Feb 3

Guild Trademark, MMOG Reputation

Category: Asides, Design

Two great posts on Raph Koster’s site from yesterday. First, he talks about a guild which has trademarked its name in relation to gaming groups.

He also responds to a Gamastura article entitled Designing an MMORPG Feedback Rating System, which was also discussed on Slashdot.

3 comments

3 Comments so far

  1. Alan De Smet February 3rd, 2006 1:08 pm

    Koster has lots of wise things to say, but he makes several wrong statements about reputation systems.

    “Negative feedback reputation systems have been shown mathematically to always spiral into chaos. The reason? People with bad reps just start up a new identity.”

    Oh really? I’d love to see this math, which Koster fails to cite. ‘Cuz I’ve got several studies that I just made up that show the opposite.

    Anyway, he’s missing the core point: yes, you can create a new identity to escape a bad reputation. But there is a cost to that new identity. In MMORPG it’s your level. So a 10th level abuser might create a new character easily as 10th level is pretty easy, but a 50th level abuser is losing something that cost him either a lot of time or money.

    “Positive feedback reputation systems do work, as long as there’s an expectation of repeated interaction (in other words, if you think you might see the other person again).”

    Why? A reputation system isn’t about my keeping notes on who I trust. It’s about my providing notes for other people to examine. Raph fails to provide any argument for this.

    “In other words, if you can get your players into clumps of 150 or less who tend to play mostly with each other, an abstracted rep system is effectively overkill at that point — and so is much of your customer service concern.”

    Raph Koster: taking the Massive out of MMORPGs.

    I will agree with him, we need a better reputation system. Indeed I’ll go further and say that eBay needs a better reputation system. While it would incur more complexity, I think a system based on commuted trust is the key. Play six-degrees-of-Azaroth and find links between me and a potential party member.

  2. Michael February 6th, 2006 4:38 pm

    My opinion, in general, is: ‘Something is better than nothing.’ I’ve met an endless stream of asshats playing Massive games. This stream was broken up by folks that were standup, interesting, and worth grouping with. In many ways, I’ve found it hard to have an ‘eh’ experience with another human in a MMOG. Either they’re worth grouping with or they’re not.

    While I see the dangers in a negative rep-spiral … isn’t it a better idea to take a crack at it than not?