Yeah, now that I’m able to play with the faction relations known: this is visibly a problem. Finished a job for a noble house; had 76 reputation. Travel northward to get another job from the same house. It’s a patrol. Do patrol. Get back to castle; fulfill contract. Result? 76 reputation, right where I started.
Patrols are the worst culprit as far as noble houses are concerned. Most of their other quests seem a lot more direct, fast, and worth the time in gold and reputation. Villages are hard to keep reputation with because they only have ONE hub from which to give you missions, and they’ll only ever have one job for you at a time, after which there’s a period of no available contracts. This is exacerbated by only being allowed to take one job at a time, so if you’re on a patrol mission for a noble house and pass through a village you want to build up, you can’t take their mission at that time.
So, my suggested changes:
1) Let us have more than one mission at a time. You can give certain missions deadlines to encourage us to focus on them (like patrols).
2) Make patrols worth more reputation if they send you traveling long distances.
3) Please, PLEASE reduce the speed at which reputation degrades.