Revisiting Prestige, SG and personal levels

[Greycat]

On occasion, the request to open Prestige up again comes up.

 

I'm going to be honest, I hate prestige as it was. It was a frankly useless system, other than needing it to build SG bases on live. It led to abuses of SG members in some SGs, and "ooh bigger number" didn't mean anything - it said *nothing* about the players or the SG. Frankly, it left a *very* bad taste in my mouth, and I'm happy to see it gone, other than a legacy listing in the SG registrar.

 

So, while I'm not particularly big on having it come back, I started wondering how to make it actually useful - have it actually represent (loosely) a SG's "prestige." How active they are, what they do, etc. On top of it, having the prestige also be "sticky" for the people who earned it would probably be a good idea.

 

So, what if activities and actions are what awarded prestige?

 

OK, right at the offset, some of it's going to be hard to track. I don't know how to award prestige to the base builder who's spent hours to weeks on a base, for instance, or who sets up RP events, or creates AE missions for the group (without some sort of additional overhaul to AE, and a link between the systems.)

 

This shouldn't be a system that would end up with millions of prestige in a month, and there'd likely be some sort of timers in place to dampen gaming the system. But, some of the possible examples:

 

- Found a SG - 1 prestige.
Anyone can do this. Every SG will basically have 1.

 

- Create a functional base - 1 prestige, one time grant.
"Functional" being the key. Small room, at least one working teleporter with linked destinations, workbench, med 'porter, one storage item, one helper NPC (trainer/tailor/etc.)

 

- Invite other accounts - 5 prestige once you hit 10. (Numbers can be tweaked on all of these.) One time grant.
It should indicate *some* degree of social interaction possibilities inside the group.

 

- Lead a team (at least 4 people, at least 10 minutes - given how fast some things can go) - 1 prestige
Also adds a point of personal prestige, which follows you instead of the SG. Personal prestige doesn't stick with the SG.

 

- Lead a league (at least 3 teams of 4 people each) - at least 15 minutes (?) - 3 Prestige, 3 personal.
Since it's a bit harder to organize.

 

- Lead a SG team (You're the lead, you have at least 3 other SG members in the team, 10 min) - 2 prestige/1 personal.

 

Trying to indicate more "SG Activity" here with the SG prestige boost.

The numbers and actions are pretty much examples - but should not be high. A SG that leads 3 raids a day, every day, each week would - at the end of the year - end up with 1092 Prestige from that, for instance. An SG has a weekly TF they run? 52ish prestige a year.  And the actions should be based on - let's call it "involvement." Personal activity, SG activity, actually doing "stuff."

 

On the plus side, you don't have to be in SG mode or anything - it's just earned for doing what you do (or don't) do.

 

So what would you do with this prestige, and/or what would it earn you?  

 

Not a darn thing. I want absolutely zero incentive to farm this. No badges, no "it unlocks...," no anything. No reason to, bluntly, be an ass to anyone over it, no inviting lowbies to grind then kick at some level, no INF penalties for having it on. If you want a bigger number, do more stuff. Yes, it would end up awarding prestige to people farming in AE if they're also PLing folks, but at kind of a slow rate - it's not perfect, but at least it'd also reward people creating AE arcs for their SG, and wouldn't necessarily incentivize "grinding it out." And it'd mean looking at Prestige would have some degree of meaning as far as how active the SG is.

 

Potentially a breakdown of how the prestige was earned (basic SG setup, arcs, team/league leadership, how many people are earning what, etc.) might be useful to see, as well.

 

(And yes. There's a whole host of other SG things I'd like to see done to make that SG lookup window useful. But this just touches on one thing people do ask for. Plus, hey, it's the perfect suggestion, to me. I don't actually care if it comes back, so if it did this way, great, my suggestion ws heard, if it never comes back, I'm still happy! 😄 )

[Rudra]

I'd rather not. For small SGs with no interest in growing and single player SGs, this wouldn't matter in the slightest, so I'm leaving them out of my considerations. For other SGs though? You run into the prestige problem we had back on Live. Where SGs that may be small and trying to grow find they can't because larger, better established SGs have all the prestige and potential recruits flock to them instead. So the cycle continues. The larger, better established SGs can do more with their SG and so earn more prestige making them even more attractive to potential recruits, while the smaller SGs get much, much less prestige despite still being active simply because they have less members available to run content and build their prestige. Just let prestige remain dead.

 

Edited November 1 by Rudra
Edited to remove unnecessary "the".

[TheMoneyMaker]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

On occasion, the request to open Prestige up again comes up.

 

I'm going to be honest, I hate prestige as it was. It was a frankly useless system, other than needing it to build SG bases on live. It led to abuses of SG members in some SGs, and "ooh bigger number" didn't mean anything - it said *nothing* about the players or the SG. Frankly, it left a *very* bad taste in my mouth, and I'm happy to see it gone, other than a legacy listing in the SG registrar.

 

So, while I'm not particularly big on having it come back, I started wondering how to make it actually useful - have it actually represent (loosely) a SG's "prestige." How active they are, what they do, etc. On top of it, having the prestige also be "sticky" for the people who earned it would probably be a good idea.

 

--- snip ---

 

So what would you do with this prestige, and/or what would it earn you?  

 

Not a darn thing. I want absolutely zero incentive to farm this. No badges, no "it unlocks...," no anything. No reason to, bluntly, be an ass to anyone over it, no inviting lowbies to grind then kick at some level, no INF penalties for having it on. If you want a bigger number, do more stuff. Yes, it would end up awarding prestige to people farming in AE if they're also PLing folks, but at kind of a slow rate - it's not perfect, but at least it'd also reward people creating AE arcs for their SG, and wouldn't necessarily incentivize "grinding it out." And it'd mean looking at Prestige would have some degree of meaning as far as how active the SG is.

 

Potentially a breakdown of how the prestige was earned (basic SG setup, arcs, team/league leadership, how many people are earning what, etc.) might be useful to see, as well.

 

 

How do we make (the thing) useful, but also there should be no incentive for doing it.

 

Sorry, but impossible. There simply must be some benefit for prestige to be made useful. Awarding it just because is pointless and I think most of us would rather devs' time be spent on more productive thing. And anything that can be beneficial will be exploited somehow. Looking at past stuff that's still around:

• Giant monsters - farmed for reward merits
• Auction house - has been exploited for profit
• Architect Entertainment - exploited for experience or profit
• New currency with prismatic aethers? even though its a cosmetic benefit only, those things can be sold for a few million because people want those pricy tier 3 and 4 cosmetic only goodies, so Halloween time people are ToT farming for elite boss badges

If there's no reward, there's no reason to have it. If there's a reason to have it, then someone will find a way to exploit it even if it doesn't have a useful purpose.

 

I'm not arguing for or against making prestige useful, just saying pick a lane because you can't have it both ways