while i preferred it the way it was before (i can explain why if you wish),
I'm not too worried about the change of hiding the rating as that would at least make me calm down a bit
the reason I'm making this post is to suggest to zep a way of balancing games, because rating was a tool to do it with, and thats being hidden, so there must be an alternative.
first, let us consider what we need from a tool to balance games : essentialy it should be at least as good as rating is/was.
what this means is :
it must be able to determine the skill level of a player to the nearest 200 points.
this is quite a big range, but if you look at a players rating statistics, you see that there is a chance that they will be 100 rating lower or higher than they most probable rating.
for example, when i last checked the rating of voodoo (he is a good example because he played many games and so has a "very" precise rating)
his rating was 2275, but his actual rating was 2423, with a 66% chance of being anywhere in between 2374-2472, and with his deviation being 148 points either way
trueskill is not very accurate, but it is accurate enough to balance games properly.
the reason a lot of people what unranked games is mostly psychological - they don't want an intense game sometimes, they want a casual one, and if its unranked, they have nothing to lose, especially if they teams are unbalanced or they are training a player
also, game quality is not accurate; if rating has its inaccuracies, then so does game quality, but on top of this, a fair (>90%) team game could still be very stacked if each player on one team is 100 points higher, also testing and playing unbalanced games
what i propose is this:
hide the original rating system but keep it functioning
replace rating number with "ranks" or "divisions" which give an approximate value of you rating to the nearest 100 points
e.g. a 1245 rated player will be rank 12, a 1999 rated player will be rank 19 and a 110 rated player will be rank 1
this will allow you to balance games but not be affected by the psychological pressure as what you see changes little
a few other things:
no rank 0, theres no point demoralising new players. this could be extended to the bottom 300 rating
on top of this, the ranks should overlap by 20 points either way.
this means if you were 1210 you must be 1180 to drop into rank 11 and 1220 to go back up to rank 12 if you have dropped
why?
because if you are on the breadline between 1100 and 1200 you don't have to worry about it. if you drop a rank, you wont frantically try to regain it as it will take 40 points, and if you gain one, you know you're not going to lose it straight away
replace "game is ranked" with "no mods enabled" or "standard conditions"
no need to remind people their rating is actually changing in the background
Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 07 Feb 2014, 20:00
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