Ewan C.
Posts: 675
3/30/2017
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I have played FL for several years, occasionally with days between plays but more normally several times each day; first lured in by the resident ocelot, I have spent several hundred dollars on Exceptional Friendship (and more on Nex/Fate before that); I was a high-tier backer of Sunless Sea, wherein you may find Ewan's Way adjacent to the sun's entry. All of which to say: I've been here a while, and a strong supporter and customer. Stats have long been capped, every item I wanted acquired, most items on the usual 'what to do when you run out of content?' lists ticked off. I would often log into these forums, and tried to be an active and helpful member.
And so: I thought it might be worth a brief note explaining why FL became in the end a source of irritation rather than pleasure, and what has led me to the point where I have cancelled my Friendship and do not expect to play again for years, if ever. A small element is the usual grindiness: top-level characters have little to do that's new or interesting. But that's common to many games, and understood. The key element: Notability. A game mechanism that actively punishes any failure to devotedly grind in a given week, rather than simply having one fail to advance. Worse: one that requires very significant time, effort and expense to conquer - I've been Notability 15 for a long time - and equally strenuous efforts to regain if ever lost.
I'd dropped a couple of times from 15 to 14 in the past; pleas - not just from me! - for a 'pause' mechanism to allow a character to go into hiatus fell on deaf ears. OK, annoying but manageable. And then this last time... fell to 14, spent several weeks trying to regain enough Making Waves (48, I think, with maxed BDR), and falling just short every time when Time arrived. I realised that there was nothing enjoyable for me currently in FL and in fact it was a source of frustration and annoyance; worse, that there was **no way** to simply pause - it was an all-or-nothing choice to maintain a character for whom Notability was an important part of his personality, or abandon that character and leave**. So: I walked away about two weeks ago, and have not regretted it. There's some significant sunk cost regret, sure: the biggest regret, though, is simply that it felt as though I was being punished for any lack of slavish diligence rather than being valued as a player or even as a customer. With luck, this'll be helpful feedback - it should not be a surprise to FBG, but I hope that at least it'll be a datapoint for one vanished player lost to them.
(I'll try to remember to log in again in a week or so in case there are any Qs. Otherwise, though: hearty thanks to the many of you who gave help, friendship, moments of delight, well-crafted visiting cards - it's been a trip.)
[**Do I think that everyone should have this same attitude to wards Notability? Maybe not; it may be that my character and I were outliers. I'm not aware, though, of other games or mechanisms that translate a hiatus into active harm rather than just failure-to-advance: it feels punitive and unfairly so, and a mechanism to force lever-pressing. I'm a behavioural neuroscientist by day  and I recognise the signs of a Skinner box.]
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phryne
Posts: 1351
3/30/2017
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While I share your view on Notability being a pain in the ass, I don't understand why you didn't simply stop going after it - it has very few uses, after all. I dropped out of the whole Notability/Making Waves thing a while ago and never looked back. The game definitely feels *a lot* more relaxed for it.
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Accounts: Bag a Legend • Light Fingers • Heart's Desire • Nemesis • no ambition
Exceptional Stories, sorted by Season and by writer ― Favours & Renown Guide
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Pumpkinhead
Posts: 516
3/31/2017
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Yeah, honestly, this is only a problem for very top level players, so it's probably not worth FBG's effort. I'd rather have updates to Ambitions!
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McGunn/Bsymstad is on the slow boat, waiting to see if he can find out what death is. (I'm done with London for now. Thanks for everything!)
Amanda Albright is a *spoiler* now, like she always wanted.
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Emain Ablach
Posts: 348
3/31/2017
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You will be missed. I understand your reasons for leaving, mine were almost the same (I also felt a lack of updates for ambitions and old contents, and I'll never thank Alexis Kennedy enough for providing an ending before I abandon the game).
The Notability is a lot of stress to maintain (and to gain as well), but as other said you can play without it. You'll miss it when new professions will be out but... well, we don't know when that'll happen. For the "personnality" of your character, I never understood why people felt any unvolontary change to their character was destroying it. I see it as an opportunity to give a new element to the story of my character, to flesh him out better.
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Went NORTH. Got salted. Never came back. We won't remember him.
https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/Emain%20Ablach
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MidnightVoyager
Posts: 858
3/31/2017
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I don't even want ways to burn it, really. I'd rather never see it again after the final profession levels unless I need it for something right then. It is the sole reason I keep it up, and I still manage to lose one every so often, much to my irritation.
I'm not able to "gradually rebuild" it either, I have to make myself sit down and grind it back up or it'll never come back to the right level. Hell, I've never been able to get it over 12 without giving up because I have no current need for it. It's the ultimate irritating grind that has no specific time for its end goal.
Also, it's why I stopped playing alternate accounts even though I wanted to see stuff I'd never see otherwise. Notability being needed for anything just made me immediately stop bothering with them.
edited by MidnightVoyager on 3/31/2017
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Midnight Voyager - A blood-cousin to predators. Collector of beasts. Affably mad.
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An Individual
Posts: 589
4/2/2017
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Anne Auclair wrote:
I've been raising Notability for the election and I'm honestly having some fun doing so.
Your the first person I've ever heard say that. My last notabiilty grind was with an alt with something like 32 BDR clawing it's way up to 12 notability from basically nothing for reasons of candle acquisition and it was, frankly, a miserable experience. Then again, I just concluded my 2 year Cider grind the other day so I'm in no position to judge.
--
An Individual's Profile
The RNG giveth and the RNG taketh away.
Goat Farming or Cider Brewing? This browser extension may help.
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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Pumpkinhead
Posts: 516
3/31/2017
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I thought you could make storylets appear in any setting? You definitely can in Storynexus, although who knows how similar the FL engine is to that anymore.
But thinking on it more, it's irrelevant, because a new area/setting would be smarter.
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McGunn/Bsymstad is on the slow boat, waiting to see if he can find out what death is. (I'm done with London for now. Thanks for everything!)
Amanda Albright is a *spoiler* now, like she always wanted.
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MidnightVoyager
Posts: 858
3/30/2017
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phryne wrote:
While I share your view on Notability being a pain in the ass, I don't understand why you didn't simply stop going after it - it has very few uses, after all. I dropped out of the whole Notability/Making Waves thing a while ago and never looked back. The game definitely feels *a lot* more relaxed for it.
I've been keeping it up myself only because I know it will be needed for the final level of profession and they haven't come out yet/may never come out. I regret it, but I would regret working it up from 0 again a lot more.
(Sorry, no idea why that doubled!)
edited by MidnightVoyager on 3/31/2017
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Midnight Voyager - A blood-cousin to predators. Collector of beasts. Affably mad.
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Blaine Davidson
Posts: 388
3/30/2017
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Is it really that difficult to maintain Notability? Ever since I've hit 15 I haven't had an issue with it. Then again I am addicted to my phone and compulsively check on London every 2 hours on the dot.
I would have thought that the Exceptional Stories each month, in addition to the modified/improved festivals each year would be enough to satiate veteran players as it has for me, but I suppose not.
Hopefully you will return, if not, good bye.
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Blaine Davidson, a reserved and sensible woman with a fondness of collecting rarities.
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Slyblue
Posts: 224
3/30/2017
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While I've personally tanked my main's Notability for the reasons everyone listed above, I do think a "pause" button would be nice. Maybe an option such as "Work intensively on your reputation", which would imply that you character is off doing things that maintain their MWs over the weeks, and aren't capable of doing anything else. You click this button, leave for X amount of time, and when you come back, your only option is to pull your character from their stasis and go back to playing normally.
One of the issues I see with this method would be when, exactly, TtH would strike. Maybe a week after you've come back? But then people could abuse it to forever delay TtH.
edited by Slyblue on 3/30/2017
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The Smiling Devil • The Curt Licentiate • The Keen-Eyed Captain
"For hearts of truest mettle, absence doth join and Time doth settle."
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Anne Auclair
Posts: 2215
3/31/2017
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Are there reasons to constantly maintain really high notability (above 5 levels) besides the election festival? I'm in the process of gradually increasing notability to 15 or so so I can maximize my influence when the second election roles around. When I don't want to deal with high notability (anytime I don't have a goal involving it) I generally just trade it in for favorable circumstances so I don't have to bother with Making Waves. Does having level 15 Notability bring some benefit I'm not aware of?
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Anne%20Auclair
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Kaijyuu
Posts: 1047
3/30/2017
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I don't bother with notability for the above reasons. I get it when I need it.
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Be of good cheer. Our contacts have assured us that your sins are forgiven.
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Lady Sapho Byron
Posts: 770
3/31/2017
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Count my voice amongst those calling for a "pause" function. It pains me to admit it, but the fragility of Notability is a nice feature of the game ... it creates a trade-off decision about how to spend actions even late into the game. But those are choices to make when playing the game. It is grating the something that takes considerable grinding can be reduced or lost by circumstances in real life. Would enabling players to take two or three or four TtHs off a year be so bad for game play? I suspect that by the time Notability becomes a real concern, most players are already deep into FL ... if they've gone this far in, they will likely stick around, even if they take a two or three week vacation.
Siankan wrote:
There's also the mechanical aspects to consider. How much would they have to rewrite in order to make such a feature functional? My guess is a great deal - much of it at the very heart of the game.
I think this is the crux ... in terms of code, how hard would a "pause" be to implement? (As a long(ish)-term player, I can't help but observe that TtH can't be that hard to stop ... ;-) ) If it's very hard, perhaps there are other work-arounds that could functionally be a pause: a few times a year a player could be allowed to spend Fate to buy Notability; likely there are others I'm not clever enough to think of.
In any event ... pause please!
edited by Lady Sapho Byron on 3/31/2017
--
http://fallenlondon.com/Profile/Lady%20Sapho%20L%20Byron
Fighting the Menace of Corsetry Since 1892.
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DonaghyLogan
Posts: 205
3/31/2017
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Apart from RP reasons, though, is there any reason to maintain Notability at a high level for extended periods of time? If the only benefits are RP and the occasional surprise package guarantee, perhaps a "pause" feature wouldn't be worth the effort?
Also, I quite agree that the Noman tattoo would lose a lot of its difficulty. Automatic Noman death would have to be written into the pause feature, I guess. (Yet another thing!)
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https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/DonaghyLogan - An eccentric, ambitious professor with a quite frankly unreasonable number of pets
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An Individual
Posts: 589
3/31/2017
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We'll be sorry to see you go. Personally, I've never sweated notability outside of the isolated instances where I actually need it. I usually end up hitting a static 8 or 9 thanks to a mix of opportunity cards I play when they show up. That lets me get Surprise Packages from An Unsigned Letter without risk of failure which is nice. But I tanked mine during Hallowmas on the quest to get all the companions and didn't really miss it in the slow months where it was gradually rebuilt.
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An Individual's Profile
The RNG giveth and the RNG taketh away.
Goat Farming or Cider Brewing? This browser extension may help.
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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dov
Posts: 2580
4/2/2017
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Koenig wrote:
I remember getting the Uber-Goat, and being utterly disappointed that their was no new hidden content unlocked for doing so.
Well, there is if you get 7 of them...
--
 Want a sip of Hesperidean Cider? Send me a request in-game. Here's an_ocelot's guide how.
(Most social actions are welcome. Please no requests to Loiter Suspiciously and no investigations of the Affluent Photographer)
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Koenig
Posts: 466
4/1/2017
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I may follow you one day soon. Fallen London has left me with nothing but a passive grind for my efforts. All my achievements in the game are for naught, with little to nothing for my persona to actually do with their fame and fortune.
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Koenig: Extraordinary. Invisible. Shattering. Legendary.
   
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Lady Sapho Byron
Posts: 770
4/1/2017
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Anne Auclair wrote:
Again, is there any reason to maintain high Notability besides the election festival?
In addition to the other uses (and future uses) of Notability on the An Unsigned Message card mentioned by other posters there is this: if one wants to grind one's way up to 15 to take maximum advantage of 'Will you execute our denouement?', one must, in a sense, maintain high levels of Notability until the zenith is reached.
But other than the election and personal desire to do so, I can think of no other reason to permanently retain a high (10+) Notability.
edited by Lady Sapho Byron on 4/1/2017
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http://fallenlondon.com/Profile/Lady%20Sapho%20L%20Byron
Fighting the Menace of Corsetry Since 1892.
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Koenig
Posts: 466
4/2/2017
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I remember getting the Uber-Goat, and being utterly disappointed that their was no new hidden content unlocked for doing so.
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Koenig: Extraordinary. Invisible. Shattering. Legendary.
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Anne Auclair
Posts: 2215
4/2/2017
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An Individual wrote:
Anne Auclair wrote:
I've been raising Notability for the election and I'm honestly having some fun doing so.
Your the first person I've ever heard say that. My last notabiilty grind was with an alt with something like 32 BDR clawing it's way up to 12 notability from basically nothing for reasons of candle acquisition and it was, frankly, a miserable experience. Then again, I just concluded my 2 year Cider grind the other day so I'm in no position to judge.
It's a challenge that requires deft use of resources and some degree of planning, so it isn't simply the brute expenditure of actions. This can make gathering Waves somewhat fun. When you're seeking Notability a number of your companions come in handy, your lodgings develop new uses, and you come to really appreciate the Sardonic Music Hall Singer. This is a nice change of pace if you don't usually bother much with Notability (and I generally do not). It also gives me a nice little Fallen London project for April, May, and June.
edited by Anne Auclair on 4/2/2017
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Anne%20Auclair
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suinicide
Posts: 2409
4/1/2017
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The unsigned message card has a notability challenge that rewards a surprise package.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/profile/sunnytime
A gentleman seeking the liberation of knowledge, with a penchant for violence.
RIP suinicide, stuck in a well. Still has it under control.
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Optimatum
Posts: 3666
3/31/2017
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For players who have to be away for multiple weeks, perhaps there should be an zero-action option in this special area to extend the pause by a week, so players could customize the hiatus length as needed. I'm not quite sure how this would play out with the living stories idea; maybe the "unpause" living story would just reduce the pause quality by 1 and set a new living story in another week? Living stories are server-intensive though, so maybe there's some method I'm not thinking of that would allow only a single living story for the very end of the hiatus...
Siankan wrote:
I don't think anyone is going to want to mess with the action coding, which has "game-breaking" written all over it.
What changes would be necessary? I suspect that, like similar browser games, FL only actually gives a player actions when they open the site. It's much easier on servers to record in the database the most recent time each player's browser made a request to the server, and to calculate gains in actions/cards whenever a request is made. (A request would be made whenever the webpage is loaded or the action timer hits 0 while the page is open.) If building up actions and cards while away is a concern, we already know it's possible for in-game options to grant actions, so it's likely possible for an in-game hiatus option to take away actions and cards as well.
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Optimatum, a ruthless and merciful gentleman. No plant battles, Affluent Photographer requests, or healing offers; all other social actions welcome.
 Want a sip of Cider? Just say hi!
PM me for information enigmatic or Fated. Though the forum please, not FL itself.
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aegisaglow
Posts: 202
3/31/2017
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Besides the technical challenges, the pause idea seems unnecessarily harsh--someone doesn't want their notability to decay, so they're locked out of their account for an entire week?
Honestly, I don't think much would be lost by removing notability decay entirely. It doesn't add that much to the game, and what it does add is mainly worry and hassle. (In my opinion removing it wouldn't even diminish the accomplishment of achieving high levels of notability--when I was climbing to Notability 15 maintaining my current notability was never an issue, since the Making Waves required always vastly exceeded my Notability anyway.)
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Mx. Aglow. Glazier, hedonist, devil-teaser, Paramount Presence. Pursuing their Heart's Desire.
Ms. Lilian Leith. A lady of proper standing, which seems like an increasingly ludicrous thing to give a rat's ___ about. Known (to some) for her Light Fingers.
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Anne Auclair
Posts: 2215
3/31/2017
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I think the game should add more options to trade Notability for Useful/Cool Stuff. That way people with high Notability who are taking a vacation can cash in their Notability in a useful way...as can people who get 15 Notability for whatever reason but don't want to maintain it for long. Like, how many really high end items would 15 Notability be worth?
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Anne%20Auclair
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Siankan
Posts: 1048
3/31/2017
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Lady Sapho Byron wrote:
I think this is the crux ... in terms of code, how hard would a "pause" be to implement? (As a long(ish)-term player, I can't help but observe that TtH can't be that hard to stop ... ;-) ) If it's very hard, perhaps there are other work-arounds that could functionally be a pause: a few times a year a player could be allowed to spend Fate to buy Notability; likely there are others I'm not clever enough to think of,
This is actually probably the easy part. TtH is effectively a living story; altering the trigger so that it checks for a certain quality ("In Absentia," shall we say) isn't that hard mechanically. On the other hand, the amount of things that could blow up from messing with the TtH trigger are probably more than any programmer wants to think about.
More serious is the necessity (as others have mentioned) of freezing everything else in the game, so that people aren't just using it as a TtH dodge. That is a monumental quantity of work, requiring a lot of rewriting of individual bits, and most fundamentally actions. I don't think anyone is going to want to mess with the action coding, which has "game-breaking" written all over it. Actually, making a Pause feature work touches a lot of potentially game-breaking bits. I don't like thinking about it, and I'm on the outside. I'm pretty sure any Failbetter employees reading this thread are already developing migraines.
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Prof. Sian Kan, at your service.
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Pumpkinhead
Posts: 516
3/31/2017
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It can't be that hard to keep a player from using actions, though. Lock them in a must storylet. Or send them to a location/setting where they can't receive social actions or do anything. Sure, you'll still regenerate actions right at the beginning, but you'll only build up 20 (or 40), which isn't really a huge deal.
edited by Pumpkinhead on 3/31/2017
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McGunn/Bsymstad is on the slow boat, waiting to see if he can find out what death is. (I'm done with London for now. Thanks for everything!)
Amanda Albright is a *spoiler* now, like she always wanted.
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Pumpkinhead
Posts: 516
3/31/2017
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In addition: make it so you can only lock your account for increments of 7 days. Then you can keep the same TtH day, and when you come out of hiatus you'll have the same number of days til TtH as you did when you went in. Should keep people from gaming the system.
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McGunn/Bsymstad is on the slow boat, waiting to see if he can find out what death is. (I'm done with London for now. Thanks for everything!)
Amanda Albright is a *spoiler* now, like she always wanted.
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Gallmarch
Posts: 111
3/30/2017
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Robin Alexander wrote:
To be honest, I think the call for a "pause" button is a fantastic idea. 15 notability is a lot to lose - and a lot to regain - simply because you're on an extended vacation, for example . . . a pause button would be an ideal way for a player not to be penalised for not playing, but also be unable to abuse the system and get any extra gain.
A "pause" button would be nice, although it would require careful implementation to avoid gaming the system, e.g., by playing chicken with Time, the Healer. I feel like a reasonable compromise would be to ding players a point of Notability the first time they miss TtH and, on each subsequent TtH, check whether they've [logged in|spent any actions] since the previous TtH — a kind of auto-hiatus.
It's pretty clear, from how it's described in-game, that high Notability is intended to be something that's difficult to acquire and maintain, but players with high Notability are a dedicated and (I'd imagine) relatively small fraction, and everybody needs to step away from things sometimes, even if it's just to spend more time in the Big Blue Room.
(Full disclosure: I'm Notability 5, so this isn't an issue for me, but I can imagine myself stressing out if I have to go on holiday during my quest to overcap Watchful.)
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My profile: https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/Gallmarch
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Siankan
Posts: 1048
3/31/2017
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Pumpkinhead wrote:
It can't be that hard to keep a player from using actions, though. Lock them in a must storylet.
The must storylet has its own minefield, because you have to start worrying about how must storylets interact with one another. Also, you'd have to write out a separate storylet for each setting, as settings cannot share cards.
The separate area is actually not that bad an idea, and might solve lots of issues quite elegantly. I can't guarantee there aren't problems with it, but it's the best thing I've heard so far. Good thought!
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Prof. Sian Kan, at your service.
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DonaghyLogan
Posts: 205
3/30/2017
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I think that the "pause" button could work if it locked a player out of xir account for an extended period of time. For instance, if one wanted to pause xir account, the "pause" would entirely lock the player out for a week. That way, it couldn't be taken advantage of as a TtH-dodge.
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https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/DonaghyLogan - An eccentric, ambitious professor with a quite frankly unreasonable number of pets
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Siankan
Posts: 1048
3/30/2017
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There's also the mechanical aspects to consider. How much would they have to rewrite in order to make such a feature functional? My guess is a great deal - much of it at the very heart of the game.
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Prof. Sian Kan, at your service.
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Pumpkinhead
Posts: 516
3/31/2017
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Some parts of it might not be that hard. To lock down the account, you could just make a Must storylet that doesn't let you escape until your time on lockdown is up (a living story could be used for the timer). I don't know if it's possible to be excused from TtH, though.
Although it would probably be better to have something to suspend accounts from outside the game engine. Move the account out of the normal player database, and leave it in a sort of limbo. I make no guesses on what the difficulty of that might be though.
Edit: Oh, one of the big issues with this pause idea is it would make it way too easy to get a noman tattoo.
edited by Pumpkinhead on 3/31/2017
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McGunn/Bsymstad is on the slow boat, waiting to see if he can find out what death is. (I'm done with London for now. Thanks for everything!)
Amanda Albright is a *spoiler* now, like she always wanted.
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Pumpkinhead
Posts: 516
3/30/2017
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Is maintaining Notability 15 that bad? I'm sure getting there is, but every time my TtH hits my making waves are always above 15, even though I never try to grind them.
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McGunn/Bsymstad is on the slow boat, waiting to see if he can find out what death is. (I'm done with London for now. Thanks for everything!)
Amanda Albright is a *spoiler* now, like she always wanted.
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