As to my own vote: a month ago, this would’ve been a tough call between Web of the Motherlings and The Stone Guest. But then came The Rat-Catcher…
personal ranking:
awesome: Rat-Catcher
very good: Web of the Motherlings, The Attendants, The Stone Guest, The Pursuit of Moths
good enough: All Things Must End, The Sinking Synod, The Murgatroyd Formula
lacking: Trial & Error, Lamentation Lock, Factory of Favours
terrible: Steeped in Honey edited by phryne on 5/18/2018
Well, this is much tougher than the least-favourite poll.
Two of honourale mentions, first:
Steeped in Honey was one of the better ones, but ultimately I failed to care enough about the main character to give much weight to the ending. I also really hoped Mnemosyne would be left as a permanently unlocked area - even if with only very basic content, a large price for entry and insubstantial rewards. Alas.
Lamentation Lock let us visit the Cumaean Canal, but in the end the story itself was good but not quite stellar either. A lot of it also ended up being grindy - I don’t mind spending actions on stories, but it simply could have better used. I’m not a fan of airs-based randomised options either because there will invariably be significant repetition while grinding unless you have very particular luck.
Now the really good ones:
The Pursuit of Moths had fantastic characters; I probably cared more about them than in any other ES. I wrote in the Rat-Catcher thread how its length gave it more room to make me care about its characters, but Pursuit of Moths did so while not being a particularly long story. Plus, everything went my way and I was left with a beautiful, if bittersweet, ending. It was also the first story to provide a usable item upon completion - a wonderful and esoteric memento of the events (which sadly I will probably have to trade away for the season conclusion - a fact that disappoints me greatly).
Web of the Motherlings had some very interesting previous city lore, expanded on my friendship with His Amused Lordship, and had some really very neat mechanics for the fight scene. It basically excelled in all areas important for an ES, as an all-around fantastic story.
And finally, the Rat-Catcher, about which I already wrote a longish post. Suffice to say that I hate rats, and this story made me care about, respect, and then save the life of, a rat.
In the end, any one of these last three could easily qualify as my favourite. Perhaps The Pursuit of Moths had me the most emotionally invested. In the end, I voted for The Rat-Catcher, if only because of the amazing companion I got out of it. edited by Dudebro Pyro on 5/18/2018
The Rat-Catcher, definitely. I’ve played all but the first three.
Excellent: The Rat-Catcher, The Pursuit of Moths, The Murgatroyd Formula, Steeped in Honey
Good: The Sinking Synod, Trial and Error
Tedious/Missing something: The Stone Guest (just felt really drawn out for what it was), Lamentation Lock (had to spend all my actions Zailing and it was a bit grindy), Factory of Favours (grindy)
I didn’t explicitly dislike any and a number introduced interesting lore (Lamentation Lock, The Murgatroyd Formula, Rat-Catcher). I played Steeped in Honey and Lamentation Lock a bit before I was fully invested in the game so I wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to the story as I should have.
I absolutely loved the Rat Catcher, the Pursuit of Moths, the Sinking Synod, and all of the Season of Ruins, which is probably my top season just based off of the fact that all of the stories in it are quite good. But my overall favorite is Steeped in Honey, which is such a great exploration and character based story that really just grabbed me by the feels and held onto me. Honestly I was torn between Steeped in Honey and the Rat Catcher but Steeped in Honey is still fresh in my mind after all these months and still leaves me with a bittersweet feeling, while the Rat Catcher is so fresh in my mind because I just played it and that might bias my perception towards it. But I definitely echo what Pyro said above, this was a much harder decision than least favorite.[li] edited by Sajach on 5/18/2018
I’m torn between the Rat-Catcher and Steeped in Honey, both stories were absolutely amazing!
The only thing I didn’t like quite as much is that the areas you went into were inaccessible afterwards. But none the less, great stories!
But with the Wings-of-Thunder Batling you gained from the Rat-Catcher that one got my vote, it is quite a unique reward!
Rat-Catcher and Steeped in Honey were absolutely amazing. Murgatroyd Formula and The Pursuit of Moths were very good; I would’ve liked more ability to find out about one character’s particularly horrifying lifestyle in The Pursuit of Moths (only available if you choose one of four paths).
The writing on it was in a class on its own, so there’s that. On the other hand, it’s a very recent experience fresh in the memory, which probably plays a part. Do the newest stories regularly get a boost? It would be interesting to know. (PS I love polls like this. Thank you, phryne!) edited by Meradine Heidenreich on 5/22/2018
I haven’t played many of those, but I really loved the last one (Rat-Catcher.) Moths was nice too, but it had too many characters and not enough lenght to really get to see them as real people, except maybe the Snuffer… This spoiled it a little for me, although I really lked the ending.
Character-wise, The Stone Guest was perfect for my Bohemian background (also I loved all the reference to Mozart’s opera in there!) altough gamer-wise it didn’t gave much choice at all…
I thought the Rat Catcher, The Attendants, Steeped in Honey, and The Stone Guest were really, really amazing. It took me a long time, and even then I was battling between Rat Catcher and Attendants. But Attendants won out. Barely.
While I haven’t played the most recent season, I’m still surprised I’m the first to vote for Web of the Motherlings. I loved that one! It had great characters, an interesting plot, and the best showdown I’ve seen in any ES!
This year, 59 users voted for their favourite story, 47 for their least favourite one.
This is the result, broken down:
01. The Rat-Catcher (26-1)
02. The Pursuit of Moths (6-2)
03. All Things Must End (5-1)
04. Steeped in Honey (7-4)
05. The Sinking Synod (3-2)
06. The Attendants (2-1)
07. Lamentation Lock (3-3)
08. Web of the Motherlings (2-2)
09. The Murgatroyd Formula (1-2)
10. The Stone Guest (4-6)
11. Trial and Error (0-9)
12. Factory of Favours (0-14)
This means that The Rat-Catcher garnered nearly 50 % of total votes in the Favourite Story poll! Somewhat reminiscent of the 2016 poll, where Lost in Reflections recorded a similar landslide victory. edited by phryne on 6/16/2018
Wow, I’m very surprised at how controversial Web of the Motherlings is. I thought it was really good and would end up with the favourite votes clearly outnumbering least favourite ones.
With the dust settled, I’ve also come to regret my own vote in this thread, since I feel like I only ended up going for the Rat-Catcher because it was so fresh in my mind, but oh well. edited by Dudebro Pyro on 6/5/2018
[quote=Dudebro Pyro]Wow, I’m very surprised at how controversial Web of the Motherlings is. I thought it was really good and would end up with the favourite votes clearly outnumbering least favourite ones.
With the dust settled, I’ve also come to regret my own vote in this thread, since I feel like I only ended up going for the Rat-Catcher because it was so fresh in my mind, but oh well. edited by Dudebro Pyro on 6/5/2018[/quote]
Only four people voted for Web (either way), so it’s not really fair to say that it’s controversial based just on this - plenty may have liked it, just not as much as another story.
And just as many felt the need to vote for it in particular as their least favourite story. While the sample size is small I feel like that’s to be expected for an older story. Compare All Things Must End and The Attendants.
4 is a ridiculously small sample size. Statistics cannot be trusted at that size. All we can say for certain is that The Rat Catcher is most likely the year’s most popular ES and Factory of Favours was the least popular.
I chose The Rat-Catcher too, but I’m surprised to see it the runaway hit that it’s becoming! Thing is, I love the L.B.s, and they were criminally underutilized in Factory of Favors, so that influenced me to choose it over other great ones like All Things Must End, The Stone Guest, The Sinking Synod, and Steeped in Honey. I also enjoyed Web of the Motherlings and The Pursuit of Moths. The ones that seemed to me to be lacking something were Trial and Error and Factory of Favors (neither of which got any votes), Lamentation Lock (the stories about that muscular young lady and her exploits were delightful, but the whole exercise seemed kind of pointless), and The Murgatroyd Formula (the sisters and their conflict were interesting, but not developed enough to keep my interest, and the stakes were low.)
Now that I see the results, I’m surprised by how many of us seem to agree. I’d expected that our ideas of "what makes a good story" would diverge more.
Web of the Motherlings’ 2-2 score is really not what I’d call ‘controversial’ due to the low number of users voting for it at all. The most ‘controversial’ stories this year would be Steeped in Honey and The Stone Guest, with 7-4 and 4-6 respectively. To put this into perspective, the most controversial ES ever was 5 Minutes to Midday, which was included in the 2016 and 2017 polls and received an overall score of 10-25, meaning a large number of participants had very strong opinions on it either way.
re: sample size
It’s true that participation has been lower this year than in recent years. We’ve had approx. 100 users voting in each of the ‘favourite’ and ‘Least favourite’ polls of 2016 and 2017. This time, we’re just about halfway there. edited by phryne on 6/16/2018