[quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Owen Wulf]Personally I find the whole system of attacking added friends ridiculous. I mean, if we were drawing from a registered pool of people to attack it would be all well and good but this is far too selective. We should just be given a target, not told who it is, pick our strategy and someone on the other side of the internet we didn’t know will suddenly be fighting for his or her or it’s life. For Heavens sake, we are simply adding people to our friends list just to stab them - does this seem wrong to anyone?
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edited by Owen Wulf on 4/15/2013 edited by Owen Wulf on 4/15/2013[/quote]
It doesn’t seem wrong to me but for me so far it’s not producing fun results. I find I am being stabbed by the same few people, often several times a day,. One of them has admitted to me that it’s because his friends’ list is so limited. Worse, since changing Forms is tied to the same few cards I cannot change my Form as often as I might wish, and there is no other meaningful way to enhance one’s defense.[/quote]
I am a bit surprised that people are having trouble finding “friends” to stab, with Alexis posting “Fallen London’s most Eligible Victims” semi-regularly.
I will third the desire you’re semi-articulating here, and that Spacemarine3^2 suggested - more defensive options. Personally, I’d be keen to see new “unbalanced” forms that enhance attack at the cost of defense, and vice-versa (ultimately favoring defense, as basic attacks currently strongly favor attack.) That would give people some options for defending themselves against a sudden onslaught of new people, without retreating fully from the limelight.
Although, in the special case of SpaceMarinesqrt(81), I’d suggest that if you’re going to be a lightning rod for attacks, it might not do to taunt Zeus with rats and stabbings… but hey, we’ve all got to play our own way!
Where would one fond this list of 'Fallen London’s most Eligible Victims’. I too find it difficult to find others to ‘play’ with as most of my friends don’t play K & C.
Go the the Knife and Candle: Underground Thread and scroll back more than 3-4 days and just start cataloging the names of everyone who received a token. It’s simple, if a tad monotonous.
I think I have found myself at a distinct disadvantage from having posted on the front page of the joining thread, I am being attacked many many times a day. And can rarely pull enough cards to mount a significant counterattack, particularly against William Dawson, who I think earned the better part of his bronze skull Token beating up on yours truly.
To mitigate the damage please go and change your Storynexus name (add a title, you deserve it) that way new people won’t be able to find it as easily. Also consider utilizing safezones as talked about in the prior page, for instance you can attend a polite party when absent and then excuse yourself when you get back. As long as you aren’t building up Talk of the Town points you won’t lose anything. You cannot be attacked in a place where you cannot receive social actions.
Twice in the thread in the Singing Mandrake, and once in this thread, Alexis has posted names. In order to provide you with the illusion that I’m a nice guy, thus making it easier to get close enough to stab you and take your token, here are the links to the specific posts:
Stuff and nonsense! You’re one of the least-frequently attacked players on my list, believe it or not. Though I do find our duels supremely charming, of course. :)
[color=#009900]Changing StoryNexus usernames is quite plainly poor sportsmanship. We wanted to see how often it happened and whether we needed to mitigate it, and the answer is too often, and yes; so the next set of enhancements to Knife and Candle are waiting on some functionality that prevents payers doing this. In the meantime, the suggestion upthread - of keeping a little black book of offenders and wreaking revenge once a renaming strategy is no longer effective - seems entirely fair.[/color]
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[color=#009900]In related news, here are the twenty-one most successful players in the Underground Leagues of Knife and Candle.[/color]
Poor sportsmanship indeed, Alexis! poor sportsmanship indeed! I don’t fancy being dogpiled out of the game whenever you feel the urge to post my username all over the forums, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one. Perhaps if there were the tiniest shred of viable defense strategy one wouldn’t feel inclined to resort to such base practices.
I’m clear on FaillBetter’s vast preferense for randomness and free-for-alls in Fallen London, and sure it makes sense for the storyline of K&C. But you must admit, it’s a bit senseless as it is now. It’s hard enough to employ any scrap of strategy in the current system when you’re dueling only a few people; let alone the entire community. Not to mention that since all of the items gained through K&C are impermanent, it’s more or less a waste of time anyhow, once one gets knocked out.
Not to say it’s not any fun if there’s no items to be gained; I hope you see what I’m about here.
Think about the shrouds of little midnight, for example. I’d be interested to know if any of the players who originally traded tokens for them managed to hold onto them for more than a hot minute. To introduce them and then immediately post the names of those who received them; that, sir, was poor sportsmanship. One wonders if the idea is just to have a laugh at the players. There are surely better ways to distribute such an item in some kind of clever and even way.
Are you planning to address this kind of thing, or is this actually your intention? To have K&C just be a random bloody fiesta with no aspect of skill involved? and then question the sportsmanship of those who show some wit, no less? That’s a fine ‘how do you do’.
Color me highly offended by such insensitive remarks.
font=Arial, Tahoma Please read and observe the forum guidelines, here: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic5-forum-rules-please-read.aspx .
(2) The Underground Leagues are experimental, optional, constantly changing content. If you don’t enjoy them in their current form, you should definitely leave unless and until they meet your tastes.Yelling at the moderator won’t improve your experience.[/font][/color]
I signed up for K&C pretty quickly, and have been duly receiving my tokens, but nothing else seems to have happened. Am I waiting for an opportunity card? I’d like to be getting stabbity!
How are you measuring success, Alexis, just out of interest - number of successful attacks?
I think one thing that might make the game more fun would be if the opportunity to change your form was one of the K&C storylets over at Watchmaker’s Hill - would make things much more interesting in terms of strategy!
Actually, I was on the list posted after the announcement that the shrouds were all gone… and I never got a shroud. So the joke was on people trying to pinch it from me, because I never had one in the first place :)
[quote=Lady Red]How are you measuring success, Alexis, just out of interest - number of successful attacks?
I think one thing that might make the game more fun would be if the opportunity to change your form was one of the K&C storylets over at Watchmaker’s Hill - would make things much more interesting in terms of strategy![/quote]
I’m curious how it is measured too - I would hope net successes since the last post.
I don’t think I would like the ability to change forms freely - then you would expect everyone to change forms immediately after attack, making form pretty random and meaningless. It’d be a toss of the dice with every attempt, and I enjoy what little strategy is currently available. On the other hand, if there was even one card with the opportunity to change form that didn’t also include an option to attack, so that one could change forms without sacrificing a potential token, I think that would spice things up a bit.
That’s fine, I understand it’s new content and all. That’s why I’m curious as to how you’re envisioning it.
It’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the duels. And I’d be some sort of petty to leave until it ‘meets my tastes’; it wounds me that you would suggest such a thing.
I’m concerned about your idea of sportsmanship here.
It doesn’t seem at all unsporting to me to want to restrict one’s list of opponents to the best of one’s abilities. The content itself so far has been heavily insistent on secrecy: the mirror-catch boxes, the league itself, the shrouds, down to the very description of the new bronze skull tokens. So it seemed intuitive, being selective about giving out profile names, choosing opponents carefully, trying to watch the threads for when you post new hit-lists. It’s not like changing one’s profile name is an instant win by any stretch. The first time my name was posted I was caught almost completely off guard and gained several new opponents.
So what I’m wondering is; is the idea for K&C that secrecy is just a vanity? That we’re all meant to be vulnerable to the entire community? Because it seems like what little strategy there is, which again, I do enjoy, is somewhat wasted when you add in infinitely more combatants. Like others have pointed out, changing forms is a bit of a mixed bag as far as effectiveness. Might as well not bother if you’re going to be attacked by who knows how many people using who knows what forms, right?
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I do apologize for being overly dramatic and provocative though. It’s not my intention to just complain pointlessly.
Gmuh? It would be petty not to play a game when you don’t like the rules? There are loads of games that I don’t play because I don’t like bits of them - in fact, the vast majority of all the games that have ever been devised. I don’t think that’s petty - that’s just participating in the leisure activities that you want to participate in.
>How are you measuring success, Alexis, just out of interest - number of successful attacks
[color=#009900]It’s been slightly different each time, actually, but number of tokens features heavily.[/color]
> the ability to change forms freely
[color=#009900]We’re likely to add more options to change forms more freely; there’s likely to be a token and action cost. But we’re still monitoring as the catchment grows.[/color]
>sportsmanship
[color=#009900]So, name-changing is an exploit based on a loophole. Sportsmanship is a troublesome subject, and some people will argue that, e.g., trash-talking in esports to distract is sportsmanlike: I don’t take a position on that, except to say that in this corner of the Internet, our preference holds sway, and that preference includes the fact that if it’s an exploit, we consider it unsporting. We’re introducing functionality to close this particular loophole, so nuff said.[/color]
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[color=#009900]In response to other points: I’ll do a blog post on the thinking behind the Underground Leagues at some point, but some of the goals of the current approach, besides experimenting with gameplay, include[/color]
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[/color] color=#009900 to test new features[/color] color=#009900 to watch usage patterns on social features. We don’t expect everyone’s (or anyone’s) friend list to include the entire community[/color] color=#009900 to prepare the ground for future changes.[/color]
Token/action cost is interesting. Still seems like it might be not as useful as I think you guys intended it though – spending a token to make a guess about what your opponent’s stats are in order to… win another token? I guess you’d have to make wearing the right form much more significant. Though that’s the point, I suppose. Heh.
Wearing the right form? assuming it? using it? hm.
That’s pretty fair I guess, it being a loophole. I just wish there could be a better balance of danger when posting Fallen London’s “most murderous”. I like the idea. But it’d be nice if it were slightly less unfortunate for those posted.
I’m very much looking forward to this blog post I suppose.
EDIT: Oh, also; any word on whether it is advantageous or not to acquire multiple skull tokens? I’d been meaning to ask. I bought two, to be safe. x) edited by Dawson on 4/16/2013
Hey, I just had an idea. Dawson and Spacemarine9 get attacked a lot. Why don’t you guys make a list of the offenders (along with what type of attacks they use to harass you) and post it here? If Alexis has a list, we can make one too. Forum veterans unite!