However, one question remains: what is reputation? How do we determine what makes a player reputable or not? In many communities, reputation is based on specific activities or actions that members must adhere to. For example, on eBay, a reputable member is someone who consistently follows the website’s internal rules, with positive feedback from buyers enhancing the user’s reputation.
In our case, however, the concept of reputation is not as easy to identify. Looking at games such as EVE Online and Albion, we can clearly identify reputable players. Their reputation usually derives from specific in-game activities they carry out. For example:
- Eve University founders became reputable after years of helping new players.
- Chribba became reputable after years of successful third-party escrow servicing.
- Garmon became reputable after years of small gang PVP.
In each of these examples, the players’ reputations are built on consistent, specialized contributions to the game community over time.
Therefore, it seems that reputation is indeed tied to both time and net positive contributions to the community. A player’s reputation in a sandbox MMO is built through sustained, valuable actions and interactions within the game. The longer a player consistently contributes positively, whether through mentoring, providing services, or excelling in specific in-game activities, the more their reputation grows. This combination of time and positive impact forms the foundation of what makes a player reputable.
An hybrid reputation system would probably help us a lot initially. A hybrid reward and reputation system combines automated tracking of specific activities with peer reviews to determine a player’s reputation. In a sandbox MMO, this system automatically awards points for in-game achievements and allows players to give or deduct points based on interactions. The system uses weighted votes, where high-reputation players have more influence.
Activity Monitoring: Track player activities that contribute to the community, such as: - Completing quests or missions. - Helping new players. - Killing or losing a ship. - Crafting and trading valuable items. - Seeding a market hub - …
Voting Mechanism: Allow players to upvote or downvote others based on their interactions. This can be integrated into the game’s social features. - Upvotes: Award reputation points for positive interactions. - Downvotes: Deduct points for negative behavior
The basic pillars of our reputation systems should look something like this:
- Reputation should give access to governance and ecosystem privileges.
- Reputation should be incrementally hard to acquire, initial reputation points can be gained by
- Carrying out in-game activities
- Interacting with the community and the council
- Community members are able to review and validate each other’s contributions
- Inactive players lose reputation points over time
Eventually, when a player accumulates enough reputation points, they can become eligible for the title of “Reputable Member of the Community.” However, it’s important to note that this title is not automatically granted. Instead, a member of the council must review the player’s contributions. The council member will conduct a “background check” on the player’s actual contributions to the community and then decide whether to assign the title based on this evaluation.