Progress Caps

Fallen London
1

I’m an on and off again player, so I’m not terribly active on the forums, but I would like to share a complaint that I’ve had for some time that was the reason I stopped playing for about two years.

Progress Caps.

I am extremely annoyed and frustrated by the caps on pretty much every action that raises a quality. You try and to ‘X’, ‘Y’, or ‘Z’ actions and you’re always greeted with the &quotYou cannot increase ‘whatever quality’ because you are over ‘arbitrary limit’&quot These arbitrary limits, btw, are ridiculously low…like 8 or something stupid. So, many many actions you do have exactly zero benefit because of these stupid caps. You can’t raise Connected: Music-Hall Singer. You can’t raise Melancholy. You can’t raise renown. WHAT’S THE BLOODY POINT?!

I get raising your ruthless would drop your magnanimous. I get raising your Connected: Constables would lower your Connected: Urchins…but not letting us build those connections or stats over time? Why? For what reason? What function, mechanical, or literary purpose does that serve? I have (had) a Connected: Music-Hall Singer amount, and I’m always getting the ‘introduce me to the Amused Lordfatbottom’, or whatever, card. Lowering, lowering, lowering that connection. I’ve done plenty of actions that should re-raise that connection, but guess what? I’m over lvl8 so I can go get stuffed. It’s stupid. It’s like Failbetter Games is like &quotPlay our game! Oh, wait, no you can’t play that part. No, not that part either. NO! Stop trying to raise your qualities! We put them in the game, but you can’t actually USE them for anything. I mean, there are really rare times they’re useful but you’ll never actually have enough of any quality to come in handy, so stop trying!&quot. It’s like playing D&D with a really whiny DM that just railroads your entire campaign. It’s incredibly frustrating.

What the hell, FBG? Honestly…

2

My impression is that the limits are linked to particular activities or areas. So while you may not be able to raise, say, austere beyond 4 in one area or performing one action, it isn’t a hard boundary across the board. The trick is finding the places where you can go beyond, and the places where raising one quirk doesn’t drop another.
One I use to raise austere to 10, for example, is the church option at court to write (in my case) symphonies. It has no impact on hedonist.
Sorry to see you so angry about this!
edited by Ragnar Degenhand on 1/9/2017

3

Some things have a hard cap. This means that not matter what you do, the quality can’t increase past it. This is how the main qualities work, for example (Watchful, Dangerous, etc.). No matter what sort of Watchful challenge you take you can’t raise your Watchful over 200. (with one exception, that with POSI specialization you can overcap).

This generally makes sense - you total Watchful (or any other main quality) is on a scale of 1-200, with lower levels easier to reach than the higher ones. While it’s technically possible not to have any cap (and let your Shadowy, Watchful, etc.) raise to infinity, it’s quite common to have some sort of upper limit. This also allows FBG to design really tough challenges and be sure they won’t be trivial to anyone who just happened to grind their Shadowy to 10000.

Your Acquaintance to the Music Hall Singer is also like that. some actions lower t and some actions raise it, but the most you can be acquainted with her is measured as level 9, same as the most Persuasive you can be is measured as level 200 (not considering modifiers).

Other qualities might have soft caps. This means that some actions will only raise them up to some limit, but other actions can raise them more. The quirks (e.g. Hedonist) work this way. The rational is that the more &quotquirky&quot you are (in this case, more Hedonistic), it takes something more special to increase this further - the actions that made you seem Hedonistic before don’t have that much of an effect. At first you could buy drinks for writers and thus become more Hedonistic. But after a while (mechanics-wise, when Hedonistic is at 5), then this action won’t affect you in this way (i.e. buying them drinks will only make you that much more Hedonistic). If you want to be considered even more Hedonistic you have to do something more noticeable, such as celebrating a romance between two of your accomplices.

(and again, if you become Hedonistic enough, this action won’t increase your Hedonistic reputation to infinity. After 10 you’ll need to do something way more drastic to be considered even more Hedonistic than you already were, such as romancing both the Melancholy Curate and his &quotsister&quot, or both the Barbed Wit and the Acclaimed Beauty together. You know, something spectacular and memorable).

You’ve also mentioned Renown. There is a soft cap on raising Renown using carnival options (caps at 5). This is because the carnival options are just there to give someone &quotintroductory&quot renown (and thus free Favours) for a faction. But after that faction already knows you a bit (Renown at 5), simply meeting a faction representative at the carnival won’t make you more known (i.e. more Renown) to them. They already know you to that level. You’ll need to collect and spend Favours with that faction to make them know you better.