Ambrose66
Posts: 55
2/2/2013
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I have noticed that this game, despite it's great atmosphere and interesting stories has a really high amount of grinding.
Especially when you're trying to hunt a beast, rob an establishment, solve a case, etc...
There are many times when I open the game, click for 2 minutes, going through 20 actions, and than close it.
I would like this thing to change, by either reducing the grinding (the amount of points you need to increase casing level, as an example) or by writing a new text for every casing/upward battle, bar that is filled!
What do you say?
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Nigel Overstreet
Posts: 1220
2/2/2013
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Hear, hear, Mr Fhoenix. While grinding can, at times feel like a chore, one of the disadvantages of a text based browser game is that you read faster than they can type.
The other part of the game design is that when hunting a beast, robbing an establishment or solving a case, the game should feel difficult. It should feel like you have to put in a certain amount of time and effort to be successful in your endeavor. It's the equivalent of making later level bosses harder. Sometimes this means opening the game, playing for two minutes and then closing it, but after you do, you're far closer to your goal than when you began and next time you play you're well on your way to conquering a much more difficult task than had you simply played 20 different storylets.
Asking for rewards to cost less actions is tantamount to just asking for free stuff. The actions taken vs. rewards given are calculated to character level and increasing over time.
We'd all like more Fallen London, but as it is the game has about as much text as the Bible, to simply ask for more storylets seems a bit out of place. There is new content being added every week and I doubt you've read everything the game has to offer. Part of the challenge and fun of the game is dispensing storylets over time. To have it all in one big go is less fun overall and antithetical to the tone of the game.
If it helps, don't think of Casing as a useless stat you have to grind to get a reward, think of each point of Casing, or whatever progress you're using, as a fraction of the larger reward you're getting over time. Remember that the next cool Fallen London storylet is just over the horizon.
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The Romantic Egotist: Most Hedonistic Man in All of Fallen London
Are you or someone you know Overgoated? Please, let me know!
Cider Club
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Hanon Ondricek
Posts: 417
2/3/2013
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Ambrose66 wrote:
I wasn't aware that writing some new text takes so much time, please forgive me.
I'm unsure of the sarcasm level of that comment, so I will take it at face-value. The *text* is not what takes time. I'm in process of writing a StoryNexus game so I have a little bit of a view behind the scenes. While it might seem like tapping out a the content of a storylet doesn't take long - I mean...it's the size of a forum post! - you have to understand that many of the parts you *don't* see also need to be adjusted and balanced against the rest of the game. It's easy to make a storylet that does nothing, but what's the point? It burns an action and gives you some lore perhaps. But in most cases you want every card to affect something else...and figuring out what you want the card to actually do and how it fits into the rest of the story, can be a days or weeks-long process depending on how much content it actually affects.
Now my game is currently only at 300 cards. Fallen London is something like 4000+? Not only do they have to write the card, they're also back-checking it against every bit of lore that's come before so they don't contradict the already-built part of the world. They also have to make sure the cool storylet they are writing doesn't break anything else in the game quality-wise. And likely they aren't just going to release one storylet at a time...they are creating groups of them that work together.
So for example...let's say they want to add a minor 6-card story arc. First they have meetings to make sure it's a worthy endeavor. Then writing text for six actual storylets on a good day might take the better part of an hour... but then they've got to hook the story into the existing framework, playtest to make sure it works correctly, other members of the team have to vet for content and playability... all this before it's released for play. If I'm being kind, I would say something like that might at very minimum take a week from conception to release. Undoubtedly that wouldn't be the *only* content they're working on at any given time.
So they release a six-card story arc. Let's say there's no grinding and you have all the right qualities to burn through it immediately. It will take you no more than 20 minutes to read all six of those cards, throw down your fork and say "what's next"? Grinding is what keeps that from happening.
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
2/2/2013
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Not to mention how many freebies have been implemented since the game's creation, and particularly in the past year or so. Between the weekly free skill boosts in the starting areas, and the new Professions, we're rolling in grindless progress.
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Sir Frederick, the Libertarian Esotericist. Lord Hubris, the Bloody Baron.
Juniper Brown, the Ill-Fated Orphan. Esther Ellis-Hall, the Fashionable Fabian.
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Fhoenix
Posts: 602
2/2/2013
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I am trying really hard not to unleash my sarcasm mode full power here. But I will answer seriously: Writing new text takes time, and that is exactly the reason there is so much grind in the game. Some people ask for even more grind, because they have finished all content and have nothing to do.
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My Character
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