Designation Rank vs. Integration Level: Why You Can Be High and Still Unranked

Notes from inside the system, for readers who already speak it Two numbers ride on every overlay in the Integration Era, and people who don't know better assume they measure the same thing. They don't. One tells you how far someone has come. The other tells you whether they ever became what the system said they were. The gap between them is one of the most legible things about a person — and one of the most uncomfortable. If you've read the first post on designations, you've met the distinction in passing. This is the long version, because the gap is where the interesting people live. ## Integration Level is a record of effort Integration Level — IL — is the quantitative one. It is experience, rendered. The system awards Integration Progress for the things it can count: kills against threats it recognizes, Rifts run to completion, Vaults explored, missions closed against system-designated objectives, the discovery of something genuinely new. Do enough of any of it and the number climbs. It climbs for anyone who engages with the system seriously, which is most of the reason it climbs at all. What IL buys is blunt and real. Three...