I guess a special clan ranking performance would encourage active players in the community and a motivation to fix clans, but don't we already have the clan league for that? We don't need a whole new ladder for clans.

Yes we have clan league, but only 7 clans compete against each other in each division. And new clans have to wait 4 seasons to compete in A

@Benjamin: Clan league is a seasonal promo/relegation league. A Clan Ladder would work like 1v1 ladder, only you'd queue up members and 1 by 1 compete with rotating templates and team games. 3 members must be queue'd up at all time and there'd be a limit to how many games a player could do in a span of time.

So a clan with 3 members would be able to participate, but would not be able to do enough provisional games in order to be ranked. Clans not ranked are sorted by alphabetical order.

A challenge system could allow clans to fight each other using whatever settings they'd like, but would require both clans accepting. So say a clan is very good at 5v5 RoR, but not at the ladder templates. They could challenge another clan at whatever template they'd like to, and use those as a substitute to the ladder games. Just an idea though.

Edited 7/29/2015 04:21:07

I really like that idea. It made me think of a "clan account" where members from the clan can suggest moves and vote on them, but only managers can commit. It would work kind of like The Impaller vs the world, except clan vs clan. These clan accounts would be interesting to see on a clan ladder, but would be tough to implement with security issues and stuff.

what is clear is that no overarchign agreement exists within the community, thus fizer cannot follow any specific view. he may change the system but it will probably be because he wishes to, not because the proposals are beign any helpful.

I would love to see a change, but is the 1v1 ladder a good reference? arent there clans which are more inclined towards team games?

even if the 1v1 ladder was to become the reference what should be more importante? percentage of participation? amount of participants? average rating? added rating? average rank?

That is why I said ALL ladders. I think we could come up with a ranking system for ladders that almost everyone could agree on.

But, we ALSO need some sort of challenge/ladder system like Lolo said. I would guess for that, we'd need to do it via CLOT, and if it is popular Fizzer might adopt it on here. There is nothing stopping us from doing that system on our own so that he can make it official later. We need to get our random bonus people on this one. I will make a small mail thread regarding that.

For ranking: you can score players across ladders using TrueSkill to get an idea of their overall skill level (TrueSkill lets you rate a player based on their performance in varying types of match, from 1v1 to something crazy like 1v5v9v2).

Then you can either rank clans by the average rating of their players or instead treat each clan as a "player" and score clans instead of their members (which would give you a rating with rather high sigma, especially for bigger clans, hurting them a bit).

For a clan ladder: you can set it up exactly the same way as Clan League but allow clan leaders to swap in/out players. Have the games running continuously but assign each game to a "cycle" to make sure that faster moving clans aren't at an advantage or disadvantage. Rank clans based on completed cycles only- so the same # of games is factored into each ranking. Each cycle would have one completed game in each category/template. You can simply rate them based on the average of (mu - 3 * sigma) ratings across teams.

Edited 7/29/2015 17:24:23

What about labeling clans (diplo clans get diplo label, 1v1 or elite clans get a certain label, maybe the country based clans getting a label, activity or point label etc) and then being able to filter the clan page on these labels. Lets say you can filter on ladder stats where one of the previously mentioned formulas can be used to get the most skilled clans (where the diplo clans might be getting lower on the page), or a filter on just diplo label whatever (where the elite clans get lower on the page or just showing the diplo/roleplaying clans). This way you can make it easier for new players to find a clan that fits their playing style, by using multiple labels you get multiple 'rankings' as clans have different interests.

I don't really think that's feasible. Who sets the label? The creator of the clan? They can just advertise their clan incorrectly. I also really don't think ladder stats are all that feasible either. Here in Apex we've accepted 2 dual-clan members who have to put their alt in our main clan to represent their membership. Their alt has 0 ladder stats and would obviously drag us down. If you base it off of current ladder stats, then clans who have multiple people on vacation or just straight sick of playing 1v1 ME/RT templates get screwed. For example, really all I play lately are competitive 3v3s and other little challenges within my clan. None of these are going to show up on any sort of system.

So really the only fair way to do this is to create a system to participate in, instead of trying to track statistics in any arbitrary manner. If you create a system that works like the other ladders of this game, but accepts the possibility of challenges, then you cater to really everyone's needs. I can play competitive 3v3s vs other clans by challenging people, my clanmates can play 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 clan ladder templates. Diplo clans can challenge other diplo clans using whatever template they'd like, and everyone can get some sort of ranking that is easily trackable and part of the game itself.

The creator of the clan? They can just advertise their clan incorrectly.

1. It's not in their interests to do so. If you have a store that sells clothing for morbidly obese people, you won't get much out of advertising it to skinny people.

2. Clans become what their membership wants them to be. If TRF started advertising itself as a Strategic Clan today, we'd likely be getting a higher proportion of strategic players (relative to diplo players) than we do today and be off the radar for diplo players looking for a Diplo Clan. In the long term, we'd become a more strategic clan than we are right now.

This label system would actually be pretty nice- other games with this functionality allow players to add "tags" to their clans/alliances/groups/whatever. The tags themselves are player-created so they end up being pretty accurate and reflect the sort of filters that the community wants to see.

I think the main flaw with this system is that it requires Fizzer to do something the community wants, which I don't think is very likely to happen.

So really the only fair way to do this is to create a system to participate in, instead of trying to track statistics in any arbitrary manner.

I agree. Something like an automated version of Clan Challenge League would probably be best. You can also weight the templates based on their popularity- e.g., if clans tend to challenge each other more often on EU 3v3 vs Poon Squad Imperium Romanum 8v8, EU 3v3 should be weighted higher. You can adopt the underlying logic of something like Swiss Tournaments to devise a ranking system for each challenge template.

Diplo clans can challenge other diplo clans using whatever template they'd like, and everyone can get some sort of ranking that is easily trackable and part of the game itself.

The issue with that is that there's no concrete way to be "better" at a diplo. I don't think diplo clans need to be in a ranking system like this.

Edited 7/29/2015 20:30:53

1. It's not in their interests to do so.

(looks around at all the trolls) Sure it is.

I think the main flaw with this system is that it requires Fizzer to do something the community wants, which I don't think is very likely to happen.

No, the main flaw with this system is that it's not something that's likely to be on Fizzer's roadmap for a year or 2. Fizzer is working on making Warlight more user-friendly to new players and creating ways for Warlight to be more stream-friendly, while keeping it updated to modern day expectations. (UI, Name, Web design)

I hate it when people are like: LOL DEV DOESN'T CARE ABOUT US.

He hasn't been 100% obviously transparent but you can find Mercer/Fizzer posts describing what their roadmap looks like on this forum. Just because he's not focused on things you want atm doesn't mean he doesn't value your opinion. He also pointed out that he's open to adapting things we make into the game. So yes, if someone created a successful ranking system that allowed the entire community to participate, pretty sure he'd adopt it.

The issue with that is that there's no concrete way to be "better" at a diplo. I don't think diplo clans need to be in a ranking system like this.

Really? As someone who's played competitive diplo on this site and other sites, there sure is a concrete way to be "better" at diplo. There's no concrete way to be a better ROLEPLAYER while playing the game. However, the objective of the game is not to roleplay, it's more of an interesting sidequest you can pursue instead of winning the game. There have been actual competitive diplo games on this site, and it's a lot about political management. Knowing when to attack, when to backstab, when to broker deals between people. If there was no concrete way to be better at diplos, then there wouldn't be players who tend to win more diplo games than lose assuming semi-equal starting points.

Edited 7/29/2015 21:00:14

Labels would be bad. You'd just end up with dozens of label types anyway because clans would be too hard to categorize. Plus you can already label yourself on your clan page however you want.

Labels

Strategic
RP
Diplomacy
Competitive
Mixed

Simple.

Sexual Simpatico - Phil Collins

I don't even know what those mean though Genghis.

What is strategic, and how is that not competitive? What is Mixed? A catch all?

Simple?

Strategic
Diplomatic

That's all we really need.

RP is roleplay.
Diplomacy is for people who like diplomacy games.
Strategic is for clans who enjoy playing the standard game.
Competitive is for clans that take part in competitive play, be it strategic or diplomacy.

You would label your clan mixed, and then could have sub-labels for which of the 4 you are.

You could simplify it to

Casual
Competitive
Mixed

Strategic is not necessarily competitive. My clan enjoys playing the game in standard format, but we aren't competitive.

Edit : I'm surprised nobody is calling me out on Phil Collins.

Sexual Simpatico

Edited 7/30/2015 01:52:58