On a similar topic, the “Searching the meaning of the plaster face” storylet is now pretty much unplayable: some options are sent way down the page, the ‘working rat’ one in particular, whose button is completely hidden by other boxes. A bug has been reported (ticket #9764).[/quote]
Wow, really? Yikes. I sent a report about the Tale of Terror too (despite it still being playable), so hopefully these issues are addressed swiftly.
[quote=Catherine Raymond]
I’ve been assuming that it’s incomplete–that they I’ve been trying to craft a box like the ones for quality checks, and it hasn’t quite come off yet.[/quote]
No, it’s not that it is incomplete, it really looks like a bug. The Investigating the Big Rat card now looks like this
I’ve been noticing that too, although nothing I’ve come across so far has looked quite as bad as that. o_O
But yeah, definitely seen that effect on multiple storylets using multiple accounts on multiple browsers so I want to say that the recent UI changes broke the CSS styling somehow.
I’m going to add my voice to the list of people seeing odd things with the storylets. Caused me to accidentally hit the wrong button more than once. (Clearly I need to be more careful!)
It seems challenge are more difficult now. Take the affair of the box (grinding stage) for example. It now shows low-risk (88% at Shadowy 164) instead of straightforward for me. They did raise the cap though.
Edit: Just received the email regarding the update. The affair of the box last stage doesn’t strike me as very easy challenges but whatever…
edited by randomperson on 2/14/2013
The difficulty for a lot of things has changed for me too, and not really in a way that makes sense. For a start, instead of the percentage chance of success always being a multiple of ten (e.g. 40% chance of success) they actually use individual percentage points (e.g. 42% chance of success). A lot of challenges have suddenly become easier/harder for me as a result, with things that were “Almost impossible” now being “Modest”. I have to assume this is a bug - it doesn’t look intentional at all.
I quote this from the email:
“We’ve re-tuned difficulties across Fallen London so we can make content more relevant to everyone (and get content out faster!) Very difficult challenges are now much easier: very easy challenges are now rather harder. To let high-level players keep enjoying the fruits of their labours, we’ve also raised the cap on abilities to 150.”
[color=#009900]It’s very much intentional, though we’ll be tuning. Basically, the spread is much wider, so that we can write content that is possible (not easy) for low-level characters while still being non-trivial (though not hard) for higher-level characters. This upcoming change was why we made the % chances visible.[/color]
[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]You’ll also notice we’ve raised the stat cap again.
[/color]
[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]Those who are building StoryNexus games will recognise this as a switch to the Broad difficulty: http://bit.ly/SNReference[/color]
[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]Blog post soon![/color]
It’s not a bug
We’ve re-tuned difficulties across Fallen London so we can make content more relevant to everyone (and get content out faster!)
Very difficult challenges are now much easier: very easy challenges are now rather harder.
[font=‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans-serif]In order to allow high-level players to carry on enjoying the fruits of their labours, we’ve also raised the cap on abilities to 150.
1:46 PM - 14 Feb 13
[/font]
Something very strange is happening with those chances indeed. I have watched as the same card ( Investigate Doctor Schlomo) came from straightforward to chancy and then became modest. That’s with exactly the same stats (140 watchful).
I do hope it’s a bug. Having a 170 Shadowy challenge for the affair is strange. The reward for that is 142 pence per action (unless it was changed too), so why would there be a sudden rise in difficulty to 170? And The new stat cap is 150. So it’s vastly outside the stat cap.
Oh I get it. So with broad we will fail even on simple actions. And have to manage menaces non-stop. Oh joy. I do so hate luck based challanges and now it looks like most of the game will be riddled with them.
Frankly, this is very off-putting.
Also now for any non-trivial challenge we WILL have to swap all the gear to boost that quality to as close to 99% as possible. I repeat: swap all the gear every time you change what action type you are doing. Great game mechanic here.
The more I think about it, the less I like the whole thing. Less rewards per action, more failures, more micro, more menace reduction, more clicking, more loading screens, more waiting for actions, less reading. Alexis, I am sorry, but my mood came from “Oh, the Feast, I must get every gift there is” to “Maybe I should hold on spending money on this to see if I can stand to play with the new system”.
edited by Fhoenix on 2/14/2013
edited by Fhoenix on 2/14/2013
[quote=Fhoenix]Oh I get it. So with broad we will fail even on simple actions. And have to manage menaces non-stop. Oh joy. I do so hate luck based challanges and now it looks like most of the game will be riddled with them.
Frankly, this is very off-putting.
Also now for any non-trivial challenge we WILL have to swap all the gear to boost that quality to as close to 99% as possible. I repeat: swap all the gear every time you change what action type you are doing. Great game mechanic here.
edited by Fhoenix on 2/14/2013[/quote]
With second chances, the chances are much greater, since you get 2 attempts.
time to go get that chrome outfit swapping extension to work again . . . .
[quote=Fhoenix]Great game mechanic here.
edited by Fhoenix on 2/14/2013[/quote]
[color=#009900]Thanks! For a moment I thought you hadn’t read the forum guidelines and were being rude and negative, but I’m really glad you like it.[/color]
[color=#009900]Sneak preview: we’ll finally be making second chances optional in the near future. (The UI requirements for this are the main reason for the difficulty block UI tweak.)[/color]
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][quote=Fhoenix]Great game mechanic here.
edited by Fhoenix on 2/14/2013[/quote]
[color=#009900]Thanks! For a moment I thought you hadn’t read the forum guidelines and were being rude and negative, but I’m really glad you like it.[/color][/quote]
Sorry if that came off as rude, I apologise. I am negative here, yes. If what I am saying is somehow against the rules, do tell. If you want some positive thoughts, please check the Feast thread, there I am all smiles.
Not sure I’m entirely thrilled about the switch to Broad difficulty (I’ll have to look up how that works). It will definitely lead to me doing a lot more min-maxing when it comes to my equipment and qualities, which can get annoying sometimes.
My question is, are the rewards scaling with these new difficulties? I think I’d be okay with the new system if they were, but if the difficulties were changing but the rewards weren’t I think I’d be kind of annoyed. There’s a pretty ingrained expectation in FL that rewards (approximately) scale linearly with difficulty level so it’s very tricky to mess around with because can get to feeling like certain storylets have unfairly low or high rewards really fast, especially on something where the difficulty has been bumped up.
Wait, really? This is intentional? But this means that basically every challenge currently available is now moderately easy for me - there’s nothing difficult enough to make grinding faster, and now it feels like all the progress I’ve made is all for nought. I mean, things that were straightforward are now low-risk or modest, so I haven’t really surpassed them, and things that were almost impossible are now modest, so I can’t aspire to be good enough to try them. I honestly don’t understand how this change helps anything. :/
[quote=Fhoenix][quote=Catherine Raymond]
I’ve been assuming that it’s incomplete–that they I’ve been trying to craft a box like the ones for quality checks, and it hasn’t quite come off yet.[/quote]
No, it’s not that it is incomplete, it really looks like a bug. The Investigating the Big Rat card now looks like this
[/quote]I’ve been having this same problem with a lot of storylets since day before yesterday. Most inconvenient, I must say.
Under the old system, you had a storylet of Difficulty Level X. If your quality was X, you had a 50% chance for success; at X+5, you had a 100% chance for success; at X-4 or less, you had a 10% chance for success.
Now, the chance for success is (Your Quality)/(Difficulty Level)*0.70
This means that under the old system, you needed Difficulty Level + 5 for a guaranteed success. Now, you need Difficulty Level / 0.7.
For example, a DL 130 opportunity card required 135 for 100% chance of success before, and now requires 185 to avoid any chance of failure, though the rewards haven’t changed.
I think there are some obvious issues here, as there are a lot of storylets that seem to have the assumption that, unless you’re a gambler, you just flat-out shouldn’t be playing them until you hit the 100% success point: multi-action storylets, carousels that give half-rewards if you fail the final storylet, storylets that have significant negative consequences on failure.
Some stories really aren’t worthwhile to play for material gain any longer, because they were balanced under the idea that you need to gain X of something in N actions (e.g., Newspaper, Pickpocketing, Polythreme). Throwing in random failures now adds an element outside your control.
Basically, this change ramps up the randomness across the board, except for (ironically) luck challenges. I can see the value in this sort of system for a game designed around that paradigm, but it’s a huge shift for a game designed around different assumptions.
Another issue is that, as has been noted, this strongly incentivizes micromanaging equipment each time you switch to making checks with a different stat, despite equipment management being something the game does particularly poorly.
I’m okay with the idea of failing because my character just isn’t good enough at something, but failing because it’s too much of a hassle to switch back and forth while playing a dual-stat storyline doesn’t really strike me as fun.
edited by Tesuji on 2/14/2013