Community - Player ratings

[Teiman]

OBSOLETE:

I really like the idea of having 2 separate stats. One for builder and other for arcader. Because with this setup you not only know how good is someboy, but you learn to respect a good builder AND yo be impresed by a good builder that is also a good arcader.

Anyway I suggest the better usage of this stuff sould be to make the game mor e fun. I dont really care about accuracy tags.

Other than that, I will love to see a way to make "Squads", and the ability to designate "your boss", so good players will pick his boss as better players, and noobs will not be designated. With this idea you militarize a war game, that can be a good or horrible idea, but interesting

UPDATE:

I need to think more about the subject.

[Shaydee]

One thing that might be very valuable and add to the gameplay of Tremulous would be to somehow track and indicate the skill level of players.  

I do agree with this idea as such, but I also don't think that simple kill/death ratios or construction heuristics can represent reliable information about players.
Some days ago I attempted to write a python script that parses the console output and stores all relevant data in a SQ-Lite database file. But soon it dawned on me that such encounter is rather silly.
But what about a rating system that allows players to rate each other ? The amazon.com site, which allows users to post reviews of books, might be a role model for such implementation.
Maybe simple ASCII text which describes a player's behaviour is a bit too loose, but what about allowing players to give their teammates (or opponents) certain awards (such as: "good teamplayer", "great builder", "skilled fragger", etc...) which are then, in turn, stored in a central database (tjw's GUID system would make it possible to uniquely track players).
I, myself, am not familiar with the Q3 codebase (in my past I've only dealt with anti-cheat stuff for the unreal engines), but from my perspective a modified server binary which has these features, would not be *such* a complicated task. Maybe it could even be compiled as a tremulous-mod. But, as I said, I'm not familiar with Q3 coding.

[Aninhumer]

BTW if you intend to have this rating to balance the teams, you'd better have a seperate skill figure for each team, otherwise a person who is a 1337 alien gets put on a hummie team and that lowers the actual skill of the team.
EDIT: Obviously a global skill level would soon strike an average between your alien and hummie skill, but that still isn't really useful.

I think a democratic skill level system might work:
Every player starts as level 1.
You can rate any other player up or down, but they only get pushed up or down proportional to your level.
Lvl 1 players' votes have no direct affect on level, but can be viewed by mods.
All mods have a level 1 higher than normal to start it off.
(This prevents people from flooding users to rate someone up. Even if there is someway to get round "1 UID, 1 vote")

It would give a quick overview of who has actually just started, who is a n00b (Lvl 0 or below), who is uber1337 etc.

You could also add different catagories: Slayer/Builder, Alien/Human
You could also have user requested rankings, for things like Sniper/Feeder/Weapon skills/Alien type skills, and also clan ranks. (Making it easier to tell if someone is actually in a clan, or just flying the banner)
Another very important catogory would be conduct
(Which would start at a reasonable level, so you can tell they difference between a n00b, and a newbie. )

EDIT: This is mainly me thinking with my keyboard, so feel free to criticise. In fact I'd feel left out if no one flames me

[SLAVE|Mietz]

I wonder if the ppl have read the previous 2 pages of discussion, and that all those "suggestions" were allready made and are not doable.

I even asked timbo once for a very easy idea, to monitor the game-time and the first 5 hours you get a "N"-Tag (for NOOB), and he answered me he doesnt know how to do that.

So you think he can make such a complicated system like giving skill-lvls to players in a complex game like trem? Where the survival-time of buildings, humans, aliens doesnt give you ANY clue about the skill of a player?

Some examples:

some dedicated builder builds an awesome base, like moving stuff into lamer-room in niveus, but the other team-mates feed and he gets overrun. how to rate him? his buildings nerver survive longer than 5 minutes due to the lack of skill of the others.

Or we got an opposit, we have a noob builder that builds crappy tesla only bases where the DC is outside the base, but the team pushes so hard on the aliens they never get to the base. His buildings survive 60 minutes, is he a good builder?

Next we get someone like Henners, kickass dragoon, 85 kills in 20 minutes, plowing his way through enemy players, and still his team losses, because his team is shit. Is he a noob?

Or we get someone that has mostly only 10-15 kills in the game and dies a lot (like me) but in this time he builds, hunts eggs, supports teammates, and leads his comrades to victory because he is in the right time in the right place anytime, so is this player a noob?

How do we rate anyone in this game by only stats and numbers.

My (and i think the developers) last word:
there will be NO player-rating, not untill we get a true logical AI, and we are far away from it now.

On a vote system by players, just only one statement:

immagine DJ_Pong rating Lava_Croft, or Thorn rating Belier13

-end of message-

[Aninhumer]

On a vote system by players, just only one statement:

immagine DJ_Pong rating Lava_Croft, or Thorn rating Belier13

I realise forum rivalries may affect how people vote in such a system, but that's still only one vote, and anyhow a decent player would just rate Belier13 down for conduct (Unless of course he is actually crap at playing, I have no licence to comment about that)

Perhaps it might even encourage people to be nicer.

[SLAVE|Mietz]

On a vote system by players, just only one statement:

immagine DJ_Pong rating Lava_Croft, or Thorn rating Belier13

I realise forum rivalries may affect how people vote in such a system, but that's still only one vote, and anyhow a decent player would just rate Belier13 down for conduct (Unless of course he is actually crap at playing, I have no licence to comment about that)

Perhaps it might even encourage people to be nicer.

only one? you underestimate the community, a human rating system will sooner or later expand into flamewars.
Lava_Croft would get as much pro as noob voices (there was a poll about that), what would make him an average player (what would be bullshit).

And how do you rate ppl you never played with often? I couldnt rate like lets say a player i play with the first time. It shows nothing about his skill. This would lead to the point i would have to rate him every game, and i dont want to do this after a game on a 32-player server --> because i just dont care about a system that rates ppl, i will still have my opinion about them.

[Lava Croft]

I rate Who-[Soup] -1235987243957423965234796587298654986798674596745985742985795367958769476093576093567309876043760954630956738763946709437603986720497624395724397862456054986243509782495627459762946395.5

[Aninhumer]

Well tough, you've only got one vote!

[FisherP]

This talk about ranking is really about education. There is really nowhere for people new to the game to learn. I came to this realization when a friend and I last night ended up on an empty server. He didn't even know that you can change to a ckit at the armory. I know that there is a tute mode, but REALLY, how much do you learn. Something I learned that as a Basilik you have to stop after you touch a human in order to grab them. One might think that this is basic, but no-one told me and the tute mode didn't say 'STOP'. there were other things that we learned but overall it was a worthwhile excercise.

All this talk about ranks and imbalances caused by new players could be solved I believe by tutorial map where newbies can enter and go through drills - like the beginning of mose games (eg Heavy Gear).

I understand that it would be boring for leets to do this, maybe it can be automated somehow. I don't know really, what do other people think?

[PIE]

@lava
shorten that long ass number that breaks the page and made my grandma cry!!
learn to use scientific notation!

All this talk about ranks and imbalances caused by new players could be solved I believe by tutorial map where newbies can enter and go through drills - like the beginning of mose games (eg Heavy Gear).
I understand that it would be boring for leets to do this, maybe it can be automated somehow. I don't know really, what do other people think?

Yes it needs to be done.. but without AI its a bit tricky. They were going to do it through videos you could watch.. but that fell through because it takes organization and time.

[FisherP]

PIE,

My thought is this... AI is OK when u want to play a game against something half (or more) inteligent... if you want however to learn how to hold a human as a basilik say (using my own example) all you need really is a human to run around (perhaps randomly) while a small tutorial script scolls through some instructions The same goes for lightning as an advance marauder etc.  Human training could be a bit more simplistic because, well, who hasn't played wolfenstein or doom :-) but should give an introduction to the various weapons and accessories

Most of the opponents in these maps can use generated instructions on a simulated server on your own computer. The interface to a random direction should be relatively easy, give the 'dumb' opponent directions and feed that into the V.server. The user might be able to specifiy if the opponent is wearing a Bsuit, or is constantly firing in the direction it is heading, what map to use etc.

Training map/s can/should be local only since who want's to make MAJOR stuff ups in game. There could also be small training sessions on building bases as human or alien.. maybe a firing range, who knows maybe someone out there has some good ideas. E.g. I didn't know that an aimed, fully charged luci can blast half a tyrants health away from him before a friend and myself blasted each other out of curiosity.

I realise that none of this will remove the stupid mistakes most newbs make since the game is truly a team game, but at least they will be able to understand how to use the various guns, accessories (esp jet pack), and evolutions a bit better. The only thing left is for them to hop on and get yelled at for feeding too much. ;-)

What do you think about this?

[Odin]

We need a Splatter Ladder of our own.