The Elite Dangerous ingame reputation system thread

[NapalmJunkie]

It took me quite a while to become Allied the Alliance, and I was really happy when it happened. I was extremely annoyed and unhappy when I lost it in beta. Even now with the "less aggressive" decay I'm still quite worried if this goes live that I'll lose Allied just beacuse I don't play or do a pro-Alliance mission every other day.

Playing computer games should be fun. So far 1.3 seems to be quite grind-centric and having to jump through hoops to keep the staus quo before going to do what you'd like is not fun to me. Some of the other changes I can grudgingly deal with, but reputation decay is a real game-breaker for me. As many other CMDRs have said, not all of us can put in constant hours every day.

 

[T@F]

I am going to assume once you get a permit it stays permanently even if your rep drops.

i mean your grinding for one,you have not got it just yet,go offline for a week or two only to come back and have to start the grind all over again to get it.

 

[Kayweg]

Any chance of a 'in the know' designer explaining the 'logic' behind this?

I'm still waiting for that answer too.
What is the motive, need and/or benefit of introducing this ?

 

[Eloy]

Is this going to be like farmville where you have to grind all day to keep up?
FDev please change this and take notice of all the good arguments above, thank you.

 

[Huros]

Sorry, for me any decay is too much. I feel like you are robbing me of time I have spent working on my rank. Total waste of time for me then. do not think this is a good, or correct decision. Is it for the XBOX crowd?

 

[Sylow]

Nice, clean solution everyone understands...and which has worked perfectly well so far.

I don't quite understand why this "decay over time" thing is being introduced.

What's the motive, the idea behind it ? What is it supposed to achieve or to balance ?

Is this some sort of "dailies", trying to trigger people to log in ?

I don't get it.

What is is supposed to do? The answer for me is pretty clear: when you were off for vacations for a few weeks, it gives you good incentive to try another game instead of returning to this one.

The better question would be: What -positve- thing is it supposed to do for this game and not for other games?
For this question i still have to ponder to find an answer.

And to also give a suggestion on how to spin this mechanic to the positive: make factions decay while -online- while not changing your status while offline. Effects would be:

- If you want to get to a better standing with somebody you messed up with, you can't simply log out, wait for a little and be good again. You instead have to play and spend your time somewhere else till things settle down.
- If you play and don't care for a faction any more, your reputation does decay, and that is perfectly fine.
- If you for some reasons (like vacations, they do happen, really!) can't be online for a while, you can return to the status you had before. You are not being punished for being away.

So really, just make decay happen while online and freeze them while offline and everything is better.

 

[FuzzySpider]

I'm still waiting for that answer too.
What is the motive, need and/or benefit of introducing this ?

The motive for this? Read here.

After that, I encourage everyone to read this post. It touches on this (and other things) and explains, in perfect detail, why 1.3 is going so wrong for us. There is an overall pattern to the changes which create a different sort of game from the one we've been playing.

 

[Dubber]

The motive for this? Read here.

After that, I encourage everyone to read this post. It touches on this (and other things) and explains, in perfect detail, why 1.3 is going so wrong for us. There is an overall pattern to the changes which create a different sort of game from the one we've been playing.

Wow, the 'play it your way' seems to have gone out of the window. To me it seems as though the guts of the Elite I knew are slowly being watered down and they seems to be pushing the 'team' mentality. That's not my bag at all, strictly solo for me. I wish they would just dump a totally offline mode on me, I'd leave today.

 

[NapalmJunkie]

The motive for this? Read here.

After that, I encourage everyone to read this post. It touches on this (and other things) and explains, in perfect detail, why 1.3 is going so wrong for us. There is an overall pattern to the changes which create a different sort of game from the one we've been playing.

Thanks for posting them. I almost couldn't believe what I was reading on the first link, punishing players for spending time away from the game. I'm pretty angry about it.

I agree with the sentiment of the second link, this is *not* the game a lot of us signed to purchase way back during the Kickstarter campaign.

 

[JughedJones]

Thanks for posting them. I almost couldn't believe what I was reading on the first link, punishing players for spending time away from the game. I'm pretty angry about it.

I agree with the sentiment of the second link, this is *not* the game a lot of us signed to purchase way back during the Kickstarter campaign.

Alright...

Can someone please tell me how this affects you so terribly? The fact that you can only be the ally of one faction at any time without lots of work is bad, exactly how?

You remain friendly with everyone if you built that up, right? You don't become hostile over time, (in fact the opposite happens.) Why do people think this is such
a terrible thing? Do folks really think that you should be able to, within a week or two of playing and going for it, you should be able to work up allied rep with the Empire,
Feds, and Alliance, then just keep that status forever?

It seems silly to me, especially when you consider that they will all remain - at worst - friendly if you don't do anything.

Good grief.

I'm at a complete loss.

 

[SteveLaw]

Alright...

Can someone please tell me how this affects you so terribly? The fact that you can only be the ally of one faction at any time without lots of work is bad, exactly how?

You remain friendly with everyone if you built that up, right? You don't become hostile over time, (in fact the opposite happens.) Why do people think this is such
a terrible thing? Do folks really think that you should be able to, within a week or two of playing and going for it, you should be able to work up allied rep with the Empire,
Feds, and Alliance, then just keep that status forever?

It seems silly to me, especially when you consider that they will all remain, at worst, friendly if you don't do anything.

Good grief.

I'm at a complete loss.

The problem is that this new mechanic responds to things you do *outside* of the game - I.e. Not playing it - with effects *inside* the game. It breaks the fourth wall, for want of a better expression (there may be a gaming expression for this, I don't know). Part of the whole premise of Elite is that your actions effect the Galaxy, but it should be be your actions in that Galaxy, not your time away from the game.

Depending on how often you manage to play, or what your prioritise while playing, you can have less effect on your standings while playing the game than while not playing the game. Surely something is wrong there?

Yes, I agree that there is some exaggeration and hyperbole involved here, but this shift, felt by many to be "punishing" inactivity, is quite a fundamental one and some people feel that it's actually quite invasive - the game is poking it's nose into our personal lives by measuring how often/long we are logged off and diminishing our in-game efforts accordingly.

 

[JughedJones]

The problem is that this new mechanic responds to things you do *outside* of the game - I.e. Not playing it - with effects *inside* the game. It breaks the fourth wall, for want of a better expression (there may be a gaming expression for this, I don't know). Part of the whole premise of Elite is that your actions effect the Galaxy, but it should be be your actions in that Galaxy, not your time away from the game. Depending on how you manage to play you can have less effect on your standings playing the game than not playing the game.

Yes, I agree that there is some exaggeration and hyperbole involved here, but this shift, felt by many to be "punishing" inactivity, is quite a fundamental one and some people feel that it's actually quite invasive - the game is poking it's nose into our personal lives by measuring how often we are logged off.

I see. I guess I can understand that.

However, we are taking part in a galaxy that moves forward without us. I still don't agree that it's a bad mechanic, but I understand now why some feel that way.

You aren't going hostile or even neutral... they still like you, they just don't love you like before you stopped playing for a week or so. It seems totally fair to me.

Thanks for the reasonable Cliff's Notes.

 

[NapalmJunkie]

Alright...

Can someone please tell me how this affects you so terribly? The fact that you can only be the ally of one faction at any time without lots of work is bad, exactly how?

You remain friendly with everyone if you built that up, right? You don't become hostile over time, (in fact the opposite happens.) Why do people think this is such
a terrible thing? Do folks really think that you should be able to, within a week or two of playing and going for it, you should be able to work up allied rep with the Empire,
Feds, and Alliance, then just keep that status forever?

It seems silly to me, especially when you consider that they will all remain - at worst - friendly if you don't do anything.

Good grief.

I'm at a complete loss.

I am a pro-Alliance player. As there are no Alliance ranks, then all I have to go on is reputation. If that repuation slips from Allied to Friendly, then I stop being able to do certain missions etc because I do not meet the qualifying criteria. It took me ages to be come Allied and I really don't want to re-invent the wheel just to get back to where I was before because FDev can't figure some mechanics out. I'm not interested in being Allied with the other factions (especially all at once), but offline reputation decay will affect my game, and as you can tell it's not to my liking.

I'm not against a mechanic that will only allow you to be Allied with one faction at at time (or something similar), as that does make sense. In fact on another thread another poster submitted what I think is a pretty good way of sorting this mess out:

I think that major faction rep should be a balance, a bit like the pips in my power distribution, i.e. You can't have all of them on max, as you increase one you lose the others.

And like the pips in my power distribution, they should be exactly where I left them when I logged out. An arbitrary degradation in real time is just silly IMHO.

I can see what FDev what to achieve, and have no qualms with that, but thier way of reaching that point by punishing players that can't play all the time seems utterly stupid to me.

 

[SteveLaw]

I see. I guess I can understand that.

However, we are taking part in a galaxy that moves forward without us. I still don't agree that it's a bad mechanic, but I understand now why some feel that way.

You aren't going hostile or even neutral... they still like you, they just don't love you like before you stopped playing for a week or so. It seems totally fair to me.

Thanks for the reasonable Cliff's Notes.

Personally I'm torn with this. I don't mind the effect but I don't like the method. Decay isn't the problem for me, it's decay while offline. If your reputation decays while in-game but not actively working for a faction, that's fair enough I think, but your CMDR's position should be the same when you log back in, no matter how long it's been.

I understand what you mean, other aspects of the faction will change - e.g. Their influence in a system - but your rep with them is *your* rep with them.

What next? Decaying Elite rankings while logged off? Decaying ship integrity? Should you expect to log in after a long absence from the game to face an insurance screen because your ship has rotted away in the hanger?

 

[CaptainKremmen]

I see. I guess I can understand that.

However, we are taking part in a galaxy that moves forward without us. I still don't agree that it's a bad mechanic, but I understand now why some feel that way.

You aren't going hostile or even neutral... they still like you, they just don't love you like before you stopped playing for a week or so. It seems totally fair to me.

Thanks for the reasonable Cliff's Notes.

They will love you more if you leave your client logged in overnight, furiously rendering and doing nothing of consequence... than if you save energy and log off.

That's not cool.

 

[Entilzar]

Alright...

Can someone please tell me how this affects you so terribly? The fact that you can only be the ally of one faction at any time without lots of work is bad, exactly how?

You remain friendly with everyone if you built that up, right? You don't become hostile over time, (in fact the opposite happens.) Why do people think this is such
a terrible thing? Do folks really think that you should be able to, within a week or two of playing and going for it, you should be able to work up allied rep with the Empire,
Feds, and Alliance, then just keep that status forever?

It seems silly to me, especially when you consider that they will all remain - at worst - friendly if you don't do anything.

Good grief.

I'm at a complete loss.

the trouble is the games billed as blaze your own trail, ie play it your way, with the changes due to be implemented, its no longer play it your way , its play it there way or lose what you gained. good or bad is a matter of perspective, id imagine folks with lots of time to play will think its all good, and folks who don't have time to play will think its bad.

just my thoughts

Enty

 

[Deleted member 37733]

The motive for this? Read here.

Interesting comment from ED's Lead Designer:-

There are two reasons for this decay:

It helps Commanders to escape a potentially permanent hostility trap with minor and major factions.

It makes it slightly harder for Commanders to be allied with multiple major factions at the same time.

So in the absence of a better explanation I have to assume that ED's motive with decay is to enforce regular play, otherwise their design goals could be met by activating decay when you're online as opposed to off. As stated ad infinitum this unfairly penalises casual players. Welcome to the grind train!

An alternative is to only decay hostile rep and two out of three major factions whilst online.

 

[Sylow]

An alternative is to only decay hostile rep and two out of three major factions whilst online.

Wy word! Make it decay while online and everything is fine. Making it decay while offline really makes me think that they should replace the game designer with somebody who knows what he's doing. (Unless the problem is that they code before thinking and consulting the game designer, in which case the internal processes need to be reviewed and the game designer has to stop defending bad decissions. )

In the times of old MUDs i have experienced some which punished being offline. The most striking characteristic of that was that most of them closed, the others changed the mechanics again after a little while, but never really recovered again. They all took a massive (and permanent) hit to their playerbase. Is this really the way ED wants to go?

 

[Oblivious]

Is this true? This is totally unfair to people like myself with a family who can only spend small amounts of time playing. I'd like to think my contribution to the galaxy is remembered when I next log back in!

This.
I've been playing a few hours every day for the past month or so, since I've had enough free time on my hands, but with the extremely busy time at work coming up for me soon, not to mention family obligations, I will not be able to maintain that, and I am very much opposed to the idea that all my hard work can be wiped away simply because I had to do real life stuff for a few days and couldn't properly tend to my galactic relationships...

 

[B33 ENN]

I've been playing a few hours every day for the past month or so, since I've had enough free time on my hands, but with the extremely busy time at work coming up for me soon, not to mention family obligations, I will not be able to maintain that, and I am very much opposed to the idea that all my hard work can be wiped away simply because I had to do real life stuff for a few days and couldn't properly tend to my galactic relationships...

Same here. Leaving aside other games waiting to be played, I can put a lot of time in right now while I'm on a break, but at some point, other commitments will start taking up most of my time.