I don't mind a new ranking system per se, however awarding people points for 2nd and 3rd place has a MAJOR flaw:
I would make certain plays during games to win or bust. Sell a plot of land late, buy stite @108, etc. Sometimes I take major gambles to WIN, not to play it safe and hope to come in second. I have finished last many times when I could have just played it out and finished 2nd.
I won a game last week making almost no ore or stite, but instead took all 4 river plots and won with food and energy; against very good players ranked in the top 100. If a statagy like that bombs on me and I finish 4th and lose ranking, where is my motivation to try to experiment with something new?
The basic premise is wrong, the 4th place player is NOT nessessarily worse than the 2nd place guy and maybe even played better.
If there is a new rating system, still award points for winning and nothing else. Don't reward a player for just being the first loser.
One way to do it is by rewarding the winning player extra points for how much he wins by.
Winning by 5000 is a lot more impressive than winning by 500. Although frankly I am happy with the ranking system the way it is.
My post above is my intellectual argument. Here is my emotional one:
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do not go to a Truskill type of ranking system. I have played other games that use it and I can't stand it.
It especially will not work in MULE because the sample of games isn't nearly large enough.
MULE is about winning people!
WINNING! I don't want to feel good about coming in 2nd.
I did a very quick reread of this thread -- skipping dynadan's and my posts. While dynadan and I have posted at length in this thread, I wanted to bring back a couple of posts I really liked by GambitTime.
In agreement, M.U.L.E. is about winning! Wild risks for a play at first founder can make M.U.L.E. exciting. Furthermore, giving an incentive for a margin of victory gives the player in first a reason to take risks, too. Then, to balance that margin and give everyone a chance at a boost, a colony award is offered. This is my basis for almost all of my SPM.
A quick rerun through my skill point modifier (SPM) idea. The SPM is multiplied to the skill point change determined by the ranking system after a game, but before the skill point change is added to the player's skill value. (These exact numbers are somewhat arbitrary, but they serve as a general guide.) :
0.6x to the winner's SPM
0.2x (max) is added to the winner's SPM giving weight to the margin of a win. How much of 0.2 is calculated by taking the difference between first and second's score, dividing that by the second place's score, and finally multiplying that by 0.2.
0.2x (max) is added (or subtracted) to all player's SPM's based on colony scores. Using the colony achievements as a guideline, 0.2x is awarded for the highest achievement, a score of 120,000+; no award for the middle achievement, 60,000 to 79,999; and a penalty of 0.2x for lowest achievement, <20,000. The in between achievements use 0.05 and 0.1, respectively.
The 0.X factors were not explained well. The SPM always starts at 1x. The 0.X parts are added or subtracted. So, a win with the worst colony penalty becomes 1+ 0.6 -0.2=
1.4x. Or, a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th with the best colony award becomes 1+0.2=
1.2x for positive skill point changes and -1+0.2=
0.8x for negative skill point changes.
Another way to think about the SPM is by moving the decimal 2 places, thus everything becomes a percentage. 1x becomes 100% of the skill value change. A win, 1.6x becomes 160% of the skill value change. For positive skill point changes, one wants the highest percentage for the biggest upward movement. For negative skill point changes, one wants the lowest percentage to minimize negative movement.
The last bit about a hosting penalty... While I applaud the developer's efforts to mitigate "host advantages," a host still gets the best pings. Their side of their games will be the most responsive. Additionally, if the lag is big enough (as little as 250-300), their low pings can overcome the host advantage mitigators. For example, a higher-placed host can steal a plot from a lower-placed player. The penalty is small, but serves a noble purpose -- it tries to make things a bit more fair.
0.025x penalty goes to the host.
The problem with being able to give results from a 5 game sample is the developers are the only people who know Planet MULE's actual equations and variables in calculating the leaderboard. I don't know how a SPM will affect sigma values and player skill values (mu) over many games. Will the SPM make a meaningful difference? Will it muck up the uncertainty portion (the sigma stuff) and create strange and unreliable results? I just don't have the needed information (and potentially the skill and/or tools) to do the statistical samples, but I am very curious and hopeful.
[edit: proofing, more clarification, and added the percentage analogy]
