Rating decay in PP punishes casuals disproportionately (not about Reputation decay)
There has been quite a bit of consternation about how Reputation decay entirely fails to give incentives for casual players to participate in PowerPlay. But decay also affects Rating, which I believe is an even bigger deal: Rating is what gets you tangible Benefits in the form of modules and perhaps ships unique to a Power, and it is the "currency" you can take with you if you defect to another faction.
Although Mr Braben says that Reputation decay doesn't affect Rating
source, Rating decays in a different manner, via the decay of Merits which are used to build Reputation. From
PP manual (pdf):
Each rating requires a certain number of merits to be enabled. You gain merits by successfully completing preparation, expansion, fortify and undermine tasks for the power.
At the end of each cycle, the total number of merits you have accumulated determines what rating you will be for the next cycle.
Merits earned from previous cycles still count towards your rating at diminishing rates.
Your merit total from the previous cycle is halved then added to your current cycle value. After two cycles, its value is halved again before being added. After three cycles, the value is halved once more. After four cycles the value is no longer added.
Thus if you take a break from the game,
after four cycles you are back at your starting Rating of 1, no matter how many hours you have spent in the preceding weeks or months! Taking a two-week vacation with your family or friends means you are at 25% of the Rating you left with. Higher-tier Rating Benefits will become impossible to reach for the casual player, and turn the already rather grind-y game even more so.
The punishing rate of both Reputation (20 days to back to Friendly) and Rating decay (four weeks) are a slap in the face of casuals, a big, if not the biggest, source of Revenue and thus funding for the continued development of E: D. Do note that even the HC players are affected by the same decay, so the highest-ranked player for months on end would be a nobody within four cycles.
I know life is unfair, and that
perhaps hardcore players should get perks above and beyond what they already inherently get from being able to dedicate more hours to the game. But there should be more incentives for casual players to take part in PP, and the dual decay of Reputation and Rating punishes casuals at a much higher degree than the HC crowd.
Rating decay needs to be re-visited, possibly in the same way proposed to fix Reputation, i.e. it doesn't decay when you're offline.
