So, now you have to check a box beforehand to use a Second Chance, and you lose it whether of not the check is successful. I had liked the idea to choose whether or not be able to use a Second Chance, but I thought it would have been a decision to take after the check… As it is, I don’t like it much, especially because I am still in the last dancing rush of the Feast of the Exceptional Rose and getting used to the system could possibly cost me a Petpanion T.T
Agreed, the new mechanic is actually very poorly done.
It now means that you burn through second chances regardless of whether you fail or not. Also, the whole part where it wasn’t announced really upset me: I was sent to the tomb colonies because I had no heads up of the new system (you’d think they’d mention a big change like that). At this point I’d have preferred no change whatsoever than this new one.
If we had the option to decide, after we failed, to use one: that’s fine. This new way is simply bad in all ways since it penalizes us for success.
On the other hand, it does make things a little less predictable and means you’ll only use 2nd chances for important things.
I don’t mind it - it changes the dynamic of second chances, and it will probably mean more incidental failures, but I think having them be optional after the fact would have been too easy.
‘Ditto,’ I guess.
I’ve been trying to self-examine to tell whether this is just fear-of-new, but my conclusion is that instead it’s just math. The value of a second chance has just decreased precipitously. The drop is minimised if they’re only used for ‘almost impossible’ challenges, but that was rare before change-in-difficulty and I don’t think has even been an option since then; so as it is, instead of being a whole extra action they’re now in general something less than half an action, often as little as .05 of an action or so if the task being attempted is a straightforward one. I’d been spending significant time accumulating and making sure that I was never out of second-chances; this tilts it so that I won’t bother.
Whether that’s good or bad is a design Q; my personal sense is that it effectively removes one option from consideration in how to play, and that doing so is a priori bad; but the game-play effect is I think going to be unambiguously negative in experience even if not so in reality. Why? Previously, a second-chance was always a benefit; they have a cost to acquire but that cost was reflected in a known boost. Now, most of the time, the user experience will instead be ‘damn, I just wasted that’ when you succeed without needing the second chance. Having that recurrent experience of frustration/loss seems an odd thing to implement, especially given humans’ known loss-aversion. I am obviously uninformed as to the intended game-play effect, and maybe this is also part of a large bigger change; but at least right now, the actual impact will be (1) no more time spent accumulating SCs, so (2) more failures, so (3) more time spent dealing with menaces. Perhaps that shift in game-time comes out neutral, not sure yet, hence my comment about experience versus reality of the change.
Yes, I like it! Considering it more insurance than a ‘second chance’ though, really: you optionally use them to protect against a potential failure rather than being forced to use them against a definite. It’ll take some mental adjusting for me, but I don’t mind it.
Well, I would have prefered to be able to decide whether to use a second chance on failure, but I think this is better than what we previously had. I am thinking that it will be handy to be able to save up second chances to use when I actually need them - if I have high menaces, for example, but am trying to keep out of the menace areas.
I like the new change. It gives you more control. I mean yeah, it sucks that you lose them on any action. But at least now you can decide whether to use them on not. Before they were more stressful than helpful to me, because they were used up on things I did not mind failing so much.
Can anybody list some good sources of second chances, that we know of?
Social actions through our Lodgings are the best source that I know of - particularly now that the free-second-chance cards have vanished.
I like the idea of selecting whether or not to use your second chance before you play the action. However, I’m not over the moon about losing the second chance regardless.
I think I’d like to see losing that second chance as more of a risk. Obviously if you fail the action, you use the second chance and have another crack. But if you succeed in the action maybe you shouldn’t always lose the second chance. Maybe another roll at the same odds as the original action, so if you had a 76% chance of success in the action, and you did succeed, you have a 76% chance of keeping the second chance (on the second roll).
So you could succeed in your action, but lose the second chance. But the more likely you were to succeed in the action anyway, the more likely you are to keep your second chance.
edited by REALJimBob on 2/26/2013
I’m wondering - if you select the Second Chance, in case you fail the test is the success 100% granted, or does ithe Second Chance just test the quality twice?
Edit: just saw it, in case of failure it works as usual.
edited by streetfelineblue on 2/26/2013
[quote=REALJimBob]I like the idea of selecting whether or not to use your second chance before you play the action. However, I’m not over the moon about losing the second chance regardless.
I think I’d like to see losing that second chance as more of a risk. Obviously if you fail the action, you use the second chance and have another crack. But if you succeed in the action maybe you shouldn’t always lose the second chance. Maybe another roll at the same odds as the original action, so if you had a 76% chance of success in the action, and you did succeed, you have a 76% chance of keeping the second chance (on the second roll).
So you could succeed in your action, but lose the second would perschance. But the more likely you were to succeed in the action anyway, the more likely you are to keep your second chance.
edited by REALJimBob on 2/26/2013[/quote]
I would personally just find that confusing, tbh.
The UI for using second chances on mobile is slightly annoying. Lots of tapping in small places. I’m not sure if there’s a good solution to that at this stage.
The main problem I’ll have to face is the fact that I tend to plain up forget to use the Second Chances XD
With the talk of changes to the second chance items I was expecting that we could shut off using them if we wished, because that seemed to be what people were asking for. They wanted to be able to take actions they expected to fail without throwing away a second chance item or going through extra clicking involved when it was wasted. Instead, we have to switch them on, and players who are hoping to succeed are the ones who have extra hoops to jump through. Which seems odd, since I would expect that more often players will be looking to succeed at their actions.
I’m mildly disappointed to see the second chance items consumed regardless of whether or not they were needed, but it seems like a reasonable game mechanic and I wouldn’t argue against it. If I were still mostly encountering 100% certain actions, then I could see that it would be frustrating for me to have to turn off using a second chance item every time I wanted to do something. But the new difficulty levels seem to be pushing the game in the direction of fewer 100% certain actions. In that case, most of the time players are trying to accomplish a task there will be a chance of failure, and I would expect that to mean that they’ll want to use a second chance item to improve their chances of success. If that’s true, then why aren’t the second chance items used by default?
Accomplishing difficult tasks is becoming considerably less enjoyable for me. I can get a few more percentage points by clicking many times to change perhaps my entire outfit and possibly extended inventory items, and now yet another click to give me a second chance. The amount of time and clicking to take a single action is getting frustratingly high.
Things that I’m not happy about with the new second chance mechanic:
- The first is the UI, which now requires two clicks to use your second chance (one click on the percentage, one click on the box.) This isn’t huge, but the game tends to load slowly anyway, and I fear that having people do still more clicking will slow the game down even more – and the two clicks of course adds to the time I spend playing. Which may be part of the point :)
While I’m complaining about the UI, that box is really small – and also there’s no indication that it’s there for new players. I found it only because I was trying to squeak my Persuasive up for improved chances at Dancing, and was curious to see what adding five points in Equipment had done. (Not much. The change was from 77 to 78 percent chance of success. So, er, yay?)
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If you do choose to spend a second chance, you lose two actions even if you succeed on the first try. Ouch. Also, no where in the game is this indicated and it actually took me a couple of Dancing attempts before I realized what was going on.
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Frankly, this does not encourage me to use up my second chances – quite the opposite. I’ve accumulated loads of them because I was barely using them in the first place, and now that I’m losing two actions – well, there’s worse things than spending time in the Tomb Colonies, and I already have my Devil if I can’t get the Gentleman Dude.
Wait, what? Using a second chance also uses two actions? I hadn’t noticed that.
My first thought is that’s horrible. My second thought is that if that’s true then I’m glad we have to turn them on to use them, because I’ll almost never bother. Eek.
[quote=MNess]
- If you do choose to spend a second chance, you lose two actions even if you succeed on the first try. Ouch. Also, no where in the game is this indicated and it actually took me a couple of Dancing attempts before I realized what was going on.[/quote]
I just realized that too. If you only have one action left you only spend that one, though.
Wait, what? Using a second chance also uses two actions? I hadn’t noticed that.
My first thought is that’s horrible. My second thought is that if that’s true then I’m glad we have to turn them on to use them, because I’ll almost never bother. Eek.[/quote]
I’m pretty sure this is a bug, especially coupled with it only consuming one action if that’s all you have left. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll fix it.
The new system really leaves me cold. I had no issues with the previous system, but since enough people did apparently that a change was made, how about just making 2nd chances equippable? The whole locking you in to using a 2nd chance in advance mechanic reduces their utility immensely. It’s not like it is easy to blow through FL in any case; making going after difficult tests that much less rewarding seems odd.
edited by memorysquid on 2/27/2013