Removal of VR, new character power measurement suggestion (respect)

LEGENDARYYY · February 2015

Hello. I have a detailed suggestion for the replacement of Veteran Ranks.

We need something to measure our characters power and progress in a new, different and accurate way. Something that makes people wanna play ESO forever.

The new system has to force the player to invest time into all aspects of ESO. Including PvP, PVE, Achievements, character building, crafting and everything the game has to offer.

Today, being VR 14 is purely based on gained XP. Nothing else. You can be a *** VR14, or the strongest in the game, without people knowing. It's just a bad measurement.

RESPECT:
The solution to this is Respect. Respect is a numeric value measuring the real power and progress of your character. The thought behind the respect system is slightly similiar to what you did with the dye system and achievements system.

The amount of respect your character has depends on everything you have done before lvl 50, and OF COURSE post lvl 50.

The respect system will be available once your character reaches lvl 50.

It gives you points based on what armour you wear, how many armour sets you have, how many achievements you've completed, your PvP rank, amount of skill points, amount of passives in the champion system etc. etc. Only our imagination can stop us.

How much respect you gain from the different aspects of the game depends on how important it is to your characters real power.

Respect can be used to match players in future PvP arena and matchmaking, aswell as give people in todays PvP a way to measure their opponent. Not to forget, it will be VERY usefull in PVE aswell. Weak players can team up in dailys together and get an easier dungeon, strong players can team up for the perfect challenge. Strong players wont suddenly team with very weak players like in the current VR dungeon system.The scaling will be much better with respect because Veteran Rank doesn't measure real character power and progress at all.

Example:
Calculations:

1 skill point = 1 respect
1 rank 10 passive in champion system = 5 respect
1 rank 30 passive in champion system = 10 respect
1 rank 90 passive in champion system = 25 respect
1 rank 120 passive in champion system = 50 respect
Max magicka /100 = the amount of respect - (example: 1800 max magicka gives 18 respect)
Max stamina /100 = the amount of respect - (example: 1800 max stamina gives 18 respect)
Max health /100 = the amount of respect - (example: 1800 max health gives 18 respect)
Magicka regen/5 = the amount of respect - (example: 123 magicka regen gives 25 respect)
Stamina regen/5 = the amount of respect - (example: 123 stamina regen gives 25 respect)
Health regen/5 = the amount of respect - (example: 123 health regen gives 25 respect)

Same goes for spell resistance, armour, weapon dmg, crits, etc. divided or multiplied by a number to fit the measurement of character power.

Per piece of normal armor or weapon = 1 respect
Per piece of fine armor or weapon = 2 respect
Per piece of superior armor or weapon = 4 respect
Per piece of epic armor or weapon = 8 respect
Per piece of lengendary armor or weapon = 16 respect

Set of 2 pieces (armor, weapon, jewelry) = 2 respect
Set of 3 pieces (armor, weapon, jewelry) = 5 respect
Set of 4 pieces (armor, weapon, jewelry) = 15 respect
Set of 5 pieces (armor, weapon, jewelry) = 50 respect

Becoming emperor = 50 respect (can only happen once)
PvP rank increase = 2 respect

And achievements that require some degree of skill to complete should be rewarding. But remember it is to measure progress and power, achievements has to give a low amount of respect points. It would break the whole point of the system if achievements gave too much points.

note: My calculations are just examples, I made them up on the fly as I wrote this to show off the idea behind the system. A system like this needs an insane load of work to make it accurate and rewarding.

What do you think?

I hope you consider something like this ZOS!!

Edit: Since most people didn't get it (looking at comments). I'll clarify: This is not a measurement of skill, its a measurement of how powerful your character is.

NotSo · February 2015

Well this system would certainly help out min/max parties find their guy, but I'd only be on board with this if there was a filter system to go along with it so I could get an idea of somebody's gear quality (dyes hide it completely) or to hide my Respect from other players altogether.

In other games, being able to "inspect" somebody's gear was also grounds for getting your account hacked by some a**hole that wants your stuff, WoW fought it by making everything bind to the player and other games fought it by having a "do not show to public" toggle, with your Respect system, you could show everybody your 'power' and not have to worry about getting hacked.

I think it's a fantastic idea.

Thymos · February 2015

This will create an aura of exclusion. Building groups and requiring a minimum amount of respect to even join. Then it will also give a false sense of expertise. Just because someone has a high respect, doesn't mean they are a skilled player.

LEGENDARYYY · February 2015

Thymos wrote: »

This will create an aura of exclusion. Building groups and requiring a minimum amount of respect to even join. Then it will also give a false sense of expertise. Just because someone has a high respect, doesn't mean they are a skilled player.

Aura of exclusion, and inclusion you mean? What is bad about groups with high respect that play together? What is bad about people playing at the level their character actually is at?

I'm currently vr4. My char is pretty decent. I wanna play with people at my own level, not people with white armor 0 sets and not people who stomp everything in my dungeon because they got all legendary gear and 2x sets.

respect doesn't measure expertise, it measures your characters progress and power.

expertise must be measured in a completely different way, like ELO system with K/D, healing done per death, damage taken per death, and dungeon performance etc. Respect isnt supposed to be that.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO · February 2015

I know they say its still the plan to remove VR levels. I just dont believe them. Vet ranks arent going anywhere.

Ixtyr · February 2015

What you're asking for is effectively another potential gating mechanism, a new spin-off of what is basically a rehash of Achievements, and it really just encourages min-maxing. ZOS isn't about that.

Additionally, you're adding another system with another "currency" or "ranking" or number, if you get what I mean. That's adding unnecessary complication and confusion, particularly for newer players - and especially if the numerical values are not well-defined or easy to understand in-game.

---

That said, your system does have some merit, but not as an addition. I would personally not be opposed to it being applied as a renovation of the Achievement system, which I think in its current state is far from being properly utilized.

For that to happen, though I really think the menu system and UI will need a serious revamp, as the current setup is far too clunky and requires too many clicks to move around and find things. I guarantee you there are people who don't even know that there's an entire Lore tab on the Journal page, despite playing the game for months, and it's because nothing in the menus is easily spelled out. TES games have always had UI/menu problems, but that doesn't mean every TES game should.

dharbert · February 2015

Hell no. All that would do is foster more elitism than there already is.

Heishi · February 2015

Eh, it's well thought out, but I have to disagree. Most significant achievements have titles to show, especially PvP. Also if you're experienced enough for this to matter, you can usually tell by talking with someone for a minute how experienced they are.

I really don't know where number of armor sets comes into play. I would suspect most people only keep 2 sets if that, and being able to buy high ranking armor really is no indication of skill. To be honest, the armor situation could be easily solved if ZOS would give us the very useful option to inspect other players to see what armor and such they're wearing. I know many times I have seen armor on someone and wanted to know what set it comes from.

Some games use a system where once a day you can "praise" someone and it keeps a running total of how many times they've been praised. This could work for your purpose, however it is a system which is subject to abuse.

Given the amount of CP are available, I do think you should be able to see this in some form though, considering the different is will make between someone with 0cp and someone with 100cp.

I don't feel that people should be forced to play with other people, but I do think it's nice for experienced players to "coach" less experienced and help them get through stuff they're struggling with. Realy that comes down more to player ethics than something which can be tangibly enforced by any game company. It's a symptom of the community.

The game design can play a part in fostering this though. For example, in GW2 when a player dies, any other play can resurrect them for free and gain xp out of it. In WoW you have skills with an easily regenerative resource to revive people. I don't know why in ESO they opted to go with a expensive consumable. It does kinda make sense with the lore, but it pushes on self preservation. Most games at least have a class which can revive people. Here you have to use a skill that's virtually useless except to make soul gems, which you still have to have empty ones to make, pay for pricey soul gems at the store, or find one on bosses or in chest, or other such things. Most people are not going to waste a soul gem when they know they may need it later unless you happen to be psuedo grouped against bosses, dolmens, dungeons, pvp, ect and even then it's only a marginally higher chance.

Really there's little about ESO which is designed to encourage people to work together short of the challenges. 1.6 will compound this problem even more with buffs not stacking. If you can give yourself all the buffs why rely on others?

Point is, as others pointed out, elitism is already a problem no need to make it worse. If ESO was designed more to get players to help each other and work together rather than millions of individuals who are forced together to overcome parts of the game's content, a system like "respect" wouldn't have so much of an impact and could be viable.

Majic · February 2015

Less Than Zero

Reverse the scale and call it "Disrespect", and it would be way more popular.

You could also add a large "Invite/Don't Invite" (or maybe "Cool/Not Cool") flag that would permanently fly over each character's head to make grouping decisions easier and more fun.

And I say that with all due respect.

seanvwolf · February 2015

All they would have to do is create a visual icon representing stages of achievement and champion points obtained.

/thread

Soulshine · February 2015

LEGENDARYYY wrote: »

Hello... [Snip] What do you think?

I think that something similar is in the works, given this from Paul Sage:

How do you plan to handle content gating using the new system and how players will know which tier of endgame content is appropriate for them?

The details of this are still being brainstormed, but some ideas that might happen include some sort of “champion rating”, increased character levels, or some other sort of indication to the player as to what they should be working on.

What is your stance on the visibility of champion levels, do you want a character’s champion progress to be public knowledge?

We’re playing with different sets of iconography to represent a character’s Champion achievement visually within the UI. There’s a lot of potential also for Champion Ratings as a composite statistic based both on their champion rating as well as the attribute levels of an enemy.

Now granted, almost everything he says ends up being something else... but, it is very likely that this will come to pass since the primary problem with the game post 1.6 will be the removal of VR and balancing of what remains of post 50 content. Short of level gating, which people claim they don't want, some kind of measuring stick has to be in place - whether it ends up being visible to you alone or another player, remains to be worked out.

LEGENDARYYY · February 2015

Heishi wrote: »

Eh, it's well thought out, but I have to disagree. Most significant achievements have titles to show, especially PvP. Also if you're experienced enough for this to matter, you can usually tell by talking with someone for a minute how experienced they are.

I really don't know where number of armor sets comes into play. I would suspect most people only keep 2 sets if that, and being able to buy high ranking armor really is no indication of skill. To be honest, the armor situation could be easily solved if ZOS would give us the very useful option to inspect other players to see what armor and such they're wearing. I know many times I have seen armor on someone and wanted to know what set it comes from.

Some games use a system where once a day you can "praise" someone and it keeps a running total of how many times they've been praised. This could work for your purpose, however it is a system which is subject to abuse.

Given the amount of CP are available, I do think you should be able to see this in some form though, considering the different is will make between someone with 0cp and someone with 100cp.

I don't feel that people should be forced to play with other people, but I do think it's nice for experienced players to "coach" less experienced and help them get through stuff they're struggling with. Realy that comes down more to player ethics than something which can be tangibly enforced by any game company. It's a symptom of the community.

The game design can play a part in fostering this though. For example, in GW2 when a player dies, any other play can resurrect them for free and gain xp out of it. In WoW you have skills with an easily regenerative resource to revive people. I don't know why in ESO they opted to go with a expensive consumable. It does kinda make sense with the lore, but it pushes on self preservation. Most games at least have a class which can revive people. Here you have to use a skill that's virtually useless except to make soul gems, which you still have to have empty ones to make, pay for pricey soul gems at the store, or find one on bosses or in chest, or other such things. Most people are not going to waste a soul gem when they know they may need it later unless you happen to be psuedo grouped against bosses, dolmens, dungeons, pvp, ect and even then it's only a marginally higher chance.

Really there's little about ESO which is designed to encourage people to work together short of the challenges. 1.6 will compound this problem even more with buffs not stacking. If you can give yourself all the buffs why rely on others?

Point is, as others pointed out, elitism is already a problem no need to make it worse. If ESO was designed more to get players to help each other and work together rather than millions of individuals who are forced together to overcome parts of the game's content, a system like "respect" wouldn't have so much of an impact and could be viable.

you misunderstood the whole consept. It's not a measurement of player skill.. but character power and progress. And that may be because I wrote "skill" once in my post by a mistake. It was meant to say character power and progress. It is now fixed

LEGENDARYYY · February 2015

LEGENDARYYY wrote: »

Heishi wrote: »

Eh, it's well thought out, but I have to disagree. Most significant achievements have titles to show, especially PvP. Also if you're experienced enough for this to matter, you can usually tell by talking with someone for a minute how experienced they are.

I really don't know where number of armor sets comes into play. I would suspect most people only keep 2 sets if that, and being able to buy high ranking armor really is no indication of skill. To be honest, the armor situation could be easily solved if ZOS would give us the very useful option to inspect other players to see what armor and such they're wearing. I know many times I have seen armor on someone and wanted to know what set it comes from.

Some games use a system where once a day you can "praise" someone and it keeps a running total of how many times they've been praised. This could work for your purpose, however it is a system which is subject to abuse.

Given the amount of CP are available, I do think you should be able to see this in some form though, considering the different is will make between someone with 0cp and someone with 100cp.

I don't feel that people should be forced to play with other people, but I do think it's nice for experienced players to "coach" less experienced and help them get through stuff they're struggling with. Realy that comes down more to player ethics than something which can be tangibly enforced by any game company. It's a symptom of the community.

The game design can play a part in fostering this though. For example, in GW2 when a player dies, any other play can resurrect them for free and gain xp out of it. In WoW you have skills with an easily regenerative resource to revive people. I don't know why in ESO they opted to go with a expensive consumable. It does kinda make sense with the lore, but it pushes on self preservation. Most games at least have a class which can revive people. Here you have to use a skill that's virtually useless except to make soul gems, which you still have to have empty ones to make, pay for pricey soul gems at the store, or find one on bosses or in chest, or other such things. Most people are not going to waste a soul gem when they know they may need it later unless you happen to be psuedo grouped against bosses, dolmens, dungeons, pvp, ect and even then it's only a marginally higher chance.

Really there's little about ESO which is designed to encourage people to work together short of the challenges. 1.6 will compound this problem even more with buffs not stacking. If you can give yourself all the buffs why rely on others?

Point is, as others pointed out, elitism is already a problem no need to make it worse. If ESO was designed more to get players to help each other and work together rather than millions of individuals who are forced together to overcome parts of the game's content, a system like "respect" wouldn't have so much of an impact and could be viable.

*missclick*

Heishi · February 2015

LEGENDARYYY wrote: »

Heishi wrote: »

Eh, it's well thought out, but I have to disagree. Most significant achievements have titles to show, especially PvP. Also if you're experienced enough for this to matter, you can usually tell by talking with someone for a minute how experienced they are.

I really don't know where number of armor sets comes into play. I would suspect most people only keep 2 sets if that, and being able to buy high ranking armor really is no indication of skill. To be honest, the armor situation could be easily solved if ZOS would give us the very useful option to inspect other players to see what armor and such they're wearing. I know many times I have seen armor on someone and wanted to know what set it comes from.

Some games use a system where once a day you can "praise" someone and it keeps a running total of how many times they've been praised. This could work for your purpose, however it is a system which is subject to abuse.

Given the amount of CP are available, I do think you should be able to see this in some form though, considering the different is will make between someone with 0cp and someone with 100cp.

I don't feel that people should be forced to play with other people, but I do think it's nice for experienced players to "coach" less experienced and help them get through stuff they're struggling with. Realy that comes down more to player ethics than something which can be tangibly enforced by any game company. It's a symptom of the community.

The game design can play a part in fostering this though. For example, in GW2 when a player dies, any other play can resurrect them for free and gain xp out of it. In WoW you have skills with an easily regenerative resource to revive people. I don't know why in ESO they opted to go with a expensive consumable. It does kinda make sense with the lore, but it pushes on self preservation. Most games at least have a class which can revive people. Here you have to use a skill that's virtually useless except to make soul gems, which you still have to have empty ones to make, pay for pricey soul gems at the store, or find one on bosses or in chest, or other such things. Most people are not going to waste a soul gem when they know they may need it later unless you happen to be psuedo grouped against bosses, dolmens, dungeons, pvp, ect and even then it's only a marginally higher chance.

Really there's little about ESO which is designed to encourage people to work together short of the challenges. 1.6 will compound this problem even more with buffs not stacking. If you can give yourself all the buffs why rely on others?

Point is, as others pointed out, elitism is already a problem no need to make it worse. If ESO was designed more to get players to help each other and work together rather than millions of individuals who are forced together to overcome parts of the game's content, a system like "respect" wouldn't have so much of an impact and could be viable.

you misunderstood the whole consept. It's not a measurement of player skill.. but character power and progress. And that may be because I wrote "skill" once in my post by a mistake. It was meant to say character power and progress. It is now fixed

I see. In fairness I only referenced player skill once as well, in reference to armor. Even still, measuring power is difficult thing and ultimately leads to elitist. Just using the armor as an example, on my characters when I'm going through the 1-50 I only upgrade my armor once every 10 levels using crafted sets, except 1-16 where I wear whatever I find.

We may circle around it, but there are 3 things which determine a player's efficiency. Player skill, character equipment, and character build. Let's give these a 1-10 score.

Player A:

Skill: 8
Equip: 7
Build: 5
Total: 20

Player B:
Skill: 4
Equip: 6
Build: 10
Total: 20

Player C:
Skill: 7
Equip: 9
Build: 4
Total: 20

If you take the player out of it it suddenly looks different. Player A- 14, Player B- 16, and Player C- 13.

Really the BEST way is to friend or join/add to guild when you find someone you thought played well and then when they're available group with them or if they're not available PUG it and find more. Over time it'll settle out into a nice group of players who you know work well and you'll generally be able to find someone on.

As I said, the "respect" system is well thought out, just not viable in its entirety. Maybe if it were broken down into pieces I could see it working out, which I tried to elude to.

An ability to inspect other players and see what armor they have on, especially with the costumes becoming more prevalent.

A way to view how many CP a person has. Problem with judging based on CP is that it is account wide. So they may have a VR14 with all the skill points, top tier in PvP, ect but you may be playing with an alt that isn't nearly up to par with the main.

More special titles based on number of achievement points, something like the "Kind of a Big Deal" achievement in Guild Wars 1: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Kind_of_a_Big_Deal
Basically you have to do everything in the game in PvE and PvP to get to it and there was a like 6 tiers to it. This gave you a pretty good idea of the players power/progress.

Player hp/sta/mag are kind of superfluous and should be viewable by default, but is viewable through most common combat add-ons.

Regen is also superfluous because potions and food.

On a semi-related note, I would love for the achievement points to actually mean something. The give the achievements point values and give you a cumulative total, but what for? It's like the points from "Who's line is it anyway"

LEGENDARYYY · February 2015

Heishi wrote: »

Regen is also superfluous because potions and food.

On a semi-related note, I would love for the achievement points to actually mean something. The give the achievements point values and give you a cumulative total, but what for? It's like the points from "Who's line is it anyway"

I agree, it's just a piece of the bigger puzzle.

Respect the way I think of it would never measure skill, and would not account for other variables like food and potions etc. It should not be affected by it at all.

Respect would, like I said, only measure the build and how powerful your char is. Base stats and attributes primarily.

Maybe achievements shouldn't give you respect points at all...

Maybe the system should be named "Character strength" or "Champion strength" or something instead of "respect". I admit naming it "respect" could cause for misinterpretation, thinking it measures skill. I just thought the word "respect" to be really awesome, because the word has many different meanings to it. And a high amount of these points would certain make people respect your characters strength

Think about having a system like this. Where you put on your new self-crafted legendary armor. In your upper left corner your "respect" score immediately increases, and it increases for everyone to see. That would be extremely motivating in my opinion.

At the moment it's like this: "OMG my new weapon is super OP and stronk" 1 minute later: "who the *** cares about my new weapon.... no one sees it, maybe someone barely notices it when we fight in a dungeon, or maybe I get 2 more kills per hour in PvP"

Most people want to be noticed when they do something great... that's human nature.

When it comes to skill measurement.. I'm a big fan of "competetive" play, and I struggle to become a good player in the games I play. I would love for there to be some kind of skill measurement myself. But that would have to be separate from the idea I have of respect points.

Ysne58 · February 2015

I think your system is too complicated. Also, it's not a good idea to require everyone to do everything to get theses ratings.