Becoming a Paramount Presence doesn’t make you forgo content. If you choose to maintain your artificially overcapped stats, then the implication is that you’re stopping yourself temporarily from a few options.
You’re not locked out of anything by being a PP. Not moreso, anyway, than the "regular" overcap ability of POSI.
If someone is an Extraordinary Mind and has overcapped their Watchful (e.g. to get Courier’s Footprint, or raise Renown: The Church), then as long as they want to maintain that extra Watchful they should avoid stat-reducing actions like the Nadir. But the game doesn’t lock them out of anything. And if they are later OK with letting their Watchful drop back down to 200, they can always overcap if/when they choose.
The same goes for Paramount Presence. You need to overcap to get the qualities you need to get this special POSI level. But once you get it, it’s your choice whether you want to maintain the 215 stats or not. You can always overcap them later if you choose (all 4 in one go!).
Some people let their stats drop from 215 the minute they got the relevant quality (e.g. London’s Nerves), before even becoming PP.
It’s all about player choice and having options. Now that they’ve fixed the problem of PP’s ability to overcap again when needed, there no downside to it (and not much benefit either).
Just a side note, but “choice” is a loaded word when discussing game design (and occasionally politics but that’s even further off topic). If one of the “choices” is too odious then it’s not really a choice at all; it’s coercion.
If one highly values keeping stats at 215 without having to regrind them then there is no choice. I’m the opposite, so instead I’ve never bothered to overcap stats. But anyone who values both to any degree is going to chafe, especially since it’s so arbitrary and blatantly gamey in a narrative based game.
How does one go about getting their stats to 215 before becoming POSI? I didn’t know you could do that. I thought you had to be tier 2 POSI (specializing in the stat in question) to overcap.
[quote=Plynkes][quote=dov]
Some people let their stats drop from 215 the minute they got the relevant quality (e.g. London’s Nerves), before even becoming POSI.
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How does one go about getting their stats to 215 before becoming POSI?[/quote]
That was an auto-complete error which came from replying on the forum from my phone. Fixed now.
There are players who are resolute to never aid the Liberation. Because of that, they can’t take certain actions (up-converting Luminosity items, calling in Favours with the Revolutionaries, etc.). Does this mean that the game blocks them from taking those actions?
I don’t think so. For instance, you cannot trade in Eyeless Skulls with advancing the Liberation of Night. You cannot get rid of Jack-of-Smiles for good without removing a number of very useful options. Likewise, the choice to keep all stats at 215 makes it impossible to visit the Nadir.
I think FL is for the most part very lenient about player choices. There are very few things that really have permanent consequences. It’s just that sometimes you cannot have it all at once. I would also love to keep all stats at 215 and go to the Nadir. But apparently I am not that high on the Chain that I cannot defy the effects of a place that not even the Judgements can penetrate.
Edit: It seems dov and I are part of a hive mind ;) edited by rahv7 on 1/26/2018
#1: You’ve begged the question. "If anyone highly values keeping stats at 215 without having to regrind them" is basically saying, "If anyone highly values having his cake and eating it, too." It’s assuming your point before it’s made. The condition should be, "If anyone highly values keeping stats at 215," and then we can talk about whether access to the Nadir, etc. is more or less valuable than never having to grind Notability 15 again. This is, in fact, a viable choice, and different people will fall differently on it. This is particularly true, given that we’re talking about a game where sacrificing a well-beloved long-term character and slowly destroying everything you’ve built up over a few years of play is a popular pastime.
#2: The potential to damage one’s stats is not "arbitrary and blatantly gamey." What magic of being a Paramount Presence protects you from irrigo? Are you really so charismatic that you can eat live bats in public without consequence? A Paramount Presence is still human (well, most of you are) and still subject to natural law as it exists in the Neath. That a Paramount Presence can ride the top of the wave with a quarter the work of anyone else is already a little "gamey," but it’s also a logical and impactful reward for having repeatedly achieved 215.
When Paramount Presence was first introduced (i.e. the first few pages of this topic), there were a lot of complaints that a Paramount Presence was locked out of the ability to rebuild stats to 215. This was indeed a major issue, so much so that it was generally assumed this must’ve been an oversight to be shortly corrected. What we expected, by and large, was that Failbetter would give Paramount Presences access to all four of the preexistent stat-cappling storylets. If they had done so at the beginning, or perhaps the next day after, as a sort of patch, then in all likelihood we wouldn’t still be having this conversation. Instead, though we had to wait for it, they did us one better: giving us the ability to improve all four stats at the same time. That’s a huge difference, and one that should mean something to those who had just had to do the grind four times in order to achieve it. Again, if this had been rolled out along with Paramount Presence, I think it would have been the talk of the town (favours in high places optional). Alas, it was not, and rather than allaying dissatisfaction, this benefit seems to have increased it. (It is rather like extending a deadline in class; students who never said anything to me about the original deadline start grumbling that I didn’t extend it enough.)
For my part, the ability of Paramount Presences to restore all four of their abilities at once has what made me finally decide to begin the process. I had been waiting until I’d gotten everything I wanted from the Nadir (because I wasn’t about to contemplate hitting Notability 15 four times for each round of playing lucky dip in the purple), but the ability to overcap each stat, lock in the needed quality, and then move on knowing that I can catch all of it up in a go once I’ve finished both the PP grind and my Nadir goals (and do so again if chance or choice damages my stats later) simplifies the process dramatically. It is now a reasonable medium-term goal with a doable (if sill not negligible) upkeep.
Let me put it this way.
As an end-level player, I am delighted for every new bit of content. When something like that is released, I look forward to playing!
Then I am told that to play THIS bit of game, I have to either forego a very enjoyable, weekly piece of the game (Nadir) or get to grind Notability to 15 again (and again, and again). A very boring, time-sensitive grind, inserted in way too many pieces of the game lately.
Now, overcapped stats are only useful in some cases, so it is not the end of the world. However, for all that grinding, it would be great if we could as Paramount Presences have our cap at 215. Irrigo would hurt it of course, but then we could rebuilt in normally (or by paying echoes, or wounds, or anything else than b—y Notability again).
Again, it is not the end of the world, but I keep getting the sense that Notability, being hard to grind, is very liberally used whenever the game design is in need of a difficult, long challenge - even though nobody enjoys it.
Hurting your character deliberately in the service of a story (Seeking etc) is fine. Achieving a milestone in the game and then having to keep it through an unpopular grind - less so.
Others might feel differently of course. This is just one player’s opinion. I might be a bit more miffed than others, as I had to lose the university and the velocipede squad due to rp choices. Now, my choices are a) not play PP b) play it and often grind Notability 15 c) lose the Nadir. Feels a bit hollow for what is supposed to be an end-game achievement.
I understand the frustration with the Notability getting. But I’d like to point out that you have another option: d) get to PP then go as usual to the Nadir (i.e. let your stats drop naturally at that point).
I think if PP allowed overcapping all stats but the various London’s Organs did not require overcapped stats, it would still feel like an accomplishment that unlocked a potential benefit (four 215 stats) for a grind. The fact that you have to do the grind first, and then face damaging your achievement, rather than being able to choose whether or not to go for it in the first place, is what causes so much consternation.
Building the grind into becoming a Paramount Presence is a reasonable game decision; I don’t think there’s something wrong with that. But it’s from that choice that all this wrangling flows.
As Dov pointed out, there’s nothing forcing you to obsessively keep all your stats at 215 at all times. Indeed, the Paramount Presence process is designed so that you don’t have to. You only have to reach Watchful 215 to get London’s Nerves; you don’t lose the achievement if you don’t keep Watchful at that level. Similarly, Paramount Presence itself doesn’t require you to have 215 in anything; it just requires you to have gotten there at some point in the past. Paramount Presence makes it easier for those who wish to keep all their stats overcapped, but it isn’t otherwise linked to them at all.
In mechanical terms, there is practically no difference between 214 and 215 in a stat; by this point you’ve already made most challenges 100% (esp. with equipment), and the really difficult ones aren’t significantly impacted by a one-point change in stats. If you’re careful with your irrigo management, it will be months before you’ve traveled to the Nadir enough to drag your stats down to 213 (three and a quarter if you always exit with Irrigo 5). After a year or so, at that rate, your stats would have degraded all the way down to the shamefully low level of… 211. It would take nearly four years to bring your stats all the way down to the natural cap. If you were interested in keeping stats elevated, one could probably find time in four years to give them a booster shot. Otherwise, you could just let it fall down naturally; you’d still be a Paramount Presence. (Indeed, you’d still be a Paramount Presence if you found a way to lower all your stats to zero and then started hanging out with a chatty rat.)
Every visit to the Nadir drops my stats by 2 points, so it would take two months, not four years, to get back to 200. Sure though, PP will remain till the heat death of the universe, I never said otherwise.
Now, as you said, (almost) nothing forces me to have stats at 215, or even achieve Paramaount Presence. I am just pointing out how a certain game design choice seems the opposite of fun - to me, in particular. I understand that some people enjoy this feature, some don’t, -I guess the same happens with every new content- and I am only offering my point of view. edited by Jolanda Swan on 1/27/2018
Ah, you must be staying in the Nadir until it kicks you out. Much is thereby explained.
If irrigo is 5 or less when you leave, then you lose 1 CP of each stat per point of irrigo. (What I meant by "careful with irrigo management" was exiting the Nadir when your irrigo hits 5.)
If irrigo is 6-9, then you lose 5 CP of each stat, up to 45 CP, or roughly half a level. This is considerably more troublesome.
If irrigo hits 10 and you are forced from the Nadir, then you lose 100 CP of each stat, which is nearly a level and a half. If that’s been your modus operandi, then yes, maintaining overcapped stats must be a nightmare. So must keeping any stats at all. I have to confess, I’m now curious what your secret has been for keeping your stats up in the face of a weekly drain like that.
Just chiming in to say that it’s not hard. I usually exit at either 9 or 11, depending on if the last card I draw is interesting. Earning back 400 CP of stats a week is pretty straight-forward given I have around 700 actions a week. Often I’ll be a bit behind on one stat or another, but if anything drops below 197 then I just switch up what I’m doing to focus on that stat for a bit. I actually like it: it helps keep grinding from getting too boring.
(I have no issue with the way Paramount Presence is currently implemented, for what it’s worth. Having stats at 215 for some specific task like Poet-laureate is one thing, but I can only think of two recurring cards for which that extra 15 points would be useful on a regular basis, and… eh. I just don’t care that much. I’d rather get more new storylets to unlock instead if PP is going to have more stuff added. I’m really looking forward to the new options for teaching proteges when I get PP!)
Same here, I just play as usual and at the end of the week my stats are back where they were. This way, the Nadir makes the game more fun because I have another goal to work towards every week: restoring my stats before the next foray.
If ever stuck, I just use second chances, but it is seldom needed.