I really like Story Points as a concept and many of the planned implementations of them seem like a great step toward character definition! I'm excited for that change.
The issue with giving story points for actions is the player would feel like they *have* to do these actions for the story point reward. Imagine needing to respond to every distress call - and to your earlier point, some of the things the player would feel forced to do would likely go against the sort of character they're roleplaying.
It pretty much has to be tied to something more abstract and general-purpose (i.e. XP). In any case, part of the reason they exist is to give you a little more of a reward as you gain XP - since there are fewer levels, and they take longer to gain, since overall XP is similar-ish, so decoupling them from XP would be counter to that goal.
Hmm. Ok, I definitely get the idea of making experience gain more rewarding if it takes longer to level. But the first part? I am little less sold there (surprise surprise the lore guy wants it to be tied to lore, right?
). Care to discuss a little if you have time?
My assumption(correct me if otherwise) is this conclusion was made because missions and events can sometimes feel hard to find for some players or they simply want to ignore them. This is especially true for those venturing away from the Core Worlds for long periods of time (other than distress calls). That makes sense to me.
I don't think this necessarily means that a player would inevitably always feel obligated to do everything they came across, however, if some events gave unique rewards like that. From my viewpoint, that really depends upon the nature of the design. If
everything you do in the game results in story points anyway, then choosing
not to do something doesn't feel like you are missing out as long as its because you want to do something else that contains roughly the same reward. Experience works this way already and I get that's a factor in tying it to there as well.
Would the same issue exist if both were possible? It kind of depends upon how valuable/universal story points are when tied to the things you can do with them in the campaign. If they effect everything and you always want more then yeah that could be problematic unless actions from every play style would result in story points. Hmm, but that kind of seems to be double dipping the design implementation and dev effort merely for the sake of less abstraction (As a player preference I typically dislike abstraction and consider it a necessary evil that should be avoided whenever possible)...
I don't know, now I'm second guessing myself to be honest, haha.
!!Campaign Spoilers Ahead!!Spoiler
As an aside, I will say the idea of making Distress Calls more attractive is something I would appreciate rather than resent. But yeah definitely not as a must-do thing.
I always ignore them right now- mostly because in my experience they are more often than not overwhelming pirate ambushes I have no hope of stopping or escaping if I investigate (last time I really bothered was before jump point warnings were a thing) and even now that I'm warned I don't want to waste the fuel or supplies. That and the reward for saving someone from what I remember seemed underwhelming considering the risk. I mean, sure, the good feels are there from a roleplaying perspective, but the cruel, calculating warlord in me recognizes that logistically its a wash even to check unless its directly in my path anyway. I won't even make small course diversions for them anymore and I role-play a do-gooder hero most of the time.
That said, if the dialogue surrounding the interaction is used like Rules would imply then there is some really neat nuance there that I appreciate. That is, ironically, the very thought I had when reading about story points; "Wow, that would sure make me want to take the risk of saving people more if I could actually use that good will for cool things."
Right now, there are only very limited ways (without mods) to increase your reputation with a specific patrol captain and even if you do there isn't much benefit to it since they aren't permanent for patrols. Faction rep is certainly more useful... but there are way easier ways to do that and that alone doesn't directly translate into a "do good deeds and people like you more" kind of feel. It just helps.
I probably just need to get around to implementing the notoriety system I've been wanting to make for a long time. Things always seem to get in the way though lol.
