LONG POST INCOMING: Scroll down for TL;DR

Instead of constant bitching about various mechanics with no arguments and expecting stuff to change, let's do something a little bit different. Let's analyse what the SCAV team wanted to do to fix Show Directors in Patch 1.12, how they went in fixing those issues and why most of these changes were more miss than hit now that we are 5 patches in and we had a chance to see those changes in action. I want this to be more of a discussion to see and try to figure out the solution by giving some much needed analysis and feedback. I want to take some of the quotes from the patch notes and try giving my own take on those. Let's begin.

At first, we introduced the Show Director with no control measures. The idea was to see how players would behave with all those powers. It created really impressive moments and a great show. On the other hand, it also resulted in players becoming abusive.

This is both a blessing and a curse. A lot of players want to use their freedoms the most to give joy, while the other half of the players want to use that for chaos (and some people love being unpunished for it). It's like good and evil constantly pulling the ropes. You don't want to give all the power to players when other players are involved at the other end. The problem is simple, but fixing it can be challenging. Let's see how the dev team tried to fix this the first time:

Then we added the Star Rating System, the main purpose of which was to block Show Directors with bad behaviour. The problem was that this system was not only used as a restriction mechanic but also as a rating mechanic with many Show Directors competing in the leaderboard based on this. This resulted in the opposite behaviour compared to the first version. Since Show Director ratings were entirely dependent on the inmates, they were less free to play as they wished. The fear of getting a bad rating was too strong. This, combined with the fact that some players would compulsively rate Show Directors 1-star as a relief for their recent loss, became a problem we needed to address.

Let's say I'm playing as a Show Director and I make the game fun and exciting. One guy died early on, because he's not a good player and compulsively rates me bad and the other thought I was teaming, while the victim he was chasing managed to escape and got rewarded for it. That's two 1-star ratings. Normally it would seem like something horrible, right? Except there are 8 other players left that are guaranteed to leave me 3 or more stars. If you're truly horrible at your job, you deserve to get punished where it hurts the most - the source of your power. Low star rating could make potentially abusive powers blocked, which in theory helps dealing with abusers and trolls. Instead of being worried that the system is used for both punishment and rating, we should embrace it and redesign the system to revolve around that. Design around the humans and their tendencies. We're gonna list all the potential fixes at the end of the post, but for now, let's keep going.

To fix this, we decided to split up the 2 components included in the Star Rating. The restriction mechanic is now linked with the Player Report system, so if a Show Director is reported too much they will lose their access.

This is how you replace simplicity with ambiguity and uncertainty. If someone is bad, you give it one star and that was it. Reporting was a secondary function that could help back up your claim with reasoning. Enough players who think the same will result the SD being temporarily banned. Now that we only have reporting left as a punishment, that could be ok, but the problem is that the reporting system lacks a lot of options. We only get reports for Cheating, Teaming, Abusive Chat and in Duos also Match Sabotage - two of them are applicable to the Show Director. If an SD abuses his power, I always report for Teaming, because there's no other option for that. It's a different thing to help one guy over and over and bully another player to death. Placing everything into one system ensures that both rewarding and punishment systems work in unison. We already have people complaining about the Reporting system doing nothing (not only in this game), but that's not because of the system itself, but because of the history of other similar systems in other games not working properly or being untrusting of an unfamiliar mechanic (that cannot be fully trusted due to its nature and lack of data on the player side). Star rating is just naturally more natural to use. Rating something as bad generally means more than reporting in terms of raw emotion and judgement that "I did something that matters". Making the report system embeded into terrible star rating are naturally close to each other and we already know that receiving one star is bad and will make receiving 5 star ratings even more rewarding, but we lacked those rewards at the time. Now we just have to let SDs know why you receive a one or five stars, but again, section at the end has that in detail.

In this new version of the rating aspect of the Show Director, we replaced the quantitative system with a qualitative one. Instead of rating the Show Director from 1 to 5 stars, players can reward them with Prestige at the end of each match by choosing one of the archetypes from the Prestige system. The goal of these archetypes is to reward Show Directors and give them inspiration as they develop their own style. Our aim is for our beloved masters of ceremonies to have the freedom to create more flavourful and meaningful interactions with the inmates.

This system with good intentions in mind lead to possibly one of my most hated pet peeves of mine - The Instagram Effect. Basically if online content can only be praised with no dislike button, it encourages shallow, barebones and predictable behaviour, which makes actually creative and thoughtful people be left in the crowd. Prestige System makes it so that more Show Directors play, but none of them try anything creative or experimental. We see Show Directors with the same stuff: no Microphone usage, throwing Electronic in the middle at the beginning, giving Wood to Crowd Favourite or First Blood (or random highest-betted player in 1.17). They do the absolute minimum to still get prestige, but not abusing their powers enough to get them reported. Basically we got rid of the chaos that made SDing before the Prestige system an incredibly mixed bag - for better or worse. This system in theory wanted to make being good take work and be earned, but all it did was make playing SD less rewarding and less punishing, the worst kind of thing you could do to a Show Director. Nowadays I get less prestige for playing a character than I did high ratings before the 1.12 patch. I felt every single high rating I got back then. That's just how humans work. If you only have an option to like a thing, you would do it far less times than if both buttons were present. I encountered it myself. I generally Skip giving prestige when a Show Director is mediocre. Looking at complaints from other people, it seems like we have a Dislike button - it's called a Skip button. The only difference is that one-star hurts, but Skip has no emotional value. Likes are that much more sweeter when a Dislike button is there looming over your head. This "everybody wins" mentality the Prestige system provides made playing SD incredibly boring and unsatisfying. Instead of addressing the issue of people being discouraged with getting lower ratings, we decided to get rid of the entirely. You don't like the pizza I made? How about I never made pizzas ever again? How about that? Ow, you want me to keep trying? Why?

As an anecdote, I tuned in into one of TheDirectorTTV's streams a couple of days after Patch 1.12 went live and we discussed the Prestige change. Back then I was on board with it before I knew true implications of it down the line - I was a newer player then. TheDirector argued that because the star rating is gone, noone cares about being good or trying their best. He called out people who worry too much about getting even one 1-star rating and he said those things are going to happen. We need to keep trying and trying. However there was no reason to do it if there are no rewards. Now months of observations, trying to understand TheDirector's reasoning and what other people told me about the system I managed to find a solution to all those problems. But we're not done with the quotes.

Each Prestige received will grant the Show Director a fan bonus.

Because being a good Show Director rewards you with Inmate stuff. That's one of the reasons people don't play Show Directors that much - lack of content and rewards.

So far, we have 4 Prestige categories. Each of these categories has its own leaderboard and the there is also a one for total Prestige received. All will be reset every 2 weeks like the official rating so Show Directors have to consistently deliver a good show if they want to stay at the top. The top 3 Show Directors of the Total Prestige leaderboard will be invited to show direct our Top 100 Showdown events.

This quote can kinda be summarised by my other remarks about lack of rewards and stuff, but I have something more to add to that pile. Not all Show Directors care about the events. Sometimes it's just about the joy of interaction with non-professionals. It's like making games or drawing pictures for fun. It's all about the self-fullfilment and growth. With that said, being at the top as the Show Director doesn't give much rewards. No exclusive powers, no AP regen increase for smart directors, no Scavenger Mode activation when present, nothing. Anything that would make being with the big boys worthwile. The same issue is also with the Inmates that are at the top in the leaderboards, but it hurts SDs especially, since he's just so lackluster in stuff to do and get. Coming back to the Prestige types, their differences mostly serve the leaderboards. I don't care about it that much, but even for those who care, just being at the top might not be enough.

Now with all those quotes done, here is all the stuff I noticed in a bite-sized chunk. TL;DR you can say.

• Show Director was too punitive and had no rewards, until he became unpunishing and unrewarding with the introduction of the Prestige system
• Star System introduced some needed enforcement, which made positive ratings more rewarding and impactful
• People tend to experiment more with powers and playstyles when there are ways to punish that playstyle
• Prestige System and lower level requirements made more people play as a Show Director, but lack of behaviour control made people resent Show Director's presence, focusing on the negative experiences (Negativity Bias)
• A lot of Show Directors played in Patch 1.12, but that number severely dropped over time with lack of content being put out and the content that did reach Show Directors wasn't game changing or fresh enough to win them over

How do we fix the current system? Reintroduce Star Rating with a couple of changes:

• Only have three buttons, Bad, Good and Great. Just the fact of replacing the Skip button with the Good button might eliminate some of the bad taste people get.
• Make your rating invisible for the first 20 or so matches. Let the players get their rating to a point where it's most stable before showing them how they perform. Let them build confidence in that they can do better.
• Every time you give a good or bad rating, you must choose from a dropdown list an adjective that best describes the Show Director (funny, inspiring, creative, fair or on the other spectrum: teaming, unfair, rude and trolling). You could browse amount of times people used those adjectives and those can be used for encouragement, self-evaluation and give more info on what needs to be worked on if you get bad ratings.
• Bring back power restrictions, but make those more loose, but still meaningful. Make it a reward for unlocking it rather than a punishment for losing it. You could hide those powers from the deck unless you get a high enough rating and then inform the player about the restriction.
• Give bonuses for top directors (lower cooldowns on Megaphone and Soundboard or even Director Unleashed). Those bonuses can be easily lost if there is a clear pattern of people being abused by that Show Director.

I don't even need to mention new fresh content. Show Director was one of my favourite things this game adds and it's sad to see him being washed out of shape, both by the Prestige system and lack of content. Let's hope that in patch 1.18 he picks up the pace with the Inmate. Because if one role has no fun, the other won't even know that it exists.

We had enough cosmetics. Time to make a Show Director focused patch.