The Elite Dangerous ingame reputation system thread

[FuzzySpider]

I agree with the mechanic. It's a living system, more now than ever. The world goes on, with or without you.

I thought the whole point of Elite was that you're a tiny piece in a huge thing... this makes it feel more like that. Moreover, it's hardly punitive. They just don't love you anymore if you
don't show them love. They merely like you. Big deal.

The first Elite game was 30 years ago.

The second and third Elite games were over 20 years ago.

We got this game, and many of us backed it before release, on the strength of those games all of that time ago. Frontiers reputation hadn't decayed with us at all.

In the past week, because of this and some of what powerplay does (introducing MMO grind mechanics) a fair few people are wishing they could take that back.

Realism - reputation is trust, and it is gained or lost through actions and behaviour, not time.

The Elite universe is not now more alive, in fact its slowly turning into a big and arbitrary board game with spaceships, WoW in space.

 

[Max Torps]

I think if you wrote to Brookes or Lewis, you should absolutely write to Braben instead...

Wrote to Braben, had it addressed by Walsh.

 

[Titus Balls]

Good memory.

You have to stop thinking that you're in charge and start thinking that you're having a dance. We used to think we're smart [...] but nobody is smarter than the internet. [...] One of the things we learned pretty early on is 'Don't ever, ever try to lie to the internet - because they will catch you. They will de-construct your spin. They will remember everything you ever say for eternity.'

You can see really old school companies really struggle with that. They think they can still be in control of the message. [...] So yeah, the internet (in aggregate) is scary smart. The sooner people accept that and start to trust that that's the case, the better they're gonna be in interacting with them.

- Gabe Newell

- - - Updated - - -

Heh, they took over 5 months to resolve an issue with my account, resulting in being unable to play from December 27th 2014 to May 17th 2015. So I missed the last patches, lucky me

I must say, that CCP, developer and publisher of EVE online took years before they managed to make half stable updates. If your game is good enough, you can survive that. What bugs me here is, that they have a tendency to gloss over things, where CCP would say 'umm, sorry, that really was crappy...' which goes a long way to soothe angry customers. And it proves you are being looked at as a customer, not some dolt who wouldn't know the difference.

100% agree, it's what I've said all along.

Instead Frontier continue to be shady and ambiguous and refuse to give a Yes/No answer until they are dragged through the mud over several pages of a forum post, them Michael Brooke's is wheeled out and gives a sarky one-word answer. They then wheel DBOBE out to appease the proles with a AMA, where we ask him anything but he only answers the simplest of questions and glosses over the real ones.

Everything with Frontier happens in a pretty standard way, and it's a crappy way.

- - - Updated - - -

Wrote to Braben, had it addressed by Walsh.

And there in lies the problem. Nothing I've seen of Walsh gives me any confidence, yet he seems to be the puppet master controlling the strings from the shadows. I'm very close to dumping my shares - they are my worst performing stock and dragging me down:

 

[Mephane]

Realism - reputation is trust, and it is gained or lost through actions and behaviour, not time.

This. If the goal behind reputation decay from positive is to make it harder to be allied with all 3 major factions, there are many better methods where it is still the player's actions that define the outcome. Some possible solutions (read this as an OR list):

- CMDRs can only be allied to a single major faction. Reputation gain in the other two major factions stops as soon as they hit the threshold that would normally turn them allied. To ally with a different faction, the CMDR must first do some actions to lose that allied status which they already have.
- From every bit of reputation gained (including forfeited reputation when at the absolute maximum value beyond the threshold for allied) for a major faction the CMDR is allied with, deduct slightly less than half (e.g. 45%) of that from the reputation with any other major faction (never going below friendly). In order to reach and maintain allied status with all three, the CMDR would have to consciously split their efforts equally among all three; if their actions are truly balanced, they can maintain allied with all three, but will eventually lose it for the other two when only working for one major faction.
- If decay is there to stay: the CMDR can declare allegiance to one major faction; reputation now only decays (towards friendly) for the other two. When defecting to a different major faction, that previously allied faction immediately turns unfriendly.

 

[Shintai]

I dont see whats wrong with reputation decay, negative or positive.

 

[Olrik]

penalizing people for having a life outside the game will go down in gaming history..

Rep decay in its current state just seems like little more than a middle finger toward casual players.

Frontiers reputation hadn't decayed with us at all.

Right. I am an alpha backer/casual player- yes, I have a life outside the game. But in fact I have been playing Elite since 1984, and I love this game. Frontier, don't point your middle finger at me.

 

[Mikey2305]

So if we get a note from our GP or fill in a holiday form then we wont have to suffer reputation decay?

 

[Kramster]

So if we get a note from our GP or fill in a holiday form then we wont have to suffer reputation decay?

I just found another job instead...back to the shelf ED

 

[Phaaded]

How this would get past the drawing boards is beyond me.

You know what makes sense? Losing reputation when you take and complete missions for other factions. You spend months building a reputation, destroying thousands of hostile ships, supporting their efforts across multiple systems, supplying thousands of tons of needed goods... and after 20 days they say nope, you are just another peasant trying to impress us.

Reputation decaying after only 20 days is laughably bad. These guys seem to prefer negative reinforcement over positive.

 

[EUS]

I think I'm going to show my displeasure, and get around this offline decay by doing the same thing; put this game on a VM, log in to open, and just sit in an outpost, medium pad.

 

[Ben Ryder]

I watch them daily too.

As for 1.3 and the argument for longer betas. Well third time lucky didn't happen. Public launch after beta and well... it roll back time.

Like I said, I wasn't insinuating anything. That would mean I was hinting. I was very direct on camera and face-to-face.

On a brighter note, smuggling seems to be a great success and I've heard people saying that they feel 1.3 is the 1.0 they'd been waiting for.. until about 10 minute ago,sadly

 

[Smugallo]

Excuse my ignorance guys, but who's 'Walsh'

 

[withnail]

He's one of the senior Directors.

Edit: this thread varies between daft and tin foil hattery.

 

[n13L5]

REPUTATION DECAY done right:

Penalizing people for having a life outside the game by offline decay will go down in gaming history as one of the top most wrongheaded decisions.

NOTE: this isn't about Power Play reputation, its about major and minor faction decay, which occurs even when you're offline just long enough for a night's sleep. As I grind up one minor faction in Empire, the previous one I did already starts to droop.


Its perfectly ok that people who can play more, can achieve more. but to take away from casual players what they already have less time to do is astonishingly daft.
We're not taking about an alternate reality here, we're talking about a game service provider and its customers, nothing else.

And remember, FD never stated that their goal was to carpet-bomb everybody's reputation as they do with their lazy 'solution' now, they stated two specific goals, see below...


Reputation decay could very well be used to achieve FD's two stated goals:

1) NEGATIVE REPUTATION - FD's stated goal: letting bad guys get out of the dog house without actually having to work for it.

(not sure I agree with that, save for those people who got hit by ridiculous escalating loitering violations or other minor things where escalation spiraled out of control - or else, if FD feels so bad about it, just fix the over the top escalation of penalties) This could be done offline or online or both, but should probably not work for griefers, lest it be an incentive. But its a totally separate bag from positive reputation.



2) POSITIVE REPUTATION - FD's stated goal: to make it hard to keep allied with all 3 factions: For fairness, reputation should only decay while online. And in a smartly regulated fashion:

- If you're offline, nothing changes whatsoever. real life > game ...is that really so hard to understand and facilitate?

- If you're online but exploring outside of inhabited space, nothing changes. Exploration should not carry a penalty. When Columbus came back from America, did they give him a title, or did they say "we don't know you anymore"...?

- But: If you're online and trading / questing / fighting for the Empire, your Federation and Alliance reputation will decay. No decay in Empire, until you actually start doing missions / trading / combat for one of the other two. Same for each faction. Only one faction gains, while two decay. Should work.

And if you think that's "not enough" I'll have you know, that FD can obviously set the rate of decay as they see fit.





General advice for player retention: Anything that lets players exchange more than just laser fire, allowing them to band together will keep them in the game. So FD should rush to enable a game mechanic for player associations (guilds, whatever you wanna call it) and let players trade among each other. stuff, modules whatever. let them buy or capture stations. Maybe more people will go into multiplayer for that.

Add powers, abilities to do things for players, not more of the same mission and hauling grind painted with a new color.

 

[Ben Ryder]

He's one of the senior Directors.

Edit: this thread varies between daft and tin foil hattery.

Something wrong with my hat? You want some eh? Do ya do ya.

Yes this thread is true brand bonkers. I have much pop corn to devour while the servers are down.

But I do have some lovely whistabel bay organic ale to wash it down with.

 

[Ervig]

I think everyone already knows..let's hope FD sees the light soon.

 

[n13L5]

I think everyone already knows..let's hope FD sees the light soon.

You mean everyone but FD knows? ;-)

 

[Krait_79]

Penalizing people for having a life outside the game by offline decay will go down in gaming history as one of the top most wrongheaded decisions.
Especially for those people who got cheated out of their single player offline game, who now have to make do with server based solo mode, its nothing but grating.



Its perfectly ok that people who can play more, can achieve more. but to take away from casual players what they already have less time to do is astonishingly daft.
We're not taking about an alternate reality here, we're talking about a game service provider and its customers, nothing else.

And remember, FD never stated that their goal was to carpet-bomb everybody's reputation as they do with their lazy 'solution' now, they stated two specific goals, see below...


Reputation decay could very well be used to achieve FD's two stated goals:

1) NEGATIVE REPUTATION - FD's stated goal: letting bad guys get out of the dog house without actually having to work for it.

(not sure I agree with that, save for those people who got hit by ridiculous escalating loitering violations or other minor things where escalation spiraled out of control - or else, if FD feels so bad about it, just fix the over the top escalation of penalties) This could be done offline or online or both, but should probably not work for griefers, lest it be an incentive. But its a totally separate bag from positive reputation.



2) POSITIVE REPUTATION - FD's stated goal: to make it hard to keep allied with all 3 factions: For fairness, reputation should only decay while online. And in a smartly regulated fashion:

- If you're offline, nothing changes whatsoever. real life > game ...is that really so hard to understand and facilitate?
- If you're online but exploring outside of inhabited space, nothing changes. Exploration should not carry a penalty. When Columbus came back from America, they gave him a title, not take it away.
- But: If you're online and trading / questing / fighting for the Empire, your Federation and Alliance reputation will decay. No decay in Empire, until you actually start doing missions / trading / combat for the other two. Same for each faction.

And if you think that's "not enough" I'll have you know, that FD can obviously set the rate of decay as they see fit.





General advice for player retention: Anything that lets players exchange more than just laser fire, allowing them to band together will keep them in the game. So FD should rush to enable a game mechanic for player associations (guilds, whatever you wanna call it) and let players trade among each other. stuff, modules whatever. let them buy or capture stations. Maybe more people will go into multiplayer for that.

Add powers, abilities to do things for players, not more of the same mission and hauling grind painted with a new color.

This is exactly how the decay system should work. +1

 

[RatzUk]

+1

Please FD, change your stance on this matter

 

[Armour]

Perhaps if people didn't jump to immediately label the developers as fraudsters and swindlers for axing a game mode that they couldn't reconcile with the direction they wanted the game to go in, and then try and tie any perceived shortcoming of the game to that missing game mode, they might be more inclined to consider suggestions from those people. Just a thought.