User:Xeeron/suggestions/Reward PUGs while allowing 7-Hero parties

Primary Issue:

Even before Heroes existed, Guildwars had an Anti-Social twinge to it that was never dealt with. Classic examples of this were seen by visiting most every Mission Staging area and finding Pick Up Groups forming with poor support, or no support at all... while a visit to any "Farming towns" like Bergan or Granite (...etc) would often reveal a full-district of said support characters all solo farming with "Gimmick" builds. The issues causing this were two fold:

• PuGs were often always more frustration and trouble(read: Difficulty) than they were worth.
• PvE rewards were never subject to a better "difficulty-scaling" system.

This trend continues with "Heroes" but let me be perfectly clear that Heroes are not the Root cause of it. The current Reward system is. ArenaNet took a major step towards solving parts of this problem by adding Story Line Log-"Books". And with the upcoming plans to improve Storage and HoM mechanics, they also have a chance to implement a Player Rating System that Tackles the following current Issues negatively affecting multiplayer PvE:

• Experienced Players actively avoiding PuGs
• Players running Primary missions and dungeons with nothing but H/H parties
• Experienced Players solo-farming "Rep" all day instead of completing Primary mission chains
• Turning in completed "Books" currently grants inferior Rep/Gold compared to Farming.
• PvE rewards in general being considered inferior to PvP rewards (Zaishen Keys selling for 5K currently!)
• PvE-Only "skills" ultimately failed and helped End-Game Farming-Groups a lot more than they helped average players.
• "PuGging" often increases the difficulty and "drama" of missions but offers no additional progression rewards
• Many players(see the PvE Category) WANT to unlock the last 4 party slots to use more Heroes but there is currently no system in place to regulate the "over-Use" of this often requested feature.
  • Allowing 7 Heroes in the party would make HardMode "Rep" farming too easy under current game mechanics

With all that in mind, I introduce the...

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((talk:System of FAIL Equivalency))

New PvE Rating Mechanic:
Create a new "Title" using the existing track system and new calculations for determining "How much difficulty" each player contributes to every "PuG" they participate in, while providing a "farming advantage" to players who maintain a "Positive" rating.

• The focus of this proposal is to better reward Teaming based on who we team with and what we team up for.
• This title's point scale would mimic most Faction ratings, but in reverse.
• It would normally appear in RED lettering, Starting at 5000 points for every character
  • ..."bottoming out" at 9999 points
  • ...and turning to GREEN lettering at 1000 points, & "maxing out" at 0 points.

Rating Calculation examples:

• Death Penalty points would be assigned directly to the FAIL rating every time a Player "returned to an outpost" either by mapping out, logging off, or after failing/completing a mission.
• Leaving with a Morale Boost would cancel out atleast that quantity of FAIL points
• Points for Missions would be converted into FAIL(upon failure) or unFAIL(upon success!) points, based loosely on XP values to mimic current Reputation conversions (IE: usually 5000xp = ~1000 rep)
• Solo players or un-grouped players (teamed with H/H's only) would gain 1 FAIL point every time they made a kill that granted Bounty or dropped an Item.
• Players Grouped with other Human players would conversely lose a FAIL point for every XP-granting kill made
• Quests can't be failed and would only add FAIL points upon the action of Abandoning them.
• Individual characters could have individual FAIL ratings, partially determined(averaged) by the Account's over-all Rating.

Converting Rating into real Rewards:

• Every completed page of our Story Books would include a drop-down column showing the last 10 (or less) players we teamed with for that mission or primary quest. ...Along with their FAIL rating at time of mission completion or fail.
  • Henchmen would always have a static FAIL rating assigned manually by Anet itself.
  • Heroes would have a FAIL rating based on how many Skill-Slots were occupied (between 0 and 800)
• The final Turn-In reward(Rep, AND Gold) for each Story Book would be heavily influenced (read:increased) by the amount of FAIL that the player had to Endure from those other players for each page of the Book.
  • Vanquishing and Quest-Updates could ultimately yield similar reward increases... more of less

Existing "24 hour Anti-Farming" code could also be improved for each explorable/mission area in the following Fashion:

• Every time a Player or Team of players re-entered an Area that they had already gained a number of "drops" from, the Levels of all mobs in it, would drop by 1 and their drop-pools would adjust accordingly.
• The max number each mob's Level could drop per-reVisit, would be calc'd with the team's average FAIL rating divided by 1000.
  • These "Diminishing Return per Farm" Calculations would only average the ratings of the Human Player(s)

Why this is a good idea

•   The difficulty of foes that a team faced would automatically decline on repeated failures.
•   Helping out average or "bad" players could yield exponentially better rewards
•   As those players improved by receiving "mentoring", so too would their Rating.
•   The choice to display one's FAIL rating(Title) would be completely optional
•   Abusive Farming would finally gain a cohesive system of checks and balances against it.
•   HardMode Rep-Farming would also be Curtailed rather effectively.
•   Farmers could easily erase their own FAIL ratings simply by teaming more often.
•   Gives players an incentive to do something so frustrating put up with such levels of delusions that it makes them smash their heads into their keyboards in frustration think they're playing a Game Wiki instead.
•   This smooths out(while BUFF'ing) the potential for Hardmode VS. Standard Rep/Gold gain, which would:
  • ...open up the door to allowing all players to unlock and Use the other 4 party-spots for Heroes if they so chose to.

Why it may not work out

•   It could all depend on Anet's P.R./Writing department coming up with more appropriate Names for this title track. Obviously "FAIL" would not go over well with everyone who was assigned such a rating. (perhaps something more underdog flavored?)
•   Multi-boxers may be able to exploit it, requiring diminishing returns for accounts that "team up" too often

•   GW1 is an "Aging Game" and some missions or locations have almost no daily traffic.

Why it COULD work

•   It uses all of the currently-existing Title/Reward mechanics already present in-game.
•   Players flock to better rewards. Previously unpopulated areas could fill back up again if implemented right
•   Many "Vets" have always wanted a better means of "knowing what they're getting into" when joining PuGs

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Thanks in advance to anyone who considers or finds merit in this suggestion --ilr 06:08, 23 January 2009 (UTC)