Helminth-like system for syndicate rep may alleviate grinding grief

[DaraSilverDragon]

Let's start with the most grievous activity people complained endlessly about for the latest major content update- Conservation. We'll use it as a specific example, though this can apply to all similar systems.

Honestly, I think the conservation mechanic/minigame is fun - I really enjoy doing it, and I really enjoy that conservation targets on deimos also spawn randomly and just roam around on top of the dedicated hunting system. Having the option to do things either way is phenomenal, and I desperately wish it worked that way on both other open world areas.
y'know... when it works and doesn't spawn the animal inside the world geometry...

...But at the same time, I kinda resent being forced into a grind for it. If all hunting got you was floofs, or if you could do something with individual tags, that would be one thing
but when Son says I need 3 velocipods and 5 cryptilexes for a single damn token or whatever, it just fills me with preemptive exhaustion because I know that I'm not going to be going out hunting because it's fun- I'm going out because I was given a #*!%ing shopping list. That's no longer gameplay, it's a chore list. This sort of thing is fine for Father because it's just resources you're picking up while you're out busting containers on accident during pitched battle - which is the same reason it worked well for Ticker - but for an activity that takes several minutes of dedicated effort and concentration for a single instance of a resource... no. That's just not fun anymore.

Frankly I think a better system would be that which is already being used for the Helminth, of all things.
Son, in this example, would give out X amount of tokens (say, 15ish) for tags that he hasn't seen in a while, slightly less (8?) for those he has plenty of, and very few (like 2) for tags he already has a ton of - and his preferences would replete over time so you could keep handing in those white velocipod tags you have 30+ of by just waiting a day or so. In this manner, we no longer have shopping lists of what tags we need to go grind out for him in order to gather one of his precious precious little coins - we can instead just go grab whatever interests us as players, or whatever we find roaming out on the drift by chance, and exchange that for some meaningful progress no matter what we just went and did. Just like with the Helminth, you dump in the resources you have from just normal play, rather than having to go out and farm the specific things the randomized recipe dictates to you - the only real difference being that in this case, the entrati tokens are the 'secretions'.
In this system, the son tokens would not give standing anymore - their purpose would be twofold.
1) Son's 'wares' are bought with a combination of (much reduced) standing, and son tokens - this means that the only thing we explicitly NEED his tokens for are the things that you get from his shop, so all you need to do in order to get improved conservation tools or rewards, is do conservation. You'll never need to do conservation to go fishing, or to get gem refining blueprints - his activity provides access to his shop, full stop.
2a) Grandmother tokens would be the only way to get standing under this system, and much like at present, they will have pseudorandom 'deals'. However, the big change to be made here, is that there will always be a set deal for 15 mother tokens for one grandmother token. Since mother has no shop to spend tokens at under the new system, the only thing hers would be good for is standing - and therefore, there needs to always be a way to get standing out of her and only her tokens (and it also fits the lore, considering that Mother is the only entrati not directly related to grandmother by blood, so she's likely to always be in the market for dirt on her daughter-in-law).
2b) Alternately, you could make it so that starting an isolation vault costs mother tokens instead of granting them (and thereby leave Grandmother's random deals as-is other than boosting the token requirements to reflect their new ease of acquisition) - which should provide an adequate sink for the tokens in exchange for a wealth of other resources; though if this were the case, the vault's rewards would likely need some improving to match the new lost token value. Guaranteed scintillant would be a good start, but I'm sure there's plenty else that would be suitable as a nice juicy reward for expending tokens on... A random vaulted relic could be another excellent option, taken from a table of all relics in the entire vault, which should be a large enough pool to prevent people from reliably farming any particular one (which also fits lore, since these are literal vaults used by explorers returning from void expeditions - these very well could be the vaults that our relics occasionally get put into on rotation).

And of course, this system could be expanded through the entire family
Son would accept individual tags
Daughter would accept individual fish parts in small bundles (ranging from 5 to 20 based on commonality)
Otak would accept individual ores in similar small bundles
and Father would accept individual resources in slightly larger bundles (call it maybe 10 to 50 based on commonality. Obviously ALL of these numbers would need to be workshopped and balanced to fit an appropriate progression curve that rewards all activities near equally, and I don't have access to the game metrics necessary to do so)
Mother, I see no need to change (other than lowering the token rewards from bounties to something approaching sanity, and perhaps as I said make them expendable on vault runs)
Loid, I see no need to change at all, with no qualifications - his grind is perfectly reasonable, and moreover, relatively fun as-is.

So in summary... Helminth system is good, token system is okay-but-not-as-good-as-helminth and incentivizes boring plodding grindloops instead of playing the videogame to have fun, please make tokens work like helminth. Passively finding resources while you play for fun and then exchanging those resources for MORE fun, is always and forever going to make for a better and more enjoyable game than World of Warcraft style 'go to the burnforest of Thz'gron and collect 30 flame-otter spleens and 12 blazedemon shinbones to complete the quest' shopping list 'do your chores before you get to play outside' grinding.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[Alpheus]

I quite like the Helminth system since it breaks away from a system games have used since time immemorial: gopher missions, or as you so aptly put it, a shopping list. It actively rewards varied gameplay but doesn't force you to change things up in order to progress. I really hope they go that route for future content since it feels like I have more of a say in how I go about ranking up.

[DaraSilverDragon]

1 hour ago, Alpheus said:

...it feels like I have more of a say in how I go about ranking up.

Exactly this. Exactly this.
In a game like this one, player agency is paramount to a positive experience.