PVP Rank Indicators

Pretty much the same opinion as what George said, and on top of that, Ashes is balanced around party pvp.

A ton of pvp content will be happening with/around parties. How would you properly calculate the rankings in a 8v8 or 24v24 fight? Do you give everything to the dps who get the kills or do you spread the points out across the whole party? But then you'll have healers and supports running around with top rank and scaring "weaker" players even when those players might've been able to kick that healer's ass w/o a problem.

And as much as I'd like a sight-read threat assessment system, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would feel put off from pvp if they see some big dick running around flagging on everyone. And you could become that kind of "big dick" by just making an alt and repeatedly killing it in pvp (or use your friends for that). And now you're running around w/o a care in the world, spooking people left and right w/o the true power required for that kind of reaction. Though I think @Azherae would have more info/data/insight on how people might react to this kind of system.

This idea is fine when it is not front-loaded. It's a common situation in my circles, where 'meeting someone online' can have certain specific outcomes and playing them 'offline' has different outcomes based on one specific thing.

You tell the participants the other's rank or win-loss ratio AFTER the fight.

It can significantly ease the blow to many player's feelings (not ego, that's separate) to know that the person who just beat them has generally won X number of encounters they have been in. You could even have it be just the last ten, and if you really want a lot of information, it could report 'whether or not those opponents were considered to be strong players or not' by whatever metric.

But as the iconic line goes...

"Never tell me the odds."

Reputation will spread on its own anyway, if it was somehow worth the time (or easy) to implement this sort of thing, I can't see it as being harmful long term... as long as you only tell people this rank AFTER a full interaction.

Now, how an MMO would ever manage to gather the type of performance metrics to properly rank players and not just lead into the usual 'playstyles leading to an absolute fear of losing', idk. I bet it could lead to more friendships though, if the attacker was a certain type of person. You can take someone's mats and still 'not want to make them feel terrible', and knowing that they often lose fights might make your reaction different.

On the other hand, there's the obvious huge problem that predatory people will just repeatedly pick on people they 'got the stats on', so if this were implemented, it'd probably be funnier/more useful if only the losing party got the information in question.

Beyond that, I don't really see any benefit to it, but since that is the benefit you mainly alluded to @keenow , I figure that's the interest point.

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In L2 you'd assess your enemy's power lvl by just seeing their gear and later on by knowing their reputation. There was also the status of "Hero" which also make your character shine very brightly. You'd get that status by being the best pvper in your class, based on 1v1 arena pvp ladder. Though quite often guilds would just move points around from one member to another to grab that status for some of their more prominent members. But that's when the reputation would come in. If you've seen the Hero doing great in the arena, you'd know that they're a spooky opponent in the open world too.

And when you'd see a shining character run towards your farming spot - you'd know there's gonna be some difficult pvp coming up, cause usually the Heroes would also be OEd to all hell and fully buffed.

Here's a video from the pov of such a Hero, though they're on their secondary class here so they don't have some Hero abilities (which are quite OP too). They do have the Hero weapon though (the shining one-handed staff).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0V-MOz9RWk

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Note that you might have a different experience of something, I'll have to use a very specific Fighting Game reference though, you can tell me what you think of it.

There is a vast number of players of competitive games at the mid-level who will do anything to avoid losing. This is not the same as doing whatever it takes to win, because that's encouraged. In practice from the game perspective, it's the same, but this situation is the one where the difference REALLY matters.

When I fight opponents with less skill than me in games but with similar or higher rank, and I demonstrate the skill difference, they run to the other end of the screen/stage/arena/whatever. QUICKLY. Because if they aren't in range for me to hit them, it's harder to lose, and by forcing me to advance, they might be able to catch a mistake and win.

People do this even when I have the 'life lead' so far that winning would be impossible. I.e. they have like 10/1000 health remaining and I have 900/950 and the timer is running down. Because they don't want to lose. When I defeat those players anyway (to their credit, I don't manage more than a coinflip because I'm impatient), most of them QUIT PLAYING instantly.

This doesn't make 'sense' though, right? It's a game where 'fighting other people' is a majority of the content. These are 'battle lounges'. They choose to come into mine, they fight normally at first, then they 'avoid losing at all costs' even if they will STILL LOSE by timer. Because they don't want to be 'proven worse'.

Most HIGH ranked players don't do this even when I am keeping up with them. Just the 'mids' (this isn't actual mid, think moreso top 20% of active players. Most of those players got where they got by 'being willing to lose and learn'. But every so often, I'll even meet a Diamond player that will do this even when their character isn't actually good at doing it.

Human psychology is WEIRD. Or maybe not so much and you just have to take it for what it is. But this is a relatively known behaviour in games. 'I would rather do anything whatsoever to avoid losing to a more skilled player in a way that showcases my shortcomings'. There are quite a few MOBAs and shooters that have to explicitly add mechanics JUST to prevent the stagnation of matches that comes from this behaviour.

I wouldn't COUNT on people in Ashes, even people with mid-high PvP rank/winrate, actually 'being willing to randomly fight people whose rank is high'. The ambitious strong ones will do it, but the 'only above average' playerbase of most games will absolutely find the most obnoxious way possible to avoid losing, as it is the only way they can 'hurt' a more skilled opponent sometimes. You've played Overwatch, I'd be really surprised if you didn't experience this, though they also made it much harder to do in that game, imo for this very reason.

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Played it for 12 years. Was a Hero a few times, but never on huge servers, so don't think it really counts. And yes, that glow got a bit dimmer in later updates cause people complained about it being waaaay too bright

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Yeah, transmog messes up the visual assessment completely. But Ashes will have an icon that gives you a rough idea of what your target is wearing, so there's at least that.