A stats reset alone won't nearly cover it, however.
Miyamiya illuminates my position exactly with this comment from another thread:
I should clarify, and I should mention I have not done any research on the current ranking mechanism simply because of the obvious exploits and the resulting lack of interest. If it is displayed in game however, I suddenly do have interest in it recording properly.
However...
If we go by win percentage, there are several common situations which throw off win percentage:
1. Playing pro only games vs. stomping around in noob only games
2. Playing with/against premade teams
3. Exploiting the system either in custom games or by queuing up at the same time in pantheon
4. Experimenting with characters/always playing your best character
If we have a chess ranking system based on some sort of team composite, and based on the particular character you play it solves most of these (as far as I know this is not in the works), but there is still the option of exploiting the system (also no prevention mechanisms in the works).
To top it all off, stats are still not reported accurately.
For someone like me who often plays against premades in pro games, often losing because some noob decided they were pro, will I still be able to join these games? or will I have to go to regular or noob only games and stomp around there for a while?
To add to that, using myself as an example because my stats are fun right now:
1. Check this out: http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/rankings/ladder/page/100
and here are my stats: http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/player/11146
See anything wrong with this picture?
The "experience" ranking system is broken, and a misnomer to boot. You have set all players at baseline 1000 exp. That means a player with 1 loss in a custom game will come down to say, 980 exp. *And that player will still be ranked higher than me, at 60-70 games played since the reset.* My "experience" is currently hovering around 900, which puts me up around Rank 24,000. There are more than
20,000 players who have played 5 games or less, and they are all going to have better rank than me. Epic Fail.
2. Since patch 1.1 (coincidentally, of course) my PC has been crashing, and every crash is a loss/dc. Of the 30 odd losses I've had, 12-15 of them have been crashes. DCs should affect stats, no argument, but I'm not intentionally leaving these games, actually in many of them my team was winning when I crashed. (Wouldn't it be beautiful if Demigod had that feature HoN has where you have 500 seconds to reconnect to the game without penalty? S2 really set the bar on the meta side, the game is a retread but the lobby, connection, and stats system are truly perfect) No real point here, just that stats aren't going to be accurate for anyone who crashes like that, or anyone in a game with such a crash..
3. If and when I actually land a team that beats a host in the top 1,000 - that host will most likely dc before the victory screen, for the scratch. That game will not show up on their record at all, and if it shows on mine it will be a ghost win, with myself as the only player. I don't blame the hosts - they are preserving their flawless records because you as the developers left a giant gaping loophole for them to jump through...But maybe that will affect relative stats as well, what do you think? (As a side note this problem existed in December 08 and was reported on these forums)
The best games I'm playing these days are ones where the host weeds through the possible players based on win ratio and number of games played. I would include both of these numbers in the lobby, and either leave experience rank out completely or fix it til it actually means something.
Also it would make sense to include aggregate number of games played somewhere, because the epoch resets make some people look like noobs who have 100 hours of play time.
Anyway, thanks for reading
Kestrel
