So you find someone you hate through Facebook, etc... and their gamer tag. Go into every game they play for a few days, harass them until they leave. Now they are flagged "leaver" and lose freebies and unless you were suitably aggressive to EVERYONE in the room, you're clean.
No Valve. Just... No. The industry can't even get the simple idea of "Make a quality product at a reasonable price, give the customer what they want and they will buy". CD Projekt Red is understanding this with the GoG.com Witcher 2 release tomorrow - No DRM, all DLC free, true expansions, and LOTS of extras.
Valve I'm worried is losing their touch - between the overpriced hat mania and overpriced bot skins,I don't want to play those games for long periods of time. I have given up on TF2 completely - Shooter MMO (sans subscription, mind you. Now its even Free To Play, and pay $20 ONCE to be upgraded to a "premium account" - if you already bought the game, you're automatically "Elite". After that, you can buy boosters for double XP and monetary rewards, but the standard rate isn't bad either) Global Agenda lets me craft a new hat or pair of blades for free within the game engine, instead of paying real money for new items or grinding for days. The biggest problem with this latest idea is that the developer's model of "people who are good for the game" will NOT be the "Nice guys" this is aimed at.
Nice guys who make a server friendly for everyone are relatively common. People who are "Good for the game" is a relatively high metric, when it comes to convincing bottom-line marketdroids and business culture. Think of it like casino comps - the only people who are getting free suites are putting themselves in a place to dump a huge amount of money to the house.
As soon as business gets its grubby little paws on this ideas "Nice" will mean "Has Eleventy Billion Facebook Friends, which means if we give him a free game every fucking tweet or status message is free advertising for our game!" or "Creates OUR content for us, voluntarily. Like the hats - We'll pay them something to keep them giving the modeled items or mods for cash. If MrModder 10,000 gets an Elite sticker on the forums, $100 bucks, and free games why would he release his mods for free or spend time developing stuff we can't control" or the "Has an alt-gamer-BDSM-modeling-pseudo porn "Profile" webpage. Thousands of lonely nerds buy Shooter 2: The Shootening because she *giggles* and says she plays and she'd like to play with them. Giving her a free copy is a huge ROI"
BAD VALVE. VERY BAD.
Unless there's a non-exploitable way to reward friendly, if occasional players simply for playing, this is a bad idea. I cannot think of one - voting for "mentors" will degrade like it does to "Will Pay XXX for Mentoring". Flagging people is useless. Time spent is simply a grind and doesn't have a good metric for "productive, game-positive" benefits. Any thing else basically rewards people who are willing to do the dev/publisher's work, for what is a pittance compared to hiring someone to do it professionally. Can't be good. Just...can't.
I too Algebra 2 and graduated around 2000. For those of us in the hardest/college prep path, it was basically a requirement. Every smart kid in the magnet program was basically told, "If you don't go Algebra 1 8th grade, Geometry 9th, Algebra 2 10th, Trig 11th, and Calc 12th, you're not going to make it into college. If you elect an Honors class instead of the AP class that requires you to give up lunch every day, you will never make it into a good college. " . Of course, the state requirements at the time only ask for one year of Algebra 1 and one of Geometry. And you know what? That's fine.
Primary K-12 education should be a place where we instill the BASICS of what we wish EVERYONE in our society to know. There are smart kids that walk out of AP Calculus and grab a 29.80% interest rate credit card when they get to college because they don't have basic financial sense, or overdraft constantly because they can't balance a checkbook. That very same Algebra 1 I took in 8th grade is taught to Bachelor's Degree candidates for a basic math credit in major universities. Hell, there is even a "Functional Math/Remedial Math" in college that counts for everyone but the kids going into the sciences. Does it really belong in primary school?
The primary school control and structure is basically poisonous and is better suited to creating good little consumers under control, than informed citizens. Its stressful and time consuming to have an 8 period day, filled with honors and AP (college credit) level classes, every day. By the time children pass 8th grade, they should have most of the basics. Let the smart kids who are taking Algebra 1 crammed in with busywork from 7 other classes in 8th grade, just LEAVE. Go take that same Algebra 1 in college. If they want to go to Algebra 2, that's fine.
Sure, make 12 grades of education available, but restructure it for the entire curriculum to ask the "Would I want every person I meet to absolutely have this skill and does it benefit society?. Reading, yes. Writing and typing, yes. How our government works? Of course. Working knowledge of history for the past 100 years? (Ever wonder why most High Schools, including mine teach from 1700 forward, but never quite make it past WWII? That's by design...). Basic finance, basic maths etc..but despite what most of us geeks may think, the vast population of the country gets along just fine without Algebra II.
The structure we have here isn't working. People aren't coming out with the kind of skills that are important to function in society, but fumble through "advanced" topics and promptly forget it to make room for the next 7 periods just to prove they're good enough for a college education. I say, set a reasonable curriculum and stick to it - if the "smart" kids are finishing it by the 7th or 8th grade, FINE. Let them go onto other things. These harder subjects are often college material and are meant to be attended to in college, not crammed into high school. If it takes the slower kids 12 years, they skill come out able to operate at an average societal level. We don't need to start regulating Algebra II. Those that want it, will find it.
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So you find someone you hate through Facebook, etc... and their gamer tag. Go into every game they play for a few days, harass them until they leave. Now they are flagged "leaver" and lose freebies and unless you were suitably aggressive to EVERYONE in the room, you're clean.
No Valve. Just... No. The industry can't even get the simple idea of "Make a quality product at a reasonable price, give the customer what they want and they will buy". CD Projekt Red is understanding this with the GoG.com Witcher 2 release tomorrow - No DRM, all DLC free, true expansions, and LOTS of extras.
Valve I'm worried is losing their touch - between the overpriced hat mania and overpriced bot skins,I don't want to play those games for long periods of time. I have given up on TF2 completely - Shooter MMO (sans subscription, mind you. Now its even Free To Play, and pay $20 ONCE to be upgraded to a "premium account" - if you already bought the game, you're automatically "Elite". After that, you can buy boosters for double XP and monetary rewards, but the standard rate isn't bad either) Global Agenda lets me craft a new hat or pair of blades for free within the game engine, instead of paying real money for new items or grinding for days. The biggest problem with this latest idea is that the developer's model of "people who are good for the game" will NOT be the "Nice guys" this is aimed at.
Nice guys who make a server friendly for everyone are relatively common. People who are "Good for the game" is a relatively high metric, when it comes to convincing bottom-line marketdroids and business culture. Think of it like casino comps - the only people who are getting free suites are putting themselves in a place to dump a huge amount of money to the house.
As soon as business gets its grubby little paws on this ideas "Nice" will mean "Has Eleventy Billion Facebook Friends, which means if we give him a free game every fucking tweet or status message is free advertising for our game!" or "Creates OUR content for us, voluntarily. Like the hats - We'll pay them something to keep them giving the modeled items or mods for cash. If MrModder 10,000 gets an Elite sticker on the forums, $100 bucks, and free games why would he release his mods for free or spend time developing stuff we can't control" or the "Has an alt-gamer-BDSM-modeling-pseudo porn "Profile" webpage. Thousands of lonely nerds buy Shooter 2: The Shootening because she *giggles* and says she plays and she'd like to play with them. Giving her a free copy is a huge ROI"
BAD VALVE. VERY BAD.
Unless there's a non-exploitable way to reward friendly, if occasional players simply for playing, this is a bad idea. I cannot think of one - voting for "mentors" will degrade like it does to "Will Pay XXX for Mentoring". Flagging people is useless. Time spent is simply a grind and doesn't have a good metric for "productive, game-positive" benefits. Any thing else basically rewards people who are willing to do the dev/publisher's work, for what is a pittance compared to hiring someone to do it professionally. Can't be good. Just...can't.
I too Algebra 2 and graduated around 2000. For those of us in the hardest/college prep path, it was basically a requirement. Every smart kid in the magnet program was basically told, "If you don't go Algebra 1 8th grade, Geometry 9th, Algebra 2 10th, Trig 11th, and Calc 12th, you're not going to make it into college. If you elect an Honors class instead of the AP class that requires you to give up lunch every day, you will never make it into a good college. " . Of course, the state requirements at the time only ask for one year of Algebra 1 and one of Geometry. And you know what? That's fine.
Primary K-12 education should be a place where we instill the BASICS of what we wish EVERYONE in our society to know. There are smart kids that walk out of AP Calculus and grab a 29.80% interest rate credit card when they get to college because they don't have basic financial sense, or overdraft constantly because they can't balance a checkbook. That very same Algebra 1 I took in 8th grade is taught to Bachelor's Degree candidates for a basic math credit in major universities. Hell, there is even a "Functional Math/Remedial Math" in college that counts for everyone but the kids going into the sciences. Does it really belong in primary school?
The primary school control and structure is basically poisonous and is better suited to creating good little consumers under control, than informed citizens. Its stressful and time consuming to have an 8 period day, filled with honors and AP (college credit) level classes, every day. By the time children pass 8th grade, they should have most of the basics. Let the smart kids who are taking Algebra 1 crammed in with busywork from 7 other classes in 8th grade, just LEAVE. Go take that same Algebra 1 in college. If they want to go to Algebra 2, that's fine.
Sure, make 12 grades of education available, but restructure it for the entire curriculum to ask the "Would I want every person I meet to absolutely have this skill and does it benefit society?. Reading, yes. Writing and typing, yes. How our government works? Of course. Working knowledge of history for the past 100 years? (Ever wonder why most High Schools, including mine teach from 1700 forward, but never quite make it past WWII? That's by design...). Basic finance, basic maths etc..but despite what most of us geeks may think, the vast population of the country gets along just fine without Algebra II.
The structure we have here isn't working. People aren't coming out with the kind of skills that are important to function in society, but fumble through "advanced" topics and promptly forget it to make room for the next 7 periods just to prove they're good enough for a college education. I say, set a reasonable curriculum and stick to it - if the "smart" kids are finishing it by the 7th or 8th grade, FINE. Let them go onto other things. These harder subjects are often college material and are meant to be attended to in college, not crammed into high school. If it takes the slower kids 12 years, they skill come out able to operate at an average societal level. We don't need to start regulating Algebra II. Those that want it, will find it.