(Copied and pasted from a document I wrote, I do apologize for any formatting errors that will inevitably pop up that I miss at first)
Guild Reputation Variety
Reasoning
With the upcoming guild and reputation system, it seems that the methods to gain reputation are quite underwhelming. It’s less a problem of being able to gain lots of reputation, and more so an issue of lacking sources. While I expect that this will be changed over the course of weeks or months to create a more interesting reputation system, I’ve still decided to write out a few concepts on how to gain clan reputation in new ways that could make “PVE CLANS” work to reward people for playing PVE in many aspects of the game, from the most passive and relaxed methods of gain to the most chaotic and hectic ones.
Diving Spots
To be honest, I thought this was already a feature. I quite literally gaslit myself into thinking that fully completing a diving spot would grant a certain amount of infamy in the game with how clans currently are. However, seeing as how I was incorrect, I think that it would be interesting to see diving spots grant reputation in the future.
However, I think it could be extra interesting if the amount of reputation you got varied depending on the depth of the diving spot. With how diving spots are currently, it’s far easier to complete a diving spot at low depth in the bronze sea in comparison to the deepest, darkest spots you can find in the nimbus sea. Because of this, I feel that rewarding the player a little extra for diving into these spots would only be fair.
I’m no balancer, but I think that for every 100 meters deep a spot is, more reputation should be acquired. Currently, a treasure chart gives 5 reputation for its completion, so to balance things out, I think that the amount of reputation should be 5 + 3(x), X being every 100 meters down a diving spot. Since the deepest diving spot is currently just under 400 meters, the player would gain 14 reputation for doing the deepest possible spot. The balance behind this is not something I am all too good at though, so I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on balancing diving spots to be better or worse as a reputation source.
Treasure Charts
Currently, treasure charts are a source of reputation. However, I find that it’s flawed. Particularly, the problem lies with treasure charts only giving 5 reputation upon completion, which means that common charts are far better at grinding reputation than higher rarity charts. This makes no sense to me, which is why I think that charts should be changed.
A common chart should stay at 5, an uncommon chart should give 10, a rare chart should give 15, an exotic should give 25, and then finally, I think it would be balanced to have an entire legendary chart give a grand total of 50 reputation. My reason for this is that currently, holding a medium sized island (ex: cassia bay, blackreach, etc) gives 10 infamy every 5 minutes. Considering the time it takes to finish an entire legendary chart, giving an entire 50 reputation for a legendary chart would not be all too crazy, and I could even see it going higher due to the effort it takes on top of time.
Castaways
This one is shorter. Saving a castaway by bringing them to a civilized island (not your own clan base) should give 10 reputation.
Slaying
Considering the phrasing of “Reputation”, reputation is the opposite of reputation: rather than being infamous, you become highly reputable. For this reason, I think it would make sense, especially given that guilds were made to be PvE clans, to grant varying levels of reputation for slaying “evil” minibosses, or by slaying various sea monsters.
The upcoming minibosses that drop spirit weapons should grant reputation upon being defeated, with more reputation being granted the stronger the miniboss. On top of this, poison jaws, white eyes (+ more for giant white eyes), obolus, the kraken (+ giant kraken), and finally, the omen should all grant varying levels of reputation. Given that the omen has been noted as a boss that’s straight up not meant to be beaten, I think it’s only fair that until the player gets strong enough to reasonably fight the omen, defeating the omen should give a completely fucking absurd amount of reputation, depending on how difficult the fight is. However, given that you have to journey far into the dark sea with a fleet of players to defeat it, and given that it has the highest HP of anything we’ve even heard of in the entire game, I think it’s only fair that the omen should give hundreds of reputation, if not a clean 1000 reputation. That’s just a random suggestion, and it should absolutely be nerfed over time while still remaining an effective method of gaining reputation throughout every single update, but I think it’s fair considering how the difficulty of the omen has been described. It would potentially be interesting if slaying strong enough atlanteans and sirens could acquire reputation too, but due to their nature of being far out in the dark sea, the player might have to bring back proof of their adventures to someone (the new clan infamy/reputation shop person?) to prove their worth. If so, the item gotten from slaying powerful atlanteans or sirens should be untradeable.
Sinking Ships
Another simple, low effort method of gaining reputation. Sinking pirates, or in the future, legendary ships, would gain reputation. Sinking a pirate would likely give very little reputation due to the ease of it, but it would be a nice addition considering that guilds are supposed to be “PVE” clans, which helps add to the entire fighting aspect of PVE.
Repairing damaged ships
Similarly to castaways, it would be incredibly interesting if you could find a stranded ship that’s low on durability and in dire need of repairs. Repairing it with your ships resources to full health should grant the player treasure, drachma, and clan reputation. It would give very, likely 10, but it would still act as a fresh feature to help add not only variety to reputation gain methods, but also to make the world feel more alive. It would make sense since we already have two ship repair quests, so adding this out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean could be an interesting addition too.
