddit, it still has to be periodically advertised to newcomers. It’s become the norm for us, but the need to reinvent the wheel decreases the likelihood of its use among all the players who aren’t part of the community.
[quote=Skinnyman]Now to add that Portfolio of Souls (excluding the "manufacture" which cost 75 E) and Judgements’ Egg were not that accessible and were seen as trophies. After some updates, they were reduced to Echo junk.
My Bats are more valuable than 12.5 E! :D[/quote]I’m afraid I don’t see the relevance of this idea. No one’s suggesting that we have a permanent source for manufacturing Bats with Attitude. The suggestions I’ve seen largely follow the precedent of Heart’s Desire and the Cave of the Nadir: a one-time manufacturing option at a steep cost to avoid luck-based or opportunity-card-based grinding. That would turn Bats with Attitude into "Echo junk" as much as the Nadir storyline converted Ray-Drenched Cinders into Echo junk.
(But yeah, these bats are valuable. They’ve already cost me somewhere in the range of 600 Echoes in opportunity cost, and that’s only going to grow. :) )
[quote=Skinnyman][quote=Kharsirr Lynx]Just adding my agreement for suggestion of additional, expensive? way-around to get a Bat of Attitude. I have 7, and was lucky to get the first literally in the days of that Hallowmas when it was needed, but… not all players dedicate themselves to choose the option on the card, and not all players are collectors.[/quote]I couldn’t agree more!
Wouldn’t the value/proportion/impact of the story be diminished if everything will be easily accessible?
edited by Skinnyman on 1/16/2020[/quote]Not sure if we interpreted the suggestion the same way, but I’d argue that the immediate impact (but not the long-term impact!) of the story is diminished by the need to wait on RNG’s blessing. Hype decreases with time. The problem is visible progress. When you’re grinding for a material, those values increase over time; you can set checkpoints and keep track of your progress to that point. When you’re waiting for a rare success on a 50% luck check on an opportunity card, you’re just waiting for it to fall into your lap.
I’m not particularly convinced by the argument that the story will be diminished if an alternative option is available, or that accessibility necessarily runs contrary to the value/impact of a story. You can go from breaking out of New Newgate to the Heart’s Desire content barrier in around a month nowadays if you know what you’re doing (and start at the right time). That doesn’t devalue the story to that point, in my opinion.
I’ll look back at this rather fondly when all’s said and done. It’ll be the story of the __ days/weeks and the thousands of cards drawn waiting for a Bat with Attitude. I’ve already memorialized it in the name of my Utterly Livid Bat! The way I see it, the grind is like Winking Isle. It’s like a whole different game: Echoes, Making Waves, Favours, pets, scraps, social actions - they’re all meaningless. There’s only one thing to do, again and again, like the breaking of waves on the shore.