Conquer Club

Concise description:

• Add a "Gameplay" attribute to the ratings system (which would include teamwork).

Specifics:

• There have been suggestions for a "Skill" attribute and our position has been that ratings are intended to influence behaviour, not skill, and we already have features to measure and reward skill. However there are behaviours that don't fall under "Fair Play" that we want to influence, such as killing the wrong assassin target or going after your teammate. Things that can make or break the game experience for others.
• The "Gameplay" attribute could be defined as this: measures how the player's ability to play makes the game enjoyable (not the player's ability to win). covers strategy, diplomacy, teamwork, etc...
• "Gameplay" would pretty much cover the issues behind teamwork and members looking for good teammates should be able to make use of it to find good teammates. So "Teamwork" (which was an akward attribute that doesn't apply to all game types) could be dropped. This will result in a loss of information in the short turn, but will make for a simpler and cleaner ratings system in the long term.

This will improve the following aspects of the site:

• Ratings attributes will better represent the types of behaviour we want to encourage or discourage.

EDIT: Please give your input on this suggestion!

lol
this is funny that youre suggesting somehting for your own great site

or are you asking for our feedback?

'Gameplay' is probably even more vague than 'Fair Play' or 'Attitude'. There's nothing wrong with the Skill based proposals, unless you truly believe that win % and points are accurate indications of skill.

I would like to get an idea of peoples "Risk Skills" so why not change it to: "measures the player's ability to play a good game of Risk (including the player's ability to win). covers strategy, diplomacy, teamwork, etc..."

I dunno, I think things like killing your teammate, suiciding, and even killing the wrong target in assassin can be covered by fair play.

The problem with a de facto skill rating is that people's estimates of the skill of others will be wildly subjective (much more so than the existing system of ranks, points, win%) due to personal prejudice ("ZOMG you only attacked me even tho that was the strategically valid thing to do so I'm giving you a 1"), jealousy ("ZOMG you only won cause of good dice so I'm giving you a 1"), anger ("ZOMG your dice went sour during an escalating killshot with a decent but not amazing chance of success and you hanged someone so I'm leaving you a 1"), etc.

Mostly I think people want a skill rating so they can vent their spleens, which to me isn't a good reason to institute one.

And let's not even get into the fact that, like I've said before, there will be people on this site that would give the Duke of Marlborough a 1 skill rating because they simply didn't understand the moves he made that resulted in his victory.

I disagree - Include ability to win. Otherwise if it's included I will include that anyways, as well as other people, and you know it will happen

This is all good and fine but we have to think of plain luck, plain bad luck ie. leaving just 1 of a player with five cards and the next guy clears the game,the dice argument both good and bad, you will have high ranked players who see all below them as less than a 1 and low rank players that think all high rank players are cheaters.

I'd be disappointed to have the loss of the Teamwork rating.

C.

I still think that unless these factors are seperated, folks will use them innappropriately.

For example, "attacking the wrong assassin target" does not affect play in other games. Also, it tends to be something most folks only do once or so, and fully by mistake. Bad play, but part of the learning curve.

Team play might be a matter of learning OR it might be an indicator of someone's skill. They might not coordinate well. They might not speak the same language. Or, they might just be a poor player overall. These things won't affect other game types at all.

And, those who want to rate "skill" will use this to do so.

For the "record" I am against a skill rating mostly I feel the majority of those who want it are not the best judges of skill themselves ... and often are those who just find it easier to blame others than to look to improving their own play. Not always, but a large percentage of the time.

I know it would never "fly" but a part of me wants to suggest that ONLY those who are at least majors be allowed to leave a skill rating. Of course, in reality, there are a few who got to be majors by playing a particular game type exclusively against largely new folks... but I find irony in thinking of it.

P.S. thank you for posting a poll.

I would much rather see some kind of "check off" system ... perhaps with room for an umoderated response (or moderated strictly for language/serious threats ... something beyond "If you ever play me, I will rate you down ... because the person can always put them on their ignore list and avoid that ... but other stuff )

I see this as rating someone on whether they how to play, e.g. not killing wrong target, not weakening themselves fighting for continents in Esc or 1v1's, spreading themselves out and blocking, etc. It's pretty easy to tell if someone understands the basic strategies needed to win a game, so that's how you would rate them in gameplay.

wicked wrote:I see this as rating someone on whether they how to play, e.g. not killing wrong target, not weakening themselves fighting for continents in Esc or 1v1's, spreading themselves out and blocking, etc. It's pretty easy to tell if someone understands the basic strategies needed to win a game, so that's how you would rate them in gameplay.

But what I'm saying is that you can already somewhat extrapolate whether or not someone's going to be able to do those things based on their rank and games played and medals and what not... if he's got an assassin medal, he knows what he's doing. If he's only played 10 games and I'm facing him in a waterloo foggy 1v1, then I know what to expect. If she's still a cook after 500 games, well then that speaks for itself.

Sure, a skill rating could potentially be another tool, but for every major that wants to congratulate a cadet on a game well played, there's a hundred stripes that want to complain about what they perceive as irrational or unfair gameplay, especially when it comes to two higher-ranked players extending unspoken courtesy (i.e. mutually coexisting with continents 'cause it would knock them both out of the game if they got into some big pissing contest).

Incandenza wrote:

wicked wrote:I see this as rating someone on whether they how to play, e.g. not killing wrong target, not weakening themselves fighting for continents in Esc or 1v1's, spreading themselves out and blocking, etc. It's pretty easy to tell if someone understands the basic strategies needed to win a game, so that's how you would rate them in gameplay.

But what I'm saying is that you can already somewhat extrapolate whether or not someone's going to be able to do those things based on their rank and games played and medals and what not... if he's got an assassin medal, he knows what he's doing. If he's only played 10 games and I'm facing him in a waterloo foggy 1v1, then I know what to expect. If she's still a cook after 500 games, well then that speaks for itself.

Sure, a skill rating could potentially be another tool, but for every major that wants to congratulate a cadet on a game well played, there's a hundred stripes that want to complain about what they perceive as irrational or unfair gameplay, especially when it comes to two higher-ranked players extending unspoken courtesy (i.e. mutually coexisting with continents 'cause it would knock them both out of the game if they got into some big pissing contest).

Or a lower ranked player using non-standard tactics to win a game/take out a high ranked terminator player. Bolded the above for agreement.


--Andy

I think this would be a FANTASTIC addition to the ratings system, but knowing whether someone would make a good doubles, triples or quadruples partner is also important. I don't think this should elminate the team player rating.

If I am understanding correctly, this rating would tell you how aggressive/passive a player may be; how much thought they put into their moves, whether they suffer with ratings envy (IE, a player lower ranked player that consistently goes after a higher ranked player in a non-terminator game even if the moves do not good for the lower ranked player); highlight people who deadbeat 2 rounds and most of three in order to earn additional armies (In my opinion that is the only thing I would change about the way the game is set up on conquer club: Missing a turn should not garner you a reward no matter what the reason is that you missed.) and such other behaviors. I could count 50 games I would NOT have joined had such a ratings system been put in place.

I vote a resounding YES for this one.

lackattack wrote:measures how the player's ability to play makes the game enjoyable (not the player's ability to win). covers strategy, diplomacy, teamwork, etc...

After reading the discription of what the attribute would mean, i got the feeling that 'Game Play' could involve almost all the existing ratings aswell..

Fair Play: covers suiciding, secret alliance suspicion, breaking or respecting alliances, chivalry, etc...
# Attendance: covers deadbeating, missing turns, deliberately prolonging rounds, finding a babysitter to keep things moving, etc...
# Attitude: covers behaviour in chat, foul language, sore losers, gracious winners, "great chatters!", whining about dice, etc...
# Teamwork: covers playing with teammates - coordination, communication, etc...

The 'Gameplay' attribute would kind of involve all of these 4 in a way.

How Fairplay is involved:
A game isnt enjoyable when people use secret alliance, break alliances. etc.

How Attendance is involved:
A game isnt enjoyable when people deadbeat, miss turns or deliberately prolonging rounds.

How Attitude is involved:
A game isnt enjoyable if your opponent use foul language, is a sore loser or whine about dices.

How Teamwork is involved:
A game isnt enjoyable if your teammate doesnt coordinate with you and dont work as a team even though you want to.

So...

If the 'gameplay' attribute measures how the player's ability to play makes the game enjoyable, then it would be to much involvement with all the other attibutes.

What i suggest:

Don't add another attribute, its great as it is now.

A attribute which involves skill isnt nessecary, since you can already see a players skill by looking at other statistics, as win % etc etc.

Just my thoughts regarding this.

There should be a star rating for skill level. That way losers who dont know what they are doing are punished But if u ask me, the rating system should be abandoned because it doesnt tell u anything. For example, people who are sore losers could lower someones rating even if the only reason is because that guy is good.

[modedit][/modedit]

Most of my comment posted above, but I want to add this.

Regardless of the system -- be it keeping the current system, adding another attribute or going toward a check off system,

I think that you need better descriptions. Unambiguous descriptions.
"average" is just too general.

Also, I have changed my mind on the skill rating issue. Maybe it should be included, but completely seperate from the other "attitude" issues, but only so we can see who actually thinks they can judge skill better than the ranking system. Might be a handy way to know who to ignore.

i think fairplay is better than gameplay. it is more specific. what we want is attributes that reflect as much as possible about a persons style of play, either to boast about to to learn from.

for me i would have the following.

Fairplay.
Teamwork
Stratagy
Attendence
attitude.

these should say all about a person.

plus one thing i am annoyed about is that its a givin now that u get 5 points just for playing,. even if u played with no skill, we really should only award a 5 on level that is deserved. i mean a 3 means you did ok, if you did great and you would have won. but ppl expect 5 for everything these days. and so now i have falling under the same thing and keep giving out high marks just so i dont get moaned at.

it should be noted that just because someone may give you a 3 does not mean they dislike you or they thought you played bad. 3 is a standared number for nothing bad or nothing special. to get higher you have to show merit in such task.

I suppose its the world we now live in where ppl just want to be told there great no matter what and cant take fair criticism.

anyway those so far i think best explains a persons gamplay as a hole. anything more and ppl wont do.

plus also ppl i think should at least have a mandatory % of how many ppl they should rate. before they can continue playing any more games. i am a bit tired of someone playing 100 games and rating none.

also very tired of those ppl who go away or do not wish to continue playing and hold up the game on there turn cos they dont wish to.

I think a opt out of game should be created for events that you wish to leave. either your losing or your going away.

anyway thats my 12 cents

Ive always wanted the option of leaving a checkbox "good sport" or "bad sport" because I think that sums it up for most.

Thanks