As we all know by now, one of the many great features added to the game with the Full Release update was the addition of an NPC called Sir Garen that is able to create vanity equipment customized to your Guild/Clan’s colors and overall look.
However, there is one issue that has been bothering me and i hope that i am not the only one that feels this way. And that is the Reputation requirements for some of the items. Considering the vast majority of the playerbase plays casually, there is no realistic way a casual player can reach the demands required by the more unique items (500k+ and above specifically.)
Unless you are lucky enough to be accepted into a Guild/Clan that belongs on the leaderboard, you will never be able to have access to these items. Making them feel gated. But what if you wish to join one of the top clans/guilds ? Well, that is also tricky. Most of them if not all, to my knowledge require people to actively contribute each day and make it a second job to be active. Which you may be able to imagine, could be difficult for someone who has a job, a family and other responsabilities. Aka, the casual Joe.
I think it is great to have unique rewards for those top clans, most being in the 500k reputation anyways. But for all the other players not in them, they are stuck with recolored armors, being locked away from anything that would feel unique to their guild/clan. Except with some of the cheaper capes, those are pretty cool.
I really wish to know what the community thinks of this and if anyone else feels the same way i do. Recently, there has been a similar change to the required Renown/Bounty for the Titles you can purchase from the Brotherhood and Proxy factions, bringing it down from 1mil to 250k and i have hopes that perhaps, something like this could happen to the Sir Garen’s shop too.
(These are some of the items from my own Guild, i am looking to try and make it advance in Reputation so these can be accessed by all members. So if you like how they look, you are welcome to join, just let me know.)
I searched for the suggestion topic but it literally was not popping up. I dont know if i have access to it. Forum kept telling me this post is similar to the Suggestion ones but it would not let me write in there. All i have access to are Game Discussions, Off Topic, Merketplace, Clans, Writing, Site Feedback, Guides and Tutorials.
Why would it matter ? Why gatekeep it to “great clans”, when most of the playerbase is casual. Pride ? It holds no real purpose than to show off. Do you envision the future of the game as a little sandbox of the leaderboard clans fighting one another with their custom armors while the casual playerbase which is the lifeblood of any online service game already left long ago ? Such rewards should have realistic requirements so that a clear future goal is not only a dream, but is guaranteed to be achievable. A goal creates engagement meaning more people will passively play towards the accomplishment of said goal.
Not everything has to be built for the casual playstyle, and if it does only function as a way to show off, then that’s what it is, to showcase the achievement of the guild/clan. Same as titles, they function to showcase the skill of a player, there’s no need to make it adhere to casual playstyle.
dawg if ur a casual player its not that deep casual players should NOT be caring that much about vanity in the first place… besides shouldnt people get better rewards the more infamy they have anyways?
Most of the replies approach this system primarily from an exclusivity and status perspective rather than the design concerns I raised. Thus, i will try to reply to each of them to hopefully clear things and outline the important bits. I wrote this because I wish to respect your time and actually discuss things out, I ask for the same treatment.
“then way too many clans/guilds will be able to buy these. it needs to be exclusive to actually great clans.”
To me this comment is saying that scarcity itself is the value and is apparently valued by all and this game’s design. “Greatness”, whatever that actually means, is defined by leaderboard presence and that more access automatically devalues the rewards. The problem i see with all of this is that this comment assumes a system that is either exclusive or meaningless and its by no means changeble, being absolute. It treats guild identity items as trophies rather than engagement tools and if it were not a Roblox game, id sort of agree with but the context of the game’s structure matters. However, being a Roblox game, whos bane will always be player egagement and how to actively keep it alive from not going down the drain, this way of design undermines player retention on the long term rather than reinforcing it. Which stated earlier, is required due to how a Roblox game’s ecosystem tends to be. Exclusivity doesn’t disappear just because access scales. The core issue i wanted to highlight is that all meaningful uniqueness currently starts far beyond a realistic reach for most guilds.
“Not everything has to be built for the casual playstyle, and if it does only function as a way to show off, then that’s what it is, to showcase the achievement of the guild/clan. Same as titles, they function to showcase the skill of a player, there’s no need to make it adhere to casual playstyle.”
From what I understood, this comment is saying that Casual players are not a valid audience for this system and that vanity automatically equals achievement display. Now, Sir Garen is not a competitive system it is merely a way to for Guild/Clans to have uniforms due to the items being vanity only. There is no skill expression in it, no ranking, or player vs player comparison that is INHERENT to the shop. Achievement systems usually track individual mastery and aren’t built on overly demanding time investment. A good and healthy game values the player’s time and does not milk it for fashion items with no other function. If the items offered quirks to showcase leaderboard dominance, there would not have been a reason to create this post. Achievement based prestige (titles, ranks etc) and dentity based cosmetics (guild/clan vanity uniforms) are two different worlds and serve different psychological drives for two very different player bases. If the goal is pure achievement display, then the first UNIQUE, not recolored items shouldn’t appear at 150k. Right now, the system is presenting itself as guild identity customization but functions as a leaderboard reward pipeline.
“that’s literally the point vro, you’re meant to make your clan a big thing and as a reward you can get the cool vanity items.” A response to my comment: “there is no realistic way a casual player can reach the demands required by the more unique items (500k+ and above specifically.)”
What i understood is, the poster is asserting that scale and output define legitimacy and that smaller or time constrained groups of players are inherently less deserving. This is structurally biased, the reason being is that Guild/Clan size and free time are not gameplay skills. The system favors large rosters, excess player availability and aggressive farming loops. This is not strongly tied to the gameplay skill progression system, it is a CAPACITY based progression system. Making a clan “big” is not the same as making it active. The system currently rewards scale and time surplus which is likely harmful long term.
“Because thats the whole point, to reward active player. Imagine this. If I sell cookies and there is this regular customer. Would I give the regular special treatment or some random one off customer?”
Cookie analogy.. fine, ill bite. Casual players are not “one off customers.” Casual players participate in multiple game systems and sustain the population density. They are regular customers with smaller purchase volumes in most games that have in game purchases, not a random passersby. Casual guilds/clans aren’t one time customers, they are repeat users with lower throughput. Designing exclusively for whales, in this scenario people with free time to burn, does not keep a service alive. This is standard live service economics.
“dawg if ur a casual player its not that deep casual players should NOT be caring that much about vanity in the first place… besides shouldnt people get better rewards the more infamy they have anyways?”
This is demonstrably false. “Dawg.” Vanity is the primary engagement vector for casual players across nearly all online games. One game i could give as an example could be Adventure Quest Worlds, an MMORPG that is well known for AFK players in Yulgar’s Inn, a place in the game for the sole purpose of showing off vanity items. Cosmetics outperform competitive rewards in retention metrics in all games that allow it, because casual players care more about expression and personal fun rather than optimization. What you are telling me is that you believe that casual equals indifference. While the reality is that Casual means time constrained, not disengaged. Vanity is precisely what casual players engage with most, because it doesn’t require meta play or long sessions, just pure fun.
What i am pushing back against is the idea that exclusivity alone should define value. My concern is reward pacing, engagement sustainability, and the long term health of the guild/clan ecosystem in a game on the Roblox platform. Most of the replies state concerns for status preservation, rarity as self wort and fear of devaluation but these things are not the same conversation that i tried to start. I apologize for not being clearer before and i hope this does serve the original post’s purpose better.
