Influence / infamy degradation....

Influence / infamy is what you get for being recognised, for making a name for yourself for doing great things that the public witness and make the civvies cheer or scream.... its popularity/notoriety as evdenced by the badges associated with inf collection (note: I'm happily ignoring AE because I dont think inf/prestige should be awarded for virtual simulated deeds but thats another argument)

So, what happens when a hero doesnt save anyone for a while? In a world full of other super heroes he'd be quickly forgotten, his deeds accomplishments toppled by another super powered do-gooder. Heroes need to keep active to remain popular... Introducing Inf Degradation! All characters have a ID rating that naturalises to a negative number. This rating is a measure of how quickly your inf dissipates. The longer a hero is inactive the quicker his/her inf is lost.

Or Alternatively: Inf gravitates to a certain level. Everyone remembers the hero that saved the world! Everyone remembers the woman that brought captain mako to his knees! Your famous!

so, as you finish unique achivements (arcs, tf/sf, raids etc) you get an amount of inf added. Additionally your influence level is increased. What is this level? its a number that your inf will naturally gravitate toward. A low level hero that hasnt done anything beyond the tutorial will have an inf level of say , 10. (arbitrary number chosen for illustration only). he is given 100,000 inf by a higher level hero - lets justify it as more than just a player transaction and say its the interest generated in him being associated with the more famous hero...

current inf = 100,000

but people will forget about this once off and start to think abotu the deeds the hero has done... none.. and so ,gradually but at an escalating pace, the hero's inf will start to adjust to its "natural" level of 10. This level can be raised by the hero being active and defeating bad guys, saving people, completing arcs etc. Even street hunting raises a hero's profile.

Mega Hyperman is lvl 50, he's done everyhting. he's earned all the inf related badges been on tv, peple buy hte t-shirt and ask for his autograph. his inf rating is 3,000,000 . He goes up against the hamidon and loses repeatedly and has to spend a ton of inf on inspirations and equipment to help him but ultimately he fails. broken he returns to paragon city with an inf of 20,000. exhausted, he takes a break from crime fighting to recover (the player plays a different alt for a while). People gradually forget his failing and remember his past successes against the council and the work he did clearing the circle out of perez park not to mention his shining example on the mothership raids.... his influence level will slowly creep up until , eventually - after a logn time - it reaches his cap of 3 mil.

A combined apprach: the inf degredation could affect the toons influence/infamy cap instead of his current total. the current total would be dealt with by the natural gravitation appraoch...

Just a thought to realistically remove some of the spare inf floating around and hopefully reduce the current inflationary economy of CoX.

---

I can accept this idea as a pure academic roleplay concept. But the fact that INF is the de facto economic currency in this game any idea to "degrade" it overtime is going to be a very tough sell.

---

Loth 50 Fire/Rad Controller [1392 Badges] [300 non-AE Souvenirs]
Ryver 50 Ele� Blaster [1392 Badges]
Silandra 50 Peacebringer [1138 Badges] [No Redside Badges]
--{=====> Virtue ♀

In a game where you have the ability to create a wide variety of characters it does not seem right to punish those that want to create those characters. Perhaps that is not what was meant when this inf. degradation was suggested but to some that is how it would appear.

---

I happen to have this useful link here that explains my position clearly.

---

While it is both a cool idea for RP purposes and a very good idea for the economy (although the gravitation upwards would be worse for the economy so that part would have to be considered), as are all things that are actually good for the economy in the long run, this would require a huge amount of "political will" and would alienate those players who don't understand the applicability of supply and demand to monetary policy (read: 99% of the adult population of the world). I'm afraid this would be untenable.

Robin

---

--If we can have huge sig images, why can we have only five lines of text?
--...faceplanting like a Defender pulling an AV (Nalrok_AthZim)

I'd just hide my inf on impossible market bids if this were implemented.

---

total kick to the gut

This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.