Ray’s idea here is closer to what i’d rather see as a ladder system if a ladder had to be used. I’m not really able to get out on sundays anywhere near as much as i would need to in order be ranked by this, due to band practice and sound work at dante’s, unless the system is able to be put into place in other locations/other nights.
The system i was thinking about was based on something i talked with Cole about at the pre-release event we held. The idea is to start locally with a system that was easy enough to implement, fair for as many people as we could make it, and that had tangible results. If testing on that system worked well enough, it could then be allowed to expand to other nearby regions. Data could be organized from this system to find out who the best Ryu player in a given area is, who the best player in a certain region is, who has the best record with random selects, etc.
if the system continues to prove itself, it could become a standard nation/worldwide. if it gets adopted, that is.
Benefit of a points system is that it rates the player based on multiple criteria and doesn’t have to limit people to just SSF4. for example, people who want to still play vanilla can do so and get ranked in it. Same with HDR, World Warrior, 3rd strike, MvC2, Jackie Chan FoF or any other game that community decides to sanction. Once the structure is built, it’s easy to expand on.
You really can’t do much with a ladder system for expansion outside of the immediate local area. Good for locals (portland metro), not so good for regional (oregon, Pac NW, etc).
Ray suggested using both systems. I’m wondering about integrating both systems. it adds complexity, but it adopting both will allow rivalries and challenges to count towards points.
I think something like the Game Spot Versus League 3rd strike ranking system could work well for local areas. You get as many people from your rank together as possible and play arcade style: 1 game, winner stays, losers goes to back of line. Each win gives you +1, each loss -1. When you break some threshold (-5/+5 for example) you go up or down a rank. Players enter at the lowest rank with a specific character. To rank up you need to get a decent win streak on all the other players in your rank.
Honestly, AMurderOfCrows, I don’t understand your system at all without some specifics. ;_; I’m sorry.
This ladder is not to be held just on Sundays, just at the Sole Purpose house, btw. If you can make it to at least one other thing a week, that should be enough, and you can try to get challengers to come out to your place as often as you can.
Think baseball, or possibly golf/nascar. there are individual events worth x amount of points. the champion is the one at the end with the most points in the season. this method allows one system to easily be implemented for multiple games and have them ALL count towards an overall point gain.
I’m off work at 6p. If you want me to explain it to you over the phone give me a call then. I’d like to talk to you guys about all this anyway.
In all seriousness, I think different games should have their own ladder. Points for participation sounds ridiculous, as I just want to rank everyone based on skill, not how much they play. This isn’t LIVE or some shit, lol. My ladder keeps players ranked by skill, and challenged players must be active. It’s simple and elegant (well, with just a few more tweaks it will be).
the idea i have gives each game it’s own ranking based on the same system. I put up a thread that you can take a look at. The idea isn’t to just compile all the points together for different games, each game is separate. Some people may never play certain games, and it wouldn’t be right to count games one person plays but another doesn’t.
That being said, you can’t tell the true skill of a player if they never play. Just because i beat someone once or twice and never play them again doesn’t mean i’m a better player than they are. This is why participation is important. The more participation, the more chances to expand your skill and see how you really stack up. Reward for participation encourages more people to be involved and widens the pool, expanding the scene. Skill comes in to play because everyone must challenge everyone else, and you can’t just keep repeatedly challenging one person over and over to “rank up”…there is a limit to how many times in one season you play against the same player within a season to earn “points”. Once everyone has played everyone else, the rank of each player naturally forms…those with the most points based on equal number of matches are the best players. The calculation and manipulation of the data will allow the same system to be used among different games, creating different ranking for each player, but if one wanted they could look at a player’s profile and see all the different games they play and rankings they hold.
My biggest issues with a ladder rank system is that rank is determined by how many places there happen to be in that tier and that you have to “challenge” to rank up rather than just having everyone play everyone…
lets say that 12 people are all of a 3rd rank, but because there are only 10 places, 2 people are constantly battling it out for placement in the upper rank. yeah, it creates movement, but it doesn’t really reflect the skill level of those last 2 “odd men out”
Also, people keep talking about if they can refuse a challenge or not, or if vacation days can be used. In a system that doesn’t force individual challenges, this doesn’t become an issue. If everyone has to play everyone and do it equally (even if the opponent is a better/higher rank than you), ranking is natural. Rank ladder can still be used, and challenges can still be issued, but those challenges do not make or break the system anymore. If someone chooses not to participate, they lose out on the points.
See, i’m not just talking about a single game, single scene, ladder. I’m talking about the start of a system that could be adapted to any competitive game, shows a more accurate picture of player skill, shows proper history of each player as they grow. We could build the backend for something like this and really take this whole thing to the next level.
Cause in the end, who the hell gives a crap about the best in our town/county/state? only us, right? I mean don’t get me wrong, there are some obviously strong players here, and i’ve been amazed by some of them, but its not like P-town/oregon is known for bringing home championships or anything, and the same people have been playing each other in the scene for ages. I keep hearing things about people wanting to expand the scene, make it more alive, get people trained and leveled up so that portland is taken seriously, as opposed to just taken. I can’t seen that happening with a short sighted ranking system, especially if there’s only about 20 people participating. Not saying that the system being talked about here hasn’t been thought out well (because this system shows it’s been thought out well, and i know a lot of effort went into it), but just that it doesn’t seem to have any long term goals outside of “who’s best right now at this one game.” And if i missed the long view, please correct me
I guess i’m pitching more of a system that can apply further and deeper than plain rank. I’m more for what Cole was talking about…local training, verifiable data to backup claims of who’s best. Transparency. Growth. Easy to participate in while not being overly demanding. Accessible.
And i’m willing to put my money where my mouth is. I’ve got a tricked out xbox 1 here, filled to the brim with fighting game goodness. I’ve got some work to do on it for the menu and some of the programs, but anyone who’s been to my place knows it. And if you don’t know it yet, well son, get on over to The Crow’s Nest on one of our nights.
I’m going to put that xbox up as a prize to the winner of the first season, assuming that both A) the idea is accepted after being discussed by all, B) people actually participate.
I’d love to discuss the idea in general and have everyone offer up constructive criticism.
Panda, i’ll hit you up later if you haven’t seen the post yet.
PS: I also think you guys should have a little bit more time between announcing the ladder system you want to impose and having the initial tournament. This is such short notice that a lot of people who would have liked to be involved may not be able to come out…particularly, me. If you guys could, make the announcement, get the feedback and do the tweaks to the system, and set an event date a bit further in the future when it’s hammered out. May 30th or June 6th is far enough away that people could make plans to be there.
Your still talking about a ranking system no matter how you slice it. And while the idea of having 1 system sounds great for multiple games, what other game is currently being played competitvely right now in Portland besides SSFIV? We could have a seperate ladder for every single game and it would accomplish the same goal as your system. Not sure what you and Cole talked about but this ladder system is EXACTLY the one he created. Panda pretty much just copied and pasted lol. Ray’s system sounds the most efficient and simplest of all though.
P.S. It’s not really short notice considering we have been talking about doing this for a long time now. Postponing the tournament would accomplish nothing. Instead of bickering online about details it’s best to just get things moving and go with the flow. We will make changes after we see things ACTUALLY being played out instead of planning theory systems online. The most important thing is to actually TRY it. Procrastination is like masturbation, in the end you are just screwing yourself. Best quote ever
It’s not about just what’s being played at portland though. there are still players interested in older games, and i’m a big fan of that right off the bat. my understanding is that they are gonna have some Fists of Fire at EVO. besides myself, i think one or 2 other people even touch that game.
And yes, we are taling about a ranking system no matter what. But i’m also talking about developing an entire support structure around it. A system outside of the ladder system that everyone seems to have different opinions on but no one exactly agrees. What i’m thinking about is longer term. Not just about what rank you are, but how you got there. And i’m not for taking one system and scrapping it half way through for another system later on. Without historical data, the ladder system that’s talked about here and about to be used won’t be able to be brought in to another system, so if the other idea takes off, everyone will have to start all over again.
Admittedly, i’m a little late to the party, but yes, this is really short notice. The ladder discussion went up on tuesday, and you’re gonna use it already on sunday. I haven’t heard much mention of it on saturday, and i’ve been talking about doing something similar for the last 2 or 3 weeks.
I’m all for trying it. i’m just hoping that we have enough time to discuss some of the things i’m thinking about to see if the historical data for this can be saved and incorporated into a system like what i’m thinking.
Ah, I believe here is where our visions diverge. I couldn’t care less for how people “got there,” and I’m only interested in seeing who is better than who. I believe that if we challenge up to four ranks above ourselves, and four ranks below us can challenge us, that gives us a broad range of skill to test ourselves against, officially and recorded. Actual tournaments and casuals are places where you can “play everyone.” I don’t want to play everyone. I want to play people close in skill to me until I get better than them and move on up. This ladder’s real purpose is more than just a rank of locals players, it’s to be an inspiration to get better and level everyone up. This visualizes that leveling up. We can keep records of the ladder, watch as it grows and changes, which will be very cool to see at a later time. But I really think this will just get people playing, and playing those close in skill to them. And that’s what I want, personally. It’s one more tool to help run the competitive drive I have and see in others.
Sorry for missing your phone call, I’ll try to get back at ya during a break at work tomorrow. @_@’’
all the talk about point systems is reminding me of the ranbats we tried to get started at versis, round robin style etc.
that idea proved to be more complicated then this ladder idea, we needed a centralized place to run round robins, the time to finish them all, and close to if not ALL players involved. Because in that set up, if the top players are not participating then there will be a lack of interest.
but thats the beauty of the ladder system, rarely do people have to go to 1 specific place to participate(challenge the people that come to your house K, or hell find the players that are willing to accept online as an option and challenge them) AND people can jump in and start challenging at any time. that is probably the only beef i have with point based system at least when you compare it to something as convenient as this ladder set up, and that is that it would be hard for someone to come in mid season and rank up because they would be behind on points.
im not against another round robin ranbat idea, but they take alot of prep work and universally agreed upon places or rules. the ladder system is much easier to implement, and should be as easy as copy paste to use in other games from what i understand.
Edit: also like Angel said, this is literally the same system that Cole is supporting at his dojo. just marginally tweaked for our smaller player pool. which does include data like character choices, etc.
lol yeah we’ve been talking about dong a ranking system without shit happenin for waaay too long. Panda and Metalhealth pretty much nailed the bulls eye.
There’s still a lot of misunderstanding about what was talked about between me and cole 3 weeks ago. In particular, there is no need to run a centralized place to run what i have in mind**, and anyone can jump in at any time**.
Since there is no need for a central place, ranking up will be easy. There are casuals going on 4 or more days a week, including major monthly events at Ground Kontrol. All you need is the 2 players and 2 witnesses. Those 4 people can max out all of their own battles to help rank that person up.
I figure the community is more interested in expanding and getting new blood in. When a new person arrives, it’ll add additional point opportunities for everyone. Also, a season isn’t going to be year long…probably closer to 2 to 4 months max. Points will be kept historically, and once a season is over ranking is established naturally (more points across even number of games = rank). Next season starts, everyone starts at their appropriate rank, but the points start over for season 2, with the exception that each place will have starter points based on their rank…a minimal amount of points that’s easily overcome over the course of the season.
THis is all an idea…it’s not hammered out yet, because i’m looking for constructive criticism and assistance in fleshing it out…pointing out problems and offering suggestions to fix them.
Angel has an understanding now i think, and after some talks i think we’re gonna try to implement both systems. it honestly won’t be hard to do…as long as sunday’s tourney has all the recorded data i’d need, i can back date the data and give credit as appropriate.
I do understand the system more and I have agreed to help out and participate in it. That being said, there are still going to be players who don’t want to do both systems. I can’t speak for everyone and force them to participate in both. Sundays tournament is just to get the ball rolling for the ladder system so we can see how we like it. Considering you are still trying to format how the point system is gonna work and waiting for feedback, the results for Sunday’s event would not work for your system unless you talked to eveyone beforehand and got them to agree to try your point system as well. The data wouldn’t be accurate unless EVERYONE agreed considering there would be some players participating in the event who wouldn’t be involved in the point system. The way you explained the system to me is everyone just plays everyone anyways. Just get a list of people who want to be invlolved and start it up. Also in the future these discussions should be happening in the other thread not this one.
Over all, agreed. What i’m hoping you guys will do is collect the data for the test run while it’s going. if you can do that, it would help tremendously.
I’d need the following:
Player 1
Player 2
Character 1
Character 2
how many rounds per match
how many matches per set
How each round was won
if you guys can keep track of that, i can use actual real data to test the scoring systems.
