[quote=Julius de Poisson]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?[/quote]
AFAIK it will apply to everything everywhere and I expect that the deck refresh/fate angle is the unspoken reason behind why they’re doing this.
[quote=Julius de Poisson]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?[/quote]
Yeah, that’s one change in this proposed update I don’t agree with at all. Fixing the deck refresh thing in infinite draw locations? Fine, I’m just glad I got all but my RM renown grinding done before this was even proposed. Removing the deck doubling for Hinterlands and the Polite Invitation? Definitely not happy about that.
These changes sound great. I was never a fan of deck-based grinds, and though occasional bonus cards from the lab were nice, the corresponding tweaks will be good enough for me. The one aspect that really hurts is losing the Hinterlands deck doubling, but I understand why it has to go—not only is it a deck reset for cards often better than London’s, but it comes with a free 2.5 echoes every action. That’s ridiculous levels of power creep.
The only additional change I need from this is for parties, heists, and similar content to use infinite decks. Deck-based progress feels terrible when you’re stuck out of cards, and this change makes that more likely. Menace areas might need a tweak as well.
Since the bug originates from an infinite-deck area (possibly mixed with deck doubling) I suspect this change will fix it, since infinite decks should no longer affect the number of cards in our finite deck. But FBG should definitely make sure.
edited by Optimatum on 10/29/2020
Infinite deck is not the same as limited deck doubling. From what they’re currently saying, moving between Polite Invitation or Hinterlands wouldn’t be affected. That said, that would be an important change.
As others have already said, the Docks Favors to Expedition Supplies exchange is in line with the new content. HOWEVER, it’s dramatically better than almost all other Favors in terms of value.
I think the overall question is what are they aiming for in terms of EPA? Arbor is around 7 EPA, which is currently the only thing that’s remotely in the same league as Helicon House. Which doesn’t bother me, it’s just a thing that makes doing any other action except for specific resources or maintaining Renown or whatever pointless by endgame.
edited by Toran on 10/29/2020
https://discord.com/channels/606151996663267338/606157158429753344/771027820263505921
Failbetter has stated that the Hinterlands, at least, will be affected by this, if this message is to be believed.
EDIT: Apologies, here is the message from Discord:
[color=rgb(230, 74, 74)]Bruno (FBG)[/color] Yesterday at 10:09 AM
"A heads up: The blog post only talked about infinite draw zones but that was an oversight, the draw-refreshing bugfix will also end the related behavior that messed with remaining card counts when moving between London and the Upper River."
edited by Paflick on 10/29/2020
edited by Paflick on 10/29/2020
Huh, well I’m not on Discord and it’s requiring me to log in so I can’t see the message, but that would make sense. And make it harder to free-grind cards while also getting paid 2.5 EPA.
Which I haven’t been doing to get Docks Favors for Justificande coins. Why would you accuse me of that?
Pew… I’m not sure what to think about this.
I can understand why they want to get rid of this “bug”, but on the other hand, all the “trash cards” like low tier lodgings I’ve accumulated will bug me even more.
Renown 45+ will also be significant harder, since you require alot of moods after a certain point. I doubt that additional sources for favours will really make up this.
The improvement for the end of Ambition items sound somewhat fine, but they could also make people outside nemesis reget their decision, because they have decided for value in stead of in-character (like I did, because losing the Marvelous felt MUCH less rewarding, especially as Correspondent).
But I’m happy that we will get more outfit slots for free. I would really like the idea of a Polythreme wardrobe. :D
Ok, so A Polite Invitation might not be affected? Magic 8 ball says ‘Unclear’.
And ‘Ask the Well’.
I need to take this thing back if it’s still under warrantee…
Also, gripe coming:
I’ve said it before and, since obviously FBG don’t wait on my every utterance (for shame!), I’ll probably say it again:
Having more than one means of communicating with players is great as long as you communicate the same info in both places.
I initially put that last bit in all caps but it looked a bit shouty. In truth I’m just wearily resigned to getting my ‘official’ updates second hand from those blessed few who, Hermes-like, carry messages from the Hadean pits of Discord to the Elysian fields of the forum.
Fly strong, fly fast my pretties.
All of the balance changes seems reasonable to me.
The only thing that disappoints me a little is that Failbetter didn’t post them here in the forums. :(
I got DoPS back when turning in the bear also required a card draw, and I’ve never systematically used the deck refresh. I didn’t feel that it took too long.
Well, I might just be scarred by my own recent experience, where I sometimes had to reset the deck three-four times for the next get-a-bear card. Looking back at it I think it was at least one reset per bear quest on average. And the deck is growing as more content is being released, it seems. Considering how few sources of Estimable Trophies there are, they should conside either upgrading card from standard to high frequency at least, or adding some new sources of ET.
Then again, I’m very grind-averse, so maybe it’s just my bias towards the whole affair. Couldn’t resist a chance to put my statue at every station, though %+)))
edited by Sagrim-Ur on 10/29/2020
I think of it more like this: you don’t always get a bear quest every time you visit the upper river.
Do/would people really pay Fate for deck refreshes? The deck fully refreshes on its own in less than two hours. Only one hour for non-subscribers. I can’t think of a card that I would need to draw before Time the Healer, and nothing else provides such a hard deadline.
Even last night when I was desperate for a Tomb Lion card before I went to sleep, so I could return to London to spend my actions, I didn’t seriously consider paying for 10 cards, none of which are even guaranteed to be the one I want. I can just go back to the Tomb Colonies again later.
edited by PJ on 10/29/2020
Do/would people really pay Fate for deck refreshes? The deck fully refreshes on its own in less than two hours. Only one hour for non-subscribers. I can’t think of a card that I would need to draw before Time the Healer, and nothing else provides such a hard deadline.
Even last night when I was desperate for a Tomb Lion card before I went to sleep, so I could return to London to spend my actions, I didn’t seriously consider paying for 10 cards, none of which are even guaranteed to be the one I want. I can just go back to the Tomb Colonies again later.
edited by PJ on 10/29/2020[/quote]
I have done it very occasionally, when I was pursuing a particular objective.
[quote=gothicmarquise][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.[/quote]
Same! I just started trying to do to Expeditions and it’s highly recommended to max out the Supplies - but at 5 a favour it’s still a ridiculous grind tbh (and forget using loads of whispered hints for a single supply case, I’m saving up those for something else!)
esp since I had to do 2 extra Expeditions anyway before I could even get to the Tomb of Seven (which was the reason I wanted to try Expeditions in the first place, several options on cards rely on “being a scholar of the correspondence” and you need correspondence stones for that and you get those in the Tomb of Seven (iiuc!?))
Anyway, I am intrigued of there being permanent storylets in places to get favours!
but I wonder how that works with renown, wont it then be too easy to farm renown fast too?
As far as i understand FBG’s goal is to slow down renown grind. If we can judge by currently represented grindable soursers of favours (finishing school, honey bear hunt, lab student graduation), it would be 8-10 actions per favour.
Leaving aside the card thing (since I don’t care about it at all), I’m actually quite disappointed that Revolutionary rewards will no longer scale with renown. I was kind of hoping that they would eventually get around to changing the other favor turn-ins so that they did scale with Renown. I never saw any reason to raise them above 40 before, but I have Revolutionaries at 51 now.
I can see why they’re doing it, though. I spent a while grinding constable favours, exchanging them for special dispensations and turning them over to the revolutionaries for their favours (and justi coins), and then turning the rev favours in for proscribed materials. It was kind of ridiculous.
Oh, for sure, Revolutionary favors have always been worth twice as much as the others. I wouldn’t blame them too much if they just cut the value in half. But why is the balance fix “make it stop scaling with renown”?
I’m not quite whether it’s worth collecting Constable favours just to turn them into Revolutionary favours via Special Dispensations, but saving up Dispensations was an integral part of my “turn 14 rev favours into Renown off of one mood card” plan. 