About The Ranking System...

[kuzal]

The ranking system appeares to be baised on the PERCENT of wins/losses a player has. This is stupid. If this is how it works, then someone with one win and no losses could be in 1st place. Also, there are people wiht 98 wins and 2 losses, behind some guy with 48 wins!!!

Ok, now that I'm done ranting, here is my suggustion for a new rating system:

Win = 2 Points
Draw = 1 Point
Lose = 1/2 A Point
5 losses = -1 Point

The way this works:

If you win, you get more points then drawing or losing.
If you draw, you still get points (point) because it was obviously a hard fought battle.
If you lose, you get a fraction of a point just for the effort.
If you lose a lot, you lose points so that you dont work the system by going into games, then quitting.

Whadda ya think?

[Ri'Orius]

It seems to me that the problem with the ranking system isn't that it relies on percentage of wins/losses, but rather that it relies solely on wins/losses, regardless of opponents and the like. I'd rather they introduce a new system, like Yahoo! uses for its games, in which you start with, say, a score of 1200 and, depending on the SCORE of the person you beat or are beaten by, your score will change. Thus, if you just noob bash constantly, you don't get squat for points, whereas if you beat good people, you'll get a lot of points.

[Woodside]

There is a rating system called the Elo rating system that is very similar to what you are describing with the 1200 points. It is used in competitive golf, chess, and many other things. I really like that kind of system because it differentiates between player caliber, I'm not going to get as many points for slaughtering a 'n00b' as I will for killing a very good player in a hard faught battle. It also wouldn't be difficult to implement because the Elo system is fairly widely used and would probably be easy to find some open code for it.

**Edit

Starcraft also uses this system on the ladder games in battle.net. For a description of the system go to http://www.battle.net/ladder/ladderfaq.shtml

[xyxaxyz2]

48 wins/0 losses is better than 98 wins and 2 losses.

[ultraexactzz]

For all its complexity, the FIDE system (for chess) looks like it would be simple to code into the existing TAO system. It may be found here (http://www.fide.com/official/handbook.asp?level=B0210).

The only problem would be the fact that the servers are distinct and separate. If the top two players are on two different servers, we'll never really know which is truly better.

[LondonJack]

There has been talk of a gold only server, where golds from all servers can come together and compete.

[Shadoww3]

Case's ladder(www.igl.net I believe) uses something called a "glicko" rating which probably isn't too different from the "Elo rating" someone mentioned. I think that would be the best bet.

[canopus]

Hi-

a gold only server or a gold pass to all servers would make alot of sense. If i am gold, i can only play on one server and never interact with the golds elsewhere. This isn't good... Even if i got 3 gold accounts,

1) they'll start another server later
2) can't take formations and drop units from server to server
3) etc.

About ranking:

Has the idea of just Wins minus Losses been used in gaming?

100/50 = 50
75/20= 55

It doesn't penalize the losses enuf?
Perhaps Wins multiplied by Wins/Losses?

100/50 = 100*200% = 200
75/25 = 75*300%= 225

[Chaosti]

It would definitely be nice if the Elo system is implemented into this game :)