Having carefully considered all three candidates, I have decided who shall get my support this year.
Feducci’s chair, which the Contrarian brought to Mutton Island for the Fruits of the Zee Festival. I am confident it will face whatever the future holds with sturdy legs, a straight back and absolutely no misappropriation of funds for any reason whatsoever. However, it will require the office of mayor be renamed. It shall be known as the Chairman.
[quote=Tsar Koschei]Am I wrong in concluding that purely in terms of earning echoes, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of sense in grinding Reputation after you’ve maxed out your election career (which I now have)? [/quote]Not quite if you’re using Favours, which is an exchange rate of 1 Favour for 2 Reputation. With Electoral Opportunism, Reputation can be cashed in at a rate of 1 Reputation for 2.5 Echoes. If you choose one of the options that cashes all your Reputation out at once, then then it approaches 2.5 EPA, minus the cost of obtaining the Favours.
As an example, let’s suppose that you obtain and turn in 50 Favours for Reputation, giving you 100 Reputation in 100 actions. You then cash out, converting the 100 Reputation in items worth 250 Echoes; this takes 101 actions total. The profit rate is then ~2.48 EPA.
[quote=Tsar Koschei]You can of course go for the more advanced options on the candidate cards, but there you’re spending purely for the flavor text, financially the returns seem pretty terrible. [/quote]For profiting off the candidate cards, you’re right here: definitely don’t pick the more advanced options. The basic inquiry or harassment options tend to give 2.5 Echoes worth of items, which is a remarkably good return.
Having read through the rest of the comments here, I believe I can tell you exactly what the disaster prophesied by Shoshana is. In point of fact there are two disasters, but both are definitely disastrous from the Madame’s point of view, and the only possible way to avoid them both together is to elect her. Honestly you have to admire the woman’s knack for vague but at least sort of believable predictions.
Either we shall have the disaster of Virginia as mayor, or the disaster of Plenty as mayor. Only by electing Shoshana will we be spared. Clever woman.
Personally, I think all three campaigners are accurately representing what they have in mind to do as Mayor–because they all are interested in feathering their nests. Mrs. Plenty is planning to increase the size and scope of her carnival business. Madame Shoshana is apparently conspiring with Dr. Schlomo to produce evidence of potential disaster for London (which will should give a shot in the arm to her business also). And Virginia, a deviless, wants to implement a program to increase the health of London’s souls–which ties in directly to her primary interest as a Devil.
Though I’m a little disappointed in Mrs. Plenty, I still think she has the strongest character (necessary for a Mayor of this place) and comes closest to having London’s best interest at heart, so she is still my candidate.
edited by cathyr19355 on 7/17/2019
edited by cathyr19355 on 7/17/2019
It’s a little ambiguous to me from the discussion - are there opportunity cards for each candidate as was the case last year? Or are we limited to flash lays to learn more for the time being?
I haven’t seen any cards for the candidates yet, although it’s entirely possible that’s just bad luck on my part.
edited by Daedalus_Falk on 7/17/2019
I’ve only seen two.
Does it do the Feast of the Rose thing where they increase as the Festival increases?
Soshana is making a VERY specific prediction about the destruction of London. I am not going into details because I have no idea how to put a spoiler tag and it’s too early to just put it out in the forum, but if you have played Lost in Reflections or The Empress’ Shadow… you know that what she predicts is already in the cards.
No idea if she predicted it as a psychic or if she just knows as a member of the Glass/Shroud wars, but we ARE doomed. And I have no idea if she is capable of stopping it, but at least she is running for a good cause, unlike the others two.
As for the Candidate cards: I have only seen two cards too… each of them once. Given how many options they have on them, they are way too rare. At this rate, we won’t get the content on them until the end of the elections.
edited by Jolanda Swan on 7/17/2019
Went and created some specific candidate discussion threads in the election subforum, like we’ve had in previous elections. That way discussion can be more focused around particular candidates.
Also, why isn’t this thread pinned there instead of free floating in the Bazaar? That seems kind of strange…
edited by Anne Auclair on 7/17/2019
I have drawn all three candidate cards. Virginia and Plenty once each and Shoshana plenty of times, funny enough.
I can’t bring myself to trust Virginia, devil nature aside, due to past interactions. She can hide behind a smirk and sweet words all she likes, but that doesn’t hide the fact that she’s blatantly only out to further her own interests. Same with Soshana and her pointless vagueries, though that is par for the course with her. Plenty may be a former seeker, but she at least has some form of experience in managing a large entity, her carnival. In the end, all three are in it for themselves, but Plenty seems the lesser of the evils, with her promise of maintaining peace for however long it lasts.
[quote=Tsar Koschei]But the Ministry? I mean, REALLY.
[/quote]
Would you say ‘no’ to learning more about the secrets of the Ministry?
To discovering the full text of the Tragedy Procedures?
To new Pages content?
I went into more detail in Mrs Plenty’s thread, but certain interpretations of a higher-level answer on her card could indicate a much more suspicious agenda than just feathering her own nest and otherwise doing little to nothing. The boringness of her pledge may be quite a substantial deception.
[quote=Passionario][quote=Tsar Koschei]But the Ministry? I mean, REALLY.
[/quote]
Would you say ‘no’ to learning more about the secrets of the Ministry?
To discovering the full text of the Tragedy Procedures?
To new Pages content?[/quote]And, to add to Passionario’s point, need I remind you that the Ministry has one of the greatest characters in Fallen London (apart from Pages, of course), the surly official?
[quote=A surly official]“Let me be quite clear. I have no desire to be here. But I know my duty, even if I think my superiors have lost their minds. I am here to divulge secrets from the Ministry vault. Perhaps you know them already. Perhaps you don’t believe them. That’s none of my business. Shut up, I’ll only say this once. [font=Helvetica, sans-serif]Ready?”
[…]
[/font]
Throughout this speech, he has worn the expression of a clergyman required to clean bird-droppings from a window with a monogrammed handkerchief. Now he snaps his notebook shut, with visible relief.[/quote]That being said, we already had the Contrarian run on a platform that was literally about reforming the Ministry of Public Decency, and we haven’t had new Ministry content, so I won’t be changing my vote from this.
Ah, true. I think the elections would improve a lot if they generated more permanent content than the mayor’s card - they are, after all, a vote on what ‘Londoners’ (players) find more exciting. Just an extra storylet would suffice - It would be like a small, programmed content update every year, too.
edited by Jolanda Swan on 7/17/2019
I did cough up for the empress’ shadow story because I wanted to see more of this school Jenny promised. It is of course fate locked, but at least she did do something permanent for Fallen London - I can continue to teach to this day, though my students may as well have fallen into wells for all you ever see of them afterward.
[quote=Daedalus_Falk]It’s a little ambiguous to me from the discussion - are there opportunity cards for each candidate as was the case last year? Or are we limited to flash lays to learn more for the time being?
I haven’t seen any cards for the candidates yet, although it’s entirely possible that’s just bad luck on my part.
edited by Daedalus_Falk on 7/17/2019[/quote]
There are Opportunity cards for each candidate. I have seen at least two, possibly three, already (the uncertainty comes from the fact that I cannot recall which bits in my Journal come from which source).
Please excuse me while I loudly second this. I think some of the older hands are becoming a bit jaded about the elections now; sure, we love to argue about candidates and policies, but we also know, underneath, that there aren’t any real stakes. The game won’t shift a pixel, whether Virginia beats Miriam or loses to her. Sinning Jenny’s school is the only real legacy any of the mayors have left us. (I don’t count the Blythenhale scorch marks, since you can’t visit.) If we knew that it would really matter whether or not Mme Shoshana becomes London’s next mayor, we’d probably be much more invested.
Before we run away with it, however, let’s be objective. What are the issues involved?
First, there’s connection. A major change in London would necessitate finding and potentially altering all the text related to the principals; unless Failbetter is an amazingly tight ship, oversights and discrepancies are likely to bubble up for years. This more or less eliminates tectonic shifts. It also means that we’re aiming for small, but noticeable changes that don’t conflict with too much of what’s already been done. (If you’ve been following along, you’ve no doubt noticed that "more noticeable effect" and "small changes" are not the most compatible restrictions.)
Second, there’s time. This is a bigger issue for Exceptional Stories than this, and also overlaps what has been said before. However, I want to add that you’re looking for something that is going to be noticeable to older players (who actually participated in the election in question) but not incomprehensible to newer players (who have no idea who this Feducci is yet nor whom he ran against).
Third, there’s long-term usability. Let’s say Mrs. Plenty does open up a new tent, or Virginia gets her sanitarium. Everyone in London’s going to visit it–once. Would any of us return? That depends on what’s there, and finding something that will bring the old vets back without unbalancing things for the fresh new Surfacers takes more work and care than may be apparent. It’s certainly not dismissably easy.
So permanent mayoral content needs to be small, not too disruptive, self-sufficiently grokkable, and at least potentially relevant to both new and endgame players. That’s not a small order, but it can be done.
For example, let’s imagine that Virginia wins. Two or three months later, there appears in Ladybones Road a brand-new Sanitarium. It’s a simple storylet, with a few options.
Now, that was an easy enough concept to write down. I want to acknowledge quickly that balancing the numbers is a more arduous task. Nevertheless, I think a little storylet like this would be appreciated by Londoners, and would be something that most of us would use, albeit irregularly. An option that is generally unappealing but becomes very appealing in certain corner cases is about the sweet spot for content like this, providing the most impact with the least collateral damage to game balance.
So, my fellow Londoners, let me ask you: do you think Jolanda and I have good thoughts here? Would you be more invested in the election if you knew that it wasn’t just a difference in text on one card, but the difference between getting a devilish Sanitarium, an extra option at Mrs. Plenty’s, or a new storylet in the War of Illusions? Or has this thought-experiment merely wasted thirty minutes I’m never getting back?
Yes! Vote for Siankan-Jolanda 2019!
I support this proposition. Now, I’ve seen that Failbetter is pretty active on the forum. Making enough noise to hear will not be difficult; persuading them is the problem. It’s not much work, but it’s still work. We have a pretty solid base for arguments. Should we make a secondary thread for this suggestion?
I adore election for candidate items, not for opportunism.