PlayerRating

How many times have you partied with someone only to find out that they were absolutely horrendous?  Maybe they perform a Leeroy Jenkins.  Maybe they ninja all of the good loot.  Maybe they scam people using one of the scams listed here at MurlocGuide.  No matter what, they are horrible people, and you desperately want to scream out in the LFG or Trade channels telling everyone about your experience.

The problem is, noone cares about your personal experience, until AFTER they experience the same thing.  The LFG and Trade channels are so full of spam now, your message would either be ignored, lost or you would be yelled at for not using the right channel.  (What is the correct channel for announcing that someone is an idiot?)

Up steps PlayerRating.  A clever idea that is much needed in the game.  An add-on that introduces the ability to rate a player, and discreetly let everyone else know how they are rated.  This does, however, open up the system to abuse, though the author is obviously interested in taking steps to keep that from happening.

Let’s start off with the options.  By typing /pro, you get a small options dialog that allow you to set what you want to see and do with the ratings.

If you select to show the ratings in a tooltip, then any time you hover over a player, their tag will also display the current rating.  This rating is server-wide, not just a personal rating.  If you show ratings in the chat window, then, anytime someone sends a chat message, next to their name is a numeric representation of their rating.  This is VERY useful if you are looking to buy something some scammer has for sale.

You can also elect to share your rating with others.  This automatically joins you to a hidden channel that the add-on monitors for other ratings.  Every time you rate someone, a broadcast is sent on this channel, and anyone else with the add-on receives the rating as well.  The add-on ignores users with ratings below 0.  While this helps to fight against abuse, it can still be abused.  If one of the idiots gets ahold of the add-on, and starts rating everyone at 0, then they will control the ratings for everyone.  I think this safety system needs some work in order to be a bit more trusted.  Maybe examine a user’s ratings, and if the majority of their ratings are zero or below, ignore their ratings until they raise the ratings they give.  Unfortunately, most people will only use this to rate poor players.  Very few will give positive ratings. 

You rate players on a scale of -100 to +100.  This is fairly straight-forward using a sliding bar control.

 When you right click a targetted player, a new RATING option is added.  Simply drag the slider to the rating you want to give, and viola.  It is done.  You have rated someone.

Finding the rating felt obvious, which means it is designed to fit right into the UI without interfering.  I liked that.  In fact, it takes no screen real estate at all when it is running.  Again, another nice addition.

I should stress now that the two users highlighted in this review were not aware they were being rated.  In fact, no indication goes to the user that they were rated.  I also rated them at 0 when I was finished so as not to tarnish or unfairly change anyone’s reputation.  As you can see, when you hover over the person, their tag shows their rating with a graphical bar.  The higher the rating, the further to the right, and more green their bar will be.  Heran, here, was rated at 100 for this test.

Cinderfella didn’t fare as well.  I gave him a -61 rating just to see how a negatively player looks.  This is it.  Not quite -100, but obviously not a good guy.

Again, I need to stress that Cinderfella and Heran had NO IDEA I was rating them, and I wasn’t basing the rating on anything at all except a test.  They have been reset to 0, and this will not hurt their reputation.  Please don’t look down on them due to this review test rating. 

All in all, I think this is a great idea, but has some more work to be done.  For instance, I would like to be able to rate a person based on different factors, such as their rule following ability, their looting experience, their playability experience, their smacktardedness, their item sales reputation, etc.  Having a single rating for a player can be misleading.  You might very well play with someone that you enjoy playing with, but would never trade with if your life depended on it.  This doesn’t truly reflect that.  This add-on smashes everything together into one single number and relies very heavily on that number.

Also, as a side-note, I noticed that the value bar in the tool-tip for a positive play was pushed slightly too far to the right. (You can see this in the picture above).  While this didn’t detract from play at all, it was just a slight annoyance. 

I also think that the author will need to work on more methods to improve the integrity of the rating.  This is a GREAT idea, but can very easily be abused by those we are trying to avoid.  If any of you have ideas on how to do this, post them here, and I can make sure the author gets them.

In the end, it’s a great add-on with a ton of potential, and has some work to be done.  It does require that everyone start to use it right away in order to obtain some great ratings on other players, so be sure to grab it, and follow it through development.  It really is one of the smartes add-ons I have seen in quite a while.

You can get it here.

I give it 3 and a half murlocs.

28 October 2006 | 3.5 murlocs, Utilities, User Interface | Comments