Update to Outfits!

Fallen London
61

As commented above, the Outfit-Lock adds more tedium to routines and Opportunity Cards. One can either remember (or look up) the action requirements beforehand, or Perhaps Not out to be better equipped. The new outfit-swap is the same number of clicks as the old one, but the old process involved tabs and a menu all near each other at the top of the screen, while the new process involves a button at the bottom (possibly after some scrolling), menu on the left, and button on the top if it’s a card, or to the right… somewhere, depending upon how crowded the area is and how far down your desired Action is. It’s not a lot, but it’s strictly a worse experience.

The new search functionality is nice, though, and arranging a few outfits makes me think 6 is &quotmostly workable&quot, even if 1 or 2 of those inevitably become ever-mutating &quotFlavour of the Day&quot outfits.

On content which locks you in a series of tests, planning for four skills with an evenly spread +122 outfit and watching one’s character stumble through like an idiot feels terrible. Rather than being prepared for anything, it’s just a constant reminder of how you could be better, and should be better, but aren’t. If one only needs to prepare for two skills, and can mangle an outfit to be great at one skill and &quotgood enough&quot at the secondary, the experience improves dramatically.

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[quote=Hannah Flynn][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][/quote]Awesome!
[color=#0066ff]
[/color][quote=Hannah Flynn][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][/quote]That is a significant caveat. Let me tell you how significant:

Without this caveat, I’d be scurrying off right now to buy the maximum number of outfits for every single of my accounts. Hands down, no questions asked, just gimme.

With this caveat, the effect is the opposite: I won’t buy anything. In fact, I’ll suspend spending any money on your game with immediate effect, because right now your game is not very much fun to play.

I’m prepared to spend loads of Fate for more outfits - but only if I can use them as I please.

I’m not going to buy something that I might not be able to use when I need it.

Also, let’s be honest: &quotcertain settings&quot in which our characters wouldn’t &quotreasonably&quot be able to change their wardrobe is almost everywhere outside their Lodgings. There’s no chance to &quotreasonably&quot implement this, and it’s a bad idea to try.

[quote=Hannah Flynn][color=rgb(0, 102, 255)]If you have any feedback, please send it as usual to feedback@failbettergames.com.[/color][/quote]Will do.

63

I also get the same feeling. I’ve only resumed my EF subscription the last three months or so, after a hiatus of almost three years, just because I was loving all the new content (and I still do, all of the additions so far are lovely, well maybe not the Bone Market so much, but still it’s not terrible). But I’m just a few hours into this new outfit lock system and I absolutely HATE playing the game so far. So I’ll probably be cancelling preemptively, expecting to play FL much less now, unless there’s a rollback on this.

64

Failbetter, you completely misread what we want. I am happy with all of your recent changes but locking outfits is far, far beyond annoying. It is infuriating. I know that your heavy users are now playing very developed characters and you are creating a greater challenge for us, but that is NOT why we play. Having new outfits available is something your customers want, and you were able to monetize it very fairly in terms of value created for users.

You got the customer profiling wrong on this one, and your value proposition is dead wrong. We play for the story far more than the challenge. We enjoy a &quotlight&quot challenge we can work hard and overcome as an obstacle. We do not want a permanent increase in difficulty, which is what this represents. Doing this negates how hard we’ve worked to overcome the challenges. We look for new challenges, but this is a mechanics change. You already know people don’t like the RNG and think it is unfair, this is going to have a negative impact.

You’ve gamified this game so heavily that most of us are addicted, but this is a good way to create inertia on the pleasure that keeps us addicted. By doing this, when you check your metrics, you may find there is only a slight dip, but over the long-haul, you will find your stickiness diminished and the average time-on-site/session duration reduced.

You should have spent some time beta testing this change in a lean startup loop. This is a heavy modification of the customer experience.

You should do a lot of listening because your metrics aren’t going to reveal the depth of the negative effect. I don’t know your pattern, but you’ll likely have a dip, as with all changes, then an increase, but that will not capture the negative aspects.

I say this as someone who’s spent - what $200 or so - in the last month on Fate. Doing this feels like a betrayal. I love the work you do, the depths of the worldbuilding, the prose, the creativity, and all of the wonderful additions. I don’t know, but my guess is that you have been aiming your changes at long-term, heavy users, which is where your bread is probably buttered now, with diminished new users yet fairly consistent heavy users.

Consider what we have to say and don’t brush it off. It’s okay to Pivot. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to be flexible. Please make get rid of the locks on outfits.

Sincerely,
Long-term daily (all day sometimes) player

65

I just want to add some technical matters:
These &quotoutfits&quot are replaceable and were probably since the game exists. It’s just calling basic APIs using the ID of the item.
I’m still very frustrated that FBG is charging money for something this BASIC that can be easily be done via Postman (for example), by anyone.

If you want people looking for existing alternatives and making up to 9 calls/outfit this is how you get it!

66

[quote=ochrasy]&quotin particular where your character wouldn’t reasonably be able to access their wardrobe, or a convenient steamer trunk&quot is SUCH a dumb reasoning lol

my character shouldn’t be able to cary 50 thousand dead rats around either, but here we are[/quote]
Besides, a lot of items aren’t clothes or tools, but rather connections, companions, affiliations or even Moods and memories (such as the Hellish Hymn or Dream of Truth-Strangling).

While it is certainly weird to change clothes in the middle of a pursuit during a hunt, it simultaneously makes it just as implausible when we must have a wardrobe around to equip our Facial Scars and Parabolan-Sized Headaches.

67

As a current Exceptional Friend, I’m really not a fan of this change.

Things I appreciate:
-being able to re-name my outfit changes (I could never remember which change was the Watchful one)
-being able to sort by qualities (OH MY GOODNESS THIS IS AMAZING)
-being able to change without switching tabs

Things that make the game less fun:
-having to pay for extra outfits. I’ve long wished for just one more outfit. My current outfits are: Notable, Watchful, Persuasive, and Dangerous (for the Parabola). But with all the Bone Market stuff and new qualities, these don’t really cover all the circumstances and remind me of the days when we didn’t have outfits and had to painstakingly sort through options. Usually I just don’t bother (I haven’t done much with the Bone Market because it relies so heavily on knowing what items reduce which stats and that’s too much work).
-not being able to switch in storylets. Honestly, I don’t want a strategic game. I don’t think Fallen London has ever been much of a strategy game and I’m mostly here for the story. I don’t want to create a spreadsheet to maximize my stats based on what I want to do. That’s not only not fun, it runs counter to how I’ve played Fallen London for the past 5+ years.
It also means that all the items I spent time and Echos buying are worth a lot less. Do I really want best in slot Watchful, or do I instead want something that’s the best combination of stats?

I really appreciate what Failbetter is trying to do, but I’m not sure this is the best way.
edited by Bonny Kate on 7/29/2020

68

I’d also like to add my voice to the pile of people that pointed out the lameness of the justification for this change… Übergoat dung…

69

I wrote my above post after only reading the announcement.

Now, after actually logging in to have a look around, I can say with certainty that it’s even worse than I imagined!

The Bone Market was near-unplayable before, but now the whole game’s become totally unplayable. Congrats!

Well, I wanted to take a break from the game anyway.

If there’s no rollback on this, it might be an indefinite break.

70

What an announcement to wake up to. It’s kind of ironic that the extra fate-locked outfit slots are made mostly redundant by the fact that you now can’t change outfits during a storylet. What’s the point in paying to have more outfits when you can’t even use them freely? I’ve been an exceptional friend for 2+ years now and I usually buy a decent amount of fate around seasonal events, but there is zero reason for me to purchase these extra slots with how things are now. Also, if you’re trying to make seasonal fate-locked equipment more usable (and thus purchasable), as they’re usually the ones with 2+ large stat increases, it would be far better to just retouch them with advanced stats like how the panther cub and strange-shore clothes were. It’s cool that my Incognito Princess is more useful now, but I don’t care enough about that to offset the overall disappointment that comes with the unnecessarily increased level of difficulty added to what I play Fallen London for: reading about interesting characters and world-building.
edited by Mulligan on 7/29/2020

71

Why can I change my outfit in my laboratory, but not in the reflection of my laboratory?

I’m going to give this change a few days before I decide how much I dislike it, but it’s not good when I’m surprised by the inability to change. I knew which equipment I would need. I would have put it on ahead of time if I had known it was my last chance.

72

I agree, it is a terrible thing to lock outfit changing.
edited by Alexander on 7/29/2020

73

[quote=PJ]I’m going to give this change a few days before I decide how much I dislike it[/quote]Honestly, &quota few days&quot is an unacceptable amount of time spent in suffering and despair. We’re really hoping they’ll just roll back.

74

In the Discord, Hannah said that they are &quotconsidering all of the feedback about the changes to Outfits and will have a response before the weekend.&quot

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[quote=PJ]Why can I change my outfit in my laboratory, but not in the reflection of my laboratory?[/quote]What’s even more amusing is that Parabola is the Is-Not, a realm of dream and paradoxes where especially talented people can warp the world around them. If there were any place where we’d be able to change our appearance on a whim, I’d think it would be there.

76

I’ve decided to express my dissatisfaction with my wallet and deactivate my three ES subscriptions for the time being.

I’m not going to stop playing entirely–I can still Echo-grind for cider, and explore some of the new content, with a minimum of frustration–but my faith in FBG has been severely shaken.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never been on the development side of game dev, but I do not understand how a change like this, that actively makes usability worse, gets approved and released in the first place. It happens all the time in the strategy games I play, too, and it is bewildering. It seems like it should be so easy, such a low bar, not to try and fix what isn’t broken.

I still hold out hope that FBG will do the right thing here, and I want to continue existing in the world of Fallen London so badly, that I will probably continue playing even if this horrible change remains. But I won’t be spending much, if any, money on the game until things change for the better.

A week ago I would have been incredulous that anything FBG could do would be bad enough for me to consider ending my subscriptions and resolve to stop giving them my money. But lo and behold, it has happened.
edited by hwoosh on 7/29/2020

77

[quote=Bonny Kate]Honestly, I don’t want a strategic game. I don’t think Fallen London has ever been much of a strategy game and I’m mostly here for the story. I don’t want to create a spreadsheet to maximize my stats based on what I want to do. That’s not only not fun, it runs counter to how I’ve played Fallen London for the past 5+ years. [/quote] This is the main reason I’m so disappointed. I started playing because it was a story game, and I stayed because of how great the stories were with a dash of &quotchoose your own adventure.&quot This is the way I’ve always played and loved it. I use the wiki when I really want a guide or to catch all the fun flavor text, but I don’t generally like that meta style. This outfit lock changes the whole experience to strategy, and I don’t want to play that. It isn’t fun for me, and I will stop playing if it continues to be so frustrating. I’ve bought a lot of Fate to play past Exceptional Stories and they often lock you into an entry storylet, and I’m afraid playing any more of them will be a thoroughly awful experience.

In fact, all of the recent updates, while exciting at first, have largely felt so pointless and grindy. There’s no story in the Lab, no story in the railway (except maybe a minor intrigue at Jericho but it’s still very grindy), no story and ZERO FUN in the Bone Market.
edited by Aiza Moor on 7/29/2020

78

After all these complaints I expect them to quickly roll back additional slots and saving, but leave the locking in place. To make a point.

No, I do not want this. Only expect.
edited by Aro Saren on 7/29/2020

79

Oof, seconded on what lots of people are saying. I love most of the things in this update - a few more outfits for exceptional friends, switching outfits from the story tab, searching by stat (and automatic sorting!) are all great.

…but locking the outfits undoes all that. Now instead of having to spend a few extra clicks changing my outfit, I have to pre-plan what I’m going to do when I go to a location so I don’t go in with the wrong stats. And having to ‘perhaps not’ out of stories to change outfits likely just brings the total number of clicks to change outfits back to where it was before, since usually I’d change after seeing what challenge I have rather than in advance…

80

Created an account to add my voice - I actually am one of those people that is fine with using the wiki and metagaming, reading snippets and challenges to plan out what I want to do: locking outfits still feels bad. More clicks for opportunities and one-off challenges, more failures (many of which are simply &quottry again&quot style messages) in stories, and more attention paid to numbers on a regular basis instead of just a cumulative &quotthis is how good my character is at x&quot.

It might be fine for future content designed around it, but it’s not the game I’ve been playing for a year - and certainly not the game that’s been written for the past decade.

edit to add: The stat manipulation required for the Bone Market seemed to turn a lot of people off experiencing it (myself included) and if that’s where FL is heading, then…ugh. Most delicious WORDS in gaming. I buy fate-locked content for the stories and lore, not the +1 gloves of rubber-slaying.
edited by Wylte on 7/29/2020