In Fallen London, Fate is the currency that can only be obtained in reasonable amounts through purchase with real money.
Nowadays, many games have a premium currency which is purchased by players willing to invest the money. The existence of premium currency is in many cases justified and understandable. The execution, however, is often not.
Premium currency is well-executed as a mechanic when it opens the path to content that is complimental to the main game: additional content that serves to broaden or extend the game’s experience. Many games fail here when they make the premium content necessary for a full experience by either making it necessary to enjoy the core mechanics or to understand the story as a whole.
Fallen London mostly avoids this; exceptional stories through exceptional friendship are self-contained, and the story hooks are primarily shallow monthly storylets like the current "Tormented Dreams" to let you know the story is out and it’s a thing that exists, they engage the player but don’t leave him stuck with a cliffhanger afterwards, like many more unscrupulously designed games do.
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Which leaves us with examples of premium currency being poorly executed.
The game Middle Earth: Shadow of War comes to mind: building on the critical acclaim of it’s predecessor, this game forces you to pay to get items and followers which can otherwise still be obtained through normal means, but without the effort.
Design choices like these show poor mentality in two distinct ways: first, you’re making players pay more money for a game they’ve already paid for: this is the thing I most disagree with since it’s seriously distorting the notion that when you buy a game, you buy the game. By selling "additional content" you’re turning a finished product sold for a fixed price into an ever-steeping incline of payments, which is, in my opinion, a blatant show of pure greed. "Oh, you’re having a hard time finding that legendary orc archer you so desperately need? Fear not, for an additional payment of 5 euro you can get the gameplay experience you were already promised for the initial up-front payment of 50/60 euro." Note that there’s a difference between power-ups and DLC. DLC is self-contained or complimentary to the game, and paid for once, while power-ups or quick grabs are constantly bought in small but growing doses.
Secondly, by offering the player to cut time from playing by purchasing a legendary orc follower or whatever, the implication is made that the game is literally not worth playing, since you’re paying to cut time out of your gameplay experience to get ahead quicker. This is mostly unintentional, but can’t be ignored: if I have to pay to not play, why should I purchase the game in the first place?
The menace reductions in Fallen London are good examples of this leaking into a free game, and so are the options to expand your card deck and action pool to 10 and 40, respectively. Having a player pay to have the game experience be more convenient is never a good thing since it implies that the game is inconvenient to play in the first place. And this holds true; it is significantly harder to optimize your action usage if your action pool is only 20, since you have to check in twice as frequently to make sure your actions aren’t wasted.
The same holds true with the Fate menace reductions, ranging from unique items like Honeyed Laudanum to special batches of tincture of vigour, laudanum, etc. or giving diamonds to the Cheery Gentleman. Also skipping Zee-Voyages. All this, again, bears the implication that the State of Some Confusion/Mirror-Marches, The Slow-Boat, Venderbight, and New Newgate are all simply not worth exploring as content, and that you don’t have to bear the responsibility of managing your menaces -an advertised and highly regarded part of the game- as long as you’re willing to cough up enough money for the Fate.
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Some games try to get a player comitted and interested to a story but then cut them off and will only give the satisfaction of a conclusion for the price of premium currency. Fallen London mostly avoids this, but the few examples where it doesn’t are to be criticized.
The one example (though there are more) that comes to mind, and that I have personal hang-ups with, is the one close to the end of the Jack-of-Smiles case. In Polythreme, you get the option to either pursue Jack and put him down for good, or to find out who/what created Jack-of-Smiles. You can not do both. Well, you can, but only if you pay a sum of Fate. This, to me, is one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest example of a Fate purchase being forced upon the player. You’re far into the case, you’re at that point comitted and intrigued to find out the source of one of the most well-known characters in the game, but you can’t have a satisfactory ending unless you put forward a sum of real-world money. This is, as previously stated, cheap, because it denies any player the catharsis of having the good resolution to the story unless he pays up. The case could’ve still made for a good story in two different ways: either allow the "perfect" ending for a trade of in-game items; searing enigmas, elemental secrets, anything would be acceptable as long as a non-premium player would be able to pay for it. The other resolution, the one that I prefer, would be to remove the perfect ending completely: force the player to weigh a choice based on his opinions, and leave him to dwell on whether his choice was ultimately the better of the two. And optional restart for Fate would’ve been a lot more acceptable than what it is now.
There’s the thing with paying Fate to skip grinds for things like the Majestic Pleasure-Yacht or Zubmarine. This is simply Bribing Your Way To Victory. Negating the grinds for the Zubmarine, the Pleasure Yacht. These are late-game grinds that players commit to so they can show off their dedication and progress in the game, being able to pay up money to skip the difficult and lengthy progresses negates the entire point.
Lastly, there’s the times when you pay fate to garauntee succes on luck-rolls or to retroactively undo a decision. The best examples I can think of is the one with the Disgraced Rattus-Fabus Bandit Chief during the Big Rat storyline, and the exceptional Spirifage story.
As for the Big Rat: There’s an option to send the bandit chief in, with a high probability of him dying and being lost forever, and with a small chance of him returning with his honor restored. For anyone interested in the Bandit Chief’s story- where you personally disgrace him and he vows to serve you, you come to depend on him, and he finally wants to take a shot at redemption, it’s a kick in the shins that you can afterwards pay 10 fate to get him back.
The low-success, high-loss chance roll is there to make a point and to put a good conclusion to the story, it’s something that you have to weigh before taking because you really only get one chance… at least, that’s how it should be. There’s actually a prompt that you’ll be able to get your Chief back later anyways, which undermines the weight of the decision, but at least it’s a relief to players who don’t want to lose him. Except… you can’t get him back, you can buy him back. For Fate. The prompt implies that you can get him back through a free storylet, by not stating it’s a fate purchase you’re misleading the player, who’ll be understandably disappointed once they finish the Big Rat story and get the opportunity card.
As for the Spirifage storyline: Selling your soul is a decision players usually make early on in the game, and something most of them come to regret. Aside from some obscure and unreliable ways to grind your soul back (through opening many bundles of oddities), opting into the exceptional Spirifage story is the only way to get your soul back. This, I consider poor sportsmanship.
Imagine if the conclusion of the Nadir storyline just let you go back and choose a different ending for a bunch of Fate. Wouldn’t that be a huge anticlimax? Wouldn’t that just remove any of the weight and responsibility of choosing who to trust with the secret to this very powerful secret of the Neath? The Rattus Faber Bandit Chief isn’t as weighty as the Nadir, but it’s certainly the same concept.
Note that I do not consider paying fate to replay a story bad; players do this to disect the story and explore its intricacies and options. The second playthrough of a storylet serves more to explore the boundaries and enjoy it in a gameplay way, while the first playthrough almost always has the player focus on the story. I consider paying Fate to replay a story acceptable.
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The purpose of this thread was to highlight and discuss some of the less savory examples of Fate use in Fallen London. It’s a criticism of what I consider to be Failbetter’s worst design choices. Please, do not think I am biased against Fate- the exceptional stories are bonus content and I completely respect both Failbetter’s decision to sell them separately, and Failbetter’s need to make profit to keep the company and the game alive.
Infinity Simulacrum
edited by A Dimness on 8/17/2017