Forged Alliance Forever

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-07-07T14:31:36+02:00

RoLa wrote:
Maybe there is a simple solution.

Some explanations to my idea:

1st: I assume that most players starting with ladder games are frustrated playing the first games against strong opponents.
- let players with less or equal 5 games play only against players with less than 850 rating (new players against less than average)
- let players with less or equal 10 games play only against players with more than 10 games (a sufficent accurate rating is needed)

2nd: I also assume that even a week player with a substantial number of ladder games is not frustrated by being defeated very rare times from a new ladder player who is better than average.
- let players with less or equal 5 games play only against players with less than 850 rating (new players against less than average)
- the opponents against players with less or equal 5 games dont change rating
(an average player should'nt get rating points from winning against a new player starting at 1500, after 5 games his rating should have dropped to an almost reasonable number, or if he wins all 5 games he wont gain much points so he has 1505 beeing in reality a player beween 1000 and 2000+)

3rd:Finally I assume that a solution to this problem has to be very simple, 10-15 lines of code must be enough. This changes should have very little affect to the whole establihed trueskill system.

Statistics: Posted by RoLa — 07 Jul 2018, 14:31

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-07-07T04:40:07+02:00

One option would be to add handicaps to higher level opponents on early stage games, but it still would be too hard to calc rating values based on a logical level.
The skill level representation should consist of more than just some numbers, because people can play like a 0 or 2000 guy depending on the map, it's complexity and how good they are on the respective map, of course. For a RTS some primitive rank level assignments are simply not enough, but that's just my opinion.

Statistics: Posted by Miuw — 07 Jul 2018, 04:40

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-07-05T23:33:11+02:00

Maybe there is a simple solution.
- let players with less than 10 games play only against players with more than 10 games
- the opponents against players with less or equal 5 games dont change rating
- let players with less or equal 5 games play only against players with less than 850 rating

Statistics: Posted by RoLa — 05 Jul 2018, 23:33

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-07-03T20:57:25+02:00

Not sure if you are trolling about the "pro" casts. The game's potential can never be used in games against the AI .

Statistics: Posted by Platinumizer — 03 Jul 2018, 20:57

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-07-03T18:55:48+02:00

This is why I just play coop or vs AI. I dont want to get stressed out. But I do enjoy watching pro or semi pro games like on gylecast or brnkofinsanity.

Statistics: Posted by Teralitha — 03 Jul 2018, 18:55

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T20:35:23+02:00

I agree with keyser

However I do think ladder players need recognition. Custom game rating is just so much more visible that it's no surprise ladder is unpopular

t2 mex before second fac

I do this on majority of teamgame maps

Statistics: Posted by Blodir — 26 Jun 2018, 20:35

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-27T14:12:22+02:00

So playing unranked games is not any different from intentional loss in that perspective.

i was unrating games because i didn't want to impact the "global rating" as i said before. "global rating" that is used to balance teamgame. Completely different from people trying to get under-rated on teamgame by making them unrated.

If i happened to choose between not doing anything or creating easy way for new players to gain starting rating+game count and get them into competitive game mode in return of 1% being "overrated" i'd defintely do 2d.

we can still hope trueskill2 achieve the first one. And keep your random % for yourself, tyvm.

I don't remember seeing this many astrocraters and gaps neither so many overrated craternoobs, but i remember ladder was more alive when that system worked.

i'm not sure if there is any correlation between ladder rating not impacting the global rating and people spamming shitmaps. At least I would keep myself from doing such assumption.

I don't even need to dig the example. How many times did you have to play nomads with me simply because ladder was dead and you had nobody to play with?

some other random assumption. first i didn't stop playing ladder because it was dead. I did play nomads vs you because i like them.

overall i think we just digressed from the topic.

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 26 Jun 2018, 17:29

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T16:55:46+02:00

keyser wrote:
When i was hosting custom 1v1, i did unrate on purpose the game i was playing so that it doesn't affect the "global rating", which i think we should rename "teamgame rating".

This is same rating fck up that ZeP tryed to change. At around the same time when he made ladder completely separated from global, he also made settings that were used to unrank games. These were adjustable game speed, auto adjust net lag mod and a couple other things if i'm not mistaken. It was done for the purpose to prevent one people from staying underrated and other ppl from keeping their precious points via unranking games they think would lose. So playing unranked games is not any different from intentional loss in that perspective.

One other thing ZeP made with it - removal of ranked/unranked indicator in top left. If you only knew how many ppl ask detailed instructions how to make game ranked...

we are actually trying to find a way to make different map or mod having their own rating. Listen to people talking about trueskill2. As i said, it's not because the rating sucks already that we need to make it sucks even more. People spamming custom 1v1, or only 1 map are fucking up the rating.

If i happened to choose between not doing anything or creating easy way for new players to gain starting rating+game count and get them into competitive game mode in return of 1% being "overrated" i'd defintely do 2d.

I don't remember seeing this many astrocraters and gaps neither so many overrated craternoobs, but i remember ladder was more alive when that system worked.

I don't even need to dig the example. How many times did you have to play nomads with me simply because ladder was dead and you had nobody to play with?

Statistics: Posted by Apofenas — 26 Jun 2018, 16:55

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T16:31:56+02:00

Same thing applies to ppl who play custom 1v1 in global, same thing applies to crater players outside crater, seton players outside seton ect. We don't have spearated ratings for seton, for crater ect. BUT we separate ppl that are actually capable to play great variety of maps by themselves without any help.

There was a reason ladder was separated from global in past. It was done by ZeP and he mentioned main reason being ability to drop rating quickly through ladder. This was done by Just_a_game for example. Now tell me does this fix an issue? We banned 3 players last week who managed to drop more than 1k rating - that's the answer for you about how that change works.

Another point was to prevent ppl from being "overrated". You will get even more overrated if you play custom 1v1s. Clear example: SB_NEXUS, KvaGa, Malantrius - all farmed 1800 on Winter duel at some point. Did unrated ladder prevent them from being overrated?

we are actually trying to find a way to make different map or mod having their own rating. Listen to people talking about trueskill2. As i said, it's not because the rating sucks already that we need to make it sucks even more. People spamming custom 1v1, or only 1 map are fucking up the rating.
Now you pointed 3 guys fucking up the rating because they abused the fact that you can get high rating playing custom 1v1, and what you are asking for is too allow all people playing ladder to f*** up their global rating. That is just a non-sense.
When i was hosting custom 1v1, i did unrate on purpose the game i was playing so that it doesn't affect the "global rating", which i think we should rename "teamgame rating".

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 26 Jun 2018, 16:31

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T16:13:08+02:00

keyser wrote:
you should already know by now that teamgame and ladder are 2 different things.
Even if wasn't a bad teamgame player, i never been as good as i was in ladder.
they are complementary to some point, but then someone that play teamgame a lot vs someone that play ladder a lot, will be most likely doing better at teamgame.
if they are under-rated right now, it's because they play a lot of ladder, and no teamgame, and that he has also a low teamgame rating. But this is just a transitory period of few games, at some point the global rating will get set up at the real teamgame level of the player.
now what you are asking for is having people playing ladder, getting an high global rating without playing any teamgame map. This end up being a major issue for balancing because they are only good into skill for ladder, but lack the skill required in teamgame. They are usually shit at handling eco over 200/300 mass/s. They lack of coordination with allies. They may only trust themself, and don't give a shit about their allies. They may lack of understanding when to stop the spam, because doing spam is usually an automatism, ending up being behind at eco.

There was a logic, why we introduced this change back in the days. pls don't make this game a cancer even more.

Same thing applies to ppl who play custom 1v1 in global, same thing applies to crater players outside crater, seton players outside seton ect. We don't have spearated ratings for seton, for crater ect. BUT we separate ppl that are actually capable to play great variety of maps by themselves without any help.

There was a reason ladder was separated from global in past. It was done by ZeP and he mentioned main reason being ability to drop rating quickly through ladder. This was done by Just_a_game for example. Now tell me does this fix an issue? We banned 3 players last week who managed to drop more than 1k rating - that's the answer for you about how that change works.

Another point was to prevent ppl from being "overrated". You will get even more overrated if you play custom 1v1s. Clear example: SB_NEXUS, KvaGa, Malantrius - all farmed 1800 on Winter duel at some point. Did unrated ladder prevent them from being overrated?

Statistics: Posted by Apofenas — 26 Jun 2018, 16:13

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T16:00:02+02:00

Easy stacking that nobody notices. If you have 2 players with similiar rating you just go to their replays. You put the one with ladder in your team and the one with gap in enemy team. Balance number stays same, but you get superior player. Funny thing that this logic applies even to some 2k players...

One knows how to make units, play everything, do his own scouting, air, power and take map control; other may start t2 mex before 2d factory, flood your chat for e, poke air player everytime scout passes his base and whine about his team when he dies. Will you need 2d guess to know who is who?

Currently ladder players end up hardly underrated. Just going to throw a couple names i heard this week: Blinchik(1600/1800); frodon (1100/1500); SYSTEM_FAILURE(1) GodKngXerxesNoob(1500/2000). Sure may be they are not as good at team games as they ladder rating says, but they are better than their global rating say and when you play 1v1 or 2v2 you are likely to trust the ladder one.

you should already know by now that teamgame and ladder are 2 different things.
Even if wasn't a bad teamgame player, i never been as good as i was in ladder.
they are complementary to some point, but then someone that play teamgame a lot vs someone that play ladder a lot, will be most likely doing better at teamgame.
if they are under-rated right now, it's because they play a lot of ladder, and no teamgame, and that he has also a low teamgame rating. But this is just a transitory period of few games, at some point the global rating will get set up at the real teamgame level of the player.
now what you are asking for is having people playing ladder, getting an high global rating without playing any teamgame map. This end up being a major issue for balancing because they are only good into skill for ladder, but lack the skill required in teamgame. They are usually shit at handling eco over 200/300 mass/s. They lack of coordination with allies. They may only trust themself, and don't give a shit about their allies. They may lack of understanding when to stop the spam, because doing spam is usually an automatism, ending up being behind at eco.

There was a logic, why we introduced this change back in the days. pls don't make this game a cancer even more.

Also if i remember correctly, there is a message telling player that start ladder, that they will be put against random opponent to evaluate their skill, and that it could be completely unbalanced.

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 26 Jun 2018, 16:00

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T15:53:45+02:00

There you go. Not sure if you get notification if you never played ladder, but at least this description says that new player will not be matched against player who'll stomp him in every area in a matter of 4-10 minutes depending on map. I used to do that, i used to play lab only, sparkey rush, scout spam ect to get any fun from such games. I can do that, than i can complain in chat, than report issue to forum. Or i can not repeat this circle once again since nobody gives a fck about it for years and save that time and nerves for me and for that new player.

Statistics: Posted by Apofenas — 26 Jun 2018, 15:53

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T15:24:33+02:00

Apofenas wrote:
Be top 100 ladder, but still rage from getting 0s? No, thanks, that would only hurt ladder in the rating area where we don't have a lot of players already. Personally i thought getting 1500+ in ladder is the number 1 goal in order to not get new players against you and not waste time on them. Sure the rating range should be expanded, but not 1000-16000, but rather 500-1100 where we the majority of our player base and most ladder games happen.

1. Top100 ladder starts at 1613 rating (June 26th;15:13 CEST)
2. It was fe, an example
3. If you have never played ladder before, you get, as i said!, matched up with players between 1200 and 1400 so I have no idea where you got this 1500+ thing from
4. Why should 1200-1400s 'waste their time' as you call it with zeroes, but 1400-1600s shouldnt? I have checked your replay history, and you cntrlk-ed multiple times when you were matched up vs zeros. Very mod-like behaviour indeed; setting up a good example for the community to follow!

Apofenas wrote:
Ladder says "the player of your skill is looking for game". So if you are going to ladder for first time, you'd likely to expect somebody who is new to this game either. Leaderboards show 5400 players in ladder rated 0+. Yet from all that amount only 470 of them are 1.1k+. Ladder should not bother these players with newbs and match those with remaining 4930.

When i came to FAF i thought i'd be placed against noobs first and get some easy rating since i watched TA4life channel and knew a lot of things about the game. Was a surprise to see 1500 even though 1500 wasn't a lot at that moment since we had much bigger ladder player base in 2013.

Afaik, you dont get this notification if you have never played ladder before;pls correct me if i am wrong on that.

Statistics: Posted by uteten — 26 Jun 2018, 15:24

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T14:58:15+02:00

keyser wrote:
you don't fix an issue by creating another issue.
rating from ladder influencing the "global rating" was an horrible thing.
The "global rating" is already completely fucked with people playing only same map all the time (no need to make the global rating even more unreliable), so i guess we can't just unrate the custom 1v1 so we have to stick with 1v1 being a way to get over-rated for teamgame too.

Easy stacking that nobody notices. If you have 2 players with similiar rating you just go to their replays. You put the one with ladder in your team and the one with gap in enemy team. Balance number stays same, but you get superior player. Funny thing that this logic applies even to some 2k players...

One knows how to make units, play everything, do his own scouting, air, power and take map control; other may start t2 mex before 2d factory, flood your chat for e, poke air player everytime scout passes his base and whine about his team when he dies. Will you need 2d guess to know who is who?

Currently ladder players end up hardly underrated. Just going to throw a couple names i heard this week: Blinchik(1600/1800); frodon (1100/1500); SYSTEM_FAILURE(1) GodKngXerxesNoob(1500/2000). Sure may be they are not as good at team games as they ladder rating says, but they are better than their global rating say and when you play 1v1 or 2v2 you are likely to trust the ladder one.

uteten wrote:
2. expanding the range from which to get their first opponent from 1200-1400 to 1000-1600 fe. (please note that im strongly arguing against my own interests here since i am 1500 and these games just suck)

Be top 100 ladder, but still rage from getting 0s? No, thanks, that would only hurt ladder in the rating area where we don't have a lot of players already. Personally i thought getting 1500+ in ladder is the number 1 goal in order to not get new players against you and not waste time on them. Sure the rating range should be expanded, but not 1000-16000, but rather 500-1100 where we the majority of our player base and most ladder games happen.

uteten wrote:
Regarding the second point, I fail to understand why loosing your first games would take a hit at your motivation. It didnt affect me back then. Who on earth joins FAF as a new player, queues up for the first game and thinks: 'Oh yea, I have a decent change of winning!?' Of course you gonnna loose! Its the same in any other gaming community which has a rating system. Do you actually believe lowering the starting rating would fix this? A new player; a truely new player and not some 'old GPG pro' horseshit wont see the difference and quality in playstyle between a 1000,1200 and 1400 rated player. The only reason i can think of that would make lowering the starting rating useful, is that it would take fewer games to get to you real rating and a low enough deviation, thereby reducing the number of losses you have to endure. But I dont know enough about the rating system to know if this is actually true.

Ladder says "the player of your skill is looking for game". So if you are going to ladder for first time, you'd likely to expect somebody who is new to this game either. Leaderboards show 5400 players in ladder rated 0+. Yet from all that amount only 470 of them are 1.1k+. Ladder should not bother these players with newbs and match those with remaining 4930.

When i came to FAF i thought i'd be placed against noobs first and get some easy rating since i watched TA4life channel and knew a lot of things about the game. Was a surprise to see 1500 even though 1500 wasn't a lot at that moment since we had much bigger ladder player base in 2013.

Statistics: Posted by Apofenas — 26 Jun 2018, 14:58

Re: New players and the rating system.

2018-06-26T13:57:08+02:00

I'm way too tired to quote and/or read all of this, but this has never stopped me from adding my two cents.
there currenty is two mayor problems with the ladder and these are:
-new players not finding any opponents
-new players getting demotivated to play more than just a couple of ladder game

Regarding the first point, I had to answer the same questions both in newbie chat and in discord multiple times: 'why cant I find a ladder match? does ladder even work?' There is imo 2 easy things that can be done to make the problem far less worse.
1. coding a popup windpow that open as soon as a player searches ladder for the first time explaining the problem to new players.
2. expanding the range from which to get their first opponent from 1200-1400 to 1000-1600 fe. (please note that im strongly arguing against my own interests here since i am 1500 and these games just suck)

So I dont really understand what the fuzz is all about when these solutions are not that difficult to come up with.

Regarding the second point, I fail to understand why loosing your first games would take a hit at your motivation. It didnt affect me back then. Who on earth joins FAF as a new player, queues up for the first game and thinks: 'Oh yea, I have a decent change of winning!?' Of course you gonnna loose! Its the same in any other gaming community which has a rating system. Do you actually believe lowering the starting rating would fix this? A new player; a truely new player and not some 'old GPG pro' horseshit wont see the difference and quality in playstyle between a 1000,1200 and 1400 rated player. The only reason i can think of that would make lowering the starting rating useful, is that it would take fewer games to get to you real rating and a low enough deviation, thereby reducing the number of losses you have to endure. But I dont know enough about the rating system to know if this is actually true.

Statistics: Posted by uteten — 26 Jun 2018, 13:57