Reputation concept, how it works (supposedly), what does not work, and how I think it could work

[Imp0815]

Ok, from my point of view, I understand that reputation with the factions is really important and a boon to many things in the game, like traders, entrance points, and how the AI reacts to you.

What I found is:

- AI does not treat you differently based on the reputation level. So it doesn’t really matter for the runs if they like you or not; they see you, they get alert, and they shoot you.
- There is no direct interaction with AI during runs, even with maximum ranking with a faction—they still aggro and shoot you.
- You can increase your reputation by selling to the traders. This is so powerful that you can enter a run, kill everyone on sight, loot their kits, and sell them back to the faction you just killed a bunch of soldiers from, and get back to level three reputation.
- Quests are insanely powerful for gaining reputation.

**Issues:**

- The reputation UI is broken in the faction quest overview; the Eurusken faction just shows the last faction rep you hovered over.
- There is no way besides quests to increase reputation with Eurusken, making them the least optimal target to kill.
- Entering from the Europan bunker on Ashen Mesa spawns you directly behind two Europan guards, who instantly aggro and shoot you if you try to run by, which makes no sense.

I like the concept of the reputation system, and it could really be the standout feature of this extraction shooter. You’d be more reluctant to shoot someone if it meant losing the benefit of being left alone or having access to traders.
A solid interaction menu with AI NPCs should be implemented and used as a basis for quests and the reputation system.
If it comes to a shootout, reputation shouldn’t drop if the other party shoots first.
If your reputation is high enough, soldiers should not aggro when they see you. Maybe a smaller group would, if you're looting their dead comrades in plain sight, or cyborgs would definitely aggro, but anything else capable of humanity shouldn’t shoot you as long as you’re peaceful and not behaving badly in their presence.

But overall, the other parts of the game—like movement, AI behaviors, pathfinding, and the fundamentals (mainly technical ones)—should come first.

[Ho Chi]

i only treat reputation as how much that one guy (vendor) likes me , not the entire faction ... i get the missions say like a "++faction rating" but i havent seen much evidence to back up the faction liking me more , just as you say theyll still gun you down regardless of standing .... do they ignore you for longer i dunno , ive not seen any kind of metric to quantify any change in behaviour.

[chancepaladin]

its kind of a bummer i was hoping maxing out with europan would actually help me in the maps but I guess not. maybe thats a tbd thing