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

targetdrone

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Oct 2006

12 Jan 2007 at 17:09 - 41
1) I don't think GW is dying. And I don't see a big need for this (or against this) - but you guys go ahead vote what you want.

But I find it silly that people vote /notsigned just because they think Anet isn't going to do it!

If you like the idea, vote for it and let Anet do what they want. Especially if you think Anet isn't ever going to do anyway.

Whereas it's different if you think Anet might do it - since Anet has limited resources its likely they won't implement all popular ideas.

2) As for trying to encourage humans to play with humans. Do people really want to play with other people esp in PvE?

I mean, I did already suggest an optional challenge mission that would _require_ human players (involved lev 20s ferrying/protecting low lev humans instead of boring old npcs, for rewards+records ), but hardly anyone here was interested.

As you suggested, many people are very happy not playing with humans- especially the people who know what they are doing and have unlocked many useful skills. They will be setting up their heroes to suit the way they like to play, and mostly avoid PvE play with "pesky" humans, until maybe the Domain of Anguish or other Elite areas.

As for the rest of the players... Oh well...

2b) The lack of stronger human-human ties is also probably partly due to players not being able to send messages to offline players, and not having a history log of the last 200 or more message box lines - so when you get code=007 you can reconnect, scroll up and get in touch with the party you dropped out of - without having to keep remembering to add people to Friends or noting their names down. If you forget to note their names down, once you get disconnected - it's like you never met them before. Good if you like a more anonymous and "faceless" environment.

It's also harder to arrange to "keep in touch", "get together" when the great party you played together with is offline and GW doesn't let you send them messages.

So it's mostly "Hi!", "1", "let's go!", "Thanks everyone, bye!".

But I guess that could be what people want for a "Lite" MMORPG aka WoW Lite .

Patrick Smit

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Nov 2006

NiTe

12 Jan 2007 at 17:32 - 42
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fril Estelin
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...
On your second paragraph:
You could limit the vote per account to 1, additional votes just allow un update, so they will change earlier votes, not add votes.

Lastly I think I wouldnt like my name smeared by some random ....... because he/she rages for not getting it the way he/she wants it, or he/she is just a griefer. It sounds all promising, but in the end its results might be much worse then what it will cure.

Patrick Smit

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Nov 2006

NiTe

12 Jan 2007 at 17:36 - 43
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fril Estelin
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...
On your second paragraph:
You could limit the vote per account to 1, additional votes just allow un update, so they will change earlier votes, not add votes.

Lastly I think I wouldnt like my name smeared by some random ....... because he/she rages for not getting it the way he/she wants it, or he/she is just a griefer. It sounds all promising, but in the end its results might be much worse then what it will cure.

Furthermore what do you do when an account is transferred from a "good" player to a one not deserving a penny? Don't implement it IMHO.

Fril Estelin

Fril Estelin

So Serious...

Join Date: Jan 2007

London

Nerfs Are [WHAK]

E/

12 Jan 2007 at 18:33 - 44
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Smit
Lastly I think I wouldnt like my name smeared by some random ....... because he/she rages for not getting it the way he/she wants it, or he/she is just a griefer. It sounds all promising, but in the end its results might be much worse then what it will cure.

Furthermore what do you do when an account is transferred from a "good" player to a one not deserving a penny? Don't implement it IMHO.
Sorry, but for the sake of this thread, I will stop continuing this discussion here, as my contribution is not really inline with the OP's contribution. I was delving into the problem highlighted in the OP's reasons number 9 to 12. Contrarily to the OP, I think that rating should NOT be mixed with a sort of new ranking, or the creation of categores/compartments of players. The social dimension MUST stay in the hands of players, not programs. But since scammers use programs, you try to defeat them with other programs (possibly program-assisted players, a bit like a police, this could give ideas to Anet for the future of GW, e.g. ranks that actually could transform you into a GW moderator or meta-moderator) And reason 13 is absolutely critical to the spirit of GW (but while I agree totally with the first half of reason 14, the the second half is not correct: such a system would actually limit the choices by creating classes/group of players which would then implicitly limit the possible interactions and evolution of players, the syndrom of the "once n00b, always n00b")

(but to answer your comment: the low rating should trigger a particular behaviour of the game for example, so that normal people complain while bots won't, this way only the bot account will be kickbanned (and the annoyed player could actually get some money as a compensation for the trouble )

Darksun

Darksun

Jungle Guide

Join Date: May 2005

USA

Karr's Castle

W/E

12 Jan 2007 at 20:07 - 45
First: Your title was REALLY BAD. GW has increased it's payers by 1 mill by each expansion.

Second: I would love a system of rating players but I think people have good reason to think it will be abused. For one: it's allways easier to remember to give a bad rating than a good one. And Second: Jerks/Rage quitters & Scammers can get their jerk posse to vote against legit players.

I just don't think human nature allows for a useful rating system to even WORK.

Fril Estelin

Fril Estelin

So Serious...

Join Date: Jan 2007

London

Nerfs Are [WHAK]

E/

13 Jan 2007 at 11:43 - 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darksun
For one: it's allways easier to remember to give a bad rating than a good one. And Second: Jerks/Rage quitters & Scammers can get their jerk posse to vote against legit players.

I just don't think human nature allows for a useful rating system to even WORK.
All of this is wrong. There are so many examples, but I would like to cite only one: slashdot.org. Many years ago, this was a place of flame wars, with groups fighting against each other (windows vs. Linux, commercial vs. free, americans vs. europeans, etc. etc. etc.), with so many people nitpicking, spamming, trolling, and so on. They designed their rating system (see more info here) so that: people would actually give credit to good posts/people (design objective: they wanted the system to show only the best contributions, while the ones with low rating would be hidden), so this invalidates your point one here; they introduced moderators to avoid abuses (and then meta-moderators to moderate the moderators) to the point that scammers would actually be invisible, which answer to your point two; they also assigned "Karma" points to everyone which would be used to moderated and would be earned if you have a post with high rating or moderate often (rules of moderation are quite complex) without a problem; and it SO worked that the slashdot community is so big that they have a "slashdot effect" (so many people following links given in their news can actually make a webserver collapse under the load ...).

It is all a question of careful and delicate design (once more, let's say again that people /= rating, i.e. your character is not only its XP or rank or fame, it's also its guild, its appearance, its history, its interactions with other characters, etc. etc. etc.), and also of transparency in the sense that the community should know what the system what designed for (many people sometimes "think" they know the system better than their designers...). And completely honestly, I think that there's probably the seeds of such a system in GW, Anet may be using internal ratings to detect fraudsters and scammers. But the rating system I was talking (which is different from the OP's one) was the occasion to push the effort a little bit further by asking the help of the community (and after all it's in our interests, the majority of us don't want to see GW become a WoW-like plagged with a subgroup of people greedy about virtual money or fame to the point that there's a game in the game, don't we?).

But I guess that since it's a social feature, if the community doesn't like it, it should only be implemented by Anet if there's a risk that the GW system will collapse under the assaults of the spam-scammers. As I said above, it's a bit like passports: the world could work without them (well nations can live without ID cards), but it would just be more painful for those managing the rules and (more importantly) damaging for the victims of those abusing the system. But a passport does NOT say who you are, it just says something useful about you.

Omnidragon42

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Oct 2005

Pantheon of Shadows [dei]

W/A

13 Jan 2007 at 12:07 - 47
tl;dr

/Not Signed.

Just kidding, I did read the post. Comments (short because I'm bout to go to sleep) -
The system you suggested is one that looks good on paper, but would fail in execution (like communism). It's too complicated, and basically unneeded. If you want to judge a players competency in PvE, have him ping his bar and ask a few basic questions. Takes 30 seconds to know if you've got the kind of person you want to play with.

PvP: I'm a pvp player. A title (display, whatever) for what you're suggesting is totally not needed. PvP players have Rank, Champion, Gladiator, Commander titles, as well as balth faction to tell how exp'd you are.

I would write more but it's late and I'm tired.

hallomik

hallomik

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: May 2006

The Illini Tribe

N/Mo

13 Jan 2007 at 13:52 - 48
Quote:
Originally Posted by gameshoes3003
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gameshoes3003
I personally can get "overexcited" about the game and totally flip out, and uuh... my rating will go down the toilet.
The fact that you think about that potential means you're already thinking about changes to your behavior. That tells me the system started to work when people are just thinking about it! Honestly, I flip out occasionally, myself. But the occasional flip-out won’t put your ratings in the toilet. Even if you flip out every mission, you will be rated as in “intense” player versus a “cool under fire” player. One is not necessarily good or bad. If you don’t like the rating, think about your behavior. That’s how the whole thing works. In addition, if you don’t like the whole thing, remember it’s an optional system that you can always opt out of.

Quote:
Originally Posted by gameshoes3003
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...).
That explains what I've seen from guild leader's perspective. Thanks for the insight.

hallomik

hallomik

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: May 2006

The Illini Tribe

N/Mo

13 Jan 2007 at 14:14 - 49
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Zado
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.
[QUOTE=Lord Zado]You have some very good points in here.

In general, I'm not concerned if people do or do not vote. Philosophically, I've never been concerned that in our country only 50% of the voting age public votes. I would rather have the results from the 50% that can be bothered to go through the effort of doing it. I think the same applies here.

As for not being able to tell how each person performed in a group, I think that's a rather good point. In some ways your rating will be a combination of the effectiveness of the group as well as your own individual performance. I think that will average out over time, but your points are well taken.

The self-evaluation idea can be separated from the player-rated section, of course. I'm not opposed to implementing only that portion. I'd be happy to see any of this implemented.

I agree with the one/non-repeatable vote and I thank you that you think this would solve leeching. I think it would, too.

I had never thought about how spreading out greens versus concentrating them spread out the user base. Good observation.

Thanks for a well-argued critique.

Sir Mad

Sir Mad

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

Moe's Pub

Pigs Can Fly [Pigs]

R/

13 Jan 2007 at 14:29 - 50
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fril Estelin
All of this is wrong. There are so many examples, but I would like to cite only one: slashdot.org. (etc)
There are also counter-examples. Just look at the auction part of this site which has a rating feature. It doesn't prevent members from being jerks, bidding on items they don't really want and won't buy, etc. Yet most of the time it's consequenceless, since even if you came across one of thel, you know if you leave a negative feedback, they'll also leave one for you. Which means you have the choice between not giving a bad rating to someone who deserves it because you know he will do the same, and despite the fact that if you don't, others won't be warned about this person, or giving a negative feedback, and receiving one in return, for wrong reasons.

So it's not that simple, and I think there is no way to know what consequences it would have on GW: would it be as in the example you quoted, or would it be messed up as in my example.

So for this reason and also for another reason I won't develop (the fact I really don't wanna have this kind of lil preasure), I /don't sign.

Oh and btw:

Quote:
it's a bit like passports: the world could work without them (well nations can live without ID cards), but it would just be more painful for those managing the rules
Amen!

Aegeroth

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Jul 2006

Sydney, AUS.

Sons of Dark Magicians [SoDM]

N/Me

13 Jan 2007 at 14:44 - 51
"The Rotten Apple spoiled the Bunch"
"The Rotten Player spoiled the Game"

However, due to the ways of Humanity, the rotten Apple is very very hard to be rid of.
Basically, you need to be adept in every subject under both sun and moon to get rid of the rotten apple.

This will never happen.

But dont let me discourage you, some one needs to figure out a way to stop the mess.

hallomik

hallomik

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: May 2006

The Illini Tribe

N/Mo

13 Jan 2007 at 15:10 - 52
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fril Estelin
All of this is wrong. There are so many examples, but I would like to cite only one: slashdot.org. Many years ago, this was a place of flame wars, with groups fighting against each other (windows vs. Linux, commercial vs. free, americans vs. europeans, etc. etc. etc.), with so many people nitpicking, spamming, trolling, and so on. They designed their rating system (see more info here) so that: people would actually give credit to good posts/people (design objective: they wanted the system to show only the best contributions, while the ones with low rating would be hidden), so this invalidates your point one here; they introduced moderators to avoid abuses (and then meta-moderators to moderate the moderators) to the point that scammers would actually be invisible, which answer to your point two; they also assigned "Karma" points to everyone which would be used to moderated and would be earned if you have a post with high rating or moderate often (rules of moderation are quite complex) without a problem; and it SO worked that the slashdot community is so big that they have a "slashdot effect" (so many people following links given in their news can actually make a webserver collapse under the load ...).

It is all a question of careful and delicate design (once more, let's say again that people /= rating, i.e. your character is not only its XP or rank or fame, it's also its guild, its appearance, its history, its interactions with other characters, etc. etc. etc.), and also of transparency in the sense that the community should know what the system what designed for (many people sometimes "think" they know the system better than their designers...). And completely honestly, I think that there's probably the seeds of such a system in GW, Anet may be using internal ratings to detect fraudsters and scammers. But the rating system I was talking (which is different from the OP's one) was the occasion to push the effort a little bit further by asking the help of the community (and after all it's in our interests, the majority of us don't want to see GW become a WoW-like plagged with a subgroup of people greedy about virtual money or fame to the point that there's a game in the game, don't we?).

But I guess that since it's a social feature, if the community doesn't like it, it should only be implemented by Anet if there's a risk that the GW system will collapse under the assaults of the spam-scammers. As I said above, it's a bit like passports: the world could work without them (well nations can live without ID cards), but it would just be more painful for those managing the rules and (more importantly) damaging for the victims of those abusing the system. But a passport does NOT say who you are, it just says something useful about you.
Fril - Thanks for your contributions to this thread. I think your ideas are a bit different that what I'm proposing but well within the spirit of the discussion, so feel free to keep up that discussion here.

I read through the link you provided on Slashdot. My brother-in-law is a big Slashdot user and we had a discussion a few years back about the site. Maybe some of that discussion found it's way into my ideas about a rating system for GW - I see a few similarities. I encourage those who think my system is too complex or "could never work" etc. to read your link. That system works well and is far more sophisticated than mine.

I think those guys had the same kind of thought I did. That is, how do you combat the anonymity factor of the internet which leads to chaos. You use the power of the internet - lots of people making small judgments - to combat it. That's what Slashdot very successfully did, and is what my proposal is trying to achieve. Of course there are many differences between the approaches, the underlying intention is the same.

One great suggestion I got from reading through their experience was to not use a number on a person but a descriptive phrase. The combats the "you can't reduce people to a number" argument, and is also less threatening to people.

Thanks for the link, and thanks for your thoughts.

Kuldebar Valiturus

Kuldebar Valiturus

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Nov 2006

Garden City, Idaho

The Order of Relumination (TOoR)

R/

13 Jan 2007 at 18:14 - 53
How about an automatic rating system based on weighted values:

Positives:
-Number of Friends list entries that other players have for your account
-Guild affiliation and longevity of membership

Negatives:
-Number of Ignore list entries that other players have for your account
-Guild Hopping (frequency of guild changes)

These values would be rated on a curve based off overall game population and would not require DIRECT player input for rating.

Patrick Smit

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Nov 2006

NiTe

13 Jan 2007 at 18:30 - 54
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuldebar Valiturus
How about an automatic rating system based on weighted values:

Positives:
-Number of Friends list entries that other players have for your account
-Guild affiliation and longevity of membership

Negatives:
-Number of Ignore list entries that other players have for your account
-Guild Hopping (frequency of guild changes)

These values would be rated on a curve based off overall game population and would not require DIRECT player input for rating.
The devils advocate:

People could abuse the ignore function to smear u.
If u are kicked from a guild for a reason that is not your fault
I could pay people to put me on friends list
I could make my own guild.

Don't think these parameters would hold for a good player, in fact, what is a good player. This will be subject to your own vision, thus subjective.

Kuldebar Valiturus

Kuldebar Valiturus

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Nov 2006

Garden City, Idaho

The Order of Relumination (TOoR)

R/

13 Jan 2007 at 19:06 - 55
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Smit
The devils advocate:

People could abuse the ignore function to smear u.
If u are kicked from a guild for a reason that is not your fault
I could pay people to put me on friends list
I could make my own guild.

Don't think these parameters would hold for a good player, in fact, what is a good player. This will be subject to your own vision, thus subjective.
Because the system would be based on a curve (your placement in relation to ALL Guild Wars Players) the effect of erratic conditions that impact your rating would be softened significantly.

Built-in error correction over time of sampling. Spikes wouldn't effect a rating for very long.

As far as what whether the rating would indicate a "good player"... Well, that's entirely too subjective to create a value so we go for:

-stability
-popularity/approval

as universally acceptable values.

And:

-instability
-infamy/disapproval

as indicators of undesirable behavior.

I don't place rage-quitters on my friends list...I often place them on ignore, but not always.

Repetitive Guild Hoppers don't happen naturally or by chance...they guild hop by choice and can be held accountable.

By tracking averages instead of exceptions, this would give a fair view of a players behavior as a guide for others.

Fril Estelin

Fril Estelin

So Serious...

Join Date: Jan 2007

London

Nerfs Are [WHAK]

E/

13 Jan 2007 at 19:50 - 56
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Smit
The devils advocate:

People could abuse the ignore function to smear u.
(snip)
Just a minor comment: whatever the math, whatever the system, people will ALWAYS find a way to bypass the system (some experience in security will teach how far they can go, which can be sometimes quite incredible ...). The point is not to find the "perfect" system (whatever perfect is), the point is to bring a feature that provides a certain service in order to thwart certain threats (and of course one can disagree what the threat is and if it is a threat, that's totally open to debate, some would prefer to focus on the decrease of PUG while other would prefer to kickban bots and scammers) and in the cost-benefit computation, the majority of the community should benefit more than what the system would cost it, while for the minority of people not contributing to GW (but abusing it) the cost would be higher than the benefit. And most of the time, you have to adjust the system regularly, to adapt to new situations (the community is not a fixed group of people, the game keeps on expanding, etc.).

Of course such a feature would NOT be simple and straightforward to discuss, design and introduce into the game. This is the "careful and delicate" aspect of it. Of course there will be resistance against such a system, people don't like strange new features that don't provide them with immediatly visible benefits. And finally, usually such new systems is only accepted by someone once something bad really happens to him (a bit like security: you don't understand the need for it until you've been hacked into).

And to reply to the comment on the rating system in the auction part of the forum, I can bring another interesting example: eBay. The most "successful" auction system provides a very basic rating (history of positive vs. negative auctions) and they never ever wanted to make it more complicated. Why? Because it is only one part of the system (see. this paper for more information), rating works in conjunction with the forum, the feedback sentences, legal actions (there are plenty of scams of ebay, but most of them will end in front of a judge with the scammer paying quite a high price ...).