Oh broken analogies, how I love them. Here is mine: This is like living underground for a year and one day finding out that you could come outside and see the sun for a little. Except you missed your chance, because your best friend did not wake you up.
Or let’s go with a car, really. I could give a Ferrari to everybody. But then nobody would feel special. So let’s give a Ferrari to some, and others will use a bus. Nothing to be pissed about, surely. People who did not have a Ferrari did not lose anything.
Disclaimer: I am not particulary angry with Alexis. Just making a point. edited by Fhoenix on 3/2/2013 edited by Fhoenix on 3/2/2013
Quite. I should have used the wording “exclusive” since that’s really what we’re discussing. I don’t believe exclusive opportunities to be all that disturbing. This year’s Feast was exclusive, and someone on holiday for the past month will have missed all of it. I don’t believe that is disturbing because of the length of time it was available.
Therefore, I believe most people will agree with the principle, but argue over the details, like what slice of the population reasonably see the opportunity. Sunlight was incrementally pushing the envelope of exclusivity, by its very design.
For the sake of barely relevant disclosure, I was at work in the US, checked the forum, saw the hubbub, logged in, stole from the crowd, and went back to work without using any of my coffee.
[color=#009900]I’ll tell you what it’s like, and this is barely an analogy at all, more a restatement of the case. It’s like an actor showing up unexpectedly to do improv in a public square, or a writer doing a surprise reading of an unpublished short story, or Banksy painting a mural on a building scheduled for demolition the next day. There are people who would write to them and complain that they had been ‘disrespectful’ to their fan base by not advertising it in advance or running repeat performances, but I really hope you wouldn’t want to be one of those people.[/color]
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[color=#009900]The only difference is that I’m not famous and I work in a slightly different medium. I did a bit of work out of hours to provide something special for the end of the Feast. I wasn’t paid for it. No-one complaining here bought tickets. The expectation seems to be that I should have done some additional work that I didn’t want to do, also for free.[/color]
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[color=#009900]I love that you love our work, I really do, it helps me get up in the morning. But I’m unapologetic about following my particular vision: four years of my life sunk into this gives me the right to do that… There are nearly a million words of Fallen London that you can get to, most of it for free. Enjoy that, and don’t begrudge me my little artistic flourishes![/color]
Will any of the items obtainable during the brief period of sunlight be obtainable again at a later time? especially the gold crab and whatever the hell the mirrorcatch box gave you. i have a gilded crab but i think more people should be able to get gold crabs
[quote=Flipz][quote=The Incorrigible Raconteur]
I suggest a compromise on future Friday nights, good sir: work from the pub!
A twist in your tale! You are now my best mate, you are, mate! You have gained 1 x Unsettling Kebab (new total: ??) You have lost 1 x Memories of the Evening (new total: 0) [/quote]
[color=#009900]I don’t think there’s any significant quality in the game that will be permanently useless or permanently unavailable, unless you’ve locked it out by a plot choice. Of course, YMMV on what ‘significant’ means.[/color]
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[color=#009900]To be less gnomic, that includes Crustaceans of both varieties, and Mirror-Catch Boxes.[/color] edited by Alexis on 3/2/2013
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]I’ll tell you what it’s like, and this is barely an analogy at all, more a restatement of the case. It’s like an actor showing up unexpectedly to do improv in a public square, or a writer doing a surprise reading of an unpublished short story, or Banksy painting a mural on a building scheduled for demolition the next day. There are people who would write to them and complain that they had been ‘disrespectful’ to their fan base by not advertising it in advance or running repeat performances, but I really hope you wouldn’t want to be one of those people.[/color]
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[color=#009900]The only difference is that I’m not famous and I work in a slightly different medium. I did a bit of work out of hours to provide something special for the end of the Feast. I wasn’t paid for it. No-one complaining here bought tickets. The expectation seems to be that I should have done some additional work that I didn’t want to do, also for free.[/color]
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[color=#009900]I love that you love our work, I really do, it helps me get up in the morning. But I’m unapologetic about following my particular vision: four years of my life sunk into this gives me the right to do that… There are nearly a million words of Fallen London that you can get to, most of it for free. Enjoy that, and don’t begrudge me my little artistic flourishes![/color][/quote]
Ah Alexis, my point really was that broken analogies are broken, not that you are disrespectful.
It could be the medium actually. Most people would not be angry at an actor. But you will notice that quite a lot of people WERE angry in this case. The thing is, when an online game makes a time-limited event nowadays, you do expect it to announce it (like GW2 will tell you exactly when its Winter’s Day is happening down to an hour). Hence my suggestion to tell people the exact timeframe for things like the Feast. Take what you will from it.
[color=#009900]Yeah, a chap upthread called it ‘hugely disrespectful’.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Re: medium: most online games are run by good-sized companies who need maximum buck for their time-limited bang. It would be unthinkable and impractical for the creative lead on GW2 to run a time-limited event on their own in an evening. I can see that, yes, that creates expectations around online games. But Fallen London is something different and eccentric, and we’re going to go right on being different and eccentric. :)[/color]
My own attempt to explicate, though not justify, the ill-feeling surrounding events like this… well, for a start, it’s often said that gamers don’t like randomness as a game mechanic, but I’m not entirely happy with that explanation. Frankly, I think that just comes from the essential desire to always win - or, at least, to know that the only thing preventing one from always winning is skill, and thus practice, and thus time. I’m guilty of that myself - Lord knows I am - but I can’t imagine it’s a terribly mature or sensible drive.
I think the bigger issue here is that we’re flying blind on this journey - we don’t know where the game’s going or when it will get there. I can’t do my usual trick of looking up all the possible endings on a wiki and plotting out exactly how I’ll reach them - I just have to make decisions on the fly, and I’ve made a lot of bad ones (and certainly taken advantage of Fate-locked “start again” options.) Thus, Alexis can post content that he made in his off hours to delight and amuse a happy few, and we see something that, for all we know, is the end point that we’ve been toiling towards for months, zipping past us like the exit for the airport on the other side of three lanes of highway. Thus, we panic, and then we rationalise our panic by blaming other people. It’s not a handsome attitude, I admit, though I suppose many of us are always waiting for the moment where life turns around and kicks us in the flaps, and that can as easily happen on the internet as anywhere.
> is the end point that we’ve been toiling towards for months, zipping past us like the exit for the airport on the other side of three lanes of highway.
[color=#009900]I’ve been quite vigorous on these boards lately in defence of artistic privilege, so let me say that I do recognise there’s a point at which ‘devotion to vision’ turns into ‘being a dick’. So let me commit to this: there will be time-limited events, there will be cool stuff that not everyone sees, but we’re not going to end the game on a whim, we’re not going to lock people permanently out of core plotlines because they’re a little bit unlucky. If it looks like that’s happened, then don’t panic! Either you’ll be reassured shortly, or we did a bug.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Unless you’re looking for Mr Eaten, in which case you’re fucked.[/color]
The story has also expanded a little in the telling. When I came in last night, I had a brief rattle-throwing moment over the detailed and complex plot arc I appeared to have missed. Then I went and looked on a wiki and found it was basically one storylet.
Funnily enough, the same happens with those “spontaneous” theatrical performances Alexis referred to. Sometimes I get tipped off to those. They’re never very exciting, when you’re expecting them - but the established wisdom rapidly becomes that it was the most mind-expandingly incredible piece of theatre EVER.
confirmed: third mr eaten candle only obtainable for ten minutes on one day of the year at the most inconvenient time possible, requires three items only someone who stopped playing months ago knows about
The way I see it, Alexis has confirmed that none of the rewards obtained here are permanently missable – we’ll still have opportunities to get gilded crustaceans, elemental secrets, and so on in the future. The only things it’s really possible to permanently miss here is the text, which kind and helpful people have already added to the wiki. I think reading the accounts there is a fine substitute for this limited one-off storylet, and it’s what I did (my actions only refreshed just in time for the very last 3-action option). To be honest, I’m a bit more concerned over this year’s Christmas content – part of it was Nex-locked, and because I panicked and assumed the storyline was time-limited, I picked the free option to continue the storyline, and now I fear I’ll never be able to experience the Nex-locked portion (…which it seems like is the only one that gives some actual answers to the mysteries raised by the main storyline there?). Still, like the item components of seasonal events, I have faith that the information in those stories will be revealed in some other manner later in the game. So far, I think the developers have done very little to dash the hope that all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.
Well I am one of the people who missed the Christmas content completely. What I did eventually is, I hunted other people journals and found all the Nex locked text. The text for every option is out there. Although it’s a pain in the behind to find. It does mean unfortunately, that I don’t have Lacre or wonderfull upgradable Crabs to use this year.
If all goes well, we will be able to replay that story next year.
p.s. The “Drown a rat in it” option blew my mind. edited by Fhoenix on 3/2/2013
More like the first and second candles are no longer obtainable.
The brave two hundred, who were at the bleeding edge of this story, it is up to you to find the truth! And spread it! Spread it!
I must say I really enjoyed this little event. Fallen London has always been intriguing and engaging and a number of other flattering words but “exciting” has never been among them–but for this brief fleeting moment it was exciting. And most of the people who missed it aren’t on the forums and will never know they missed anything. I say to Alexis, Well done.
Aside: I do hope there will be another way to get a crab some day, since I missed them at Christmas.
Alexis said during the time of the event, that only 0.01% of the population were fully stained/chained/whatever. He also said somewhere, that the number of active accounts was ~20000 (I am quoting from memory here, could be wildly wrong). That gives us an upper boundary on the number of Candle Holders. The actual number is probably less.
p.s. I made an alt during the Feast to manage Scandal. Her name is Kagaribi. Which roughly means “Fuel for the bonfire” or “Sacrificial fuel”. Gonna try to seek the name with her. Fully expect to be fucked. edited by Fhoenix on 3/2/2013
Pleased to hear that one day I might be able to get another Dark-Carapaced Crustacean. I really like the Gilded version though and daffodil was a nice touch on Saint David’s Day.
I am pleased that I didn’t miss all the sunlight even if I didn’t have the actions necessary for all the content. Fleeting and imaginative and a nice conclusion after the grindiness of the Feast. Well done Alexis.