[quote=Chris Gardiner]
[color=#ff9900]The delay on ambitions isn’t because we don’t know how they end! It’s purely because an infinitesimally small number of players qualify to see them, which means its hard to prioritise them over other content. That’s not to say they’ll never happen - they will! But the stars need to align. [/color][/quote]
Now this is a statement. But I have to fall in line with [quote=Riful]
Excuse my curiosity, but what is the most priority story-content then (other than monthly exceptional stories, of course)? There is quite a lot of unfinished story branches, not only ambitions - the Last Constable, the Dilmun Club, Watchmaker’s daughter etc. […][/quote]
There is a lot of early- to mid-game content that would probably have a broader audience. And while there are a bunch of people who inexplicably maintain several active accounts, giving people a realistic option to go through the content they did not choose might help getting more people to see it. I mean, you created Honey-Dreams, what’s stopping you from letting people pursue another ambition in there?
I can only speak for myself, but the fact that you can still say "It’s coming! …someday." is a really big deal. In the year I have been playing, I can’t deny to have felt as if FL was becoming "a thing of the past" and that FBG had started to shift their focus towards other projects. Adding any non-event content would already send an important message.
Some of the early to midgame content that was never quite finished could always be put into Exceptional Stories. The story of the Heiress was recently continued in that way.
I’d suggest The Spirifer and the Pianist as the best candidate for a continuing Exceptional Story. There are mysteries and events in that story that you danced around with but never really got into. Meanwhile, players who have never encountered the Shallow Spirifer or the Devil Pianist could quickly be brought up to speed.
I think the belief about Ambitions having an infinitesimal audience is kinda circular.
People don’t work on ambitions because they have massive investments of time and resources for no actual resolution…so they don’t do them. Hell. People on the forums are specifically told to wait until they’re finished to actually work on them.
[color=#ff9900]If it puts your mind at rest, we’ve had rough outlines for how the ambitions would end sketched out from very early days of FBG, and we developed those into completely-plotted outlines for the final chapters years ago. [/color]
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[color=#ff9900]The delay on ambitions isn’t because we don’t know how they end! It’s purely because an infinitesimally small number of players qualify to see them, which means its hard to prioritise them over other content. That’s not to say they’ll never happen - they will! But the stars need to align. [/color][/quote]
That few people qualify? Really? I have four characters that I play, and I’ve reached the end of each ambition story line–one per character. It wasn’t really that hard. What I hate is the cards for the cellar and the toys and the other stories that don’t end, so I don’t bother with them. I played them on my main character, found out they petered into nothing, and didn’t bother for the other three. There’s so much repetition in the game, I’m not sure how much content there really is. I’m grinding to get SoC 21 for my main character, but I’m not sure why since even if I get there, there’s not really any content that goes with achieving it–there’s not really any story to the correspondence at all–it’s kind of an empty shell.
I mean, regardless of what they work on, it’s pretty easy to play through content faster than they can write it. That’s just the long and short of it - it takes weeks for a player to finish what took FBG years to write. (And that’s pretty normal! Compare how long it takes to write a book with how long it takes to read it…)
As of a few years ago, Fallen London was 1.5 million words. (According to http://www.failbettergames.com/why-is-fallen-london-still-free-to-play/ - by the way, a good read on this topic). That’s more than all the harry potter books combined. (That blog post has been a few years ago - by now, I’m sure they’re up at "All of Harry Potter plus the Hobbit AND the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for sure, and maybe even the Silmarillion).
My $0.02 (or more appropriately for Fallen London: 0.02):
I’m probably one of a small minority in that I don’t care about the Ambitions reaching an end. In fact, I prefer that they never do. I treat the Ambitions (and I include SMEN in this, because it’s really an Ambition in everything but name), as background stories which define the characters’ motivations.
As such, it’s nice to make progress in them, but I really don’t expect an ending. (which is why I was disappointed that SMEN got an actual end, instead of always threatening to jump on you from the dark for the rest of your gameplay).
It would be nice to see a continuation of some of the older stories, but frankly, after so many years playing this game I have almost no recollection what those stories were about (and the journal system doesn’t help there).
That said, I do believe that the people who chose Light Fingers as their Ambition (and I’m not one of them) deserve a long overdue update, simply out of fairness. The last update to that particular Ambition was sometime in mid-2012 according to somethreads (though the relevant wiki entries were all only added in July 2013, so I’m not sure). The other 3 Ambitions all got their latest update (promised in October 2014, and delivered on October '14, December '14, and June '15).
[color=#ff9900]I’m going to pick out some points and questions from this thread, and address them in one big go. I’m going to be very frank - please don’t read any of these responses as grumpiness! But I believe our community is more than capable of engaging with matter-of-fact, behind-the-scenes information that uses lots-of-hyphens. I’m favouring answering as many points as possible over being flowery, here![/color]
[color=#ff9900]Yep! We have clear data on that.[/color]
[color=#ff9900]None of our data suggests this is a significant factor in putting people off pursuing the ambitions. I’ve said this elsewhere on the forum, but it’s always worth repeating: only a tiny percentage of Fallen London players ever visit the forum, and only a tiny percentage of those visit IRC. [/color]
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[color=#ff9900]There are many more significant reasons why people don’t reach a content cap, the key one being it takes a very long time! This is a big-ass game.[/color]
[color=#ff9900]I confess I wince when I see something like this. :) Because "absolutely certain" based on what?[/color]
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[color=#ff9900]Bear in mind that we have a dedicated analyst on staff, a colossal amount of data, and attend monthly stats meetings where we look in-depth at how people play Fallen London. At these we dig in-depth into specific issues, like re-engagement or recruitment, or even get hyper-specific and look at - for example - why a specific branch is bizarrely popular.[/color]
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[color=#ff9900]A few comments on your other following points - I’m not picking on you here, I just want to provide clear information:[/color]
[color=#ff9900]‘the very minute you’d announce the implementation of the final Ambition chapters, not only would many slightly jaded early- to mid-content players feel a surge of motivation to continue their game’ - no, we have prior data on this. [/color][color=rgb(255, 153, 0)]A subset of them would return, and then only when we released the content and deliberately messaged them about its release (a thing we don’t like to do too often.)[/color][/li][li][color=#ff9900]‘scores’ isn’t very many.[/color][/li][li][color=#ff9900]‘maybe get hooked anew, and become paying subscribers’ that would certainly be the goal! However, to get the best effect from this requires communications work, supporting content, and careful timing.[/color]
[color=rgb(255, 153, 0)]We were very pleased with the effect SMEN had (although, based on what you posted above, I suspect it was less than you imagine purely because Seeking was a minority pastime[/color][color=rgb(255, 153, 0)]). However, SMEN is the most famous of all Fallen London content, pursued by the most - let’s say [/color]dedicated[color=rgb(255, 153, 0)], shall we? [/color]- [color=rgb(255, 153, 0)]of players. It’s not a one-to-one comparison with Ambitions. Especially since Ambition content splits the player base in four. Each update to an Ambition is about as much work as an Exceptional Story (i.e. a lot of work), but only targets one-quarter of people at a content cap.[/color]
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[color=#ff9900]([/color][color=rgb(255, 153, 0)]I’m[/color][color=rgb(255, 153, 0)] ecstatic we finished SMEN. I’m doubly ecstatic Alexis wrote it all. It’s an exceptional piece of work, unlike anything else in gaming, and no one else could have written it. I will also be ecstatic when we finish the ambitions!)[/color]
[color=#ff9900]I can understand this perception, but it’s very much the opposite. There have been times before when we had practically no resources to devote to Fallen London (during much of Sunless Sea’s development, for example). Now, Exceptional Stories ensure monthly Fallen London content, and we’ve been adding new (or completely revamping) seasonal events, and using them to insert additional content (e.g., we used the Feast of the Exceptional Rose to introduce the marriage revamp, divorce, and married dates).[/color]
[color=#ff9900]What there’s been less of is free content outside of seasonal events, and I think that’s - completely understandably - at the root of the feeling you describe. [/color]
[color=#ff9900]You won’t have to wait that long! Viewers of/listeners to last week’s Failbetter podcast will have heard us let slip that a Secret Fallen London project is in the works. We’ll be talking about that more soon![/color]
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[color=#ff9900]We’ve discussed this, but we still feel that - in these cases - if we began a story for free we should conclude it for free. Making people pay for them doesn’t sit right with us. It would also make that Exceptional Story harder to access for players who hadn’t worked through that free story yet. Exceptional Stories need to work for anyone, regardless of where they are in the game (this is a very challenging requirement to fulfil.)[/color]
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[color=#ff9900]I’d say the Clay Man’s Arm referenced the Heiress story, rather than continued it. The Heiress’ story reaches a conclusion in the free content. Elaborating on a story, or potentially providing a different perspective on it, is something that fits [/color]
[color=#ff9900]This is an example of a suggestion where the ramifications are clear to us but probably not to players. Doing this would probably mean cancelling everyone’s EF subscriptions without consulting them, then expecting them all to remember to resubscribe after a month. It would require extensive comms and support work. It would also break a clear contract we establish with our Exceptional Friends: that we provide a complete, new story every month - a contract which, I’m proud to say, we haven’t broken once in two years.[/color]
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[color=#ff9900]Delivering a complete, very large interactive story of a standard we’re happy with reliably on a specific day every month is a feat I can only describe as Sisyphean. We only manage it because our content team is a grizzled band of goddamn word-vikings. If we make it look easy, then hurrah! But believe me, it isn’t. :)[/color]
[color=#ff9900]Already, this puts you in a tiny minority. By which I don’t mean you’re doing it wrong! I mean that people play Fallen London in many different ways, and this one is very unusual.[/color]
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[color=#ff9900]I hope you’ll forgive me for linking to an old post I made on this issue, but I think it’s relevant here. [/color]
It’s kind of funny to think of it this way–but what you’re really saying is that this isn’t a game for people who like to read. Even if this game is about words and stories–if you truly like to read, you suck this game dry in a matter of months.
Thank you, Chris, for taking the time to communicate with us. I want you to know that I, for one, appreciate the time & effort it takes to speak both frankly and publically (especially if, as you say, a forum post will only reach a minority of players). Most developers don’t want to deal with the potential minefield, and I’m glad that you do. While I truly wish the Ambitions would see an update, I at least feel a little better knowing the reason why.
Is there any chance you could give us a few inklings of what your stats team uncovers that would surprise us? I understand if that information is proprietary, but I for one would love to see, at least, in general terms, what fraction of the user base has hit various content barriers or milestones (e.g. POSI, stat-capped, top-tier professions, Making Name 7).
I’m quite happy with Fallen London, and I really do love that you are so concerned with the playerbase as a whole. Thank you for engaging in this thread as well, despite having tough answers like lack of priority.
Ideally, there’d be enough time for you to devote a small slice of time to finishing a free story that has already started, perhaps every few months. This is clearly not as reasonable as it sounds, since you’d otherwise be doing it already.
I’d suggest some sort of Patreon-like scheme where people donate to make certain free stories higher-priority, paying upon the release of the content updates, but it sounds like the main problem here is time.
If I could donate barrels of hours à la Sunless Skies, I would. In lieu of that, I can only commend your existing efforts and encourage you to keep up the good work.
First I want to say that I truly appreciate the time you took to answer!
This all reminds me of World of Warcraft. In case you are not familiar with it, the MMO-RPG WoW has been around since 2004 I think and every few years a new content boarder is introduced. With every subsequent expansion, people became vocal over changes and, most often, about how it has started to cater far too much to the casual playerbase.
You see, back in the day the grind was real. It took really long to hit the level cap, and even longer to reach the content cap. In fact, the content cap in the original (Vanilla) WoW has allegedly only been reached by <1% of the players. Yet even those who never got that far seem to reminiscence of the good old days when they had to walk 10km in the snow, uphill, to and from school. There are a myriad forum post about how back then everything was better in that regard - with diverging opinions, of course.
What I am getting at is, despite people never having set foot into content, knowing it was there seemed to be an important part of how they perceived the world.
While searching for the actual number of Vanilla Naxxramas players, I found this in a forum:
Now World of Warcraft can also be taken as an example for another aspect when it comes to "end-game content": The original Level Cap was 60. Instead of adding ever more stuff geared for End-Game geared players (best equipment, etc.) they release a new level cap and "evened the field" for everyone, new and old.
Don’t get me wrong, I know World of Warcraft and Fallen London are very different in all regards, but the "Content - When and Where" question is an issue for every game with no definitive end.
And thinking about it, I can not say I know of a right answer to that question, despite a long history in the field of observational studies.
[quote=Chris Gardiner]
[color=#ff9900]Bear in mind that we have a dedicated analyst on staff, a colossal amount of data, and attend monthly stats meetings where we look in-depth at how people play Fallen London. At these we dig in-depth into specific issues, like re-engagement or recruitment, or even get hyper-specific and look at - for example - why a specific branch is bizarrely popular.[/color][/quote]
I understand that the problem at heart is how to reach the most players. In that vein, I can also see how continuation of content might not even be among the top choices to achieve that - how often have features been introduced in a game where I had to think to myself "This was not made for you, but to appeal to a broader audience."
Regardless of all that, again, thank you for taking the time to engage with the playerbase in the way you do. edited by Jillius on 5/17/2017
[quote=Chris Gardiner][color=#ff9900]SNIP[/color][/quote]Thank you for that long and detailed answer! Don’t worry, I don’t feel picked upon - indeed, I was very much aware that my points were pure speculation based on my ‘feelings’ and ‘perceptions’ as a dedicated and active player and community member. Wheedling some insights of the kind you just provided out of you was exactly what I was aiming for! ;)
[quote=Chris Gardiner][color=#ff9900]We’ve discussed this, but we still feel that - in these cases - if we began a story for free we should conclude it for free.[/color][/quote]That is very good news!
[quote=PSGarak]Is there any chance you could give us a few inklings of what your stats team uncovers that would surprise us? I understand if that information is proprietary, but I for one would love to see, at least, in general terms, what fraction of the user base has hit various content barriers or milestones (e.g. POSI, stat-capped, top-tier professions, Making Name 7).[/quote]Being a notoriously curious person, I have to chime in here: I would simply LOVE to have a look at any data or statistics you’d let us see! :looks: edited by phryne on 5/16/2017
[color=#ff9900]No, it’s definitely a game for people who love to read. But if you could all read really really slowly that’d be great kthxbye[/color][/quote]
Basically, treat fallen london like how you treat game of thrones :P edited by suinicide on 5/16/2017
There is one thing that makes players more prickly I think: the useless cards that keep reminding us that some storylines are not finished. I had forgotten about the sprifer and the pianist but the palace cellars and sympathetic about ratly concerns cards seem like taunts. If they were removes once you got to a certain point, then re-introduced when there was new content, there would be no constant reminders of “oh! what is happening with that?”
I was stating that I would be willing to continue paying without getting exceptional stories to see progress on everything else. I understand the ramifications. What I’d suggest determining if anyone is thinking like I am with… perhaps a poll storylet either visible to all players or exceptional friends that asks "Would you as an exceptional friend be fine with not having an exceptional story next month if instead the rest of the game is worked on?"
I’d be surprised if the majority didn’t want that or more correctly I suppose disappointed. If a single EF isn’t fine with this in the time you run it then clearly people want ES each month rather than the rest of things being put together and you can’t help that…
I do respect you and your company (and I’ve rather enjoyed your products) but it does rather frustrate me that I’ve began to think that the things that have been waiting since I started are probably to stay unfinished and I primarily blame the focus on stories I usually blow through out of desperation for content. There are no mysteries left because I already know where all of them are sitting waiting and those that take effort to reach I can wait to approach as I’ve been spoiled by people casually warning that there’s no resolution to them yet and for those one casually reaches it’s even worse because it’s immediately apparent.
As you responded with mention of a secret project to someone asking a similar question. When Sunless Skies is ‘finished’ and out of early access is Fallen London going to have any of its hanging threads worked upon?
[quote=Jolanda Swan]There is one thing that makes players more prickly I think: the useless cards that keep reminding us that some storylines are not finished. I had forgotten about the sprifer and the pianist but the palace cellars and sympathetic about ratly concerns cards seem like taunts. If they were removes once you got to a certain point, then re-introduced when there was new content, there would be no constant reminders of "oh! what is happening with that?"[/quote]is the palace cellars unfinished? that would explain how despite all my visits it whont go above 5 makes me sad though ):.
on the topic at hand though personally im content with my ambition as it is at the moment…even though that lady im meant to be saving is probably horrifically damaged by now…
may i ask though if this secret project is targeted towards current unfinished content or something entirely unrelated?.
dude, think about SMEN. it was innactive for years, without even a chance to see what had already been in the game. it was pretty much gone from the game. and we got the entire thing, finished.
I’d love the Palace Cellars finished. Not because I care about the story, no, but because I’m bitter about my character being irrevocably damaged because I didn’t check the wiki before playing a card. Same goes for the Struggling Artist. It’s fine that there are junk cards in our decks, it’s not so fine that there are avoidable yet unremovable junk cards in our decks. edited by Kaijyuu on 5/17/2017
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