Why GuildWars is Dying and How This Idea (player ratings) will save it.

As a disclaimer, I don’t actually know that GW if dying or if my idea will really do anything to stave off any problems, but it seems like provocative thread titles get a lot more responses.

That being said, I do actually think there are some fundamental problems going on in GuildWars that are detracting from the game’s long-term viability and that I think can be addressed in several ways. I can summarize my thesis as follows:

For the GuildWars business model to prosper, it needs to both attract new customers and retain existing players to purchase future expansions.

The game must therefore simultaneously provide a welcoming environment for new players, and a continuously challenging but fun experience for existing players.

Those two goals are made difficult to reconcile and otherwise hard to achieve with the current design for several reasons:

1. Players play for different reasons at different times.
2. Both the best experiences and worst experiences in the game involve interaction with other people.
3. The key to getting a good experience versus a bad one is grouping with people with compatible goals and mindsets.
4. Factions’ alliances rendered the ability of guilds to facilitate this goal much more difficult.
5. Removing alliances is not feasible or desirable
6. Nightfall’s introduction of Heroes rendered the ability of PUGs to facilitate this goal much more difficult.
7. Removing Heroes is not desirable or feasible.
8. Scammers can ruin the game for new or careless players.
9. Outright bans of all players engaging in behavior that could be considered scamming is not feasible.
10. Leechers, AFK’ers can ruin the game for other players.
11. There are many problems associated with automatically identifying deliberate abuse of the system by players versus innocent situations that resemble planned cheating.
12. Behavior annoying to some made possible by the anonymity inherent in GuildWars is common and arguably more prevalent than in other MMOG’s.
13. The freedom to behave as one chooses is part of the appeal of a fantasy environment and any constraints should be applied extremely carefully.
14. The best way to handle most of the above is to give the players information and choice.

Whether you are going to be open to my suggestion depends a lot on of you agree with the above. If you don’t agree with it, feel free to disagree (or 1. flame, or 2. say “I stopped reading when…,” or 3. read only one or two sentences (maybe just the title) from the post and respond to what you imagine I’m saying, or 4. attach your unrelated idea to my thread instead of starting your own, or 5. Imply that I am deficient in some way because through your superior gameplay, you have rendered my concerns moot). These are all very common approaches to responding to provocative threads and I would not want to deprive anyone from these excellent rejoinders.

With the legal stuff out of the way, let me first provide some backup for each point.

1) Players play for different reasons at different times. I think this is trivially true, but my point is that it is even true for the same person over time and with different characters. When you first start, you are playing to learn – both the mechanics and conventions of the game. Sometimes you’re playing to progress the plot. Sometimes you’re playing to achieve a particular goal: Masters, Bonus. Sometimes you’re playing for human interaction. Sometimes you’re playing to cooperate. Sometimes to compete. Sometimes to show off your cool gear. Sometimes, you’re working on your survival title. Sometimes you’re there to explore a few fuzzy map areas. Sometimes to share your wisdom with others. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

2) Both the best experiences and worst experiences in the game involve interaction with other people. I think this is fairly inarguable, too. The most fun missions (for me) were with full human groups working together like a well-oiled machine or finding a good player with a good sense of humor. The most unpleasant (for me again) involved very annoying behavior by other players. Yes, succeeding or failing a mission with hero/henches can be satisfying or frustrating, but never quite on the same level as when other players are involved.

3) The key to getting a good experience versus a bad one is grouping with people with compatible goals and mindsets. Again, obvious, right? If you are there to learn a particular mission, but others are there get a Master quickly as possible, and still others are there to have some amusing interaction with other players, this group will be an exercise in frustration for all. The new player will wonder why the master player is yelling at him. The master player will be frustrated by the novice and annoyed by the casual player. The casual player will be mystified by the, to him, overly goal-driven master player. None of these players is playing the game wrong. What is wrong is for them to play together and expect the group to function to their liking.

4) Factions’ alliances rendered the ability of guilds to facilitate this goal more difficult. My experience with guilds has been less than stellar since the introduction of Factions. My typical experience is as follows. A new guild is formed looking for members – advertised as low-pressure, friendly, casual, helpful, etc. I join guild. Leadership positions are highly sought after by others for Alliance Chat, but not by me. Guild starts off as advertised. Sometimes people ask for money, help, items, materials. I always help guildies if asked and almost never ask in return. Guild eventually reveals that it wants to either join or maintain its status in an alliance. In order to achieve that goal, faction is required. All members are expected to supply X amount of faction per Y unit of time. This is not my idea of a good time, as I already have a job, so guild and I agree to part ways. Repeat. I’m sure PVP guilds still work out fine, but it seems that PVE guilds are not holding together as they did pre-Factions.

5) Removing alliances is not feasible or desirable. The concept of an alliance is very clever and a now fundamental part of GuildWars, and there is nothing really stopping guilds from ignoring the faction competition aspect to it. I am not proposing that ArenaNet change it, although others have suggested changing how control of the Deep and Urgoz work. These changes could take some of the faction-grind pressure away from guilds and I would support such changes. On the other hand, I respect if people enjoy the PVE competition between guilds.

6) Nightfall’s introduction of Heroes rendered the ability of PUGs to facilitate this goal much more difficult. I have immensely enjoyed outfitting and controlling and experimenting with my heroes. This has allowed me to avoid PUG’s almost entirely. I’m about to take my 6th character thru the Realm of Torment and I’ve done it nearly all alone excepting the last two missions. I have to admit the game has gotten rather lonely, despite the nearly utter elimination of bad experiences. I’ve sacrificed the high’s and low’s of PUGs for the now boring certainty of heroes. As most experienced players are finding success with heroes, the success rates among the remaining pool of players looking for human groups has worsened which pushes ever more players to go for heroes or to get frustrated. I think that if Nightfall was my first campaign how disappointed I might have been. With Prophesies, there were always other good players forced to group with us new players and show us the ropes. (Confession: my first character was a healing breeze Whammo.) I doubt the first-time player to Nightfall has anywhere near the number of early-in-the-game good group experiences that I had. I further doubt that I’d still be playing GW if my first experience was that of new players these days.

7) Removing Heroes is not desirable or feasible. I would personally go on strike if they tried to remove heroes now. There are so many times when you can’t get enough players otherwise, or you’re in a hurry, or you want to experiment. There would be a revolt of epic proportions if ArenaNet tried to reverse this gameplay element and I would grab a pitchfork. As much as heroes have tended to isolate players, there is no going back. Especially considering that each expansion will spread players ever more thinly (if the overall base growth fails to keep up), Heroes are here to stay.

8) Scammers can ruin the game for new or careless players. I remember the first time I stepped into Ascalon City. The atmosphere reminded me of a sleazy carnival with all the barkers trying to take advantage of new players, but I was smart enough to avoid all of the come-ons. Not all players are so lucky and finding that the black dye sold for 100g is worth many times that is an all-too-common experience. Right now, it’s the law of the jungle out there with little but a healthy dose of skepticism to protect oneself.

9) Outright bans of all players engaging in behavior that could be considered scamming is not feasible. There are simply too many players for ArenaNet to police trades. Also, sometimes a player is willing to take less that the theoretical market value of an item in the interest of time. Cheating should be deplored (e.g. the gold for platinum trick – swapping items with similar skins, etc.), but trying to get a good deal is also part of the game. An auction house would help a lot – or traders for everything, but a certain amount of risk makes trading fun. The key is to protect the players from the truly unscrupulous.

10) Leechers, AFK’ers can ruin the game for other players. Is any elaboration here really required?

11) There are many problems associated with automatically identifying deliberate abuse of the system by players versus innocent situations that resemble planned cheating. Sometimes a player really does need to go AFK because of an emergency. Some people can use a bot to simulate a live player, which could avoid the detection by an automated AFK detector. On the other hand, the other players, unlike an automatic system, usually can tell the innocent act from the deliberate cheat.

12) Behavior annoying to some made possible by the anonymity inherent in GuildWars is common and arguably more prevalent than in other MMOG’s. Whereas games like WOW dedicate a server to a small subset of the gaming universe and therefore players are much more likely to encounter each other repeatedly, any two players of the X million GuildWars gamers could find a way to play with each other. This means there is an anonymity factor far greater than that of similar games. Also, because it’s a one-time investment per chapter and characters can be leveled to the max rather quickly, the price of entry is low and there is generally less concern over one’s in-game reputation. Just like people are more likely to whoop it up when they go out of town, so are GW gamers more likely to act crazily with so few social constraints. Does the same thing go on in the other games? Sure. Does it go in at the same level as GuildWars. From my experience, it does not.

13) The freedom to behave as one chooses is part of the appeal of a fantasy environment and any constraints should be applied extremely carefully. Not all would say this freedom is a bad thing. Being able to be someone else for a while is part of the appeal of the RPG format. If the possibility of making a bad trade, for example, was totally eliminated, the game would lose something. Also, GuildWars has implemented all sorts of things to give players choices – both to play and behave as they like and to choose their interaction with others. Players can go PVE or PVP. High level areas act as a filter for poorer/newer players. Henches, heroes, friends lists, ignore lists, guilds are all tools to allow the player to choose exactly how to interact with the gaming world. The problem is all of these tools have tended to isolate players more and more. Collectively, with all of these improvements and the continued expansion of gaming real estate, some human element has been lost, and the game is suffering.

14) The best way to handle most of the above is to give the players information and choice. Ultimately, allowing the player to make choices is critical and fortunately, GW does an admirable job of providing choices. What it doesn’t give players is enough data to always make the best choice and that leads to frustration. My proposal is to provide a structure to give that information to the players. With that choice, players will be better armed to deal with scammers, new players, weak players, leet players, afk’ers, leechers, and rage-quitters.

The proposal: In-game user profiles and a player rating system.

The system would work as follows. Like titles, you would be able to tell others about your gaming style and desires for a particular mission, such as:

Skill Level (PVE):
1 - From “Be nice, I’m learning” to
2 - “I’m getting the hang of this”
3 - “I’m bringing another character through the game”
4 - “I’m skilled if I do say so myself”
5 - “Hardcore Veteran – Watch and learn”

SKILL Level (PVP):
1 - “I love a game that let’s a brand new player create a level 20 character!!!”
2 - “I’m getting the hang of this”
3 - “win some, lose some – but mostly win some”
4 - “Grizzled Veteran”
5 - “Gladiator Champ”

Openness to suggestions:
1 - From “I’m always looking for tips” to
…
5 - “I know what I’m doing, keep your opinions to yourself”

AFK probability
1 - From “My Life is GW” to
…
5 - “Sadly, Real Life often intrudes”

Cool Under Fire
1 - From “cool as a cucumber” to
….
5 - “Serenity now! Now I say!”

Tolerance for inexperienced players
1 - From “we all have to learn sometime” to
…
5 - “today is not the day I help the newbie”

Mission/Quest knowledge
1 - From “What’s a mission again?” to
…
5 - “My other 7 characters already have Masters”

Mission/Quest Expectation
1 - From “let’s see what happens” to
2 - “let’s just finish it please” to
3 - “let’s go for the bonus/Masters” to
5 - “Masters Only – I have already done this mission”

Other Considerations (checkboxes)
I’m a survivor.
I need to uncover the map.

These simple tags would allow the leet player and the new player to avoid each other. The guy who demands dedication can avoid the potential afk'er etc. It's all great, unless people communicate false information.

Shockingly, people in GW do not always tell the truth.

Next, the Player Ratings come into play, but only after successfully completing a mission or a quest or winning a PVP match. If you have self-rated yourself higher than a 2 on a 5 point scale, other players can provide feedback on your skill level. Using the same scale of options, they will assess your skill, tolerance, mission expertise, etc. Again, this applies only if you have made claims about yourself. Further, if the mission fails or if the battle is lost, no ratings will be allowed. Emotions always run high following a failure, so this negative skew is eliminated. Rage-quitters, however, will be subject to ratings if the other players complete the mission without him.

After a sufficient number of votes (200?), these ratings from other players will become available to you as an averaged number – a kind of community scorecard. You will then have the option to display your scores to others if you choose. No once is forcing you, but your claims about being a leet player once the ratings have been in effect for a long time might not be taken seriously if you don’t “show your cards.”

To prevent vote farming, multiple votes between two players will result in only the latest vote counting. Votes from members of your guild count as a .1 vote and votes from within your alliance count as a .2 vote to further discourage farming. All votes from members of a guild you’ve just joined will be striken from your tally. Missions and quests in the beginner regions/islands and pvp areas will not count. The last 5 missions of any campaign will have a doubled value and successful completions of elite missions will result in triple value votes.

Repeatedly running the same mission will cause the value of the votes for you to diminish and diminish – much like the anti-farming code affects drops. People will still be able to rate your mission knowledge, but not overall skill for repeatedly completing the same mission.

As skill levels vary by character, and some players share an account, each character will have separate ratings for all player-communicated/rated attributes.

For random arenas, PVP Skill player ratings will be treated as a kind of handicap. Players will be put together so that competing teams are evenly matched and all players equivalently skilled. This will be done based on the availability of players, of course, but for example, new players will be more likely teamed up with and play against other new players. If you are an unrated player or self rate yourself low, and you’re actually an experienced player, you will likely win a lot but your rating will rise until the matches begin to be more competitive. Over time, you can then use a high rating to get into highly-competitive PVP guilds. Let me admit that I don’t play PVP, so if something like this already exists, please keep the flaming to a low sear. This is just what makes sense to me from an outsider perspective.

Similar to player skill ratings, players will be able to rate each other upon the completion of a trade. If you were scammed, let your rating be a warning to others. Note that some forms of scamming are cause for banning (e.g., selling an account), so feel free to take screen shots to send to ArenaNet if you suspect a player is really underhanded. Your trader rating will accrue over time as well, and there be the option of the trader to display his player-rated title or not. For high dollar trades, players may insist on seeing the other person’s rating, but this is still the option of the each player. You may take a person’s unwillingness to share into consideration before a trade is made.

My biggest hope (hope, I said, not expectation) is that the subtle pressures of a player rating system will cause players to think a moment before tearing into someone. Nothing would really force anyone to change anything, but given the lengths people go to to acquire titles, I’ve got to believe this would have a positive effect on the overall community in ways that would make the initial and ongoing experience of players a lot more positive.

Anticipated negative responses to proposal and my responses:

A) Jerks will rate me poorly for kicks – no thanks! You don’t have to display your rating, and you don’t have to even allow yourself to be rated if you maintain a beginner status. If you are already so down on the user community, you’re probably only playing in guilds or with heroes anyway. Why worry? In general, I think this fear is overblown. It only seems as if every player is a tool. In reality, most players are actually pretty cool, but it only takes a few bad apples to ruin it for a lot of people. Cool people outnumber the not-so-cool. The ratings will be fine and fair over time.
B) The subtleties of my class will make it difficult for player to properly rate my skills. Other classes (MM’s & Monks) will have it easy. You play a mesmer, don’t you? Seriously, ratings will be comparable between classes, but likely not across classes. That means a “3.5” assassin may be recognized as a better player than “4.0” Monk. Players are smart. They take these kinds of biases into consideration.
C) All this math is too complicated. Relax. The people at ArenaNet are quite bright, indeed. It doesn’t have to work exactly as I’ve laid out. Players will figure it out quickly enough.
D) Your system is too complicated and subject to abuse. Can’t we just have a player kick system within missions? Player kicking is far more subject to abuse than this system. Imagine getting to the end of tombs with your PUG only to be vote-kicked before the greens dropped. Vote kicking only works after the experience has been nearly ruined anyway. No thanks to vote kicking. That being said, nothing says you couldn't do both. I just like mine better, natch.
E) You just don’t know how to play. I’ve pugged the hardest missions and never had a single mission fail once. If you were a good (leader/player/planner/sizer-upper of people) this wouldn’t happen to you. Go cry somewhere else luzor. Mom, I’ve talked to you about trolling on my game forums.
F) You really expect players to shape up because of your system? Get real. I only hope players will shape up. What this really allows is for players of like minds to find one another in this great big world we call GuildWars.
G) GuildWars isn’t dying and it’s irresponsible of you to suggest otherwise. It’s people like you who will ruin things with your constant negativity. Admit it. You didn’t get past the title of the thread, did you?
H) What we really need is more storage space and an auction house. Umm, I agree with you, but that isn’t what this thread is about.
I) I like French fries. C’mon Mom. Please!
J) I stopped reading when… If you couldn’t be bothered to read the post, why in the world would you spend time responding to… Oh, that’s right it’s because you’re a troll. Mom!
K) Shouldn’t this be posted in Sardalac? Umm, that is where I posted it.

good idea, albiet a bit complicated. signed.

I like the idea about the player skill titles. But it might become like PvP rank. People will not let you in unless you show your title, god forbid this become like pvp. I hate the rank system already. But it would be nice to know some peoples skill level and attitudes before letting them in your group so you can have a nice happy group. If this can be implemented so it is fair and not a bais to join a group sure thing, I would love it.

I have long felt a rating system is needed with the lack of community in this game. At the least it would allow like minded players to party together and help avoid some of the conflicts around. It would also help make some people think twice about their actions unless they purposefully want a bad rating.

Of course, abuse may still be an issue unless some type of 1 character 1 vote system is established. The safeguards you listed would work nicely but I am sure some player will find a way to exploit votes.

Reputation smear campaigns could also be an issue if someone is petty enough to hold a grudge.

How would this be displayed without further cluttering towns?
Also, since it is an opt in system, just how many players will opt in? Rating a team would require a fair amount of time (we all know how some get bent out of shape by just the "waste" of a few minutes).

That said:

/signed - I generally think a rating system would be a good idea.

Just to mention that the player rating system may be a good idea, but it is not as easy as it seems (NO, the math is not simple, however bright you are! I'm part of the research community working on this topic and I can tell you this is still a really open issue). It requires a lot of careful design so that it can achieve its objectives with minimum "false positives" (=those real and honest players that couldn't get a good rating for reason XYZ). It is a desirable feature, but one that entails more problems that it seems (notably due to the fact that the "bad guys" are ready to go to great length to abuse any system, remember that they can make money out of this!).

There are many websites and applications out there implementing such reputation systems (a notable one is the one from slashdot.org) and it is quite an art, because whatever rules you use to define "reputation", there are always ways to defeat the purpose of the system, but this is fine if the cost of doing this is prohibitive (in the end, you want to make the life of those who try to (ab)use GW and its community). For example, collusion can always be a problem, e.g. a spammer owning several GW accounts and providing several good ratings for each of his accounts (there could be no way to say that these accounts belong to the same person, not even from IP addresses?), a bit like shill bidding in auctions, but one can detect if the ratings always come from the same people/account and then decrease those ratings accordingly (side effect: honest people who associate with less people will have lower ratings, but this is fine as long as the rating does not buy you anything, it is here to help find the bad guys).

It would also also need to be tweaked regularly in order to adapt to those who seek to bypass the limitations imposed by such a system (which would, ideally, enable to ban bots). And I think that there needs to be a lot of publicity on the principle before it is rolled out, as this is not necessarily something everyone will understand out of the blue. In the end, the success of such a system will also depend on the community (i.e. the good guys, those that do not want to (ab)use GW) using this feature often, so as to provide good "numbers" (i.e. ratings).

And there's always the problem of finding a nice and non-intrusive way of implementing this feature. If it's a "reputation window", there's the risk of it not being used (and thus not providing good enough ratings). If it's by adding a symbol/button next to avatars, there's the risk of people being annoyed, but it could also lead to more ratigns being provided. And there's always the possibility of adding a command, or one button in the chat window (next to the IGN maybe?).

post-edit: I realised that what the OP called "rating" is something different: you rate other people, not you! That's the whole point, because otherwise anyone can lie about their abilities (and after all it's very subjective, as many people mention, e.g. look at the PUG thread, some people think of themselves higher that they actually ARE). The rating is here to sort-of give a community opinion on a character (possibly player if you aggregate all his character ratings). It can be seen as a social status, but shouldn't be confused with fame or rank: its ultimate goal is to help in detecting the bots and people abusing GW (but one should still contribute to it by rating people so as to make this efficient).

post-edit 2: the rating system could also use the guild system, as often guilds are made of people that know each other well. But this is not an aspect of GW I know well...

I'm not an afker, don't worry.
*goes afk*

As in the greatest YTMND ever made, lol internet!

First...congrats on writing the longest post I'll ever read.

Second...comes after I read it..

Ok...I'm done reading...half of it...

But for your proposed idea, it should NOT work like titles. Profile should be very different from title. It should not be "gained" by doing something in game, instead, it should be something that the player can choose which to display. Reason? Because you don't know how many accounts out there are bought from other (veteran) players. So newbies with an already "veteran" account is not going to become a verteran instantly.

/signed

I really like this idea, and how you've spent a lot of time elaborating this. Although, it should be completely different from titles, because titles have been created so that the higher the better. Therefore you can't rate players with titles, because your idea only serves for directing people with the same profile to find each other easily. This should be a completely new panel on the Hero [H] panel, and I believe ANet has enough capacities to make it work out even better than how you've designed the concept.

I know that unfortunately this might not help out on the Stretch tendency that Guild Wars has. For example, if you are looking forward doing the Ring of Fire mission, there is far too few people for anyone to even bother with this Profile feature, it's either grab the 8 players around (if there are that many), or use heroes/henchman. Honestly speaking, it's as ineffective as Party Search on Tyria/Cantha, where the population is too small to even bother opening the Party Search window, you just use the chat for few people.

Off-topic: Why do I think Party Search is ineffective? Simply because we have 4 continents with countless outposts and people willing to do something might not be willing to be stuck to an outpost to maintain his Party Search ad. With more sorting options, and more options of how to make the Party Search advertisement, we could see this feature to its fullest working cross-continentally.

I like your suggestion very much.
I also agree with some of the other people here abotu the title part.

GW should just have a profile and these titles that you suggest should be part of it.
Other things that could be added are number of completed missions in a certain map, so

14/25 Phrophecies Mission Complete.
150/270 Elite Skill Captured.
Survivor.

You know what simply be able to add most of the current titles that you can achieve,that way you can show that you have carthogropar (sp?) ,friend of the kurzicks and Skill Hunter all at the same time.

Every single one of these should be optional, so you could choose to add all of them or you can choose to hide for example number of missions completed because you payed for a run with this character cause its your 4th character.

well thought out and well stated.I like the idea,i would probably change a couple of the title names but thats just personal prference of course.good job/signed

O-o;;;

Jesus I can't believe I read that and I thought I wrote long OPs...

at any rate i like the idea as well as other stuff that people have posted already. I like the idea of a profile card/window rather than titles, and more than if you typed a command all that information just spilled out into the window.

with a profile card/window, you could..iunno shift+ctrl click a person or something or right click on the person or something (and this would only work in outposts/towns so as not to cause any command changes in explorable areas) and a window no bigger than the hero window would pop up and you could see their profile there. This would include all of those attributes (the "titles") as well as the voting. It could also really be like a profile card and the player could have a little description as well as a list of all the other characters along with their age to further give some insight as to how long the person has played. All that is optional, however.

Uh, one thing I'm *not* so clear about is whether or not those "titles" are optional to the player or if they like..just appear. Cos a person could check the top one but they're really not. Or is that what the voting system affecting?

Otherwise, I like it. It would definitely help bring groups that would work well together...well, together! I would only caughtion against possible biases that *could* arise as well as people might randomly PM the person and thus cause some annoyances

Random Dude: "OMFG A GIRL WTF OMGZ HIHIHIHIHI"
Victimized Girl: "....*ignore.*

(>_> Yes that's happened to me...*coughcough* not like that though xD)

Though it would help with gender discrepancies.. though people could still lie xD

Anyway, that's..not really on topic. Okay a more on topic general annoying PM

Random newbie: "Hello Mr. Uber l33t player can you help me plz????"
Victimzed Legitimate Experience Player: "...*ignores because it's the 20th person within 10 minutes and would have helped otherwise*"

It's 2 in the morning give me a break >_>

like i said it's a cool idea, and i'm all for it as long as tweaks and clarification are done o.o

Very nice, very thought out thread

I would like to see a feature like this implemented, but like others have said a profile window would be more preferable compared with a title.

And as far as people owning multiple accounts voting for themselves/getting guild members to vote for each other, hopefully if this feature was to run and be used for a long time scale then all biases/self voters should be minimal.
As the OP has stated only 1 vote from 1 person would count, therefore (unless someone does own 200 accounts =S) then biases would be minimal.

I was writing this over lunch and this thought popped into my head

2 days ago i was bored with exploring, and therefore i was helping people through the zen dajui(sp?) mission that day i helped maybe 6-7 groups out of then 30-35 people only 1 person (as far as i can remember) said thank you, not just to me but to the team, and many people left as soon as we got to the docks, so how many people would use this system if it were to be implemented?

Dark

Player Rating and Goal Orientation has been discussed before, but you did a rather good job of it.

On a side note, I hope we get full Hero parties and some outstanding content in the future too. Easier gameplay may reduce drop off, but it doesn't draw people to play. When you know the next chapter is just going to be another new class which isn't so different, and the next chapter will be much of the same gameplay with new paint, it really doesn't propel players to continue. I would have to say that so far, Nightfall is the best chapter, and at the same time, I haven't even put in the time to continue it because I'm not really interested in GW anymore. I would have to say that no video game can compete with women, so maybe it will never be as appealing as it once was, but without some outstanding attractions and interesting features, I really don't see myself returning for chapter 4, I am more interested in spending time with new friends at gatherings or even in whatever game they play.

Heres hoping the next generation of GW has some of the spectacular I have been suggesting all along.

Enforcing social responsibility through ranking system doesn't work. Proven in every environment it was tried at.

Why? Consequences.

Just because someone has a number next to their name, doesn't mean anything. This is also extremly volatile system due to human nature and limited interaction present in Guild Wars.

Once you abstract a player to a number, or a set of numbers, you take the human side out of the equation.

Social responsibility comes from the need of reliance on others. When you cannot do something without the others, you'll either give up, or adapt to others' expectations.

Why do people in other MMOs behave "better". 1 world, 10,000-15000 active players. Assuming person's social sphere at 150 people it's easy to see, that everyone on such server is a friend of a friend.

Why are heroes perceived as a trigger for this? Exactly because since they were introduced, you no longer need to group for anything. Hence, everyone became self reliant. All 3 chapters are perfectly completable with heroes.

Ranking doesn't change that. Humans will always gravitate towards self-reliance.

The only solution is to offer subtle advantages to players for interacting with others. Not title rewards, they require exploitation and grinding ("STFU noob, i have Serenity now title"), but gameplay, which rewards cooperation and teamplay. Current game doesn't.

In GW, that will not happen. Its target market, as well as the apeal of no fee, combined with anonimity of one server makes it impossible.

These issues have always existed. They were just exposed since nightfall, since social constraints were finally taken out of the picture.

If you want enjoyable experience, do what many have done since start. Join a guild, turn off spatial chat.

Your idea, like many similar ones, causes exactly the issues that other titles do: Time spent does not mean anything. Titles don't mean anything. People can work at one job for 30 years, and be completely incompetent. In other case, you might have an intern come in and play with the big boys from day 1.

Ironically, titles that reward people who play a lot actually bring out the worst people. Why? Let's be realistic here: The more time someone spends in a game, the less likely they are to have sufficient real world social interaction.

Too complicated.
For title/profiles, I wait for Anet to do exactly like modern IMessengers. A title where you write whatever you want in it ("AFK", "chatting", "Selling stuff", etc...) and a customisable status on the friend/guild list ("Eating", "Sleeping", "farming"), with an automated AFK status after 5 minutes of no trigger on keyboard/mouse. That is, what exactly is implemented already in messengers.
Your idea is good, just too complicated. Just let the player wear a custom title and a custom status, and your profile is ok.
/half signed

On the rating system, for 150 gold, I distribute one good rating.
You understand ? It's only one way to abuse it. Many can come up with better ideas.
So
/not signed.

obviously you have given this a lot of thought. kudos for that. i support anything that will make the GW community better.

The rating system can be designed in such a way that this behaviour would not be a problem, as long as not too many people are greedy (anyway, if it was the case, GW would probably have been screwed a long time ago) and understand that screwing the rating system would actually make the life of spammers/bot-makers much easier, and thus your pleasure on GW much lower. As long as such a rating is understood as something completely different from fame/rank but as a feature to kickban those that suck the juice out of GW, it should work.

There are loads of reputation systems out there, all with various features to try to catch a certain definition of what a "bad guy" is. I guess GW could also benefit from that, because I doubt that bots bring anything to the community (it rather brings money to the small group of bot owners, who then break the EULA and abuse this game and the larger GW community).

It's a bit like spam: when it started and for quite some years, it was bearable, people wouldn't mind deleting 10-100 emails a day and would hope that social responsibility would bring an end to the madness (social responsibility and ratings can work together nicely, as long as the latter is not created to replace the former), good filters were invented and better products sold; but nothing worked (not even spamming the spammers) and now that 70% of email communication is completely useless and rubish spam, it's a bit late to do a u-turn and introduce deep changes into the email system. So I hope that this topic can move ahead with ideas from the community.

This is exactly where you are wrong: a rating system MUST NOT at any cost be designed, not even advertised, as something that can do that! It SHOULD be for kickbanning those that do not "contribute" to the game and the community, like you and I could do (i.e. we don't spam, bot, or play GW to gain a benefit outside of its world).

The human factor is always the most important thing, the one at the core of our interactions. But this "magic number" is not here to tell us who's better than who, it's supposed (if it is well designed) to help make the GW world a better place, in the sense that it doesn't have bot-spammers (look at the thread on the snowball fights, if I remember correctly, being no more fun at all because of these nasty people that have no interest in the beauty or challenge of GW).

It's a bit like a passport: you don't need one to say who's good or bad, it will probably not help you determine who is or isn't, but this is still very helpful to help spot those that want to abuse the system. A good reputation system is either used to find the best person providing a service/information, or to find the person that harm the community, and the community can still find them by other means! The "number" is just here to help, even when you've got suspects, the number is not enough to "prosecute"

Im actually really sick of people suggesting the game is dying, so to write in your header that it is, just to get attention has earned you an automatic...

.../not signed to what ever else you wrote.

I like the concept of the idea, but at the same time I agree that there could be several blatant abuses:

1. Paying for rankings. WTB one positive response for 100 gold spams come to mind.

2. Discrimination similar to PvP Ranks. Remember the good old days in HoH (now HA) where you'd see "GLF Rank 3 Warrior - show emote or you won't be accepted". Now imagine the same in PvE. It's hard to "get in" if you don't have the rank/title, which discourages new players, and that becomes a vicious circle.

3. Ranking abuse. Although you mentioned a partial response to this, it is very, very easy to get in an argument with someone in game, especially if you are the organizer of a party. Imagine your PuG goes into a mission and fails. Who do you think will get most of the negative responses, whether or not it was their fault?

I posted this in some other thread and I will do it again:
"Most of the titles doesn't really make you a pro:
1. OMG I AM R13, I grinded and I play HA all day. I ran IWAY and SF = I am PROZ!
2. OMG I GOT ULTIMATE SURVIVOR! I had someone to run me and got pwr leveled because I am rich.
3. OMG I GOT FRIENDS OF KURZICKS TITLE! I ran the Faction run as a doorman, I am pro.
4. OMG I GOT CHESTRUNNING! I had a full team of pro runners and I didn't even get hit, once. IT'S TRUE I AM INVINCIBLE!

And this title is unnecessarily complicated."

Do something about stuff like this instead of making Anet change every little thing. Use your hands, they are there for a reason. Type, communicate, you know, like talking over the internet? Yeah it's really not that hard. Ask people you invited to your party.
Next thing you know, you want a detail report on everything someone's character has ever done in his entire GW experience, and what happened in his real life into a diary that is organized in a proper fashion.

And GW is dying due to 2 things:
1. GW is not innovative after 3 chapters.
2. WoW.

Let me respond to those those critiques I didn't anticipate in my original post (Sorry I won't be able to respond rapidly like a conversation. Other obligations and all.)

I agree that PVE elitism is a concern and could even be a deal breaker. The goal of the whole thing is to allow players with similar attitudes, playing styles, expectations, and yes skill level to get together. I would personally want to group up with people at or around my level or higher skilled players who have some patience or less-skilled players willing to take a little direction. I think this system would allow for that, and that there are safeguards built in, but some elitism might be inevitable. Yours is a legitimate concern, but I think the benefits would generally outweigh the risk you describe.

Thanks for the support!

I don't think smear campaigns could really work. Remember, you have to group with a person for 15-30 minutes and successfully complete a mission in order to earn the right to apply a single, non-repeatable vote. The organization required to plan huge numbers of people to all group with this single person all separately and then all rating the person falsely after working to complete a mission. Honestly, I don't think a smear campaign is possible. Moreover, most of the extremes of the ratings aren't good or bad - They represent playing styles. Beginner versus Veteran. Teacher versus Stoic. Player-taught versus versus self-taught. Demanding versus forgiving. Have a life versus GW is my life. You get the idea. The "smear" would tend to push you from one style to another - Hardly a scarlett letter. Also, it's the player's choice to display the rating. I think you are right to be concerned, but I believe I've thought that through.

As for screen clutter, I hadn't given that one a lot of thought. I guess it could be an adjunct to the party search screen. You hover your mouse over those players LFG and a little screen pops up showing what if anything that player communicates about his or her playing style/mission expectations. That would be nice.

As far as the time involved in voting, I would put a big cancel button on the vote screen that comes up after the successful mission. If the player can't be bothered to vote, do you really want their vote. Voluntary is best. Choice is what this is all about.

If a player repeated goes AFK, and other players tag that player as such, they will earn a score of (what did I call it?) "Sadly, life intrudes" instead of the "GuildWars is my Life". For missions where AFK is of concern, players can demand this rating be shown. That would be one form of "elitism" I could support.

The system is specifically designed to address this concern (among others).

With all due respect.....Wait there was a proposition in that beast of an essay?? Guess ill have to go back and read all 30 pages of it...heres my rating system..

1. Casual Guru poster(me)
2. Posts on a certain forum once every couple days
3. Goes on probably once aday to see whats up
4. Goes on once aday for 2 hours at a time
5. OMFG Hardcore Essay Writer that spends 5 hours typing a forum on his own opinion that the game dosent suit him...so clearly its dying :\ (you)

Come on.....if you think the game is dying then go play something else. Its your own opinion that some things should be changed. Face it there will always be people in the world that are like me and its our goal to ruin your fun (im kidding, i love GW and play it relgiously). Facts are the facts and those facts are that the world is filled with A$$holes. And another thing...complaining and posting petitions on GWG really does nothing. Do you think ANET is going to log on here and read this and say. "Hey wow this person dosent like the way the game looks like its going so lets change it according to his personal preference"

People in the world will always be there to ruin what you want to do for fun. A nice easy way to fix that it ...Put up and Shut Up

Cool ideas. Very nice. And I totally agree about the optional part. That is what it's all about.

Thanks for kind words, and, yes, optional. I should have been more clear (or less wordy ).

Thank you.

Your point about the long run smoothing out biases and is soo true and I should have stressed it more in my OP. I knew it was too short.

I even have some ideas about how the more recent votes should count more than the older votes or that old votes start to drop off after some time. That is, use exponential smoothing or moving averages for the mathematically inclined.

As far as the few thank you's received, imagine the potential friendliness that could occur when groups know the ratings will come. It might swing the other way - if only at first. But as I've said elsewhere, if a person can't be bothered to vote, you don't really want that vote anyway.

I like the idea of the AFK/Chatting/Selling stuff profile - even better if that profile appeared on your friends' and guildies' friends and guild screens.

As for paying to get a "good" vote,

A) You have to complete a non-trivial mission with the person,
B) there is no way to know how a person voted for you. I can't believe people would pay for something that there is no way to know if you got it or not.
C) Suppose even after everything I said above, someone figures a way around. People are clever, as you suggest. This person goes out and pays a bunch of people to honestly sell fake ratings to inflate his skill level. Now this person goes out with some pickup groups with an obviously wrong rating. 7 other people per mission quickly bring this person's paid ratings back into line. I don't see the potential for abuse you imply.

Mom, Mom, Mom Mom Mom.

I did read the whole thing and many people have agreed to this idea. A problem that you said was that everybody will run into someone that'll hate their guts. What does the angry guy do? Makes the others' (can be more than one lol) rating worse which can be oooogly! Also there's always those people that try to be funny then giving that guy a bad rating too. I personally can get "overexcited" about the game and totally flip out, and uuh... my rating will go down the toilet.
I do accept any new player for I do believe that the new people in the game, are the ones keeping it going because if the people on the game are total asses then that player will tell anybody he/she meets not to get it. And those titles can potentially do that because there are some picky people out there you know. So then, a new guy with that "I'm still learning" title tries to join people who are on their 2nd-8th+ character and then id denied. Well that's not nice. Then a pro tries to join a new people group. Generally the new people will let he/she join, but sometimes they want a NEW people party ONLY group which therefore pushes the "pro" out.
I did see you mentioning about Factions ruining the "spirit" of the guild. Yes there are times when the alliances are all crabby about faction. What do I do as a leader? I let my people do whatever they want lol, therefore my faction drops since I'm such a cool leader that I relax then my guild gets kicked for "leeching" no matter what my guild has done to help the alliance (guild battles, money...).
But just to sum it all up, I don't think there should be these titles because it'll make the game look like a whole competition for ratings since people are likely to say, "please give me a good rating so I can get a super-duper title." No, that's not what this game is about. Titles are fancy sure, but not the centralized focus of the game.
If people are going to be stingy and anal about having pros everywhere, they're not challenging themselves to play a game that's suppose to be challenging. What do leechers, scammers, rage quitters do? They add a level of difficulty to the game which I would call, REALITY. Therefore, these titles will take away the "reality" of the human mind away from the game and then taking away many challenges from the game itself.
/notsigned
clearly elaborated, just will not work.

You are making GW unnecessarily complicated, and people don't like complicated stuff because they have to actually think for themselves.
Democracy fails, so obviously Anet has to pull a Dictatorship on this one.

Interesting....but it wont work.

No way no how never. Player ratings in a cut throat enviroment such as an online game. I dont care how you rationalise it, what kind of safeguards you think you can build into it, it will never work.
Your idea is so insane I have to wonder.
Think about it, letting the player base of Guildwars rate each other, FTL, that would be the day I quit for good.
Not that I dont think your heart is in the right place, because you obviosly took a lot of time, and thought was put into this, I just think you are giving way too much credit, to a community that, in my eyes, has done absolutley nothing to prove itself worthy of such responsibility, and never really can given the anonymous nature of online gaming, and that is just the way it is.
Its a non starter as far as I am concerned, and always should be.

I can understand your cynicism; however, the entire point of the system proposed is to remove some of that anonymity. Whenever you are grouping with someone you have no idea of their play style unless you play 20 questions with them. This system's purpose is to allow play style and expectations to be known in a glance.

Even the most ardent jerk of a player would enjoy being known as a jerk if such a rating existed. Afterall, isnt that the entire point of bullying and taking advantage of people: attention.

hallomik, I do believe you have made a decent framework. "Smear" campaigns, though difficult, could be done if someone is determined enough. Would be a lot of work with a system like yours, but then you can never tell what lengths some people will go. As long as the system does not enable any banning or any type of suspension based on rating if instituted, "smears" and buy offs would only last so long before the true colors of the player shows through.

I appreciate you reading it all. Think of it as an "elite mission" post that only the top forum readers can get thru.

Begging for particular ratings (attempted bribery even) will surely occur. I believe I've addressed elsewhere why this fear is legitimate, but overstated - no one knows how you voted, the ratings are not good/bad but represent playing style. Also, begging is kind of annoying, so beggars I imagine will learn through this system the "community" doesn't approve of it.

As for the various player types adding reality to the game, I agree with your point. This system doesn't ban or eliminate that behavior. For all the reasons outlined in my OP, it will surely still occur. If my proposal worked, the effect would be to reduce it. Are you really against that?

Agreed with antheus, it just has too many complications.

Also, it just won't happen because of money. ***holes will stop playing the game, because no matter what system you try, you will be "forced" to show your titles because people will ask to see them, not showing means its low, and since they cant be a jerk they'll stop playing. I know anet doesn't like ***holes in general, but they do like ***holes that pay . ***holes don't stop people from playing GW also, seeing as they're a fact of life that everyone adapts to. So its a big loss monetarily for anet, and I wanna see more sequals even if I have to put up with ***holes.

Also this is terrible for newbies. Someone with an "inexperienced" title will never get a group. You can argue they can just group with henchies, but do you honestly want the gw community to start with having to do the first X missions with henchies?

P.S. You may want to condense your initial posts a bit, it'd be a shame if you write some artwork like that and people don't like it. Trust me I know, check out my leet "Wilds Pathfinder" title lawl.

This may be not be the right place for this post, as everyone is responding to the idea of player ratings - but I'd like to respond (briefly) to the title.

The only concern I have about the expansion of GW is that new areas keep getting developed (yes I said it). People drop off and people join up but overall, I'd say the pool of players is quite thin to support three maps. As others have pointed out, there are barely enough players to facilitate a community outside of Nightfall. When I first started playing GW, it was Tyria only, and every town you went to had plenty of players. Some for farming, some for questing, some for missions only.

Either way - there were enough players to find a team for what you wanted to do!

IMHO - Anet needs to introduce some funky new features to draw people back to the old maps instead of spreading the world out further. For example (albeit examples already expressed by many):
- Introduce some new races;
- Introduce some NPCs like steeds or some such crap;
- How about a hybrid of PVE and PVP? What about allowing one team to play the bad guys on a PVE mission and letting the regular team come through and try to obtain the mission?
- Maybe for those people with uber machines and bandwidth, make some areas accessible to anyone at anytime (not just the group that zones)
- expand the party styles and sizes;
- offer new ways to complete the existing missions (maybe going through a mission without aggroing something like the watch towers in Nightfall?);
- introduce new bosses (almighty ungodly bosses maybe - with extended team sizes);
Add more rares or elites to existing places; add new quests to old places;

These may or may not be good ideas, but the underlying theme is thus: Improve, tweak and mod the existing map with new features and you'll obtain a greater sense of community because there will actually be PEOPLE where you are. Oh - and reduce the reliance on monks already - talk about egos.

You know, I've always been against a player rating system due to the griefing and elistism others have mentioned, but you have a very well thought out system.

You avoid guild/alliance/multiple account buffing with your 1 vote per person and "guild votes count less" idea.

You avoid most griefing by forcing people to complete a mission with someone before they can vote. How many people would go through an entire mission just to give some stranger a single bad vote? You can perhaps even extend the protection by saying lower rated players' votes count less. The low rated players will either be griefers who were voted down or actual beginners. Beginners usually have no idea what builds their allies are using and how well they are using them, so it would make sense that their opinion of someone would count a little less than a veteran.

The flaw in the system isn't griefing or artifical rating buffing though...it's getting people to use the system properly. As others have pointed out, most PUG's finish a mission and disband right away, most times without even a "thank you" or "nice job". How can you expect people to be patient enough to rate 7 others? There's no real incentive to rate others. In fact, we could see a situation similar to what we see on the forums. Few people are compelled to make positive posts, but as soon as someone sees something they don't like...off to the forums they go! There could be a general trend to just vote for the people that did poorly.

Secondly, there is the issue of how to judge other players. I'd classify myself as an accomplished veteran. I have at least one of every character type through at least 2 campaigns and I read these forums regularly to see the latest PvE build ideas and such, so I am extremely familar with all the classes strengths and weaknesses, common builds, etc. But even with all this knowledge, when I am in a mission, my job is to fulfill my role, not observe what others are doing. So how would I know whether or not they are doing a good job? In fact, the only people able to accurately rate others are people who I would rate down for paying more attention to the group than fighting!

It becomes a "shades of grey" issue. Sure the group makes it through the mission, but maybe the tank was bad and we had a really good healer? My monk is my primary character and I can tell you that they would be the hardest to judge. Most people unfortunately believe deaths = bad monking. I've had level 5 monking outings where the whole group nearly wiped and level 3 monking outings where everything went just peachy.

Now I know your ratings are designed to indicate playstyle, not necessarily player skill, but the ratings WILL become all about player skill. And there's simply no way to adequately judge who gets a 2, 3 or 5. So for this reason, may I make these suggestions:

Keep your self evalution idea. It lets players indicate to others how they feel like playing and if they think they are a veteran or not. Sure some people might lie, but I doubt many beginners will go around with "hardcore veteran" showing. At least this will get people in the ball park for the most part. And more importantly the playstyle thing will get people on the same page.

Second, instead of a complicated peer evaluation system, simplify it so that its usable. At the end of a mission or quest (after everyone resigns I guess), there will be a countdown timer similar to what is at the end of every PvP battle or tombs...say 15-30 seconds. During this time on the party menu, on each person's health bar (or next to it like when someone calls a target) there will be a + and - symbol. You can vote someone down, up or not vote at all. This is quick and simple. (Side note: People could also use this time to cap skills from end of mission bosses. It's another common request around here to give players more time to cap skills from such bosses)

To keep your protections in place, you can only vote for a person once ever. If you vote for someone a second time, it simply replaces your old vote. People with a -.5 or less rating should not be allowed to rate others. People with a -.75 or less should not be allowed in places like RA and Fort Aspenwood. (Sidenote: This would likely solve the leeching/quitting problem as everyone would immediately give leechers/quitters negative votes).

The other, deeper, problem with ratings is ratings are most useful where lots of people are gathered. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of places where people gather nowadays! Now I could create an entire thread on this, but I'll tack it on here. If you look at Prophecies, after everyone played through the game, they went to 1 of 3 areas: Tombs, Sorrow's Furnance or Temple of the Ages. Why? Because those were fairly challenging areas that had nice rewards (greens, ectos, shards). Something you can do over and over. What was introduced with Factions and continued with Nightfall was this whole "every boss has a green" idea which is a huge, huge mistake. The biggest worry with an ever expanding game is you stretch the playerbase to thin, so why not create more gathering places like SF or ToA instead of putting valuable items all over the map just to spread us even thinner.