Graalians - View Single Post

Thallen · 08-30-2013

I sent a forum PM to two of the scripters a while ago, but it was ignored. I'll post it here:

I really just want to suggest that you guys reconsider the model behind the sparring leaderboards. The sparring community consists of the same 20ish people every day, and queues usually see no more than 4 at a time. Long ago, it was much more active.

The Glicko system that the leaderboards use right now is really good and does its job. However, people regularly abuse a glitch to reset their rating deviation to 350, use alternate accounts, and otherwise "camp" at leaderboard spots. The nature of the leaderboard encourages inactive sparring when you reach a high number of points.

PHP Code:


			
pointsWon = loserWins/loserLosses

Start every player at 0 points at the start of a new season. Do not penalize them for losing spars. If you beat a player with 120 wins and 30 losses, you gain 4 leaderboard points. If you beat a player with 200 wins and 400 losses, you gain half a leaderboard point.

This will achieve a lot of things that the current leaderboard doesn't. First of all, it will remove the reliance of Graal's spar rating system, which again can be glitched and manipulated. The iDevice leaderboard has been absolute trash for many months because the same players continuously abuse a glitch to reach high leaderboard spots, and then they just camp until they decay off. This model will also give sparrers that aren't considered to be "the best" a fair chance at winning a season by sparring actively and working their best to improve. It will also give the best sparrers more incentive to spar actively, rather than camp on their points.

Someone decided to remove the spar hat rewards some time ago, and people don't spar anymore. There needs to be some incentive to spar, just as PKers are influenced by tower guilds and the 1K hat reward. It would be cool if spar hats could come back, also.

Keep in mind that I'm pretty sure I'm the sparrer who has most consistently sat at the #1 spot for around a year straight, I have the best ratio over 10K wins, etc. I don't benefit from this suggestion. It will actually make reaching #1 considerably harder for me. I'm just offering the idea because I want sparring to be active and fun again.

TL;DR: We need a new system to encourage activity and penalize players less (or not at all, as I suggest) for losing. The current leaderboard that we use works perfectly IMO, but the community is full of pansies who won't let it work properly and try their hardest to cheat as some way to prove they're the best.