Rankings and Symbols

[End]

Ok so having spoken to Pure_Luck and Dim, both seemed to like the idea and so i am now going to lay down my idea infront of both players and staff with a bit more detail.


The Problem:

As we know TWs population hasnt been at its highest ever for a while compared to the golden era of 700+, i see the cause of this due to two problems.

1. As we know some arenas are played more than others, such as base and elim whereas others such as wbduel and public are either not played or played by those who know no better. As such i see that as a primary cause of the TW problem, multiple arenas are not played by multiple players causing people to leave the game.

2. A secondary problem with tw is that their is no recognition or objective for those of both higher and lower skill levels, in that at the moment for those who play pub they have only points and kills, and now with scorereset introduced this becomes even less important. The bi weekly resets for all doesn't help this problem either. Those higher up have twd and twl along with base mvp and elim statistics, primarily goals for squads.

I believe this leaves us with no objectives a single player can work towards throughtout the year.


The Idea:


I "semipropose" that we introduce a ranking system into to game which encourages people to play all arenas, from hosted events to public and elim, whilst gaining recognition to do so from the possibility of a rank increase.

Basically it will work like mvp in base, for doing certain things, such as getting a terrkill in public, winning a hosted event, mvping in base, going 2:1 in elim you gain a certain amount of points, each corresponding to the difficulty of the task, say for killing a terr in pub you get 2 points but for mvping in base you get 10 points. The more points you have the higher your rank shown by an added column in the F2 statistics.

Lets say you start on private and then after 20 points become a lance-corporal, then at 50 become a corporal at 200 become a sargent and so forth until you reach high ranks requiring 2000 points which only a few players will reach.

However to stop people playing the same arena there will be a limit to how many points can be gained in one arena/ the number of points gained will drop after each win, encouraging people to play other arenas.

This idea could then be combined with a symbol by your name to show a speciality or elite skill. As rankings work generally symbols will work elitely, much like a banner you choise which one you wear and is the same as the continuum flag for highest points. Say for example you have repped over 10000 times you gain a rep symbol of by killing over 10000 people in javs you are able to wear an explosion. The possibilities for symbols are endless and would encourage some to go for the harder to get symbols and gain more recognition. This would not only allow players to be more respected but it would let squad captains see where players are at in terms of game development and might let people ease into squads, whilst encouraging those just joined to work towards a target of next rank and improve.

Well post what you think, thats my idea, rankings and symbols. Im not good enough to code but im willing to help forward and develop the idea.

Enda

[F22 Raptor]

I like the idea, and I really think ?scorereset should be removed too.
About the elite signs.. I dont know about that.. still the idea is nice.

[phata$$]

Seems like a lot of work. But good idea :up: :up:

I believe that the problem however is the attitude towards the new people. You can make a new alias, pretend your a "newb" and watch as you can either be helped or ridiculed. I asked my friend to play start playing and he quit right after because this guy kept PMing him racial slurs and profanities for TKing him on accident in one of the small pubs. But asking to fix the players' attitudes is impossible so hopefully this can be a good solution.

[End]

Well this is a way for new players to improve their respect, its a simple system where they get rewarded for playing any game type, not just base and elim.
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Deposit Insurance Forum

[Ignominy]

I'm not a huge fan of this idea, and here's why:

Arenas like base and wbduel, and pub even moreso, people should be playing them because either they find them fun, or for practice. When you add an element of ranking to it, people suddenly begin to take things too seriously and tempers flare and some shithead gets all bent out of shape over something and storms off, perhaps in the middle of a game. With things that involve sticking through until the end (specifically but not limited to go base), it's important to not give people reasons to "spec 4 rec" or give up or quit trying. I want someone who is on my team (team being an important difference in this and elim arenas) to be there because they want to play, not for some ulterior motive trying to gain points for a rank. The dynamic in these arenas is very balanced now, and if you throw that off then the play in these arenas could feasibly decrease too. Any true player knows that nothing stats-wise matters as far as judging skill in pubs, and I can't really see something like a ranking system falling far from that mentality among the population. And in this worst-case scenario, it'd be terrible to have something so large that no one who is good cared about. I think contributing to this view of it would be the large amounts of newer players who would, for lack of a better term, power-level whatever point increments you decide on. I can easily see some kids getting some of their friends on alts to get in a terr and feed them in pubs.

Lastly, two things I remember you mentioning, the f2 statistics and the symbol by your name (I assume this would be apart from your banner, since banners are easily stolen), would these not require a client update? Honestly, I can't really see that happening over something such as this. And if not that, then what other method do you propose of showing rank?

Sorry, I like the thought and effort you've given this, and I like ideas, just not this one.

I just don't think that it will achieve your objectives of a system of respect and increased play in the underpopulated arenas.

[Kawrae]

Basically it will work like mvp in base -- mvping in base you get 10 points.

There is a problem... since base MVP doesn't really work. Camping spids get always MVP,or terr that gets less than 3 deaths and more than 20 kills. Where are shark MVPs for example. MVP=player who get's the best score while that's not the fact. MVP is player who helps his own team the most. Terrkils are also underrated. So is pushing and in some cases.. terrwork.

This idea is ok, but wouldn't work.

ps. events are fun and relaxing, everything doesn't have to competition. TWD and TWL are for competition, too many ppl are already taking elim and belim too seroiously and these new things would just increase the use of "newb" ect.

Feel free to disagree

[End]

Ok to answer your first point about teaming and speccing, you could add negative points for say racism, bans, swearing or leaving a game. Points would be rewarded for winning as a team not just individual. The arena dynamic is clearly not balanced, as baseelim is dead and only a selection of people play elim, this idea is about getting people to play all arena types.

Kaw i agree that the base mvp is wrong and doesnt recognise important factors, but this doesnt have to be solely based around 10 things it can be based on 100s, such as kills in game, reps, damage done etc.

I understand this cant be done with a client update, but maybe a bot or a website possibly.
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Chrysler Br Platform

[Ignominy]

The arena dynamic is clearly not balanced

You misunderstood me. I mean the level of seriousness exhibited by the players within specific arenas (the ones that get played).

People try, but it's not the end of the world when they lose. And they will play on whatever team.

If someone cared about ranks, then they would straight up refuse to play for the underdog team.

you could add negative points for say racism, bans, swearing or leaving a game

How racist someone is has no correlation to their skill as a player. And swearing? Are you serious? Sometimes, people have to leave a game, they have RL business or TWD things to take care of, and there's no reason they should be penalized for that.

The same reason there is no !rank in base is why this shouldn't happen. To win, it requires some people not trying to be the person with the best stats, and encouraging this will throw off the DYNAMIC of the game.

Now do you follow?


EDIT:

I understand this cant be done with a client update, but maybe a bot or a website possibly.

A website will be just as unknown/unwatched by newer players as !rank functions or TWD or TWL, and I don't think a bot can put things by your name or add to the f2 stats, but I claim no expertise there.

[Izor]

lol, if you incorporate this everyone will just play pub to get those easy points. Ooh terr kills you say? 1:Izor> racka, eazy, wark, geet, come to pub, get in terrs and die to me

Its hard to add points for a team game like base/wbduel/javduel also. good recs just promotes kill whoring instead of the objective of the game, which is team play. Also if you get stuck with shitty teams all the time you suffer cause of it.

Elim/belim/even ?go javs could use a little boost. The statsbot was added to elims to sorta fix the site but like I said before in another thread, having dominated elim for the past 6 months is rather unfulfilling since nobody cares about elim cause there is nowhere to brag about how l33t you are. I remember when people still cared about elim, the top 100 still worked on trenchwars.org. Perhaps even a small part of this, was because when others logged on to look at the top 100, they would see who was the best at the time. Now people have no idea except for like the top 3-5 whos any good.

[winipcfg]

lol, if you incorporate this everyone will just play pub to get those easy points. Ooh terr kills you say? 1:Izor> racka, eazy, wark, geet, come to pub, get in terrs and die to me

I think that pretty much sums up why this won't work. It's a good idea, really, but between having to update the client and people abusing the system, I think it's more work than it's worth. Maybe incorporating something within the bots would be easier, but I don't think you could achieve the effect you want with bots.

[Ephemeral]

I think that the posters above called it correctly. Doesn't it boil down to trying to 'reward' individual play inside what is supposed to be basically a team based game?
Ranking players means defining what someone thinks is most important (i.e. points). While kills might be important part of TW, so are other aspects like being defensive or giving yourself up for the team at key moments of the game.
The trick is to devise a way that rewards team play, no ship should be at a disadvantage in this type of calculation.

[End]

You guys are going on about a small thing where you could exploit the system, when that doesnt even have to give points for you. It could be made that points are only given for winning team agmes or elims/baseelims where it requires great skill or teamwork.
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Bulb vaporizer

[Maverick]

I have to agree with Ignominy.

Such a system can change people drastically throughout TW. TW needs to stay fun and not be dominated by a group of people that only go for the ranks/stats and quickly get agitated if a small thing goes wrong. This will also put alot of strain on the staff and might just kill the zone even more.
(I think this was maybe one of the few things that killed 17th)

At first this idea seemed quite fun to me, but I think Ignominy is making a strong point here about the downsides.

How about a test of this system in pub-only? People can get a (new) rank based on the number of games won. Then you can also monitor statistics on how much the website is visited for the rank stats to see if people really care about it.
If that works well you can always roll it out to a few other arenas (not ?go base imo).

That the population is going down is a given fact and probably can't be solved within TW at all (since its a SS problem).

EDIT: People, cheating can easily be prevented. Stop thinking that ranks are only determined by kills. -_-

[Doc Flabby]

I dont like the idea of global points or ranks, they suck. I like being able to play on aliases. I don't want to be spawned to crap in pub its bad enough normally.

I think fixing these things first would go along way

?go tourny
?go elim
?go baseelim

tourny stats are broke, which means winning tourny means nothing now.
elim and baseelim need stats. Getting first in elim stats would be a difficly and challenge worthy of respect for any highly skilled player.

wbduel / javduel / spidduel / base are practice arenas for TWD i dont think they need or should have stats.

My currnet view on pub (keeps changing i know).

If as im told everytime i suggest otherwise this zone really is purely about basing. pub should run with go base rules and 10/20/30 min games. First freq to 5/10/15 mins total time (doesn't reset ie ?go base rules - so last minite weasel grabs that are very annoying are a waste of time) wins.

I would change the way that the time is displayed so each team starts with 5/10/15 minutes and it counts down all the time the other freq has the flag. This would add a sence of urgency to get the flag and secure FR. When your time is up you lose

ALL ships allowed BUT levi restricted to 1 per freq - person with highest score gets the option of being levi. (?go octobase anyone :P) so only 2 levi max in the arena. Which would make basing possible as you only need 1 or 2 sharks in the fr to counter a levi/LT. It would make the levi useful in its original purpose - artillery. break those crams $$.

[Sumpson]

I agree we should be trying to make the game more competitive, but don't think this would be the right system.

It would be hard to understand for newbies what's going on, where to get points, how much you get/got, what you can do with the points, who has much points, all this would have to be shown on a website. it would get too complicated to be fun to me.

Why would we want to make the game more competitive?

To make the game more intense, which would make the gaming experience better ofcourse.

Well how to make the game more competitive then?

Let's start with the public since this is where people get started, we want to encourage basing here.

There needs to be a clear goal, and be worth fighting for to make it more competitive.

The current basing system in public: Hold flag with your team for 3 minutes straight to win, in the end winning team is shown with mutiple MVP's.

How is it encouraged to get basing?

By long arena messages telling what the objective is. (with un-clear english for those who are not used to english)
During game showing message's about how much time a freq has and needs.
At the end showing who won the game and show MVP's.
Showing statistics of game when messaging RoboGirl.

I think this could be allot better.

I suggest using a basing system with a bot which would:

Message public arena with:

Hold flag with your team for 10 minutes to win! The time your team has is displayed at top right.

Game starting in 10 seconds.

Go! Go! Go!

Game Over Freq 1 wins: 10:00-7:80
Player statistics would be shown of players who have been playing the whole game on one of the public freqs (this would avoid spam)

MVP: you?

How would this encourage basing?

The game has a clear goal (which is the same in the whole basing scene of TW, 1 easy message to pub at beginning of game, score at top right), which would make it easier to fight for it.

Since the player scores will show up at the end of game if players play the whole game on one of the pub freqs they will be encouraged to: not freq-hop, play the whole game, not play on a private freq, try getting a good record but win since when losing you won't be likely to gain MVP.

Instead of the current MVP system this one gets credit, and can be a goal fighting for.
The MVP system, would give more experienced players a goal in the public arena's. It would also bring more spiders to the pub basing since those are most likely to gain MVP.

The pub basing would also be encouraged for experienced basers who play ?go base/twbd/twlb they are used to the kind of basing and this is what they like, those players will also encourage competitive game play in pub arena's.

I have already suggested this to staff, it is uncertain yet if it will be implemented I really hope it will and believe it would be awesome, I hope you do the same.