I agree completely with this.

Fame served a great purpose in XI in that it allowed players to get a general 'feel' of their progress in a given city. It also was really cool that as your fame increased, people trusted and respected you more and gave you more involved and more important quests to take on.

I also agree with others who noted that they should be one-time quests, not repeatable ones like in XI where you could just turn in ore in Bastok, the grass in Selbina or those musical instruments in Windurst. That really undermined the point of the system and seemed very implausible. You're going to "emerge as a hero" to an entire nation because you brought one guy a ton of grass for his sheep? Really?

Reputation should matter, and so should earning it.