Character Profiles

Is it a good idea? - Yes
Is it Feasible? - Depends

We are talking about GW, there server would expload, unless you store locally, but, as with the templates, you could potentially edit the profiles.

Though it has come up already in some other small topics, it never got the attention it deserved: 'in-game player profiles'.

As all of you might know, many people are experiencing lots of troubles with the banlist system. In most of the cases people are saying that it's too short for the amount of players they want to add to this list. As a solution to this problem, and to add extra functionality's to the whole guild and friends system, i have come up with the following idea:

As we all know, we currently have the option of adding friends, joining guilds, etc. There also is the hero tab, which contains info about the character we are using to play the game. Here one can already see his or her's information about Faction points, and the vast variaty in titles. The idea is to unite the information that is available inside the hero tab, with that of the friends and guild system.

First there needs to be a new tab created inside the hero tab. A new tab which contains information about the player itself. This should be the usual stuff, together with some more advanced features:


Usual Stuff:

• Real name
• Age (linked to a system that automaticaly takes track of the birthdate and calculates the age)
• Country of origin/currently living in
• City of origin/currently living in
• E-mail adress(es)
• The possibility to create a short story (max ? characters) behind your character of yourself.
• Together with all the other usual stuff...

Advanced Features:

• Player rating system, similair to that of Xbox Live. The possibilty to rate other players, and/or make comments on them. This should have different options you could rate with a star system. For example you could rate if someone is a scammer. When the person has 0 stars, he would be the truth itself, of when he has 5 or 10 stars (depending on the rating system) he would be a master scammer.
• Linking to player profiles of the same person's account, if that person has more than one character on his account, or has another account in Guild Wars. Note that it is a little tricky to plug various accounts to a single persons name, as one could maybe pretend to be someone else.
• Making an in-game option in the friends and guild system that allows others to see all the information that is stored inside one's hero information tab. By doing this, guilds possibly won't even need to create a website anymore, as they can share all the standard neccesary information in-game.
• Making a 'Top 50' list for each in-game title that is available to players.
• Maybe even give others the possibilty to see full player statistics of current armor, weapons, etc.

The main benefits:

• Player's can express them selves more by sharing personal information about them selves, and creating a backstory behind them selves and/or their characters.
• Rate others on their behaviour.
• Creating a universal scammers/rude people/etc, list.
• Expanding the friends and guild system.
• And above all: creating a more safe and enjoyable game and community!

I would like to ask the people that have read this topic what they think of these idea's. Would you want to see this option in-game? Or do you think that Guild wars is just better off without it? Also make sure that you tell why you think this way!


All that is written above is a start of things that are possible by creating an in-game player profile system. If this thread will attract a major audience i will surely expand the startpost and add some more flair to it!

dont know about you
But I hardly tell any one I only know online my real name and age.(they are welcome to guess )
And I dont see how that going to solve the problem....
age group, nation group...any of these ring a bell??

now if its anything illegal, there is ip address, it is as good as a real address(in most cases, and if you make ur local police actualy care about something happen in-game )
Why do you want their real address yourself?? Dont tell me you are planing something nasty like go there and throw eggs

but I get nothing against role player, so the short story part...go wild.
and if anyone want to, they can put their "real" info in there(role play themselves??)

Sure a profile would be kinda cool, but like KESKI said, guild wars isnt Myspace.com

I wouldn't use my e-mail address in it. I don't like the advanced options either.
Apart from those: /signed

Edit: With the advanced options I mean the rating thing and the full statistics of inventory. Would get on only more beggers or gimme gimme traders.

/notsigned

Like it was said, Guild Wars isn't myspace. Many players don't like to have their real name and information displayed, and what's to keep people from lying about their information? This kind of system would easily be abused by scammers and immature players.

The only suggestion I like on that list is to have short descriptions of your characters for roleplaying and such. Maybe changing it so that the stats showing are those that you made for your character? Like the character's age, place of origin and short description. That would suit the game and work very nicely for the roleplayers around.

Anyway, this suggestion kind of reminds me of the Guild Wars Messenger suggestion someone posted a while back... I don't understand why people have the need to bring personal information and constant contact into everything. If you want to have a huge friends list and keep in touch even when offline, there are plenty of other places for that.

It is useful for finding people who live in the same countries and such. I would like it to meet more dutch people ingame. Talks easier. (although sometimes I do better english than dutch it seems) Same thing is also available in a game like Goonzu. Also, if you don't want to or need to, you can always choose not to fill it in. Just like a profile on a forum or something.

This idea has got great potential, but it would be very unsafe to give out personal details. Therefore I agree with Keski.

Edit: W00H :P-1,000'th post

I would /sign it if you kept everyting in-game relavent. disregard the age/sex/location/favtorite movie to watch after sex/

and put in system information guild wars already keeps on record. I want to know if someone wearing the survior title actually has 0 deaths, so put a char info on, Age of char (in months like /age), how many deaths that char has, information thats more usefull then billy joe bobby lives on 123 fake street

Just on the topic of rating other people...
I decided to earn some money just before Christmas. And since I get bored really fast with farming of any kind I tried trading, that is buying and selling things. Got a million in one week but here is a bad part, I started with empty ignore list and ended up with dozens of names, beggers mainly. I don't think they are bad people but trying to trade Sskai Sword + Candy Canes for Kanaxai's Edge and saing "I really need it" is really annoying, especially if you are forced to flee to other city/district (wonder if it's possible to disable "trade" button for people in my ignore list ).
And I am pritty sure that my name was added to many ignore lists as well. Any kind of in-game rating system would give me "VERY BAD PERSON, AVOID AT ALL COSTS" title. And it was just one week and just one facet of the game. I don't think it would be fare

i think thts one of those really big and important features that anet hasnt implemented...

how is it a more safer environment when you give your personal info?

/notsign and don't bring this up anymore.

Either work on it so people feel safe or else get rid of it. And the rating system wil just be purely abused.

yea, lets allow a rating system in this game that is user controlled...

WAMMO: WTF MONK WHY YOU NOT HEALZ ME!!!
Monk 1: You over extended buddy
WAMMO: WELL WTFZORZ TEH OTHER MONK CAN MOVE TOO!!!
Monk 2: I dont heal, I protect, and your not worth 5e for rof
WAMMO: OMFGZ YOU BOTH F*ING NUBZ BAD RATING FOR BOT HOF YOU!!!!

yup, this rating system by user control is a great idea

/not signed

The whole profile thing with age, name, dob, etc is just dumb. Like Perynne already said, Guild Wars is Guild Wars not Myspace.

The only thing I can think of is having an account flagged if it receives too many complaints [i.e. scammer]. Simply having the name of character show up as red will let people know not to deal with that person. It would make sense to make it very obvious that red flagged players should be avoided.

I absolutely respect all the things people say about this sort of system. You either like it, or you don't. Some functions maybe indeed be a little pointless, as they do not fit perfectly into an RPG, and take away the whole role playing concept, so far it exists in GW.

However, your reaction, as a concept of how player profiles are going to look like, are not proof of a bad system, but of a rotten community.

The GW community has defenetely got more rotten appels than some other one's. I know that from my own experience. But the rating system works just fine in other community's! As an example i like to name Xbox Live. It works just perfectly there, so why shouldn't it work in other games? The only problem with this kind of system would be that people are going to use it for things it wasn't intended for. That's not proof of a bad system, but of bad people.

If i give a platic toytruck to play with to a twelve year old, and he uses it for smashing the neighbours windows, it's not my fault. If you know what i mean.

I'm not going to be for or against this idea, as in the spectrum that you have given it would be bad. This being game wide, I can see a few problems.

First, you have the issue of personal information being spread to anyone who adds it to their profile and being viewed by who knows what kind of people. I for one know of government officials who play this game, and well, you should be able to figure it out from their on the amount of crap that is said wherever, that mostly is false, but some is true and yeah, no more on that one. Besides the fact that you open up a whole new ball game for identity theft towards individuals from online thieves. Now if this information would be all character related, then I could see this not being a problem.

Second, the rating system would be abused no matter how you look at it. No matter if someone is a bad person or not, they most likely would put some bad remarks on someone just because they pretty can. Example:
Yes, this might be an extreme case, but when it comes to this type of situation; an extreme case might be needed for proving the bad. I do have to agree though that the xbox live rating system does seem to be doing well for its self, even with the amount of younger children making up the vast population of that particular system. I realize that the Guild Wars community is actually a higher age range than most other online communities due to ease of playing this particular game, but their are still quite a few people who do the act before you think method and give people a bad playing experience.

Third, I do think that if this sort of system would be implemented, it should come with stipulations for rating and who gets to view the information. As in, only those people who are a member of the characters party would you be allowed to provide a rating for the player, otherwise the system would be overly abused to boost a players rating based upon guild/alliance members. This would also mean that only members who are not in the guild/alliance can give a rating to a player's character, as then it would cause more trouble to leave the guild, give a rating on someone, then be invited back in; as well as costing the person a lot of gold in the long run, just to have a better rating. A time limit would also need to be present, like a month from leaving the guild/alliance before you can give a person of the same guild/alliance a rating. No, this time limit should not change, even when you join another guild and leave that guild. It should stay one month from that particular guild/alliance before a rating can be given.

Just some thoughts to consider.

I dont see the need to know personal information about a player in any way shape or form.

Especially in an MMO.

This isnt the nicest thing to think about or post, but the reality is that in MMOs you have pedophiles, stalkers and those looking to take advantage of vulnerable people.

You also have hackers, and criminals looking to steal accounts. The golden rule about the internet is NEVER display personal information, especially in such games. The only people who need to know that information are the game developers, incase they need to persecute individuals for harrassment or abuse.

And displaying emailing address is a very bad idea for obvious reason.

You may say that it should be a choice to show such information. But would you honestly trust a 13 year old girl to do the safe thing and hide her personal information? I wouldnt and I wouldnt want my child playing on a game where such things are displayed (not that I have a child).

You just have to look at stuff on faceparty or myspace to see how niave people are.

A large section of the population of GWs are young vulnerable children who think its funny to strip their character half naked and dance infront of someone. Its not nice to think how old the other person is watching, and if their getting their jollys from it.

I know thats extreme, but you get the idea.

Id be a hypercrit though if I said I dont have personal profiles online myself which display information. But most are hidden and can only be viewed by people I know and trust. Id also be a hypercrit to say ive nevet met anyone from online. But im 24 and ive more sense then a child.

/notsigned on showing personal information.



However, not to be completely negative.

This idea of displaying ingame information, which has no relevance to the real world, isnt a bad idea. I cant really see the need to display your characters information such as experience, titles, skills, etc. But im sure some people might want to know it.

/signed at showing ingame information.





Sorry if that all came off as a bit strong, but its the kind of thing you have to be carefull of.

While the player info is not a bad idea, I personally don't see myself using it. Heck, I don't even have my personal info filled out in MSN... why would I bother here either?

As for the rating system, I see what you're saying, however, I could see it going bad pretty fast. I'll give you an example as to why. A few weeks ago, I was in the ToA forming a group to go down to the FoW. While I was there, some dude was spamming chat trying to sell a shadowblade. I personally love the look of them, so I said I'd have a look at it. Unfortunately, the stats were not to my liking and I told him so. He then went on to tell me his sob story of how he had been trying to sell it for five hours and was getting nowhere. He asked if I had no sympathy, but of course I did... however, I'm not going to buy a sword I won't use. I then suggested instead of spamming in game he should go to a forum like this one and put it up for sale, as he may find it easier. I offered a few more suggestions to which he told me to f off, shut the f up, and go to f'ing hell. Well... how nice of him. However, if we had a system like what you suggest in place, I'm sure he would have made me look like a real jerk for trying to help him. It would just be another feature immature jerks would abuse, and I'm really not for that. In the end, your player rating probably wouldn't really reflect who you are because of some of the people who like to ruin this game for others.

/not signed

My little brother is 7 and can spell "hypocrite"

no way... people guild wars is a game... not myspace..... lets get that clear...... people lie on my space as it is... i don't really care that the guy thats tanking for me is a 40 year old greasy man that pretends to be a woman... noone cares

And your point is what? or were you just trying to be impressive and rude?

As long as the real individuality is private I see nothing wrong with tracking the virtual components.

/not signed

I don't really care to get that social, and have the devs waste development time on that. As well "Rate others on their behaviour." is a horrible idea. What keeps someone from leaving bad/mean reviews 'just for fun'?

The rating system is ripe for abuse, and I'm most definitely not handing over my personal info for public view in an online game.

/notsigned

I don't get why people who have uploaded their personal picture on a forum have problems with the "privacy".

What do you think of this:

Character(s): Me20 Nolani Blaze, A20 Janice Blaze, D20 Fayola Blaze etc
Campaigns: Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall
Time played: xyzi hours
Guild: Acolytes of Balthazar [AB]
Alliance: Titanium Knights [Ti], Luxon
Name: Rick
Region: Europe
Location: The Netherlands

Information about the character itself follows:
Title(s): Protector of Tyria, Elonian Pathfinder, Advanced Treasurehunter, Advanced Skillhunter, etc
Time played: xyz hours
Info: I play PvE mostly. I like PvP also, but anything but HA. I have one character who's been through all campaigns. I don't like FoW armor nor cookiecutter builds.
Favorite profession: Mesmer
Favorite attribute: Domination

*You don't even have to fill in anything if you don't want to.

Well, I'm sure I'm bout to get bombed now. Come on, stalkers? Abuse? Privacy? How could anyone be threathened or stalked by giving out this information. I don't like the idea of a rating system, but saying this will put you in danger is redicoulous.

If i wanted people to know about me, i'd just tell them.

edit:

also, ill guarentee you that by giving a large group of people a place to write about themselves, you WILL end up with idiot remarks eventually.

I am sure a lot of people dont want to share their personal information online, one of them is me.

internet predators ftl

I support both the user profile and a rating system.

As far as the people worried about sharing personal information, well, you can always leave the fields blank or put in fictional information. It is no different from the profiles in this very site. I’ve never heard people complain that GWGuru was somehow an invasion of privacy.

Those who want to use the profile can. Those who don’t, don’t have to. What could the problem possibly be? I personally wouldn’t fill out every field just as I didn’t when I signed onto GWGuru.

/Signed

As far as the rating system is concerned, I’m unfamiliar with the Xbox system. I am familiar with Ebay and can easily imagine such a system adapted to the Guild Wars Universe. For example, players could get trading, gamesmanship, and skill player-rated titles (separated for PVE and PVP). Here’s how such a system might work.

After each trade with a person, you’re given the opportunity to rate the player’s trader conduct. You can only ever give a single person a single vote to prevent trade-rating farming, but if you trade again with the same person, you can give them a new rating based on the latest trade. Your rating will be added to other people’s experiences and a title will, after a specified number of “votes,” become available. It would then be your choice whether to display this title or not. I assume if you’ve earned a bad one, you’d never display it. Only you would necessarily know what the “community” thought of you, so privacy issues don’t enter into it.

Traders could then turn on this title (or not) when initiating a trade. Not showing a rating wouldn’t prevent you from executing a trade, but you might think twice about the guy offering 9 plat for a black dye not displaying a trading title. (Your hesitation would be confirmed when 9 gold appears offered in the trade window.)

Similarly, after either successfully completing a mission or winning a PVP contest, you would get the opportunity to rate your fellow players. This would only be allowed after a success since either a failed mission or a loss in a PVP match tends bring out the worst in folks. You could rate your fellow teammates on a “Skill” sliding scale and a “Conduct” one. Again, the one-player-one-vote rule applies to prevent farming this title with your friends. Also, some minimum number of votes would be required before the title would become available. This delay would also protect the anonymity of the voter.

As with the trading titles, gamers would themselves decide whether to show the player-rated Skill and player-rated “conduct/gamesmanship” titles. Also, the system could be geared so that the most recent 100 votes (or 1,000 or whatever) are the only ones to count so the poorly rated players can improve themselves over time.

And before people say that some classes would get inherently higher ratings (e.g. MM’s & Monks), and the contributions of other classes are harder to discern (I don’t know, mesmers, ‘sins, & dervs?), or that some immature player will toss out bad ratings out of spite, just remember that it’s a title you can turn on or off. Also, for every annoying player in GW, there are many more decent people - although it doesn’t always seem like that! Over time, the ratings will be reasonably fair and an alternative way for decent players to hook up and avoid bad experiences. It won’t replace guilds and friend/ignore lists, but will be a useful addition to finding a nice gaming experience.

Also, don’t underestimate the transforming effect it could have on some players. Think about the lengths that people go to achieve this or that title or acquire this or that piece of equipment (Defender of Ascalon, anyone? End game armor?). Many players will shape up in the pursuit of these titles to the benefit of all. Of course, it won’t fix everyone, but nothing is going to do that, is it?

I used to think such a system was critical, but since the advent of heroes, avoiding bad PUG’s and players became a whole lot easier. Hero/Henchies FTW.

That being said, the OP has made a good suggestion, and Anet could improve the experience of all with some such system.

I was recently in a group where a player said “This is the best group I’ve ever been in.” It would be nice is such positively expressed feelings had more staying power.

/signed

Well, personally I wouldn't want people to see some of my armor... poor choices made there... >_>

My name, age, email, ect. is all personal and if this was implemented, then I'd want it all hidden.

My titles would be a sham, I have every track open but not ONE maxed.

People would add "stars" to a person if they pissed them off. IE, losing in HA, Searing Flames people would get stars all the time.

Backstories would be the pwn sauce, I'd SO make a 9,999,999,999 profile for my characters.

/signed for some things, /notsigned for others.

Basically, this would provide each character with the option to have a background/story (like in CoH/V). It would just be a small text area to let a player give the character some depth.
I guess other players could view this text through a button next to the trade button.
Of course it'd be filtered, and a new /report function would need to be added, but overall, I think this could add a lot more depth to gameplay.

Moving on... Okay, not really.

The backstories could also be a gold sink (apparently GW needs a few more) provided by 'Jimmy the Record Keeper [Namechanger/backstory-er]' (as mentioneed in my first post), costing 500g to change the story.


Thanks for reading this bit,
Peterac.

I don't see why not. Text doesn't take up that much storage space. It might take a little bit of time to implement what's needed for a little personalized window of text for background story, and you're right there would have to be channels through which one could report inappropriate stories, but ultimately it should be a relatively small update. At least compared to something less aesthetic and more related to gameplay.

I actually really enjoyed that little feature of CoH/CoV. Even if it was hard for me to write anything that fit within the allowed amount of words! I felt it really gave my characters greater depth and gave me a more immersed experience in that I could click on any other player and have the option to read their background story, which were often very creative and sometimes offered insight into what kind of player it was.

Maybe something like a new book that has pages filled in after you do certain things?

/signed, cool idea.

I don't know. I think you included "namechanger" in your idea to make many of the people who feel indifferent to say they like the idea. I guess it makes sense to combine the ideas, but I think, the namechanger idea is the stronger one.

There's a word for this suggestion too (just like the last four I posted in!)

what's the word?...oh yea...copied. This idea has been in ever single D&D ripoff in the gaming world (which sadly includes this since D&D is the start of all rpgs) and thankfully gw left out of it, I'd prefer keeping this kinda thing out because people will brag about their "cool" backgrounds...and I don't wanna hear the morons speak.


...somehow I think I just set myself up for a mild insult...just can't figure out where...

I like this idea. as I've already got backstories for some of my characters, would be neat to share them and read other characters stories.

/signed

Yes yes yes! Every time I make a character I see some sort of story that goes with them. Granted I've been wanting to write short stories and such but I think this would be cool. /signed

As long as no one forces me to read their poorly written dribble, I'm all for it.

/signed

My inner fangirl is screaming right now, but it's a good scream.

/signed

Ah well, you get that with people boasting about armor all the time. As if this option would be any different. Besides, I highly doubt that niche would be remotely literate enough to form a coherent, braggable background profile about their characters.

Secondly, he forwarded a few examples, so it's not like he claims it's an original idea.

/Signed, Patty baby.