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.