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I propose a team ranking system independent of 1v1 ranking, which evaluates an individual member's performance in a team setting. It would use more dimensions than merely the zero dimensional fact of a team win or loss. It would evaluate the player's performance as part of a team. While the fact of winning or losing as a team would still be a critical, even paramount value, the other factors which I propose would be included would weight the value in a significant way. This weighting would give upward thrust for good team play during a game, and downward thrust for bad team play.
This method would allow a player's good play to mitigate point loss to his rank in a game that his team lost. It would allow a player's bad play to dampen his point gain to his rank in a game that his team won. It would therefore allow a team play ranking which reflected much more than merely the fact that he has been on teams which have won, on average, some certain amount to be worth some certain rank. It would indicate all the dimensions of his play which led to his being at the rank he is, by making all his team play attributes that can be objectively determined a part of his team play rank.
As mentioned, 1v1 ranking would have no influence on team ranking, just as the reverse is currently true. This I suggest should be the case now, but the "global ranking" doesn't break down into 1v1 and team rankings, but acts as that team ranking, and rather poorly at that. It would be automatically better to have a team ranking which is independent of the 1v1 ranking, right now, even if it is simplistically the same as the way it operates as part of the global ranking as it does now. That would be an immediate improvement. The global ranking could then exist as a true composite, in whatever way, of these two independent rankings.
The mechanisms I propose for creating an objective algorithm which analyses player statistics from their play in team games are given in general outline in the OP below. Please read them before attempting to criticize my idea, or making claims about the viability or inherent possibility of it. I think it is a GREAT idea, because, as I argue, it would greatly benefit the play of team games, and make such games more attractive to those who are playing now and who appreciate good team play. Those who like to play in teams but not as true members of a team would find that their individual team rank would decrease more when their team loses, and increase less when their team wins, than those members on their teams who played better as part of team in various ways. No subjective aspects of evaluation would be used, only objective analysis of concrete data which would be extracted from games as in "player tracker" or something similar. Such data would then be analyzed by algorithms which are based on equations intended to reflect an evaluation of the data such as a forensic scientist might provide, combined with the insights of a battle tactician or strategist of war.
That is the general outline of what I propose, I hope this extremely short abstract of the OP helps readers.
OP
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1) What IS such a thing, and Why should we want it?
Players in a team are already rewarded with positive or negative rating increases if, in a rated team game, their team wins or loses respectively. But what if players performed differently during the game in such a way that, if their team one, it was largely through their own spectacular efforts, or if their team lost, it was mostly due to their own poor performances? Or in another aspect, sometimes a team wins, but in spite of a certain players' performance, or the opposite where a team loses in spite of one or two players' spectacular efforts. We've all seen it, so how can it be quantified and brought to bear on the ratings of players? Secondarily, should it be? I'll address the secondary question first.
It should be done, if it can be. There can only be benefits for doing so if it can be done correctly. It addresses a MAJOR problem in team games which the current rating system endeavors to address already, but cannot address fully due to the lack of a sufficient number and complexity of measuring tools. It matters if a team mate plays very poorly and if that ruins an entire teams ratings. Why should their ratings all drop merely because one player decides to "go rogue" and do things which even common sense dictates shouldn't work? Over long periods of time, such players are gradually chastened by hard reality, but in the meantime a lot of good players are hamstrung by their antics, and many simply do not know what they are getting for playing with them by looking simply at their "rating" number. A differential rating system for team games would greatly shorten the duration between a player's performance in team games and the results in their ratings, both for good play and bad.
While the all or nothing approach of the status quo allows for a general net which gradually allows good players to struggle to the top in team games, and it gradually flattens down bad players, there are some features of good and bad play which it cannot seem to address but which themselves affect the overall quality of the game experience as well as the perfomance of teams. I propose that a differential rating system for team games would address both issues and that by definition it would be good if workable, as it would improve the gaming experience for good players who play well together, and punish those who choose to be a perpetual turd in the punchbowl.
2) What is GOOD teamplay vs. BAD teamplay?
Good teamplay is play that wins, or WOULD win if everyone played that way, significantly more than half the time against a team who had equal skill in all non-tactical and non-strategic elements of the game such as interfacing the computer/program format, having good ping/cpu speed, etc. We're talking if each team had "equal skill" and equal forces and was balanced in all such objective and material ways, and then played a thousand games, the team who played well together BETTER would win MORE. Leaving out the issues of mixtures of skill in playing the game AT ALL, and equipments issues, we're talking how well they play as a team tactically and strategically. While the "all or nothing" approach has its obvious merit, it doesn't address the issue of the fact that sometimes a team is carried to a win largely due to one or a few players' efforts, and many times IN SPITE OF one or several players' screw ups. If that "team" one, then it should be especially rewarding for those players who played well, but not so much for the turd who nearly ruined it for the whole team and died on the frontlines in the middle of setons trying to build a fatboy asap. If a team loses, it should be that the entire team loses points to be sure, but especially for the one who sat in the back with his merely defensive airforce while building GC's that only come into battle to defend his base when most of his team mates are dead or reduced to some pockets of resistence, mostly to continue benefiting his incredulous folly of thowing an occasional nuke at giant onslaught of enemies, most of which are swiped out of the sky by missle defenses built everywhere because they've been busy playing FA instead of sim city. HE should lose MORE points than everyone else.
But how to take the quality of game play and quantify it meaningfully and accurately?
3) How to properly quantify: what can be differentiated fairly
Well, first off we can't quantify everything, and many things are too dynamic even though we have a sense of a differential quality about their effects in a game. Sometimes play is good per se, but doesn't lead to any directly measurable effects. Such play as doing scouting runs with one's air units when it is feasible, helping out one's teammates for pecuilar requests when it is doable and might help in some way, are good things which may often have helped in the final result, but there may be no accurate way to quantify such efforts in a micromeasured tally. That sort of thing will have to be rewarded by the satisfaction of having done well and gotten strategic and or social results which may have even resulted in a group win as well, or at least did no harm. But there IS group play which can be differentiated by team member in an accurate way, whether it is beneficial or harmful, and regardless of whether the team loses or wins, but especially in terms of that as well.
Each player has a mirror, and in the grand scheme of battle there is a general truth that if each player can beat his mirror, then the team can beat the mirror team. That is obvious. But often situations get sticky and messy, and asymmetries may abound tactically and strategically which make things as complicated as a game of "go". Good teams compensate well to these and adjust off of the situations as they appear. So if a reargaurd thinks "his job" is to build asfs and experimentals and strategic weapons and devices, okay. If he manages to help the team win by doing that, fine. That's good and he'll get his share of the reward. But what if his front man in say, a Setons match, is not only having trouble with own mirror, but the rear air guard is sending a small squadron of t1 gunships to harrass him, or the naval players are sending some frigates? What if he cannot quite get up any aa, fixed or mobile, in time, nor and torp launchers to his sides, nor has the friendly navies gotten there yet? Well, if we don't want a giant hole in the middle, then we should help plug it before it becomes a giant hole. We need to send units to kill that air force. The rear player has an obvious stake in punishing his mirror by a long-term strategic advantage in asfs, but if that is offset by an enemy land force marching to his gates, what good is that? There is an obvious need for him to help if he can, and the friendly navies had better be doing their part also. In this case, one teammate was beset by all four of the others, and it is obvious that if each of his own comrades does their meagre part, then it would balance out at least. If they just let him die, that is going to reflect badly on them in the team result.
What about the aggressor team? They are cooperating to create a weak point in the lines, smashing a hole through the land player in the middle, and are expected to be at least holding their own against their respective mirrors (if not, then are their mirrors punishing them with counterattacks "where they aren't?). In that case, assuming this is not an excercise in folly, then this is going to help and possibly lead to a strategic advantage which leads to a win. That is its own reward, but shouldn't such excellent cooperative play be rewarded beyond that?
While a failure to hold one's own area, or do one's own "job" well can be ameliorated by the rest of the team, and that can save a game, it is sometimes merely in that the opposing team all focused on him as a vulnerable point, and so it is simply the mirror image of the opposing team's focused aggression. But this is a neutral case, a sort of "zero" where we can see excellent play on both sides offsetting each other. What about the issue of DIFFERENTIAL scoring due to DIFFERENTIAL play? We already see that doing more than one's supposed "job" can lead to spectacular results for a team, or if balked at could lead to a loss for another. But what if the gap in a team was made by the FOLLY of a single player? Or what if the advantage in a team were the result mainly of a single excellent player doing all the right things IN SPITE OF his OWN TEAM being the ones who neutralize those efforts instead of the opposing team?! These are issues which don't find proper expression in the status quo of "all or nothing" scoring. On the whole they lead to a bogging down of good play by bad play, and this should not be rewarded by being ignored when something can be done about it. Let's make FAF a realm where quality is DECISIVELY rewarded, and punchbowls become a lot cleaner, even if not turd proof entirely.
4) Special Cases
When everyone plays well, the games neutralize the issue of who gets what proportion of a win or loss effect on their ratings. If they are equally well played by both sides, that is obviously going to balance out over the long haul, like a coin toss. If each member of a team plays equally well, then the total win, or loss, should be shared equally. Only a damned commie would say that different abilities and quality of play should be rewarded just the same! But how to differentiate?
Grossly, team play is already roughly differentiated. One team must have done something right to win, the other something wrong to lose. Even if both played badly, one must have played worse. Same for good teams. One must have played better. That's always true and will never be negated by anything I propose here. In fact it will be AUGMENTED and made more meaningful by what I suggest. Just as teams are differentiated by the binary logic of win or lose, and this is even gradated by the proportionalities of their total team ratings, and this is even altered for each team member depending upon his particular relation to the team means (hopefully, and if not why not?), SO SHOULD INDIVIDUALS BE REWARDED FOR THE QUALITY THEY SHOW, and this should make direct impact on their numerical rating!
Leaving out areas that cannot be objectively measured, I have a concrete proposal for a specific domain of play which can be measured accurately and can also be worthwhile to measure and reflect back as a ratings change that differentiates the proportion of win and loss points changes to rankings for each team member. These are starting proposals that I think affect the game ONLY POSITIVELY, and do not force players to play in any specific way as to style or method, but accounts for differences in play which are forced in games, or which should have made a difference if elected upon, but which don't get noted in the final tally, and this whether a team wins or loses. I will explain those two main aspects of play now.
5) All for One and One for ALL + Giant Sized Fighting Spirit = ?
Some players strive to do their best not only in their own "sphere" but also look out for the whole team, seeing how they can help. Not all these can be well quantified as far as I can tell now, but some aspects can be tallied well and possibly reflected into their ratings. If a team player drops the ball a lot, it shows becaues he does stupid things like playing middle in Setons and not getting mass from the center, or trying to build fatboys while an enemy t1/t2 army wipes him out. He has done more HARM to his own team by being there at all than if that area were simply EMPTY, or equipped with just one engineer for his team to use instead. They may win in spite of this bad play, and he gets all the reward that they do, or they may lose directly because of this, but they must take all the same loss as he does. That is absolutely ridiculously unfair and ruins the morale of players, and ruins the appeal of the game DRAMATICALLY, excpet for those who enjoy being the fecal matter in the fruit punch. THEY LOVE IT! It seems they care neither for the effects this has on other players, nor even their own ratings. For them a low quality experience is tangibly good, no matter what the effects on others. OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME, this will be punished because he'll just languish as a mediocrity at best. But he does a lot of damage to others who want to climb into a better gaming experience, who must suffer him on the way as there is no way to directly reward such play negatively, pushing it directly down to lower tiers where it belongs.
On the flip side, what about a player that KICKS ASS, even among decent but mediocre teammates? He is rearguard, and he is thinking about ASFs and such, but he is looking out for the front lines. He scouts enemy positions, not only for himself, but for teammates. He transports teammates to islands, then gives their units back to them to take those islands with (they may not have transports as fast as he can give them to them, or work it out to take their units and give them back to them on the others side). He uses gunships and inty's in the middle to help the middle guy get his job done, and he might topedo the enemy navies a bit. The middle guy might be doing a lot of land fighting, but he builds some torpedo launchers and a lot of AA, so he takes out a lot of rearguard planes, and sinks a lot of enemy navy ships while STILL holding his own against his mirrror. The navy guys are doing well, and they've had time to build up a t2 air force and take some of those center land player's units around the sides to do some painful stabbing. If the whole team played in this spirit, it'd be great, but what if only one does and the other teammates are just there to die if left to their own initiative? If they win, great for them, but it should be GREATER for the team player who DID MORE. If they lose, then why should he suffer as much in his rating?
Do you now see how a differential rating system could cull stupidity from the higher ranks FASTER, and make getting good at this game more rewarding and FASTER for both new AND old players alike? The increased quality would be expanded in QUANTITY also, leading to many more opportunities for high level group play, and better quality games to send in to Gyle to be cast, giving him his much pined for big selection to choose from.
So let's try to measure in objective terms how a better player can be rewarded, and whether or not his team wins!
6) Down to Brass Tacks
Let the following modifiers to ratings score be true, and it seems that better players will be better rewarded for their play, or harmed less by the poor play of others:
- 1) Define primary targets
- Primary targest are enemy units OF ONE'S MIRROR. There is a logic to this which is not arbitrary, but let is stand for arguments sake at this time. If primary units are killed, this leads to a certain number of kills for the player. That is worth some number of points depending upon the value of the targets. That has obvious impact on the team effort, as it neutralizes the efforts of at least one enemy team member who is trying to do roughly what the player is trying to do. That's like taking one enemy player operationally out of the game. That's getting closer to winning. This is nominal play at its best.
- 2) Define secondary targets of interest
- Secondary targets are any targets that are NOT of one's mirror. These may be differentiated by their value as well. Killing these are worth substantially more than killing primary targets. This reflects the logic that one has gone above and beyond one's nominal duties, for whatever reason. This is appropriate in every way. If the exception which proves this rule occurs, it will get an exceptional result. For instance, if a player ONLY went after secondary targets, but let his mirror run free unchecked, that would offset his folly with a harsh reality soon enough. The enemy player will be more than happy to punish his insipid "teamwork".
- 3) Contextualize primary and secondary quantities
- The above quantities, with certain contextualizing factors, will greatly help differentiate ratings effects of wins or losses in a way that reflects individual playing quality in team games. If a player has been doing well, he gets the nominal results which go with that. If he has been fighting well under extra duress from the whole enemy team, the secondary targets that provides will reflect even better on his score, both qualitatively and quantitatively (the first being a multiplier for the second as a final quantity). If he has been helping a teammate who was under difficulties, his score is benefitted accordingly. If in the final extreme he has aggressively taken on the whole team by himself like a dreadknought, then that is well-rewarded. In any permutation of play which sees a player doing more, and doing it better, he is rewarded well. Players who don't do as well, are rewarded less, proportionately. If that team wins, he wins more. If it loses, he loses less. Simple and straightfoward. But more must be taken in to context in certain special cases.
7) Who loses least?
Further qualifications can lead to even more accurate and differentiated scoring. What if a player has thrown away his position, not because he fought long and hard against the whole other team, alone, and was abandoned by his teammates, but because he just plain sucked? Then he couldn't have racked up a lot of kills that way, could he have? But what if it was because he was abandoned!? What if he DID fight well, but getting a lot of kills wasn't going to be in the cards? What if the rest of his team sucked, but he couldn't prove it by playing stellarly? Well, they are likely to lose as well, playing like that, especially if the other team can perform such coordinated play. It will only get worse for them, and that is their punishment. But if they lose, how can he lose LESS by this system, since he will have so many fewer kills and all due to being left in the lurch against a better team, while his teammates defend only themselves and rack up a ton of kills, including a lot of his mirror's units (since they are not his only targets)? This is interesting. I propose to continue the logic of this system rather than retreat it, or even merely to say we can do nothing about this. We CAN do something about it. Since the other team got an immediate tactical advantage, their coordination is already rewarding in real terms. But there is a rating bonus for three of them who are focusing on a secondary target. The mirror is allowed real term help, but his ratings will cost a bit since his kills are being diluted. Yet he'll probably find a way to recover as there are three other, totally secondary targets to focus on for the rest of the game, when kill counts have higher value due to targets being more expensive. (rules about what you kill a target WITH could also be invented in harmony with all this). But the player being eliminated gets seemingly NO advantage if he was merely left in the lurch by his team. What of his redress? It could be as follows: If his team loses, then his lack of kills cannot show his quality, but how many different secondary units were thown at him CAN help him. If he was massacred by four enemey teammates, then he was killed by a whole other team. Therefore, IN A LOSS, let his number of lost points be tallied in some ratio inverse to the amount of damage inflicted by secondary (non-mirror) attackers, and multiplied by the coefficient of the reverse order he was in as a losing player. So if he lost first, and their were four players, let this multiply to his benefit against the ratio set up by proportion of secondary attackers which dealt him damage. This will mitigate his losses. His losses will be mitigated far less if he was simply destroyed by his own mirror one on one.
But the point of this system is not to reward victims, but to ennoble great fighting. So therefore if a player can last longer and kill more, we want to reward that rather than always attempt to find gold in unlikely places. A player who is abandoned by his team can simply turtle up and rack up a ton of kills, and this will take advantage of the above extension of the principles of differential rating. He sees his situation, and he remedies it with a tactical retreat and a stonewall defense. This rewards him immensely the longer he can hold out, ESPECIALLY if he dies first, but loses no value if he dies last, either (especially if the others were letting him do all the killing). When the dam bursts upon his death, it will be shown that he lost less than others in the final score, certainly more often than not, whether he dies first, or last.
What of his counterpart on the other extreme, who was hiding in the back while all this happened, getting a bunch of experimentals ready while his other three teammates died? He will do vastly more killing and against a proportion of secondary targets possibly larger in his favor as to scoring. He will have a lot of kills, even if he does die last. Here is how THIS is mitigated. If the sequence of other players who died first is shown to be due to "multiplayer massacre" focused upon them, and during those times he hadn't racked up any kills on those opponents involved, then that will factor against his score. If he DID get lots of kills against SOME other player than those involved, that already will mitigate his final score loss, but in this case it will not so much, especially if his only target were select parts of his mirror's base or something. He will not only suffer the greater loss for holing up, as the data shows this to be his action, but he cannot get an advantage from all the last minute kills he'll get against high value targets (especially if weapons chosen to kill targets are set to produce a score in a ratio to the targets, value for value). He has lost this because he was the last player to die, AND because the players who died before him were SINGLED OUT IN COORDINATED ATTACKS. This can be factored in directly from the kill data from both sides and each player.
So the valiant victim and the cowardly camper are taken care of, or at least given redress in this system. And the equations should be created which ensure that the valiant victim, or hero holdout, loses less than the others, who can only mitigate this eventuality by cooperating to redress this situation with immediate gestures in game play. There are several mechanisms which can ensure this, a few of which I've proposed with my very limited knowledge. Others can and should pick up this ball and do much better with it than could I.
What of the players in the middle of this spectrum? They will be the majority in higher quality games, and they will reach those games faster as their ratings converge with like players over time, and much faster and more accurately than they do now. These players will not allow a valiant victim to happen, and will assist a player who is singled out by the opposing team, in any proportion. They will not hole up in the rear, but actively kill things and make a difference throughout the game. They will go out of their way to coordinate with fellow players to make a painful difference for the enemy team, putting the scoring onus of "who loses least" into THEIR lap. These are the cooperative players who will not be valiant (or cowardly) victims, but will not let their teammates become that either. They have much too much dignity to be hiding around in the back, and far too much warrior pride and bloodlust. And this system will shine for such players, bringing them into more and more games with each other, ensuring that it is mainly they who only have to look at this question: "who wins most among the winners"?
8) Who wins most?
In the worst case scenarios, a rough draft propositon has been explained what may be done about them to result in fairer scoring for those members of losing teams. What of winning teams? This is fortunately much easier, and fittingly so. This game is about winning, not losing. By being softer on better players in losing teams, we've mitigated damage done to them by their unworthy "teammates", and helped set up a path for their scores to more quickly reflect their quality over time. This gets them into more games with like-minded, GOOD PLAYERS, and gets them there faster, and it sets the tone of this game to be much superior to what it is now, which is currently a TROLL'S DEN OF BAD CHARACTER AND BAD SPORTSMANSHIP, and just plain bad play.
So with higher players actually BEING higher in skill and quality, not merely better at ecoing faster and clicking better, or better at working hard being different places at once, a HIGHER QUALITY OF GAMING EXPERIENCE is systematically arranged accross the board for all players who want that, and for those who don't, they'll stay down in the moat below, sharking in its murk but never rising to th noble heights among players who actually play well together. They can continue to prove their worth in 1v1, which is far more appropriate for them. I suspect that they will still get great enjoyment from that, and they may even excel at it, but their group play rating will not be grossely benefited as the "global rating" is now. That will be modified to work completely independently of the 1v1. This will prevent the loner TROLL from bringing his favorite smells into more refined company merely because when he sniffs them alone he is made very happy.
Who wins most is easily tallied by the factors of:
- Quantity of kills
Quality of kills
Value of kills
Whether he kills commanders, and how many
Whether he lived longer on the winning team, or died first (There is already a logic which protects a team from the "Break out Turtle" who let's others die and in the end takes more than his fair share of kills in a meaningless and self-maturbatory final stand, as in the case of the losing variety of the this "last hold-out coward" which was already discussed at the end of 7) above as the "cowardly camper").
All these factors, already indicated or roughly explained, will make the better warrior shine properly by giving him a better portion of the score increase due to a team win, that win being proportionately due to his own excellent play even beyond his fellows. Issues such as how eco plays a part in this can be determined as well. Did a player eco hard and turn that eco into a war machine that did something meaningful for the team? It will be reflected in his score because of the ass he consequently kicks, so that is taken care of already: that is included in the previous discussion in the effects it brings about. Who cares about excellent eco if you can't do anything with it, or if the units you make, or structures you build result in nothing concrete? If he shares resources then that should ALSO go into his personal score as its own factor, whether or not the other players make good use of it. If they do make good use of it then it multiplies in the final win, rather than merely possibly mitigating a loss of points if his team should lose. We encourage warriors, not treasurers, and yet cooperation is still given a nuanced nod in the scores either way. Maybe reclaim should be given a special nod in this case... given its riskiness and its gumption, and its grounding in classical warfare! Sunzi declares that the wise and winning army "eats its opposition" and doesn't spend so much time in its own kitchen or hauling around its own pantries. It lives off the land, and off its enemy's land best of all! Let reclaim have a certain value. There is already a mod which lets a player get resource rewards for killing enemies. In the same spirit, let reclaim have some value for the final score of a player as well, when it is stripped of of the enemy wreckage. Those are just some examples of how such factors, or others I've not noticed or mentioned, can be figured into this paradigm of differential rating in team games in the spirit of noble warriorship.
What of the failure who tries to lurk and skulk among such excellent players so as to parasitically attain a higher rating while doing barely crap? He cannot get up as much , not nearly as much, and needs to play with lower rated players (how did he get in that team anyway?). The score changes will quickly push him into more appropriate ranks. Perhaps in a lower ranking team he will learn the nature of Good Team Play and begin to find his own Quality, and then he will earn the right to games with higher-rated players, rather than have a prolonged, vampiric and clinging relation to them before he is shrugged off finally, fortuitously, only to be allowed to find more victimes elsewhere on the battlefield.
9) Conclusion
This system is but a rough outline, a proposal, an earnest suggestion if it is doable, a humble declaration of love for goodness and high quality and and slightly hateful reproach for the wretched evils which seem to never leave the decaying condition of man, whether he try to live a life of doings in the world or, as a retreat from those, seeks some solace in a game which involves some challenge of wits only others of his species can provide. This decay is the entropy of an evil mind who hates fairness, hates being exposed to truth, hates others for their virtues, and wants an entire world to give his own vices succor eternally. He is everywhere, in the spheres of political economics, at the workplace, in academia, in religious endeavor and science, and perhaps most pitifully, even in realms reserved for amusement and entertainment. He is the internet troll, the heckler in the crowd, the evil jester that taunted the acrobat in "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (by Nietzsche), and barbarian within the gates of society, always emerging from one of these skin bags we call our bodies, seeming to be an eternal and never-riddable parasite on all joy and peace. So if these ideas are practicable, then hopefully they will be considered by one who is able to do something constructive in this area. If they help him do something good in this vein, then GREAT, I'm glad. If not, or if they won't be given any berth in the realm of action, for whatever reason, then I'm glad to have at least hurled one missile of light in the general direction of ugly darkness, which in this world, especially of late, seems to be in just about every direction, in every place we turn. I hope it hits, regardless.