Would you be against or for rewarding good performance in parties?

[Lynart]

It hit me today that the reason why party mechanics in MMORPGs' suck is because regardless of how you preform, you are rewarded the exact same as every other player.

Lets all admit that not all players are equal. Some players thrive on doing the best possible job. Others simply play for fun. It doesn't matter if you spent an hour or two researching what gear is the Best in Slot, reading on your rotation, or simply carrying the party by outperforming everyone else. As long as the party clears the raid or dungeon, everyone gets the same reward.

This makes no sense to me.

In PvP games, when a player outperforms everyone else they are instantly rewarded via some kind of high score. Whether it is a high "score per minute" or a KD ratio, a good player knows they are doing something right. In MMORPGs there is literally nothing that distinguishes between a player that is "doing the bare minimum" to one that has gone above and beyond.

I understand that MMORPG players, including myself depending on the mood, don't really care for e-peen waving (lol who am I kidding, we all know many do). So rather than having some toxic promoting device like a DPS parser, why doesn't the game simply reward players for going above and beyond via additional loot?

For DPS, the bar can be simple: beat x DPS throughout the dungeon, you get additional loot.

For tanks, total the amount of damage before mitigation, if it beats x amount, you get additional loot.

For healers........somebody help me here because I have no idea.

The above are just simple examples and there are very obvious loop holes. I am not a gamer designer. I'm referring to the concept of rewarding good performance

Thoughts?

EDIT: The system proposed at a high level is by no way, in anyway shape or form, competitive. Competitive systems involve having a finite # of rewards at any number of players. In FPS games this is simple: a player with a high KD means they have added deaths to other players. Performing well means somebody else is going to be doing poorly.

In a race, there is only 1 "first place". To be in first place means you pushed someone to 2nd.

In the proposed system, nobody losses anything if someone performs well and literally everyone can perform well.

[Erys]

For healers, dps and substract points for overhealing. Ez
And yes, more efficient play should be rewarded. Regardless of content. The harder the content the better the reward.

[Kosmos992k]

PVP is competitive, and so is designed around rewarding the best performer. PvE is cooperative, the required for doing 'well' is clearing the content and obtainign whatever the rewards are.

This strikes me in the same way as yesterday's topic where someone wanted some kind of rating system for dodging ability and specifically mentioned a game in which players compete with each other - Overwatch - as their inspiration.

It seems too many want to bring competition to cooperative content. This is not a good thing IMHO. Perhaps you all missed your Sesame Street reruns and so never learned about 'cooperation'.

[MoroMurasaki]

I like this idea but I feel like they would make the healer one something not DPS related keeping the dev comments about DPS in mind which would piss me off to no end as a healer that isn't constantly topping people off. If it was scaled off of healer DPS contribution then awesome but if it was something dumb like average party health % it would reward poor playing which would force healers to choose between being good or getting extra loot/exp/whatever.

[Chronons]

snip

But then the bad people will complain about the rewards the good players are getting. Spent much time around these forums???

[Inuk9]

There is already a system for that. It is called comendation.

[Vidu]

While I do like the idea in general, I see certain problems with enforcing it. Good player performance doesnt only come down to numbers after all - I personally like to say that mechanics often matter more than getting that last hit in and pure numbers wouldnt reflect that.

Or well, they could, if you'd calculate damage dealt vs. damage taken for dps (slight problem: dungeons with a lot of flat out AoE-damage that cant be avoided might have to be treated differently to make up for that)
For tanks: you sound as if you'd encourage them to take damage, aka to get additional loot it would be good for the tank to take extra damage, supporting a playstyle that isnt actually good.
Probably why you didnt suggest "total HP healed" for healers because that could mean stupid overhealing.

As much as I'd like to see some reward-system like that, I cant see how it would work, since "good playstyle" and "bad playstyle" cant only be reduced to flat out dps-numbers or migation-numbers or HP-healed-numbers.
During the past few days I had several healers die during bossfights in dungeons - I have no idea how they managed to do that btw - so I've healed through the last 30% of different bossfights as my paladin. I totally felt that I earned a reward there, since me utilising my whole move-set basically saved us from a wipe, but how would you measure something like that? (granted you could say my reward was that I didnt had to do it over again...)
Good playstyle is, in the end, subjective and situational. It can be good playstyle for casters to use their aggro-reduction-skills - and it can also be kinda irrelevant.

...so the only thing I could think of as a "reward" is something along the WS-system we've got in place - granted, thats not impartial, but as I said: I dont feel as if a dungeon-performance can really be put into plain, objective numbers, determining wether you did good or bad.
So that system either needs to be changed a little, allowing you to give more than one commendation or a special type of commendation - or there needs to be a new system for that.
(Also: we need new commendation-achievments!)

That being said: reaching a certain amount of damage-dealt, depending on your class/job as some sort of bonus could really be fun!

[Arrius]

We don't need anything like that, since the cheese potential is huge and overgearing dungeons makes it only worse.
Good play results in faster clears, less wipes and less pressure on the healers. And that should be enough in itself.

Playing your class right should be a requirement for anything at level cap.

[Inuk9]

I would like to, at the end of every endgame content, the game chooses a MVP player and gift him with a free content drop for the job, outside the actual chest drop.

For example, a WHM MVP in Susano extreme gets an extra token. A Mvp from a dungeon run gets 20 more tomestones....

[Lynart]

PVP is competitive, and so is designed around rewarding the best performer. PvE is cooperative, the required for doing 'well' is clearing the content and obtainign whatever the rewards are.

This strikes me in the same way as yesterday's topic where someone wanted some kind of rating system for dodging ability and specifically mentioned a game in which players compete with each other - Overwatch - as their inspiration.

It seems too many want to bring competition to cooperative content. This is not a good thing IMHO. Perhaps you all missed your Sesame Street reruns and so never learned about 'cooperation'.

Um.....let me get this straight: players trying to beat the same bar in order to get rewarded for "good performance" results in competition? Competitive games revolve around the mechanic of rewarding a player by subtracting something from another player. A player that has a high KD ratio means other players have died a lot. In the system I proposed, this is not the case as everyone could theoretically perform well and receive maximum rewards. In a competitive environment this is not possible because there is only one first place.

.....so I'm sorry to say, your argument makes literally zero sense.

There is already a system for that. It is called comendation.

Doesn't work. There is no objective universal reason to receive an commendation.