Criminal Reputation

Though I recognize it isn't yet so much as approaching its final form, I'm very interested in seeing how this mechanic develops and in understanding how it works.

So my first question is... how on Earth does one's character accrue criminal reputation? What behaviours impact it, how is it tallied and totaled? Rak's seems to stay static for weeks and then abruptly leaps up by 20+ points in a single game tick without any pronounced deviation in general habits. Is it the case that the points are slowly collected over a long period and then dumped onto the total all at once? Or is there something in particular that has a pronounced impact I'm just not noticing?

I was very much wondering the same when my character's crime points went up yesterday. (I was wondering what they somehow did lol) Alongside what all adds to them.

Here are the things that can so far increase your criminal reputation:

• Being ACCUSEd of a crime
• Committing a crime in public
• Stopping by a sordid establishment
• Attempting and failing to do some illicit trade
• Attempting and failing to rob from a store

These things don't necessarily cement your reputation -- in the reputation handler, there are separate pools for 'established reputation' and 'growing reputation'. If someone stops by Keely's once in their life they aren't automatically considered a local criminal. However, it's probably been noticed... and added a point to a 'growing' criminal reputation. 

If a pool of growing reputation points is over 10, then it becomes an established reputation. And the strength of that reputation can obviously grow, too.

Right now there's only one thing that fades a criminal reputation automatically: throwing vegetables at criminals who are in the stocks. Eventually there should probably be other ways to fade that -- and if anyone has any ideas or any more questions, this is an ideal thread for those! Thanks pof Rakim.

Edit: 'Stopping by a sordid establishment' is connected to movement (though it does have a delay and can't just be spammed), so if you keep up a lot of activity around a sordid establishment, rather than simply walking in and out, or just not even pausing on the way past/through, then that'd boost the rep a lot.

Well this is very interesting. Is there some kind of "zero threshold" under which nothing ever visibly happens, maybe? How long does a "growing" reputation pool last before expiring? Is there a roll to see whether growing moves to established, and if so what gets rolled?

As far as ways to reduce the rep - one would assume that spending time in public in the company of esteemed members of the community, and probably in particular law enforcement, should drop it. Talking to the fuzz extensively should really for all intents and purposes tank one's rep amongst other criminals but that's probably a separate rep tbh. This one just seems to be for the purpose of one's publicly perceived by the average citizen reputation, which is a very different thing from one's reputation as a criminal amongst one's fellow criminals. (Meta reputations, anyone? Ooooh)

Doing charity work and/or donating money to the church/whatever religious institution is considered legitimate and upstanding might be another pathway, again to be done in a public-facing manner in order to have an effect on rep obvs. Might be a case where you could implement tasks like for jobs, but available to anyone.

Finally, maybe just a lifestyle/behaviour option as far as how hard one is working to improve or decrease any given reputation in the background, again similar to the job effort? This might allow for some small wiggle room such that someone who is actively trying to get in good with the locals and be perceived as upstanding can differentiate themselves from someone who does not care/wants to be seen as a Bad Guy.

Edit: I've had another thought on this last one - in order to make it so that you can't just get infinite free credit with no effort just by setting yourself to be virtually working on every reputation ever at 100% effort, probably this should be limited to one reputation at a time? So something like "lifestyle reputation decrease criminal 100%" to focus your offline/background/downtime efforts 100% on lowering your criminal reputation, but you can't do this AND ALSO be lowering your "foreigner" rep, or raising your "local" rep, or whatever else! Also potentially you could get into territory where putting "100%" effort into too many things eventually means that you cannot, in fact, put that much effort in and it gets split/divided across all aspects with all suffering...

(No, no, I haven't thought extensively about reputation before, why do you ask? 🤣)

If walking around outside Keely's can give you reputation, doesn't that mean that sooner or later anyone working at the clinic is going to get a reputation as a criminal?

Just as a little side note, hanging out in Keely's shouldn't really be considered "criminal" so much as an indicator of vice or immorality. But, there is no reputation for that at this point, so currently it's just under the umbrella of "criminal". Eventually there will definitely be a lot more expansion and refinement of the reputation system, and hearing thoughts and suggestions is always helpful!

I thought that, given a.) The state of the clinic as maintained by St Loomis, and b.) The clientele of said clinic, implied that the location is very much on purpose, and yes, anyone who frequents the clinic is probably Super Suss 😂

That said, I don't think "walking past Keely's" is the same thing as "stopping by." If walking past it did anything I'm p sure my character would have... rather a lot built up >.> (A lot of walking happens at night when no one is around, and at some points rather a lot in that area...)

Going by the clinic has not caused a noticeable increase in criminal reputation as far as I can tell! (...or it is going to hit all at once and suddenly Firo is on the St. Loomis Most Wanted list)

Right now a sordid establishment is pretty much directly a place that has a black market for something, tying in with illicit trade abilities. 

In the future though we should try to expand and diversify what this means along with different reputations rather than just everything being under the criminal umbrella.

I really like those suggestions about how to fade reputations, and the idea of the lifestyle reputation-work is also awesome.

The zero threshold for growing reputation at this time is ten points -- but this is all definitely subject to change and refinement.

I like those ideas. A thought that occured to me was something additional to survey to see if a location gives certain rep points as someone lingers them. (I think the Seaglass inn certainly has some tea regulars if patron was ever a rep lol)