Make top ranking players more competitive

[Clanlord Carl]

Needs to have a annual decay to keep folks fighting to be top and some kind of mechanism to reward people who achieve success across a wide number of settings and maps. Until then the 'best' players will have to be determined via tourneys.

[Swimmerdude99]

I agree that something needs to be done, but finding a system that is truly more valid would be a headache to come up with

[benga]

Needs to have a annual decay to keep folks fighting to be top and some kind of mechanism to reward people who achieve success across a wide number of settings and maps. Until then the 'best' players will have to be determined via tourneys.

still don't understand why after couple tournament wins you consider yourself a conqueror material

[mc05025]

Oh that came back to live.

For your information and it isn't really a matter of debade:

Teamgames are not nearly the best way to achieve top ranking. Folowing systems are better:

- Freestyle games. Actually I achieved my best of 5000+ playing only freestyle open multiplayer games a few years ago
- polymorphic in specific maps. Many top players are succeeding about 90% win rate or more at specific settings map at polymorphic which means that by playing open games you can easily have 5000+
- Even 1v1 in Hive can take you to 5500+ as Kaskavel proved a few years ago
- playing any of the above plus chosing your opponent carefully by either foeing whoever is getting good to what you play or by using invitations will get you where Naruto is
- open non escalating games multiplayer with trench or escalating against colonels or above are also settings that can take you to 4500+

Teamgames in clans would very difficult take you over 5000. At least I do not remember any player the last years.


My original post propose a specific logical decay per month (annual seems a bit too long). I still can't see drawbacks except from the fact that it is a bit daring and some people might not like it.

[narutoserigala]

Thank you. Appreciated. I welcome your opinions and see you in the battle field.

FYI, Iplay a varied settings and games. I can shift from Stalingrad to Schloss (& a lot others in between) Play multiplayer or team. Trench or not. Even POLY (unless fremium of course).

What I play at any given time really depends on the seasons of my life ( time schedules , changing preferences etc).

Furthermore, they are by default public to allow opportunities for everyone to play especially so, after I achieved Conqueror ( and even before then, it was the case )

[Swimmerdude99]

My original post propose a specific logical decay per month (annual seems a bit too long). I still can't see drawbacks except from the fact that it is a bit daring and some people might not like it.

The only thing I think that makes this hard is that you would also have to come up with some way to pump scores so that points didn't become a rarity. For instance you would have to take whatever decay and distribute it to poor players in order to keep the points around. Currently we have an equivalent exchange, so any points you lose go directly to another player. Obviously over time as people leave with lots of points or less points they boost or shrink the point pool (so to speak). So I'm not sure how best to handle that. I suppose something like, per active player over that decay period, make sure that many points stays in circulation with the decay and boost to poorer players... I dunno.

[mc05025]

Rating systems are not that static as you think. A huge amount of people come to site play few games, fall under 1000 and stop playing injecting points to the system while when high rated players leave take points out of the system. But anyway we can give 1 point to the rest of the scoreboard or as many as needed to cover this issue if people consider it an issue

[narutoserigala]

Oh that came back to live.

For your information and it isn't really a matter of debade:

Teamgames are not nearly the best way to achieve top ranking. Folowing systems are better:

- Freestyle games. Actually I achieved my best of 5000+ playing only freestyle open multiplayer games a few years ago
- polymorphic in specific maps. Many top players are succeeding about 90% win rate or more at specific settings map at polymorphic which means that by playing open games you can easily have 5000+
- Even 1v1 in Hive can take you to 5500+ as Kaskavel proved a few years ago
- playing any of the above plus chosing your opponent carefully by either foeing whoever is getting good to what you play or by using invitations will get you where Naruto is
- open non escalating games multiplayer with trench or escalating against colonels or above are also settings that can take you to 4500+

Teamgames in clans would very difficult take you over 5000. At least I do not remember any player the last years.


My original post propose a specific logical decay per month (annual seems a bit too long). I still can't see drawbacks except from the fact that it is a bit daring and some people might not like it.

The first half of your post is interesting and can be useful for anyone aspiring Conqueror rank.. I do not want to add more comment to your 2nd half from what already commented earlier.
e.g my foeing had already been talked about so much, there is nothing more to say.

Regards my invitations. they were reserved for opponents with enough skills to match mine. It wasn't necessarily to score a net gain pointwise. I will comment more out of good faith and hopefully some light can illuminate ignorance (said without offence intended)

Here is a good example. One time I played concurrently 20 or more POLY Antarctica games.

Here are some points you can consider.

1) My invitees were 4 highly skilled opponents and no fewer than three of them were Conquerors before me. People I highly regarded. irregardless of their ranks at the time.
2) One of them even had a 90% win rate at that Antarctica settings.
3) Pointwise, our ranks were so far apart that one of them might be a Colonel or lower ( but I was above 5.5K) . The closest was not 1K within me.
4) One guy played that Antarctica setting almost exclusively.
5) Except the above, Antarctica was not a favourite of the rest, a closest thing to neutral map (at least I can say for myself), although we were all good at it

In the end, I still lost points even though I won against all those 3 Conquerors. Like I said, I wouldn't have extended this kind of invitations had I been more interested in securing more points.

This demonstrates my invitations are motivated more for special reasons such as special challenges I set for myself like the above ( I wanted to beat 3 Conquerors simultaneously at neutral maps and did just that!)I I was happy eventhough I lost points, ya!

If you want to emulate this, do so only at a high risk of losing more points! Hahaha

[Clanlord Carl]

Needs to have a annual decay to keep folks fighting to be top and some kind of mechanism to reward people who achieve success across a wide number of settings and maps. Until then the 'best' players will have to be determined via tourneys.

still don't understand why after couple tournament wins you consider yourself a conqueror material

Where in anything i have written here have i talked about myself as a conqueror due to a couple of tourney wins ? Why construct a straw-man to rip into someone who is just trying to improve things ? Maybe you profoundly disagree with the idea that anything can be improved or changed if so state the reasons without personal attacks please.

[mc05025]

narutoserigala with all due respect earth isn't rotating around you (if this is also valid in english and not only in greek ).
My post wasn't refering to you. I mentioned your name once because I remember you had invite me in 2 exactly games while I hadn't played antarctica for a long time at that moment a few years ago. I do not know which tactic exactly you followed. I wasn't around. Mostly I wrote it because random had foed me when a beat him in couple a of USA2.1 at a point he was playing these settings only and I know that more people are foeing for this reason.

There is no problem about how you became conqueror. The problem is that you and some more people can hold high position while playing too few games. This is problematic for the site and reduces the people who intend to play and pay for it. It's that simple. No reason for debade.

[Mad777]

he does play several games...bot and Guide games....

(dices wash? )

[Dukasaur]

I think it's a no-brainer.

There is no sport or game on earth where the champion can sit on the throne forever and ever without having to face a challenger of their own caliber.

When a boxer refuses to fight, after a certain time he's stripped of his belt. In most other sports it's even more explicit -- the champion has to defend his title, on some kind of neutral ground, every single year. In chess, it's every two years. In many other online games I've played, there's a regular score reset and everybody starts at at the bottom over again. There are many possibilities, but the idea that someone could sit at the top of the scoreboard forever and ever, only playing on his own terms in situations where he's unlikely to ever lose, is absurd, and unheard of anywhere except CC.

[betiko]

I think it's a no-brainer.

There is no sport or game on earth where the champion can sit on the throne forever and ever without having to face a challenger of their own caliber.

When a boxer refuses to fight, after a certain time he's stripped of his belt. In most other sports it's even more explicit -- the champion has to defend his title, on some kind of neutral ground, every single year. In chess, it's every two years. In many other online games I've played, there's a regular score reset and everybody starts at at the bottom over again. There are many possibilities, but the idea that someone could sit at the top of the scoreboard forever and ever, only playing on his own terms in situations where he's unlikely to ever lose, is absurd, and unheard of anywhere except CC.

this is why you just need to stop reffering to the conqueror position as some sort of throne or champion. It's just the guy with the most points. It' like in chess if a guy only faces mediocre players over and over with his own timer settings etc and he becomes the most rated even though he only plays in his own terms.

MC05 you forgot also that people start tons of games andtake all the wins first then the losses to become conqueror, it's been done manny times.

Thank you. Appreciated. I welcome your opinions and see you in the battle field.

FYI, Iplay a varied settings and games. I can shift from Stalingrad to Schloss (& a lot others in between) Play multiplayer or team. Trench or not. Even POLY (unless fremium of course).

What I play at any given time really depends on the seasons of my life ( time schedules , changing preferences etc).

Furthermore, they are by default public to allow opportunities for everyone to play especially so, after I achieved Conqueror ( and even before then, it was the case )

oh right. that's why you don't even have a bronze crossmap medal. you haven't been able to beat 5 opponents on 20 maps in 8 years and over 1600 games. That's what we call a player that plays varied settings and games

[narutoserigala]

narutoserigala with all due respect earth isn't rotating around you (if this is also valid in english and not only in greek ).
My post wasn't refering to you. I mentioned your name once because I remember you had invite me in 2 exactly games while I hadn't played antarctica for a long time at that moment a few years ago. I do not know which tactic exactly you followed. I wasn't around. Mostly I wrote it because random had foed me when a beat him in couple a of USA2.1 at a point he was playing these settings only and I know that more people are foeing for this reason.

There is no problem about how you became conqueror. The problem is that you and some more people can hold high position while playing too few games. This is problematic for the site and reduces the people who intend to play and pay for it. It's that simple. No reason for debade.

Yours were the highest win rate (exceeding 90%) I ever seen. That was precisely why I wanted to play with you on top of your Conqueror achievement. in one of the games we played I had to come back the brink.I really enjoyed playing with you irregardless of our differences in opinions and philosophy about point stealing.

[Huyuk]

I think the point system is broken for bad. I also think the poor boy who needs to enter every day several days ago for years to maintain a fictional throne for what? Nobody thinks he is the best, the last medal he won was more than three years ago.
It is obvious that the site has long since stopped importing things to improve, and it only goes by inertia of some players who kill themselves for the site and make it a pleasant place to play

Here team points are mixed with singles, in tennis, chess, online games, to keep the high places you have to play a lot. That is just my opinion .

[narutoserigala]

I think it's a no-brainer.

There is no sport or game on earth where the champion can sit on the throne forever and ever without having to face a challenger of their own caliber.

When a boxer refuses to fight, after a certain time he's stripped of his belt. In most other sports it's even more explicit -- the champion has to defend his title, on some kind of neutral ground, every single year. In chess, it's every two years. In many other online games I've played, there's a regular score reset and everybody starts at at the bottom over again. There are many possibilities, but the idea that someone could sit at the top of the scoreboard forever and ever, only playing on his own terms in situations where he's unlikely to ever lose, is absurd, and unheard of anywhere except CC.

I can agree that we need to make top rated players more competitive ( if this in fact was the idea behind this thread in the first place) . I can make a counter suggestion at the end of my post. First allow me explain why I disagree with the idea of score/point reset.

Points decay, point tax, score or point reset etc are all different versions and merely sugar coating point stealing ( which is what it is) .There is also no logical reason to believe any one of them neccesarily make top rated players more competitive. Someone else already pointed this out. What works in one place, is a not a sufficient reason it can work here. A case of apples to oranges analogy.

What is worse, it can even backfire with unintended or unforseeable consequences.
In fact, it might even make us lose interest altogether. For example , why would anyone want to spend time, effort or resources to achieve something only for it to be taken away by a swift reset? Any conqueror can tell you the journey is a long one.....years in my case. Not to mention, the time we spent analysing each game to the point that even when eating, we are thinking about our next moves! The virtual world crossed into our real world!!

No one should be forced to play nonsensical settings. Having said that, one may be persuaded under certain conditions.For example when I was working my way up to conqueror , I offered "home and away" series to highly skilled players not just top ones. Usually they are highly ranked ( due to correlation between skills and rank but not always, ya) . I even took account rank differences and offered a higher away game ratio when other party out rank me.This show there is at least one better way.

Something like this can work and as I have said before, why would reasonable people resort to point stealing when there clearly are available,better ways than that? I have no problem doing this again albeit on a reduced capacity as a freemium/or to brainstorm, this may even be CC sanctioned as a Top 25 home and away series vs any players willing to bid acceptable terms, of course? This has the potential to be a problem free creative solution.

[narutoserigala]

I think the point system is broken for bad. I also think the poor boy who needs to enter every day several days ago for years to maintain a fictional throne for what? Nobody thinks he is the best, the last medal he won was more than three years ago.
It is obvious that the site has long since stopped importing things to improve, and it only goes by inertia of some players who kill themselves for the site and make it a pleasant place to play

Here team points are mixed with singles, in tennis, chess, online games, to keep the high places you have to play a lot. That is just my opinion .

It really depends on your priorities. If you think that medals are your goals, then go for it..However with due respect to your medal achievements, in themselves are no indication of skills. What is more relevant to this thread is, they are poor tools to motivate top rated players to play more.

Basically I agree we gotta find better and effective ways. As I pointed out, home and away series worked. If CC can consider this set up, while making sure it makes sense to all, then it is worth trying to make top players play more.Try to be creative in solving problems,,not create more problems in the process.

[mc05025]

I am sure I explained at some point why point reduction (not point reset and no it is not the same) will increase 'competitive' it terms that top players will play more (actually against more opponents which is the accurate term and what realy matters). But I will explain it again so you do not have to search.

Lets say that my skills at the moment reflect 4800. With point reduction this will fall down to lets say about 4000 (same as most top 10 players). So I will have 4000 but play like 4800 which means that from any game in average I will gain about 4800/4000*20-20 = 4 points per opponent. That means that if I remain on 3rd position and take a reduction of 160 points as said at original post I will need to play 40 1v1 games or 5 nine player games. This might be a bit too much so I also proposed a smaller reduction on my second post (half of it) so as if I play 20 games per month to stay at 4000 points. Which is what we need.

I will play more because I win points from any game. If I do not play more someone else will and take my position which is exactly what we need.

None of your arguments applys to what I proposed.

ps site is not being benefitted by the journey of any conqueror to take first place. Site is benefitted if players can play against him or other top players

[narutoserigala]

Nah, I am not convinced.

We just have to disagree till the cows come home and in a respectful manner as it the case now.

Cheers,

[benga]

Just a thought, if you guys really wanna know whos the best of the best of the best, why not just organize a tournament of 3k+ or 4k+ or whatever.
Everyone chooses their own setting for 1-1, poly and multiplayer games.

[Swimmerdude99]

Just a thought, if you guys really wanna know whos the best of the best of the best, why not just organize a tournament of 3k+ or 4k+ or whatever.
Everyone chooses their own setting for 1-1, poly and multiplayer games.

I think that would be cool! I wonder if people are willing to put skin in the game

[t4mcr53s2]

very interesting discussion ; points/ideas I like most are
1) opening post for raising issue well and offering an idea,
2) mc reasonable suggestion of a modest point decay
3) observation that highest score achieved isn't best player,

my additional trial balloons it people want to kick them around
A) maybe list it but don't call it conqueror ( "most points achieved"?)and
B) don't give people repeat awards for their position on the leaderboards ( including medals btw ) but once a year
C) to be the "best player " should really have some all around skills not merely best if most (not all) of your games are played at niche settings , ie i will never likely be able to compete with the guys who play 50% of their games on zombie trench fog parachute , and that's ok with me and I think its fine that they can consider themselves excellent at those settings
D) random maps should help determine the "best player" although it does tilt it to the most experienced …. one could propose that to stay on a "currently dominating player leader board' you have to play 10 random games a month
E) SoC alum 1 v 1 ladder achieved much more variety in leaders when we changed the 3 game sets from leader and challenged picked a favorite map and setting , and a third neutral game , to all 3 games were on random maps though each player could pick setting on their home random map so I am all for encouraging players to play more random games , it helps us grow
F) I've partnered with many leaderboard leaders and have found them great at analysis but if I had to stick a pin in a list to come up with a great bunch of all around players I suspect the great war leaders or year long map masters championship contests might be more likely to show a higher % of all around excellence with the caveat that its a limited sample size of participants , who were willing to devote that much game time from real life to the contest ( 1 won one and certainly am not in the top 5 in my clan )

[Nut Shot Scott]

Interesting discussion. I am in agreement with a lot of it. Seems the goal is to force top ranked players ie conqueror, to play more games on more settings and open themselves up to actually being challenged. Makes sense - if you're just a guy who can grind out wins on a couple maps with the same settings, then that's what you are. Just a guy, certainly not a conqueror of much of anything.

Points decay is tough because you're asking someone to play, by some standards, a lot of games each month. That doesn't seem fair either.

What about the idea that in order to be conqueror, you have to hold X amount of medals, have played X amount of games, have won a tournament and maintain X amount of open games with different opponents at all times? For example:

You say in order to be conqueror, you must hold 20 medals and three of them MUST be silver cross map, silver standard and silver random map. This at least proves that you can win games on multiple maps, against multiple opponents and do it when you don't choose the map. Then, you say that you must have played 1,000 games which of course you would have. Then we say that falling below, I don't know, 10 open games with different opponents for 10 days straight (or some reasonable number) knocks you off the board the following month. Your score still exists and if you come back to play those games and maintain them, you can have it back assuming nobody has snaked it from you.

This requires basically making that conqueror leaderboard a "qualified" leaderboard for active players who have shown the ability to play on multiple settings and are open to playing more than the same three pre-approved players or whatever. Probably an impossibility to code all that in, but just wanted to throw that idea into the ring.

[SaviorShot]

I did not read this entire thread but I think the ladder system used to acquire points is not suited for Open/Public games used on CC. It's more suited for skill-based matchmaking. Meaning your only playing against players that are the same caliber as you and hold similar ranks. So a Captain would only get matched up with +1 rank or -1 rank from him IE: Majors & Lts and everyone in between those ranks. Most games with the ladder system are using some sort of Ranked Play: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond leagues and they don't match up Diamond players with Bronze or Silver players. And those types of games are solely based on SKill ... Luck plays a little factor in who is the victor. CC would not thrive with that kind of system tho (PLayer count & Settings). I think the point system should be a set number no matter what rank the player is. +20 for win per player or -20 for lose ... to play devil advocate here I could see players farming worst players way more and that would not prove who the best player is either. As much as I don't agree with the point system I'm not sure how to actually fix it or that it even broke. There is plenty of Sgt ranked players that I would not want to play against because I know their skill level matches mine and I have more points to lose. I'm not for taking points away from the top ranks only ( They Earned them). It would have to be taken away from all players in the game. Conqueror Rank is not the best player on CC IMO its just who has the most score. Granted I'm sure everyone with the Conquer Medal is a great player no doubt about that. In short most of us enjoy building rank and climbing the leaderboard but as most of the active players on this site know Rank does not mean everything.

[Shannon Apple]

Make top ranking players more competitive

Currently you can play none rated games and maintain your position at the leaderboard even at top position. That makes the leaderboard quite constant and top ranking players are not encouraged to play many games. That's bad for many obvious reasons.

There are sports where playing games is very important to maintain a potision at the leaderboard like tennis and others that not, like chess, in order to better indicate the best player.
In cc rating doesn't realy reflect how good player you are anyway because it is subject of the settings someone is playing.

I think best way to impliment a punishment for not playing many games while being at top rankings and also making it easier to reach the top with many changes at the leaderboard is the lets say 10 top ranked players to lose constatly points every month. More spesifically each one of the 10 top ranked players will see thire rating dropped at the 1st of each callendar month. An indicated amount of the drop can be:

1) -200, 2) -180, 3) -160 4) -140 .... 9) -40, 10) -20

In this case you will see top ranked player drop to about 4000 points and players with many games, less affected by the drop would reach top potition

It wouldn't be fair that the person in second position gets that rank purely because the top scorer didn't play enough games. Then it becomes like musical chairs moving from person to person within the top 10 or so.

Instead of removing someone's points, a simpler way of doing it might be to make the medal conditional where you don't become conquerer based on points alone. That you'd have to have played and won X number of games within a specified period. So, the title and medal would go to the highest ranking player who also met all of the conditions for having that title. And in order to keep it, they need to continue to meet the conditions.