Since the Favours/Renown debate has flared up again (as it will continue to flare up and die down until the conversion is complete and Connected is lost among the sands of time) I figured why not have a poll. I wish you could put more than one question in these things because I’m one of those people who thinks Favours is a pretty good system while Renown… isn’t. But I don’t want to flood the forum with Polls so we’re just rolling them together.
I realised earlier today that I’d probably feel differently about Renown if it was just a thing you gained a certain amount of for each favour you spent. Grinding it would still be a nightmare but it would at least feel more thematically consistent. As it stands, I just find it really annoying to try and build up and I suspect newer players will have difficulty figuring out what it is and how it works without visiting the wiki. I look forward to the day when I have all my Renowns at 40 and don’t have to worry about building up favours ever again.
I think that Favours work great. No change needed (though it would be nice to have a way to convert Favours from one type to another in a carousel - it’s easy to design in a way that won’t make it extra profitable, since you’d be spending actions converting).
I also think that Renown is a mess that should go back to behave as Connected did (i.e. go up and down with player choices), except for the old calling in favours, obviously
It’s not the length of the grind (I’m used to it as a Seeker, and as a Cider holder). It’s the complete disconnect of Renown from any role playing choices and consequences. (remember when conflict cards used to represent actual conflict, with losing Connected with the faction you disappoint? Now these cards are just ways to cash in Favours).
Same issue here. I quite like how Favours are implemented, really. Since I can’t just let them pile up and (unlike Connected) they’re actually valuable, Favours have a far more presence role in my gameplay than Connected ever did. Renown on the other hand is incredibly tedious. It requires either sacrificing all the valuable Favours you get for a lengthy period of time, or spending lengthy periods grinding before the conversions take place. Story-wise, it has no relation to the rest of the game. Mechanically, Renown means a great deal of sacrifice to access a couple preexisting options and acquire a handful of items with very slightly better stats. (And by the point you actually get those items, that slight stat boost is virtually irrelevant.)
The poll option I want is "Favours are an improvement" combined with "I hate Renown with the burning passion of a thousand suns". The only good part of Renown is having more cool items to collect.
There are benefits in NOT being ever forgotten by the faction you choose. For example, I kept building and then squandering society and bohemians. This did not make narrative sense. Renown represents the relationships you built over time and are hard to erode. This, I understand.
However the endless grinding to get there is tiring. With all factions turning to renown all together, suddenly Fallen London is all about cashing in favors. Not to mention that for RP reasons, some people might want Renown 50 and are never getting it now. I am not one of them, but I dread the day when an increase in the Stat cap and a new renown item at 50 will get me back to grinding rubbery men.
New players might appreciate it much more as long term goals though. No way to know that.
Like many others I think Favours are a good change but that the way Renown works is not the best.
If you want (or need) to raise your Renown level you have to collect favours and other items and get higher stats. One problem with getting the 7 favours needed to raise renown is the undiscardable cards. That means that your hand can get full of them, if you are raising more than one faction, and you are then less likely to draw the cards you need to get enough Favours to raise renown.
I’d be perfectly fine with renown if there were more non-favours ways to grow it, other than early on in the carnival, or selling to location to the cave of the nadir to certain groups.
Not that I want anything easily grindable, or cheap, of course. But maybe small bumps of renown with spending favours to up-convert items, to help counteract the struggle of actually getting the favours to up-convert in the first place. Or, alternatively, add one or two higher-efficiency conversions to higher levels of renown, which are increasingly more expensive, though reward more renown. I believe this would also help on a narrative level, as you’d figure the constables would change their security patterns after so many successful breakouts on the route to 50 Renown: Criminals. edited by Yeah on 6/2/2017
The problem for me with favours and renown as opposed to Connected, is how they feel. Connected feels like it grows and shrinks organically, as part of my character’s story and as a result of her actions. Renown, by contrast, feels like a matter entirely of mechanics, bolted to the side of the main game and barely related to it. Yes, they are both merely mechanical systems, but the new one feels much less involved with the actual game-world and story, at least to me. It might work as a system, but it utterly fails at story-telling. Connected does a much better job of that.
For example, every now and again, when my favours are high enough and when I remember to check that I have it down in my Diary of the Dead, the Tomb-Colonists let me act out a little pantomime with them. They pretend they need help from the same predicament (I honestly can’t remember what it is, I haven’t read the flavour text in months) and I pretend to rescue them from it. And because I have done this, they like me a little bit more. So we say our goodbyes and arrange to do it again in a week or so. Honestly, that’s how it feels. Like we’re all simply acting it out. Why are we doing this? I have no idea, but I do it, because this bizarre pantomime is now the only way to raise my standing with them. It doesn’t even really feel like something my character is doing, but just something I, the player, am doing. It is so boring, and a world away from the deeply immersive story-driven world that is Fallen London at its best. The same mechanical slog, over and over and over. A separate mini-game that isn’t any fun, and actually drags me out of any feeling of being in a living world.
I don’t mind favours. Like others here, I actually quite like them. But how they get converted into Renown is for me a problem. I wish it would happen more naturally, in a way that doesn’t feel so divorced from the main game, from my story.
One more thing, I’m not even sure the rewards are worth it. The 10 Renown ones definitely aren’t. So far, without exception, by the time I had ground out the renown and favours for them, I already had acquired something better through other means. The same has been true about half the time for the 25 Renown items. I don’t have any 40 Renown items yet, so I can’t comment on those. edited by Plynkes on 6/2/2017
Put me down as someone else who likes favours but not renown. But I’m sympathetic; I’m not really sure how to implement something that’s like Connected but not rewarded. I don’t particularly like the idea of having it be a purely cosmetic stat (another complaint against Renown, as it has very few effects besides occasional thresholds and the items).
I do think that no longer having tiny gains and losses of a few CP for routine actions around London makes it feel less like what you do is noticed and appreciated or condemned by denizens of the city.
While it isn’t at all ideal, I think keeping old Connected exactly as it is/was and just adding favours on top for the big cash-outs would have been preferable.
This is a really good idea, imho. It makes thematic sense, since conflict cards essentially have you make a public stand as to where your loyalties lie. Perhaps an option on each faction’s card to somehow boost Renown by trade or something else would be nice as well.
The main thing that Renown is lacking in is the organic growth that Connected had. The limited avenues of increasing Renown (which are found in items that have very little connection with the main narratives) causes it to feel, as Plynkes said, a pantomime. Now you may argue that all grinds will necessarily be less narratively-rich, but Connected (and now Favours and Renown) aren’t quite on the same level as, say, glim or rostygold. Both provide rewards in Echoes, but Connected also represents the player’s relationship and position in the woder universe of Fallen London. The way Renown is gained right now makes it feel more like a shiny badge of conspicuous consumption than anything else.[li]
Of course, it may be that Failbetter already had all this planned but have not fully implemented it yet. Fingers crossed that Renown becomes more interactive with the player’s story ;)[/li][li] edited by fiscusnimbus on 6/2/2017
My problem with Renown is that, in effect, it is ultimately capped at 50. I don’t think that’s true of the way renown behaves in real life, and I agree with the players who have said that the way Renown behaves interferes with their efforts to role play their character/s. I like the idea of having Renown behave like Connected always has, and having a Favour component along side, behaving as it does now.
Renown isn’t actually capped at 50, that’s just the cut off for conversion. (Not to mention the difficulty going past that, and the complete lack of benefits)
Totally and absolutely neutral. If it should come to a fight between the Favours/Renown supporters and the Connected supporters, I can be the umpire. ;)
I enjoy both favors and renown. With the old connected system, I never really paid attention to it unless I got a conflict card and had to spend some to get rid of it.
With favors, I actually have to spend them once I get a certain number, so they actually get used. Renown is actually fun for me to grind for now as it’s challenging and not only do I like the rewards, I actually feel a real sense of accomplishment when I look at my renown, becauae getting there was hard.
If it becomes something you can just grind for by mindlessly clicking a button, that sense of accomplishment will feel greatly cheapened, at least to me.
I genuinely appreciate the challenge, I guess. It’s tougher than just repetitively grinding for money, which is the only other thing I really have to do in between exceptional stories.
But… isn’t that already what Renown is? One way to reach high levels is to mindlessly click a button to grind the relevant Connected quality before the conversion. The other way is to wait for days to draw the necessary cards for Favours then mindlessly click a button to convert them to Renown. Either way, the narrative constructed around clicking whatever button just gets ignored entirely in favor of watching numbers slowly increase.
I’d honestly prefer we went back to clicking a button in a storylet somewhere. With that style of grind, it feels like I’ve actually chosen to put my time and effort into a task. Right now, grinding Renown just feels like the RNG is grinding while I do nothing. There’s no difficulty in sitting around, just tedium.
That’s kinda why I hate it. It turns trying to get a number higher into sitting around and HOPING THAT LUCK will turn the number higher. It’s an endless luck challenge that I can never escape. Even guaranteed favor gains for a lot of these aren’t guaranteed, like bloody Tomb Colonies even with the finishing school.
My biggest concern is how long it is taking to perform the conversion. I thought this would be finished by the time the iOS version launched.
The perpetual complaint threads on the forum are tedious, and I would think disheartening to the staff. Seems like it would have been better to get it over with quickly. Like a band aid, one fast motion.
Then again (and this is pure speculation) the Renown items probably surfaced because no one was increasing their Renown. It is possible we have all gotten some better items as a result of the pace.
I think the question of whether Renown is frustrating (post-conversion, I mean; I’m not touching pre-conversion grinds) comes down to a matter of attitude. If you’re trying to grind Renown the way people try to grind Echoes, then yes, you are going to be frustrated, because you’re working against the setup. You’re trying to tame something that’s essentially random, so yes, it isn’t going to be fun; it’s like looking out the window every ten minutes trying to see a meteor. Enough days of that and anyone’s sanity’s going to crack. On the other hand, a meteor is a lot of fun if you’re outside anyway and happen to see it. In the same way, if you treat it as lagniappe, an extra bonus that comes while you’re doing other things, then it’s a lot more enjoyable.
There’s still a lot of personal decision that goes into it: which pet to choose, how to lean in conflict or other cards, whether to spend favors or hoard them for conversion. Unlike connections, nobody’s getting up to high renown on accident; it’s always a deliberate choice to spend your resources to improve your standing, rather than on something else. If you take it how it’s intended to be taken, I think the system offers a lot of potential - and at least the Brass Embassy doesn’t forget who you are just because they did something for you.