Suggestion: task force on point farming

[gdeangel]

Concise description:

• Create an ad hoc group to come up with solutions to the "point farming" of noobs that seems to have gotten to be a common practice with a lot of players.

Specifics:

• Just what it says above, this should be an issue that gets worked through with community input
• See also the conversation about the clan "farmers" in the GD
• The group should be formed to evaluate the problem and make specific recommendations to Lack, Twill or whoever is in charge.
• As someone noted, Lack has had in the "to do" list something about this problem for over 2 years... it's time it got taken care of.

This will improve the following aspects of the site:

• stop some of the "bunny bashing" of people who show up to try the site, then get a very negative first experience
• get the point inflation on page-1 under control
• or determine once and for all that noob farming isn't a problem by looking at the join rates/return rates for the people who have gotten farmed by the likes of the usual suspects, against the join/return rate among noobs in general... take opinion polls and such...

[KoE_Sirius]

rofl ..this is the worst idea I have seen in a longtime .People should be allowed to play whom they wish .

[gdeangel]

rofl ..this is the worst idea I have seen in a longtime .People should be allowed to play whom they wish .

Umm... first, we are talking about "farming", which in the most common forms, involves not much actual "play" or even intent to "play".

Second, the argument that is often put forth is ... 'Nothing in the rules says I can't do it'. So this is a suggestion that there should be a hard look at officially changing the rules regarding some of the more egregious practices (and part of the task force would be to identify which of the "point payout" strategies are to be restricted by new rules, and which are a legitimate party of play on the site...)

Obviously you are not interested in the idea Mr. Freestyler ... even though you might want to think over your position because to lump what you do together with what guys like Klobber seem to do for their points actually makes what you do seem worse than it probably is...

[Incandenza]

If nothing else, I would be interested in some hard stats about the retention rate of farmed-vs-non-farmed ?'s. You'd have to figure out a metric (i.e. certain maps would be flagged, certain play types also, plus you'd have to take into account relative ranks of opponents), but it would be interesting to find out if farming really represents a problem for the site (dissuading return visits) or if it's just much ado about sweet FA.

[gdeangel]

If nothing else, I would be interested in some hard stats about the retention rate of farmed-vs-non-farmed ?'s. You'd have to figure out a metric (i.e. certain maps would be flagged, certain play types also, plus you'd have to take into account relative ranks of opponents), but it would be interesting to find out if farming really represents a problem for the site (dissuading return visits) or if it's just much ado about sweet FA.

Exactly the point. It is obvious from the other thread in GD about Farmers Guild that there are many different types of practices to simply say "No Farming", because one person might call things farming that another might not, and because each person seems to draw a line in a different place based mostly on subjective criteria.

I think it will be extremely difficult, though, to track those games where the "farmer" drops when someone of a competitive rank joins from the end-user side of cc. You can look at "?" and see how many games they played, what those games looked like, and how long it's been since they've been back... but that's about it. I don't know how you get at that information, and I don't want to run this task force (or even probably be on it because of my other thread, that people will probably consider me to be prejudiced on the subject), but I throw it out there that something like this should be done like they have made other ad hoc groups to look at improving aspects of the site...