SPOILER ALERT : if you do not know the full story of the Lost Valley DLC, you should probably not read this.
I really liked the DLC overall and played over 60 hours ! Now that I know the story, what/who is behind the factions, I better understand some faction reputation drops and conflicts, BUT the way it is felt by the player during the gameplay needs some tweaking.
Here are two concrete suggestions (easy to implement I think) :
a) If one joins the Rebellion but actually slays their leader, you still lost all Forge reputation, though in reality you destroyed their leadership (trying not to spoil too much). It felt really bad, after doing all quests for the Forge, to suddenly drop to Animosity.
FIX : simply move that reputation drop to after speaking with the Rebellion leader, if the party did not kill the leader.
b) When doing one of the many quests leading to the secret base, even if your only quest is looking for a lost giant, you lose 100 Dominion reputation as soon as you are barely 15 feet on the map, and unseen by anyone. As this was a total surprise (I had not even seen the building yet), this was felt as very un-immersive and does not give the player much agency, even if there is a mild warning banter in the party. It seems the designer presumed the party would always be on a faction quest, but I went there rather early it would seem.
FIX : i) When a Dominion guard spots a character, give a clearer warning, similar to the one screamed by guards at forts and ii) trigger the reputation drop after a fight with the Dominion there. This both improves the immersion/role-play and makes sure the player really decides to start waging war against the Dominion.
As this requires only moving the triggers a bit further, it seems easy to implement and would greatly improve the experience.
Steam profile : https://steamcommunity.com/id/baraz/
Addendum : while completing various factions, I noticed that, after doing the rebellion leader's biddings, I can still do the Mask quests. I think the Mask option remains open. My point here is that faction relations or score does not change even if you were to betray the rebellion leader (placing the Mask leader as king) or if you were to slay the rebellion leader after doing his quest (I don't think the game allows us to at that point, but why not?). The Forge, for example, could revert to its original faction score if you destroy the rebellion leader.
Anyhow, my suggestions in the first post above are much simpler. The new point here is more work to add.
Steam profile : https://steamcommunity.com/id/baraz/
A few more issues with the rebellion faction and the related quests:
- After meeting the leader of the rebellion (not Ellaria, her superior) and leaving the place through the minor gate there is a cutscene where the party discusses the ... let's put it this way ... rather odd state that person is in. That is well done and certainly expected after the encounter with the leader. And yet there is no option to speak to Ellaria Anfarel or maybe Renno after that, addressing the leader's condition (both know the leader, as can be heard in previous dialogues). In fact, it seems that all of the NPCs in the rebellion's headquarter seems to be either unaware of their leader's condition or they just do not care - which is rather unlikely, given its severity.
1st possible improvement: Add some dialogue options for (at least) Ellaria, and maybe even Renno and other rebellion NPCs in the headquarter. That would make things more immersive.
2nd possible improvement: (possibly building on the previous one, but requires more work) There should probably a way put someone else on the throne when the rebellion overthrows Orenetis. For example, Ellaria could be on the throne, and the leader with the severe condition should just be moved out of the way somehow. (Doesn't need to be killed, just don't let him take the throne.) Building on the impression that the average rebel seems to be unaware of the leader's severe conditiion, there could be a dialogue that starts like "Hey, random rebel NPC, did you know your leader is [severe condition]? And he even seems more racist than Orenetis. Is that what you are fighting for? Do you really want to put someone like that on the throne to rule over you?" And while I agree that some rebels may be upset by such an approach, including Ellaria, Ellaria could be appeased by the fact that she will be queen / ruler of the valley in the end, if she agrees to put the leader away. Just my two cents. - About the reputation drop with the Forge when finally siding with the rebellion: This reputation change even occurs when the player did the Forge quests where two forge members had to be escorted to a meeting with the rebellion, and the later one where Hasdrubal meets Ellaria. Despite solving both of those meetings in the friendly way, the reputation with the Forge dropped from something like +80 (not sure, could also have been +90) to -70 which is severe, considering all the previous stuff done for the forge.
Possible improvement: Make the reputation change less drastic, for example just to +/- 0, if the player has done quests where the Forge members met the rebels and has chosen the amicable way on both occasions.
"From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it." - Grace Murray Hopper