The Need of an Overhaul to the Commendation/Reputation System
The current commendation/reputation system in Intruder is inherently flawed. It's an honor based point system completely controlled by other players in your matches. The systems purpose is to allow players to evaluate other players with a negative/positive scoring; however this system holds multiple flaws that do not promote proper usage of the tool, and hinders the game experience cause of it. These hinderances are a causation of the absence of rewards/repercussions for a positive/negative reputation, the lack of incentive and incentivization to vote among players, and being a underdone system needing more depth and purpose. Yet, the reputation systems flaws can be fixed and improved upon to greatly benefit the health and longevity of Intruder community.
As it is now, the system allows you no control over your score, it is all controlled by opposing players and teammates in your lobbies. Before anything else is discussed, a major flaw that needs to change is, opponent players should not be able to affect your score during a match. The system is designed to distinguish intentionally hindering, cheating, and toxic players from helpful, kind, and cooperative players; However, misuse of this system is common and blatant, an example of this: A round of 10v10 Mountainside, a Intruder in a 1v7 wins the round by remaining undetected and network hacking, after the round his reputation, starting at +34, drops to +29. The usage of this system here was guided to punish the player for outmaneuvering and high skill decision making, not reward. In a perfect world this player would receive multiple commendations, but instead 15% of this players points were removed by opponents due to their frustration with their loss; again a simple solution to this misuse would be to remove the ability of opposing players to vote on the other teams scores.
In addition to before, a players standing is neither punished/rewarded accordingly. A player with a score of -500 compared to a player of -100 is, first, not punished in anyway whatsoever, second, there is no corresponding punishment to their difference in score. On the other hand, a player at +500 compared to a player of +100 falls in the same case as the negative scoring players, they are not rewarded in anyway for upholding a good scoring. A simple solution to this issue is to punish/reward players based off their negative/positive scoring. -i.e. Game bans for extreme negative scores, and hinderances for low scores (official server bans, chat bans, etc...), or special rewards for high positive scores, with continued rewards for upholding the score; however, this links to another issue with the system.
Before the previous solution could come into effect, the current mobility of ones' reputation score needs to change. The player as it is now, has zero control of their reputation, and is effectively at the whim of random strangers on the internet. This problem has many moving parts. First, negative commendations need to expire; a players vote on another player is a permanent -1/+1 on your reputation score: inactive accounts, banned accounts, and toxic players votes are a branding iron to your ability to change your score (positive scoring should stay). Second, votes should occur at the end of matches, where team members commend one another for helpfulness, kindness, cooperation, and skillful play (similar systems to Overwatch's endorsements, CS:GO end of match trackers, PUBG reputation). Voting occurring at the end of of matches would circumvent frustrated players' "hate voting" other teammates down. Third, there needs to be a reason why you were upvoted, the player(s) should be commended at the end of round for their feats in the match -i.e. total knockdowns, total kills, total objectives captures, etc...- A caveat to this is not to force players to upvote, but encourage, this increases the amount of outgoing positive votes allowing greater mobility in your reputation, but not forcing it. These changes alongside the other mentioned changes would move the reputation system to a greater place of importance, rather than the side of the team menu.
Video game development is a difficult task, Rob and Austin, along with the rest of the community do amazing work on Intruder. Writing this outline on the issues of the reputation system, I hope, would get them to really dig into making this system as fully realized as it could be. Moving the current system from a solely honor based system to a more inspired and rewarding system could greatly benefit the health of the game as the player base expands into the future; lastly, I encourage and implore the developers to not leave this system ignored for long.
Love, gambivliac.
