Mission monopoly on standing (CSM)
Stats
- Raised by: Ankhesentapemkah
- Submission Date: 11-10-2008
- Issue ID: 0103-03-0091
Summary
Under the current game mechanics, NPC Faction/Corp standing is only obtainable in reliable quantities through missions. With Factional Warfare and Cosmos, players can get limited amounts of standing, but the underlying principles of Cosmos does not differ significantly from normal mission running, and Factional Warfare only offers a quite limited amount of Faction standing, nor any Corporation standing besides standing with the respective Militias through the completion of objectives.
Solution
The standing mechanics of the game should not be limited to certain playstyles. There is a large part of the playerbase that simply is not interested in mission-running, yet they require standing for other areas of the game such as setting up a POS or having access to datacores.
Reliable standing gains should be obtainable through other means which are accessible to different playstyles. One mechanic would be through exploration mechanic that is already part of the game. Pick up SOS signal, rescue a Sisters of Eve vessel from the clutches of the Blood Raiders, and gain a bit of standing and loyalty points for your troubles. Just an example, I'm sure people can be more creative than this. Even better would be situations that offered players a choice as to which faction they want to assist: Tip the balance for the Serpentis or Sansha (Setup can be akin to infamous Worlds Collide mission, with two faction bases in a single deadspace pocket). As usual, the more dangerous the system, the better the rewards.
Another issue is that Science/Industrialist players are currently unable to partake in missions. Miners can at least get some mining missions (although they are not profitable, and have the bad habit of getting mixed with combat missions), but there is no way to research or produce in order to gain standing. It would be nice if the NPC factions would tax these players with the production of goods or a contribution to research. To prevent "industrialists" from buying goods off the market, an agent should instead provide an item which is then placed into an assembly array or lab, and produced or researched. This would take job slots as normal.
PVP orientated players are also a group that is not very happy with the current situation and the solutions above does not answer their woes. For this type of player, I suggest a more open-ended system, where players can get bounties or standing boost through the elimination of players with high standing in an opposing Faction. How to prevent people from selling themselves for kills or people shooting their alts I do not know, but possible avenues would be that a player can only provide standing once every X time, or that the standing gain is based on the amount of financial damage inflicted on the victim or the size of the ship that was destroyed.