New Ranking and scoring (official thread)

[Zombrex]

This the official thread of the new Ranking and scoring. Here you can give us all your feedback regarding this new feature. Given that is very important for us to receive everyone thoughts this will be the only thread to discuss about this matter. All additional threads that talk about same will be closed or moved into here.


(Important information)

In this thread we enlist all the information you need you know about the new Ranking system. Please keep in mind that the first leaderborard will be selected from Nov 8 to Nov 15, and will be presented in the ranking section of our website and here, in our official blog as well.


1) What kind of variables will be taken in consideration to select the top players?

We tried to make the most out of the actual information that we have about the activity in the warzone. For now, the results are calculated taking into account fort capture participations, significant gold donations to enhance forts and player deaths/kills ratio (this is the order of influence too). This calculation will end in a value called Personal Score.

2) How often will be the top players leaderboard updated?

The top players will be selected on a weekly base, following an established time period (from Monday to Sunday). This will also be extended into a monthly and annual base. The top player will be in the front page of the Ranking and in the “Top Players” section, the top 30 players of the world will be listed.

3) What is this beta-staged thingy that you’re talking about?

Although the scoring system will be working, we will need to tune it up and gather feedback to know what any other information is needed to give the best results. Therefore, we will not be able to select the best players of this month as winners because of the stated reasons. So, in order to do things properly, we decided to use the remaining weeks of November as a Beta Stage. We surely will be happy to receive your feedback, as long as it’s constructive.

So what are you waiting for? Come on all Knights, Barbarians, Warlocks, Conjurers, Marksmen and Hunters from the three realms to give their best in battle. Get ready to involve yourself into war as you never did before. Glory is awaiting you!

[53453467734534]

Here you can find the old posts (pre official-thread) on that subject (to follow up here):

http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/forum...ad.php?t=68389

[bois]

I still cannot judge it. We simply do not have enough information to go on just yet. When the first few scores come out we might be able to judge it slightly better.

Zombrex gave us a nice basic overview and did mention that it is in the beta stage. So there are bound to be hiccups . I hope the community remembers that.

The beta will basically try to fine tune the formula to come up with one that NGD is comfortable with and gives an equal chance (hopefully) the the widest player base possible.

At this point we have no idea of the weighting of each criteria in the personal score. We have a framework of the initial components but the weight each one carries towards the total is crucial.

What will be important in the coming months would be the obvious need to develop and /or improve the tools of data collections on player activity.

So, additional criteria such as trades, participation in invasions, fort/castle captures, differentiation between home forts and enemy fort captures, upgrade status of these structures, gold accumulation*, XP accumulation*, clan prowess, death/kill ratio, community rating (via polling community) and all of this weighted by the character level. All of this would all factor in a more comprehensive system.

Lastly, there can be no singular top player in one genre in this game. Classes are either offence or support and are of different levels.
So, top players would have to be broken by class and the so called "dream team" of the best of each class would be posted. The best of this 6 would then be team leader in effect becoming the player of the week.

*I do suggest that a "rookie of the week" be added to the level 1 to 32 bracket. This basically gives commendation of the best levelers. Criteria will be XP and gold. Any RP these guys can scrape will also improve their score as well. Their involvement in fort captures will also tally in the score. Of course this is capped at 32.

Generally I think it is a good idea and hopefully will signal a movement away from RP tally as the prime statistic on the website. I would also like to see the compilation of personal scores as the prime guiding tally towards Clan rankings. It would be a much much better indicator of clan prowess rather than rp and gold accumulations mostly by players that do not even play anymore but still have their characters in the database.

The only one I am worried about is the kill/death ratio. Once this gets only very minor significance ( I note it is the least significant of the lot ), we should be fine. I would hate to see players hiding away from war to preserve a tally they might have accumulated by running around killing half dead grinders all day. I would hate to see grinders hiding inner realm for fear their tally gets hurt by vultures picking at them over and over.

Edit I pulled this from a good post by W_Larsen and the points raised there are very important to the discussion:

as ngd has planned it, the way to do will be: (the importance order taken into account)
1) few players should take an empty fort (assuming that reward is split across fort takers evenly)
2) upgrade
3) pony to next fort
3a)wait while people nearby (2-3) come then
log if more than you can handle comes.
pony after 2.5 minutes for example if it is trele (aggers save- trele fort 3 minutes on horse)

defenders:
a) decide that attackers will pony away anyway, so there is no reason to run just to find empty fort
b) see that fort is actually defended and decide to not mess up ranking ratio and let them rot

defenders, who dont care about that bullshit:
a) fight desperatly with little numbers until ragequit and play ufo:ai


its not like we didnt see this all happening at one of recent events.

If their formula does not cater for this then the RvR and PvP side will take a serious hit. Hopefully they have learned form the lessons of the past and have a formula to overcome it.

Good luck NGD. Ideas are always nice. Delivery is the hard part.

Regards
Artec

[Seher]

Is it possible to gather data about the surrounding enemies?

I know that player deaths/kills ratio currently is the least important point according to the order of influence, but still... Some players will try everything to read their names in the ranking, so...

To me it's the best way to judge your playing style via something like "enemy/kills", the more enemies, the more points. The formula could look like this:

enemies in range * their level * kills
--------------------------------------------
allies in range * their level * 0.5 (see 2.)

Some comments on this:

1. The range in which enemies count should increase at forts as your enemies are spread there, compared to normal pvp

2. To promote playing in teams. Right now you usually get more points for just killing single targets while being alone, I think it should be the other way round. The number, 0.5, is completely random and just there to show the basic idea behind it.

3. No death is in this formula. I really love to charge against 30 enemies with just one or two allies, and it's just great to take someone down then. Your description of how the ranking will work suggests that this would actually decrease my personal score. My formula would actually count this as an epic win. :P

4. I don't know if this is actually viable because it would mean more position checks and maths for the server...

[53453467734534]

So, additional criteria such as trades, participation in invasions, fort/castle captures, differentiation between home forts and enemy fort captures, upgrade status of these structures, gold accumulation*, XP accumulation*, clan prowess, death/kill ratio, community rating (via polling community) and all of this weighted by the character level. All of this would all factor in a more comprehensive system.

Ok, but these criteria should not be susceptible to abuse, and should not encourage cheap and unintended playing style. RP rating has been tried and tested for long. And it is not at all game breaking and encourages fighting.

Lastly, there can be no singular top player in one genre in this game. Classes are either offence or support and are of different levels.
So, top players would have to be broken by class and the so called "dream team" of the best of each class would be posted. The best of this 6 would then be team leader in effect becoming the player of the week.

Yes, this would be in compliance to my "champions race" suggestion

The only one I am worried about is the kill/death ratio. Once this gets only minor significance, we should be fine. I would hate to see players hiding away from war to preserve a tally they might have accumulated by running around killing half dead grinders all day. I would hate to see grinders hiding inner realm for fear their tally gets hurt by vultures picking at them over and over.

There is more to worry about. Remember "Rosettes quest"?
http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/forum...ad.php?t=61139

And who appreciates players, that "enhance" forts by "gold donations" Anyone? It´s nice for invasions, but really bad for normal battles.
With this reward it will be impossible to prevent them from upgrading a fort.

Ok, in case of a significant weekly reward on RPs (my suggestion), there have to be adjustments to prevent RP jobbery (see soccer event). But fort swapping is much more game breaking. Jobbery will not effect the normal WZ activity.

Osram

[Mattdoesrock]

My support conjurer will love the kill / death ratio!

[von1958]

I really do not see this as helping to create more war . right now with the big lag issue and positional errors alot of folks just don't play the game. they just log in every now and then to see if anything has been fixed

[bois]

For the record 534.. , I never voted against your suggestion. Rather, I really want to see what NGD is really proposing and the outcome after this beta period of theirs.

Regarding your idea, I am still weighing it and have no position on it as yet. NGD surely know how to pick tough projects. This one is deceptively easy on the face of it but incredibly difficult to balance and not have a knock on effect in the general game culture that exists today.

And yes I do remember the rosettes debacle. Hopefully, all of these mistakes will give the devs the experience and knowledge to sidestep them this time.

I still remain cautiously hopeful that something good can come of it.

Artec

[53453467734534]

For the record 534.. , I never voted against your suggestion.

I don´t take that personal anyway
Yes, I am confident, it would be a good idea.
However, if someone doesn´t like the RP rankings in general (these are many people), i will never convince him/her, and NGD will not convince him/her of their idea either.

Rather, I really want to see what NGD is really proposing and the outcome after this beta period of theirs.

Sure, but some objections seem obvious.

This one is deceptively easy on the face of it but incredibly difficult to balance and not have a knock on effect in the general game culture that exists today.

Absolutely, NGD has to be careful.

I still remain cautiously hopeful that something good can come of it.

We will see. I liked the idea at first, then this suggestion about "champions race" came to my mind, but these criteria NGD has taken into consideration to find a "top player" are very questionable at first glance and easy to abuse.

[e30G]

I'd like to see kills weighed in according to class. For example from highest to lowest:

1. Conjurer - Conjurer's are an army's life line and taking them out may turn the tides.
2. Knight - They are tanks. Placing them higher up the list will encourage more people to shoot at them. They can provide a very good distraction for unorganized armies.
3. Warlock
4. Hunter
5. Marksman
6. Barbarian - Putting them down in the list will help warrior rushes more.

Instead of deaths, I'd rather see a system that tracks how well your team works together. Maybe have it track the number of people in your realm that is within your visual range that dies. This will mean people will be looking out for their team mates better. Have it class based too with deaths from more important classes lowering your score more:

1. Conjurer
2. Warlock
3. Barbarian
4. Hunter
5. Marksman
6. Knight

This will hopefully encourage a little more team play and better target coordination.