Designing a MMORPG Feedback System 86
Gamasutra is running one of their highly enjoyable 'soapbox' pieces, looking at possible ways you could implement a feedback or ranking system for Massively Multiplayer Online Game players. From the article: "When playing an MMORPG, I should be able to give a positive, neutral, or negative rating to anyone who has been in my group for more than thirty minutes. Negative ratings could be characterized via a multiple-choice list of common gripes (i.e. 'loot theft', 'abusive language', etc) -- a feature now built into the Xbox Live feedback system. However, it isn't clear that a good feedback system requires this level of depth; there's an argument to be made for simplifying the process as much as possible."
decent idea... (Score:4, Informative)
FYI - this was tried in Ragnarok Online but it was taken off due to abuse. People would pay (in game) money for positive points, and you'd have people who would stalk you and give negatives at every opertunity. You could only give 1 point per day, but it was still abused by people having multiple characters on one account or multiple accounts. It opened people up to a lot of threats as well, as a planned implementation of the system would have been more chance to drop equipment when you died.
Eve Online (Score:2, Informative)
They have two great means of this. 1, players can set standings for how they view any player, corporation (think guild), alliance, faction, or what have you. The can rate some(one/thing) on a scale of -10 to +10. At any time you can look at another character's standings to see what PC's, NPC's, Corps, factions, alliances, etc., like or dislike them. Also, committing illegal acts in secure / semi-secure space results in a decreased standing with Concorde (NPC Police), which gives a highlight to their nick. Eventually, if that standing gets too low, the police will shoot on sight if the person is found in too high a security zone, depending on how bad the standing is.
The second way that you can deal with people you don't like is with bounties. If you've got the dough, you can place a bounty on somebody's head and it will be visible to all players that they are wanted. If they have good (or not horrible, at least) standing with Concorde, shooting them will still be illegal in secure space, but for the right price...well, you get the idea. You would think that this feature would be heavily abused, but in fact it's not. It's not especially difficult to get a bounty off your head (just have somebody kill you...note however that clones get expensive, so it's only worth it if the bounty is higher than the cost of your clone), but it is still a moderately effective tool.
Another interesting note is that some have mentioned loot thieves. As of last expansion, if you loot something from somebody else's kill, they have kill rights on you for the next hour, regardless of security level. And last of note, unless you are in the most secure (and therefore, least profitable / exciting) sectors, it is not overly difficult for somebody to kill you if you piss of the wrong person. Oh, and did I mention PC corps can declare war on each other, and thereafter kill opposing corp members, regardless of security level? Mmmyesh. All in all, the game deals beautifully with asshats.