Update:
If you dont want to read the whole post you can read the following summary, beeing quoted:
There is a problem with most of the tracking sites basing their stats on xp. An example site is splatterladder. All it does is track the xp beeing provided by a server and calculates its rankings from that. The actual problem starts when you realize that there is also support xp influencing this. For example you can stand at spawn the whole map and throw ammo packs at your teammates and still gain a higher rate then someone who has done his xp with kills. But not only these hard examples are corrupting this, its the system itself. Almost everytime you revive someone it increments your xp. So this resulted also in some players not even caring for a revive, because they wanted to show their specs or fans that they are gaining their xp, respectively their rate, by only fragging, and not through support xp.
So overall summarized: when a trackingsite is basing their stats and calculations on xp, there will be also support-xp calculated and therefore influence the offered system in a “bad manner”. The system becomes instable and not relieable.
However a possible solution for these kinds of trackingsites is of course using another technology, but as this is not going to happen, but the influence of these kinds of trackingsites is still very high on the community, you have to work towards them from inside a mod. This works by filtering out all the support skills and implement a random system which only forwards xp beeing made by kills or battlesense. Actually there is a large varieaty in this. On top of that the actual skilllevels will remain untouched, so you can still go from, for example, skilllevel 1 in first aid, to skilllevel 2 first aid, and enjoy all the upgrades beeing related to it.
However this would rely on modifications of the servercode, so it would need to be implemented in a mod. I’ve done that already and saw that it would work, though i must test this in realtime.
If you want to implement this in your mod you can spare youself some time by just contacting me and request the necessary places in the code which imo have to be changed. But as i said it needs to be tested, so its still alpha.
Now actual post starting
As you might know the sl rating system is basing their stats and rankings on XP. The big problem with this, and what can be seen all around the servers in ET, mostly at big servers, are players corrupting this. They simply stand in spawn and gain XP by throwing ammo, medpacks. This is what i want to prevent and why i opened this thread. Maybe we can discuss even better solutions:
one of these possible solutions could be supplying a mod which filters first-aid and signals skill when it comes to summarizing them to forward them to the server.
That means if i have:
SK_BATTLE_SENSE
SK_FIRST_AID
SK_SIGNALS
SK_LIGHT_WEAPONS,
SK_HEAVY_WEAPONS
all set to 1, the server would display a total amount of 5 XP for you, without the mod, and with the first aid and signals filtered, only 3 XP (while you still have first aid skill or signals skill. The skill itself mainly remain untouched, so no fear that one cant upgrade his skill levels anymore).
What you think, good, bad, dont know ? do you play for rating ? I can tell you those fakers can get annoying. Sl can also do nothing against them, as the server is only forwarding the XP as they say.
Contact me if you want to know what to change in the code. I would also be happy to see the ‘big mods’ taking that idea in consideration.
Unfortunately THE mod i want to see this in just closed down its windows. It is jaymod and when this mod doesnt have this system, then one could probably forget this idea. Because the fake players would still play at jaymod (old version) and therefore corrupt the system.
(those are enum values btw. means SK_BATTLE_SENSE = 0, SK_FIRST_AID = 1 etc… I meant it the way it is ingame. Hm…how should i explain best. Lets say i hit TAB., then you can see the players listed. Then i can also see the XP value, and this is where splatterladder should extract their XP. So the way these XP get calculated is as a sum of all the different skills you have, lets say if i start up with 0 XP at all and i go to my teammate and give him an ammo pack, then i will get 1 XP, which will come to my signals skill. Then if i go and kill an enemy with my thompson i get Light Weapons +3XP. So without mod i would have a total amount of 4 XP, because the XP gets calculated as