Hail Guristas… I guess?
Just returned about a month ago, getting back into things. Ran through the new tutorial, great change of pace compared to just being thrown into space with a sassy AI. After that, got accepted into a corp in null and thought, hey I’m gonna grind out Guristas because it’s something I never got around to when I used to play.
To my surprise, due to not doing research prior, grinding out standings doesn’t mean poop when it comes to EvE game-play and is only really meant for discounts or buying certain items. This isn’t going to be me complaining about the items in the shops but more focused on the “real world” impact of chasing the pirate standings.
CCP, please consider changing the rules around faction standings and how it affects “rat” NPCs. Currently, no matter how high your standing, rat NPCs still attack you if you try to do anything within or without their space.
My changes are as follows:
- If you are at +3 standing or greater, the affiliated faction will not attack you outside of their space.
- If you are at +5 standing or greater, affiliated faction will not attack you within their space. They may however take passive aggressive actions.
- These passive aggressive actions could be - bumping your ship intermittently, bringing in a mining fleet to try and rob you of resources, etc.
- If you are at +9 or higher, they just leave you alone, neither helping nor attacking.
If nothing else, we shouldn’t lose standing if we’re attacked first. When we fight in low-sec, we don’t lose standing if we kill our aggressors, shouldn’t the same apply to NPCs?
Standing requirements could be reduced for those in faction warfare (ex. instead of +3, it becomes +2) but upon leaving you lose 2.0 standing. In addition, if you affiliate with another faction within 3 months, you lose an additional 3.0 standing. While that may seem harsh, it’s to deter those who would abuse the system suggested below by jumping in and out of FW. Being affiliated though, having a higher standing could introduce mechanics that work in the players favor such as NPCs coming to assist (rats or otherwise) and fight alongside them.
Additionally CCP, please consider re-balancing standing gain and loss when it comes to factions outside of the one the players is currently aiming for. Unfortunately, I don’t have a decent enough argument for how to re-balance things but I wish that my standings for nearly all factions (except Deathless Circle) wouldn’t drop just because I’m aligned with Guristas.