We have all been in that situation in gaming – a battle on the edge with both sides giving it their best: your score is excellent, you are about to win and then your match gets ruined by a player who suddenly goes away from keyboard and - despite your awesome performance - your team loses, earning you much less in terms of reward than what your performance would warrant.

We at Obsidian Entertainment believe that excellent performance should be rewarded under all circumstances and have tuned our progression system to reflect that opinion. Today we are going to tell you about the basics of the reputation progression.

What is the reputation?

Reputation is the primary progression currency of Armored Warfare. In order to unlock more vehicles and advance to higher tiers, you have to acquire enough reputation points with the vehicles you have. Reputation is not used only to unlock other vehicles, but also additional vehicle modules and upgrades such as the improved engines, guns, ammunition and various elements of technology that enhance your vehicle’s performance.

Reputation is divided into two types. The basic reputation is tied to the vehicle it was earned with and can only be used to unlock that vehicle’s modules or to progress to the next tier. Second type of reputation is called “global reputation” and can be used freely to unlock any vehicle progression. Five percent of each battle’s reputation result is automatically converted to global reputation.

Once the player accumulates 50 percent of the reputation required to unlock the vehicle of the next tier, his tank receives the “proven” status. Once 100 percent of the reputation is earned, the vehicle receives the “renowned” status. “Proven” status means that all the upgrade modules of that vehicle get unlocked and it also serves as a parameter for unlocking some advanced vehicles (for example, in order to unlock certain tanks in the game, a certain number of vehicles you own has to reach the “proven” status). Obtaining the “renowned” status unlocks the vehicle - or in some cases multiple vehicles - of the following tier. It also allows the player to convert any further reputation obtained on that vehicle to global reputation in exchange for premium currency. Premium vehicles in Armored Warfare are automatically considered to be “renowned”.

Obtaining reputation points

Reputation can be obtained only by playing battles and is specifically tuned to allow well-performing players to progress faster, even though the performance of the entire team still plays a role.

The primary way of obtaining reputation in Armored Warfare is by damaging enemy tanks. While enemy tank kills are important, it is the damage that earns the players the most reputation overall. A player who heavily damaged multiple enemy vehicles but did not manage to kill any will receive much more reputation than a player, who killed 5 heavily damaged enemy tanks with one shot each, causing only small amount of damage. Kills themselves are also rewarded with a minor reputation bonus but consistent performance is more important. Additionally, players who damaged enemy tanks that someone else destroyed later will get an assistance bonus for helping to destroy them. It is worth noting that damaging or killing targets above the tier of the player’s vehicle will yield more reputation (and vice versa).

Extra reputation is awarded for damaging and destroying enemy vehicle’s modules and wounding their crewmembers. This bonus is however limited to the first two damaging or destroying module or crew hits in order to prevent players from attempting to gain bonuses for example by keeping an enemy vehicle permanently immobilized by shooting its tracks over and over.

Lighter vehicles do have other options to gain reputation. The AFV class in particular can rely on scouting, as spotting enemy vehicles comes with a sizeable reputation gain, calculated as if the spotting player dealt 75 percent of the spotted target damage himself. In other words, if a target X with 100 hitpoints is spotted by vehicle A and destroyed by vehicle B, vehicle B will receive reputation for dealing 100 points of damage while vehicle A will receive reputation as if it dealt 75 points of damage. This reward is intended to incentivize players to use their lighter vehicles with good spotting range (notably those of the AFV class) to cooperate with their teammates in heavier tanks.

Additionally, helping destroy enemy vehicles by immobilizing them (for example by destroying their tracks or wheels) is also rewarded by a reputation bonus (calculated as if the assisting player dealt 75 percent of the damage himself). Both of the ways listed above were specifically designed to encourage team play and to teach the players to coordinate their efforts. In Armored Warfare, both the individual performance and the team play are important and essential to successful matches.

Reputation can also be obtained by capturing enemy team’s base. The current reputation system rewards the players for performing daring raids into the enemy territory. The capture of the base by itself is not worth many reputation points but when capturing the base, the player gets considerable bonus for every enemy team member still alive. Capturing enemy base with 8 enemy players still active is thus much more rewarding than capturing the base with last enemy tank left.

Finally, players are rewarded with a 25 percent reputation bonus for winning the match.

Reputation to unlock vehicles will be obtainable in Armored Warfare in both the PvP and the PvE mode – the PvE reputation gain however will be considerably slower.

Additional ways of obtaining bonus reputation

Players can earn reputation bonuses through less common means as well. First victory of the day will be rewarded with double reputation gain. In Armored Warfare battles, players will also be given various types of challenges and missions. Completing these challenges is rewarded with a hefty bonus to the reputation gained in that match.

There will also be multiple achievements in the game – obtaining one such achievement (commonly known as “medal”) will also earn the player a reputation bonus.

One of the functions we also plan to introduce is the awarding of reputation points for good performance within battles and between multiple battles. As an example, players with a “kill streak” in one battle will receive bonus reputation for every subsequent kill. Same mechanism can be applied to spotting.

A small bonus to reputation in each battle is also given for the amount of vehicles present in the player’s garage. For example, for every 10 vehicles the players have in their garage, they will receive extra one percent of reputation in each battle.

Last but not least, the premium account status will provide 50 percent bonus to reputation gain from all battles – but that is not the only way to speed things up. In addition to that, the players will be able to purchase consumables that increase the reputation for a specific number of battles or specific duration.

Reputation penalties

In this post, we have shown you the examples of behavior that will be supported by reputation bonuses. There are on the other hand activities and behaviors that will be penalized and will actually result in reputation losses.

One of the most important issues we want to focus on is the one of inactive players (also known as “away from keyboard” or “AFK” players). Inactivity in battles will be punished – after a certain period of inactivity the player will start losing a chunk of his reputation for that battle every few seconds. Completely inactive players (who do not fire a single shot or spot a single enemy) will receive no reputation whatsoever. Players committing intentional suicide will also find themselves earning much less reputation than they usually would.

This way, we want to promote active participation in battles and dynamic gameplay.

Converting and Using Global Reputation

Reputation collected by Renowned vehicles (vehicles with fully unlocked progression, also known as Locked Reputation) can be converted to Global Reputation that is not bound to one particular vehicle and can be used to unlock modules or even tanks without restrictions. The current amounts of Locked and Global Reputation can be seen in the garage screen in the upper right corner (Locked Reputation on the left, Global Reputation on the right). The displayed Locked Reputation number represents the sum of all the Locked Reputation acquired, regardless of which vehicle you have selected.

To convert the Locked Reputation to Global Reputation, all you have to do is click the reputation counter that turns into the "Convert" button upon mouseover.

A window will appear where the Locked Reputation can be converted into Global Reputation. By clicking on the arrows, you can adjust the amount of Locked Reputation to be converted. Each 125 points of Locked Reputation cost 1 Gold to convert. After inserting the desired amount of Locked Reputation to be converted, press the highlighted Convert button to finalize the conversion.

When unlocking modules, Global Reputation is only used if the amount of Vehicle Reputation collected by playing the vehicle is not sufficient enough to unlock the desired module. In such cases the game will ask for confirmation whether you really want to use Global Reputation.

Please note that spent Global Reputation counts towards vehicle progress (the amount of reputation needed to unlock the next tier vehicle) and for Proven vehicles (with 50 percent of progression bar unlocked) it can also be used to unlock the rest of the progression to next tier by clicking on the Progression Bar.