Ladder Site Online...

[TheMasterOfBattle]

Are we allowed to start ladder-related threads (besides this one) here in the MP Dev forum? If so, perhaps we don't need a ladder forum.

No, this is the only thread where ladder related stuff is allowed in the forums atm. Whether that will ever change or not, I do not know.

[Mordred]

First of all, my nickname here is misleading, in the ladder I play as 'Nomade'.

I discovered today that I hit the cap with 14 of 14 allowed games played.
I play Ladder because I like the old fashioned duels and the fact that ladder players tend to have good manners and not quit (usually).

To solve the problem, I have a suggestion: The cap itself is, frankly speaking, a little annoying, and not really good. I guess the many posts in here show that the cap creates a problem as much as it tries to solve one.
To solve the problem of 'match-spammers', one could alter the idea and lower the amount of points to gain after, lets say, 14 games played in a week. It still allows people to play and report, and it allows new players to get ranked if they get 10 reported games (I was just playing against a relatively fresh opponent who was not ranked yet). If the number of points to get shrinks with the amount of games played, its getting close to impossible to become a top ranked player (unless you have 100% wins and play hyperactive. Then you've probably deserved it).

I play against any opponent and never cared before the game how many points I might win or loose. As far as I can see from other posts here, others are probably not different. I think punishing 'match-spammers' should not be messed with punishing activity as such.

[Pelopidas]

Mordred,

this would exactly be done by the RD-system as suggested - the more games you are playing the less change in points you experience. Apart from this the RD-system, if calibrated properly entirely removes any problem (if it really exists) of rating distortion by match spam - since ladder ratings come to a distribution that gives a fairly rated player an expectation value of 0 points gain per match (the points gien reflect the probabilities for win/loss for him).

Best,
Pelopidas

P.S.: If there is a problem with implementation I can try to help there.

[eyerouge]

all

I think some parts of this discussion have been creative and good, and it's nice to see that so many got engaged and actually came with some feedbacks and suggestions in the matter. I'm also quite convinced that this would never ever have happened if I hadn't enforced the cap on the ladder and if we would have had this discussion without it being enforced, just hypothetically. This is of course no excuse for me enforcing it, so please don't read it as an apology

I will soon reply to some of your recent posts, in particular to Pelopidas RD-discussion as it sounds interesting and I still have some questions about it. But first:

the elections & change of admins

Hi ladies & gentlemen...

I'm writing this in order to confirm the following is correct and that you are still interested to run for the admin position. Tomorrow, the 8:th of november 2008, I will resign my duty services as admin for the ladder and the plan is, and has been for a while now, to hand over all ladder administration to you guys and make the ladder ran by itself, it's players. I have announced the elections and nominations way in advance and on KnightKuniberts request I have also extended them to the above date.

Here are the names of the people that are running for admins right now:

TheMasterOfBattle (Germany)
KnightKunibert (Germany)
Pelopidas (USA)
Svek (Sweden)

Nordmann was also nominated but retracted his application due to real life reasons. This leaves us down to 4 candidates, unless I have forgotten anyone, in which case you should remind me quickly & I apologize.

Since my idea was to have 3 different admins, for various reasons, and the amount of candidates exceeds 3 we will announce the elections for the 3 positions tomorrow, unless any of you retracts his nomination, in which case the remaining 3 would be automatically elected without elections.

I'd also like to make one or two clarifications:

1. You all run for admins. Whoever becomes admin can then become judge, or not, it would all depend on how you guys want it to work. It would all be up to you how you hand out the judge positions, if you will use an judges at all, and so on. Personally I'm not comfortable with the ideas of judges for reasons I mention in the FAQ. I do however get the feeling that most don't agree with me and would rather have them. I won't debate the issue here and now, and it will be up to you to do as you wish.

2. This also goes for the ladder in general: As I wrote to Pelopidas in the forum recently the admins will have the power to do whatever they want with the ladder, how it works, and it's rules. You could for example re-write all the rules or lift the recently placed cap I enforced, or whatever you can think of. As I have explained several tilmes you will be the ones running it. My personal hope is that you'll do it wisely and with care, hopefully looking after the interests of the ranked players and it's future , but I won't ever interfere in any case.

Please write me if you are on the list but aren't interested in being admin, and, also feel free to write me if you wish to become a candidate for the positions - you have this day to do so.

With regards,
eyerouge

[TheMasterOfBattle]

To correct things, I am from the U.S.A, not Germany.

[Cernunnos]

Hi guys,

I'm sorry to play the bad guy once more.
Here is my point and i think some may have an approximately similar point of view since we may have discussed the election thing sometimes between players, maybe with players and nominee too. But please take it as my self opinion.

Since there can only be 3 admins, and since once nominated, they'll be able to do what they want about the ladder, like for example nominate a new admin.

Moreover cause the ladder is somehow disturbed at the moment partly because of the cap thing.

Then, i would like to share an idea with you, who're pretending for the admin post.

Maybe one of you should retire. This way, all the 3 resting competitors will be nominated, and once admin nominate the fourth one.

My point is that elections, even democratic and fair will raise some more tensions.
What will happen to the one who's not elected if there's elections? OK, you're decent players and smart people and maybe won't take a loose as something to bad. But you may also take it seriously. The ladder can also be devised between supporters of one and supporters of one another.

Vote is personal, but i doubt there'll be no discussions on the lobby.

Well, this was my sole and self opinion about that. And maybe in some cases democracy's not the best form of government (talkin about small groups there, for more information read Platon "The Republic" or Rousseau "Of Social Contract" ).

Well, if there is elections tomorrow anyway, can we have some sort of programs?

Thx and see ya!

[Pelopidas]

well, you may just exchange nationalities: TMOB is from USA and I am from Germany (although I am mostly playing ladder in the evening).

Concerning admin decisions and so on. I do not think any of the admins are keen on exhibiting some kind of power. So no matter what we are going to do, I will not vote for anything that has not been discussed in the forum before.

One might also think about having 4 admins. That would mean that for a majority decision among admins one needs 3 admins, which is not too much in my eyes. I think each nominee can do pretty well with the other guys, so I would not expect a lot of trouble.

At eyerouge: I hope you did not mistake the discussion about the cap - I tend to tell my opinion frankly in a discussion, which does NOT mean that I mistrust or dislike my opponent in any way. I think everybody is content with the state of the ladder and there is just the problem with the cap. And yes - it surely has boosted discussions, which is not a bad thing, though one should be cautious about upsetting people too much.

Best,
Pelopidas

[Fosprey]

Just let the 4 admins in, don;t make 4 troubles for nothing, 4 is ok, and if they want to do it, the all deserve it, and i think the ladder will be better with 4 than 3, after all i'm pretty sure that 3 is a pretty arbitrary number.

[svek]

One of the reasons I applied is that I'd actually like there to be a vote to give the whole thing at least the pretense of democracy.
If there seems to be some risk for actual conflict I'll step down.
(I think 3 is better than 4, just to avoid any possible 2-2 votes)

[TheMasterOfBattle]

hmmm... I just thought of something. What about a sort of compromise. What if you could play any amount of games you wanted each week, but after a certain number of games played if reached, say for example, 20. Then if you play any more you can only gain 25-50% of the points you could have gained, and possibly if you lose you lose 25-50% more if you lose?

this might be a bit too complex and confusing for new players though.

thoughts?

[Pelopidas]

TMOB,

this is in fact exactly what the RD-value I proposed does. Apart from that it is happening smoothly. With each match you slightly reduce the amount of points by which your next match results change your rating.

@svek:
That is an honourable thought, however, I would suppose there will not be that many votes cast anyway. The question is if you really want to be an admin or if you just want votes. I would think that we even do better with 4 guys instead of 3, since always someone will not have plenty of time at a single moment.

Anyway I do not really think the new administration will do striking things and I think opening a separate thread (if possible here) which is dedicated to hints, suggestions, criticism and so on about the running administration would be a good thing.
Concerning the present growth of the ladder I think it will be appropriate to do new admin elections in a relatively short span of time anyway (half a year or at maximum one year).

Best,
Pelopidas

[Zephyrus]

First of all, I want to say THANK YOU to eyerouge for creating and maintaining this wonderful addition to the Wesnoth community. For me, as for many others here, the ladder provides a way to find opponents who know how to play (though some may argue that I don't...) and will not quit at the first sign they might lose. This solves (to me) the biggest problem of MP Wesnoth. Many thanks for your hard work.

Second, if we're really going to have elections, I want to know the candidates views on controversial issues:
- Do you support the cap? What alternatives would you support?
- Would you organize tournaments? How would this be done?
- Would you fund universal health care through a tax on units that regenerate?

[Cernunnos]

Svek wrote :

One of the reasons I applied is that I'd actually like there to be a vote to give the whole thing at least the pretense of democracy.

Well, you must be right in the end, forget about what i said.

I would like to ask a question to eyerouge about the part of coding in the admin task :

Eyerouge, will you do all the code (php/html...) or must admin have some knowledge about that too?

+ the Zephyrus' questions to nominees.
+ What about other forms of cheating ? (as in my mail to eyerouge)
[EDIT]
+ What about 2vs2?
+ What about a Wesbowl ladder?
[/EDIT]
thx bye.

[TheMasterOfBattle]

Second, if we're really going to have elections, I want to know the candidates views on controversial issues:
- Do you support the cap? What alternatives would you support?
- Would you organize tournaments? How would this be done?
- Would you fund universal health care through a tax on units that regenerate?

Well, to answer the first question, no, I do not really support the cap, you can see what I proposed as an possible alternative and Pelopidas' idea is similar.

As to tournaments, that sounds like a good idea. However, the problem would be to organize it. One way it could be possible would be for example to have an A-class, B-class, and C-class tournament. For example, anyone 1800+ could play in the A division, 1500-1799 in the B division, and 1499 and below in the C division.

Another way to do it is just simply to e-mail ranked non-passive players to see if they would like to join and we would go from there, making sub-tournaments based on time-zones and number of participants.

There would be numerous other ways we could do it as well.

To organize it, I would think perhaps starting a new small forum for the ladder on http://www.invisionfree.com to organize such things. Plus, it would be cool if the ladder had it's own forum.

As to the last one, no. Perhaps a tax on having level 3's and 4's during a ladder match. XD

[Zephyrus]

Yesterday eyerouge wrote:

3. You will be able to play tomorrow. Guaranteed.

Ummm, eyerouge...the ladder report page currently gives me this:

No more games for today...

Sorry Zephyrus, but you have played 14 of 14 games within the recent 7 days. This means that you are not allowed to play any more ladder games today. Please try again tomorrow!

Notice that current server date & time is 07/11 09:11