I was thinking of something similar to the rank missions, but with a vendor and it would depend on the amount of prestige you have collected. This vendor, who I guess could be something like the Supply Depot; Crown Department, would give you authorization to buy new goods based on the amount of prestige you have collected. Something like the low 1-2* items would be availible with ~500 prestige, and the 4-5*s would naturally require more. The things available could be items like recipes, armor, weapons, costumes, accessories, what-have-you, ideally with some new content thrown into the mix.
I don't like the idea of the points being consumable, because then what would the point of being able to show it off with full inspect be? Right now, you can see how much prestige a certain knight possesses if they have full inspect on. If you could just use away Prestige, it wouldn't mean anything and it would just seem like being able to inspect how much cr someone has, and do you really care about the wealth of a stranger?
I think something like this could satisfy all the rich, crazy knights who are not afraid to throw away 5*s and reward them appropriately l with very nice shinys for their sacrifices, yet give "lesser" knights something to strive for. Possibly the most important thing this would do is that it would give folks an actual reason to complete Prestige missions (Until, you know, they unlock everything and it just goes back to being bragging rights).
The theme would also go pretty well alongside the progression of the rank mission and it does the whole karma thing. Donating minerals to the Geo Knights, arming helpless victims of Gremlin attacks, sending supply packs, it would give you a way to show that Spiral HQ actually cares about you going above and beyond the call of duty and that they wish to return the favor. It might also work as a nice crownsink, but that, of course, depends on the quality of content that would OOO put out ;)
A proposed use for Prestige
*Pictures '60s-dressed Stranger in rainbow, flowery clothing, with an afro and a bandana*
...
I don't care what he sells, that is win.
~Sev
@Schattentag Ideally you'd buy them with crowns, yes. It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to buy a recipe with energy only to require even more energy to craft the item. And I know that prestige doesn't look like it capped at the moment and once you'd get enough prestige to get everything, it'd be useless. That's the awkward part about OOO releasing prestige when they did. Lots of knights have over 10k, myself included. But it can still be salvaged when you realize that most, or at least a good chunk of, the prestige you get is from rank missions. Now that we're out of those, everyone at a certain rank is basically progressing at the same rate. A cap at around 20-25k would probably be fine. I don't think anyone is truly interested in getting 50k+ when it stopped doing anything 30k ago.
@Sev that would be amazing XD
...you're saying these items would be purchasable with crowns, right?
My other question regarding this idea is that there doesn't seem to be a cap for Prestige, so would we just say that if you had at least 20,000 or something, you will have unlocked everything in the Prestige Store?
Side note: Since you mentioned karma, I think it would be cool/mysterious if this shop actually came in the form of some kind of crazy-about-karma Stranger. I feel like this might actually warrant adding new content, like ancient weapons that the Strangers found before Spiral Knights showed up on Cradle.