Darth Hater

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"Your group has been disbanded."

Don't you just hate it when that message pops onto the screen? You spend half an hour putting together a group to run through a dungeon, you're about to pull the first boss and then WHAM. EliteDPSer27 says the pizza guy is at the door and he has to go.


Well, an interesting thread has popped up on the official SW:TOR forums that has me pondering something Ive never considered in the past. Its something thats popular in online shooters and sports games, but I cant think of a similar system in MMOs. Namely, its a mechanism that conveys to other gamers how reliable someone is and whether or not you should take them into a long and involved instance/dungeon run. For certain games on Xbox Live its a number attached to each login name that tells you out of 100% how often that person disconnects before a game is completed.

My question is would a similar system work in an MMO? Or more specifically, is this something people would want included in The Old Republic?

The way I see the argument breaking down is you have two distinct groups of people. One group would welcome such a feature with open arms because they are frustrated and tired of dealing with failed grouping scenarios in an MMO environment. The other group would condemn such a mechanism because they are a fierce proponent of keeping their gaming experience as private as possible. This would be the same group of people that despises online databases that detail the gear they are wearing, along with their vital stats and other gaming achievements/milestones. You could argue that a third group exists, one that fears this would lead to another source of elitism and griefing, but for now Ill just lump them in with the others who would say HELL NO to such a system.

Weighing the pros and cons, I think on the whole this would be a very nice addition to my SW:TOR gaming experience. My days of spending hours a day playing an MMO are long behind me, so it would be nice to have a way to vet the list of possible people I could take along with me into a flashpoint/instanced event. This would in all likelihood reduce the number of times your groups fall apart halfway through a dungeon and for someone putting casual hours into a game repeating content is not something thats high on the priority list.

So while I personally support such a feature, I cant ignore that it would be terribly annoying to have my personal rating harmed by unavoidable real life scenarios. For instance, as was mentioned on the forums, if you have a pre-arranged agreement with your guild to leave the raid at a certain time each night, that is not a negative action, but it would wreak havoc to your disconnect rating. Or perhaps you are running through a flashpoint and you lose your internet connection. This is another circumstance that would harm your rating, but was entirely out of your control.

At the end of the day, I think these are things that could be worked out by the developers. And if it means that my gaming experience is more efficient and that I dont have to deal with Johnnys early bedtime, Im all for it

Feel free to comment and tell me Im horribly wrong. Or even better, if you like the idea let me know how you would implement it into Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Comments

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  • TaboriHK's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #23 TaboriHK Posted 9/17/2009 7:58:17 PM
    Perhaps they could implement a prefer/avoid function similar to Xbox. That way, it's user-controlled and not up to a system that just logs the comings and goings of a player.
  • ryanmac's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #22 ryanmac Posted 9/17/2009 7:44:15 PM
    No offense but if you are the type of person that wants to stay for the first boss and knows you have to leave after that then I don't want to group with you. That's exactly what this system would accomplish. I could avoid PUG'ing with you if I knew you had a tenancy to leave.
  • sado's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 1623
    #19 sado Posted 9/17/2009 4:33:20 PM
    Ahh, sounds like a good idea though. In the time I played city of heroes I don't think I ever used that feature though.
  • Avaro's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #17 Avaro Posted 9/17/2009 1:53:04 PM
    I think it sadly would get abused and wouldent be that good to have. You can give someone bad rating even though he made good and vice versa.
  • Hewo's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 312
    #13 Hewo Posted 9/17/2009 5:21:17 AM
    This is why I don't pug. I know my ENTIRE wow guild is going to play this once it goes live so it won't be a problem at all finding people to group with. We will have actually 2 guilds (Sith/Repulic) and the want to play each sides are equal, therefore we will start off with around 100+ members on each side. Luckily for me it has been a tight nit guild with almost the same people since SWG. I believe this fresh, new, exciting game will peak much interest and guilds should be super active. My advice is find a guild with a great long lasting history and you should have no problems finding groups.
  • sado's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 1623
    #14 sado Posted 9/17/2009 5:50:29 AM
    That would be my same suggestion. Pug groups are always terrible.
  • ryanmac's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #16 ryanmac Posted 9/17/2009 6:53:28 AM
    They might be unavoidable if this game doesn't have a few million players. Even the most popular MMOs that aren't named Warcraft have trouble with numbers.
  • TaboriHK's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #21 TaboriHK Posted 9/17/2009 5:30:11 PM
    WoW is not immune to it either. I'm from the Zangarmarsh server, good luck getting a group together if you are not in a guild. Even if you ARE in a guild it's a total pain.
  • Zenkei's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #15 Zenkei Posted 9/17/2009 6:11:35 AM
    "Hey?! Wanna join my guild?!" - Illegal Danish
  • Sztanyi's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #9 Sztanyi Posted 9/17/2009 12:38:05 AM
    I honestly think that this will NOT be necessary. Bioware knows very well about these issues, and i think they are designing the whole game to get around this. From what we have seen so far, it is very unlikely that BW will release a class on both sides who's sole job is a healer. Not only does that not go well with the story, but also they don't exactly have a tank class atm either.
    Another thing to think about is that there are only 4 classes on each side, this means that unlike in other games, with 8-10 classes (which can be played on both sides) it is hard to replace 1 specific class. In TOR there are only 4, meaning there's a 25% chance out of all the people, that you get the class that left.
    The beautiful thing is, that since it looks like BW won't go with the traditional dps/tank/healer set up, it wont matter if a smuggler leaves and you get a trooper instead.

    Of course it isn't confirmed that BW wont go by the traditional way of grouping, but it seems highly unlikely that there will be a priest type of healing class.
    So the whole point of my post is, the way the game is set up, we probably wont need a system like this that gives you a big black mark for disconnecting, even when you had nothing to do with the issue. With this system if someone disconnects, it will be really easy to replace them with someone else.
  • Zoid's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 656
    #12 Zoid Posted 9/17/2009 2:22:09 AM
    Remember, if you go random on picking a class there is a 25% chance you will be one class. In reality about 50%+ will be holding a lightsaber. A VERY old article on this website has the stats. http://darthhater.com/2009/07/14/jedisith-wars-ahoy/
  • TaboriHK's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #20 TaboriHK Posted 9/17/2009 5:28:55 PM
    That's true, and it isn't even counting people who will be new to the TOR franchise. I guarantee you 95% of them will be rolling a force user too.

    But if you think back to how KOTOR 1 and 2 were, in the end it didn't really matter who you used, except in the context of which characters you preferred. Mira was fine shooting or whipping out the lightsaber, and you could function just fine regardless of group make up. I love to think that this is the angle they are going with, but that totally wrecks my radar for what to expect from 'end game' content.
  • Zenkei's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #8 Zenkei Posted 9/17/2009 12:04:01 AM
    I think this type of system would have to be carefully balanced in order for it to work. It would be far too easy to abuse this system to cause someone to get a bad rating, when truthfully, they don't deserve it. Perhaps a better system would allow others to post comments and rate a person on their performance, with or without the predescribed system. I understand that this system would also allow for abuse, but it wouldn't be too hard to allow the person which comments are made about, to approve them or disapprove them, while making the rating given by other players automatic. This of course would have to be carefully balanced, but any system of this form would have to be in order to prevent as few griefers as possible.
  • nedostup's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #6 nedostup Posted 9/16/2009 11:40:41 PM
    This would work as long as your rating was not cumulative over your whole history of the game, but based on your recent history. It would suck to be saddled with a black mark forever even if you've changed your disconnecting ways.
  • ryanmac's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #7 ryanmac Posted 9/16/2009 11:56:16 PM
    That's a good point. There's definitely a lot of variables with a system like this. I truly believe it would be a nice addition to SW:TOR.
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