Ok, so I just had a thought, and I have no idea if it’s practical or not. Several ways of getting items have been hit by the Renown/Favors thing. And building up renown is a hassle with no real reward (BTW, on a unrelated note, if anyone has good ways of getting favors/renown PM me or post here noting it’s off topic.)
But I was thinking: What is renown, but how well known you are? And what is favors but what you are owned by factons? And surely the more well known you are, the more pull you have, and the more a favor owed or carried out would carry weight?
Simply put, what if in cases where renown is needed (EG some Unfinished Business) or Favors are needed (Some cards, or gaining renown) the more renown you have the more these pay out (in either cash items or Renown?)
Say the Great Game Unfinished business pays out 100 wine with no renown. You have 3 renown it pays 130. You have 20 renown it pays 200.
Doing this in my opnion could have a couple of advantages. For example, The Unfinished Business Grinds, and others, do not need to be locked out and give a certain amount. BUT if you DECIDE to earn their respect they pay out more. (NOTE: There would be a baseline that pays out a decent amout at 0 renown.)
It also means that favors become more profitable the more you work and ally with those factions and therfore become more competiive.
The main downside as I see it is that it might remove the thought of renown being only how you are perceived, or people will grind it to get optimum payout.
Let me know in the poll if you think me a genius or insane.
As there are things that already pay out depending on stats (robbing a rat for example) I don’t think this is an unreasonable suggestion.
As for how it would work and how much more you should get as your renown rises I leave to better minds but probably only a slight increase per level of renown would be best.
Renown overall really needs to be integrated more. Perhaps storylets requiring a certain renown instead of favours would be apt, especially past the PoSI point.
A bit off-topic, but I did write a thing about a consistent (though long) grind for favours. Well, at least for docks, great game, and urchins.
Regarding renown, I just wish it had more benefits. If Failbetter were to add a small amount of new opportunity cards added by having high renown, with either interesting or valuable rewards, I’d feel like it was a far more worthwhile grind. There are presently a handful of opportunity cards which do unlock at certain amounts of renown, but they’re mostly just old cards that swapped from a connected requirement to a renown requirement, and most aren’t that good.
I don’t actually like Unfinished Business being locked with Renown, however low it is, since it was there to guarantee some baseline to acquiring basic goods and locking them off with Renown just produces headaches for anyone unfortunate enough to not have the relevant renown.
Perhaps instead of directly increasing the value of certain actions’ rewards, higher renown could unlock alternatives which pay out an equivalent value of higher-tier items. I think a good place for this would be the Call In Favours options. For example, “the dead men’s chest” in the Forgotten Quarter pays out 210 primordial shrieks, and various Renown: Tomb-Colonists milestones could add new options for 42 maniac’s prayers, 9 correspondence plaques, or 2 aeolian screams. That would actually be an incentive to boost Renown, because spending actions and favors on Renown would save later actions by not having to grind large amounts of basic items and up-convert them.
[quote=Tystefy]This would be nice, as I am already obsessed with getting max renown with everyone.
… Including The Masters. Hoo boy. edited by Tystefy on 7/2/2017[/quote]
Yay someone else whose decided to try and butter up the masters, and get all the renown items. Let me know if you need help on it.
[quote=Robin Alexander]Out of curiosity, at what point are you guys planning on stopping getting Masters connections?
It’s a little easier to judge a safe cut-off point with other Connections, but Masters is one of those super tricky ones . . . I’m wondering whether I need to buy some fate soon, to grind it up higher than 14, or if that would be enough to get all renown items on a future conversion. I know someone who had/has 20, but I’m guessing they’re a super-tiny minority and most people only have 3 or 4 at most?[/quote]
My interest in currying favour with the Masters is limited, so 11 is enough for me. That’s where at least two cards are capped, and that fact might be something to consider if you’d like to figure out how much is accessible to every Tom, Dick and Harry who loves the Masters as much as some people love rubbery men, devils and other popular Fallen London characters. I imagine that there is a large minority who has well above 3-4 Connected: The Masters of the Bazaar. How large though? No idea.
I feel this would become very broken very quickly, and it would limit the applicability of Renown to various storylets. Renown will likely become far more integrated as time passes.
Speaking of which, I haven’t played the early game in a few years, but I imagine the relatively immense cost of the Renown-increasing items is a ludicrously annoying roadblock for new players. The costs of all of them should be lowered dramatically.
As for improvements, I would like far more opportunity cards, along the lines of Favours: Criminals. The dirigible heist card should have an equivalent for every faction, if possible: something unlocked by high Renown that makes it easier to gain Favours and provides a lucrative way to cash them in.[li]
In my opinion, and I feel this is the design goal already, Favours should be something that you don’t need to go out of your way to use. Each Favour should have many different uses, and a few different sources, such that you always have a few but rarely have 7 unless you are trying to save. edited by Saklad5 on 7/3/2017[/li][li] edited by Saklad5 on 7/3/2017
I think that the Masters system, and perhaps just the Masters system, should stay at Connected. More than any other faction, they really don’t get too attached. The current system makes a lot of sense for largely cynical and relatively long-lived space bats: stupidly hard to curry favor, and basically impossible to make a lasting impact on them. I’d appreciate more value from using it, though. In particular, I’d like to be able to purge a Criminal Record with it.[li] edited by Saklad5 on 7/3/2017
I don’t know if new players really need Renown above 5? Renown 10 for certain Unfinished Business options would be for a PoSI, and those are surely expected to afford ludicrously expensive items. Though Renown 10 for a +4 item would almost always come too late to be of much use, wouldn’t it? So with that in mind it might be a good idea to give new players some easy access to those ludicrously expensive items. Or lower the costs in general. Just warn me first, so I can sell all those antique constable badges while they’re still worth something.
I don’t know about increasing the value of options based on Renown, but there are certain options where I’d like to see different text when you have higher Renown. The option to buy drinks on the Docks card, for instance, still portrays you as something of an outsider at arm’s length even if your Renown is 40.
Another thought: when I draw faction cards which use Connected, I invariably take the option to increase stats, e.g. “take tea with a reclusive novelist”, unless I haven’t got enough Connected. On of the Favor-using factions’ cards I take the favor, because a) favors are in limited supply and b) the stat-increase options seem to cost a whopping 4 or 5 favors each. Those actions involve interacting with notable figures in each particular faction (the bishop of Southwark, or the Veteran Privy Counselor), so perhaps for their ungodly favors cost they could also give a few cp of Renown.
I suspect that Masters will be switched over to Renown in name but very little will change mechanically.
Related to this, I really hope that the Call in Favours in the Flit card gets turned back into a storylet when Revolutionaries get converted. Having it be card-based to balance the unusual profitability stops being relevant when Favours work that way, and making the ‘default’ method of cashing in Favours a card is counterproductive when we’re not supposed to hold on to them.