Quality of life suggestion: if we could have a checkbox to keep us logged in past 24 hours, that would be lovely. :)
If it’s not already been asked (couldn’t find it)
on the Analytics > Character tab ( http://YourWorldHere.storynexus.com/analytics?tab=Characters ) could the character names be queryable / visible also? It would be interesting to see how players name their characters and use that perhaps to flavor text (or NPC names) in later stories.
Would it be possible to make item equip limited by a quality or setting instead of/in addition to by area? For example, you could make an “Away from Prying Eyes” quality that sets in your house to change clothing, and then also set the same quality in the changing room at the department store when you buy new ones.
The issue is it becomes difficult to return a character to the area they were in if you have to move them to a specific “equip” area if you need more than one.
Alternately, could we have a list of equippable areas on a quality instead of just one?
edited by HanonO on 12/18/2012
edited by HanonO on 12/18/2012
edited by HanonO on 12/19/2012
Another suggestion:
I am often copying cards that have similar quality requirements and branches to make similar cards or duplicates by cloning it and changing stuff. I often will completely forget to hit the clone button, and then start changing things merrily, finding out later that I’m missing the original card.
Would it be useful to have a tick box for “Lock Card” for finished storylets which will preserve it from changes unless the creator takes the step to uncheck the box again?
Yet another…
I would like the ability to copy and paste a single branch. Along the top of a branch would be the options “Copy Branch” and “Paste Branch”. Of course copy only remembers the last branch you copied. Paste would overwrite all values of the selected branch with the ones on the clipboard.
This would make it easy when you need similar branches for steps of a plot quality, or to have an identical branch with effects happen on multiple cards.
Sorry if this has been asked for already, But is there any possibility of a character reset option in debug mode so we don’t have to go through and manually set all qualities/inventory?
[color=#009900]Robert: you can use GAME_END_EFFECT on a result to reset the character.[/color]
A quick point on Slots. The reference guide says this:
“You can use Slots purely as organisational tools, not for equippable items. For example, you might have an Photographs Slot, an Eyewitness Evidence slot and a Forensic Reports Slot, even if all those items are just placeholders for readable descriptions. This will just help your players keep their inventories organised if you have a lot of items.”
Which is a brilliant idea, and works very well. However, it does mean that the items can be “equipped” (even if that doesn’t do anything), which some playtesters have found confusing.
Could I suggest an added option for “Is Slot” qualities, which turns off the ability to equip items?
(Apologies if I’ve missed an existing way to do this. As a workaround, I tried “Limiting to Area” to an area which is never accessible. Unfortunately that just makes it worse, because you still see the Equip button and then get an extra message when you click it… which makes it look even more like this is something you’re meant to be able to do.)
Cheers
Richard
Alexis: is “echoing” (posting to social media in exchange for an action refresh) anywhere on the roadmap?
[color=#009900]We can’t offer echoes in exchange for action refreshes any more: Facebook and Twitter ToS’ prohibit it. The Promote functionality replaces that for sharing purposes - we hope to enhance it a little more for a journal, but incentivised shares are now out. And, honestly, I find this makes me sleep a little easier. :-)[/color]
edited by Alexis on 1/3/2013
Okay. Here’s my most outrageous suggestion that will never be implemented. Sound clips.
Okay, hold your horses before you chortle derisively and walk away. I was playing my parodic fairy tale with a podcast playing in the background, and it stopped for a commercial and it had a sort of light harpsichord instrumentation to it. Suddenly I was like THIS is the music that people should hear behind the game!
I know it’s ridiculous and the streaming costs would not work. But imagine how interesting it could be if you could add a soundscape to areas or settings similar to the theme and the banner heading. If you were in a tavern, it could be a repeating short clip of muffled conversation and clinking glasses that faded out after about thirty seconds. Or, imagine Fallen London with an otherworldly drone in the background, along with voices. Crickets for night time, a marshy sound for swamp. Traffic for a modern city area. Seashore… Various music clips.
I know these games aren’t meant to be so multimedia, but if sound clips were representative (similar to how the icons are) and could be toggled off by the player, and perhaps only played for about 10-15 seconds in an area by default, it might add atmosphere similar to a radio play.
Okay, I’ll sit down now, sorry!
[color=#009900]It is not beyond the realms of possibility that we will allow people to add rich media to storylets in some way. (Theoretically there are ways you could hack it in now, but we may replace HTML with Markdown in slets at any point.)[/color]
edited by Alexis on 1/3/2013
Funny, I was thinking something similar. NOT autoplay (which I loathe with an abiding passion), but the ability to embed at least a link to a playable sound or bit of music (perhaps the creator would have to host it/use the cloud somehow), with a little play icon…
NOT an urgent request.
Aside: Alexis, the GAME_END_EFFECT deletes the character, doesn’t it? Isn’t that different from a reset (where a character might keep his/her/its name, say)?
[color=#009900]It is, but you can just choose the same name anyway.[/color]
edited by Alexis on 1/3/2013
Having the Promote button right next to the Save button on storylet branches in the editor is just asking for misclicks. Such as the several I’ve made in the last 24 hours.
I’m bumping this thread to indicate that I’ve replied inline to some suggestions. I’m working on the roadmap for Q1 today - so more information about upcoming features soon.
Exceptional. Thanks Alexis!
Alexis: I know you’re a busy dude, but I wondered if you could talk a little more about incentivized social networking options.
I don’t know much about the FB and Twitter terms of service. What about them prevents incentivized “echoing?”
Can you think of a workaround for folks interested in incentivized social networking? (For example: could we tie the Like button into a quality change structure? E.g. click this, get a quality change, like +1 usable item with an action refresh effect.)
I’m pushing on this a little because I remember reading (a looong time ago) that even though you folks didn’t like spamming people, it was your primary way of expanding the EBZ user base. It seems like it worked out pretty well, and I’d like to be able to do something similar!
As always, thanks for everything you do – including responding to creator nags! :)
[quote=Gordon Levine]I don’t know much about the FB and Twitter terms of service. What about them prevents incentivized “echoing?”
I’m pushing on this a little because I remember reading (a looong time ago) that even though you folks didn’t like spamming people, it was your primary way of expanding the EBZ user base. It seems like it worked out pretty well, and I’d like to be able to do something similar![/quote]
[color=#009900]Yeah, this is worth discussing a little more.
[/color]
color=#009900 FB and Twitter both forbid too direct a means of incentivising posts - because it means more spammy, low-value content which, crucially, doesn’t earn them advertising revenue. Various companies attempt loopholes and workarounds. We took expert advice on whether it was worth us continuing to do it, and the result was, no, because
(2) we’re really small. If Twitter or FB sanctioned us, the customer support burden alone would be a serious issue.
(3) and actually? it was never a very effective way of driving recruitment, because we weren’t prepared to be aggressively spammy, but it was hard to tell that from outside. So we had all the PR problems of viral social games but few of the advantages. Consequently, we’ve always been fairly niche. When we turned off echoing, our daily recruitment numbers barely flickered. Most users just weren’t that enticed by what iooked like an unknown application posting something weird through their friend’s feed. If you’re reading this and thinking ‘wait, I clicked one of those links!’ - well, that’s selection bias.
We primarily get users through word of mouth; good press; and people bringing their friends in to help them with social actions. The first two are available to creators, and the third will be soon.
If it were an effective way of getting new users, we’d have to make a tough call about whether to implement it. Growing and retaining the user base is a big deal for us - that’s why I prioritised the promotion tools and messaging, and why we’ve been hustling to get the infrastructure ready for social actions. Please do keep making suggestions about (ethical) recruitment features - but, Gordon, incentivised echoing isn’t the silver bullet you want.
[/color]
Alexis: thanks for taking the time to respond! That’s all good to know. I’m excited to see what you have in mind for social actions and recruitment. This would be along the lines of “Johnny needs help burglarizing the Epicanthic Mansion, click here to help” – and if the clicker isn’t currently playing, they have to register and receive a goodie in the process?
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][quote=Gordon Levine]I don’t know much about the FB and Twitter terms of service. What about them prevents incentivized “echoing?”
I’m pushing on this a little because I remember reading (a looong time ago) that even though you folks didn’t like spamming people, it was your primary way of expanding the EBZ user base. It seems like it worked out pretty well, and I’d like to be able to do something similar![/quote]
[color=#009900]Yeah, this is worth discussing a little more.
[snip]
[/color][color=#009900]
(3) and actually? it was never a very effective way of driving recruitment, because we weren’t prepared to be aggressively spammy, but it was hard to tell that from outside. So we had all the PR problems of viral social games but few of the advantages. Consequently, we’ve always been fairly niche. When we turned off echoing, our daily recruitment numbers barely flickered. Most users just weren’t that enticed by what iooked like an unknown application posting something weird through their friend’s feed. If you’re reading this and thinking ‘wait, I clicked one of those links!’ - well, that’s selection bias.
We primarily get users through word of mouth; good press; and people bringing their friends in to help them with social actions. The first two are available to creators, and the third will be soon.
If it were an effective way of getting new users, we’d have to make a tough call about whether to implement it. Growing and retaining the user base is a big deal for us - that’s why I prioritised the promotion tools and messaging, and why we’ve been hustling to get the infrastructure ready for social actions. Please do keep making suggestions about (ethical) recruitment features - but, Gordon, incentivised echoing isn’t the silver bullet you want.
[/color][/quote]
I accept your word that echoing was never a very effective way of getting new users. It was, however, how I learned of Fallen London and started to play it. However, I brought my husband in, not through echoing, so my experience doesn’t really contradict your conclusions.
As a player, it would be nice to be able to mark worlds as favourites and have them pinned to the orange Storynexus bar at the top - even better, to have them highlighted if there’s new content since the last time they were played :)
It seems to me like StoryNexus has been getting more and more sluggish over the last few weeks. I assume this is due to tool upgrades and increased player traffic? Which are both great!
What’s not so great is that it’s getting harder and harder to work in the developer tools on my tablet. It’s a two-month-old Nexus 10, so I don’t think it’s a hardware thing. (Also I can feel the slowdown on my desktop.)
I know it would be a low priority, but could we get a resources-light version of the developer tools? It would be a big help, especially on my tablet. Thanks!