That part could be made clearer in-game.
And you can't say it's optional, you know perfectionists out there will chase all the sixes. That's how the world works.
As an alternative, you could have freed characters give stat-resources dependent on their overall stats, which can be used to improve existing characters. Mansion upgrades could be used to improve resource gains.
Personally, I'd argue making a much higher factor ceiling or get rid it all together would have done more to make characters with higher initial stats feel more special than having a very low factor of 6 being the ceiling. Since with the relatively low ceiling and having a bonus for maxing the factor out, it encourages players to pursue perfect 6 with all the character. Having a higher ceiling that would certainly make end game where you could invest in a few brokenly powerful characters the player get personally attached to feel more rewarding. With the current ceiling being relatively low, but forcing player to sacrifice character to raise it regardless if they are killed or sent away within the context of the game, it instead encourage save state hacking. Which is rediculously easy, just very annoy with the text wall physically hurting the eyes.
Same with my problem with the loyalty implementation in the later game versions. It doesn't add more content to make end game more fun. It just add more gate keeping for the early game to make it more tedious and annoying.
P.S.
Sorry about necroing this thread. Didn't realize this discussion happened over half a year ago.
I don't think changing stat cap would change the balance of the game that drastically, to be honest. Because it's more about changing the end game than beginning and mid game. To give players something to work on. With a much higher factor ceiling would make having a full team of all 'perfect' characters unviable as it would take too long or get too tedious, which would encourage players to focus on a few characters they love (aka their favorite waifu/husbando) to make them feel more unique... while also make the characters they don't invest more unique as well as they would be differentiated based on their initial stats.
As for the balance of late game... you honestly don't even have to design encounters with broken characters in mind. Just go with what you already planned for the end game. Having brokenly OP character for end game doesn't have to be a bad thing, it can be a reward for players who breeze through any encounters with their favorite waifu/husbando.
But yeah. That's my two cents at least. My opinion is this game right now need more content both for story campaign, and for free play element as well. It doesn't need more quote unquote, 'balancing'. As all it does is gatekeep the content of this game and make everything more tedious and unfun to play.
Honestly. I think For Power's character stats balance was better done than Conquest where each race had its own different prime stats cap rather than a max 6 for everyone. At least it made each race feel somewhat unique, as opposed to Conquest where each character just feel middle of the road when they are maxed out.
Although the class system from Conquest was definitely more interesting than For Power's specialization, and the economy resource is done better. For Power ends up being click the next day button as soon as I realized pumping all initial stats to agility and have characters set to hunt made food a non-issue, and then public performance made money a non-issue.
But I'd still say the 6 max out stats factor for all characters and all races ends up making all the races feel too homongenized.
I agree that race differentiation has been lost with every race having the same maximum for every stat, and often not much initial stat difference. You could make each race have a different maximum for each stats, maybe between 4 and 7, so that each race has a purpose, as right now there's not much point using some of the smaller races. This might also give a purpose for humans, if they have no stat maxing at 7, but multiple at 6, so they can be great late game.
In addition,there could be certain classes or events that increase one's maximum stat. Higher tier classes would have more of an appeal, and events like completing a character's unique quest, getting married, having children could all increase maximum potentials.
