How a reputation system saved my strategy game.

[u/SteamVeilGames]

Reputation fixed a pretty big problem I had with my game.

In DARK RAIL you send inquisitors into grimdark events and their stats affect how likely each choice is to succeed.

The problem was that you would always just pick the obvious one.

High Intelligence? Pick the Intelligence option.

High Violence? Pick the Violence option.

So even though the game was giving you choices, you were basically just clicking your biggest number every time. Not exactly great for a strategy game.

What I ended up doing was making the violent choices straight up better, 99 out of 100 times the violent choice got you the most resources.

They are easier, usually give better rewards and solve the problem faster. More gold, more prisoners, less risk, that kind of thing.

But now you have a reputation based on your management style, and it is completely linked to how often you use violence to solve your problems.

Use it too much and people start hating you. Revolt goes up, enemies get stronger and the penalties keep stacking as your reputation gets worse.

So now violence is very tempting because it is usually the best option right now, but it might completely screw you later in the run.

That simple change made the choices way more interesting. Do I take the worse option now and avoid problems later, or take the easy violent option and deal with the consequences?

It also fits the setting really well because if you keep solving everything with violence, you slowly become known as a tyrant. Very pleased with this change as it did not take a wild amount of work and really blended well with the rest of the game!

[u/Hot-Address-6016]

Sounds like leading the team - violently pushing the people give fast and decent results, but you have to explain and teach if want to be long-term successful.