Community Question: Measuring Player Skill

(DarkangelUK) #101

We’re back to ‘did you actually play these games?’. I guess it seems that SD simply didn’t learn anything over the years, the medic has always topped the XP table in all games. Search out any flame post about rambo medics and it’s quite clear to see that the class, the XP it can gain through menial tasks and players desire to simply to get to the top show clearly that the XP system wasn’t working as it’s the class that was always on top regardless of who was playing it… that removes the valuable player from the mix completely.

I’ve played ET, ETQW and Brink extensively, I can guarantee I’ve played each class to it’s fullest and for the team. I can also guarantee that I’m always near the top of the board when I’m a medic but lower down the food chain per class… usually the covy/operative near the bottom. When one class is almost always at the top and one class almost always at the bottom regardless of the player, then that’s a broken system if you’re purely using XP numbers as a metric.

How many years have SD been using XP for the scoreboard and still haven’t gotten it right? You’re throwing guess work and theory in here and ignoring real world examples. If you’re saying it’s down to SD simply not tweaking it properly after all these years, what makes you think it will magically start working now?

(tokamak) #102

The algorithms used to derive the way the xp is distributed and the parameters used within those algorithms need to be discussed separately. There’s the way in which you measure something and there’s the amount you reward for it. The former is something you can mostly set up in advance and simply requires a lot of theory. The latter however, the amount in which each action is rewarded, that is rather easy to tweak on the go and needs to be adjusted based on playtesting and in the long run, on player statistics.

Your issue seems to be mostly with the way the rewards are balanced. And I agree. Brink had an accurate reward system but the rewards themselves were skewed. The logic was that combat would happen automatically but players would need the carrot of disproportionate amount of xp for buffs. Because the medic possesses the most pips as well as the most opportunities to buff people, the medic was getting an unfair amount of xp.

If we want xp/min to be a more accurate indicator of skill then such incentives need to go. Players need to be rewarded for prioritising their actions the right way rather than frivolously applying class-skills simply because they reward the most points.

The system was a step up compared to ETQW, but the weights within that system were completely skewed indeed.

(Humate) #103

If the system gets the balance right between awards for kills along with everything else, then it should be the best measurement of value-to-the-team (aka skill) that is available.

In ETQW the higher the skill of the server, the more the completion of the objective is a reflection of combat dominance / area control. The lower the skill of the server, the more the responsibility of the win is placed on the objective player - as players dont have the capacity to control areas.
But please dont take my word for it though. Check it out :slight_smile:

(ailmanki) #104

Murphy is gona knock your nice plans of XP down. IMHO if the game is not created from scratch for an XP system - it will not work - or you got a genius at work.
Lastly, its called skills, and not skill. Humans have different skills; if you try to measure them all with one unit, you will only get an average of all skills.

edit: for example k/d ratio is a mix of different skills already.

(tokamak) #105

Yeah well they still didn’t hire me yet.

(Humate) #106

Ahh it all makes sense now.

(tokamak) #107

[QUOTE=Humate;402966]In ETQW the higher the skill of the server, the more the completion of the objective is a reflection of combat dominance / area control. The lower the skill of the server, the more the responsibility of the win is placed on the objective player - as players dont have the capacity to control areas.
But please dont take my word for it though. Check it out :)[/QUOTE]

Context-sensitive distribution would account for that by measuring all the support that preceded the completion of the mission. On a pub there would be less support and so there wouldn’t be much to measure, the guy who completes it nets all the xp. But the moment the support is there, all the players who take part in it will see their contribution expressed in a reward.

(ailmanki) #108

How do you measure the communication skill of the peoples using Teamspeak or something alike?

  • the skill of evading enemies to deliver a flag/obj?
  • the drop in skills coming from a poor PC and the resulting fps?

Interesting for me was the actions per minute in Starcraft 2. Interesting way to measure various skills …
Lastly its way different if you compare a public server, a clan server or lastly professional gamers.

(SockDog) #109

Voted: Other.

Said it many times before but the best rating I could achieve is recognition by my fellow players for playing well. You’re just digging a deeper and deeper hole down to wonderland by making the scoring system more and more complicated. Ultimately the fancy maths will be broken and the system undermined and devalued (or worse you screw with the whole game to keep a scoreboard valid).

That said, you could by all means give people a scoreboard for various things but perhaps allow their team mates add a multiplier. If you have 100 kills but they weren’t focused on supporting the team and your team know it, expect a juicey 0 multiplier. If you seem to be everywhere you need to be but aren’t contributing enough in a single aspect to rank highly, perhaps a x5 multiplier will help.

This along with MVP WVP would be good fun and bring more of a personal aspect back into play rather than this clinical cow clicker to get to the top crap.

(tokamak) #110

[QUOTE=ailmanki;402983]How do you measure the communication skill of the peoples using Teamspeak or something alike?

  • the skill of evading enemies to deliver a flag/obj?
  • the drop in skills coming from a poor PC and the resulting fps?
    [/QUOTE]

Those three would all be expressed in a better xp/min.

(Indloon) #111

Score per minute can’t be taken into skill definition.

And at all,it is the last thing what can be meant under skill.

It is same as thinking that gold is a vegetable.

You see,back to old days in Wolf:ET, I used to play as Field Ops, so I could farm XP of that by dropping ammo packs at our spawn.

The result was good, I got about 500XP - 700XP per map by just XP farming.

And I repeated and repeated it .

Soon I found myself in top 50 rating list on SplatterLadder website,

because SplatterLadder used and still uses XP for calculating the rating.

It is easily breakable.

(tokamak) #112

What I find interesting here is that the exploit of ammo-crating the spawn-point doesn’t really bother you unless it’s being used as a skill-indicator.

(DarkangelUK) #113

It seems to me that it’s the skill indicator that prompted it to be abused… just as he said.

(tokamak) #114

It also gives in-game rewards like the coveted double airstrike and artillery.

(SockDog) #115

Easily solved. Get rid of XP too

(DarkangelUK) #116

You jest, but I honestly wish they would!

(Slade05) #117

Pffft. The one and only measure of player skill is his result in a 10-minute duel on Q3DM17.
Everything else is ****!

(Humate) #118

Its the same as spamming nades on deployables to earn reduced weapon spread quicker.
Something I used to do, back in the 380xp/h days. After xp whoring got boring I moved to hyper, and got 65-70 kills a map with that. Then the penny drops – this xp stuff is actually pretty insignificant. :slight_smile:

(SockDog) #119

I’m not joking, I just know it’s going to troll the dice rollers out there and that SD seems quite comfortable expending huge amounts of energy trying to make XP and Scoreboards work rather than look to something different to distinguish themselves. I’d actually love them to take on board some of the stuff DayZ is exploring, a game that has no scoreboard or levelling by the numbers but seems to offer a very realistic model of progression and knowledge through the actual player’s input.

(tokamak) #120

Yeah and while they’re at it include a collectible trading card system, full kinect support and an in-game auctionhouse because all of those things have as much to do with SD games as DayZ.

What you’re doing here is dragging in stuff that’s so far out, just complete brainfarts for the lack of an actual solution. This is akin to Gingritch plan of colonising the moon in order to boost his election campaign. It doesn’t solve anything, it’s just a nice distraction that can’t seriously be discussed.