Reputation System and PVP Rankings

@chronodusk said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon

This seems like it goes against what Sea of Thieves is supposed to be about. It is an unpredictable shared world. Similarly to PvE servers or safe modes, a suggestion like this endeavors to make the game... well... more predictable, which it isn't supposed to be.

It's just a different kind of divide - Pirate Legends likely would only run into Pirate Legends. Ultra sweats only run into ultra sweats, noobs only encountering noobs.

What about the situations where an old legend helps a new player out on their first voyage? How about the peril of being a skilled Reaper being hunted by the absolute most skilled players in the game? The game doesn't just thrive on PvE and PvP happening in the same world, it also thrives on players of varying levels of skill and experience meeting eachother. I would hate running only into people who are just as skilled as me. In fact, the equally matched ship battles tend to be the ship battles that take HOURS to end.

I agree that is a risk to what I propose assuming it's not designed right. It does add a small layer of predictability, but I'm not looking for it to be 100%.

Pirate Legends who do a lot of PVP would be more likely to run into other players who do a lot of PVP, not necessarily Pirate Legends.

Likewise, Pirate Legends who do not do a lot of PVP would still run into a lot of new players and be able to help them.

It's not about your company rankings, it's about measuring player's aggressiveness and propensity for PVP and encouraging them to be paired together. It still would be randomized to a degree based on geography and server availability, but it would absolutely reduce the randomness that is currently there (which really, while random, ends up favoring the PVP player since they will typically end up in a server with more people uninterested in fighting than interested).

Also, by including a modifier/multiplier for people who attack/sink/kill the same players repeatedly in a session, it helps ensure those who may be truly skilled at PVP, will still have some easier PVP targets in their server.

@wolfmanbush said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

I don't like this at all. Not only because I feel the randomness of interaction comes with far more pros than cons but because it puts people like me in a category I don't wanna be in

I have thousands of hours and very high interaction rates with very high ship sinks and engagements in combat if my stats were to be examined it would look as if I'm big into pvp. On paper it tells a different tale than what happens. I don't attack most ships first. I don't sink to sink or kill to kill I only take what I need and I don't need a lot of what people have. I support people playing however they want but my own code is often different from those that have my stats.

Literally all of my gameplay has either been alone or in an open crew with mostly inexperienced players. I don't wanna be paired with people that share my stats. I want to be thrown into chaos with random people in open crew that are in random situations that need an extra hand. I get to help players get out of pve and pvp pickles where they are often being killed by people with my stats.

It's an adventure I don't wanna be around people like me or that have done what I've done I wanna pass through other people's worlds and get involved in what they are doing. As long as the crew is doing something I'll help at least for a while.

As far as sharing a server with a bunch of people outside of my crew that share my stats no thanks.

People being able to find custom crews outside of the game allows people to find compatible people. The opportunity to play with different types of people when I have no control over selection is worth more than silver and gold, that applies to my crew and the other crews that share the server.

It's not just about skill and engagements from a defensive perspective. The point is to measure the aggressiveness of players, not just how good they are at PVP. The game can measure how often a ship attacks a smaller ship, how often a ship attacks the same ship repeatedly, how often a ship attacks an empty ship first, how often a ship is the aggressor. Those are all things that can be done to fine-tune how it determines how to matchmake players.

Again, it doesn't have to be a discrete IF lots of kills THEN insert all players here. It's just a modifier to help encourage like minded players with being paired together so they can enjoy the game how they want. It still allows for randomness. It's not 100%. The model, variables how it's all determined would need to be heavily thought out by Rare and analyzed for what data points make the most sense in determining the results, but it would improve the quality of the community.

@wolfmanbush said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@wolfmanbush said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

I don't like this at all. Not only because I feel the randomness of interaction comes with far more pros than cons but because it puts people like me in a category I don't wanna be in

I have thousands of hours and very high interaction rates with very high ship sinks and engagements in combat if my stats were to be examined it would look as if I'm big into pvp. On paper it tells a different tale than what happens. I don't attack most ships first. I don't sink to sink or kill to kill I only take what I need and I don't need a lot of what people have. I support people playing however they want but my own code is often different from those that have my stats.

Literally all of my gameplay has either been alone or in an open crew with mostly inexperienced players. I don't wanna be paired with people that share my stats. I want to be thrown into chaos with random people in open crew that are in random situations that need an extra hand. I get to help players get out of pve and pvp pickles where they are often being killed by people with my stats.

It's an adventure I don't wanna be around people like me or that have done what I've done I wanna pass through other people's worlds and get involved in what they are doing. As long as the crew is doing something I'll help at least for a while.

As far as sharing a server with a bunch of people outside of my crew that share my stats no thanks.

People being able to find custom crews outside of the game allows people to find compatible people. The opportunity to play with different types of people when I have no control over selection is worth more than silver and gold, that applies to my crew and the other crews that share the server.

It's not just about skill and engagements from a defensive perspective. The point is to measure the aggressiveness of players, not just how good they are at PVP. The game can measure how often a ship attacks a smaller ship, how often a ship attacks the same ship repeatedly, how often a ship attacks an empty ship first, how often a ship is the aggressor. Those are all things that can be done to fine-tune how it determines how to matchmake players.

Again, it doesn't have to be a discrete IF lots of kills THEN insert all players here. It's just a modifier to help encourage like minded players with being paired together so they can enjoy the game how they want. It still allows for randomness. It's not 100%. The model, variables how it's all determined would need to be heavily thought out by Rare and analyzed for what data points make the most sense in determining the results, but it would improve the quality of the community.

yet again the stats don't tell the tale

When I'm on an open crew brig with non pvpers with a maxed emissary and just helped them get through an event and the ole server hopper sloop I've been watching since they spawned in comes over and one or both fire off because their skillset is gun combat and I hit their ship so that way if I'm able to kill them they get spawned away, this very common scenario will count me as the aggressor. This will count me as hitting empty ships and as empty smaller boats, and when I have to take them out 2 or 3 more times because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain on paper it makes me look like a very different player than I am and will match me with very different types of players

Yeah, no, I don't disagree with you on that. I'm just spitballing some variables that could be used, not necessarily an exhaustive list of ones that should be used. Any system would likely have some fallibility to it (as models typically do), but it seems like the good would outweigh the bad in my opinion and those aggressive sloops would encounter other players not as skilled as you, repeatedly attack those players and drive up their aggression rating in a way that would make them more likely to end up in servers where they do run into more combat oriented players.

Again, don't think it terms of absolutes. It's not if you sink other players you end up only in combat focused servers, it's if you take into account the totality of how a person plays, aggressively, non-aggressively, defensively (assuming you have the right variables to fairly measure this), you are more likely to be paired with aggressive players.

Again, not exhaustive, but if you factor in number of voyages started/finished, tall tales, own treasure turned in vs other player's treasure turned in, you could get to a reasonable assumption of what players are aggressive and looking to fight vs those that are looking to chill and while not only pairing like with like, you could encourage it slightly in a way that would reduce toxicity and improve the quality of interactions players have with each other in more meaningful ways.

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

Again, don't think it terms of absolutes. It's not if you sink other players you end up only in combat focused servers, it's if you take into account the totality of how a person plays, aggressively, non-aggressively, defensively (assuming you have the right variables to fairly measure this), you are more likely to be paired with aggressive players.

The problem is that this is nearly impossible to quantify. If I sail near a ship and shoot over the bow, I've initiated combat but because I haven't hit anyone yet if they shoot back and hit me they're now flagged as the aggressor since it's not going to be very efficient to track every cannonball and determine if it was near another ship. I could also just as easily approach and wait for the other ship to shoot first. You're just encouraging players to bait other players first to damage their rating over their own.

I've seen systems like this in MMOs and older MUDs and it does not work well.

Again, not exhaustive, but if you factor in number of voyages started/finished, tall tales, own treasure turned in vs other player's treasure turned in, you could get to a reasonable assumption of what players are aggressive and looking to fight vs those that are looking to chill and while not only pairing like with like, you could encourage it slightly in a way that would reduce toxicity and improve the quality of interactions players have with each other in more meaningful ways.

All this does is allow players to game the system if they want to by completing a few missions every so often, just sailing in circles, or starting tall tales to keep them from being bumped into a different pool. The benefits of a system like this are very few considering the cost to design, implement and prevent abuse when you consider the end result will probably not be all that different than what you run into now. Some servers are chill and some are spicy.

@d3adst1ck said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

Again, don't think it terms of absolutes. It's not if you sink other players you end up only in combat focused servers, it's if you take into account the totality of how a person plays, aggressively, non-aggressively, defensively (assuming you have the right variables to fairly measure this), you are more likely to be paired with aggressive players.

The problem is that this is nearly impossible to quantify. If I sail near a ship and shoot over the bow, I've initiated combat but because I haven't hit anyone yet if they shoot back and hit me they're now flagged as the aggressor since it's not going to be very efficient to track every cannonball and determine if it was near another ship. I could also just as easily approach and wait for the other ship to shoot first. You're just encouraging players to bait other players first to damage their rating over their own.

I've seen systems like this in MMOs and older MUDs and it does not work well.

Again, not exhaustive, but if you factor in number of voyages started/finished, tall tales, own treasure turned in vs other player's treasure turned in, you could get to a reasonable assumption of what players are aggressive and looking to fight vs those that are looking to chill and while not only pairing like with like, you could encourage it slightly in a way that would reduce toxicity and improve the quality of interactions players have with each other in more meaningful ways.

All this does is allow players to game the system if they want to by completing a few missions every so often, just sailing in circles, or starting tall tales to keep them from being bumped into a different pool. The benefits of a system like this are very few considering the cost to design, implement and prevent abuse when you consider the end result will probably not be all that different than what you run into now. Some servers are chill and some are spicy.

I mean, you're picking at the specific variables I mentioned as examples rather than considering that Rare likely could measure things in ways that would account for both these situations.

Also, the variables used wouldn't be public or published anywhere. So while people theoretically could game the system (and would absolutely try because that's what people do), if it was done right, it would be relatively invisible to players and significantly harder to game.

I would argue that implementing a system like this has significant benefit from a cost-benefit analysis perspective. If it creates an improved community environment that encourages player retention and reduces toxicity, more players = more people buying emporium content. It's on Rare to do the analysis on whether the value is there, but it seems like they already measure a lot of different variables in the game, so it would really be just determining the best way to leverage those to come up with a meaningful rating and then implementing that into their server assignment code. Obviously not cheap, and the benefit would depend on how much it improves player retention, but seems worth it for them to explore the option.

No system is perfect. No solution is perfect. But you can't let perfection get in the way of progress. All of the counterpoints are certainly valid and should be considered by Rare if they were to implement a system like this, but I don't seem them as reasons not to try to improve the way the community interacts and the way people experience the game.

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

If it creates an improved community environment that encourages player retention and reduces toxicity

But I thought this system was intended to split up players based on PVP tendencies, which isn't toxic by itself. It's more than possible to have players not engaging in combat be absolutely toxic towards each other.

If you're trying to target toxic encounters, you're barking up the wrong tree with this idea.

@d3adst1ck said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

If it creates an improved community environment that encourages player retention and reduces toxicity

But I thought this system was intended to split up players based on PVP tendencies, which isn't toxic by itself. It's more than possible to have players not engaging in combat be absolutely toxic towards each other.

If you're trying to target toxic encounters, you're barking up the wrong tree with this idea.

Okay, so how would you improve toxic encounters then?

This comment goes to everyone. If you don't like the idea, that's fine, but instead of just saying this idea is bad I don't like it, how do you propose improving the situation?

@alymon PvP is not toxic. If you're trying to regulate toxicity, you're trying to regulate personalities which isn't possible outside of using the support system to report toxic behaviour.

@d3adst1ck said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon PvP is not toxic. If you're trying to regulate toxicity, you're trying to regulate personalities which isn't possible outside of using the support system to report toxic behaviour.

I never said PVP is toxic in and of itself. This isn't about PVP vs non-PVP. This is about helping match players into servers that encourage experiences they are interested in rather than not. The current method encourages people to server hop or join alliance servers and when new content is released with a single point of progression, it creates toxic interactions that could be limited with the right controls.

Again, rather than telling me what won't work or can't be done, present solutions you think would work better.

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

I never said PVP is toxic in and of itself. This isn't about PVP vs non-PVP. This is about helping match players into servers that encourage experiences they are interested in rather than not. The current method encourages people to server hop or join alliance servers and when new content is released with a single point of progression, it creates toxic interactions that could be limited with the right controls.

Again, rather than telling me what won't work or can't be done, present solutions you think would work better.

But your entire idea revolves around PvP interactions and then you basically said it was to "encourages player retention and reduces toxicity" implying that PvP is toxic and decreases retention?

@wolfmanbush said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@d3adst1ck said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

If it creates an improved community environment that encourages player retention and reduces toxicity

But I thought this system was intended to split up players based on PVP tendencies, which isn't toxic by itself. It's more than possible to have players not engaging in combat be absolutely toxic towards each other.

If you're trying to target toxic encounters, you're barking up the wrong tree with this idea.

Okay, so how would you improve toxic encounters then?

This comment goes to everyone. If you don't like the idea, that's fine, but instead of just saying this idea is bad I don't like it, how do you propose improving the situation?

People should leave the server and then it's over. New server new adventure new opportunities

A person chooses how much nonsense they deal with. Mute/block/new server solves it all

People should stop escalating negative situations and stop sticking around if they aren't having fun on that server. It's easy to hop there are no penalties and all negativity goes away as soon as people use the tools they have to escape it.

Not everyone is escalating negative situations. Not everyone is sticking around. Hopping servers doesn't solve the problem and wastes time. Having a model in place to encourage the matchmaking system to put people into servers that are more likely to be what they want solves this without wasting time. Nearly all multiplayer games have some sort of matchmaking based on skill or other factors. It's not a novel concept and again, would improve the community.

@wolfmanbush

I've certainly changed servers when things weren't positive for me. But that doesn't solve the problem if every server you jump to has people doing the same thing.

I don't think it's worth going back and forth over the same points here. If you don't see a problem with the current implementation and people camping out at single points of progression when content is released, you aren't going to agree with any solution to what you consider to be a non-problem.

I've seen too many times where the existing tools in place do not solve the problem I see, and what I proposed is meant to address that. I'm well aware of what the current options are to me. I'm well aware of what I can do currently. I just disagree that what's there is sufficient.

I also am not a fan of any game mechanic that causes me to have to waste time doing things I don't want to do. Server hopping, regardless of how quick it may be, wastes time. If I server hop and run into the same issue, I have to repeat and waste more time. If I have to sail to a specific spot each time before I know if I need to hop again, it wastes more time (yes all games are basically wastes of time, but I'd rather spend it playing than hopping servers).

Server hopping is also not a game mechanic. It's sort of gaming the system, just as creating alliance servers is gaming the system. If players don't have proper mechanics to address these concerns, something is wrong. Scuttling avoids spawn camping, but does nothing if a ship sits at the one spot you need to progress and repeatedly attacks you to no benefit for them.

@captain-coel said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

What situation needs improved?

It's detailed in the original post and subsequent responses. Did you read them?

@captain-coel said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon i did, i think matchmaking is perfect as is, trying to sort players is just a mistake

Okay, so you disagree there is a problem. You don't think players camping single points of progression with new content and attacking other players over and over again to no benefit or gain of their own is an issue when it drives people away from the game and negatively impacts the size of the community?

@wolfmanbush

Server hopping has a penalty. It wastes time. Again, you don't always know a server doesn't have people camping a single spot until you sail there. That takes time. If you need resources first, you have to buy or gather them. That takes time (or gold).

Absolutely I'm not proposing setting this up in a way that prevents you from meaningful encounters with different people who are all the same as you. Tuning the model and what is factored in is something that would need extensive testing on to ensure it doesn't have a negative impact on players like you as well.

Here's a thought on how it could work in a way that would help reduce problems while still allowing for people like you to be happy... You run the model and record the data constantly, but it only impacts matchmaking when it is close to new content delivery or periods known to be more toxic. Then as time passes from those points, the model impacts matchmaking less (while still recording data) until at some point it isn't used for matchmaking. It ramps back up when new content comes out.

This has the effect of reducing toxicity around new content while still encouraging the randomness you are concerned with.

@captain-coel said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

@alymon I think the tools have already been given to players via swapping servers or scuttling. I also don't think the sum of my actions should dictate how every server goes. Sometimes I wanna chill and fish some times I wanna sweat, your system would put me on the same servers all the time.

It would not. Not if implemented correctly. You are thinking in terms of absolutes, 100% impact to matchmaking as opposed to guiding the matchmaking but still allowing for deviation. I'm not proposing 100% absolute match like with like. I'm proposing a model to guide matchmaking to encourage positive experiences while still allowing for variations that ensure diversity in servers.

@alymon said in Reputation System and PVP Rankings:

Okay, so you disagree there is a problem. You don't think players camping single points of progression with new content and attacking other players over and over again to no benefit or gain of their own is an issue when it drives people away from the game and negatively impacts the size of the community?

In your proposed system, this is still going to happen because players are converging on the same locations because they are looking at doing the same thing (tall tale choke points). Steering players with similar intentions into the same servers is going to exacerbate this issue, not fix it.

Create multiple points of progression if players are bottlenecking and causing conflict. Problem solved. They already did this with the vault system used by other tall tales, I'm sure they can do the same thing with the Pirates Life TT2 (because that is what I assume this entire thread is about).

@wolfmanbush

I don't think this is an appropriate argument to make. I've been playing the game since the beginning and have tons of experience, playing in both closed crews and open crews. My PVP experience is certainly more limited, but I'm not here to wave around experience creds as if that matters here. Yes, many people call things toxic that are not toxic. I don't dispute that point. You don't want to use the word toxic, fine, that's semantics. I also don't appreciate the insinuation that something is being exaggerated or people are being false accused. Toxicity is certainly a spectrum and everyone has varying degrees of what they consider toxic. Your opinion is just that, an opinion. My opinion is just that, an opinion. When players camp out new content specifically with the intention of ruining other people's fun, literally that's what they've said their reason for doing it is, that's toxic to the community as a whole. You can disagree on that point, but if you do, there's really no reason for us to continue discussing this as we won't come to any common ground. There is a real problem when players come back into the game with the sole intent of driving other players away.

@d3adst1ck
It could. I wasn't inferring that all players who are working on tall tales be grouped together though. I'm also not proposing that it be an absolute if you don't want PVP you aren't going to be exposed to it (at that point it would be easier to do PVE only servers which is certainly not what I want). I absolutely agree having multiple points of progression would solve the problem with the new content specifically, but my proposal was trying to address a larger concern. It's possible the concern goes away with your solution though.

@captain-coel
A positive experience is going to vary to a degree, but I'm not proposing reducing PVP or eliminating it. It's about encouraging people in meaningful ways not to repeatedly go after the same players over and over again without reason. And since I'm sure the next statement is going to be "server hopping fixes that", it only does so when there's not a situation where there's a popular singular point of progression. But as D3ADST1CK said, removing those singular points of progression would certainly help without a major overhaul of the matchmaking system.