Poll: Do you like da_Vinci's Pseudo-Tier System?

Addendum: Given Alan's question in post 2, the question really is "Assuming that a good/fair system for awards and rankings is developed, how do you like da_Vinci's Pseudo-Tier system?" See posts 2 and 3 for details.


With the 2-tier discussion dying down, might be a good time to poll sentiment on what I think is a reasonable synthesis of several of the objectives and ideas discussed.

Of course, sometimes a little bit of everything turns out to be a whole lot of nothing, so that is why we poll!

The system is to have games within a game version be Noble/Immortal; Prince/Diety; Monarch; Emperor; over four months. Two months have two difficulties of the same map: high and low. Any player can chose either one. Two months have one intermediate difficulty save. No adventurer or challenger adjustments to tech, units, or resources.

A beginner can play a noble to emperor cycle. Advanced players can play a monarch to diety cycle. A prince to immortal cycle is available, as is a noble to diety cycle.

Rationale:

Half the games immortal or diety for the top players

Half the games noble or prince for the developing players

We all play one save on monarch and emperor half the time (the two tiers meet!)

So ... whatcha think?

dV

How would awards and rankings work?

AlanH said:

How would awards and rankings work?

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Well, one suggestion in the discussion was first to figure out the game pattern, then deal with the awards and rankings.

However, that is not a very satisfactory answer ... I think the possibilities include:

1. Higher difficulty has its own rewards: score algorithm accounts for that, and higher AI tech rate may improve speed at higher difficulty. If so, could have all games eligble for awards equally, no adjustments.

2. Could have a score adjustment like we do for adventurer now, maybe figure a speed adjustment as well if that seems necessary. All games eligible equally with those adjustments.

3. In dual months, awards go to the high dif game, equivalent honorable mentions are given on the low game, but not awards and not enshrined in pantheon. With whatever approach to global rankings makes sense.

I don't have one answer yet, and so I think the question is "Assuming that a good/fair system for awards and rankings is developed, how do you like da_Vinci's Pseudo-Tier system?"

If it is not popular, then no point is sweating over an award/rank system.

dV

I still think the system I proposed in the other thread is better than this suggestion.

Awards could be separate and at the same time we could get rid of the shields and ambulances and other odd awards. Thus the total number of awards would not go up.

I voted in favor of a new system because I think change is needed. Out of 100.000 members of Civfanatics (according to this post) roughly 100 play GOTM. That's 0.1%. Makes you think...

Frederiksberg said:

Awards could be separate and at the same time we could get rid of the shields and ambulances and other odd awards. Thus the total number of awards would not go up.

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No!
It's those silly also ran awards that motivate some players who don't expect to ever win a medal.

I voted in favor of a new system because I think change is needed. Out of 100.000 members of Civfanatics (according to this post) roughly 100 play GOTM. That's 0.1%. Makes you think...

Click to expand...

Rather than looking at how many registered, we should consider how many active users (visit at least twice a month?) play the gotm.

Frederiksberg, can you edit in a summary or link?

da_Vinci said:

Well, one suggestion in the discussion was first to figure out the game pattern, then deal with the awards and rankings.

However, that is not a very satisfactory answer ... I think the possibilities include:

1. Higher difficulty has its own rewards: score algorithm accounts for that, and higher AI tech rate may improve speed at higher difficulty. If so, could have all games eligible for awards equally, no adjustments.

2. Could have a score adjustment like we do for adventurer now, maybe figure a speed adjustment as well if that seems necessary. All games eligible equally with those adjustments.

3. In dual months, awards go to the high dif game, equivalent honorable mentions are given on the low game, but not awards and not enshrined in pantheon. With whatever approach to global rankings makes sense.

I don't have one answer yet, and so I think the question is "Assuming that a good/fair system for awards and rankings is developed, how do you like da_Vinci's Pseudo-Tier system?"

If it is not popular, then no point is sweating over an award/rank system.

dV

Click to expand...

How about (as a more lower-tier friendly hybrid of #1 and #3)::

4a. Noble and Prince (lower tier) players are NOT even eligible for the fastest finish awards (unless absolutely no one wins that category on higher tier). The arguement being, if you are good enough to finish that fast, you probably are too good to have been playing in the lower tier in the first place

4b. (partially to make up for 4a, partially because the point scoring system adjusts for this already, and finally partially because most of the award-winning players disdain the idea of score in the first place, so in theory they won't care) For purposes of awarding medals (gold, silver, bronze), all scores are compared, straight up.

I don't know what you do with all the ambulance, cow, etc. But this covers the ones that most people seem to care about, so maybe best just to focus on these for now.

p.s. IMO #2 is just asking for trouble, someday, somewhere ...

Niklas said:

I still think the system I proposed in the other thread is better than this suggestion.

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Fair enough, and who is to say that you are not right?

It was actually the positive responses to your proposal (where just over half the games were immortal or higher, IIRC ... in the top tier of [was it 2 or 3 game levels?]) by Munro and Rusten (representing the "more high diff games" group) that led me to this proposal. I looked for a way to have half of games hard for the elite, half easy for the learners, but still have us all playing together half the time, as some (I think yourself included?) didn't want too much fragmentation of the community across saves.

One thing I have been pondering is "what do we have now that we lose in this system?" I suppose comparability is one, as the N/I and P/D months are a Grand Canyon between the two saves, compared to the modest differences between adventurer, contender and challenger now.

Perhaps a straighforward awards system is another, although I think something reasonable could be worked out. Are adventurer games eligible for the speed awards currently? The shields? The memory fails me ...

It does lack the whole community playing a nice leisurely game at noble or prince ... if that is important, than a more complex difficulty pattern over a longer period of months might be able to work that in, assuming we still want to provide more high and low dif opportunities. Your system would be an example, I think.

I like to think this proposal does several things right, so a clear sense of what it lacks is needed to guide the next iteration of proposals.

So what is missing from this proposal, that we need to incorporate in a future proposal? Post that here.

(or What's not to like?, asked non rhetorically ... )

dV

dr_s posted a tier idea, with an approach to handling ranks and awards that might fit my Pseudo-Tier system:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7918769&postcount=71

dV

Hi to all.
Maybe its a bit offtopic, but I want to post my 2 cents. I'm rather prince level player and sloooowly moving to monarch. For me this Pseudo-Tier system is really welcome, 'coz I'm able to play/post each month. Current system does'nt give me this. Most of games above monarch (sometime including monarch) I play until AD, but after that I'm a bit lost - so I don't post my unfinished gotms. The new one (if is applied) gives me opportunity to play and post result each month.

@Deckhand "Rather than looking ... how many active users"...
I rather lurk frequently this site (3 years), but as you see this is my 1'st post , so I'm not active user if we look how many post I did. But I'm active visitor (not always logged).

Bye

Deckhand said:

No!
It's those silly also ran awards that motivate some players who don't expect to ever win a medal.

Click to expand...

Since none of the best players are going to take the "low tier" save there should be opportunities for most players to win a low tier award . That's why I think the shields can be removed when awards are separate for low and high tier save..

Deckhand said:

Rather than looking at how many registered, we should consider how many active users (visit at least twice a month?) play the gotm.

Frederiksberg, can you edit in a summary or link?

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I'm afraid I don't know where to find these statistics .

We've had 550 unique players for Civ4 XOTMs in the past 12 months. I estimate, based on players with significant post counts, that there are up to 5,000 active forum users. If we plan to make substantial changes to the competition we ought to target to double our participation.

Small changes that tinker with the way we classify and reward players will not do that. Think big, guys!

We've had 550 unique players for Civ4 XOTMs in the past 12 months. I estimate, based on players with significant post counts, that there are up to 5,000 active forum users. If we plan to make substantial changes to the competition we ought to target to double our participation.

Click to expand...

Let's ask them. I will start a thread.

Where? .....

One level up, in the GOTM forum. Would it be better in the general section?

Yes, sorry, I found them. People who are in here already are important, but we can only retain them, and maybe get them to play a few more games. But since we want to attract a lot of new players, I would have thought the most productive place to ask would be outside the GOTM forums. That's why I asked where you planned to ask. Maybe the Strategy people and/or the SG players and/or the Civ4 General Discussions forum?

Would you move it to either of those areas or should I just add additional threads?

Additional threads, probably. As I say, it's also useful to know what we need to do to get the existing community to stay, and to play more, so the existing threads are useful. We probably only need a single one for the external forums.

AlanH said:

and to play more

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just give us more free time As for me, 2 good games per month is a limit and it means I was not hard busy in a real life.

I appreciate the idea of attracting new players to GOTM, but I see a problem with the two tier system. One may be very good at getting high scores & fast finishes, but still prefer playing at low/medium difficulty level. Forcing such people into playing the higher difficulty version to be eligible for awards may actually lead to them loosing interest. For example, while I am one of those who do prefer higher difficulty level games, I find deity level to be too hard for GOTM. A win on deity is not guaranteed even for a good player, much depends on luck, this makes it less suited for comparing games. Also deity games usually take much more time (unless you get killed by the AI quickly). I tried playing two of the deity GOTMs, but failed to complete either of them due to lack of time. Perhaps having 1-2 deity games in a year is OK, but having to play deity every 3rd month is too much.

For me the biggest disadvantage of the current system is the lack of comparability between games. If we'll have a chosen VC each month, then I'll propably play more often, even if I don't like the difficulty level. A QSC event for civ4 would be another great thing, it is a great learning tool and can propably attract some new players.