We Need to Start Expecting Mid-Level Sprouts to Play Better

[Yeastyloins]

MMR (matchmaking ranking), also known relatively loosely as 'skill based matchmaking', is the domain of competitive gaming, where you don't play with the heavy hitters until you can prove you deserve to be there. League of Legends is a prime example of a game that leans heavily on MMR.

In MMORPGs, you'll find some simple measure of MMR in competitive PvP. Other leaderboards in an MMORPG are generally the result of 'time spent in game' rather than skill level. There's a list of 'skill based' MMORPG games out there (although I'd call them "partially influenced by concepts of a skill-based system").

Would I be against such a thing in an MMORPG? Not particularly. It's there already in some games with PvP elements. Would it work for PvE? It's easy to say "skill based", but what skills are we measuring here?

What "skills" would you be looking for that are not already available to you from third-party sites? Considering the fact that damage meters will never be available in-game, what criteria would you use to determine if you are 'gold' or 'platinum' or 'diamond' level worthy? I know that the only criteria currently used is "did you complete the objective within the time limit assigned?".

The thing is that that SE could calculate DPS in a run, true healing done (not overhealing), overhealing, damage taken, damage mitigated themselves, and time completed. They could take all of that information, compare it other players internally, give you ranking WITHOUT assigning a percentile rank or showing the player the actual number of DPS/True HPS/Overhealing/Damage Mit/Damage Taken which is fundamentally what logs are giving you when you look at somebody's parse in a fight. You just rank players in those categories as Poor, Good, Great and show the player but not the party that information except the ranking for completion time. Make an explicit rule in the ToS against asking players about their ranking unless they share that information with harassment rules in effect. People who get a great ranking get 1k extra gil added to their reward per category, or something that is conceivable small but adds up overtime.

Guess what happens next. Mr. Tank who gets a poor for damage mitigation goes "why do I keep getting poor rankings for mit?". He then goes looks up about damage mit techs and begins to understand that not only it will improve his rankings but it makes him a more enjoyable person to play with, which makes him more comfortable playing tank. The healer that gets a poor ranking in overhealing despite the party living goes "why do i keep getting this?" looks stuff up means to heal a bit more efficiently which gives them time to play around with using their "dps kit" (lmao). The DPS who gets poor damage ranks might check something to learn the importance of positionals, when to use their AoE rotation.

[Iustitia-sama]

The thing is that that SE could calculate DPS in a run, true healing done (not overhealing), overhealing, damage taken, damage mitigated themselves, and time completed. They could take all of that information, compare it other players internally, give you ranking WITHOUT assigning a percentile rank or showing the player the actual number of DPS/True HPS/Overhealing/Damage Mit/Damage Taken which is fundamentally what logs are giving you when you look at somebody's parse in a fight. You just rank players in those categories as Poor, Good, Great and show the player but not the party that information except the ranking for completion time. Make an explicit rule in the ToS against asking players about their ranking unless they share that information with harassment rules in effect. People who get a great ranking get 1k extra gil added to their reward per category, or something that is conceivable small but adds up overtime.

Guess what happens next. Mr. Tank who gets a poor for damage mitigation goes "why do I keep getting poor rankings for mit?". He then goes looks up about damage mit techs and begins to understand that not only it will improve his rankings but it makes him a more enjoyable person to play with, which makes him more comfortable playing tank. The healer that gets a poor ranking in overhealing despite the party living goes "why do i keep getting this?" looks stuff up means to heal a bit more efficiently which gives them time to play around with using their "dps kit" (lmao). The DPS who gets poor damage ranks might check something to learn the importance of positionals, when to use their AoE rotation.

I personally would choose against giving players any info on it at all, as people cannot be trusted with that info ingame, and we already have fflogs for finding out precisely how we are doing.

[Yeastyloins]

I personally would choose against giving players any info on it at all, as people cannot be trusted with that info ingame, and we already have fflogs for finding out precisely how we are doing.

A casual player is not going to upload logs to fflogs and data from fflogs is only going to be relevant within the patch itself and only relevant to the current raid tier and ultimates within the patch. Parses for UcoB during 5.1 do not hold any relevance to parses from 6.1 outside of speed comparisons. Further, parses from sub max level dungeons are going to widely swing and typically do not have a sample size large enough to accurately make determinations that are free of kurtosis. So FFlogs is useless to a person leveling in SB or ShB content in order to determine if they are doing right. A ranking system I'm proposing is presented playerside rather than public and is instance specific rather than something overall standing such as a Raider.IO score from WoW. It just a check for the person to see if they are doing a passable job, a better than passable job, or doing poor across metrics without assigning a numerical value.

Even if another player asks what dps ranking you got for the dungeon and they provide their ranking, a "great" rating could mean fundamentally that you were at the 66th percentile to the 99th percentile. And again, you just put in the TOS "Do not ask other players for end of duty rankings" and enforce it with the same harassment rules should the player freely disclose that info.

What you suggest then is that you hope player just decided to get better but alot of player have no idea that they are playing suboptimally to the point where they are grossy extending the time in which it takes to complete the dungeon or that their play is negatively impacting other party members. Unless they are real gamers, most players need external motivation to improve and there are ways to do this via metrics that could be provided by SE in a means that is constructive.

[Bukachu]

The thing is that that SE could calculate DPS in a run, true healing done (not overhealing), overhealing, damage taken, damage mitigated themselves, and time completed. They could take all of that information, compare it other players internally, give you ranking WITHOUT assigning a percentile rank or showing the player the actual number of DPS/True HPS/Overhealing/Damage Mit/Damage Taken which is fundamentally what logs are giving you when you look at somebody's parse in a fight. You just rank players in those categories as Poor, Good, Great and show the player but not the party that information except the ranking for completion time. Make an explicit rule in the ToS against asking players about their ranking unless they share that information with harassment rules in effect. People who get a great ranking get 1k extra gil added to their reward per category, or something that is conceivable small but adds up overtime.

Guess what happens next. Mr. Tank who gets a poor for damage mitigation goes "why do I keep getting poor rankings for mit?". He then goes looks up about damage mit techs and begins to understand that not only it will improve his rankings but it makes him a more enjoyable person to play with, which makes him more comfortable playing tank. The healer that gets a poor ranking in overhealing despite the party living goes "why do i keep getting this?" looks stuff up means to heal a bit more efficiently which gives them time to play around with using their "dps kit" (lmao). The DPS who gets poor damage ranks might check something to learn the importance of positionals, when to use their AoE rotation.

SE could calculate DPS in a run but, that means 0.

If tank pulls w2w, your DPS will be different, compared to if tank pulls 1,2,3 packs.

like, DPS is such an irrelevant number in dungeons. not to mention certain classes will do more DPS in different scenarios.

and dont forget gear exists, which will change your DPS obviously.

even so, lets say you segregate people by "their dps done", what about healers?

Like yeah, for logs DPS does work to a certain degree, but main purpose of logs was never the parse, its to read the fight, hence why healer logs are quiet literally irrelevant. because 1. in order to "heal" a lot, people need to take damage a lot, which ultimately makes them worse, so ultimately, the more you heal, the worse your group is LOL.

And for tanks, sure you can measure damage taken/damage mitigated, but less you pull, less damage you'll take. you could pull one pack at a time, use all your mitigation, pull as slowly as possible, maybe even chill between packs until all your mitigation is up again.
+ kitting would mean you take less damage, while DPS would do less DPS due to adds moving.
and 99 other factors that I could list for either role, and aside from the fact that ranking for each role means too little, there's also a massive conflict of interest between each role.

[Yeastyloins]

SE could calculate DPS in a run but, that means 0.

If tank pulls w2w, your DPS will be different, compared to if tank pulls 1,2,3 packs.

like, DPS is such an irrelevant number in dungeons. not to mention certain classes will do more DPS in different scenarios.

and dont forget gear exists, which will change your DPS obviously.

even so, lets say you segregate people by "their dps done", what about healers?

Like yeah, for logs DPS does work to a certain degree, but main purpose of logs was never the parse, its to read the fight, hence why healer logs are quiet literally irrelevant. because 1. in order to "heal" a lot, people need to take damage a lot, which ultimately makes them worse, so ultimately, the more you heal, the worse your group is LOL.

And for tanks, sure you can measure damage taken/damage mitigated, but less you pull, less damage you'll take. you could pull one pack at a time, use all your mitigation, pull as slowly as possible, maybe even chill between packs until all your mitigation is up again.
+ kitting would mean you take less damage, while DPS would do less DPS due to adds moving.
and 99 other factors that I could list for either role, and aside from the fact that ranking for each role means too little, there's also a massive conflict of interest between each role.

I wasn't clear on the point of proposed ranking system. It isn't for matchmaking BUT it would be a way for the player to get feedback on their play to highlight areas in which they may be doing poorly in order to motivate them to improve at their own pace.