The Notes Needed

[Olleus]

I've heard that there are plans to add notes in the game (per room?) to make the alt-tabbing part of the game less prominent. While plain text notes would be fine for keeping track of the lore, I don't think it would really help with the bulk of notes - which is keeping track of recipes.

A huge part of the game is knowing what items and/or memories you can make with which skills / books, with what requirements and which aspects. There are hundreds of recipes that can each be done dozens of way, so the only way I can remember it all is through spreadsheets. In fact, I doubt anyone can do it without spreadsheets unless they have a phenomenal memory, limit themselves to a tiny part of the game, or spend hours trawling through paper/notebad notes. That's not to say I don't like the process of incremental discovery and progress, far from it - it's whats greatest about the game IMO, but I dislike the "paperwork" I have to do to manually keep track of it all.

For reference, this what I've been using (with other tabs for things like candles, pets, potential determinations, etc...). Obviously, spoilers for some recipes
[img]https://imgur.com/QN1GWDG[/img]
[img]https://imgur.com/qoIIm8p[/img]

The great advantage of this is I can filter and sort it to my heart's content. Need a 5 heart liquid for a recipe? I can quickly find what my options are. Need to see all the Lantern memories I can make, and how to make them, in order to upgrade a skill without burning lessons? Not a problem.

But, having to fill this in manually every time I find a new recipe / skill / book, and having to constantly alt-tab is a pain. Transcription is a source of errors, it's boring, and leaving the game is really immersion breaking. Now I'm sure I could look this up in an in-game wiki rather than writing it all myself. But that's basically just a whole dump of spoilers that ruins the mystery that makes the game fun. I want to push back the veil bit by bit, not have it dropped completely on day one.

This kind of spreadsheet, IMO, *needs* to be in the game. I know need is a strong word, but it would remove almost all the tediousness of the game, make it far more accessible, and remove non of the feeling of progress and discovery. This is how I would see it working:

• The game keeps track of every item you've clicked on, every recipe you've made, every memory you've seen, every skill you've learnt in a database.
  
• That database is searchable. Not just by name, but also by type (eg: memory, or comfort) and by aspects; like the spreadsheets above.
  
• Each entry in this database not only tells all the stats about that thing / memory / skill, but also all the ways you've found so far to craft it or find it, as well as all the known recipes that it's mandatory for. Conversely, the entry for skills would list all the known recipes for it.
  
• Everything is hyperlinked, so you can quickly navigate through it. Eg, the entry the De Horis Book 3 would mention the memory Contradiction, and clicking on that would open the page for contradiction, which itself lists all other known books that give the same memory.
  
• Include links to this database directly in the game when crafting. Not the first time you come across a new thing, but the 87th time I brew witching tisane, I could do with an immediately reminder of what aspects it gives rather than having to look it up manually.
  
• Absolutely nothing is said about what you don't know. Nothing like "3 Lantern memories still to be discovered" or "1 more way to craft dearday lens remains". Revealing such known-unknowns would remove a lot of the feeling of discovery and exploration that makes the game great, turning it instead into a completionist box-ticking exercise.

To make this system feel like part of the world in-game rather than some external help, it could be opened via the diary. Double click on it and you have a quick animation (faster that the tree of wisdom IMO) that opens up a book-like screen where you can access it. I think it makes sense lore wise that the diary would actually be used by the Librarian to keep track of what he's found so far.


Anyway, sorry for the long post. While I love the game, the time and effort needed to maintain my own spreadsheets in order to make the game playable is what I find most tedious about it. In fact, it's the only major negative of the entire game IMO. And I known I'm not alone. I took the time to flesh out my idea system to remedy this in the hope that it might encourage the devs to implement something like it, or as a starting point for others to improve on the idea.

tl;dr: I want an in-game excel spreadsheet of all crafting / recipes / skills / memories that I've discovered so far in the game to be automatically populated as I discover things.

[Alexander]

Yeah, it is a popular request. I myself have written something similar some time ago: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1028310/discussions/0/3812913565881248407/

Unfortunately developers have already written that they are not planning to add a recipe book into the game. I believe it is a local version of Soulsbourne's "git gud".

Which is a pity. It could have been not just a QoL thing but a core mechanics. I had the same idea as you about Librarian's journal, but with a twist: writing something down into the Journal is an in-game action that consumes soul effort, sometimes the things you are cataloguing (after all you need to taste Thirza's cordials in order to describe their properties), and, perhaps, even requires actual ink. If that would be considered as something that makes player's life too easy, I'd propose to make consulting the Journal an action that requires soul effort, or even sort of a mini game, similar to crafting, where you need to have a rough idea what do you want to find.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by Alexander:

YWhich is a pity. It could have been not just a QoL thing but a core mechanics. I had the same idea as you about Librarian's journal, but with a twist: writing something down into the Journal is an in-game action that consumes soul effort, sometimes the things you are cataloguing (after all you need to taste Thirza's cordials in order to describe their properties), and, perhaps, even requires actual ink. If that would be considered as something that makes player's life too easy, I'd propose to make consulting the Journal an action that requires soul effort, or even sort of a mini game, similar to crafting, where you need to have a rough idea what do you want to find.

The danger of having some in-game cost to accessing this information, is that as some point it's optimal (game-wise) to do it yourself outside the game. Optimising the fun out of a game is all too real a problem, especially for a game like this. That's why I think it should be tied in the in-game world, but "free". In much the same way as you can give actions to the game while paused: perhaps not realistic, but more relaxed.

Originally posted by Alexander:

Yeah, it is a popular request. [....]
Unfortunately developers have already written that they are not planning to add a recipe book into the game. I believe it is a local version of Soulsbourne's "git gud".

I fear so. It does seem like the devs are confusing the fun that comes from slowly piecing together different bits of the lore, world building, and mechanics without having your hand held; with the tedium and bureaucracy of actually managing multiple tables hundreds of lines long. In case they read this: the former is good, the latter is bad, and you *can* separate them.

[Alexander]

Originally posted by Olleus:

The danger of having some in-game cost to accessing this information, is that as some point it's optimal (game-wise) to do it yourself outside the game. Optimising the fun out of a game is all too real a problem, especially for a game like this. That's why I think it should be tied in the in-game world, but "free". In much the same way as you can give actions to the game while paused: perhaps not realistic, but more relaxed.

Well, in order to rightfully claim the title of Cultist Simulator's successor, Book of Hours has to cause some pain to a player. Question is, what kind of pain and how much of it.

Originally posted by Olleus:

I fear so. It does seem like the devs are confusing the fun that comes from slowly piecing together different bits of the lore, world building, and mechanics without having your hand held; with the tedium and bureaucracy of actually managing multiple tables hundreds of lines long. In case they read this: the former is good, the latter is bad, and you *can* separate them.

Some games require players to have a really good reaction speed to get certain achievements. Or to use some external tools. Book of Hours requires really good memory. Your ability to master game's mechanics and find the secrets it contains is limited by your ability to store cross-referential pieces of information in your memory. Or you could resort to external tools.

Personally I have already accepted that I won't find anything that is not semi-explicitly said in a single message somewhere.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by Alexander:

Some games require players to have a really good reaction speed to get certain achievements. Or to use some external tools. Book of Hours requires really good memory. Your ability to master game's mechanics and find the secrets it contains is limited by your ability to store cross-referential pieces of information in your memory. Or you could resort to external tools.

I doubt _anyone_ has good enough memory to get everything in the game without some aid to memory. And that's fine. I just think that having those memory aids in the game would add convenience and remove literally no challenge. The only thing lost would be tedium of manually typing into excel, which is a fine thing to lose?

Note that having such a database wouldn't make the game easy. You'd still have to explore recipes to fill it in. You'd still have to build up a mental map of where you want to progress. You'd still have to make a plan of how to combine easy-to-find stuff into powerful stuff. And you'd still have to piece together the lore to find the secrets.

All the challenging and interesting parts of the game would stay the same IMO. Just without having to do a couple of hours of secretarial work for every in game day lol.

Personally I have already accepted that I won't find anything that is not semi-explicitly said in a single message somewhere.

Yes, and that's what's excellent about it! That you have to pay attention, and that gameplay and story are closely weaved together. Not that you have to use external tools to remember the lore.

[Alexander]

I think you are not supposed to get everything in the game into their memory. At least in a single playthrough. The portion that you can keep in memory determines what you, effectively, have access to. Kinda like the choice of the soul pieces at the start.

If you want more than you can achieve just by using your memory... well, that's your choice and it comes with consequences. Same as with the secrets in some platformers, the ones you can get only if you are able to click extremely fast.

[Olleus]

But inconvenience is not an interesting consequence. It's not fun. It's not even challenging. It's just tedious. It's simply not a great concept to build mechanics around. Inconvenience for the sake of it leads to things like P2W games were you have to wait 12h to be able to use some ability again.

All I'm proposing is to keep the difficulty, the challenge, the intrigue, the mystery, the feeling of bewilderment and the mechanics the same, but remove the immersion-breaking inconvenience of alt-tabbing to excel to write things myself.

[Wintermute]

The crafting recipies need to be in the game, in an easy to read interface. Having them in some books you might randomly never get is not a solution.

There needs to be a massive rework of the interface of the game as a whole. And I'm not convinced we'll ever actually get one.

[Alexander]

I would also love to have the feature you described in the game, but since we won't have it, the best we can do is to try to understand "why?" in hopes that this understanding will help us to accept the reality. I think I found a key to "why?" in the same developer notes that say there will be no in-game recipe book:

We probably won't add fast-travel to Brancrug, because I want the House to feel remote...

I think we are not supposed to alt-tab. We are supposed to keep in memory as much as we can, and build our play around that. If we can't quite remember something, we are supposed to roam the House, muttering "Where did I read that? There has to be that book somewhere here!", or "Where did I put that thing?", or "How did I do it the last time?", or "Did I really finished the last bottle of Leathy while partying with that nun?"
Something like that.

[A Hoonter of Hoonters]

Originally posted by Wintermute:

The crafting recipies need to be in the game, in an easy to read interface. Having them in some books you might randomly never get is not a solution.

Yes it is. There's a recipe or hint to finding powerful artifact in almost every book. There are many redundant books for this reason.

[Wintermute]

Originally posted by Korol the Bard:

Originally posted by Wintermute:

The crafting recipies need to be in the game, in an easy to read interface. Having them in some books you might randomly never get is not a solution.

Yes it is. There's a recipe or hint to finding powerful artifact in almost every book. There are many redundant books for this reason.

Where do you people come from.

No, it's not in "almost every book". All the books from CS, for starters, are junk without any relevant information.

Second, tell me, right now, from your memory. What recipe is contained in The Mirror of Melancthe book?

[Olleus]

Originally posted by Wintermute:

The crafting recipies need to be in the game, in an easy to read interface. Having them in some books you might randomly never get is not a solution.

There needs to be a massive rework of the interface of the game as a whole. And I'm not convinced we'll ever actually get one.

Those are two different issues. How easily recipes should be given vs how much you have to hunt clues to find them is one thing. That's a genuine game design decision. But having to manually write down the recipes you already know in order to have any hope of finding them again later is nothing but more UX leading to tedium for the player.

Personally, I think that the only hint should be that recipes exist at some level (apprentice / scholar / keeper) for some aspect for some skill, but without telling you what the needed ingredients are. But I can see that some people would dislike that and it's definitely an actual meaningful design choice to hide it.

Originally posted by Alexander:

I would also love to have the feature you described in the game, but since we won't have it, the best we can do is to try to understand "why?" in hopes that this understanding will help us to accept the reality.

Or we can try and get the devs to see the error of their ways lol.

Originally posted by Alexander:

I think we are not supposed to alt-tab.

I seriously, seriously doubt that. Firstly, the devs have explicitly said that they love games were you take notes. Secondly, you can literally single-click copy all text in the game, and the only way to paste that is to alt-tab. Thirdly, the game has very generous pause (that doesn't prevent doing actions) and a highlight-by-aspect button which makes stopping to find the exact thing you need convenient(ish). Fourthly the publicity of the game is all about how it's relaxed and friendly compared to CS.

Lastly, if we were intending to not alt-tab, then the devs have fundamentally failed by providing huge incentives to alt-tab, and it seems to be what almost everyone is doing all the time. It doesn't really matter how the devs imagine we ought to play the game, if the player base as a whole actually plays it a different way. Got to have the UI/UX that is the best in reality.

[vergil feet pics]

Originally posted by Alexander:

I would also love to have the feature you described in the game, but since we won't have it, the best we can do is to try to understand "why?" in hopes that this understanding will help us to accept the reality. I think I found a key to "why?" in the same developer notes that say there will be no in-game recipe book:

We probably won't add fast-travel to Brancrug, because I want the House to feel remote...

I think we are not supposed to alt-tab. We are supposed to keep in memory as much as we can, and build our play around that. If we can't quite remember something, we are supposed to roam the House, muttering "Where did I read that? There has to be that book somewhere here!", or "Where did I put that thing?", or "How did I do it the last time?", or "Did I really finished the last bottle of Leathy while partying with that nun?"
Something like that.

Originally posted by AK:

This was absolutely meant to be a game where you take notes. A lot of people (me included) like games where you have to take notes.

I will also take note of the inherent feature that's been in the game since release: clicking on any text copies that text to the clipboard, presumably to be copied and pasted somewhere else.

[Wintermute]

Originally posted by Olleus:

Originally posted by Wintermute:

The crafting recipies need to be in the game, in an easy to read interface. Having them in some books you might randomly never get is not a solution.

There needs to be a massive rework of the interface of the game as a whole. And I'm not convinced we'll ever actually get one.

Those are two different issues. How easily recipes should be given vs how much you have to hunt clues to find them is one thing. That's a genuine game design decision. But having to manually write down the recipes you already know in order to have any hope of finding them again later is nothing but more UX leading to tedium for the player.

Personally, I think that the only hint should be that recipes exist at some level (apprentice / scholar / keeper) for some aspect for some skill, but without telling you what the needed ingredients are. But I can see that some people would dislike that and it's definitely an actual meaningful design choice to hide it.

Even if recypes need to be discovered manually - sure, why not - the game needs to record them for you in structured manner. That's the only way to deal with the note bloat we're currently forced into. That requires the infrastructure for the list and its interconnections though. Which is what the issue boils down to. There's no system in the game currently able to do that, because mechanically it's still CS.

[Wintermute]

Originally posted by vergil feet pics:

Originally posted by Alexander:

I would also love to have the feature you described in the game, but since we won't have it, the best we can do is to try to understand "why?" in hopes that this understanding will help us to accept the reality. I think I found a key to "why?" in the same developer notes that say there will be no in-game recipe book:

I think we are not supposed to alt-tab. We are supposed to keep in memory as much as we can, and build our play around that. If we can't quite remember something, we are supposed to roam the House, muttering "Where did I read that? There has to be that book somewhere here!", or "Where did I put that thing?", or "How did I do it the last time?", or "Did I really finished the last bottle of Leathy while partying with that nun?"
Something like that.

Originally posted by AK:

This was absolutely meant to be a game where you take notes. A lot of people (me included) like games where you have to take notes.

I will also take note of the inherent feature that's been in the game since release: clicking on any text copies that text to the clipboard, presumably to be copied and pasted somewhere else.

The game is too big for that approach. It quickly stops being "taking notes", and turns into the need to organize and interconnect separate entity trees. I'm not sure who exactly enjoys doing this, but they must love working in accounting.

[undermensch]

It would be cool to have an auto-generated log, even if it wasn't customizable or very descriptive. Maybe something designed to look like an old ledger.