The league system clearly is there to demonstrate skill. The portraits are for your efforts, your veteranship so to speak.
Community Question: Measuring Player Skill
Humate
(Humate)
#182
Im not talking about the players intention of obtaining the portraits. 
Im talking about the developers intention of creating them in the first place.
If they created that system, with the expectation that players would only earn these against players of their own level, then its a flawed system.
attack
(attack)
#184
i would say xp is important, but there should maybe be a kill death ratio because most players only play for a good ratio . the way team fortress with the points go is good too,maybe some stats only for yourself and other for all.(not that much flame than).
light_sh4v0r
(light_sh4v0r)
#188
Ok good, I know you were prO. It’s just that for a second I thought you were Ifurita before you were prO, that would’ve been prO smurfing to say the least 
INF3RN0
(INF3RN0)
#189
[QUOTE=Humate;403106]I’m curious, you say players shouldn’t feel restricted to play a certain way. Is there a condition that it needs to be within the context of the match? Lets say theres a group of players that like to drive around an Armadillo and run Strogg over the entire game would that piss you off? Or what about a player that spends the entire game trying to stroybomb everyone? Maybe someone that plants HE charges in hallways? Blaster only kills? Knife stab only? Husky+3rdeye kills only? DMC’s on prone snipers in the hills? Defib kill only? Supply crate kills on AFKs? Mid air oblits? Mid air rails? Mid air sniper shots out of Anansis?
EDIT: what about stroybombing anansis?[/QUOTE]
Pretty much what DA said. There’s really no way to force people to play the way we think they should, but when actually winning comes with more reward then you get less distraction from the main goal. There’s nothing wrong with challenging yourself to play a certain way or trying something that’s unorthodox. As long as you win, then your rewarded. The disadvantage of constant losses is the best way to convince people to re-think their actions.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#190
Humate’s point still isn’t fully addressed though. Sure there’s no single ‘right’ way to play but that doesn’t mean that every way to play is valid. There are multiple valid ways, even more less valid way and a whole bunch of completely invalid ways to play. Players must feel they’re recognised and appreciated for this or they’ll end up finding their own ways for recognition (like trying to up their K/D or bodycount the best they can or just doing novelty tactics).
The argument that an xp-distribution only rewards a single right way to play and the argument that it promotes exploiting it don’t hold up together. If an xp-distribution system truly forces players to play in the way that developers intended then there should be no room for exploits.
Luckily an xp-distribution does not reward a single way to play, it rewards many tactics, and if handled intelligently it will also be flexible enough to recognise ways of playings that the developer never foresaw in the first place. The xp-distribution is the only feasible way to reward multiple directions of play. The only way to weigh individual actions is to attach a score to them. The only two alternatives are either not measuring anything at all and just scoring the win or starting to grab arbitrary qualities (battlesense, K/D, kills) and piling them together to give us some number. Not measuring means no distinction between team-member which means that every win or loss is as much due to the fanatical, skilled player as the player simply fooling around. Piling different qualities together is in fact restrictive because it means that you, as a player suddenly have to watch your bodycount and K/D ratio while all you wanted to do is be the hero medic that goes around reviving key-players in the team at the exact place and time.
There’s nothing wrong with a developper saying ‘look, these actions clearly contribute to a goal, and these actions do not. Therefore we reward these actions and we don’t reward the others’. The only objection against this is when players start to use actions that carry rewards for purposes that don’t contribute towards the end result the system. Yes, this happened in the past, W:ET and ETQW had a pretty well balanced system comparing different qualities but indeed had a couple of flukes (like the field ops spamming ammo at the spawn, the supply circlejerking and wasting time on disabled deployables) and Brink, although a more sophisticated system was inherently perverse because the game designers intended it that way.
Developing the system further does NOT mean it becomes more rigid and restrictive. If you look at my proposals then they’re all meant to provide more flexibility:
-
Hot zones and hot players mean that you can still do whatever you want, only that you’re being extra rewarded in moments where your skills are more likely to be relevant. The probability that spending your efforts outside of this context is more useful is very low indeed. If you truly think that decking out the spawning place with ammo crates is useful then you can still do that, but the dude spending his resources on keeping a team supplied when they actually need it will receive more and so his xp/min will be higher.
-
The biggest flaw with the all the old systems is that the outcome of the match was less important and didn’t count towards peoples xp(/min). The issue was that objectives were treated like any other handling in the game. This meant that the game actually communicating things like ‘destroying that generator is worth as much xp as reviving 5 players’ which is just inane. Making the objective reward a modifier bonus to everything you accomplished in order to get to that objective in the first place is far more rewarding and focuses on winning rather than trying to look good as a contributing team-member. It actually means that both teams can put equal efforts into winning the match (and thus have roughly equal xp) but at the end the victor will walk away with a considerably higher adjustment to their xp/min simply because they put more skill alongside their efforts.
Yes it rewards certain actions over others. That’s the point. In order to to recognise the best players in the team its tantamount to differentiate between useful and useless actions. Not by defining them beforehand, but modifying them afterwards based on the actual results they contributed towards.
Humate
(Humate)
#191
Ok good inferno 
So basically the condition is as long as its in alignment with winning the match.
As for trying to get players to care about win/loss for pub games, I think its a tough task.
Tie medals to wins, have those medals attached to forum accounts.
Maybe have a private club forum section, that you only get access to once you reach x amount of wins /cough
Maybe even tie early beta access through that forum for future games. /hint /hint sd
Grant access to detailed stats, instead of general stats after x amount of wins and x amount of objectives completed.
Not much can be done imo.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#192
You can’t just narrow someone’s value down on wins and losses either, the individual stake in a 24 or 16 player match is just too low and it will make the player feel like he has no control over his performance. That’s extremely frustrating, oh well, see LoL for that.
The in-match performance and the result need to be tied together. It means that losing isn’t the be all end all if you generated a high xp/min (it just means that there’s a penalty to it) and it also means that if you didn’t contribute a lot to the win, then your share of the victory bonus will be lower because there’s less to multiplier the modifier with.
That way victories and losses matter as much as his individual performance and it can still be expressed in one neat number.
Humate
(Humate)
#193
Based on infernos desire to have players play to win pub games, the in-game performance is not important.
At least thats what ive interpreted from his posts.
Humate
(Humate)
#195
You can’t just narrow someone’s value down on wins and losses either
Thats right, its not based on true individual value.
But its the same for XP which has already been discussed.
Btw I dont actually care whether players play to win or not.
The simple solution is to find a new server.
But overall I do care about players learning how to play, and XP has a place there.
Just not as a KPI.
haternet
(haternet)
#196
“A combination thereof,” and then some.
There are all kinds of important skills, but probably the most important ones are difficult to measure.
Teamwork, for example. You can track actions that benefit teammates, like revives and ammo, but I’m not sure that’s a very meaningful measure of teamwork in the deeper sense, which is difficult even to define (but I think most people know it when they experience it).
And what about movement? How does one measure the incredible movement skills seen in a game like Quake?
Timing. Not merely timing items in Quake. An uncanny feel for the flow of a game comes from an immeasurable familiarity with it.
Some stuff is easy to measure, and is clearly worth measuring. Like aim accuracy. Then again, it’s not as if nothing is lost when we do it. Status junkies who know that their accuracy will be judged will have a disincentive to lay down useful spam.
Other things, I’m not so sure are worth bothering with. Tracking individuals’ W:L ratio in a team game doesn’t seem useful to me, due to free-riders.
INF3RN0
(INF3RN0)
#197
As I mentioned before, win/loss xp and individual xp should be drawn into separate systems of purpose and functionality. A win is inarguable evidence of the success of the actions of a team as a whole, and ought to be treated as one. A lot of the time the responsibility of a win belongs to a few, but then that can be argued. As a player who tends to “carry” via kills, I can’t say I don’t accredit the medic who dropped the crate I hugged, the other players who put out damage into the group I finished off, the guy who resupplied me, etc, etc. In the end a win is a team effort, and it’s quite pointless to try and analyze every action and slap a value on everything. It’s the combination of actions that produce the results regardless of our opinions on the ratios of responsibility/significance, which is exactly why win/loss should be treated in such a simple manner.
There’s been plenty of occasions where it appears that one person is doing all the work or others aren’t doing enough, but it really only seems that the whole ‘reward issue’ has always been prioritized by the non-powerhouse types feeling undervalued or unrecognized. XP/medals/rewards are non-essential to the overall game play, so I really find it baffling that people make it out to be so important. The entire goal of individual rewards shouldn’t have to be there to make people feel important or convince their team that they did more than everyone else; nor should it attempt to punish players for not following a strict set of per-defined parameters. Internal competitions of worth among teammates is a totally stupid and distracting. Individual rewards should either become more temporary (campaign unlocks/end game awards) or offer something separate from the XP meta-game like I mentioned in some ideas earlier.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#198
[QUOTE=INF3RN0;403182]As I mentioned before, win/loss xp and individual xp should be drawn into separate systems of purpose and functionality. A win is inarguable evidence of the success of the actions of a team as a whole, and ought to be treated as one.[/QUOTE] This is the argument why it can’t be translated directly on to the individual. If we collected the statistics of a person then a simple win/loss ratio would be very meaningless.
A lot of the time the responsibility of a win belongs to a few, but then that can be argued.
Thats not my argument though. I’m saying that everyone in the team is responsible in varying degrees. Nobody ever has an equal share in the outcome, especially not in pub matches which are large and have all kinds of levels of play, beginners and veterans play on the same server and there will be a very large degree in variance. This doesn’t mean that players with a a low contribution shouldn’t be contributed at all, why draw an arbitrary line of ‘you did enough, and you didn’t’ when the xp system can do a really good job at assessing each player’s worth?
it’s quite pointless to try and analyze every action and slap a value on everything. It’s the combination of actions that produce the results regardless of our opinions on the ratios of responsibility/significance, which is exactly why win/loss should be treated in such a simple manner.
Which is why the victory modifier is so important here. Effort alone is not enough, the outcome counts as well and so your individual contribution is multiplied by the results of the team.
I’m going further write out the way the success of individual players can be tracked without losing sight of the team. There’s some nuances in it that I think you will like. I’ve been completely working it out in bed last night. Brb
tokamak
(tokamak)
#199
Okay so let’s paint the entire picture of how any potential SD game can track a player’s statistics in such a way that it’s both accurate, rewarding and encouraging to a player to give it all. I think that what I’m describing here is an indicator that isn’t just accurate but also illustrative, in the sense that it will speak to a player’s imagination. By building up a player’s score (which in the end will be a very nuanced version of the xp/min) based on an indicator that players constantly deal with in-game you get something that speaks to the imagination of everyone. It’s something tangible that you can work on improving.
Working it out also brought up a couple of dilemmas and I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on that as well.
So to start:
A player will have two ratings that the game will keep track of. One rating will be paraded around on a leaderboard and one rating will be hidden.
-
There’s the xp/min. This rating will be the player’s ranking. IE, the dude with the highest xp/min will be #1 and descending from there. That’s something we already discussed. This is the very visible and very lauded score. This is what the game openly appreciates as the defining indicator that everyone should strive for.
-
Then there’s the player’s individual ELO rating. This score is hidden but still quite relevant. The ELO rating works just like in Chess and in WoW and Starcraft. It works very much like this. The reason it’s hidden is because it’s not directly relevant. Unlike games like Chess, WoW or SC, the matches in an FPS are large and the individual contribution is low. Unlike 1v1 games, players in 8v8 or 12v12 games have very little control over their overall win loss ratio. The rating is therefore highly inadequate to asses a player’s worth.
The reason the ELO rating is being tracked regardless is to help determine the outcome modifier to the xp/min at the end of the match. The individual rating remains hidden but at the end of the match the adjustment to the average team ELO is shown. If the player was part of a team with a much lower average rating than the opponent then it will be a huge rating adjustment.
This rating adjustment then translates to the modifier to the player’s xp/min during that match. So say the average rating of your team is slightly lower than that of the opponent then you will something like a 13% xp bonus (and they will have a 13% xp penalty).
Now the rating adjustment doesn’t need to directly translate to a percentage 1 on 1. That’s the beauty of this idea (INFERN0 will like this). The modifier can be different depending on the level of play! The higher the average rating of both teams, the bigger the xp-modifier! As INFERN0 already rightly argued, during high level of play the individual difference mean less and the outcome means more. So rather than a 13%, the modifier between two very highly rated teams can be 30% or even more (its up to the developer to decide the way this increases). This means that the higher a player climbs, the more important it gets to win his games.
Between a team of expert players, say a scrim or even a clan tournament, the weight of the outcome modifier will be far larger than between a team of beginners, where the individual contribution matters more. The point is, both matches will still use the same xp/min to asses the worth. For an expert player to make any meaningful progress in his xp/min, he’ll need to keep winning against very highly rated teams.
That’s another huge perk about this system: It encourages players of high ratings to meet up and fight organised matches. This system is so sophisticated that it can include every level of play. Pub play or competitive play. Players that want to have huge boosts to their xp/min will need to find teams of other highly rated players and try to nail that huge xp/modifier to their already high xp/min during the match. The flipside is that losing will mean severe punches to their xp/min which will cause a really high dynamic at the top of the ladder. If ELO didn’t matter to the xp/min then a dude like Dommaffia would just sit comfortably at his number 1 position. But now ELO does matter he will have to keep winning against his equals to maintain his position.
That brings me to an obstacle I’d love to hear everyone’s view on this: I haven’t really worked out the factor of time played. Here’s the issue: The longer a player plays, the more stable his xp/min will become. At the start his xp/min will jump around, but every match he players will modify is average less because there’s already a large pool to offset any change. This means that there needs to be a decay in the xp/min scored in the past. This is tricky and the rate at which the weight of your past xp/min contributions decay is highly subjective.
The decay can be gradual (each weak it will count less towards your recent xp/min) or the game can use seasons like Starcraft and WoW do. Every two months the score (not the player’s ELO as it doesn’t have the inflation problem) can reset and players can have another go at reaching the top. Tantamount for this however is that there need to be an initial amount of matches before the xp/min starts to matter. A player needs to play 10 games or so in order to even be placed on the ladder.
Now as I said before, there are a couple of options that are pretty subjective. In my description I used the team’s average rating against the opponents average rating to derive the modifier. But you can also use the player’s personal rating against the opponents average rating to derive the modifier. This means that each person will end up with his own outcome modifer rather than sharing the entire modifier with the team.
I don’t know how I feel about this. Maybe it doesn’t really matter but I lean towards team average vs team average as I think the outcome should be shared. But holding the individual rating against the opponent’s teams average will make the player more in charge of his own score. It means that players with low ratings will be punished less for playing against a highly rated team and that highly rated players won’t gain as much when playing against beginners. This problem is giving me a bit of a headache. Intuitively I think team vs team is fairer.
Oh and here’s a fun idea for the statistics page, may also be a novelty that attracts more player to the statistics page and keep track of it. Its similar to what ETQW did. But rather than feature a player with an overall highest score in a particular class (or damage / kills done) it should be more detailed and only relevant for that particular day (otherwise it ends up cycling around the same players)
The statistics page should have a ‘remarkable story of the day’. Because every action is still detected by the system it can also detect whenever a high deviation from the norm is reached that day. If a player broke a new record in amount of revives in one match, or simply ventured really far beyond the average amount of damage taken, then one of these anomalies in the statistics will be paraded around on the front-page of the statistics.
It will read like:
FEAT OF THE DAY:
Johndoe1 managed to score 40 headshots during one match
or
Johndoe2 managed to construct the bridge 2 and 37 seconds into the match.
or
Johndoe3 made 17 revives in one life.
It’s a novelty but the idea that one day they might be featured on this feat of the day page will keep them coming back to the statistics page. Even if they didn’t play that day then just reading a feat of the day story is enough to keep checking it.
Breo
(Breo)
#200
Measuring skill need to be something like battlesense from ETQW.
A FPS is about frags, ofcourse you won’t win a game without doing objects but everyone can do it, mostly it’s holding a button or something and doesn’t require skill.
To make the Battlesense more accurate it need some work. For example adding a multiplier according to the current battlesense of the fragged enemy. If it’s higher then yours it will increase your XP and decrease the battlesense of the fragged opponent. Or you won’t receive much XP if the opponent has a low battlesense.