Why i think the ladder System is broken

from Demigod Forums

1. In a game with randoms, one bad player is enough to ruin the game. it's almost impossible to achieve favor points if the other team is fed to unbeatable.

2. In a team game, a supporting character, espacially QoT even if securing the victory will almost never get many favor points, as it is so much easier to stack kills with reg, UB or TB. kills mean gold, means citadel upgrades, better items etc. Maybe by evening out kills and assist a bit, and counting heals and shields as assists in a fight too could fix this.

3. No Team Pantheon. This is really bad, see point 1, too much luck involved with teammates.

4. Ladder rank seems to be based on favor points mostly. I'm not sure about this, but at the moment noob bashing and getting huge favor seems to be best to go up in rank. this is wrong imho, you should get much more reward for beating better players.

5. Favor points discourage teamplay. Heal/shield or let die to get all the death favor in an already won game? Snipe to get the kill if he could kill him alone? Do i really want to be support only for 90 fav points even if it would be the best chioce? etc.

I bought this game because i loved GPG's Supreme Commander, which had all these points done perfectly. 1v1 ladder, Team ladder, equal shares on a win/loss in teamgames, and a chess rating kind of rank system, where people with high rating got matched automatically.  This is not meant as a rant, i'm just a bit disappointed that many things seem to be done worse than in an earlier game from the same company (not even mentioning netcode, balancing and bugs, i'm sure they'll be fixed eventually). And i really love the game, but there's still some things to fix to be a fun competitive multiplayer game.

demigod
5,640 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

Hey Bune, haven't seen you for a bit :p

 

Yeah the matchmaking part of this game is very mismatch.

 

The stats are broken. I don't want to see any kind of player ranking indication in custom based on the stats until they are fixed.

The rating system doesn't seem to be much use, I am 3W 3L at the moment, yet have a negative rating (from 1000) of around 80 points. Seen as everyone at the moment is reset I fail to see in how an ELO based system I should be at that level already. Coupled with the Host reporting bug, they are pretty pointless, I could farm a perfect ratio if I wanted.

 

If they ever get it sorted out, then the skirmish/pantheon system should be working that you get launched into a game with players of a similar rank/rating. However, you can't play those modes because they place you in 2v2 a lot and in silly mode/map combos.

I hope they can get it sorted out. I am having fun in custom games (mostly!), however it is frustrating playing against bad players or playing with bad players. I play at odd times and irreguarly so don't have the luxury of being able to form friend groups to play with all the time. I kind of feel by the time the necessary impulse changes are made, my interest will already have waned in the game.

 

The only reason why I played Supcom for over a year was the awesome competitive ranking system (which even pales in comparison to Blizzard). I am a big stardock supporter and realise they have to grow, but this is a painful experience both for them and us as the customers.

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

SupCom was the last RTS I played competitively online as well, and I too found the ranking/matching system there to be far better than anything I had seen previously, or have seen since.

I don't really see the point of rankings in a team game you can't play as a team, you're too dependant on your team mates for win/loss results to even mean anything in terms of rating your skill level. I'm hoping team pantheon comes soon.

The thumbs up map system from GPGNet was good too.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

In my opinion Ladder Rankings are currently messed up because Custom games are counting but Ladder Rankings only affect Pantheon and Skirmish match ups. So if you only play Skirmish and Pantheon it is much harder to top the ladder because the game forces you into skewed matches but Custom players can just keep playing their premade games versus non premades. Then these custom players complain when they get hosed while playing Pantheon and Skirmishes because their rank is so high that the game forces them into groups with players that have lose ratios as high as their win ratios.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Within the top 40 players i see 3 guys who have 18 wins and 0 losses and I'VE SEEN THEM PLAY TOGETHER. I know one of them isn't nearly that good and they all have favor within 250 points of eachother. Same with experience. One of these is michiganQ11. He's number 21. Is this luck with team or is it just because they noob bashed/computer farmed.

*Edit. It's 125 favor of eachother and 25 experience RANGE FROM HIGHEST TO LOWEST. This isn't coincidence.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

Here's a few things I've concluded so far:

- Your point 4 is correct.

Example: Belier13/Apika have won 22 games together, their ranking gain ratio (326/228) almost exactly equals their favour gain ratio (3,835/3,220). So a total ranking gain is computed for the winning team, then split amongst the players based on their % of total favor.

- Games with more players nets more total ranking points for the winners.

 Example: There were some people in top20 on day one with one win, a game with 1 player 4 ai on each team, winner got 63 ranking points (100% of gained favor on his team, obviously).

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

Does anyone know if the ladder system matches up people with a similar ranking? If it doesn't then it really should.  People of the same skill level should be paired together so you can actually get a good game and the ladder would then be an accurate way of seeing who is best.

I'd like to also see the ranking of people who are in the game aswell. and the experience gain/loss for people on the post game screen.

I also strongly agree with support demigods not getting enough reward.

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

The 2v2 ladder in Supreme Commander was the most broken thing I have ever seen!!!

What I remember was BlueScreen-ISu 1st, 4th, 8th and 10thwith diffent teammates and thats was with a lot of players like ICG, Mentel-ISU, GovtCheese, ....

In the TOP 100 there were only 25 diffent players in many combinations. Thats massive broken.

It always took ages to find a ranked 2v2 or 3v3 game, because u always have to find somone in lobby or friendlist to join your team to open a game.

You are righ, the pairing system in skrimish and pantheon is annoying, I ws #1 in Skrimish and half the time I got a first timer as teammate. That was realy disappointing.

I would prefer in skrimish and Pantheon random Demigod and no doubles (to Rooks, .....). In Pantheon u can chose your side and u will get one of the 4 DGs and your teammates different ones.

I have no idea how the points for wins and losses are counted, what happens if someone quits, what happens if one quits and the other cencede??????

Why do they make a secret about this??? I think the guy devolped the formula quit the company and take all the papers about it with him.

 

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

Yeah, the stats still dont mean a thing.  I lost a game yesterday that the webpage said had 1 person in it (me).  Yeah, whatever.

Right now you have two very random things going on - teammates are still very random (1 really bad teammate means you probably lose) and there are still a ton of ragequits/disconnections.  Basically its a lottery - if your team has fewer newbies/AIs you win.  Otherwise you lose.  The only way to get away from this is to play on premades.

Frankly I'm shocked that they dont have a reasonable multiplayer stats thing doing yet.  These kinds of things are completely standard in games nowadays and a high school student should be able to think up a reasonable algorithm to get stats that at least mean something.

Reply #9 from Demigod Forums Top

Yeah it's completely borked but another thing is, I just had a loss in Pantheon but our team still scored more points than the winning team!

Basically, it was Conquest and the other team just raced up to giants and smashed our citadel.

On the way, we got pretty much every other achievement bar winning.

Not sure if the losers should ever get more points than the winners....

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

I know for a fact it is broken, i have played 1 skirmish game and put 2 other human players on my team and we were playing AI. We easily won the game and now im ranked 600 with 1,006 exp points....so yea im not sure about that.

Reply #11 from Demigod Forums Top

I know for a fact it is broken, i have played 1 skirmish game and put 2 other human players on my team and we were playing AI. We easily won the game and now im ranked 600 with 1,006 exp points....so yea im not sure about that.

Reply #12 from Demigod Forums Top

thinking of the fact that I am a noob I have to say you are right. But on the other hand it is also a problem for us noobs. We make servers call it noobs only and what happens? Player with 40 wins 2 losses or so join the game. This means learning the tactics of the game is impossible for us noobs and the noob basher is happy of... yes of what? To get favor points? To bashed some noobs?

And Gas Powered does nothing to change this "funkiller". No chance to invite friends you know to a party (means no friend lists), no chance to find out who joins your game, no chance for communication  inside the lobby.

Was it a good idea to buy the game for me? In that condition the game is: No!

 

I apologize for probable mistakes I made. I know my English is not perfect but hey: I try my best ok?;)

Reply #13 from Demigod Forums Top

Yea, the ladder system is very weird/broken. Winning good players should reward you more than winning bad players. Why isn't the ladder system just based on rating/ladder points or a similar system where you would gain/lose points based on your own rating and your enemies rating. Just like pretty much ALL online games and reallife sports have.

Why was Stardock trying to invent the wheel again ? Do they really think the Demigod system is better than Elo rating system(all real ladders are based on that). The reason all ladders are based on Elo is the fact that it is the best way to measure skill.