Rise of the Witch King

Hi all.

What kind of awards and ranks would you mostly like to have on the ladder?

I remember back in old CCG days they used to have a nickname's rank/grade from private, through croporal, colonel up to general. It was very fun watching your account day by day growing to a certain rank.
I also thought of some kind of awards like you have on cw.cc, like:

- active player award (keep your medal if you play acitvely)
- X win streak
- bonus points for activity

Right now the main goal for me is fixing some core feature stuff that do not work well enough. And struggling to find time for it too lol, but that's secondary. That will take a lot of time especially when I'm developing it alone. However if you give me good ideas for really useful (I stress - useful) features, I would be able to think all the plan, think of backend implementation and so on. So would even be able to give some estimate.

Cheers,
Stray

Except exactly the same awards and ratings(nup, amateur, captain, legend etc.) as in cw dw needs awards for being top 1 one week, one month, one year(i mean not being top 1 one week in row but in general so system must count and summarize these amounts of time for players and display it in their profile info). Same for being top 2 and top 3 since we have eternal ladder without resets i hope.

Well Idc about those things. I rather divisions like:
0k-1.5k bronze
1.5k-1.7k silver
1.7k-1.9k gold
1.9k- 2.1k diamond
etc etc
i set these values pretty randomly.

Suggestions for awards:
-10, 20, 30 game win streak
-maintaining a certain win-loss ratio (maybe 66%) for a certain amount of time
-one for sticking to a faction for 10, 20, 30 games (or for winning with it)
-one for playing every map in the map pool 2 or 3 times within a certain amount of time (maybe a week)
-the obligatory one for activity (certain amount of games played within a certain amount of time)
Maybe design them similarly to the awards on GR.org so there's a level 1, 2, 3-map diversity award and so on.

Rank wise I'd either go with the classic split like Mako said (Bronze, Silver etc.) or maybe sth similar to what EA used for your account on the servers (Peasant, Dark Wizard etc).
How many of them you should have prolly depends on the expected peak activity once it's fully functional. I expect sth like 50 players max, so I'd do 5-6 ranks/leagues.

Peasant - Rookie - Beginner - Soldier - Veteran - Captain - General - ALLMIGHTY OVERLORD OF SWEGG

Earned by wins or being handsome 1 - 10 - 50 - 100 - 250 - 500 - 1000 - (only for muadd)

I quite like a few of the suggestions already made. I'd only suggest using LotR terms for ranks and awards (I.e. Peasant, Goblin, King, Dark Lord, etc.) If you have a look at 2.02's Discord server, you'll see 20 ranks (roles), most of which have names that come directly from the game itself. I'd suggest using them.



This post has been edited by Excelsior: Apr 3 2018, 14:55 PM

These are real nice suggestions, thank you. I will think and extend my db diagram to take these ideas into consideration.

More details, more details!

10, 20, 30 game win streak

Idea: when a game is reported check every player's win streak. If a player earns 10 wins, he gets an award. So when you get an award, your profile gets updated with the following record: [some medal/badge, DateTime when he gained the award]. And a total count of these awards gained. So if we have a player that wins 100 games in a row, he gets 10 awards (reflects with 10 new records on his profile)

maintaining a certain win-loss ratio (maybe 70%) for a certain amount of time

Idea: Remember date and time when someone reached 70% ratio. Check every 24 hours from that datetime if it is still above 70%. If after (i.e.) 14 days he still has 70%, he gets the award.

one for sticking to a faction for 10, 20, 30 games (or for winning with it)

Idea: I would go something like faction cups/medals on cw.cc, I liked it, but a little different. On each game played check all past games of a player. If the last 30 games player played Elves and won at least 70% of his games, he gaets some Elven medal/statue

-one for playing every map in the map pool 2 or 3 times within a certain amount of time (maybe a week)

Idea: First we have to have all 2.02 maps uploaded to the system. Second: run a check once in a week if player played all 1v1 maps in 1v1 maps pool. If he did, he gains the award.

the obligatory one for activity (certain amount of games played within a certain amount of time)

Idea: If a player played 20/40/60 games in a week, he gets a bronze/silver/gold activity statue?

Rank wise I'd either go with the classic split like Mako said (Bronze, Silver etc.) or maybe sth similar to what EA used for your account on the servers (Peasant, Dark Wizard etc).
How many of them you should have prolly depends on the expected peak activity once it's fully functional. I expect sth like 50 players max, so I'd do 5-6 ranks/leagues.

How? How would you like it to be claculated? What criteria? What points? Also should it be ranked system like LoL has? You can go up and down with your rank, or once you earn it (like level 4) you can never drop below (this is what you had in EA servers, CCG and cw.cc).


This post has been edited by StrayHeart: Apr 4 2018, 19:39 PM

You got all the award ideas right.


Thinking about it again the only point in introducing sth like leagues would be to prevent players from the higher leagues to play with players from the lower ones entirely but the way the point system works already makes that undesireable anyway in terms of point farming. It only visually adds another feel of achievement for lower ranked players climbing up the ladder cause they would be able to play with people that they werent before.
The downside of that would be that overall activity with a smaller playerbase might just suffer, so you'd have to see what type of seperation would make sense for the expected activity on DW.

If we're talking about levels/ranks for your account in general, not depending on your current ranking, then idk

I played Red Alert 3 and the way it worked it used to match you with random player. The random player was one near your rank. Sometimes you got much stronger, sometimes much worse player than you.

It is not a problem for me to write an application like 'the wheel of fortune' that brings you a random player. The way it can work is, say: 20 players have my app opened, so these 20 players are currently in the players pool. Each of them clicks 'Find player!' and I can make it match some player near your rank.

I could as well implement both ranks system (situation in which activity is quite big) and the ranks constant one. This can be switchable for the sake of tests.
What can stay constant (not depending on activity) are the awards ideas you mentioned.


buff..

I dunno about leagues. It's way too early for implementing that considering how many players are on DW atm


Matchmaking would be really great imo. I would suggest an algorithm that tries to pair equally rated players who you didn't play vs recently but gets less strict if it can't find anyone.

E.g. the algorithm can make a match in either of these 4 categories:
1. Rating differs +-100 points and 0 matches in the last week
2. Rating differs +-200 points and less than 4 matches in the last week
3. Rating differs +-400 points and less than 8 matches in the last week
4. The rest


So, a category 1 match may always be made. A category 2 match may be made only if the longest waiting player of the pair had been waiting for more than, say, 30 seconds, and so on.

A "match" would mean you're expected to play a series of 2 games -> onhost and offhost. If those games are not played, the server will log this.


Would be cool if we could have a DW bot in the Discord that prints new matches it made

Why dw needs matchmaking at all or these leagues? I cant get. I assume its another nubs protecting feature? But currently at least nubs can see who they play and can dodge, will they be able to do the same with matchmaking? U cant be sure that some pros wont make more accounts just to farm points from nubs bashing through this matchmaking and then just transfer them to their main account. Also u take from nubs opportunity to farm points from tops because currently they are encouraged to do this more than anywhen. This opportunity makes nubs play more with GPs = fight they fear of playing GPs = nubs become pros = profit for 2 02. Esp. considering specific of this game where pros can lose to nubs some game just easy because of offhost, bad mu(disbalance) or lags. Look upon Jaber or mr. Smokk in current ladder. Jaber was some time 13+ i think and Smokk 14+. Due to opportunity to play vs tops they became 15+ and 16+ just in couple games vs tops. If they were allowed to play only vs same rated it would take much more games. I repeat - nubs dont need any more protection currently! Also matchmaking kills any points system if there will be games only among same rated players. Need just 2 rules like +16 points for win, -16 points for loss. No need any calculations. Also i saw all yours awards suggestions and didnt see one that can indicate player skill(exept my suggestions ofc). Win streak and win - loss ratio mean nothing here - u can be nubs basher and dodge playing goods and have better win - loss ratio than better players. Sticking to faction, every map played and activity dont indicate players skill either. Imagine that there was very good player playing dw but not active now so he doesnt have top spots, how one can see it was really good player by watching your sticking to faction type awards in his profile? Dunno. In cw u could see it by watching his awards for winning some months but we have eternal ladder. Btw i would transform this sticking to faction award to awards for winning 50, 100, 500(rank 1,2,3 of award) games with one faction(not in row ofc). So players can be motivated to play many factions to win more awards.

????

Matchmaking severely reduces the ability to point farm because you never know who the system will match you vs. Let's say I'm looking for an opponent with my Braham account and with a throwaway BrahamNab account at the same time. The system could match:
1) Braham vs TaDa
2) BrahamNab vs Sep

Then what?

Without matchmaking, I can keep making replays of Braham vs BrahamNab without going through any process. = strictly harder



This is simply a criticism of the matchmaking I proposed. Matchmaking can also be random -> you just play vs all skills.

The main point of matchmaking is to combat dodging. Not to protect new players.

You're right that there are benefits to having high skill vs low skill matches.



Not inherently. I just explained this.



True, but medals are just a fun addition IMO.

Not every medal needs to correspond with "high skill".

E.g. I'd be fine with a medal "played 100 matches". 100 losses would be fine. It's not a measure of skill but simply a statistic that allows you to build a profile.

I agree but u didnt suggest even one.

So should I put awards and leagues implementation later and focus on that auto match making tool?

I would disregard leagues for the moment. I'd focus on medals or matchmaking first. Medals are less of a breaking change so that's safest.

Before any of that though, are you sure the points/penalties work OK? I posted in the "bug report topic" concerning Excelsior's rating and that of some bottom-tier players.

Yeah, it is not working correctly. I should have disabled that ot requires fixing. I am assuming I fix the current stuff first and then carry on with new features.

Bump. So what is our final idea? I would like to finally design it and predict how system architecture should look like.

Ok, so these are ideas Mauhur made:



We have 4 ladders in general:

- individual global
- individual monthly
- team global
- team monthly

And here are two of my exemplary questions:

- maintaining a certain win-loss ratio (maybe 66%) for 1 week - if a player achieves that in 1v1 games, should that have influence on both individual ladders? What if some games are 1v1, and some are 2v2?
- 10, 20, 30 game win streak - player won 5 1v1s and 5 2v2s - he does not get a prize. Player won 10 1v1s in May - he gets prize for May individual ladder and global individual ladder. Player won 10 1v1s from May to June - he gets the prize only for global ladder.

Why did I call them exemplary questions? Because the same goes for the other ideas. I don't know how to grant these prizes or penalties because we have 4 ladders in total and there're many possible scenarios because of that.

Most of the stuff mauhur said looks very good. But ill rly like that we include ranks aswell. Being rewarded for spamming and playing more is gooood