I was waiting for my final haul of confessions, and I half expected a notification banner letting me know when my time for such would be up.
Are my chances to upgrade companions now nil? That would be extremely disappointing.
From the first post in the Hallowmas thread:
[quote=Absintheuse][color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]–7th November 2016–
[/color]
[color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]Delicious friends! Due to the server hijinx over the weekend, we are extending Hallowmas for one day. Alongside that, we have released one extra free confession.
[/color][color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]
Please make sure to finish any and all Hallowmas activities ahead of its official close, tomorrow, the 8th of November, at noon GMT. Including:[/color]
- [color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]Destinies[/color][/li][li][color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]Trading confessions[/color][/li][li][color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]Enhancing companions[/color][/li][li][color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]Betraying or Honoring any of last years’ confessions[/color][/li][li][color=rgb(204, 0, 153)]Purchasing any of the Exceptional Stories on sale for Hallowmas[/color]
edited by Optimatum on 11/8/2016
Ah, well that’s too bad for those who don’t frequent the forums.
You can follow their Twitter for such timely updates as well.[/quote]
Yes but I think the point is that as a casual player of Fallen London who doesn’t go out of his way to keep track of FBG, it can be really bothersome to not get any of these updats or notifications. We didn’t even get an E-mail even though that’s used for regular in-game stuff. I completely understand Kamin’s stance here, and I do quite agree that there’s a big miscommunication here between players and FBG.
In my opinion, the system is alright as is. There’s a limit to how much information can be conveyed through the game itself without becoming disruptive, so simply providing links to the full information elsewhere seems a reasonable method. Failbetter posts information such as this on Twitter and Tumblr as well. Hallowmas was explicitly planned to last until yesterday, so an extra day ending before some users were ready is still more time than normal. The announcement was made on the same platforms where the original information was posted, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to find. And email notifications don’t work for situations like this because the email notifications are optional - not everyone uses them, so they aren’t reliable for last-minute changes.
Notifications have been an ongoing issue since I joined. The addition of the banner was meant to be the ultimate solution and while it’s easy to just visually filter it out it’s generally worked pretty well. Putting a reminder that Hallowmas was going to end and you should make sure to complete companion upgrades in the banner a few days in advance would have been helpful but I’m not sure what else could have been done.
There’d plenty of ways to convey it through the game itself though, maybe just putting a little disclaimer under the very last confession one can collect, for example.
Note- Hallowmas is nearing its end. The ability to upgrade companions will be gone by the eigth.
Something like that.
That doesn’t really work, though. There’s no guarantee players would use any given option, and that doesn’t allow for changes of plans. Hallowmas was originally supposed to end by the seventh, so what would happen if players used their last opportunity and saw one message, then the plan shifted afterwards? And what if players never did collect the maximum number of confessions?
edited by Optimatum on 11/9/2016
I can’t remember the exact text and it’s now gone, but weren’t the dates for Hallowmas given in the instructional storylet? Not that I disagree with a banner notification; I think that would be a good way to convey the ending time of festivals and other time sensitive things.
I don’t remember specifically either, but I did read through those and I’m pretty sure you’re right that it was mentioned somewhere. That said, expecting people to read the instructions is always a quick path to failure.
I admit I also (despite confession grinding) missed the chance to upgrade any companions since I was waiting til the end, and then the US election happened so I didn’t check the forums & twitter as religiously as I usually do, and… yeah.
Not the worst thing in the world, though, just a disappointment.
It’s unfortunately that hoarding confessions to see what Mr. Huffam would offer for a whole pile of them turned out to be unambiguously worse than trading each of them in as soon as you got it.
It would be nice if in the future the option to redeem some seasonal item/progress would stay around at least a bit longer than the ability to obtain it. That would communicate clearly to the people who had been accumulating it that something had changed and now was the time for cashing in.