What are everyone's thoughts on Favors and Renown?

Fallen London
41

This is the locus of my problems with the way that Favors have been implemented, both from a mechanical and from a roleplaying perspective. Favors are extremely profitable if used in conflict cards, but only if you have seven. They can be used to boost renown, but work most efficiently (or, at high levels, exclusively) if you have seven. This creates weird hand-bloat issues. If all conflicts are undiscardable, then getting five of one type of favor can wreak your hand size.

Tomb Colonists are one example. Going Gentle is now a Very Infrequent card. If you get seven favors, and want to cash them in, you may be waiting for a while (with Bandages and Dust filling your hand). If you get Going Gentle at five favors, you may be waiting for a while (with Going Gentle filling your hand). If you are building up Rubbery favors then that’s another set of cards filling your hand.

Each change to Favors lately has just exacerbated a basic and foreseeable mechanical mess.

This didn’t need to be a huge problem. Having conflict cards represent different levels of conflict could be one solution (as was done initially with Youthful High Spirits). Having Calling in Favors be (slightly) more profitable (as was done with Docks) could allow people more granular control of their conflicts and could make a big difference. Having favors be convertible on conflict cards would be be easy to implement and solve almost all of it. The current lack of granularity helps nothing.

The roleplaying/narrative side is almost as odd. A Familiar Face by the School Railings is going to be really strange as a high-level conflict. I always really liked the combination of warmth and calculation that the Widow exemplifies. The text when you favor the Urchins was always a sign to me of her proportional, measured response. Having her cut all ties seems OOC. The Kaleidoscopic Church will be another odd one from a perspective of proportional response.

A Contact in the Great Game will be one of the weirdest though. Why should France care whether I suborn a Prussian?

42

If Renown is implemented into the story side of things, which I really hope happens, I think there should be rare ways to lower it. Cutting ties with a group you’re Closest To, for example - they might be angry in the short term but for some situations at least they’d move on and forget about you. Pursuing the Great Game and taking penance at Saint Joshua’s shrine might have you forget about details of the Game, or other agents might forget things about you. Conflict cards could also change Renown levels, with the neglected faction raising or lowering Renown based on the story context.

43

I feel similarly to a lot of people in this thread, though just to be clear I really like the system overall, conceptually.

I don’t see any reason why Renown couldn’t work, it just doesn’t yet. A way it could work from a roleplaying perspective is if it unlocks a pair of branches each time it has a (non-grind-based) unlock, and the player gets to choose which one suits them: Fame or Notoriety (both unlocked with Renown X). They could even do the same thing, just with different text. (This would take more work to implement, but… so does every piece of writing in the game, and, well, this is a game about reading.)

However, those unlocks would have be present, but… few seem to appear in the game so far, and when they do, there’s no roleplaying aspect, just a measurement of fame and explicitly not notoriety (see: Rubbery unlocks; at least the ones I know of so far – pls correct me if I’m wrong!).

The fact that conflict cards have no impact on Renown, and that there’s no real way to raise Renown in general except by using the Special Item for each faction, is possibly the most disappointing aspect. It just doesn’t make any kind of roleplaying sense. For example, why does hanging out in Flute Street not raise my Renown with the Rubbery Folk?

Favours work a lot better. I really like most things about Favours at present.

Favours make playing many cards drastically more fun and profitable, and the card deck is significantly improved with faction cards paying out in favours (and also being burnished quite a bit like the Rubbery card) and conflict cards actually being profitable as opposed to clutter.

A minor-ish thing (which may be worse in the future) that requiring Favours for upconversions just makes it mechanically worse to play the game, since getting a bunch of Favours at once is extremely unreliable. Since so far this use of Favours is a primarily mechanical change and not a roleplaying one, this is doubly unfortunate – if it served a roleplaying purpose, the mechanic wouldn’t be so objectionable. As it stands, I wish it were improved as a mechanic.

Conflict cards also make little sense now. This isn’t really a complaint from a mechanical perspective, since holy shit the payout is huge.

But the writing makes me think &quotthis should be: gain 1-3 favours + small rewards from the side you, well, favour, lose 1-2 favours from the side you disfavour, and gain a tiny amount of renown from both sides&quot. This isn’t an actual suggestion, btw, it’s just what I gather from the writing and the explanation of what favours and renown are supposed to mean.

Instead, we … gain no favours, and no Renown at all, but instead get a giant payout of items, sometimes a ridiculous amount for the small thing we did? And lose a massive amount of favours from what is in some case something affecting small numbers or literally one member of the faction? It may be a good system mechanically, but It’s very confusing because it doesn’t make intuitive sense from a player perspective.

Hopefully this was coherent and maybe helpful and/or interesting! :)
edited by thedeadlymoose on 5/10/2016

44

Seconding the notion that it should be possible for renown to be earned from certain opportunity cards and carousals, albeit in very small increments. As it stands, have to use a connected item to increase renown is a mechanical bottle neck that arbitrarily locks progression behind it, while from a role playing point it effectively kills the vast majority of the connection related actions one takes throughout the Neath.

45

Maybe you should gain a little amount of Renown when becoming Closest To a faction.

46

I really dread the day when Connected: Masters is converted to the new system.

47

I can’t wait for the Renown items!

48

I’d think that’d be too short-term: A one–time offer. not worth the cost of implementing,not the mention it’s internal. If they were going to do something like that, i’d do it for the faction-related secrets and spending option- make it give you one point renown per time you picked it.

I’d also do the same for favoring them on a faction conflict- 2 points on favoring and one point loss on betrayal- and maybe for cashing in, too.

49

At that point I think it’s getting a little too close to favours, and there wouldn’t be much point in separating the two.

50

Yes, exactly. Which is why I like the split the way it is- and i don’t think it’s getting too close to favors- the best way to gain renown is still actually using the items, chances to interact with their society as payment for those favors- but you gain a little by profiting in their favor, and lose a little by favoring others. The point is that renown shouldn’t be untouchable outside of the relics, not that the relics shouldn’t be optimal for min-maxing.

A tiny number of points gained or lost seems like the best way to do it. It would take a year to reach renown 40 at 1 favor a day, and at two points per seven the result would be much the same, but it wouldn’t be untouchable- just hard to drive up or down without other factors.
edited by Grenem on 5/12/2016

51

I agree that they shouldn’t be untouchable, but causing the conflict cards to change them would make them too changeable. (Maybe it could be added to a few, like replace the turncoat from the constables/criminals. But I don’t agree with all of them)
Renown strikes me as something that should stay relatively stable, and I think the cards that do effect renown should have a cap much lower than 50.

Also I agree with an earlier comment that &quotClosest to&quot Should increase renown, and would like to add that changing your closest could decrease it.

Edit: Sorry, I misread you as saying it should change by levels. A point or two sounds a lot better. And tried to edit this to make it all clearer.
edited by suinicide on 5/12/2016

52

[quote=suinicide]I agree that they shouldn’t be untouchable, but causing the conflict cards to change them would make them too changeable. (Maybe it could be added to a few, like replace the turncoat from the constables/criminals. But I don’t agree with all of them)
Renown strikes me as something that should stay relatively stable, and I think the cards that do effect renown should have a cap much lower than 50.

Also I agree with an earlier comment that &quotClosest to&quot Should increase renown, and would like to add that changing your closest could decrease it.

Edit: Sorry, I misread you as saying it should change by levels. A point or two sounds a lot better. And tried to edit this to make it all clearer.
edited by suinicide on 5/12/2016[/quote]
Conflict cards are going against their interests, but most of them aren’t a big deal, so it should be a petty change- serious issues might reduce/increase by more, but none enough to actually compete with turning in your favors- just enough to grant renown by repeated favoring.

If closest to changes renown, it shouldn’t zero it, instead lowering it with a cap akin to the accidental one they had on feeding a vicar to your plant, where it won’t be lowered below five.

53

Yeah, thats what I meant when I was talking about “closest to”. My bad. (I was thinking +2, -3 in levels)

54

That seems kinda abusable- hold onto it, use it to jump from 38 to 40, then claim the ultimate reward at renown 40 and dive back to 37, and repeat with each faction as needed. I’d rather that they buffed the faction-specific parts of counting the days, with no renown boost directly from claiming it- though a drop from abandoning it- as generally speaking, that’s how they worked when you choose your initial factions. That both turning in marks of credit to your faction and whatever the faction-card option was would boost renown and gain favors both for your faction, while gaining favors from the adjacent factions.

You could go so far as to make it objectively superior to the standard option- one point renown, and one favor, and the &quotcounting the days&quot. Not sure that’s a good idea, but it’s an option.

The renown drop for swapping closest to sounds good, though. one option for preventing abuse is having two otherwise identical storylets- one at renown, say, eight+, one before that. The one at below eight would set renown to five, while the one at eight would lower it by three levels.

55

If I’m reading right, suinicide previously misunderstood you to mean that conflict cards would cause +2/-3 in level changes, but now means it would work for CP.

56

Well, yes I misunderstood that. But the +2,-3 was for the closest to. Since it takes a long time to work up to 38 and actually be able to abuse it, I doubt the abuse would be too much.
But the idea for the mark of credit is something I like more, if theres a place for all the factions.
edited by suinicide on 5/12/2016
edited by suinicide on 5/12/2016