Fixing Player engagement DEV pls consider

[Feronar]

WildStar had a bronze/silver/gold medal system for its dungeons and adventures (Accessed through the duty finder), and rewards like gear, and even progression of the raid attunement quest, were tied to said medals. For example, for one step of the attunement quest you had to get silver or higher in every veteran adventure. Later you would have to get silver in all veteran dungeons (Which were very hard) as well. Also, The best weapons would only drop if you got gold. The result was people would simply drop out of the duty or vote disband if they failed to get gold. It was a total mess. It's just one of the many reasons WildStar failed and shut down a couple years ago.

[Ath192]

WildStar had a bronze/silver/gold medal system for its dungeons and adventures (Accessed through the duty finder), and rewards like gear, and even progression of the raid attunement quest, were tied to said medals. For example, for one step of the attunement quest you had to get silver or higher in every veteran adventure. Later you would have to get silver in all veteran dungeons (Which were very hard) as well. Also, The best weapons would only drop if you got gold. The result was people would simply drop out of the duty or vote disband if they failed to get gold. It was a total mess. It's just one of the many reasons WildStar failed and shut down a couple years ago.

This seems interesting but not entirely related, as our normal difficulty raids arent hard, and the system would be implemented so people meet an acceptable standard, not a high one. In other words, were you AFK? Do you know your job a reasonable amount? Gold.

And also, since the medals drop after the raid is done, you cant disband midway, and lets say you drop mid raid because you are doing terrible, the 30 minute penalty you get for doing so would outweigh the benefits of at least getting a silver and queuing up again for another one if you want to farm them that bad.

[Vahlnir]

I'd rather not see this come to pass. It fosters unnecessary competition and gives players with a high ego more of a reason to flex their totally awesome skills.

I think it seems the general consensus is that there are some reasons people would not prefer this, and that is okay, it is always easier to do nothing, but I think people are failing to analyze the other side of this equation. Which is the current state of affairs, with the current system I've seen people kick poor performers without saying a word or helping them for fear of being reported, High end raids get locked behind super high ILVL so people who haven't raided cant get in and have fun, elitism is very common, I've even heard poor performers get black listed so that you don't see their listings in party finder. People have found ways to segregate themselves, and even here we have a person who has confessed that as a healer they don't heal and just dps, this in my opinion would be grounds for no medal since healers are supposed to keep the party alive and do damage when there's no healing or raising to do.

Honestly, a system like this would just make whatever elitism exists 10 times worse. It doesn't solve anything.

[Ath192]

I'd rather not see this come to pass. It fosters unnecessary competition and gives players with a high ego more of a reason to flex their totally awesome skills.



Honestly, a system like this would just make whatever elitism exists 10 times worse. It doesn't solve anything.

How? If no one will ever know how you performed and you get a generic acknowledgment at the end of a duty when you're gone from the instance? I do not see any prestige and only a mild sense of satisfaction that you did decently coming from this.

[linayar]

=/ But they did, in PVP you have a giant performance chart at the end, and also earn more medals if you win, and in Bozja you can't get a duel if you dont perform well with a set of criteria.

Those examples have a built in element of competition. Normal PVE content doesn't despite the community having world first race "events."

How? If no one will ever know how you performed and you get a generic acknowledgment at the end of a duty when you're gone from the instance? I do not see any prestige and only a mild sense of satisfaction that you did decently coming from this.

Because your performance in group content is affected by the performance of others in your party. You put a reward based on that, and you could bring about more conflict with no guarantee of the desired result of people trying to be better.

[MilkieTea]

I was talking with a few friends about this issue and wanted to pitch this idea, maybe the devs like it, or it may make a difference.

Essentially, We think it would be beneficial and non-toxic to introduce the following system to ensure players are encouraged to perform better and be engaged in fights:

A Medal system, exchangeable for cool glamour items that take a long time to farm. This medal would get given to players upon completion of a current level alliance raid for example. Not too different to unreal trials (the item shopping experience)

A gold medal for doing good damage and using cool downs.

A silver medal for doing average damage maybe.

and simply no medal if performance was just meh.

This does not involve any damage meters the players can see or any shaming at all. But if collection of these medals can be traded for glam items that take a long time to farm it would keep current content populated with people trying to do well at their jobs right? It would also encourage people to look up how to do proper rotations and strive to do well so they can get these, all without shaming.

And if they dont want to, no harm no foul, they just simply dont get a medal. And since you're the only person that gets the medal noone else will know whether you did well enough to earn one.

Maybe a 5 silver medals can get traded for one gold medals, and you need 99 of them for X glam item, and the bar for these medals can be set at average performance right? noone has to play immaculately to earn one.

For example if a player did 50% of their max theoretical job output damage and managed to mitigate an X number of damage from the boss then thats a gold or silver medal depending on how tough the devs want to make it.

Anyways, this discussion started mainly because we were noticing that in Delubrum Reginae for example runs were taking forever and a lot of ppl were very uninterested or even AFK at times. So perhaps this system could introduce engagement but no toxicity.

In Delubrum Reginae a gold medal would be reserved only for those that used an action on top of performing well, and maybe a silver for no action but still performing well.

I also know in FFXV at the end of a battle you get graded for style, speed of completion etc... so there are systems like this in play through final fantasies that encourage you to do better without shaming.

Anyways I wanted to see people's thoughts and in no way do I mean to introduce negativity and I hope the discussion is civil right? Elitism really downgrades the experience of a game, but so does unengaged people that don't do anything.

If how people run content over and over when a relic comes out is any indication, I am sure this system would see the average player base perform much better in any duty it's implemented.

I also hope this doesn't offend anyone it was just a thought.

Archiving this because there’s been quite a few people deleting the contents of their first post once it gets criticized more than it gets praised or agreed with. Not saying OP will do that, this is just in case.

[Ath192]

Archiving this because there’s been quite a few people deleting the contents of their first post once it gets criticized more than it gets praised or agreed with. Not saying OP will do that, this is just in case.

Not planning on deleting it, I think its a great system. And despite initial opposition I still think its something the DEVs should consider along with other ideas here like revamping hall of novice. That is also a good idea.

[MilkieTea]

Not planning on deleting it, I think its a great system. Dangling a carrot does work in my opinion, in the same way relics are dangling carrots for people to grind old content, and they do with great success. Some people may complain about it but I still am of the mind it would help rather than detract from gameplay.

Not saying OP will do that, this is just in case.

[SenorPatty]

Can we be real for minute and just simulate a meeting where you (the OP) sits down with YoshiP, face to face, alone and you just read him all this
What do you honestly believe he would say?

Come on, just try it. Simulate it in your mind, then reply here.

Genuinely interested.

[Vyrerus]

What's to stop people from taking screenshots of all of their golds, and then other people putting things up in PF like, "Gold medal earners only." for extremes or anything prebuilt?

As far as an actual scoring system goes, they have a scoring system in XIV in the Masked Carnivale. A lot of the points categories are weird and only something relevant to soloing, like, "Taking a Walk" or whatever the one is, that you get for kiting a monster around the arena perimeter once.

If they were going to implement a medal system, it's likely they'd have a scoring system for each job or role at a minimum. It's just, a lot of it would be stuff you'd have to go out of your way for, or it would be stuff that happened so readily, that it becomes meaningless.

I'll also echo other posters responding to the OP in that, you're stating the problem is engagement. There are tons of people who play FFXIV who are fully engaged, but they have stupid hands. They know what they need to do for their rotation, but can't execute it flawlessly or even nearly flawlessly. Others have cement minds. They like to play multiple jobs, but only one or two really click with them, and most of their muscle memory/rotation memory/setup is devoted to their, "Main" job. Implementing ranking in content will drive up the problems with less tanks/less healers even farther, because people willing to step out of their DPS comfort zone to try them will be met with being reminded that they aren't good at them.