I’ve packed my board with members susceptible to Obfuscation. I already open every proposal with the Chewbacca Defense, I think putting on a fake mustache (which will go over a real mustache) is only going to improve my odds.
I feel as though what’s happening here may be similar to what is happening with many older games: the devs are becoming restless about working on the same old gameplay, but are unwilling to move on from the OG property, so they muck around with the old stuff in a way that just doesn’t work.
If that is the case… Why not create a new subsection of Fallen London-- an expansion, if you will, that takes place in a second story tab? You can make the new gameplay elements as voluminous as you like (rather than spottily restricted to a few new exceptional stories) there without affecting the base game.
It works even better when you put on a real mustache over a fake one. Trust me.
This. I exactly did this last night. There’s no penalty to failed "get someone to vote with you" checks, so I ended up spending an extra ten actions. It did not add anything of value to my gameplay experience.
Related is the lack of overlap between gear that increases the new end-game stats and the core four stats which currently show up in a mix on various stories. Parabolan hunts are a good example - you need maxed Dangerous and Glasswork/Monstrous Anatomy. The Glasswork tracking checks don’t carry a penalty on failure beyond a lost action, while the Dangerous checks increase Nightmares on failure. Well, guess what, Glasswork increasing gear doesn’t increase Dangerous. So the outcome is ignoring Glasswork increasing gear. Yay.
And then there’s the Bone Market. There’s no overlap on the new end-game stats at all and Assemble a Skeleton is entirely reliant on those stats. Which means you have to Perhaps Not out of the skeleton-building and change gear EVERY TIME you add a new element. You’re not restricted on this, so all it adds to game-play is… clicks. Click click click.
The other aspects of the update (particularly being able to temporarily shuffle gear) are very good!
I am pretty sure new players, who are the least likely to have an EF, are feeling the brunt of the whole thing - wasting actions again and again. Which means they are less likely to stick with the game, especially during the long early grinds.
As an endgame player, I simply feel dissapointed. I was a bit swamped with the new content and was looking forward to buying a couple of extra candles and going through it during my holidays. Instead, I am letting all my actions go to waste as I dare not touch my Ambition, the two ES I have waiting or even enter the Lab. What really scares me though is that the game will keep morphing into something needlessly complicated for the sake of innovation - just as we got enough content to last us for another year.
A thing that has been crossing my mind regarding having to use Fate to unlock outfits is that, if there is a rollback and outfits are useful again, there is nothing stopping Failbetter from waiting a while and announcing the outfit cap is now 20! So please pay another 200 Fate now! After all, many have expressed that 10 outfits isn’t that many. So you could have players with 20 outfits while some have 4. This could happen every time Failbetter feels like they need cash flow. There is no guaranty it will happen, of course. It’s just a bit discouraging to me to see such a frequently requested feature finally being provided, but only for those able to afford it.
Hi,
I just signed up to be an Exceptional Friend a few days ago, and it looks like this change breaks the Paisley exceptional story and traps me in Concord Square? The ‘Consider your wardrobe choices’ is still part of a storylet, so I can’t change outfits to put on the Paisley glove, but I also can’t step outside Concord Square until I’ve talked to the Supervising Detective with the glove on.
[quote=Gammrar]Hi,
I just signed up to be an Exceptional Friend a few days ago, and it looks like this change breaks the Paisley exceptional story and traps me in Concord Square? The ‘Consider your wardrobe choices’ is still part of a storylet, so I can’t change outfits to put on the Paisley glove, but I also can’t step outside Concord Square until I’ve talked to the Supervising Detective with the glove on.[/quote]
Probably your best bet is to submit a bug report. I’ve always found Failbetter to be very responsive. You can email support@failbettergames.com with a description of the issue.
Most of my thoughts on the change have been already said and much more eloquently than I ever could. However, I would like to echo a couple of points:
[ul][li]The idea of having some (!) locations that restrict outfit switching sounds exciting! However, the only option how I see it could work, is if it used in new content and only in stories that have been written with this design element in mind.[/li][li]Another alternative (or addition) could be having more multi-stat checks. I, personally, find those very exciting. However, like with having but some locations that restrict wardrobe changes, multi-stat checks would be nice if they were a lovely sometimes-touch not an overall thing.[/li][li]Making additional outfits fate-locked leaves an extremely sour taste in my mouth. It has been requested for such a long time, and locking something like that behind a paywall just does not feel right. To me, fate (apart from ES-s) has always been something to support the game and get a lil’ something extra (items etc), but never for gatekeeping significantly more comfortable gameplay.[/li][/ul]And as a bonus: my pet peeve! I have spacial memory, so I very often don’t read the texts when I am familiar with them, but instead click on the space I know the button for my choice to be. However, at one point, the drop-down menu for outfits in possessions tab stopped displaying the outfit one was currently wearing. Which means the order of outfits in the drop-down list is ever changing, depending what one is wearing. This forces me to actually read the outfit names, instead of just clicking, for example, the third option that I know to be my rp-outfit. The drop-down list stays fixed in the sidebar, and it would be so freaking awesome, if the possessions tab list also stayed fixed.
EDIT: formatting
edited by Desirée on 7/30/2020
edited by Desirée on 7/30/2020
Finally got a card to let me into The Flit without having to pay prices I couldn’t afford.
Too bad I didn’t think to change into my Shadowy outfit before coming there. You can’t change there at all. Guess I won’t be doing anything in this much looked forward to location after all.
[quote=Gammrar]Hi,
I just signed up to be an Exceptional Friend a few days ago, and it looks like this change breaks the Paisley exceptional story and traps me in Concord Square? The ‘Consider your wardrobe choices’ is still part of a storylet, so I can’t change outfits to put on the Paisley glove, but I also can’t step outside Concord Square until I’ve talked to the Supervising Detective with the glove on.[/quote]
Might be worth emailing support about that - they might respond to that faster than reading this huge thread!
I hope we can all agree that the previous system – where you find yourself constantly switching outfits and fiddling with them to ‘optimize’ everything – was a bad way of doing things. Outfits should be meaningful, not infinitely malleable. Fallen London loses narrative richness when people get too focused on optimizing the game and playing it like a spreadsheet.
However, this isn’t a great way of achieving the goal.
Here’s an idea: Instead of forcing people not to switch things around, have a bonus for using an outfit ‘set’ that you’ve had preset for a long stretch of time.
If I set a ‘Dangerous Monster Hunter’ outfit and keep it that way, for every month that preset remains unchanged, +1 to my Dangerous, with a cap of, say, +6. A nice little bonus, nothing huge, but that gives me some satisfaction for not playing Fallen London like it’s a spreadsheet to be relentlessly optimized all the time.
edited by Televangelist on 7/31/2020
[quote=Kaleestraza]Finally got a card to let me into The Flit without having to pay prices I couldn’t afford.
Too bad I didn’t think to change into my Shadowy outfit before coming there. You can’t change there at all. Guess I won’t be doing anything in this much looked forward to location after all.[/quote]
Refresh the page.
Failbetter’s people patched the work-around that I had been using to circumvent the outfit-locking. (No, I had not told other people about this - but someone blabbed about it here, I recall.)
Someone on the staff is hella adamant about this change.
I can already imagine how much strain that would put on the maintenance routines for the servers.
[quote=Rostygold]Failbetter’s people patched the work-around that I had been using to circumvent the outfit-locking. (No, I had not told other people about this - but someone blabbed about it here, I recall.)
Someone on the staff is hella adamant about this change.[/quote]
Well, that’s disheartening to hear. I haven’t been overmuch affected because I play Fallen London like Ultimate Spreadsheet Simulator 9000 anyway (not always well, mind you) but I think it’s clear by now the response to it has been overwhelmingly seen as a net negative, especially by newer players.
I just want to enthuse for a bit.
I’ve been playing Fallen London for… actually I don’t remember… at least 7 years i think? And it has kept me fascinated, baffled, confused, and astounded for the entirety of that time. This game has given me more joy than most books I’ve read (I’m the son of two librarians so that’s high praise) and definitely more engagement than any other game I’ve played. I don’t remember ever having such a sense of glee when playing a game before.
The lore and background is labyrinthine and complex and, in some cases, near impenetrable - and I love it. I am constantly encountering penny-drop moments where something a character says or alludes to hooks back to previous content. It’s such a moment of joy to realise a connection between what you’d assumed were unrelated things.
Quite recently I started writing stuff down and taking screenshots to supplement my (failing) memory - something I’d been meaning to do for years and really wish I had. In the course of a few of weeks I’ve assembled more than a hundred pages of notes and thoughts and questions and comments on people, places, events, history, etc etc. It’s only scratching the surface but already makes me feel like some conspiracy theorist with a wall covered in papers, pins, string, and pictures - but in a good way!
This effort was precipitated by the new content that’s been arriving and I really can’t thank Failbetter enough for what has been immensely important to me. I had a rough start to the year with a death in the family and my interest in, well, anything took a dive. Then all the emotional and social disruption of the pandemic happened and I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone about how that’s been. This game and community has been an essential source of pleasure and engagement.
I’ve been a paid supporter for years and have contributed to Kickstarter, bought other games, purchased merchandise, and sought out content creators to support their work in whatever small way I could. I’ve felt very strongly that this thing I love should be supported as best I can and I’m in a place to be able to do that monetarily so please, take my money. I really love this community - though I’m not really one for engaging online so I feel like a bit of an observer rather than a contributor. Thank you to everyone who makes this forum and the wiki the incredible resources they are, you have my undying admiration. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all involved in creating this game and this community
To bring this ramble back to the latest update: I trust in Failbetter to have the welfare of the payers at heart (though I say this prior to the promised response to feedback…) and it’s unlikely that anything will stop me from playing now. The changes introduced the other day are mostly positive - with the massive exception of the outfit lock. I think the arguments against it have been made far far more eloquently than I could by others in this thread but, yes, I’m definitely of the opinion it needs to be reversed. Personally, I will not be immediately quitting the game if the change stays - though I can understand why some people might - but it already has reduced my enjoyment of actual game-play and made me focus more attention on that rather than on the thing I really want to enjoy, which is the story.
Please. Just let me love your stories.
I cannot change anything anywhere in london, how do I unlock all this ?
Screenshot, please? You might be stuck in some kind of storylet.
There’s also a bug that keeps your outfits locked. Can be fixed by refreshing.