Nep's post on that fort assassin's PBF thread got me to thinking. Basically it was, "I never saw {insert crappy behavior} from character X. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but I didn't see it."

What if you allowed every PC with more than, say, 100 game hours, to give a silent "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to any other character. Potentially with a one-line comment attached.

The *intent* would be for this to facilitate players either acknowledging (to the staff) characters who exhibit positive traits, or flagging characters who exhibit negative traits.

To prevent people trying to game the system (despite it having no automated game-play effect), you could maybe dole out the "votes" according to hours played. Every 50 hours played you get another vote, for example.

So if I see some level 11 guy who's just hanging around cabals waiting to loot heros, all day long, maybe that annoys me enough to spend one of my votes and give that guy a "thumbs down". Or maybe someone almost kills me when I'm AFK but realizes it and stops. So, when I come back, maybe that impresses me enough to spend a vote in order to give them a thumbs up. Etc.

If I think a char is good or bad I'll tell an immortal. Usually I'll tell MY immortal, and so it's not coming off as me being a jerk, it's coming off as my RP... I think that's a good way to do what you're suggesting.

If you don't have an immortal that cares to listen to you, your input on a character probably isn't that valuable.

From what I understand it'd be for the staff to review?

Yeah, I don't want them judging me based on the opinions of a dozen assholes.

How about a slight alternative...

Your character gets one comment about any/ever other character, with some short limit... one-liner. You may update it as many times as possible. You may read your own notes.. and an imm may read all notes associated with that character.

You could add a note like this:
charnote lornis badass shifter gator/croc/ice-drake great roleplayer

Read your own note like this:
charnote Lornis
badass shifter gator/croc/ice-drake great roleplayer

Imms could run a query for all of a char's charnotes.. or allver. charnotes for characters 40+.

It has the added benefit of letting players keep track of cabal/killed me/ranked with me without having to keep notes on paper or whatever

Of course.. you could leave out the whole player being about to read their own note... which would improve the helpful comment to useless (from an imm standpoint) ratio.

Yeah I think that's actually worse.

charnote rade I killed him 1 time
nope, let me update that...charnote rade I killed him 2 times...
oops...charnote rade I killed him 3 times so far today (man he sucks)

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Okay, so don't let characters read their own note. They'd have to be awfully bored to keep track both OOC (paper) and make the charnotes.

>What if you allowed every PC with more than, say, 100 game
>hours, to give a silent "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to any
>other character. Potentially with a one-line comment
>attached.
>
>The *intent* would be for this to facilitate players either
>acknowledging (to the staff) characters who exhibit positive
>traits, or flagging characters who exhibit negative traits.

Who defines positive? Who defines negative? Who monitors that people are using it as they should?

>To prevent people trying to game the system (despite it having
>no automated game-play effect), you could maybe dole out the
>"votes" according to hours played. Every 50 hours played you
>get another vote, for example.

Meaning at 50 hours you get to put one vote on one character, and that's it? At that point, I'll make sure to save all my votes for the jerks.

>So if I see some level 11 guy who's just hanging around cabals
>waiting to loot heros, all day long, maybe that annoys me
>enough to spend one of my votes and give that guy a "thumbs
>down".

Or maybe someone kills me, so I give them a thumbs down. Or maybe I don't like their name because it's similar to something I read in some book.

>Or maybe someone almost kills me when I'm AFK but
>realizes it and stops.

Why would this even warrant a thumbs up?

>So, when I come back, maybe that
>impresses me enough to spend a vote in order to give them a
>thumbs up. Etc.

And the ultimate question...what exactly do you expect to come out of these player-run moderation? What do you expect the Immortals to do with it? Do you want to see it in PBFs? This turns into the "good player/bad player" ratings on X-Box Live where you get all your friends to give you a thumbs up, and then only ever give thumbs down to any douchebag you come across. Or it turns into LinkedIn where you get all your previous co-workers/managers to write you up glowing recommendations even though you're not THAT good.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

>Who defines positive? Who defines negative?

Players. Open interpretation. While different players have different views, I think there is some general consensus. You see this in battlefield comments. Some characters get almost universally complimented. Others get umpteen people calling them a douche as soon as they delete.

Are some of the douche-callers probably out of line? Sure. But when you have a character for whom the "negative comments" outweigh the "positive" ones by a huge margin then usually that character really was pretty douchey.

>Who monitors that people are using it as they should?

I agree monitoring is sort of dicey. Mostly because there's no clear cut definition of "as they should". So maybe don't bother to monitor it at all.

>Meaning at 50 hours you get to put one vote on one character,
>and that's it? At that point, I'll make sure to save all my
>votes for the jerks.

Yes, and every 50 hours after that you'd get an additional vote. The number "50" could obviously be tweaked. Maybe you get your first vote at 200 hours and then get another vote every 100 hours after that.

For what it's worth, I'd save my votes for the jerks too. And I don't see that as a bad thing with respect to this proposed feature.

If you have a character who has amassed a "large" number of negative votes, considering how "rare" votes are to begin with, then maybe that's a guy you want to watch and potentially give some crappy title.

You would never punish him solely on the basis of the mortal-driven feedback. But you might use the mortal-driven feedback as a "red flag" to let you know that this particular character might be due for some snooping.

>Or maybe someone kills me, so I give them a thumbs down. Or
>maybe I don't like their name because it's similar to
>something I read in some book.

That is, of course, you prerogative. But since you can only vote once every X hours, you're not going to be able to flag very many people that way. Plus if you include a comment detailing why you're giving this guy thumbs down (e.g. "He killed me") then any staff member who looks at that character's info can just disregard your thumbs down.

>And the ultimate question...what exactly do you expect to come
>out of these player-run moderation?

Here's the problem I'm trying to solve:

I, while playing my character, see douchey behavior on the part of some other character. Not behavior that qualifies as a rules infraction, or else I'd immediately pray about it. Just crappy behavior of the sort that typically earns people negative titles, or possibly a critical PBF comment.

The immortal staff, however, is not omnipresent, and so may not ever notice this character's douchey behavior. So he essentially flies under the radar and "gets away with it".

I'd like to see fewer people "get away with it".

>>Who defines positive? Who defines negative?
>
>Players. Open interpretation. While different players have
>different views, I think there is some general consensus. You
>see this in battlefield comments. Some characters get almost
>universally complimented. Others get umpteen people calling
>them a douche as soon as they delete.
>
>Are some of the douche-callers probably out of line? Sure.
>But when you have a character for whom the "negative comments"
>outweigh the "positive" ones by a huge margin then usually
>that character really was pretty douchey.

This system is really going to lean towards the douches, I guarantee. Especially if you structure it such that you get one vote every X hours.

>>Who monitors that people are using it as they should?
>
>I agree monitoring is sort of dicey. Mostly because there's
>no clear cut definition of "as they should". So maybe don't
>bother to monitor it at all.

Without any monitoring it will serve no purpose other than an emotional release against someone you perceived has wronged you.

>If you have a character who has amassed a "large" number of
>negative votes, considering how "rare" votes are to begin
>with, then maybe that's a guy you want to watch and
>potentially give some crappy title.
>
>You would never punish him solely on the basis of the
>mortal-driven feedback. But you might use the mortal-driven
>feedback as a "red flag" to let you know that this particular
>character might be due for some snooping.

So you really want monitoring by the Immortals (not no monitoring at all), with potential benefits/punishments associated with that feedback. Again, pushing it towards something that HAS to be monitored.

>>Or maybe someone kills me, so I give them a thumbs down. Or
>>maybe I don't like their name because it's similar to
>>something I read in some book.
>
>That is, of course, you prerogative. But since you can only
>vote once every X hours, you're not going to be able to flag
>very many people that way. Plus if you include a comment
>detailing why you're giving this guy thumbs down (e.g. "He
>killed me") then any staff member who looks at that
>character's info can just disregard your thumbs down.

The way people break character, rage delete because they lost shinies, start OOC hissyfits because they are certain that Fortlander exists, piss and moan because they got ganged down and those people MUST be an OOC perma, this is more than likely going to be an emotional response that isn't going to be representative anyway. In an ideal world, I think it's a great system, but CF isn't an ideal world.

>>And the ultimate question...what exactly do you expect to
>come
>>out of these player-run moderation?
>
>Here's the problem I'm trying to solve:
>
>I, while playing my character, see douchey behavior on the
>part of some other character. Not behavior that qualifies as
>a rules infraction, or else I'd immediately pray about it.
>Just crappy behavior of the sort that typically earns people
>negative titles, or possibly a critical PBF comment.
>
>The immortal staff, however, is not omnipresent, and so may
>not ever notice this character's douchey behavior. So he
>essentially flies under the radar and "gets away with it".
>
>I'd like to see fewer people "get away with it".

Again...monitoring/policing/praise/punishment. Even if you force a comment along with your thumbsup/thumbsdown who is to say that it actually happened? thumsdown isildursimperial Is grouping with Scions, attacking in town, and hero-gearing up some level 3 dude!

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

It's garanteed to be more work, with a 'possibility' to maybe get the result you want, 'if' the players manage to maybe use it properly.

On a long list of things to do, stuff with such a cost/benefit ratio would be put at the low end, with very little chance of ever gaining any more priority.

As such it would never happen.

Doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but when there's a human factor involved, assume the worst*.

* And the CF community isn't even that bad.

Same argument seems to apply to the newbie channel, prior to it being added. "Well, people won't use it like we intend, so it won't add any value to the game. Ergo we shouldn't take the time to implement it."

Were I to implement the thumbs up suggestion, I would make comments mandatory. That would drastically reduce impulse votes (which would generally be negative). And I would make it thumbs _up_ only.

But in general: No attention is good attention.

Edited to add: The newbie channel can really test your patience sometimes.

I like the idea. A lot. But only if the players actually used it in the way it was designed.

Overall, I don't think the playerbase is mature enough. It would be a lot of "This guy attacked me when I didn't want to fight" thumbs downs and a lot of OOC traded thumbs ups for #### reasons.

>Overall, I don't think the playerbase is mature enough. It
>would be a lot of "This guy attacked me when I didn't want to
>fight" thumbs downs and a lot of OOC traded thumbs ups for
>#### reasons.

I think there would definitely be some of that. My hope was that the people using it as intended would be numerous enough to overwhelm the other group, so that you could still see trends develop.

The "comments" feature might tend to mitigate this as well, since it will force people to just lie, and that could potentially be policed. Say I die to some guy and am pissed about it, so I give him a thumbs down vote with the comment, "This guy has terrible role-play!"

Any imm who watches me do that should probably remove my ability to cast votes altogether, since I'm clearly abusing it.

The per-hours thing might also mitigate douchebaggery, since the type of players who would engage in that behavior typically don't play long-lived characters.

But expect a lot of 'unworthy' votes like "this guy took my favourite weapon", "he killed me with no RP reason"

That was the reasoning behind doling out the votes based on hours played.

If you only get one vote every 50-100 hours, then maybe you don't "waste" it on some guy who just looted your weapon when he killed you. Since, really, that's not such a big deal.

Oh, and these would either not be part of the PBF data, or they'd be anonymized before being posted.