Slitherine

OneSpartan wrote:Ranking is the key to maintaining interest here I believe or at least one of them.

Mike

A major charge against FOG is that it caters too much to tournament players. My interest is in creative recreation rather than competition. What I or my friends or family play should be our own affair unless in a public tournament format. How do we opt out of the rankings system and get the rankings out of the profile (see left)?

Please advise. Thanks,

Mike

MikeK wrote:

OneSpartan wrote:Ranking is the key to maintaining interest here I believe or at least one of them.

Mike

A major charge against FOG is that it caters too much to tournament players. My interest is in creative recreation rather than competition. What I or my friends or family play should be our own affair unless in a public tournament format. How do we opt out of the rankings system and get the rankings out of the profile (see left)?

Please advise. Thanks,

Mike

I don't agree with this.

I am the casualist of casual players. I am playing my first PBEM game now. If I lose, and I fully expect to, that's fine.

For those players that like to play a casual game, it would be useful to see who the other casual players are...If I wish to accept a challenge, I would think twice if the prospective opponent was 215-22....unless I was looking for a difficult challenge.

DennisS wrote:

MikeK wrote:

OneSpartan wrote:Ranking is the key to maintaining interest here I believe or at least one of them.

Mike

A major charge against FOG is that it caters too much to tournament players. My interest is in creative recreation rather than competition. What I or my friends or family play should be our own affair unless in a public tournament format. How do we opt out of the rankings system and get the rankings out of the profile (see left)?

Please advise. Thanks,

Mike

I don't agree with this.

I am the casualist of casual players. I am playing my first PBEM game now. If I lose, and I fully expect to, that's fine.

For those players that like to play a casual game, it would be useful to see who the other casual players are...If I wish to accept a challenge, I would think twice if the prospective opponent was 215-22....unless I was looking for a difficult challenge.

DennisS

I don't know what meaningful conclusions you hope to reach by analysing the rankings but I don't think that you will find any. They are, at best, a bit of fun but no more. Especially solo rankings which prove absolutely nothing. I have only to play an easy scenario, say, Clusium several dozen times to inflate my wins and kills ratios but that gives no indication as to my true worth as an opponent. If you are as casual a player as you say, then accept any challenge and what matters if you are beaten?

I'm not sure that even MP rankings will prove much; other than, perhaps, who plays the most games. Tournaments are the only way to display prowess, as in sport and IMHO, using unseen scenarios rather than ones which could have been practised many times before.

I tend to agree with MikeK that solo play is private recreation anf FoG players ought really to be given the choice, at the outset, as to whether they wish to have their details 'published'.

I must admit that I was rather surprised and not a little alarmed to see my games being made 'public' so to speak. Not because of the information displayed, which is inocuous, but simply because of the unknown intrusion.

So long as FoG is not 'taken-over' by MP and solo (with accompanying AI) gaming is still well supported, I'm not too bothered by the rankings one way or another.

8 losses! I knew I shouldn't let my son play with my game!

I agree with the previous post, the rankings can't be more than a bit of fun, because without a meaningful opponent, they don't tell you much other than identify who doesn't have a life!

I often use the single player option to try tactics out and that is totally unrepresentative of a real battle.

The rankings are entirely intended to be mostly a bit of fun. Hence there being more than just wins and losses. It's mainly for the interest of seeing certain stats about oneself. And they certainly can be good part of community building.

MP rankings will serve much the same purpose, together perhaps with the ability to try and automate certain tournament aspects for those who want to engage in them.

Personally I'd love to have Easter eggs, be it ingame or on the forum, enabled through the stats reporting. Ideally using the more isoteric stats.

Cheers

Pip

One thing that annoys me if that if my opponent in a MP game resigns it says the game is a draw

For what it's worth, I've largely stopped playing solo since multiplayer was added and have racked up to major states doing so (not all good). I'd be interested in seeing those posted.

Deeter

petergarnett wrote:One thing that annoys me if that if my opponent in a MP game resigns it says the game is a draw

It reports this to your solo stats?

Pip

So, Pip, what do I need to do to get out of the rankings list and off my profile?

If I can't do that an still play online, will unregistering my game do it, and how do I do that?

Or if you are not the right person to handle this, let me know who to contact directly.

Thanks,

Mike

Not sure what you mean Pip - I just noticed that when I viewed the last move back from opponent he had resigned but in the summary screen it said it was a draw.

My point was that if/when ranking is there for MP games I would regard a game I resigned in as one I had lost.

MikeK wrote:So, Pip, what do I need to do to get out of the rankings list and off my profile?

If I can't do that an still play online, will unregistering my game do it, and how do I do that?

Or if you are not the right person to handle this, let me know who to contact directly.

Thanks,

Mike

We don't have a scheme to opt out of the rankings currently. We'll have to look at how we would do it - it is a fairly integral part of the community website features.

Cheers

Pip

I would like to recommend an additional column of data for the ranking system...one that I believe would be a better measure of the quality of play than simple wins or losses, or even a won-loss percentage.

It would be trivial to have a ratio between casualties taken, and given.

For example, 200,000 casualties taken, and 500,000 casualties dished out would be a ratio of 2.50. The higher this number, the more likely that it is a result of skilled play.

If you were to take 250K casualties, with the same 500K kills to your credit, your ratio would be worse, at 2.00.

Taking this a single step further, this ratio could be the basis for seeding, in a tournament type system. The number 16 seed, playing the number 1 seed, and so on. This would provide a significant benefit for learning proper play. Especially if the tournament winner gets the next expansion free!

Looking through the rankings list, I can see several individuals, like myself, who are not terribly efficient in the way that they win games. Most players have relatively few losses, and this would be a nice addition to the ranking system, and provide very real reasons to be extra careful in your games during the mop up phase.

Thanks for letting me ramble on.

Do you have to register somewhere to get in thed ranking? I am not in...

All you have to do to be ranked is register your serial number. Its easy to do - just click register on the pop up on the launcher for the game. Or just log in to multiplayer - this automatically registers you.

Hi!
New player here, just starting to learn the game!
Regarding the Ranking system, personally i find it Ok, but definitely it should be something one can on/off.
Use it if you want to or shut it down if you don't.
As it is now (mandatory and without any "in game" warning of your single player result being published around) looks a clear privacy invasion
My game and my computer shouldn't be sending my info around without my knowledge and permission!
By the way...
I see the ranking tables have been tweaked lately. I find the old one (just one full table) much more convenient than the new "page by page" table.
Finding oneself there can involve 30 clicks!
And it could use a "order by player name" and a "search" function. Unless your are the best or the worst in some of the categories it can be difficult to locate the info
With the community getting bigger each day, it will be still more unmanageable.
Just my 2 cents!
Cheers!

EDIT: ups! sorry, double post!
i got an error message while posting and tried again... but it seems the first one had already been published...

The rankings are very much work in progress so expect them to completely change. We'll see if we can add an opt out in the user profile section. It was not something we even considered - we thought people would love it

I can't honestly see how displaying rankings is an invasion of privacy, bar in a completely trivial and pedantic way. I think it's a great feature (or would be if it applied to multi-playter games, it's a bit of a wet lettuce at the moment). It's not like you can really be identified by your online pseudonym (even if it's your real name).

If you don't want to be included in the rankings, can't you just disconnect your conncection to the internet and play the game. I've tried this, uplugging my modem and the game still plays.

Brigz wrote:If you don't want to be included in the rankings, can't you just disconnect your conncection to the internet and play the game. I've tried this, uplugging my modem and the game still plays.

Well, its not very convenient having to plug and unplug the modem and disconnect yourself from the Internet each time you wanna play single "in privacy".
Not sure if the game will store and update the info once you connect again.
As i said above, personally i don't have problem with my statistics being shown, but other posters seems to do, and i understand them.
And certainly i was surprised that the game was recollecting, sending and sharing my game results info without me noticing or any warning being offered .
Of course the info being shown is not sensible or anything but, i feel i should have been asked about it before, and be permitted to shut it off if i want to and when i want to.
Cheers!