An idea from madden '08

Despite my dislike of some parts of the game, I thought of something from madden that might improve people's willingness to PUG. First a background for people who haven't played the game. In '08 there is a feature of the game called superstar mode. What you do is create a player and play through his career. What's interesting about this mode is that everything you do in a game adds to or subtracts from your preformance rating for that game. Let's say your QB throws a 20 yard pass for a TD, that's 10-15 points. Let's say he throws a INT that is run back for a TD, that's a 20 point penalty. Funny thing is, it is completely automatic. So after the game is over, your total rating for the game will improve or hurt your overall career rating.

Now let's think about PUGs. The most common reason why people who don't use them much is it's too hard to find a good person to PUG with outside of a friend or guildie. Now if there was some abilty to tell just how well a player does in a PUG while you are looking for one, it might make someone more willing to join up. For example if you were going into HA and the person you see win it from time to time is LFG you'd be more likely to pick him because he's a good HAer.

So why not take that Madden feature and apply it to GW? A title that keeps a track of everything you do while in a PUG and gives you points or takes them away based on what you do. Vanq an area without anyone dying? There's a bonus. Have a party wipe/mission over? There's a penalty. Save the party from a wipe/mission over (meaning surviving and ressing someone who can res the group if you have a res sig)? There's some points for you. Rage quit? Lose some points. Two mobs clustered together and you pull one? Points for you. Pull both or not pay attention to the radar as another patrol comes in? Lose points. Using a skill at the right time? Points for. Using a skill at the wrong time? Points against. PUG your way to Legendary Survivor? Huge amount of points for. That sort of thing.

The idea is let people have a method of displaying how well they do in groups so you know if a person can be PUGed with or not. If he has a good rating overall, he'll have a good rating. If he stinks, plays leeroy, and RQs he's going to have a bad rating. Most importantly it won't be too based on other players' actions and responces (unless as a group you are making disasterous mistakes) so it'd be at least a semifair system to implement.

I also think that this system should be at least partly character based and here's why: let's say that someone is a great person in a PUG in general but a poor monk in PvE. Someone who's good but not playing in his strong suit would be able to get into teams who were expecting more if it's solely account based. However he might be better than some other person who's a worse player in general and at the same skill level at least monk wise. Why? Because he knows at least how to play as a team. On the other side, let's say that someone is a great monk in both PvP and PvE but stinks at the other 3 classes he plays, he needs some way to let others know that's he's trustable at least in that role. So IMO this title needs to be account based to show your general skill, and it needs to have a character component so people know if you happen to be good or bad with this class.


Thoughts?

horrible idea.

i suck at GW, i get 60% dp all the time so if GW decides to use your idea, i will be playing by myself all day.

Do you get 60% DP often when playing with other players?

The title progress shouldn't be changed if you are H/H or in PvP.

seems like it would just encourage griefing. there's always going to be someone on a team who's going to agro everything to bring down others.

So, some guy who pugs in say... Ascalon, would have a better score then my pug that works in HM RoT? I mean, there would/could be a point system for different areas, but it would just be too hard to come up with a valid point system.

Plus, it wouldn't be comprehensive. I mean, if I take a break from GW and then they implement this system, when I come back I'll be rejected from every group, even though I have 2000+ hours of experience. Its just another "show R9 or get kicked noob" thing.
/notsigned

I remember when you couldn't ping your skills, and couldn't show titles. In pvp it was "Got any experiance? No? Run these skills. Ok lets go" and it was fun. Now I cannot ever get into pvp because its so high end.

Its hard enough getting into PUG's as an assassin (even though im really really good at it) so i dont need anything else that will deter me from getting into PUG's

/notsignedtothepowerof10

Enko, the guy who greifs would take the hardest hit. Another way to cancel that out is if you have too big a negitive modifier, then you wouldn't be able to hurt the group so much.

Hawk, true enough, but at least there'd be some system in place to make it easier to pug. It doesn't have to have 15 ranks either... it could be -1, 0, and +1 for instance. The goal of the idea isn't to promote elitism or max a title, it's just to give a quick means of showing how good this particular person is in a PUG. Thus the scoring system could be simplified accordingly. Plus if you have friends you regularly group with, they could help you out some by just going about your regular course of action.

How on earth would this be programmed? It seems fine in theory, but there are so many details in the process that make it extremely complicated. A sports game is far more simple, as it has a single goal and very limited number of methods. With the number of objectives and skills in Guild Wars, this idea simply isn't feasible. To use some of your examples:

So every time we make a minor error, no matter who's fault it was, my score decreases? What if one individual made the mistake, while I acted perfectly? Moreover, does this mean I can farm easy missions for completion points?
How do you tell a rage quit from a disconnect, a power outage, a family crisis, or a simple case of needing to go help a guildie? Remember, this would have to be purely computerized, and unless you have a sentient AI to monitor chat or emotion, this simply won't work.
What distance do they have to be for this to be an expert pull? What if I want to pull several mobs to decimate them with AoE damage?
How many skills are there in this game, and how many uses do they have? Some are simple: heal when the health bar is low. Some are more complicated. Gale can be used to interrupt, to prevent a melee opponent from chasing down the monk, to catch a kiter, to prepare a combo that relies on knockdown, or to create a quick diversion to escape. How exactly will the AI keep track of all these possibilities, and which was most appropriate for the situation?
Again, what is incorrect? Distracting shot should interrupt skills, most of the time. On the other hand, sometimes you need to stop a simple attack, which it can do. Should the AI choose between the skills on the monster's bar to determine which should be interrupted, and which is not a good use of the skill? How do you rank skill potency in regards to interruption? That's a single skill right there. Now do the other hundreds.
Also, does this mean that if a skill doesn't have a perfect effect, the player is penalized? Sometimes you just want to cast inferno to see a nifty graphic, and being deducted points because it failed to hit anything seems a tad foolish.
So if I ever get XP outside of a PUG, less points for me? What if I include one hero, or talk to a collector on my own? Will the system chart my entire career, watching where I went and what I did, just to see if I ever stopped PUGing?

Skill is really complex in this game, and assessing it takes quite a bit of knowledge. Trying to have a computer handle all possible actions in the game, then assign rank to them based on efficiency would be extremely complicated, time consuming, and prone to error.

/not signed

So you want to give me a bad rating because the other 7 members of my team fail /joke

Right now, titles are a bonus. As it is now, in some situations you almost have to have certain titles to be considered good enough to be let into parties. It's bad enough. The last thing we need is someone to be able to know a player's exact history down to how many times they died last time they did pvp. A player's ability to play well ought to show, but a player's inability to play well shouldn't be paraded and shown.

I see that as a sort of demerit, and generally speaking, incentive for players to not play the way they wish but to try to keep straight records by only doing activities in which their likelihood to die is very low.

/not signed

make all of guild wars like Heroes Ascent? no thanks

/notsigned

/notsigned... undoubtedly someone is going to screw up my pug title by agroing everything... nice thought though.

Nice concept, but would not work in reality. I was pugging Elona Reach last month. My monk had the misfortune to get into one of the worst pugs ever.

We warped in. While I and a ranger in the group were still loading in, the 2 warriors went ahead and grabbed the crystal and aggro'ed EVERY SINGLE minotaur in the starter area. Before I could even run to the ghost who used to have the crystal, one of the warriors was dead, the Ele and the other warrior were close to dead and all 3 of them were cussing me out for being a horrible monk.

Are you saying I'd get points taken from me for not being able to heal Leroy over there? I suppose with the system in place, I could choose to not PUG with Leroy in the first place.


What if my little 13 year old cousin who's staying with us for the weekend wants to play for a bit? He loads up my account and after an hour spent learning the basics, he gets into a pug. He sucks bigtime!!! Is my rating now permanently destroyed?

Shriketalon also made some very good points in his repsonse. There is absolutely no way this could be programmed to the degree you've outlined. If the AI could tell what was a good action and what wasn't, the henchman would be WAAYYYY better than they are.

I think the only way this could work would be with a rating system given by other players. The other members of your pug would be asked to rate you at the end of the mission/quest. They can give you a Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down/Neutral. You're gonna have abusive ratings from the jerks, but if you're truly a good player, the jerks can't hurt you too much.
- Only allowed to rate your teammates at the conclusion of the mission. If you left early, you can't rate.
- Cannot rate Guildies or Alliance members
- If more than 50% of your teammates give you a thumbs down, you cannot rate your teammates. (Help stop jerk abuse)
- Your rating cannot be seen by others until you receive at least 100 ratings.
- You can choose to hide your rating.

My idea isn't perfect either. I know it's been suggested before in various ways, but unfortunately there isn't a clear-cut way to prevent abusing the ratings.

No one seems to like this idea, yet aside from Raven, no one has an alternative solution to the fact that PUGs in general are bad and there's no way to tell if another player knows what he's doing or not.

People are always talking about how the community isn't that great or people don't PUG because it is so random to what you get yet when I try to offer a possible solution, I get more "your idea sucks" than helpful suggestions to improve it.

Examples of helpful suggestions
Problem: That screw up lowered my rating a little.
Solution: If someone or the entire team screws up and you lose an overall point or two, big deal; one good outing afterwards should make up for it. Also as I suggested earlier, the worse one player does, the less it should effect the group as a whole.

Problem: People might farm easier areas
Solution: Limit how much "easier areas" can improve a bad title so people can't easily farm it.



Raven, personally I do like your idea but I've seen it shot down before. Maybe it'd be best if the two systems were combined somehow: you'd need a neutral or positive PUG score for that run yourself in order to rate someone... that way players who did poorly can't shift the blame over to you.

It's funny to me that most games look to character levels to indicate a PUG candidate's worthiness to participate. I am SO GLAD that GW doesn't use character levels this way, since it's incredibly easy to re-instantiate the same encounters and hyper-inflate your xp and character level.

I agree its somewhat of a problem to gauge a PUGmate's abilities. The only existing mechanisms which may be useful are the Guardian, Protector and Vanquisher titles. Good luck forming a PUG with just those in it.

jkyarr, what about Survivor? I know someone who's gotten legendary on Dervish, Assassin and is about to do the same on warrior and he's a very competitent player.

/NOTsigned

Bad idea!
Its a PUG... keywords PICK-UP... hence random people in the group.

Also what about new players to GW? If this system was in place, you know and I know, every new player wouldn't get chosen for a group. They would be left to either team up with another new player/players and possibly make no progression b/c they are new to the game and might not have the slightest idea how to complete the mission........ or........ they'd be left with just heroes and henchies.

Then you got to think about new players getting denied to join a Guild because their "rank" is low... which is not fair for them.

Sorry this is a bad idea.... the bad things far out weigh the good things.

Can someone translate the 1st paragraph for non-Americans BabelFish doesn't do American --> English

If i've read it right it seems you get judged for every mistake and then can't get a PUG if you wanted so less people will want to try, sorry but i think this plan shoots it's self in the foot

More leetism in GW? /notsigned theres already too much when we PUG (reason i don't)

Having some 12 year old Wammo tell me what build to use bugs me or the real PUG thats just add everyplayer in town and go regardless of proffesion

Eh, the thing is, the thumbs up thumbs down system isn't just about getting "good" players. Its not about finding legnedary suriviors or protectors. Its about being able to not have to team up with jerks, which is a big difference.

/not signed I already feel like I'm standing in line to be last picked to play baseball and frankly I don't need any more reminders of how that felt. You take your chances everyone should be able to play, Even the not so good players can only get better if they play. Yes, you get a bad PUG some but sometimes you get a good one too.