Vortex Wars

Ranking System Proposal (draft)

Main concept:
Player would have rank value besides levels to actually show his skills, not how much does he play.
Players meeting some minor restrictions would be able to create and join special, ranked, games.

Possible benefits:

• Slight revenue increase (explanation below);
• Easier player skills evaluation;
• Easier pro-games management;
• Prestige of being high-rated;
• Less "quiters";

Possible drawbacks:

• matches opposing people with very different rank values (Lopdo, KivoR) [partially solved by minimal rank]
• people trying to boost the ranking with fake players (KivoR)
• refusing some matches (KivoR)
• one value for different maps and game modes (KivoR)

Ranking explanation:
Every player starts with base rank value of 1000. After every match it increases or decreases based on his place and opponents rank values. Users playing as Guests are considered to have 1000 rank points that do not change or are not able to join ranked games at all. Ranked games can be created only by premium players and they can set up minimal rank AND level requirement to join their game. Possibly only premium players can join ranked games as well. (?)

Revenue increase
As creating ranked games requires premium it encourages players to buy lifetime premium. Also winning or at least better finishing position is more important than in casual games which makes players use more boosts - not only the free ones.

Technical aspects:
This got a bit to difficult and I won't explain details until its proven to work as intended. Sorry!
But you can still check formula results and play with some values here: http://joriom.site90.net/vw/feature.php?t=1489
Don't forget to report any strange things you might observe.

Replies:

• Matches opposing people with very different levels, refusing matches, different maps/game types, targeting high-end players:
  http://vortexwars.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1489&p=9832#p9832
• Ranking superiority over levels and other measurement methods, possible solution for different maps:
  http://www.vortexwars.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1489&p=9872#p9872

I like that idea, but it would require lot of changes, I will have to look into it to see if it is possible. Btw your link doesn't work

I like the idea.
I spare you a lot of comments about theory and options and formulas

I think that there are things with that system in VW that are not perfect :
about matches opposing people with very different levels
about people trying to boost the ranking with fake players
about people who doesn t want to loose their ranking and refuse some matches
about people who doesn t want to boost their ranking and target high ranked players Edit : about people who do want to boost their ranking and target high ranked players
also each sort of map can be considered a different category (8 players /att/huge map and 3 players/HC /small map are very different)
etc...

but those are details (important ones) and I am globaly positive with that request.

link works now.... wow, great job! now I will have to use it or I will feel bad

I played with number a little and it looks solid. There is small problem when there is huge gap in ranks, when you have too big rank, you lose some points even if you win. But I suppose that could be solved somehow

Lopdo wrote:There is small problem when there is huge gap in ranks, when you have too big rank, you lose some points even if you win.

KivoR wrote:matches opposing people with very different levels

Thats both benefit and a drawback of this system. This enforces good players to compete against each other rather than grind low ranked players (as some do now with Level). The higher you get, the harder it is to gain more rank points and more points are lost after being defeated. I've suggested ability to set up minimal rank requirement in games created by you but I think it should be limited to around 80% of your own rank so player with 1500 points can set it for maximum of 1200 pts. Simply not to allow people to do opposite - grind high end players.

Also one more thing came to my mind now. You should not be able to kick players that did already "Ready Up" in your game lobby and they should also have 5 seconds "protection" right after entering so they can look at others and ready up. Why? Simply to make opponents selection a bit harder and partially counteract what KivoR said:

KivoR wrote:people who doesn t want to loose their ranking and refuse some matches

KivoR wrote:people trying to boost the ranking with fake players

Sadly we can't prevent that, but... If you get high rank without skills you will possibly loose it even faster!

KivoR wrote:people who doesn t want to boost their ranking and target high ranked players

If I'm right you mean "who DO want"? Thats exactly the point of ranking! Players would want to boost their rating by competing with top rated ones. If they succeed they get rank high enough to be "wanted" by others

KivoR wrote:also each sort of map can be considered a different category (8 players /att/huge map and 3 players/HC /small map are very different)

Thats the biggest problem IHMO. Mostly due to "strange" user made maps. But dividing rank into many categories would make it messy and while entering game you can see everything: map, game details and if it is ranked. Its up to you to decide if you want to play it.

This seem's like too much work for the developer; and I think it makes the game too complicated. If you want rankings just show win% next to username or something like that.
Or
If you really want to give people points for each game.
Assign a value to a place you get in the game
(This is an example the math doesn't make sense)
first out of 8 gets 10 points
8th out of 8 gets 0 points
1/4 gets 6 points
4/4 gets 1 point
3/6 get's 4 points
then take the mean of all the points people have ever gotten. that's their rank.

egavaS wrote:This seem's like too much work for the developer; and I think it makes the game too complicated. If you want rankings just show win% next to username or something like that.
Or
If you really want to give people points for each game. Assign a value to a place you get in the game
(This is an example the math doesn't make sense)
first out of 8 gets 10 points
8th out of 8 gets 0 points
(...)
then take the mean of all the points people have ever gotten. that's their rank.

What you suggest has same flaws that current Level system. The more you play, the higher you're ranked. Player that wins 10 matches in a row will possibly have the same rank that player who played 50 matches but took average place.
What I suggested is system that reduces your points for loosing sorely and does not change them when you take average place. Winning or being at high position increases your ranking accordingly to your enemies rankings.
Due to how this works players who play 15h/day but can't win single match will be low ranked in contrary to current level system or what you suggested.

I have thought about map types after what Kivor said. We could always reduce ranked games to "Random" and "Map Pack" maps. Thats how its handled in many strategy games. You can play many maps with user made scenarios freely but ranked games are played only on strict set of maps. Other way would be to include additional factor in the ranking formula, for example regions count, but I would rather avoid that.

Beautiful idea. I do not like your base value 1000 because the number "1000" does not hold any meaningful value to my eyes. I would much prefer winning %, but since there are many factors determining a player's worth and second place should also get points, I guess the base value 1000 is necessary.

A big problem with this is that the rate of the increasing numbers will always grow for high ranking players. Say 8 players with 1000 points play, winner gets 7 extra points. Using this value 7 as a point of reference, with 8 players of 10 000 points (because the point is to play against people your difficulty), winner gets 78 points. Since we all know how much we're all obsessive gamers and how much time we're going to spend on this, 8 players with 100 000 points; the winner will receive 778 points, which is an increase of roughly 10 000% from the initial winning value.
Assuming exponentiation will be fixed by calculating formula NOT based on 1% of full points going into reward pool,


I have a suggestion, unlock special features as points grow.

Example:
EDIT: By rank, I mean points.
Once rank reaches 1050, unlock background (unlocked forever)

Once rank reaches 1200, unlock race with stats we already know, but cool addition (unlocked forever)

Once rank reaches 1500, unlock xp upgrade +5% (unlocked as long as rank remains over 1500)
At this point, it will be an incentive to stop playing ranking matches, but by putting more rewards, the incentive to keep playing ranked matches, and thus to get premium for life, greatly increases.

Once rank reaches 2000, unlock shards upgrade +5% (By then, players that reach this point probably already have all the upgrades, so offering more shards does not actually matter; but to new players, it is a great incentive to get premium for life.)

Keep adding badass upgrades, etc, etc, etc.

Joriom wrote:

egavaS wrote:This seem's like too much work for the developer; and I think it makes the game too complicated. If you want rankings just show win% next to username or something like that.
Or
If you really want to give people points for each game. Assign a value to a place you get in the game
(This is an example the math doesn't make sense)
first out of 8 gets 10 points
8th out of 8 gets 0 points
(...)
then take the mean of all the points people have ever gotten. that's their rank.

What you suggest has same flaws that current Level system. The more you play, the higher you're ranked. Player that wins 10 matches in a row will possibly have the same rank that player who played 50 matches but took average place.

see the bold... you take the average of their points so if u've played one game and you took 1/8 you have the highest score possible and can only go down.
because that would really mess up the leaderboards just make this stat not display until they've had 50 games.

BelgarionRiva wrote:I have a suggestion, unlock special features as points grow.

Example:
EDIT: By rank, I mean points.
Once rank reaches 1050, unlock background (unlocked forever)

Once rank reaches 1200, unlock race with stats we already know, but cool addition (unlocked forever)

Once rank reaches 1500, unlock xp upgrade +5% (unlocked as long as rank remains over 1500)
At this point, it will be an incentive to stop playing ranking matches, but by putting more rewards, the incentive to keep playing ranked matches, and thus to get premium for life, greatly increases.

Once rank reaches 2000, unlock shards upgrade +5% (By then, players that reach this point probably already have all the upgrades, so offering more shards does not actually matter; but to new players, it is a great incentive to get premium for life.)

Keep adding badass upgrades, etc, etc, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? give a reward to people who are doing good so that they can do better easier?
i think bragging rights is better.