Forcing NA Duty Finder to be better, we need a grading system.

[MihaelB]

It's commonly known that NA servers use the duty finder for learning groups and PF for farm whilst in Japan servers it's reversed due to various reasons, one being culture.
We shouldn't be wasting other people's time in new content when we have 0 learning experience but yet the large population of the community does.

Link for NA/EU vs Japan for A4s for statistics and generalisations of the communities and why they fail/succeed.

From latest Unofficial Census thread:


Its is very clear from this forum thread that some players simply don't give a damn about what others think and how their individual game play affects 3 to 23 other player's gameplay and want to show no improvement for their gameplay.

What I and many others want is change, what we currently have is stagnancy in a system that provides no punishment for detrimental and negative play.

How can we change this?
A simple solution to enforce the NA servers to be like the Japanese is to create a grading system for non PF groups.

This rank will be hidden and only for you to see. It will be calculated and assigned to you after every duty via various factors. An average sum of your grades will be calculated for your 'Total Rank' and your 'Total Rank' will be what is used for your duties. Further consideration from the community and game developers will be needed to further segregate this into DPS ranks, Healing ranks, Tank ranks or individual class ranks.

For those people who struggle to understand averages, playing better will improve your grade. Playing worse will lower your grade.

The simple F, E , D , C, B, A & S-rank tiers with different variables for them such as skills used, healing done, damage taken, damage done, etc.

A particular website already has a great algorithm for assigning 'all-star points' for our performance in duties which is indicative to performance and is great for a baseline assessment for PUG group purposes.

The data already exists in game, what's left is further formulas to calculate and utilise it, then further providing an appealing interface to display the information.



Further factors to calculate rank that are recommended:

A leave or fail to complete the duty will result in a negative indicator.
A commendation for the duty will result in bonus points towards the grade.
A kick report will be sent to the GMs to assess the reasoning for the kicking of a player, points will be nullified until whether the right reasoning for the kick was assessed. The people will be punished if they abused the kick.

Example

Vindictus EU had a pretty good system. After finishing a fight successfully, you'd get your dps as a rank and your place in that rank. You'd also see who was the #1 dps on that party.



You were also attributed a rank that didn't had any impact on anything, just a "you did good and you got SSS on this fight".

What does the grading system further provide?
It provides us a duty queue based on prioritization of average graded tiers to be placed together.

S-ranks will be prioritised to be grouped with S-ranks but if none are present, the duty finder will check for lower ranks.
Example S-rank Healer queues. No S-rank tank is available. Duty finder looks for lower tiers, finds B-rank tank. Assigns them in. Repeat for DPS.

Mentor roulette or a new 'Mentor duty' could leeway into this by choosing an option for A/S rank players to choose 'Queue without rank', helping the lower grade tier players and ignoring the grade queue altogether.
A re-assessment of Combat Mentors needing a S-rank can be considered to truly serve a purpose as they are currently a big joke with the majority of them not even being able to do a proper rotation.

When is the grading system ignored?
PF groups will be ignored due to the easy manipulation of data and pointless purpose of grading.

Any sub level 60 content should not incorporate the grading system as newbies should have the time taken for them to learn the content and have people explaining to them how to play the game.
Conditionally, any newbies with a sprout icon will also not receive a grade until they are 'sproutless' players. Their base rank will have to be determined by SE if they do level 60 content and use the statistical knowledge to identify the average median rank that exists.

What does this leave?
People with the same mentality towards content to do content the way they are done together and fester the improvement of general performance with players.
Players who are toxic or horrible to be in low level tiers will be the ones to be forced to spend time learning the game with friends and players in PF instead of wasting the time of others who have spent the time in prior content to learn how to play.

Furthermore, this helps alleviate the boredom of farming if you're a lower rank to try strive for a higher rank.

Many people don't know how to improve their rotations and game mechanics because they have no indication of how well they play, this would serve as a footstep in that direction.

If this improves player performance, harder content will be available to us instead of wet noodle fights that the DEVs are currently forced to create for us.
This could also pave the way to ladder boards for S-ranks who wish to have a toggle for public rankings, rewards and other additions to the game.

[Mahri]

No.

Nnnnno.

e. wait, you put time into your post, maybe I should give the rebuttal more than a cursory moment.

Anything that splinters the playerbase in random content is extremely unhealthy for the game.

Forcing the players into brackets in the duty finder would create longer queue times for everyone. This includes so-called "higher" ranked players.

Having all players operate under pressure of being "graded" in group content turns this from a game into a job.

Furthermore, this would be a complete waste of time for the GMs, whom you propose directly moderate this system. That is not what customer support representatives need or want to do.

This is a bad idea that no wise MMO developer would even begin to consider.

So, no.

[White_Devil]

That's a pretty good idea but you're forgetting SS and SSS

[RLofOBFL]

This actually sounds like an excellent idea....I think. Maybe I'm forgetting something.

[Snugglebutt]

This is a bad idea, it's elitism gone too far and a toxic idea in general. It would actively punish others for not being as good as the next person forcing their queue times to be longer and treating them as second class. If don't like the more diverse range of skilled vs less skilled players via PuG's in DF, instead just want to play with people who share your mindset, play style or goals then just use PF.

[Hayward]

*snip*

As long as that sewage dump known as Reddit and the elitist forum which shall go unnamed exist, that idea should delete itself upon being posted.

I swear, some people act as if this movie didn't premier during the FFXI years. The sequel would be just as much a disaster as the original. Just burn the master reel, torch the studio, and let this subject die in peace.

[Larkspur]

There's already a thread touching up on this for several pages.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l-their-weight.

I'm just gonna say I don't agree with this idea for the obvious fact that it would seperate the playerbase.

[TankHunter678]

Commendations grant bonus points?

So what stops people from paying the people they wind up with for commendations to boost their score? Or gil sellers providing a score boosting service where they run bots through dungeons that throw commendations at players on the bots commendation list?

[bass9020]

Any content that doesn't give me bads is fine by me. I already do all roulettes with friends and only if I'm DESPERATE do I do them with randoms.

[Normalizer]

The only problem from this is we gonna have every dungeons/trials outside of the most hardcore ones nerfed to the ground. Cause you know, if half of the player base are put together, many of the DF content will never be cleared ¯\_(ツ)_/¯