please add post-elite status ranks

[joergen]

Problem:
Achieving Elite status in one or more areas is "easy". for example, 310 million in exploration data gets you to elite status, which is fairly easy to achieve, as soon as you leave the bubble.

Suggestion:
add a number behind the Elite rank, at least for all text based representations. The number is log 10 based, and represents how much more advanced the player has gotten after reaching the elite status.

Example:
1. user has gathered about 500 million credits in exploration data. (500m/310m)=1.6 log10 of 1.6 is 0.2, hence the Elite rank would change to Elite0.2
2. user has gathered about 2 billion credits in exploration data, resulting in Elite0.8
3. user just reaching Elite Status gets Elite0.0

Results and advantages:
Using Log10 has enough headroom to give players a status reward past Elite status in the game, despite the number climbing up rather slowly, but that is an already expected behavior within the game. reaching Elite1.0 status requires 10x the efforts of reaching Elite status, Elite2.0 requires 100x the effort.

Implementation:
Rather easy, IMO, since I suggest to only show this in all text-based instances. It is debatable to add a space in front of the numbers.

Suggestions, agreements, oppositions to this idea?

 

[MK Regular]

A 'prestige' system for elite ranks would be kinda cool for the purpose of bragging rights. As long as there is no benefit to having a certain level of prestige on your elite ranks, I have no problems with the idea, however I do still have a few nitpicks:

I agree that a log function could easily form the basis of such a system, but I'm not entirely sure the log10 function would be the best option to use. There are other functions that could work just as easily (log2, log3, log4, etc...) that would give players a better sense of how they compare to everyone else. If you're concerned that people will be getting to excessively high prestige ranks with log2, remember that "Elite 10" would take 1024 times the effort of reaching Elite, "Elite 20" would take 1.049 million times the effort and "Elite 100" would take a whopping 1.268 nonillion (10³⁰) times the effort. For reference, it would take around 5000 hours of peak-efficiency painite mining to earn "Elite 10" in trade rank, which is widely considered the easiest elite rank to earn.

For displaying the prestige rank, I don't think "Elite0.0" would be the best naming format. The decimal value feels out of place to me and wouldn't be that necessary if you continue with the existing system where you are given a % progress meter. Instead, I feel that something like

Elite -> Elite I -> Elite II -> Elite III -> Elite IV -> etc...

would be a far better option. Even with some of the longer strings of roman numerals, there should still be plenty of room to display to display them (I suspect CCLXXXVIII would be the first one that may have issues, but nobody will ever get anywhere close to that).

 

[badibeat]

Roman numbers are for counting sheep (cohorts maybe), not for displaying or comparing numbers. Good riddance.
Edit (Had to): There is even a worse system spreading, it's counting As. At least it turns rank into some kind of ASCII progress bar.
I am not in principle against some Eliteism, but the completionist in me is subconsciously happy that ranks are limited.

 

[MK Regular]

Roman numbers are for counting sheep (cohorts maybe), not for displaying or comparing numbers. Good riddance.

For comparing large numbers, Roman numerals are definitely not ideal. However, considering that most people won't get past 5-10 and NOBODY will get to 20, it's mostly a non-issue. Also, using Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals would be physically painful from a stylistic perspective:

Elite -> Elite 1 -> Elite 2 -> Elite 3 -> Elite 4 -> etc...
vs.
Elite -> Elite I -> Elite II -> Elite III -> Elite IV -> etc...

It might be OK for numbering the sequential entries in a movie or video game franchise, but imagine seeing "Elite 3" in the rank field on ship info for another player. Just no.

Edit (Had to): There is even a worse system spreading, it's counting As. At least it turns rank into some kind of ASCII progress bar.

Elite
Elite A
Elite AA
Elite AAA
....
Elite AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Oh god plz no. I'd take Arabic numerals over this.

I am not in principle against some Eliteism, but the completionist in me is subconsciously happy that ranks are limited.

Eh. It's a matter of personal preference. I could probably get myself to stop at Elite and only progress further because I was doing something that counts towards progression and/or needed credits for a new toy.

 

[M00ka]

The only way this would work is if the title is descriptive:

Elite
Elite a little more
Elite more
Elite a lot more
Elite more than you
Elite and don't you forget it
Elite and without a social life

 

[badibeat]

Numbers are nice, ask Dagobert Duck. I learned to write 12 as twelve or a dozen, but will stick to 12. Arab digits on watch faces also look better to me, only on my watch they'd go from 0 (bottom) via 12 (top) to 23.

 

[badibeat]

The only way this would work is if the title is descriptive:

Elite
Elite a little more
Elite more
Elite a lot more
Elite more than you
Elite and don't you forget it
Elite and without a social life

That's glorious ; )

 

[gorankar]

The ranks are not really an indicator of skill. They are all easily earned given time in game spent playing, and doing certain things. Open, Private or Solo. So, not sure it would interest me all that much to be Elite + or Elite II or Double Elite Ultra or whatever. However, if it gives someone some added sense of accomplishment in the game, I suppose I am not against it. Would like to be able to opt out if possible though.

 

[Sylow]

The ranks are not really an indicator of skill. They are all easily earned given time in game spent playing, and doing certain things. Open, Private or Solo. So, not sure it would interest me all that much to be Elite + or Elite II or Double Elite Ultra or whatever. However, if it gives someone some added sense of accomplishment in the game, I suppose I am not against it. Would like to be able to opt out if possible though.

Very much this. Rank is more an indicator of time invested than anything else. Perhaps we should have a decal which displays minutes played?

 

[varonica]

They could just display a number after the rank that represents the number of billions earned in that activity. Elite Explorer 1 would have earned 1 billion while exploring, a player who has earned 12 billion would be Elite Explorer 12, after all that's all we are measuring here right? We could call it the Epeen factor. Oh yes and an option not to show the Epeen factor for those if us who couldn't give a rats whatever about Epeens!

You do realise I am not being sarcastic, the entire idea is ludicrous.

 

[M00ka]

Okay, being serious for a moment - I have never really liked the Elite moniker in the game. Take me as an example, I am ranked Elite in both Trade and Exploration but only Deadly in Combat. Yet, overall I can call myself Elite and even be granted the privilege of receiving the permit for Shinrarta Dezhra among other things. To me this isn't right, I am not an Elite Commander, I am a Commander that has done a percentage of the activities in the game enough to reach a required level (notice that I have never mentioned skill lol).

I would much prefer if all the separate areas stop at one level lower than Elite, i.e. maximum combat rank is Deadly, Tycoon for trade and Pioneer for explorer. And bring in new profession streams like mining, pirate, smuggler, mission runner, cruise boat captain and the such. Then have the overall combinations of all these diverse and differing professions combine to give you your Commander Status. So in the end when you do see a Commander ranked Elite, you know they have mastered a good percentage of the game and not just done one activity over and over again.

Anyway that is my 5 Arx contribution to this discussion

 

[MK Regular]

Would like to be able to opt out if possible though.

I don't see anything wrong with being able to opt-out. I'm not going to hold it against you if you don't want to get into an epeen measuring contest. The Elite rank is all that really counts in-game, anything after that would really just for people who are into that kind of stuff.

 

[Charonys]

I really think it would be nice to have such a system, simply because it would allow me to track my progress in a more compact format (instead of checking the codex, etc) and possibly also give me something to do in the very rare case that I might be bored one day. Also, if people are dedicated enough to invest a huge chunk of time just to reach higher ranks, I think there is nothing wrong allowing them to display that. Not that it matters, but it also would be cool to see the progress of other CMDRs when meeting them.

But it doesn't have to be Elite A+VIII.2 - it could simply be separate badges/ranks? Instead of changing the current nature of Elite badges/ranks, why not introduce something similar to Steam achievements (but in-game)?

We already have 14 different categories where stats are tracked - why not add 14 more badges, each of which have several tiers (like navy ranks). For each badge, only one or two parameters would be relevant. For example, for smuggling the number of networks and commodities smuggled would be the relevant stats (or just one of the two).

Or - if possible - introduce tiers to each single stat. It would be so much fun to see how many passengers someone has ejected and proudly present that number on their luxury tourist vessel. Or how many crew members someone lost or fired etc. Let people brag about whatever they want, not just some number that doesn't really tell the entire story of a CMDRs experiences.

To be fair, this is additional work that isn't really relevant in general - it would just add some flavor imho.

 

[Raino]

I dunow, cant really remember, but, one thing i was happy(confused at first) about has been -> "0% Deadly", this was funny else didn't matter really

 

[Winterwalker]

We already have 14 different categories where stats are tracked - why not add 14 more badges

Umm, badge awards?

I'd rather if it was, "only after 138 clean ship hatch-breaks" will you be allowed into the Pirate Guild.
Then you can have a badge (and access to the following specialist missions).

Meanwhile you can always start your own.
1 hour in game .. Confused
10 hours in game .. Mostly Confused
100 hours in game .. Pew Pew
1000 hours in game .. Rebuy Screen Veteran
10000 hours in game .. Elite
100000 hours in game .. that's 11.4 years, straight you absolute madman, have as many badges as you like.

+1 to OP? .. kind of

 

[ZeroAi]

Problem:
Achieving Elite status in one or more areas is "easy". for example, 310 million in exploration data gets you to elite status, which is fairly easy to achieve, as soon as you leave the bubble.

Suggestion:
add a number behind the Elite rank, at least for all text based representations. The number is log 10 based, and represents how much more advanced the player has gotten after reaching the elite status.

Example:
1. user has gathered about 500 million credits in exploration data. (500m/310m)=1.6 log10 of 1.6 is 0.2, hence the Elite rank would change to Elite0.2
2. user has gathered about 2 billion credits in exploration data, resulting in Elite0.8
3. user just reaching Elite Status gets Elite0.0

Results and advantages:
Using Log10 has enough headroom to give players a status reward past Elite status in the game, despite the number climbing up rather slowly, but that is an already expected behavior within the game. reaching Elite1.0 status requires 10x the efforts of reaching Elite status, Elite2.0 requires 100x the effort.

Implementation:
Rather easy, IMO, since I suggest to only show this in all text-based instances. It is debatable to add a space in front of the numbers.

Suggestions, agreements, oppositions to this idea?

Great idea!

One thing I really liked about Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2 is once you hit the top rank it kept going up, like Elite x2, x3 and so on. Like prestiging in COD without the reset.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Sure, but what happens when you hit the limit of the prestige system? Or do we keep going until the numbers are so high they're meaningless anyway (I'm Elite level 457 and you're Elite level 456. Who cares any more?).

 

[Charonys]

I'd rather if it was, "only after 138 clean ship hatch-breaks" will you be allowed into the Pirate Guild.
Then you can have a badge (and access to the following specialist missions).

Specialist missions that are rank-locked sound fun, but (many?) people would hate such a system.

If it's just non-relevant ranks with zero benefits (other than bragging rights), it would cause the least amount of complaints imho.

 

[Masta Squidge]

This whole concept exists for satisfying the monkey brain reward centers and keep you playing, and buying. If yall are down with that be my guest. Just give me a way to turn that nonsense off for myself - because after Elite (and largely before elite) those ranks are utterly meaningless anyways.

 

[joergen]

Sure, but what happens when you hit the limit of the prestige system? Or do we keep going until the numbers are so high they're meaningless anyway (I'm Elite level 457 and you're Elite level 456. Who cares any more?).

in my original proposal, it is next to impossible to "top out" due to the nature of log (no matter if log2 or log10 is used).
as others have mentioned, this is purely for the satisfaction of the individual player, same as badges.