Spring RTS Engine

Holy testicle tuesdays! I have 1000 hours? that is Saaaad,
I guess thats what 3 months of unemployment and a foreighn gf do for ya ^^
Luckily I live in Vancouver now so I spend all my spare time job hunting snowboarding and going to the bar with m'lady hehe, yay for Canada and having stuff to do! also its my birthday today!

ok... after three, Everybody!.... 1...2...3... Happy birthday to steve.... tra la la la laaa laaaa.....

mmm beer and french toast for breakfast! hehe

Anyway to my point...

Id add one more rank for 300 hours personally, and maybe one more for 500. Id also add an auto lifetime ban for anyone that hits 1000 hours because that is just not healthy ^^

STEVE'S A CANUCK!


Steve, i live in Michigan!


DO NOT SEE ME!

>_>

BigSteve wrote:Holy testicle tuesdays! I have 1000 hours? that is Saaaad,
I guess thats what 3 months of unemployment and a foreighn gf do for ya ^^
Luckily I live in Vancouver now so I spend all my spare time job hunting snowboarding and going to the bar with m'lady hehe, yay for Canada and having stuff to do! also its my birthday today!

ok... after three, Everybody!.... 1...2...3... Happy birthday to steve.... tra la la la laaa laaaa.....

mmm beer and french toast for breakfast! hehe

Anyway to my point...

Id add one more rank for 300 hours personally, and maybe one more for 500. Id also add an auto lifetime ban for anyone that hits 1000 hours because that is just not healthy ^^

No no no, just a rank reset

I'm alright with more ranks.

Sheekel wrote: Also, NO new ranks. Its just another catalyst to encourage cheating. The current ranking system is fine.

In fact the problem is that usually we want to play balanced games. So it would be perfect that the server would make an automatic balancing (when requested to do so) based on the time each player spent with that specific mod and faction without showing effectivly the rank. (this is from "nice ideas that will not be implement because of lack of time")

Time doesn't indicate ability in even that case. I'm roughly as solid with URC in E&E as I am with ARM in AA, and I've spent maybe ten times as many hours as the latter.

Sheekel wrote:What the hell is smurfing?

Smurfing is when experienced players get new names so that they can pose as nubs.

I have at least four smurf accounts. None of which I have logged into in the past four months.

neddiedrow wrote:Time doesn't indicate ability in even that case. I'm roughly as solid with URC in E&E as I am with ARM in AA, and I've spent maybe ten times as many hours as the latter.

It's one of the best indicators we can have.

Even if you are as solid with URC, this may be because the mod is easy, or because there are no players that played AA that much. From a balancing point of view the time will do. If you have any idea I think everybody would be happy to hear it

you have no idea how many sucky star players are out there have you

Day said it better than I could, really. Time is no indicator of anything besides dedication, and I don't think we really need a skill based rating system. Get to know the people that you play with, that is my method, and it is the theory behind the academic clan structure besides - and look at how well that works!

I think the point though, is that it's the only stat we have tracked by the server, so it's the best (only) indicator we have.

Day wrote:you have no idea how many sucky star players are out there have you

This is again, a 'negative' comment (no new idea, just saying an idea doesn't work in all the cases - which should be know by everyone by now). And what if they are ? If 95% of 1 stripe players are bad, and 50% of star players are bad, you can still balance a game by taking into account mod play time, rather than by making a 'random' choice.

And you really can't deny that if I am playing a mod for the first time I will be bad at it. So time is a factor. When you play other mod than AA, you usually have no idea of the skills of the players. And I have to announce 'I'm total noob, don't balance based on my rank' (thinking primarily at EE as I do not play many others)

For XTA I think this is not that of a problem, because there are either people who play it from long time or total noobs (which are switching to AA as it is easy to find an open game and bad players to beat )

How about introducing a method which detects noobs and changes their rank symbol to a banana to get rid of these star noob prejudices...

I'd like mod-dependent ranks.

Rattle's banana idea is good too. No ranks, just a newbie symbol.

More ranks would just make it a bigger fiddling to finally get a game going.

how about no?

This is not an elitist area, at least it tries very hard not to be. Keep it that way. Some people may not be good at any mod in spring, but that doesn't mean they should have to work harder to get a game.

+1

+2 and a bunny

+I see your bunny, and I raise it a pancake.

I agree, a rank that shows how much a person wins would be nice to judge abilities.

I dont like this idea. If anything I think it would be abused - Players would only play if they felt the game was stacked to their advantage - people would all want to host their own games and not join other peoples because they are in control of the teams in that case and can stack them as they please.

Even if this didnt happen, many people would probably have ludicrous win % and actually still be pretty rubbish, due to selectively playing only noobstars repeatedly, and refusing to play with people that can beat them because they dont want to "hurt their rank"

In short, people would turn into stat whores, and thats not a good thing, we've probably all seen what it does to other games, they are everywhere, they always bitch and whine and only care about their stats instead of actually enjoying playing the game without a care if they lose to a better player.

But...+1 for more ranks, it can't hurt right? I've wanted my own personal little icon thing in spring for a while and have thought about harassing betalord about it for a while, but higher ranks could also do the trick.

(always wished i had one of those moderator spanners, or at least my own icon even if it represented nothing)

[EXTRA STUFF]

Anyway the point is, unless theres a pretty detailed ranking system build into spring that tracks every game you play and updates your statistics accordingly, then puts them into a ladder system, then we'll never have a full-proof way of telling who is good and who isn't, except what neddie says - learn who the people are.

The vast majority of players i play with these days i know how they play and how good/crap they are from several/many previous games with them. The people i dont recognise are either clearly distinguishable as smurfs (in which case its not too hard to find out who) or are randoms that are new to spring or havnt played in a long, long time - in which case they're crap.

My wish would be for a supcom style ladder system.



I didnt even like the game much but played it obsessively just for the ladder