Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.