Persistent online ranking in ET:QW

(Salteh) #21

awesome :smiley: :slight_smile:
Now all we need is a :tapir: emoticon !

(ayatollah) #22

(eRRoLfLyNN) #23

Awwww :nag:

(Gringo) #24

Awwww :nag:[/quote]

Awww nothin, looks like dinner to me :chef:

(B0rsuk) #25

It is important to undestand that in the end, you don’t wan’t clans.You want higher level of teamplay.
Clans are means to the goal, not the goal itself. Both IRC and arrogance existed long before fps clans.*

As soon as someone finds a way to make casual players teamplay well enough, we can happily say clans goodbye. Main reason behind clans is ability to coordinate actions better. As (team) skill of pub players increases, clans lose in importance.
Splash Damage already made some steps towards pub players, rather than clan players. Wolf:ET maps are generally bigger than, say, Q3F ones. Bigger clans are harder to manage; clans tend to proclaim 6x6 etc games as the most leet thing ever. Some of W:ET maps are small enough so it works reasonably well, and some discourage small teams. I perceive ET:QW as another step towards pubs rather clans - 24-32 players as optimal numbers is (I feel) a bit more than typical W:ET map. Additionaly SD put additional effort into optimising XP system - clearly pub-centered effort. Of course, there will no doubt be some smaller maps potentially fun for clans, but they’re clearly not the top priority. No, clans won’t just disappear, but it is my hope that they won’t be needed for fun and objective-centered play.

  • I hope it was cynical enough.
(amazinglarry) #26

I have to disagree and only because I don’t see competitions (mainly where prizes are awarded to the winners) with completely random pub games. I can’t really picture people being comfortable with a 12v12 tourney in which the teams are selected at random. Clans will always be around and the main reason they ARE around are for tournaments and competitions, as they can practice together, get some chemistry going and be able to play off one another and ultimately become a pretty formidable force. You’re right to the degree that we may see less pub clans, where people join a clan JUST to say they’re in one, but as far as competition goes (which is healthy for any multiplayer game) clans will be around for the foreseeable future.

(B0rsuk) #27

I think that many clans will just move to greener pastures - other games, like CS, where you can merrily compete without being accused of going for some silly objective.

As for me, I’ll do my best to cook a mod which removes all traces of K/D ratios and similar stuff, and adds some XP gain tweaks of my concept. I’m an IT student, so I may as well try something useful instead of pointless C / client/server / IPC stuff.

(Wils) #28

I have to respectfully disagree completely with much of the above :slight_smile:

Organised competition should always be more satisfying than unorganised play, however well-tailored the game is for the latter. The reason for this is that even if the game is IDENTICAL whether you’re playing it with a clan or a bunch of random people, you’re always going to derive more satisfaction from any game when you play it with friends than you are with strangers (or people you barely know at best). I don’t think it even has to be a team game - I know I enjoy deathmatch against co-workers infinitely more than I do shooting the crap out of a random bunch of pub players on the internet.

There are two points which I think are worth bearing in mind. The first is that, when you’re really into a game and playing it every free minute you get, pub play occupies the majority of that time, with organised pickup (pug/gather/etc) games second and clan games last. On the other hand, it’s likely that most of your best and most fun games are actually clan games, with pickups second and pub games third.

So, on the one hand it’s absolutely vital that pub games are fun, since the more effort that goes towards improving them, the more you’ll enjoy the majority of your time spent playing the game. On the other hand, the maximum level of enjoyment you’re likely to get out of a game is influenced by the focus on clan (or otherwise organised competition) play the game has.

Why does a higher level of teamplay make clans redundant? I’m not convinced, and I don’t see clans disappearing any time soon. Would you rather enjoy your higher level of teamplay with strangers, or with friends and cohorts… possibly drunk on pear cider, and babbling about Tapirs?

(Gringo) #29

Ive only been frequenting this forum for a lough o months but that is the first time i have heard one o the SD guys talk seriously :clap:

I have to agree with wils. I love ET but i play most when i know me fellow crew members be inda house. If there aint a few o them on i generally wait till some of them come on before i play.

I also agree that clan matches are great fun and better than pub because u aint spammed up to the eye balls (even tho we usually get raped in matches :smiley: )

I have to apologise to ul wils. I hope by me agreeing with u it dont take away the validity of ur points.

(Dazzamac) #30

possibly drunk on pear cider, and babbling about Tapirs?

Thats a bit random. I have no idea at all what that would be like. :skull:

Though pub play is good. Clan play is so much better. Especially if you are playing locally so you can hurl abuse across the room. The bolthole is lucky at the minute as we have a large number of regular players who enjoy the game for the fun of it.

(Ifurita) #31

90% of the communication and coordination for clan games occurs outside of the game itself. Even in tight server communities, I haven’t really seen much in the way of out-of-the-game coordination and stratting going on. People just don’t put in that kind of effort unless you expect repeated play with the same people and have equivalent expectations that the other parties will handle their end of the responsibilities – just not really going to happen on pubs.

(eRRoLfLyNN) #32

What he said!

(amazinglarry) #33

Just read the article on Gamespy… it says the following “(According to Cloud, there’s also talk about having persistent stats tracking a la Battlefield 2, but firm details on that will have to wait for another day.)”

Of course that’s not the entire article, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not =/

I hope they implement it right, if they do have it.

(Joe999) #34

i’ve read all articles. there is no persistent ranking. persistency is only over one campaign.

(Dazzamac) #35

Aye it said they were toying with the idea. I have nothing against persistant xp per say. Its just xp tends to be rewarded more for personal achievment and not how good you are for the team.

(Joe999) #36

found the paragraph:

[i]How do the persistent character promotions work and the rewards system for continuous play?

Paul Wedgwood: In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory we had a campaign system and experience points were accrued for the duration of the campaign and rewards were retained until the campaign finished. The everything restarted again, and that’s important because gameplay effecting rewards, if they have any real value, can unbalance a match. Our general feeling is that we want to pursue persistent character advancement but that gameplay effecting rewards should be campaign length and status rewards that tell people how good a player they are, how good a leader they are, are the persistent elements.

For example, persistent military ranks are a great idea but giving somebody an additional weapon is not necessarily a good idea as it isn’t fair for other players playing on the same server. In an RPG like World of Warcraft, you tend to go off and fight in specific dungeons which are appropriate for your skill level, but unless you have a really good solution to player matching on servers that’s not a constraint you can apply to people running public servers. And so you end up with an unbalanced game if persistent rewards are too gameplay effecting.
[/i]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/interviews/interviews_story.php?id=132507&page=1

(amazinglarry) #37

Well yeah I wasn’t saying they were definitely having persistant online ranking or anything. I was just quoting the article. It says in the article that there will be xp across campaigns but made mention that there were talks of having persistant ranking. Here’s a bigger cut…

“And like Enemy Territory, Quake Wars will have 3-map campaigns where player stats carry over from one level to the next, including bonuses for actions that help your team. (According to Cloud, there’s also talk about having persistent stats tracking a la Battlefield 2, but firm details on that will have to wait for another day.)”

So yeah that’s the newest preview, and by no means was I saying that IT WAS IN… there’s just apparently talks about it. I just meant if they ARE going to do it, they do it right.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/enemy-territory-quake-wars/681231p1.html

(baff) #38

I don’t really like ranking.

The persistent ranking and weapon unlocks of BF2 is a major annoyance.
I want to see and use all the weapons available, but I must play the game for x million days.
This is the kind of game I get bored of in 2 or 3 days. Access to the other weapon types would have doubled the amount of time I remained intrested in that game. And hence it’s value for money.

BF2 is an excellent game, but I don’t expect to buy any more BF products.

The single campaign ranking in Enemy territory was a double edged sword for me.
It adds a little spice to each map, but it rewards the best players only.
It unbalances the game.
Noobs become easier to kill and 24/7 internet hardmen, already very difficult to kill because of their knowledge of the maps and successful tactics, become harder to kill.
In the intrests of balance you should be upgraded for doing badly, NOT well.

(kamikazee) #39

Well, if you’re doing bad I think you shouldn’t get upgraded. That would look totally awkward even though it might balance things.
However, from what I’ve read in the articles I’d say there are some “soft-objectives” like covering a certain player who’s going to build some construcible/deployable. Now they could hand out tasks of supporting someone to a bad player if he got other people supporting as well, or let him be the guy who should be covered. (Unless he screws up any task)
This might make a team stick more together and keep the noobs together whilst the experienced players know where they should go without any form of objective. So your reward is that you can play more on your own. Of course, this might lead to rambo-ing again, so excessive rambo-players should be stopped as well.

(mortis) #40

My suggestion for persistent online ranking:

The should be no ‘weapon unlocks’; it should be for personal glory.

It should be based almost exclusively on percentage of “time on task” times total frags times total time played weighted by quality of other players played.

The ‘rank’ should be represented as a unique symbol or percentile added to your alias name. For example, “Captain Mortis, GR99 (global rank 99th percentile)” Alternatively, it could be represented by unique symbols. For example, I’d suggest Greek letters, where alpha represents the top ten percent of players worldwide, beta the top 20 percent, etc… For example: α for alpha, β for beta, γ for gamma, but maybe where with stylized icons.

The stylized greek letter would be added to authenticated players with a certain minimum of total hours and recent average hours. Ranks could be reclaimed with renewed play. If you add a “shuffle by global rank” then you’re in business. I still want a “shuffle alphabetically”, too.

Now if you allowed admins to specify a minimum world rank to join , say gamma, you could allow for uberelite servers by global rank. I’m not saying that this is a good idea, only that this is an alternative method besides ‘weapon unlocks’ to reward global rank.

Even better would be a system that ranks overall quality of players on the server that would be reportable to the game browser, allowing players to select servers based on the overall quality of players who play there. (An “alpha” server)

–Mortis

P.S. You can send the beta to bsdterritory. No need for any of this Activision craziness :wink: