Restrict rank through lobby

[errorblankfield]

Stupid question, how come we don't just implement a system that let's hosts restrict the ranking of players joining. Then hide games you don't rank for?

This seems to solve our current rank 'crisis' without to many downsides...

The biggest of which is segmenting the player base a bit. Some ranks might not see any games and thus assume the game is dead (over time of never seeing games they qualify for blah blah).
But that's remedied by making either toggle-able (in the sense of seeing the rank-restricted games) or showing games you can't join with a icon similar to password locked servers.
Oh, and put unrestricted games first. This makes fill faster which makes these servers more popular -a good side effect.
So that seems downside nullified to me.


Most game are rank locked anyway, just requires host kicking. Which works, but could be automated removing some friction between hosts and kicked-mismatched-ranked players.
Makes finding games you can play in faster. Without games you can't play in anyway cluttering everything, you can see good hosts with ease.

Heck if it works out well, we could allow for a dynamic rank restriction. With some maths, we can just say 'gimmie a 80+ quality game' and the ranks of whom can join can change with each new player. (Tie in who is actually playing at the time and it's even better. And as a fail safe, the ranks loosen with time (optional?, to pre-set bounds?) so games aren't stagnate.

So yea, why don't we do this. It's fairly straightforward code (I can't do graphics, but I can handle the back end code assuming it works nice with python) and seems helpful to me.

Hope it's a 'no one's done it yet' thing rather than a 'we aren't doing this ever' thing. :{/

[ax0lotl]

Nice ideas. But I expect that Zep is cooking up something. If he wants to get rid of global ranking, then he probably has something else in mind.
Maybe you should converse with Zep via PM to see if you can combine forces.

[Flipper]

An Auto-Rank restriction would need to be optional in my opinion. I learned a lot by some nice people letting me into their higher ranked games and then coaching me as we played.

[errorblankfield]

I've never thought to have the contrary -always optional.

[Resin_Smoker]

I'm all for a simple Win / Loss ratio * number of games played. This would be an accurate measure of quantify a players skill over time.

Beyond that maybe a method that decrement a players score over time if they're not playing frequently.

[E8400-CV]

Sounds like a good idea. But definitely not by default; make it optional.

Another addition I would definitely like is that people you have on your foe-list can't join your game (make it optional too). Apparently the most hated players change their nickname every week. In the "Find games" tab there is a nice distinction in the color of the host's name (blue=friend, red=foe in that lobby), but once in that lobby there's no way to tell except by taking a look at the "Find games" tab again to see if your own name is red.

@Resin:
Not really. If one only plays against heavily stacked teams a 0.1 WLR can still be pretty good.

[errorblankfield]

@Resin
Same as above really.
But two guys with a .5 win rate can be wildly different in terms of skill because the win rate depends on the foe -not the player.

Though you remind me of how I'd tweak ratings. I don't know how rating works now (or will soon), but I hope that it accounts for skill degradation. Something like ratings earned within the last two weeks are in full effect, 2-4 weeks back only nets 80% of the points, back further 70 and so on until like anything three months back has no impact on the game.
If that didn't make sense, think of it this way.
You play a match and gain 100 rating.
If this match was current - 1-2 weeks old- your rating is currently +100 based off that match.
If that match was older -2-4 weeks- your rating is +80 off that match.
If that match is even older, even less impact.

If we are getting nitty gritty, it needs to be an S curve to define how much to scale a rating. Current matches of course need full impact, but 3 weeks needs a nice jump down to simulate how poorly you become if you just stop playing for three weeks. But skill loss isn't linear! Don't play for 6 weeks you aren't twice as bad. In fact, compared to the 3-week hiatus the change is likely half or so. A nice function can easily give something that will scale back scores in a fair way. Only oddity will be not playing for awhile will knock your rating down a fair amount -only to be brought up quickly when you play regularly. Which isn't a bad thing in my book.

Anyway, that was off topic. Just something I think about time to time.

@E8400-CV
Foe-list idea sounds good to me. (If you are on my foe list, there is no 'optional' setting needed for my hosted games... just sayin'.)