Saturday, January 15, 2011

Mediocre, or "Do We Need a Player Reputation System?"

I'm of two minds about reputation systems that let players rank other players.  On the one hand, it would be nice to downrate jerks and uprate awesome people.  On the other, it would add an aspect to the game that I'm not convinced would be beneficial to players.

Today on Birdfall, I had a mediocre group in Throne of the Tides that lost 3 healers.  The first healer left after three wipes on the same boss.  The second helped us through that boss but chewed us out for being terribad and left.  The third stayed until the last boss when the tank had to leave and the group fell apart.

Personally, I would have liked to give props to my group even if we were pretty mediocre.  The tank and other dps were new to the instance and perfectly willing to admit when they didn't know what they were doing.  But they were also willing to keep trying.  They kept a quiet, honest respectability around them that the second healer didn't possess in his littlest finger.  He might have been "pro," but his social skills were terribad and got a /ignore from me.

There's something to be said for a group that rolls with its faults and doesn't implode.  I might not have rated us very high in skill for that run, but I would have given my group mad rep bumps for tenacity and patience.

I think I'd like to leave a group or finish a dungeon and get a popup for "Did you enjoy this group?  Yes/No" and yes gives a rep bump to everyone and you can also choose to rate each player individually:
Skill: Terribad -- Poor -- Mediocre -- Fair -- Good -- Outstanding -- Don't Know
Attitude: Terribad -- Poor -- Mediocre -- Fair -- Good -- Outstanding -- Don't Know

See also: Pug Matching

3 comments:

  1. While this is a fantastic idea, there is no doubt it would be abused to the point that no one could get in groups anymore. It would probably increase the douchebaggery in WoW by over 9000%. It's sad, because there are honest people like you and I, and then there are some who are... not so honest. It would be awful. It's good in theory, but there's no way it could be executed fairly. People will always abuse that sort of system.

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  2. An excellent idea that must be polished until we get a solution that can be used fairly. Cata heroic dungeons without a guild is nothing more than:
    1. wipe, wipe, people left, idiot looking for someone to blame, wipe, people left.
    2. good group, newbie being harassed and/or kicked without chance to get his points, drops and knowledge necessary to do heroics well.

    Most of the time what we see is enraged people repeating like parrots the insults they received when they started or trying to find someone to blame so the rest of the group don't see how lame they are too.

    This "elitist jerks clone" attitude is making a lot of people drop WoW of pure frustration and should be addressed fast so people newbie to cata heroics can play and have fun.

    And most of all, for those of you that have this kind of attitude, remeber that EJ are really technically good at WoW, but are very poor in social skills and shouldn't be used as role model.

    Lets make this game more friendly, you hear me Blizzard?

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