Dear Sirs (and maybe Madams),

Here I suggest to discuss the creation of smth special - the ultimate competition for Westeros!

That will be like a separate kind of games with separate ranking. It will have strict requirements to participate and a better system of reputation. Only 6 player live games with the same settings will be played (closed westeros and 2nd edition house card return).

New features:
1) Players will be anonymous - i.e. only house-names will be shown. Therefore we could not carry on with stereotypes and friendships as it happens everywhere in current games
2) The points for winning will be differently redistributed and a new ranking system will be created (which will include both games played and winning points)
3) Every month an absolute leader will be announced and that player will get the profile-badge to distinguish himself

Of course it will require some adjustments but as I feel that some people get bored with current game and demand better ranking systems we might do smth more serious for them. Plus we can finally sort out unreliable players.

What do you think?

We had some discussion about the ranking system a while back. We wanted to introduce something like the chess Elo-system, but could not decide on details. Do you have a specific proposal on that front?

btw: I like the idea of non-dislosed player names, but I dislike the idea of closed westeros. You can't take many risks, if you don't know whether there will be a mustering or supply next turn. The type of game should not be that rigid.

Elo-system is a very good idea. Especially for the rated games, because we are dealing with all kind of players there, but for the Championship we have best players and we want to get the fresh start and a new champion every month therefore i suggest smth else.

Because the contest is held within a month the ranking should be competitive with a requirement for the games played.

Rating=(7*N^4-7)/(7*N^4+7)+average(game points),
where N - is the number of games played this month and game points are following (10 5 2 2 2 0) for the winner, second place and other players and a looser.

(7*N^4-7)/(7*N^4+7) gives bonus for players who played more games, it approaches value of 7, and increment in is practically not-significant after a 5th a game.

Kind of like that the 1st and second places are rewarded more to motivate some cooperation and non-cooperation at the same time

I made an approach for that some months ago: https://www.thronemaster.net/?goto=community&sub=forum&fid=5&tid=4163#top
But nobody besides Duesterwald and JM was interested in discussing about it...

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"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." , Terry Pratchett

I made an approach for that some months ago: https://www.thronemaster.net/?goto=community&sub=forum&fid=5&tid=4163#top
But nobody besides Duesterwald and JM was interested in discussing about it... Indeed, ElPopelos, I saw your topic, and though it got too much into the calibrating the formula for the rating I actually agree with you that Elo system might be very good for normal games. However having a good rating system might cause the increase in abused and just messed-up games when people would be going afk just not to finish with a loose. It all would require a more systematic approach of filtering fair players and creating a special a homogenic playground. And my systematic solution is the Championship It will increase the value of having a rating and provide us with selections mechanism not to get stuck in some silly afk-games. Do you see what i mean?

Last edited by nexus on 2014-Mar-21 10:53, edited 1x in total

Further matters: there are a) games where players leave prematurely, giving certain players an advantage and b) PBEM games that last longer than a month. Concerning b), the games could just be counted towards their finishing month, that is not a big problem, but a) is rather difficult.

One solution would be to reveal a players name as soon as the game is over, so that they can be barred from the championship. But the problem of unbalance is not solved by that.

Duesterwald, thanks for pointing that out! I was also thinking about it for a while.

Precondition for the solution of a) is the selection before entering the championship. I would suggest an extensive form to fill in with personal information (Untersuchung) and a consideration period of 3-5 days, so that creating bots will be hard.

Further a reputation system would be installed: by the end of the game players get to fill in a short queestionarry (was is a good game?; who was a trouble maker(s)? (indicate reasons); was the game balanced?)

In such a setting if you leave game prematurely you will be banned from Championship. Plus we can see if a player is called a trouble maker admins can check some games of him and then also ban.

As I said it will be LIVE games so we can set a timer for the moves for 15 min.

PS This all concerns a LIVE games since I wanted to have a LIVE-Championship as a start to see how it goes. But at the same time we can have a separate PBEM championship too.

Then there is an inherent problem: LIVE games switch to PBEM or are aborted more often than they finish in LIVE mode. You will have trouble finding enough players for ONE game of six, where everyone has at least four hours of consecutive free time. I don't play LIVE partly for that reason. I think it is more probable to succeed with PBEM games.

However having a good rating system might cause the increase in abused People are already doing that in the current system (One reason why we introduced the report-function). I doubt that this will increase with a different situation.

Something that will most likely happen is that some people might refuse to some others because of fearing to lose a lot of points  with the risk of not getting much in case of a win.

However, the current Rankingsystem is ok to get a first impression about someones skill but doesnt really show differences between plaayers when being close.
I think that this might motivate more players to play on a high level (climbing the ladder and stuff).


making players anonymous could be a nice feature but isnt really needed to get high level games.

Some time ago i started a series called "Top games" ( https://www.thronemaster.net/?goto=community&sub=forum&fid=2&tid=3763#top )who were only open for players within the top 10/20/30 and all these games were quite nice.
However, one could still see huge differences in the level of skill, appearing in the games, with this one ( https://game.thronemaster.net/?review=1&game=2808 ), featuring 5 players out of the Top 10 and a standin, being a very intense game without any throwaways.
Im currently planning to start a new series, once i got some free time to set it up (hopefully within the next week).

I also agree with DW, that your Tournament wont be doable in a LIVE-modus since one needs a lot of time to play it.
However, finishing a game within 30 days should be doable when all players are motivated and willed to play fast.

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"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." , Terry Pratchett

El Popelos,
making a private tournament is a good idea but also too local. I am not inventing smth new - just trying to set up an official and more strict play-mode

I still would suggest to at least try LIVE games. But separately we can also make PBEM game in a same way? Right? Though PBEM games are usually all over 30 days (my average is 60 days, and thus the tournament can be easier made a seasonal: for example with respect to each season of the year - /Winter is coming/ for winter, Rains of Autumn for the Fall time, and smth for summer and spring 3 months will be exactly enough

Perhaps an idea here is to have league tables in which players can compete with each other based on their positioning in the public ranking tables..

So that say people in the top 30 or so are in the top tier league, and then others in corresponding leagues below.

Also someone said something about people playing 3-4 player games for easy points? As far as I can see the ranking systems takes into account many variables when calculating actual ranking, i.e. win percentages, turn speed and so on. But it seems to me that more weighting is put on average points..

And since point values for a win are different across 3-6 player games, someone who is going for the 'cheap points' in 3-4 player games can never pass a certain threshold on the ranking tables.

I think it's worth giving credit to JM and his team for already including this kind of balancing parameter within the conception of the ranking system. It's also worth pointing out that people who are using the 'easy points' argument have no idea what they're talking about.

Keep up the good work TM crew.

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All the chickens.

Ser Orestes,

So that say people in the top 30 or so are in the top tier league, and then others in corresponding leagues below.
I think that will significantly restrict players choices and cause too much of a debate over who belongs to which league. I see it rather as disadvantage