Content Finder and malicious players

We still don’t have many specific details on how Content Finder will work, but we’ve got the general idea.

There will be an important challenge that will have a big impact on the success of the Content Finder (and retaining those players susceptible to use it often in the long run): the quality of players being automatically added to your group.

Would it be convenient to have some kind of system where you can set a personal “rate” to the players you play with?

That “rate” could be used in the Content Finder programming when assigning random players to groups, prioritizing players best rated from the ones already in the group (then from the overall community if not applicable within the group).

Each rating could only last for 3 months or 30 days, to prevent abuse or “eternal punishment”.

We’re not talking about players who make some mistakes here and there, we’re talking about players who cheat, who are disrespectful, who do not participate (Caravan Escorts are a good example where leechers could have been down rated), who force disconnection when losing in PvP, etc...

What do you think about this potential issue? Do you think that a rating feature would just be segregation and would be bad for the community? Have other games found solutions to this issue?

Thank you,

Sounds pretty bad in my opinion, and as always with such systems the bad people would use it more just to spite someone than for legitimate reasons.

What? It will be automatic ?

yeah I think this suggestion just opens the system up for a second form of abuse.

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Originally Posted by Vingtdeux

We’re not talking about players who make some mistakes here and there, we’re talking about players who cheat, who are disrespectful, who do not participate (Caravan Escorts are a good example where leechers could have been down rated), who force disconnection when losing in PvP, etc...

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I think that the problem with this is the same as the problem you face any time you let other users rate others positively or negatively (the "Reddit problem"): no matter how much you say "this should only be used to negatively rate people who do really bad stuff like cheat, being racist/sexist, disconnect, AFK leech, etc", there are still lots of people out there who will downvote anybody that they personally don't like, or whoever they feel like blaming the run on (we wiped, mass-downvote the healer!).

I can definitely see a benefit to allowing a personal blocklist ("prevent me from ever being in a group with this player again if at all possible"), but a universal rating system that allows you to affect how other peoples' groups will be formed seems a little bit perilous to me.

I don't know if there's any good way to handle this. I remember doing dungeons with the content finder in WoW, and while it wasn't perfect, it worked ok. The main problem I had with doing random dungeons in WoW was people would roll on offspec items when a person playing as a main spec could have used it. When you're playing with random people with no set rules when it comes to that though, not a whole lot you can do.

Yoshida has already said that content done in the content finder will be more casual than some of the harder stuff in game, so hopefully skill level won't play too big of a factor. The biggest thing, as you mentioned, would be someone joining and then AFKing. But there should be some kind of thing where you can get a majority vote to kick a player if they've been AFK for too long, or if they're just a general douchebag and you want to remove them from the group and find someone else.

Incentives for playing well and a minor penalty for being a poor player (20-30 minute lockout if kicked) will be enough to make sure people don't grief.

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What do you think about this potential issue? Do you think that a rating feature would just be segregation and would be bad for the community? Have other games found solutions to this issue?

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I've run into very few truly malicious players. Some people have bad attitudes, some people can't play (and think they can) and some people should just log off until they have more time to play instead of wasting everyone else's time with their constant AFK.

For the players that are consistent in ruining my gaming time, /blist works wonders. Even if I'm in party with them, they can't annoy me no matter what they say (and what they say is 90% of the annoyance). If they are truly bad players, the other option is /oust, if you're party leader or send the party leader a /tell. Chances are he will agree and oust him. Right now, this typically ends the run... but with content finder you should be able to find someone to replace him fairly quickly.

If someone is such a malicious player that you feel like you want to hit them with some sort of penalty, why not just /pcmd leave and go find another party? It'll be a lot easier with content finder.

It can work well, see League of Legends' Tribunal system, but I think the reason that one works is that it achieves a scale which makes automatic and player-driven case review practical. Could I see something like this work in FFXIV is the player base explodes in ARR? Yes. For now, I think Wolfie's idea is more practical.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Incentives for playing well and a minor penalty for being a poor player (20-30 minute lockout if kicked) will be enough to make sure people don't grief.

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I am worried about this too :( Hoping SE has a way to handle this kind of thing. A rating system would be nice but I have a feeling some folks would abuse it and rate down others just to be jerks ; ;

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Originally Posted by Babydoll

I am worried about this too :( Hoping SE has a way to handle this kind of thing. A rating system would be nice but I have a feeling some folks would abuse it and rate down others just to be jerks ; ;

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Long term penalties are dangerous because of groupthink and because there's being an a******e goes both ways. Look at Zam boards and the s**tfests that happen there with rate downs and rate ups.

You need minor inconveniences as penalties as protection from the rest of the group. The same way that you can be an a*****e, the group can be an a******e to you, and if there are harsh penalties in the system, that would be a disaster.

Some great suggestions and solutions.

Especially like options like:
- Positive rating only (acting as some kind of lower tier friendlist for Content Finder for prioritization)
- 100% personal (take current player's within party rating into account, but not the overall community rating)
- Other systems (like Wolfie's idea, locked out for X minutes if kicked out from party)