Game mode / ladder disambiguation

This is a dump from the earlier discord discussion for visibility. Essentially, before an overhaul of the ladders gets done, there are some low hanging fruit tasks that would make the current situation make more sense for little effort.

Competitive (Matchmaker) is majority 1v1s, and 1v1ers cite not enjoying staking their elo on Sortie or Battle. "Matchmaker" is a misnomer because we have 1v1 Pro host.

Proposal: Rename this to 1v1 (Ranked). Change Sortie/Battle elo to the teams ladder, or just remove them.

Casual (Custom) has been many gamemodes, but FFA has been / is to be divorced from the mode. It would make sense if 1v1 matches were also removed from this calculation.

Proposal: Rename this to Teams (Ranked). Remove 1v1 games from the rating here.

Arguments against the lobpot / teams being ranked ignore the fact that (the origin of this discussion) this ladder has been the only way for high skill players coming from the 1v1 Ranked ladder to gain purple status - a competitive badge by definition. So either 1v1 has to be more generous in rewarding competitive play, or we label teams exactly as it is.

Proposal: Make "casual" actually casual - Have a no elo lobpot in addition to Ranked teams. For clarity's sake, have a no elo version of every ranked mode.

To aid all of the above and make it much easier to clearly see what you are getting into, changes to the lobby are suggested.



However, as Aquanim suggests, this need not be headers. It could be drop-down filters or some other navigation method.

quote: How exactly am I supposed to judge my teammates capability without an assigned rating? An important part of team games, that you personally do not participate in, is that you need to know how well your players are distributed and who to assist.

Would it matter in an environment that was by definition, casual? If you are playing ranked teams, all the same information will be available to you. Infact, I'm not sure where I specified that any information would be missing to you in either mode.

quote: There's nothing inherently more competitive about matchmade 1v1s than large public team games, both have the same objective of victory and use the same algorithm for team compositions.

Thank you for making my point for me from a different angle. If 1v1 is no more competitive than large public team games, this can equally prove that team games are indeed competitive and should be labelled ranked as such.

quote: 1. No player hosted games contribute to any rating. Only games hosted by official hosts can affect rating. There's no shortage of official hosts. This will prevent low effort abuse that has been occurring.

Agree.

quote: 2. FFA, 1v1 and Teams (any size) will be the new ladders, where there will be absolutely no influence of ratings from one ladder on the other ladder.

Agree, but not low-hanging fruit. Can logically come after the changes in my OP.

quote: 3. Rating rewards such as badge color will be awarded equally for any of the 3 ladders, with highest achievement having display priority.

I like the idea of this but not psychic enough to know what you're thinking of. Tell me more?

quote: There is no difference between the balance or "casualness" of a "ranked" or "casual" team game, unless you introduce fixed teams which is not part of this discussion. Given the same players, both environments will produce the same two teams using the same algorithm. Both teams will try to win, assuming they will not try to win is not arguing in good faith.

This sounds like your angle is that everything is ranked, and depends upon rating to match distribute. Which is fine, but is having the option to play no-elo games not desirable? People do need practise environments. I'm not really sure if there is an issue, or what the issue is here.

quote: I frankly do not care if either is labeled as casual, I think those are deceptive labels that do not represent the game environment. It can be called red and blue for all it matters. Both modes need a rating system to maintain a semblance of fair games, how it is labeled doesn't change this.

It is deceptive. Thus the OP. Give them labels that represent what is actually taking place.

quote: Current ladder reward: your badge has a color based on your rating in casual ladder. Proposed ladder reward: your badge has a color based on your highest rating out of all ladders.

Yeah, that would be good. We briefly touched on the badge being shown matching the lobby / game mode being participated in. There are options here. However, we didn't arrive on a solution for how we distribute purple to ranked 1v1 players being that 1% = only 2 spots on the ladder. We discussed the percent being proportionate to the overall playercount, but there were issues with that. The only thing that seemed to stick was to create some abritrary "Top 5 get purple, Top 20 get blue" thing - and even that's not perfect. I don't personally have a solution to this, but I do know that the current system is broken.

Lastly, I just want to say that this post was made because the actions within it are trivial and have a quick impact. I get that they're not the end goal, but stepping stones on the journey to the idealized ladder presentation. If you can argue that these tiny tweaks leave us worse off than our current state, I'm all ears. Otherwise, don't see these as suggestions made to put it all to bed once and for all.

quote: My problem was with you wanting to remove elo from "lobpot", which would absolutely destroy any balance as that's the only room that's consistently played aside from 1v1 games.

Right, I get you now. I was suggesting a concurrent version of the lobby. So you'd essentially have 1v1 ranked, teams ranked, (ffa ranked but not part of the scope of this post, definitely ideal though), and then the unranked equivelant of all of the above. It was more an "in addition to" than an "instead of". Sorry if the wording wasn't quite there. I think we might want the same things.

quote: I have no problem with people playing no-elo games. I even suggested all non-official player hosted games be forced to no-elo.

quote: We do not, I don't want to encourage no-elo games.

What.

Thankfully I think everything we covered up to this point clarified my intent perfectly. Thanks for helping me to clear things up.

Right, imagine having a place where you can build storages without a big hitter's elo being on the line. It is win win. I give people the benefit of the doubt that they don't hit something labelled explicitly as "ranked" as easily as they do something labelled "casual teams".

quote: Being OK with something and not actively encouraging it is a big difference. Players not being able to host elo rated games is vital to prevent abuse. Your suggestion would attempt to split the playerbase into a no-elo "lobpot" where no balance could ever take place.

It would not split the player base it would allow choice into peoples gameplay rather then every game being some fiesta were a purple is crying at a level 10 for doing something non meta.
The majority of players who have experience would opt for an elo game whenever they FEEL like it and when they don't and just want to sit and hop on and play some zk with no pressure they can also do this

quote: It would not split the player base it would allow choice into peoples gameplay rather then every game being some fiesta were a purple is crying at a level 10 for doing something non meta. The majority of players who have experience would opt for an elo game whenever they FEEL like it and when they don't and just want to sit and hop on and play some zk with no pressure they can also do this

Without this choice it encourages people to only play when they are ready to absolutely sweat to gain elo
Which is just completely unhealthy for community growth

quote: Having !balance and !predict work in those rooms is *important*.

I admit I never participated in such games, but I'm assuming those functions work despite having the no-elo option enabled.

It may seem like a miniscule problem due to size of the community, but allowing players to influence their rating through such custom games is a glaring security issue for the whole system. Which is why you will not find any mainstream game with such custom and simultaneously ranked games.

quote: And honestly, rating manipulation can be and is dealt with by the moderation team in a reactive fashion.

Possible only due to small size, even that requires someone to actually catch it. Nobody is actively looking for it, I only noticed it because the room was literally claiming to be doing boosting.