Outfit Patch? Add an "Easy Outfits" Option

Fallen London
1

First off, I’d like to refer to a similar developer controversy to the outfit-lock that Red Hook Games ran into with their game, Darkest Dungeon:

And the two things that Red Hook did to resolve the controversy:

  • Continue to polish the change they made, to make it better for the players. (I believe FB will do this over the coming weeks and months.)[/li][li]Added an option for players to turn off the change. (See below.)

So I’d like to offer that FB should add a toggle in Settings to disable the new outfit-lock, much like they did for the new map. Call it &quotEasy Outfits&quot or &quotClassic Outfit Mode&quot or whatever. And start with it disabled by default.

Since Fallen London is, in essence, a single-player experience, there would be no real harm to letting people disable the outfit lock for themselves. There aren’t leaderboards for the first person who gets to Ealing Gardens, and there aren’t PvP activities where outfits matter, so the only people affected by this change are the players who decide to use it.

And it lets FB avoid having to find solutions to the thornier issues (of grind and Fate items) that the player base has with the outfit lock.

What do you think?

(PS. There’s already multiple threads discussing issues with the outfit lock. So I’d like to keep this thread to discussing how to improve the new system instead. Thanks!)

.
edited by Six Handed Merchant on 8/2/2020
edited by Six Handed Merchant on 8/3/2020

2

Apologies for the irrelevant question but… we can have the old map back? How?

3

If they’re going to “balance” content around having the outfit lock and a bunch of different stats, it will still be onerous having to swap inventory around for content that is made with this lock in mind.

Darkest Dungeon didn’t solve any of my problems with this toggle either. It was only a symptom of one of my problems, the direction they took in development. At best, it is a small bandaid over a larger problem.

4

You can’t go back to the old map eactly, but you can get a map that works better on mobile, tablet, and low-end computers:

  1. Go to &quotAccount Settings&quot. (usually at the top of the page on large screens, or in the side menu at the bottom on smaller screens)
  2. Look for &quotMap settings&quot.
  3. Check &quotPrefer compatibility version in this browser&quot
    edited by Six Handed Merchant on 8/3/2020
5

Why not just leave the outfit-lock off? With the outfit-lock disabled you’d never have to update your inventory as your existing best-in-slot outfits would always be the superior choice for challenges (both new and old content), and with the lock gone you could use them whenever you like.

And if you want to experience the challenge of the new system, then why would you ever disable the outfit-lock?

I can see a case where someone leaves the outfit-lock off until things are rebalanced and then turns it back on when they’re happy with the new system. But would anyone feel the need to toggle the outfit-lock on and off?

6

Why not just leave the outfit-lock off? With the outfit-lock disabled you’d never have to update your inventory as your existing best-in-slot outfits would always be the superior choice for challenges (both new and old content), and with the lock gone you could use them whenever you like.

And if you want to experience the challenge of the new system, then why would you ever disable the outfit-lock?

I can see a case where someone leaves the outfit-lock off until things are rebalanced and then turns it back on when they’re happy with the new system. But would anyone feel the need to toggle the outfit-lock on and off?[/quote]

That’s not what I mean. I mean if a challenge is targeted to different stats all in one, then if I needed more of a stat to pass a check, I’d have to either play as if the system is there, making an outfit that targets all the stats I’ll need, or change my outfit around after each part of the check. It doesn’t actually allow someone to ignore the outfit lock system if they are designing content so that you will need to make outfits that target different stats in one go.

Look at the Watchmaker’s Daughter stuff. There’s several different checks in that, and it wouldn’t be more enjoyable if you could swap outfits out for each part to get better odds. It doesn’t really add anything but more clicks still.

7

Ah yes, the Darkest Dungeon corpse debacle. Those were fun times. I only started playing that game once it released in full, but I saw the controversy from afar. I think there are several reason why that example isn’t applicable here.

Firstly, Darkest Dungeon was in Early Access, so large changes were indeed expected and even promised, even changes that affect the balance of the game in large ways. In contrast, Fallen London has been established for 10 years now, and a lot of content has been made that depended on the previous balance.

Secondly, the corpse mechanic was beneficial for the game as a whole. The introduction of corpses made several strategies obsolete that were dominant before, but ultimately what this caused was that new strategies could emerge. Corpses have a wide effect in every decision, including which team to select, how to select their skills and trinkets and how to play them in a moment-to-moment basis. In FL, for most storylets there is no such element of strategy. The only places where the outfit lock has a strategic impact is certain pieces of recent content. Everywhere else it’s nothing but a nuisance.

Thirdly, corpses did not add considerable tedium to Darkest Dungeon. Health and Stress management is extremely important in that game, so a single wasted turn dealing with corpses is a turn that you’re losing health and gaining stress from the surviving opponents. this incentivizes working around the corpses by bringing a team that can reliably hit all ranks, thus dealing with corpses is not tedious unless you’re doing a quadleper meme run.

Fourthly, corpses had workarounds, and I don’t mean an option to disable them. Enemies killed with damage-over-time or critical damage did not leave corpses behind, for instance, which could be exploited by certain strategies (e.g stacking crit chance with Jester, poison-nuking with plague-doctor, exanguinating with flagellant). Not to mention the skills that outright clear the field of corpses. FL offers no such strategic options.

Ultimately, corpses in DD were a feature that upset the previously-established balance of the game in a large way, which greatly upset the community, but that’s where the similarities to Lockgate 2020 begin and end, because corpses introduced new, interesting strategic possibilities across the entire game without adding tedium whereas outfit lock only introduces interesting strategic possibilities only in a very reduced part of the game while making the rest of it very tedious.
edited by NotaWalrus on 8/3/2020

8

I wouldn’t compare this change with the corpse mechanic in Darkest Dungeon - which I have indeed played.

The corpse mechanism changed up combat for certain - but it’s not entirely an impediment.

There are player characters that can only hit enemies in certain ranks, and there are enemies that can only make attacks when they are at certain ranks. The corpses made combat more complex, and they can still be exploited for some silly strategies - like pushing a powerful bruiser enemy to the rear ranks with corpses in front of it.

This change to Fallen London is to the user interface itself; it locks the player’s controls, with nothing that compensates for this change (other than the introduction of more multi-stat items, which could have been accompanied by multi-stat challenges instead).

This is nothing like the introduction of corpses to Darkest Dungeon. There is no conceivable introduction of anything else other than frustration from this change.
edited by Rostygold on 8/3/2020

9

Okay, but even if it doesn’t line up with Darkest Dungeon, what about the idea of a toggle for the outfit lock? Would that solve the problem?

10

A toggle wouldn’t solve the problem, but it would be a good stopgap, and an alternative to adding more code for where the lock applies and where it doesn’t.

IMO, the lock shouldn’t apply to content that wasn’t built for it (almost everything) but if there are to be more lengthy storylets with INTERESTING failure paths, I would be more ok with committing to an outfit.

11

I think the issue with that is that the entire rational for the change is ‘the players are not playing our single-player game the way that we want them to play it’. If the devs were happy with the idea of people being able to choose how they play, we wouldn’t be here in the first place. They would’ve introduced outfit locking for the specific new content designed around it (like the Watchmaker’s Daughter) rather than blanket applied it to the whole game.

12

[quote=Wylte]A toggle wouldn’t solve the problem, but it would be a good stopgap, and an alternative to adding more code for where the lock applies and where it doesn’t.

IMO, the lock shouldn’t apply to content that wasn’t built for it (almost everything) but if there are to be more lengthy storylets with INTERESTING failure paths, I would be more ok with committing to an outfit.[/quote]

Exactly. I’d be perfectly OK going into new, repeatable content with this kind of lock on. But right now, it leaves a sour aftertaste and makes me anxious to try anything that might conceivably be one shot - where I actually may be full stop locked out of pursuing a storyline avenue. If I were to go and try an Exceptional story, right now I wouldn’t even know how to dress. Would it be enough to have BDR 5 each? What if there was a lock with BDR 0? This sort of uncertainty is highly stressful rather than strategic or fun.

So for me, the answer is yes, a reliable lock-toggle would be a good solution, and I’d willingly toggle it on for the areas designed with it in mind.

Basically, I’d mostly toggle it off to be able to freely enjoy all the content I’d paid rather a lot of money for.
edited by Aardvark on 8/3/2020