I totally agree there. I wish people didn’t jump straight to assuming malice, and there’s no need for abuse.
I totally believe that FBG thought they were making a change that would make the game better and more fun, they’re not mustache-twirling villains and are doing their best.
…and except for the outfit-locking, many of the other changes - searching items by quality, switching outfits from the main screen, extra outfits (albeit for Fate) are pretty nice.
Almost everything in this update is actually great. The whole thing is geared towards making it much more convenient to quickly and easily change equipment/outfits. It feels like the lock was implemented by some other group that was specifically trying to sabotage the improvements that Failbetter made with this update.
This. I can’t fathom the thought that the same person(s) came up with such massively conflicting changes. At the same time, I can’t understand why the person(s) with the good ideas wouldn’t just slap the hand(s) of the person(s) with the terrible idea. What happened during the decision making? Was it politics?
Or maybe, just maybe, FB staff is tired and overworked and made a bad call on this. This stands to make sense, at least. They have most probably been working round the clock to add so much new content to the game the past few months, and to constantly tweak it. I would understand this theory. As hopefully they can understand the mistake they made here.
edited by Baron Lagavulin on 7/30/2020
So I haven’t posted in the forums in awhile. But yikes, some people are getting way to hostile. :( Please keep it civil.
First off, a lot of these changes are a great quality-of-life improvement. I want to thank the FB team for adding them, and for being willing to attempt improvements to core systems even after 10 years. I’d hate to have the game stagnate because developers were unwilling to try new things.
But there do seem to be some big unintended consequences for the seasoned player base (those paying fate, and who routinely face much tougher stat challenges than the rest of us in the mid-game):
I personally like the lock for role-playing reasons, but sadly it is devaluing paid gear and making end-game grinds really painful. :(
And I can see how the changes seemed like no-big-deal when it was pushed out, but perhaps it’s worth considering beta-testing features like this with paid players in the future? Just for these kind of unintended consequences.
edited by Six Handed Merchant on 7/30/2020
[quote=Six Handed Merchant]So I haven’t posted in the forums in awhile. But yikes, some people are getting way to hostile. :( Please keep it civil.[/quote]I don’t think there’s hostility here. Apart from a couple of comments by a couple of people or so. Most of us are frustrated about this, yes, and we express this almost confrontationally, but I think that noone’s really taking it out on the FB team directly. The game is still wonderful, the writing is still far better than anything else out there that I’ve tried, and they’re allowed to make mistakes some time. But we do have to voice our concerns when such mistakes are made.
I think, from what I’ve read here at least, that people are mostly aggressive on Discord? I wouldn’t know for sure because I don’t visit there. But here, it’s pretty civil. We’re mad at the change, because it makes no sense, and the justification for it, because it makes even less sense. We still like FB. I think. :)
Assuming the universal outfit lock will be removed, I do think it’s worth using the outfit lock functionality for new (isolated) story content in the future.
I like the idea of having to choose a balanced outfit for use over a whole storylet, and it would make a lot of much-ignored multi-stat equipment useful again. As a limited game mechanic, it would be a fun challenge. :)
Or, provide a toggle for the outfit-lock in Settings, that way those doing end-game grinding or who paid Fate / Memory of a Tale for min-maxing on individual challenges don’t get screwed by the change.
edited by Six Handed Merchant on 7/30/2020
One more thing that I haven’t seen mentioned: If you’re gonna introduce a thing that pretty much necessarily makes a lot of parts of the endgame content harder. Then at the very least reduce the difficulty a touch to compensate.
For an example, I used to get 67% success chance on Following the storm bird with 10 scouting, now I get 60%. This is entirely due to me now stocking some glasswork items to get the aforementioned 10 scouting. If you’re gonna reduce my effective dangerous like that, at least reduce the challenge rating a little bit too so the content doesn’t become arbitrarily harder.
Simply put: the change tries to transform ten years’ worth of storytelling content into an ersatz strategy-exploration game. And nobody asked for that.
Since the new fragmented map came up, the nature of the game keeps changing - the story is still strong, but the new elements while fun in themseves, keep adding needless stressors. The Bone Market was needlessly annoying enough as it was - just a poor excuse to make BDR matter outside Notability. The introduction of 4-5 new stats was between fun and annoying - you abosolutely had to check the forum and the wiki to do anything, which a lot of people would rather NOT do. The new map added to this difficulty - finding new content became troublesome, as you had to cycle through twenty locations JUST in case something came up, somewhere. Troublesome in PC, impossible in mobile (one of the reasons I was forced to play less - I had to be in front of a large enough monitor).
And now, on top of that, you have to keep in mind what you wear before entering any of these fragmented locations because apparently you can house tigers and bears in a tiny room above a bookshop, but you cannot possibly carry a second pair of gloves on you.
Just… why? People play FL for the story, and the delicious words. This is not a console game, where you have the make the proper combos in the right equipment to achieve the desired result. Realism and min-maxing was never a part of this; we just want to read forward! And since the most precious FL resource is actions, making us waste lots of them to walk out of an area, "change" clothes and come back is making the game less desirable and breaking immersion much more than outfit changes ever did. Didn’t we make it clear enough we’ll never love the RNG?
As many said above… it is as if someone in FB decided to implement all the right "quality of life" design choices, and then someone else decided that players would end up spoilt and bereft of any challenge, so they added the outfit lock just in case.
Can we just… go back to playing Fallen London the storytelling game instead of pushing towards a convoluted hybrid? We like it as it is. Really. We love it. It’s not Sunless Sea/Skies, it’s a browser game, and that was always fine with us.
edited by Jolanda Swan on 7/30/2020
[quote=Six Handed Merchant]Assuming the universal outfit lock will be removed, I do think it’s worth using the outfit lock functionality for new (isolated) story content in the future.
I like the idea of having to choose a balanced outfit for use over a whole storylet, and it would make a lot of much-ignored multi-stat equipment useful again. As a limited game mechanic, it would be a fun challenge. :)[/quote]
This. This seems like the perfect solution to me. The functionality is awesome to have for the occasional change in pace, but it makes a lot of older content somewhat more tedious at best and frustrating and obnoxious at worst.
It is one thing to be forced to compromise with stats and inevitably made to face delays, failure and its consequences in the freely repeatable content. But a lot of things (Ambitions, many one-shot stories and most crucially, Exceptional stories) offer you one pass at playthrough and exploration of all the possibilities. Some have been written to offer various options different in flavour and/or functionality, dependent on your stats and qualities (such as BDR). Unlike in the new content, these options were often not meant or balanced to be mutually exclusive, but now they are. And in case of Exceptional Stories, you are literally going into these situations blind, without knowing which of the quality-giving items you will need or which stat check you really can’t afford to miss.
Missing out on lore, parts of stories or various rewards due to perceived inadequate signposting has repeatedly been the most loudly voiced complaint regarding Exceptional Stories or other one-shot content. This problem is magnified to the extreme by this change.
And while I get the intent of implementing greater realism, it does come up with its own inconsistencies. Case in point - Port Carnelian, which is set so that you need maxed out Persuasive to be competitive, and then you repeatedly run into one of the most challenging and punishing Watchful checks in the game. We are supposed to be the Governor of London’s colony, but we are incapable to change into a more suitable outfit for a meeting with a known enemy spy in our own house? What gives?
Anyway, I have full faith in FBG’s capacity of considering feedback, and it’s been made abundantly clear that there are few if any members of the player base who care for this sort of focus on balancing and optimizing gear along multiple axes more than for streamlined, user friendly game. I’m sure FBG will come up with an agreeable compromise, as they have done many times in the past.
edited by Aardvark on 7/30/2020
Today I almost started a railway board meeting while wearing the wrong outfit. Had I gone through with it, my choice would have been spending twice the actions per vote or having to wait an extra week to do anything. That’s just silly.
To pitch in my two cents:
¢: A systematic change, like with outfits, is going to require combing through and tweaking tons of content in order to work, which did not happen here. As a part of this, I think a change like this should be announced to the community at large before launching so players can point out conflicting content that might be overlooked, which to the best of my knowledge didn’t happen. And as others have said, outfit locking can be a good thing. Carefully preparing our gear for unknown territory/storylets would add to the atmosphere of the game, and could be used for content that’s mechanically made for it, such as the upcoming war.
2¢: To add a new point, I think all players should get a fifth slot. For one, Failbetter has put so much effort into creating interesting items and art pieces that players can’t use because they’re not best-in-slot. Second, as it stands, this means players have to pay for a basic fix in mechanics, which is a terrible business practice. Even as an Exceptional Friend who technically paid for two slots, I’d be happy with making this privilege open to all accounts.
[quote=Optimatum]Today I almost started a railway board meeting while wearing the wrong outfit. Had I gone through with it, my choice would have been spending twice the actions per vote or having to wait an extra week to do anything. That’s just silly.[/quote] I actually made this mistake yesterday and I did indeed blow through all my actions very quickly. It took multiple candles to simply get through that one meeting. Heh, seems like they’re going extra hard on the realism by making board meetings exceptionally tedious!
Minor point, all things considered: We recently added seven new stats. Why did we get six new (potential, non-exceptional) outfit slots?
As a newer player, I feel well positioned to comment on the earlier conversation concerning stickiness with new customers.
I indeed feel that the change imposes an incredibly steep barrier to enjoyment for new players. You see, I already had a niggling discomfort with the Action system. It’s difficult to feel invested in this game when play sessions are cut off so quickly, when it feels as though I’m just trying to read a book but only get handed a page at a time. But I accepted it because it’s so totally necessary for you guys to put food on the table.
But now? With a change that essentially does nothing to benefit the employees of Failbetter and accomplishes nothing but added frustration and mouse clicks and more time and fiddling and lost Actions between you and the story experience…? Jeeze. It’s hard to imagine any new players dealing with all this on top of each other. I’m on the verge of quitting myself.
Do you realize how hard checks are before you’ve had the chance to grind qualities? It’s gear swapping that helps new players get through the beginning of the game.
I began playing Fallen London because I loved Sunless Seas but could not yet afford Sunless Skies. I planned on spending money on Fallen London once I got in a better financial situation. But now that I might be forced to fail out of Exceptional Stories by this poorly planned mechanic? Wow, I can’t imagine spending that cash if it might be wasted.
edited by Kaleestraza on 7/30/2020
The easiest solution is to add a toggle in Settings for the new outfits rule like they did for the new map. Call it “Unlock Outfit Selection” or “Classic Outfit Mode” or something. And if they want to push the new system, leave “Classic Mode” on for existing accounts (or for accounts with POSI), but turn it off for brand-new accounts.
That way those of us who like the new system can play with it, while those who paid for a lot of gear using the old rules, or who are doing lots of end-game grinds, don’t get screwed by the change.
Just popping in to add my voice to those who think outfit locking could be an interesting feature, but only in specific areas with skill checks that were designed with a single outfit in mind (and definitely not as a universal feature!). I wanted to play through a bit more to see if my initial reaction of "oh no, this isn’t fun at all" changed over time. Unfortunately, it didn’t. In most cases it’s just tedious to have to click back out of a storylet and finagle my gear to make sure I have the highest mithridacy (etc.) possible. It even negates the convenience of the new outfit slots because I still have to click out of a storylet even if I have a max-mithridacy outfit saved but not equipped. For players like me with slow internet connections and long loading times, this adds a lot of frustration to an otherwise fun experience. It also added even more clicks while playing on mobile, where the option to change outfits from the story tab isn’t available (that I could find).
I can see this option working in certain areas like board meetings or parties, where it’s a bit silly to imagine my character ducking into a closet, putting on a monocle and a fake mustache, and popping back out to say "Well do you agree with me now? But applying it to all storylets universally, without (it seems) re-balancing all of the past skill checks, feels like a net negative change. And as others have said, it also makes me wary of playing non-repeatable (and fate-locked) content without checking the wiki/forums to make sure that I’m not going to miss out on something special just because I chose the wrong hat. This also makes the game less fun for me because I often run into spoilers which I would rather experience organically. Fallen London is a game about choices, but the choice between potentially missing out on content or spoiling a story for myself doesn’t feel like one I should be forced to make.
I’m very glad that you’re re-evaluating this change, and hope that this feedback can be helpful while deciding how to enact this new feature. Thank you for all of your hard work over the past 10 years, and I look forward to 10 more filled with compelling choices and delicious stories.
edited by Kloxe on 7/30/2020
[quote=Kloxe]It’s a bit silly to imagine my character ducking into a closet, putting on a monocle and a fake mustache, and popping back out to say "Well do you agree with me now?" [/quote]Oh, I can totally see my character doing exactly that. In fact, he probably has. Eccentricity.
It’s in the side menu. Same place you see your menaces and such. Click on the three lines in the upper left corner of the screen.
Couldn’t you make multi-stat equipment useful by just having more multi-stat challenges?
Well, doing that with any degree of success, haha. I’m imagining the looks you must get from Virginia during board meetings…