One thing always came weird to me and that was when people required that you were having a huge amount of factions properly rep'd before you can join a bounty board. And recently (15 minutes ago) I came into this example:
(03-09-2014, 07:12 AM)The Republic Of Liberty Wrote: Aidan McGann, your background shows affiliations with enemies of the state, namely the Unioners and Red Hessians, that disqualify you from approval on our board. You are denied the right to hunt until such time as you show sufficient hostility to these groups.
So what I'm coming to ask is - don't you think requiring so much repping in order to join a board where you're already required to have the people you claim against to be red is kinda putting people off to join in the first place? (Basically even being red to people you won't ever dream of claiming on)
Another example is the TAZ board which requires me to screencap my whole rep sheet which would take over 6 or 7 photos just to cover 2/3 of it, because I met all kinds of folks.
On the other hand there are some really loose boards that I registered quite easily on and didn't require any grinding - Vagrant Raiders and Unione Corse. So that meant I had more time to actually execute them than do paperwork.
Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be forum work in order to be Sirius Police/Syndicate and have something to shoot everywhere, but requiring so many things in order to even register really puts off people.
Another issue is that if you have to take care of 15 different faction reputations for a single board and then another 5 for another board you're more likely to end up with an odd neutrality to some faction. For instance my outcasts and xenos love popping into neutral every time I deal with the GRN or the Outcasts, Hackers, Rogues in the xeno case. And then I shoot a ton of Xenos, so what happens to my Unioners? Yep, they try to go white.
Also to be honest I find the Hessian issue kinda hilarious - does the Navy EVER meet Hessians? Sure, the Unioner one is more understandable, but they're pretty much a dead faction and last time I saw one in Texas was when I was playing unioner myself.
NPC reps are an imperfect game mechanic that we have to RP and otherwise play around as much as possible. The fact that bounty boards take them as strongly RP-related has always annoyed me.
I mean, seriously. If I treated every incident of an IMG base shooting a GRN ship as an iRP incident (for example) that would be just laughable, because everyone knows that the damn NPC faction reps are utterly irrelevant to your actual iRP diplomacy. Yes, they do mirror and should mirror it to a degree, but it is nigh impossible to manually configure the NPC reps perfectly for each and every character.
Being Aidan there, I gotta say the fact of being forced to rep hostile against factions that not only are dead, but also barely have a reason to visit Liberty anymore (Unioners maaaaybe, but Hessians?) just makes me think that some people just put the most obstacles possible to end up signing for opposite bounty boards (or joining Reavers).
(03-09-2014, 12:32 PM)Ryummel Wrote: Being Aidan there, I gotta say the fact of being forced to rep hostile against factions that not only are dead, but also barely have a reason to visit Liberty anymore (Unioners maaaaybe, but Hessians?) just makes me think that some people just put the most obstacles possible to end up signing for opposite bounty boards (or joining Reavers).
would be nice if you could have a command /sethostile, would would drop your rep to hostile with a certain faction. I mean, it takes a while to build a tower, but just a few seconds to destroy it, no?
It's the same as if I would send the US government a direct threat to bomb Washington. I doubt I would be let in.
Yes, there are boards that have a good deal of.. rules, per se, where they follow roleplay to the extreme, as in "You worked for unlawfuls, aka, Mollys and Hessians. That is an issue. Bye."
Other boards are more relaxed on that. It depends on the faction and on who is running the board.
But roleplay wise, your character made choices in the past that are a boon and a problem, depending on the situation. I mean, people these days truly forget the meaning of the word mercenary. Both ends of the spectrum, the board runners and the mercenaries. They see your actions in the past, but forget you are there to shoot for the higher pay/running for a new toy.
For one side, the board runners want 'loyal' hunters because it stops a possible problem on its track, as in, in the future it won't bite them on the arse.
From the other side, it stiffles the progression of ones roleplay if you are truly roleplaying a mercenary, flowing from contract to contract.
But as it stands, it depends on who is running the board. It's their board and their roleplay.
<3
[8:32:45 PM] Dusty Lens: Oh no, let me get that. Hello? Oh it's my grandma. She says to be roleplay.
[12:12:00] Traxit: this is smut stop