I have noticed that there are some very strong feelings about not accepting abuse of game mechanics to ruin the enjoyment of other characters such as training, KSing etc. I see this as a struggle to maintain by GM intervention. this is also a niche outlet for certain albeit abnoxious people that are willing to pay for the experience in this virtual world. Does anyone know if any thought has been given to a player rating system? I personally would enjoy an open world RPG in which people have the freedom to play how they choose, but have a system in place that would allow the society itself maintain the accountability. Especially with the groupcentric style of play and importance of crafting and trading.
grapeneehi said:I have noticed that there are some very strong feelings about not accepting abuse of game mechanics to ruin the enjoyment of other characters such as training, KSing etc. I see this as a struggle to maintain by GM intervention. this is also a niche outlet for certain albeit abnoxious people that are willing to pay for the experience in this virtual world. Does anyone know if any thought has been given to a player rating system? I personally would enjoy an open world RPG in which people have the freedom to play how they choose, but have a system in place that would allow the society itself maintain the accountability. Especially with the groupcentric style of play and importance of crafting and trading.
There have been other threads about a reputation style system. Basically the problem I see is that it can be massively abused. What if you are in a group and one of the people in the group is a Hilary Clinton supporter while you support Trump? Are you going to give them a bad reputation just because you disagree with them? I know a lot of people will say it won't happen but unfortunately I've seen enough reputation systems to know that they pretty much always get abused in some way.
This is a double edged sword. In theory this sounds like it could be a good thing but the abuse can go the wrong way, meaning, some people could tarnish the reputation of good people by giving them a " bad mark" just because they didn't like them for some stupid reason (color of their armor, how they overpriced an item on auction, their character name, etc). I see this as just another tool for the abuser to use to ruin the game experience for the good people. Some might get a bad mark over a simple misunderstanding which can easily occur through chat or an online game. Slippery slope in my opinion.
IMHO:
If you want to expand the target demographic beyond the niche, you're better off designing and implementing mechanics that don't permit toxic behavior and/or don't encourage toxic behavior.
The entire notion of real time GM intervention to prevent toxic behavior is laughable, given operational realities. Just don't permit the toxic behavior in the first place! :)
Also to that end as long as you don't just have a good vs bad there would be some self sorting / improved socializing by allowing characters to see and associate with others that share their interests.
You could even set it up similar to something like the amazon review system where if you were to give particularly detrimental rating you would need to add more specific details and if it was being abused that is where GM intervention could be involved.
The fear of abuse is also easily remedied by limiting how many negative ratings you can give keeping abusers from being able to destroy someones reputation.
Mod Edit: Consolidated double posts into one, please use the edit function or make sure you have finished including everything you want to say before clicking to post your thoughts as double posts are against the forum guidelines.
Agree with Cromulent there,a rating system can be abused.So in an attempt to solve the problem this way,another would be created.
Not saying it would be impossible,through different means;
Maybe mob type (scout etc) could provide a solution if a wanted level is introduced to accompany it?
When you drop mobs on another player (train) ,you'll be flagged as an elusive target and thus you become target mobs will pursue more aggressively.
If you kill a lot of the mobtype and actively purue them,helping other players with the killing ,it increases the chances they'll flee slightly.
So it would be hunt or be hunted(training other players would be seen as a sign of cowardice and weakness so they'd chase you more aggressively)
This might also mean,more players putting pressure on mobs in a given area ,could alter the respawn rate as the mobs in that area would go in a survival/defense mode
grapeneehi said:I have noticed that there are some very strong feelings about not accepting abuse of game mechanics to ruin the enjoyment of other characters such as training, KSing etc. I see this as a struggle to maintain by GM intervention. this is also a niche outlet for certain albeit abnoxious people that are willing to pay for the experience in this virtual world. Does anyone know if any thought has been given to a player rating system? I personally would enjoy an open world RPG in which people have the freedom to play how they choose, but have a system in place that would allow the society itself maintain the accountability. Especially with the groupcentric style of play and importance of crafting and trading.
Player rating system is open to abuse. You don't like so and so or their guild..well your guild members just downgrade them ..for no other reason than...there might be a personality conflict. :) I think its best left out of the hands of the players ..in that regard. Word of mouth works better..if someone is a ninja, just robbed the guild bank..etc etc. Oh and of course the usual features, like /ignore /report when its really gotten out of hand.
Cana
grapeneehi said: A reputation system is word of mouth.... Word of mouth actually working would mean that you would be talking to everyone on the server all the time and everyone knows everyone.
Worked in other games I have played since 1995 ..word of mouth spreads fast. And not to forget if its a really bad situation, the GMs "could" get involved. And you could just NOT invite that person to your guild or group. :) We had a rating system here on the site in the early days...it got out of hand. I saw some childishness with that system. Let's not go there. hehehe
grapeneehi said:I have noticed that there are some very strong feelings about not accepting abuse of game mechanics to ruin the enjoyment of other characters such as training, KSing etc. I see this as a struggle to maintain by GM intervention. this is also a niche outlet for certain albeit abnoxious people that are willing to pay for the experience in this virtual world. Does anyone know if any thought has been given to a player rating system? I personally would enjoy an open world RPG in which people have the freedom to play how they choose, but have a system in place that would allow the society itself maintain the accountability. Especially with the groupcentric style of play and importance of crafting and trading.
This would be catastrophic. You have been to reddit right? People will certainly downvote you for anything and everything in addition to its intended purpose. Ignore lists work well for this. So does word of mouth. There are lots of people I refuse to group with (and other people refuse to group with) on P99 because the players are either terrible or trash in some way. It works. Don't need a upvote downvote system. There is also another feature that works well, it's called "kick from group."
grapeneehi said: I have had better experience with rating then word of mouth especially since the spread if it does make it is the telephone game. I am just a firm believer in these to things. One the majority of people are good. Two you can create a system that is limited and descriptive to an extent that it can improve your experience.
Pretty sure the Devs aren't on board with that system, hence why it was gotten rid of on these forums..a couple years ago. One the majority of people are good, if not given avenues to be otherwise. :P I've worked in customer service..for some long years. :P "the customer is always right" is yet another fallacy. There might be some old threads on the site on this rating system you favour. Might do a search, pretty sure its been discussed before. :) Don't leave people open to abuse and it won't have a chance to gain a foothold. Last online game I played was Rift, the trollishness and abusiveness in the general chats was over the top. That seems to be the way of things these days, anonymity grants freedom to do as one chooses with no accountibility.
I played EQ from day 1 and think they probably had the best system of any I've seen since.
We did monitor ourselves to an extent. As noted: 'kick from group' and /ignore worked well. It dosn't take long to discover the difference between an inexperienced player and an obnoxious one who simply does not know or care how to play his/her class.
Also, we had GM's, the developers and trained players, who played along with us unanimonsly (sp?). In the event of a unique problem we could chose to call a GM to observe a situation as it was unfolding.
The GM standard was hands off in the majority of cases. They did not interfere in corpse camping and ks'ing, or standard corpse retrieval. That was our problems. But for unique situations, they did.
I think that mixture of player self governing, and deveolper care of what transpires in the game world, is what makes a successful monitoring system.
There will always be trolls, they just didn't seem to have a long successfull life in old EQ. (yes I know, there were some exceptions).
Word of mouth is a great system, and most other built-in-to-game systems will likely be abused. I've seen it before. In Archeage, someone got kicked from a raid because he was being a jerk, and his guild then decided every time they saw the person that kicked him from the raid they'd downvote that person. Mind you, everyone in the raid wanted him kicked, but since not only was he a jerk, but his entire guild was likeminded invidivduals, they took advantage of the system to down vote him. Archeage only allows 1 vote from a person every 12 hours (up or down), but it can still have an impact when you have so many people downvoting you for no reason.
In order for word of mouth to be effective, though, the player can't have an easy way to avoid repercussions. Mainly, if they can be a jerk by kill stealing, ninja looting, etc until they get everything they want, then server transfer to lose their reputation, then word of mouth becomes much weaker. Also, the ability to rename your character to lose your old reputation kills the system as well. These are two features that are common in most modern games. I believe I've seen it said that renames likely won't be allowed, and server transfers, if they are allowed, will be expensive, restricted in time frames and won't allow any gear, items or money to be transfered; purely character only. Hopefully this stays the case.
From Kilsin: "We have discussed this a few times before and our answer is the same, we will not be implementing a rating or ranking system to judge fellow group members/players as it can just as easily be abused and used against innocent people plus we do not want to encourage a culture of judging others in our game, we will look at other ways to mitigate poor player behaviour, one of which is the report system and having GMs available to help resolve serious issues."
(Source: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4031/mechanisms-that-create-social-accountability)
You may also want to read: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3520/i-hate-to-ask-but-can-we-expect-serious-player-moderation
vjek said:IMHO:
If you want to expand the target demographic beyond the niche, you're better off designing and implementing mechanics that don't permit toxic behavior and/or don't encourage toxic behavior.
The entire notion of real time GM intervention to prevent toxic behavior is laughable, given operational realities. Just don't permit the toxic behavior in the first place! :)
Wholly disagree. A game that is so battened down that it's impossible to be disruptive is not a game I'd personally like to play. I want freedom. One simple examples is that I want to help random people who are about to die and have the possibility available for someone to do the same for me. If you make the game ******-proof, you would have to kill that possibility by design.
On the topic of a rating system, please no. Please. No. Please. It is ripe for abuse any way I've ever heard presented.
in my opinion a friendly, mature community will be one of the core points if this mmorpg will be successfull in the long run.
i think a rating system, as mentioned above is not the way to go. on the other hand, i dont believe that "word of mouth" will solve this issues.
example: 1 guy trains all day. sure people can know that he's a jerk, wont group with him, kick him from the guild, etc...but he will still be able to train and ruin my and others fun.
pantheon might be an "old school" mmorpg but im looking forward for the fresh/other ideas as mentioned by kilsin. in my opinion, far to long had bad behavior no real consequences. (cmon...1 to 3 day bans are laughable...)
There should still be a /report feature, Nandor. Nobody will be allowed to be a jerk forever. We could do that in EQ, /report someone deliberatly training our group, GM would come by and observe, and deal with the perpetrator. Don't know how that will be set up in Pantheon, but I'm pretty sure VR won't want that kind of obnoxious activity to be prevalent in their game.
Feyshtey said:vjek said:IMHO:
If you want to expand the target demographic beyond the niche, you're better off designing and implementing mechanics that don't permit toxic behavior and/or don't encourage toxic behavior.
The entire notion of real time GM intervention to prevent toxic behavior is laughable, given operational realities. Just don't permit the toxic behavior in the first place! :)
Wholly disagree. A game that is so battened down that it's impossible to be disruptive is not a game I'd personally like to play. I want freedom. One simple examples is that I want to help random people who are about to die and have the possibility available for someone to do the same for me. If you make the game ******-proof, you would have to kill that possibility by design.
On the topic of a rating system, please no. Please. No. Please. It is ripe for abuse any way I've ever heard presented.
"impossible to be disruptive" What does that actually mean? Trolling..abusive behavior...stalking, harrassing? What's your definition?