Surprised no one created this one yet. Forum one of the places it probably should be discussed.
In late November or early December, during a gap in content releases, we will be launching the winter balance patch, a package of balance and quality-of-life changes to Fallen London.
Entering and exiting an infinite-draw zone will no longer refresh your deck.
We will be making other balance changes to support this, including making entering/exiting the Laboratory no longer cost actions.
Favour rebalance:
Many opportunities and stories in London will have their rewards changed, to even out the availability and value of different kinds of favours. Notably:[/li][li]Trading in Revolutionary favours at the Flit will grant a fixed amount of items.[/li][li]Trading in Docks favours for Forgotten Quarter Expeditions will be less efficient.[/li][li]New repeatable sources of Favours will be added to several places in the game, to reduce player dependance on opportunity cards to make progress.
Some Ambition rewards will be more powerful, to bring them in line with other rewards.[/li][li]Players who have completed the Nemesis ambition can expect to new items.
I’m a tiny bit miffed that I raised my Renown: Revolutionaries from 40 to 51 only because the favours started scaling based on that. Only a tiny bit, though. I wonder if cards will still double when you move to an area with a different deck.
Well, changes to the deck were expected. I’m only surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Changes to favours also sound quite reasonable.
And as for ambition rewards, as long as they are buff underwhelming rewards/give more items to people, instead of nerfing and taking away what I gained as part of my ambition, I’m quite content.
There are two things I’d really like to see as part of the rebalance, though:
[ol][li]Dismissing 7 Favours limit. It always felt artificial, and now with no infinite deck refresh to generate massive amount of favours, it is much less important in terms of balance. Since it would seem that we’ll have less favours on average, ability to store them would do much towards alleviating the pain from being no longer able to draw infinitely.
[/li][li]Upgrading or retiring some of the most useless cards. In the update, the state quite correctly, that a lot of people came to rely heavily on deck optimisation. But, the implication that agressive deck optimisation will be less useful, once infinite deck refresh is turned off, is wrong. In fact, deck optimisation will be even more important - once you are back to only limited amount of opportunities, you’ll want to make the most of every card. And I don’t just mean mechanically - beyond certain point drawing card about fallen cities, or clay man one does zero in terms of story, not just rewards. Useless cards are considered useless for more than a mechanical reason.[/li][li]EDIT: Oh, and the desperately need to do something about Defender of Public Safety, at the very least remove limits to Estimable Trophy on current sources - once Bear grind is gone, it would be a total slog to get it, much worse than Poet-Laureate, even.
[/li][/ol] edited by Sagrim-Ur on 10/28/2020
Nerf of Rev and Dock favours is really bad for endgame players. Very few cards are better than current endgame grinds (3.5 - 4.5 EpA). If revs and docks are nerfed we have even less motivation to flip the deck.
Also if your ES is avoided because it gives bad card, make card better. Give it a scaling, if you dont want to provide too powerful card for early/mid players.
"We also don’t want Ambition capstone rewards to be overshadowed by items that are universally available, even if those items cost Fate."
Yeah? Half (2 out of 4) of my ambition rewards have a free / fate copy in game.
New attiers without real money are good.
I dont care about full deck refresh. edited by Waterpls on 10/28/2020
[quote=Sagrim-Ur]EDIT: Oh, and the desperately need to do something about Defender of Public Safety, at the very least remove limits to Estimable Trophy on current sources - once Bear grind is gone, it would be a total slog to get it, much worse than Poet-Laureate, even.
[/quote]
[quote=Lady Sapho Byron]These changes seem reasonable save for:
[li]Trading in Docks favours for Forgotten Quarter Expeditions will be less efficient.[/li]
Is the archaeology EPA really so out of line with other EPA options that it needs to be reduced? I doubt it.
Love the free outfit slots, though!!![/quote]
I absolutely agree; it’s hard enough to gets Docks favours as it stands and I don’t go in and out of areas for cards. If they are one of the repeatable Favours-gaining options throughout London though, I would be persuaded!
[quote=Amalgamate][quote=Sagrim-Ur]EDIT: Oh, and the desperately need to do something about Defender of Public Safety, at the very least remove limits to Estimable Trophy on current sources - once Bear grind is gone, it would be a total slog to get it, much worse than Poet-Laureate, even.
[/quote]
Wait, how would the bear grind be gone?[/quote]
I presume, that in the author’s opinion it’ll be harder to obtain the Urchin’s opportunity card, which gives the quest in the first place.
I’m not so sure, though. FBG remove the full-refresh option, but it was never the case for the Hinterland; Hinterland is semi-refreshed through a deck duplication on moving to and from London (you keep 2 cards in the deck, move to London to make them into 4, move back to make them into 6). It’s unclear whether this will be changed or not.
Wholeheartedly support this. edited by Wojciech on 10/28/2020 edited by Wojciech on 10/28/2020
[quote=Lady Sapho Byron]These changes seem reasonable save for:
[li]Trading in Docks favours for Forgotten Quarter Expeditions will be less efficient.[/li]
Is the archaeology EPA really so out of line with other EPA options that it needs to be reduced? I doubt it.
Love the free outfit slots, though!!![/quote]
And no mention of the Helicon House grind, which apparently is even better and completely unreliant on chance.
I feel I should clarify here, since nobody else has posted it yet. Failbetter clarified on the Discord that the deck-doubling mechanics will also be gotten rid of with this update, so this also affects the decks of the Hinterland locations.
Oh, man, reliable sources for favours will be a relief. One of my alts hasn’t started their railway yet because they’ve been trying to get up to Church Renown 25!
Here’s one fringe question. As most veteran players are aware, there is a bug in late SMEN which occurs when you get St. Gawain’s Candle which sets your card deck size to a large negative integer. AFAIK this was never fixed because you could just refill your deck using the method that’s about to be removed.
Will the Gawain card deck size bug also be fixed? I realize SMEN is all about “screw you, enjoy your misery” but the deck size thing is very clearly a bug and that disclaimer anyone who opted into SMEN signed did expressly exclude such… :p
Will crosspost this to discord and update if I get a response.
While most of this seems reasonable and even beneficial I’m disappointed that the card doubling mechanic between London and the Hinterlands will be removed. I guess they want to push people to spend fate on deck refreshing.
Did they say that the same will apply to the ‘A Polite Invitation’ card?