[color=#009900]A couple of meta points.[/color]
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[color=#009900]On wipes: one of the reasons we are conservative about wipes is that they annoy players. Another is that they are hard to roll back. A third is that when we remove a system, then all the decisions which were made in the context of that system still remain, and some of them look weird or become malignant. A fourth, related point is that when we remove a system, we also remove all the good features of that system, which tend to be disproportionately overlooked when the system is making itself troublesome. In this respect, long-running game systems are very like (a) legacy code-bases (b) legal systems. ‘Burn it to the ground and start over’ is always seductive and often unwise.[/color]
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[color=#009900]On the increased amount of green text on the forums: this is a direct result of my attending Rami Ismail’s talk at Develop. Rami made the very good point that giving careful explanations to your community educates the community and lets them give those explanations to newcomers (even if it’s in the form of ‘I don’t agree with the devs, but what they say is…’)[/color]
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[color=#009900]I’d tended to back off giving long explanations after a series of draining experiences where I’d post something long about FL or SS, and someone would show up further down the thread and ask the same questions all over. But I’ve noticed that people have remembered and repeated our explanations - even when they don’t agree, or put their own spin on it - and I think it’s more valuable than I realised. I also think it’s a useful exercise for me to talk about my decisions outside the team, to minimise groupthink. The amount of time I can put into this will always be limited, but expect to see a bit more tigerhat, at least for a while.[/color]
[quote=Alexis Kennedy]
[color=#009900]On the increased amount of green text on the forums: …[/color][/quote]
Unexpected, but not unwelcome. Thanks for the transparency. I’m looking forward to more [in case anyone asks, repeatedly] glimpses into the design and values.
[quote=NiteBrite]
That would have been my suggestion for quirks, to move in a more Notable direction. The two are almost identical already except one is balanced and the other is not. The key difference? Notability keeps grinds in check with a weekly bleed and quirks don’t. That’s my suggestion, bleed the quirks with TTH and make it more in line with your more successful already established reputation system. Everything else can remain more or less as is and it’d bring story into balance with grinding. It’s a much more consistent build that way, rather than having two disparate reputation systems.[/quote]
I don’t know, that sounds a bit off. It is kind of like if Florence Nightingale is no longer Magnanimous because on the way to the hospital she was trapped in rubble for a month, or NiteBrite is no longer considered a Patient Seeker because Alexis shut down SMEN despite the fact she still would press the button for 1000 times if SMEN is available.
Alright, going to go ahead and drop my suggestion in the ring.
First up is my interpretation of what quirks are. My operating assumption is that quirks represent how a character thinks about itself. A character with 10 Magnanimous thinks of itself as a generous person, while a character with 10 Ruthless believes that it is capable of doing ruthless things.
Following this, I’d ask how people change the way they think they are. Obviously you cannot do so by force of will, just ask anyone in real life with high Melancholy or Forceful. However, some things do change how you see yourself, making big decisions is the strongest method, and that’s exactly in line with the way content is laid out. If you uncharacteristically help someone out in dire need, you start to think of yourself as more magnanimous. I would say that regular acts do not leave that kind of impression. If you make a habit of giving to charity, that does not make you think of yourself as more and more magnanimous with each donation. So that’s the part of the current content that doesn’t fit my understanding.
So how to bring the repeatable content in line with my (hopefully correct) interpretation? My suggestion would be turning grindy repeatable content into big decisive story moments via an opt-in mechanic. For example, you might say "By gum, I wish I was a more generous person! I’m going to pledge to turn this city around!". Doing so commits you to grindy (probably) quest to accomplish your pledge, for example, by earning a large amount of Adrift on a Sea of Misery and then having some big ceremony where you get congratulated for your work. If you complete your pledge you will get 1 cp (or level, whatever works) of the relevant quality.
This resembles previous suggestions, and I believe the criticism of those was primarily that it creates an inequality between those who are playing just the main story, and those who grind, making the quality useless for design. That’s a harder problem, and I can’t say that any solution I’ve thought of is truly satisfying. I specifically avoided caps, even though they have potential, just because they’re a very negative interaction to run into, and I think everyone would prefer a situation without them. All that said, here are my possible solutions to that imbalance:
- make all repeatable quirk changes trade-offs. Any pledge will consume 1 (cp/level) of another quality (ideally, of the player’s choice) and reward one for completing it. So the total level of all your quirks is always number earned through main story decisions. Obviously this requires a wipe, and removes the ability to consume/waste quirks. As a near total re-write, I don’t think this is a practical solution, even if it’s otherwise good.
- make all quirk change not repeatable. So each pledge (and there could be multiple pledges for each quirk, as desired) can only be done once. Obviously, this requires removing the ability to consume/waste quirks. It does not, however, technically require a wipe (it’s no worse than the existing system, at least.)
- If keeping quirk sinks was desirable behavior, but implementing design 1 or 2, I’d say the quirk sink should return (directly or via a TimeTheHealer check) some new resource ("ennui" or something) that can be then used to take Pledges. With the in-universe justification being "well, I just became less steadfast by betraying someone, so I now feel a loss of personal identity. This motivates me to take up some quest to redefine myself." and ends up with a situation like 1 or 2 where total quirks remain constant. This will also require a wipe (as again, this would allow players above the designated amount to change to 15 levels in everything) but the wipe would at least be implemented fairly (as the Time The Healer check would have to take into account the total amount of quirk points they are "supposed" to have at that point.)
TLDR: Gaining or losing single cp of quirks should not be a single-action event, it should always be part of a story. If quirk gains/totals are finite, there’s no need for caps or tradeoffs to keep everyone in a comfortable range.
Ah, okay I think I finally get it. This isn’t an all audiences content, and while it -could be- it isn’t intended to be, it is specifically content for the kind of player who shows up and only plays story. A perfectly valid if under-voiced/represented contingent of the fan base. Basically, we all got so caught up in ‘could we’ that we never really questioned ‘should we’.
My error was trying to shoehorn grinder accommodation into content where they are not the target demographic. When I think of it in that context, like if it was a brony demanding there be more adult content in what is a childrens tv show at its core, then it becomes obvious why my behavior was not okay.
I think that was the biggest mental hurdle for me on this subject. Not realizing I was outside the target demographic (i.e. my arrogance). I think my head got a little big and I felt I could make everything about me, me, me. But I get it now and I see the error of my way. I hope we can move past this indiscretion, as it is embarrassing for me in retrospect, and into a new, causal friendly quirks system.
Edit: Also Ian, what you are describing is more or less a type of Notability system similar to what I proposed. It’s what would have catered to our demographic, although I am not certain of the detailed specifics.
edited by NiteBrite on 7/24/2015
[quote=Alexis Kennedy]
[color=#009900]On the increased amount of green text on the forums: this is a direct result of my attending Rami Ismail’s talk at Develop. Rami made the very good point that giving careful explanations to your community educates the community and lets them give those explanations to newcomers (even if it’s in the form of ‘I don’t agree with the devs, but what they say is…’)[/color]
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[color=#009900]I’d tended to back off giving long explanations after a series of draining experiences where I’d post something long about FL or SS, and someone would show up further down the thread and ask the same questions all over. But I’ve noticed that people have remembered and repeated our explanations - even when they don’t agree, or put their own spin on it - and I think it’s more valuable than I realised. I also think it’s a useful exercise for me to talk about my decisions outside the team, to minimise groupthink. The amount of time I can put into this will always be limited, but expect to see a bit more tigerhat, at least for a while.[/color][/quote]
That’s actually very reasonable, appreciated and just cute! Just don’t let explaining distract you from other work (SMEN wink wink)
[quote=NiteBrite]
Edit: Also Ian, what you are describing is more or less a type of Notability system similar to what I proposed. It’s what would have catered to our demographic, although I am not certain of the detailed specifics.
edited by NiteBrite on 7/24/2015[/quote]
I did definitely take inspiration from your Notability idea, it fits well with my idea of what quirks are. The big change I’m proposing though is a global quirk cap. So your total quirks can’t go higher than some amount dependent on the number of quirk-changing stories you have completed. So the grindy half of the community can change their quirks around through great effort, but they still have the same total number of points to work with as the story-only half of the community.
My concern is what happens if you make a one-off quirk-changing decision but the relevant quirk is less than 10. You’d essentially waste what is supposed to be a permanent record of your character’s decisions.
I am in favor of the wipe as well, but I can see why Failbetter would shy away from such drastic action.
edited by Little The on 7/26/2015
My two-pennies’ worth:
I’ve spent fate to boost my quirks, several times. (looking for Paramount, didn’t find it). While I personally wouldn’t have a problem with a quirk wipe, I can understand some people that have paid real-world money to boost their quirks being a mite disappointed when they find that their money was wasted. Which is a shame, because it does look like the best solution.
It was painful to see those high quirks ground down by daily life in the Neath, a cut here, a swipe there, that Zee festival (many offensive adjectives removed to allow for a shred of diplomacy). A wipe would have been more tolerable, to be honest. A moment of pain and you can move on, rather than a continual death of a thousand cuts.
I can raise quirks, but they don’t feel like a representation of my character. The way they’ve been implemented feels to me like a point of conflict between the game and the narrative. I prefer it when the two get on with one another.
Oh, also: you say you won’t go out of your way to allow players to get high levels of opposing quirks, but how does that interact with Scarlet Saint? I think you do have to make sure it is at least possible, or else remove the option so you aren’t forever taunting players with an impossible achievement. There’s a thread going around right now where people are trying to figure out if it’s still possible, and they’re coming up empty-handed.
Also wait, are mundane grindy actions still going to erode quirks that are past the cap?
I think the stated goal canot be reached if mundane grindy actions have any effect on quirks at all, so … maybe not, down the road when the system is done being revamped?
It has been my experience that, about halfway through any work project, someone gets incredibly frustrated and recommends this. It is almost never a good idea in the long run. It usually entails a lot more work and, ultimately, leads to more frustration in the long run.
I once had a VP recommend I fire all my staff, whom I’d spent 2 years finding and training, and hire "some kids from McDonald’s." I scheduled a meeting to discuss it for a week later, at which point he’d cooled down.
As someone who spent months grinding a Quirk, and shares an interesting, in-character story for that grinding with another player, I would be incredibly frustrated by a wipe. Not just because it alters pixels on my screen, but because it would negate a story Narci and I told together using Fallen London.
Especially when the main argument for a wipe seems to boil down to: If everyone can’t max out all their Quirks, no one should max out any Quirks.
It would also set the precedent that anything you do in Fallen London could all be wiped tomorrow; eliminating both Complicity and Consequence components from the game.
If it absolutely must be, then I might recommend something like the Apple of Discord, but with Quirks. Give folks who have clearly put a lot of grinding work, and sometimes Fate, into Quirks a new Accomplishment or Item which recognizes their Choice & Consequence and gives them Complicity in the wipe. Like a "Most Ruthless" Accomplishment for silasilent or Persuasive "Bedsheet of Hedonism" for Narci. Something like that.
[quote=Nigel Overstreet]
Especially when the main argument for a wipe seems to boil down to: If everyone can’t max out all their Quirks, no one should max out any Quirks.[/quote]
My point was more "why are Quirks something that we try to max out rather than something that plays any sort of useful narrative role." Or, in the present hybrid system, something that you max out and then it can play a useful narrative role. Granted, you’ve made a story for yourself out of them, but that’s your story, not one that’s part of the game. It’s informed by the game’s mechanics and narrative, but to anyone who wasn’t privy to your external storytelling, it just looks like you ground your stats real high.
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook]My point was more "why are Quirks something that we try to max out rather than something that plays any sort of useful narrative role." Or, in the present hybrid system, something that you max out and then it can play a useful narrative role.[/quote]I feel Quirks already play a useful narrative role in the game as it presently exists. Even if they didn’t, I fail to see how wiping them so everyone must begin anew will make them so.
The number of people with preternaturally high Quirks has got to be fairly miniscule in terms of the overall player base. I don’t see how draining these people of their Quirks changes anyone else’s narrative.
Well, it would allow them to completely rebuild the quirk system, with better controls around what kind of level ranges quirks will fall into.
For example, they could balance quirks around a tit-for-tat system where you come out of the tutorial with some fixed number of quirk points and every increase decreases something else (and vice versa), but this would require a reset since it doesn’t work when some players have a massive quirk they can potentially spend down in order to cap everything else.
I don’t see why. How does someone else’s cap affect your play experience? What do you care if a dozen or so players of the 10,000 user base has capped Quirks?
Like I said, the main argument seems to be that if everyone can’t max all their Quirks, then no one should max any Quirks.
EDIT: Besides, if a long time player has amassed a high single Quirk, they are incredibly unlikely to shrink it just to play the "Gotta Catch 'Em All" Quirk game. If that was a goal, they would have done it a long time ago. They’re more likely to just want to keep the one Quirk they’ve increased as high as possible. What do you care if it’s 15 or 100?
edited by Nigel Overstreet on 7/27/2015
It’s more like this: say there’s going to be a Quirk check in a story, so that only (f’rinstance) Austere people can take it. In the old system, it doesn’t matter what decisions you’ve made up to that point, because Quirks went up and down all the time, and you could grind for pretty much any one you needed. So, what the Austere check was really checking for would be whether the player had the patience to attend five hundred parties and turn down a thousand cakes (or whatever.) Under the present system, with lots of soft caps, it’s a bit more like whether the player has attended twenty parties to reach a certain level of cake-refusal, then played the once-off Ambassador’s Favourite Vintage story and refused to have a drink of the Unusually Crusted Old Tawny, choosing instead to donate their time to an orphanage for wayward kittens.
It’s a moot point now, but what I was proposing as an overall more rational system would be to dump the grind altogether, so that the only way to reach level X level of Austere would be to play X major stories and take X once-off Austere options. Thus, the writing team can set an Austere limit to a story and know that it will only be accessible to people who have hit certain story beats on the path to reaching it, and players can look at others’ characters and see clearly that, when it counted, that character was as Austere as balls. Perhaps that sort of implementation doesn’t interest you - and I won’t deny that it has its obvious problems. Certainly, the old system, where we could more or less customise our Quirks and get them as high as we wanted (and where Quirk checks were thus basically impossible to fail) worked fine too, in a sandbox-y undirected sort of way.
Personally, I quite like the idea of seeing my Quirk sheet all spread out and being able to tally up "that’s the point of Hedonist I got from the Ambassador’s Favourite Vintage; that’s the point of Steadfast from the Urchin Federation; that’s the Forceful from the Literary Dinner, minus the point I lost from the Affair of the Aluminium Truss." As it is, it’s just a bunch of numbers. Some things are higher because the beneficial or convenient storylets happened to modify them. Certainly, I’ve tried to act true to character, but sometimes those decisions happen once and sometimes they happen hundreds of times.
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A redesign could affect your play experience. A wipe is probably preferable to broken game behavior because one of your qualities is way outside the assumed range.
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A potential rework could have unintended side effects for players whose quirks are only slightly overcapped, not just the handful of players with truly exceptional quirk levels.
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People don’t like things that feel unfair, even if it doesn’t actually hurt them. Why are the feelings of the dozen or so players with very high quirks more important than the feelings of every new player? (Note that this question is not rhetorical or meant to be dismissive. There are plenty of answers worth talking about.)
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It’s not very important right now, because quirks are a pretty minor gameplay element, but if quirks become more mechanically important then all of the previous issues become more relevant. If FBG wanted to rebalance the four main attributes to cap at 100, for example, I don’t think wanting currently capped stats to be grandfathered in would be a seriously tenable position.
For the record, I don’t want a wipe. One of the things I like about Fl is all the currently impossible accomplishments people have, I think it adds a really special kind of character and history to the game.
On the other hand, I don’t think either of those things are more important than building something the right way. Protecting your Hedonist or Silas’s Ruthless is a very good reason to plan for a quirk system that will accommodate those qualities, but it’s not necessarily a good enough reason to abandon a system that otherwise satisfies all the design criteria.
[quote=Sackville]For the record, I don’t want a wipe. One of the things I like about Fl is all the currently impossible accomplishments people have, I think it adds a really special kind of character and history to the game.
On the other hand, I don’t think either of those things are more important than building something the right way. Protecting your Hedonist or Silas’s Ruthless is a very good reason to plan for a quirk system that will accommodate those qualities, but it’s not necessarily a good enough reason to abandon a system that otherwise satisfies all the design criteria.[/quote]
Thoroughly well said. The existence of comically high Quirks is a charming, well, quirk of the old system, and I’m happy to see it. At the same time, if updating the system into something that more comprehensively integrated story and mechanics required clearing those Quirks, I think it would be a sacrifice worth making. We know that’s not likely to happen, so it doesn’t really matter, but, hey, imagination costs nothing. (Full disclosure: I don’t have any Quirks that high so it may look like I’m making sacrifices I don’t have to live with myself, but I have ground some Connections up similarly excessively and I’d happily let them go if that system were redesigned.)
Yeah, that seems to be the crux of the argument.
I don’t mind that I’ll never have a Mirrorcatch Box or a Gilded Crustacean. There are plenty of things players older than have that I never will, like an Apple of Discord or an old K&C rank.
I’m sad I didn’t get them, but I don’t think no one should have them simply because I don’t.
There were plenty of people who were legitimately furious that Alexis would dare award some players something that not everyone would have. That seems to be the sentiment at play here.