Seeding system?

[dogscoff]

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

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?

[geoschmo]

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

[dogscoff]

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

[Trajan]

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 ]

[geoschmo]

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

[dogscoff]

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=-)