Decline in MP Quality

[OlBudt]

Thanx for the elaboration, Noy. You are very clear (to me now) in your answer. And then indeed, this idea of mine would not help to eliminate or make managable the problem of new people jumping in the game all the time, only with people that stick around longer.
I had a much bigger (future) community in mind when posting this idea where a lot of anonymous good reliable players would be present, corrupted by a small group of individuals. But as you say, this is currently already implicitly in the game with the honour system, which aparently works fine.
(And I regret feeling personally offended, as you, Noy, did not intend to do so.)

Then there is no more to discus and this can be closed.

[Yogibear]

How hard would it be to implement a system that would allow You to add personal notes to players in MP that would be accesible only to You (recorded only in Your game)

I think this is an excellent idea. I got it myself while reading this thread and like you i have the same problem of not being on the server many times. I even started to do my own table of players having things in it like: good/bad player, slow/fast moves, swearing, quitting, impatient etc.

There are more reasons, why i think this is a good idea:
- As has been pointed out, officially judging players is easy to be abused
- Despite not having registered names, the great majority of players keep their multiplayer names
- Registering names on the server is probably a much greater effort than providing such flags

There is also some techniques, that can make your life easier. You can for example name your game something like "... no quitters please". It does not stop them from entering but it might keep off some of them.

If i remember correct, there is an invitation system for games in the development version. Maybe that can be coupled with the flags you propose...

There also has been proposed to have separate lobby's maybe with some sort of membership. Not the worst idea as well, i guess.

[Kirit]

I have to agree with Noy.

Any System that ranks players is usually a bad idea and leads to a decrease in the MP community...

Besides: the MP community didnt suffer from a 'decrease in quality'. The game got more popular with the release of a first stable Wesnoth 1.0 and now new players are flocking to the game and testing the new Dev-Branch. Not all of them know the Wesnoth-MP-Netiquette yet. and you can always ignore them. its not that hard.

if you have a problem with some players you can write down their names in a text file or *gasps* maybe on a post-it

@Aloo: i really like this idea as it's not a ranking-system rather than a Wesnoth-Post-it.
But i think i heard somewhere that creating a login-script for wesnoth might not be an easy task to do.

[Magus]

I like huge, random, maps. Sure, they may take 6 or so hours to finish, but they are much more realistic and thus, to me, more enjoyable.

[FleshPeeler]

Thoughts on the topics I've seen (I've read the whole thread before posting); generally, all ideas are theoretically "good" ones, but think of how many people are going to come into contact with your implementation. It only takes one person to discover the loophole or misuse your system, and a thousand will copy.

Specifically:
-Win/Loss rankings: BAD. This is why games like Starcraft become so overladen with hackers or SCV rushers.
-Flags: Sounds like it could be way too complicated. Imagine the size of the database that would have to be kept to keep track of who flagged whom when so prevent subsequent flagging. Also, potentials for abuse are:
-- a user who doesn't even play the game or did very poorly their first time logs in, flags everybody in the channel (even people who are in games and cannot react, since those players are still in the lobby), logs out, makes a new name, flags again . . . just for global revenge against a game they think "sucks" just because they didn't understand it the first time.
--Flags being perceived by some as a win/loss crutch, or a newb/pro detector. Every time a player wins, they flag all losers for being noobs. No, there isn't a category for it, that's why they lie and make up a claim.
--Guilds may be called to mass-flame a user to get their flag rank way up. This happens all the time in Maple Story, for example.

-The rank +/- idea reminds me too much of Fame in Maple Story, and that is the most worthlessly abused system I've seen. People go around selling fame for money when it doesn't even really mean anything, guilds or buddy lists are called down like thunder on one unsuspecting user just because they didn't leave the map when demanded (I've been hit for that very reason by a verbally abusive lightning mage . . . an immature user gets a Fame ranking of 258 and me, just trying to play a game the way it was intended, now have -2 fame because 20 people swarmed me for one claim? Yeah, that's an excellent system. *eyeroll*). I know people can't buy fame from people in Wesnoth, but guilds could be employed to mass rank up/down a single user's account which makes this option fail.

-The whitelist idea . . . probably the best out of the suggestions made so far, but still has its flaws and, worst of all, a significant impact on the community. The first question I have to ask is who decides who gets on the whitelist? A person, or a group of people, obviously. Is there bias? If a person is not on the whitelist and wants on, or if a person is removed from the whitelist, what kind of hell do those people have to go through when they start getting spammed with requests to get on the list? Is there an application? How do those individuals judge every single player fairly before deciding who's the best?

At the risk of making this post even longer, I'm going to hold off on posting a suggestion of my own. I think this requires more thought than I'm able to give at the time anyway, but I will likely be back with some form of suggestion.

[FleshPeeler]

Actually, in all honesty the way things are set up now are probably the best. I like the informal atmosphere; because there is no rank or lasting effects to a login name, I find that I'm not forced to play on a daily basis to build up a win ranking or keep my account active; I can play casually whenever I feel like it with no pressure. I think that if any system is to be employed, it should not have lasting effects on a user's account or login name.

The way things are right now is the best. I think that as far as improvements go, the one thing we should try to do is encourage more communication within the chat lobby; get people talking more about each other so we know from user experience who likes to log out in mid-game, who likes to swear at people for kicks, and who the experienced players are who will see a game out to its gorey end.

[scott]

-The whitelist idea . . . probably the best out of the suggestions made so far, but still has its flaws and, worst of all, a significant impact on the community. The first question I have to ask is who decides who gets on the whitelist? A person, or a group of people, obviously. Is there bias? If a person is not on the whitelist and wants on, or if a person is removed from the whitelist, what kind of hell do those people have to go through when they start getting spammed with requests to get on the list? Is there an application? How do those individuals judge every single player fairly before deciding who's the best?

Right now MP regulars keep a mental list of who are responsible and worthwhile players. I would recommend such a list (or designation) be run just like the "forum regulars" membership or moderatorship-granting is carried out. It's a benign oligarchy of sorts:
1. A set of senior players can add to the list at any time for any reason
2. Anyone on the list can nominate others
3. Self-nomination results in the opposite result
4. The best way to get on the list is to not seek membership (our ever-popular zen principle)
There have been disagreements regarding the other 2 groups I used as examples, but they have all been worked out peacefully between. I don't know how formal you would make this system, since there would need to be at least one change in code (IRC-style nick registration or full account registration).

[jb]

I rarely see players being utterly ridiculous so I don't feel like there is a huge MP problem. It does happen from time to time, but not often enough to warrant huge changes.

I'd be curious to know how many total Wesnoth players there are...a few hundred? maybe a thousand? It just seems like until there are thousands or tens of thousands of players there is no need for drastic change...or any change at all.

Though I confess I haven't waddled into the stable version for a long time now. There may be a whole differant world there where players are difficult to play with and poorly behaved. A magicial land of noobs where intolarance reigns supreme...

So, what happens with the next stable release when both worlds are thrown into the same pot remains to be seen.

[irrevenant]

I don't think that rankings are a good idea, but being able to register your nick would be useful. Notsomuch to defend against maliciousness, as to prevent people accidentally using the same name. It's nice to know when you play a match against (eg.) "Goblin Pillager" that it's the same guy as last time you played. Especially if you're playing him because you enjoyed the match so much last time...

[tadpol]

Has name stealling/<a nice name for it> been a real problem or has it only been a feared problem?

I guess I have no way of knowing if the people I've payed more than one game with are the same people each time. But most of the names I've seen seem unique enough that I doubt anyone copying them by chance and for intentional spoof-ing there seems to be no advantage to be gained and little to no space for doing any harm without a lot of work.

I'm curious too about our total numbers, but I can't think of a reliable way to make a count.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Has name stealling/<a nice name for it> been a real problem or has it only been a feared problem?

No. Name stealing happens to other games, because other games try to make it difficult, which becomes a challenge, and some people like that kind of challenge. In Wesnoth, we make no attempt to stop this kind of behavior, which leads people to decide whether they want to do it in the first place, which they don't.

It's the paradox of making things free. Once it's free, people stop looking for a bargain and start looking for something they actually want.

[Yogibear]

Has name stealling/<a nice name for it> been a real problem or has it only been a feared problem?

I guess I have no way of knowing if the people I've payed more than one game with are the same people each time. But most of the names I've seen seem unique enough that I doubt anyone copying them by chance and for intentional spoof-ing there seems to be no advantage to be gained and little to no space for doing any harm without a lot of work.

I'm curious too about our total numbers, but I can't think of a reliable way to make a count.

I think the most people we had on the server at the same time was a little more than hundred. Based on that i estimate the number of active players about twice or three times that much.

I never saw someone steal a name on purpose. It happened to me in the beginning (i choosed "yogi" and after some time experienced an unintended name collision). I don't regard it to be a problem at all atm and i don't expect that to change in the near future.

[Baufo]

I think such a list of approved players would be a good idea. In the last few weeks I was experiencing "decline in MP quality". Idiots who build maps that give themself a lot of villages and then play this map with shroud, people who do not grab villages and it seems like he did not even know what they are good for (Actually he even won (!) the game - his first wave of recruits did about 2 times the damage it should, while mine hit only once in a whole move with maybe 20 strikes and so he could simply kill my leader. I have to admit that I became rather unfrienldy too after a while because he kept claiming that he was extremly unlucky and his winning was pure skill in a rather annoying way.) or hosts that make the teams on a 2vs2 map so, that not the to allies but a member of each team is on the same side. It really spoils the fun, if you are too polite just to leave such games. If there was such a list it was easy to recognize nice opponents for enjoyable games.

Though I confess I haven't waddled into the stable version for a long time now. There may be a whole differant world there where players are difficult to play with and poorly behaved. A magicial land of noobs where intolarance reigns supreme...

So, what happens with the next stable release when both worlds are thrown into the same pot remains to be seen.

I fear nothing good will happen. Yesterday I visited the stable version server to meet an old friend but you simply can't even chat there without reading anoying things like (I have really read them) "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", "gggggggggggggg", ... And this peole seem to be taking over the developement server slowly. I think something must be done to keep MP alive.

[Truper]

As a relatively simple game with a fantasy theme that also happens to be free, Wesnoth attracts a lot of kids. While some are polite and reliable opponents, others are more... childish There isn't anything that can or should be done about this, imo.

[Baufo]

I would still regard myself as a kid

But you are right, maybe there is not much that can be done. Although I think that a white list of players would be a little help.