Hannah Flynn
Administrator
Posts: 491
9/1/2015
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Delicious friends,
The Haunting at the Marsh-House is now available to play from the Fate page, for 45 Fate. If you've played it before, you'll be able to reset it for 25 Fate.
A PRESENCE HAUNTS THE MARSH-HOUSE. DO NOT DREAM.
A malevolent presence has driven the Prim Baronet from his ancestral home. His nights are riddled with nightmares.
Brave the mists. Travel to his crumbling, ivied marsh mansion. Gather clues, but guard your sanity. Fear sleep! Can you unravel the Haunting at the Marsh-House?
edited by h4nchan on 9/1/2015
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Wields the news canon, aboard the hype train.
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Kolanowski
Posts: 148
9/1/2015
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Sooo... can any Exceptional Friends tell if it's good? Sounds right up my alley.
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Kazimierz Kolanowski, gentleman, scholar, humble servant of the Maw. Chaotic Evil. Open to all social actions & accepting almost all requests. Might sell you to Satan for a single corn chip.
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Emain Ablach
Posts: 348
9/1/2015
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It's good ! All of the monthly stories were good, so far, and this one is really nice with this dark secret-like atmosphere 
edited by Emain Ablach on 9/1/2015
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Went NORTH. Got salted. Never came back. We won't remember him.
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Estelle Knoht
Posts: 1751
9/1/2015
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It is pretty good! But all of the Exceptional Stories so far are pretty self-contained, so I'd suggest you grab most of the major fate-locked storylines like Flute Street or other stuff first.
45 Fate is a pretty hefty price, mind you, I personally think it might be a bit too high. But most of these stories have a different structure to regular storylines (free or fate) and have little padding.
The Marsh-House and the Courts of Cats are a bit lighter in content though. The Marsh-House in particular is very very very self-contained. The Last Dog Society and Cut with Moonlight are Sunless Sea ties-in.
If you don't want to spend too much fate, I'd recommend you wait for the Lost in Reflection story from July - that one is much denser and contains some pretty big information.
edited by Estelle Knoht on 9/1/2015
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Estelle Knoht, a juvenile, unreliable and respectable lady.
I currently do not accept any catbox, cider, suppers, calling cards or proteges.
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Kolanowski
Posts: 148
9/1/2015
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Estelle Knoht wrote:
45 Fate is a pretty hefty price, mind you, I personally think it might be a bit too high. But most of these stories have a different structure to regular storylines (free or fate) and have little padding.
The Marsh-House and the Courts of Cats are a bit lighter in content though. The Marsh-House in particular is very very very self-contained. The Last Dog Society and Cut with Moonlight are Sunless Sea ties-in.
If you don't want to spend too much fate, I'd recommend you wait for the Lost in Reflection story from July - that one is much denser and contains some pretty big information.
edited by Estelle Knoht on 9/1/2015
I already did Lost in Reflection and Last Dog Society when I was Exceptional a while back and yeah, it was absolutely awesome
No spoilers please, but does The Marsh-House offer some long-term gains? Interesting items or qualities that might be useful in later stories, sorta like the Fork/Timepiece from Soul Trade?
edited by Kolanowski on 9/1/2015
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Kazimierz Kolanowski, gentleman, scholar, humble servant of the Maw. Chaotic Evil. Open to all social actions & accepting almost all requests. Might sell you to Satan for a single corn chip.
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
9/1/2015
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Let's just say that the clue to the possible reward offered by The Marsh-House is right there in the name. It's not mechanically different to other rewards of its type, but it is unique!
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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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marcmagus
Posts: 168
9/1/2015
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Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook wrote:
Let's just say that the clue to the possible reward offered by The Marsh-House is right there in the name. It's not mechanically different to other rewards of its type, but it is unique!
It is also only available from one of the final decisions, which may or may not be how you'll want to resolve the story.
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marcmagus, a scholar of the Correspondence of some minor note and bold explorer of the new Unterzee.
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
9/1/2015
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Estelle Knoht wrote:
45 Fate is a pretty hefty price, mind you, I personally think it might be a bit too high. But most of these stories have a different structure to regular storylines (free or fate) and have little padding.
Well, that's $10, so yes, a premium on the $7 Exceptional Friend subscription that would've let you play it when it first arrived, thus, incentive to subscribe.
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Hannah Flynn
Administrator
Posts: 491
9/1/2015
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an_ocelot wrote:
Estelle Knoht wrote:
45 Fate is a pretty hefty price, mind you, I personally think it might be a bit too high. But most of these stories have a different structure to regular storylines (free or fate) and have little padding.
Well, that's $10, so yes, a premium on the $7 Exceptional Friend subscription that would've let you play it when it first arrived, thus, incentive to subscribe.
Here's why these stories cost more to buy separately than they do as one of the benefits of Exceptional Friendship. Normal Fallen London revenue is very volatile. It varies a lot from day to day, and it's hard to predict with any certainty what it will look like six months from now. That makes it difficult for us to make important business decisions, like whether we can afford to pursue a creatively exciting project or hire a new writer.
Our revenue from Exceptional Friendship is much more predictable, so we made some changes a few months ago to try to make it as attractive as possible to our players. We realised that what our players care most about is stories, so we decided to release a new story for Exceptional Friends every month. We didn't particularly want to sell these stories separately, because from our point of view their main purpose is to make our revenue more stable so that there's less risk of us going bust or having to lay anyone off. We certainly wouldn't want to sell them for less than the cost of Exceptional Friendship, because that would run counter to the reason we write them in the first place. But a lot of people asked for a way to access them if they weren't playing Fallen London at the time they were released, so we decided to make them available later at a small premium to accommodate that.
We don't think this is greedy: we might actually make more money if we sold them for less, but we're more interested in making games that get into your dreams than we are in getting rich, and for that we need a sustainable business that will still be here in five years' time.
If you're not certain that the Exceptional Stories are worth 45 Fate to you, we'd honestly rather that you don't buy them. We're not being flip: it's your Fate to invest, and - like the Peculiar Enhancement - they are not essential to progress or enjoy the game.
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Wields the news canon, aboard the hype train.
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Gonen
Posts: 817
9/1/2015
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Please be here in five year's time.
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 The Ashen Anesthesiologist - Paramount Londoner
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.
The long journey to eccentricity:
On March 10th, 2018, reached 15 on all quirks, simultaneously. The Quirky Anesthesiologist
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BlakeTheDrake
Posts: 237
9/1/2015
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As some have mentioned, that certainly is quite a mark-up... if I might make a suggestion, though, there should be some form of 'Newbie Discount' allowing people to purchase any story that came out before they joined at a mark-down. Maybe the same 25 fate that old hands pay to re-do? I mean, it doesn't seem fair to charge people extra for failing to have had a subscription before they even started playing.
Heck, it could even be used as an added incentive to become Exceptional - if a subscription was required to make use of the mark-down.
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One of these days, I will remember to record interesting things in my journal...
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/BlakeTheDrake
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
9/1/2015
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Subscription could unlock a cheaper Fate price for unplayed Exceptional Stories of past months, whether at the cost of a month of subscription (~30 Fate I guess?) or the re-play price of 25 Fate.
Alternately, Failbetter could make more use of sales. They're horrifyingly effective money-makers for most games, and I demand that Failbetter earn more profits (so as to better embody the Bazaar and the Masters, of course). Make an old Exceptional Story cost 30-35 Fate instead of 45 Fate for a month, promote it, give potential subscribers a taste of the kind of content they'd get for a subscription. I'm sure a number of regulars would tell their friends to play "Lost in Reflections" if it went on sale for a limited time. Rotate which story is on sale the next month, etc. It's nice to see the Failbetter social media promotions for Exceptional Stories every month, but I have to wonder how many new subscriptions a cool image and tagline can possibly generate relative to a "try this out, it's on sale, subscribe if you want more!" approach.
edited by metasynthie on 9/1/2015
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Positively antique
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/metasynthie
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Theus
Posts: 311
9/1/2015
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metasynthie wrote:
Subscription could unlock a cheaper Fate price for unplayed Exceptional Stories of past months, whether at the cost of a month of subscription (~30 Fate I guess?) or the re-play price of 25 Fate.
Alternately, Failbetter could make more use of sales. They're horrifyingly effective money-makers for most games, and I demand that Failbetter earn more profits (so as to better embody the Bazaar and the Masters, of course). Make an old Exceptional Story cost 30-35 Fate instead of 45 Fate for a month, promote it, give potential subscribers a taste of the kind of content they'd get for a subscription. I'm sure a number of regulars would tell their friends to play "Lost in Reflections" if it went on sale for a limited time. Rotate which story is on sale the next month, etc. It's nice to see the Failbetter social media promotions for Exceptional Stories every month, but I have to wonder how many new subscriptions a cool image and tagline can possibly generate relative to a "try this out, it's on sale, subscribe if you want more!" approach.
edited by metasynthie on 9/1/2015
This would be a full-time commitment, though. Once you train customers to react to sales, there are few good ways to undo that. See JCPenney, Steam. At that point, you have to maintain a process to fluctuate pricing to build/release/fulfill demand that will only ever be less profitable than a non-sale purchase. For many people, it's good for acquisition, especially in a marketplace of similar goods, provided that addons or additional services can be leveraged once the foot is in the door. So, this might require a full-time marketing professional on staff, but may work on the level of getting more people to see the Exceptional content and hopefully subscribe.
There's also stupid details to consider, like most retailers who do this have a price guarantee, so someone who purchased in the 14-30 days before a sale can get a refund up to the sale price, etc.
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Estelle Knoht
Posts: 1751
9/1/2015
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BlakeTheDrake wrote:
As some have mentioned, that certainly is quite a mark-up... if I might make a suggestion, though, there should be some form of 'Newbie Discount' allowing people to purchase any story that came out before they joined at a mark-down. Maybe the same 25 fate that old hands pay to re-do? I mean, it doesn't seem fair to charge people extra for failing to have had a subscription before they even started playing.
Heck, it could even be used as an added incentive to become Exceptional - if a subscription was required to make use of the mark-down.
Something that let you buy one Exceptional Story at a discount rate (even just at, say, 30) each subscribed month would be great, though.
So you'd have people paying two months of money for one month of EF + one extra story from the past.
Regardless, have you guys considered, er, giving these stories a separate area? That Fate tab could get pretty crowded in a year, let alone five 
edited by Estelle Knoht on 9/1/2015
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Estelle Knoht, a juvenile, unreliable and respectable lady.
I currently do not accept any catbox, cider, suppers, calling cards or proteges.
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
9/1/2015
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Theus wrote:
This would be a full-time commitment, though. Once you train customers to react to sales, there are few good ways to undo that. See JCPenney, Steam. At that point, you have to maintain a process to fluctuate pricing to build/release/fulfill demand that will only ever be less profitable than a non-sale purchase. For many people, it's good for acquisition, especially in a marketplace of similar goods, provided that addons or additional services can be leveraged once the foot is in the door. So, this might require a full-time marketing professional on staff, but may work on the level of getting more people to see the Exceptional content and hopefully subscribe.
There's also stupid details to consider, like most retailers who do this have a price guarantee, so someone who purchased in the 14-30 days before a sale can get a refund up to the sale price, etc.
Good points all, though I've rarely seen digital goods under $10 come with a price guarantee when they go on sale (despite some inevitable gnashing of teeth). I'm mostly recommending sales because Failbetter's piling up new chunks of content at a steady rate of one a month now, and there are a lot of new customers out there to acquire -- far more than an existing trained customer base who might be inclined to wait around for a sale to "pick one up cheaply." Kind of the same reason the mobile version makes a lot of sense as an investment: vast fields of untapped players where the biggest hurdle is getting them to go from paying $0 to $1.
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Positively antique
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Theus
Posts: 311
9/1/2015
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metasynthie wrote:
Good points all, though I've rarely seen digital goods under $10 come with a price guarantee when they go on sale (despite some inevitable gnashing of teeth). I'm mostly recommending sales because Failbetter's piling up new chunks of content at a steady rate of one a month now, and there are a lot of new customers out there to acquire -- far more than an existing trained customer base who might be inclined to wait around for a sale to "pick one up cheaply." Kind of the same reason the mobile version makes a lot of sense as an investment: vast fields of untapped players where the biggest hurdle is getting them to go from paying $0 to $1.
Very true. The digital goods thing is a little different and price guarantees, while a tool for customer satisfaction, primarily prevent lost sales for the exact same product to your competitor. With an in-game story, there is no competitor.
I think you may have the most interesting point re:iOS monetization. The conversion rate there likely has the ability to skew any other conversation around pricing.
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Ian Hart
Posts: 437
9/1/2015
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Estelle Knoht wrote:
Something that let you buy one Exceptional Story at a discount rate (even just at, say, 30) each subscribed month would be great, though.
So you'd have people paying two months of money for one month of EF + one extra story from the past.
I think Exceptional Friends getting a once-per-month credit to buy a past story for ~30 Fate makes sense.
Of course, I'd be willing to buy them full price, but since the goal is getting more subscribers hooked, rather than maximizing profits on the back catalog, this would be yet another strong incentive to subscribe, without making "not subscribing" ever be a good strategy. (assuming ~30 Fate is equal or more than that subscription cost per month.)
Certainly not a priority, but I think that makes the most sense if there's an easy way to implement it.
Edit: Oh! And if the credit had to be used each month (rather than being bankable) it would probably drive more people to the forum and/or social media looking for advice on how best to spend their credit. Which means more people talking up the exceptional stories in public, and more engagement from new subscribers (which hopefully keeps them hooked longer.)
edited by Ian Hart on 9/1/2015
edited by Ian Hart on 9/1/2015
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xKiv
Posts: 846
9/2/2015
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Hannah Flynn wrote:
Here's why these stories cost more to buy separately than they do as one of the benefits of Exceptional Friendship. Normal Fallen London revenue is very volatile. ...
Our revenue from Exceptional Friendship is much more predictable, so we made some changes a few months ago to try to make it as attractive as possible to our players. ...
In that case, I believe it would be even more effective to have these stories unlock automaically on accounts that have exceptional friendship (at the time when the story is unlockable). Then people who can subscribe but can't play (not even the few clicks to start the story, or would just forget) would have incentive to stay subscribed.
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https://www.fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/xKiv - a witchful, percussive, dangermous and shadowry scholar of coexplodence, hopsidirean, and walker of fallen kitties.
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vegetables
Posts: 3
9/2/2015
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I can't help thinking that the problem with this approach as a sustainable one is that it doesn't actually seem to be very sustainable. If you are, indeed, still around in five years - and still using the same pricing model - you'll have produced 60 buyable stories with a combined cost of $600. That's an awful lot of money, and new players clicking into the fate page are going to see an increasingly large amount of content walled off to them which experienced players are going to have ended up with for up to $180 less. As a player that started in June it does feel a bit like I've been penalised for no real reason for not being able to buy one story for its original price, but when it's 60 stories instead I suspect that Fate page is going to start looking more and more like a middle finger to new players, and a fair number of them will end up not investing time or money in the game at all. Pricing at 25-30 Fate would solve this problem and probably make you more money, so making it cost much more seems like literally everyone involved in the process ends up being worse off.
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Guest
9/2/2015
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(it's been awhile since I have had to do a thoughtful and refereeing kind of reply. Apologies if in any way it fails to hit the mark for any sides reading this.)
With the highest of respect to what Hannah Flynn wrote in regards to the cost, 45 Fate/25 Fate reset costs is too high a price for a single story. (And that does not even go into the length of said story compared to the other EF stories already mentioned here.)
As vegetables noted, (even those who join EF later) newer or later playing people who did not buy the story at the EF monthly release are stuck with a huge cost just to "catch up" on old stories. I realize this change in marketing is new for FB games and "growing pains" are going to happen as Fate is transitioned away from the primary story purchase method, but considering what one had to pay 45+ Fate for in FL historically and what you get currently seems a bit of a disconnect.
And remember, EF also doubles your turn bank and ups your card total to 10 for less money than one Fate story rate , thus paying more for one story and no benefits could be interpreted initially by players (most who don't bother to read things like forums as we posters are in the small percentage of players historically) as greedy and "forcing an Exceptional Friendship push" and just turn off players from that bad first impression.
What would work is to "thank" those who sign up for EF as giving those who do "loyalty discount" recognition for past story events as a continued gratitude.
So (as noted by several other replies as well) having some discounted past story option for those who joined EF after said story release would be a nice way to "thank" loyal FL supporters.
Or, as a way of supporting those who want to "catch up" on missed EF stories whether they are EF or not, one could offer a "bulk" discount (be it Fate or a one time charge) if one were to buy multiple stories for this type of EF story specifically (as in the other stories for Fate should keep their cost as Fate-exclusive stories as they always have, unless you like the idea of Fate-bulk purchasing here too.)
But speaking as an EF member who only joined a few months ago, even I don't feel that this "missed story' is worth what is being asked for compared to what other options I could spend Fate for on my accounts.
And if you look at the history of my posts, I have been quite a strong supporter of Failbetter and their story-based creations (as well as a proud owner of the Sunless Sea game with 277+ hours played to back my posting putting my money where my forum mouth is) when it comes to encouraging the literary continuation of this kind of gaming.
I strongly support their work and their revenue to continue that work, just respectfully questioning if the rate and method they are asking for is properly decided in this iteration?
But I am one of many people here and ask the community reading these kinds of replies speak up and voice their opinions (even if usually staying in a "lurker' mode) to help everybody on all sides of this marketing find their detente regarding this.
edited by the truthseeker on 9/2/2015
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