A Suggested Ladder for Distinguishing Player Levels in 0 A.D.

[king reza the great]

 

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Based on my 4-5 years of experience playing 0 A.D., I have noticed that many players are either overrated or underrated, with some claiming their skill level is higher than it actually is. To address this, I propose the following ladder to categorize players' levels:

1. Iron Level (1200 or below):
   These players are beginners with limited experience in the game. They are still learning the mechanics, and progressing beyond this level may take a few months to several years, depending on the player.

2. Bronze Level (1200–1500):
   Players at this level excel at booming but are weak in combat and often struggle against rushers. Many prefer defensive playstyles and are not as active in offensive strategies.

3. Silver Level (1500–1700):
   These players are "eco-bots" with excellent economic skills and strong armies. However, they rarely rush and lack proficiency in advanced rushing tactics. When they do rush, it is often infantry-based. They primarily prefer playing on mainland maps and are less skilled on low-resource maps. Additionally, they are vulnerable to early attacks.

4. Golden Level (1700–1900):
   These players are aggressive and knowledgeable about rushing strategies. They excel at disrupting the economy of silver-level players and often dominate early engagements.

5. Diamond Level (1900+):
   These players are highly creative, capable of devising new strategies for both combat and economy. They often serve as role models, with others learning from their gameplay. In my opinion, among last year’s active players, only Vali, Borg, and Vinme belong to this elite level.

Note on Cheating:
Some players use tools like ProGUI auto-train, hacked auto-civilization selection, or multi-click mice. While some may argue these are not cheats, in my view, anything that provides an unfair advantage is cheating. These tools can artificially elevate a player's level. For example, a bronze-level player using cheats might appear to be at the silver level. Therefore, players using such tools should be demoted by one level in their ranking.

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Edited January 3 by king reza the great

[TheCJ]

What purpose does this post serve?

I mean, I guess its a nice idea, but what am I supposed to do with this?

Also, do your distinctions even apply to 4v4 teamgames? Most of the time it's just the best play to go for a defensive eco-bot tactic, because thats just the strongest tactic in 0ad at the moment. So anyone that makes use of the tactic that has the highest probability of success is silver?

Also, what do I do, now that I know King Reza The Great declared me as silver? Should I put that as a custom suffix?

 

Well, my comment may come off as more combatative than intended; you are absolutely correct; the ratings are a very bad indicator of actual skill.

But if you want a better way to rank players, why not think about how a mod could process the post-game statistics to calculate a better rating (like local rating is doing, but using better logic). If you manage to decipher which of your skill groups a player belongs to just by looking at the stats, it should be possible to create a mod that can do that aswell, which would be a significant improvement to localratings and ratings as a whole!

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I think we should have some sort of ranked play system with matchmaking for ratings. It should use a set map pool and a handful of other constrained settings (ie u can't make the map giant to throw off your opponent).

The hold up is that it probably won't work well with a small player count.

[Emacz]

I kinda of agree.  Pretty sure i suggested somewhere a ranking system similar to Starcraft 2.  But I agree it will be harder with a small player pool.