Care about faction Standings? You may wanna read about a weird thing that happened to me

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
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EDIT: mystery mostly solved by Never Enough ISK’s post. Diplomacy impacted my Gallente Standings until those were raised beyond zero.

A week and a half ago, I:

  • activated a Glamourex Booster (to increase Standing increase)
  • took a screenshot of my Faction Standings
  • completed 4 Storyline missions (from Gallente carreer agents in Couster)

Result:
My Gallente faction Standing was significantly reduced, instead of improved.
Derived faction Standings were in/decreased as expected.

The numbers:

  • Gallente: 1.12 → 0.35 (negative modification, should have been positive)
  • Minmatar: 0.26 → 0.94 (derived positive modification)
  • Caldari: 3.17 → 2.59 (derived negative modification)
  • Amarr: 1.58 → 1.37 (derived negative modification)

I contacted support, and a friendly GM tells me my standings prior were not +1.12 (as in the screenshot I took from the client) but -0.33, according to his logs.

So, either the Standings shown in the client can be off by 1.45, or a glitch can cause Standing changes to go the opposite way.

I have once noticed Standing gains to be recalculated twice, showing minor downward changes, in the hours after completing an SoE Epic Arc + one of the Storyline missions I earned along the way.
CCP thought nothing of it, so that’s a minor nuisance I accept.
But this is a whole other phenomenon.

I’m sharing this here so people who care about Standings can be aware, in case they run into this problem too.

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That is certainly weird…
I would suggest you create a character sheet at (20’ after your last mission turn in):
http://char.tools4eve.com/
It gets the standings you have from ESI.

Then, run one more career agent for Gallente (btw those are not Storyline missions, but career agent missions) and refresh your character sheet you have created (after 20 minutes since your last mission turn it, so that ESI registers the latest change on standings).

That will show you (and us) the differences of all the standing increases/decreases (marked as bold).

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If the screenshot is of the line graph then yes, it is totally borked, never use it to track gains/losses. It requires a PhD to understand and then some.

Only use the list of numbers. I think this is what you’re talking about but worth clarifying.

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What’s your Social skills be like? Effective standings can be lowered by raising the base standing of Diplomacy is skilled to a higher level than Connections.

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The standings transaction window (line graph and associated numbers) has been broken since it was implemented and CCP have never fixed it. It lies constantly.

I once had it tell me I had -18 to Caldari State. The values it shows are worthless.

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Effective standings are higher than base with diplo/connections.

Thats why if you have a base of 3.75 and connections at 5, your effective is 5.0

The difference between diplo and connections

Diplo works only when the base is a negative number up to 0. Connections works only for positive standings

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Yes, and If he has a low negative standing and high Diplomacy it will turn into a decently high positive effective standing.

But if he hasn’t Connections trained and the base standing crosses over into the positive, the effective standing will plummet.

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It’s actually pretty simple. The game remember your variations and your present standing.
Then it applied the variations back to make the graph.
The issue is, it applies the variations additively while the game applies the variations multiplicatively ( see NPC standings - EVE University Wiki ).

For example you are at 2, and you gain +1 standing. You actually gain 1/10 × (10-2) = 0.8, reaching 1.8. But the game assumes you were at 1.8-1 = 0.8 before.

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I think @Never_Enough_ISK is right in this, and that this is a case of diplomacy versus connections.

Both skills can improve your effective standings, yet one of them applies at standings below 0 while the other applies to standings above 0. If you have a high level diplomacy and a lower level connections, your effective standings will drop once your unmodified standings cross 0.

I’m not really known with standings, but did some searching and found this formula in a very old post:

Effective Standing = Actual Standing + [(10 - Actual Standing) * 0.04 * Level of Connections or Criminal Connections or Diplomacy]

Let me go through an example:

  • You have a diplomacy level higher than connections level. (Let’s take level 5 diplomacy and level 1 connections)

We start at -0.5 actual standings. What would the effective standings be as result of diplomacy?
Your effective standings are now -0.5 + (10–0.5) x 0.04 x 5 = 1.6

Now let’s increase your standings to from -0.5 to -0.1

New effective standings are -0.1 + (10–0.1) x 0.04 x 5 = 1.92

→ Both your effective and actual standings went up, as expected.

Now let’s increase your effective standings from -0.1 to 0.1.
(This means instead of level 5 diplomacy, you now use your connections skill, level 1 in this example)

Effective standings are now 0.1 + (10-0.1) x 0.04 x 1 = 0.50

Result: your actual standings went up from -0.1 to 0.1, but your effective standings went down from 1.92 to 0.50!

Why? Because your connections skill is likely lower than your diplomacy skill.

@Fuliare_Cescada What are your diplomacy and connections skill levels, if I may ask?

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If the screenshot is of the line graph then yes, it is totally borked, never use it to track gains/losses. It requires a PhD to understand and then some.
Only use the list of numbers. I think this is what you’re talking about but worth clarifying.

I only screenshotted the numbers (I’m well aware of the problems with the historic values in the graph - that’s why I screenshotted in the first place). Thanks for asking though.

tradebot Standings 230518 before completing SL

tradebot Standings 230518 after completing SL

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Diplomacy 4
Connections 0 (I’m only interested in base Standings in this case, cause only those lower Broker Fee)

Wow, I think you solved most of the mystery! Thank you very much indeed. I didn’t screenshot the Base Standings, but if CCP’s logs are correct, Diplomacy would indeed have raised Gallente Standng into positive numbers - until I completed the 4 final Storyline-ish missions that each concluded a carreer path.

Still, it’s weird that derived standings (Minmatar) increased by the same amount - from a higher base, even (0.68). But I can live with that.

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Minmatar base standings were likely above zero already, which means before and after both use your level 0 connections skill, which explains why the effective standings there did not drop.

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I see that now, but that’s not the point I was making in the statement you quote.

Principal standing gain (Gallente) is 0.68 (-0.33 → 0.35 )
Derived standing gain (Minmatar) is 0.68 (0.26 → 0.94)

I would expect the gain for Gallente to be higher:

  • principal gain should be greater than the derived one
  • gain from a lower base should be greater

What am I missing here?

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According to support, this was down to my client being out of sync with the sever.
They suggested I’d clear my cache. I suppose checking the values from the API would work, too.

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There’s definately something weird going on with standings.
I’m doing my Amarr career agents on a brand new character, I’ve gained more Ammatar progress from derived standings than I’ve gained Amarr standing itself (I have no other sources of gain or lost standing other than career agents and blowing up Blood Angel rats during those missions)

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According to support, “derived standings will not always be lower than main standing”.

BTW, I’ve also noticed that the ratio of main standing change to derived standing change is not the same for all missions.

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