Character Accountability Idea

May 23, 2006 on 8:07 pm | In General Gaming

Inspired by Zonk's post about Tobold's blog on the quality of grouping, I'm reminded of the many discussions about player accountability over the years.

Some feel open PvP is the only way to really keep people in line. Others want the Hand of God in the form of personal Game Masters that can be called upon to dispense justice. Still others want to be in charge themselves.

I prefer a more moderate approach.

Edit: I've since read Richard Bartle's idea (which he further defines at Lum's place), and see Tide is developing one as well. It's good to see activity in this area.

There's been ample discussions about why people do or do not group. This is not an attempt to repeat those. Rather, it's a quick conceptual overview of feature that people who want to group with others could use, particularly useful if they do not have a cadre of friends or guildmates immediately available. This is also an amalgamation of many different ideas. So it may be bunk. Or being used somewhere already.

Character Rating

Short and sweet, take the eBay Member Reputation system and tweak the rules for leaving Feedback to be relevant within a specific MMORPG. What sort of rules would this require?

Rules

We can't just have people voting for other characters. By itself that would be fraught with so much abuse, the achieved ratings would be irrelevant. So we need to determine a number of different rules. First, we'll specify the type of game. Let's use World of Warcraft, not because it's the best, but because it's a very common mechanic. Further, there are games with built in accountability already, mostly because they so deeply integrate PvP (ie, Shadowbane Eve) that PvP isn't really the point at all, but just a feature of the much larger reason for being in that world. For example, the below would not be a good thing for Eve.

1. Account Rating- Every character in the game also shows the name of the Account. Clicking that link would open up a list of all characters under that account, maybe even across all servers of that game. There are many who would scream loudly against this feature, but I don't see how this could be a bad thing for folks who aren't occasionally (or often) jerks in these games.
2. Group Requirement- Players shouldn't be voting on other players simply because they didn't like that character's name. They should at least have grouped for them, preferably for a cumulative hour.
3. Comments- Both the voter and the subject should be allowed to leave comments. And, the voter should be allowed to rescind a comment if a dispute is resolved offline.
4. Time-in Requirement- Players must be active in the game for at least four months to leave feedback. And feedback can only be left for characters that have been alive for at least three months.
5. Activity Requirement- Votes and comments can only be left for characters that have been active in the last 48 hour period. No sense allowing people to dig through someone's list of unplayed alts looking to leave bad feedback for everyone.
6. No self voting- As much as possible, players should not be allowed to vote for themselves. Obviously this is not foolproof, as no automated system exists to guarantee that every account can be traced to a specific person looking for many accounts to link to one. Different credit cards, different addresses, different IPs, anything short of a retinal scan can be spoofed. And even that… well, I saw Demolition Man…
7. No cumulative scoring- Just wanted to mention I don't believe in cumulative scoring. A player who's interested in looking someone up should look at each character and make their own judgement.

I don't consider this a magic bullet. But I do think that all of these rules taken together could allow an interested player an easier time at finding a group. Folks with bad ratings would have a harder time finding a group, so would need to work harder to convince people. Maybe this would make them realize they need to shape up. Maybe it would just compel them to find a different game to abuse. I am not niave though.

I doubt the above system would be well-liked. In fact, it may actually be considered bad business to purposely design an accountability system that would demonize players. MMOG companies right now have a relative hands-off approach to individual character accountability, and nobody likes to see a dip in their base of paying subscribers. But I offer this up for discussion anyway. I'm interested in discussing whether it's a good idea, where it could be improved, where it may have been tried previously and where better systems might exist.

Have a thought? Feel free to talk about here, with Zonk, or at Grimwell Online.