Prestige ranking system is dumb.....

[ViciousFett]

I'm almost ashamed to admit the amount of time I've spent decorating my strongholds. Unfortunately, my personal prestige score doesn't reflect that. I'm currently just under 300k, but there are usually several other players above me (some over 400k) on the prestige rating boards (depending on time of day), and it pains me to say their decorating skills leave a lot to be desired.

 

With the current system the players that have the most decorations are the victors, regardless of how terrible their design skills are. Once a month or so I'll go check out other player's strongholds, and the top strongholds are never inspiring in the least bit. The system is practically pay2win, considering these guys are bolstering their scores with primarily cartel market decos.

 

I'd really like to see a new system implemented that gives visiting players the ability to rank your stronghold, and some kind of benefit for actually going to other players strongholds in the first place.

 

Thoughts?

[Mireleni]

Prestige is even dumber now (since 4.3) than it used to be. It has never been a measure of decorating skill, but it used to be a measure primarily of the variety of decorations one owned. It took considerable effort to get a large enough variety of decorations to top 200,000 prestige (all prestige values I'll use here are the doubled values that show for subscribers; the 200,000 mark signifies for subscribers the 100,000 personal prestige achievement). Money could buy you most of the available decos, though you would have to be diligent to buy at least one of each new deco that came out with each cartel pack, and you could get a bunch more by clearing ops and running flashpoints.

 

However, now there is enormous weight placed on a few specific achievements and on disposable credits. Do you have Legendary status? That's 33.5k prestige right there. Do a lot of PvP? That's 25k prestige. Star Fortress? Worth 17k prestige. A few other achievements also will give you an easy ~4k prestige each. Then, depending on how many millions of credits you'd like to spend, you can get about 90k prestige from Felusia Stato (I can't remember exactly how much--that full amount is probably going to cost you over 20 million, but you can get a good portion of it for a lot less). I'm pretty sure the people with over 400k prestige are taking advantage of these things more than just using the Cartel Market (though they're probably getting at least one of each of the CM decos). Basically, for people with all of the (common decoration cap) achievement decos and a lot of cash, 4.3 meant a nearly instant >150k prestige boost.

 

The prestige system was never very good, but I don't think the devs thought about what the increase to a 999 cap would do to it. If they had thought about it, they would have kept the achievement-related decorations capped at 50, so they would remain more in line with other achievement decorations. But there's really nothing sensible they could have done about the Felusia Stato decorations without changing the prestige system itself. Oh well. The unfortunate consequence of the terrible prestige system is that people looking for well-decorated strongholds for inspiration have to wade through a bunch of dumps in search of something worthwhile. I'd like a system were people can give a "like" vote to strongholds they visit--no negativity, and while it could benefit people in large guilds who are vain and shameless, it could also benefit genuinely good strongholds that random people visit and like. But I think improving prestige is pretty low on the dev's to-do list, so we make do.

Edited May 13, 2016 by Mireleni

[Xina_LA]

I'd really like to see a new system implemented that gives visiting players the ability to rank your stronghold, and some kind of benefit for actually going to other players strongholds in the first place.

Thoughts?

 

This is a good idea in a general sense, but the ranking system you propose will have problems if not designed carefully. The same people who build a "museum of chairs" are also likely to make alts to vote themselves up. The ranking system would have to allow votes only from subscribed accounts, and only one "vote" per account, regardless of how many alts visit the stronghold. Even this won't stop trolls or vengeful players from down-voting your stronghold into the ground, even if it's the most beautiful place in the galaxy. People who are members are large guilds will also have an advantage, as they have a larger pool of friends to vote for them.

Edited May 13, 2016 by Xina_LA

[ViciousFett]

This is a good idea in a general sense, but the ranking system you propose will have problems if not designed carefully. The same people who build a "museum of chairs" are also likely to make alts to vote themselves up. The ranking system would have to allow votes only from subscribed accounts, and only one "vote" per account, regardless of how many alts visit the stronghold. Even this won't stop trolls or vengeful players from down-voting your stronghold into the ground, even if it's the most beautiful place in the galaxy. People who are members are large guilds will also have an advantage, as they have a larger pool of friends to vote for them.

 

That occurred to me as well. You could also have all your guild members vote for you, or rivals could vote down in spite, but despite all that nonsense I think the majority of players interested in stronghold decorating would vote legitimately.

[Theeko]

Yeah I agree it has gotten stupider with the increased claiming of 999 items and free ones as well

[EHKodiak]

Yup, but it's been that way from the start, I can't see it changing sadly.

[Tsillah]

Yeah I agree it has gotten stupider with the increased claiming of 999 items and free ones as well

 

yep basically if you buy the most of those decorations from the generic vendor you win. An in game version of pay to win.

 

The worst thing for me about it is that it lessens the value of decorations that cost really money from cartel packs and such. You can buy a stack of 999 for 500k that's worth almost 2k points which are double for subs. 4k points....how are are decorations from operations and cartel packs going to compete with that?

 

I'm not doing to badly with almost 340k prestige but I kinda gave up on the idea of blowing millions just for that rating. I am usually rated in the top 3-5 and I do actually put a lot of effort in my strongholds, but I'm not gonna blow 10-20 million just to get a number one rating which is nothing more than he-who-spends-the-most-credits-wins.