The Elite Dangerous ingame reputation system thread

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Any of you played GTA V online?

In that game your online character will decrease in skill levels if you don't play the game. So all that time spent leveling up its stats will decay over a few weeks back to level 1 stats regardless of your actual character level. Its a stupid idea in that game and its a stupid one in FD.

I like to explore why should I join a power if when I am away my reputation will decrease? It makes no sense.

Should the next version of GTA end up online only, they won't see a penny from me. Maybe game developers are getting more daft is because the populace keeps getting more daft, being drowned in processed food, laden with massive amounts of undeclared Glutamate. (well not entirely undeclared, Industry just has come up with 60 different names for it to use in the ingredients list.) look up on Google what a good, every day flooding with Glutamate does to your brain...
 
So you are wrong, everybody else (and Frontier) doesn't have it back to front. Rather, people here seem to exaggerate the loss/gain of reputation with time for the purpose of saying it is bad. Read the description and play the game! You'll see it is not really that bad, unless you want to be Captain Awesome all the time even when you are not playing.



:D S

He's not wrong, you're just lying into your pocket. This isn't talking about Power Play reputation either, but faction reputation.

Reputation is a LONG grind, and the reputation loss doesn't even occur just when you're offline. And unlike FD promised, that only major factions would decay but not minor factions, minor factions decay also... Even as I moved to grind up the next minor empire faction, the previous one already starts to droop. All while I'm online.

If you take off to sleep for 8 hours and you don't first log in and put a pecker on your keyboard, you'll have less reputation in the morning. Why not drop your elite ranking too while you're at work?

And with your ship being your 'level' in Elite, why not shrink your ship as well. Same idiotic logic. You log off in the evening in a T9 or Anaconda, go to sleep and then to work the next morning. When you get home in the evening and you log back in, your T9 or Anaconda has decayed and you're in a T7 or Python now. Or maybe if you really were just offline for ~16 hours, your ship is still the same, but your components all degraded from A rated to B rated.

After all, by your logic, we shouldn't all be able to be captain awesome when we're not playing.

And you worded that very poorly, maybe on purpose: Nobody wants to be captain awesome when they're not playing. They just want to be the same level of captain awesome they worked up to when they played the last time before going on summer vacation.

Anybody who can't understand that doesn't realize that a game is something people escape to for fun and satisfaction, because real life, with organized crime sitting comfortably atop our elected governments, its already this terrible, anxiety inducing three steps forward, two steps backward thing in particular for people prone to computer games. Games are supposed to be nice, fun and pleasant. Not hound you for your last shirt and try to mug and diminish you at every turn.
 
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I have said this before in other threads, but I feel so strong about it that I will repeat my sediment here that,

We are now been punished for having a 'REAL LIFE' outside of 'Elite'.

This offline decay is really bad for the game and can only reward the hard core players who can afford to devote hours or hours of game time.
 
This thread isn't about Power Play reputation decay.
As you are fond of pointing out, and missed the point entirely. We aren't even a week into this thing. There was a new patch already, and from what I read some reputation resets. There's not been anywhere near enough time yet for people to flesh this out yet to grab torches and pitchforks and go yowling at Frontier's door in search of blood.
 
Anybody who can't understand that doesn't realize that a game is something people escape to for fun and satisfaction, because real life, with organized crime sitting comfortably atop our elected governments, its already this terrible, anxiety inducing three steps forward, two steps backward thing in particular for people prone to computer games. Games are supposed to be nice, fun and pleasant. Not hound you for your last shirt and try to mug and diminish you at every turn.

You have this game mixed up with Mario Kart I think. There are other games trying to inject a bit of gritty realism into the gaming experience. I welcome them all!

PS: I do like Mario Kart too.

:D S
 
You have this game mixed up with Mario Kart I think. There are other games trying to inject a bit of gritty realism into the gaming experience.

Mario Kart is a silly argument. I like gritty too, so long as it stays in game time and doesn't try to reach outside like a demon. And it has NOTHING whatever to do with realism! My Company doesn't respect me any less, doesn't reduce me to a worse job when I come back from a vacation. I still get the same great coffee and my parking spot is not suddenly moved away from my office. Calling reputation decay "realism" is utter nonsense. Its purely a device to cattle herd players into repeat grinding, if its done the lazy carpet bombing way, instead of following their stated goals.

Game = Game time
Life = Life time.
Don't try to decide the mix for someone else. Especially not from the lower to the higher.

- - - Updated - - -

As you are fond of pointing out, and missed the point entirely. We aren't even a week into this thing. There was a new patch already, and from what I read some reputation resets. There's not been anywhere near enough time yet for people to flesh this out yet to grab torches and pitchforks and go yowling at Frontier's door in search of blood.
You read about rank resets, because some people got too many rank up missions and others who finished rank up missions received no title, so some got all the way to 'King' and others got nowhere. all got rolled back to pre-1.3 status. Another example of not taking responsibility for shoddy code released, but instead wasting players' time, some who had spent many hours.


And do you really think it matters if it decays this much or that much? Its the principle of overstepping their bounds by using offline penalties.

Their design decisions should NEVER reach our real lives.

No matter if its a little or a lot per hour, cause if you took a well deserved vacation to the beach, you will have been brought low in the game afterwards. Its not like they reduce grind time for getting your crucial reputation back. And maybe, just maybe, you wanted to enjoy the well deserved fruits of your work in the game, instead of having them yanked in your absence.

Since when is it ok for someone to break into your house and steal your medals and uniform just because you're on vacation? Yeah, I didn't think it was ok...


Having to repeat and repeat the same reputation grind is - repetitive. Overly repetitive games are usually not well reviewed. And this game is already hard at the limit of acceptable repetition in general. Make the repetition level any higher and you're left with only the mentally immobile willing to play it, as the bright people will have moved on to find new horizons full of multifaceted wonders. It would be a sad waste of the potential of this game, with the entire galaxy there, waiting to do something with.

Force repeated grind by taking players achievements back - even gradually, its the wrong way to move players to participate in your game. You should give them new stuff to move forward into, rather than backhandedly forcing them into the same grind over. Like nobody is ever upset about a voluntary money sink either.

SWTOR pulled off a good one with their Strongholds. You get a house or more houses on different planets, that are pretty cool, but they are all empty. You have to get furniture and decorations etc. And the amount of furniture and decorations they have is staggering! Some of it comes from killing stuff, some from missions, some from reputation, some you buy with credits, and if you get into it, which people do, it gets exceedingly expensive which causes people to play more to make more credits etc.
This is a positive, forward way to induce people into playing more, with something they are happy about doing.


The opposite of trying to bite at people's ankles for something that was originally and in all previous iterations something you had to gain once to enjoy.

Taking something back you had already given is always going to make a large number of people sour at you and is a really bad idea if they are your customers. This should be an absolutely last resort and be used as sparingly as can be done to solve what problem you need to solve.

It amounts to a contraction of the game, rather than being expansive, as it should be.
 
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I agree.

The problem with decay is that it feels the progress you do make is completely pointless.

Imagine if you are playing an MMO like world of warcraft. You spent months even years developing your character.
Then they introduce a decay which de-levels you back to the start if you don't keep playing the game.

I know it's not the same situation, but reputation is one of the few progression systems in the game that people like to work towards.

I love Elite, and I've always supported FD's decision, even on very controversial subjects, but to me, it feels like a ploy to push people into playing Elite and only Elite all the time, otherwise you will be punished for not playing Elite.

Those of us with lives outside of the game, are effectively unable to progress to the points we want.
Say we take a week off? 2 weeks off on vacation? A few weeks due to work related travel?

All that time you previously dedicated to hitting that Allied status becomes obsolete.
It feels completely pointless to even try to gain reputation if you can't play the game 24/7.

It's the same with Powerplay. What's the point in even trying to rank up in rating when you will be demoted back to the start if you go on vacation?

All efforts put into the game are only rewarded to those who continue to play all day every day.

So although FD's thoughts on this was to encourage players to keep playing the game. I feel the opposite is happening. It's putting off players from playing the game. Because everything we do, has no point to it, if we are pushed back to the start.

For the players that don't play any other games, don't have families/ work/ school or can afford to keep playing the game to keep up their reputation - that's fine, this doesn't affect you. But for you guys, please understand that this is severely affecting people who cannot afford to play day in-day out.

It's alienating a lot of players. And for me personally, I'm slowly lacking the will to play, since I do have a family to look after, a demanding job that requires travelling, and other games to play too.

I want to play Elite. I want to experience Powerplay to it's full extent. But the changes they've introduced, it's targeting players who can afford to play every day, and punishing players who cannot
 
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1.3 has been out for like 3 days, has all of your rep's decayed from allied to neutral in that time? maybe you should be posting that in the bug report forums instead of posting it here. i still retain friendly status with the federation after shooting down hundreds of them, and not doing a SINGLE mission for them. 24/7? i think you are seriously overreacting. the comparison to loosing levels doesn't make any sense, because you aren't loosing cash or your elite rank. Since the release of 1.3 i have completed 3 assassination missions, and participated in powerplay, thats really it. I hear all of you screaming at the top of your ears about how this is a bad decision and it will go down in history as the worst thing ever, but it isn't even an original idea.
 
The strawmen arguments, the hyperbole and the presentation of opinion as fact is really not helping in putting forward a good case.
 
The strawmen arguments, the hyperbole and the presentation of opinion as fact is really not helping in putting forward a good case.

accusations and claims without anything... trolling? please point out the straw-man arguments at least. or do something to substantiate your lazy attempt at disqualifying the discussion.
 

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.



Again, this one just boggles me, as a bounty hunter, at a RES, or in a neighbouring system, I absolutely do NOT want to be out of the dog house. It's way more fun to be in it. Now I have to keep at it to stay in the dog house, and this is just silly. They forgot I murdered 20 of them yesterday when I murder 20 of them again today......

If somebody got there by mistake, offer recompensing missions for data delivery or cargo or donations etc.. etc.. but with a cooldown timer so there has to have been a few days time passed before they get offered.

Offline decay is just silly from a gamer's perspective. Offline should be seen as a "pause" rather than a "stop". Surely we don't want the case of players AFK overnight wasting electricity to maintain reputation. We gotta eat, don't want to die playing elite. Die in Elite, Ok. Die for Elite, no thanks. That's the developers jobs ;) The player's reputation doesn't affect any other player. If it's internally affecting the faction calculations, then use a separate "player impact" calculation that does decay while offline, but resets to Reputation when back online.
 
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1.3 has been out for like 3 days, has all of your rep's decayed from allied to neutral in that time? maybe you should be posting that in the bug report forums instead of posting it here. i still retain friendly status with the federation after shooting down hundreds of them, and not doing a SINGLE mission for them. 24/7? i think you are seriously overreacting. the comparison to loosing levels doesn't make any sense, because you aren't loosing cash or your elite rank. Since the release of 1.3 i have completed 3 assassination missions, and participated in powerplay, thats really it. I hear all of you screaming at the top of your ears about how this is a bad decision and it will go down in history as the worst thing ever, but it isn't even an original idea.
Ok you're obviously not familiar with the issue. There is no decay if you are only friendly.

FD have stated you'll be back down from Allied to *just* above Friendly in 20 days. I've noticed decay just from sleeping for the night. (because I'm allied)


But It matters naught how much it decays within what time frame.

Its the fact that they target people who dare go offline. Coming after your reputation, that was permanent before and in all previous iterations of Elite - Like ankle biters running after you, stripping what you had already worked for, to keep you in an infinite grind cycle, rather than giving you something new to do you'd actually want to do voluntarily.

two simple things:

- Don't target people who have a life for having a life, in your game (especially when that's not even the stated goal of your change)
- Don't take back something you had already given, especially if the people you gave it to are your customers.
 
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accusations and claims without anything... trolling? please point out the straw-man arguments at least. or do something to substantiate your lazy attempt at disqualifying the discussion.

This response is no surprise, you're clearly too emotional to see how you're presenting your arguments.

No matter if its a little or a lot per hour, cause if you took a well deserved vacation to the beach, you will have been brought low in the game afterwards. Its not like they reduce grind time for getting your crucial reputation back. And maybe, just maybe, you wanted to enjoy the well deserved fruits of your work in the game, instead of having them yanked in your absence.

Since when is it ok for someone to break into your house and steal your medals and uniform just because you're on vacation? Yeah, I didn't think it was ok...

A clear example of what I was referring to in my previous comment. I do think what your trying to get across has some merit (in general) but it's hard to take it seriously when such outlandish examples are used.
 
Maybe I'm missing something here, but... I don't think the faction reputation decay is as bad as is being made out.

I don't get to play Elite every day, in fact, I don't even get to play very long each day when I do. I played over the weekend to try out the new 1.3 shinies and then I put the game down all of Monday and came back to it Tuesday evening after I came homefrom work.

I saw no appreciable decay in my reputation. My Empire rep was still Allied, and I'm still Allied with every Empire minor faction I come across. No red arrow indicating rep loss, nothing to indicate that there had been any appreciable loss of reputation during my absence.

Even if there had been, as long as it wasn't too extensive, I wouldn't mind. The game is in a persistent universe. Time marches on in game whether I'm playing or not, and I'm okay with that. Popwerplay, the background sim, Community Goals... all of this stuff happens while I'm not at my desk playing. This is not a bad thing, it means that the next time I log on I have to take stock of what's changed, and then possibly adjust my plans. This will be even more pronounced at the end of each Powerplay cycle. I like that, it makes the game world feel like it's doing stuff even if I'm not there to see it, it adds an additional sense of a living, breathing world.
 

Javert

Volunteer Moderator
As a casual player, I am also disgusted with Frontier's attitude to reputation... So I was working hard (my whole online time) to reach friendly with Federation, and now they are telling me I will get Neutral if I don't play for a few days? Well, thank you! I like my RL more than game, sorry.

Er... no they are not. The reputation changes in 1.3 mean that your reputation with the three major factions only (not minor factions) will very slowly decay back towards "just inside friendly". That is not decaying back to neutral. I haven't actually tested this but that is the last dev update on this. My impression is that doing a mission or two would get you back to allied.

If you are hostile with any major or minor faction, that will also slowly decay to "just inside unfriendly".

I understand that many don't agree with going even this far, but let's not exaggerate what the actual change was.
 
As a casual player, I am also disgusted with Frontier's attitude to reputation... So I was working hard (my whole online time) to reach friendly with Federation, and now they are telling me I will get Neutral if I don't play for a few days? Well, thank you! I like my RL more than game, sorry.

Er... no they are not. The reputation changes in 1.3 mean that your reputation with the three major factions only (not minor factions) will very slowly decay back towards "just inside friendly". That is not decaying back to neutral. I haven't actually tested this but that is the last dev update on this. My impression is that doing a mission or two would get you back to allied.

If you are hostile with any major or minor faction, that will also slowly decay to "just inside unfriendly".

I understand that many don't agree with going even this far, but let's not exaggerate what the actual change was.

Guys this thread isn't anything to do with in-game reputation decay. But thanks for taking part :D
 
I stopped playing in March. It's sad to see nothing much has changed, except the releases were made on tuesdays some months ago. I think I will be keeping the distance from the game still for some more months... :(
 
Although I disagree with most of the OP's posts, this one does ring true. Something's very wrong with the timing, and quality of 1.3
 
I saw no appreciable decay in my reputation. My Empire rep was still Allied, and I'm still Allied with every Empire minor faction I come across. No red arrow indicating rep loss, nothing to indicate that there had been any appreciable loss of reputation during my absence.

That's because decay happens each week. The patch has only been out for a few days, you won't notice it yet
 
I do think what your trying to get across has some merit (in general) but it's hard to take it seriously when such outlandish examples are used.

Outlandish to you, ok. How about this one then:

1) its penalizing people for doing NORMAL things that humans do outside of the game.

2) people claiming its "realistic" are full of it in two ways:
a) Elite isn't trying to be particularly realistic at all, what with thunderstorms, birds chirping and ghostly voices in my ship while flying through space, and my ship's engine sounding like a ww2 bomber prop slicing through an atmosphere. Just for some very small examples.

b)
- A war hero never becomes not a war hero, even if he's retired from whatever army for 10 years.
- Bin Laden never became just 'unfriendly' after he stayed out of the action for a bunch of years. His rep was still bad enough to just shoot him in the face without trial and in front of women and children. No decay at all.

Making people with less time to play re-grind their reputation, in spite of that having nothing to do with FD's two stated goals is either because they didn't feel like programming a game mechanic that properly targets their goals, or they have some unannounced thought, that its a good idea to force more grind for some reason only known to them.

Same way they tried to suddenly start charging 10% on modules without first giving us a way to store modules we didn't actually want to sell, but just swap.
Some dev said "I just buy a second ship for a different role anyway, no need to swap gear". Yeah, if I was a dev and didn't have to earn it in game, I'd do that too! I'd have 3 or 4 Anacondas and Pythons and Vultures, or even more for even the slightest variations in fitting. Not to mention parking one in every place I want to go repeatedly.

To say one thing, but do another is dishonorable in any situation.
 
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