Combat Rankings

Denex

As it sits, there's a fundamental problem with the combat ranking system, and it's quite broken for several reasons.

The first problem comes from the fact that Individuals can willfully refuse/dodge a fight with someone else. Normally, honor takes over and you get a sense of "rightness" by facing an array of opponents. However, it's quite easy for someone to simply turn down a fight with you, or for you to avoid a fight with @Earionduil to prevent ranking point loss. This method, in effect, completely makes the ranking system 100% moot. 

The second issue ties closely with the first, and that is that Individuals aren't encouraged to fight everyone else - I could, in theory, ONLY spar @Eld and @Mako, while dodging any I feel I would lose against. I could effectively dodge @Sohl for weeks on end, while fighting a bunch of lesser ranks to gain enough points to pass him - and then just sit on my score.

I propose the following changes:

1.) A "Combat Challenge" system that gives an opponent 12 hours OOC'y on a clock that ticks down in much the same way as the Contracts system (but instead of a singular person, the clock moves only when both participants are awake and logged in)

2.) Reduce the award after defeating an opponent 3 times significantly. If I spar @Eld and kill him three times, following him defeating someone else to move to the same point spread we were before, I should receive a reduced "Victory" point allotment than facing a different opponent.

What would be your edits? Comments? Thoughts? Let's hear em!

Nemutaur

1) Yes and no. If someone challenges me and I'm away for the weekend it punishes me. The problem currently is that you'll see a higher ranking person than you, send them a tell and they flat out refuse to combat spar you.

So the system should be, if you and the a person you want to challenge, who has a higher rank than you (no high ranking people picking on someone 100 points under them), are online. You can go to the arena and COMBAT CHALLENGE <person>, this gives them an hour to COMBAT CHALLENGE ACCEPT <challenger>. When the challenge is accepted both people have to have gone to Delos arena and be inside within 5 minutes.

At least this way someone higher ranking than you is dodging, they might qq or journal the first day. But if you notice they're online a day or two later you just go ahead and COMBAT CHALLENGE them.

2) The points system could use a little tweaking, but it's not the biggest problem right now.

Eld

Something along the lines of your second suggestion seems reasonable, but I'd prefer for the reduction to wear off after some time. Given the length of the season, if you stomp me three times at the beginning of the season, and then we come back and rematch toward the end of it when I've had a couple months to practice and hopefully improve, it doesn't necessarily make sense for more victories to be discounted so heavily. 

I'm taking your first suggestion to mean that if you challenged someone and they didn't meet the challenge within the allotted time, they would lose points, to discourage people from just avoiding fights with people they don't expect to do well against? If so, I don't think I like it. As annoying as it is when people just refuse to spar people they expect to lose against, or people of certain classes, I don't like the idea of forcing people to spar constantly. If someone joins at the beginning of the season and spars some, then gets really busy with other things and doesn't have time to seek or accept many spars for a month or so, then comes back and participates actively again toward the end, I don't see a reason to penalize them for spars they didn't accept while they were busy doing other things. I suspect it would discourage people from joining the rankings in the first place as much as it would encourage those who do join to spar more.

Eld

Nemutaur said:

1) Yes and no. If someone challenges me and I'm away for the weekend it punishes me. The problem currently is that you'll see a higher ranking person than you, send them a tell and they flat out refuse to combat spar you.

So the system should be, if you and the a person you want to challenge, who has a higher rank than you (no high ranking people picking on someone 100 points under them), are online. You can go to the arena and COMBAT CHALLENGE <person>, this gives them an hour to COMBAT CHALLENGE ACCEPT <challenger>. When the challenge is accepted both people have to have gone to Delos arena and be inside within 5 minutes.

At least this way someone higher ranking than you is dodging, they might qq or journal the first day. But if you notice they're online a day or two later you just go ahead and COMBAT CHALLENGE them.

Well, he did say the timer would only count down when both are online, so if you were gone for the weekend, it wouldn't be counting down during that time (except maybe if you journaled for the weekend instead of QQing, in which case that's your own fault).

The problem of highly ranked people picking on people way below them SHOULD be largely covered by the 15-rank difference rule on challenging. Even restricting it to challenging higher ranked people, though, you still have the problem that it penalizes people for declining spars for perfectly legitimate reasons. The longer timer that only counts down when both are around would be better for that, but still sounds to me like it would discourage participation as much as anything.

Denex

Nemutaur said:

1) Yes and no. If someone challenges me and I'm away for the weekend it punishes me. 

To quote my original idea, " but instead of a singular person, the clock moves only when both participants are awake and logged in" . I meant if you're not logged in and we're pending a challenge - the timer will only tick down if You and I are logged in at the same time. It won't move if I am logged in and you're not. 

--

Eld said:

Given the length of the season, if you stomp me three times at the beginning of the season, and then we come back and rematch toward the end of it when I've had a couple months to practice and hopefully improve, it doesn't necessarily make sense for more victories to be discounted so heavily. 

I'm taking your first suggestion to mean that if you challenged someone and they didn't meet the challenge within the allotted time, they would lose points, to discourage people from just avoiding fights with people they don't expect to do well against?

You make solid points here, and I hadn't considered that.

The issue is now, though, that I can effectively spar you 12 times providing you get your rank back up, reaping the rewards and making "teaming" valuable within the rankings systems to blow past a particular combatant who you're dodging fights with.

I suppose this would be fixed with the first idea though -- we wouldn't even have to have a diminished victory reward. 

Dunn

I've always thought combat rankings are a joke. I won't buy them as an accurate measure of combat skill until they're to the death style with herbs used as well as some sort of decay in rating if you're not fighting.

Goggo

Dunn said:

I've always thought combat rankings are a joke. I won't buy them as an accurate measure of combat skill until they're to the death style with herbs used as well as some sort of decay in rating if you're not fighting.

this, makes arena useless for any affliction kind of strat.

Zeon

Yeah cause riftlocks are tots pops these days.

Mako

i agree though because the toped ranked fighter is not always the best fighter, which makes the whole thing pointless and false

Vicious

disregard if this doesn't make sense but if there was a point loss due to not accepting challenges couldn't it be stacked by 5 or 6 guys? Like let's say I was ranked #1 and was challenged by 5 or 6 at the same time and just DIDN'T accept for whatever reason (while in realm for the entire 12 hour time), wouldn't that be a way to abuse the system and just knock off fighters without fighting? I think this was a point Eld was getting at?

Edit- so maybe just a fixed point loss for not accepting would be more viable?

Mako

not if it only went down if both the challenger and the person were in the relms at the same time, a 12 hour time window to spar someone is long enough

Vicious

I meant like if there were multiple challengers. Let's say Denex, Mako, Vicious, Eld, and Dunn ALL combat challenged Earionduil at the same time and he accepted none, but ALL were in realm for the 12 hour allotted time? Those points would stack, no? Thus maybe like a fixed 50 or so point loss would be more intuit? I agree that the 12 hour time is defff more than long enough. It would also have to dissolve itself if the challenger was absent for a while? Like let's say it wears off after 24 hours with no point loss if the challenger is not in realms. something like CHALLENGES ME could show those who had challenged me already just in case I didn't see the challenge in the first place.

Sylvance

@Vicious - you been reading The Blinding Knife?

Vicious

@Sylvance just read the plot on wiki and that'd be a no, sure haven't

Jonners

:ar!

Jonners

Goggo said:

Dunn said:

I've always thought combat rankings are a joke. I won't buy them as an accurate measure of combat skill until they're to the death style with herbs used as well as some sort of decay in rating if you're not fighting.

this, makes arena useless for any affliction kind of strat.

I agree, there should be a separate ranking system for duels to the death.