Assault Ladder

[Azarael]

So what?

The nominal idea of Freon is to win the game. We don't track win rate at all and that's because win rate and skill are only loosely correlated. The correlation is even WEAKER between objectives and combat skill - the latter of which is responsible for stacks.

[darkelf]

Its really hard to make this ladder about true defense skill via kill counts on a game type like assault.. There isn't any incentive for attackers other then to be sportsman like and stick through an attack with sub par players going against a very strong defense. The proper incentive would be to give players points to completing objectives.

I hear the argument that well any newb can complete an obj and they get points that you think should go to a more talented person. To be honest... I would be ok with this!!!!! and I'm pretty sure most of us here would be. The whole idea is to encourage people to complete objs.. I hate seeing dimbos going defensive and not one willing to do obj. It wouldn't hurt to give this a try. If anything its going to promote the concept of speed and fast game play. Which is what assault is designed to be.

Lets start a poll.. Seriously you guys have this concept that people would hate to see people get rewarded for doing an objective.. You might be shocked that people would pefer this.

[Azarael]

I don't care what people prefer, I care what makes for a more accurate system fulfilling its INTENDED FINAL purpose - skill balancing. Objectives make no part of this whatsoever and ladder stacking is nothing more than a short-term problem while skill is still visible.

That's from my own argument perspective, as I don't code the skill system.

[darkelf]

I don't care what people prefer, I care what makes for a more accurate system fulfilling its INTENDED FINAL purpose - skill balancing. Objectives make no part of this whatsoever and ladder stacking is nothing more than a short-term problem while skill is still visible.

That's from my own argument perspective, as I don't code the skill system.

How dare you ruin what the concept of what ut2004 assault was meant to be.. Just remove the skill from as ladder if this is how its going to be done. I have never felt so strongly about a subject against you but.. This is unacceptable..

The whole idea here is to have fun and be competitive and fair.

This undermines everything..

[Azarael]

You offered no counter argument whatsoever there.

[darkelf]

I made my counter argument perfectly clear and you just tossed it out the window. Why argue with you anymore? You clearly don't care. I'm a bit pissed. So yah I'm not going any further with this atm.

[Azarael]

Alright, let me set it out once and for all for anyone else wanting to have a crack.

Fact is, every single stack problem we've had? A good player or multiple good players have been causing it. We've never had a single post about <someplayer> The Amazing Objective Hound ruining games consistently with his objective taking skill, and that's because you need combat skill, someone else's or your own, for the team to get near the objective on real Assault maps. There IS NO unique "objective taking" skill. There's no getting around this simple fact - combat skill is what stacks games and it is what the skill system by its very nature should track to avoid stacks.

If you want to avoid people gaming the ladder, hide it in all its forms and make it an offense for admins to divulge skill information. Ruining the metric with unrelated crap just means you're going to get more unbalanced games with the skill balancer on. With no e-peen to wave (and conversely, no big number next to your name to be judged by), everyone will stop giving a shit and you might even get more accurate skill information corresponding to how people would actually play without skill distortion and psychological factors associated with being visibly tracked.

Either address the damn argument or don't bother coming in here.

[iRobot]

No, there are people who are influential on game play while being shit at combat. Fallen_Angel is a fine example. He claims objectives often without excessive deusing, but isn't a DM master player.

I do not believe there are 'clearing' roles and 'objective claimer' roles. Everyone should be doing the same thing, moving on the objective.

[Azarael]

You think Fallen Angel is "shit at combat"? While I'm not by any means saying that even 7.xx on LDG Assault represents good combat skill with respect to the spectrum displayed over UT's lifetime, I'm pretty sure he's 7.xx, which is still above average.

w/r/t roles: strongly agree in games where peak skill and bottom skill are extremely close, but if all players have the same rate of objective clearance and a caveat of taking an objective is that you can't contribute to combat anymore (and in the case of holds, can't move), it does make sense to have players who contribute less to combat tied up in objective completion and defended by stronger players.

[iRobot]

My definition of shit at combat is the dodge jump triple rocket maneuver. You are quite capable of contributing to combat while attacking.