Reputation- needs a fixing (post your thoughts)
kingthrall
Member Posts: 76
Ok I made an evil character, the ranger who talks to you on the next area map before you go to friendly arm inn I kill. reputation decreases by three. Now I want to know why it should even decrease since you are in the middle of the wilderness with no witnesses to your actions.
Anyway thaughts? I would say the same applies to drizzt as well since he is alone.
Anyway thaughts? I would say the same applies to drizzt as well since he is alone.
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Trees are immortal in the BG series so you can't fight Mother Nature.
Or not. I agree; ideally there should be separate stats for your reputation in town and for your companions. Town/World reputation should only decrease if you're caught doing something bad, whereas your companions would be harder to fool. But I don't know what it would take to implement that.
To be honest it doesn't need to be revised for this game, because the way it works now, if broken as anything, is a core mechanic of the role-playing side of the game. If Overhaul goes on to create another RPG with a similar gameplay style, a morality-tracking system is something that would need to be considered carefully, over the reputation we have now.
anyhow that of course would be about 1 years worth of recoding besides which the enhanced edtion guys might not be able to legally change the game that way too...
Link: http://www.pocketplane.net/mambo/index.php?option=content&task=blogcategory&id=107&Itemid=82
And yes, Neutral IS ignored... a druid isn't going to commit alternately good and evil acts they are going to commit acts that restore balance towards neutrality.
And it's entirely appropiate for a druid to commit an evil act if they think their actions have pushed the cosmic balance too much towards good.
But everyone, including the developers, knows the reputation system is highly flawed. However, changing it would not only be a fudemental change to the game beyond the scope of the EE, it would also be against the terms of the contract.
I.e: won't happen, can't happen.
Balance is its own bath, not just getting splinters in your ass from fence sitting.
if the game was being fair to all alignment paths, surely the goody goods would be ambushed by evil lovers that have an interest in seeing a powerful good force being quashed
"God knows all"? Absolutely, and Talos approves of my deeds. There is a balance between good and evil among the many deities, too. "God" is many gods, and they come in all alignments. They don't favor a good party or an evil party.
I'm not a NWN fan, but I think BioWare did reputation a lot better there in that actions affected character alignment. Anyway, for BG:EE, the only thing I wish were different is Viconia's actions - it doesn't make sense to me that she splits from the party. Maybe she should permanently reduce your reputation (capping it at 18) because, regardless of good deeds, there is only so much that the people of the Sword Coast can trust your party.
So, in a fantasy realm where we could have another game with a different mechanic, I personally think that the "Reputation" should be three (maybe four) fold system.
Like - how nice, reasonable, helpful, charismatic and even tempered you are. This would be a slider based on your responses to interactions with people. Even interactions where no one else sees you would translate because it is a record of the type of demeanor you put off. If you are mean, even in private, it probably gives off in waves in public.
Respect - a measure of your good (or bad) deeds as seen by the general public. If you save the miners, you get good and positive respect. if no, you lose points. if you complete a lot of the side 'Fed Ex' quests, you get a reputation for being helpful. If you take more of the 'Kill that guy for me' quests, people respect you less. But also, if you are good and successful in combat, people will respect you.
Fear - a measure of how terrifying you are. The more people you kill, the greater this aspect. Also, based on the allegiances that you forge. If you side with Tazok, people will fear you more. If you join the thieves guild, same effect. And level will also have an impact on this.
The fourth factor I was considering would be morality. This is new to my model, but it could be used. The more positive action quests you undertake, the higher your morality goes. The more negative ones take it down. This would work kind of like the current reputation, but would not have as much impact on the game space. And some of the things like taking Viconia on board wouldn't impact this. Other things like letting the miners die would greatly impact it. And it would still drive the dreams.
The point is that these combination of factors, except morality, could be applied to any alignment, but would still impact how NPCs interact with the PC. And the Morality would still drive the dreams.
All fantasy and in my opinion. By no means am I suggesting a change in either BG:EE or BG2:EE. Just idle fantasy.
You had Karma - which was some hybrid between virtue and reputation. But it had very little "reputation" hit.
And you had separate reputation for each faction/region/town
But it is probably too big change to do it. It would just be hard to implement and contract limitations wouldn't let to do such changes.
However, while I agree that the way reputation is handled is flawed, I don't think it should be changed.
For a future game, it might make more sense to let each party member have their own opinion of your reputation based on what they've seen you do.
I did a playthrough yesterday with a chaotic evil character, and maintaining a reputation of 1 for most of the game (except right after turning in quests that caused it to go up). I even killed Winthrop _twice_ - once before leaving Candlekeep for the first time, and then again during my return later. Aside from the obvious spawning of Flaming Fist people in cities and towns, which were a non-issue as long as I stayed hidden in shadows, the game really doesn't seem to care about your reputation. All the main story-related NPCs treat you exactly the same as if you had a reputation of 20 as far as I could tell, and you can even enter the Flaming Fist HQ (to talk to Scar and Eltan) without getting any reaction from the guards inside.