Sorry if someone else had this idea. I was talking to a friend and we were comparing rep and other similar systems in other games, and it struck me as odd that several other games have some kind of account-wide option, and STO doesn't.
I think the devs have two concerns:
1) If people have less grind to do, they will play less. I personally think rep grinding makes people play less, but that seems to be their viewpoint.
2) They want rep to be personal to each character, representative of their personal achievements.
Well, I had a thought. I don't know if anyone else has had this idea, so if they have, sorry, it just came to me in this discussion I was having.
We'll probably not get truly account wide rep because the devs don't want us to, but we see full rep grinds as a disincentive to roll new characters.
What if the account shared rep was a hybrid system?
Say it evaluates the highest rep on the account, and then gives one rep level below that to every other character?
Like for instance, if I have a character with all three reps maxed out at 5, all of my other characters will have 4.
I would still need to grind on that character (which seems to be what the devs want), but that grind will be significantly reduced because of my prior work.
Call it a compromise. I don't think it's realistic at this point to expect the devs to give us truly account bound rep.
♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Or they could just make reputation stuff account (+ faction) bound
and you'll still have to grind/earn your passives.
(but maybe its a bad idea most people want the passives and not the rep stuff cause of fleet stuff,idk)
Well if they adjusted the points at which rep tiers were gained upwards a bit, so that tier 4-5 was only about 1/3 of the grind instead of almost half, and then gave every character on your account max -1, then if you had Tier 5 in all 3 on one character, you would suddenly only need like a week and a half (these are all approximations, my brain doesn't math) on any given character, which is IMO, much more reasonable.
the rest of end game should focus on meaningful content that enhances the rep system, as opposed to adding more grind on top of it.
♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Biggest issue for me is actually the tediousness of having to constantly, day after day, go in and set the experience projects running. If they'd strip the time requirements I wouldn't mind a bit - a weekend or two of focused play on one character and I could get a fair bit of progress done then hop over to another the next weekend. It keeps the game fresh and I feel like I'm genuinely accomplishing something.
I mean give me a single weekend and I can grind out half or more of the marks, expertise, EC, and experience required to fully level a single reputation. Then I have to spend several weeks logging into that character and loading up the rep projects while waiting to get my rewards.
Personally I would like to see a token unlock mission for X char at tier 5... said token item reward can then be used on another character to get to Tier 5 Rom/Nuk or Omega in X <time>
I don't mind having to grind marks on all my characters but timers on rep projects need to be eliminated if another character on an account has already maxed that particular rep.
I like the suggestions here. I do have a question? If you lower the cooldown and requirements for additional characters, Cryptic should also reduce the reward for those characters. I would be glad to get rid of the 32000 dilithium and the marks for completing the grind on additional characters. Time and rewards need to stay consistent. Half the time, resource, and grind for half to mo reward at the end. I support full grind for first toon and half for additional toons.
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and you'll still have to grind/earn your passives.
(but maybe its a bad idea most people want the passives and not the rep stuff cause of fleet stuff,idk)
the rest of end game should focus on meaningful content that enhances the rep system, as opposed to adding more grind on top of it.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
I mean give me a single weekend and I can grind out half or more of the marks, expertise, EC, and experience required to fully level a single reputation. Then I have to spend several weeks logging into that character and loading up the rep projects while waiting to get my rewards.
The day will not save them. And we own the night.