Beta testing and balance

[Ozricosis]

I will make this as simple as possible for you to understand.

If you recruit a PILOT into your SQUAD and you do not do ALL THAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP THE NEW PILOT BECOME A BETTER PILOT then you are only helping to create an IGNORANT PILOT WITH A SQUAD TAG.

Now, ignorant pilots with squad tags make for imbalanced games. Correct? yes.

So, educating them FURTHER after CADET will make them better pilots? YES!

Good for you, good for me, good for all!

Balance button will not work if unequally skilled pilots both have the same rank. Period. This is being ignored over and over. Please respond to this. Thank you.

And to Mcwarren. I am trying to promote an Allegiance that EVOLVES into helping pilots after CADET. Bringin up the AZ here does nothing.

[Terralthra]

QUOTE (Ozricosis @ Oct 22 2006, 10:08 AM) Balance button will not work if unequally skilled pilots both have the same rank. Period. This is being ignored over and over. Please respond to this. Thank you.

This is the whole point of a statistical system. Everyone's rank starts out at "average" (1500). Those who win have their rank increased, those who lose have their rank decreased. An assumption of the system is that those who are good will tend to be on the winning team, and those who are bad will tend to be on the losing team. By starting with a 1500 v. 1500 game, the best results are obtained for changing the ranks to be more accurate (as I have explained elsewhere, and won't go into here). Stacking, on the other hand, prevents the system from obtaining accurate results.

Please keep in mind, while balanced games are the best for obtaining relevent results,, they take a longer time to converge, with the number of games to obtain 1 level of accuracy higher increasing with every level obtained (analysis elsewhere).

In short, where are you getting this idea that "unequally pilots will have the same rank"?

[guitarism]

Because pilots that are on the same team as those people who are actually conttributing to the team to help it win are also getting points for that win.

Lets take an example. Pilot A is a perfect type of pilot. Always nans the miners, always rams the opposing con, can whore like no tommorow but also has no problem nanning the bomber. He is also a great HTT driver and usually caps 3-4 bases when HTT's are around. This means he will win more games.
Pilot B is always joing the same team as A, he never nans, is in basic figs when the team has hvy ints, and is a general idiot. but he always plays on the same team as A, (lets say he has a fetish). Will his rank not be abnormally high?

Team play =/= individual rank. And there is no way to acurately protray an individual's worth just through team win rankings. It tells you how often the guy has been on a winning team, not if he actually contributes.

[Terralthra]

QUOTE (guitarism @ Oct 22 2006, 10:36 AM) Because pilots that are on the same team as those people who are actually conttributing to the team to help it win are also getting points for that win.

Lets take an example. Pilot A is a perfect type of pilot. Always nans the miners, always rams the opposing con, can whore like no tommorow but also has no problem nanning the bomber. He is also a great HTT driver and usually caps 3-4 bases when HTT's are around. This means he will win more games.
Pilot B is always joing the same team as A, he never nans, is in basic figs when the team has hvy ints, and is a general idiot. but he always plays on the same team as A, (lets say he has a fetish). Will his rank not be abnormally high?

Team play =/= individual rank. And there is no way to acurately protray an individual's worth just through team win rankings. It tells you how often the guy has been on a winning team, not if he actually contributes.

Hm, autobalanced teams would tend to prevent this from happening...that's the essence of a statistical model and its requirements. Yes, pilots who just happen to be on a winning team while shooting at rocks all game will still gain points; however, statistics say that given enough games with mobile team members, the rock-shooting idiot will contribute to a significantly higher number of losses than he does wins.

The fact that our model has the distorting factor of stacking (which is what you just described), means that forcing players A and B onto separate teams is the only way to effectively separate their ranking and evaluate which of them is better. As of right now, if the system sees A & B on the same team all the time, it has effectively no means of judging which of them is contributing to the team and which is not, and ranks them the same.

Make B and A play on different teams, and you'll see their ranks diverge.

[Paradigm2]

I'm all for the autobalance button, but why not allow back traditional stats as well? I really enjoyed the old statistic system and I see no reason why not to keep it even if its not used for balance.

Have the old stat system for those of us who like old stats, and have the auto-balance button based on ELO, everyone wins.

[Terralthra]

The old AZ stat system used code we don't have access to as part of MSN's Zone.

[mcwarren4]

QUOTE (Ozricosis @ Oct 21 2006, 08:08 PM) And to Mcwarren. I am trying to promote an Allegiance that EVOLVES into helping pilots after CADET. Bringin up the AZ here does nothing.

How does autobalance deter squads from educating their pilots? Your comments suggest that you can't have one without the other. Which makes no sense. Speaking for @ACE we hold practices to work on various techniques on occassion and our forums are full of critique and instruction. I don't disagree with you on the point that educating pilots should be your obligation as a squad mate, but implementing a balance feature doesn't keep me from educating. So where's the correlation?

As I type this you are currently playing in yet another game that the other team has no chance of winning. Nice... educational. The other commander asked for someone else to com but after 10 minutes of waiting he finally just said 'go ahead'. Games like this are the real problem here.

Like I've said before. This is what we've been doing for the past six years. Its time for a change.

[TheVoid37]

QUOTE (Ozricosis @ Oct 21 2006, 02:11 PM) I think that you all are attacking Shiz too much.

Maybe you should look in the mirror and ask yourself "Who in the community have I taught recently?" "Does this person need more attention?"

Point is this. Before you point your $#@!ing finger at someone else, make sure you are actually doing something to help the community instead of spouting off bull@#(! on the forums about how high and mighty you are.

Phew. that felt good.

Shutup and play.

Exactly what I was pointing at Ozzy /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> glad someone understood it, and thank you for putting it in plain english for others.

[takingarms1]

I think people are attacking shiz because the topic name has "shiz's comments" right in it. I know the whole squadies defending squadies is cool and everything but I really don't see the point.

This thread is supposed to be about the balance patch, and the good/bad points about it. Shiz addressed this topic, and I responded. All this stuff about helping newbs and teaching community members is great but not really on point.

The point is, the balance patch is a good thing because balanced games are more fun than stacked games. People who say the balance patch will force them to fly for crappy comms are wrong, that is pretty much a straw man argument. The only other argument I see posted here is "the ranks aren't accurate" or "the stats aren't accurate" which isn't so much an argument against the auto-balance button as an argument about how the algorithm should work. I personally don't think we should ditch the whole idea just because it might prove to be difficult to impliment or require some tweaking before we get it right. I also don't think we should ditch it just because it might not be 100% accurate 100% of the time. If it improves the quality of games, keep it. If not, ditch it. Why all the fuss?

And people who throw up their hands and say, "fine, I'm leaving" when they don't get their way are crybabies, who are bluffing anyway. My comment about the perma-ban is not a personal attack, it's a way to call shiz's bluff - if shiz were really leaving, he wouldn't care about a perma-ban. Reality is, shiz wouldn't really leave if the balance patch were implimented. Even if he did, though, alleg would carry on without him, as it has carried on after much better whores than him have left the game for good. This comment is nothing personal, but rather a statement pointing out that saying "i'm leaving unless you do/don't do X" is not a valid way to carry on a discussion.

[Shizoku]

Honestly I'd probebly play a few pickup games from time to time, but not like I used to. I wouldn't have a problem with being permabanned except for that it would prevent me from playing squad games, which up untill they find a code change to nerf XT will still be fun.