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i think AS is as good as it gets.

1 - it has predictive capabilities
2 - it has predictive capabilities
3 - it has predictive capabilities
...

also

@spunk

what are we playing exactly, if not a game with a binary result? what is your skill in a game if not the ability to win? how do you define skill when there are no parameters to measure?

a kill makes you a skillful player? (AS says - glhf)
perfect scouting makes you a skillful player? (idem)
bomber driving? (...)
<anything you could consider skill> (...)


BF.

Is AB being worked out such that:

1) The balancing only is applied to members of a certain rank threshold?

This way the newbs and the lightly seasoned (don't be a frown with Golden Brown! ) could be on a team regardless of the 'upper echelon' influence.

2) That the balancing can be offset with mutual approval of each commander/team?

Yes this may require that dreaded code change. I don't know how much that is at this moment, but worth suggesting. It allows for a modicum of imbalance for the greater good. These people could be in training or training someone.

I am wondering if anyone else came to these conclusions and if these things are being attempted with CSS, et al.

MrChaos wrote:QUOTE (MrChaos @ Jul 13 2011, 12:38 AM) Until then I sincerely hope you read all of my words to you cause I'm not dismissing your comments ,simply telling you it isn't worth the debate until you understand the math... no offense intended.

(*sigh*... $#@!, ok gonna trim the mini-novella I just wrote)

None taken. You think what I said conflicts with what you've found but I don't believe it does: I'm not questioning AS team totals are predictive of the outcome while disregarding the commander's influence (or the accuracy of your analysis at arriving at the conclusion). I'm more than happy take your word for it.

But while there could be a number of reasons why that holds true in the current matchmaking environment, it won't necessarily hold true in a new, more structured (and hopefully fairer and less painful) matchmaking environment. We won't know until there is enough historical data, and my "gut-feeling" is that ignoring the commander influence especially in a stacking-free environment is not going to help.

Or to put it another way: we know AS, or rather TS, works perfectly in games where there no external variables beyond player skill influencing the game. Therefore it's logical to either eliminate them or take them into account. I realize eliminating them is more in-line with TS/AS philosophy and any additional fudging has an arbitrary factor, but the commander is not something you can eliminate (others such as game settings favoring one team could be eliminated, potentially)

Cyre: you can measure skill. There will of course be some arbitrary weighting to it - the question is if we can get it close enough to result in an agreeable number. We won't know till we try and model the system.

There is also a huge advantage in providing statistics to highlight good stealth bombers, TP droppers, proxers etc for gameplay purposes.

I'm going to celebrate a promotion tonight. Consider this a placeholder to be filled probably this weekend.... Other things too

I dislike autobalance, I can't fly with my homies as much!

How to make allegiance not die.

1. STFU
2. Play

@spunk: i'm sorry if this sounds like i'm picking on you, but it is the heart of the matter: what is skill if not the ability to win? what is skill if it has no predictive power? give it to me in non absolute terms if that is what you want but be sure that to cram your definition in a mathematical model you must have as you most likely know to have some measurable parameters, both at the start and at the output. you can´t graph a function on an undefined domain and codomain, and that is how i percieve what you're saying.

when you are measuring 'skill' 'arbitrarily', what you really are doing is just calling a function on arbitrary factors and undefined codomain

skill:arbitrary factors -> what?

how can you do something with this?

i could be the best dogfighter in the world, that would make me 'skilled'. 500/1 kd ratio. but a bomber comes and i don't care, i keep podding the noob in the unshielded scout popping from the door time and time again. is that 'skill' then? what use does your perfect aiming and dodging skill do to the real, *objectively quantifiable*, *absolute* objective of winning the game?

not saying you couldn't just gather random stats and make leaderboards for commanding/scouting/whoring/bombing/etc. but it is not a way to quantify how good of a player you are, because nobody cares about your apm or your age or your incredible bombing skills, the only the game (not people, the game) is how much you contribute to your team. absolute, measurable, predictable.

I think we should stop making threads like this, "Allegiance is dead"

and make them more like, "What are you going to do when allegiance is dead?"

Ehh?

hi spunk

It's a shame ... I have been looking for a game like this for years and now that I find it,
I have to see threads like this.

The funny thing is: Why did I have to look for years to find it?

... I used to play Privateer, Priv2, Freelancer ... several years passed and I really wanted
to play space-sims again. Did I find Allegiance despite badly wanting that multi-player
space experience? No.
I actually found it on some "free to play games" site ... burrowed under a
pile of worthless crap ... because I was sort of bored and wanted to see if there are
alternatives to ufo:ai, an entirely different game ... that's not the way a potentially huge fan should find the game.

As of now, you basically need to get lucky like I did, or you would need somebody
referring it to you, which is tough if the player-base is small already.


Post links everywhere, join the Alleg-facebook-group, recruit people from the X-forums
who are waiting for X-online, actively refer people next time you spend 3 hours chatting someplace about the weather.

If everything fails you can always wait for X-online. ;-)