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PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 9:15 am 
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Sea Wolf
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A example of the currant system working: Placid has moved into the #2 spot with 95 wins--He is one of the best players in the game and is deserving of the high rank no matter how many wins others have!

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:32 pm 
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Sea Wolf
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Why not come up with some sort of 2-tier rating system. Tier 1 - From Newbie to Captain the rating system is based on experience. Tier 2 - from Major up it is based on Glicko. Then you can add in Mentoring games where anyone from Tier 2 plays a Tier 1 player it does not effect there Glicko rating.

Wouldn't a system similiar to this meet everyone's needs???

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:33 pm 
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Seems I have missed quite an interesting discussion here!
Here are some of my thoughts.

Its absolutly essential for a thinkbased strategy game to have a skill based ranking system for all the somewhat experienced players, who want to evaluate the skill. On the other side I agree this need dosn't fit for most of the new players, for them the ranking must reflect their growing experience, which grows with every battle, no matter wether win or loss.

And its true, that if you like playing on the top, you feel obliged to show your very best play to your challengers to proof that you either do or do not deserve the rank. Allready out of respect to the great, hard fights you had with other players. This really sometimes takes out the fun of the game not having the option to play around here and there without fearing to loose, for what you put in hard work in some way. Its not the reason I am not playing a lot though ;)
This could easily be solved by allowing different nicks, allthough I can understand the developers fearing abuse.
Of course thats one reason for thinking twice to accept a challenge from lower ranked players. I for my part would accept such a challenge if I see he means it serious. In that case it wont be an easy win and the risk of loosing lots of points is much too high. (Thinking of Pitor who accepted playing me while I was still in trial. Great players like this really shouldnt be punished for giving young motivated players a challenge!!)
Connected to that, in my opinion the top players should have some kind of need to play regularly, giving other players the possibility to proof their skills. Not like me having no time for playing but still being on the top spot after weeks.


So here are the possibilities I see:

- two ranking systems working parallel
- one ranking system, where if you reach a certain rank, for example major, you switch to skill based ranking-calculation(while this might be hard to implement in a good way)
- A kind of Ladder-system. Players can choose to join the ladder after a relativ short time, games will either apply to the ladder or to the standard ranking. (I wouldnt say anything against seasons ending in a tournament for the better ranked players allowing to earn life-time achievments in an eternal hall of fame :D :D )

The last possibility would solve multiple problems at once. Veterans will much more likely play low ranked players outside the ladder. On the other side you know that in the ladder, players will be giving their very best play, so suceeding there is the biggest challenge available and the ranks are most accurate. Newbies know where they stand, getting points for all their games and getting experience going up in the nonladder-rank until they had some skirmishes with experienced players, feeling they want to try the ladder, not expecting too much on the first run.

think about it!


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:49 pm 
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Sea Wolf
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Some good thoughts in this thread.

Indeed, it would be nice to have separate Glicko ratings for individual maps back (as per the old Glicko webpage) and have this info available in-game. This, of course, assumes an ongoing Glicko-type skill-based rating system.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 3:24 pm 
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I think, that new system most better than now because if you, have lost the player below your rank because of not a successful allocation of allies or because of something for another you lose many glasses which you have earned having won 2 or 3 contenders so, that I think new system will be good!! :D


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:37 am 
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So when it will be :D ? This new system. On March, 19th already for a long time has passed :x And that people pending play for time and do not wish to surrender that spots to not lose.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:50 pm 
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Developer
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I do apologize for this delay as we had to negotiate mutual release with FilePlanet. We will release the Demo version and patch tomorrow.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:03 pm 
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Sea Wolf
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Starting to feel left out! Better add my thoughts.

I think what a lot of you talked about, most recently Captain X, seems like a good approach considering the reasonable introduction of new players gives a strong argument for the experience approach.

Specifically, I really like the separate Ladder system where people can join in when they really feel like competing for keeps. People would be able to join this system when they feel like they are ready for the real trials of strength.

That approach leaves a couple problems though:
1) If only ladder-based games are used for recording score, one of Glicko's drawbacks comes into play, the fact that Glicko is only accurate when it has enough games to look at to determine true ratings. When only a handful of games are considered, it drives the value of Glicko down.

2) The obvious solution to problem 1 is to include ALL games a player has ever played once they join the rating system. But this again leads us back to square one... once you join this system you're not going to want to play with new players because you'll risk too much.

This is a dillema that will take a lot of thought.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 4:09 pm 
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Sea Wolf
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Why not bring back the "Mentor" system? I am not sure how a player became a "Mentor" in the old MAN but i know that several players had 2 logons--one with the word Mentor in front of their user name. If, for example, I was given a 2nd logon as "Mentor storm 440" I would then be able to play the games that i think matter using my original logon and play newbees and other less experenced players--offering advice and suggestions, with the "mentor" log on. Since the old MAN had several players willing to do this I am sure that we could find several in our ranks that would offer to help out in this way. I think it would also give a better feeling to the new players if they had a chance to play a few games where someone actually offered them some advice. Also, you could allow each new player to play 2 or 3 "mentored" games and not have these games count in their score so that they did not start out with a couple of losses.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 5:29 pm 
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Quote:
That approach leaves a couple problems though:
1) If only ladder-based games are used for recording score, one of Glicko's drawbacks comes into play, the fact that Glicko is only accurate when it has enough games to look at to determine true ratings. When only a handful of games are considered, it drives the value of Glicko down.


yes true, thats a point which must be considered.
But why not tweaking the Glicko-system in a way to fit the needs? Alltogether it can't be much more than some formulas with some variables, so change it in a way, that it adjusts sooner to a score with less up and downs after 30-50 games allready and not after 200. Of course it will loose some of the accuracy, but actually it will just increase a little bit of the inaccuracy which is always there anyway.

What brings the question up, why the system wasn't changed a little bit in the first place. If players think its too high a risk to play vs. lower ranks, why not changing the reward-ratio(first cutting the possible loss, second showing the amount to loose when accepting a challenge (who cares if the loss 'might' be okay, but you don't know it).
And I am sure all other problems could have been solved too with the right adjustments, like winning points will always be within a certain (rankbased) range or that matches versus players with same rank do weight more, than with a big difference in ranks... etc.

So what I mean is, that there are lots of ways to adjust the skill-based rankingsystem to all needs, without totally disbanding it.

Am curious how people will like the new system though, heard it is out by now :)


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:33 am 
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Now that the new system is out is it possible to see the old Glicko ratings still?

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:33 am 
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Sea Wolf
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storm440 wrote:
Why not bring back the "Mentor" system?


The Mentor system was nice, but it was a very heavy load. Every new player was automatically assigned a game with a Mentor, which meant that we got flooded with new games constantly. Maybe they could reduce the load by only assigning a mentor game to people that specifically request it...

I think their idea of giving players an incentive to play newbies is a really good idea, but the point system doesn't really give that incentive to hardcore players that aren't interested in the experience based score.

Captain X wrote:
But why not tweaking the Glicko-system in a way to fit the needs?


We did do some things to tweak the Glicko ratings back in the day... for example we split PL and FNU, and also split ratings by planet. It used to be that PL had a lot heavier advantage over FNU, but that's not so much the case anymore.

Any more than that though, trying to prematurely stabalize the scores may be tried, but then you lose the ability to climb ranks somewhat. In the end, MA has just so many variables in play such that even the best players can lose to a less skilled player with really bad SA placement. Thats why having many more games to judge from is important.

Now, if we could truly weigh a game based on what happened somehow to remove the element of luck, or by how badly the one player beat the other...

Captain X wrote:
So what I mean is, that there are lots of ways to adjust the skill-based rankingsystem to all needs, without totally disbanding it.


I think we're all agreed there.

I am starting to think that the only way to conceivable solve this dilemma is to make the advanced scoring a web-based thing as it was before. Usually the players who want it will find their way to it (especially if it is touted in-game), and being web based it could be easily tweaked along the way, also allowing a lot more detail.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:37 am 
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Sea Wolf
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Placid wrote:
Now that the new system is out is it possible to see the old Glicko ratings still?


http://www.massiveassault.com/clans/nwo/allratings2.php

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 9:42 am 
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Maelstrom wrote:
Placid wrote:
Now that the new system is out is it possible to see the old Glicko ratings still?


http://www.massiveassault.com/clans/nwo/allratings2.php


Would it be possible to display on this page the players that were not active during a lot of days (let say 500 days for exampel) ? At the moment, i cannot see my old friend Placid or myself on this page. Just to remember nice souvenirs :wink:


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:42 am 
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Sea Wolf
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Don't think so... unfortunately you have to set the filter for active to really high, and if you're like me who's further down the list you have to set the number you can view pretty high too :).

I think it was RMJ who did the code for this... would be nice to just be able to type in a name you want to check on. Ah well.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:08 am 
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Sea Wolf
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So now the new system is out, Tiger is on top, and surely, in the minds of the developers (vic did lament the fact, in his post, that Tiger was "only" a colonel in the old system), all is right with the world. But, from what i have seen, they have taken a system that had flaws and replaced it with a system that has much bigger flaws. Say what you will about number of games played ect. you could not achieve a top rank without beating a lot of very good players and loosing very few games while doing that, so skill, not luck, was the main factor. Now , volume is the main factor. If i gain 100 points for every victory from this point on, it will "only" take me about 930 more games to get back to Marshall--what a joke. Are you going to tell me that a new player is going to feel better about having to win over 500 games to make general and 1000 games to make Marshal? If you are going to stick with this new system, i suggest the following modification. Points gained with victory (from a lesser position) over Marshal--5,000, and points gained with victory over general (from a lesser position), 2000. At least this way players that do not play a very large number of games will still have a chance to move up.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:37 pm 
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Got no problem with the new system, but I do agree with Storm: there are not enough points awarded to truly reflect the vitcory over a higher ranked player. It seems that beating two sargents is worth about the same to me as beating one general. That doesn't feel right.

I think it would please everyone and hurt no one if more points were awarded for beating higher ranks.


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:12 pm 
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Levy

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Isn't this the inherant problem with experiance based rankings? Beating a general in this new system may mean LESS than beating 2 sargents. Someone that dosen't play a lot of games, maybe a Cris Craven is ranked low, but ability wise he should be a general or Marshal. As long as the rankings are experiance based as opposed to ability based, ALL rankings are meaningless. If this brings in more people, great, but lets not tip toe around the fact that this change has limited our ability to judge competition. The only way I can tell who is good and who is bad is to play them or to see who they have played and beat. I'm guessign that I will limit my play to known opponets. Maybe accept a challenge from an unknown here and there.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 3:25 am 
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My 2 cents
I really do not like the new scoring system. It shows me in 8th place but after playing this game for a couple years now I am not a top ten player.
I know of a few that are alot better than me. I would say top 50 but not top 10. I feal like Im cheating may way to the top because I like the game.

But its COOL to be 8TH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But really Im not that good!


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:36 pm 
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storm440 wrote:
So now the new system is out, Tiger is on top, and surely, in the minds of the developers (vic did lament the fact, in his post, that Tiger was "only" a colonel in the old system), all is right with the world. But, from what i have seen, they have taken a system that had flaws and replaced it with a system that has much bigger flaws.

"Seeing is believing." I wish that it weren't so, but myopia is ubiquitous.

I had only reached the rank of Major under the old system, and had played no one of a higher rank than Lieutenant. One particular Lieutenant opponent of mine had a penchant for playing the AI, and had amassed 340+ victories as a result (with over 100 losses, mind you - likely his human opponents). I beat him in two successive games on the same map. Under the new system, he was promoted to Major and I was demoted to Corporal.

I am far less concerned about my own demotion than I am about how this example further illustrates the serious flaws of the new system.


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