RP or Ranking Problem

[Gota]

ranking.
I propose a new ranking system from a lobby's outobalance point of view.
What i mean is that the major problem with team game balance is that its very hard to build it since you do not know the level of play of each of the perticipants.

Another problem is that making a win/loss ranking system will hurt the people that want to play games without being afraid to have a "losers" profile or rank and are motivated to win by their sporty spirit
alone[spring has no prizes for being better so nothing else makes sense].

what i suggest is to leave the time played based ranking as it is and maybe even add a few more ranks since the top rank has already been reached by some players and make another ranking system that will not be in any way reachable by players,meaning,it will only be used and produced by the lobby for the outobalance feature
[outobalance will no longer use info relating to time spent in game].

It will be some a sort of win/loss ranking system which will be covert and will allow after a lobby has gathered enough info to make outobalance generate better team game balance.

This will not hurt win/loss anonymity since nobody will know about your loss win ratio except the lobby and will hopefully generate better balanced teams[even though some games are pretty random and people sometimes fool around i think that after a lot of game data has been gathered about you the system will have a more accurate assesment of your capabilities than the "time spend in game" solution.

If it is possible,and i do not know if it is or how hard or easy it is to achieve this,the lobby should keep track of your smurf accounts and combine the info so that when you smurf and want anonymity you recieve it but when the outbalance feature is used in a team game you are still calculated as a very good player if you are such.

What we achieve by that is that even smurfs are calculated correctly into team balances and you dont get,for example, a one stripe smurf balanced into an all star team so that that team can be balanced vs a team with all the memebers being avarage players[resulting in an even stronger star team instead of it being weaker due to a noob player being added to it].

I think for a non competitive community that we have this system will suit best and even if we might get weird looking teams when examined by their in game time indication ranks they will be much better balanced ingame.

[Gota]

I forgot to mention that the internal ranks should be calculated for each mod seperatly[would be even better to have specific map statistics fit into the internal ranking of a player but that is probably pretty complicated].

for the one vs one,two vs two and even three vs three battles it should be considered to make an option for a player to show his internal rank which will be symbolized by a number or a totaly different symbol system than the "time spent in game" symbol system[here to it would be optimal to base the internal player ranking seperatly for each mod and maybe even each map thus changing the internal rank of a player depending on what mod and map he is playing his current game on].

we can have different rank calculations for as much veriants as we want for example a different calculation for:
one vs one games.
two vs two game.
three vs three games.
and eight players and more .....for each game ur internal rank will be calculated differently when outo balancing.

for a two versus two your internal autobalance rank will give more power to your results[when calculating ur internal outobalance rank for the battle] from games played in the same player set up [two vs two],more to the results of games on the same map and mod but will also give weight to the other results but a lower weight.

[aegis]

manual balance

[Gota]

Manual balancing is pointless.
If you dont know all the players its pointless and exhausting when hosting big games.
If the community grows at some point manual balancing wont give anything close to good team balance.
And it doesnt sort the smurf problem.

I dont see that as a good argument.
If you would have said that the server load will be very high or that the coding of such a system is extremly complicated i wouldnt have objected but manually balancing 8x8 games is rediculeous.

[Neddie]

We used to do it ALL THE TIME.

[Gota]

??
We also used to play without lua,And we used to play without new and pretty models and we used to play with a lot of dsyncs and connection problems and we used to...

Whats your point?

[Snipawolf]

Spring used to be a lot more tight knit. Ask the players how they think their skills are then just go on that. It is generally easy to spot a smurf.

[Gota]

I dont understand...
I suggested a way to improve the current way of balancing games.
If you in anyway think it wont improve things do say but dont say we dont need to improve team building at all...cause we do..and making a system that will predict with accuracy a players skill and will make balancing teams and players easy is one of a lobby's/game's main objectives.

Such a system will also allow skill based random games.
You click on search a game and it finds a player of your skill...on a veriaty of maps which you chose that you want to play on or just exclude a few maps you dont want completly and you can start games without even opening rooms.
Also such information coming from within the lobby wil allow for tons of interesting statistics and will allow different ranking possibilities and all sorts of other options.

Youll say,code it.Ill say i cant but any lobby that will have such a ranking system has my personnal support.
Plus if i understand correctly people wont actually have to play with the lobby that has that option for the lobby to have information about them since the games speak with the server and than the server with the lobby right?or am i worng here?

[Neddie]

Whining about manual balancing is not productive. Automatic balancing doesn't give you better games as it is, and possibly the opposite.

[Gota]

But thats what im saying..

[Forboding Angel]

Dunno why everyone is trowing so much crap, as this is actually a pretty good idea.

[BaNa]

easy to dodge/buff your rank, but as its not public, no real motive to. I like, it may be better than current.

[koshi]

This plan relies on obfuscating/hiding information in a completely open environment.
Server protocol and lobby source code is open, how would you go about restricting information?

[Gota]

So,your saying someone might hack the code and stuff and learn informatin about my "internal account for example?
Why would anyone do that?if that is possible than In the same way people with appropriate coding skills can find out how many minuts i have ingame but the sever still gathers that info so by your logic we shouldnt be gathering that info as well.
Cant the server be programmed to not give out such information?

there is no command i can use from the lobby to find out someone elses ingame time is there....so in the same way you wont be able to know win/loss information about other people and i think it will only be good to not give out ways to find out your own win loss information.

sure if there will be people persistant enough they can try and find away to hack the server or whatever(excuse my lack of progamming skills or knowledge)but ok that wont effect the community in any way since even if those actions will be possible with some effort most of the community will not be trying to do that.
The data stored will be trusted to those that run the server or lobbies or coded to use the information outomaticly only giving out statistics and using it for autobalance.

I mean all the information is at the servers disposel.
I dont know code but cant the server be coded to not give a certain type of information and only use it for specific needs by certain people?Is that such a problem?

Are you saying that if the server will be storing informaton about wins/losses of players it will be forced to give that information to anyone?I dont understand...

[koshi]

The problem is not the server giving out personal information where it shouldn't.
The problem is that you cannot in any way i can think think of verify information that gets send to the server.
Spoofing ingame status, win/losses etc. is easily possible. So any system that relies on information send from the user (through the lobby) is as unreliable as teh one we have now.

[Gota]

fine so there wont be any differance between how it is now.
Now if someone wants he can lie to the system about his ingame time as well to raise his rank so the system cant be worse in any way by implementing my offer it can only get better.

Cheating about your ingame time is much more attractive than cheating about data that nobody ever sees because your rank that is displayed for everyone to see is effected by ingame time.
Why would I,as a player,would want to change my win/loss data if nobody sees it anyway?what is my motivation if not to make others think im better?i dont have any..
such hacks are very lucrative when your playing a competitve game with tournaments and ladders and all that,im trying to find a way in which a non competitive community like spring's community can enjoy better games with people playing other people of the same rank and teams are better balanced for longer and funner games and less games where one team just gets stomped.

What you said is the the ranking sysem will be as susaptible to hacks as it is now.
Well i dont have any cure for that but i think we can rely on the members of springs community to not hack the ranking system
because of the nature of the multiplayer experiance that we have,it being a non competitive experiance with no tournaments and no prizes.

My offer if implemented will further unmotivate people to hack the system because they themsleves want to play others that aer at the same level of play as they are.

***edit***
Sorry didnt notice Bana's reply....

[koshi]

i think we can rely on the members of springs community to not hack the ranking system
because of the nature of the multiplayer experiance that we have,it being a non competitive experiance with no tournaments and no prizes.

We obviously have different opinions on the human nature.

Even if i were to accept your positive outlook on people's behaviour, there are major technical hurdles in implementing such a system:
- afaik there is no programmatic way to gain win/loss info from a game for lobbies
- lobby server and protocol would need non trivial work to recieve, store and relay gathered information (which would increase server traffic/load yet again)
- all lobbies would need to agree on same implementation

All of the above (and stuff i forgot) is not impossible of course. The implied time consumption vs the expected gain is the bigger issue.

A system that is much more reliable is already available: the human brain.
It can easily be helped lobby side by providing note keeping feature for players. Something that we at springlobby have already planned. From there on one can easily implement a network of trust. Meaning you could import the private assesment of other players from players you trust.

I'm aware that this would not address all the issues you wbrought up, but i believe the usefulnes/work requirement ratio is a lot better.

[Gota]

Oh,now i understand.You one of the makers of springlobby and you have your own solution.
A trust system?how is that got to do with balancing teams and players?
I understand how such a system would help against people who rage quit or do anything that certain other groups of players might not like like Xta group feels very strongly about combombing (excentuating the differances of different groups isnt nessesarily a good thing).

Furthere i doubt such a trust system will benefit the community and will only serve to divide it and make it unfriendly to newcomers.
Some players kick new players out of rooms just for ebing new,a trust system based on personal assesments can only make the community be more closed to new players by expending the "profile" of a player not even to more skilled player or less skilled player but to good and bad in a more general social kind of way,a popularity contest.

what special features will it require of the server? commercial RTSes that have mutiplayer options have a "player" profile with statistics.
If its not the lobby's job that its the server that needs to be changed and the lobbies must adjust to it.
What i offered is basiclly a commercial games system adapted to springs community.

I kinda loled at your human nature thing.
I have been playing spring for a few years now and i never heard about anyone chaning his rank and as you can see you dont have tons of bad players that have a silver star.
If people were cheating like that youd have tons of silver stars right now that dont know how to play the game.Instead all the silver stars are known and skilled players.
If this system is not being hacked into than a system that doesnt show anything about you and doesnt boost your ego wil be even less likely to be hacked into.

I dont need to make arguments cause we have reality to show us where we stand and what were dealing with or not dealing with.
There is nothing to back up the claim that people are hacking into the server to increase their rank and even if there are such cases they are a rare exception.

"I'm aware that this would not address all the issues you wbrought up, but i believe the usefulnes/work requirement ratio is a lot better."

I want to say again that i havent seen your system but from the little you wrote it doesnt nessesarily sound usefull to the community as a whole.

[koshi]

how is that got to do with balancing teams and players?

If you trust a player you trust his rank and can balance from there.

Some players kick new players out of rooms just for ebing new

can't blame any system for that though

a trust system based on personal assesments can only make the community be more closed to new players by expending the "profile" of a player not even to more skilled player or less skilled player but to good and bad in a more general social kind of way,a popularity contest.

should be easy enough for newbies to gain respect if they behave. Also i think you underestimate the self regulation such a system might provide.

what special features will it require of the server?

In the first stage where information is only stored locally, none. Once information is to be exchanged between clients, lobby server should provide means of initiating connection between two clients.

i never heard about anyone chaning his rank and as you can see you dont have tons of bad players that have a silver star.

There is nothing to back up the claim that people are hacking into the server to increase their rank and even if there are such cases they are a rare exception.

I never said anyone was "hacking" into the server. Also it's quite obvious that there are players who want to hide their advancement in rank. A trust system might very well disclose more smurfs than more technical means.



The one thing i really dislike about your model is that it relies on gathering data that is not visible/accessible to the user and then using it to rate him/her. I feel such a lack of transparency is unfit for an community that is rooted in open source

[Neddie]

There are huge numbers of players with silver stars who, for time invested, are simply incompetent. Not to mention people can trade accounts.

Additionally, Gota, you and I both smurf. I don't know your rationale, but I smurf so I can test treatment of new players, check games for ingame abuse and enjoy the game from a new perspective.