Does anyone like the following idea? I've thought for a long time there is a better approach to earning standing than either the 13-POS of old, or the highly restrictive system of today. I suggest a middle ground.

I think standing should not be something you earn once and then have forever unless you do something to degrade it. I think it should be continuously earned.

I propose that all faction and nation standings slowly drop, possibly hitting a floor at neutral or dislike. It would require taking missions regularly to keep them cranked up. For example, if you're a Serco and haven't done any Serco missions in a year of regular playing, you probably deserve to have the Serco Dominion reevaluate your status. Different rates of decline and different floors could be defined for different nations/factions, possibly also considering the nation of the player.

I also think that 13-POS should be allowed, but that the faction decline rate be such that a player has to work constantly to keep it there. A player would then have to decide whether they consider it worthwhile to put in the effort to sustain whatever combination of factions they're interested in. I think this is appropriately a player decision, not a default game decision.

I think that's interesting. I've considered options like this before, but not in awhile. Are you thinking the standing would auto-decline based on real-world wall-clock time (ie, constantly), or only when a player is logged in?

It might be a bummer for someone to come back after a few months and find their status in the dumpster, and need to grind a bunch to get back to where they were. Makes "welcoming people back" a little more problematic for me, from a business standpoint.

This has been suggested before, and I like it. To address Inc.'s issue (with which I can definitely identify, as 5 years of rust is enough of a barrier to re-entry without coming back to find I can't buy anything because I'm neutral with anyone who ever liked me), perhaps standing could degrade naturally only over in-game time and for X days thereafter.

If you spend a year playing the game without touching up your standings, they'll be gone. If you play for a month and take 11 off, you'll come back to some minor standing degradation but not insanely bad.

+1 to the OP based on logged time. Adding X days becomes potentially problematic for people using multiple characters (upkeep), which may ultimately be a desired outcome, but should at least be taken into consideration.

I've always liked the idea of degrading faction based on inactivity of reputation maintenance. There definitely needs to be a degradation over time even if the player doesn't log in, as it would otherwise be abused by having specific characters which have good standing in specific areas, as we have now. As an example, I have Savet Hegar, which is neutral with Itani and Serco, Savet who is Serco admired, and Hegar which is Itani admired.

I like the idea of not limiting specific ships to specific factions, as the whole "only Serco can buy SCPs" thing cuts out a lot of roleplay opportunities for someone who wants to play a traitor to their faction by working for the opposition.

I do still think we need mutual exclusion though, as there needs to be a benefit and a drawback to having very good standing with specific factions.

+1 I do think the longer someone has been gone, the slower the standing should degrade. It also should stop degrading at some point around neutral.

My vote is also for real-time decay with diminishing rates over time.

The base decay rates could also vary by faction and be modified by your birth nation and alliances.

There definitely needs to be a degradation over time even if the player doesn't log in, as it would otherwise be abused by having specific characters which have good standing in specific areas, as we have now. As an example, I have Savet Hegar, which is neutral with Itani and Serco, Savet who is Serco admired, and Hegar which is Itani admired.

That's not abuse, that's some loser reaping the rewards of their investment of (way too much) time and effort. Next.

+1 I've always supported a maintenance requirement for standing- with the Good Dr's caveat.

I think the standing decay should be slow so that players only need to spend a nominal amount of time in standing maintenance rather than making it a huge time investment that sucks away from enjoying the rest of the game.

As to ship exclusivity, I still think that the SCP SVG X1 and IBG should be tied to ongoing military service.

On its own, this suggestion sucks. Not because it's necessarily a bad idea, but because the only viable method of raising faction standing is through trade guild missions, which are trivially easy to stock up once and be setup for a long period of faction fixes (especially with tridents now).

In conjunction with such a suggestion, not only should the guild trade missions be changed (limited procurements per day or based on stock on hand) but other, just-as-good options should be added (raids on another faction).

Further, I don't think faction should degrade all the way to neutral. I think it should degrade to the bottom of respected at a minimum. The rate of decay should probably also be based on your current standing level. So you would lose standing faster at admired than at respected. Piller of Society should similarly have its range increased (995-1000?) so that you have some noticeable time to repair and maintain it along with the ability to build up a buffer.

While I agree that the trade procurement method of building standing sucks as a universal best method and would like to see other methods in place for different nations and factions, I don't think that necessarily creates a bad environment for this type of standing system.

In my imagination, I think that maintenance of high standing may actually be too easy. A player can easily gain 1-3 points of standing just by running an escort mission. And most other mission award faction standing as well. Nickle and dime activity over the course of a month or year should be sufficient to maintain an overall level achieved vs the grinding of procurement missions for rapid growth. I may be mis remembering since it's been so long since I've actually traded, but doesn't simply selling widgets to a station give a bit of standing?

On another note, should the reverse apply? A decline in hate / kos status if no actions have been taken to maintain it?

That's an excellent idea Fluffy. I think it should, to some extent. For example, if you make it to -1000 KOS, that should slowly degrade to something between hated and disliked, and will still get you executed, but you can't just commit a few crimes and be on the most wanted list for life, things age off by relevance. And since we have no justice system in VO, the statute of limitations would eventually kick in since nobody has been convicted of a crime.

But on a serious note, this would also help when someone gets tricked into killing and admired person to tank their standing, which is another way that vets often cause problems for new players.

Thanks for the comments, folks. My thought was that degradation would occur based on logged-in time, not RL time. But having floated the idea, it's in the hands of the devs from this point. Btw, for those of you out there concerned about bots (horrors !!!!), consider the advantages to the rest of the player base of players managing legions of bots having to run around cranking up their standings all the time.

I think several of the other useful ideas on this thread could be addressed through assorted modifications to mission structures etc. I recognize that requires dev time.

I'm a bit lukewarm on the idea, but If this were to proceed, I'm gonna vote it be based on time logged in, not real time, and the player should get an in-game warning before it happens: Your Pillar-of-Society standing with Tunguska will be lost if you do not complete a mission for them within 1 hour.

Adjust the maintenance rates based on the standing categories (arbitrary values for example):

POS: 1 mission per hour logged in
Admire: 1 mission per 4 hours hour logged in
Respect: 1 mission per 8 hour logged in

Once you are in the Neutral range, no maintenance should be needed.

Similarly then, a villain should have to maintain their KOS, Hated, and Disliked status by posting a faction loss, perhaps in 2x or 4x or 8x slower timeframes. Cases get dropped. If you're gonna add a "What-have-you-done-for-me-lately?" mechanic, you should also have a "What-have-you-done-to-me-lately?" clause.

+1 Conflict Diamond

Let's just add more tedious crap to do in this game.

The standing grind has got to be the worst part of this game.

-1 to Conflict Diamond's idea. Fighting at the border or over conquerable stations already costs millions of credits. Now you want it to cost you all of your standing everywhere just because you're not doing missions? Mudering people in monitored space is OK as long as you spread it out across the galaxy enough that people forgive you on their own?

I am okay with this happening as per the OP as long as we greatly expand the range of activities that give standing. For instance, killing an itani national should grant you serco standing proportional to how liked they are with the Itani, vice versa and as appropriate for the scenario.

Mudering people in monitored space is OK as long as you spread it out across the galaxy enough that people forgive you on their own?

Obviously!

Yes, ARF. More tedious shit indeed. Even I would likely say to hell with my standings if this were implemented in any sort of way.

Very anti-fun and grindy in my opinion.