[color=#0066ff]Today we’re introducing some changes to the way Outfits work in Fallen London.[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]You are now able to purchase additional Outfits with Fate. Exceptional Friends now receive two extra Outfits as part of their subscription. The maximum number of Outfits you can have is now ten![/color]
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[color=#0066ff]We’re removing the ability to change Outfits while in storylets and in certain settings (in particular where your character wouldn’t reasonably be able to access their wardrobe, or a convenient steamer trunk).[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]We’ve thought quite carefully about this, and hope that it will create more opportunities for us to introduce strategic gameplay built around selection of Outfit, and allow for you to make more creative sartorial application of a wider range of clothing. We’ve prepared a little story to illustrate how these applications work; look for a continuation of the Watchmaker’s Daughter story on the card Devices and Desires in your Opportunity Deck.[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]Lastly, there are a few helpful functional changes to the way Outfits behave:[/color]
[color=#0066ff]You can now rename Outfits.[/color][/li][li][color=#0066ff]Saving an Outfit is now an explicit choice (so if you change your hat while wearing an Outfit, you will have to explicitly save changes to that Outfit for that hat to be part of the outfit the next time you change into it).[/color][/li][li][color=#0066ff]You can now filter equipment by a specific quality.[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 102, 255)]We hope you have fun investigating these changes! If you have any feedback, please send it as usual to feedback@failbettergames.com. If you find anything that doesn’t look like it’s working as intended, please send it to support@failbettergames.com.[/color]
>We’re removing the ability to change Outfits while in storylets
Ok, so this is a HUGE change UX-wise.
Do you plan on making going in and out of storylets any easier? It’s currently a real pain because:
the native browser navigation doesn’t let you do that
the "Perhaps not" button is always in some different place and sometimes requires a ton of scrolling
going back to a storylet I just left is hard because scroll position is usually not saved between navigations
And now you’ve just made it even more painful.
I don’t want to have my stats perfectly optimized when they shouldn’t be, I just don’t want to constantly click in and out of regular, mundane storylets because I forgot which stat I need in them. edited by Senthe on 7/29/2020
FBG is usually good with pricing… but not this time. 20 fate for such a basic feature (and requested for years!). And in the same time you are making game harder for everybody who do not pay. Very bad decision.
Pew… To be honest, I don’t know what I shall think about this.
First of all, I like the changes, that you can rename outfits, explicit have to save changes and beeing able to search for qualities.
What I don’t like is that the new outfit slots are completely fate locked. I understand the decision itself, but I would like to see 1-2 additional outfits that are unlockable ingame for lategame chars. To clarify this: I don’t expect them to be free available.
A story that requires some work, skill checks and ressources in order to reward an additional outfit would be fine for me. Maybe we’ll get a wardrobe from polythreme or something like that. ;)
And while it’s somewhat logical that you can’t change your cloths everywhere, I think this change could lead to alot of extra scrolling, clicks and actions. I expect players to run into situations where we’ve forgotten to change cloths or there is an skillcheck with an unexpected skill. But you said you thought carefully about this change, so I will at least try the new storylet before I give a final feedback about this.
/edit: found 2 more small pros on the update: Hinterland Scrips are now shown below Echoes and you’re able to change the outfit at the Story tab. The latter change at least weakens my concerns about additional clicks a little. edited by Judaspriester on 7/29/2020
I like the new UI changes, the outfit saves are nice, and thank you so much for adding Hinterland Scrip to the sidebar, tracking that was becoming something of a pain.
The thing is, while I get that it’s pretty silly to be suddenly changing clothes mid-story, this is a pretty drastic change to gameplay and really affects your ability to enter stories with confidence. Especially with so many new stories right now, I feel like I’m going to go in unprepared and wind up losing out on things because I wanted to explore the new content (still kinda salty about failing the Discordance check at SotC 21, but that’s just the RNG and nothing to do with outfits).
And besides, if we’re talking about silliness here, I assume my Facial Scar doesn’t disappear when not equipped. All my Home Comforts are presumably still in my home, I run a Newspaper and work with God’s Editors, and I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to imagine carrying a Nuncian Pocket Watch and a Ratwork Derringer (easier than carrying just a single Unexploded Mine, I would imagine).
Honestly, I do appreciate the way the changes reduce the tediousness of optimizing outfits, and I can get the idea of wanting players to just experience a story instead of having to play optimally, but what we’re doing is trading control for convenience. And especially with some of the high difficulty challenges out there, it can be pretty important to have all the right equipment. It could be said that there should be consequences for walking in unprepared, but this is a game and I’d rather not replace mild annoyance with stress, especially when there could have been the option to have neither.
[quote=Rostygold]You can’t have Feducci in your board so readily anymore. Persuasive-loaded outfits tend to have low Dangerous counts, and vice-versa.[/quote]I was just speculating on that in the old outfit request thread right when this announcement came out. It’s a change that’s going to make a number of things more difficult. Makes me wonder if I should just have a "general purpose" outfit that’s not good at anything in particular but at least won’t be awful.
I’m really not a fan of not being able to change outfits anymore. Large portions of the game are balanced around being able to switch outfits easily and with how expensive (both action and resource) many areas are to access the primary thing this is going to make me do is stop exploring new content and just wait for the wiki page to be upgraded because I’m not going to potentially waste tens to hundreds of actions on something that I could fail because the game didn’t signpost the outfit needed well enough. Not to mention that many of the outfit items are abstract concepts and represent drawing on connections rather than actually having the item with you, when I equip a tiger minister the idea is that I am drawing on knowledge gained from it and using its influence, same with the one who pulls the strings and countless other items.
If you want to make new content more strategic with regard to outfits then make the outfit locking limited to these areas and well signposted instead of limiting it everywhere with a few exceptions.
How is it that you have people at Failbetter who consider changing outfits during certain situations to be "not reasonable"?
The Light Fingers Ambition has the player flash-backing just to somehow get resources for the dirigible expedition and then flash-forwarding. You already have some narrative gymnastics here!
I am going to send another email over this. edited by Rostygold on 7/29/2020 edited by Rostygold on 7/29/2020
I think while having a new outfit system is a neat idea, FL is unfortunately not suitable for it quite yet. There are several problems I can think of from this system.
First, this will increase the reliant on the wiki by a large amount. Some people are already having problems with how the bonezone is extensively dependent on having a wiki opened to see the results and where you can find the bones, now to get the best chance to succeed the checks people will need to use the wiki and see what they need to bring into a place where you can’t change your outfits anymore. This will, theoretically, make people focus less on the story side of the game and more on the metagaming side. Since the checks are included with spoilers of what’s ahead of them in term of the story, folks will probably go further from what make FL a great game.
The point above is doubly so for Exceptional Stories, where the wiki doesn’t have any information on it. Some of them have exceptional hard checks here and there, and there’s no way you would know to prepare for them without asking for the ES spoilers. And while the mid to endgame players might have some multiple stats equipment, new players might not be able to pass even the easy checks since they can’t change the outfit anymore, since those have a large impact at the early stage of the game. This might lead to new players needing to hold off any ES until they have built up some multistats equipment, or become PoSI first.
Another point is the inability to change inside a storylet is problematic. Not to mention the habit that already built in the FL players to change outfits after getting into the storylet, now if you don’t remember/know what a check is, you will need to go in to check, go out to change the outfit, and then go in again to attempt the check. And even then, with the BDR 15 folks in the bonezone, good luck with those checks when you are equipping the BDR outfit instead of an actual usable one.
My last point is it doesn’t even make sense for some of them. Affiliations should be able to change on the fly since it doesn’t require any tangible thing to the player character. You shouldn’t be able to change home comforts unless you are at your lodging unless your character learns psychokinetic power somehow. And some equipment is just things that made up from intangible material together, like What might be a Thunderbolt. It wouldn’t make the game any more immersion with the changes. edited by Lottery on 7/29/2020
New outfits! Confusing? Maybe. But. New Outfits! Oh joy! Oh frabjous day!
Edit: Changing outfits in the Story tab! And the sort feature? Being able to see my Bizarre items or what gives me a Mithridacy boost? Perfect! edited by Raccoonajr on 7/29/2020
This is the part that bothers me the most. The combination of increasingly complex mechanics + endgame with much harder ability checks + reduced flexibility is going to make me plan ahead a lot more and read a lot more spoilers, and probably make my choices based on what ability I’m locked into, rather than what feels in character. Selecting the best Dangerous outfit is one thing, but I feel like I’m going to need a spreadsheet now to optimize my different skill combinations.
Considering the upcoming continuation of the Watchmaker’s Daughter content, I get the impression that Failbetter wants players to make more use of multi-stat equipment like the Semiotic Monocle.
If that is the case, why not implement multi-roll challenges like the ones under the City Vices card for asking the Sardonic Music Hall Singer for help? That would be better than locking controls and reducing convenience.
The catch is most stories and activities are balanced for being able to change them on the fly, like that thing with Feducci, and sometimes exiting a storylet forfeits a costly resource or quality, like Parabola, or even a one-time opportunity.
And I sincerely doubt anyone will bother to comb through a metric ton of text and checks to fix this, when the main goal (additional paid option) is already achieved anyway.
Oh, and WM’s Daughter sounds less like an actual continuation of a storyline, and more like a disguised attempt to axe an old cliffhanger noone knew what to do about.
Guess, I’m in a grouchy mood today, huh. edited by Aro Saren on 7/29/2020
The filter and the ability to change outfits without going to Possessions are splendid.
The storylet lock… not so much. Especially now that we have so many additional stats (Glasswork, Mithridacy and the like) and isolated areas that need them together with the "old" ones and sometimes even BDR as well (the Bone Market is going to be a clicking nightmare, for one).
I’ve just drawn the “Devices and Desires” card and I’m not seeing any different options. Just the same “The trade in clocks” and “The Albino Rat”. When will the new content be live?
I’ll add to the chorus. Extra outfits are nice. I’m fine with FBG turning a profit on it. Not being able to change in storylets is annoying, promotes wiki dependence, and requires more going back and forth. I am a huge non-fan.
As we all know, Superman can change clothes in any phone booth.
I own the Augmented Electrostatic Machine, which is a Tesla in a sense. I want to know if this is because the new mayor is peeping into the car window, so my character is ashamed to change clothes in the car.
If it is, I will immediately protest to the Masters against cat’s voyeurism.