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And that information will never be catagorized in a neat little image except as an overall ranking.

So wish for something that can be done instead.

Or randomly complain and do nothing, which is what usually happens.

Tyrh wrote:QUOTE (Tyrh @ Mar 4 2013, 01:03 PM) And that information will never be categorized in a neat little image except as an overall ranking.

I disagree.

Consider the squad game verses a pickup game. They are both played in the same fashion, meaning that they are using the same faction / map selection / game settings and so forth...however, the squad game is started with Players and Commanders knowing their team and their opponents, strength and weakness, by simply knowing WHO is on each team. Moreover, we do not have "fake noobs" selecting which squad team to join because the squad players are revealed by name prior to game start.

In contrast, the pickup game has little or none of this information when formed. The Commander and Players are forced to assume that the "ranks" reveal that individual players' strengths. There is no information whatsoever that reveals what that player is capable of or even likely to do. We have to assume that a rank(10) Player on blue team is equally capable and the proper countermeasure for the rank(10) Player on yellow team. This is a ridiculous concept for a game like Allegiance.

Go look at any rank on the leaderboard and study the diversity of the players who share the same rank and tell me how splitting those ranks on different teams creates a balance. Add to this the fake noob factor and you end up with games that few will enjoy. Most squad players hate pick up games for these very reasons. One solution was posed by Drac to eliminate hider names and hide ranks from players however, that is impractical because it requires accurate ranks, autobalance to be on and still does not eliminate the fake noob problem.

By placing color icons next to Player names revealing their more specific strengths and weaknesses, you transfer to all players the same information that exists in squad games.

jbansk wrote:QUOTE (jbansk @ Mar 4 2013, 03:00 PM) By placing color icons next to Player names revealing their more specific strengths and weaknesses, you transfer to all players the same information that exists in squad games.

whoa, though i don't believe it has "all" the information i actually agree with j on this one

jbansk wrote:QUOTE (jbansk @ Mar 4 2013, 03:00 PM) I disagree....

It's not that finding out how good a pilot can do a task is not good information, the issue is that there are limited options.

Getting a resume isn't one of them.

Categorizing in extremely broad categories that are likely as accurate as the current ranking system is an interesting option to augment information, however as much as I disagree with the current incarnation of AllegSkill it does provide one important set of data- the likelihood that a given player on a team will be on the winning team, either because of their ability at Alleg and/or their ability to stack.

Tyrh wrote:QUOTE (Tyrh @ Mar 4 2013, 05:26 PM) ...the issue is that there are limited options.

BT and Spunk could whip this out in less than a day. Two days, tops.

Tyrh wrote:QUOTE (Tyrh @ Mar 4 2013, 05:26 PM) Categorizing in extremely broad categories that are likely as accurate as the current ranking system...

Categorizing pilots by STATS is far less broad than what Allegskill is doing and infinitely more accurate.

Tyrh wrote:QUOTE (Tyrh @ Mar 4 2013, 05:26 PM) ...I disagree with the current incarnation of AllegSkill it does provide one important set of data- the likelihood that a given player on a team will be on the winning team, either because of their ability at Alleg and/or their ability to stack.

The most useless information there is.

When a squad game is formed or played, do you think anyone relies or considers the player ranks for any tactical or strategic action taken?

Again, it's meaningless to everyone and fails to provide any means of balance.

FURTHERMORE,

There should not only be icons for the 3 categories I mentioned but also one for Commanding. When in flight and launched in ship, each ship should have icon display both in HUD and on pilot name (for F3 view) the pilots color indicator. Thus you have:

1. While in lobby, each player has 4 icons representing Command, Scout, Int(Fig), Bomber(Cap) visible to all players in lobby. Each Icon has 3 colors to represent strength in category based upon (fill in blank) method.
2. Each team in lobby will have the same Icons representing the average strengths, by color representation, of the players on that team. These icons should be visible to Commanders while game is running.
3. While in game, each player's ship should carry a color representation of that Pilot's ability in that ship. For example, when Weedman launches his Int, his team should see that he has the high ranking color for that ship (in HUD and in F3 view). The opposing team should have no view of this information (let them memorize it from game start).

jbansk wrote:QUOTE (jbansk @ Mar 5 2013, 08:32 PM) 1. While in lobby, each player has 4 icons representing Command, Scout, Int(Fig), Bomber(Cap) visible to all players in lobby. Each Icon has 3 colors to represent strength in category based upon (fill in blank) method.
2. Each team in lobby will have the same Icons representing the average strengths, by color representation, of the players on that team. These icons should be visible to Commanders while game is running.
3. While in game, each player's ship should carry a color representation of that Pilot's ability in that ship. For example, when Weedman launches his Int, his team should see that he has the high ranking color for that ship (in HUD and in F3 view). The opposing team should have no view of this information (let them memorize it from game start).

Great idea, but you got the point.

As long you don't know how to get these numbers, the whole idea is just a woolgathering...

Post your idea again, once you know how to get these numbers out of the game.

pkk wrote:QUOTE (pkk @ Mar 5 2013, 04:18 PM) Post your idea again, once you know how to get these numbers out of the game.

There must be at least 100 people who will submit formulas they believe will measure strengths using the stats available and by collecting a bit more data.

Imago was pulling data in such detail that he was almost able to produce game replays. He had a website up that showed the data in unbelievable detail.

Thought between You, BT and Spunk, it might be feasible.

jbansk If wishing made things happen we'd all be flying these ships in space right now.

Look, until as pkk says there is a criteria to give the actual information you want, the community wants that information and agrees on how it's going to be gathered and displayed, and people are willing and able to bring the project to completion, it's just not going to happen, then there's the whole scout thing.

So either do it all yourself and present it, or come up with a solution.


QUOTE Command, Scout, Int(Fig), Bomber(Cap)[/quote]

We have a command rank, the int(fig) is basically a whore rank from the sounds of it, the bomber/capship is pretty meaningless since they are completely different things and is very subjective regardless, and for that matter there's nothing taking htting or sbing.

So let me put it another way;

If you want a detailed set of somewhat accurate information you can have a plethora of detail from achievements I suppose to give you a resume if you will from a profile. You might then be able to collate that information into a few icons by a players callsign in lobby and f6.

I'd be willing to produce the graphics and work on the background details of how they should work together and have the community twink it after, however we'd need to at least have pkk/senate/community be willing to explore that and we'd need to have someone code up the old profile page and modifiy it to display information/badges/whatnot.

1)do what jbansk wnats
2)...
3)alleg #1 game in the world with 50 million players

Moot points, I agree.

Like giving a facelift to a cadaver.

You should realize our player base is 150 people and 50 of those people play regularly. I'm pretty sure everyone knows everyone at this point and very little weight is being put in AS. Maybe when we have a playerbase large enough to not remember everyone and their hiders in a week we'll have a reason to rehash this old talking point.

As for a stat based specialty thing, you can't glean anything from the stats. You can't tell a good whore from a bad one, as always stats don't give any weight to the usefulness of a prober/nanner/minerfinding scout, you can't reward reaction time or situational awareness or any of the important components in being a valuable player. Any approach using stats is blind, and none are objective towards usefulness except wins and losses factoring in stack. AS is pretty useless, but it's not because it's poorly designed, it's because there's nothing else you can really use. Other than the decreasing sigma nothing about it is really broken.

That said, bios could be written about every regular player at this point. All it would end up being would be a name calling match, but you could assign people specialties based on what the community thinks. It would be hilarious at least.