Quote Originally Posted by DPZ2 View Post
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.