It seems that failing the test now slashes your MW quality by three-quarters, and not merely half. I failed a 60% chance of increasing Notability from 3 to 4, and Making Waves decreased from 15 all the way down to 4. Ouch!
so we’re just making it not even worth trying until you have a 100% chance? Man, that’s half of why I always tried at the minimum possible. It just wasn’t worth grinding that long and it wasn’t worth grinding up to a decent chance and then losing half of it.
edited by MidnightVoyager on 12/22/2013
I guess I’ll articulate the current attitude on the IRC—why have a luck check at all if the penalty for failing it is a sword through the chest? I don’t quite understand.
If the aim is to stop people brute-forcing the checks at the lowest possible level, why not just set each level of notability to a minimum MW requirement and take out the luck check altogether? No sane person is going to risk 3/4 of their Waves past the first few levels, when it’s such a huge pain in the neck to grind it in the first place.
To be honest, the whole business doesn’t make much sense to me conceptually anyway, with the luck check.
Basically there’s this belligerent peon dropping in on people (mostly) uninvited asking whether they think they ought to be more notable. Then for no discernible reason (failing the luck check), he goes “oh wait, psych, nevermind”, packs up his gear and leaves without so much as a ‘thanks for the tea’.
—and then to make sure the wound is thoroughly salted, he steals all of your social standing to boot? What an incredible jack***.
From a mechanical standpoint it doesn’t really work either. It’s not easier at all; instead, it’s just a grind. One that doesn’t always pay off; you can either grind a lot for a 100% chance, or grind a bit less and risk having to grind even more. The punishment for failure is ridiculously harsh and gets worse the more effort you put in since it scales with how much Making Waves you have, and with Time coming every week to siphon your Making Waves (and possibly your Notability when December ends) you’re on a timer that’s trying to undo your progress that isn’t already undone by failed checks (and, if Notability starts getting depleted again, your successful checks as well). And since you’re relying on random chance to get the cards to actually use that Making Waves/Notability, well, that just compounds the timer issue. Anyone who isn’t buying Favorable Circumstances is going to have a miserable time even if they aren’t horribly unlucky with their Making Waves checks.
[li]
I will also note, that when using Favorable Circumstances and/or MW to force Unsigned Letter/Amanuensis you have no idea what you are getting into. Especially with all the content changes. You can use your resources and find out that you don’t have enough Notability or your chances with current MW are too low.
Would be cool if using those options actually gave you a card that you could use at your own convenience (then again having an Unsigned Letter in your deck would basically prevent you from leaving London proper for while. Would still be preferable to what we have now).
And yeah, what people before me said. I think, there is a general agreement between all players that luck checks at the and of a grind chain, which wipe most of the progress, are not fun.
edited by Fhoenix on 12/22/2013
Daintily raises gloved hand in agreement
As long as the MW requirement numbers are high enough that the challenge still remains (I can’t believe I actually said that). I wouldn’t really want it to be easier, just less random.
[li]
Just got the Slowcake card in my hand, I have notability 7 and I can’t even gamble my making waves as I need 30 to even play it. I’ll just have to hang on to it and hope that I manage to raise them high enough:(
Really not sure if I like this change.[li]
edited by reveurciel on 12/22/2013
[color=#009900]Seberin,[/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] a 3/4 drop sounds like a bug: drop us a report if you’re sure that’s what happened.[/color]
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>a general agreement between all players
[li]
[color=#009900]Beware the echo chamber. There’s a general agreement between the dozen players on this thread which may be shared by the (probably) 300-odd constituency out of a 20K active player base who aggressively optimise. Who are important to us, and who often say smart things, which is why I’m here. But I also have a birds-eye view of all player behaviour.[/color]
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> you can either grind a lot for a 100% chance, or grind a bit less and risk having to grind even more.
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]I always have to fight the temptation to respond to this sort of comment by typing in all caps DO YOU THINK THIS NEVER CROSSED MY MIND. :) The vast majority of players have much lower level Notability (note the plaintive Notability 3 comment upthread), and some players like a punt. If you think it’s crazy to risk it, then wait for 100%. If you think the 100% is too hard a grind, wait until still more means of Making Waves come online (I added about a dozen this month). If you don’t like the way Notability works right now, focus on something else for a while. If you’ve literally run out of other stuff to do in the game, then wait a little while, there’ll always be other stuff to do soon.[/color]
[color=#009900]Folks, do have faith and patience. We always make changes as part of a larger plan, though the plan changes and of course sometimes we backtrack on mistakes. A year ago, I remember Fhoenix imperiously explaining to me that the switch to Broad Difficulty mechanic had ruined Fallen London by destroying any sense of progression or meaningful decision-making. Not long ago people were howling at how soul-crushingly impossible it would be to raise Notability past 4. Kick back, smoke a mince pie, unwrap a turkey, see what Christmas content and the New Year brings.[/color]
[color=#009900]>the (probably) 300-odd constituency out of a 20K active player base who aggressively optimise.[/color][li][color=#009900]
ah, that is, the 300-odd constituency who aggressively optimise, out of the 20K active player base. On a tangentially related topic that may interest people here: some of you will know we injected an access code into the IRC about 48 hours ago and asked people there to spread it so we could watch its progress. It was used by about 300 individuals (not accounts) before it started to slow down.[/color][/li][li]
I’m going to try and hold off on doomsaying until I see the rest of the changes, but one of the reasons people were so worried about notability 4+ was because they were looking at the work required to try it at 100%
edited by Sackville on 12/22/2013
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]>the (probably) 300-odd constituency out of a 20K active player base who aggressively optimise.[/color][li][color=#009900]
ah, that is, the 300-odd constituency who aggressively optimise, out of the 20K active player base. On a tangentially related topic that may interest people here: some of you will know we injected an access code into the IRC about 48 hours ago and asked people there to spread it so we could watch its progress. It was used by about 300 individuals (not accounts) before it started to slow down.[/color][/li][li][/quote]
[/li][li]I was wondering what the results of that would be.
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>echo chamber
Ok, you are right, I was overstepping with that one.
>I remember Fhoenix imperiously explaining
It did not ruin the game. But I did not get a "Damned by Bells" +500 stat destiny either. So I’d call the change a mixed success so far :P
Actually at the moment I’d like to have some repeatable hard-to-succeed-at action with a generous reward. It’s terribly slow to train to 200 doing the Affair of the Box or robbing the Flit (also robbing is done with a 5-action action. This is terrific, as it saves time on clicking and reloading, but you also get less exp that way sad face ).
edited by Fhoenix on 12/22/2013
I actually thought that was an intended strategy, like going further with the Fidgeting Writer. If you accept significant short-term setbacks and trust in the law of large numbers, you’ll probably come out ahead in the long run. But perhaps what wasn’t expected is just how ahead you come out, especially given the amnesty and people with better deck hygiene than myself making use of it.
But it’s probably still going to be the best strategy to summon the Amanuensis as soon as you qualify; we just need to get the data on what the requirements are at different levels.
[/li]
18 Making Waves required to attempt to increase Notability from 3 to 4.
He said plaintively ;)
[quote=Alexis Kennedy]
[color=#009900]Seberin,[/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] a 3/4 drop sounds like a bug: drop us a report if you’re sure that’s what happened.[/quote][/color]
I’m glad to hear that’s not the intended reduction! I still stand by my confusion about keeping the mechanic as a luck check, but if the penalty isn’t quite as severe as all that anymore then I’m sure it’s not quite as big a deal as I’d made it out to be.
Faith and patience engaged. I think my last post came off a bit too harsh, I apologize. It was mostly intended to be humorous since the situation really did just make me laugh more than anything else when I thought of it that way. Silly Amanuensis.
I suppose I really shouldn’t be complaining about notability though anyway, since I’ve had some pretty incredible luck passing the checks at low odds myself. :S
In general, I have every confidence that the right things are being kept in mind for the right reasons, I hope I make that clear. I’ve really enjoyed the progress on FL this past year and I look forward to new changes more and more these days. :)
[li]
edited by Dawson on 12/22/2013
Oh yeah, Notability is not the end of the world (broad difficulty on the other hand felt like it at the time). So we should definitely chill out. It’s just that 5-card lodgings… so shiny…
I should complain less. I-should-complain-less. Ishouldcomplainless.
[color=#009900]Cheers, folks, for the good-natured response! This year we haven’t got as far as I’d like, what with client projects, Kickstarter fun, Storynexus pangs and my senior developer going on tour with his band. But we’ll keep on refining, and although many things get delayed, very little is actually forgotten. [/color][li]
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[color=#009900]I think we’re likely to end up with two distinct branches on the Amanuensis card: one that’s more of a gamble than the other. And the mechanic for Notability maintenance is likely to be ‘Notability drops if it’s lower than Making Waves’, i.e., generating enough Making Waves for maintenance becomes a gentle regular splashing rather than a desperate struggle to stay afloat. But we’ll see after Christmas. I need to crunch (a) numbers (b) mince pies first.[/color]
Now I’m curious about what Failbetter have realised that they’ve forgotten - “Wait, weren’t there four primary stats? CRUD WHEN’S THE LAST TIME ANYONE SAW SHADOWY” “RETRACE YOUR STEPS, ALEXIS, SHADOWY CAN’T HIDE FOREVER!”
That sounds like an interesting way to take the terror out of Notability! I can imagine it resulting in incidents like “Oh, snot, I forgot that story gives a big Making Waves boost - now I have to do something unpopular before Time passes!” But, then, I suppose at MW/N levels where that’s an issue, it wouldn’t be too hard to get up to levels where it -isn’t- an issue.
Alexis, not sure if that’s a typo, but Notability drops if lower than Making Waves?
FOr my self, I have found that I went from having little do due when I came back near the end of Nov., to having four different things I’m working towards because of new Professions and trying to upgrade my spot in the Brass Embassy, and getting a stat up to 200.
>forgotten
[color=#009900]I mean that, for instance, I’m always itching to go back and convert the other big crime jobs to Heist mechanics, or extend some of the long-awaited story content, or add Shadowing to the Crowds of Spite - which was always the original intention - especially now that the engine can do fancier things. But there’s always twenty things to do.[/color]
>typo[li]
[color=#009900]Oh cripes yes. So: if your Notability is 5, then if your Making Waves is 5+ when Time comes calling, your Notability won’t drop. I originally wanted a slightly more tailored maintenance mechanic, but simplicity is, as always, a win. <–NB DRAFT.[/color]
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[color=#009900]A notional mince pie, btw, to any student of gaming trivia who can identify the early GDW game that very directly inspired this mechanic.[/color]