Sareln

Join Date 05/2007

+19

[Suggestion] What Multiplay Statistics to Include

Sound off / Discuss what you want to know about your multiplay partners

Since we're barreling ever faster towards enabling multiplayer, what do you want to know about your opponents before you commit to a game? In RTS & FPS games, it seems that folk most want to see ping and some sort of ranking number (often ELO). For a TBS like Elemental, what numbers do you want to see?

Just brainstorming, here are some things that I thought of:

Generic:

Percentage of games played to completion (% finish rate)
Some "skill" number (we should argue how to measure this!)

Simultaneous Play

Ping/Latency
Average Weighted Turn Time Number (average time spent on a turn, with a normalization curve to account for early game turns, and yes, this should be pretty controversial so argue about it!)

Asynchronous Play (Such as PBEM or Pitboss-style)

Average time to turn a turn around.
Current number of active Asynchronous Games (how many PBEMs are you playing right now)

Thoughts, comments?

elemental

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Technical

Percentage of games completed
Average turntime for every single turn (and you can bring up a list of every number you want)

Game

Preferred faction & Sovereign traits, mapsize and gamestyle (1v1, 2v2, FFA)
Win/lose ratio
Ping/Latency

Turntime completion is redundant since I'd play timed turns exclusively with a timed pause function for emergencies.

Successfully updated karma reason!

This probably would have been better in the Suggestions forum, but nonetheless, I like the idea, so things I'd like to see:

A straight W/L ratio, perhaps mousing over this would display W/L for Solo/FFA play, and W/L while as part of an alliance or pre-match beginning team.

Then out of their Wins, would like to see a break down by victory type. Wins by conquest, Wins by Diplomacy, etc.

I'd also insist that each player have an option to hide some or all of their stats if they wish.

Then perhaps on the less practical but more 'fun' orientated stats to track, maybe things like:

Units designed
Units produced
Units lost
Units killed
Highest damage inflicted by a single unit
Most Units killed in a single turn

# of times researched technology x
# of times maxed technology research in a single game

etc etc etc. Could go on and on and on with things like that.

Successfully updated karma reason!

This probably would have been better in the Suggestions forum, but nonetheless, I like the idea, so things I'd like to see:

Yeah, I wasn't paying attention to which forum I was in at the time of hitting the make new post button (I often have different parts of the forum open in multiple tabs). If a mod moves it, that would be awesome.

When I did the original post I was thinking more in terms of statistics that at a quick glance can tell me if there's a chance of a viable game from a relatively anonymous person. Stats like units designed, units produced, and stats in a similar vein are more for bragging rights and sharing with friends than determining playability. Since I, personally, like to finish my games, seeing how often a person plays a game to completion would be important to me.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Sareln,

reply 3

Since I, personally, like to finish my games, seeing how often a person plays a game to completion would be important to me.

This would be a very useful metric for MP, to know if a potential opponent can be relied upon to not quit a MP game.

Successfully updated karma reason!

How would it measure games that were technically still in progressed? Or were unfinished because OTHER people quit? Having a metric of how many games played to completion is rather pointless if it isn't able to handle all the situations that arise at no fault of the player in question.

Perhaps a more useful metric might be: Average time played per game. Of course, this could get rather skewed as well, if say, one person plays only Arena or tiny maps on fast speeds, vs someone who predominantly plays Huge maps for several hours but never actually gets to finish any of 'em.

So it's a tough one. I'm not opposed to having some sort of measure like this, I just hope it's capable of dealing with the differing scenarios that can lead to a game not being finished.

And yeah, the latter set of stats I suggested above were just 'fun' stats. Perhaps viewable on a full profile view rather than a quick mouseover glance or player select from lobby.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I'd really like to see two things:

Elo rating

Feedback rating - What I mean by that is at the end of every game a player can rate the other player for enjoyability.

Elo rating would be best for competitive play in EWOM while the Feedback statistic might help you at the lobby screen if you are playing in a pub game. Feedback might also encompass the person's disconnects in a way that a simple disconnect number cannot. For example, it's much more deleterious for enjoyment to disconnect during an early game where one thing goes wrong rather than a late game where you are behind and have no way of catching up.

Win/lose doesn't mean much because people will cherry pick games to improve their ratio.

Successfully updated karma reason!

@ Naithin You raise some good points. Possible answers:

1- If the someone stops playing while the game continued, they 'quit'.

2- If they play to the game's successful end, they 'completed'.

3- If they play to a game's unsuccessful end, they 'persisted'.

4- If the game isn't yet over and they are still playing they '[I dunno what term to use -- 'still in progress'?]

2 and 3 could be combined, and 4 ignored, for simplicity's sake.

Quoting Naithin,

reply 5

How would it measure games that were technically still in progressed?

Or were unfinished because OTHER people quit?

3 or 4 as appropriate.

Successfully updated karma reason!