Lol. The quest/relation status code sounds buggy as hell.
As for reputation, it is a bad idea and generally a bad system. Not as bad as alignment, but still. It's one of those tools that was probably intended to encourage or enhance roleplay, but it is ridiculous.
If one wanted to do reputation well, one should consider :
- how impressive and impactful our latest deed is (slaying a big pack of monsters terrorising a whole village will get more coverage than saving a child who fell in a well),
- how well-travelled the place where we are is (news only travel with people),
- how famous we are (people are more likely to talk about already famous adventurers),
- how long it was since our last big deed (news cycle, if you haven't done something noteworthy in a year, most gossip places will have stopped talking about your group).
Sure, a bit of simplification/modelling can be done here. But "does action A in place P, distant city C knows about it within seconds" is too simplified.
Then, a reputation system probably wants to model whether people talk about you in positive or negative terms.
- You shouldn't be painted in the same light everywhere (the village where you just saved a girl might give less weight to rumour that you killed a smith in another village a year ago, whereas if you go back there, people will remember you as troublemaker).
And finally, assuming you talk to someone who has heard of you, and has a pre-conceived idea of whether you're nice or dangerous, how they react on that is yet another thing.
- Clearly, the potion seller who knows you easily resort to killing might not want to charge you more. In fact, they'd rather give you a low price and hope you leave their shop fast.
- Clearly, the shady charlatan who sells whatever poison or drug people buy won't care if you're a famous do-gooder, you'll be just another pigeon.
The way BG1-2 handled reputation was laughable. The Virtue mod improves things a bit, but it's hard to do good with a bad system.
I hope Larian focuses on all the other things, and doesn't bother with a reputation system.
We don't need these tools. Dialogues and decisions are where we roleplay. Good dialogue options and multiple good ways to handle situations and resolve "quests" will be a lot more impactful and interesting, imo.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist 