Fortress: how to detect and handle different player types
Lucoire
Posts: 1,245 ✭✭✭✭✭
There is a wide variety of player types you might encounter while in the knight bus fortress (or any other fortress really). Some might cause frustration, others are frustrated themselves, some are the result of frustration. This suggestion is aimed primarily how the game and (to a much lesser extend) the community can/should handle them.
Disclaimer
- This is a thought process, an opinion and a suggestion. It is not a fact.
- This is primarily aimed at changes to the game, not changes to the community.
- If you disagree with my base assumptions, please don't do so here. If you disagree with my conclusion, please share.
- The characterisation of player types is a compilation of stories I've read in various communities. It might not be representative.
Basic assumptions
Not everyone who appears malicious is. As Players, we have a limited perception in regards to what's going on in the mind and on the phone of another player. Niantic however (should) have a more thorough insight in that and therefore is in a better position to detect and actually do something about it.
The different player types (from my perspective) are:
- The leech. Aims to invest as little as possible to get the maximum reward.
- The greedy. Aims to progress their achievements and profession, disagrees with the "efficient" tactic.
- The buggy. Tries to play but is hindered by bugs, crashes, etc. Probably has a phone that's somewhat incompatible with the game.
- The inexperienced. Tries to play but lacks the experience / knowledge of how to do so effectively.
- The experienced. Knows what (s)he's doing and does it.
(This is not a complete list. Also, these types may overlap - there can be a greedy inexperienced player or an experienced buggy player)
Detection
There are a lot of battles happening with lots of players involved. Scanning and categorizing all of them like that isn't going to be efficient or effective. The most common suggestion I've heard and seen is for players to give feedback after a Fortress-Round. There are however different ways in how to do so:
Commendations
Players upvoting / praising other players. This is the best strategy to detect "the experienced" - it is however also prone to manipulation: hardly anything is stopping bad actors from praising each other to "game the system". A somewhat efficient counter-strategy (inspired by LoL) is to limit how many "praise points" a specific player can give another specific player.
Reports
Players reporting / condemning other players. Might seem like a good strategy to detect "the leech" but doesn't protect the buggy or inexperienced player from being accused of malicious intend. Also might increase the overall skepticism and hostility of players towards each other and thereby increase toxicity within the community.
Generic Feedback
Players giving feedback on their experience - positive, neutral, negative - and letting Niantic figure out what the cause of said feedback is. Might enable a more nuanced characterisation of player types and thereby also a more nuanced "handling"-strategy. Might cause significantly more "work" for Niantic in analysing. Might still be prone to false-negatives.
Handling
Each player type has different "needs" and "interests", some of those in conflict with each other. The experienced player is interested in playing with other experienced players, the leech is interested in abusing experienced players.
As before, there are different strategic suggestions I've encountered:
Making the "detected Player Type" public
A public display of "condemn / praise". Most likely to cause discrimination and exlusion, hostility and harassment. Doesn't improve the situation of the buggy or inexperienced player. Doesn't protect the "experienced" player from the leeches that manipulated their score.
Banning "reported players"
Excluding people from parts of the game as a result of reports. Might not cause discrimination but be a tool for those who would like to do so. Doesn't improve the situation of the inexperienced player, might cause a ban-wave - resulting in even more toxicity.
Segregating different player types
Putting different player types into Fortresses that are exclusively populated by other players of the same type. Little to no chance of "redemption". Might be suited to separate Leeches from the rest.
Repress rewards
Refuse to give Battle-Rewards based on performance. Difficult to detect - as some "inaction" might actually a suitable tactical strategy in the interest of the group - thereby punishing "efficient" gameplay. High chance of false negatives.
Educate the inexperienced and hinder the greedy
Providing a more hands-on guide to the inexperienced player on how to play "efficiently" - requiring a UI-update. Might appear very annoying at first but actually improve their situation. Put a delay / warning on actions considered "inefficient", thereby preventing "the greedy" from being so and enabling the experienced players to be effective. Might harm solo-experience. Significantly increases software complexity, leading to a higher chance of bugs.
3 Strikes
Warn 3 times before assessing a Player-Type and "take action". Suited to avoid / mitigate false-negatives.
Conclusion
- There is no simple, perfect solution.
- A combination of "actions" might be best suited to mitigate negative side-effects.
Comments
I don't think that this type of system would be workable in a reasonable fashion.
Central to the problem is that there is not one agreed upon method of optimally efficient game play.
Trying to write a program to categorize each player's play type would require an AI that could analyze a multitude of subtleties. I can't imagine this being programmed and implemented without creating a storm of incorrect categorizations as well as a whole new round of bugs and unintended consequences.
Relying on player provided feedback of their teammates' performance assumes that there's a single standard of performance against which to judge them. If you think an auror should take a first shot against each opponent and then leave them for the team to finish, while I think each player should fight and finish each of their proficiency foes before moving on to non-proficiency foes, we will give different feedback of the "efficiency" of the same player. This coupled with the fact that not everyone will review conscientiously (some will like to downvote people just to be a troll, or upvote everyone because they feel bad), and I don't think this will be useful in real world play.
@MtPollux That's a fair point, thank you for your input. And you're right, going into detail in regards to "efficient" gameplay would only cause further argument and disagreement.
I was more thinking along the lines of "If you have full focus, use it" or "don't attack Enemies against which you are weak when there's Players in the same group that are proficient against them" - Educating in the sense of teaching the basic basics of what team-play is about.
That being said, even the very basics might already be somewhat complex and conditional. I'll have to think more about that.
@Lucoire I agree with what I believe to be your intent, to identify "good" players in the fortress so that they can have a greater chance of joining a group with other "good" players, and I appreciate you trying to think of ways to do so. I just see too much room for error, abuse, and disagreement about the parameters for this to be a viable system.
I agree with @MtPollux - the intent is good, the implementation nigh-impossible.
Identifying "good" players in a multiplayer game in an automated fashion is kind of the holy grail for game developers. The best any system has managed is to oust some subset of the "bad" players: cheaters, griefers, and trolls.
But Niantic isn't even that large a company. If the playerbase were bigger, justifying more expenditure, I could see them trying to pursue something like this, but the plain fact of the matter is that solving this problem is hard.
It's a decent proposal. But makes it rather complicated for the developers to implement. (like earlier mentioned)
I have a simpler solution that will not eliminate the issue for public fortresses, but at least solve the issue for the groups looking to work together without intervention.
My proposal on this, is for friends to be able to invite each other to fortress battles. With the introduction of the Knight buss this makes for a perfect timing to implement this, queue up in a private lobby and depart to a private fortress. (without the intrusion of unwanted players)
While I'm at the friends interaction topic, please let us see each others profile picture also.
It should be a rather simple code to implement. 😅
@KaioZel - the profile picture thing is rife with the possibility of abuse, so I can understand them keeping players anonymous.
Also, while I'd like the ability to invite friends to fortress battles, I can understand why it might be a bit more complicated than one might think: current friend list interactions (gifts) are a non-time-sensitive push notification. Adding real-time invites as a mechanic has a bunch of implementation constraints that they'd want to get right before rolling out. (Also, it seems like the kind of thing that they'd be tempted to monetize, possibly justifiably, with some sort of purchaseable item to create a friends-only challenge.)
Good thread. I have hammered hundreds of runestones at Hogwart's Castle the last few weeks and I have seen enough to know it's still too buggy to be judging what you see just yet; at least to the degree we are talking here with what appears to be the performance of other players. Entering a room with the battle half over, sitting in a lobby alone when in fact it's full of players... It's early yet and there is some work to do here, as should be expected.
That being said, I love player statistics! You know, the kind that shows the efficiency of a player in battle based on performance. Would be a nice addition to the profile page and I can't imagine it would be THAT difficult a challenge to overcome. But what do I know, I'm not a programmer, just a hunch. Player stats in battle are a good way to see who the leeches are, markers to spot them quickly and no stats for players with less than 100 battles, or some such to protect newer players.
May I also suggest players focus on their own performance, instead of playing the 'I'm looking at you looking at me' game.
TL:DR
Add a small focus bar for each participant allows others to see who is using their focus
Too many professors wait until they can perfect or det hex before everyone is shielded and too many Aurors don’t pass focus
Doesnt solve the problems but helps expose them
But how are you measuring performance?
Is the guy that churned through a handful pixies "better" than the guy who's tackling the elite spider? How about the professor that, instead of shielding someone, puts his hex on a foe so he has his passive kicking in? Or vice versa. How are you measuring that?
Or is the one guy who funnels tons of cash on potions better than the person who doesn't (or even can't)?
Adding the fact that there's zero ways to communicate with each other in the knight bus so you can't optimize group play. Thus possible hurting your "performance".
Unlike mobas, where you have standard team compositions and encounters, here you don't. So your performance is also affected by what group you're in versus the mobs you face. Mix in the fact that focus (outside potions) is limited and thus complicating "performance" even more.
Performance is extremely vague and fluid atm.
Agree with @OriginalCaruso
Focus being displayed give away if a player is active or just a cheapskate for focus.
Not nececessarily as a focus bar like stamina, but display as block is great for easy focus count.
Given focus is limited, I disagree with seeing someone else's focus bar.
If I want to conserve my focus for tougher foes later on or to be able to proc my passives deeper in the encounter. So what. I don't need spend it all as quickly as possible. Especially in a pug.
And looking at some comments, it's going to be used more of a means to judge if I use my focus according how they want than a means to see if they're active.
Mind you, that doesn't mean I don't want anything done against leeching. On the contrary.
Thank you all for your feedback and especially @ZookiTabooki:
May I also suggest players focus on their own performance, instead of playing the 'I'm looking at you looking at me' game.
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" ~JFK
A leader inspires others to do the right thing. He's not searching for things or people to critisize but for good deeds to do to inspire them to follow suit.
That being said, my proposal was also aimed at protecting those "who want to do the right thing but can't" from the wrath/harassment/hostility of other players:
By allowing players to peak into each other's performance, they would be encouraged to compare without context - which is prone to skepticism and hostility.
Instead, the developers should:
It would be worth me to see the level of the player. If I am level 37 in the dark chamber and I see that the rest are level 20, then they should go back to kindergarten.
@Magobyte With the caveat there that we are talking profession levels, so we are talking Level 14/15 in dark chambers. You can have a Level 25 wizard who is a proficient auror / professor / magi, as they get most of their xp through fortressing, and could conversely have a Level 46 player who is only Level 5 in their profession as it is a secondary.
@Magpie31 you Are right. Maybe its not usual get most experience from fortressing but can be. Anyway, we need some type of prove on these chambers our partners have the required level for it.
Regards.
Just hard lock floors for people not in level range for the floor. Like a lvl 7 can't do floors 9+ and a lvl 5 can't do lvl 7+ etc.
My shoulders are broad, I’m up for helping lower level players.
The first 2-3 days after the Knight Bus first appeared, things were really good (at least in my experience). The teams felt like a well oiled machine. Everyone seemed to know what kind of foe they were supposed to prioritize if available. I'm pretty sure at one point I as a professor even got some extra focus from an auror. I really loved the change that the Knight bus has brought us. But things went south quickly. And when i now read a grade 7 player complaining that he can't find a group that gets him through Dark I, I remember why after those first days i changed from waiting for a full group to immediately leaving when i find out i'm not gonna be soloing that chamber.
I agree that something needs to be done. Showing a kind of ranking (total damage done, total damage taken, kills, deaths, active time perhaps?) after each fortress would be a nice thing - but possibly only make the leeches laugh harder, i there are no consequences. What they could do though is make those statistics for themselves instead of showing them and team those players up with their own kind of player. I'm fairly certain that if an incompetent player constantly ends up with a bunch of leeches, he's gonna start searching for guides to help him get better.
An easier way would be to assume that you can identify an experienced player by his.. well.. experience (aka grade). Just let ppl of the same grade play together. That way everyone knows for certain (ok, assuming no technical difficulties), that if they are repeatedly killing significantly less foes than everybody else, that they are doing something wrong - and hopefully go looking for help.
But there's one thing, that definitely should happen: Prevent players from entering a chamber via knight bus where they have absolutely no business. For example if their grade is more that 1 below the recommended grade. Any player looking for someone to carry him through higher chambers shouldn't do that in knight bus pugs.
Knight bus challenges with ppl on my friends list would be an absolutely wonderful thing in this time of reduced human interaction. I know it's difficult to do but it would be wonderful. Absolutely no need to build communication into the game for that, there's plenty of other possibilities to do that. Just like let us generate a 24h fortress code to pass to our friends or something like that.
I don't know if this should be a hard and fast thing, though, especially in lower chambers. Until I got to about Dark 1, I was often able to solo a level or two above recommended, and it seems that team fortressing makes it all easier. But for Dark 3 - 5 there could be something about not below profession level 12.
But I am like @Dewin99. Within reason, I will support a weaker teammate. I know that when I go in with my teammates, we watch any extras we have picked up, and we support accordingly. Usually we shield aurors first, but if we have a magi who is weakening quickly or clearly not maxed (not able to fully revive), then we get their shields up before professors. Weuse our hexes to support, we weaken foes for our less experienced teammates to finish off... There are ways to support and still enjoy.
BUT... Getting through with a Level 7 teammate, or several of them, would be a huge challenge.
@Acroamatis i sort of dont agree there. Firstly, if you're concerned about your privacy, you simply don't make a real picture of yourself. You choose your friends and on apps like; insta Twitter and Facebook profil pics are shown to non-friends. I hardly doubt it could be abused in any significant way unless you're wanted by cia or post nudes. + could be solved by simply adding a 'hide profile pic option. (Which I certainly wouldn't use lol)
Regarding the fortress suggestion it could be rather simple. Queuing up is already a function in regular fortresses. All they need is to add a function to choose fortresses elsewhere with the knight buss. Sort of like servers. Invite friends will simply be a pop up that takes you straight to the dungeon in the 'less' populated server.
Or tag people in your friend list so you're put in the same instance of the Knight Bus every time you join.
@KaioZel - Okay, my post is being repeatedly swallowed by what I assume to be a filter against certain words describing icons that would be offensive to certain groups. But if a user decided to make their avatar one of those things, it then opens Niantic/Portkey to lawsuits or (at least) negative publicity, since they don't have the resources of the major social networks and even those social networks can't detect and filter offensive content programmatically.
Why would Niantic/Portkey put that risk/expense on themselves to obviate a minor annoyance?
Edit: I would argue that the very fact that this forum prevented me from using the name of a symbol popular in Germany during the 1930s and 40s indicates that Niantic is extremely risk-averse, which makes allowing user-provided images to appear in game even less likely.
@Acroamatis eeeh. my text disappeared.. maybe I said something bad also.
Conclusion was; They could do it, but I get why they wouldn't bother to put in work and effort to realize it.
As in: With the right terms and conditions + report function, any negativity towards "unsettling profile pics" wouldn't be directed at niantic, but rather the user, and I hardly doubt there wold be any lawsuits.
With that said, I'm not really a laywer, and I've heard USA occasionally having some bretty ridiculous laws. (like for ex. a guy suing red bull "for not giving him wings" and actually pulling it through getting a wopping 13mil refund?.. just wow..) So I'd guess they have some stuff on profile pic usage also. 🙄
Ugh! So you want to change the game into a toxic space where people can criticise each other rather than support one another?
Maybe we need less judgement and more understanding?
I played in DC5 with a Magi that didn't res anyone. They smashed on with every Elite Foe they could. It would be easy for me to assume that this person was a **** that didn't understand their basic job description. Or they could be a player that chose to be a Magi because they loved Hagrid and the Beasts, and if they'd known more about the professions then they would have picked Auror because for them it's more fun to Hulk Smash than to play The Party Healer.
Maybe they don't know that if they change professions that they won't loose their progression as a Magi? I've met many players that don't know this.
I've played in Challenges where Aurors didn't pass any Focus to the Magi nor the Professors. Ugh! 🤦🏻♀️
I played in another Challenge where the Aurors passed their Focus to the other Professor in the group, who used it to throw down Det Hexes on everyone. To their credit, they used the Focus given to them, but that's not why it was passed to you, lovely. But maybe they don't have the Proficiency Charm? Maybe they have a fully maxed Det Hex and only a level 1 Shield, and they thought they were doing the right thing? Maybe the aforementioned Aurors played with players like this before and figured, "**** it. Why bother giving others my Focus if it's not gonna get used or will be used poorly?"
This recent Community day has generated a heap of discussion in Forums and FB groups about how each profession should be played. This is great, because now players that until now have been solo players can learn how to be team players.
But I've also found it interesting to see people debate over which Charm/Hex should be placed where and in what order. Orange Wizard released a bunch of graphics and I know *I* didn't agree with what was posted, and I know others disagreed too.
There have been instances where I've jumped out of battling a Foe with a Det Hex so that the Auror can finish it off with a Bat Boggy (43 pts for zero focus/energy), only to have another player jump in and finish them off. Maybe that player has an abundance of energy but time is precious to them. Or maybe they want the Achievement for defeating X Foes in Challenges? 🤦🏻♀️
The best way to deal with players with play styles that are not compatible with me is to either...
• Take note of their name and to avoid them when I see them in a Foyer
• Understand that playing with people with different needs
• Understand that playing with "non-optimal strategy" is part and parcel with riding the Knight Bus
• Understand that part of what makes us Good Player™ is how we can adapt and handle sub-optimal play
• Be active in forums and help share information on optimal play techniques
• Give up on the Knight Bus and get together with Friends
Ugh! So you want to change the game into a toxic space where people can criticise each other rather than support one another?
May I ask how you came to that conclusion, @Razorgirl?
You want to give players the ability to criticise players that they don’t know and will never meet based on them under performing. If you can’t see how that could go very, very poorly then I don’t know what I could possibly say to help you see that.
You want to give players the ability to criticise players that they don’t know and will never meet based on them under performing.
@Razorgirl Which of the things I wrote gave you that impression?
@Lucoire If you don't see that as the inevitable outcome, then I think you have an unrealistically optimistic view of players. And probably humanity in general. That is a lovely thing, and I admire the principle of seeing the best in people, but I honestly believe - like @Razorgirl - that a significant portion of players would use this feature punitively, to criticise players who have a different style to theirs.
If you don't see that as the inevitable outcome, then I think you have an unrealistically optimistic view of players.
@Magpie31 Which part of what I wrote makes you consider that I'm unable to see the negative side-effects of aforementioned "suggestion"?
@Lucoire I may have got my threads confused last night due to medication. Apologies. I will reread when less groggy and get back to you.