POT5 Ranked GSF TOURNEY

[SWCNT]

Sith United Ranked GSF Tournament!

Server: POT5

Date: Dec 19th

Time: 9pm-12pm;

Prizes: Each pilot of the winning 4 man team will receive 1,500,000 credits

 

 

This tournament (outlined below) will feature a rating system allowing for pilot/team performance to be tracked during the event. Although we do not claim the rating system to be perfect, I believe it is the best we can do until BW decides to promote such events.

 

We do not wish to “steal the thunder” of the Bastion, and recently the Ebon Hawk, server tourneys. You guys have done a great job, and we all have fun in them. That’s why if the ranking system succeeds, I believe we should team up and implement this on a rotational basis. Maybe something like every month or few weeks--or more often if we want-- a new server gets the ranked tourney. I don’t think it’s practical to do on every server, but maybe the 3 of us? We can even do it for stock nights if we wish. I can perform the necessary tasks for the other servers to implement the rating system (see how it works below). The success of this event and other tourneys depends on high participation. With higher req coming in dec, making other toons and getting them with good ships shouldn’t take as long.

 

Rules (READ THEM CAREFULLY):

 

 

1. Each team is defined by a 4 pilot squadron (no exceptions). Prizes are given to the first place team, there is no second place in the Empire.

 

2. Each 4 pilot squadron must submit their game names at least 2 days in advance. Each squadron must also submit a team name and a team captain. The easiest way to do this is to reply to this thread with your team name and the names of your teammates.

 

3. Upon the completion of each match, the captain of each team must upload a screenshot (jpg) of the leaderboard at the end of the match. The screenshot file should be named with your team name and the match number. For example, Alpha 2 would be team Alpha, match number 2. You must make sure that your name and the names of your teammates are in the leaderboard chart. In other words, make sure your names aren't in the unscrolled section of the leaderboard window. If this happens my program will not detect your name and you will be given a zero for match. IF A SCREENSHOT IS NOT RECEIVED, YOU WILL RECEIVE NO POINTS FOR THE MATCH.

 

4. I've written a program that decomposes the screenshots to extract the text. Your name, damage, metals, accuracy, etc will be stored in an array with your character name. The program calculates the team and player scores and produces the needed graphs/tables which will be available for download after the tourney.

 

5. The following algorithm will be used to calculate a score per pilot, and then your score will be added to the score of your 3 teammates to form your team score. You win by team score. Your team score will be normalized to the number of matches your team played.

 

6. The algorithm is a simple weighted average:

Domination:

(Kills-Deaths)*0.15+Assists*0.15+Damage/10000*0.20+Objectives*0.3+Accuracy*0.05+Metals*0.15

 

If TDM then,

(Kills-Deaths)*0.25+Assists*0.25+Damage/10000*0.25+Accuracy*0.1+Metals*0.15

 

[Note] The reason Objs are weighted so heavily is due to the bomber class. There is unfortunately no way to keep track of ships used/changed during battles, so we cannot weight individually based on ship type. Also, the leaderboards do not provide %heals. Furthermore, we all know how bombers get ripped off for accuracy, which is why that’s weighted rather low. The system is not perfect, and it may be updated as these events progress. As for now, this is the formula for the tourney.

 

7. Winners will be announced at the end of the tournament--allow about 1hr to finish completing everything. The totals will be available on the Sith United Website (http://sithunited.enjin.com/), furthermore graphs of the performance for each team in the tournament will be provided for download at the website. Your individual performance will be plotted for each match as well.

 

Example of a match:

12v12 TDM

At the end of the match each captain will take a screenshot and rename it with the proper file name formatting and upload (upload details will be provided closer to the match) it on the Sith United Website. The images will be processed and scores will be computed in a timely fashion. The scores for each player and their team will be posted on the website at the after the tourney.

 

FAQs

 

1. What if one of my pilots needs to leave before the tourney is over?

The program knows your team name and the 4 pilots on that team. If one of your pilots leaves, the program will continue to see the other 3 and it will continue to add your scores. However, you will be at a disadvantage because your team score is the sum of the individual players. If the player comes back, the program will continue to see the name, that player will just have a missing match. We realize this may seem unfair, but it is impossible to allow people to randomly drop/add and attempt to be fair with the rankings.

 

2. Can we pick up different players during the event?

Yes, but again, only those players who have been entered into the program will be counted. Picking up different players than the ones on your team list will not count towards your score.

 

3. What if I don’t have a team of 4?

Try to use the forums to find people, if you cannot, you and your group can still play. However, you won’t be eligible for the prizes.

 

4. How will you handle teams playing a different number of total matches?

Your final score will be the average of your match scores. You must play in at least 8 matches before you will be counted in the tourney. We want to avoid people trying to exploit the system by only playing in one (or a few) really good matches and then quitting.

 

5. I have a good premade and I get stuck with a bunch of 2-shippers one match. How is that fair?

It’s not. Neither is life. By playing for several hours you will also get balanced matches. Remember that gsf is actually good at balancing matches if enough players are queuing. The problem is this usually isn’t the case. That’s why we need a lot of players.

 

6. What about people photoshopping their screenshots?

The team doing so is immediately disqualified. Your screenshots are cross-correlated with the other teams that are in your match. If there are discrepancies, I will know the team that produced them. Furthermore, the program can detect the slightest anomalies, produced by say the patch tool in Photoshop. To the eye it may look perfect. To a computer, it is not.

 

7 What if the program makes a mistake?

The program has been tested using screenshots from a wide range of color balances/resolutions/tints/contrast, etc. I will also be spot checking throughout to make sure everything is going smoothly. Also, everyone will have access to the screenshots on the Sith United website, if you wish to calculate your own score as we go.

 

8. How do you envision a rotating tourney?

The same system above can easily be implemented on any server. I am fine with processing/calculating the scores for the other servers using my programs. Prizes should be provided by the sever host.

 

9. Do you teams need to stay the same from tourney to tourney?

No. Your team names should be the same, but you may change the players if you wish. For each tourney you will need to register your team, so that’s how I will update your team names. In theory, your team name could also change; however, if we implement this on a rotational basis, we may decide to track team performance across multiple events, and award end of year prizes or something. Keeping one team name would prevent issues.

If this goes well, we can do bigger and better prizes at subsequent events.

 

If you have any questions, please ask.

[MatuVonnegut]

im interested to see how your program works out. I go on Christmas leave around that time, but I should be able to play.

[SammyGStatus]

Solo play optional? With the calculations present, will a team be needed? Sry, I pew pew better than I comprehend posts Edited November 18, 2014 by SammyGStatus

[MatuVonnegut]

from what I gather you can always play solo and the program will still extrapolate your score. it would just have zeroes for the other three members. still be able to see how well you did compared to teams. I doubt that would be in prize contention if that's what you were asking though.

[MatuVonnegut]

Double Edited November 18, 2014 by MatuVonnegut

[Armonddd]

Accuracy is not weighted low. If I have 50% accuracy in Domination, I get +2.5 points. That's equivalent to 17 kills more than deaths, and slightly more in TDM.

 

Likewise, it's not hard for someone to get over 200 objective points in a match. Hell, even without trying I generally get 50-100. Lowballing it at 50 objective points (for capping two points and then completely ignoring them for the rest of the game) gets me as many points as 15 kills.

 

The biggest problem about accuracy is that it naturally favors certain builds over others. An average day for Sammy is something like 80% accuracy because he's careful with his railgun shots, whereas my BLC/pods build generally is closer to 45% because my accuracy drops off super fast in sub-optimal conditions (which are common due to short range) and I need to shoot things a lot more often. The solution is to normalize to build... but unless you can get perf tabs or req announcements proving that everyone only played the match in one non-cartel ship, that's going to be very hard to do.

 

Would recommend weighing objective points a lot lower, or ignoring the first 100ish. Toss the remaining weight into kills and assists.

 

Oh yeah, you probably also want to make it MAX((Kills-Deaths), 0) * 15. It shouldn't come up, but being punished for getting farmed would just add unnecessary insult to injury.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Armonddd

[Drakkolich]

I hope you guys have a good time, something like this doesn't interest me. I don't play for stats other then win%, which the fact that you win or lose the game isn't in your formula is kind of terrifying.

 

However aren't you guys guys worried about a team putting 4 Ion railgun gunships on a node farming basically every category you put in for points? (Along with anything else that breaks your formula that I haven't thought of) How about the fact that making sure a 'farm" game where you are fighting terrible people would be better to make last as long as possible, since you have no "time" in your formula, in fact you probably want to let yourself lose to get more points in that kind of game since it doesn't hurt you.

 

To me it seems like you are trying to reward very awful behavior.

 

Even with all these problems I'm seeing I hope you get lots of people to come, GSF events are awesome and thanks for trying to get something going.

[Verain]

I think a dps contest will have a lot of appeal to the sorts of players that already chase this sort of thing, but this sort of thing is definitely ripe for exploitation. It's also pretty strange when you consider that as a player in a group in this event, you would be grouped with players (your pug allies) that have differing goals than yourself, and your goals might be contrary to the ones where you play you to win as a team. Even stranger, if you find yourself allied with a competing team...

 

Also, why would you write a program for this event? That seems very strange, and I find the claim that it can detect photoshops (!) to be very ear-perking.

 

I think that you've already planned to have to change the weights and rules at a later time, but I definitely feel that without the ability to queue into a custom "wargame" like in WoW, versus fully preselected opponents (for no in game currency rewards, of course) you are stuck with a great deal of kingmaking and die rolling. Presumably, the sort of folks that want to compete will do so honestly and with good sportsmanship, because, like all GSF pilots, they are constantly looking for different angles and new things.

 

Still, "post a formula, compete to maximize" is certainly novel.

[MaximilianPower]

I hope you guys have a good time, something like this doesn't interest me. I don't play for stats other then win%, which the fact that you win or lose the game isn't in your formula is kind of terrifying.

 

However aren't you guys guys worried about a team putting 4 Ion railgun gunships on a node farming basically every category you put in for points? (Along with anything else that breaks your formula that I haven't thought of) How about the fact that making sure a 'farm" game where you are fighting terrible people would be better to make last as long as possible, since you have no "time" in your formula, in fact you probably want to let yourself lose to get more points in that kind of game since it doesn't hurt you.

 

To me it seems like you are trying to reward very awful behavior.

 

Even with all these problems I'm seeing I hope you get lots of people to come, GSF events are awesome and thanks for trying to get something going.

 

The bolded precisely reflect my first three thoughts upon opening this thread. Wouldn't be hard to game that point system, and doing so would inevitably produce awful matches.

 

That said, I like the fact that you're even attempting this, and I'm curious how it will play out. In the future I strongly suspect you'll need to tweak some things to make such a tourney appealing to the GSF masses (such as they are), but it's nice to see the effort being made.

Edited November 18, 2014 by MaximilianPower

[StrixHiraeth]

I wish you luck and fun! I am curious to see how this turns out. It's my belief that if GSF was more competetive than it already is, it would be toxified. I think many of us actually like the fact that it's not ranked or some such thing. I could be wrong. Anyway, best of luck!

[zaskar]

What is with all the chagrin? Yet again this TINY community proves that they flat out suck at constructive criticism and creative support. I can be a real dick at times, but, Jesus. Way to be welcoming towards someone that has obviously put a lot of time and effort into making something FOR YOU. Or is it a case of the "Not Created Here"s?

 

I think there are a lot of great ideas here and with some tweaking it could truly make GSF competitive and lots more fun.

[Drakkolich]

What is with all the chagrin? Yet again this TINY community proves that they flat out suck at constructive criticism and creative support. I can be a real dick at times, but, Jesus. Way to be welcoming towards someone that has obviously put a lot of time and effort into making something FOR YOU. Or is it a case of the "Not Created Here"s?

 

I think there are a lot of great ideas here and with some tweaking it could truly make GSF competitive and lots more fun.

 

Who exactly isn't being supportive, almost every post are people wishing Yallia good luck with the event. some are explaining why they aren't interested and the potential problems with the system that's planned to be implemented. (which is very good constructive criticism by the way)

 

For me competitive play is playing to win, playing for stats has never interested me in the slightest and probably never will. It does sound like a great idea if implemented properly for all the players that do like to play for stats though.

[Verain]

Zaskar, it is pretty predictable that I wouldn't be all about a dps contest- I spend a lot of time telling people that the map is not the territory, and that using the scoreboard in lieu of an actual ranking has issues, so obviously a literal scoreboard competition will not be my style. While the game is certainly not perfectly balanced, edge cases like this are definitely not something that the devs were aiming at (scoreboards don't show number of times you chased off enemies with missile locks or discouraged area attacks with mines), and it means that the game you are playing (while in the tourny) is likely different from the ones your (pug) allies and enemies are playing- you have fundamentally different goals.

 

 

But no one in here (except you!) is being negative- in fact, many of these posts are saying "I feel the following thing will be anticompetitive" which is absolutely constructive criticism, given that, unlike every other event, this one will actually generate a ranking and a winning team. Anyway, I didn't post in this thread to have it become about me, and I'm sure Drako didn't either, and your reply is just wildly out of line.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Verain

[zaskar]

All of the "toxifying", "ear perking", "terrifying" passive aggressive language is egregious. Don't like the formula? Say "hey how about starting the base of the formula at 100 for a win and 25 for a loss"; something that is constructive without being demoralizing and peckish.

 

I could launch into a diatribe on community, human history and clans/cliques but it does not belong here, like the vast majority of the text in this thread.

[Armonddd]

All of the "toxifying", "ear perking", "terrifying" passive aggressive language is egregious.

 

I disagree. I think the community is being very supportive of something they personally do not care for. Honestly, this comment makes it look like you're reading words instead of sentences.

[MaximilianPower]

All of the "toxifying", "ear perking", "terrifying" passive aggressive language is egregious. Don't like the formula? Say "hey how about starting the base of the formula at 100 for a win and 25 for a loss"; something that is constructive without being demoralizing and peckish.

 

I could launch into a diatribe on community, human history and clans/cliques but it does not belong here, like the vast majority of the text in this thread.

 

What is this I don't even...I just went through the thread again, and I don't see anything that could be interpreted as passive aggressive. If that's what you're reading, I'm pretty sure it's entirely in your head.

[zaskar]

I disagree. I think the community is being very supportive of something they personally do not care for. Honestly, this comment makes it look like you're reading words instead of sentences.

 

They personally don't care for? No one here can speak in the royal we, if you personally don't like something, good for you; don't hide in ambiguous language. Better yet, send the OP a constructive PM. I had a lot to say about this idea, to protect the integrity of the concept and the fledgling community I took it to PM.

 

The win/loss oversight aside, the formula is not so different than any other rating system found in any other game of this type. It's pretty close to noobmeter for world of tanks. Personally I think the greatest weakness in the concept is not having combat logs to parse to back up the endgame stats. Access to logs would ensure no knucklehead teams of four ion gunships. For now, human oversight will be required.

[btbarrett]

I think there are fair points being made here. Can we do what zaskar asks and make this a constructive debate? What WOULD be a good rating system? I think we would all love to have ranked GSF, in-game: how would that work? If BW isn't going to implement it (and it really doesn't look like they will), can we do something ourselves?

 

I think the proposed system is a fair starting point that is definitely sub-optimal for all the reasons previously stated. How could it be improved?

[StrixHiraeth]

Wow. Didn't mean to discourage you. I think your system is fine, and a player-run tournament with willing participants is fine. Just... for GSF to be "ranked" or "tiered" a la Warzones is something I'd rather not see.

 

Again... good luck with your venture!

Edited November 19, 2014 by Ymris

[Verain]

All of the "toxifying", "ear perking", "terrifying" passive aggressive language is egregious.

 

We aren't being passive aggressive, we are being polite. Tone doesn't transfer too well in text, but you are absolutely overlaying your own angerface on top of what is being said. Our posts are not mean, insulting, or derisive, but yours are becoming as such. You've actually ticked me off pretty hard in this thread.

 

Lets put these words in context.

 

Toxify: Ymris said: " It's my belief that if GSF was more competetive than it already is, it would be toxified. I think many of us actually like the fact that it's not ranked or some such thing."

My opinion: I've stated this before in other threads. Games with a very competitive team pvp scene bribe players to chase a progression or ranking goal primarily, over sportsmanship, mastery, and friendship. This is VERY obvious with League of Legends, and in my experience, the rated battleground scene in WoW has some real turkeys. Ymiris makes a good point, and that is this- the moment you set a prize, people will compete for it, and the second order effects of this competition should be considered carefully. A VERY good example of this is the ion gunship strat, which I would absolutely be all about if I played in this- 100%.

You said "Access to logs would ensure no knucklehead teams of four ion gunships."

But, if the rules are as posted, where are YOU reading that this should not be a thing? I'm reading it as an optimal strategy. Your response here is a great reason why, for instance, I shouldn't even consider playing- even with clearly specified rules that I would be playing inside, you would essentially think my team was cheating. That's ludicrous. The OP never bans the high damage ships (scouts, gunships), after all- that means that you play to win, right? If it is a competition I was competing in, I would play to win- and if that is a strategy that works better than yours and makes you angry, that sounds like a sound strategy.

 

"ear perking" - This is mine, and in reference to the program that automatically does an OCR pass on a set of screenshots, checking for photoshop in an automated fashion, and adding everything together into a database. You're in software, you know why this is ear perking. I'm not being passive aggressive, I'm not talking about the competition itself, I'm fishing for more info on this unnamed program. If I was doing this, I would manually add the numbers together and then have an excel macro or bash script that ran the formula, and rely on players not to cheat in such a small community.

 

"terrifying" is Drako, and I agree 100%. He says:

"I don't play for stats other then win%, which the fact that you win or lose the game isn't in your formula is kind of terrifying. "

 

One reason we held off in posting at all for awhile is that we weren't sure if the whole POINT of the competition wasn't to disregard win/loss, but at this point asking OP for clarification on this is a pretty good point. Maybe it's an oversight, after all. And here's why it's terrifying:

 

1- Kingmaking- Kingmaking is when a player who cannot win gets to choose who does. It's a very common situation in 3+ player games where each player represents their own side. In many strategy games, if two players are very strong and a third party is clearly no threat, farming him by one side can result in him throwing everything into defeating the aggressor, and if both parties know that this is likely, both will have a motivation not to simply roll into him. But in a game like this, that is designed to be two teams fighting to win the game, you actually have 1-4 players (teams) in each game- and even the pugs could be roped into helping or hurting one side, which can be done from either side of the fence.

 

2- Possible game rule issues- if you tried this in WoW, you would face account action. I doubt Bioware does that for anything short of hunting down young players IRL with a blade longer than 8 inches, but I dislike how this skirts the rules. The game as launched is intended to be a competition between the two sides, and your team members will have motivation (if they are taking the competition seriously, which, I mean, it IS meant to be taken seriously... right?) to do things that are not standard or helpful. For instance, if you queue into a game that is you plus four two ships versus 8 two ships, you have a golden opportunity. You want the game to go to time limit, which mostly means you want one green node that you farm for objectives and the other two to stay white. In TDM, you want to attack shields on the food targets, and you never want to take a shot that might miss, even if that would normally be the correct call (getting a good accuracy is not really correlated with winning a game- if you have enough yellow, you often want to open up and take unlikely shots, but here you wouldn't want to). Because the game is redefined to be a bunch of numbers and you need to maximize those numbers, that becomes the proper way to play- and Bioware could actually raise issue with that.

 

3- When you set up a competition, people play to win.

This is obvious: if a competition has rules, people seek to win. Just as above, you'll be bribing the players to do things that are highly unusual, and to disregard the end of the game. You dismiss an OBVIOUS strategy- quad ion gunship- but what else would you dismiss? Are you just dismissing it because you haven't thought of it yet? I bet what you think is fair is not what OP thinks is fair and I know it's not what I think is fair. If the game is to maximize those numbers, the winner will be the team that does that best. Now, given that, what are the second order effects of that?

 

4- Matches gotten into determine a lot.

The ideal match appears to be your team versus a bunch of scrubs. On a normal GSF organized night, that's the worst case- we never try to rank everyone, but we do try to all play together, so playing with randoms that you can get any night is the lame situation. Which queue cycle you are in will matter a whole bunch, and if you get into a double premade versus double premade, which will probably be on your lists of most FUN games you play, you will have found yourself in a hard-to-farm-from position- that game will feature a lot of deaths compared to others, much less damage, etc.

 

5- Everyone has different perceptions.

Is this a fun night where people show up and then a program gets run on the data? If that was the case, I would expect that it wouldn't crown a winning team, but would instead go off of individual players and give out titles and categories- "deadliest bruiser" (and rankings) with a formula similar to that but maybe disregarding accuracy "precision ninja" for one that heavily ranks accuracy, "Highlander" for a formula that penalizes deaths heavily, etc. Instead, it's not that- it's a straight competition over the whole four group, with one winning team, and a purse!

Is this an attempt to quantify what makes a good player? If so, it is a political statement, because it ignores the game modes themselves entirely.

Is this a serious attempt to play competitively within a specified rule set? That's my impression of it, but not really yours I don't think- after all, if I roll up in there with four gunships and you think something is wrong with that, then that's because you think it's something other than what it is.

The intentions of it aren't clear, and OP could make them clearer.

 

 

 

Don't like the formula?

 

No, I don't like the idea of a formula. If this game did have ranked, it would be on wins and losses in ranked play, not based on the ability to be the prettiest dps queen. But given that several DO like that play style, I'm not in here trying to make this into something it isn't. The fact that wins and losses aren't considered- and IMO they should be the only thing, period- is likely not some oversight, right? I mean, that seems unlikely. If pointing out broad generalities strikes you as passive aggressive, consider that perhaps we worked out team strategies that would probably hurt the fun of the competition, and we want OP to think a bit more about it, or at least be aware of it. If the host of the competition is like "farming activities are crap", then he needs to give a bit more guidance with that, but that's fine.

 

 

I could launch into a diatribe on community, human history and clans/cliques but it does not belong here, like the vast majority of the text in this thread.

 

 

Why not? You've been busy turning this into a crap festival, which I even asked you not to do. Your posts walk in, insult me and others, and then are like "hey guys be constructive". Making open ended statements that prompt OP for design statements are not passive aggressive, they are asking what the heck this is about. Handing rules and walking away is the biggest "open field, anything goes" statement than can be made by any designer. Which is ALSO fine, if that's the intention.

Edited November 20, 2014 by Verain

[Karlbadmanners]

Daaaaaang Verain, well said, I'm pretty sure I heard you drop that mic all the way from here! Edited November 20, 2014 by Karlbadmanners

[zaskar]

...No, I don't like the idea of a formula. If this game did have ranked, it would be on wins and losses in ranked play, not based on the ability to be the prettiest dps queen. But given that several DO like that play style, I'm not in here trying to make this into something it isn't. The fact that wins and losses aren't considered- and IMO they should be the only thing, period- is likely not some oversight, right? I mean, that seems unlikely. ...

 

I wholeheartedly agree with this. All rankings in other games take into account wins/losses. For the OPs ranked to work right, it must be accounted for or you'll get sandbagging players/teams ranking well without merit.

 

The rest of what you wrote belongs elsewhere.

[SammyGStatus]

Aww I wanted to be the prettiest dps princess. I'm game, but I will be rocking a t1 GS as I suspect most will (scouts are the other)

[SWCNT]

Wow. Well let me start off by saying thanks to those who have provided useful feedback regarding the event. The intention of this tournament—now ironic—was to bring the GSF community together for night of fun matches with the added benefit of making some credits for a team. I purposefully did not make the rewards too enticing to try and discourage large amounts of unsportsmanlike conduct. For most of us, 1.5 million is not an absurd amount of credits, but enough to be of use to a new toon. All we are trying to do is build up the POT5 GSF community; we thought about simply having a tournament like other servers but thought maybe we could think of a way to entice some higher participation. I regret having gone with the stats path, maybe a sweepstakes with a random drawing would have been better? It is all too obvious now that fun and rankings are not possible. At no point was the purpose to generate the reaction I’m seeing by many. Maybe that’s my fault, perhaps I should have sold it better. I am by nature not a highly competitive person, nor a serious gamer, for me flying with friends in GSF is a lot of fun, and if I do well so be it. I know some people are very competitive, and so I thought maybe I could take my knowledge of image analysis and Matlab/coding and throw something together. There are too many questions/comments/complaints to address on an individual basis. I believe I've now answered the question regarding the purpose of the event and below I address the exploitation issues.

 

Are you afraid of people exploiting the system? Be it ion GS or people doing things counterproductive to winning the match, etc

 

Sure. Every scoring system is flawed, and those flaws can sometimes be exploited to the detriment of all. Such blanket statements apply to nearly all aspects of our lives, that being said, we must start somewhere. Every formula will have its pluses and minus, and a lot depends on perspective. I cannot think of any scoring system that could be implemented, given the match data at hand, that wouldn’t be exploitable. If anyone has ideas on how to improve the formula, that would be most useful. There’s no test server I can use and have 100s of players to test the formula and fine tweak it. Therefore, I expected things to be rather imperfect going into it. As a passionate GSFer, I would fine unsportsmanlike conduct completely unacceptable. I would hope others would share my feelings. Maybe I’m naive in thinking in such terms, but so be it. There is also a cost to doing such things. You’d piss off a lot of really good pilots, blacklist your toon from our GSF community and get focused in every match.

We all play in stock nights, yet that is ripe for exploitation. Are there concerns with a group of mastered premades ripping up stock ships? Or what about that guy who upgrades those burst lasers to second or third tier? How is that fair? You simply can’t control it. Should we all just dismiss stock ship nights because there are fundamental flaws that can’t be easily fixed? No, there’s a certain degree of honor and sportsmanship that is expected of the participants. You go into such events knowing you may not always be fighting on an even playing ground. Now, not having prizes certainly lessens the impact of such unfair situations, and perhaps the stat based thing is just asking for a lot of drama. I’m not perfect; I was just trying to come up with fun GSF events.

Given that the whole point of this event was to build community, and instead it’s turned into a Jurassic Park with the power out situation, I see little reason to do it. I’ve only seen one or two posts that expressed interest in actually playing (besides my guild). Whether that’s because there are only two people or others have been discouraged, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll (POT5) consider doing a sweepstakes where a “winner” is picked at random. Something like a Cartel Ship of your choice if you win the drawing. Hopefully that doesn’t lead to a debate on the nature of random numbers…

 

I don’t have much to say in regards to the infighting displayed here. It’s seems that there are various personal issues contributing to the debate which is quickly becoming less and less relevant to the OP. It would be good manners if those players took such issues to a new forum or some private means of communication. Maybe even take a step back and cool off. It's just a game after all.

 

Sorry for the drama guys. If you ever want to GSF on POT5 please do, we are always happy to see new pilots. Good luck to others with their tournaments too! I'll participate in the ones that I'm able to, and bring as many as I can with me.

[Verain]

Chill, a few players arguing doesn't mean you have a fundamental drama.

 

What we were missing is the context and tone of the competition. Is this the super bowl? Is this flag football?

 

Are, say, four ion gunships sitting on a node being a poor sport, or are they competing optimally? That's what we were missing. I know Drako and I sort of assumed you wanted normal GSF team play with emphasis on the numbers instead of winning the game, but that was by no means clear or apparent.

 

And we absolutely DO "exploit" stock night. Within the rules we try the hardest to win, right? Stock night allows stock bombers, for instance, and I run one of those sometimes. No, none of the participants are cheating or using non-stock ships, but some players would prefer it just be the base three ships (or honestly even the base two).

 

So if you say, "here's a formula, prize for maximizing", it's good to know to what extents you expect players to go to do that. Obviously no one would be doing things that would be reportable normally (chain self destructs, etc), but there are other cases where normal pilots reading your post would come to very different conclusions about what is going on, and what is appropriate.

 

 

I am by nature not a highly competitive person, nor a serious gamer, for me flying with friends in GSF is a lot of fun, and if I do well so be it. I know some people are very competitive, and so I thought maybe I could take my knowledge of image analysis and Matlab/coding and throw something together.

 

So this tells everyone a lot!

 

 

 

If anyone has ideas on how to improve the formula, that would be most useful.

 

1- I suggest having a playstyle in mind for the players the first time through. For instance, if you had no points for objectives and a statement that bombers are probably going to get screwed and that is intended for this time, that would let you narrow down your focus. Or straight up even ban components or ships. "How much damage can your battle scout do? Battle scouts only!" Not these suggestions specifically, but if you shrunk the formula it would be a bit clearer.

2- You might consider offering a scaling factor to the games that have more of the queue participants. This would offset the "farm game" effect. Since this is the first one, this could start gentle and you could see if it is even an issue.

3- I personally think 8 games in 3 hours is not going to be very trivial. I also think the "peak" effect is only being eliminated in one direction (the low game that doesn't get submitted). I would suggest something like "Submit your best six games. The one with the most points will be discarded completely, and then the five remaining will be averaged together.

4- A statement of intent really will do wonders for saying what it is that you are expecting. My points aren't "your thing is flawed because some people are jerks"- it's "if A thinks X is fine and B thinks X is crap, then A thinks B is a dummy and B thinks A is exploiting". You don't need strict rules to handle that, just the idea that farming super hard isn't the name of the game is a lot.