Once upon a time we had four main attributes. So generally speaking, we had a need for four outfit slots, which is exactly what we had. A fifth would of course have been useful for, say, a BDR slot, but that goes more in the “nice to have” category rather than absolutely essential. But let’s say it would at times have been better for enjoyment of the game to have five slots.
Subsequently we’ve been awarded nine new advanced skills, plus the “neathproofed” value, which is additionally sometimes but seldom tested, but behaves more like a modifier, so we can perhaps discount it here. However, there are many more tests now that require a specific value out of the BDR trio (eg at the bone market), which could plausibly make us wish we had specific slots for those also. So now the number of outfit slots we might reasonably wish we had has increased from five to seventeen.
However, the number we were given is ten. Far short of the ideal. For paying a monthly subscription fee, you can get two more. Now, I’ve always rather resented this perk, because rather than offering “Exceptional Friends” a nice extra, it feels to me more like a punitive measure against anyone who doesn’t cough up the dough. But the fact remains that even if you pay the fee, you still don’t get enough slots to save you from perpetual item shuffling. You don’t even get enough to cover all of the advanced skills, let alone BDR needs. Sure, discordance seldom sees use outside Hurlers, but the point still stands.
Now an eleventh advanced skill is set to be implemented, along with two more neathproofed analogues.
Having lived with the present system for some time, how do we all feel about this?
I’ll be honest, as a non-exceptional friend who only gets 6 outfit slots, I’m fine with the current system. Could it be a little less tedious at times? Sure, but let’s be honest. How often really do you actually visit the Khanate? (and do spycraft, not just collect your reports) And do the specific Bone Market BDR requirements crop up often to need full outfit slots for them? In addition, this might just be me, but I feel like I only have one or two Advanced Skill items in each slot, so once I know what they look like I can just go down the line of slots and equip all of those, which I kind of like. It reminds me of that scene in Iron Man 3 (I think, it’s been a while since I watched any of those) where Robert Downey Jr. is having all the pieces of the Iron Man suit come flying on to him except it’s my British chap and instead of a mech it’s an Admiral’s hat, a pair of raggedy gloves, a heavily censored book, a bird, a reliquary, a coral chair, and a giant spiky sculpture of some sort. For the Bone Market I usually just throw on whatever things match the stats I need, but I don’t use the Bone Market much so my experience may differ from yours in that area.
EDIT: what I would like, however, is for your favorite outfit that shows up on your profile to be separate from an actual outfit slot. I may be fine with what I’ve got, but that doesn’t mean I want to lose any of it just for style!
QoL interface features should not be put behind paywall. I will never pay for it on principle. Encourage behavior like this and next time they will make search or filters paid feature.
I feel like the logical next step for the usability of the increasingly complex equipment system would be a single-click button to “Equip all the best equipment I have for a given stat”. This wouldn’t necessarily replace the outfit system, but let you do the same as we do now—equip a “base” outfit for a particular purpose, then manually make any necessary tweaks—but with less clicking.
If they do make such a feature, I hope they take caution to avoid annoying niggles and edge cases such as the automation selecting, e.g., the Efficient Commissioner for Player of Chess when the Efficient Plenipotentiary is also available—while they both have APoC +2, the Plenipotentiary is a strict upgrade in all its base stats; but because it was added to the game later it appears later in the equipment list.
I do agree in principle, and I held out for a long time, but I caved and bought the extra slots a while ago now. I still feel dirty about it, however :(
I’ve bought a few outfit slots and will likely buy the rest available outside of Exceptional Friendship. I definitely would prefer more slots, but if I build my outfits carefully for the situations I use most and double up stats as much as possible, it keeps the frequency of manual dressing low enough that I don’t find it too bothersome. Eg, instead of a Dangerous outfit and a KT outfit, I have an outfit that’s all but 2 points of Dangerous and 6 out of my 10 possible KT, which is enough for quite a few of the situations where I need KT, and then it’s easy enough to add the extra manually when needed. Truth be told, I quite like the challenge of building those perfect outfits!
I’m not keen on the general concept of charging for quality-of-life upgrades (especially given that the Possessions tab can be pretty slow to load), but I feel like it’s minimal enough and Fallen London is overall so reasonable about what they provide for free that I don’t mind that much. They’ve earned a lot of my trust and willingness to fork out occasionally.
I mean, I don’t really care. Coming from a relatively recent Londoner I probably have some sort of biased or ignorant view about this, as I don’t have much gear for Advanced Skills. The most I’ve had to shuffle is BDR or Nightmares-reducing equipment, which even then frankly isn’t that frustrating or tedious.
Maybe it’s because I’m not at the end-game content yet, but most challenges that I run into don’t require me to maximize all the points from my wardrobe. So instead of having an optimized outfit for every stat, I create outfits for the different occasions that I currently face on a daily basis. Like the following:
Daily Wear: An outfit with high balanced stats that let me easily sail through most common stat challenges.
Zailing: An outfit maximizing Zeefaring and Monstrous Anatomy.
Research: An outfit maximizing various stats for the lab (Artisan of the Red Science, Research Preparations, etc.).
BDR: This one I have maximized for the Notability/PP grind.
Profile: No good stats, but it has all my favorite stuff in it to show off on my profile.
To be honest, with all the combination stat checks out there, plus unique stats like “Well Known At Southwark Cathedral”, I don’t think 30 outfit slots would capture all the possible outfits I would need in Fallen London. So instead I just try to notice when I am repeatedly going to the Possessions tab to tweak things, and if I keep building the same outfit over and over again, then I save it to a slot. And if I change my focus for awhile (like ignoring Zailing to go fight in Parabola) then I will get rid of the now unused outfit for a more useful one. If you treat your outfit slots like temporary shortcuts rather than saved ideal builds, I find that you can do quite a bit with only a handful of them.
I don’t know that I need 17, but I could certainly use a couple more, mostly for dynamic reassignment depending on what I’m currently doing. I routinely (as in weekly) use the primary 4 (watchful, etc.), khanate, zeefaring, player of chess, monstrous anatomy, and KT.
The 10th is set to para-archaeology, which granted I seldom use but it is so tedious to remember how put together the outfit when I need it that I keep it locked in. Khanate I only use once a week these days but that falls into the “tedious to remember how to reconstruct” category and I would probably retain it for that reason. I wish I had one for mithridacy generally as I frequently need it, and I have a weekly need for an outfit in the Courts, though a mithridacy outfit might satisfy that.
I have no current open dynamic slot for when I’m doing stuff in the bone market or some other specific thing. At least one would be helpful there, preferably two. I’m not sure if the new neathproofed+ things will need an outfit if I can at least find them in my inventory (I don’t think they are drop-down searchable yet) as it seems closer to the railway than zailing in terms of likely frequency of travel.
I have checks seven slots—the five basic ones and then three associated with my exceptional friendship (where I have subbed on and off for a while.) When I first got EF the extra slots seemed a bit excessive, now they feel like about the right amount, without much pressure for more. If I need an extra slot for the new outfits I can probably ditch at least two of my current ones.
I agree it’d be nice to have a one or two more free spots, and have my EF slots go back to a nice bonus I rarely use. But I really don’t think Failbetters adding stats to try to trick people into paying for EF or whatever, I think it’s just a natural consequence of the game’s complexity increasing over time (which is a good thing!)
The times that really make me wish I had more outfit slots is when I’m drawing from my opportunity deck. Regularly coming across, say, a Player of Chess check that I only need the outfit on for very briefly, then switching back to something else.
Or in the Hinterlands, having my Hellworm equipped while drawing cards, then usually having to switch to another outfit to play whatever I’ve drawn — I’ve made an outfit specifically for my Hellworm, just to avoid having to find it in my inventory every time.
Or the Lab, where I have to switch repeatedly between Red Science and Watchful.
There use to be a golden rule of design: zero, one, or infinity. Arbitrary limits should not be allowed. (this does not apply to practical constraints - contrived example: you cannot put 3 liters of water into a 2 liters container - but that does not mean all containers should be limited to containing only 2 liters in them).
I might have been tempted to pay for unlimited outfit slots, but there is no price that I would pay for a single extra slot. The “outfits” feature is something I might buy, but how much does each row in the database cost?
If it’s most frequently requested feature and it takes literally 10 years to implement, than you could charge around 5 bucks for it. At least that’s what we got in our cursed timeline.
