New Ranking and scoring (official thread)

[Gytha_Ogg]

Originally Posted by Zombrex

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.

Will the fort level and amount of defense weigh in the fort capture scores? That might help balance against a zerg taking a fort, level-4-ing it and then farming for hours, if the attacking realm gets more credit for taking a level 4 packed fort over a level 1 empty fort, it may counterbalance the bad deaths/kills ratio they're going to get from fighting a protected zerg.

Possibly make gold donations that level a fort from 1 to 2 count more than ones from 2 to 3 and 3 to 4, this may slow down the upgrade-n-camp tactic.

I'm concerned that kill/death ratios might promote timid gameplay, but that can be handled if, for example, kills counted more, or that total number of kills/deaths is taken into account, so that, say
100 kills/10 deaths counts for more than 10 kills/1 death, even though the kill/death ratio is the same.

[Winds]

Originally Posted by Zombrex

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.

I assume the ultimate goal of the new ranking is to increase the warzone activity (fort captures). Thus making the game more attractive, as people will see the warzone more active, even if they are not there their selves. However the criteria fails to bring in the fun, since you've opted the easy way and chosen easily measurable factors.

1. Fort capture activity
Didn't you learn anything from the Rosette quest? Capturing a fort and running straight after to another isn't fun for anyone and it's highly repetitive and dull.

However the intention is good, so we can work from this. When capturing a enemy fort it should give points only, if you can hold it for some period of time. This is encourage fighting other players instead of AI guards and a fort door at the next fort. Secondly to increase the motive of the realm, that had their fort captured, they'd get points if they manage to recapture the fort before those who took the fort get points.

The points could be handed out in time intervals. For example like this:

1 point/5min hold of the captured fort
3 points/15min hold
5 points/30min hold

10 points for recapture of own fort within 5min
5 points for recapture within 15min
3 points for recapture within 30min
1 point for recapturing a own fort no matter, when it was captured

The points and time barriers can be put as you wish, those are just an example. I intentionally gave more incentive for recapturing an own fort and left the longest timer to 30min in order to not encourage camping the fort for ages.

2. Gold donations to fort upgrades
With the current design of fort upgrades they are just fun killers, there's no point in encouraging them. So I'd just scrap this idea entirely. If this is needed to act as a gold sink, then only give points for upgrading own forts. (Upgrading enemy structures should be removed.)

3. Death to kill ratio
Not good. We all ready have people who are afraid to go anywhere with out a zerg/personal conjurer, not to mention tree huggers or horse runaways. You don't want to encourage this behavior. One of the best parts of this game is, that it doesn't have bad death penalties. So you can fight even, when the odds are not on your side.

Any factor involving deaths or kills heavily favors some classes. I'd rather use rp over kills, since support characters can at least get those, even though they aren't perfect either. But like some said it might be worth listing the 30 best of each class, so the class differences wouldn't matter that much.

So for the intention, but this definitely isn't ready to go out of beta-stage in this form.

[53453467734534]

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.

Conjurers are a priority anyway,...Barbarians are really strong enough.
Notwithstanding the above, I think that system is too artificial.
However, killing a "champion player" could give you a RP bonus according to my suggestion.

[53453467734534]

1 point/5min hold of the captured fort
3 points/15min hold
5 points/30min hold

10 points for recapture of own fort within 5min
5 points for recapture within 15min
3 points for recapture within 30min
1 point for recapturing a own fort no matter, when it was captured

This idea is really nice, but there is sadly still an easy option to exploit with fort swapping:

Of course, only the "defending" side will gain points by repetitive "recapture within 5 mins". But they could simply change to a fort of the formerly "attacking" realm, and repeat this procedure.

Fort swapping unlike RP jobbery is affecting the WZ badly, therefore this problem is not negligible, although a bit hypothetical.

The first part is good, second is not.
Think of a better solution.

Ok, i have an idea: A once recaptured fort will be "out of order" for additional 30 minutes after recapture. Only after that a countdown will start again, if an enemy realm controls it at that time.

Extra points for:
-Recapture of an upgraded fort.
-Capture of an enemy fort, that´s in possession of the third realm (Example: Ignis has Aggers, and Syrtis will gain Extra points by capturing Aggers from Ignis).Important: You will only score high if you hold it long enough after capture, otherwise there is room to abuse.
-triggering an invasion (all attacking players being in forts or castle of the defending realm at that time will score)
-breaking through the realm gates (all attacking players near the gate will score)
-being in the room with the golden dragon after a successful invasion.
-anything i haven´t thought of

[Winds]

Originally Posted by 53453467734534

Think of a better solution.

Ok, i have an idea: A once recaptured fort will be "out of order" for additional 30 minutes after recapture. Only after that a countdown will start again, if an enemy realm controls it at that time.

Extra points for:
-Recapture of an upgraded fort.
-Capture of an enemy fort, that´s in possession of the third realm (Example: Ignis has Aggers, and Syrtis will gain Extra points by capturing Aggers from Ignis).Important: You will only score high if you hold it long enough after capture, otherwise there is room to abuse.
-triggering an invasion (all attacking players being in forts or castle of the defending realm at that time will score)
-breaking through the realm gates (all attacking players near the gate will score)
-being in the room with the golden dragon after a successful invasion.
-anything i haven´t thought of

All suggestions should be open for further developing and mine certainly are. The ideas you posted about it are a great addition and that's the way things should work. (I'm hardly ever trying to propose complete ideas, but something NGD or other players could work on and you just did that well.)

[53453467734534]

All suggestions should be open for further developing and mine certainly are. The ideas you posted about it are a great addition and that's the way things should work. (I'm hardly ever trying to propose complete ideas, but something NGD or other players could work on and you just did that well.)

Thanks.

I now think, your point system will work well.

Are there objections, anyone?

[Gabburtjuh]

Does this mean i have to:
1. Go knarb for kill death ratio
2. Go broke on upgrading
3. Keep capping empty forts
To get top player? No thanks.

[Gytha_Ogg]

Originally Posted by Gabburtjuh

Does this mean i have to:
1. Go knarb for kill death ratio
2. Go broke on upgrading
3. Keep capping empty forts
To get top player? No thanks.

One down, 860195 to go... my chances are looking better and better.

(This would have been a green karma message but "You must spread...")

[Znurre]

2 ideas from me on this matter.

Idea 1

Fort capture statistics, as has been mentioned earlier in this thread, is hard to credit without promoting boring gameplay like swapping forts, hit-and-run, camping inside forts without fighting just to gain points, etc.

Imo. the following would be a better option and is very hard to abuse:

• Each enemy kill, anywhere in the Regnum world give 1 point in theory.
• Each enemy fort/castle held by your realm works as a multiplier for the received score. (So basically, if you don't own any enemy fort the multiplier will be 0, and you don't receive any points for kills)

This way, if you hold a fort or a castle you still need to be out on the battlefield and fight to actually receive some points.
You also make it easier for your realm mates to earn points, of course.

Idea 2

The server should know players x, y and z coordinates.
Save the last 10 coordinates for each enemy kill in an array, and compute a difference between the values for each kill.

The bigger difference, the more points received.
This would solve 2 problems:

• People camping, be it forts, bridges or whatever.
• Bringing people out into the whole warzone instead of everyone gathering at a few key places.

[bois]

Originally Posted by Znurre

2 ideas from me on this matter.

Interesting ideas there. As always I worry about the computational efficiency in the code and and such, hope that idea B will not impact the server performance for so many fetches.

Idea #1. Good idea. a few things occurred to me though. There is no formula to encourage taking back your lost fort under the system. Each realm could in theory capture one other fort and then leave it so that everyone has their multipliers on. I could see this happening during off peak times. Everyone would then do the open field skirmishes.

Each kill in theory is one point meaning that the level 30 weighs as much as a level 50 and as such they become the prime targets.

There is no doubt in my mind that the equation needed for this is going to have to be very complex.

Like I said earlier, there is absolutely no way to pick the one best player. But you can pick the best of each class. This would be a much more fair assessment. Each class is then judged on criteria that is more tailor made to the expected operations of their class. I can see no other way to do it fairly and equitably.
You can never tell me that a conjurer that heals everyone is not better than a barb that plunders so many virtual lives. It will not compute to me.

NGD is picking a very contentious and exceptionally difficult project to work on here. I see this one as looking deceptively simple but can disrupt the game equilibrium very easily if they get this one wrong.

I strongly advise at least 2 months under beta. Do not release this officially until 2011. Haste will make waste if this one is rushed through. Run it through all of November and December and fine tune this. Also I do hope consultation and more importantly Developer feedback will be forthcoming after the first month. This one can do more harm than good if mishandled . Be warned.

Regards
Artec