Suggestion / Discussion: Only allow intra-ship commendations when losing

[Electric Donkey]

When everything goes smoothly and your team handily wins a match, only trolls or the truly maladjusted behave badly on the winning team.

So I would assert that the true test of "good sportsmanship", which is ostensibly what commendations are about, happens only when your team loses.

Did the main engineer ignore the armor?

Did the captain fail to indicate when he was using moonshine?

Was the noob gunner dumping mortars onto a target with full armor?

Did the captain pilot the ship into the firing arc of multiple opponents, smash into the landscape, then shriek blame at the engineer for ignoring the armor, apparently oblivious to the concept of repair cooldowns and the non-existence of a +10 Enchanted Mallet of Divine Protection?

In my opinion it's only when your side struggles and fails that you can possibly know whether your crewmates are actually quality teammates. As such, I would suggest that commendations between crew members only be made possible when your crew is on the losing team.

(Alternately if it was possible to revoke a commendation, that would work too.)

[Indreams]

Dunno, I like the commendation system as is. (I think most people had problems with achievements related to commendations).

It's sorta something I give out just to be nice about it. (as long as they didn't completely screw up) And I'd like to give commendations to everyone if a match is fun.

So, yea, dunno about the commendation system needing a change.

[RedRoach]

I don't see the issue. If my teammates fail and they work hard, they get a commendation. If we win, and they don't work hard (IE Gunner was not listening when I'm yelling GET ON FRONT GUN and finding flares to be fun to shoot at ships with instead of a hwacha) then they don't get a commendation.

The problem you're saying is "When you're on the losing team, you don't hand out commendations because you think the entire team sucks because you lost." I fiercely disagree with that. In fact, the solution of making it so that only losing will get commendations is going to A.) make those achievios about getting teammates to give/get commendations hard as balls if you're good at the game and B.) cause a reverse of the problem "The team was brilliant and well working but I can't salute you."

[Electric Donkey]

I guess the problem is I'm expecting commendations to serve a purpose which they do not serve.

Is it fair to say that there is no machinery in place which attempts to answer the question "Do people like playing with this player"?

If someone works hard and contributes to a win, that's great - and if they work hard but lose anyway and exhibit good sportsmanship, that's great too - but if they work hard, lose anyway, but turn into a screaming, insane idiot in the process, that's not someone I would choose to play with again.

Since commendations (or lack thereof) seem to have no visible effects, I suppose the only use they have is serving as a mild positive-reinforcement mechanism. (Though I understand that in the not too distant past level increases were achievement-based so being held to a low level due to not receiving commendations might be a more weighty mechanic.)

I wonder if GoIO could benefit from a more overt reputation system. This wouldn't necessarily need to rise to the level of visible endorsements of fellow players (like a publicly viewable "is friends with" relation), but some sort of system where commendations or discommendations from players who have put in hundreds of hours and have a high reputation have more weight than commendations or discommendations from people with less than 10 hours and low reputation scores.

In order to prevent a new player from being sandbagged by a veteran having a bad day, reputation could be accrued or lost at a reduced rate until a player graduates from being a novice so that they have an opportunity to screw up but then learn from their mistakes.

I'm probably overlooking problems a reputation system would cause, but I can say that the current level scheme only gives you an idea of how many matches someone has played, not whether anyone likes playing with them. (You can get to level 45 and still be a jerk.)

[RedRoach]

OOoooh, I see what you mean, like you expect Commendations to be like a karma rating that other people to keep an eye on?

there are plenty of threads suggesting something like that. In fact, I agree with having a visible karma rating.

I even like the system you suggest, with the balancing a bit of the amount of hours (might not even swap that for matches, some matches could go for literally 5 minutes, another for an hour straight) played and the karma effect of getting "positive" marks and "negative" marks.

However, other people have said that Muse has stated that they don't condone placing forth a negative karma system, so the meter you're thinking about implementing would only have to go one way, and that would be a measurement of how many people think person X is great, which is essentially what the current commendation system does.

[Caprontos]

I honestly.. just give everyone one.. unless they were outright being a troll.. 99% of the people I've played with were just playing the game as they understand it at the time..

I also don't support negative systems, like the karma or kick functions. I see no gain for them really. Best case is they aren't used for anything useful.. worst case is they are abused.

[Electric Donkey]

I see - well maybe there would be a way to have an effective karma rating without involving negative points, and even without something like "revocable" commendations...

Here are some ideas for a commendation-driven visible karma system...

1) When a player receives a commendation, this fact should NOT be announced to them. Players shouldn't feel pressured to give a commendation to a player simply because they received one from them. Likewise, a player shouldn't be made aware that they did NOT receive a commendation from a crewmate since that could potentially be a source of ill will. In order to fully obscure whether or not a particular player awarded you a commendation, your karma value should only update at fixed time intervals, for instance, at midnight or 3 AM, so that you will only see the effects of ALL of the matches played that day and not the effect any single match had on your karma.

2) Instead of player A commending player B being a one-time event, player A can commend player B once each day. (Keep reading.)

3) The karma from a commendation is not permanent and gradually erodes as a function of matches played. (Eroding as a function of time could be unfair to high-quality players who do not play often.) As an example if Alice commends Bob, Bob's karma would increase by 100 points at midnight (per number 1 above), but the value of that commendation would decrease by 1 for each match that Bob plays, until after 100 matches at which point that commendation no longer carries any weight at all. However if Alice and Bob play another match the next day and Alice commends Bob again the karmic value of Alice's commendation of Bob would be restored to the full 100 point value and would proceed to erode as before.

4) Instead of seeing a raw karma score, karma scores would fall into a handful of "buckets", with the topmost bucket being open-ended. For instance the buckets could be something like "Swabbie" (0-999), "Deckhand" (1,000-4,999), "Officer" (5,000-9,999), "Captain" (10,000+). These numbers are PDOMA, the idea is that even though karma gradually evaporates, as long as you continue to receive commendations at a reasonable rate, you should stay in the best bucket.

A system like this appeals to me since if I give a commendation to someone I later discover is a jerk, I'd know that any benefit their karma score gets from that commendation will eventually vanish. On the other hand if there is a player I like playing with, I can commend them each day that we play together so my commendation will have an ongoing positive impact on their karma.

The most obvious flaw (I'm sure there are more) is that if you have 3 friends and you only ever play with them, your karma would max out at 300 and you'd always be a Swabbie, so if you went to play with randoms they might think you weren't a good team player.

So perhaps instead of the karma value of commendations eroding by one with each match played, they would only erode in matches where you're on a crew with someone who hasn't commended you that day (or maybe it would still erode when playing with your clan, just at a greatly reduced rate). That way someone who plays with the same 3 clan members 99% of the time would be able to retain any karma they earn playing with other people for longer (possibly indefinitely), so they could build it up to the "Captain" bucket and keep it there.

Anyway, just some ideas.