Multiplayer ratings

[Baelish]

I think that a multiplayer rating can be very useful to understand real power of a player to make a balanced game. In my experience I met overpower 1100 and weak 1300. I have no doubt that their ratings are real, but a team game is really different from a 1vs1 match. So, I want to propose a multiplayer rating, next to the already existent 1vs1.

The main problem is: how to rate players? In my opinion we must take in consideration both who is the victory team and the results obtained by players in each team.

1. calculate the sum of the points of each team: so if the stronger team wins, they gain less points; if the weaker team wins, they gain more points.
2. use the overall ratings each 5 minutes to understand who played better in game (although he/she is in the loser team);
3. create a classification based on previous point and give points to first 4 players, remove from least 4;
4. finally give bonus points to all player of the winner team, based on point 1.

In this way a good player of the loser team can earn points and a weak of the winner one can lose them. The only problem is that players on the borders are disadvantaged, because they usually grow slower.

It's only a sketch, so can be improved with formulas to define all possible cases, but I think that the previous list contain all essential rules.

 

[gui456wSERTDYF]

This also depends on the map. For example, take all the pros who play always mainland 4v4 to any other map with less resources or water, and you will find that suddenly they are not pros anymore. But in mainland they are unbeatable.

[Norse_Harold]

There don't seem to be any developers willing to implement multiplayer ratings, probably because it wouldn't be reliable anyway. If you want it implemented, you need to volunteer to write the code for it.

Instead, I suggest using LocalRatings mod. It does most of what you're asking for in terms of getting a gauge of how to make a roughly balanced game. It does favor players who boom, but hosts should be paying attention to the strengths and weaknesses of the players and balancing games accordingly.

Balancing is an art, and it is based on getting familiar with the players. There's no way around that.

Edited Sunday at 14:29 by Norse_Harold

[Stan`]

There is also https://replay-pallas.wildfiregames.ovh/ that allow you to share replays with other people to get an idea using as many replays as possible to someone's rating.

[Baelish]

7 hours ago, Norse_Harold said:

There don't seem to be any developers willing to implement multiplayer ratings, probably because it wouldn't be reliable anyway.

I know it would be reliable, but IMHO better than actual system anyway. I had not thought about maps, so I believe that a solution is: chose mainland as official map for classified games. So we can also take tournaments or fixed teams using discord (or other) for coordination in the team.

Quote

Instead, I suggest using LocalRatings mod. It does most of what you're asking for in terms of getting a gauge of how to make a roughly balanced game. It does favor players who boom, but hosts should be paying attention to the strengths and weaknesses of the players and balancing games accordingly.

Balancing is an art, and it is based on getting familiar with the players. There's no way around that.

Thank you very much for the suggestion, I'll try to create something and maybe more than one parameter because the strength of a player can't be defined by a single number.

[Vantha]

11 hours ago, Baelish said:

I know it would be reliable, but IMHO better than actual system anyway.

I agree. I think any decent team game rating system would bring a good improvement over the current system, just because most players play more team games than 1v1s and a higher number of rated games will automatically result in a more accurate rating. We wouldn't even need to abandon the current rating system, players can have both 1v1 and team game ratings at once.

I can't even imagine it to be that hard to implement, the problem is a lack of manpower. However, if anyone decides to start working on it, I am open to help coding it.

[alre]

there is a problem with creating teams rating, which is that it needs a pull request to the lobby code, which is harder to test (easy enough to change though), possibly on top of a mod to the game as well.

@Dunedan is the lobby maintainer. last time we had this same discussion he said he would accept a pull request with good enough guarantees it wouldn't breack anything.