FreeGameDev

Hi guys!

To kickstart a proper competitive community I was thinking about setting up a competitive ladder based on the ELO system:

• Facilitates paring of players of similar skill.
• Takes into account your opponent ranking after a win/lose to calculate your new rank. If you defeat a player with a very low rank compared to yours, you don’t get any points.
• It’s self-correcting.

Since I don’t have a site or codding experience, I was thinking about making a chart on LibreOffice “Calc” with rank, matches played, wins, loses, etc. Obviously, demos must be provided with conformation in chat from both players that it is a ranked match.
Also, independently of which system and implementation do we agree to use, we would need to reach a consensus about these topics:

• Official competitive rules. Modes, mutators, etc.
• Maps.
• Rank degradation or how much time without playing needs to pass before you get penalized, and how many points will you lose.

What do you guys think?

Nice shot! it could be really useful, but who will record on a LibreOffice chart "Calc" and keep it up to date? maybe we will need some automatic stuff...
anyway a great idea.
ty

Maybe use an IRC bot?
https://github.com/OpenRA/elobot
Came up in a quick search.

\/ /\ |^ < <> {l Wrote}:Nice shot! it could be really useful, but who will record on a LibreOffice chart "Calc" and keep it up to date? maybe we will need some automatic stuff...
anyway a great idea.
ty

I will do it
With the small playerbase we have, i shouldn't have an issue. But i do agree that we should automate it in the future.

Julius {l Wrote}:Maybe use an IRC bot?
https://github.com/OpenRA/elobot
Came up in a quick search.

what's that?

A bot is a small automated chat response program that can automate various things. For ladders and tournaments IRC bots are/used to be quite popular as they can often be used from the in game chat. I guess these days there are similar bots for Discord.

For that to be ok, I would want it to be opt-in, per player. Because sometime players will just want actual... you know, fun? Or training with a weapon set?
Also, you need to define a player's efficiency. No, it's not the K/D ratio. It's not even the accuracy. How do you measure teamplay?
Finally, but not least, how do you work with people you can't identify? Just a pseudonym is *far* from being auth. And if you auth, there are legal issues.
If you can reply to those problems, I may even find new objections.

Don't take me wrong, I'm not against the idea, but I think a simple spreadsheet is *way* too light. How can one measure the skill of a player on a bomber ball, for examle?

freem {l Wrote}:For that to be ok, I would want it to be opt-in, per player...

Yeah, you would need to opt-in first. Then, as i said, both players could confirm (in chat, so there is evidence on the demo) that the match they are having is a "ranked" or "official" one; because most of the times the players just want to have friendly duels.

Also, you need to define a player's efficiency...

By matches won. In the beginning we could just use individual "duels" since it's easier. Latter, when the community grows, we could add crew matches/clan wars with them ranked per mode (BB, CTF, etc.).

In the future i would like to include more stats like k/d ratios, weapon accuracy, on which maps X player has more probability of winning, against which weapons X player struggles the most, etc.

how do you work with people you can't identify?

Auths are the most convenient way since it's already included on the game. If someone wants to be included in the ladder, he or she would need an auth.

...there are legal issues...

what kind of legal issues? i don't know much about this topic