New Second Chances use

Fallen London
41

[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]And here…[/color]

http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/a/warm_and_dark

[color=#009900]is a little something to perk up those of you who’d lost actions to the bug. For the first 20,000 players: get it while it’s hot.[/color][/quote]

Thanks for the coffee, though the correction of the bug is the best gift here ^^

I really appreciate FBG’ attentiont to the game and to player’s advice, though for the future, wouldn’t be a good idea to implement innovation outside of timed events like Christmas and the Feast of the Rose?

42

Anyone know if the darkdrop coffees now give 20 actions for Exceptional Friends, or is it still bugged?

43

It still gives 10. And I don’t think it’s a bug.

44

The bug is in the email: it’s 50 for everyone, per Alexis.

45

That’s almost just a side effect. The primary change is that second chances were changed from being insurance that kicked in on a failure, to something that has to be spent ahead of time for each and every action (whether or not they’re actually needed).

The fact that you can now hold them in reserve for those crucial one-off checks is just the flip-side of essentially destroying their utility for anything else. No player has ever requested this, so it’s a bit disingenuous to play it off as simply implementing a player suggestion.

My perception is that you believe that the game is less fun than it could be because players succeed too much. Second chances worked as insurance against failure, being most useful in situations where the chances for failure were relatively low, so to the extent that they gave players a way to plan ahead and avoid random failures, they just didn’t fit with Fallen London’s philosophy any longer.

I don’t really understand the idea that increasing the chance of random unavoidable failure in a game like this makes it more fun, but hey, not my game. I would prefer, however, that you be upfront about why you’re making these changes.

46

The part that is really ‘in your face’ is the little message “You succeeded! …but used up an anti-candle anyway.” Way to rub in the complete waste of a resource. Perhaps you might want to call me a cretin everytime I fail a challenge, too! I believe I heard that was 2nd on the player feedback list. :)

47

I’m glad about the new change to Second Chance items. Considering the way success % is now calculated, they’ve become far more useful. There are some opportunity cards and storylets I would really rather not fail either due to the consequent reward, failure or both. I used to lose most or all of my Second Chances from failing at low-risk challenges, which was less than pleasant.

I, too, would like to preserve a Second Chance item if it isn’t even used, but I think it’s more balanced game-wise how it currently stands. Aren’t Second Chances just free actions when they’re used? I view them as special bonuses that are nice to have when they’re there, but I don’t miss them when they’re gone. I don’t think of them as necessities that my character needs to enjoy him/her/itself. (I mean, if my stat-raising 300Echo shoes weren’t working when equipped, I’d be howling up a storm.) For FL, I alternate between min-maxing and roleplaying between my characters; the min-maxer in me has been kinda peeved at times, but that’s okay. I believe that what a player likes isn’t always the best design choice for a game and what one dislikes isn’t always the worst choice.

Frankly, I both dislike and respect the new probability scale for challenges. When I stopped to think about it, it was ridiculous that a high level character could perpetually and always succeed if a challenge appeared straightforward. It breaks the verisimilitude of the world. Even master criminals and legendary heroes occasionally should and do fail at seemingly simple tasks. From an objective viewpoint, I still think the Broad system %'s need to be tweaked because they don’t currently seem reasonable, yet I am willing to wait to see what happens during the next few months. Alexis has said something along the lines of the FL team planning to upgrade equipment stats and making other changes so that the Broad system doesn’t make us flinch (or even blink) each time we see it. Welp, we’ll see!

I am aware that thanks to the Broad system, my pre-PoSI characters had a relatively high chance to successfully dance at Mrs Plenty’s Perfumed Pleasured Garden this Feast to gather pet-panions. Sure, my characters spent half the Feast at the Tomb Colonies but “high risks, high rewards” and all that, eh?

I’d like to close my statement by saying “DANG, I wish I had been a PoSI before all this Broad stuff occurred! I could have hoarded mountains, molehills, anthills and regular hills worth of items…” D:

48

If players were saying “I want second chances to be optional” we know at the very least one thing: “I don’t want to waste my second chances on things that don’t matter.”

Without segue: Populism and good game design are not one and the same.

Engaging gameplay is about meaningful choices.

Players didn’t want second chances to be part of the game when things were trivial. If the players truly said “We never want to fail” they would load up on them and want them applied to everything.

The devs hear “We want this system changed so we have more control” and combine that with “We want decisions to be meaningful” and provide (not trivially) this next iteration of the system. Choice is now rewarded. Decisions are now more meaningful. Thought and care are now a part of exploring Fallen London. There is a noticeable shift away from thoughtless gameplay. Even the “optimal and grindy” way to the shiny new carrot/companions forced you to manage your Scandal.

What happens if the system is “fail challenge, option presented to use second chance or not?”

Second Chances are now more plentiful because the drain has been removed. We have the appearance of choice in when to use them. In practice:
(failure, no sc)
Action 1: fail, +menace
Action 2: -menace
Action 3: succeed, +reward

(failure, sc)
Action 1: fail, -second chance
Action 2: succeed, +reward
Action 3: +second chance

The outcome of both looks remarkably similar (qualitatively). This is not meaningful decision making. There is only a decision to be made after a failure, and then, it hardly matters. Now, the decision has to be made at the beginning, with no prompt from the system. If the second chance didn’t go away if we succeeded, this looks exactly the same as the above scenario.

The difference now is that your choices now matter more, and each second chance used gives an actual impact. Why don’t we want this?

49

[quote=Alexis Kennedy]

[color=#009900]We implemented a long-standing suggestion (literally years at the top of the feedback list); but we implemented it in the way that matched our creative agenda and fits with our long-term aims for the game economy. We listen to suggestions and I like players to be happy, but I don’t want anyone mistaking this for a democracy. :)[/color][/quote]

How do I put this? You implemented it in a way that fitted your vision but is not what the player is complaining about. Kind of like a restaurant seeing customer complain that the tomato sauce is too sour and make the pasta taste bad, so the restaurant stopped serving pasta and just give us sweetened ketchup. (Not everyone agree with this, just my view.)

I didn’t like how you guys put new caps on a lot of storylets, but in exchange you guys make requirements lower (i.e. Scarlet Saint requirements and Hedonist) so it is easier to go along with it.

But right now second chance is implemented with bad that far outweigh the good, and in a way that suddenly devalue the second chance greatly with no notification beforehand. This is probably intentional, but combined with the recent difficulty change and the recent difficulty bug it can make people feel frustrated.

By the way, any chance of telling us what’s your long time aim for the game economy? Because knowing why might let us take the update a bit easier :)
edited by Byron Man on 2/28/2013

50

That’s true. Problem is, it just wasn’t that fun. It wasn’t a “I will make several big decisions that will impact my character, so I need to think about them”, but a “I need to send two hundred scandal reducing messages to another character, so shouldn’t forget to click all those buttons one thousand times at the right time (to send one message you need to do five clicks at the very least. more if you are not sending in bulk)”.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the Feast as a whole was a bad event. I am happy we had it, the gifts were very cleverly thought out, the text as delightful as ever. But I was one the few people who did the “optimal and grindy” thing all the way to 100, and take my word for it: It wasn’t a shift to anywhere, it was the same usual grind, only bigger. Most of the people did not bother with it and just used their money, if you they needed a high Masquing pet. Which I suspect was just as planned.

That’s also true. Problem is, at the moment the reward is less, then it was before, when you did not need to make choices. I mean, take the game as a whole now. Actions return less on average, the value of second chances has decreased, and Connected quality is getting harder and harder to increase (or keep high) with the new Connection card rebalances. Maybe something awesome will happen very soon thanks to all these changes, but right now there is not very much to be happy about. The game is objectively harder and grindier than it was before the Feast.

51

I wish they just enabled them as a clickable button. One click and they lock, click again and they are used upon failure.

If I’m trying to stockpile I can stockpile, if I don’t care(99.99% of the time) they work as expected.

I’m mainly waiting for the new story furthering content. Working with the Honey Addled Detective, Iron Republic Woman, Ladybones Pickpocketing, More about Lilac, etc.

Need some kind of light at the end of this tunnel. Hopefully not something with a candle.

52

[color=#009900]Zeedee and Theus: yup, you have it![/color]

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[color=#009900]Byron: I talk about this a bit on the epic-sized New Difficulties thread.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Tesuji: another passive-aggressive rant, this time accusing me of dishonesty? No, I don’t think I’ll engage.[/color]
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[color=#009900]memorysquid: what alternative phrasing would you suggest? This isn’t a rhetorical question.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Fhoenix: to be fair, the social actions to manage scandal are very old design. I’d have liked to tweak them pre-Feast, but other things got in the way.[/color]
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53

[quote=Alexis Kennedy]
[color=#009900]memorysquid: what alternative phrasing would you suggest? This isn’t a rhetorical question.[/color][color=#009900]
[/color][/quote]

I am not bothered by the phrasing myself, although I think some people might not like “anyway” or “but” because it can feel like success or not, they lose something.

Something simpler, like “You have used a -second chance name-.” beneath the normal “You have succeeded in a -quality- challenge!” might be, er, more neutral?

EDIT: Hang in there, a London with a difficultly system I mildly dislike is better than a London with no future!
edited by Byron Man on 2/28/2013

54

Unlike the new difficulty changes (I still think the curve is too wide but with more changes coming I’ll be happy to wait and see), I am fine with the change to second chances.

The interface for them is not great though but also not something that would be easy and visually pleasing to implement. All I can think of is to show the checkbox (but not the text) at the end of the collapsed difficulty box so you won’t have to wait for it to expand. This is hardly pleasing to the eye though.

Some people suggested making the game remember if you want to use second chances or not. This is great if I’m grinding and doing 20 times the same action but when I’m playing my cards or just all kinds of different things this would bite me in the posterior cause I would definitely forget my setting and ‘waste’ second chances on actions where I want them to be set to off. You could put an on/off checkbox on the four abilities on the left navigation column but that one is so tall that on most screens it won’t be visible unless you scroll down. (BTW, it still shows TROUBLED WATERS 0, ORTHOS IS COMING! 0, etc.; I hope those are still on the list to be removed when equal to 0. I created a user style to decrease the column height a bit but I would love a shorter page.)

It’s hard to come up with a really good phrasing for this, I must admit. The second chance is removed but not ‘used’ when you succeed but how to put this in a neutral way? “You succeeded! Your Confident Smile was helpful but you think you would have succeeded without it as well.” This does not really indicate you lost one though.

You could perhaps replace the current dropdown box with checkbox list of friends and have the players check all those they want to invite so that they could send off all invites with one submit action. Potential problems are of course the amount of actions needed (would it push them into negative actions) and perhaps spammy behaviour by some people.

55

[quote=Corran][quote=Alexis Kennedy]
[color=#009900]Fhoenix: to be fair, the social actions to manage scandal are very old design. I’d have liked to tweak them pre-Feast, but other things got in the way.[/color]
[/quote]

It’s hard to come up with a really good phrasing for this, I must admit. The second chance is removed but not ‘used’ when you succeed but how to put this in a neutral way? “You succeeded! Your Confident Smile was helpful but you think you would have succeeded without it as well.” This does not really indicate you lost one though.
[/quote]

Alexis, why not have spent second chances increase the chance of rare successes and change the text to something like “You succeeded. Although your second chance was not necessary, it may have helped you in an unexpected way.”?
This would solve the problem of clicking for nothing (in the case of success), and I’m sure there are a number of people frantically dancing the Feast of the Exceptional Rose away who would give an arm and a leg for something that would help them out in their quest to mask up. Essentially, you want people to be happy to use their second chances, not annoyed.

56

Oh, man, that’s a gorgeous idea.

57

[color=#009900]Back when FL was young, this could have worked nicely. Unfortunately only about 5% of challenge branches have xux anyway, so it wouldn’t have a very visible effect; and of those several hundred, several dozen are[/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] carefully calibrated x-successes which give strictly controlled results. But I’ll bear it in mind for future iterations: I do rather like the idea.[/color]

58

[quote=djcrashoverride][quote=Corran][quote=Alexis Kennedy]
[color=#009900]Fhoenix: to be fair, the social actions to manage scandal are very old design. I’d have liked to tweak them pre-Feast, but other things got in the way.[/color]
[/quote]

It’s hard to come up with a really good phrasing for this, I must admit. The second chance is removed but not ‘used’ when you succeed but how to put this in a neutral way? “You succeeded! Your Confident Smile was helpful but you think you would have succeeded without it as well.” This does not really indicate you lost one though.
[/quote]

Alexis, why not have spent second chances increase the chance of rare successes and change the text to something like “You succeeded. Although your second chance was not necessary, it may have helped you in an unexpected way.”?
This would solve the problem of clicking for nothing (in the case of success), and I’m sure there are a number of people frantically dancing the Feast of the Exceptional Rose away who would give an arm and a leg for something that would help them out in their quest to mask up. Essentially, you want people to be happy to use their second chances, not annoyed.[/quote]

I really, really like this idea too. A variant: if a second chance is used but isn’t needed, you get 10-20 pence worth of random items on top of any other reward. (Maybe more items for rarer second chances like twin candles?)

Second chances are no longer worth the hassle to use constantly, but thinking about it it’s wrong to say they’re no longer worth using. Even if you’re grinding, there are going to be checks which are unusually valuable (e.g. carousel-ending checks). If a test has a six echo payout, I’m inclined to see using a second chance as a reasonable hedge even under the new system. Ignoring the effect on the economy, the change reduces the amount of overhead needed for efficient play while not taking away options, which I’d consider a good thing.

With that in mind, it also makes sense that the default is not to use a second chance rather than to remember your previous choice - extremely valuable or important checks tend to be sparse, so it’s rare you’re going to want to use two second chances in a row. (It’s going to be very annoying for people who have hundreds of second chances stockpiled, though, so it might be worth adding an option for using them by default or giving us a way to sell them.)

I think the real issue is that there’s been an awful lot of stick and very little carrot in terms of economy changes recently - is this going to change in the near future?

59

[color=#009900]Back when FL was young, this could have worked nicely. Unfortunately only about 5% of challenge branches have xux anyway, so it wouldn’t have a very visible effect; and of those several hundred, several dozen are[/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] carefully calibrated x-successes which give strictly controlled results. But I’ll bear it in mind for future iterations: I do rather like the idea.[/color][/quote]

Good to hear! I hope you can make it work, because that would provide an in-game incentive to justify the extra clicking. :)

60

I don’t think you even need to let us know whether or not the second chance was necessary. When we fail the first time, you can just automatically rerun the challenge. Whether we succeed on the first or second chance, the victory text can read something like “With the help of your sudden insight, you succeeded in a Watchful challenge!” Or, on failure: “Despite your sudden insight, Watchful 100 failed in a challenge!” That way, the player never feels like a second chance was thrown away for nothing (on success, anyways). It would also require one fewer clicks if the player fails the first check. The difficulty with this is figuring out how to effectively and succinctly communicate to the player how the second chance is working, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

Using this method, increasing the chance of a rare success would be pretty easy: just run each challenge twice regardless of success on the first try, and then always pick the ‘best’ result out of the two. It would approximately double the chance for rare successes though, which might be more than you’re willing to do.
edited by Guy Scrum on 3/1/2013