I suppose I am not as vetran as others on this list, and I know that the two sides of the argument have been given a number of spins, however, since Clint did ask for player's opinions, therefore I will give mine.
As stated below, objective ranking in a game that is heavily based on player interaction is all but impossible. About this ranking system, I really have two key requests:
1) It never interferes with me joining a game with whomever I want, whenever I want, irrespective of points, rankings or other "fuzzy math".
2) As such, I would suggest, like in chess, you have sanctioned (please feel free to insert whatever word you think works best in place of sanctioned) games, and unsanctioned games. Sanctioned games have rank, unsanctioned games do not. If I don't want to get involved with this, I should have the ability to avoid it, for my $7 a turn per position.
My key factors are a) that I am considered to be a good and fair team player by my teammates and b) that I have fun. If someone else wants to inject an additional layer of competition into their games, great! I am not interested in that right now. Its a game to take my mind off of reality, not make my head hurt with spinning numbers and equations that don't take into account the diplomacy in a diplomatic game. Lets face it, its not like you can use diplomacy to get someone with twice as many rooks and pawns to join your side in a chess game:)
Clint, just an idea. If you do run as sanctioned and unsanctioned, you may find the people in those competitive games are more likely to be interested in giving their input. As such, you may be able to get them to actually provide interactive rankings of their teammates. I can think of no more accurate judge of "how good" a player was than what his teammates, and I suppose his opponents, think of him. Or at the very least, plug the players view of who is best into your equation some place. I know how math people get about their equations...
-Kenneth Weed
ยทยทยท
From: "taurnil" <historian683@cs.com>
Reply-To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [mepbmlist] Re: Player Ratings/New GWC's
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 17:10:54 -0000--- In mepbmlist@y..., "corsairs game 101" <corsairs101@h...> wrote:
> ME Games wrote:
> I remember the bad old days of VCs.Me, too.
I love how the current lack of ranking
> encourages play based on "just having fun". I'm very strongly
against
> anything that messes up the fun aspects of the game. Why make it
personal?
>
> Darrell, so my opinion counts, ShimelI remember having this conversation before on another bb. Everyone
knows that the VC system built into the game is not "just" in the
sense of not truly rewarding good play, and certainly not rewarding
team play. Yet in a way I do miss the old GSI GWC system. It
introduced a kind of moral tension into the game that made things
interesting. You always knew that your teammates, and especially
neutrals, had a genuine motivation for screwing you. Part of the art
of the game was figuring out who was trustworthy and who wasn't. You
even had to figure it out about yourself.Of course, the really good players figured out that team play made
the game so much more fun and brought so many more victories that the
GWCs became trivial by comparison. Good teams sought to engineer the
final turns to give the GWCs to the best and/or most deserving
players on the team.I can't bring myself to care a bit about any "true" ranking system.
Objective ranking is impossible. The only rank I care about is the
purely subjective rankings we can earn in the opinions of the
teammates we like and respect.Mark
************************************************************
I believe in the golden rule...Give as good as you get...
I mean, do unto others as you would have done unto you...
-I dont know who has said it, but it definitely needs to be said
_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx