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I want to have a productive, constructive conversation with someone about ELO. I am aware that a thread like this could be a nightmare, but I'm not sure whether I should be PMing Tiger or Pook or what, and also I'm just naive and like to pretend that open discussions are good.

So if you think this is going to turn into a nightmare, delete it ruthlessly, but PM me afterward.

So first of all, it needs to be said that the correlation between current ELO rank and pilot skill are pretty bad. Bad enough that autobalanced games are just as stacked as non-autobalanced games.

This problem should fix itself with the built-in feedback mechanism (as long as people continue to play autobalanced games!); the stacked team will win, their ranks will go up, and next time ELO is presented with the same set of players it will make better team choices.

The problem is that this process is slow, and that it will be made slower if people don't play autobalanced games much, which seems to be the trend right now. And the main reason I, at least, don't like playing with autobalance on, is that there's no way to pick your commander. Do you guys think there would be someway to implement a commander preference option? That way all the people who didn't mind flying for Voob1 against Hider1 would get assigned to Voob1's team, at least.

Also, along the same lines- it seems to me fairly frequent that there are several good commanders riding the lobby, all of whom have the same unwillingness to command. Since we all know that the first ingredient of really good Allegiance games is two good commanders stepping up willingly, I was thinking about ways to encourage this behavior. It seems that the primary motivation to command is respect, glory, etc. Is there some way to implement a "voting for commanders" routine in the lobby between games? I mean, I would have a much harder time saying "no guys I don't want to comm" if I knew the majority of the lobby wanted me, specifically, to comm. And this could be tied in with the commander preference business above.

One more observation- while rank doesn't seem to correlate well with skill yet, kills per game seems to pick a good chunk of the people who are low-ranked and high skill, and I didn't see anyone with a high kills/game that I would consider a bad pilot. This isn't to say that all of the good pilots have good kills/game.

Good points Lyk.

I'm not sure about the correlation for kill with skill. Sometimes I'll go kill a miner and a con in the first 5 minutes then be probing most of the rest of the game, so I may pick up 5 kills in that game though the miner and con kill were very important.

Even the points system in game is not so hot, 2 pts for finding an aleph? Sure it's easier to do that then pod someone, or is it, someone has to find 5 alephs to equal 1 kill, that's a bit of an issue. Bah, ok some I'm off topic, in anycase the in game points for finding a tech rock (1 pt) and finding an aleph (2) should be doubled.

Nice post. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

As far as balancing goes, commanders elo should be multiplied by 3 or 4 for balancing purposes since they have at least that much more of an effect on the outcome of the game as one player does.

Paradigm2 wrote:QUOTE (Paradigm2 @ Feb 6 2007, 12:34 AM) As far as balancing goes, commanders elo should be multiplied by 3 or 4 for balancing purposes since they have at least that much more of an effect on the outcome of the game as one player does.

But when your commanding, your playing a different game then when you are a pilot.

Most commanders are great pilots.

most great pilots are not great commanders.

bax: Go look at the leaderboard and note the pilots who have kills/game greater than 8 or so.

Lykourgos wrote:QUOTE (Lykourgos @ Feb 6 2007, 07:11 AM) One more observation- while rank doesn't seem to correlate well with skill yet, kills per game seems to pick a good chunk of the people who are low-ranked and high skill, and I didn't see anyone with a high kills/game that I would consider a bad pilot. This isn't to say that all of the good pilots have good kills/game.

Last time I looked I had 9 kills/game. Point disproved? /mrgreen.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="mrgreen.gif" />

As for not being able to pick your com with the autobalance, you can sit afk until the game launches and then see if the autobalance will let you play for your prefered com. It's not great but it's an option.

What you, as a player, should really be pushing for is even coms. If both coms have an even chance to win (assuming even teams) then either, you don't mind playing for either com, or there won't be any great pressure for spots on either team.

I agree that the situation at the moment is not ideal, but it should be improving as time goes by.

...I'm going to preface this by saying your post was pretty good Lky, very constructive, very positive. That being said, since R3 was introduced, I've seen and played on exactly 2 autobalanced games. Last night was one of them. And the team I joined was going to lose just based on the player mix, regardless that ELO showed it even. And sure enough, soon as I joined, a lobby squatter instanteously joined the better team. And it was gd frustrating knowing that it was going to happen.

Autobalance has no chance of working unless people use it. And if people are still going to try and join the stacked team because of certain rationales, wtf difference will it make? YP was the com I joined, the losing team. So people didn't want to join his team because he's a bad com? No, it's because they still want to stack. They want to protect their kills per game stat high, keep their ejects percentage low.

Is it possible that we could reach a point where people would just join a game and not worry about it. Probably not. 'Cause people will always have the same set of excuses, and it's been this way since the beginning, bad com, bad faction, bad team color. And really bad excuses.

I think your post is constructive, Lky, but honestly, you know as well as I do, the reason people stack has really little to do with the com or any other reason. They just want to win by stacking, period. For example, I've seen Aarm, or Weed, join the weaker team with a crappy, new com. Bad com, right? And then, lo and behold, the team gets the stack. And wins, or comes very close to winning. So the moral of the story is that it has exactly NOTHING to do with the com skills or any of another dozen reasons. It has EVERYTHING to do with the stack.

Really, if people aren't going to give this a chance, all the admins, coders, server hosts, designers, etc., etc., etc., should just close up shop and move on. Anyone can host this game, maybe we should move to a ragtag collection of ad hoc servers. And the game will die for good.

The entire infrastructure of the game, all the effort as it stands today has been aimed at R3. So let's forget about our kills per game and give it a chance. As you say, autobalance HAS to be played to work.

greator is right. We either embrace ELO or remain stackers forever. That being said, I am a stacker.

I stack bc I want to win and I don't enjoy screaming at clueless pilots or explaining every detail of how to do this or that task (Drop your shields n00b, arm missiles at 2k, ATTACK THEIR PROBES, Stay together, defend bomber, nan the TP2!!!!, etc.) and if i know this or that pilot is going to be able to do everything I do- and more- then I want to fly with him rather than against him. That being said I have completely stopped caring about my kills/game (until i get a better than .500 win percentage) and abandanoed whoring (for the most part) in favor of finding cons/miners, deprobing bbr runs, nanning misc., et cetera. If I join the non-stack then I am going to get very little opportunity to do these game winning things and have to defend base or generally try and make up for the difference in skill. It is no fun to take on 3 or 4 superior players seemingly alone bc the 2 or 3 teammates you brought with you *popped* almost instantaneously...

With a community so small that we know who is good at what on sight, stacking is going to persist, and persist, and persist.

Jormagund wrote:QUOTE (Jormagund @ Feb 6 2007, 04:08 PM) It is no fun to take on 3 or 4 superior players seemingly alone bc the 2 or 3 teammates you brought with you *popped* almost instantaneously...

I know this is off topic but why is it ok to make it so other people have no fun? Surely if all the stackers stopped stacking that wouldn't happen? In fact by stacking you increase the chances of being in that situation.

As we can't force the stackers to stop stacking by any other means we must use the autobalance. If the various formulas need tweaking then they must be tweaked. It's the only way we can erradicate that sort of rubbish gameplay experience for everyone.

The ELO adjustment formula needs to be constant rather than adjusting more or less based on the expected outcome, or possibly even inverted from the present case so stacked games yield greater changes than balanced ones, and stacked games need to count. Join the stack, gain more ELO, become less able to stack because your high ELO rank prevents it.