Update to Outfits!

Fallen London
81

I’ve been a bit in Parabola… hunted a bear. Not a pleasant clicking experience. In the Waswood a little better, cause you get kicked out after every action, so I “wasted” only the first and then equipped the right stat equipment.

Not nice at all.

I still forgot I can’t use items in storylets nowadays (every single time I was starting a flash lay during election, I mindless discover a menace to high locking me out, click in possession DAMN, go back, “perhaps not” and then profit), it will take AGES to adapt to this new game-style and I am not sure I am willing to.

82

Why would Failbetter make a universally asked for option available for free when they can charge you for it, right? God, I hope there will not be other ‘pay to get’ quality of life improvements or even worse - making something uncomfortable to later fix it with microtransactions.
And outfit locking is plain stupid. First, it doesn’t make the game more challenging - it makes it more frustraing due to increased failure rates. Either waste your time (actions) or wait for wiki editors to fill everything so you know what to wear. Second, not everything you have is slot exclusive or even physical, thus there are no reason to not have it ‘equipped’ at all times giving a player a lot of BDR and 10-40 permanent bonus to every stat.
Was this discussed and playtested at all.
Nevertheless, scrip and outfit choice on the main page is great, thank you for that.

83

[color=#0066ff]Hello all! We are considering all of the feedback about the changes to Outfits and will have a response before the weekend. We will be referring to this thread. Thank you![/color]

84

I’m going to go against the grain here. Yes, an outfit lock makes things harder but I’m not against that per se. I’m glad that there are things that we can’t do 100% because a challenge where you can’t lose isn’t a challenge. There are not that many points where failure has a permanent effect, and while it might slow people down because they have to go back and heal menaces more often, that also doesn’t feel unreasonable.

What this, and some of the other recent changes, most reminds me of is Below, Chris Gardiner’s magnificent dungeon-delving game that he made in the period when he wasn’t working for Failbetter. It is superb, I play it still. below.storynexus.com. In it, changing outfit requires going to a special location (your camp) and spending resources to do so. You just can’t change gear in the middle of the dungeon, only when you’re safely holed up. It makes reasonable narrative sense and good gameplay sense. To a lesser extent, that also holds in Fallen London.

(Separately, in Below +1 is the standard bonus you get to stats from equipment, and +2 is what you get from high-powered stuff, and you really value that +2. It’s like the bonuses to the new stats, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the FL updates were modelled on that.)

Harder doesn’t mean a worse game, even if it means we will all do worse in it. Lots of clicks is inconvenient, but actually I can cope with inconvenience in life. It’s not a big thing in the grand scheme of things, and worse things happen at Zee.

And finally, I’m also thinking of all those poor failure texts that never get read and may do so a little more now.
edited by colinsapherson on 7/29/2020

85

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but “I can deal with this” seems very far from “this is an improvement”. And I’ve never played Below, but if the game was created with the idea that you couldn’t change outfits while playing, it’s a completely different situation from Fallen London.

86

To add my own opinion without trying to dogpile (I realize this thread is getting long, and is mostly critical!), I personally am totally fine with extra outfits being fate locked, as it’s basically “QoL monetization” that’s mostly nonexistent in FL, despite being prevalent in lots of FTP games. It doesn’t bother me, I might buy one or two depending on need, but I don’t feel like I have to.

Not being able to switch outfits is definitely frustrating though, especially with all the new qualities. Mostly, it means being much more careful about how I move about the website, with probably more clicks. It’s also a pretty strong disincentive for me to buy Fate gear when new events roll around, because “it’s best in slot for X stat” isn’t sufficient anymore, it needs to holistically be better than whatever I tend to wear for that sort of thing. If anything, I think I’ll end up spending less overall, rather than more, purely as a function of item utility.

87

[quote=colinsapherson]I’m going to go against the grain here. Yes, an outfit lock makes things harder but I’m not against that per se. I’m glad that there are things that we can’t do 100% because a challenge where you can’t lose isn’t a challenge. There are not that many points where failure has a permanent effect, and while it might slow people down because they have to go back and heal menaces more often, that also doesn’t feel unreasonable.

Harder doesn’t mean a worse game, even if it means we will all do worse in it. Lots of clicks is inconvenient, but actually I can cope with inconvenience in life. It’s not a big thing in the grand scheme of things, and worse things happen at Zee.

And finally, I’m also thinking of all those poor failure texts that never get read and may do so a little more now.
edited by colinsapherson on 7/29/2020[/quote]

What about Exceptional Stories though? Pretty much all of those have moments where a failed stat check permanently alters the narrative, and now everyone’s going to be constantly worrying about whether they’re bringing the right gear for stat checks they can’t predict instead of immersing themselves in the story.

edit: this is -especially- a problem for all ESes pre-Paisley, considering their stat checks weren’t balanced with this restriction in mind

Likewise, I doubt there’s many people playing FL (if even a statistically relevant amount of them, bar the maniacs that are Seekers) for the &quotchallenge&quot of RNG-based skill checks, especially considering that people who play games for challenge generally derive that challenge from tests of skill, not luck. This game’s popularity stems from intriguing stories and immersive lore, not the &quotchallenge&quot of grinding luck-based checks for days on end just so you can advance a teeny bit further (yes, I am still mad about the mechanics of the railway and bone market).

Also, how is people needing to go and heal menaces more often a -good- change? How does it improve the experience? Likewise, how does everyone being worse off from the shift in difficulty improve the experience? How is the inconvenience of needing to click around twice as much and waste actions just to equip gear that gives a decent success rate an improvement? You say you’re not against these changes and that you can cope with them, but you certainly didn’t voice that you’re -for- them, and you don’t seem to list any positive effects beyond some throwaway failure texts getting more reads (in fact, the mere statement that you can cope with it seems to implicitly admit that it’s an outright negative change, but that it simply doesn’t impact you personally enough to care much). What was the point of implementing such a change to begin with if it only has negative effects on the experience? A balance change that damages part of the experience for everyone without offering some sort of compensation by improving another part is the very definition of &quota change for the worse&quot
edited by Xorph on 7/29/2020

88

First off, I want to say the ability to change outfit from the sidebar, the sorting by quality, the renaming slots and the ability to swap things temporarily without altering your saved outfit are all fantastic, so thank you very much for those two! Some thoughts on the stuff I find more mixed.

The locking: In the Watchmaker’s Daughter, I found it fairly frustrating having better items sitting in my inventory and not being able to switch up for them, it felt almost punitive knowing that I could do better if I was allowed. But I do think it’s possible that’s only because of what I’m accustomed to and I’ll get used to it in time. It does make the difficulty level harder overall, which is jarring as a change, but again, I don’t think that necessarily will prove to be a bad thing in the long run. I like the fact that it broadens the range of equipment that’s useful and gives motivation to try and save up for more equipment that I’d have otherwise ignored, and I actually found it exciting trying to think out how to plan my outfits for the broadest spread of uses; it requires judgement calls rather than just searching out the needed stat and piling it on for your next move.

But for the storylets that you can Perhaps Not out of without penalty, it’s extremely annoying having to leave the storylet to change your outfit, and I don’t think that’s something that will get better when I get used to it - changing outfits is needed much too often and is much too desirable to be permitted but have an inconvenience-barrier.

The outfit slots: I’m okay with these being quite limited, actually, to keep it challenging, but 4 seems really low. Having longed for more slots for so long, and more and more so with the new stats and the separate BDR requirements, it was a blow not to get even one more slot, especially when having to anticipate and maximize multiple stats makes each slot do even more work than it used to and each slot is a bigger commitment now. Even just one more free slot, or a possibility of a resource-draining storyline to be granted one, would have given a little more flexibility and convenience to feel frugal but not stingy. And I’m fine with any further slot expansion costing fate; when I first saw this change, I was immediately keen to get one and would have probably gotten a few more down the line (I’m very much not a big spender, but I do occasionally purchase a little bit) - but 20 seems like a lot for something that gives convenience (or less inconvenience) rather than actual game-playing advantage or content. If it were 10, I’d go for it; at 20, definitely not.

So IMO just a few changes would make this something challenging to get used to but not negative, and maybe even very positive overall:

-Ability to swap within the storylet when Perhaps Notting has no penalty anyway. This would reduce a lot of the inconvenience without compromising any of what Failbetter was aiming for with these changes, so I think this is the most important

-For all one-time stories you can’t freely Perhaps Not from and for areas that require many moves or have a cost to enter, give accurate guidance at the start for what stats are going to be needed in the area. Like they did for The Watchmaker’s Daughter, except that that one warned us it would need the four main stats, but there were unannounced challenges for BDR stats as well - imo that’s fine in a repeating story like this seems to be, but would be really frustrating for a one-time chance where you would have made different choices if you’d known you’d be missing out on that - and for an Exceptional Story, would probably be the sort of &quotfeeling cheated&quot frustration that puts people off of the game permanently.

-either reduce the Fate cost for more slots (maybe each extra slot costs more than the last) or give some non-Fate means of getting at least one more slot.
edited by enail on 7/29/2020

89

[quote=colinsapherson]Harder doesn’t mean a worse game, even if it means we will all do worse in it. Lots of clicks is inconvenient, but actually I can cope with inconvenience in life. It’s not a big thing in the grand scheme of things, and worse things happen at Zee.
[/quote]
Worse things happen at Zee, sure, but I don’t pay $7 a month to experience them. For now I’ve cancelled my subscription, so if the change isn’t rolled back I won’t be paying for the inconvenience here, either.
edited by Grouchybeast on 7/29/2020

90

Adding access to more outfits and a tab on the side of the screen to change between them is a fantastic UX change, though the Fate price is a bit steep for such a basic UX feature. That said, the fact that we now can’t use our best gear for each check totally upends the balance of most existing parts of the game. This is &quotonly&quot an enormous annoyance if it just means more attempts, more menaces, etc., but if it makes us fail one-time checks or locks us out of branches in key stories like ambitions and ESs, then it’s actually preventing us from playing the story in the ways we want to play it. With all the new stats you’ve added this year, along with all the new checks that require low BDR rather than high, we’ve all been spending a lot more time in the &quotPossessions&quot tab lately than is ideal, but this was hardly the way to solve that problem. As it is, this will just mean greatly increased reliance on the wiki to ensure that I have just the right balance of stats before entering a &quotno-change&quot zone.

91

For the record, I love all the changes except the obvious one. I’m a little skeptical of paying fate for a pure convenience feature like extra presets, but I probably would pay 20 fate to unlock all six extra slots. I’m not about to pay 20 fate for just one more slot, though.

92

I don’t often comment here, but I felt compelled to reply and add my thoughts, since this is a huge change.

I’m a long-time player, though I have taken some time off here and there. I have maintained my EF subscription throughout, however, because I really like this world, and wanted to support the game.

When I play Exceptional Stories, I tend to avoid spoilers, and have indeed missed out on the “good” reward. I also tend to avoid the Wiki in general, at least for my first attempts at new content. This was pretty much a disaster on my first Bone Market attempt. I was totally lost, and ended up wasting a fair amount of actions and resources in there before I gave up. Haven’t been back yet.

I personally don’t mind FB making the extra outfit slots available for pay. That seems fair, since they have bills to pay too. But changing outfits in storylets is what the game was designed around. Retrofitting the entire game to account for being unable to change outfits sounds like an insurmountable task. If this only applied to the most recent storylets, and were clearly indicated before you go in, I suppose I will learn to live with it. But if the game in general is headed in the direction of the Bone Market, I may be headed out. I find that whole experience to be maddening.

I’m here for the in-game stories: the Cheesemonger was heartbreaking (I legitimately agonized over my final decision), the final content in Heart’s Desire has been wonderful, even the mystery of the murdered Reader at the University was interesting. They are the whole reason I’ve kept playing. Please don’t take away the fabulous storytelling with a lot of stuff like this.

93

People have covered both the good and bad parts of this update already, so I’m not going to rehash it.

What I do find confusing is how… antithetical the parts of this update are to each other. Yes, we have more outfits. But there’s not a lot of reason to make use of the outfits. Not without requiring a player to make a lot of clicks to back out of a storylet. It… incentivizes using only one outfit that has middling stats for everything as that will let the player get through content with less clicks. The main reason players have been wanting more outfits for years is so that they can swap equipment with less clicks. And this doesn’t fix the problem, it just moves the clicks to change equipment to different (and more annoying) locations in the UI.

The other issue I have is… the game does not give us, the players, enough information to know what kinds of items we should be equipping before we go into a storylet where we can’t change outfits. It feels odd to say players can’t equip items in a storylet when they don’t know what they should equip before going into the storylet. Almost like we need to know what check the storylet gives before we change the outfit…

This also bugs me… because it feels like it didn’t take the previous 10 years of Fallen London content into account. Fallen London’s skill checks have always been balanced around people being able to change equipment on the fly. Fallen London’s equipment has always been balanced around changing equipment on the fly. There is a very, very small number of equipment that has multiple stats on it that could be used to minimize (or rather, maximize) making numerous kinds of skill checks without being able to change equipment to make the skill check. I would think this change, that effects every skill check in the game, would either have been put to a beta-test (like the map was) or have the entire skill-check mechanics be overhauled, or had a bunch of equipment stat revamps built in with it. At best, this feels like an idea that was only half-implemented.

This doesn’t feel well-thought out or like it was play-tested. It feels like someone flipped a variable on the back-end of the game because they though it would be more “immersive” rather than because it would make for non-frustrating gameplay. Which is what the feedback for this change ultimately is. It makes the game as a whole categorically more frustrating to play than it was before.

94

“… gear that helps you in all stats”??
Sheesh, that’ll take me an hour to figure out.

I’m still wrestling with a game that’s gotten the players to spend significant time and money to maximize play, then changed basic systems to punish behavior it demanded,
edited by Snort on 7/29/2020


(And this card now seems to ask for a lot of effort for not much of a reward.)
edited by Snort on 7/29/2020

95

Okay, which one of you wished on the monkey’s paw?

Who thought this was a good idea? This is Seeking-level cruelty, inflicted to even the most casual players. I usually have a great deal of respect for this company, but really, Failbetter?

The logic doesn’t even hold up: &quotOh no, I forgot my head at home! At least I remembered to bring my facial scar with me! Unfortunately, this has rendered me incapable of carrying a pocket-watch at the same time.&quot

This update would have been an amazing change if not for that one little detail of locking outfits during storylets. That alone makes it a massive inconvenience, detracting not only from the benefits of the new changes, but to the entire rest of the game up to now. It’s far too massive a game-design change, far too deep into a game’s lifetime.

96

I’ve already said plenty, but another quick thought. I’ve seen several suggestions that the game better indicate which stats will be used, and I don’t think this would work either. Whenever the game explicitly describes how an option works, that shifts the focus from the narrative to the mechanics, and it’s rarely a positive change.

Consider the Bone Market. Flavor everywhere, but there’s constant text saying what attributes bones have or what prices buyers will give. Rather than a place to build cool skeletons, the area’s purpose is explicitly turning Resource A into Resource B at rates x y z. Would I want to explore the Bone Market without some level of information? Absolutely not. But I also don’t play Fallen London to optimize spreadsheets.

In the end, our characters’ stats are abstractions representing their capabilities. I’m fine with the narrative hinting my character will investigate something next. I’m hesitantly okay with the game saying I won’t be able to change gear for a bit. The game saying to equip Watchful gear both spoils potential surprise and brings me out of the narrative entirely.
edited by Optimatum on 7/29/2020

97

I have been a player, and subscriber, for about 4 years now. Bit more and bit less respectively. I put in 20 bucks twice-ish a year for fate. This is because I do so enjoy your content, because you offer so much good content for free that I don’t feel you are being greedy, and because I get some good LGBTQ+ content for making LGBTQ+ stories. When a company gives Queer representation, I want to support them, and while we do not have a lot of money, we have enough to toss FBG a few bucks. often, I do this in lieu of buying new, less Queer friendly games.

I strongly dislike the change to disallow changing outfits in storylets. I feel it punishes players for taking stories in organically, It eats up time with repetitive actions as we back out, change, and go back in, It does not add to immersion. There is a certain gamyness to the whole thing anyway, and stoylets make the change arbitrary and and non immersive by their nature. Maybe if it had begun that way, and the probably millions of storylets were written with that in mind, but that ship has sailed.

Also, frankly,. it is bad timing on multiple levels. You just added 7 new attributes to track and made three suddenly more important. And speaking for myself, I just purchased 60 fate worth of items last week under the assumption I would be able to use them when I needed them. I am very unhappy about this. Also we suddenly face much higher difficulties than we have (outside watchful) and being unable to change makes this more difficult.

At this time, I am working out whether I want to continue my subscription. I am not giving ultimatums yet, I will give it due thought. But I am seriously reconsidering if I want to keep paying for the game when I foresee a great deal of frustration with it. I want to be supportive and I want to work with you on changes even those that might not be ideal for me, but this breaks a lot. I am intensely frustrated.

Please note, as a meeting halfway, I don’t, necessarily, object to certain points locking you from changing outfits, with appropriate warning. But use it as a spice, please, not core mechanic. I think this compromise can get you points where you need to be unable to change outfits and not making it as common.

As for the additional outfit options, my feelings are more complicated. I don’t think asking for a sub for more options is too much to ask. You do, after all, want to turn a profit on a niche game. I feel that in combination with the above change, though, it is bad because it essentially demands more outfit slots (because we may need different combinations regularly) and people find themselves with essentially fewer options for it. Having a standard for each of the four attributes is not enough with this change. So this hurts free players, who essentially lose a slot and have the outfit changing issue.

I can’t comment on the 20 fate/additional slot much. I mean, absent this change, I can see why people would be annoyed, but it is not too unfair. We got by on four outfits, and if the above change is reversed that will still be possible, those who really want more can pay…FBG needs money to survive, and I don’t feel this is asking too much. At the same time, I can see free players wishing they were getting something besides screwed over with the changes. So I am not upset about this, though I understand some of the anger.

I have not liked every change made, but I have stood by the company, because it is not just about me. I am not going to have a fit of temper because they do not do things my way. But this is a bad idea. Maybe it would have worked once, but that ship sailed a decade ago. The game has been built in a certain way, players have had expectations, and this change is a problem. Even moreso, with more stats to juggle. I request you reconsider, as I am reconsidering my own financial support and from what I read and hear I am not the only one.

Thank you, and I hope despite this you manage a good day.

98

[quote=0bsidian Fire]…the game does not give us, the players, enough information to know what kinds of items we should be equipping before we go into a storylet where we can’t change outfits…it feels like it didn’t take the previous 10 years of Fallen London content into account.

…This doesn’t feel well-thought out or like it was play-tested. It feels like someone flipped a variable on the back-end of the game because they though it would be more &quotimmersive&quot rather than because it would make for non-frustrating gameplay.[/quote]

Absolutely the idea I was trying to pin down.

And after playing through my deck a couple times and working on stories: leaving to manage my gear is the polar opposite of immersive. Changing clothes during a party may be strange from an in-universe perspective, but it’s easy to suspend disbelief. Having to make a bunch of meta decisions and added clicks as a player is directly taking the player out and away from the game.

99

Bingo. There are plenty of games where you pick one set of equipment and rarely change it, and you have to balance (for example) Attack, Defense, Speed, and Magic. But in those games, all of the stats are useful in almost all battles. Only rarely do you encounter situations where maximizing Magic would have been strictly better, because the enemy pierces all Defenses, negates your Speed advantage, and is immune to non-magical Attacks.

Every one of Fallen London’s challenges tells you point-blank which stat you should have maximized, and gives you a number telling you exactly how bad it was that you didn’t maximize that one stat. Ten years worth of content is designed for maximizing one stat at a time.

100

This is by far the worst thing they’ve ever done, far worse than Requirements & Costs way back when.

I’m absolutely baffled by how even a single person at Failbetter could have thought this a good idea after actually testing it for more than five minutes.

How can they possibly expect us to know which stat we’ll want to boost before going into a storylet all the time? Everywhere in the game? In new content? There’s no way I’m going to play an ES under this system. Or do much of anything, honestly.

This makes every single location outside of London proper literally unplayable, and menace-locations… geez, I don’t want to think about it. Having to play Chess against the Boatman is bad enough as it is, but at least I can prepare for it most of the time… maybe even equip a mood right before going there. But ending up there surprisingly without being able to boost my Watchful at all?

What if I get sent to New Newgate while wearing a Pirate Hat? I won’t be able to unequip it, right? So how am I going to get Suspicion to zero?

This is so massively badly implemented, massively badly thought-through, and has such massively bad effects on overall gameplay, it really boggles my mind how anyone could’ve thought &quotHey, let’s do this!&quot and even expected us to pay real money for it. This is Trump-level trolling, and the explanation that being able to change equipment everywhere is &quotunrealistic&quot only adds insult to injury.

Because Fallen London is such a realistic game, right? Being able to change your hat in prison really detracts from the realism in a city that elects a talking cat as mayor. Kicks you right out of your world-immersion.

Dear Failbetter: When you’ve just released a new feature for subscribers, and people’s reaction is cancelling their subscriptions, something went wrong. Massively.