Foxhole is reopening today after a brief period of renovations. I hope you all will enjoy the extra amenities!
Visit the Foxhole today and bring a friend for a chance to win the grand prize! The more friends come along with you, the better your chances are!
I’ve had a tour around, and unfortunately, I’m disappointed.
I can tell a lot of work, good work, went into writing the new structure out. There’s a few funny jokes thrown in too, which is always a bonus.
But now? The Foxhole feels like cinnabar 2.0. It’s cast off the ‘hole in the wall sex club’ vibe for the ‘another nightclub, this time with better DJ’s (we swear) and cheaper booze (you wish)’ vibes.
Just like every iteration of the Foxhole I’ve seen in the last year, the first room (The Mezzanine ((yes, I copy+pasted, because English sucks))) will maintain the same 90% of bodies that the first room always carried. The pool? What does it have in comparison to Cinnabar’s pool? A cold room?
The fish bowl, admittedly, is a novel idea. I’m sure that glass and soundproofing will lead to the occasional, fun scene, but without Wolfery having an implementation of a ‘shout’ feature, it’s going to end up under utilized. The only great thing I foresee is the red room, Sinder can absolutely make use of a proper, public, hard kink space. Yet it’s two clicks of a button away (for those heathen’s who don’t have room names memorized and a typing speed over 100 words per minute), and without the glass door functionality the pillows room had, it’s going to be a setting for planned roleplays rather than spontaneous ones, like the pillows room’ (admittedly, occasionally) spawned.
The new changes feels like an active shift away from the erotic roleplay aspect of the old Foxhole, whereas the last change (removal of the dance floor) felt like an active shift towards it. I’m not sure what your intentions were, Shinyuu, or the folk that seem to have banded together to run it, but this new vibe feels like an active move to make more of the realm fit for safe consumption.
I might be the only person on all of Wolfery that dislikes forced nudity. I Iove pool settings and would love to use a pool in a populated area, but I strongly dislike that the rules are that whatever character I’m on must be nude. It made some amount of sense to me with the Pillows Room because it was specifically about having sex, but I don’t know why that’s the case with the pool. It ends up making it feel less erotic for me and more uncomfortable.
Regarding what @Nirofur said, this feels like Prism 2.0 in a bad way. Also like what Nirofur said, it’s not the quality of writing! I can tell that time was spent on each of the descriptions. None of it feels lazy, it feels confused and lacking in identity.
Goodness knows whenever I show up I’m a wallflower but I still have opinions on the places I lurk!
Thanks for your feedback!
I don’t think foxhole had much of that vibe since I ened up taking over it? If anything, I tried to spice it up becasue I though it seemed too much like a gentlemens club.
That is a problem that I honestly don’t know how to solve. I’m not even sure I need to solve it. We don’t have enough population to fill anything proper, do we?
I don’t think that linking every single room to the entry point is practical, is it? I’m not sure why people don’t use the area view to see if there’s anyone inside. Do they not know it’s there? Do they look for specific faces before entering?
Okei, I totally dropped the ball on this one. I tried to make it more erotic, not less.
My intention was for the pool area to be a new pillows room. I think it didn’t quite work out, though, did it?
I reworked the pool into something that hopefully communicates that intent better, now. Thanks for pointing that problem out.
I won’t really comment on the theme, because if you can’t feel the identity of the club then I clearly didn’t make a good job on that either. I’m not quite sure how to fix that just yet, but I’ll give it a thought.
If you find a way, please share it. Most of us would kill to know how to have people spread out and explore. Even Sinder, as a whole, has that problem. Station park, anyone? I’m moreso commenting on how people are going to use the place.
I agree, it’s not practical. From a layout point of view, I just don’t think verticality is the answer. A stairwell/elevator doesn’t help the folk who don’t know area view exists, they’re looking for faces on the exists, a la glass door.
I do like what you did with the pool room, though. It certainly fits a different vibe, one that’s a lot more aligned with the foxhole’s apparent purpose.
I also think it’s far too early to make a guess as to how the community feels, as a whole. Compared to the usual, Sinder has been dead compared to normal, since the reopening. It’s nice to see others out and about, but that also makes it impossible to guess at actual usage/population numbers in the Foxhole.
I know Sinder is post scarcity and hella magic. But the new Foxhole does feel like another overly opulent Prism complex. I like to think Sinder a rather rustic town? I liked the old foxhole vibes, felt like somewhere I could go for a quick hookup with. (Which should be the mission here.)
On a public sex room, I think the mission here is a voyeuristic space. Shouldn’t be obscured by central pools, water. Ahh hot and cold themes? I already take people to the Prism pools if I want an indoor pool scene where that is to take central focus. Pool just really isn’t what I think of a ‘voyeuristic sex room’
I thought of that exact problem and I mentioned that in the about area and I mentioned the command in the entry room.
It’s on them if they don’t want to read, at that point.
I actually have the numbers, thanks to some industrial light and magic. We’ll see what they tell us in a week.
See, I’m very much along with you on that one. But a rustic town sex club would be a barn, no? I took inspiration from some of the Keri Arthur’s books where the events happen in small Australian towns not unlike Sinder, but they have an extremely posh nightclub, a single one in many miles, because a vampire decided to settle there. That writing impressed me, because the author managed to make something so out of context fit in nicely and I’m guilty at trying to replicate that.
Foxhole is rustic on the outside. Inside it’s home to anyone and everyone, including the Eisenhorn royalty and the fox Mafia of the City of Winds.
I suppose tastes differ? But that’s a fair point and I made the pool way less prominent yesterday, bringing back the old good cock&tail lounge instead.
The back room of the corner bar, the converted lower level of a shop, or even yes, a barn done up with sitting space and gear. Any of these could strike me as a sex club in a rustic town. Actually, now that you mention it, a large barn renovated as a sex club sounds like an awesome idea. People could go smoke out front. People chatting while seated on hay bales outside… Sounds cozy.
I genuinely want to make a sex barn now. Maybe I’ll get on that.
If you follow through on this, make sure you tell us all! I’ve got a character that that sort of place would suit perfectly.
As long as there’s some kind of bar attached, the poor thing can’t go without his whiskey.
Finding the correct Spinal Tap video I am referencing here is left as an excercise to the reader.
It is way, way too convoluted.
Entrance, accept terms, enter lounge with bar, upstairs for private rooms, pillow room for public, restroom for whatever.
Foxhole attendance will decline as it is configured currently. I hate saying this since I know the owners have worked hard, but it needs to be as simple or simpler to increase engagement.
I’m not sure if you remember the old foxhole properly, because the room count didn’t change that much from the old foxhole. It’s one extra room-length towards the cock&tail lounge vs the pillows room, though, but I cannot fix that without breaking the story, and I don’t believe that one extra click matters that much.
The attendance of the new Foxhole is constantly higher than the old one since reopening (I keep an eye on the pops numbers). I’m not sure if it’s because it’s a new place, but it was more than a week now and they aren’t dropping.
In fact, I see people roaming around. The concern @Nirofur mentioned above doesn’t seem to be as true (and what a relief). While the majority of the people stay in the mezzanine (just as we expected), there are numerous spikes of people self-assembling in the cock&tail lounge, the hot and cold rooms and on the dance floors. The dark alley only sees spontaneous visits, same as the old Foxhole’s.
I think I’m not pandering to the crowd that can’t walk a single extra room, that’s just not practical. There’s a huge amount of people that never even leave the hostel and interact with others via messages. There’s no way they will be out in Foxhole even if it was the most dumbed down place possible.
That said, I do agree that some parts of the layout could be better. I’m not sold on the hallway bit as it is now, for example. I think the dark alley is important part of the storytelling, so it stays. Not every room has to be there for the sake of being a social hub. Some rooms are in there to make the story coherent.
You know, I’ve been thinking on this one for a while. Like, really, for a while now. And I came to a conclusion that people don’t see the identity because people just don’t care. I can count everyone ever visiting the -2 level on single hand and you can’t really get the whole picture of Foxhole unless you get into its deepest secrets. And those secrets fit the new narrative better.
It’s on me to promote more environmental storytelling, but I honestly don’t think Foxhole and Prism are comparable. The former tells you a story of not only a huge chunk of inner-Rift lore but also the various weird events happening around WSL. You just need to look for it.
Part of this might be how disjointed and difficult the easter eggs are to complete. I’ve spent several days focused on it, and I was never able to make much progress back at the old Foxhole.
I won’t lay out what steps I did complete, no point spoiling it if others want to try, but I’ve been around for a year on Wolfery, now. I’ve consulted others for help on it. The progress I’ve made… I don’t expect, or want, my hand to be held all the way through. But holy dear god why is this harder than integrating partial fractions with pen and paper.
That’s a valid criticism. I hope to improve some puzzles now that scripting is a thingy.