Forged Alliance Forever

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-30T16:33:04+02:00

I am really happy that ladders are coming, and pretty close to what I wanted too

I guess for rewards, in-chat avatars and stuff would be good. Also FAF should prominently immortalise season winners in various ways - have a shiny banner linking to a shiny page listing the winners in shiny fonts, shoutcast some of their greatest matches that season, record to Youtube and embed the video in the shiny page, etc.

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 30 Aug 2012, 16:33

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-14T13:38:10+02:00

Still really closed to koecher's topic, but i'm pretty sure some ranked awards like we had on gpgnet could be a source of motivation for a lot of players.

Anyway, summer had often been some quiet times. it will probably be more active in september

Statistics: Posted by Lu_Xun_17 — 14 Aug 2012, 13:38

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T20:23:50+02:00

Seasons still strike me as an iffy idea. As I say, I find it totally demoralising, and to judge by the numbers from my only experience of it, halo reach, it made those playlists dead zones.

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 13 Aug 2012, 20:23

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T20:14:17+02:00

Ze_PilOt wrote:
(something I wonder if someone read my messages or if I don't speak a correct english

Kryo : That's EXACTLY what I've already described. It's planned.

lol k, sry, didnt read 6 pages

Statistics: Posted by Kryo — 13 Aug 2012, 20:14

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T18:45:11+02:00

The first one.

Statistics: Posted by uberge3k — 13 Aug 2012, 18:45

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T18:35:23+02:00

(something I wonder if someone read my messages or if I don't speak a correct english

Kryo : That's EXACTLY what I've already described. It's planned.

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 13 Aug 2012, 18:35

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T18:33:00+02:00

DilliDalli wrote:
I don't think we should have periodic resets; its something that I've experienced on Halo and tbh its just demotivating. Why bother pushing yourself to achieve anything, if in a couple of weeks time you are back to square one.

What might work is setting the deviation for the 1v1 rating so that it can't fall below a certain level, so that the system maintains a certain fluidity when changing peoples rating.

a system that could work, would be something like in other sports: you have a global ranking, and seasons. The seasons would last something between 2 and 4 months. All ladder games you play would count for both. After a season, you would keep your global ladder position, but the seasonal ladder would be reset. This would make it possible, also for new players to get into a good ladder rank quite fast, which could be encouraging. But the really good players would be those who can manage to stay on the global ladder very high. Also being inactive for more than one season would make you lose rank in the global ladder, or you would be hidden, invisible, until you play again.

Statistics: Posted by Kryo — 13 Aug 2012, 18:33

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T17:36:18+02:00

I don't think we should have periodic resets; its something that I've experienced on Halo and tbh its just demotivating. Why bother pushing yourself to achieve anything, if in a couple of weeks time you are back to square one.

What might work is setting the deviation for the 1v1 rating so that it can't fall below a certain level, so that the system maintains a certain fluidity when changing peoples rating.

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 13 Aug 2012, 17:36

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T16:48:36+02:00

Elo was working like that more or less, but because of its flaw. A real ladder will be way better.

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 13 Aug 2012, 16:48

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T16:32:47+02:00

ELO worked that way kinda, even if a player with 200 more points won vs the lower player, he still would win points and would increase his distance

Statistics: Posted by Kryo — 13 Aug 2012, 16:32

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T16:04:20+02:00

You are describing a ladder system. It is planned.

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 13 Aug 2012, 16:04

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T15:52:32+02:00

I've been thinking about competitive ladders and matchmaking systems for a while now.

Whilst Trueskill and other such systems offer good mathematical accuracy for matching people up against others and comparing skill levels, they're not very good motivators to play competitively. Often (whether by mistake or not) they're DEmotivators to play, since people become afraid of losing points and rank.

I made this point in the fighting game community, where online play is considered a joke anyways due to lag. "If noone cares about online "skill", then why bother having your ladder be skill based? Just have an incrementing point system - a system that rewards people who play more matches. Because you want people to play more matches."

Of course, this isnt quite true in FAF, since online play is standard here. But having some sort of system that rewards being active in random ranked could be useful.

What's a good system? I have no idea. This is the tricky intersection of mathematics and psychology. As a naive first suggestion, some sort of simple ladder/league/thing where:

- Each season lasts for a fixed period of time. (A month, for example.)
- Ladder points reset after each season.
- If you win a match, you gain 10 points.
- If you lose a match, you lose 2 points.
- Standard matchmaking still applies? (ie. you still fight people assigned to you by the matchmaker.)
- There are varying levels of rewards for the top 50%, 20%, 10%, #1 players at the end of each season, etc.
- Optionally, there might be a cap or diminishing rewards in the amount of points you can gain per day.

It sounds dumb and wont work, right? But that's a bit like saying the Wii would never sell. Sometimes people's psychology doesnt work the way we rational types wish

Of course, in FAF we don't really have anything to reward people with. There's no ingame cosmetic stuff we can give, exclusive chat avatars, achievements, titles, or anything. (And yes, I think they're kinda silly myself, but there's no question that they seem to be a powerful motivator for some people.)

And yes, the system can be gamed - whoever has time to play the most matches, will have a dominating advantage in the ladder. (the cap would reduce this a little.) But that's the most important feature - we want the system to incentivise playing lots of matches, because we want people to be more active.

Of course, there's a competing view that, "I'd rather play one good match than 100 mismatched ones." But those people make friends and then play player matches - random ranked is usually a "friend discovery" system for them. Putting those people aside, it can be good to create a space where people who value variety and activity can play lots of games and feel like they're gaining something. (even if it's worthless points.)

Don't underestimate the addictive power of watching numbers go up

--------------

(I think the remaining playerbase is probably too set in their ways to be influenced by such a system. But if the original plan was, "Do FAF release and then start advertising widely on reddit/social media/gaming sites/etc", then something like this would be useful to motivate random new players to play more.)

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 13 Aug 2012, 15:52

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T09:14:05+02:00

To be honest, I could make the matchmaker in big red flashing letter with sounds when you mouse-over it, I don't think it will change the amount of players on it.

IE. prince is complaining, but he doesn't play on it

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 13 Aug 2012, 09:14

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T08:20:17+02:00

That's overly complicated. We need more players first.

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 13 Aug 2012, 08:20

Re: 1 vs 1 Ladder

2012-08-13T06:02:46+02:00

As I recall in GPG Net, in ranked you got a choice of thumbs up for one map, and thumbs down for another.

What about implementing something like that, where each player gets to indicate their map preference when searching for a game, and if a lower ranked player gets matched against someone better the game setup would defer to the weaker player's map preference?

Statistics: Posted by welder — 13 Aug 2012, 06:02