Hey, this was the first World I tried and I’m happy it happens to be about superheroes! And happens to have good content and structure àla Fallen London :)
One thing that just popped up: my hand contains Try Some Hacking which is currently locked by the “Impossible!” requirement. I know what it’s for from reading the SN docs, but since I don’t see any way to discard it (which I believe is a SN “feature” at the moment? :/…), it looks like I’m stuck with it forever?
EDIT: also, I think it’d be better to see Abilities (Brawn, Stealth, …) in the left columns, rather than our superhero type (which won’t change) edited by leokhorn on 8/11/2012
[quote=leokhorn]Hey, this was the first World I tried and I’m happy it happens to be about superheroes! And happens to have good content and structure àla Fallen London :)
One thing that just popped up: my hand contains Try Some Hacking which is currently locked by the “Impossible!” requirement. I know what it’s for from reading the SN docs, but since I don’t see any way to discard it (which I believe is a SN “feature” at the moment? :/…), it looks like I’m stuck with it forever?
EDIT: also, I think it’d be better to see Abilities (Brawn, Stealth, …) in the left columns, rather than our superhero type (which won’t change) edited by leokhorn on 8/11/2012[/quote]
Yeah, I combined several cards and then tried to block some from being drawn by slapping Impossible! on them, but it’s not working so I’m going to revert that change and just change them to the rarest drop rate.
Hey, still playing this and had a few more remarks:
The number of actions is currently barely limiting. If it’s for play-testing, no complaint. Otherwise, strangely enough, I think you might want to eat up actions slightly more quickly.
It’s much easier to get Favours than Clues so far. I have the feeling it might be by design, but thought I’d mention it.
Rubbing People the Wrong Way is the Menace I get the most easily, and yet is the one that drops down the least easily. At least it feels this way. What about adding another Menace type or two, if only to vary things a bit?
I have abilities at 12, 11 and 10 right now and:
The Field Training card barely helps anymore, yet keeps coming up quite a bit. It would be nice to either have new harder actions added to that card, or have new level-appropriate challenges at that point. Comparing to Fallen London, I know I love it best when available challenges are at Modest or the step above. Straightforward is when I start looking for new challenges because it feels I’m not getting as much out of a click/action as I should.
As it is, progress has slowed tremendously as I’m trying to gather some of those special permanent items that you need 3 of. From what I’ve seen, I expect this is what I need to solve the Golem’s card. But it’s forcing me to go through the same cycle of clue gathering and crime solving three times, without much added content value.
All of the above means I’m more than tempted to raise all my stats more or less equally, which prevents me from defining a unique character. More storylets linked to each ability would prevent that.
Note: I have the same complaints about abilities in Fallen London as I’m in the 50-70 tier, so make of it what you will :)
I’ve been enjoying this one! I’d like to mention a wording issue. In Foil a Robbery -> Bust Them -> Easily Done, the first sentence is “Three armed mafioso.” I think a mafioso is one guy. If you have three guys, they’re mafiosi.
I haven’t been playing much each day, so I haven’t seen a whole lot of the content, but so far I like what you’ve done.
I’ve had another playthrough, it’s good to see that there’s more content and the game is coming along nicely. It’s especially good to see more ongoing/aspirational content in.
I did see a problem though - I had the ‘Uncovering Something Huge’ pinned card, that had no visible branches and nothing in the root text to indicate what qualities I needed to play it. And I’ve had a look backstage - Heroic is now of a size where you’d benefit from adding tags to the storylets to organise them. It’ll make finding stuff a lot easier.
I’ve been Working a Cold Case and when I get to the conclusion, I get “An occurrence! Your ‘Caught The Killer’ Quality is now !” It doesn’t appear the platform really supports having Boolean qualities, does it? So I think you’d have to assign some number to this quality. If I look in my Qualities, I see it listed there with no numeric value. (Incidentally, I still see A Stranger with a value of 1.)
If the Cold Case is only to be played through once, you could perhaps change this so that on naming the killer, instead of the player gaining a new quality, they get a named step in their progress on the case (“Your Cold Case progress has increased to 10 - Caught the Killer!”) – but I don’t know if this kind of named quality level is supported in StoryNexus, either. It would only work if the following steps to continue the case required that minimum level, i.e., it wouldn’t work if the player stepped through the different stages of the case by grinding through the initial steps over and over, building Cold Case from 0 to 8 each time.
But no complaints – I have a hydraulic fist and a jetpack! Why, those might come in deuced handy, I say :)
[quote=leokhorn]
I have abilities at 12, 11 and 10 right now and:
The Field Training card barely helps anymore, yet keeps coming up quite a bit. It would be nice to either have new harder actions added to that card, or have new level-appropriate challenges at that point. Comparing to Fallen London, I know I love it best when available challenges are at Modest or the step above. Straightforward is when I start looking for new challenges because it feels I’m not getting as much out of a click/action as I should.[/quote]
I’ve got the same issue testing this out (On a throwaway account, sadly still have issues with email login on my main), primarily because I got “Investigating the Police” to 8, and all the challenges were at high-risk or almost impossible, yet all of the cards I can use to grind my stats come up as straightforward. I did eventually try using my brains (and my captain ally) on a high-risk challenge, only to fail and get ALL my progress wiped out. edited by Urthdigger on 8/17/2012
You’ve done some really good work here. It’s a good concept, and I think the brevity of the writing works well. I think it could really shine, though, if you tightened some things up:
Around the beginning of the game a lot of the Sometimes cards follow this basic structure:
branch 1: no requirements, little to no change in qualities
branch 2: chancy, high-risk, or almost impossible challenges, sometimes giving menaces upon failure
This is a little intimidating, and when you’re playing the same cards several times in an attempt to succeed in a difficult challenge it can feel like you’re not making much progress. Also, in the early game it’s a bit unclear how you make progress. I’m slowly building up resources but I haven’t yet been given a chance to do anything with them.
Finally, it’s a taste thing, but some of the qualities like ‘background’ and ‘powersource’ are MajorLaterals rather than MinorLaterals (and so they’re big and always visible). I’m guessing these won’t change throughout the game, so it looks a little odd to have them like that.
But like I said, I think the core of what you’re doing is very impressive. If a few things are tweaked and altered it could grow into something fantastic.
Poked around a bit again. I really have to reiterate that the opportunity-based plot progression continues to grate. If Obsessions are supposed to be major plotlines, it does not do to have them sitting in the background, with only luck as the determining factor for whether or not you can advance. In FL, you can always choose to focus on your Ambitions – the limiting factor is that there’s usually a large stat gap between steps. I keep getting the same low-level stat grinding cards over and over again, so I now have a bazillion items I can’t use, yet I have barely advanced in investigating the police at all.
(By the way, about the card issue: If using Impossible! doesn’t work, maybe you can try making them location-exclusive cards bound to ‘Way Down in the Hole’ or something.)
So far i find it quite fun. I find the idea of choosing one’s powers, origin, and moving factor fun. However, right now the game is really repetitive. More qualities and event cards should be avaible earlier in the game.
I’ll Echo-- erm, echo the previous comments: I also find the randomness of strictly Opportunity plot cards annoying for progress. At least setting the “mission” cards about villains as Pinned would be nice, so we can keep an eye on the requirements and get it cleared as soon as we meet them.
I’m also at a point where things just stopped being interesting: Working on a Cold Case… with a single action… not related to any Ability… with a rather high requirement… that can only be raised by doing that same action, again and again.
Suggestions:
Add actions to it
Link action(s) to an Ability (it would be swell if all/most regular Abilities got an action each)
Add new level-appropriate Opportunities to vary things a bit (I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I like mixing it up when I get long-term missions in FL, to avoid getting bored doing the same action constantly)
I’ve made many goofs in the construction of Heroic, typos, missing icons, Qualities set wrongly, a lack of planning leading to a mass of cards that become useless later on. My biggest mis-step was with the first chunk of the Murder Obsession. All the other story sections had branching solutions. You could use your cool gadget, or call in an ally. Something.
When it came down to it though, I couldn’t think of anything other than “finding the evidence” to catch the killer. I thought that might be OK, the Murder story was always meant to be the “smallest”, in terms of scale. You shouldn’t bring a jetpack or magic alien powers into it. I still think that was right. Perhaps I should have added a Stealth option too, but that wasn’t really the problem for me.
It was anticlimactic and unfulfilling. That’s why today I am sending live an extra event for the Murder story that I hope will give some measure of closure for those that have been playing the Murder story. It’s based on an old plan to have a choice of sub-stories to each Obsession, to add depth and a sense of forging your own story. I will continue this more branching approach with the Murder story, as I’ve now begun to tell three separate stories with it.
Other stories will probably see these branching options to a lesser extent in the future.
I started my playthrough as a Child of Legacy, the source of my power is Gear & Gumption, and I am trying to Find a Challenge. I am enjoying the game quite a bit so far, I ran out of energy sadly.
[quote=CalicoJack][quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Byron Man]So… I am trying out “Heroic” by CalicoJack at the moment (it’s the only thing available at the moment) to get a feel of how StoryNexus work (and to have some fun).
Here’s another issue. I got another “Machine Parts” raising that quality to 2. However, the “Machine Parts” opportunities that opened with Machine Parts 1 are now locked. There was no hint on the cards that this would be the case, and no real story reason (why should a “security card”–a Machine Parts 1 opportunity–suddenly be ineffective once you have Machine Parts 2?)[/quote]
The “Security Card” branch is only playable if you have at least 1 Rubbing People The Wrong Way, likewise the “Medical Researcher” branch is only playable if you have at least 1 Wounded! I can’t see anything wrong with the card on my end, so that’s probably the cause.[/quote]
I came back to this after a vacation and I was no longer blocked! Yay! I played for a bit. I now have ‘You Need To Rest’ and no way to get rid of it sometimes. Othertimes I get medbay option?
More importantly, I have ‘Working A Cold Case’, unlocked with Obsession 2. And on the unusable card, it says, ‘Unlock with Background Child of Legacy. You have Background Child of Circumstance’. Probably an, er, legacy thing but I think I need debug assistance to progress. :-)