The problem of subjectivity in dungeon finder policing

Heroics haven't been a completely pleasant experience as of late, since not all players have been willing to adjust to the demands of the new design of heroics. As discontented people are wont to do, many people have been trying to think of ways to improve the heroic experience. Some of the ideas for ways to make the dungeon finder "suck less" have included systems for rating players; systems where you can "friend" players, i.e. mark them as good players and be more likely to be grouped with them in the future; and other ideas, most of which are based on the idea of players policing themselves.

The intentions behind these ideas are good, and in theory, they could work, but they all share the problem of having the potential to be abused by players. Some people will always look for a way to game the system if they can, and some people are just jerks, so no matter what Blizzard might do to try to prevent the system from being used as it wasn't intended to be used, someone will either benefit unfairly or be unfairly penalized. It's tempting to think the system could be designed to avoid that, but no design is foolproof. As an example, someone in the comments section of the WoW Insider post above had the idea to make it so that you can only mark players as bad players, which will increase their queue time. There would be no consequences for new players under this system because they would not be locked out of fast queues by a lack of up-ratings, which would be one of the worst consequences if players could be rated as good players, in addition to bad players. After all, up-rated players would be given shorter queue times (or else why up-rate players?), and if the up-rated players are being grouped together, that would give the newer players no one to group with.

But as another commenter pointed out, some players would just down-vote everyone they group with just because they can. Even worse, since down-votes would move the down-voted player farther down the queue, any down-rate you give another player would theoretically move you up the queue, assuming the down-rate isn't reciprocated. This would give players real, tangible motivation to down-rate people who don't deserve it; in other words, it wouldn't be just the jerkass players who down-rate everyone. In an attempt to moderate this kind of abuse, I had the idea of changing the system so you can still mark players as bad players based on their performance, but the more negative votes you give players, the less your negative votes will count against other players. This would discourage players from trying to game the system because the more they try to do so, the less of an effect they will have. Of course, players could abuse this system as well by just abstaining from down-rating players, which would give their votes more weight, and then using that weight to grief players they personally don't like by voting them down. Did another player win the roll for an item you wanted? If they're the only person you've ever down-rated, that could really increase their queue times. Isn't vengeance sweet?

Now, sure, Blizzard could tweak the formulas to prevent this kind of abuse, too, but the issues of players always looking for a way to game the system aside, this kind of system would still suffer from the issue of being a subjective system. A down-ranking system like the one described above depends on players down-ranking other players based on criteria shared by every other player, but people are subjective, and this might not be the case. Some players would down-rank players based on lack of skill, others would down-rank players for their attitudes, and some would probably only down-rank good players just to be ironic. Rather than a unified system for judging players, we would get players using their own standards to rate other players, standards which are not universal, and thus won't improve the dungeon finder for everyone.

What is needed is an objective system to help weed out the bad players (or at least increase their queue times). Some players have suggested that certain statistics be used to rank players, rather than a rating system. These statistics could include whether or not they use crowd control, whether they were healing efficiently, average healer mana when the tank pulled, etc. These are nice ideas, but they also have their own issues. What stats will we choose to use to judge a player? What if the player runs with a guild that chooses to run heroics in an unconventional way, a way that is successful but won't reflect well on their statistics? Or what if they consistently run with bad players and thus can't use crowd control, because their crowd control ends up being broken anyways? The fact is that it's very difficult to objectively measure player skill, no matter what statistics you use.

Another possibility is an idea I had a while ago, inspired by the achievement Ready for Raiding. What if a series of quests was set up to help players learn the skills they need to run heroics? These quests would be phased quests in which players would have simulated party members, and they would run through various typical heroic situations and train players in the skills they need to be successful in heroics. Tanks could learn to wait for the healer to regain his mana, how to hold threat against multiple targets, how to position targets, etc. DPS could learn how to crowd control, how to move out of the fire, how to prioritize kill order, etc. Healers could learn how to heal efficiently, how to best use their cooldowns, etc. All this could be done in a phased environment where the player would really be tested on whether or not they had the skills needed to run heroics. Now, players would probably feel uncomfortably forced if these quests were mandatory to run heroics, so perhaps they could be option and could reward some valor points to sweeten the deal, as well as an achievement--perhaps called "Ready for Heroics".

Or we could all just wait a few months until everyone out-gears heroics and they don't require skill to run anymore. It'll happen, it just needs time.