Stats are being retired as a locking/unlocking mechanism for new stories. They will still be used to determine difficulty, however.
I deleted the extra post for you. :)
edited by Sara Hysaro on 8/4/2015
I like this idea overall, myself. Forcing people into stat necessity for the unlocking of some of the stories sometimes makes sense, but overall being able to see they’re there makes more sense - like, sure, you might not be strong enough to get involved in a fight club, but that wouldn’t stop you from hearing about it through the grapevine, right?
Nifty idea and it should improve game flow, I should think!
I really have no idea how it will work at this point.
I’m not sure if it’s wise to fix something that is not broken - I think it’s working great at this moment - but let’s hope it will ease the experience for new players and therefore bring FB much money in long term.
It does worry me a little that the leveling will be more linear now. FL always felt like open world, a real city, where you can do anything you like, anywhere, at any point. And if you don’t want to do something, you never have to.
Being locked in a linear “watchful guy” storyline and fed content at limited intervals will be helpful for new players, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s in the best heart and soul of Fallen London.
But I won’t be quick to judge, so let’s see how it goes!
What of characters on high tiers, who delevel stats near zero? Will there be enough low-level content left unlocked for them (but “swept under the rug” for high-stat characters, so as not to take too much space?), or will they be left to grinding second chances?
How much of a tier will one need to complete before graduation? All, most, or just some?
Will one be able to finish all of a tier or will there be many mutually exclusive parts?
(Will 100%-ing a tier be easy/impossible/an achievement?)
[color=#009900]The answer to most of these questions is ‘wait and see’ and in some cases ‘TBD’.[/color]
Will graduation have a story of it’s own, or is it just an achievement that the player could feel good about? I’m tempted to switch pathes, but I do like this Watchful path I started so I can wait a few months to a year for the watchful tracker.
If the trackers are only for the early game, will they stop once a player hits the mid-game, whenever that is?
Also, since I’m not currently caught up with the hardcore players, as it were, how has the content changed mechanically VS. the early game without the trackers now?
I might recommend that, once this is implemented, please make liberal use of feedback@failbettergames.com for any bugs, changes or ideas you might have.
Direct feedback is always more helpful to the developers and to the game as a whole than even the most well intentioned forum whinging.
I like the thought that the comunity (we) can ask questions that you’ve not figured the answers for… not knowing a thing is important sometimes.
Just like some names are better unknown.
It sounds like the intention is less a linear progression of stories, as the current early game content stands, and having it structured more like, say, Court, where there’s several storylines available at once. It sounds like the Tracker’s built so that instead of grinding one’s primary stats up, you succeed in a few storylines, each of which raises the tracker up a step, and then that unlocks a storyline where your social status changes.
It sounds like a fine change, not least because it suggests a confidence in the intended pace of progress (it should take x number of actions to explore this tier of content, so the players’ stats should grow at y rate, but we should boost their stats by a, b and c at these boundaries) that the current early-game content absolutely does not have. It also suggests there might be latitude for some players to opt out of some minor storylines entirely, or, at least, decide very early on that you don’t approve of devils and you’re certainly not going to watch their storehouses.
As the early game is probably still going to be more primary stat driven than the late game is, you could probably also do neat things like use stat growth as a storytelling device. Have actions that appear a few times along their journey, that players are intended to fail at at first. Imagine going to the Ambassador’s Ball as a hired musician and making a hash of being charming, say.
Only other thought I have is how this’ll affect PoSI - currently, PoSI checks for reaching 100 in each primary stat and then a bunch of story-related checks, which are probably going to be rolled into the trackers. Would the PoSI unlocks be tied to a tracker as well, instead of a linear sequence of checks (including opportunity cards)?
PoSI strikes me as a strange convergence with the tracker system, since it sounds like in the new system, getting 100s all around will more or less require you to have gone through the tracker checkpoints for all four attributes. Which is a fine way to ensure players see all the content, and a bit like the way many branching-narrative games reach a point of reconvergence that all paths eventually lead to – but it does also create that thing where every player becomes “irresistible, inescapable, terrifying and midnight” or whatever.
Yeah I’ve felt like the player should gain some degree of control over that title after reaching POSI status for a while, now. Would that be a thing that would be possible to implement?
You do technically have full control over that title in a roundabout way Snowskeeper. See, it reflects your -two- highest stats and you can adjust which ones those are by changing your clothes or performing leveling in a careful way. Always wear the same clothes and you will always have the same title. Similarly, I suppose if you wanted fewer titles you could tank your stats with oblivion and do it that way since the number of titles you have reflects how high your stats are at present. Haha, I remember tanking my stats down to 0 and taking a picture when all it could say was “NiteBrite: A Lady” with no other titles because I had no highest stat (or any stats at all).
(Note: These are terrible ideas and probably not what you are looking for, but they do exist and are valid.)
Falling into a drug-induced stupor does sound like a wonderful way to get people to start calling you something different.
Interesting! Would this be related to why the “hunting dangerous beasts for the Labyrinth” story is suddenly back open to me?
Oh, that’s been back for a while now.
Has it? I only saw it yesterday, and I play every day… Perhaps I am just unobservant.
I think it reopened to people who’ve previously moved past it back when the Monster Hunter profession became available. It requires the quality you get for hunting a Spider-Council, so they made sure people would always have the opportunity to get that quality.
Well, it seems like the first part of this just kicked in… I got a weird storylet when I entered Veilgarden, had to make a few choices about where I was in regard to Persuasive stories. It… doesn’t seem to work very well, though. Several of the highest-tier storylets in The Shuttered Palace are just GONE now, and I can’t access The Imperial Court anymore. Which is really, really unfortunate since I was in the middle of grinding up my Bohemian connection to 60 so I could establish a Saloon, and also finishing up the last few masterpieces as the Imperial Artist-In-Residence…
EDIT: The most advanced storylet available was the ‘Commission for a Royal Portrait’ one, so I figured I maybe just needed to re-do that one? But when I activated it, the storylets that would NORMALLY appear to allow me to boost my Inspired… - didn’t. So yeah. This thing isn’t really ready for prime-time yet. I wonder if it got activated by accident…
edited by BlakeTheDrake on 8/7/2015
Similarly to Dov, I’m concerned for roleplaying reasons. The game’s registration page says “Your choices matter”. It sounds like that principle might be being undermined.
My main character had a lot of difficulty getting his Shadowy high enough for POSI, due to being unwilling to steal or blackmail. There were things I could do; he practiced freerunning in the Flit, made friends with thieves, and did a lot of conjuring tricks for the Topsy King and similar. (Ended up selling the location of the Nadir to buy some Lenguals to get the final Shadowy boost for POSI.) Even now, most of the Unfinished Business in Spite is off-limited to him, but that doesn’t permanently block him from most things, just makes a few bits harder. Assuming that one of the major graduation points for Shadowy is going to involve a theft, would he be permanently blocked from advancing beyond a certain lowish point?
Similarly my alt, though she’s very happy to steal from anything that does or doesn’t deserve it, Does Not Write Poetry. She’s very happy to float around Society and Bohemians, flirt and seduce and flatter and gossip, but she Does Not Write Poetry.
I hope this won’t mean such characters can’t progress beyond a low level. The idea that every character of Some Importance in Fallen London has written a Mushroom Epic… doesn’t fill me with confidence.
Same, I think I went with the wrong option as it has been a while since I advanced at the Court. Still, unless it’s important to correct it, I may just assume my reputation has waned over the time I’ve been out at Zee, and lost in the Quarter…