EVE General Discussion

I Concede!
I was wrong! I admit it. My comments have nothing to do with this thread, and I've derailed it.

even though CONCORD is technically an NPC faction, and the only real difference is that Standings with Concord are listed in a separate place and cap out at 5.0.

Still, I was wrong. I misspoke myself.

I was just so excited that someone had finally made a thread on the subject of Standings, and in my excitement, I jumped the gun and included STANDINGS from Concord as well.

even though I did make comments on other Faction standings ... lore wise they don't make sense ... Yes! they are a measure of how much we've ingratiated ourselves with a particular faction ... but why are we ingratiating ourselves??? We're not Diplomats! We're Not Representatives! We're capsuleers, god-like mercenaries! It should be the Faction/Corps that incentivized to have us work for them NOT the other way around! I understand that these standings were intended to gate content, but as the OP points out and recent changes demonstrate, those gates were actually unnecessary hindrances. And the same is true for the rest of the things in the game which Faction Standings gate!

There's no reason to gate level 4 missions with faction/corp standings! You can't do a lvl 4 mission without the skills. the extra hurdle of faction/corp standing is completely unnecessary.

If they stop the ad hoc dismantling of the Standings system, and actually directed their attention to it specifically, they'll have to change other systems, like the Mission system, when they change the Standings system, in order to remain consistent.

still wrong, sec status isn't the same as concord standing. Some number of years ago it was but CCP changed it

Standings are there to make your short term decisions matter long term, these empires have been at war for a damn long time and they don't like it that you were helping the other guy out. Sure they look past normal missions vs pirates or neutral factions, but a storyline indicates you are serious about that faction and if you do a ton of them eventually they won't let you easily work for them. luckily it isn't too hard to fix standings although it is pretty grindy. And if you go to null and kill the local rats all day it makes sense you cant also go and run missions for them.

not saying standings are a great system by any means but they do make sense.

Is there really a purpose to having dozens of different LP? Why not just each faction + concord? The majority of items within the stores are faction dependent so why is LP on a corp level?

There are 4 major LP stores within each faction offering slightly different rewards, then there are 4 faction LP stores in high sec, and then the pirate factions in NPC null all with entirely unique items with only a few implant crossovers, then there are Concord LP which can be converted into any high sec faction LP at a reduced rate as well as used in Concords LP store itself.

With the addition of FW most high sec LP stores crashed in what items or worth they had and FW became the go to for the LP stores in many cases as a silent nerf to high sec L4 mission runners. This has been given back through the burner missions though to many extents.

Standing has gotten very useless in many cases as CCP has nerfed it into the ground and removed it outright for citadel and or POS ownership along with refining changes and jump clone creation. Estel Ardor was a player run initiative to get around the jump clone standings grind but since the changes has gone the way of the dodo which is a shame as many players have had a home in Estel Ardor over the years. ( as a side note) Id love to see a full list if anyone has one on how many people they helped with this initiative as it was a HUGE thing for New Eden.

The issue with standings are just that; issues mostly in the balance department. I can see the nightmares myself as many players hate the standings grind yet there is no way to make this remotely fun tbh while still keeping the time and therefore the "value" intact.

One way of making standings fun would be to allow those with high or low faction standings to participate in FW, albeit with a twist. Anyone with over 5.0 faction standings with any faction can actively engage with any FW member of the opposite enemy factions at will at anytime and see them as valid KOS targets regardless of FW status. This would engage a LE with the target and only be applicable within the factions space. This would add a threat to FW targets flying in enemy space from anyone as they wouldnt appear on their overview as enemies until they wished to engage.
Now from a coding pov I think this might be a nightmare though.

Another option is standings degradation over time. In real life people forget about you over time and we become irrelevant over the years away and this might reflect such forgetfulness.

Another idea I had, more for missions in general, was to have only a few missions available per agent and then the agent tells you they no longer have work for you and give you a contact or two to go "talk" to for more work. These contacts would eventually dead end into low sec or null sec mission areas until such a time that the agent(s) chain had "respawned" and gotten more work for a pilot to do. It would mean less static dock, accept, run, dock, accept sort of missioning and more moving around for running missions more like an arc and given standings issues by being sent to an agent working in enemy high sec or venturing out into dangerous areas might cut off the missions available for the day and limit farming considerably.
The agents would have a pool of available missions you could choose from rather than the accept or decline method and once all had been run you would either need to wait for the timed respawn or move to another agent. Must like escalations that move you around to more available mission agents.

But yes please CCP make standings relevant again.

Yes, make it relevant but not in a bad way.

The day I will see you need standings to fit some module or fly a ship, I will go shoot Jita monument.