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Designing a MMORPG Feedback System
Gamasutra is running one of their highly enjoyable 'soapbox' pieces, looking at possible ways you could implement a feedback or ranking system for Massively Multiplayer Online Game players. From the article: "When playing an MMORPG, I should be able to give a positive, neutral, or negative rating to anyone who has been in my group for more than thirty minutes. Negative ratings could be characterized via a multiple-choice list of common gripes (i.e. 'loot theft', 'abusive language', etc) -- a feature now built into the Xbox Live feedback system. However, it isn't clear that a good feedback system requires this level of depth; there's an argument to be made for simplifying the process as much as possible."
Just a Slashdot-style moderation system, where a player can be modded up and down (one vote per person, which can be up/neutral/down) according to that player's action.
These mods will "expire" after a couple of days so that players can start a new leaf.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
well the problem with most rating systems used is that they could be abused... this sounds good though, since you would need to be in a party for a while...
FYI - this was tried in Ragnarok Online but it was taken off due to abuse. People would pay (in game) money for positive points, and you'd have people who would stalk you and give negatives at every opertunity. You could only give 1 point per day, but it was still abused by people having multiple characters on one account or multiple accounts. It opened people up to a lot of threats as well, as a planned implementation of the system would have been more chance to drop equipment when you died.
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
Any such player-run system would be too easy to abuse. If you put restrictions in place to prevent the abuse, people will game their way around them.
For example, a guild could have all of its members give each other high ratings. Or they could band together to give poor ratings to someone that pisses them off.
Now that you mention it, I do believe we did.
:-)
The result of the conversation was that a rank system could be implemented similar to that of the Military ranks. Rather than working your way up some sort of point system, you'd get your promotions directly from your CO. (That's Commanding Officer for those of you who aren't familiar with the term.) High ranks would be seeded by the "Admiralty" (i.e. The people running the game), thus kicking things off. And if you really don't want to follow the whole rank system, you can always privateer.
At least, it seems to work in the context of Star Trek and military SciFi. YMMV elsewhere.
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I play Gemstone, an older (to put it lightly) text-based MMORPG. In it, someone's "popularity" or whatever comes from interacting with other characters etc. Having a game mechanic to tell you if someone was a jerk to someone else seems very very strange, and would definetly be out of character. So, for "role playing" games I don't feel like that is something that's useful or good. On the other hand, if the game has on objective, and you are trying to "win" WoW or whatever, I guess having that feedback system could save you time and frustration. I guess one way to rationalize this in character is to have some little cottage where you would go in and greet a jolly fat man in a little red suit who keeps track of who's "naughty" or "nice".
I should be able to give a positive, neutral, or negative rating to anyone who has been in my group for more than thirty minutes
Hypothetical situation. I form a group, recruit people who want to do (insert dungeon here). Halfway through the run I realize one of the member is incompetent. I remove him and flag him "incompetent". Out of spite he returns the favor and flags me something negative. Yet I've only done what was best for the success of the run, I wasn't using abusive language, I didn't do anything wrong.
Another problem is when there are games where you can reach max level fast. Blacklist the assholes all you want, they will remake as different characters. UO murderer system is perfect example where griefers would level throwaway characters and PK until they got caught. Rinse, repeat.
Another problem is with raid guilds. From experience, raid guilds will recruit the biggest assholes on the server under two condition: They obey the raid leaders and have insanely high play time. Raid guilds don't care if you are an asshole. They care only if you can contribute to their success.
One of my gripes with WoW is the inability to quickly flag someone as a gold-seller, user of inappropriate language (sexist, homophobic, racist, etc.), exploiters, etc.
Too often will I receive a whisper from a character trying have me visit a gold for $ site. I will report them but the process is not stream-lined, it takes a few minutes. If multiple people could quickly flag this character as a gold-seller then blizzard reps would be able to investigate and perma-ban the most abusive accounts.
The key, then is to not give out absolute ratings, but rather relative ones. The rating you personally see for people you haven't rated yourself should be based on how they're rated by people you yourself have rated highly. This goes a long way towards preventing abuse by effectively negating the ratings assigned by people you don't like.
"A++++++++++, great raider. Would group with him again."
"Perfect, now hand over the Scimitar of the Wolf, or my whole guild will give you retaliatory feedback."
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What about a system like Fable had? Not necessarily changing your appearance, but your fame (or infamy) was automatically calculated by the game, and NPC's react differently based on your deeds. Say the system is based on points; playing all the way through cooperatively in a quest gave so many positive, healing teammates, etc. On the flip-side, ninjalooting etc. would be caught by the game mechanic and weighed accordingly. This "karma" system would be automatic and players could say, view a few stats about a player's reputation, without any necessary player input. And then there would always be the opportunity for a player to redeem their poor reputation.
--- Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion -Lem
None of this will matter until there are real consequences to anti-social behavior. That requires a couple things. First, you need the people running the game to care enough to *publicly* boot people for being asshats on a regular basis. Secondly, once that is done, you need a way to prevent the asshat from just opening another account or creating another character.
I've thought for a long time what the MM market needed was a third-party identity broker. Call it 'Good Guys, Inc'. You apply for a GGI account. GGI does a check, verifies you are who you say you are, address, SSN, whatever, and issues you a GGI #.
You buy Worlds of Evercrack, and enter the CD key that came with the game into your GGI account. You login to a GGI-enabled game server, and it uses the gamekey to lookup your GGI account and verifies that that key belongs to a member in good standing. Or, if you've been banned (from that game, or anther game, or whatever they want to check), it boots you or forces you to play on a server comprised of other asshats.
Not infallible, but maybe if it booted the jerks (and ninja-looters, and bots, and pro farmers) from not only that game, but potentially other games that used the service as well, things might start to improve. Or at least segregate the people who want to play the game from those that want to beat up on other players.
Once again, I brink up Eve Online on a subject under games...I swear I don't work for them, tho. :P
They have two great means of this. 1, players can set standings for how they view any player, corporation (think guild), alliance, faction, or what have you. The can rate some(one/thing) on a scale of -10 to +10. At any time you can look at another character's standings to see what PC's, NPC's, Corps, factions, alliances, etc., like or dislike them. Also, committing illegal acts in secure / semi-secure space results in a decreased standing with Concorde (NPC Police), which gives a highlight to their nick. Eventually, if that standing gets too low, the police will shoot on sight if the person is found in too high a security zone, depending on how bad the standing is.
The second way that you can deal with people you don't like is with bounties. If you've got the dough, you can place a bounty on somebody's head and it will be visible to all players that they are wanted. If they have good (or not horrible, at least) standing with Concorde, shooting them will still be illegal in secure space, but for the right price...well, you get the idea. You would think that this feature would be heavily abused, but in fact it's not. It's not especially difficult to get a bounty off your head (just have somebody kill you...note however that clones get expensive, so it's only worth it if the bounty is higher than the cost of your clone), but it is still a moderately effective tool.
Another interesting note is that some have mentioned loot thieves. As of last expansion, if you loot something from somebody else's kill, they have kill rights on you for the next hour, regardless of security level. And last of note, unless you are in the most secure (and therefore, least profitable / exciting) sectors, it is not overly difficult for somebody to kill you if you piss of the wrong person. Oh, and did I mention PC corps can declare war on each other, and thereafter kill opposing corp members, regardless of security level? Mmmyesh. All in all, the game deals beautifully with asshats.
Unpleasantries.