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Utility isn't a real skill or anything deserving of its own rank, it just means you suck at/refuse to be effective in a combat role. Any self identifying whore in this game is a better at both whoring and utility tasks than any self identifying "utility" player. I've been listening to this utility rah rah rah bull @#(! for years. Learn to kill things.


Let me stack my team with whores against a team of equally ranked "utility" players and see how that pans out. lol

in example: the history of XT whore squad vs PK utility squad. Aarm had an incredible ability to coordinate PK but it still wasn't enough to beat the squad of whores because it turns out

you don't get to "utility" anything when you're in a POD

who ever knew a combat game mostly revolves around combat? YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN THAT!



you either win or lose as a pilot and you either win or lose as a commander and that's all that matters

there are a handful of people I'd like on my team for "utility" roles but almost everybody who claims to be a "utility" pilot is just terrible at the game.

cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Mar 20 2018, 05:24 PM) Random chance is a part of many games where TrueSkill is used. In fact, you could say random chance is an element of any game, even chess -- otherwise weaker players would always lose to stronger players, but they don't.

Horse $hit. It is the underlying principle of Trueskill and you're pretending that the commander is a variable like random chance that can be weened out along with the other variables and somehow you're going to get enough interesting samples to derive rank.

cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Mar 20 2018, 05:24 PM) This is a terrible metric. Hour long games are more reflective of how the cores are designed, what factions are being played, and whether either team has a will to win or whether they just enjoy whoring. Arguably, hour long games are the cancer that kills allegiance, as everyone winds up exhausted at the end and not willing to play another game, or unwilling to join a game in progress they won't see to the end. Basically, any game that ends to a bomb rush is by definition not a balanced game?

Hour long games means that there likely wasn't a huge early game upset, that there was somewhat equal teams (by avoiding early resign), that there was somewhat decent rock placement where the factions somewhat matched and that neither team was overwhelmed early allowing the "skills" to determine outcome.

Hey P1, Eat $hit

Sheriff Metz wrote:QUOTE (Sheriff Metz @ Mar 20 2018, 05:28 PM) Utility isn't a real skill or anything deserving of its own rank, it just means you suck at/refuse to be effective in a combat role.

EXACTLY MY POINT!!

We don't care whether I'm good in a scout or not BECAUSE I'm not going to fly one!!! so my utility rank would be low regardless of my skill in that craft thus I would not balance a team properly if that team needed more utility players.

This thread has gotten interesting rather quickly.

Sheriff Metz wrote:QUOTE (Sheriff Metz @ Mar 20 2018, 05:34 PM) in example: the history of XT whore squad vs PK utility squad. Aarm had an incredible ability to coordinate PK but it still wasn't enough to beat the squad of whores

WTF are you talking about?... I left XT and immediately went to PK and I don't remember XT doing anything aside from getting their asses spanked.

Wasp wrote:QUOTE (Wasp @ Mar 20 2018, 02:51 PM) WTF are you talking about?... I left XT and immediately went to PK and I don't remember XT doing anything aside from getting their asses spanked.

XT was undefeated for years.

Sheriff Metz wrote:QUOTE (Sheriff Metz @ Mar 20 2018, 02:28 PM) Utility isn't a real skill or anything deserving of its own rank, it just means you suck at/refuse to be effective in a combat role. Any self identifying whore in this game is a better at both whoring and utility tasks than any self identifying "utility" player. I've been listening to this utility rah rah rah bull @#(! for years. Learn to kill things.

It's not often I agree with Metz, but yeah. There are too many players in this game that fancy themselves a "utility" player when they do nothing but wander the map aimlessly in a scout all game until they get podded, then lather rinse and repeat. And the whole time think they're doing their team a service.

You can't call yourself a utility player unless you're also able to jump in an int and go help kill a miner when the situation demands it.

If there's anything I've learned in flying in "utility player" squads for ten years is that situational awareness is not the be-all-and-end-all. Yes, it's important, but if that's all you have, and there's no muscle on your team, then enjoy the situational awareness of being slaughtered again and again and again.

Wasp wrote:QUOTE (Wasp @ Mar 20 2018, 02:38 PM) Horse@#(!. It is the underlying principle of Trueskill

Again, you're going to need a citation.

QUOTE and you're pretending that the commander is a variable like random chance that can be weened out along with the other variables and[/quote]

And you're pretending that it's all up to "the god like hand of the commander" which "completely disassociates almost every player of each game from outcome".

I agree the commander has more influence in the outcome of the game than the rest of his team, but you're going to have to do better than that to demonstrate TrueSkill is fatal flawed. After, TrueSkill also makes the assumption that skills add linearly, which doesn't really have a good theoretical basis either, but ignoring second-order effects works well enough that they can be ignored.

QUOTE somehow you're going to get enough interesting samples to derive rank.[/quote]

TrueSkill converges a lot faster than you think, if you go look at the paper.

Again, why are we arguing about theory here? Let's just go measure it.

QUOTE Hour long games means that there likely wasn't a huge early game upset, that there was somewhat equal teams (by avoiding early resign), that there was somewhat decent rock placement where the factions somewhat matched and that neither team was overwhelmed early allowing the "skills" to determine outcome.[/quote]

I agree that unbalanced games are often quicker games, but the converse is not necessarily true: a quick game is not necessarily an unbalanced game. Just because one team won happened to win the opening furball in a same-sector planting scenario, or one team had more success in early miner O than the other, is no proof that the shoe couldn't have easily been on the other foot in the next game. Even chess has some stunningly short games between grandmasters. Ultimately, it's winning odds that matter.

cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Mar 20 2018, 05:24 PM) Again, this is not a rule of TrueSkill. You're making it up.

I'm not making this up. Please quit making such such accusations. I quoted that specifically from a MS source some 10 years ago when I had this argument with baker and pook... I'm having difficulty finding that source at this moment.

Don't misunderstand me here, I'm not saying that the principle is flawed, what I'm saying is that the application of trueskill to the game of allegiance, is inapplicable.

Players being ranked must be the sole responsible party for outcome, if not, the game would be considered "uninteresting" by the principle. When a god like hand comes in and influences outcome to a degree that dwarfs the players influence on outcome, the sample is tainted to the point where you can not distinguish who the responsible party was and thus make a proper determination of whether the game should be "interesting". Even though there is no way to determine who was responsible, we assume the results as interesting and apply it anyway.

Sheriff Metz wrote:QUOTE (Sheriff Metz @ Mar 20 2018, 06:04 PM) XT was undefeated for years.

oh yeah, when I was XT, we were invincible, then I went to PK, and then PK was invincible...