Betterblog

I like the idea about buying a new candle also. Look forward to seeing the new content (which is always fabulous)

Tigers!

I'd mentioned this briefly on Twitter, but I'm not sure I like the hard limit on the actions per 24 hours. Yes, they don't really give you a lot more over whatever you already do, but the choice is there for you. If you get to it just before the 24 hours is up, you have a little more to do. If not, then they're forfeited--which is fair enough.

The loss of that user choice is huge, for me: you're telling me I can only play this much today. There is no reason for me to keep coming back and hunt around for possible new storylets and things to do after my 70 actions are up. (Most of my exploring happen then, to be honest.) The excitement of "hey, this looks like a cool thing to do in 65 minutes!" is gone. After a browser refresh, where I am in the game--staking out a spot in the aforementioned storylet--is gone. The catalyst is gone.

If you're quite firm on this decision, maybe you should do refreshes on one single time a day. Allow users to customize this time according to what they want, if needed--but honestly, I have three EBz accounts and they all refresh at different times of the day. I feel that it's even more important when hard limits are involved.

I have to step in and second Angela's comment -- slow-refresh has also allowed me to be a bit more gracious with social actions, when I'm out of turns but can promise to accept the invitation in an hour. Without it, I'm going to be useless to my friends for a good chunk of the day.

I have to second Angela on this.  I like having the moves continue refreshing, even at the slower pace.  It means that if I use up my moves, but walk away for a few hours, I can come back and play a couple more moves. It also means that for K+C, I can afford to be patient, and that I can do social activities with people in other time zones, because I'm at the very worst no more than 70 minutes away from a new action.

I also support the first Angela's comment. I have deeply appreciated the absence of a hard cap, and am vexed by this change. This makes it a much more stressful game for me. I am the kind of player who cannot keep stats entirely to the back of mind, but I still very much want my decisions to be motivated by my perception of my character and random whim/curiousity. Putting a hard cap and making me actually count every action will make it much harder for me to immerse myself in and fully enjoy the game. Even on days when I don't reach the 70-action cap. I know this may sound silly, and fully admit it is mainly a psychological thing. But then, so much of my enjoyment of the game is derived from how it plays psychologically.

Hello Angelas, Gil and Kylee -

There've been issues of confusion around Exhausted for a long time. Losing it will solve a lot of niggles (and reduce the constant support burden, which is a big deal for a tiny company like us). Taking it out was a real relief for me.

But further - the user feedback has been very consistent on wanting a larger action pool (it's been the highest-ranked item on the suggestions forum for a long time). We took this step with some trepidation, because it may mean that the mainstream of players burn through content much more quickly. Content is the heart of the game, and Fate sales for extra actions are its lifeblood: if we can't keep those high, we shut down. So if we give with one hand, we take away with the other, and we monitor carefully.

So we'll be monitoring this change very carefully, and we'll continue to tweak. We might change the action pool again (up or down), we might change the candle mechanics, we might change the refresh time. But this is surgery on a live patient - we can't afford to make mistakes that will damage our livelihood.

But finally, in response to Angel's suggestion: the ability to change refresh time (or find some other way to make it more convenient - like increasing the time between action refreshes, but removing the daily limit) is on our tentative list of upcoming changes.

I was very disappointed to wake up this morning, and instead of finding my usual 5 actions that build up over night, instead finding 0 because you got rid of the slow refresh. That means I have no reason at all to visit the site until late afternoon when my refresh happens, which means I am going to simply forget about the site.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted, but since we've all been punished because of the few people who can't understand something simple, I'm not sure I'll even bother with the game anymore.

Thank you for your prompt response! I'll just have to adjust my playing style -- play through 60 actions a day without worrying, leave 10 over for social or other actions that might arise. If a larger action pool is implemented it's possible that I won't have to, since I'm not out of actions until the evening, anyway. I trust that you'll keep all of our concerns in mind as you continue, so good luck with the surgery.

And I forgot to give my usual 'new content coming! yay!' cheer. New content coming! Yay! I know some people who've been waiting on new Heart's Desire content, so 'all four ambitions' is especially exciting.

I can't help but say this is the first thing about Echo Bazaar I've been turned off by.  You guys work very hard on this game and it's one of the best web games I've played, but seeing "Want a second candle?" under the candle forever is just one facet of how baldly exploitative this "feature" is.

The groups of turns being too small for all 70 turns to be spent during an average person's day was the number one complaint on the forum until the thread was removed (as it had been "fixed").

Taking a feature of the game that made it frustrating to play and/or sometimes unplayable and saying "You don't have to endure a feature of the game widely considered as broken...if you pay us" is the height of dishonest dealing.

I did start a feedback thread for it if anyone else wants to vote on it, or tell me to stop QQing, here:  http://uservoice.com/a/k3UVM

I have to echo Angela and the others, here--losing slow refresh cancels out the happiness I might otherwise have at being able to buy fewer actions. Slow refresh made me:

* Come back to the site more often to see if there was an opportunity card worth playing (being unable to ever play them without using fate will have the opposite effect)
* Wake up in the morning because I knew I had 5-8 actions coming
* Play more social and healing actions, because it felt like less of a "waste"
* Poke around locations and "catch up with friends" while waiting anxiously for the next action
* Buy more fate because something I see while exhausted makes waiting impossible.

My EBZ day begins in the late afternoon, which means it ends around midnight. Now I have no reason to check the site during the day, and much less reason to buy fate--I might wind up getting some when there's new Bag a Legend content, but other than that there won't be any draw.

Actually, it occurs to me that I can save my refresh time -- that's 10 actions right there. So you see, adjusting to changes is even easier than I thought! ^^;

I do want you to know, Alexis, that I have so far loved your game, have donated to its development, and have, in general, spread it amongst my friends.  I do understand and commiserate with your financial situation in regards to fate points.  I'm less understanding of a "feature" always in my face as my fate slowly regenerates that seems exploitative of the game's biggest complaint.

I dunno, guys. 70 actions a day, plus 10 from tweets which we won't count because you get them instantaneously and (if you're like me) spend them just as rapidly. Plus a cheeky extra 9 you can get if you let your candle build up once you're down to 1 action.

Considering that actions build up at the sedate rate of 1 every 7 minutes (that's about 9 an hour), and taking into account the fact that your game day starts with a full candle, you're looking at 7 to 8 hours of gameplay over the course of a day. That's pretty good going. If anything, the problem's getting enough opportunities in the day to check in and actually spend the things, so I don't personally see the hard cap as a problem (and that's speaking as someone who often hits the cap...), which is what the bigger candle is useful for.

I don't personally see anything wrong with the way they've implemented the candle. Yes, they're asking for money. But money makes the difference between the Bazaar expanding and growing on the one hand - which benefits *all* players, paying and nonpaying alike - and on the other hand the servers going dark and FBG shutting up shop, which helps nobody.

A few comments of my own:

From my understanding of the second candle (and please correct me if i'm wrong) it does not increase the number of actions you receive, or the speed at which they build up.

The only thing it does is lets you build up more of a buffer of actions so that you could get through your 70 actions per day in fewer sessions (ie instead of having to log in 7 times in a 24 hour period with a minimum of an hour between each login, you could let actions build up for 2 hours and log in half the number of times per day).

I dont deny that there is some use to it insofar as you are less likely to waste actions as you dont have to log in so much, but the cost of 35 fate ($7) for a month's extra candle seems slightly excessive given that you are still stuck with the hard limit of 70 actions per day.

On a related note, if the exhausted system was still in place the candles would be noticeably more useful as it would potentially enable you to get more actions if you are away from the computer for extended periods of time for sleep/work etc yet still get through the 70 non-exhausted actions each day.

That said, I dont begrudge the removal of exhaustion in the slightest - ESPECIALLY as it allows the team to focus on more important things like *new content* instead of having to repeatedly dealing with support requests about exhaustion.

disclaimer to the above: I am not someone who buys actions with money

And finally - YAY NEW CONTENT!!

Thank you for the prompt response, I didn't really expect it. Kudos on that.

I work at an Internet company myself, specifically with communities within that larger sphere (albeit in an indirect manner, as a frontend engineer). Hence, I understand how difficult it is to keep up support on a small much-misunderstood feature: and again as a frontend engineer, I can well understand the relief washing your hands off of this troublesome feature (I can imagine the relief of your engineers, too!). I also understand the need to focus energies on what matters, as I've always been part of small teams myself.

But I'd still like to urge you to reconsider this. Small features like this do matter to communities, small things that seem to be negligible ("after all, you don't get a lot out of it!") but these small features can have a much, much larger impact on users. I'd have to agree with Callie that seeing "want a larger candle? pay us!" instead of my slow-refresh countdown felt way too shady. I also need to agree with Ed that this just gives me a lot more time to not even care about the website...which, I think, is a much bigger issue.

You see, right now, after I've burned through my 70 actions (and believe me I can burn through them quickly--I work online), I still come back every so often to check and do other things. Echo Bazaar is still floating around in my head. But after those 70 actions are gone...what then? I don't need to keep Echo Bazaar somewhere in RAM, I can file it away until the next refresh. And I will let you know--sometimes in the morning, I forget about EBz. I only remember during midday, because my mind has neatly sealed off unnecessary information. That space of time can only lengthen as time goes on, until the time comes when...I just forget until the end of the day, and then I just don't bother anymore. That has happened to me before in other browser-based, turn-based games.

The "pull" to keep EBz somewhere in RAM for easy access during the day would be something I would personally care about, if I was interested in keeping EBz interesting and relevant for users. It's not just the content, but the actual pull of the game.

As a programmer, I see the change in the handling of actions as a big benefit to EBZ. It cuts out a lot of the tedious programming that inevitably creates bugs. It also makes Alexis's job far easier, as I assume the exhausted feature has been a burden on him for a long time.

With more options to spend fate, the more people will actually spend it, the more money EBZ makes, the more hours they can spend programming, the more content we get! In fact, the only times I've spent fate are on the soul trade and getting a second candle. With more options in the future, I may get tempted again.

With a second candle, the maximum actions I can receive each day is 99: 69 for the regular cap, 10 for tweeting, and an additional 20 when the actions fill up at the end of the day. For all of that to fill up, that's nearly 12 hours - 12 hours of free entertainment every day on a beautiful game with an addictive storyline. No complaints from me.

Can't wait to see where the story goes when the content cap gets raised!

I understand that explaining the slow refresh is complicated, but -- when I started playing, I got 2 actions an hour after my 70 actions were used up. Then I got 1 every 2 hours, and I was disappointed, of course, but saw the problem with running out of content. Now it's down to none -- which, again, I understand, but was dropped on people suddenly, along with a "here, buy another candle" ad (which, honestly, reads to me like if you buy that second candle you will, for a month, get 140 actions a day -- I am sure you won't, but what the candle does is unclear based on the main page). It looks like the "refresh candle with 1 action left" exploit has been removed, too, so that's about 15% fewer actions in a day.

This will kill the social aspects (lodgings storylets) -- I'm not going to be willing to listen to nightmares for an action, now, or do the "something in a tree" storylet. Why would I use 35 actions on preparing a theft from the museum when I don't get much out of it (unless I betray my friend and steal for myself)? The social actions are a fun part of the game, but when action points feel so limited, they become extraneous, and are more droppable than other parts. I'm not sure if that is a result you want.

Of course, I meant one every hour before the hard action cap, not one every 2 hours.

While I can understand why you've changed to a flat action cap, I have to say I'm very disappointed. I always enjoyed checking back throughout the evening for my one or two extra actions, and choosing carefully how to spend them was fun. Now I don't have any incentive to keep messing around in the game after my 70+10 actions are done for the day. As someone else said above, this is the first decision you've made about the game that's really rubbed me the wrong way.

It looks to me like the aforementioned cheeky extra 9 are gone now. Which, I'm not going to lie, saddens me. I liked feeling like I was getting away with something. I felt so smart when I first figured it out.

Also, yes to everything Angela's said.

Yup, just noticed those extra actions you get at the end of the day when you let it refill are gone. That's the only reason I got a second candle, so it'd be an extra ten actions each day. Oh well. Now that second candle is useless.

I feel like an important thing many commenters are missing is that this is a beta. Do you like the second candle? Great! Are you mad about it costing Fate? Here's the thing.

I'm just guessing here, but I'm thinking that the roll-out of something which causes concentrated bursts of activity (plus an extra 10 actions at the point of sale) is probably a freaking nightmare to deal with initially. If they rolled it out to everyone, any bugs or issues or strains on the hardware would be multiplied by thousands. By making it cost less than a decent sandwich, they make money while reducing the pool of adopters to a manageable level for testing.

Or would you have been happier if the second candle were free, distributed arbitrarily to a small number of people, and you weren't given any option to get one at all?

Hi folks

A melange of responses to a number of the comments above.

We really do listen to feedback, both pos and neg, as long as it's polite - those of you who've been around for a while know that. We'll continue to listen over the coming weeks.

A clarification about the Exhausted issues. It's not just having to explain it or deal with confusion (although that was a significant chunk of my time). It's also that removing it should have fixed a number of troublesome intermittent bugs:

- the Weird Intermittent Negative Actions Bug
- the Sinister Infuriating My Countdown Timer Reached Zero and Then Started Over Bug
- the Cheeky Exploit that you folks mentioned above (which would have allowed *nineteen*, not nine, extra actions with a double candle...)

and a number of other old adversaries that (I hope) will now be gone.

Does solving the other bugs mean you will have time to fix the long-standing "can't see your K&C results in IE 7 or 8" bug? I now have to use IE during the day, and would love to be able to actually play K&C on weekdays. Will it also solve the "some people in K&C have higher-than-possible stats" bug?

I have no opinion about the second candle except that I find the constant ad there a bit intrusive and somewhat unclear. I have never especially wanted a 20 action buffer, but don't feel it's unreasonable to charge Fate for it.

I -- and I assume most if not all of the other commenters -- understand that it's a bugfix. And bugfixes are cool! It's great to have improvements in the code. But it's a bugfix that forces many of us to change the way we play, which is unfortunate and a little disappointing.

This could make an... interesting difference to Knife and Candle. At the moment, if I attack somebody who is hunting me, and fail in my attempt, I can be reasonable certain that they'll retaliate within 70 minutes, which is only long enough to rebuild half of my stealth bonus. Under the new system they may not be able to retalliate at all, due to being out of actions.

To reiterate a few things that have been mentioned already, and hopefully add another thought or two (and friendly waves to Gil and jillheather): I don't mind the second candle, or the loss of what I never even saw as an exploit-I thought it was perfectly normal to get the "last" ten actions before Exhaustion like that-but I do mind taking the slow refresh away completely, and without warning in advance to boot-I was not very happy today stuck at zero Fate and zero actions and not being able to "just go buy a few Fate"...

The problem will be that quite a few people, as have already said here, then just won't play anymore during the day-then it will really end up needing "just a few minutes per day" to play it. Until now, it has been rather addictive, and if you knew there'd be one little action every few hours due to the slow refresh, you could sneak in and do something-like the aforementioned social actions, which will no doubt suffer now, too.

Is there no way to make the Exhaustion refresh less confusing then to avoid all the support questions? I'm not sure what people didn't understand about it in the first place, but then again, I don't understand the problems most of my students have when dealing with our enrolment system either-I do understand the problem that it eats away at the time you'd rather spend doing something more productive.

And add another voice to the "please fix the IE K&C bugs" choir-it is rather annoying to get a blank screen every time you do something...and some people have to use the blasted IE <whisper> at work </whisper>

(the Captcha, btw, seems to have problems producing something on Firefox that I can actually decipher and which isn't half blocked by the box below it...it took ten tries to find something today!)

Cheers,

Sandy

Whoo-hoo! New content! Yay and thank you! That's the main thing.  

But also: I see the point of doing away with the Exhausted slow refresh, but I will miss it, and I will *especially* miss the Cheeky Exploit, which gave me a tiny but delightful feeling of getting away with something every time I did it.  

More broadly, I think this bugfix will make the game a lot less fun for players who can't afford to buy Fate, or can't afford to do so very often.  I'm okay with supporting the game (and the company behind it) financially, because I'm so grateful for all the imagination and effort being expended on Fallen London - and because I can afford to do so.  But that may not be true for everyone I play with here; they can no longer substitute patience for cash as readily in order for us all to play on more or less equal terms.  The game feels less democratic to me now, and that's a real loss.

Again, your explanation about why you did this makes sense.  But I hope you reconsider anyway.

I was someone who also woke up, went excitedly to refresh EBZ, and felt my heart sink. I'm fine with the pace actions went at before, so I really see no need to spend money on using them up twice as fast in short bursts, and the thing is -- the time that 24 hours starts? Is based off when you signed up, yes?

I didn't know that when I first signed up and signed up at 4 pm. It was the end of a long work day (at a game dev company too, actually), I had nothing on my plate, and I finally wanted to check out what everyone was tweeting. I quickly discovered, belatedly, this meant that my 70 actions then ran out after midnight (which I would stay up to, sure) and that, of course, I had little to do during the day at work which was the main reason I'd signed up.

But! I did have SOMETHING to do, because of the Exhaustion system. I could engage in social actions with friends (my first experience relied on the exhaustion system, actually -- On my first day playing, I experimentally asked a friend to have dinner with me and got a quick tweet back "I'm out of actions right now but if you give me around 45 minutes I'll accept!" and I was so excited this was possible). I could play with opportunity cards or work, just a little, on my storylets. By checking in every few hours at work, there was something I could do, and I'd literally make a note of when I last checked so I could go in 2-3 hours later for a little burst of fun. That "Exhausted" refresh felt to me like a very sweet little gift that kept me interested throughout the day.

So now I can't do that. I can only play after 4 pm unless I save actions, and honestly, why would I save actions if a) I spend money on a new candle entirely in order to burn through it twice as fast or b) had the time to play them all in the evening anyway?

And I don't want to be like YOU ARE LOSING MY BUSINESS!! about it. But I can say honestly that with the way I play browser games, if I use things up and have no reason to check back, I slowly stop bothering to do so. This is why I ultimately quit Legends of Zork -- not because I lost interest (though it WAS a much less exciting game than EBZ) but because if I could only check in once a day I'd soon be checking in once every two days, then once a week. And there I had a LOT more actions, as I could have five characters and 90 actions each.

I understand the bugfix reasons and I am excited to hear about the new content! But the double candle is useless, personally, to me as I don't want to go through action  points any faster, and by removing the slow refresh you got rid of what little I could do that was in line with the reasons I originally signed up. I do love this game and want to keep playing, but I also wanted to explain my problem with the results of this decision. Thank you!

I'd like to second the request for the refreshes to be at a user-specified time rather than the sort of random and now-inconvenient basis of when I first started the game.  I'd much rather spend Fate on being able to adjust that than on a second candle, in fact!

I have to admit, I thought that the waiting for the candle to build up to ten with one move left was an easter egg that you'd left in to reward patience on behalf of the players.  If I'd realized that it was an exploit, I would have said something.

That being said, if it does go under review again, I'd like to put in a request for returning to having the exhausted actions refresh, and that is something I'd pay cash/fate for, because I do like going to bed at night and waking up in the morning to find that I have a small cache of actions collected.

Thank you!  I'm glad to have a chance to give you cash for something I really want; it's a convenience feature.  Just don't let people pay for extra turns, because that would change the balance of play.

I have very mixed feelings about this update. On the one hand, I was one of the people wanting a way to burn through actions quickly when I had time (or when, say, I'd been out the day before and wanted to use as many of that day's as possible before reset-time), and so I'm really happy at the prospect of the second candle. I'm not at all against paying for it.

On the other hand... I really want Exhaustion back. As many people have said, it kept me going back to the computer during the day to see if I could get just one more stat point this hour, or taking time to reduce my Menace. And the Cheeky Exploit was also fun, because it hinged on me remembering about it and not using up quite all of my actions by mistake. I assumed it was something done on purpose, and I appreciated it. And I liked the anticipation of waking up in the morning with the accumulation of a precious few action points, to be spent carefully... I do feel a bit ungrateful for having got something I wanted and still be whining, but in all honesty I think I'd prefer to go back to how it was before, if I had to choose. Exhaustion > larger action pool, in my opinion at least.

Given that the real action cap has always been not 70 but 79, might it not be a fair trade to raise the new, absolute action cap to 80 in exchange for removing the Exhausted refresh rate?

I also agree with purpleshinyecho that it would be kind to let players reset our daily refresh times. Perhaps, to prevent us from resetting to get free actions, it could be a one-time event. One's initial daily refresh could be determined as usual, by when one began playing EBZ, but one could then have the option of selecting a specific time for future refreshes. That time would then be as permanent as our current, arbitrary refresh times are. (Perhaps a Fate option would allow repeated resettings; I don't buy Fate, though, so I'm hesitant to suggest such solutions.)

- F.A.R.

I agree with Angela's comments about removing the exhaustion phase. When I woke up, I was always happy to have a couple of actions to play. Now, there won't be any at all until afternoon. That's just not fun.

I thought about buying a second candle, because it would store up more actions. Now, there won't be enough actions throughout the day anyway, so why should I pay for a candle? Especially when, for the price of a month's worth of a second candle, I can buy a used game that will give me hours worth of gametime instead of a couple of minutes?

Echo Bazaar is a great game to play when I need a break from work. The storyline takes me away to another world for a few minutes' break, while the action refresh keeps me from being distracted for too long. But seven minutes between actions that take an instant to perform is already a long time. And to remove even the slow refresh is just frustrating.

Please rethink this idea. I think if people can't figure out to click the "Why Is This Slower?" link, they can't really be helped anyway. And can't you make a templated response that would explain this not-very-complicated idea?

I appreciate that the Exhaustion removal was as much bugfix as clarification, but could there be any way to imitate that slow-refresh function in a less buggy way? (I know nothing about code, so if this is in fact like suggesting we mine cheese from the moon, I apologize for my ignorance.) I think the way it allowed players to keep thinking about and keep engaging with the game is a little too important to remove entirely if there's any other way.

I also agree with the general clamor for a resettable refresh time. My EBZ "day" starts at 7 PM - even if I save actions for the next day, I inevitably run out well before my refresh time and spend a large chunk of the middle of the day waiting to be able to engage with Fallen London again. Considering that I'm an unemployed student with a very light class load this semester (my last semester!) and the middle of the day is the *best* time for me to play Fallen London, this is quite an irritating itch - all the more so now that the slow-refresh is gone.

An alternative to letting us set "new day" time would be to make it work the same was as the twitter refresh -- 24 hours from the time our last action was spent. Then with a little patience, the time could be reset to whenever we want, with no concerns about abuse.

I agree, I'd like to be able to permanently change the time my refresh starts. I really wish I'd started playing at the start of the day instead of the end, I'd like my seven hours to begin in my morning, not at 4pm.

I'm going to miss the slow refresh, though I might get more done without it.

I feel I need to say something about this as well. First up, practically, the entire community now has around 15+ less actions a day (whether they knew to use them all or not - 9 extra actions a day through keeping the last action going and say another 6 or so more from the exhausted action buildup depending on how quickly you got through your actions.)

This is quite a significant loss. Perhaps this was not the intention originally, but when I came into the game, my "mentor" taught me this as I was finding my feet, and to the many I have introduced, I did the same. So this significant reduction is quite frustrating.

Furthermore, the exhausted actions did lead to me engaging with the game more during the day, especially to help others with social actions. While part of me appreciates this untehering to EB (yay part of my life back!), from a developer point of view particularly, being less engaged with EB during a day surely cannot be a good thing?

Also (while I did buy the 2nd candle to try it out), please do not keep the "want a second candle?" message where it is for much longer. It served its purpose as an "hey guys, more fate options, check it out", but it leaves a bad taste having it right there in your face. This is overall a classy game, and I'd like it to never change in that respect

For what it's worth, I am happy to see the "exhaustion" idea go. Why?  Because it would tempt me to keep looking at my computer when I wouldn't ordinarily do so, faunching for ONE MORE ACTION when I really had meant to be doing something else, but not really being satisfied with the dribble of action I got that way.  For me, it will be better to have my actions refresh at a constant rate until I exhaust my daily supply.

I'd just like to point out that even if some people think that getting a few extra turns per day isn't really that important, for someone who's trying to save up enough items to change their lodgings or buy something, every single turn helps, even if my stats are already maxed out.

This pleases me, because while I am willing to buy Fate, I only have done so once; I can't bring myself to do it regularly because whenever I think about it, it seems indulgent (I'll use all the actions up so rapidly, it's just a momentary pleasure). The second candle will last me longer and as such is easier to justify to myself.

(I'm not putting forth that my reasoning makes complete logical sense, mind you, but spending habits rarely do. Thought you mind find my self-rationalization useful somehow.)

Plus, I tend to like to play in chunks anyway-- usually when I need a break from my job.

Oh, and now that I've run out of actions once, I will say that I miss the Exhausted actions--I'd previously used them almost exclusively to sift through my opportunity cards looking for the most awesome one to play in the next hour.  I know I can save up some actions and set them aside for this purpose, but I really felt that the Exhausted actions were a nicer way to do it.  As a programmer, I understand the value in discontinuing a buggy feature, but I do hope you replace it with some other (less buggy!) feature that allows some meaningful, occasional engagement with the site after the 70 actions run out.

I couldn't be happier with this change.

As someone who *doesn't* spend all day, every day with ready access to the internet, I found it pretty tough to fit in seven (eight, really) sessions of Echo Bazaar, spaced at least an hour apart, every day. When I was fitting it in, I was always thinking "hmm, it's probably better not to let the internet dominate my day like this". And I would buy Fate to get more actions, because it was really annoying having only 10 at a time when I might not even be able to get through all my actions for the day ... but that didn't fix the problem at all, of course.

I'll very happily switch to paying for an extra candle each month if that's the way you guys continue to run things. I love the way it works for me now.

Thanks for making such an awesome game!

Since we're talking about pricing:

10 actions cost 10 fate and 240 fate cost 50$. So 240 actions cost 50$ and I get 80 actions per day so that is three days worth of actions. So 50$ for 3 days that is about 17$ per day. Am I the only one who thinks this is a little pricey?

Also note the huge difference to the new prices. If I buy the second candle for 35 fate I get about 300 extra actions over one month for less than 10$. If it's not obvious: 50$/240 ~= 20c per action but 10$/300 ~= 3c per action so basically the new actions are somewhere around 84% cheaper.

Which only makes sense since with the old exhaustion system you could wait to fill up to 10 actions when you had one left giving you 9 extra actions at the end of each day and if you slept 8 hours you would have 8 more in the morning so we just lost at least 17 actions per day which would amount to about 510 actions a month and I don't have to tell you what those would have cost before, right?

Anyway I did not use a calculator for this so I might be totally off.

Also: The captcha is only half visible in my firefox.

How about just getting rid of exhaustation? What is the problem with letting people play when they want to?

Also, it is not obvious from the fate screen that the second candle only lasts for a month. I would have been raging pretty hard after a month if my extra candle for which I paid good money disappeared.

Ah! I already miss the 'cheeky exploit' and the slow, overnight 5-8 action refresh. I will visit four times today, to burn through my twenty actions.

On thinking over this issue a little more, I've decided that it's not actually the Exhausted mechanic I'm missing - it's the fact that I'm now getting around 15-20 fewer actions per day. If you raised the action cap to refresh this then I don't think I'd actually have any issues with the loss of Exhausted.

Also, I can't see the reCaptcha. I've refreshed the box now 7 times before it came up with one I could make out.

Personally, I'm with Catherine. I've always liked the way that EB is a game that *doesn't* insist that you keep checking in on a 24-hour basis. It's the fun, laid-back browser game that doesn't mind if you see other games on the side! The death of Exhaustion means I'll be less inclined to check in *all the damn time*, but the fact that you can't blitz through your 70 actions all in one go means that I'll still be checking in on a regular basis to spend them. Thank you, the Bazaar, for setting me 60% free!

Not happy about the removal of Exhaustion. Between it and the last action 'exploit' (is it really an exploit when everyone is using it?) I had about an extra 15 actions a day, which means I now suddenly have 20% less actions than before; and as others have said, these slowly building actions encouraged us to spend them on social actions or something other than stats.

The candle is useless to me (one still needs to check in at least 4 times a day, which is the minimum required to spend 70 actions with a pool of max 20) and I feel it's somewhat overpriced, considering that it doesn't give you any extra actions beyond the cap.

I still think that you should either have the hard cap or the slowly reloading actions, because both together are really frustrating. I would prefer the soft cap back, because of the aforementioned social benefits and because it keeps people coming back to EB even after their normal action pool is over.

I'm one of the people who was actually happy with this change, exactly because it "freed my RAM" for a large part of the day. EB is a great game, but it's also hurt my productivity on a lot of days - if I'm drawn online, I easily not only do an action on EB, but then also check my e-mails, IRC and stuff, and then I end up wasting 20 minutes online again. That's actually caused me some resentment towards the game, and I'm happy to see that gone.

But I do agree with those who thought the "cheeky exploit" was neat, and gave them a small kick of feeling smart. I think it would've been cool to keep that.

Atrus: You get 10 additional actions because the candle comes preloaded. At least that's how I understood it.

I think I get where both players and developers are coming from here. As a player, my immediate reaction was the same as everyone else's -- disappointment. In the future (and maybe I missed this) it would be good for the FailBetter to telegraph major functionality changes like this, providing users forewarning on this blog and on the site.

From a developer perspective this makes a lot of sense. Obviously they have to keep the lights on, but it's important from a gamecraft standpoint too. Their worry about users overrunning the story is an important one, and a problem with the exhaustion/"cheeky" points is that it makes "demand" harder to gauge and thus "supply" harder to match to it. With the hard cap, they can much more comfortably assume that users will use 500-someodd points per week and that they'll need to produce enough new story each week to absorb that.

So long as the work they produce continues to be absorbing (loved the Cheesemonger arc, btw), I'm sure users will adapt their gameplay styles and soldier on. Personally, I'll just end up a little less distracted/more bored at work.

(P.S. One suggestion: When a player has hit the cap in one of their four attributes, stop delivering opportunity cards that do nothing other than improve that attribute -- e.g. the trade X influence for Y attribute cards.)

I think the designers can comfortably assume that *hardcore* players will use 500ish actions a week - I think it would be a bad thing for the designers to lose sight of the fact that some people can't play every day! To my mind, it should take around 20-30 actions to make concrete and easily-recognised progress in a storyline. That way, if you're having a busy day and can only check in on the game once or twice, so long as you focus your actions towards a particular goal you can still feel as though you're getting somewhere.

But I definitely agree that it'd be worth their while designing new slabs of content with the 500ish-a-week limit in mind, especially if Fallen London Friday becomes a regular thing.

This is the first time I've commented on one of these posts, but I just wanted to add my voice: I, too, am very unhappy about the loss of Exhaustion. I've read the comments above and I totally understand why the developers removed it, but if possible, could you please reconsider? I'm another player who didn't realise that the Cheeky Exploit wasn't intentional, and I really enjoyed checking back in the morning to use up the actions I accumulated overnight. I gave this change a little time to try to get used to it, but I have to say, I don't like it.

It's unsettling to log in in the morning and find that my last nine actions that I didn't use the night before have loaded, and the timer is ticking down to - nothing, because I will never get that last action. It's unsettling to automatically check in every few hours only to be reminded that I can't do anything for several more hours yet. I'm not sure why people were so confused by the explanation for Exhaustion, and I understand that you want to spend time on things other than bug fixes for what you see as a small issue, but personally, I really hate the flat action cap. Please, please find a way to bring Exhaustion back.

As far as the money thing goes - I would love to support Echo Bazaar financially, but I don't have a way of paying for things on the Internet. I can't go around asking my friends to buy me Fate with their credit cards to be paid back in cash, you know? I'm probably going to ask for merchandise from the game for Christmas, because I love it so much. If it were a possibility, I would happily pay a one-time fee to get my Exhaustion back, but at this point in my life, it is just not possible for me to buy Fate constantly in order to get more actions. I would bet that there are other players who are in similar situations, so please don't think that we're all just cheapskates who don't want to give you money!

The joy I got from playing is gone, I enjoyed coming back to 2 or 3 actions for especially strategic maneuvers. If you stop me from returning every few hours I will stop visiting at all. The lure of a few points kept me immersed in the game waiting HOURS to do anything is failbadder.

I just wanted to say that I like the second candle option.  One, it reminds me to donate money to you guys occasionally - and it's not like I was buying all that much with my fate otherwise.  Two, I like that if I'm away a sizeable part of the day, I come back to find 10+ actions waiting for me, instead of just 10.  For me, that extra buffer works.

I did like the continued refresh during the Exhausted stage, but as I'm someone who spends far too much time on the 'net as it is, it appears to me to be a not bad thing to have a point in the day when I just have to stop playing.  (Obviously, I'm not typical in this, from the above comments, but I thought I'd add that datum to the pile.)

I am very excited about the upcoming addition of new content!

First time I've ever commented here, but I felt the need to add in my two cents.

I appreciate the need to get rid of the exhausted mechanic, and while I'm disapointed, I don't mind that much.

For me it's the cheeky exploit that hurts the most, or, more specificly, it's turning up today to discover both of them gone at once.

Or, when I realy look at it, both of them gone, and nothing in return. I think you are aware that fans will be disapointed about losing these two features (I have to say that the exhaustion mechanic was one of the reasons I got hooked originaly) and you have your reasons for the change, so what I realy want is a little something to soften the blow, a couple of extra actions (say 5) would be realy nice around about now...

And on the seperate issue of the second candle... That add is realy bugging me. I mean realy. A way to turn it off would be nice (other than paying for it I mean).

Anyway, thanks for listening, and whatever happens, I still love the game.

Thanks all. Too many responses to respond to individually.

In response to people calling us 'exploitative' and 'dishonest'. I do want to call for a reality check here. We are giving away lots of free good stuff, every day, to everyone, for free. The change means that we are giving away a slightly smaller quantity of free good stuff, every day, for free. We are running a courteous and low-key business, but a business nevertheless. We need money to keep the servers on, to eat and to buy shoes for our various dependents. It's not immoral for us to ask, politely, for small sums of money to support the very large amount of content we've created.

A paying minority of our players subsidise the game for everyone else. We can't afford to drop the price of actions-for-Fate, so we're looking at ways to give people significant value for small chunks of cash without their ripping through our carefully accumulated content. The second candle is the first experiment along those lines. We'll tweak, test, change pricing, run sales. Nothing is set in stone.

To people calling us pushy. If you want to see pressure-selling, spend some time playing some of our competitors' games. Especially the ones which pop up interstitials if you leave the game idle for more than a minute. The 'Buy a second candle?' link is a low-contrast-colour text link, not an animated jumping hat gif.

About the exploit. Yes, it was an exploit, however widely used. It wasn't intended to work that way, but we lived with it for a long time because one or another change was eventually going to fix it, and because my dev time is so limited. We had about two bug reports a week from people saying 'I probably shouldn't tell you this because I like it, but...' So - we don't begrudge you having used it, but it was never meant to be. Celebrate the fact that you had it for that long.

In response to the various requests for increased (or unlimited!) actions. Server cycles are a limited resource, content is a really limited resource. We need to be able to calculate our output of both to match player consumption as best we can. Think of it this way: if we took the action cap off completely, first the servers would melt, and then everyone would eat up all the content, nom nom nom, and then we'd all go home. Well I mean I'm at home quite a lot of the time anyway. But we'd *stay* home. Work back from there.

About informing you guys in advance. Our logs showed that only quite a small minority of players took advantage of the 70-actions-plus - we knew people would be disappointed, but we didn't expect this many responses. What we failed to take into account, of course, is that the players who play every action are the most enthusiastic ones... which is a lesson learnt for the future. We have no interest in making players unhappy.

Anyway. Always nice to see a crowd. On with the fun stuff!

I came over here to see what was up after logging into EB to "spend" my overnight actions and being thwarted.  I just want to echo what everyone else is saying - it was disappointing and frustrating not to be able to get my morning "fix."  

I knew the "cheeky exploit" was an allowed exploit - you mentioned it in response to a bug post in the forum as such - and so I thought you were planning to leave it in (I think your response said that y'all didn't care that people were using it that way...).  Having the few extra actions dribbling in overnight was a LOT more fun for me than that exploit, though.  I appreciate your reasoning for the changes, Alexis, but I do hope you guys reconsider the exhausted refresh.  It serves a real purpose in never allowing the player to be fully disengaged.  (And I definitely say that as someone who has purchased fate to get more actions.)

Regarding the captcha: The text entry field covers the lower part of it. A workaround for now is a right-click on the image, copying the image url, and pasting it into a new browser window to see the image.

I'm slightly sad about losing the "9 extra actions if I paid attention to my candle" feature, but there you go.

I'd really like the option to change at what time my EchoBazaar day starts. Had been wanting to since day 2, but if there are no new actions overnight, it's even more interesting/important.

I'm looking forward to the Labyrinth of Tigers.

@MK: Yup, I didn't mind because I knew we were closing that loophole - and I thought we'd be closing it three months ago! devilishly hard to clear development time.

"never allowing the player to be fully disengaged" - I think this may be true, but I also know there are a number of players who want to be able to disengage, and/or get stressed by the idea they're not using every possible action. (How many, comparatively? good question.)

@Anke: I'll fiddle with the captcha when I get a chance (this is an off-the-shelf theme). We are very likely going to allow people to change their refresh time (probably for some nominal sum of Fate).

Add my voice to those who are really disappointed at losing the exhausted actions _and_ the 'cheeky exploit,' which I also thought was a kind of reward, not an exploit. Since it was an exploit it would've been nice if you had said at some time it would be going away, since it has really changed how I play the game now. I don't have money to spend on Fate and probably won't for a long time, and I was one of those people who hung around doing other things for hours and hours while keeping EBZ open in another tab. I also support the idea of your actions refreshing from the time you run out, rather than when you happen to start playing, which for me (and no doubt others) varies from day to day.

The action throttle for people who couldn't afford to buy Fate was already the thing I least liked about the game, and now you've really exacerbated that. I'll probably play much less often now.

And I know you do have to keep the lights on and so on, but the 'buy a second candle' really feels like an annoying ad. I'm probably going to Adblock it because it feels frustrating and like free players aren't welcome.

"We are very likely going to allow people to change their refresh time (probably for some nominal sum of Fate"

I think that charging people to REPEATEDLY change their refresh time is perfectly reasonable, but to change it ONCE should be free. If it was mentioned anywhere at all that I would be locked to the time when I signed up then I would have waited until a more convenient time to create my account, and I suspect that this is true for just about everyone. I think that, especially if you're going to charge us money to fix an inconvenience caused by lack of information on your end, you should definitely warn people of this on the sign-up page.

@Kate: Warning people on the sign-up page is a no-go, except as an excuse for us to be passive-aggressive. New players won't read it, and if they do they won't understand it, and if they understand it they might not realise the importance until too late, and then they mail us and we go 'Well did you read the notice on the sign-up page?'.

But you're right, and this is exactly the reasoning behind 'a nominal sum of Fate'. It's pretty straightforward to pick up bits of Fate here and there - we give some away early on, and non-Fate buyers usually end up with crumbs of Fate they can't do much with. So a refresh change for a handful of Fate that uses up those crumbs is a good fit, and if people then want to do a bunch of customisation, they can cough up $5.


@Moira: 'The action throttle for people who couldn't afford to buy Fate was already the thing I least liked about the game' - in some ways, it's the thing we like least about the game too. But 'keeping the lights on' isn't some sort of annoying bureaucratic requirement. If we didn't do it, there would be no game. I'm saddened that you're Adblocking our text link, but as a free player that's your prerogative.

@Alexis: Thank you very much for the response, I do see your point about people not reading a warning. And I wasn't quite sure what you called 'nominal', but being able to use Fate crumbs on a reset is good. I was just worried that people who for any reason can't buy Fate would be quite disadvantaged (beyond the understandable and unavoidable one of having fewer actions).

I miss the Cheeky Exploit* and the Exhausted refreshes to an embarrassing degree; I had no idea that I was such a spoiled brat! But even when I had closer to 90 actions/day, I had to remind myself that there's no deadline, no rush, nobody about to beat me if I don't get One More Point TODAY...(of course, I don't do K&C, so maybe that's different). If this is what it takes to keep the free stuff coming, then that's just how it is. I promise I'll give you money when I find work; until then, thank you for keeping me sane while I'm looking.

*Doesn't that sound like a Shadowy Opportunity Card? Rare success = 9 Fate.

I miss the cheeky exploit...and I'm still getting the sinister counts-down and starts over bug!  But I love the candle--while I'd be much, much happier if it doubled your total actions, mind you, I like not having to click back every hour in order to use all my actions and being able to get away from the computer for a while and still play them all.  So the candle is worth it to me, I suppose.

What I would really like interms of the ability to make links go away is the option to say "No thank you" and have the "add facebook" links go away forever.

I don't have a facebook because I deleted it.  My family is very well known in our area and I value my privacy far more than Mark Zuckerberg does.  I am never going to create a facebook or link my account to facebook, yet there is that link every day being annoying.  I would really like the option to say "no thanks" and make it go away the way I presume it goes away for those who do link their facebooks, because basically this constant reminder of the existence of facebook (a peculiarly 21st century annoyance) gets under my skin when I'm trying to contemplate the life of Dr Endymion Fairlight, soul shepherd, Summerset lecturer, noted sodomite and intimate of devils.

That would make me REALLY happy (remember, I was one of the people protesting facebook in the first place, precisely because I do not have a facebook and I'm never ever going to again and fb-only content shuts me out).



Speaking of which I'm loving the Intimate of Devils storyline but terrified you will only allow it to reach its climax in one of two ways--my selling my soul or doing something to alienate my friends forever.  (You seem to really like making people choose sides, and I avoid doing so whenever possible--and am grateful that the choosing sides cards are not red bordered or forced on me, because that would be THE way to lose me as a player.)

I am hoping desperately for a "now why would I give you my soul and lose your interest and respect forever" sort of option because what my character really wants is the Affectionate Devil as a lover and the Quiet Deviless as a BFF, not to sell his soul--after all he is in the business of rescuing souls, not to mention he doesn't much want to be kicked out of Summerset after seducing the Provost ten times.   He rather believes that the devils respect him more than the ones who pursue them, desperate to give up the only thing the devils really want.  I hate the saying "why buy the cow if the milk is free?" but if you've only got ONE glass of milk it suddenly makes a great deal of sense.

also one other thing...

A constant frustration for me in terms of the game is that you build up relationships and then they die after one night of passion.  Perhaps there are people out there who enjoy the idea of having many short flings but I'm not one of them (I am very very married and like it that way--as does my husband) and particularly since neither I nor my character are interested in pursuing women, it's annoying to have the relationship just fall apart immediately.

I mean yes there is that Starving Artist who is always at my door begging for another handout, but:

I slept with the Melancholy Curate, and now he is gone from my life.

I slept with the jewel thief, and now he is gone from my life.

I slept with the Acclaimed Beauty, and now he is gone from my life, and he doesn't even reappear to be won again (like the others did, until my stats got too high) because I can't bring myself to auction off his token of love (which would probably not be worth much, and avoiding spoilers, having heard his story, only a jerk would sell it anyway).

I think one of the reasons I keep seducing the Summerset provost and keeping company with my devils is that they don't go away.  This is part of why I am so terrified that I will only be allowed to continue the Intimate of Devils storyline so far without doing something that will bring it to an abrupt end -- either selling my soul, against everything I and my character believe, and giving them the one thing that they want and will never care about me again once I've given them -- or having to say/do something that will make them slam the door in my face and end the storyline forever.  No amount of austere will be worth that one.

I think if that happens I probably will lose interest because the constant rounds of affairs that end after a single night are frankly very depressing to those of us who don't fancy the idea of leaving a trail of broken hearts and one-night stands in our wake.

You guys are probably quite annoyed with how I've suddenly appeared on this blog post and keep coming back :x but this development is interesting to me not just as a user but on its effect on the community, so I'm sort-of keeping tabs. (I've blogged about it as well, although it's not very different from what you've seen here or know already.)

I wanted to chime in again for two things:

1. The idea of burning through content because (some) users are playing [uber-]optimally. I agree it would be crazy to try and provide new content at the rate these hardcore players are eating up content. I don't think this is exactly a solution to that problem though, even if the number of actions now have a very finite, same-across-the-board-unless-you-pay amount. In the EBz board I frequent, someone raised the point that when exhausted action refresh went up to 70 minutes/action, nobody complained (I do not have data for that, I'm only going by what was said). There were much lesser actions to be had, but it's not the same as completely cutting it off.

2. "If you want to see pressure-selling, spend some time playing some of our competitors' games." I reacted pretty strongly to this statement. Just because other people are doing it worse doesn't mean you should do it a little. ;) Pressure-selling, ads-in-your-face and the like are some things most people almost absolutely dislike. I've never really commented on how EBz has handled this recent slew of changes (i.e., lack of warning about a playstyle change even though you always "warn" of new content, placement of ads, etc) but if it makes any difference, there it is--it's off-putting because it's right above the fold, right below my timer and "higher in importance" than the number of actions I have left (which is pretty damn important to me, even more so now).

I think there's something to be said about users who have never commented here before chiming in now with these changes (myself included). As someone who works with communities, I also get annoyed when users complain about something that, to our point of view, fixed. However, these users are the ones who are enthusiastic about the product, who recommend people to try it, who may give it distinction in some form or another...and who are the type of users who would be most likely to purchase a subscription (read: ongoing money in) to a game. EBz does not have a subscription model, nor would I suggest it, but buying Fate is near enough to that, I think.

To put this in a personal, non-hypothetical perspective: I am a World of Warcraft gamer. I took a look at how much I spent monthly on WoW, and how much I have spent buying Fate on EBz (according to the length of time I have been playing after discovering EBz) and I've spent around 60% more on this game. I am a purchasing customer. I like supporting small online "underdog" companies that I feel are doing good.

The second candle appeals to me due to this change, but I have refused to buy since the slow refresh and the second candle are mutually exclusive, and my purchase would imply that I prefer the second candle+removal of slow-refresh, which I am not. With the change, I don't feel the urge to buy Fate for actions. I get sad at the end of my 70 actions, but I leave (close the browser tab) after and don't go exploring. In the morning, I sometimes forget until midday or later about EBz now, and I've stopped playing my Clay man (third character) as well. My $15/mo on WoW lets me play unlimited, and I do so even if all my characters are already at end-game. My higher-amount "investment" in EBz has eventually netted me a cap at how much I can play, regardless of whether I am at end-game or not.

I won't ever suggest allowing the second candle and slow-refresh both, of course, but maybe an option that if you have a second candle, you have a maximum cap of actions? While if you do not have a second candle, you get the (slightly buggy) slow-refresh feature. This would meet the preferences of those who would like to burn through their playtime quickly at one time of the day, and those who prefer a slower, more drawn-out pace in playing...without having people burn through actions quickly AND get so much more actions (since slow-refresh would kick in earlier).

(P.S. I suppose it's not entirely appropriate to use WoW/Blizzard as an example, but that is the only other game I have ongoing payments (in some form) on. They are a much bigger company, with a much bigger wallet, and have much different issues from what a much smaller company would face. But there are parallels nonetheless.)

You totally changed the gameplay mechanic with no warning and ruined a great game for me. We all know its no coincidence that the new candle and the removal of exhaustion arrived in such a way for you to exploit a segment of users and I recognize that is your right,but I dont reward game developers who pull these kind of stunts.

ALSO: See Angela's post.

Wow. "Exploit"? Seriously?

I'm a long-time, hardcore player (since January, generally played all Cheeky Exploit actions and all Exhausted actions, every day; have also bought substantial amounts of Fate to spend on both content and additional actions beyond the dailies). I miss my extra actions, and I wouldn't have minded knowing that the change was upcoming.

But I also think talk about "exploitation" and "making people feel unwelcome" is a mammoth overreaction.  

Look: we're being given stuff. It's not free for Failbetter to make, even if it's free for us to consume. It's not even marginally free. You might think "hey, they're making this content anyway, so free users cost them nothing." Not true: even free players have to be supported with server time and customer service.

Tweaking the model to reduce the expenses a bit is not exploitation. It's responsible business practice, without which the whole thing would close up shop.

So yeah, I miss my extra actions, but not nearly as much as I'd miss the game as a whole if it went away. Let's try for some perspective here.

I think the WoW comparisons are a red herring; EBZ operates on a completely different scale and Failbetter trying to be Blizzard would be daft - like a graceful and agile pixie trying to imitate a big hulking giant.

I think a better comparison (and one which came up frequently on the Feedback forum, I seem to recall) is Kingdom of Loathing. Where, erm, you blitz through all your day's actions at once and then that's kind of it, unless you happen to be able to buy an item which gives you extra actions. (Which would be good in EBZ, but should probably wait until the developers are happy that such items won't cause people to gobble up all the content too quickly.)

So even without exhaustion EBZ is still way ahead of its major competitor in terms of giving people a reason to come back to the site regularly during the day. I just don't buy the "I'll lose enthusiasm and forget that the site exists if I don't visit every hour" idea; if you're already visiting a website six to eight times a day I think it's fair to say it's well-lodged in your mind.

"I think the WoW comparisons are a red herring;"

I only gave that comparison because that's where I'm coming from. In the end I did say it wasn't the best parallel, but I pay for both games and to that extent, it is similar. I don't expect Blizzard-level polish (and that "polish" is debatable), but when a company I put money in moves in a direction that is opposite to how I would like to play a game, I'm not under obligation to continue support.

I am expressing my opinions here because I feel it is where I can be heard. I'm not saying EBz will not see me anymore, like some you've seen in this thread. I'm saying that this is where it seems to lead me now, in the hopes that THEY listen and it won't go further than this. Unless you think I should shut up and just quit when I've had enough of the game even though I've never voiced my concerns: I disagree with that stance.

EBz is in beta. Users SHOULD be voicing their concerns and preferences with playstyle and the like, because it is in beta. Will everything get implemented? No. Will everything please everyone? No. But I'd rather have my say rather than miss the chance and then hear later from the team that "the time when you should have told us you didn't like so-and-so is past, it's now set in stone and that's that."

"I just don't buy the "I'll lose enthusiasm and forget that the site exists if I don't visit every hour" idea; if you're already visiting a website six to eight times a day I think it's fair to say it's well-lodged in your mind."

No, that's what I'm saying: the change has impacted the number of times I actually visit the site. Hell, I'd just forgotten now (my refresh was four hours ago, and previously I have always been ready by the time the refresh hits), and was only reminded when I went to my blog to check stats and saw the EBz entry. *shrug*

censorship? really? I guess I know what kind of developer you really are now. goodbye and good riddance.

Arthur says:
I just don't buy the "I'll lose enthusiasm and forget that the site exists if I don't visit every hour" idea; if you're already visiting a website six to eight times a day I think it's fair to say it's well-lodged in your mind.

You may not buy it, but I haven't even been using all of my tweet refreshes since the change and find myself putting less thought into my actions :/

Probably good for my overall sanity, but I do miss the addiction.

EndUs3r (and anyone else to whom this might be relevant),

We reserve the right to delete comments on this blog when, for instance,

- they are personally offensive,
- they are anonymous and use a Mailinator email address,
- they are accompanied by email harassment.

In a year, this is the first non-spam comment I've deleted. Please let's keep it civil.

@Angela: I wasn't trying to say you shouldn't express your opinion, I was just saying that I didn't agree with it. As you say, in the Beta process it's important for everyone to express their opinion, even - and I would argue *especially* - when those opinions disagree with each other. Surely it helps the developers to know that the objections against this new development are by no means unanimous?

My first reaction to this is that it seems a touch expensive - something closer to $7.50 a month seems more appropriate, rather than paying $10 for this + 5 Fate. (Yes, I know that there's an effective discount if you buy more Fate up front... but I still feel that's pushing its luck, what with having to pay a lot of money so far in advance.)

However, I really can't know yet! I've decided to try it for a month. (Twitter: eric_astor) I'll get back to you when I know how it plays.

On that note, I wanted to float an idea: allow subscriptions, and possibly with something of a "family-pack discount". They don't HAVE to be paid in advance - but you get a meaningful commitment to paying every month, in exchange for... I don't know, either a second candle and a small bundle of Fate - or perhaps just a monthly dose of Fate, at a more-discounted price than the amount spent each month would normally justify.

My fiancee and I play EBZ together, a lot. We've each got an active account, and also a shared joint account that we both help to play. We'd love to send you guys somewhere in the vicinity of $15-20 a month for all three accounts to have a second candle... it would help the game fit better into our lives, while placing this new feature (and future Fate features) at a more convenient discount for "bulk customers".

I know this might be a pain to implement... I don't know how much of a pain. I know PayPal enables subscriptions, but I don't know what's involved. But it might give Failbetter a way to quantify a reliable source of steady income, while benefiting the players too. What do other people think?

@Arthur: yes, you're totally correct in that they also need to hear from the people who do appreciate the change. Hearing from those people also help give the ones on the other side a bit of perspective, and that's totally welcome. Apologies for misunderstanding, your comment had felt like it was telling me my comparison did not bear any merit.

@Eric: subscriptions might actually be a good idea, to be honest. I would very likely go that route, assuming that whatever's bundled in the subscription is right for me (as well as it being a manageable price).

Well, er, I don't think the WoW comparison is any good - I still disagree with it. But there's a difference between saying "I don't think that argument is correct" and saying "I don't think you should have been allowed to make that argument in the first place". We can dispute each other's points without mistaking that for an attack on the person making the point, can't we?

Since you read these comments, have you quit responding to bug reports entirely? The candle countdown bug remains, the K&C IE bug remains, the K&C within 20 points bug remains, the people have higher stats than should be possible bug remains, the Clay Man bug remains, the unable to read the Captcha text bug remains, and now you've changed the stats on items people have already bought -- to make them worse.

What is the best way to actually know what the status is on these quite major problems?

Jill,

Zendesk tells me we've responded to 43 tickets in the last 48 hours. I can't really discuss the detailed status of these various items in the comments section(I'm not even clear what you're talking about in every case). We have to prioritise our limited resources - the game has a Beta warning for exactly this reason.

@Arthur So you ARE saying my point did not bear any merit whatsoever, which pretty much means there is no use in sharing that insight as it only adds to the noise. I do agree we're all allowed to disagree, and in light of that we can likely put the matter at rest, as I won't agree that two games I pay money for voluntarily do not have any connection to each other and cannot be used for comparison.

Cheers.

I agree, my descriptions of the bugs were rather cryptic. I assume that by responded you mean "more than an automated reply"? I know the game is in beta, and bugs are par for the course -- but at the same time, it would be nice if there were responses to the bug reports. If it's easiet, I will just recreate the bug reports. In particular, the bug where you cannot see any results from playing K&C in IE is a rather annoying impediment (first reported by me in July). A lot of people are stuck with IE only at work.

If you want to downgrade things -- take away stats from an item, remove the ability to play K&C as a clay man -- you could at least announce the changes.

Jill,

My bad on not announcing the Brass Ring change. I've corrected this.

All Clay Men content is an Easter egg. We do not advertise or support any of this content, and we avoid discussing it publicly.

Fair enough on the Clay Men. I will not mention them again -- it's a cute Easter egg.

Since Exhaustion and the Cheeky Exploit went away, I've felt unbalanced, like my rhythm was off. So I have done some math. Because I'm an unemployed insomniac, I used to get about 20 extra actions per day on top of the 70+10. That's a lot of actions to lose--and I know that's why you took them away, but it's going to take me a long time to get used to the new 80/day limit.

@Angela I think we have our wires crossed. If I thought the comparison had merit, then, er, I'd agree with it, wouldn't I?

Like I said, disagreeing with an opinion is not the same thing as telling someone to shut up. But I agree with you that this line of conversation can no longer usefully progress.

I miss being able to get those 'cheeky 9 actions' by leaving it for a  bit when I'm down to my last action and letting them build up again! I did have a good minute of 'Wait, where are my actions?' followed by 'well blast, they must have fixed it' but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a huge deal. If it was causing you annoyance, I suppose it's all right that you changed it. ;)

Gave one of my characters the second candle to test it out...since it just makes your 70 actions go by faster I won't be doing it again, but I expect there are people who don't sit around on the computer all day who aren't using all their actions because they can't get through them, and those imaginary people will probably find it quite useful!

If you're that worried about the actions and all that, have two characters and stagger their gameplay. Easy. ;)

(I too am not someone who buys game things with real money, since I'm a student and don't have any. Sorry. I'm free advertising?)

Adding a voice to some of this. (Couple of item-point comments, suggestion regarding exhaustion/candle, request for pointer to data, if it exists.)

A) Second candle: not as useful as first appears. I, too, thought I would be getting more than 70 per day with it, tho I realized after I got it and things didn't change that was not the case. Thank you for the half-price sale; I no longer have cash available to purchase fate, and have been hoarding it for various things. This let me try it without making it impossible for me to buy something with fate in the future.

B) Loss of exhaustion: also unhappy making. add one for 'likely loss of social actions', 'no reason to bounce back here during exhaustion', and add 'felt like a bit of a Christmas present to log in and find some actions in place'.

C) Some way to turn off the facebook advertisements would be very welcome.

D) Moving the 'add a second candle' to below 'actions left today' would be very welcome, and feel less intrusive -- putting it next to the Fate point counter makes sense to me anyway.

I, personally, would be more likely to pay periodically to have exhaustion than to have the second candle. I expect it would be an awful collection of code to have both items available. I don't know how the fate-point tradeoff would work -- I can imagine it costing more fatepoints for exhaustion than the second candle.

I read the wiki, and have searched for this info without being able to find it -- which might be my incompetency in search. Is there some way to find out what actions to take to acquire fate? I've two chars -- one I put money into fate (until I ran out of spending money due to RL happenings) and one I didn't. The one I didn't put any money into has all of 7 fate points after about a month of playing, and I have no idea how to go about getting more. The hovertext on the soultrade image says 'shadowy 20' (which I believe is recent, cause I hadn't found out till the day the second candle went live what one had to do to activate that) and that sort of implies, to me, that one *should* be able to get it close to the point one's gotten Shadowy 20. And yet, here I am at Shadowy 41 and 7 fate points...

THank you for all your work here. If I didn't like it so much, I wouldn't bother reading, never mind commenting.

Hi Allessindra

What do you mean by 'the Facebook advertisements'? There shouldn't be any ads showing up at all.

The Shadowy 20 point - it just means, if your Shadowy is at least 20, the storylets won't be too difficult to play. The way to get Fate in the game is basically to buy it - we occasionally give out a point here and there in exceptional one-off circumstances, more to signal they're exceptional and one-off than anything else.

A point about the wikis (there are at least two out there) - they're an entirely unofficial fan project, and we don't support or guarantee them in any way.

I just started playing a few days ago, as such I have no experience with the Exhaustion system and however it worked.

I can however say that I see no draw or appeal in the idea of buying a Second Candle.

I already have no problem going through my 70 actions during the day, finding myself sitting at my desk forlornly with several hours of evening still ahead of me and wistfully poking at the game with longing for the 'morrow and more actions again.

As such, a 2nd candle would mean to me only that I would simply run out of things to do in the game an hour or two sooner than otherwise, awakening in the day with 20 actions instead of 10.

Now, a month-long increase in the action limit per day... I would gladly and quite quickly invest in some Fate to purchase something like another 10 (or 15, or gods-forfend even 20) actions per day.

But I do suspect that won't be showing up due to a desire not to speed the player-base towards the upper limits of the game too quickly.