Community accountability and how games can accomplish it.

UknownAspect

You'll notice that browsing these forums and the forums for just about any game on the market that the quality of the community is a prevalent discussion point. From what I've seen and what I believe, the only way the issue can be addressed is on the development side.
As mmorpg.com members, what can we come up with for systems that improve community involvement and accountability?

Melieza

A "Behavior Rating" or similar. 

Every word that breaks the language filter gives the player a negative rating point.  In a PvP game, 'ganking' or similar might give negative rating points.  Depending on the game, other actions would automatically give negative points.

Every player would also have 1 rating point per day to give to another player.  If a player helped you out with a quest or gave you a good deal, you could use your daily rating point to increase their rating.

Players with very low ratings would give themselves detriments such as debuffs or even chat blocks.

Search features could be added to only show players with at least a certain rating.

erictlewis

Originally posted by Melieza

A "Behavior Rating" or similar. 

Every word that breaks the language filter gives the player a negative rating point.  In a PvP game, 'ganking' or similar might give negative rating points.  Depending on the game, other actions would automatically give negative points.

Every player would also have 1 rating point per day to give to another player.  If a player helped you out with a quest or gave you a good deal, you could use your daily rating point to increase their rating.

Players with very low ratings would give themselves detriments such as debuffs or even chat blocks.

Search features could be added to only show players with at least a certain rating.

 I dont think so, we seen that in the lotro forums and the ddo forums watched good folks be kicked out because they got dogpiled on.  We dont need that hear,  they just need more staff to handle the mal contents.

Melieza

In this system you can't get "dogpiled" on since there is no way to lower another person's rating.  You can only lower your own rating.  You can only raise other people's ratings.

Disdena

Originally posted by Melieza

A "Behavior Rating" or similar. 

Every word that breaks the language filter gives the player a negative rating point.  In a PvP game, 'ganking' or similar might give negative rating points.  Depending on the game, other actions would automatically give negative points.

Every player would also have 1 rating point per day to give to another player.  If a player helped you out with a quest or gave you a good deal, you could use your daily rating point to increase their rating.

Players with very low ratings would give themselves detriments such as debuffs or even chat blocks.

Search features could be added to only show players with at least a certain rating.

Very much no. There's no RL equivalent of this, so there would be no social context for it. There would be no set consensus on what one does to deserve 1 point. It's also totally counterpurpose to be allowed to "buy" points from people by giving them good deals or whatnot, effectively letting people purchase their way out of notoriety.

erictlewis

Originally posted by Melieza

In this system you can't get "dogpiled" on since there is no way to lower another person's rating.  You can only lower your own rating.  You can only raise other people's ratings.

 Well I will point at what has and did happen in lotro.  You can give rep to anybody.  What was happening was certain folks would get together and dontate all the could to that person giving them noteriety.

These kind of systems always invite folks who do what they can to abuse them.

Sorry once again I will say that is what they have moderators are for.

 

UknownAspect

I don't think it makes sense to leave everything up to the moderators. Not because it's not within the scope of their job, but because they litterally don't have the ability to police the tens of thousands of people at any given time. I honestly can't see how a behavior point system similar to this can be exploited. Even if an entire guild decides to rate down someone, then there would probably be a good reason for it.

What if it was simply a thumbs up thumbs down system and each person can only vote once for another person. And each vote had to be accompanied by a comment as to why the vote was so. And each person could comment on the votes made to them. So in the case that someone was just voting them down for no reason there would be an unsubstanriated reason attached as well as the player in question being able to comment on his vote.

Therefore a quick look at someone's votes would see base on his comments and other people's comments if he was someone worth their time.

SwampRob

For lack of a better term, more "chat' cops.   Active, present GMs who will actually put the slapdown on someone being a d-bag.    There'll be some bitching at first, but players will adapt and the community will be better off for it.

TheLizardbones

A while back I saw a "Trust" system on the internet, basically for internet connections. I think something like this could work. It is based around the idea of trusting people your friends trust and distrusting people your friends distrust.

You meet and add them to your "Trust" list (or just use the existing "Friends" list). These are people you trust. You also have an "Ignore" list. These are the usual @sshats that ninja loot, behave like babies, have different political opinions than you, whatever.

Now, when someone on your Friends list rates someone that you do not know as a "Friend", then to you, those people will appear as "Friend of a Friend". If "Friend" is a trust level of 5, then "Friend of a Friend" is a trust level of 4. If those "Friend of a Friend" have friends, those "Friend of a Friend of a Friend" people will appear to you with a trust level of 3. And so on. People you've ignored would have a Trust level of -5, people your friends have ignored would have a Trust level of -4, etc.

Basically you're creating a trust network. You basically trust people your friends trust, and distrust people your friends distrust. The further away from you the relationship is, the less weight you put on the relationship. People with no relationship to you would have a trust level of 0. Guild members would have a Trust level of 6. The scale is really kind of arbitrary, but you get the idea.

There is no reason the Friends/Ignore lists couldn't be based on Accounts rather than Avatars and there's no reason it couldn't extend across servers.

* edit *
The reason this is functional is that it's not a "Public" system. You can't get together with your guild and tank somebody's rating, anymore than you can get together with your guild a get somebody to an exalted status. Somebody doesn't automatically pop onto your Ignore or Friends list based on the rating they got from people you do not know.

Wolfenpride

I like STO's method of attatching an @(name) to all your characters, so I know a shit head regardless of what character he's on.

Not that i've run into a single shit head in that game

 

I wouldn't really be a fan of a rating or trust system, that sounds like it could be used for rating people based on their performance in-game, and not their actually behavior. A trust system sounds to facebook-ish.

drake_hound

I honestly think blizzard was onto something , with there real ID .

Well but poorly executed and poorly defended .

 

Well that was one way to solve accountability , what would hold accountability thats impossible with the way net was set up.

You see more and more companies tying stuff with facebook , just to get a general idea of the public .

Instead of nameless trolls , people opnion are not held high anymore .

Example SWTOR forums , it wasn´t untill I had my bioware social network up connected , the trolls were flagging any fanboi on swtor .

In the end money talks , and whats more valid a nameless troll , or a paying customer and supporter of a product .

I guess somewhere along the line , a lot of companies realise this .

So guess in the end accoundability comes with money ... aside from well written post or fundamental Ideas .

Whats more important a opnion of somebody who paid 5 years nonestop , or somebody who in the 5 year paid only 2 months .

Sure they can create the Illusion of fair world , but sadly it isn´t anymore .

Castillle

Originally posted by Wolfenpride

I like STO's method of attatching an @(name) to all your characters, so I know a shit head regardless of what character he's on.
Not that i've run into a single shit head in that game
 
I wouldn't really be a fan of a rating or trust system, that sounds like it could be used for rating people based on their performance in-game, and not their actually behavior. A trust system sounds to facebook-ish.

 

+1!Global names would be great. Also, the player note featurefrom city of heroes. In that game,i always put stars depending on the person. Its only visible to you so it doesnt affect other people but when you see theirchars, itll show you your ranking to that guy. Very useful in labeling noobs and leechers and mean people.

Ramonski7

I would have to say if you want to build a respectful in-game community you have to regulate it strictly. Two things come to mind that do not add to any conversation:

• 
  Foul Language
• 
  Caps

 

Make it so if you use foul language in your chat you get a automatic 2 minute delay in order to type something else.

If you use more than 2 all cap words in your message, you get a 1 minute delay for your next message.

 

All you have to do is slow down players' response times and sooner or later they change the context of their messages in order to get them across faster. You cannot argue with someone if they are automatically delayed for being rude. And I know that people get offended from being censored, but in this case you're not being censored just forced to slow down before you type.

Tedly224

The answers for this one are simple.

The ability to change a character's name, race, faction, server, and/or class (through paid or free means) is what opened the door for asshats to crop up and do as they wished.

PvE group making that is cross server is likewise a feature that had people treating others like crap.

Get rid of all of the above for your MMORPG and you just solved a lot of headaches. If a person is a jerk, there is no where they can run, hide, or misdirect who they are from the peers they play with on their server. Their only recourse is to roll a new character with a new name, and try again.

 

Also.

Many, many MMORPG's are in it for the money to a painful degree. They will list a rules set for player behavior within the game and then fail to enforce it. This positively stems from the FACT that they simply won't employ a set of GM's to work at all hours to moderate chat and punish those who won't obey their rules set.

Example - A well known MMORPG makes a tremendous amount of money from monthly subscriptions, but has One (1) empowered GM on shift at a given time of day for a Server Cluster (group of servers) that can act to punish people who fail to follow the rules, often times in an abusive manner. They have volunteer GM moderators instead who are paid in free game time - but these moderator GM's are not empowered to temporarily suspend accounts or mute players. All they are able to do is smooth things over between players and seek help from the Head GM of the Server Cluster if required.

As we all know, this is crap. Fix both of the above and we're back to the days of Everquest / Asheron's Call / Dark Age of Camelot were players made an effort to be social.

Torik

Originally posted by Tedly224

The answers for this one are simple.

The ability to change a character's name, race, faction, server, and/or class (through paid or free means) is what opened the door for asshats to crop up and do as they wished.

PvE group making that is cross server is likewise a feature that had people treating others like crap.

Get rid of all of the above for your MMORPG and you just solved a lot of headaches. If a person is a jerk, there is no where they can run, hide, or misdirect who they are from the peers they play with on their server. Their only recourse is to roll a new character with a new name, and try again.

Nope.  Games were full of asshats even before all those features came into being.  EVE is a prime example.

Kyleran

One solution to solve it all, actiive moderation by /GM's 

I've played MMO's that had them (Lineage 1, DAOC, and most recently Earth Eternal, RIP)

Didn't make everyone nice, but it sure kept them in line.

Wouldn't hurt to throw in some game mechanics like tying every alt to a single account name so no one could ever hide (there's a down side to this of course) and gameplay mechanics that limit a person's ability to progress in some way unless he play's nice and participates in the community at large.

UknownAspect

Originally posted by lizardbones

A while back I saw a "Trust" system on the internet, basically for internet connections. I think something like this could work. It is based around the idea of trusting people your friends trust and distrusting people your friends distrust.

You meet and add them to your "Trust" list (or just use the existing "Friends" list). These are people you trust. You also have an "Ignore" list. These are the usual @sshats that ninja loot, behave like babies, have different political opinions than you, whatever.

Now, when someone on your Friends list rates someone that you do not know as a "Friend", then to you, those people will appear as "Friend of a Friend". If "Friend" is a trust level of 5, then "Friend of a Friend" is a trust level of 4. If those "Friend of a Friend" have friends, those "Friend of a Friend of a Friend" people will appear to you with a trust level of 3. And so on. People you've ignored would have a Trust level of -5, people your friends have ignored would have a Trust level of -4, etc.

Basically you're creating a trust network. You basically trust people your friends trust, and distrust people your friends distrust. The further away from you the relationship is, the less weight you put on the relationship. People with no relationship to you would have a trust level of 0. Guild members would have a Trust level of 6. The scale is really kind of arbitrary, but you get the idea.

There is no reason the Friends/Ignore lists couldn't be based on Accounts rather than Avatars and there's no reason it couldn't extend across servers.

* edit *
The reason this is functional is that it's not a "Public" system. You can't get together with your guild and tank somebody's rating, anymore than you can get together with your guild a get somebody to an exalted status. Somebody doesn't automatically pop onto your Ignore or Friends list based on the rating they got from people you do not know.

 

This is the best idea I've seen for a system to solve this problem. Making sure that it is an account based system rather than character based, I'd think this would cut down drastically on comunity douchebags.

severius

Originally posted by UknownAspect

You'll notice that browsing these forums and the forums for just about any game on the market that the quality of the community is a prevalent discussion point. From what I've seen and what I believe, the only way the issue can be addressed is on the development side. As mmorpg.com members, what can we come up with for systems that improve community involvement and accountability?

If you want accountability, why not hold the developers to some sort of a standard.  Why not hold these bought and paid for scumbag reviewers that do little but shovel the bullshi% that the marketing departments feed them in a concerted effort to part you with your money as they purposefully deceive everyone they can.  Why not railroad and shutdown the plethora of sites that are complacent with people like John Smedley, Chris Cao and others whom have the nerve and hubris to say that they know better than you what you want.

To look to marketing departments and their tools or to developers to correct a situation through which they conspire to rob you for their own self-aggrandizement is about as fantastical an idea as plugging a hole in a dike with your finger.  But then again, from your message, it is the community that is the problem and not the scumbags perpetrating fraud that is the problem.  I see a possible politician here