Ladder Site Online...

Discussion of all aspects of multiplayer development: unit balancing, map development, server development, and so forth.

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chains
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by chains »

The only information the ladder has is: Who won, who lost, and when they played. I will consider adding faction drop downs to the report page, and maybe a box to let players report who was "lucky". But for most of the "interesting" data you'd have to talk a wesnoth dev into building it into the wesnoth statistics, or find someone to take up the parser project.
DrinianRzor
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by DrinianRzor »

One more suggestion:

Full game history for all players instead of just "recent games."
rwar
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by rwar »

chains wrote:The only information the ladder has is: Who won, who lost, and when they played. I will consider adding faction drop downs to the report page, and maybe a box to let players report who was "lucky". But for most of the "interesting" data you'd have to talk a wesnoth dev into building it into the wesnoth statistics, or find someone to take up the parser project.
How about map as well? Races+map should be decently easy to remember I think, also the rules suggest that there is a limited amount of maps available (they are not saying that specifically though). But yeah, without a parser, the other ones are too much effort for the gain.

I do think it should be optional to input race/map data in any case, although I guess it'd be wasted effort on your part if everyone is too lazy or otherwise unwilling to use it ;) .. It should be pretty interesting for players to see how good they are with certain races and such though, so hopefully most players will use it even if it is optional.
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by Swiftfingers »

My suggestion is similar to rwar's. I think it should be mandatory to report the factions played. This would allow statistics to be compiled on faction vs faction matchups. In such a way, one can get an idea of the relative balance of the factions. It could be very useful. I was also considering reporting who was player 1 and who was player 2 and the map played. Again, useful statistics could be compiled from these reports.
atly
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by atly »

I don't think the faction matchups data would be relevant. Victory or defeat will be more likely to be determined by player's relative skill or map rather than the matchup.
Also, I like the current system, with only a dropdown to fill and a button to press ; too much data to enter would imho look less friendly, especially if mandatory.

I'd rather suggest adding a "favourite faction" or "favourite map" on player profile. Since most players use random as faction anyway, his matches won't be really representative of the player's preferences, so I think asking him directly would be better than having scripts calculate them.

I'm also skeptical about the luck field, because it would be useless for most players and only be one more step before being able to report, since the one who reports is the winner, and the winner is less likely to say his victory is only due to luck (having the loser say it would be even worse in term of neutrality).
chains
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by chains »

The new report screen, type the first few letters, and I have autofilled the feild from the database on keypress, so once you hit in a few characters you can either select from a very short list, or type just enough to find a unique name, gal for gallifax cha for chains and then hit enter, and the report is submitted.


Any extra fields will be not be mandatory. The idea of the new redesign is to make the interface as easy to use as possible.
Crassus
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by Crassus »

"I must also add that this change will be retroactive: Once it's introduced we'll re-calculate all ratings accordingly..."

Lex retro non agit!

Rules should never be retroactive. Whoever got their current ranking on new players probably made some effort and wasted some time to get the newbies to play with him. + Every next match is worth less points and if you lose a game you lose more points. The new rule is OK, but making it retroactive is NOT FAIR!

Imagine that you're offering somedoy something for 5 bucks, he takes the offer. After a while you realize that the deal was not good for you and good for him. So you decide to take 2.5$ away from him and he can't do anything about it cause you have the power (ADMIN). You get what I mean?

With ranking as it is now skalping newbies for points is a good idea only on the beginning, maybe you can reach 1700, maybe even 1800 but later on you get 1 point for a win and lose 20-30 points if you lose the game. If you consider that every game takes at least 30 minutes skalping newbies later on is not an efficient way to get to the top. And this site is FREE and you get NOTHING for ranking, who the hell would be dumb enough to cheat to have a high ranking?? I feel sorry for such ppl.
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eyerouge
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by eyerouge »

Thank you for the input Crassus. I'll try to give a reply that clarifies on the issue you raise.
Crassus wrote:Rules should never be retroactive. /../ The new rule is OK, but making it retroactive is NOT FAIR!
i.
You're fully correct. Usually it is indeed a bad idea to have retroactive rules. In this specific case I would however be
prepared to defend them on the following grounds:

Elo, the system we use to rate players, was originally used for organized play where people didn't select their opponents by them self. The opponents were randomized and/or arranged in another fashion where the players had little to say. They played the game, and the result was recorded. That makes Elo work very well since you're forced to play against all kinds of players, in result giving a more accurate and meaningful rating.

When it comes to an online ladder we could of course try to force such a solution and try to force players x o play against player y and so on. We have chosen to not pursue such a course, not because it would be technically hard for us to code it, but because it would be very impractical for many more or less obvious reasons and in result lower or close to no ladder activity overall. Of necessity and because of the international character of an online ladder with very different types of players which all have different play time, skills and ambitions, the most viable solution is to let the players decide them for them self who they play or don't play - within a certain extent.

This is where the new rule comes in: If players are to decide fully for them self there will be "bottom feeding", which has been discussed before on the ladder (in the news), meaning there are players who exploit newcomers. In the ideal Elo situation this isn't possible since players don't choose their opponents to the same degree as they do in the online ladder.

This fact alone suggests that "our" implementation of the Elo system was flawed from the start and that it could have been better. I write "our" since the ladder code wasn't originally written by me and because it's based on WebLeague. We have however continued to develop the project and improving on it.

To this date we have introduced four concepts that will make the rating more accurate and the ladder even more professional: 1) different K-value for different classes of players, just like in the world of chess. 2) a beginners K-value of 32 3) Modifiers to encourage players even more to play primarily other players within their own skill range and 4) provisional ratings to deal with newcomers getting exploited and also give them a chance to get a feel for the ladder before they start playing "for real".

I agree with you that retroactive rule changes aren't fair. Then again: The ones who will be mostly affected are the ones who were never fair to begin with - people who mainly played agains newcomers. It's not a crime, nor is it even punished. That effort is just re-evaluated according to the above. A ladders goal has never been, and never will be, to encourage players to only play new players or accept it. On the contrary, a ladder is more like a competitive and friendly family where the members get to know each other and play games together, but, above all - a ladder should work as a relative measure of your own skills compared with every one else's in the ladder.

This last goal makes correct ratings a priority. If the ratings aren't correct or don't reflect reality well enough to some degree, then the ladder is meaningless seen from that perspective. I believe that this alone is justification enough to be unfair against a small percentage of individuals on the ladder, since it would actually tell us more correct and useful ratings of each individual on the ladder, improving it overall.

So yes, it's maybe not "fair" to a minority of individuals, but it's correct thing to do and would give us an overall better environment and more professional ladder that reflects skills better than he current state since all this is actually a fix to the adaptation of the Elo system put online. A fix that should have been then from the start of course. If the system was never sound enough to begin with, and that actually benefited some individuals, they would of course prefer it that they kept the result of their work even when the system is fixed. Such a claim is of course "fair" to some degree, but, it's not good sportsmanship, nor does it make sense to allow players to keep the fruits of exploitation since that would give incentive to exploit new things in the future. That, we can't encourage. Us not taking action, showing that whatever people exploit (even if it's a loophole in the rules at that point) they get to keep, would be a far greater problem for the ladder.

ii.
The above was the rational answer. The more ugly one is that the change is legit and that it should be of no surprise for most players:
agreement wrote:# If there are breaches in the agreement and/or other apparent reasons to do so the site administration has the right to ban users and/or delete/modify results, together with any other necessary measures that a situation might require for us to secure the ladders integrity and the intended functions of it.

# The rules are always a subject for change. If many players require a modification, addition or deletion or if the admin sees fit the rules will be revised. Revisions are marked with a version number and they're announced in the news section as well as in here.
With other words, whoever uses the ladder simply agrees on giving the admin the possibility to modify it in whatever way needed to improve it. It also means that we would of course listen to popular demand if something we did proved to be fatal for the ladder: After all it exists to be used, not to make us dictators ;)

iii.
A third answer is a combination of the two above: If there are good reasons for not having a rule and they can be proven we'd of course adapt to that and back from the retroactive claim.
Crassus wrote:Imagine that you're offering somedoy something for 5 bucks, he takes the offer. After a while you realize that the deal was not good for you and good for him. So you decide to take 2.5$ away from him and he can't do anything about it cause you have the power (ADMIN). You get what I mean?
I know exatcly what you mean, and I agree that it in your example is unfair. However, in our case it is fair since it was in the agreement already. So, if we are to have a proper example we'd also need to include an agreement between the two persons which gives one of them the power to take back $2.5 if he wants to. If the persons still make the deal, and they know the agreement, it would then be okey if one of them took back $2.5.

Trust me, we're not making it retroactive because we "happen" to have the power to do so or to frakk around with people. Yes, the admin has the power, (somebody has to operate the site, and those always have the power, then again, they also put down hours of work on it etc and all in all most are happy), but the goal with the ladder is not to display my or whoevers "power": The goal is to provide you guys with a, under the circumstances that go for any game which doesn't support in-game ratings, a solid rating system. We will of course make unpopular decisions from time to time, but, popularity alone doesn't say anything about the validity of he decisions or how they'll impact the ladder in the long run.
Crassus wrote:With ranking as it is now skalping newbies for points is a good idea only on the beginning, maybe you can reach 1700, maybe even 1800 but later on you get 1 point for a win and lose 20-30 points if you lose the game. If you consider that every game takes at least 30 minutes skalping newbies later on is not an efficient way to get to the top. And this site is FREE and you get NOTHING for ranking, who the hell would be dumb enough to cheat to have a high ranking?? I feel sorry for such ppl.
I'm not saying the "cheater" is a rational person. I even suggest otherwise in the text on he topic of cheating/exploitation.

You're right that the problem solves itself sooner or later, but letting it solve itself in the ranges of 1700 - 1800 is too late in my opinion. It's too late because 1500, in contrast to popular belief, is not a newcomers rating: It's an average players rating.

Another aspect is the one that has little to do with the rating: We not only want to affect the ratings, but we also want to let new players get a feel for the ladder and play a couple of games where they are "protected", simply because they're new to the ladder and that playing for example 10 game on it would give them a pitcture of the competition and overall ladder climate.

Lastly, there are people already who have more or less intentionally only been playing newcomers in order to "scalp" points from them. They may be "dumb" and the site may be free, but it's still a fact and I can guarantee you that the pronblem will be gone once we have implemented the suggested changes.
Crassus wrote:and you get NOTHING for ranking,
In a not to distant future there will be a lottery among the top x players where I'll transfer €10 to two of them. It's not much, but a way of giving players at least a drink or something as a thanks for being part of the community. Personally I'd like to be able to do that more often and plan to do so as soon as I get a job etc ;) It would of course be cool to offer more grandiose rewards for being on the ladder, but I can't do it all by myself. However, in order to feel okey with involving rewards at all, we need to insure the integrity of the ladder, and, that's exactly what we're doing.

*

Hope this all helped somehow.. and again - thanks for the criticism. I value it highly even if it maybe sounds as if I don't ;)
tsr
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by tsr »

eyerouge wrote:In a not to distant future there will be a lottery among the top x players where I'll transfer €10 to two of them. It's not much, but a way of giving players at least a drink or something as a thanks for being part of the community. Personally I'd like to be able to do that more often and plan to do so as soon as I get a job etc ;) It would of course be cool to offer more grandiose rewards for being on the ladder, but I can't do it all by myself. However, in order to feel okey with involving rewards at all, we need to insure the integrity of the ladder, and, that's exactly what we're doing.
Oooh, terrible, terrible idea imho :)

If you want to award players for using the ladder award them for using the ladder not for winning games, so make the lottery for the ones that have played at least X number of games.

/tsr
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eyerouge
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by eyerouge »

tsr wrote:If you want to award players for using the ladder award them for using the ladder not for winning games, so make the lottery for the ones that have played at least X number of games./tsr
Yeah, that could work as well or instead. Plenty of ways to do it.
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by Becephalus »

Well I for one have been very happy with the ladder and the way it has valued the matches. I think chains and eyerouge have done a fantastic job adding a competitive environment to the community for those who want it. Please keep up the good work guys :)
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Wintermute
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by Wintermute »

A few thoughts, some of which I know have been discussed.

Nice job! The ladder seems to be going well.

I would like to see statistics on the average rating of a player's opponents. In other words, which players are trying to play higher level players? Which are just lurking around schooling the newer players, or "low hanging fruit" if you will? :wink:

I think that adding color coding for the player with the highest win ratio would be nice. Assuming that both players have played "lots" of games, win percentage is far more important an indicator than number of wins.

The "Stats" section (where you can search for the player with most wins, etc) does not allow for looking up a player's win percentage, which I think would be a nice feature. What would be even better IMO, is combining the Stats secion with the regular Ladder section, and just make each of the columns (wins, rating, etc) sort the list by clicking on the heading. In other words, if you go to the ladder section, you see the ladder by player rank (sorted by rating basically). Why not be able to click on "wins" and see the ladder, with all the player info right there just sorted by wins, or losses, or streak, or win percentage, or what have you.

Just some ideas!
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eyerouge
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by eyerouge »

Bece wrote:Well I for one have been very happy with the ladder and the way it has valued the matches. I think chains and eyerouge have done a fantastic job adding a competitive environment to the community for those who want it. Please keep up the good work guys
Thanks. We will.. there's plenty to do and more is coming ;) Nothing is ever perfect but the process towards it makes it better all the time.
Winter wrote:I would like to see statistics on the average rating of a player's opponents. In other words, which players are trying to play higher level players? Which are just lurking around schooling the newer players, or "low hanging fruit" if you will?
This can, in a way and more or less, already be seen. Check this out.
Winter wrote:What would be even better IMO, is combining the Stats secion with the regular Ladder section, and just make each of the columns (wins, rating, etc) sort the list by clicking on the heading. In other words, if you go to the ladder section, you see the ladder by player rank (sorted by rating basically). Why not be able to click on "wins" and see the ladder, with all the player info right there just sorted by wins, or losses, or streak, or win percentage, or what have you.
Chains has implemented this into the new code he wrote. It's on it's way and coming very soon.
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Doc Paterson
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by Doc Paterson »

I've reposted the link to the 1v1 map updates, in the Multiplayer Map Reader's Digest thread.
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Faello
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Re: Ladder Site Online...

Post by Faello »

I wanted to ask is there any chance for a 2vs2 ladder anytime soon ? 2vs2 are more complex and more interesting imo, it would be great to participate in such rivalisation, espescially that I know some very effective duo's that play together already so it would be a nice addition to whole ladder idea :)
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