Slitherine

Hi guys,

http://www.slitherine.com/LadderFront.htm

Steve has been working hard on a ladder system for Legion Arena. We're getting close & wanted to get you guys reporting your results & letting us know how it feels. It is not complete & there are likely to be issues, but if you can test it out & let us know if you have any problems we'll sort them out as soon as we can.

Log in using your Slitherine passport as you do for the forum/shop. You must report the results of each match separately (up to 7 games in a match). You must enter your oppoonents Slitherine passport username & they must verify the results. Only one of you shoudl enter the score & the other should verify it, so decide between you who will enter it.

Any questions - let us know! Now go play some multiplayer games!

So... What happens in the case of a disconnect

I guess you shouldn't report that game, and play another.

For now, you can decide between you what to do.

These are the sorts of issues we want to work out so thanks for the feedback! We'll need to come up with a system for handling disconnects, so you can report a partial result. A player with regular disconnects should probably be penalised on their rating and have it shown in their profile. If it happens too often they may find it hard to get an opponent.

Ladder games must be agreed in advance. You cannot say afterwards it was a ladder game if it was not clear before. Slitherine usernames should be exchanged before the game to ensure people dont disappear!

Two problems with it- I created 2 psudonyms (uniqueeunuch and mightyhiccuper) and reported a game that never occured. It still worked. Is there any way at all to prevent this? Or is this just going to be an honor thing?

Feel free to delete them- I wanted to see if it would work. I do in fact use these names, but for other things.

Second problem- the ladder has the possiblity of winning 7 out of 7, even though it is impossible- the game ends once you win 4 of the battles. Also, if you check a number, it assumes that your opponent automatically wins the rest of the battles.

I think it is an honour system. It would be nice to have a fully integrated ladder, but even then (as I saw when working on games for Westwood) people will cheat . It is very hard to prevent (for example) someone playing themself.

Better online integration is something we definitely want to go for in future. It's all more work for me and Ste though

Cheers

Pip

What we can do is check things like e-mail addresses of registered users. If they match we can prevent them recording results. THis would mean you need one e-mail address per username. Also, once you have reported a few wins then one of your usernames will be getting a low rating so the higher one will be earning less points each time you report a win.

We can also monitor how often you play the same person. Playing one opponent too often should reduce your rating.

No matter what we do there will be ways to cheat but we can try and prevent the most obvious. There is going to be a certain amount of honour involved & there will be a admin level that can adjust scores if we feel there is some misbehaving going on?

So, Im thinking that when selecting your score, it is meant to be calculated like this:

Total number of possible battles - number of victoires of the losing player equals the score of the winning player

Or, number of victories of the losing player is the score of the losing player.

(same thing)

Otherwise, it is impossible to get a 5,6, or 7 on a best out of 7, or a 4 or 5 on best out of 5, or a 3 on best out of 3.

Yes, we made a mistaken assumption that the number of games was related to the score. We'll sort that out ASAP

So the game does not show up in the ladder till the other person verifies it, correct?

this is correct. you report the games score along with the slither passport username of your opponent, next time they log in, they get a message saying they need to verify the score. and then the resulting rating changes are computed based on a number of factors. this in turn updates the ladder.