Looks like the afair of the box option went away in the rebuild of favor to replace connections.
On a card that can’t be discarded.
That 0’s out one of your connections.
That now can’t be replaced out by going somewhere else?
This is … not a good thing.
Yes, the Affair of the Box options are going to be leaving the conflict cards. On the plus side you only need to drop below 5 Favours to get rid of it, so I’d recommend either flipping cards in the Flit hoping for either an implausible penance or call in favours to turn up or just using an Old Bone Skeleton Key to trade your favours in for Renown. Alternatively you could convert some Rag Trade items if you don’t feel like losing all of them but don’t want to wait for a card.
Hard choices: you can’t be everything to everybody anymore. Favours are deliberately more volatile and hard to keep than Connected qualities.
(Although you can be quite renowned.)
The box options on the conflict cards where the main balancing point of them, turning cards that where mostly negitive into ones with a CHANCE (at a high enough stat) of being a small gain…
This is a painful rebalancing.
Here’s the thing - the card is going to be a lot rarer in the future when faction favours are easily gained and lost.
Favours, compared to Connected, is much less painful to lose because they caps low (at 7) and the game really, really wants you to spend them instead of using it as a stat to define your character. Converting items is a pretty good way to spend your favours reliably too.
Why are conflict cards mostly negative? Because of the main options where you choose one side or another? For most connections those were the most reliable way to get Connections at a high level and a steady source of Someone is Coming, plus some other bonus rewards, second chances, etc.
They weren’t particularly profitable in Echoes, but neither were the Box options – they’re mechanically identical to storylets that are always available in Spite, but with slightly less reward. There’s no benefit to doing those branches rather than discarding the conflict card and getting a Boxful of Intrigue in Spite. Unless you want to roleplay a Turncoat, I suppose.
The new setup, on the other hand – if you play as intended and cash in your Criminal Favours periodically, this card will earn you 20 echoes in goods and a point of Someone is Coming. That’s in the neighborhood of 2.5 - 3.5 echoes per action, depending on your timing of Favours and Someone is Coming. Way better than Boxfuls of Intrigue, and about as easy to gain as Boxfuls via conflict cards. I wouldn’t expect other Favours to be as valuable as Criminals (except perhaps Revolutionaries, with Docks and Urchins and Great Game close behind) but in general this new system is an “opportunity grind” that’s more profitable per action but takes longer than the standard “reliable grind,” and FL definitely needs more of those.
I didn’t say “all conflict cards” I said the ones that where on the balance negitive.
That would be the ones where none of the options gain you more connected (or favour) then you loose.
This is a smaller subset, but still worth noting.
Right – the two high-level conflict cards. The options on those cards are the most profitable ways to turn Connections into resources – they’re like much better versions of "Calling in Favours" storylets that you can’t do very often, and they convert connections into sellable goods at a rate that’s 3-4 times better than "Calling in Favours." (Maybe up to six times better if you consider how many actions you’d have to take to cash in the same amount 120 at a time.)
Of course, those ones seem negative if you’re trying to get very high connections, because they lose you more connections than you gain. Keep in mind, though, that Favours are different than connections – you simply can’t get them to high levels, and it doesn’t make sense game-wise to hoard them. You’re passing up profits if you just leave one at 7 and never touch it, and you can’t keep two opposed connections over 4 unless you want to leave a card in your hand forever. The new system just isn’t designed to be treated that way, it’s set up to be played in a cycle (gain favour, cash them out, repeat).
It sounds like all the conflict cards will eventually work like this, although the rationale for having to side with either Tomb-Colonists or Rubbery Men and lose all your Favours with one side in exchange for large reward seems a little shaky. Maybe rescuing a Rubbery Man from a fire will lose a single Tomb-Colonist favour and give you ~300 Deep Amber, rather than cashing in all of them; we’ll have to see.
That’s part of why Renown exists (maybe the only reason?) – it’s now the quality you can grind up to high levels to represent your status with a group, and it never goes down.
edited by metasynthie on 9/1/2015