Vortex Wars

There still seems to be a big issue with drawing. Players are moving up fast on the level boards, with once again incredibly high win ratios.

Based on the feedback I am getting from other players, there are a few that are either:
1. Players creating two player maps and drawing.
2. Players creating 3-4 player maps, kicking all but noobs, and then beating them together to take a draw

This is upsetting several of the higher ranking and fair playing members, myself as no exception.

IMO, 4 players or less should not result in a draw scenario ever. It should be part of the downfall one most accept to playing 4 players or less. Only one will survive. If this is not an acceptable solution, I would like to see one, as would others, as there continues to be abuse with the draw option. At a minimum, 2-3 player set-up should never result in a draw, although I would like to see it for 4 player maps as well, as it is still just too easy to have two players gang up on 2 noobs.

Either way, looking at stats once again, you will see players that have not earned this status, and hence why I received complaints from other players that have, or are trying to do so earnestly. I cannot stress enough the win ratios to identify these draw-for-rank-ers.

I still think the best solution is to make the Draw offer the LOWEST possible XP, rather than the highest. This should always be 0 xp in a 2 player game, and 10 xp ina 4 player with 2 noobs.

Reducing the amount of XP for a draw rewards people who play it out.

I disagree. Though I feel that people should not abuse the system, I would like to suggest the rather than have a two person draw system, we should have a turn limit or minimum turn requirement for a draw. Something reasonable for the map size. I personally prefer to play one on one games especially with my friends or sometimes a two on two where there are allies. But even on the one on one games, some maps are generated with choke points that we just cannot break. I recently played a game 1v1 game where I ended up drawing after about 10+ turns of neither my opponent nor I could make any progress because of a 4 territory choke.

A turn limit itself is not sufficient. Your solution, adude159753, does not stop any of the problems I originally posted about. This is not an issue of making the draw point longer. It's about people using it inappropriately to increase level and win ratio. No amount of turns limits will stop that.

That said, IMO Bounty42 has a decent approach as well.

Bounty42 wrote:I still think the best solution is to make the Draw offer the LOWEST possible XP, rather than the highest. This should always be 0 xp in a 2 player game, and 10 xp ina 4 player with 2 noobs.

Reducing the amount of XP for a draw rewards people who play it out.

I also think this is the best idea. Only 10 xp per draw in 4 player game would not be worth the effort and people would stop.

We definitely need to be able to draw with several parties remaining. You can generally guess based on the map how many people it'll take to draw. I've played maps which supported 4 players in a very stable setup. Not being able to draw on these maps is frustrating and broken. I think a turn count limit to auto-enable draw should exist so that after a certain amount of time, draw will always show up. If you wanted to be extra fancy about it, you could watch for territory sizes to be stable for a given period of time, or assign maps some metric to indicate sizes of isolated islands and the number of entrances. I'm way to exhausted to think of one of the top of my head, but I'ma say something something min-cut something. I might try to work something out if I find myself with some free time...

Honestly, I think a min-turn count for a draw is the best solution to this. You can't really stop people from only playing n00bs unless you implement some sort of matchmaking system, and that would be a huge pain.
I suppose you could weight experience gained by level difference, but that would make high level players stand very little chance of going up in rank. *glances over at no one in particular*

techgump wrote:A turn limit itself is not sufficient. Your solution, adude159753, does not stop any of the problems I originally posted about. This is not an issue of making the draw point longer. It's about people using it inappropriately to increase level and win ratio. No amount of turns limits will stop that.

That said, IMO Bounty42 has a decent approach as well.

If someone wants to spend 30 minutes to reach the turn limit on a large map to get to a draw to game xp, I say let them. At that point, they're playing the game, right? I'm against a draw lowering point rewards by much. It seems like drawing on a map that you worked quite hard to get into second after knocking out the several players that placed next to you, and fighting the lone guy who had the map to himself into a draw should reward some amount of xp...

How is XP calculated at the moment? I haven't figured it out myself.

It seems like the current draw system requires all territories to be owned. This doesn't seem like a good idea. Say someone has all 8's and quits. Reclaiming those territories might give you a disadvantage that could give the other player the win.

I'd much rather see draws made in a way that makes sense to people playing legitimately than in a way that can't be gamed. If it's bad enough, log data and try to detect that sort of behavior.

A claimed territory is a claimed territory. If someone gets all 8s and quits all his territories are claimed, they just aren't claimed by a current live player. You could still draw with them on the board. Now if some Asshat put twenty 8s around an unclaimed region, you're hosed...

2) XP is calculated as follows:

1 XP per region taken from a player (active or not)
+1 XP (2 total) if you take that region with inferior forces

~~ SO 6v6, 8v6, and 8v6 get you 1 XP on a win, 6v8 gets you 2 XP on a win ~~

Performance Bonus:

First player out, gets 0 XP
Each player after that gets +5 XP

There may be a bonus for 2nd and 1st place.

OK, I said it like gajilion times, I will say it again... there is bug with draw and I know about it, however I wasn't able to reproduce it myself, so lets try to figure it out, shall we? I have suspicion but I need to confirm it and if I were to do it myself it would take forever. So I want to ask you to let me know what players remained in game where draw didn't appear.

So if you are sure that draw should be there (20 turns, 3 players remaining (yea, I raised that)) but buttons isn't there, please write list of players and their exact position in player list. Something like this:
Empty
Empty
Joe shmoe
Empty
me
Empty
Spectator john doe
Empty

or post screenshot of right panel where I will be able to see who is where ( I need to see all positions, even empty ones). Also game types might be useful. Even tho I think it isn't related, it never hurts to have more information

ok, I think I fixed it, let me know if it is still there (it doesn't affect games in progress, only new ones you start from now on)

appears fixed to me.