What I think is the real problem is communication. It's used to be the case that FBG did change logs but those days are unfortunately in the past. I know the developers have acknowledged the need to communicate more frequently and more clearly but for whatever reason that hasn't really happened.

If its just a question of money, perhaps they should have a kickstarter to dispense with the FL content/update backlog?

One: they've done a hell of a lot for us over the years, in terms of producing fun new content, listening to feedback, fixing bugs, and rewarding our participation. I don't think it's fair to assume deliberate disrespect or malice when they fail to meet your expectations,

Two: They're keeping a lot of balls in the air, and keeping us informed of everything can go just as wrong as keeping things mum, if not moreso. It can mean, explicitly or implicitly, making promises that they can't - even shouldn't - keep.

I think the problem is that very little attention has been given to end game grinding. After a while the game becomes just waiting for exceptional stories, grinding echoes towards cider, and roleplaying to break up the monotony in between. For the most part I think that's OK, we can't expect the dense story of the early game to continue forever. But there could be a little more care to make grinding interesting.

Perhaps storylets could unlock at 50k echoes, 100k echoes, 150k echoes, to mark your progress towards buying cider and encourage you to continue. ... There could be slow building long term stories like seeking, but that do not destroy your character. Imagine a mechanic like marsh-mired, that encourages you to come back once a week to progress a story, that provides a slow dribble of lore and intrigue that lasts for years, albeit in a brief once a week morsel. It's okay for the end game grind to be a grind where nothing much happens, but there's s happy middle ground between the rich densely packed story of early game and "go buy cider! See you in two years!"

There could be expanded roleplaying options for end game players, beyond the old coffee and chess, so they can interact in new and fresh ways over the months and years.

I've honestly forgotten what happened in a lot of stuff on the unfinished stories list, to the point where I'd have to reread it to know what's going on. But I can't actually do that because of how the journal works.

So then you get people who carry on playing and get to end-game, so to speak . . . the game is then about waiting for the EF stories, or self-imposed challenges . . . one person may want to max all their renown, one wants to collect 7 of every item, one wants to grind rare connections . . . at that point you start looking for closure/completion, in a sense. You look back and realise how much was never completed . . .
ite wanting to complete.

I wonder if it would make sense to conclude some lingering plots by making the ending an Exceptional Story. Then the money/resources that goes into writing a monthly ES could be used to tie up the main storylines, and do it in a complex and built out way from both a narrative and gameplay standpoint

What slow response times? Its basically always a good speed for me. (Then again, time zones)

But I do feel they have been pretty good recently about free content, its just that its all been seasonal. (The election, what sounds like a fairly large hallowmas revamp, both in less than half a year, and wasn't SMEN within that time too?)
edited by suinicide on 10/19/2016