by Fuggo » View Fuggo's OpenRaid characters » Tue Jun 19, 2012 3:31 pm
Again, it seems very obvious we will NOT be wiping reputation, as was stated in the orignal post. There is a very simple way for us to convert people' current raid statistics over into the new system. We can also, as people have suggested, add a note/achievement/Feat of Strength on their account stating "Earned an Honored reputation in the classic rep system". So, please avoid keeping your feedback solely focused around rep wipes, it isn't happening.
As for rep decay, yes, we were also considering adding in reputation decay in some capacity after a few weeks.
A note from me to you all; please keep in mind this proposed system splits reputation and the idea of rating. Reputation would evolve into "what is this person's worth to OpenRaid?", whereas rating would be "what is this person's worth as a player?".
To the people claiming this concept is pointless, we have received a lot of feedback over the months stating the opposite, you guys want to rate performance. The current system mixes the two, and makes the whole concept confusing. Is reputation currently performance based or personality based or OpenRaid participation based, etc? While OF COURSE my philosophy of how to give a rating to a healer and your's could be different, the rating is not meant to be a literal translation of one's ability. That is the point of it being an average. Averages also help people recover from a bad performance one time. To the people claiming that everyone will hand out 3's...yeah, I think that is very true. How is that bad though? Wouldn't a 3 represent someone who was good enough to not be noticed but not great enough to stand out? Is getting a 3 a bad thing?
On to ratings based on which instance they are running. I think you need to look at the whole picture to better understand how this rating system can help you. First, all of this new information would be displayed on the signup page. All of this information would be easily accesible for raiders and raid leaders alike. Also, for those who have said, "just use armory", what if we could bring armory to you? Our goal is to provide as much information about a raider as possible based on what they have done on OpenRaid. Now tying this back into what I started this paragraph about. We want to track which raids people run, as that is very easy on our end, and display it for people to see. It was suggested that we tie ratings to an instance, and honestly, I think that could be a great idea if it is practical. So, you can see that someone has a 4/5 star rating with 76 total votes as a tank, but you look at their OR raid history and they have run 10 ICC's and 1 Tier 11. That is information that some raid leaders will not care about, and others will. The point is that the information is available.
We are also trying to incorporate a person's raid history on armory better. Much like Blizzard's system at the bottom of the armory page, we are trying to use the API to tell you how many times someone has killed a boss, on top of telling you already how many bosses they have killed in the instance.
Another piece of feedback was, do not make it required to leave a comment in order to rate someone. Fair enough, we just want to make sure people take rating seriously, not so much from the "just give a 3" point of view, but more so from a "do I actually remember this person?". Asking for a comment makes you think of whether or not you can come up with one, however I think you make a good point, how does "good dps" help? So, what if you only have to leave a comment if you give out a 5 or a 1? Obviously, you can leave a comment for any rating, but we make those mandatory?
We also considered having the rating that you have displayed, your average, display 2-3 comments that were given to you based on the rating tied to it. So if your average was a 4.2, your "quick" comments would be 2-3 that are 4's.
Trust me, we love comments more than ratings, but reading through 10 pages of comments is impractical. (we are fixing that with the new website in a pretty nifty way, but there is still sifting to do) A rating is a quick means to judge someone. Comments are a more "complete" way of judging someone. It gives you an idea for more progressive content. Who cares about measuring dps in ICC? Few. Who cares about measuring dps in Dragon Soul? Everyone. We are moving forward under the assumption that more progressive content will be available for you all to raid using our service, and we want to have a system in place that offers you help while building a raid. I don't see how just because instances are easier than others, or my rating philosophy is harsher than another's, makes the whole system pointless. This, again, is not meant to be a literal definition of one's talent. Think of armory, you can see someone got 10 heroic Deathwing kills right now. What does that mean? What if they were the lowest dps in a 25 man guild and were essentially a warm body now that nerfs are so harsh? What if they were a warm body even if their first kill was in the 2nd month? Every judgement given or read, outside of actually playing with a person, is an approximation and/or assumption.
For the people who like the current system, but don't like the idea of rating people in the new concept...it is exactly the same thing. People use the current system to rate others, the only difference is that people rate each other based on their own thoughts. My +5 rep vote could be because I liked your personality as a raider, but you were ok dps. Another +5 could be because in his mind, your 25k dps in ICC was good enough. The point is...any system that involves more than a simple 0 or +1 always brings in relative values. I do not see how that is bad if the whole point of the rating system is to simply provide other people a quick look at what you have earned based on what you have done. With all of the other information we will be providing, one can simply pull people in based on a 3+ rating and decent rep, or they can dig deep to find out they have killed Heroic Rag only once, they gem incorrectly, and based on a comment 3 pages deep they actually have a pretty rough time with world in flames. Options!
As for attendance, yes, I love the idea of adding more options in. Options for people who were kicked, or disconnected, or left, etc. I also think that there needs to be a bit more functionality available for raiders, if the raid leader bails right before or during the raid. We will certainly look into implementing that. Great ideas. Also, yeah, we need to figure out how the reserve works. Sadly, most people take reserve to mean "do not give a crap". Adding consequence should help mop up a bunch of the current "no show" issues.
Someone asked "if the rating system is based on attendence...". No, it won't be. Attendance would just be something we track and display separately. So I sign up for your raid as a tank. You see me listed in signed up and want to either approve me or leave me out of the raid. You would now see my ilevel, the rating for the role I signed up as, as well as the total votes i have received for the role, you would see my attendance, you would see my reputation via the new system, you COULD see (this is just an example of more we can show) how many times I have ran the instance your raid is for on OpenRaid, how many times I ahve killed the end wing boss, etc, etc.
The addon...yeah sadly addons have a rough time communicating with the website. Is it possible to sync up the rating system with the addon? Maybe. However, it would involve a lot of generating and pasting text strings, like the current one uses. How we would get the text strings to properly generate in WoW to paste into OR could be a pain. We can certainly look into it.
Why have rep? Because people love it! The concept of grinding something out that shows you are skilled/dedicated/reliable/sexy/a good person is what we all play these type of games for, right? We just want to take that core concept, and really flesh it out into something that has a value to other users as well as simply being a badge of honor.
Will people take the new rating system seriously? I am not sure really. Will the people who won't take the new system seriously take any system seriously? I think if this new idea has some weight behind it, and more people admit to looking into other players before raiding with them, I think any new system would get more traction.
For people claiming this concept is complex, sure maybe on paper without an example to play with it might be, but I assure you it is not. A 5 star rating system with comments is simple. Rep being a measure of what you do for OpenRaid and what people think of you as a person is simple. Tracking and displaying more information is simple. I think you need to have some faith that we can make this system function properly, and not simply cast it aside when obviously no one outside of the staff have had a chance to play around with the concepts.
For people who think just because it is participation based, everyone will be exalted in a week. No. We control the thresholds and monitor rep gains very closely. Also, another reason rep decay is nice.
For people who think rep doesn't matter, and ratings don't matter, and the only thing that will matter to you is a full scan of their armory. Outside of us bringing more of armory to you, I don't know...just use armory then? Why is this bad for other people because you personally do not want to use it as a gauge? We are trying to make these things have more meaning, and give you more information, and you are responding as if that is a bad thing JUST BECAUSE it is not a 1 to 1 copy of Armory.
To the person who thinks this is just too much for a "glorified pug system", I would say this to you. We have plans to make it a lot more than that, and incorporating new things like a more valuable rep system, pushes us forward...at least I think. If OpenRaid is simply LFR with a litmus test for you, then you can continue to use it as such. Mark no response to all the ratings, give no one rep, ignore attendance and enjoy raiding. We will not make any changes that would completely overhaul the system, for exactly the reason of still being a simple LFR tool with a litmus.
Sorry, I think the covers a lot of the feedback, but if I missed you I apologize.
