Slitherine

ive been play this for about 2 years and i have to admit i lose more games than i win bit fed up with playing people who really know the rules in side out and beat you 100% 10% say. wouldn't it be a good idea to have a ranking so play people of the same ability

grandad

I think that's a really good idea.


Best Wishes

Mike

Pete's digital league does this at least. It might be nice outside of this just for an idea of skill level though. Many multiplayer games do this already and have a simple formula.

I suppose the problem is that the person, or system, doing the ranking needs to know what your result are and against whom. Unless the server logs all online battle results, I'm not sure how this would be done outside of the 'official' competitions.

Best Wishes

Mike

MikeMarchant wrote:...Unless the server logs all online battle results, ...

The problem with this is that you can't just resign a game which was mismatched (happens a lot in competitions with mirror matches) without affecting the rank, and it must have an option for tutoring/friendly games.

Yes, that's true, so you'd need the facility for the players to be able to designate a game as a 'friendly', so that it wasn't included, and the facility for the competition referee to designate as a game as being non-rated, if the referee accepts the argument.

I suppose it might also encourage existing players to play more against newbies in order to run up their rating - whether that's a good thing or not is debatable. I suppose the rating bonus you get for winning a game would have to be related to the opposition player's rating, so that a game against a lesser player would have a lesser influence than a game against a player with a higher rating.


Best Wishes

Mike

The problem w a "ranking system" for MP, apart from the myriad issues that are mentioned above is, what do you "do with it" in terms of what the OP is talking aout. Is it incumbant on me when accepting open challenges to "look up someone stats" and determine if I "morally" should accept or not ? Offical vs friendly games shouldnt matter, I like to assume players are giving a good game regardless, although many are more willing in "friendly games" to pick interesting armies, try riskier moves etc, basically making it more enjoyable/variable.
You just dont know someones mettle until you fight them, stats be damned

I hadn't really considered what it might be used for beyond an interesting index for players to look at and, hopefully, to see themselves improving over time. I hadn't really imagined it forming a set of guides for who could play whom, though.

One feature that I think has perhaps been missing in the game has been the ability to add a note to a challenge that you've posted. If that feature existed, it would be possible for a player to specify what kind of opposition they're looking for to pick up the challenge, in terms of ability. There wouldn't be any enforcement, of course, but one would hope that players would be sympathetic to such 'requests'.


Best Wishes

Mike

MikeMarchant wrote: One feature that I think has perhaps been missing in the game has been the ability to add a note to a challenge that you've posted. If that feature existed, it would be possible for a player to specify what kind of opposition they're looking for to pick up the challenge, in terms of ability. There wouldn't be any enforcement, of course, but one would hope that players would be sympathetic to such 'requests'.

That would be a great enhancement. You could also put blurbs in a challenge like " prefer if you select historical", or "please select a persian army" or "anything but a pike army" etc

I agree

TheGrayMouser wrote:

MikeMarchant wrote: One feature that I think has perhaps been missing in the game has been the ability to add a note to a challenge that you've posted. If that feature existed, it would be possible for a player to specify what kind of opposition they're looking for to pick up the challenge, in terms of ability. There wouldn't be any enforcement, of course, but one would hope that players would be sympathetic to such 'requests'.

That would be a great enhancement. You could also put blurbs in a challenge like " prefer if you select historical", or "please select a persian army" or "anything but a pike army" etc

Yes, exactly right, that would be a very useful feature.


Best Wishes

Mike

Okay, but when you're at the top of the game, who will be left to play with you? I would hate to be stuck with the AI after stomping everyone into the ground...

I like to play people who are better than me, so I'd still be happy to play them. I learn a hell of a lot more from my losses to really good players than I do from my victories over lesser players.


Best Wishes

Mike

The ranking can be done just by users, without Slitherine. But it will require that the winner must report his victory and the name of his opponent and he is not a lier (but I think it should not be an issue). The external and independent system will calculate Elo ranking. That idea works pretty well in Wesnoth multiplayer community http://wesnoth.gamingladder.info/
But FoG has an annoying flaw, lack of any official chat or message system on game server for players before joining to the game (maybe mesages on the forum?), so they can not quickly find out if that match is ranked or not.