Community retirement of RANKED

Apples · 2011-10-13 14:57:18 UTC

IMO going unranked AND custom content is something I would put on the same basket… If it’s just for the sake of playing stopwatch I dont really see the point… But well, as you all said it’s not about content etc, unranked wont work as long as there are still ranked servers, so either all admins give up ranked status, or it wont happen I think.

The best Actifial could do to the community right now would be the just stop allowing “ranked” alltogether… They already destroyed stats so why the hell did they still allow gsp to label their servers “ranked” anyway? Quick question, are you guys still paying more for a ranked server on QW or is it the same prize as an unranked one??? If you still pay more, I suggest you to yell at your gsp…

Peace

Chris2 · 2011-10-13 15:11:58 UTC

[QUOTE=Apples;381682]IMO going unranked AND custom content is something I would put on the same basket… If it’s just for the sake of playing stopwatch I dont really see the point… But well, as you all said it’s not about content etc, unranked wont work as long as there are still ranked servers, so either all admins give up ranked status, or it wont happen I think.

The best Actifial could do to the community right now would be the just stop allowing “ranked” alltogether… They already destroyed stats so why the hell did they still allow gsp to label their servers “ranked” anyway? Quick question, are you guys still paying more for a ranked server on QW or is it the same prize as an unranked one??? If you still pay more, I suggest you to yell at your gsp…

Peace[/QUOTE]

Have you even read the rest of the thread?

Apples · 2011-10-14 01:15:00 UTC

Stop teasing me And no I didnt read all the stuffs, just pointing the obvious, lets all go unranked yay!

Brainless · 2011-10-14 15:40:08 UTC

Ranked or unranked = endless discussion.

Breo · 2011-10-15 09:43:58 UTC

Imo it has no sense to have a ranked etqw server today without official stats and ac support.

But I’m afraid this won’t work unless the GSP’s doesn’t offer ranked ones anymore.
When we look at the server stats only the ranked ones are active with players. If a couple server admins stay ranked they will get all the players. I already know 1 eu server that won’t go unranked.

I’m also sure when every admin goes unranked it will cut down the community to half. It’s like what happend when the official forum/stats were taken offline.

DrFunkenstein · 2011-10-16 16:49:35 UTC

Here’s a break down of all the new players we managed to attract to our server since we started it.
.

[B]Year + month[/B] 		[B]New players[/B]	[B]Average per day[/B]
2009/12			1191			92
2010/01			1511			49
2010/02			930			33
2010/03			1051			34
2010/04			1109			37
2010/05			1164			38
2010/06			1034			34
2010/07			1005			32
2010/08			909			29
2010/09			835			28
2010/10			846			27
2010/11			677			23
2010/12			678			22
2011/01			611			20
2011/02			471			17
2011/03			574			19
2011/04			502			17
2011/05			529			17
2011/06			471			16
2011/07			427			14
2011/08			487			16
2011/09			387			13
2011/10			182			13

I’ve mentioned this in earlier posts, but I guess it’s worth repeating it here: smurfs are excluded, these numbers are based on pbguids/cd-keys, not on nicks!

I suppose we were catching up with the existing player base in the first 2 or 3 months, but as you can see there’s been a steady influx of new players every single month since we started the server. There’s a steady decline in the number of new players as well but I would like everyone to consider the fact that they are new and that the number you see in the right hand column is the number of new players per day.

I have no clear answer to the question if we should go unranked or not. To me it seems like a choice between two bad options. I would love to go unranked because of the freedom it would give us, but I’m really concerned about the number of new players were gonna attract.

No new players equals death in my humble opinion and I think this aspect is underestimated in the discussion so far.

Dr. Funkenstein

sereNADE · 2011-10-17 13:28:34 UTC

I believe ads has said he would pay SD for 1.6 patch.

changelog:

removed “ranked” filter
removed blue ribbon icon from server browser

BioSnark · 2011-10-17 13:31:32 UTC

Sounds like an expensive, lengthy proposition!

MoonOnAStick · 2011-10-17 18:40:02 UTC

[QUOTE=DrFunkenstein;382133]Here’s a break down of all the new players we managed to attract to our server since we started it.
…
[/QUOTE]Do you have data for the total number of unique cd-keys each month, to put those figures into context?

Those recent counts seem rather high, considering the number of players you see in the server browser. I wonder how many of them are genuinely new players and how many are returning players (don’t suppose it matters too much for the purposes of this discussion.)

Anyway, interesting figures, looks like a pretty strong trend.

Too much time on hands
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

DrFunkenstein · 2011-10-17 18:56:37 UTC

[QUOTE=MoonOnAStick;382238]Do you have data for the total number of unique cd-keys each month, to put those figures into context?

Those recent counts seem rather high, considering the number of players you see in the server browser. I wonder how many of them are genuinely new players and how many are returning players (don’t suppose it matters too much for the purposes of this discussion.)

Anyway, interesting figures, looks like a pretty strong trend.[/QUOTE]

As I said in my post, these numbers are based on pbguids, which means that smurfs are filtered out in these numbers. PBguids equal cd-keys.

Dr. Funkenstein

MoonOnAStick · 2011-10-17 18:59:43 UTC

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant people who had played previously but not since Dec 09.

DrFunkenstein · 2011-10-17 19:14:17 UTC

We enabled alias tracking on our server on December 19th in 2009, the server itself was started a couple of days before that and this is the best I can give you.

I can’t give you any information about what happened before we started the tracking on our server but this is the result of what we recorded and it’s a record of every player that joined the server almost from the day we started it.

I’m not sure I understand your question.

Dr. Funkenstein

Apocalypse_Pony · 2011-10-23 05:24:56 UTC

@sereNADE

I see you freed the Cherry Blossom server. I’m curious, has BH tried to populate it yet? The first time I went on, there was one other person AFK. While I was sitting there, I was watching 3 BH members on the Crypt server. Tried again tonight and saw a couple BH on your second, still ranked server.

Anyway, when I have time, I’ll be stopping in there first, to see if we can get anything going. Had some nibbles, but no full game yet.

sereNADE · 2011-10-23 06:48:56 UTC

We had 2 good nights with it unranked with full or near full games. I liked it because we could skip maps or change to stopwatch on the fly to equalize the newbs. Our new ranked server was an unplanned surprise thanks to a generous member of our ranks but I don’t think it will be a server under our clan banner for more than a month or two. I really want to get things going unranked but with the rumors of 2 more ranked servers getting started in NA it might still be a bad time. The best thing that could happen is if ranked gets shut down by acti, forcing the change. We already have custom stat tracking server side which could be incorporated into a community wide program.