An Individual
Posts: 589
6/29/2016
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I've been fascinated by the idea of Seeking ever since I learned about its existence, which unfortunately happened when it was shut down. The idea of a story that promised the player only a long journey of pain and frustration that would end in disappointment and regret was almost completely unique among video games which are so often focussed around power fantasies and reward systems. So I was extremely excited when it came back. I currently have 3 characters at various points on The Seeking Road and I'm really enjoying it so far. But given what we know about the whole affair, and how it ends, it isn't quite the journey I thought it would be.
Seeking is, without a doubt, one of the most taxing stories in all of Fallen London. You need to have advanced a character extremely far through the game to reach the end. And I really like the theme of letting go that you hit later on. But letting go isn't the same as suffering. And an ending that ends your character isn't disappointing or something you regret if it was something you are ready to do. Especially since it's something totally unique in the game and seems to come with some cool text.
There is also, I think, a problem with it from a business perspective. Making the most epic achievement of the game also the terminal point for a character means your game, which draws income from retention of long time players, is effectively encouraging it's long time players to do something which, in all likelihood, signals the end of their time there.
Obviously, I don't think any of this is going to change. And, as I said, I actually really like the story. But for the sake of fun, here is an alternate way that I would have handled Seeking. General spoilers for current Seeking follow.
(EDIT: people seem to really dislike this so I've thrown it in spoiler tags. Hopefully more interesting discussion below.)
[spoiler]
The Seeking Road
In general, I think the core mechanic of new Seeking is solid. Here's a value you need to increase. Doing so is either extremely expensive or extremely slow. The other parts of Seeking unlock for you as you go.
I would, however, add menacing cards that appear as you increase Seeking. Not super aggressive common ones like the ones you get from Unaccountably Peckish. More like the ones that show up when you're carrying around eyeless skulls (rare but unpleasant). And thematically in the vein of those cards that show up when you're having visions from the Vake's perspective in Bag a Legend. Terrible dreams. Brief bouts where your actions aren't wholly your own. The constables roughing you up to try and dissuade you. Stuff like that. Right now Seeking is a rough road but you can take a break anytime you want without consequences. This would put a bit of a fire under you and makes the slow and steady approach less appealing.
The Candles
I think the candles would mostly stay the same. For St. Cerise’s I'd probably require a goatly sacrifice instead of providing easier options. The ante will be upped on St. Erzulie’s and it will become the last candle for reasons discussed later. St. Gawain’s is the only one that I'd make a serious change to because of the way I'd change the ending (ending beheaded wouldn't really work). Maybe you need to sacrifice An Impossible Theorem to get the candle while keeping your head?
Winking Isle
This is where the changes really start. There is a common theme between Winking Isle and events in the Nadir of letting go of your goals and accomplishments. But at present, you don't have to have had these things. You just have to not have them. The big thematic change I'd make here is that you aren't truly letting go unless you have something to let go of. So instead of requiring you not to have those things, you'd have to have them and you'd have to dump them all down the well to advance Seeking far enough that you can start fasting and meditating to get the rest of the way. Is that cruel? Yes. But that's kind of the point. If there's something on the list that you need for one of the later candles I'd probably be kind enough to strike it off but everything else must be both gained and lost.
The Obscurities
The big addition here. You can't simply go NORTH. The Masters and/or The Bazaar would find you and stop you. So you must protect yourself with the 7 Obscurities that will conceal and protect you on your journey. You must erase yourself just as Eaten was erased. Once are obscured you will receive St. Erzulie’s candle. Each Obscurity requires you to enter the Nadir and raise Irrigo to at least 7. This unlocks an option to gain the next obscurity which will flood your Irrigo to maximum and force you out of the cave. As with Winking Isle, Irrigo can't wash away what doesn't exist so there are requirements. While not necessarily in this order, something like:
1) Obscurity of Image
They will look upon you. But they will not know you.
Requirements: none
Effect: Erase all tattoos. Locks you out of getting new ones.
2) Obscurity of Mediocrity
You have done great things. No one will know.
Requirement: Tier 3 Profession
Effect: Lose your profession. Can't gain a new one.
3) Obscurity of Insignificance
You are known. You will be unknown.
Requirement: High notability (maybe 12?), Destiny
Effect: Lose all notability and your destiny. They cannot be regained.
4) Obscurity of Poverty
Your residence marks the skyline. You will be wiped from the map.
Requirement: 5 Card Lodging
Effect: Lose all lodgings (back to renting a 2 card room). Can't buy a new one.
5) Obscurity of Apathy
Your wants carve a path through The Neath. The road will be repaved. No one will remember.
Requirement: An Ambition
Effect: Lose your Ambition. Locked out of all ambitions.
6) Obscurity of Isolation
You have been loved and adored. You will be forgotten.
Requirement: Spouse
Effect: You no longer have a spouse. You cannot remarry.
7) Obscurity of the Unexceptional
You can do so much. You will do so little.
Requirement: POSI Specialization
Effect: You are no longer a POSI. Cannot be regained.
Going NORTH
I don't know what going NORTH is like in current Seeking, but I do know that you must ultimately turn back or end in a state that makes your character unplayable. That is not how this journey is going to end.
For this version, going north requires all 7 candles and all your stats capped (at unmodified 200). You also must own a boat. You are protected by the Obscurities and the light of the candles will guide you to your destination. You light the first candle and it leads you to an unspecified section of the northern shore where your ship is wrecked and crushed on the ice. The next 6 guide you across the frozen wastes where the weather takes its toll. Each step costing you 1/6th of your stats until the end when they are all at 1.
Here, at the end of your journey, maybe you meet Eaten, or what's left of him. Maybe the ice breaks open and you are swallowed by dark water where a voice invades your failing mind. However it happens, you encounter something of Eaten. And he rejects you.
Maybe he sees you as a pale imitator. Maybe he finds you wanting. Maybe he just says "you know what? Changed my mind. See ya." However it happens, you are cast out and all your scars, stains, memories, obscurities, and other Seeking related qualities and items are erased and the next thing you know you find yourself lying soaked on the shores of London, surrounded by the footprints of drownies, with absolutely nothing to show for it.
To me, this is a more Seekery ending. The current one may end your character, but you actually get something out of it. This way, you've spent all that time on something that is truly pointless. You don't get an ending or even get a quality you can show off that locks you out of doing it again.
Although, if I wanted to be really cruel I would give you +1 to a quality called something like "Rejected" and I wouldn't explicitly state that raising the quality didn't unlock something (even though it definitely wouldn't). Thus creating the most difficult and pointless grind in the game.
Anyway, this has been rattling around in my head for a little while so I figured I'd share it. I hope you enjoyed it (or if you've actually read this far, that it at least didn't bore you to tears).[/spoiler]
edited by An Individual on 6/29/2016
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An Individual's Profile
The RNG giveth and the RNG taketh away.
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Want a Cider sip? Please refer to this guide before requesting.
Scholaring the Correspondence? A Brief Guide to Courier's Footprint.
Contemplating Oblivion? First Steps on the Seeking Road.
Gone NORTH? Opened the gate? Throw your character in a well.
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Guy Scrum
Posts: 197
6/29/2016
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There's some serious cleverness to the way that Winking Isle is implemented now that I think you're overlooking. To a large extent, Seeking wasn't built for new players, and it wasn't built for players who already knew what was going to happen. Seeking was built for those who stumble upon it and those who have been waiting years for it to return. For these seekers, having to not have something is far worse than having to give it up. If Winking Isle required that I throw my Fluke Core, my Master's Blood, and my Breath of the Void down the well, I would have felt great. Finally, a use for all those items! My hard work would have been vindicated, because without that hard work I wouldn't have been able to progress in my goal. Instead, I get to Winking Isle and am told that all my hard work — literal years of scrap collecting — was for nothing. I shouldn't have even bothered. Doubly upsetting is the fact that I collected a lot of those items for the express purpose of throwing them down the well. Seeking asks you to destroy yourself not in a blaze of glory, but drowning, slowly, in a hole in the ground*. The mechanic touches a nerve.
It is a little sad that Seeking is now complete and there are guides that tell you exactly what you need to do every step of the way. It did, indeed, lose some of its teeth. Even though it still tries to cut you down to a nub of your former self, it ends up feeling like progress so long as you're grinding purposefully to be cut down.
*Of course, I haven't yet been all the way North. Maybe you do go out in a blaze of glory? Fire is certainly involved.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Guy%20Scrum
Interactive fidgeting writer simulation
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Zoe DeGeest
Posts: 104
6/29/2016
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An Individual wrote:
This was all about me thinking about how you could adjust new Seeking to make it feel more like what I invisioned when I read about old seeking. That means making it cruel, mean spirit, unapproachable, and ultimately disappointing. It means it becomes something most people won't ever want to complete even if they were able to.
But, it is sooooo..... pointlessly edgy, for a lack of better word! I don't believe Mr Kennedy wrote the storyline to be pointlessly edgy.
Additionally, I started the game with people telling me about the Admirer of Art storyline and it is something most people don't want to finish even if they can!
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Zoe DeGeest, your humble churchgoing grocer, now respectable.
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Estelle Knoht
Posts: 1751
6/29/2016
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An Individual wrote:
But the cruelty is less in the mechanics and more in the story. All the things it makes you discard aren't really a problem if you don't have them in the first place and even if you do they don't matter because of how it ends.
I really dislike this fixation on giving people Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and making sure people are annoyed at waste of time in case they don't mind the pain.
An Individual wrote:
This was all about me thinking about how you could adjust new Seeking to make it feel more like what I invisioned when I read about old seeking. That means making it cruel, mean spirit, unapproachable, and ultimately disappointing. It means it becomes something most people won't ever want to complete even if they were able to.
I'd like to think Alexis didn't set out to write SMEN for the sole purpose of being repulsive or cruel, even if it happens to be cruel. Yes, it has a high bar of entry and it is mean and the promise of destruction makes it not for everyone, but these traits are there because as it happens you are exploring a topic that is sort of a taboo in the game's setting and the difficulty adds gravity to the storyline.
It is quite a pity that some people won't be sticking around after SMEN, but they are leaving with closure. Sure, the journey is more streamlined, but is the old method of wasting people's time really so deserving of praise? I believe people play despite the padding, not for the padding, and this time around all the padding has justification and are thematically fitting.
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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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Estelle Knoht
Posts: 1751
6/29/2016
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I have a better idea! Don't even bother writing text for any of the storylets. See if people will like that!
(I agree with your business perspective that it is sorta unfortunate, though, but the rest....)
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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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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
6/29/2016
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This forum is a very poor sample in terms of the broader player base. And even here, the poll is running 27 stay to 7 leave. Regardless, presumably FBG knew the risks they were running perfectly well and decided it made sense for them.
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Social Actions: send them to Kade Carrion (she/her; no Tournament of Lilies, please). an_ocelot has gone NORTH and cannot benefit from social actions!
Possibly-Useful Things: Spreadsheets and hints and link collections, oh my.
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MrBurnside
Posts: 188
6/30/2016
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Some of the responses in this thread seem based around a set of assumptions I take issue with: That cruelty is not an essential part of Seeking and/or that mechanical cruelty is somehow less then narrative cruelty.
The first first: One of the pillars of Seeking is the breaking of taboo. Seeking itself is a taboo in Fallen London and a substantial portion of the story deals with themes of cannibalism, murder and suicide. Transgression is, in a real way, both the act and the goal of substantial portions of Seeking. We all, Seekers and non-Seekers alike, navigate moral and ethical dilemmas in part through expectations of results. To complain then that a given act of cruelty is pointless, is to completely miss that very pointlessness' value as a symbol of transgress.
The second triggers me a little so I'll be brief. It's the same trigger I get when people think Fallen London should be made into a real game. It is a real game and it's mechanics matter. If clicking evokes nothing within you, then it's poor content. Granted. An enormous amount of effort was put into making you feel complicit in your own destruction; if it failed: it failed. If, on the other hand it makes you furious with yourself over wasting your time on something so trivially pointless: it succeeded beyond measure. Saying it isn't fun isn't the same as saying it's meaningless.
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dov
Posts: 2580
6/29/2016
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I think the risk of leaving is not so much because it's Seeking (with its tragedy, horror, and loss), but because the game has, for the first time, an "end state".
Suppose that FBG were to release new content which, after a long path, requiring much effort, resources, and sacrifice, you'd reach your Destiny (e.g. become a Master, conquer the Mountain of Light, etc.), and reach a "you win; game over" state.
It might be a very satisfying end from a story perspective, but I can see some players not having the energy to start a new character from scratch once their main is done (for good or ill).
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 Want a sip of Hesperidean Cider? Send me a request in-game. Here's an_ocelot's guide how.
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Passionario
Posts: 777
6/30/2016
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The two ideas you proposed (making SMEN pointless and propping up the business model) are at odds with each other. Once someone reaches the bitter end and finds out that it was all just a cruel joke at their expense, the news will spread like wildfire. There will be bad publicity, accusations of scamming - and very little profit to show for it. Yes, some enterprising folks manage to monetize cruelty, mean spirit, humiliation and ultimate disappointment, but if it could be done with nothing but interactive stories, they wouldn't need dungeons full of specialized equipment. 
...Which is not to say that SMEN can't be made worse and yet profitable. It can, just in a more cruel way. Here's a modest proposal:
[spoiler]
Time the Healer
To provide a sense of urgency to the search, Time the Healer now has a chance to reduce your SMEN by 10% (rounded up). The chance is 77% if you're not an Exceptional Friend at that time and 7% if you are.
You can obtain further protection by drawing 'Presumptious Little Opportunity' and converting Honeyed Laudanum (currently available from 'Mr. Wines is having a sale' or the House of Chimes) to Tainted Laudanum. If you would lose SMEN levels to TtH while Tainted Laudanum is in your possession, you consume it and die instead.
God's Editors
The Deep Archives of St. Cyriac are now a fate-locked option. F2P Seekers can obtain a one-time ticket from a Bundle of Oddities with a value of 777.
Winking Isle
Winking Isle is an EF-only area, similar to House of Chimes. Non-Exceptional Seekers have to progress via the Seeking Road.
Also, Winking Isle now has a global leaderboard for FaM losses (resets weekly) and Understand/Insight can now fail to give you SMEN. The further you are from the top of the leaderboard, the greater the chance of failure. Gotta keep up with the whales!
The Obscurities
Obscurities still take away your stuff, but they keep track of what is gone via hidden variables that can't be mantlepieced (more on that below).
Obscurity 8 is an optional addition. It cancels the Sunless Sea license attached to your Storynexus account so that you have to rebuy it again.
Going NORTH
Beyond the Gate, there's a combinatorial explosion of endings that depend not only on your Big Question, but also on the qualities you lost to Obscurities, the way you were Admitted to the House of Chimes (let's face it: if you got this far, you probably were) and your character cameo. This way, if you want to see them all, you have to replay the whole shebang several thousand times.
(Disclaimer: All of the above suggestions were shamelessly stolen from random screams overheard in the Iron Republic, and are provided for entertainment purposes only. None of them are intended to be taken as serious suggestions or commentary on FBG's monetization practices.)[/spoiler]
edited by Passionario on 6/30/2016
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Passionario: Profile, Story, Ending
Passion: Profile, Appearance
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Arensen
Posts: 69
6/30/2016
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Passionario wrote:
The two ideas you proposed (making SMEN pointless and propping up the business model) are at odds with each other. Once someone reaches the bitter end and finds out that it was all just a cruel joke at their expense, the news will spread like wildfire. There will be bad publicity, accusations of scamming - and very little profit to show for it. Yes, some enterprising folks manage to monetize cruelty, mean spirit, humiliation and ultimate disappointment, but if it could be done with nothing but interactive stories, they wouldn't need dungeons full of specialized equipment.
...Which is not to say that SMEN can't be made worse and yet profitable. It can, just in a more cruel way.
[spoiler]
Time the Healer
To provide a sense of urgency to the search, Time the Healer now has a chance to reduce your SMEN by 10% (rounded up). The chance is 77% if you're not an Exceptional Friend at that time and 7% if you are.
You can obtain further protection by drawing 'Presumptious Little Opportunity' and converting Honeyed Laudanum (currently available from 'Mr. Wines is having a sale' or the House of Chimes) to Tainted Laudanum. If you would lose SMEN levels to TtH while Tainted Laudanum is in your possession, you consume it and die instead.
God's Editors
The Deep Archives of St. Cyriac are now a fate-locked option. F2P Seekers can obtain a one-time ticket from a Bundle of Oddities with a value of 777.
Winking Isle
Winking Isle is an EF-only area, similar to House of Chimes. Non-Exceptional Seekers have to progress via the Seeking Road.
Also, Winking Isle now has a global leaderboard for FaM losses (resets weekly) and Understand/Insight can now fail to give you SMEN. The further you are from the top of the leaderboard, the greater the chance of failure. Gotta keep up with the whales!
The Obscurities
Obscurities still take away your stuff, but they keep track of what is gone via hidden variables that can't be mantlepieced (more on that below).
Obscurity 8 is an optional addition. It cancels the Sunless Sea license attached to your Storynexus account so that you have to rebuy it again.
Going NORTH
Beyond the Gate, there's a combinatorial explosion of endings that depend not only on your Big Question, but also on the qualities you lost to Obscurities, the way you were Admitted to the House of Chimes (let's face it: if you got this far, you probably were) and your character cameo. This way, if you want to see them all, you have to replay the whole shebang several thousand times.[/spoiler] For a moment I thought that these were legimate suggestions and was on the verge of preparing a rant before I noticed the satirical note of it all. I should really leave some time in between writing my philosophy essay and visiting these forums...
On a side note, while I do still believe that Seeking is about destroying oneself to a pointless end, I think that the final destruction that lies beyond the High Gate is quite a powerful ending--and while the whole 'being reborn' cycle is an amazing idea, I think that completely resetting the account might only be a good plan for one of the Questions (Who is Salt springs to mind). I think it's important that Seeking does keep the option to destroy the character fully, a final oblivion of sorts, just for the closure it brings to those who have otherwise finished the game.
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Mysteries are fire. Truth burns.
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Arensen
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ExcArc
Posts: 44
6/29/2016
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I take issue with your proposed ending. Everything else is just trials and issues. More grinding, more struggles? Okay, no one Seeking particularly cares about the number of hoops you have to jump through to get to the end goal. They're in it for the Seeking. Frankly, you could have just said "dump 10,000 actions into this to unlock the ending" and they would have, just because that's part of the Seeker's mindset.
Personally, I think a great deal more non-linearity, perhaps like a certain Ambition, but more realistically a great deal more in-game contained would have done Seeking some good, as it would have made it felt a lot more like actually seeking something and less like mining away at a problem. Of course, the flavor and words that we did get seem excellent, and the point of the Seeking was the destructive need to find something.
But the real problem with the ending is that there's nothing there. And yes you can call it avant-garde or say that was the point of the quest, but it's not. It's to Find the Name. You are not just grinding. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty is just cruelty. There needs to be something, no matter how long it takes to find, because that's the point of the Seeking. To find something. Not to just hurt your players.
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