Frogboy

The reason why Favor Points are not a good measure of skill level.

I agree that favour points aren't a good measure of skill. But they are a good indicator of a person's experience, if all favour points ever accrued are the currency used, as well as being accessible by the current statistics tracking system (i.e. no need for a redesign.) 

The more games played, with as indicated in your re-direct cosmoe, the more favour someone is going to have. The more games played, should equal more experience.

Perhaps a modified version of what my memory remembers of the old fairly useless vanilla starcraft rating system. It had a star system, each half star earnt by winning two games. Whilst pretty useless as 10 games wasnt much indication of experience, you oculd always look up a persons stats too.and see the actual stats.

So for demigods case, an easily identifiable system could be half a star earned for every 1000 favour points accrued in the players lifetime?

If 40 is the minimum favour for staying in a game and losing, then itll take at least 25 games till you earn that one half star.

For custom, its only use would be say bragging rights and indication of experience, nothing more.

For new demigod players, theyd have some idea who to play against.

So in a potential ladder, you could compete against the players at your star rating in order to work your way upto a 5 star rating. Would give players something concrete to accomplish, as well as allowing for skilled players to compete in a ladder vs other likedminded skilled players.

In terms of identifying random teams, if team play isnt organised, the % played on team sounds like a great idea.

@cosmoe. I think we may be arguing for things that are different.

Whilst I agree that support demigods may be slightly shafted in terms of favour accruement; if someone plays a support demigod for 100 games (without dropping), even losing every game,  they will still accruemore favour then someone only playing 10 games.

I simply propose that since much more favour comes with playing many more games, an easy way to indicate player experience (not skill or demigod strength) would be to at least have a visual representation of the amount of favour points accrued. The star system i think would work nicely.

Seriously these ideas are half-assing it. You're just proposing a system which makes it easier for players to avoid premades, you're not incentivizing premade vs. premade matches when you de-emphasize experience.

Players with a lot of exp should want to fight other players with high exp levels, they should not want to stomp pugs, which is what a solely win % based approach encourages.

Think about it. Even if the system worked like you hope it would, which is to say it encouraged premades to fight equally skilled opponents, their win ratios would drop down to 50% win rates and then pugs would fight them not knowing what their actual skill level were.

Experience is the only logical gauge of skill, if you feel the experience equation needs tweaking then say so, I would agree with you.

I would be carefull with this kind of stats (talking about the "experience" and "team %").

I´ll take an other game as an example why you have to be carefull about introducing such skill ratings (and make them viewable for everyone who´s just connected to you):

Maybe you heard about HoN, if not, it doesn´t matter. It´s a team game, like demigod. The game does have skill stats, they call it PSR (public skill rate). With each win it will increase and vice versa. A few weeks ago the developers decided to make this PSR visible for everyone without making a few more clicks. First: A good idea, now there´s an easy way to seperate skilled players from new players etc.

But on the other hand, let us think about the following:

A pre-made team of 3 or 4 players are playing some matches everyday together in the same team and are defeating random teams by, maybe, 70%. So their skill rating will increase very fast. After a few weeks (or even days, if they´re playing like freaks ) they will encounter the following problem: most people will leave their matched up game instantly because they´ll just see the ratings of the pre-made team and will think: "What? No way, I´ll not sacrifice my rating points by getting stomped from (by?) a closed team."

The effect will be, that the pre-made team won´t get a game started easily, because most of the people who will join their game are leaving right after checking their stats.

The skillrating is no problem, if there would be something like "Arranged Team", well known by WC3 and Starcraft (well, don´t know if it´s in Starcraft, but it´s in WC3).

So, according to the last journal you could maybe change the Skirmish mode with an AT mode. I know, that this would mean more developing for this mode. I don´t know if it could be done in a few weeks (regarding resources. I think most of the devs at Stardock are currently working on Elemental).

I fully support the shuffle team option, (prefeably I would like it to also try and balance the 'stats' of the team), i.e. try and set it up so that %wins of each team is as close as possible...this will result in much closer games.

Didn´t know Demigod got only a handfull of players online at the same time, didn´t touched it since beta was over. I´m more used to those 15k+ users only at once. But if Demigod lacks of such a base and you´ll know most of the players of Demigod after a few matches the "Arranged Team" button is pointless, yes.

It would save you the time for searching some enemies on IRC though.

and it would give your win/game rate, which would be low so people wouldn't feel threatened. i don't see why no one would play you. most people look first at your win rate, and then at who you've played with.

check:

http://www.demigodthegame.com/opengames.asp

usually 5-10 open game lobbies at a time (50+ games in play). people tend to play at the same hours each day. you quickly learn who plays with who.

Nothing new to me ed anger, only that the stats page got some minor changes since beta. But if there are only 5-10 open games, I fully agree, no need for an extra arranged team function. It would only make sense if you have 15k+ players online, 400+ open games (running and full games not included) at once etc.

How will the Experience be calculated?

ah... thanks for the clarification shade.

I've been watching these kinds of threads for a while now...

As a regular host, I would like to know the % disconnect which is calculated as #disconnects/#total games.  That evens the scale for someone with 200+ games and someone with only 50 games.  If % is too high, I'll call them on it, and ask if they plan on sticking around. 

I'd like to randomize teams, but dont know how to do it, and still preserve the DG of choice.  I play TB mostly, and my team wouldn't benefit from my being switched to say a Rook for example.  It may not be able to be done.  Maybe only randomize players with same dg on either team?  idk...

Lastly, any consideration of calculating %premade has to figure in the fact that there is a limited set of players at any given time of the day, and the chances of playing w/the same people ATM is pretty high. Over time, I've become familiar with many players, and have played with them all more than once. I don't consider us a premade cuase I'm just as willing to play with as against them.  We just happen to be the same set of folks who play in the evening, looking for 4v (or higher) games.

there is also teams where favor divided badly.. Ie sedna-UB.. tanking, ganking, dealing a lot damage UB get 140-195 fp and healing, capturing flags and full support sedna usually get 105-130 favor... support not counts there... just pure damage, flag controlling and frag/gold income!

When I hop into a lobby I check the following:

• Win rate of the host.
• If win rate is high, determine whether I am playing a premade by looking at the hosts past games.
• If host is a premade, look at my teammates win records.
• If they are reasonable, play game.

Basically, I look at win rate.  It's not perfect but it is a quick an dirty benchmark that works more often than not.