First, let me preface with my ceterum censeo, which is that I believe reputation decay is fundamentally a detrimental game mechanic and should never have been started in the first place. But we must assume it is here to stay, and that it is meant to serve two particular purposes that FD are keen to solve this way (recover from hostile rep, make it difficult to stay allied with all 3 major factions - both of which could have been solved in different ways, especially the latter point). Fighting entropy can be an interesting challenge in a game where this is the point, but this here is a game about flying futuristic spacecraft of the future, not a hardcore simulation that tries emulate as realistically as possible the real struggle against entropy itself. Now to the actual post:
We've seen it with wear&tear (integrity) repairs. Ever since the start of the 1.3 beta, they were a rollercoaster of up, down, up down with every minor update. Then finally 1.3.04 received an extra hotfix which apparently solved the issues and w&t is back to normal - but now hull and module repair has gone through the roof. These must be somehow connected, so either there is a miscalculation somewhere that is just very elusive and patching one thing makes it appear in another place, or else*.
We've seen it with reputation decay. Originally meant to apply to all minor factions and down to even neutral, it was then in the 1.3 beta announced to be capped at friendly (i.e. never going back to neutral) and only apply to the major factions at least. Nothing of that announcement went live, and it took until 1.3.05 to be even addressed at all (and we didn't even have confirmation that this is a bug that is being investigated until shortly before 1.3.05). Well, 1.3.05 fixed it so that it finally only happens to the major factions, but now it occurs so fast, ~1 tick/hour, and some reports sound like such a tick is strong enough to require multiple missions to be fully offset. So either the announcement was never implemented until 1.3.05, and then not carefully tested and balanced, or else*.
*Now let's get to the "else" part. If I were to don my tinfoil hat, both of these appear, on the outside as if the massive effects were intentional, and there were some internal rule that says "the timesink must remove at least X effort from the players", so that any fix that changes one thing down to a more reasonable level, were simultaneously countered by a change in another place so that the total mean entropy players have to fight against remains the same. High w&t and now repair cost as a big money drain - they didn't go through silently, so they were addressed but a different money drain/timesink had to be introduced instead, or the effect merely shifted onto other things. Minor faction reputation decay, which would require re-grinding all the individual factions ever raised, wasn't accepted in the beta, the announced softening of the rep decay system never implemented in the beta (iirc not even mentioned in the final 1.3 release notes), hastily thrown in later when it couldn't be ignored any more, but then that same rule said "they must regrind for X time to offset the decay" and now finally only 3 things decay (3 major factions), not hundreds, it was made to happen once per hour.
I'll now take off my imaginary tinfoil hat, because I do not believe in such a conspiracy theory, I am merely entertaining what it might look like from the outside, especially for someone who is no programmer and therefore hasn't experienced how it is to chase an elusive bug that rears its ugly head in another place as soon as you stomp it down in one place; which is the most likely explanation for what has been going on with w&t and now hull+module repair. But the reputation decay system very clearly was never modified in the way announced. Now, to be fair the announcement never said when it would be implemented, but since that was during the 1.3 beta, and because of the ill effects of any delay, it was only reasonable to assume the change was meant to go happen at least together with the release of 1.3, preferrably still during the beta (to iron out any remaining issues).
Let's look a bit further back to the attempted changes to the heat mechanics in a previous update beta, which went out of control and was eventually put on hold until the thing was properly redesigned. Why, FD, did you not do the very same thing for w&t integrity and reputation decay? Once you found you could not deliver the softened decay system, and the w&t cost was still not under control after you thought they were, twice - why did you not simply disable reputation decay entirely, and wear&tear entirely (afaik they only require server changes), until you are sure these issues are sorted out for good, and with no ill side effects caused by the bugfix itself? That would have saved us players a mountain of hassle in the game and on the forums, lots of time recuperating losses (credits, reputation) as well as the time and effort that went into reporting these issues again and again, and it would have saved you and your support team lots of time, too, in reading these reports, and responding to support tickets trying to get back the millions of credits or lots of reputation lost due these ongoing problems.
And honestly, on top of it all, the way these two matters were handled don't really make you look good. Especially disabling reputation decay when you realized you couldn't do all the changes for the 1.3 release would have been a good way to both save face and get ample time to reconsider and possibly even scrap the whole thing.
We've seen it with wear&tear (integrity) repairs. Ever since the start of the 1.3 beta, they were a rollercoaster of up, down, up down with every minor update. Then finally 1.3.04 received an extra hotfix which apparently solved the issues and w&t is back to normal - but now hull and module repair has gone through the roof. These must be somehow connected, so either there is a miscalculation somewhere that is just very elusive and patching one thing makes it appear in another place, or else*.
We've seen it with reputation decay. Originally meant to apply to all minor factions and down to even neutral, it was then in the 1.3 beta announced to be capped at friendly (i.e. never going back to neutral) and only apply to the major factions at least. Nothing of that announcement went live, and it took until 1.3.05 to be even addressed at all (and we didn't even have confirmation that this is a bug that is being investigated until shortly before 1.3.05). Well, 1.3.05 fixed it so that it finally only happens to the major factions, but now it occurs so fast, ~1 tick/hour, and some reports sound like such a tick is strong enough to require multiple missions to be fully offset. So either the announcement was never implemented until 1.3.05, and then not carefully tested and balanced, or else*.
*Now let's get to the "else" part. If I were to don my tinfoil hat, both of these appear, on the outside as if the massive effects were intentional, and there were some internal rule that says "the timesink must remove at least X effort from the players", so that any fix that changes one thing down to a more reasonable level, were simultaneously countered by a change in another place so that the total mean entropy players have to fight against remains the same. High w&t and now repair cost as a big money drain - they didn't go through silently, so they were addressed but a different money drain/timesink had to be introduced instead, or the effect merely shifted onto other things. Minor faction reputation decay, which would require re-grinding all the individual factions ever raised, wasn't accepted in the beta, the announced softening of the rep decay system never implemented in the beta (iirc not even mentioned in the final 1.3 release notes), hastily thrown in later when it couldn't be ignored any more, but then that same rule said "they must regrind for X time to offset the decay" and now finally only 3 things decay (3 major factions), not hundreds, it was made to happen once per hour.
I'll now take off my imaginary tinfoil hat, because I do not believe in such a conspiracy theory, I am merely entertaining what it might look like from the outside, especially for someone who is no programmer and therefore hasn't experienced how it is to chase an elusive bug that rears its ugly head in another place as soon as you stomp it down in one place; which is the most likely explanation for what has been going on with w&t and now hull+module repair. But the reputation decay system very clearly was never modified in the way announced. Now, to be fair the announcement never said when it would be implemented, but since that was during the 1.3 beta, and because of the ill effects of any delay, it was only reasonable to assume the change was meant to go happen at least together with the release of 1.3, preferrably still during the beta (to iron out any remaining issues).
Let's look a bit further back to the attempted changes to the heat mechanics in a previous update beta, which went out of control and was eventually put on hold until the thing was properly redesigned. Why, FD, did you not do the very same thing for w&t integrity and reputation decay? Once you found you could not deliver the softened decay system, and the w&t cost was still not under control after you thought they were, twice - why did you not simply disable reputation decay entirely, and wear&tear entirely (afaik they only require server changes), until you are sure these issues are sorted out for good, and with no ill side effects caused by the bugfix itself? That would have saved us players a mountain of hassle in the game and on the forums, lots of time recuperating losses (credits, reputation) as well as the time and effort that went into reporting these issues again and again, and it would have saved you and your support team lots of time, too, in reading these reports, and responding to support tickets trying to get back the millions of credits or lots of reputation lost due these ongoing problems.
And honestly, on top of it all, the way these two matters were handled don't really make you look good. Especially disabling reputation decay when you realized you couldn't do all the changes for the 1.3 release would have been a good way to both save face and get ample time to reconsider and possibly even scrap the whole thing.