Skill indexing - force players to participate in the tutorial, adding an additional part whereby players would fight a match against a bot as default Skyhammer. Statistics such as accuracy, average DPS, damage taken, ect. would be analysed to form a “Skill Index Number”. That number is a rough indicator of that player’s skill.
Tutorial can be replayed to update Skill Index Number.
Give players the option to choose between showing their level or their Skill Index Number.
Account levels, as they are now, is easily the worst UI feature in this whole game. There is so much negativity around them and so little positive gained. I’ve listed out the pros and cons in previous forum threads so I won’t re-tread them here.
Getting rid of them and adding back merc levels would make the most sense. Gives people a sense of leveling up, you can still judge experience at a glance and the levels stop at a point and SD could even give rewards (they used to give you taunts for maxing merc levels). Maxing Fletcher at level 10 will show that you have a lot of experience with him but it won’t look like a freaking MMO where people these days have it burned into their brains that a level 66 will beat a level 54 easy and there is no way a level 22 could be better!? And people won’t immediately blame a game being imbalanced on a team who has a supposed higher number instead of the fact that they have no engineers, no medics who revive, no fire support who give ammo and 3 snipers.
Get rid of account level and bring back finite merc levels and add rewards. Give the grinders something to grind for SD and remove the negativity while not losing what some people like about the current level system (judging experience at a glance).
I wrote about merc levels a while back here, http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/45897-Feedback-Remove-public-account-level-and-add-Merc-level-(back)
SD mentioned they knew there was an issue back then and they were going to look into alternatives but then nothing came of it and apparently it’s just been shelved.
Level should be shown until matchmaking and team balancing/shuffle issues are fixed. After that you can do whatever you want. For right now if I join a server and see 6 level 20+ players against me and 5 people who are < 10, I know not to waste my time. I don’t mind losing a good tough match but I’m not a big fan of getting completely rolled in a horribly team stacked match when I could be playing in a decent DB game on another server or one of the other hundred games in my steam library.
edit: I know people will say I am full of it or part of the problem and it can be done etc… if you have a picture of a massively uneven match level wise where your team won, please post it. Then for every 1 you post, I’m sure people can post 9 going the other way. My point isn’t that underdog wins are impossible; they’re improbable.
Also, if the system is trying to figure our skill to make lobby teams in pubs, it must have a hidden player rating somewhere it’s using. Put that up instead of skill. I think it’s more relevant but the risk is it would just reveal how bad matchmaking actual is.
[quote=“torsoreaper;138755”]Level should be shown until matchmaking and team balancing/shuffle issues are fixed. After that you can do whatever you want. For right now if I join a server and see 6 level 20+ players against me and 5 people who are < 10, I know not to waste my time. I don’t mind losing a good tough match but I’m not a big fan of getting completely rolled in a horribly team stacked match when I could be playing in a decent DB game on another server or one of the other hundred games in my steam library.
edit: I know people will say I am full of it or part of the problem and it can be done etc… if you have a picture of a massively uneven match level wise where your team won, please post it. Then for every 1 you post, I’m sure people can post 9 going the other way. My point isn’t that underdog wins are impossible; they’re improbable.
Also, if the system is trying to figure our skill to make lobby teams in pubs, it must have a hidden player rating somewhere it’s using. Put that up instead of skill. I think it’s more relevant but the risk is it would just reveal how bad matchmaking actual is.[/quote]
It is using a hidden player rating. It takes your last 25 pub matches and sorts teams based on the number rating it assigns players. It’s trying to factor in skill of each player and not a generic number next to their name. I don’t agree that the ratings should be shown because the same negativity you see with player levels will be shifted over to that. If some see that the other team has a crazy high rated player it will cause some people to get salty, make remarks and leave. Same problem with a different number.
The system currently sorts by skill rating but it can’t factor in people joining and leaving easily and it can’t factor in any number of other issues like what mercs people can/will use. If it could that would be awesome and a great way to sort things. But these are public servers and they will never be balanced all the time. You can’t even balance 5v5 tournament matches with even skilled players. There are blowouts on maps in those games all the time. So how do you explain that?
[quote=“Amerika;138814”]
It is using a hidden player rating. It takes your last 25 pub matches and sorts teams based on the number rating it assigns players. It’s trying to factor in skill of each player and not a generic number next to their name. I don’t agree that the ratings should be shown because the same negativity you see with player levels will be shifted over to that. If some see that the other team has a crazy high rated player it will cause some people to get salty, make remarks and leave. Same problem with a different number.
The system currently sorts by skill rating but it can’t factor in people joining and leaving easily and it can’t factor in any number of other issues like what mercs people can/will use. If it could that would be awesome and a great way to sort things. But these are public servers and they will never be balanced all the time. You can’t even balance 5v5 tournament matches with even skilled players. There are blowouts on maps in those games all the time. So how do you explain that?[/quote]
If teams are balanced coming out of the lobby, less people are going to rage quit. If teams are massively uneven coming out of the lobby, people will rage quit whether ratings are shown or not because it’s obvious when you’re getting stomped. When a team is getting spawn camped they aren’t going to think “golly, there’s no ratings being shown on the scoreboard so this must be an even match”. Hiding ratings is just a bandaid to the real problem of matchmaking.
[quote=“torsoreaper;138941”][quote=“Amerika;138814”]
It is using a hidden player rating. It takes your last 25 pub matches and sorts teams based on the number rating it assigns players. It’s trying to factor in skill of each player and not a generic number next to their name. I don’t agree that the ratings should be shown because the same negativity you see with player levels will be shifted over to that. If some see that the other team has a crazy high rated player it will cause some people to get salty, make remarks and leave. Same problem with a different number.
The system currently sorts by skill rating but it can’t factor in people joining and leaving easily and it can’t factor in any number of other issues like what mercs people can/will use. If it could that would be awesome and a great way to sort things. But these are public servers and they will never be balanced all the time. You can’t even balance 5v5 tournament matches with even skilled players. There are blowouts on maps in those games all the time. So how do you explain that?[/quote]
If teams are balanced coming out of the lobby, less people are going to rage quit. If teams are massively uneven coming out of the lobby, people will rage quit whether ratings are shown or not because it’s obvious when you’re getting stomped. When a team is getting spawn camped they aren’t going to think “golly, there’s no ratings being shown on the scoreboard so this must be an even match”. Hiding ratings is just a bandaid to the real problem of matchmaking. [/quote]
[quote=“torsoreaper;138941”][quote=“Amerika;138814”]
It is using a hidden player rating. It takes your last 25 pub matches and sorts teams based on the number rating it assigns players. It’s trying to factor in skill of each player and not a generic number next to their name. I don’t agree that the ratings should be shown because the same negativity you see with player levels will be shifted over to that. If some see that the other team has a crazy high rated player it will cause some people to get salty, make remarks and leave. Same problem with a different number.
The system currently sorts by skill rating but it can’t factor in people joining and leaving easily and it can’t factor in any number of other issues like what mercs people can/will use. If it could that would be awesome and a great way to sort things. But these are public servers and they will never be balanced all the time. You can’t even balance 5v5 tournament matches with even skilled players. There are blowouts on maps in those games all the time. So how do you explain that?[/quote]
If teams are balanced coming out of the lobby, less people are going to rage quit. If teams are massively uneven coming out of the lobby, people will rage quit whether ratings are shown or not because it’s obvious when you’re getting stomped. When a team is getting spawn camped they aren’t going to think “golly, there’s no ratings being shown on the scoreboard so this must be an even match”. Hiding ratings is just a bandaid to the real problem of matchmaking. [/quote]
It’s as if you completely ignored everything I wrote.
[quote=“Amerika;138944”]
It’s as if you completely ignored everything I wrote.[/quote]
I think I could say the same thing 
No, I don’t think you can. I’m not using a random number I made up and forgetting convenient issues with my own argument to try and make my point. I’ve stated how the current system works, the current flaws with that system, the issues that are out of that system’s control to predict and also that sometimes even evenly matched maps end up in stomps.
You keep talking about one single piece that goes into what would produce a proper skill rating and you want to use it as the whole system. All while completely ignoring all of the issues associated with that.
Your argument is “hide levels, this will solve things because people won’t know when the match is uneven” and my argument back is “when people get spawn camped they will know the match is uneven”. Please feel free to refute.
His argument is that levels do not determine if a match is uneven, not that it would prevent people from knowing if it is uneven or not. One of my major points is that people can get discouraged from seeing somebody’s level when they may not be that good at all, or with some effort they could beat them. They choose not to put in that effort because they believe they could never surmount the enemy skill which in this case wouldn’t be skill, but level.
I’m lvl 39 I have good games & I have bad games it happens, you can’t win them all.
Feels like at times I get a lot of abuse for having a higher level though, whether its comments in chat or stuff being said over voip or players that will just try & focus their whole game & just trying to kill me (Must kill higher level player to increase teh epeen)
If I have a good game I get called things like “a no lifer” " basement dweller" “get out your mums basement” all the typical good stuff.
If I play bad cos well sometimes I want to muck around with other mercs & have a break from my mains to stop things getting stale, I will get ridiculed for not playing well.
It does feel like having a target on you at times.
Other times I join a lobby & I see players instantly drop out.
I’ve played games all my life been high ranked/leveled in other games so it’s not something new.
I’m a level 39(age) in the real world so it’s safe to say I’m a big kid & I can handle the BS.
My real concern is that it creates a level of toxicity within the games community & having levels on display don’t seem to bring anything good or positive into the game.
Personally if they were never removed I wouldn’t be fussed but if they did get removed I think it would be better for the game in the long run, less low ranks feeling intimidated by higher ranks, less higher ranks bitching at lower ranks, less targeting of individuals in chat/voip & hopefully players just being more focused on playing the game & having a blast.
Yes, it makes it easier to spot haxorz, and if someone cant deal with if and think a few digits will ruin their game then, though shit, deal with it. Numbers dont mean a thing, clantags do! 
How so?
Anyone that is decent at the game can go make an alt account (Smurf) & start wrecking, just because a low bob is able to play well doesn’t mean they are hacking.
There are better ways to tell if someone is not legit & little numbers next to name are not it.
How so?
Anyone that is decent at the game can go make an alt account (Smurf) & start wrecking, just because a low bob is able to play well doesn’t mean they are hacking.
There are better ways to tell if someone is not legit & little numbers next to name are not it.
[/quote]
There is a giant difference between smurfs/really good people and hackers.
Idk got hachusated last night, and almost kicked out but I had buddies to vote no. I have a low level Account and I guess that on that one I can appear as a hacker because of the level
Again, it’s as if you didn’t read anything that was said. Lobbies aren’t balanced based off of your current level. They use a private skill ELO that is assigned to players that uses your last 25 matches. You could be level 10 and destroying people and have an ELO that matches it and a level 30 could be going middling to bottom every game.
Combine that with the mentality tons of players seem to have today where if they are losing it means the game is imbalanced and we have issues. Even games like Rocket League let you cover up your account level due to this exact issue.
Level is definitely not a good criteria for judging one’s skills,
BUT it is considerable, as it shows your experience of the game. Also, if you are good enough, you level up faster due to high XP/min.(Let’s not include medics, ok? also, good medics earn more XP than bad medics.)
One thing I can suggest about, is to show XP/min or kills/min at public situation. DB does need another good criteria for defining how good the player is.
I played 550 hours(NOT Steam calculation, but in-game playtime) and level 62, and there is the other guy who played almost 200 hours longer than me, and still level 48.
Levels do show a bit part about how good you are, and eventhough you aren’t good as your level, your experience from long playtime does give you more advantage than good skilled level 10s.
I do see pro low levels sometimes, but still it is pain in the ass most of the time when you play with bunch of low levels. At least low skill players who knows how to do their role as medic or fire support than under level 10s without basic knowledge.