Looking towards Epoch 3

2. Team Automatch so premades can play eachother.

This should be a top priority, but in the interim I still think it makes more sense to ditch custom game ranking completely.

3. Truly seperate custom and automatch stats: "Top Players" ladder displays automatch stats. Custom games count in a seperate ladder so puggers can still track their stats, but wont interfere with the meaningful automatch ladder stats.

Puggers don't need custom stat tracking, they have pantheon/skirmish as-is. Warcraft 3 had a random ladder and a team ladder and it was an excellent concept.

What I think the real purpose of the ladder should be is pairing players with similar skill levels against each other. Stats have nothing to do with custom game pairing so I don't see how it's important there, as the people who are currently on top of the ladder have gained the lion's share of their points from pub stomping, the points from premade vs. premade games are a drop in the bucket.

quoting post

2. Better handling of Pantheon / Skirmish match making (something we would like your input to with regards to people quitting before the game starts and such).

Actually i remember reading about a really good looking fix to people rage quitting (which still happens alot btw)and leaving before the game starts to get their pre in pantheon it was something like the person that leaves cannot join another game until the game they left ends but we would need something to keep the guy whoms teamate left in the game for awhile say for every quitting teamate one team has his favor points are split between the remaining players or a bonus a favor points and such as long as they do not resign they'd have to play till the end or it wouldn't punish the leaver.

I agree with Polynomial 110%. If you take away rankings then i would put money down half the current demigod players would uninstall the game and demand a refund. I certainly would i bought this game so that i can play with friends it would be meaningless if those games didn't count. An example would be finding out your 4 years of college didn't count because the dean decided that your major ws pointless. or better yet that you worked a 40 hour week and your boss decided not to pay you because he decided that it wasn't really work but just manual labor 4 fun. I believe the only reason why anyone (Obscenitor) would not want custom games to count is for either one of the following reasons. One is that he doesn't have firends either in rl or on the internet who will play with him. The second is the most obvious which is he simply isn't good at the game and if he can't win why should anyone else have fun winning.

2. Better handling of Pantheon / Skirmish match making (something we would like your input to with regards to people quitting before the game starts and such).

I really think you need to hide players' names on the connecting screen before the game starts. Would it be possible to just have them listed as player1, player2, player3, etc. or something to that effect and then show their real names in game?

Quoting Jukebox Hero,

reply 3

I believe the only reason why anyone (Obscenitor) would not want custom games to count is for either one of the following reasons. One is that he doesn't have firends either in rl or on the internet who will play with him. The second is the most obvious which is he simply isn't good at the game and if he can't win why should anyone else have fun winning.

Well in my experience nobody respects the opinion of someone who sinks to personal insults.

The second is the most obvious which is he simply isn't good at the game and if he can't win why should anyone else have fun winning.

The other day I was rank 290 something and had a few bad games so now I'm rank 351... You're rank 345 and you play with premades, so pot meet kettle?

If you want to call me terrible then that's great. It shows that the system is completely meaningless because I have about the same ranking as you in spite of me being terrible and you being great. I'm glad we're on the same page.

-edit- made more sense to consolidate these posts

I certainly would i bought this game so that i can play with friends it would be meaningless if those games didn't count. An example would be finding out your 4 years of college didn't count because the dean decided that your major ws pointless.

No, it would be like completing 3 years before you get your degree and then your college losing its accreditation because they were teaching you out of kindergarten books.

or better yet that you worked a 40 hour week and your boss decided not to pay you because he decided that it wasn't really work but just manual labor 4 fun. I believe the only reason why anyone

The game is like a job for you and it's only payment which motivates you to play? If you're genuinely not enjoying the games then rankings aren't going to keep you around for long.

double post

Quoting bane_solemon,

reply 5

Quoting Jukebox Hero, reply 3I believe the only reason why anyone (Obscenitor) would not want custom games to count is for either one of the following reasons. One is that he doesn't have firends either in rl or on the internet who will play with him. The second is the most obvious which is he simply isn't good at the game and if he can't win why should anyone else have fun winning.
Well in my experience nobody respects the opinion of someone who sinks to personal insults.

my personal experience disagrees with that

but really

there is no reason to remove them.

just add a way for teams to play pantheon/skirmish

Quoting woca,

reply 8

my personal experience disagrees with that

Fine then let me rephrash that If Jukebox is desperate enough to resort to insulting another player then I would think a majority of the players wouldn't want him here so he can go ahead and uninstall his game it won't bother us a bit.

Quoting bane_solemon,

reply 9

Quoting woca, reply 8
my personal experience disagrees with that

Fine then let me rephrash that If Jukebox is desperate enough to resort to insulting another player then I would think a majority of the players wouldn't want him here so he can go ahead and uninstall his game it won't bother us a bit.

you are insulting him by blatantly using his name, does it work both ways?

this isn't the point of the thread though

don't remove custom rank, add team join to skirmish

Okay, so let's assume you can have two seperate ladder rankings. Why not have one be random skirmish/panth and the other be premade skirmish/panth instead of using one of those slots on custom games?

Assuming we had a functional team pantheon system (and that the current one discarded because of it) and that an indefinite number of ladders would exist concurrently, what would custom game rankings really measure anyway?

Quoting woca,

reply 10

you are insulting him by blatantly using his name, does it work both ways?

this isn't the point of the thread though

don't remove custom rank, add team join to skirmish

I suppose it does but i already havent been on for more than a week....anyway back on topic if you get team join in skirmish why would you need custom games to be ranked? We need somewhere to test new things or we will keep seeing the same old health stacking and minion swarming every game this might-yes might but probably won't-fix the numerous posts about this and that being OP since people can test new counters to the builds without it being put on their record incase something goes wrong it'd kind of be like a lobby for practice and whatnot.

Quoting Obscenitor,

reply 11

don't remove custom rank, add team join to skirmishOkay, so let's assume you can have two seperate ladder rankings. Why not have one be random skirmish/panth and the other be premade skirmish/panth instead of using one of those slots on custom games?
Assuming we had a functional team pantheon system (and that the current one discarded because of it) and that an indefinite number of ladders would exist concurrently, what would custom game rankings really measure anyway?

why not keep custom game rankings? there is absolutely no reason to take them out. go ahead and do tests in custom, your custom rank doesnt ahve to matter to you, you want it removed so pretend it was

add team join. have ranks for premade and random, keep custom games rank

everyone is happy

Quoting woca,

reply 13

why not keep custom game rankings? there is absolutely no reason to take them out

sure add a random and premade rank, keep custom imo

There are reasons to make custom unranked see my last reply...

Edit:no everybody isn't happy because there is no place to test any new builds without reprecutions....

What about sperate rankings for custom matches and pantheon/skirmish? Then once "team join" in pantheon/skirmish (with the option to play complete PUG vs PUG, PUG vs pre-made, pre-mades vs pre-made) make custom matches unranked.

Quoting bane_solemon,

reply 14

Quoting woca, reply 13
why not keep custom game rankings? there is absolutely no reason to take them out

sure add a random and premade rank, keep custom imo
There are reasons to make custom unranked see my last reply...
Edit:no everybody isn't happy because there is no place to test any new builds without reprecutions....

uggh i dont care if you want to test builds, that's not a reason to remove ranks imo. a lot of people may like to test builds, but they can do it against ai or likee i said, pretend that custom games dont have a rank, cause you seem to not care if they get removed

but if someone wants to test builds against people without messing up rank, i think a sandbox mode that doesn't effect ranks is great(this would be ideal)

Quoting woca,

reply 16

uggh i dont care if you want to test builds cause you can. do it against ai. do it in custom games. like i said, pretend that custom games dont have a rank.

Yes because ai play this game briliantly

Ok all sides can be happy

leave custom rankings. have a premade join option to panth/skirm, have random join. have a seperate ranking. of course this won't work long term, not enough people so premades playing pugs, but that's a diff issue

add sandbox mode to custom that won't effect rank

Quoting woca,

reply 18

Ok all sides can be happy

leave custom rankings. have a premade join option to panth/skirm, have random join. have a seperate ranking. of course this won't work long term, not enough people so premades playing pugs, but that's a diff issue

add sandbox mode to custom that won't effect rank

I guess that about sums it up it sounds like alot of work for GPG/Stardock but it looks like it'll cover all sides for now.

Don't fix want is not broken? Just fix the stats reporting incorrectly.

There is no reason to take them out especially with only 1 person (Obscenitor) thinks its a great idea.

I frankly don't care if you have a problem with me playing with friends. Its your problem, not mine. I want to play games with my friends and I want them to count. Period. There is no reason to take that away from me. It leaves me with nothing. I play nigtly and always stick around for the midnight stats update.

Frogboy, you cannot take something away from people without offering a comparable replacement method for friends playing together. Its not a bad thing people want to play together.

why not keep custom game rankings? there is absolutely no reason to take them out. go ahead and do tests in custom, your custom rank doesnt ahve to matter to you, you want it removed so pretend it was

add team join. have ranks for premade and random, keep custom games rank

everyone is happy

I disagree for a couple reasons.

The main one is that they have a pretty complicated pantheon website and ranking system which feeds stats to it. Not counting custom games is likely a toggle somewhere which can be easily done. What you're asking for is a far more robust system which may more may not be feasible whereas a simple change like no longer counting custom matches is probably relatively simple (relatively being the key word).

The other reason is that the implementation of team matchmaking when it eventually comes isn't the end of the process, you need to get people to actually play it and I think letting players be the king of the custom game sand pile is a bad incentive to have in place. It's not a competitive game format and it doesn't make sense to me to have a competitive ranking system attached to it.

I don't think we should take for granted that the premade games would be popular. People may very well stick to custom games to avoid waits on premade opponents, especially considering that the vast majority of their current opponents are pubs who would effectively be out of that system (I think, or maybe the auto-matches will pit pubs vs. premades still?) which could result in tremendous wait times if everyone doesn't hop on board.

You know a fair amount of players will still hang around and pub stomp once the top end of the players take off to dominate the real ladder, not to mention the droves of players with 90% win rates are going to get frustrated when their win rates plummet and many may be tempted to head back to where the games were easy.

There is no reason to take them out especially with only 1 person (Obscenitor) thinks its a great idea.

That seems improbable. I doubt it's something that Frogboy just pulled off the top of his head as he sat down to make an unrelated post. I'm sure quite a number of people at SD/GPG thought it was a pretty decent idea if he's at the point of pitching it to the community for feedback.

I frankly don't care if you have a problem with me playing with friends. Its your problem, not mine.

I don't. I used to play exclusively with one of my friends until he got a job out in D.C. Once he gets settled in I'll play with him again and once my video card comes in on Monday (old one burnt out) I can stop using my brother's computer and he and I will play together. The notion that I would never play in a premade is absurd, I've been playing solo to get enough practice to be able to do well at exactly that. My perspective on rankings comes from having played online multiplayer games for years and having seen numerous approaches to ladder systems.

I want to play games with my friends and I want them to count. Period.

That's reasonable. I would like to see a system which does just that impelmented concurrently with the implementation of team matchmaking.

There is no reason to take that away from me.

There is, that's that it currently borks pantheon/skirmish games.

It leaves me with nothing.

Oh come on, that's ridiculous.

Quoting Polynomial,

reply 20

Don't fix want is not broken? Just fix the stats reporting incorrectly.

There is no reason to take them out especially with only 1 person (Obscenitor) thinks its a great idea.

I frankly don't care if you have a problem with me playing with friends. Its your problem, not mine. I want to play games with my friends and I want them to count. Period. There is no reason to take that away from me. It leaves me with nothing. I play nigtly and always stick around for the midnight stats update.

Frogboy, you cannot take something away from people without offering a comparable replacement method for friends playing together. Its not a bad thing people want to play together.

So I don't count as a person I see how it is...

Stop counting custom games in a ranked ladder, we will need to play games with friends to test out builds without counting!

Tranparent ladder, where we can see how much points we win/loss in each games to each opponent.

Updating ladders every 5 minutes not every 24 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stop counting a game with different amount of experience points in 2 ladders. For example:

I played a Pantheon game with "cardeg" on my team and our opponents were "Hibiko" and "Gubbel"

Both opponents were better ranked than myself and my teammate "cardeg" played his first pantheon game.

We won, I had the most favor points and earned 6 (six) points for the pantheon ladder and 16 (sixteen) points for the overall ladder!!!!!!!!!!!! This was the only game I played this day, because I wanted to learn how this ladder works. I think only Stephen Hawkings knows how this ladders are working!!

In the 3 pantheon games I played before this game, I lost 3 times and lost 147 points in the pantheon ladder!

Please fix this ladder system fast or the amount of players in this game will shrink rapidly.

Make only ONE ranked ladder, not 4 like now!!!!!

Quoting Polynomial,

reply 1

Until you can provide us a way to play ranked games with my friends, no. As in a team automatch.

Agreed

Quoting Obscenitor,

reply 4

2. Better handling of Pantheon / Skirmish match making (something we would like your input to with regards to people quitting before the game starts and such).

I really think you need to hide players' names on the connecting screen before the game starts. Would it be possible to just have them listed as player1, player2, player3, etc. or something to that effect and then show their real names in game?

That's a bit far fetched don't you think?

IMHO you are really dealing with the smaller issues here. Why am i saying that? You are still having problems with crashes and networking. Why should you fix something that doesn't affect the quality of the game more than it affects how players see each other? In my book that means a really bad priority system. Ok let's say you fix ranking system, automatch, etc, but your problems with the above mentioned remain. What have you accomplished then?

It's not that you aren't working hard on this one, but Epoch III should first of all mean patches to the base components of the system, not its derivative children.

Regarding the Custom Game, etc...you guys are really hung up on that one aren't you? The best solution i saw is not ranking them at all and consider them "trainings".

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