A two-dimensional reputation system

[midnite rule]

Obsidian really likes reputation systems, having used them all games (except maybe DSIII, which I haven’t played). But their reputation system so far has been one dimensional, being based solely around whether a person or faction likes you or not.

I propose a two dimensional reputation system with one axis representing emotional feelings and another representing practical opinion.

The y-axis the being emotional and the x-axis representing the practical, it would look something like this:

                                  Sympathy        Affection        Admiration
                                 Indifference       Neutral           Respect
                                   Disgust            Hatred             Fear

This would make the reputation system more dynamic I think.

[C2B]

Not to offend, but the execution sounds terrible.

[Ffordesoon]

@C2B:

 

It's worth remembering that nobody (or very few people, at least) here is a professional game developer. Not every good idea is going to be pitched well. That's what constructive feedback is for.

 

And I do think it's a pretty good idea, if underdeveloped in terms of the particulars.

[midnite rule]

Not to offend, but the execution sounds terrible.

Well, it hasn’t been executed, it’s just some scribbles on an online forum.

 

But how this system might work in a game, well…

An Antagonist who fears you might be more willing to parley then one who simply regards you with contempt.

An organization that fears you might send out assassins to kill you; whereas if that same organization disliked you but didn’t consider you a threat, they might decide not to waste any resources on you.

Some characters might be more predisposed toward pragmatism then emotion or vice versa.

 

[rjshae]

It's a decent idea. However, I think the nature of each faction may tend to restrict the nature of their response. Thus a business may focus more heavily on the practical aspects while a religious creed or political faction would put more weight on the emotional elements.

[Boo's Brother Hoo]

I also have been hoping for a more dynamic "reputation" style system.  I like the premise, just needs a way to be made more important.  I also mentioned in another thread I'd like it to be invisible during game (less likely to metagame or whatever) but maybe have a summary of what kind of person you were at the end of the game.  Being judged by the gods would be an interesting way to do it, or just a GTA style list of achievements.

[Lephys]

Not a bad idea at all. Of course, few ideas are initially conceived in their most spectacular form. We could always spin it a cocoon and see what emerges,

[Tamerlane]

That sounds... really, really unnecessary. I think New Vegas had it pretty much dead on:

 

[Failion]

What they could do is get more reactions out of the reputation system, More then factions wanting to kill you and being nice to you. If you are are idolized you can manipulate its members to do your bidding. Or if you have maximum infamy from a faction. When you infiltrate their bases you can intimidate lesser members to flee or help your party. More rewards for players that do not want to be neutral/friends with everyone.

[Lephys]

That sounds... really, really unnecessary. I think New Vegas had it pretty much dead on:

 

 

Ehhh... the difference, though, is that that's really kind of just "Good" vs "bad," blending together in the middle. It's like a single quadrant of the Cartesian plane. Midnite Rule's proposal would extend that to the entire plane. Sort of.

 

It's got a good bit more complexity, even in its base form.

[Tamerlane]

Yeah, I know that they're different. And as far as I can tell, the difference mostly lies in stuff that doesn't really serve much.

Edited April 17, 2013 by Tamerlane

[Lephys]

Well, I like to think of it as the difference between only having sharp weapons and blunt weapons. A hammer or a sword. You can progress with one or the other.

 

ORRR, you can have 2-handed weapons, AND blunt weapons, AND slashing weapons, AND piercing weapons, AND ranged weapons, AND throwing weapons, AND shields, and any combination there-in. I mean, I don't know what that serves, other than pleasant complexity? Why is it nicer to have a variety of different factors that make up the available weapons in the game than it is to have like 2? *shrug*

 

I guess you could say it serves a lack of oversimplification? Reactions to things in a variety of different ways, rather than a couple of different ways. 

[Adhin]

Well Weapons and Armor is more of a personal customization and generally the more the better as less means... no real customization options available.

 

As far as the OP suggestion, as someone showed the Vegas basis thing is, mostly, already that but I kinda feel like it should be all on an individual basis for anyone whos not a generic NPC. For example you got Bob in Whatever Faction. Then you got a Guard in Whatever Faction, gonna call that WF for now. In a lot of games its just the faction and everyone in it is defined entirely by that so the Bob's and Guards reactions are entirely based off WF faction. Would be nice if Bob was 'influenced' by the WF faction in his reaction but he had his own, personal levels on the same kind of slider.

 

As a further example say you help Bob before WF faction likes you... it ups your WF faction but it ups Bobs general opinion of you more. You could end up with Bob really likin' ya while the faction still doesn't care to much one way or the other.

 

Beyond that most people's opinions of others, in general aren't to complex. They can be if you think about it to much but in general you either like someone or you don't. You can feel like you owe someone something, for whatever reason, and still not like them but due to that you help them on something. That sounds more like some kinda side 'owes you' tracker that supersedes a reputation like systems to some extent. They still treat you like crap but they'll do you a favor.

 

Beyond that kinda stuff I don't really even see the need for New Vegas style reputation stuff. They like ya, or they don't, I guess a second slider to see if they're scare of you or not is something else but... Meh. Would be real awkward to be feared and liked, I'm not entirely sure how the crap that would even work. They run away screaming how much they love you?

 

Generally speaking though you want things as simple as possible while hopefully allowing it to allow for complexities. Can be a hard balance, bit to easy to go down the rabbit hole of making things far more complex then they actually have to be.

 

-edit-

Remembered something else about this stuff. New Vegas didn't really use there's effectively. It just put you somewhere on a grid which came down to one of 2 things. They attacked you, they where neutral, or they liked you. They had all those variations and blah blah blah, but it wasn't audio-ly represented to the player where they stood, or that the system even existed beyond a basic single slider.

 

That's the biggest issue I see with any system at all, how anything actually responds to you in game is far to simplistic to actually show how complex the under-the-hood actually is. Ultimately it just came down to a little title to that faction... which is where it kinda loses me and makes me think its mostly pointless if it can't be visually shown or via audio/text... and that takes a lot more work then just making something hostile or giving you a discount.

Edited April 17, 2013 by Adhin

[Jarmo]

The basic idea of your capability also affecting peoples opinion, if I got that right, is a good one.

But I'd think it'd be simpler to just use character level as that one axis, on assumption that word gets around.

[Sensuki]

It'll probably have numbers associated with it right ?

 

Do this = Rep +5 Vailian, -5 Aedyrian, -10 Glanfathan etc etc

[Frisk]

A two dimensional reputation system might well make sense, but in that case I would aim for a different system -

 

On one hand you would have a "like" score with each faction, which would among other things control what they are willing to do for you, discounts you get on their merchandise and so on.

 

On the other hand you would have a "trust" score with each faction, which would among other things determine whether they are willing to give you important tasks or information.

 

This allows people to develop reputations like "Trustworthy, but not very likable".

 

However, for the purpose of this game,  something like this might even complicate things too much - a per-faction reputation score will probably be just fine 95% of the time - and at the very least it is way better than a single game-wide reputation score, like some games have.

[Amentep]

 

 

That sounds... really, really unnecessary. I think New Vegas had it pretty much dead on:

 

 

Ehhh... the difference, though, is that that's really kind of just "Good" vs "bad," blending together in the middle. It's like a single quadrant of the Cartesian plane. Midnite Rule's proposal would extend that to the entire plane. Sort of.

 

It's got a good bit more complexity, even in its base form.

 

 

Actually its two quadrants - the green is quadrant 1, the red quadrant 4 and the black the horizontal origin line. Essentially you have one variable that can be either positive or negative; something in a single quadrant is either positive or doesn't exist (0).

 

The only way to do a 4 quadrant plane is to have two independent variables (emotion-practical or trust-like as suggested) where both variables can be positive or negative.

[Gfted1]

Isnt this the same thing as the "Tides" in ToN? (scroll down to "What are the Tides")

[AGX-17]

Obsidian really likes reputation systems, having used them all games (except maybe DSIII, which I haven’t played). But their reputation system so far has been one dimensional, being based solely around whether a person or faction likes you or not.

 

I propose a two dimensional reputation system with one axis representing emotional feelings and another representing practical opinion.

The y-axis the being emotional and the x-axis representing the practical, it would look something like this:

 

                                  Sympathy        Affection        Admiration

                                 Indifference       Neutral           Respect

                                   Disgust            Hatred             Fear

 

This would make the reputation system more dynamic I think.

They haven't announced anything on how reputation would work in P:E.

 

How is this even supposed to work? Like Bingo? Reputation is a broader concept than individual reaction, and the words you've placed tend toward personal perceptions. How can an entire faction feel "affection" for an individual? Unless this entire faction is a hivemind, your idea doesn't make sense.

 

You haven't actually added an additional dimension to the concept of reputation, all you've done is placed a linear reputation scale vertically, repeated it three times and given positive, neutral and negative reputations different names in each column.

Edited April 17, 2013 by AGX-17

[Amentep]

 

 

Obsidian really likes reputation systems, having used them all games (except maybe DSIII, which I haven’t played). But their reputation system so far has been one dimensional, being based solely around whether a person or faction likes you or not.

 

I propose a two dimensional reputation system with one axis representing emotional feelings and another representing practical opinion.

The y-axis the being emotional and the x-axis representing the practical, it would look something like this:

 

                                  Sympathy        Affection        Admiration

                                 Indifference       Neutral           Respect

                                   Disgust            Hatred             Fear

 

This would make the reputation system more dynamic I think.

They haven't announced anything on how reputation would work in P:E.

 

How is this even supposed to work? Like Bingo? Reputation is a broader concept than individual reaction, and the words you've placed tend toward personal perceptions. How can an entire faction feel "affection" for an individual? Unless this entire faction is a hivemind, your idea doesn't make sense.

 

You haven't actually added an additional dimension to the concept of reputation, all you've done is placed a linear reputation scale vertically, repeated it three times and given positive, neutral and negative reputations different names in each column.

 

 

What the grid is is showing what the parts of the Cartesian graph would be

 

Sympathy (X,-Y) Affection (X, 0) Admiration (X, Y)

Indifference (0, -Y) Neutral (0,0) Respect (0, Y)

Disgust (-X, -Y) Hatred (-X, 0) Fear (X, -Y)

 

I'd quibble on the naming system (as some of the names are loaded), but really the idea is "quantitative value vs qualitative value" and there maybe better ways to describe it, but it is two dimensional.

 

Now in terms of reputation, I'd argue that having "Liked" as a status per the Fallout example in a large group is pretty silly too. For example I might get my reputation with the NCR to liked without having met more than 10% of the NCR people. How is an entire faction suppose to "like" me when they haven't met me. Being villified by some powder gangers (who attacked me first and who I killed to the man so WHO TELLS THE POWDER GANGERS I DID IT?) is also silly. But that's how game reputations work.

 

If you were trying to be less abstract you could have a "reputation" for factions and a seperate "opinion" for individuals in the factions.

[Frenetic Pony]

Not to offend, but the execution sounds terrible.

 

It does sort of.

 

I've always wondered whether you could get a separate "fame" integer, that would indicated how likely people are to know your reputation otherwise, which could be more complicated. EG a not famous "Criminal evil dude" wouldn't get nearly as much hate and attention from guards as a famous "criminal evil dude". Make fame a thing you can decide whether to have, and have consequences for that decision.

[Ffordesoon]

@Frenetic Pony:

 

I think they did that in Fable II, but accidentally, which is why it didn't quite work. If you got enough people in Bowerstone to like you, you'd get mobbed by random strangers who were in love with you because you were the best at flatulence. Which was a lot less enjoyable than it sounds.

 

Still, I actually agree with you. Fame - in cRPGs as in real life - is one of those things that's treated as an automatic positive, but it can be really bad for you in a whole host of ways. Getting recognized should be awful for a thief, but fantastic for a bard.

 

EDIT: Also worth noting? The Fable series isn't all that good, but they've done a hell of a lot of really interesting stuff with it. I'd like to see more RPGs swipe and flesh out some of the systems those games left half-finished, because some of the ideas there really were terrific. They just whiffed the core mechanics.

Edited April 17, 2013 by Ffordesoon

[Lephys]

The 2 most significant points that have been brought up so far seem to be:

 

1) An individual's opinion of you should be separate from their entire faction's opinion of you.

 

and 2) No amount of + points or - points is ever going to provide a deep reputation system so long as they're all on the exact same scale.

 

People have expressed concerns with the OP's specific terms and layout used, but the idea behind the proposal is what's most important.

 

You can respect someone without liking them. You can fear someone while appreciating them at the same time, a la "I don't really want to talk face-to-face with that guy, but I'd like to help supply his efforts because I like what he's doing."

 

Games are already representing actual interactions and factors that affect people in numerous different ways, and yet they're still sticking to increases and decreases of "reputation" or "faction" points on a single, linear meter. It's pretty much counter-productive. You either end up limiting the options presented to the player to "good, neutral, or bad" (only a piddly three) to match your reputation system, OR you present 3 "good" options that all have the same outcome, 3 neutral options that all have the same outcome, and 3 "bad" options that all have the same outcome.

 

Personally, I'd rather see a game have an NPC say "Oh, it's you! You did that terrible thing! But, you actually did accomplish something with it, so I'm going to react to you differently than I would have had you done that terrible thing on purpose and accomplished nothing with it but your own gain, rather than simply thinking -10points about you either way you went." But, maybe that's just me. *shrug*

[Frenetic Pony]

@Frenetic Pony:

 

I think they did that in Fable II, but accidentally, which is why it didn't quite work. If you got enough people in Bowerstone to like you, you'd get mobbed by random strangers who were in love with you because you were the best at flatulence. Which was a lot less enjoyable than it sounds.

 

Still, I actually agree with you. Fame - in cRPGs as in real life - is one of those things that's treated as an automatic positive, but it can be really bad for you in a whole host of ways. Getting recognized should be awful for a thief, but fantastic for a bard.

 

EDIT: Also worth noting? The Fable series isn't all that good, but they've done a hell of a lot of really interesting stuff with it. I'd like to see more RPGs swipe and flesh out some of the systems those games left half-finished, because some of the ideas there really were terrific. They just whiffed the core mechanics.

 

Fable 2 is one of my top five games of all time! I think enjoyment of it really depended on how you wanted to play it. If you were just going through the quests like any other RPG, straight to the finish, I can see it not being great. If you wandered around, finding all the things you could do, buying all the houses, collecting all the dyes and clothes and etc. Making sure to get all the treasure, getting a spouse and kids, then it was absolutely wonderful.

 

But yes, they sorta screwed up the fame thing, automatically making you famous no matter what you did. And the zombie hordes of NPC's that loved you were hilarious. They'd follow you into your house while you were drunk and trying to sleep with some random NPC, and just stand there right next to the bed.

[Adhin]

@Lephys: Definitely not just you. I just want it to be better represented in text then just a hostile, neutral and happy generic welcoming type thing. Rather it be based off what you've done where applicable or based off where you sit on said grid in a more granular manner.