MisterGone
Posts: 139
3/3/2015
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So, I've been thinking about this for a bit, and want to throw it to the crowd to see what everyone else thinks. But really, it's simple:
Why don't Doctors/Surgeons train the player in the Pages stat?
Like, I seriously don't understand the reasoning behind this decision.
You have 5 stats in the game - Hearts, Veils, Pages, Mirrors and Iron.
You have 5 Officer types in the game - Cooks, Mechanics, Surgeons, Navigators, and Gunnery Chiefs.
Gunnery Chiefs train you in Iron. Makes sense.
Navigators train you Mirrors. Makes sense.
Cooks train you Hearts. OK, I suppose that also makes some sense.
Mechanics train you in Veils. This makes less sense until you realize that Veils directly ties into running your engines quieter.
Surgeons train you in P- No, they ALSO train you Hearts. What?
I mean, Surgeons are going to be (along with Engineers) probably the best educated Officers on your ship. So them being pages trainers would make the most sense out of all of them. They're passing on various esoteric knowledge they've picked up to you.
Then there's the fact that one of the three doc's in the game . . . DOES train you in pages. The Plausible Surgeon, only available if the player starts as the Natural Philosopher, can train you in pages up to 50. Making this one of the most reliable ways of at least initially raising pages, but only for one of the 5 available starts (6 if you start wreathed in shadows, I guess).
Past that without a trainer, raising pages is REALLY difficult. It's best done through a number of events scattered throughout the game, the easiest of which to access is only available for the character with the highest base pages state - the Poet. One of which has the possibility of lowering your pages, and this is the eventuality that can be repeated endlessly if you hit it (so if you're not paying attention, you can easily dumbify your Captain very quickly).
Just added was a new Study Item that raises pages, but you need to not only save up the secrets to trigger it, but also grab Outlandish artefacts, something that can only be done reliably in the late game by hunting zee monsters. So this is a method that new starting players can't really take advantage of, even if they wanted to. Especially since at the start, there's way more incentive to burn secrets to train, rather than saving them for larger goals, as skill checks are what get you past certain story gates.
This means if you're not a Poet or Natural Philosopher, you have very limited ways of raising your pages, and yet, that's one of stats that you'll need to raise the most if you want to see all of the game's content.
Ultimately, not having Surgeons train the captain in pages results, in what I can see, several Balance issues and inconsistencies:
#1 - It makes the Poet and Natural Philosopher starts the only real choices on who to pick as a character if the player wants to maximize their potential with a captain.
NOTE - Most players want to maximize their potential. Roleplayers who want to roleplay are generally a much smaller subset of players rather than people who want to at least somewhat try to make their character, "The Best". While plenty of people do some degree of both, and I'm not saying every one's necessarily a min-maxing munchkin, it should really always be assumed that players will look for the best advantages they can, and at least statistically, always choose those options.
In effect, the lack of a pages trainer really makes this game have 1 or two background options - Poet or Natural Philosopher, with a heavy bias toward Poet. This is when the game presents the player with 6 potential choices. Hence, it's encouraging the lack of choice, which diminishes the point of even having the choice in the first place.
#2 - It's DEEPLY Inconsistent with the general training mechanics presented to the player.
It follows a natural sort of common sense that if you have 5 stats, and 5 types of characters that can train the player in stats, that all 5 would be able to train you in all 5 stats. The fact that this is generally not the case except in a theoretical 20% of player's games (and then, of mitigated usefulness since Plausible Surgeon only raises it up to 50) is very weird at the least.
#3 - It artificially raises the importance of the Pages stat over the other four.
Don't get me wrong, Pages is good and getting secrets faster is great. But the rate of exchange between pages raised and fragments isn't so amazing that it would make a trainer in the stat game-breaking balance wise. The calculation on pages to fragments per secret is: 300 - 0.5 x Pages (rounded down) = Fragments required per secret.
So if the player were to raise pages to 100 through training, from either a 25 or 50 start in the stat, then they're potentially removing either 38 fragments needed per secret, or 25. At 100 pages, you still need 250 fragments versus the starting non-poet player's 288. That's 75- 50 secrets spent to gain either a 38 or 25 fragments per secret advantage. At best, that's one more successful challenge at dissecting an Angler Crab or two Jillyfleurs (after visiting Visage) not needed per secret.
As for checks that require pages in the game, they're somewhat less common than other checks, and often have VERY high values, so they're pretty tough for everyone but the poet. Again, this gives Poets (or training Nat. Philosophers) better access to more areas MUCH more reliably than any other Captain.
I'm not talking about speed of access either. There are lots of places that, say, a Street Urchin has access to more quickly than other captains because of their boost to Veils, but other captains can eventually get there through training or Officer Swapping et cetera. But due to the lacking ability of reliably raising pages, there's a real chance some captains won't even get to see the story at all. I'm definitely thinking of a certain major story in a certain Coral Locale right now, which is skill locked by needing decent pages before you can even get to the interesting part.
#4 - Events that lower pages are now 1000% worse than any event that may lower another stat.
I've lost some stats at various points in the game. It's always a blow. When it's pages, it's so much greater in impact that it's very frustrating, and I'm a pretty patient person. A less patient person is bound to take it as a much greater blow and hate it a LOT more, and get genuinely angry with the game.
#5 - How does it even make sense that the 3 primary surgeons in the game raise Hearts of all things?
I mean, Hearts is supposed to be essentially, the skill of empathy and talking to other people. Of encouraging them and raising morale, while showing that you do care about them. Of honesty and open communication.
The 3 surgeons that raise this value of open communication and empathy are: A completely neurotic psychopathic zealot who has gone half-mad after a deeply disturbing series of events, a dying taciturn woman who says little and always seems impatient with other people, and
[spoiler] a nearly dead, deeply traumatized girl who likely can't communicate well due to severe physical damage[/spoiler]
Those sure don't seem like experts in empathy and morale to me. At least the cooks, while weird, all seem affable in their own ways. I can buy that French Chef Mum-Ra is probably teaching me something about meeting other people's tastes. I also buy that just learning to communicate with something so alien as a Rubbery Man would teach the captain about better communication and empathy. Those make sense. Hearing how the Haunted Doc had his eye gouged out, or lessons from Lady of Lacking Bedside Manner (seriously, "Brisk" is referring to her attitude) . . . not so much.
So yeah, am I wrong here? Am I crazy for thinking Surgeons should raise Pages instead of Hearts? I don't mind if they raise Hearts for the ship. That makes sense because having a surgeon aboard would be very reassuring to morale. But as to what they teach a captain? When there's such a huge hole in the training situation here?
Does everyone agree? Disagree?
Does anyone have an answer as to why this decision was made? Or why it seems inconsistent even in the game, with the Plausible Surgeon actually being a pages trainer?
edited by MisterGone on 3/3/2015
edited by MisterGone on 3/3/2015
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If you'd ever like to enjoy a good round of pugilism or discussing the higher mysteries, Reginald Drownheart may be the dapper gentleman for you!
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Reginald~Drownheart~
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babelfishwars
Administrator
Posts: 1152
3/6/2015
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*looms ominously over the thread*
If you're arguing about the nature of your arguments rather than the content, you're at risk of becoming personal. It is possible to avoid the temptation, but fairly difficult.
Consider that a statement with intent, directed at all, and not anyone person in particular.
On the subject of symmetry, you should see my ears. Completely different heights. Makes glasses look ridiculous.
*ceases looming*
edited by babelfishwars on 3/6/2015
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Mars, God of Fish; Leaning Tower of Fish
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SouthSea Rutherby
Posts: 224
3/10/2015
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Mr. Mister wrote:
I'd like to say I too feel that, personally, it'd do good to have all surgeons train your Pages instead of your Hearts, both for lore (as MisterGone nicely explained in the form of each stat's in-universe description), balance (Poet background no-brainer), and symmetry reasons.
That's just my uninformed opinion, though - for me to consider it more than that, I'd need to know the dev's reasons (or lack thereof) behind their choice.
Still on the uninformed opinion level, I wouldn't agree on making different officers of one same job train different stats (Mascots not included). I do really like the small difference between the trainings of the gunnery officers though, and I'd like if the small difference were expanded to the other jobs in the same form of different rare outcomes.
I agree with this as well. Overall, I think a few new officers might fix this, though I understand they're still ironing out some of the other non-gunner professions. 
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Now the proud captain of Mr. Eaten's Revenge
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WormApotheote
Posts: 725
3/3/2015
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SporksAreGoodForYou wrote:
MisterGone wrote:
Also, I definitely disagree that obtaining 1000 Echoes is trivial in the early game. It is if you're a highly experienced player who knows the general island placement and what enemies to avoid and generally how far you can go on the Steamer's fuel tanks, and a couple strong starter trade routes. Sure. But at that point, you're certainly not a new player, and you're not ever going to be in the "Early game" for long.
I'd have to disagree with this almost entirely. You don't need any trading to get the first 2500 echoes. You can do it in about 2 hours, just exploring, in no more than 3 trips to zee. Yes, you need a little experience to know that forging out far beyond London is actually a good idea, but you need nothing more than port reports, strat info, the salt lions, and a curious mind to interact on some of the islands and get stuff to flog to the scholar, and a little luck in finding the island to drop your first officer. Do Tomb colonist to Venderbight. Sell the training book. Return to London. Buy all the fuel and supplies. Explore. Done.
The biggest hurdle, talking to friends who are playing this, is knowing that it's ok to push out way beyond London.
I just started a new Invictus character and my first trip back to london had scouted 9 tiles and had 1149 echoes and a neathbow piece to turn in. Which was moderately lucky (Avid Horizon not being waaaay in the east) but not exceptionally so.
No trading whatsoever.
Knowing islands and what options to pick is somewhat important but that's probably the first knowledge you should focus on acquiring, certainly before you worry about maxing stats for the sake of maxing stats. (And pages isn't that helpful on its own, I've currently gotten exactly nothing out of my extra pages from starting as a poet, which just gives you 5 percent more secrets. Its very valuable in the long term, but for a new player not so much. I picked Poet so I could drop off the navigator at Frostfound, since this captain is going to die soon.)
edited by WormApotheote on 3/3/2015
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No, I don't pull the Eater of Names.
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grisamentum
Posts: 19
3/11/2015
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South-Sea Rutherby wrote:
Mr. Mister wrote:
The one "issue" I can think of with both letting surgeons train your Pages and doing the above, is training a dinasty of corresponcdence-poet-explorers that, on each life, rediscovered all locations, trained only Pages, and passed it onto their Correspondent, until you get a breed that can start with 100 pages without needing to be a poet. But, then again, you can kinda do this already with any other stat, the only difference being that the pages increase would make each dinasty member's run more fruitful.
That's the problem: currently, you can do this with any stat except pages. Which is unbalanced, now that secrets are so easy to acquire.
No, that's not the problem. You can do precisely what Mr. Mister described by raising Pages through creation of Monstrous Almanacs.
The full extent of the "problem" is: "With one limited and minor exception, Pages cannot be trained by officers despite the fact that other stats can be so trained."
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lexiconical
Posts: 19
3/14/2015
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Let me just quickly say that it would be nice to raise pages somehow. If you are not going to let the officers train the captains, perhaps a punitively expensive course at the College would do.
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SouthSea Rutherby
Posts: 224
3/4/2015
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lady ciel wrote:
No idea why but there has never been an Officer that raises Pages, except the Plausible Surgeon. I am sure it was asked for in the early beta but nothing came of it and I don't remember any discussion of why.
I believe there was a time (before the game was properly balanced) where having a high pages stat made it too easy to gain secrets -- in the early stages of development, you could only get so many secrets without a massive amount of grinding. Now that the game is officially released, however, secrets can be bought and sold, so having a high Pages stat is not game breaking; it's just a benefit of the stat that it may save you some time or money on secrets, whereas other stats have other uses.
Personally, I see no reason why there shouldn't be an officer who raises Pages -- it would balance out the stats better and make them more fair, enhancing a lot of storylines in the game.
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Now the proud captain of Mr. Eaten's Revenge
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
3/3/2015
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Actually, the Pages officer comes with the Mirrors start - the officer you get for starting with Pages raises Mirrors!
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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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SporksAreGoodForYou
Posts: 291
3/3/2015
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MisterGone wrote:
Also, I definitely disagree that obtaining 1000 Echoes is trivial in the early game. It is if you're a highly experienced player who knows the general island placement and what enemies to avoid and generally how far you can go on the Steamer's fuel tanks, and a couple strong starter trade routes. Sure. But at that point, you're certainly not a new player, and you're not ever going to be in the "Early game" for long.
I'd have to disagree with this almost entirely. You don't need any trading to get the first 2500 echoes. You can do it in about 2 hours, just exploring, in no more than 3 trips to zee. Yes, you need a little experience to know that forging out far beyond London is actually a good idea, but you need nothing more than port reports, strat info, the salt lions, and a curious mind to interact on some of the islands and get stuff to flog to the scholar, and a little luck in finding the island to drop your first officer. Do Tomb colonist to Venderbight. Sell the training book. Return to London. Buy all the fuel and supplies. Explore. Done.
The biggest hurdle, talking to friends who are playing this, is knowing that it's ok to push out way beyond London.
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Mr. Mister
Posts: 38
3/10/2015
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In fact, you could say that Tentacook and Bandacheff already do that, in a way: one can give one point of terror, while the other won't but has quite the recruitement price.
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You cursed a traveller, and I ain't one if I'm not returning, you sodiung!
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SouthSea Rutherby
Posts: 224
3/6/2015
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In spite of my ardent fascination for unbridled verbosity, I am attempting to play peacemaker here and steer the conversation back to its purest intent; which ostensibly is to address the fact that the game would benefit from an officer who can raise the Pages stat, at least to 100, if not 150, as the game no longer appears to need over-balancing of the Pages stat...
edited by SouthSea Rutherby on 3/6/2015
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Now the proud captain of Mr. Eaten's Revenge
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Mr. Mister
Posts: 38
3/9/2015
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I'd like to say I too feel that, personally, it'd do good to have all surgeons train your Pages instead of your Hearts, both for lore (as MisterGone nicely explained in the form of each stat's in-universe description), balance (Poet background no-brainer), and symmetry reasons.
That's just my uninformed opinion, though - for me to consider it more than that, I'd need to know the dev's reasons (or lack thereof) behind their choice.
Still on the uninformed opinion level, I wouldn't agree on making different officers of one same job train different stats (Mascots not included). I do really like the small difference between the trainings of the gunnery officers though, and I'd like if the small difference were expanded to the other jobs in the same form of different rare outcomes.
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You cursed a traveller, and I ain't one if I'm not returning, you sodiung!
Fallen London profile
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