Seeding system?
 

OK, I know it would be horribly complicated and involve a lot of work for someone, but we've taken on more insane tasks than this and won before now...

Anyway, wouldn't it be cool to have a player seeding system? I'd love to have my World Player ranking in my sig (even if I was at the bottom of the list=-)

I know there was that tournament Last year (Askan won, didn't he?), and I'm just thinking of extending that premise. Perhaps it could be tied it into PBW somehow. Tournament/ league games could be played and each players' performance tracked and scored. Eventually (after enough playing had gone on to get decent statistics) each participating player would have a "world ranking".

On the plus side...
+It would be cool! Come on, wouldn't you like to be a world seed at something?
+It would encourage ppl to finish their games rather just than abandon/ surrender them.
+The standard of human players would get better and better.
+Massive corporate sponsorship deals and TV rights to the championships could bring some money into the game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

On the minus side...
-People might start cheating / taking it all far too seriously (It IS only a game.)
-It would cost someone time and/ or money to organise it. Perhaps a nominal admin charge could be levied on players who wish to be seeded, and that money used provide PBW for free for everyone else.

Anyway, there it is. Anyone approve? Anyone have any idea how to go about it? Anyone prepared to try to organise it?

Re: Seeding system?
 

I had kicked around an idea like this. A ladder would be a great thing. I was sorry to see the Borg ladder go away when it did.

If it's done it would need to be seperate from PBW, for a couple reasons. Mainly because the guy doing the programming for PBW is tied up as it is doing bug fixes and stuff on PBW. Although we could have a seperate, but "endorsed" ladder for PBW.

There are plenty of free games ladder systems out there. You would have to put up with some ads when you went to the ladder sight. I actually set one up at one point and played around with it just to see what it would look like.

If there is enough of a call for this sort of thing I'd be happy to help get it off the ground.

Geoschmo

Re: Seeding system?
 

Perhaps some system which took into account results from lots of different ladders and tournaments. Tennis seedings, for example, aren't calculated from the results of Wimbledon alone, but from lots of different events from around the world through out the year.

The difficult bit would be working out the scoring system. There are so many different settings and ways to win in SEIV, and also a victory against an unseeded/ low sedded player would have to count very differently to a win against one of the top ranking players... The more I think about it the less possible it sounds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Seeding system?
 

Gentlemen,

I have participated in numerous Online ladders and whole heartedly support them as a method of increasing the participating in any Online community such as this one.

The only drawback to a PWB ladder system is the time to report results of each game. I imagine that the average time for a PBW game is quite long (weeks - months), and that would make for a slow growth ladder, which is not always a bad thing.

This community appears quite solid, and the players appear to be in for the long-haul, so a ladder would be an fun addition to a fun community.

Cheers!
Trajan

[ July 29, 2002, 14:37: Message edited by: Trajan ]

Re: Seeding system?
 

The varying styles of games and the length of them are both valid concerns for any prospective ranking system.

The idea that I had toyed around with was a simple ladder system such as is available at Case's Ladder website. The way it works is you move up the ladder by beating players ahead of you in the ladder. The losing party in each case would report the loss.

My idea would be to limit the number of player in an official ladder game to four. This would help with keeping the games from going on forever, although they can still take a long time even then. Any combination of mods, victory conditions, and game settings that can be agreed upon by all the players would be fine I think, as long as there is some clearly defined method of deciding who won and who lost, and in teh case of 3 or four man games who game in 2nd and 3rd.

If I ran the ladder I would also require that anybody in the ladder use their PBW login as their identity on the ladder, although I would not require the game to be played on PBW if the players choose not to.

But the length of games is really the biggest obstacle to something like this working well.

Geoschmo

Re: Seeding system?
 

Hmm. I agree with the practicality of your scoring ideas, Geo, but it would nice to allow *any* kind of game settings/ number of players/ victory conditions.

Unfortunately then the only way to properly score each game would be with a panel of expert judges/ impartial peers looking in on the game files.

They could allocate scores depending on growth, diplomacy skills, defensive/ offensive proficiency, style & sneakiness, roleplaying and other similar criteria. For example, a player might lose the game, but score highly because he put together an exceptional end-game defence against overwhelming odds.

In this way you'd get a true assesment of your worth as a player and mastery of the game which a computer could not really hope to calculate.

Of course, until SEIV is adopted as an Olympic event and the massive corporate sponsorship starts rolling in, this system would be hugely impractical for about a dozen different reasons. Still, we can dream=-)

Re: Seeding system?
 

Good Morning Gentlemen,

Is it possible to consider how a person placed in the game? While the win/loss totals would more than suffice for game reporting in a 1v1 game, I am wondering if it would work as well for 2x2 or larger games? Scoring would be optimal, though seemingly difficult to implement.

Counting absolute wins whether an individual win or allied win might be the most simple way to account for wins and losses.

Also...another perk might be that each player in the league would have their record and profile posted in the league player records. So that if someone wanted to join a game they could look up a particular players win/loss record, and any other pertinenet fact the player may have posted in their profile.

Cheers!
Trajan

Re: Seeding system?
 

Well, the simplest way for multiplayer games is to record one loss for everyone that did better than you in the game. So for a 5 player game the ultimate winner would end up with four wins and zero losses, etc.

This would have the additional advantage of allowing players that exited the game early, a common occurance in a game such as this, to go ahead and record their losses without having to wait around weeks or months to do so. As each player leaves they will post a loss to each of the players still remaining in the game. They will not need to worry about wins as the players that left prior to them will have already reported their losses, giving that person the win.

Another benefit of this system would be for players that abandon a game in progress. If said game was a ladder game they would be required to post the losses when leaving the game, even if their empire is still alive in the game. Then we either leave the empire as an AI, or we could then come up with some quantifiable "save" statistic for players that take over these abandoned games.

Geoschmo

Re: Seeding system?
 

Well, perhaps trying to compare relative worths of victories is not neccesary. Afterall the object is to win, regardless of game type no? And why is a win under one type of system any better than a win under another. You can't say one win is easier than another, because it's then easier for the other players in that game too, and they still got beat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif So perhaps merely tracking wins and losses as far as your rating goes is sufficent. But it would also be good to keep a brief desription of the game settings for each posted game resolution. Then if you were considering playing someone, you could see how they have fared in the particular type of game you are considering. But that would be just for informational purposes, not any sort of rating.

When enough information is accumulated, you could have seperate Ratings I suppose based on game type. You would have one overall rating that encompased all your wins and losses, and then seperate Ratings for games of each type. If you have no games of a particular type, then you simply would not be rated in that Category.

Geoschmo