Fixing Player engagement DEV pls consider

[Ath192]

Yeah, but then the game is judging me for being bad. I shouldn't have to feel attacked just for having fun.

It is not judging you at all. Specially not for being bad, it is simply rewarding you for playing well. It is not the same thing and you face no consequences whatsoever for performing poorly. The game already punishes you for performing extremely poorly: As an example, you die if you keep getting hit by aoes and mechanics right? you could also consider that a form of judgment, you failed and died, but without it, it would be no game at all, its not a game if you cannot die or lose, you're just walking through places.

[Ath192]

No.. people explain mechanics... Even if nobody asked. It's quite annoying.

It seems you find annoying that other people are trying to be helpful. Maybe everyone knew the mechanics and so it was unnecessary, that would be best case scenario right? But even if that were the case, why would you find other people trying to help out annoying? At best you could inform them that there is no need and that the whole party knows it. And the purpose of the party chat is to discuss things with your party, presumably about the content that you are currently engaged in. So if that is something that isn't to your liking the party chat channel can be disabled all together and you don't need to read it. But I believe the chat channel for parties was explicitly designed for that purpose, unlike linkshells and free companies.

[DPZ2]

The primary question for all of this:

Are you willing to endure the latency that would be generated in a 24-man battle in order to record and analyze how 'good' you are? That's a lot of data to analyze on-the-fly.
Remember, this is data that would need to be reported back to the servers, rather than to a file on you local computer, for. Every. Individual. In. A. Raid.

[Ath192]

The primary question for all of this:

Are you willing to endure the latency that would be generated in a 24-man battle in order to record and analyze how 'good' you are? That's a lot of data to analyze on-the-fly.
Remember, this is data that would need to be reported back to the servers, rather than to a file on you local computer, for. Every. Individual. In. A. Raid.

Hmmm... Not necessarily, the game already tells you via chat log how much damage your attacks do, who gets what effect, who dies to what, so it already does all of that correct? So at the end of the instance it can run a report and compile the information since the rewards would be given after the fact which can count as part of the server resources used for that reserved instance. Yes, the number crunching may take additional resources but the information is already available, I believe the PVP instances such as hidden gorge already produce a scoreboard saying how much damage everyone made and whether it was to structures or players. And those are large instances with many players as well.

That being said, I am not an expert, but the PVP scoreboard seems to indicate this is possible.

[Haruka_R]

Yeah, but then the game is judging me for being bad. I shouldn't have to feel attacked just for having fun.

If I didn't automatically get a gold medal, no matter what, I'd feel attacked. I'd have anxiety for.. quite awhile because of it. I don't know if I could continue to play the game.

Where is this coming from? Lol what makes you think you're gonna get attacked by what/whomever?

[Seera1024]

While on paper this looks good, this would be bad in practice.

There are too many variables in deciding who is playing well vs who is not.

Is the tank who single pulls because his healer is new and it's a low level dungeon and his DPS are both lancers with no AoE's playing poorly because he's only single pulling?

Is the healer who doesn't have to heal much in a run because players were playing exceptionally well punished because the game didn't have enough data to judge them?

Is the healer that worked their butt off to keep people alive because there were enough new players in the run punished because the system judges based on DPS done in deciding who gets the medals?

Is the healer that doesn't DPS at all not penalized because you can't consider DPS in the judgement because of the above situation where a healer can't DPS due to actually needing to heal?

How do you judge the cause for someone's output in game? Especially when the actions of other players can impact the game?

Do you punish the Dragoon or the Monk because the tank kept the boss' rear pointed in a spot where they couldn't do their positionals? Are they supposed to sit in enemy AoE's to ensure their DPS stays high enough?

[Ath192]

While on paper this looks good, this would be bad in practice.

...

How do you judge the cause for someone's output in game? Especially when the actions of other players can impact the game?

Do you punish the Dragoon or the Monk because the tank kept the boss' rear pointed in a spot where they couldn't do their positionals? Are they supposed to sit in enemy AoE's to ensure their DPS stays high enough?

Yeah it would be a complicated algorithm for sure. Now for one I envision this more for max level stuff, alliance raids, normal raids mostly. As those are the ones that can drag out and involve the most people. As a healer I suppose it would be a combined score of damage, healing, and raising. Meaning they all count towards your performance. So if no healing is needed then theoretically a healer can glare a certain amount of damage that would count, but if he cant dps because everyone is dying then Raising and healing all have similar weights as well.

Dragoon or monk on positionals I would hope the requirement is low enough that even though they missed some positionals their good rotations are more than enough to earn them a medal, this is, casual content after all, what it wouldn't reward is someone being AFK or doing nothing. Also Mechanics already give you vulnerabilities and damage downs for missing them, so likewise a vulnerability from personally avoidable mechanic would count negatively towards the total score, discouraging that behavior since it would negate any benefits incurred from doing so.

And it is true others actions do impact the game, so likewise I think the requirements should be mild so that a good player that got killed by someone else in an accident can easily recover. But you can also not ignore that this is a team based game, so if the healer did not healing whatsoever and everyone was dead 100% of the time yes noone would get medals. However that isn't likely to happen in my experience, especially at high levels and regardless of whether there is a medal system or not, if people don't do a decent job at things they die and people get angry because of the wipe, so I don't necessarily see what would change in that regard, only that people may be more interested in doing better because of the medals.

Also, since this is casual content, if you don't get a medal because others were doing so impossibly bad that run you could never recover you could just run it again, they are not something extremely hard to get or to farm necessarily. I do not see a witch hunt for players happening if they didnt get a medal because of them in that one Nier raid, although theoretically a player can still receive that amount of hate from simply wiping the raid a million times right now, in which case it is a reportable offense to the GMs of harassment and they already have the tools to deal with those types of toxic players.

[Seera1024]

On top of being a nightmare to code to allow for an extremely large set of variables that might affect how one should score a dungeon/trial, it doesn't solve the problem.

You say the problem is player engagement. Yet your system talks about how well a player performs and not if they are engaged with the game.

This system punishes players who are actively engaged with the game yet do not perform well enough because they are new or for reasons that may be entirely out of their control. Or do not perform well enough according to whatever algorithm is used, but others would say they performed exceptionally well.

The game already has systems in place to deal with leeches who do not engage with the game but want rewards. It's called the kick system. Groups should kick players who are attempting to not help complete the activity.

Players who are actively engaged and learn mechanics get through them quicker. Meaning they can move on to other activities they want to do in the game quicker. Meaning they can progress towards their goals quicker.

Also, it would turn into players running the easiest means to get those medals to accumulate enough of them to get whatever they want unless they make it encounter specific. And if they make it encounter specific, they've got a space issue whether that's UI issue or player's inventory space.

[Jin-]

I like this idea. Hidden carrot to get people play somewhat optimally

[Ath192]

I disagree, just like we have achievement rewards that dont take inventory space but you can buy things with, this system would allow for the same thing and even if youve bought everything you would want to keep earning them for things that may appear in the future patches. Also, in casual content there are very few things that can stop a good player from performing well TBH, Personally I have never been in a raid or instance where I feel other people have hindered my ability to perform well for most of the raid, have others killed me on accident? yes. But have they killed me on accident every fight that raid? no. And if they are new, thats okay, they will gain experience and perform better next time to get the medals. Its not the end of the world if you dont score one on your first run ever.

No need to make them encounter specific, just to regularly add things so people keep making sure to score them as they go about their daily activities.

Likewise I would counter the current system rewards players that AFK and farm others efforts for the clears, and in most raids people don't loot or are reluctant to kick others because their offenses may not be severe enough to warrant it, whereas the other system rewards people and may make new players interested in becoming better.

But it is a difference of opinion and I respect that. It may be a nightmare to code, it may not, SE already experimented with grading peoples performance for Duels in Bozja and adjusted it recently I believe, so they are open to this system.