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Why cant the Reputation system be unlocked at a lower rank such as Captain or even LT. Cmdr
foodog2
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
Currently, the reputation system is unlocked at level 50. This seems to high of a goal and unlocking sooner would make the game seem more enjoyable and have more goals that can be accomplished sooner. Waiting until level 50, a person has already blew thru 2/3's of the content of the game. TFO's and such let you earn reputation marks that can't be used until the system is unlocked.
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Besides, Level-gating game content is the norm across most MMO's so as to not overwhelm new players with too much content at once. I don't see any need for this change to the Reputations, or any other game systems/content in this or any other games.
I'd suggest unlocking the reputation systems one after the other during the game's storyline. After all, the Solanae Dyson Sphere is the fourth or fifth story arc. Current game player reach that with a level around 30 if they progress linear through the story arcs. The Borg arc comes before that, Delta afterwards.
I do fear that unlocking some reputations and TFOs/Battlezones at lower levels is too complicated code-wise, but it would make sense. Pus it'd provide you with gear tailored to the story arc you are currently in. Of course, all reputation gear needs to be levelless/infinity mark for that to make sense.
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Most fit nicely in the Mission Journal chronology too.
Right, I forgot New Romulus. But yeah, the "old" reputations being unlocked earlier would make sense story-wise. Of course, the accompanying TFOs and activities had to be accessible as well and the players either boosted temporarily or the difficulty adjusted. I don't really know how the New Romulus adventure zone fares compared to the Dyson zones and the TFOs.
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I think people would be more inclined to actually use reps more if they could bring their character up inside of one instead of getting to it only after they have gone in some other direction out of necessity to get to the point where they can use the rep stuff.
One good compromise if the devs think reps would be too much too soon for a new player would be to handle it like cross-faction flying and require a player to have an endgame character to unlock the ability to use the rep system earlier (and ideally insert optional in-mission hooks to entice them to do that).
That would require the reputation gear be either self-scaling to level XII then unlockable to further upgrading like some of the better gear in the game, or simply be issued at whatever level the character is when they receive it of course, and I have no idea how much of a job it would be to make those adjustments to the code for them, it might be that the effort would prove to be something of a stumbling block I suppose.
All reputation gear starts at XII. To retrofit reps to be unlocked at lower levels, every single item that has ever been produced for reps would need to be manually converted to level less. Every single boxed item, every single project payout, accounting for the XIII UR upgrades received from admiralty (they'd require a separate free upgrade limit). Hundreds if not thousands of items converted for use in this update.
That's not a good spend of precious dev time.
The reputation system was built as what you do at the end game. Ie. when done with 100% of "the game's content." (defined here as episodic content to create a rhetorical imperative. Content in fact is a much more broadly encompassing term) Ie. way back the end game of STO was grinding the Borg STF's once done with a story arc that capped off much sooner. That was updated and expanded to reputations, allowing similar content to be developed under a shared mechanical theme and codifying STO's end game. Always this content occupied the same space as end game STF's, allowing players to shift into build optimization and gear grinding while waiting for the next story drop. This is a critical path to keep players engaged with the game, requiring balanced orchestration. Eg. when you've think you've seen it all, here's something new to occupy time and interest.
Shift rep grinding back in the levels and you magnify apparent grinding (compounding it rather than treating story and rep grinding sequentially) for gear that new players aren't likely to appreciate (they're still learning how to fly straight, use weapons that face the right way, and equip a single theme of TAC consoles) and old players are already getting advanced grinding progress for via recruitment rewards and the odd TFO attempt. Those in the latter camp are blasting through their leveling and those in the former camp shouldn't be rushed through the basics of build theory. So what does shifting reputation grinding to any level (eg. levels when things like the EC and Dil requirements are going to seem monumental though at the end-game they're far more forgiving, giving a false impression of what the system actually requires) get us? All reps to T6 faster? Okay but the time spent leveling is already marginal compared to that progression, so the real terms "benefit" to your completion date is going to be trivial (especially for newbies without reputation bonus XP). And if you're anxious about min-maxing that time, you can already address that need by stockpiling rep marks to be sure you're not missing days of progression from your reps.
Ie. you can already set goals for yourself with rep stockpiling at early levels if you need them. That said, for new players goals like "I wanna get my favorite ship!", "I wanna make a cool crew!", and "how do I play this game?!" are going to be paramount over unlocking end-game grinding payouts sooner.
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Roll-players are generally only concerned with how the toon performs, and sometimes how they look, but usually treat the character more as a playing marker like a chess piece or whatever. They have the entire game to choose from when it comes to gear so playing missions with whatever is the best gear they can get at each stage is not an issue and usually consider reputations as capstones the same way the devs did when the rep system was put together.
Generally speaking, from that point of view any gear is as good as any other gear as long as it performs well enough.
Roleplayers on the other hand deliberately restrict the builds as much as possible to a theme gear-wise and treat the character as a character in a novel or whatever with a past, their own viewpoint, preferences, etc., and ideally "gear from home" where possible. Every time through the mission list is slightly different with the different characters because the point is to do them with the kind of gear and viewpoint that such a character would have if they were authentic characters of the type or theme in a novel or show.
Gear for them is not judged solely by effectiveness, but rather by how close it is to the character concept, and effectiveness is a secondary consideration. Reputation gear carries a lot of the right stuff for doing a theme/background-based character and would be a big help in keeping the feel of the concept going, something difficult to do when scrambling around trying to plug the gaps caused by a shortage of the type of gear the theme requires as the character levels up.
Both are perfectly legitimate viewpoints, but a game (especially one as old as STO) generally favors the roll-player one, which can be frustrating for roleplayers and themeplayers.
In my case, what happens most of the time is I start a character and have to skip around to specific missions (often doing the same one several times) to get gear that either fits the theme or at least will do until I get something more in line with that theme, and then do nothing but events and patrols with her until the right reputation gear unlocks or whatever so I can have the right gear theme-wise to do the missions with that theme instead of just another generic run of the mission list.
Of course, by then I usually have other character ideas I want to try or the kludges I had in place temporarily are so intricately put together and tuned (remember, it is not just the gear itself but also the rest of the setup) that it just does not seem worth the effort to switch to the reputation gear the character concept was originally built around, or whatever, so the character and ship often sits unused instead of starting on the missions as intended. And that includes the various Recruits, which is why so far none of them have completed all of the stuff in the recruit special-devices, and the ones furthest ahead in that are the ones whose concepts are outside of the scope of the story elements the reputations cover.