I was just wondering what everyone’s playstyle for FL is? With all RPG games I try and even things out as much as possible but actually found myself raising my Watchful and Persuasive higher than the rest, at least for now… Mostly because I REALLY want to gain entrance to The University and who doesn’t like a higher position in Society :P
What about everyone else??
Well, I’m capped on my main account and my alt account so it’s really a matter of which connections I’m more interested in and such for them. My alt alt account I was following my ambition (Light Fingers), but I kind of want to get to Court and write some Epic Poetry so I’m working on my Persuasive.
I used to play for Persuasive and Shadowy, because their corresponding menaces were easy to reduce, and I always wanted my character to be a gentlemanly thief that could talk his way out of anything.
Then I realized that the Correspondence could set your hair on fire, and that at higher Dangerous storylets, you could hunt spider-councils and breed fire-spitting lobsters, and as they say, the rest is history.
My playstyle is determined not by the qualities I want to grind, but by ambitious projects I wish to undertake. After getting PoSI, I grinded parts to get a Swift Zee Clipper, before going to the Palace to create one of every novel, poem, song, and so on. Then I decided to go to Polythreme, and changed my vessel to a Zubmarine. Then I decided I wanted to get an Overgoat, and spent the next 3 months shopping in the Flit for various items, because I had made overly pessimistic assumptions in my calculations.
I’m not sure what I’ll do after getting the Overgoat, but I should probably deal with Jack of Smiles.
edited by Nagato-01 on 8/22/2012
i tend to play like a seeker of mysteries.
As for my stats, my watchful and persuasive is higher than the other; simply because I prefer convincing other to give me stuff rather than taking it without their consent…
I suppose I’m what TV Tropes calls a Genius Bruiser. I focused on Watchful and Dangerous, to the detriment of Persuasive and Shadowy.
(Reposted from the duplicate thread)
Personally I went into the game intending to play an erudite thug, someone who would quote Plato in the original Latin while demonstrating an admirable knowledge of pugilism. The first opportunity for an Ambition I had was for Nemesis which required high levels of Dangerous and Watchful, so it was a perfect fit. (Note that this is a thug in the London sense rather than the Indian one.)
Note that like all truly good characters, mine evolved over time. He developed, even cultivated, an appreciation for the arts beyond the admiration he had always had for their technical achievements, and learned that sometimes the closed fist is less effective at opening doors than a lightly grasped bit of spring metal.
Now he is leveraging his considerable abilities into a network of favors and friendships with the many factions that pervade London after it’s thef… I mean fall. He is slowly learning that some doors that resist even the ministrations of the spring metal can be opened by someone on the other side with the right word dropped in the right ear at the right time for a small consideration.
At first I thought this was going to be about the Bartle Test, which categorizes gamers into
Achievers (diamonds), who want to get all the shiny things,
Explorers (spades), who want to see all the content & figure out exactly how the game mechanics work,
Socializers (hearts), who’re in it for the roleplaying and friendships,
and Killers (clubs), who love PvP and/or griefing.
You can take a quiz here, though a lot of the questions don’t really apply to ebz. Our current lack of a PvP system makes it hard to club these days. I should draw up a more Neathian version. (Though actually, now that I think about it, the four stats line up quite well with these four categories. Meta!)
Edit: & so this isn’t a complete derail - I maxed Watchful & Persuasive before going back to boost the other two, which were both at like 15. I don’t find the burglary & violence stories interesting … though once you hit the Labyrinth and the Hall, Dangerous & Shadowy get a lot more intense.
edited by Eudoxia on 8/23/2012
edited by Eudoxia on 8/23/2012
Wow that is quite a quiz… Thanks for the amazing find! I was 60% Explorer 60% Socialization
44% Achiever and 23% Killer, which sounds about accurate.
I always play games for story with a sense of accomplishment when I get the associated achievement or just for being one of the few people that achieved it. That is why I like FL so much, it is pretty much a never ending story! :D
Hah. I don’t even need to take the quiz to know I’m basically an explorer.
I am also basically an explorer, though i also enjoy achiever stuff. Never had much interest in PVP.
In Fallen London, a game of secrets and mysteries, exploration and achievement are pretty much the same thing. I suppose an achiever might spend more time grinding for quantifiable rewards, and an explorer might deliberately fail to see different outcomes, but much of their gameplay would be the same.
The only complaint I have on that quiz is that it pretty much expected you to like to brag OR kill stuff. There were no options for neither of them. Otherwise a very nice quiz =)
Explorer 100%, Socializer 53%, Achiever 33% and Killer 13%
Heh. When I joined this game Knife and Candle had already been taken out. After about four months I learned that there was suppose to be PvP, but I had never seen any evidence of it. I looked for a bit, but obviously didn’t turn up anything other than it had been removed. I was… not disappointed.
47% Achiever (I thought this would be higher, honestly), 47% Socializer (While it is true I do very little socializing in game, I contribute to the wiki and I have a time or two posted on this forum. I guess that makes me a meta-socializer.), 20% Killer (which is amusing as Dangerous is one of my signature stats).
100% Explorer.
I won the quiz.
Yeah actual player interaction is something I would really like to have in FL outside of sending requests and stuff but I think it is practically impossible with the way it is currently set up but I’m not disappointed with the lack of PVP either. I actually started playing while K&C was still in but my stats didn’t get high enough before they took it out but it never really interested me anyways.
I look for unsolved mysteries and work on that. Stat building and wealth gathering are merely happy side effects. Right now I am working on plugging the gaps in my knowledge about item conversions and their rare successes. Other things don’t interest me as much… I am only seeking the name because I got bored of the stat cap message.
I started out looking to try and do everything, carefully perusing guides to make sure I picked the “best” options. Lately, however, I’ve decided that since I can’t literally do everything, and thus a perfect file is futile, that the things I do NOT do are as important as the things I do. I kicked out the intimate devils, ripped up my plant when it started demanding to eat people, told the devils that they can suck it… and otherwise played the part of a virtuous member of the Neath. I even got myself kicked off the squad when I tried to reform it.
Exactly with me. My main character i’m a bit of a meta-game perfectionist, a explorer investigator who wants to use everything at his disposable to find out the truth of the matters so just he could know it (and maybe use it to his advantage). So I want all the titles and fancy rewards on him… but, that’s, a rather tiring thought because i’m realizing its impossible… or the things I want, don’t fall in line with what I’d want to do…
But ever since I started my alt… I’ve really had a blast, just, doing things crazy, skipping whole content swaths I didn’t care for (Never did the archeological stuff or joined the University), making crazy decisions, sucking up to the Masters. He’s actually become my content explorer… whereas my main is sort of time-frozen (for money grindings pretty much, i’ve got about 25000 echos, enough for an Overgoat and a whole wardrobe set [Actually in retrospect, I could in fact buy TWO Overgoats]), so my main is time-frozen because… I don’t know what to do with him, and what I really want out of him.
Meanwhile my Alt’s having a blast cracking skulls and killing Joes…although he is decidedly ambitionless.
So… I guess back to the question at hand.
One’s an intellectual explorer with a pension of going too far into things he shouldn’t Ahem NAME ahem. While the other is an intellectual brute, who’s cold and heartless… except for his adorable Salt Weasel who he protects ruthlessly. So Achiever/Explorer, and Killer/Explorer.
Edit, bolded.
edited by armadaos on 8/25/2012
I never had a playstyle until now, as this is the first real game (other than tetris) that I’ve played since D & D 30 years ago. So I took that Bartle test and found that I’m an explorer, which does not surprise me. That said, when I started this game I went for the easiest successes early, which for me turned out to be the dangerous tasks, so I reached 100 on that first. Now I’m doing the fun stuff, which for me is the exploring.
edited by progpen on 8/25/2012
edited by progpen on 8/25/2012
I’m all Diamond/Spade, which I believe translates to Achiever/Explorer, with emphasis on the latter. I’m not surprised Fallen London attracts so many of our ilk; it’s not the sort of game you play if you find exposition scary.
My approach to Fallen London was a bit… improvised. I started out pursuing the Light Fingers ambition, but when I took a look at the Watchful content, I found it so much more intriguing that I switched my Ambition… to Heart’s Desire, of all things, simply because Persuasive was my highest stat at the time. From that point on, I explored the content roughly in order of Watchful > Persuasive > Shadowy > Dangerous. On my alt, I’m doing Shadowy first, though.
edited by Cedric Appleby on 8/25/2012
I started out as a single minded intelligent brute-Nemesis ambition, but later learned the importance of shadowy and persuasion when my character discovered those could help with his/her goal. After that I tend to focus on a specific area and switch when I get bored to try to keep my attributes equal. I also try to the story stuff first before grinding and keep my character in mind. Which is huge bag of contradictions, wrapped up with melancholy and hedonism. Right now, I’m grinding through most of the storylet’s in the sidestreets to heap gifts upon my companion.
So, Diamond/spade for me.