Ok now it works… nevermind … (I was in no storylet and had refreshed before my last post) thanks anyway
I am getting the bug too. It seems to happen if I have my character stay in a locked state for too long, presumably when the server is running refresh routines.
UPDATE: It also appears to happen if I use the Bazaar while being in a storylet. Making transactions causes the lock to stay until the webpage is reloaded.
edited by Rostygold on 7/31/2020
Here comes a very selfish request: as Failbetter discusses what to do, could we possibly have the lock removed at least temporarily?
I am staring at my half-finished Ambition, two unplayed ES and a ton of new content, as my two candles go to waste since the change. Not in the mood to do the usual grinds while this remains undecided.
Given the overwhelmingly negative response, would it be too much to ask for a rollback until this is resolved one way or another?
I would say here that not being able to change outfits in Parabola is very difficult to accept.
The player character can conjure Parabolan versions of things through the memories of these things alone. They can work like the real thing in Parabola, as long as they stay in Parabola.
So, no, I don’t accept that it would be unreasonable to change outfits there, if someone is going to pose a thematic argument.
P.S. Currently, places like the Chessboard will lock the player’s outfit, even outside of storylets.
[quote=Rostygold]I would say here that not being able to change outfits in Parabola is very difficult to accept.
The player character can conjure Parabolan versions of things through the memories of these things alone. They can work like the real thing in Parabola, as long as they stay in Parabola.
So, no, I don’t accept that it would be unreasonable to change outfits there, if someone is going to pose a thematic argument.
P.S. Currently, places like the Chessboard will lock the player’s outfit, even outside of storylets.[/quote]
What about the Base Camp? Can you change outfits there? I hope you can, otherwise you would basically have to spread visiting Waswood, the Chessboard and any hunts over three separate visits, which would be borderline unacceptably limiting. And considering the all-or-nothing nature of Waswood and the Chessboard, this sort of action sink really is unwarranted.
Also, the "locked until refresh" bug makes the bad situation even worse and more grating, so I’m really hoping a rollback is under consideration.
Like others, right now I am now loathe to play any of my 6 waiting Exceptional Stories just in case I might miss something important for my character.
Like said, a final feedback after I tried the new storylet:
I equiped with different stats, so that I’ll have a little bonus of everything. But it doesn’t felt more exiting than compared to a normal story. I’ve just required more actions because I wasn’t able to switch outfits in between for maxing stats.
Since there is no real drawback/change for failing this design felt like a action sink. On failure you just hit the “try again” button until you’re trough and you require this button more often because your equipment can’t fit to all challenges.
If you really want to make stories like this interesting, you’ll need to do it the P&P way: continue with the result in stead of trying again. You fail to persuade the constable to let you trough? allright, in stead of talking to thim again (and again, and again) you have to find another way inside. This could be to strike down the constable (Dangerous) or find a way to sneak in (Shadowy).
Stuff like this means much more work, since the story is way less linear and you have to find ways to get the paths together, in order to keep the necessary work in bay. But this way, it would make a difference beyond rng which equipment you chose before entering the story.
Based on this move discouraging my play I have cancelled my Exceptional on my two main accounts. I believe that if enough people show that this update devalues the game for them and withdraw that source of income changes will come incredibly quickly. I like the team at Failbetter and I want to support them, but I think this nudge will make a change more hasty. I intend to resubscribe once the Outfit Lock is removed.
Yes, fortunately - but there is a bug that can cause the lock to be retained when re-entering the base-camp from the Chessboard. It requires a browser page reload.
That seems like a reasonable response. I can definitely see ways that this could make the game interesting when specifically designed to take advantage of the new mechanic.
Since it sounds like more often than not we will still be able to change outfits freely, I hope that the minority of cases where that’s not the case will be signposted in advance.
I thought that post was just pointing out how trivial it would be to write a browser extension to save an unlimited number of outfits. Save a list of nine things you want to equip, make nine HTTP POST requests when you want to equip them. $5 to save me the trouble of doing that actually doesn’t seem unreasonable, but charging $5 for each list of nine things I want to save seems a little sketchy.
As someone who works on both the front-end and the back-end, the thought of disabling something by turning off the button in the UI without checking the validity of the API call makes me cringe. If I worked at FB I would have patched that if I noticed it while looking at the code the next day, regardless of how I felt about game design.
Personally, I do think the total Fate cost of each subsequent outfit is a bit high. I’d definitely get one extra if it was 10 Fate, but not for 20 Fate. It might even make sense to change the cost levels to 10, 20, 30, etc.
But with the current locking mechanism, I won’t bother at all. There’s not point in storing additional outfits if they’re not easily usable.
edited by Toran on 7/31/2020
Honestly, I would be more likely to pay 20 Fate to unlock all six than to pay 3 Fate each. Making it incremental feel exploitative. It makes me think of exactly how much an extra database row must cost them, instead of how much it cost them to develop the feature.
edited by PJ on 7/31/2020
I’d be more willing to pay by outfit only because realistically I only need one for BDR and that’s because BDR is a giant, occasional pain in the butt. Everything else takes a couple clicks and with the new “no-save” feature it’s negligible. Like, MAYBE I’d want two additional total outfits.