Realm Ratings

[Arrakis]

How acceptable would be the idea for players to start rating realms? It would be an OOC rating of course, which should include:
1. How active the community of players is in that realm. This can generally be rated based on the amount of letters that go around.
2. Roleplaying rating (a realm with too much OOC letters, and mixing of OOC with IC wouldn't get a decent rating here).
3. How fun the realm is. This depends on IC factors (wars etc etc).

Not sure whether the player would be required to answer all three of these questions, or just one which would be simple "How would you rate this realm"?

Such a system would give better guidance to people joining new realms, and would sort of rewards those realms that play properly and are trying hard to make players have fun as I assume a good rating would attract more players to such realms.

[Revan]

Thing about player generated ratings is that realms can change whilst past player ratings would remain. Somewhat like the many realm descriptions on the wiki, many a realm would flatter at vibrant activity but then you arrive to find that particular version of the realm had died off many moons ago.

I'd love to see a game-generated calculation when making a new character that maybe measured roleplays or letters as a percentage of realm correspondence during the past fortnight or month. For players looking for war maybe you can have a calculation showing the number of battles involving a large percentage of the realms mobile military force or something like that. Stuff, anyway, that remains relatively up-to-date and hopefully isn't that gameable without groups of players making ridiculously convoluted and sustained efforts at upping their percentages - though one would hope players took the hint that communication is and of itself a pretty worthwhile endeavour in a team based strategy game!

[Anaris]

The problem is, generally, players would rate their own realm very high, even if it's actually pretty lousy.

This also creates an incentive to create lots of characters to upvote a realm.

[Chenier]

The problem is, generally, players would rate their own realm very high, even if it's actually pretty lousy.

This also creates an incentive to create lots of characters to upvote a realm.

Indeed, which is why I prefer a series of statistics that anyone can interpret as they wish than a rating on how one realm is "better" than another.

This has already been discussed, though.

[Peri]

Such a system would give better guidance to people joining new realms, and would sort of rewards those realms that play properly and are trying hard to make players have fun as I assume a good rating would attract more players to such realms.

I agree with anaris' critic, and I would like to add that perhaps a more simple way - meanwhile a proper solution is searched - would be to make the diplomacy relations and statistics page available for new nobles to consult upon choosing the realm. Someone even mentioned letting recent world news readable.

[Arrakis]

I wasn't really aiming to make the current going-ons of realms accessible. They already are. Wiki, IRC...you can find out easily what is going on where. I wanted to emphasize the importance to rate the quality of a realm. For example, there are realms which are dead boring even when participating in interesting wars. My own examples are: OG during the fronenite gangbang, Minas Ithil during the current, large scale war in Atamara. Even in such interesting situations these realms fail to deliver any sort of fun. At least that's my experience and I know experiences vary, but I would wanna have the option to rate that. On the other hand, there are realms which are quite interesting even when not having war going on at all. Of course, the purpose of such a rating would be to rate a realm looking from a regular knight's perception...you know, the grunt. And this is probably where the problem begins as inner councils probably have loads of fun while their grunts don't. This would then cause unbalanced ratings.

The point should be to give better guidance to mostly new players, but also to those that want to have a fun realm with just being the knight. So perhaps the option to rate should not be mandatory and could be time-limited? Say, in the first 2 months in the realm you should have the option to rate it. This would prevent the oldies to pump up their realms with good rates and would allow for an objective rating from a low-hierarchy observer.

[Penchant]

So in other words you want realms to be unbalanced, either dead as can be because it got a bad rating and people would have livened it up but saw the low rating and didn't want to join that realm or realm's that are super active and full of roleplay always because it got good ratings so all the active people and roleplayers joined that realm instead of a realm that has fewer active people and people who roleplay not as often because it got a bad rating.

[Arrakis]

So in other words you want realms to be unbalanced, either dead as can be because it got a bad rating and people would have livened it up but saw the low rating and didn't want to join that realm

Yeah, I'd rather not have too many of those. What is the point of playing in a ghost realm that offers little experience? I guess that those who wanna play as drones (and I am aware there are many who like that) can of course choose to play there. I prefer not to.

or realm's that are super active and full of roleplay always because it got good ratings so all the active people and roleplayers joined that realm instead of a realm that has fewer active people and people who roleplay not as often because it got a bad rating.

If you mean roleplays as in sending a lot of letter tagged as roleplays, then no, I don't make that mandatory. Rp's are nice and can spice things up, but they are not crucial.
If you mean roleplays as in "majority of players playing their characters as a role, and have at least a small resemblance to real, "live" characters", then yes, I'd definitely like that and would give the best rating to such realms.

I think that there are many ways to play this game. Some like to play it semi-actively, some don't. To ride a fine line according to Tom's guidance on how the game should be played is, in my opinion, that what the new players should get a feel of when they join. The rating system would allow for new players not to "end up in the wrong place", sort of. It may not really be the wrong place, but may not be the best place for a newbie to start. If the rating system would lead the new players to the realm that truly defines BM in its most beautiful form, then I'd say it would be a success. Seriously, starting up in some craphole where no one greets you, no one helps you and no one says a damn thing for a month, probably wouldn't make the player stick around. I am not saying this system I proposed is best, but devising any sort of system that can show some quality play to new players would be beneficial, and in the long term it would probably affect the growth of the player base.

[Penchant]

I must say the getting a greeting when you start is good as when I joined I was unsure if I wanted to stay but I got semi-lengthy greeting which put gave me a very positive attitude towards the game but in the end if you create a rating system you will make most semi-active realms into dead realms because all the new characters will join the more active realms and make the semi-active realms dead as the active characters go to the active realms while no new characters join the semi-active realms making it dead. If you do this you will condem all semi-active realms because all the new characters will join the realms with the best ratings.

[Arrakis]

Until such a time when there are no more dead-boring realms! It is a wonderful circle :)
Seriously, the above statement is utopia really, but at the moment there are a *lot* more dead-beat realms than fun realms. If a rating system at least evens that, we'd made a lions share.

[Penchant]

How would a rating system even it? you have yet to give any way how it would make more realms active.

[JPierreD]

Having the political map and diplomacy relations available before joining would be a major boon, in my opinion.

How 'good' the realm is depends, it's subjective, but to which other realms it is allied and with which is fighting can be really useful. I would personally hate to join a realm at war against distant enemies, and would much prefer those fighting neighbors (or fighting at all).

Is there any reason for those to be unavailable?

[Penchant]

+1

[egamma]

Having the political map and diplomacy relations available before joining would be a major boon, in my opinion.

How 'good' the realm is depends, it's subjective, but to which other realms it is allied and with which is fighting can be really useful. I would personally hate to join a realm at war against distant enemies, and would much prefer those fighting neighbors (or fighting at all).

Is there any reason for those to be unavailable?

Why not write that up in the proper format and put over in feature requests?

[JPierreD]

Why not write that up in the proper format and put over in feature requests?

Would like some proper feedback first.