Skill system

[iRobot]

There is no benefit to high skill. When the balancer is functional, high skill means you'll just be matched against people of similarly high skill.

It's better to have a lower skill and be able to farm those sweet noobs

[iZumo]

Just to clarify, you can use normal EFR at will, whatever the reason is (i.e if you're in team with full noobs, it's a valid reason). The thing about Cal's EFRs before was he was also using Admin EFRs quite frequently before (month ago).

[iRobot]

(i.e if you're in team with full noobs, it's a valid reason).

Nope. Not a valid reason. Skill value should be an average of ALL games, not just those where you have a good team to carry you. EFR even existing outside of weapon beta testing undermines the whole system.

Other team has good players - you EFR to preserve your skill, even though you might get annihilated. System thinks you're skilled when in actuality you just dodge the other skilled players.

[Azarael]

Not being able to EFR under stack conditions will simply result in spectating or leaving the game. EFR is actually providing stability in such conditions (as the other players' game experience is concerned) by allowing those concerned about stacks to remain playing.

This will become less of a problem with skill balancing, but you can blame stackers for its existence at all.

[Skaldy]

Yup, I've regularly seen players (legally) spectating when they start in a weak-skilled team, and joining when they can (legally) join a strong-skilled team (one that has a lower score or fewer players).

And I also thought that the EFR mechanism was meant for weapon testing, not skill preservation.

Basically, I thought that public skill ratings were a good idea at the time because they added an extra challenge, but all this skill paranoia distracts from achieving the team goals and the gaming experience overall. Hide it all, imho.

[Azarael]

The original intent of EFR was for weapon testing, which would chiefly apply for me, but I'm not sure if I want admins to be the only ones able to use EFR, as it would inevitably result in accusations of abuse being levelled my way for using it.

[Skaldy]

If there was no EFR, then regular weapons testing would reduce your skill rating quite a bit.

But there's actually nothing wrong with that because if that's what a player often does, then the affected skill is still correct as it includes a proportion of regular weapon testing. If the skill rating is not public (i.e. a matter of pride) but only used by a balancer then it doesn't matter.

Chicken and egg?

[Azarael]

Not all players test weapons, and by this I mean using weapons for the sake of gauging their balance and assisting in that regard. Some players use one or two loadouts almost all of the time, examples being just.a.man, giZmo and FlowerPower. This is obviously advantageous.

Skill shouldn't be hidden until the balancer is implemented or until a critical mass of people start appearing with X.XX next to their names. I've noticed the numbers increasing lately in addition to fakenicks being used and it plays hob with the ability to judge team balance from skill values.

[Skaldy]

Yes, if the skills are hidden once the balancer arrives, you should get a lot more weapon variation and testing which would be preferable.

Until then, I think I'll join the 'fakenickers clan' too - which is possible as "cm whois" has been duff for a while.

[iRobot]

cm whois is an unfair command, given that some members of the admin team routinely wipe their own history of it when smurfing. But that is another issue. I am not naive enough to believe they are using a new GUID every time.