A new matching variant for GU league

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Monster
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by Monster »

Although I have commented on this thread two times already I feel like I have to add to what I said already again.

While this discussion originally started with red-der's idea of implementing two random teams into the regular ladder and thus generating more opportunities for official matches a lot of players came up with other ideas or different variants. As I feel that it is important for this discussion to advance to sum up all ideas I will do that:

#1 red-der's proposal of associating every player with one of the two "league-teams". Official matches such as regualr team vs league-team, league-team A vs league-team B are now possible.

#2 MLG/Slime/Monster: do not list the league-teams among the regual ladder but in a seperate section. Points earned/lost will be determined by the elo ranking of those individuals who played for a league-team.

#3 FiringSquad: set up a "sister-league". In this league players will be assigned to their teams automatically. One could even match teams of the other league and steal points from them.

#4 Slime: Do not implement the two league-teams at all but allow regular teams to match random players earning/losing a set amount pf points (2/5/10).

#5 etigah: set up a seperate "fun-league" where those players who want are seeded in one of 2 to 5 teams and have their competition there.

#6 g4force/slime: set up the funleague agian - this time with an auto-report-plugin

#7 etigah: introduce team rouge with which all teamless players are associated. Team rouge will just be another team, listed in the normal ladder, which makes the calculation of points very simple.

#8 figurines: enforce contracion: only allow up to six teams to exist in the guleague. All players will be split into those teams.


Personally I like variants noumber 2 and 4 and I would oppose to the other suggestions.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by figurines »

6 is not a hard number. Doesn't matter what the descision is for how many.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by etigah »

Any suggestion that involves calculating individual scores will probably disrupt the way the game is played severely, besides requiring a lot of coding I presume. I do hope though that any of the presented ideas so far would get implemented, my preference being the ones that require less changes.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by ducktape »

Wayney wrote:
ducktape wrote: I agree with slime that this could do away with the bonds of your actual teammates, and for that reason I would love to see this idea incorporated just more so as secondary/intro league. I think the only way to see success in this is to make it optional, say I know I have a couple hours today where I can play some matches, I simply go to the "Free match" tab (or whatever you want to call it) and click "Put me in a team", and I'll randomly be added to team one or team two and I can match for the day or however long I please. Then the teams will be randomized, rinse and repeat.
As a side note, I am interested in you expanding on this idea, ducky. "Put me in a team for the evening and let's see what happens!" - I am intrigued. :D
Really I picture this as a rebooted funleague. I'm with slime on the idea of restarting it. However I would want some changes. Primarily I would want to have 2 or 4 randomly generated teams that re-randomize every day or so, but I would want statistics that follow my username. I'd be more interested in personal ranks for this rather than team ranks. I want statistics. Its more of a matchmaking model rather than fm/official model. That's just me, though. I feel like playing bz has become such a chore if I want to play GU. I'd rather just get on and play. This model could result in games of 30+ people for a 10-15 minute game, and as soon as that game finishes another one starts. After I'm done for the night I go to www.newfmidea.com/u/ducktape and bask in my statistical glory. Anyways, I'd love to hear more spins on this idea. Probably not needed in this thread PM me if you'd like.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by Joop »

Sounds Joopy! I like it!
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by kierra »

Rover Blaster wrote:Sounds Joopy! I like it!
ok Joopness. Of the half dozen or more ideas presented here, which one do you like?????? :*
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by Zac »

belonging to more than one team will get you banned.
No sorry. This idea conflicts with GUleague rules. :lol-old:

People either want to play a large fm or an official match without all the crap that comes in between, such as finding viable players, which can often involve searching through multiple servers and asking multiple people individually. It wastes time and people leave, because no one wants to sit around in obs for 10mins arguing over who is matching who and what server they need to go to. Plus bz is a bad way of communicating because the chat box also logs kills, who picks up what flags, server messages etc. its easy for a message to get lost in all that. What we really need is something that allows players to organise matches, servers etc, without having to open bz, and i dont see how 'a new matching variant addresses this.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by Jacko H »

The idea of having only 6 GU teams is ridicules.
People enjoy the freedom of moving and swaping and making teams.

Otherwise you may well as have:

Team Blue
Team Red
Team Purple
ect...

You would lose the freedom of the GU league.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by FiringSquad »

Zac wrote:bz is a bad way of communicating because the chat box also logs kills, who picks up what flags, server messages etc. its easy for a message to get lost in all that
You can turn those messages off.
There are tabs for the different types of messages "All", "Chat", "Server" & "Misc".
Just switch to the "Chat" tab, if that's all you're interested in.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by Snake12534 »

Personally, I prefer Red-der's original's idea the best of all. It seems like a very good variant, not the other ones that had modified it.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by Lave »

Yeah, this sounds cool. I support this idea! :D
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by blast »

King Rabid Rabbit wrote:Yeah, this sounds cool. I support this idea! :D
Which of the half dozen ideas discussed here do you support?
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by jh^ »

I support this, that and dont support the rest of ideas.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by FiringSquad »

Red-der brought a real concern to the table and proposed a solution.
The problem is how to provide competitive matches for players with no mates currently online, and in particular for players that rarely have mates online.

There will never be complete agreement for any proposal, but there needs to be some general acceptance before something is implemented or we will end up alienating people.
I haven't seen acceptance for any particular proposal here or even acknowledgement that a problem exists at all.
This is your league. It does not belong to Admins. We just do what we can to make it as much fun for all.
If you have an opinion about this, even if it is to say "There is no problem", then please let us know.
If players really want something, then admins will do what we can to help bring it to fruition.

The key to a healthy league is activity. Without it there is no league.
One way to increase activity is to increase membership and support new members so that they stay.
Alternatively, we encourage more activity within the current membership.
Ideally, we do both.

So how do we help players that are members of inactive teams?

One solution might be to automatically dissolve teams that fall below a certain threshold of activity. After all, what use is a team to the league, if it never participates?
This would free up players to create more active teams without feeling guilty for abandoning their old team.
All players will then have an obligation to keep their team active, which will also help the league.
This way, the inactive players will be the ones to feel guilty and not the players that arrive every day hoping to see a mate online.

Sorry for adding another proposal to the mix, but this idea could be implemented without a lot of coding.
What you need to remember is that proposals are a lot like children, delivery is always the hard part, and some of the ideas proposed would involve a lot of work and that makes it less likely to be implemented.

I imagine something like warning GUMails (possibly also BZMails or even emails) sent to members of a team that is in danger of being dissolved.
Provide a method for "stay of execution" under certain circumstances, e.g. players doing exams and taking 6 months break.
Provide a method for old teams to be reinstated.

What do you think?
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by kierra »

I like the idea of deleting inactive teams.

I like the idea of red vs green. I just don't like the elo changes to League teams...
To quote a hoster:
The idea itself is not bad, may raise activity (for a short time?). But depending on the number of matches with one of the random teams involved it will screw up the ELO rating of the normal teams. Randomness is poison for an ELO system.
Why not go with red vs green and award a set amount of points ~ 3 to 5 points. Seems like this would minimize the randomness to elo system.
Leave the red/green teams empty on the gu site....players just match on a color team....becomes like the fun league in that respect.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by An SQUERRILz »

FiringSquad wrote:So how do we help players that are members of inactive teams?
This idea has been frying for a long time. A plugin that tracks all FMs and associates objectives (flag capping, flag holders shot, TKs) with an individual's "career score". Perhaps a rating system for all players that tracks their FM results.

The motivation is the idea that people can see their record, just some fun statistics.

It would require a plugin on every GU server, a website for receiving and displaying info, and a consensus that players won't become shy to FMs for whatever reason.

As for the rating system, I have constructed an elo-based system that would work. Somewhere I have written a technical overview of its properties, but in short, it successfully tracks the elo rating of individuals as they play in team matches (Just like individual rating in MOBA, but more accurate if I say so myself). All that is needed is the players on each side and the win/loss/draw outcome. Unfortunately I could not find any server owners who log that info for a pilot study. Brad has players by names, but not which team or the outcome. It would take a data mining experiment that makes educated guesses on which player was on which team and the corresponding recorded match on the GU site. A good rating system should accurately estimate the winning odds for a matchup. I consider myself a good predictor of match outcomes for players I know, and my system gives surprisingly good predictions for all manner of matchups (1v1, 10v10, 5v3 etc). If I had time I would be able to demonstrate its predictions (Someone take me on in a bet!)

The idea of a public rating (or maybe hidden rating but a website still gives predictions for fun) has some major drawbacks. Firstly in my simulations it takes a large number of matches to get to the accurate ratings for a pool of players. You can decrease the number of matches required by increasing the K factor, but then each match has quite a hefty contribution. This is a major "weakness" of elo-based systems: one would not dare to mention "convergence" in elo because it is a non-existent idea. With elo, rating is just a function of a sequence of matches that will inevitably have regular spikes and dips due to pure chance of flipping 8 wins in a row out of 100 games. An alternative is to convert my system to glicko2, which is also "just a thing to track/predict performance" but unlike elo one could mention "true rating". The only downsides are 1) effort spent by me 2) people will play enough games to get a reasonably accurate estimate of their rating, then they'll play more games and win 10 games in a row and their glicko barely changed. It's a tradeoff: elo gives people false impressions, false trends and false hope, but hope nonetheless. Glicko stays true to "finding you" but then you'll hardly have highs or lows or short-term progress.
FiringSquad wrote:Randomness is poison for an ELO system.
My point is just that randomness is a part of elo. So if an FM elo-based system were to be used... well in general people should realise that there is no such thing as a "long term elo rating". The only exception to this is Rainbow score campers. If every team played one game a day for eternity, there would be a not too distant point in time where ICE has a rating of 2000 (which is logically a hideous rating that would only reflect the fact that they had a lucky streak with 99% wins over 1000 games or something).
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by FiringSquad »

I think such systems have a lot of merit and anything that contributes to the fun should be considered.

There are a few issues at stake here though…

1. The Player:
Anything that encourages players to be more active should be encouraged. An ELO rating of kills might be useful, since there will be many and it should settle down to an eventual norm relatively quickly. It will certainly get exciting for high-ELO players since they essentially will have a bounty on their heads. :-)
However, a single ELO-type rating is too restricted and might not give a full picture, so statistics about number of caps, longest killing streak this month etc., might be useful too. This could also show players what skills still need work and can provide information for teams deciding on whether to allow a new member to join.

2. The League:
A healthy league needs active teams. Anything that encourages players to remain in an inactive team will not help the league. It would be better to encourage these members to move. For this reason I think removing inactive teams and making players teamless, or moving them automatically to a newly created team might be a better option.

3. Plug-in & Website development:
This is generally where all good ideas come to die. Those with the skills to implement these ideas are generally too busy to invest the time required. If you're willing to do the coding or know somebody that can, then things will go a lot smoother for you and you will have a greater say in the final outcome.
The server-owners have been very willing to support the league and I'm sure there won't be a problem to get them to add the plug-in, but before you begin any coding, it would be advisable to give an outline of functionality and get agreement from the GU-League Admins.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by An SQUERRILz »

1. The Player:
Anything that encourages players to be more active should be encouraged. An ELO rating of kills might be useful, since there will be many and it should settle down to an eventual norm relatively quickly. It will certainly get exciting for high-ELO players since they essentially will have a bounty on their heads. :-)
However, a single ELO-type rating is too restricted and might not give a full picture, so statistics about number of caps, longest killing streak this month etc., might be useful too. This could also show players what skills still need work and can provide information for teams deciding on whether to allow a new member to join.
I should have been more clear: the tracking of fun statistics (kills, caps, saves, TKs, flag grabs, etc) is a completely separate idea from the rating system, which is purely driven by the outcome (win/loss/draw) of a match. They could be tracked by the same plugin and displayed on the same website, but that's about the only connection. Basically if all match reports on the GU site also listed the team members that played, I would now have a list of all players with their individual rating that is independent on their team. E.g. Players A, B and C who have been on the same team forever would have their unique ratings, and their ratings would be applicable no matter what matchup they played (e.g. in an FM).

I might as well point out that an offi doesn't happen everyday, so FMs would definitely count as matches for the rating system (need plugin to track). Teamswaps happen a lot in FMs, and sometimes FMs are /gameover'd as well. I dare say that I can make my rating system accurate despite teamswaps. That's right - you can join a clearly lost team without worry; you can swap with someone at any time and play against your former teammates.

About the plugin and website:
I would write the plugin. I think the website would be external, since statistics is not an official idea. I am fairly hopeless with web development but the main components would be 1) PHP page that receives data sent by plugins and updates it in a database 2) a database 3) some update mechanism e.g. re-calculating things every hour 4) a page with list of players and their stats, maybe you can click on a player and it will show their profile or sort by kill or kill ratio or rating. I guess something like the planetmofo high score website would work.
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Re: A new matching variant for GU league

Post by -panda- »

lol no, just no, didn't work for bzmb and it won't work here
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