Cantr has clearly no winners or losers, because players determine themselves what kind of characters they like to play. This is crucial to the game design and should not be touched. But that does not mean that some players are really better at the game than others. They accomplish bigger goals, or they are more fun to watch, or they become more popular in the game, etcetera. Of course, there are forum threads to promote those players, but the forum is visited by a minority of the players and it means that the people that are the loudest on the forum also influence most clearly who are perceived as good players. So perhaps a slightly more "objective" system would be nice.
The idea would be that any player can rate any character they encounter on the basis of a number of criteria. Maybe things like "wealth", "power", but also "fun", "leadership", things like this. The exact list is up for debate. Every player would have a limited set of votes - perhaps it would work if everybody can select only one other character as being the best on a particular characteristic (that is, every player can select only one character (and not their own) on each of the criteria). It would not be a "one vote per month" kind of thing, but rather, the vote persists perpetually, until you decide to select another character.
If we have such votes, we can easily make an overview of high scorers per month, or even possibly just any current snapshot.
If we want to use a rating rather than one vote, statistical techniques exist to balance the number of votes versus the ranking (i.e. someone with 1 5 star ranking should not outrank someone with 20 5 star and 1 4 star ranking).
The ratings of course apply to both characters and players - the latter just rated on the basis of how their characters are rated.
I should also point out that the GAC never liked this idea
.
To be sure: if people like this idea, and the GAC approves, it would still mean that many other things have higher priority in the programming department
... But to me this is an interesting point to contemplate.
Original plan 27/6/2005 in email to GAC (as you can see, quite different from the above, current suggestion):
Jos Elkink wrote:Hi guys,
Just something I was thinking about on the way in to college today.
What do you guys think of the idea of implementing a player scoring
system. I have something in mind like this:
- with a random chance, but at most once a day, anytime open the
player page, you can get a survey to score what you think of other
characters
- based on the table that stores the dynamic names you gave to other
characters (this to make sure you have met the characters, and we
don't tell real names you don't know) you get a list of, say, 5
characters your character has met, and you get a standard question
about this
- randomly any of a small number of questions can be asked, for
example about roleplaying quality, strategic playing, powerful
playing, wealth/status.
So it could look like this:
Please describe, from your perspective as a player, what you think of
the QUALITY OF ROLEPLAYING of the following characters:
1. Jonathan Russell very poor 1 2 3 4 5 very good
6 don't know
2. John Woodhouse
3. Amon Bigsby
4. Sven Bluetooth
5. Nee Tschey
And another day, this player might get another set of five characters,
with a question like:
Please describe, from your perspective as a player, what you think of
the SOCIAL STATUS of the following characters:
or:
Please describe, from your perspective as a player, what you think of
the POWER of the following characters:
etc.
This could lead to:
1) ranking of best played characters (in different categories)
2) ranking of best players
And it makes it possible for us to determine who are good players, for
example when recruiting, when finding testers, or when finding
moderators as newbie guides or newbie island moderators.
What do you think?
Jos
Next day's attempt to formulate the questions better:
Jos Elkink wrote:1) Please describe, from your perspective as a player, how POWERFUL
you think the following characters are in their respective regions.
2) Please describe, from your perspective as a player, how you rate
the QUALITY OF ROLEPLAYING of the following characters. To what extent
do you think these characters are played with realistic personalities?
3) Please describe, from your perspective as a player, how WEALTHY you
consider the following characters.
4) Please describe, from your perspective as a player, how IMPORTANT
you consider the following characters in their communities. Does how
they are played add in a positive way to the gaming experience in
their regions?
Wiro's list of criteria (29/9/2008):
*Wiro wrote:Best RPd character -
Nicest character -
Meanest characters -
Best town leader -
Worst town leader -
Funniest character -
Most annoying character -
Most perverted character -
Most fearsome character -
Best clothed character -
Cutest couple -
Manliest character -
Womanliest character -
Best company
Worst company
) the world to make it more populate and more interesting to play again.
