Paramount Presence

Finished!
edited by Estelle Knoht on 9/2/2017

Congrulations on your achievements! I made a (empty) list for Paramount Presences, and if you could give your names, I’d appreciate it.
http://community.failbettergames.com/topic25116-a-list-of-paramount-presences.aspx?MessageID=204177#post204177

I still find it ridiculous that Paramount Presence is not capable of everything the lesser specializations are. The fact that you cannot change it once you get it would imply that it is supposed to be superior in every way.

Yes, it is kind of strange. Not in a good way either.

The fact that you can’t overcap your stats anymore once you’re a PP is very troubling to me. If I go to the Nadir or lose stats in any way, I can’t raise them past 200 any longer using the Unsigned Message options (which you could do as a specialized PoSi). Plus, once you’re a PP, the option to change your PoSI status (A Reputation of Some Importance: Another Way) disappears from the &quotAttend to Matter of Society&quot storylet. So once you’re a Paramount Presence there’s no going back. It’d be kind of silly to do so, but still… Then there’s also the fact that you can’t Flirt with the Amanuensis.

It was a lot of work to attain the PP status, but you actually end up with less than what you had as a specialized PoSI. Doesn’t make sense really. Unless FB plans on &quotfixing&quot it so that PP has the abilities of all of the other PoSI statuses, I really don’t think it’s worth it other than simply saying you did it.

Yeah I’ve personally been discouraged from getting it due to this. Unlike, say, a Heptagoat, where you can just get another ubergoat to make up for the stat loss, PP seems to permanently inhibit your character’s stats and options.

Has it been confirmed that this is intended behaviour?

The last I saw was the Gonen has not yet received any response from FBG on his bug report.

And I definitely also agree this is a bug. (and if it’s intended it’s a bug in the design).

Unlike the Heptagoat (which is a different creature than the Ubergoats), being Paramount Presence literally means that you must also first be all the other POSI specializations. e.g., if your last specialization of the four was Legendary Charisma, you don’t have to renounce it to becomes a Paramount Presence. To it makes no narrative sense for you to be locked out of Charismatic options (e.g. flirting with the Amanuensis) you had a minute before.

I hope that this is just a small thing they’ve overlooked and just isn’t prioritized very high yet, compared to other tasks (given that this affects under 10 people at the moment).

I hope that this is just a small thing they’ve overlooked and just isn’t prioritized very high yet, compared to other tasks (given that this affects under 10 people at the moment).[/quote]

I received my reply a few days ago,and it contains ‘near future’ and ‘fairly busy right now’ in it.

So don’t let down your hopes!

Ah, that’s good to hear. Thanks for the update!

Got my reply today:
“We’re considering doing something with the specialisation-locked branches for Paramount Presence in future, but we don’t have any way to let Paramount Presences play them at the moment.”

Which is a bit disappointing, yea.
If you want to become PP, be aware that you are locked out of, for the near future, maximizing your stats if they go down (Nadir or otherwise).
A bit of anti-climax, this paramount position.

To be fair, they did say that they prioritize content based on how many people have access - Ambitions are on the backburner because they don’t have enough people at the content boundary, too, so I don’t think PP is a priority.

Add a revised Hallowmas (previous one being mostly a Notability grind) and Sunless Skies on top of it… Well, if you can rein it in and not go to Nadir during the Notability race, you can do it for longer. It’s really just the Nadir, anyway.

[quote=Gonen]Got my reply today:
“We’re considering doing something with the specialisation-locked branches for Paramount Presence in future, but we don’t have any way to let Paramount Presences play them at the moment.”
[/quote]

Strange that they don’t. Either there is something bigger in their plans, or I am missing something, as ‘either one of these qualities or items’ logic had been used, for example, in the ‘Legendary Charisma’ Barrister storylet (frock or gown).

[quote=Estelle Knoht]To be fair, they did say that they prioritize content based on how many people have access - Ambitions are on the backburner because they don’t have enough people at the content boundary, too, so I don’t think PP is a priority.

[/quote]
Right, I understand that. But it seems rather disappointing to release the years expected content without much behind it (or even with a minor downgrade). I would rather wait another year and get it all in one piece, just to avoid that anticlimax.

[quote=Estelle Knoht]To be fair, they did say that they prioritize content based on how many people have access - Ambitions are on the backburner because they don’t have enough people at the content boundary, too, so I don’t think PP is a priority.

Add a revised Hallowmas (previous one being mostly a Notability grind) and Sunless Skies on top of it… Well, if you can rein it in and not go to Nadir during the Notability race, you can do it for longer. It’s really just the Nadir, anyway.[/quote]

It makes sense in the PP context, especially with everything else they have going on right now, but I’ve always felt the ‘proportional priorities’ things is slightly self-fulfilling; personally, my girlfriend and I have never bothered to reach the content boundary of the ambitions precisely because they are unfinished (I’ve delayed with Màiread since I’m planning to switch from Light Fingers and haven’t got around to drinking the tea yet, but our other characters are mostly on penultimate steps but prioritising other grinds). I find I lose the thread of the story after months away, and I’d rather play it in a oner so I know what the heck is going on.

Still, back on topic, it’s probably safe to assume that there’s a reason for not employing the ‘either/or’ logic and that unique options will at some point be forthcoming.

[li]

That only works for two different qualities (of which items are a specialization), not two different value of the same quality. The engine knows how to ask for zero, not zero (in which case the tooltip lists all known values, at least for qualities with text descriptions of values), at most N, at least N, exactly N. I imagine the engine has a specific safeguard against testing the same quality twice, so they cannot do &quotq=A or q=B&quot.

A bit of copy/paste should be solve the problem; two separate storylets that look identical to the user except the requirements. They have the capacity to hide options that is separate from the unlock requirements, so there needn’t be two identical storylets next to each other, either.

[quote=Kharsirr Lynx][quote=Gonen]Got my reply today:
&quotWe’re considering doing something with the specialisation-locked branches for Paramount Presence in future, but we don’t have any way to let Paramount Presences play them at the moment.&quot
[/quote]

Strange that they don’t. Either there is something bigger in their plans, or I am missing something, as ‘either one of these qualities or items’ logic had been used, for example, in the ‘Legendary Charisma’ Barrister storylet (frock or gown).[/quote]
As Kaijyuu says, I’m pretty sure you’d have to have two separate options. As I understand it, the Legendary Charisma option works something like this:

  • You need at least <1 - Parabola-Linen Suit quality> of Parabola-Linen Frock[/li][li]You need at least <1 - Parabola-Linen Frock quality> of Parabola-Linen Suit

Thus it’s possible to fake an OR operation with the system. But you can’t do that when you want two different values for the same quality. Extraordinary Mind is the last value before Paramount Presence, so they could actually do a range there: PoSI at least 6 (EM) and no more than 10 (PP). FBG won’t do that because that wouldn’t work for the other specializations, since you can’t exclude part of the range, so implementing it for just one specialization would be confusing.

The card should have an option for PP to just raise all 4 at one go, and not deal with the limitations of the system. Spares them of the duplication, and gives a nice benefit to the successful grinders.
edited by Artful on 9/8/2017

[quote=Artful]The card should have an option for PP to just raise all 4 at one go, and not deal with the limitations of the system. Spares them of the duplication, and gives a nice benefit to the successful grinders.[/quote]Honestly, that’s kind of what I was expecting.

Aaaand done!