Fixing Player engagement DEV pls consider

[Nethereal]

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.

Very much a non issue. The site that shall not be named does exactly this and also keeps a 2d recording of everything, SE wouldn't have an issue doing what a random site with less funding can do.
They won't though simply because the method is tried and true and now ffxiv is in the milking phase, no large changes will be made to the recipe anymore, especially with yoshi leaving the scene.

[linayar]

yoshi leaving the scene.

What are you talking about?

[DPZ2]

Very much a non issue. The site that shall not be named does exactly this and also keeps a 2d recording of everything, SE wouldn't have an issue doing what a random site with less funding can do.

Are you are implying that which has no name actually pulls the data from the SE servers?

I know how that which has no name works in other games that don't have one built in (WoW, for example). It reads battle data sent to the user's computer in real-time and records it. It uses your computer's CPU and memory, not the MMO company servers. It is also doing so for a single battle environment, not every battle environment occurring at the same time across all servers.

Talk about ping ...

[Penthea]

Are you are implying that which has no name actually pulls the data from the SE servers?

I know how that which has no name works in other games that don't have one built in (WoW, for example). It reads battle data sent to the user's computer in real-time and records it. It uses your computer's CPU and memory, not the MMO company servers. It is also doing so for a single battle environment, not every battle environment occurring at the same time across all servers.

Talk about ping ...

Yeap all a parser does is use the info from your combat log.

If parsers pulled data directly from the servers SE would have a super easy time tracking down who used them, which would mean it would be easy to figure out who to ban. It's because it uses client side data that SE can't tell who is using a parser from their server info. Sure the info that the combat log gets is from the server, but a piece of software does not need to be connected directly to the servers to read a body of text, which is what the combat log is.

[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.

[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.

[Jin-]

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

[ItMe]

I can definitely see a system like this leading to problems.

"I want a gold medal, AST buff me more!!!"

"Hey! Switch to me for dance partner! I just need a few more gold..."

"I DON'T CARE I'M TANKING, DRAGOON GIVE ME YOUR TETHER!"

And the inevitable PF's for farming medals would undermine much of what the system would be trying to accomplish.

Also, if you could get medals from EX content they would quickly become worthless while people farmed the weapons/mounts.


But it's a moot issue.
Yoshi P. has said they'd never add anything in game that rates/ranks your performance.