I am making a new thread from this original one:

http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/topic/6005/page/1

So a coder has arrived...and a good one as well. He told me it would be nice if someone could make a good design, so might need a css/gfx/design dude. If you are interested PM me...i will give you lots of freedom.

We need feedback on some issues before we finish the project. Suggestions backed up with arguments is gold


1. How many maps for teams to choose on signup? Teams can choose _ANY_ map they want

5, 4 or 3? (can not choose tb3). Choosing smaller maps (dm4 dm6 etc) would be dmm3 (weaponstay)


2. TB3 as decider map (each team throw away a map) or the 3 most voted/picked maps on signup? We decide here or we do a vote for that on signup?

A possible problem to consider on "3 most voted/picked": Fake clans might sign up to affect the map vote/pick.


3. Pointsystem

1000 points on signup
0100 points for playing a game
0125 points for map victory
0075 points for game victory

0-2 loss = 100 points
1-2 loss = 100 + 125 = 225 points
victory = 100 + 125 + 125 + 75 = 425 points

Is this ok or not? suggestions?


4. Standin-player

Ok with to allow 1 standin player if needed? The other clan must accept the standin (like milton-standin every time is lame) or not necessary?


5. Play in several teams

Ok if a player plays in different teams (if so you need to use different nicks) and at the same time? If this helps more teams to get games played its ok, as long as you know who the player is? The alternative is ofc to use a standin-player.

There will ofc be more teams if there are only 4-5 players in each team. If you add 10 players in each team you will get fewer teams. What is good/bad about this?


6. Switching teams and number of players in team

I suggest you can switch teams as often as you like, as long as you are registered on the playerlist of the team. We should not leave a player out because, for whatever reason, he is not playing in a team no more.


7. No deadline for signup

As long as the ladder has started, any team can at any time signup and play, at any time.


8. Playoffs

We could do playoffs at end of a ladder-season, if enough teams and enough interest for it. We can do both gold and silver playoffs.


Remember: this is a fun/prac league where we aim to spawn activity, not the champions league of quakeworld

No feedback = you agree on everything

Players should use the same nick if play in few teams or standin for a team.

Ask Cyan1de to do console version of his qwrating to export data for rating section of website.
Mandatory upload of demos for played games.
Matchreport generated by script based on demo.
Screenshots could be generated too.

Ppl love a lot of nice numbers in game report.

Points system looks weird. It is better to use frag difference and pre-game rating to calculate post-game rating.
There are a lot of systems like that. I think Cyan1de use similar system to calculate players rating and it could be adopted.

Blaze, plz explain in detail

Thanks for feedback.

I created a ladder system for QWL (which seems to have fallen apart from inactivity, including myself to blame).

here is a system I devised:

http://www.quantumbitdesigns.com/QWLRanking1.pdf
http://www.quantumbitdesigns.com/QWLRanking2.pdf

I could indeed write a console version of my demolyzer (or even a GUI modified version) to assist in a ladder-like tournament.

I think a tournament that allows anyone to play anyone else and have a practical rating assigned to them, is of value. By that I mean, even though I personally do not like 1on1, I would enjoy hopping on a server and playing someone 2x better than me, since demolyzer/iELO gives an 'expected' score, so if you beat it your rating increases. If I play milton and am expected to lose 50-1 but I play and lose 50-2, great my rating went up, and I got participation points.

The QWL ladder I designed has 5 divisions, so even low skilled players can play any other higher skilled players, lose, and still rise in points, and win their division.

Feel free to steal any of the ideas in my system. It was just a draft that I would like to improve and update some time.

I would really like to collaborate with someone in 2013 to use iELO in some way to make a nice tournament anyone can play in and enjoy.

Ok thanks

Did you all read the previous posts about the earlier qw 4 vs 4 ladders where i described its "advantages and flaws" ?

I just read them now, thanks. I like your points system, a lot.

But I have a suggestion, and I may take criticism for this suggestion, but that is OK with me (I am biased toward my own work). I have a long rant/backstory before I get to my suggestion...

Your points system as it stands now gives little incentive for playing a higher ranked clan, other than participation points. So a low ranked clan can rack up points by playing a high ranked clan. And a high ranked clan can rack up points by playing the same low ranked clan 100x times. Massive points. That seems to me to reward participation too much. (but if all we want to do is get people to play, then hey that system should work). But regardless, just play a lot more than any other clan and you are sure to have massive points.

You made the comment:

"NQR 2 had a nice point system but it had some flaws. When you won a game you got 10% of the points of the clan you played. After a while clans started to speculate whom to play: better to play vs a clan that was higher in the rankings so you can get more points!"

I agree that NQR 2's point system is flawed. Using the NQR 2 system, a clan would be best by playing a lesser skilled clan that has more points (and thus higher ranked). So, very easy to cheat the system there, and that discourages proper clan activity.

Before I get to my suggestion, I want to make a distinction. There are 2 possible metrics one can use for building a ladder system for a tournament:

1. Team skill
2. Team points (results of win/loss/participation)

No tournament that I am aware of, in the history of QW, ever used #1 in their ladder system. The reason why? There was never anything in QW that can measure team skill. The closest to using Team Skill in QW tournaments is separating clans into div1/div2 etc, and that is done by humans.

Beyond divisions, the ladders just become all about win/loss and participation. Let's consider an extreme example. Consider a team with milton, para, zero, and kingpin, and they only played 3 games, and won all 3. Then consider another team with fix, kapo, niw, ok98. Lets say this second team has played 20 games and are 20-0 vs various other teams. Which team has more skill? According to win/loss fix's team will have more points, which is fine and expected. But everyone knows milton's team would probably win against them 98% of the time. (That doesn't mean upsets never happen, hence the 2% probability, and the fun of underdogs scraping by with a win)

Tournament ladders are inherently flawed using just #2, because the clans use their human knowledge of who is skilled and not skilled, to know who to play against. It discourages PROPER activity.

Now to my suggestion. Your ladder system would be more robust with the following added:

1. A program that can measure a team's skill (call it a 'rating'). An algorithm similar to SC2's.
2. More points for win against a higher RATED team (not a team with more points).
3. Less points for a win against a lower RATED team.

Continuing on with the milton example, if milton's team beat fix's, milton would get XXX for participation, but only 10 points for a win. If fix's team won vs milton, they get XXX for participation but a HUGE payout of points for the win (1000? it depends on the rating DIFFERENCE).

Why do people put money in slot machines? It is for the big payout!

With the addition of my suggestion, I would love to play in a tournament for these reasons:

1. I could play against any team, no matter how skilled, and get participation points
2. I could play against higher skilled team, and if I win against higher skill I can get the 'payout' points depending on how much higher they are RATED.
3. I could play against lesser skilled team, and get some easy small points for wins

I would hope that others would like to play for the same reasons.

Feel free to trash my suggestion. Ideas never killed anyone (in qw at least). I would love to hear flaws in my suggestion (I am aware of some already, there is no perfect system).

I would never criticism suggestions, its good to debate, and i like the ideas.

What i want to consider (that being the reason for my suggestion) into all this, is our inactive 4 vs 4 scene. I am not sure a ladder would be successful using the "ordinary" ladder, though i think that the system you are suggestions is better....if we had an active scene. As Åke Vader put it: "the holy grail would be a ladder like starcraft".

You are saying a low ranked clan can rack up points by playing a higher rated clan, no matter the points in the ranking. How much difference in qw-skill are we talking about here? For example; If this game is played on TB3, then the difference in skill-level (in other words the rating?) has to be very minimal or you will get a game of rape?

Our quakeworld is so different than any other games; the tiniest of skill difference results in massive fragdifference. And the massive fragdifference/rape is what i try to avoid. I am ofc not sure if this is the way to produce more activity, but all I know is that "equal" games are the most fun to play. Sure some spawnrape now and then is also fun, but most of the time its most fun for those who are spawnraping It's not like a RTS-map where every map is like 100% balanced. Its so different and gets harder to rate?

1. A program that can measure a team's skill (call it a 'rating'). An algorithm similar to SC2's.

How do you rate this? Need to be explained in detail so i can get a grasp of it

2. More points for win against a higher RATED team (not a team with more points).
3. Less points for a win against a lower RATED team.

Then clans start to speculate whom to play and might reject teams? I want to try and avoid this As Hooraytio says: "no way i will play with handicap". That is why i want to reward activity and winning your home map...it might give lesser skilled clans more motivation to play better teams? Or do we rate teams on share frag balance also?

Right now i am starting to doubt if we should leave TB3 out of the map pool If we found a way to make TB3rs dont leave WO or go "lame" on kenya's I would for sure include TB3 also. I am not sure giving more points for kenya map-win is the solution...i just dont think that is fair.

Need more feedback and debate plz

Link: great points.

I definitely agree with this one: "the tiniest of skill difference results in massive fragdifference." No way around that one.

SC2's algorithm uses ELO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

The problem with ELO is that you need a bunch of games to be played for people to reach their true rating. Hence, I researched and developed iELO which computes ELO by reprocessing the all games 1000x times to simulate infinity # of games (thus, the i in iELO).

You said: "Then clans start to speculate whom to play and might reject teams?" Why would they speculate on who to play? Perhaps if they thought a team was over rated and thus an easier win? Here is a counter argument: clans will always speculate which team to play, no matter what voluntary tournament/ladder system is used. Case in point, with your points system as is, clans would not want to play higher rated teams. The only reason would be just for the participation points. With a SC2-like rating of teams, there is incentive to play higher rated team. Plus, with a rating system, it might make it easier for clans to find opponents who are same skill level. Especially if there are a lot of new teams with new players.

One point you made that I can not argue with: "As Hooraytio says: "no way i will play with handicap"."

Certainly if clans do not want to play with a handicap/rating system, then throw my idea out the door because it won't work. Using a rating system only works if two things happen:

1. People trust the rating system
2. People want to use the rating system.

As for your point about my idea working well for active scene, I think it would work well for inactive scene too. Its just my opinion, but, I would think, and hope, that new clans would want to play to see where they stand in the ratings. And once they are rated they can enjoy the feeling of improving and their rating going up.

Just want to say something about handicap:

There are a lot of other possibilities to solve the "don't fuck up how much damage things do" issue.
Just some examples of what could be done instead:

- Each frag enemy team does is counted as 3.
- Add 2 seconds to spawn time for the better team (to give the "worse" team a chance of getting away)
- Reduce the number of cells/rockets/ng in ammo packs when a player from the better team takes them.

etc etc...

Just need to think outside of whats currently implemented

dimman:

great ideas...but this have to be a new server version?

like:

frag_handicap
ammo_handicap
spawn_handicap

or something?

Again, don't bother about the technical implementations.

sarcasm? irony? ...what? :-)

No really. Come up with a good solution for handicap, when you have a good idea, then worry about how to get it implemented.

Once upon a time...two dinosaurs were talking. The dinosaurs were Hooraytio and Link.

They came up with an IDEA for the upcoming qw 4 vs 4 ladder, that means you can implement any map (tb3, kenya or whatever) you want in the ladder, that SHOULD make "everyone" rather satisfied.

Dinosaur Idea:

You have some basic points for every game, like:

100 points to play, 100 points for win, 100 points for map victory etc. The value of each of this not decided, still open for debate etc, but we want activity.

The idea is about the map-issue and how to implement what i call "tb3-only-teams" and the rest, with every map allowed.

You make a rating system for points according to the maps you play. So when 2 teams play each other, they get their standard points. But in addition, they also get some extra points based on the map-stats they have; how many times have they played a map? how is their record (skill) on the map?

Example:

- Team X have played dm3 100 times. Team Y have played dm3 5 times.
- A map victory is by default 100 points.

So if team X wins dm3, they get their 100 points + a little extra...lets say 5 points, so total of 105 points.
But if team Y wins dm3 they get their 100 points + more than a little extra...lets say 50 points, so total of 150 points.

And if team X are really strong on dm3 and have a 80% record on it, then team Y gets even more extra points for winning it.
And if team Y got a 0% record on dm3 (5 losses), then team X dont get any extra point for beating a team that is bad on dm3.

Basically your record on the map and how much you have played it will calculate how much points the enemy will get if they beat you at it.

Why this?

This will encourage teams to play more maps. If you have played tb3 23423 times and you face a lesser good clan that you are pretty sure you will beat on your home map (for example a tb3 map), then perhaps you will choose a kenya that you have not played very much (or at all?). Because victory on that map will give you more points than trashing your opponent on your usual tb3 map.

Also this gives the option for teams to speculate what maps to play vs a certain team. What is the smart thing to do? We secure the safe points or do we go for gold? The map-stats of your enemy will setup your map choice vs them if you are interested in getting high in the rankings. If you are pleased with the way you are, just playing your usual map, then fine, no problem.

So then it does not become a map issue anymore, it becomes a point/ranking issue. You can choose if you like to play "only-tb3-clans" and still get extra points, providing that your enemy got a good record on it.

This IDEA brings, as I see it, both freedom and variety to the 4 vs 4 scene, without "forcing" any team what map to play to advance in the rankings. Maybe you will get to a situation that a "tb3-team" chooses a kenya vs a "kenya-team", and a "kenya-team" choose a tb3 vs a "tb3-team". Sounds too good to be true? Well with a point/rate system based on the map-stats for each team, this can happen, if points is what matters. If you dont care so much about points/rankings, then just play whatever you want to play.

dgCyanide...and the rest...some feedback here plz?

ELO is the way to go for sure.. also what would really be interesting is a ladder system for personal ELO in 1on1 2on2 4on4 and FFA separately. These are possible and simple to count. Maybe a match setting for ELO counted game on/off that would also show in countdown. I don't know anything about technical possibilities of tracking games tho.. also could implement team making in mixed 4on4 based on ELOs

Link,

I think that idea is brilliant.

Perhaps because I am deep within the stats and ratings and I am confident it would work from an algorithm standpoint. It would just be a matter of all players and teams being on-board.

It basically boils down to the following ways to get points:

1. Participation
2. Winning
3. Bonuses (some for wins on other maps, and some for outperforming ELO's expected score)

I love the idea of bonus points. It adds an ingredient we have never seen before. I need to think through how it could be best applied to map participation, but I can think of another portion of the bonus points that I believe would be very interesting (to me at least).

Provided teams are rated using ELO, then with ELO there is an 'expected outcome' for each game. I think teams could be rewarded with bonus points for exceeding the expected outcome.

For example, consider team 666 with milton vs team ABC with... heddan. The expected score, according to ELO, might be 350 to 50. If they play the game and milton wins 330-70, then heddan's team exceeded the expectations by 20 frags.

Team ABC would get 100 points for participation (item #1) but also, just as an example, 20 bonus points for outperforming rating expectations.

I can't stress enough how these bonus points would make me want to play ANY clan, no matter how much better. If I am in a donkey clan, at least I can have a target to try to beat. I get participation points and the POTENTIAL for bonus points.

Those savvy enough to understand how ELO and ratings work, would know that the next time ABC plays 666, the expected outcome would change, to something like 334 to 66 (it really depends on # of times played). My point is that the bonus points are not infinitely available. The more you outperform, the higher your rating gets, and the better you are expected to perform.

So in a nutshell, I am on board with your idea of maps and bonus points, and at the same time it sparked an idea of 50% of bonus points coming from performance.

The exact numbers and percentages for points is always open for debate later.

1. Does anyone else like the idea of link's map participation points?
2. Does anyone else like the idea of performance points? (incentive to play any team and beat 'expected' score)

buggyy: Right now I implemented a crude ladder system using ELO and points for players in 4on4 mixes on foppa:
http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/topic/6007

A while back I also implemented 'team-making' (as you suggested) into my demolyzer program using ELO: http://blog.demolyzer.com/



Equalize – Click Equalize to automatically find team that would be most fair

I think its a good idea to get extra points if you do well. The frag difference should also mean something, to prevent idling and "laming" during a game. Let every frag count!

But what I think is hard to be "fair" about are expected frags for a player. I think its way more easier (and correct?) to expect how much frags your team should get.

I mean if player X gets 90 frags and player Y gets 10 frags, the team still got 100 frags. So for the team that counts just as much as if player X got 50 frags and player Y got 50 frags.

Teamwork above all

Yes points would be awarded to teams. Besides team points and ratings, we can also have player ratings just for fun, which is currently what I am doing for salvation 3.