Reputation System: A minor softening

[squirrel_killer-]

So with each new syndicate added we see the same issues, the daily cap is the complaint. I have thought on this, and I was going to put it in the Fortuna feedback but this could stretch beyond just Fortuna.

What I propose are two mutually exclusive in my head solutions:

Idea one is to remove the cap entirely and instead lower the standard award rates of everything across the board and have your mastery rank act as a multiplier, higher MR, you gain more per action over the day. I don't like this one but it came to mind so might as well say it.

Idea two is the one I think people would like more. Soft capping reputation. Leave the gain rates the same up until daily cap, at that point reduce the gains to say, 1/10th. This might seem harsh, and it is, but here is the thin:. A lot of people feel compelled to leave the fun new content, Fortuna, to do other content because they capped on reputation and feel like that is a signal to screw off. Instead it would be a very strong suggestion to switch to others.

Maybe the older syndicates, the main six, could remain capped for balance reasons, they have other ways to go above and beyond (in fact the entire system of medallions and daily quests are specifically to address the low cap), but syndicates like Ostrons, Solaris United, Simaris, and such could benefit from a soft cap instead of hard cap. Also, let's be fair the "fast" ways to get standing like fishing, mining, and debt-bond trading cost resources, so it isn't like you will want to trade those at the reduced rate, bounties at 1/10th the return also would be in double digit returns, triple at best. Only the hardcore no lifers would really feel much of a benefit to this, most players really won't notice a change anyways once the release hype is done and over with.

In the end it just means faster and sooner feedback and a rare few people *@##$ing its already done since the time gating was shortened by no lifing the game.

Edited November 21, 2018 by squirrel_killer-
clarification before linking this elsewhere.

[Shrapnel110]

The first option with the MR multiplier would really hurt newbies and not affect high rank vets much, no go with that one. I'm in support of a soft-cap though.

I recall DE kicking around the idea for focus gains too, maybe they should add that as well.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Shrapnel110

[squirrel_killer-]

2 hours ago, Shrapnel110 said:

The first option with the MR multiplier would really hurt newbies and not affect high rank vets much, no go with that one. I'm in support of a soft-cap though.

I recall DE kicking around the idea for focus gains too, maybe they should add that as well.

They tossed out the focus gain idea for raising hard cap, and yeah, that was my issue with the MR multiplier. It would result in less reputation for low level, and more for high level, which is what already happens, but there would need to be a balance point in it all. A target MR per hour per MR level. That could get nasty.

[peterc3]

3 hours ago, squirrel_killer- said:

Maybe the older syndicates, the main six, could remain capped for balance reasons

So they should keep a cap for balance reasons, but balance reasons don't apply to anything else?

[squirrel_killer-]

2 hours ago, peterc3 said:

So they should keep a cap for balance reasons, but balance reasons don't apply to anything else?

The difference here is specifically how standing is gained. Look at how you get the standing for those guys. Put on a sigil and kill. That builds up fast and would get out of control fast. Add in the fact we also have our medallions and our daily quests which don't count towards our cap and go beyond it, and you notice that they handled the issue of those six that way. In fact, back in the day the modern caps and all of those dailies were added specifically because syndicate power gains were too slow, but uncapped and people over farmed one thing to gain standing fast, DE throw a fit, reverted the issue later on and fixed syndicates to work how they currently do. The balance issues related to this were handled on those original six, but the fix for those don't work for nor get applied to the newer syndicates like Ostrons and on wards. They are using a system designed for a different problem.

They have a balance that works because such an issue exists, but not for things like Ostrons, Fortuna, etc. This is to fix the fact that such a thing doesn't exist for anything beyond the original 6. Now we could do something insane and change how those syndicates gain standing in general to be more than "Wear this cosmetic so you get the stuff you want" and give them some infinitely regenerating randomly selected bounties or something as well as the dailies and medallions, but the thing is, those already raise quite quickly because the go up passively and have active ways to go above and beyond the limit each day by a little bit. A balance for this is in place. Now if we applied my method to those six and made it a soft cap, and I was working on the dev team (this is where you should be glad I work on different games and not for DE) I would push to have the dailies count against the standing cap as well as medallions. Which no one would like.

Then we look to say Ostrons. They have no passive way to gain standing, only active, and a limit balanced against passive gain is being imposed against its active gain. So we need to look at it as a different balance issue.