Narrative Issues Since Ace Update (Early May)

I'll add first off, my issues could just be how I'm writing my own input, maybe CI's in my campaign, and maybe a dozen minor things I could change/edit just on my end to see improvement. It could be me just failing to adapt to the new ace update or just hating change in general. But I have at least mention this as it has been nagging at me the past month since the Ace Update.

Esp since it has all but killed any drive I had playing Fables/my campaigns. Not for the lack of trying as well. Dramatic I know. Overblown? Maybe. But I have gone from easily doing 1k-1.5k or more messages in any given month, since I first found the website back in Nov last year, in my free time to less then 350 since the ace update and I find myself normally stopping after only five-fifteen messages before getting frustrated with the narrative Franz creates now and stopping to just world build instead.

While the update isn't all negative. I don't wish to give that impression. It's wonderful not having random npcs/room service barging into the room/conversation unbidden etc every other message, not stressing where POI's are on the world map due to nearby npcs, and the dialogue overall has been greatly improved in a lot of ways when talking to other Npcs. Normally the dialogue side of things is where I find enjoyment engaging in since the ace update last month.

It's everywhere in between I struggle to stay invested in the narrative Franz creates.

For me, the core issue right now is that Franz does not actively push or add anything tangible, in my mind, into the narrative when traveling from A to B in the world. Doesn't matter if it's across camp, town, or to the next village.

In my experience, he just takes huge parts of what I type/send to him and just reuses it while adding some descriptive flair to it. If I mention three or five core details my players does? Say, walk towards this building, adjust the character backpack or weapon, etc. Then I'm getting 100% 3-5 paragraphs each detailing in descriptive flair what it was I stated.

Which fair LLM's have to use the context we provide to it I understand that. But it's highly predictable, repetitive, and immersion breaking for me compared to what I was having pre ace update.

Still, I recognize It can be a little hard to explain clearly what I'm talking about. But best **analogy **I can come up with is that Franz seems to be hyper focused on what I tell him my character is doing in that moment and in the process he disregards what is happening in the WORLD around my character as if it doesn't exist.

Not unless I directly tell him in my own input that my character does or checks something as they are moving. (Then I would get a paragraph about it). (Just for Will/David sake, these are examples of what I got just a day or two ago now - 01973337-9ff1-7547-870f-d3bf9633cee4 / 019744ea-6e03-7019-89e1-de63230da7e9).

I used to simply be able to say the character is walking down the street by X POI and used to get a much more immersive narrative created by Franz. (This is a example of what I used to get constantly even with little to no input from myself just walking thru a town before the ace update - 0196944a-2c68-707b-ac42-ed6e464416f3).

The best example that I can think of, narrative wise, from just before the ace update. My character returns to where his been staying. A NPC unprompted by me or my own input mentions they got a surprise for the character which turns out to be a small lockbox (my character is a jeweler) they made themselves for the character. Completely unprompted by me having giving no input other then I walked back to the location they were at in the world. (01969696-538b-76dc-b4a5-fb416c500ab2 for Will/David).

With the, granted only few hundred messages, time I've played since the Ace update. I can't see how Franz would ever comes up with this type of narrative now. Not unless I added into my own input that X character has a surprise/gift for character Z when they meet.