Obtaining the requirement for ranking up for the *first time* with the Solaris United Syndicate does not make sense.

[Em3r4ld]

    In order to rank up the first time in Solaris United the player must provide 13 training debt bonds. This feels terrible from a player perspective - here's an explanation as to why. 
    The first obvious way to acquire the required bonds is through an NPC who sells the player training debt bonds. The purchase of these bonds requires materials that are regularly obtained throughout the open world of Orb Valis, but the required materials rotate and change making the acquisition time sensitive and opportunity based. This would not be an issue under different circumstances. The issue with this path to obtaining the required training debt bonds is that the highest chance a player has with being rewarded with training debt bonds is 20% - and this is only for the first stage of the lowest level Orb Valis bounty. 
    If a player is to reasonably pursue obtaining the required debt bonds to rank up for the first time and not worry about the debt bond shop rotating out the materials they have acquired then they might be incentivized to only complete the first stage of the lowest level Orb Valis bounty for the best chance of getting what is needed. With the understanding that it would take seven times being rewarded with two training debt bonds: this means that a player is expected to run the first stage of the lowest level Orb Valis bounty approximately forty-five times before getting the fourteen training debt bonds of thirteen required. This requirement feels terrible and like a waste of time; especially because the player cannot earn more than 5,000 standing before ranking up and still must complete an abundance of bounties that provide significantly more standing than 5,000 in total. In that same vein not only does it feel like a waste of time but it is a waste of standing too. The alternative is to not do bounties and to fish and resource gather which can be favorable only if the a shop sells the right bonds for the right materials.

    Personally, I'm a big fan of the Orb Valis open world. The Fortuna area, its colorful cast of characters, and unique mechanics and opportunities are fun to engage with. With that being said: the tedium of grinding a low level bounty forty-plus times, wasting potential standing, earning beginner rewards, being incentivized to leave after the first stage of a bounty, and all that just to achieve the beginning rank ends up leaving a bad taste in my gamer mouth. I appreciate the alternative path of doing more resource harvesting to acquire the right materials to purchase the bonds, but I do not think the discrepancy between bounties and open world farming makes up for the poor odds of gaining these debt bonds through bounties.
    Having more time consuming requirements to achieve higher ranks with Solaris United makes sense to me. Having such a tedious task for the first time does not make sense.
    This game has flaws, but they're subjective flaws at worst. However I'm certain it's easier to understand why the requirements for ranking up for the first time with the Solaris United Syndicate might be different from just a subjective flaw when taking the full picture into consideration.
    One way to remedy this issue could be to increase the amount of bonds rewarded from Orb Valis bounties.
    I hope this criticism is considered moving into the future. More importantly it does not reflect poorly on all the hard work and effort that went into, and continues going into, the vast amount of gameplay experiences the team at Digital Extremes curates for us players.

Edited January 25 by Em3r4ld
Edited formatting and structure for readability. Edited all references to purchasing bonds having a rank up requirement as it was incorrect.

[Tiltskillet]

51 minutes ago, Em3r4ld said:

The first obvious way to acquire the required bonds is through an NPC who sells the player training debt bonds. However; the purchase of said bonds costs Goblite Tears, and Goblite Tears require a blueprint to craft.

It's been so long since I did the Solaris grind, so apologies if I'm forgetting a rank up or something you have to do to see all of Ticker's bonds.  But purchased Debt Bond costs are pretty random, often costing resources or credits, and not Goblite Tears or other syndicate locked items.  For instance right now, I see four options for Training Bonds: fish parts / credits, resource / credits, fish parts / resource, and one that would be unavailable to you because it involves Travocyte Alloy.

Bonds are on a timer and rotate regularly, so hopefully it's just a matter of revisiting Ticker.