Reputation system - helping you select company

[mouseman]

I read some of the old diablo 1 guides (http://web.archive.org/web/20010417075528/www.diabloii.net/strategy/shuri_rogue/shuri_guide.shtml) and I enjoyed the politeness and thoughtfulness those guides had towards other players. I was thinking how we could implement that in Diablo 3 gaming community and this is what I came up with.

A reputation system:

You can limit players joining the game through reputation the same way you can limit them by level. You can simply type the number of players allowed, the level difference allowed and the reputation needed to join the game.

How to gain reputation? Each account can give one reputation point to every other account. The trick is that you have to play a certain amount of time (say, 1 hour) with that account in the same game and/or complete quests in order to be able to give a positive or a negative reputation point to another account.

Very high amount of reputation points could allow an account holder to place multiple points, kick a player from the game or other things like that. This is optional, however, as it can lead to elitism and exploit.

The big thing is that nobody loses here. The players who like to get rushed, avoid quests and scam eachother can very well do that without reputation points. This system would just allow peaceful co-op players to find good and mature playing company easily. Everyone gets to play the game how they want to play it.

What do you think?

[imjustsomeguy]

I like the idea. I would like the option to be able to change your mind later on. So if you give some one a positive mark and later find out he/she is a real bastard you could switch it at any time to negative. Of course this would work much better if players could only have 1 account per cd key.

In one of the interviews someone from Blizzard did mention something about taking measures to add more player accountability, perhaps something like this is a possibility.

[Omikron8]

the word "mature" is open to big interpretation

[5zigen]

I don't think it would change anything. It sounds like either it would just be another grind. It sounds like it would greatly favor people who own multiple accounts of the game. It just seems unnecessarily complicated as well.

I would rather have a simple vote out system, where the games creator counts for 2 votes and everyone else counts for one, and if a player gets more than 50% of the votes to be voted off, they get kicked from the game (with a 1 minute warning, as to avoid griefing by kicking people during boss fights to screw them out of the drops.)

[stillman]

I think the idea is really good. EXCEPT: you should not be able to remove a reputation point because every brat on bnet will just lower people's reps for no good reason at all. Why should my reputation lose a point because some random kid feels like hurting every account's rep? We'd see a lot of players compelled to jumping out of games exactly 59 minutes after they've joined.

I'd like something a little more complex, based on actual gameplay feats rather than people vouching for you. What if each chr has a "record" showing points for every 1000 bosses you've killed (or 100 or w/e), every 10 players you've pked, every 100 quests you've completed while in parties, and so on. Then, you can send others your record or make games where all players' records are visible in town or make games where records are private. It'd be hard to join a serious co-op group if everyone can see you've pked a ton of players.

In d1, the game kept track of how many kills you've made of each monster. Maybe they should do this sort of thing again in d3 but actually use the information for "proof" of a player's reputation.

[Funkopotamus]

Scenario - Groups of pkers and/or singular people with multiple accounts boosting their reputation to ruin co-op games.

Also, pk counts can be written off as duels, in which case duelers would be punished by the discrimination. Unless there's a differentiation between accepted duels and pkings. In which case, vindictive people and people claiming to of killed someone who really deserved it are punished. Which isn't so bad.

[stillman]

Some players who are truely rightous (and who deserve the best rep) will not pk anyone or engage in any duels even if "they deserve it." Lots of brats on d2 deserve punnishment for their poor behavior. But if you get lured into dueling them, then you have become one of them.

I think my idea of having a clean slate showing that you have zero pks is good because it shows your true interests (pvm ONLY). You can simply make another chr for duels so you get the best of both worlds.

Overall, I really hope there is some form of reputation or proof of your character, and by character, I mean the player's personality proven by deeds committed in the game.

[mouseman]

Scenario - Groups of pkers and/or singular people with multiple accounts boosting their reputation to ruin co-op games.

There are strong statements made that Player Killing without consent will not be possible in Diablo 3.

We also don't know if you can make multiple accounts per cd-key.

I don't like the idea of pure stats - one can have a PvM and a PvP character on one account. In this case reputation would have to be tied only to the characters and not to the accounts - starting a new character would doom you to reputation 0 games. Of course, there should be a way to invite a character to a reputation game, even if that character/account doesn't have enough reputation to enter the game normally.

Most of all, reputation, in my books, is given to the human player behind the character, not rewarded by the deeds of the character (killing monsters, bosses and so on). The idea is to encourage players to consider each others as human beings, encourage general politeness, speaking with full sentences and genuinely helping each others out without the constant need to gain profit. So degrading reputation to achievements of the character would make it possible for a speed-leveling pro-player who never speaks to other players to gain the best reputation - which is fine, you could have stats, it's just not what I had in mind here.

Why should my reputation lose a point because some random kid feels like hurting every account's rep?

There is a lot we don't know about the game and because of that we can't go into specifics. However, the idea is to make reputation points givable only when a player has already showed that he is a co-op player. There will be a great deal of rushing, begging and generally hopping in and out of games hoping to get quests without effort. Reputation points should be givable only when a player has proved to be worthy of giving them.

How this should be proved isn't really the main point of my suggestion. Maybe the 1 hour playing time isn't sufficient. Maybe it would require clearing an act together. Maybe only players who have completed every previous quest could give reputation points.

The main point is, however, that "normal" b.net players wouldn't be interested in reputation. It would be worthless for them. It would slow them down and tie them to boring co-op games without giving any real benefit to them or their characters. They could, as well as people who like to solo, play the game like they want to play it.

The game wouldn't revolve around reputation - it would just be a small feature for those who are interested in genuine cooperation. Personally, I think it would help out a lot, if you could filter games by reputation, helping you identify players who you already know (even if they play with other characters) and so on. It could create a new type of community even within another community.

Ideally, a reputation system would allow everyone to play the game like they want to play it without constant conflict about which way is the right way to play the game. It would allow all players to peacefully coexist without bumping too much into each other and ruining each others game experience.

[chenghao]

why not before you create a game , there be this checkbox that allows or disallows PK

cos i think the flavor of hostility towards others is lost if you need their consensus after the game has been created while in the realm of the sanctuary

[stillman]

I still see a problem with measurement of reputation. I don't think it would work out if it was just based on word of mouth. We all know what kind of bad people are lurking out there on bnet. There would be guilds of psychopathic scammers getting together and giving each other competitive amounts of rep points so they could have an upper hand in tricking us nice guys. "look dude my rep is 3k, more than u. ill hlp ur xfer trust me srsly. dude. come on. dont be nub"

Or, the whole thing could backfire and become more useless and ignored than stamina. That's why I think rep points need to be earned via recorded actions.

Mouseman, all of the traits you mentioned can be measured mathematicaly by programs. For example, politenss can be measured (in part) by a built in language filter. People who swear all day and use degrading names like "noob" (and evey variation of "nub") will have these violations tallied up and points get deducted from their reputation. How about a program that "tags" every account that has vouched for you. To gain one rep point, 3 untagged players must click to vouch you within 5 seconds. If you get vouched by 3 or more palyers in the 5 seconds, you gain one rep point. But if any of those people are "tagged", then their vouch doesn't count because they've already helped you gain a rep point. So to get the most rep points, you go around in large games (3 people or more) and help as many strangers as possible. The idea is, they have to be untagged (stranger) accounts who increase your rep so scammer groups can't exploit it.

Anyway, I'll get back to this later when I thought of other solutions.

[mouseman]

I still don't know if you get what I'm saying. Maybe I just don't know how to make my point clear :)

When I read those diablo 1 guides (link (http://web.archive.org/web/20010417075528/www.diabloii.net/strategy/shuri_rogue/shuri_guide.shtml)) I realized that it had a completely different way of seeing multiplayer games than b.net has now. Most of the guide was used to describe good manners towards other players. Things like asking if you can take an item from ground. Things like giving a spell book to the one with the lowest level spell (and trusting that people won't lie their levels). Things like dropping money on the ground near NPC's collectively so that everyone has enough when it is needed.

Diablo 1 was so flawed that it required a lot of trust. All that trust is gone, there are no real interaction between players, everyone just tries to take advantage and gain more to himself/herself. Really, everyone should read the guide (http://web.archive.org/web/20010417075528/www.diabloii.net/strategy/shuri_rogue/shuri_guide.shtml).

You can't mathematically measure good manners, cooperation or trust. And if someone speaks like a illiterate, I wouldn't trust him/her no matter what his reputation is. Also, you're assuming there will be no improvements to the stash system and because of that there would be muling.

I really don't think anyone would just finish every quest with multiple characters, spend hours and hours in the same party, clear acts and play cooperatively just for gain reputation to scam people. If they do all that, maybe they'll realise something :) You would also need hundreds of friends, because only one account (assumed it's tied to cd-key) can give only one point per account. So with a scammer group of four, each scammer would have reputation of 3 (assuming they actually spent hours in the same game together).

Of course it should be unexploitable, of course it should work perfectly and of course there are millions of ways to ruin all that - like every feature in every game. But we don't have the power to actually change anything so arguing about the little details is quite pointless. I was just trying to get the general feel about a possible reputation system which, in my opinion, would be one of the greatest feature in the game. And I hope most of the people would ignore it - then it would work better.

[Sein Schatten]

No, just plain no. This system will be bad, unfair and ridiculous.

[Jesse24]

I picture people spamming:
"REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU! REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU! REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!"

[mouseman]

No, just plain no. This system will be bad, unfair and ridiculous.

Well thank you for your constructive critisism.

Maybe the battle.net can't be saved. Maybe the expansion of internet really has a negative effect on computer games. It's a different world and there's no turning clock back.

I picture people spamming:
"REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU! REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU! REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!REP ME AND I'LL REP YOU!"

Why would they want reputation? It has absolutely no value to them. Why would they even be in a game that allows you to give reputation?

Whatever, I give up. This is pointless. People arguing here (generally, like with the color/respeccing arguments) like they could change anything or the fate of the game depends on their next forum post.

[Jesse24]

Whatever, I give up. This is pointless. People arguing here (generally, like with the color/respeccing arguments) like they could change anything or the fate of the game depends on their next forum post.

Why are power gamers power gamers? Aside from not enough going on in real life, they want EVERYTHING a game has to offer. Not having rep gives them even the slightest feeling of exclusion or disadvantage therefore giving it value to them and a demand. Never mind the talk of giving high rep people extra power, that will just make things worse.

Oh well, let's just give up together, right?

[chenghao]

maybe they could increase the friends list limit till 250 ? that could help you select company by allowing u to list the companies you want (have a system similar to steam ?)

[Luckymofo]

Not sure if this has been said, but Guild Wars has a rep system in the form of titles and it didn't work out perfectly

[SlechtWeerBeer]

Titles in GW are in NO WAY a "rep system", fyi. It just tells you how much you have played a certain thing, i.e. PvE. If you'd have Leg Guardian, it'd not tell someone you're a nice player, it tells you have completed all campaigns.

[theBanger]

Why use a complex thing like rep to tell if someone is awesome, when you can just look around on these forums. ;)

Honestly, that's one reason why so many people come to these forums. Doesn't mean every one here is someone you'll get along with, but you can always choose not to play with them if you feel that way.

[Funkopotamus]

You're giving up? If nobody tries to poke holes in an idea nobody would ever know if it holds water.
There are strong statements made that Player Killing without consent will not be possible in Diablo 3.

We also don't know if you can make multiple accounts per cd-key.

I meant to include people who buy multiple copies of the game. And if that's so, that defeats someone's pk count suggestion, or turns it into a harmless pvp record.

[Sein Schatten]

Why use a complex thing like rep to tell if someone is awesome, when you can just look around on these forums. ;)

Honestly, that's one reason why so many people come to these forums. Doesn't mean every one here is someone you'll get along with, but you can always choose not to play with them if you feel that way.

Exactly. Someone who is around here for like 2-3 month with a non-zero postcounter indicates (for me) that he is able to post somewhat mature. Otherwise he would be banned.
Any kind of rep system is going to be flawed. And I would rather have a unlimited friend list and ignore list (preferable all entries are account bond. Meaning putting someone on ignore and he is ignored with all chars.).

[phool]

A very well applied rep system results in elitism, a poorly applied one results in elitism and unfair abuse. Acc-wide badges/titles/medals/accomplishments or whatever that can be seen when rcling on a char in chat seem altogether acceptable and could extend to a game's replay value and encourage players to play in ways they may not usually, e.g. speedrun badge, complete game on every char badge, naked badge, etc.

Titles in GW are in NO WAY a "rep system", fyi. It just tells you how much you have played a certain thing, i.e. PvE. If you'd have Leg Guardian, it'd not tell someone you're a nice player, it tells you have completed all campaigns.

"LF X build for Y team must be rank Z+"

Many titles certainly imply an amount of experience and competence.

[konfeta]

The last thing this game needs is rep drama. It's an artificial mechanic that begs to be abused. I say keep it out.

[visom]

I think reputation should depend upon how many times you PK, how many times you've stole money (from other people when they die) , and how many times you've used any curse words within a certain amount of time (to know if that player is harassing others)

Reputation shouldn't be determined by players, even though this game is rated M there are still alot of kids playing as well, and some 20year old aren't better than those 10year old kids

I think i have a better idea, instead of reputation, have feedbacks on the players, the feedbacks won't do anything to the character, except show what others thing of them. The last 10feedbacks will be displayed on the player's profile, and the player can leave a comment on his feedback to explain himself (if necessary) so everyone can see. Here's an ex.

Feedback#1: This guys awesome, very reliable and mature.
Reply: Thanks :D

Feedback#2: This guy is a stupid noob, he should die
Reply: I didn't even do anything to you

Feedback#3: OMFG THIS GUY SCAMMER
Reply: I didn't scam you, stop making up lies.

[SlechtWeerBeer]

"LF X build for Y team must be rank Z+"

Many titles certainly imply an amount of experience and competence.

Yes, that happens, but that says "Look, I can grind Varajar Fells. Now let's go to UW!" (taking Ursan as an example here, which is the only thing ran atm).
It shows you can grind Varajar Fells, not that you're any proficient in UW/DoA/Anything beyond Normal Mode.

Yes, they imply competence if you take, say, Leg. Guardian again.
But a rep system shows if you are kind, not proficient.

[mouseman]

You're giving up? If nobody tries to poke holes in an idea nobody would ever know if it holds water.


My point was that we simply don't know enough of the game to discuss details. If blizzard makes a reputation system, I bet they will take everything into account. I was just passing around the general idea - people acting like they know exactly how D3 will play out (just thinking it's a remake of D2 with different graphics) and judging suggestions based on that won't result to anything meaningful.

I bet no one bothered to read the guide I referred to. You all assume a reputation system is something to boost your ego or think it's an achievement system. The battle.net atmosphere has got you ;) Really, people are using language and saying things they wouldn't be saying if they were face to face or even using their own names.

So, you don't get what I'm saying, I can't say it any better, we don't know enough from the game to argue details and even if we did know, it wouldn't matter. So yes, I give up (again) ;>

EDIT: I actually like the feedback system. Or something like they got in ebay-type internet auctions - you can give ratings and leave comments to people you have been dealing with.

Yeah, I meant reputation system to be about the person behind the characters, not about the character's achievements or what not.

[WzWz]

Bad idea .

[Kijya]

I too think it wouldn't work out as you wish it to.

However I'm all for a user controlled chat filter/manipulator and auto squelcher.

Filter: if a user says "noob" just remove that word and show me the rest of the sentence.
Filter: if a user says the same sentence twice just show the first one and ignore the second.

Manipulator: if a user says "n00b" replace it with "Your Grace" and display the edited sentence.


Auto squelcher: If he says "www.***gawdlyitems***shop.com in one sentence just don't display it to me, and squelch him.
Auto squelcher: if a user spams 2 or more sentences longer then x words in quick succession, squelch him for me.


All filters should be user controlled of course, and you should be able to exclude people on your friend list from them.



Think this should be really easy to implement if blizzard wants to ...

[slickr]

this is a mixed bag thing.
If done properly it can work, if done poorly it can suck!

[jamesisbest]

I think this idea, though sounds like a good idea at first is flawed at closer inspection. I think people would abuse it so they can get high reputations, making it easier to scam people who aren't cautious with their high reputation. I have a feeling that gold websites would make a profit off of "power reping" people which also would be a bane to the game. I can imagine most of the people with high reputation being exploiters of the system with bad manners and/or intentions to take advantage of people. There is no way to safeguard the system in a way such that it won't be exploitable.