If you hide it, this won't happen anymore. It will also stop people doing things like leaving a team when they think it's going to lose to preserve their score. People are gaming the hive rating, instead of the game itself.
Actually, that should not even work. But i dont remember if its already fixed or will be fixed in an upcomming patch.
Actually, that should not even work. But i dont remember if its already fixed or will be fixed in an upcomming patch.
It works, but it's not as simple as just leaving the team. I won't say how he does it, but I can think of one player in particular who has a hive score of +4k PURELY because of this method. I hope that fix is upcoming, or at least w/ the hive rework. I will not play on the server if I notice this player is on. Ultimately it will not be a fair game, not interested in playing.
I think all your post shows is that the value should just be hidden. The concept works and there is no better one existing. If people are really so crazy about it, it should be hidden.
After all that value is only supposed to be used for the server browser skill icon and the force even teams vote. Thats it.
This * 1000.
Anytime you tag a player with a value, it becomes personal. In their mind it's a reflection of their ability, even if technically it isn't. Higher means you're good, lower means you're not good. It gets attached to self-worth. It's that simple. Just look at all the posts from people saying 'I lost XX points in that game, WTF!'.
If you hide it, this won't happen anymore. It will also stop people doing things like leaving a team when they think it's going to lose to preserve their score. People are gaming the hive rating, instead of the game itself.
Hide it.
People don't leave a team to preserve their score, they leave it because they don't like losing horribly. When you know you can't win, why play? Hiding the information only makes them suffer more.
If the score is personal, it's only a motivation to try harder. As has been made perfectly clear, there's no real way to game the system, not without a LOT of help.
I regularly check other peoples hive scores on my team to get an "idea" of how well we are going to perform, specially if I command, if I cannot see someones hive score I have no idea how well our team will potentially play out and adjust accordingly.
My mind is also at ease if I know a 1500+ commander jumps into the chair than a player who has only played 20 hours.
Leaving in the middle of a game should immediately count to you as a game lost, no matter what happens next. If they pull out a comeback great for them, they deserve the win not you.
In other games if you leave in the middle of a match you get a ban that prevents you from playing for hours or even days.
I know how annoying it is when you are turteling in a team full of rookies that doesn't concede, but if you are so sure that your team already lost, then what do you care?
The only exception to that rule should be when you find yourself on team balance. If an unbalance on the number of players prevents you from playing (or if you want to balance those numbers), then you should be able to switch teams without being punished for it
Leaving in the middle of a game should immediately count to you as a game lost, no matter what happens next. If they pull out a comeback great for them, they deserve the win not you.
In other games if you leave in the middle of a match you get a ban that prevents you from playing for hours or even days.
I know how annoying it is when you are turteling in a team full of rookies that doesn't concede, but if you are so sure that your team already lost, then what do you care?
The only exception to that rule should be when you find yourself on team balance. If an unbalance on the number of players prevents you from playing (or if you want to balance those numbers), then you should be able to switch teams without being punished for it
Different style of game. Games with a "no leaving" policy generally don't support mid-round replacements, so if anyone leaves everyone gets screwed. In NS2 the only thing lost is your res, but most times when are ready to leave you've already spent most of it anyway.
And I care because I don't like feeling helpless. Stuck in a turtle or other slow defeat with nothing to do but die over and over is literally worse than sitting around doing nothing waiting for a game to start. So either concede quickly, end it quickly, or more likely then not I alt-f4 because an extended loss kills my desire to play at all for a while.
Leaving in the middle of a game should immediately count to you as a game lost, no matter what happens next. If they pull out a comeback great for them, they deserve the win not you.
In other games if you leave in the middle of a match you get a ban that prevents you from playing for hours or even days.
I know how annoying it is when you are turteling in a team full of rookies that doesn't concede, but if you are so sure that your team already lost, then what do you care?
The only exception to that rule should be when you find yourself on team balance. If an unbalance on the number of players prevents you from playing (or if you want to balance those numbers), then you should be able to switch teams without being punished for it
I'm sure the TGNS servers implemented an anti fortunetelling mechanic, Ill try and tag the guy *edit* got him lol @Wyzcrak
*EDIT EDIT* Rofl, damn google auto correct, anti fortunetelling mechanic **Turtleing** Gonna leave that in that just because haha
I regularly check other peoples hive scores on my team to get an "idea" of how well we are going to perform, specially if I command, if I cannot see someones hive score I have no idea how well our team will potentially play out and adjust accordingly.
My mind is also at ease if I know a 1500+ commander jumps into the chair than a player who has only played 20 hours.
I actually blame this approach on the tons of games we have where people prematurely concede. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People look at the hive scores and conclude that they can't win and so they fuck around waiting for the round to end instead of playing to win.
I actually blame this approach on the tons of games we have where people prematurely concede. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People look at the hive scores and conclude that they can't win and so they fuck around waiting for the round to end instead of playing to win.
^^This, players should just play, no matter what the hive score is, if its somewhat even, great then you know you may win, but if its not even, then you dont even try? i hate seeing commanders telling players something, (in this case the commander knows better) and they dont even listen, aliens - only 2 gorges - start with 4-5, things like this and what Santa says are what forces players to not even try, and who can blame them.
In other games if you leave in the middle of a match you get a ban that prevents you from playing for hours or even days.
why would you want a cooldown from leaving mid-match on public servers?? the games that actually do have this feature only have it for ranked matches, not casual.
I was NOT saying that we should ban people for leaving a match. That would be a terrible idea in NS2. I was only comparing with other games and saying that leaving a match is not cool. Leaving in the middle of a match should be accounted as a loss to you. That doesn't seem an excessive punishment to me, after all you didn't believe your team could win and you abandoned them. And that doesn't affect you in any way in the cases where you F4 during a stupid turtle
And by the way, it is not cool to leave in the middle of the match because you have signed in a gather which is finally starting. Saying "F#&$ them, it is just a pub game" it is not a nice in-game practice. But I guess that this is only my very unpopular opinion.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
edited September 2015
I wouldn't have started playing the game again if it wasn't for hive skill. I'm back playing for more reasons than that at this point, but that was my only motivation to play.
@UncleCrunch, if you are correct then why does it not match up with my experiences? Why is it that I see hive skill working as it should most games? Why is it that I see it work well fairly often?
Yes there are people who exploit it. I don't see that very often at all.
Yes people try to stack with it. Before hive, they tried to stack teams using badges. Before badges they tried to stack teams using name recognition. There has always been stacking and always will be attempts at stacking.
Are there people who try to get as many kills as possible just to get their score up? Yes, those uninformed people exist. They also acted the same way before hive skill.
Do any of that prove that hive does not work? Nope.
@UncleCrunch, if you are correct then why does it not match up with my experiences? Why is it that I see hive skill working as it should most games? Why is it that I see it work well fairly often?
Yes there are people who exploit it. I don't see that very often at all.
Yes people try to stack with it. Before hive, they tried to stack teams using badges. Before badges they tried to stack teams using name recognition. There has always been stacking and always will be attempts at stacking.
Are there people who try to get as many kills as possible just to get their score up? Yes, those uninformed people exist. They also acted the same way before hive skill.
Do any of that prove that hive does not work? Nope.
Whats also quite funny is that players call stack even if the teams are even, if your on the losing side, other team must have been stack. :P
@UncleCrunch, if you are correct then why does it not match up with my experiences? Why is it that I see hive skill working as it should most games? Why is it that I see it work well fairly often?
Yes there are people who exploit it. I don't see that very often at all.
Yes people try to stack with it. Before hive, they tried to stack teams using badges. Before badges they tried to stack teams using name recognition. There has always been stacking and always will be attempts at stacking.
Are there people who try to get as many kills as possible just to get their score up? Yes, those uninformed people exist. They also acted the same way before hive skill.
Do any of that prove that hive does not work? Nope.
People don't leave a team to preserve their score, they leave it because they don't like losing horribly. When you know you can't win, why play? Hiding the information only makes them suffer more.
Oh no I agree. You should be able to F4. But some people are also doing it in an attempt to preserve their hive score. If that score was never visible or known to them, this incentive is removed.
I regularly check other peoples hive scores on my team to get an "idea" of how well we are going to perform, specially if I command, if I cannot see someones hive score I have no idea how well our team will potentially play out and adjust accordingly.
My mind is also at ease if I know a 1500+ commander jumps into the chair than a player who has only played 20 hours.
You can hide the hive score and still see hours played. I think that's a better indication than any other. Someone with say 200 hours for eg is unlikely to have a really bad score, and even if they do, Force Even would have allocated them with that in mind.
@UncleCrunch, if you are correct then why does it not match up with my experiences? Why is it that I see hive skill working as it should most games? Why is it that I see it work well fairly often?
Yes there are people who exploit it. I don't see that very often at all.
Yes people try to stack with it. Before hive, they tried to stack teams using badges. Before badges they tried to stack teams using name recognition. There has always been stacking and always will be attempts at stacking.
Are there people who try to get as many kills as possible just to get their score up? Yes, those uninformed people exist. They also acted the same way before hive skill.
Do any of that prove that hive does not work? Nope.
Does iy proves it works : Nope
Now we fairly stuck isn't it...
Yup!
So, your "not that difficult" solution? The implementation could use improvements, but there really isn't a better system. Again, your expectations are too high. There is no system that will ensure perfect balanced games.
I love how most of the vocal adversaries of the skill system have absolutely nothing to back their claims with apart from slurs. Can't like what you don't understand, eh?
Hive skill system causes autism.
It also results in evangelists who preach faith in response to criticism and pointing to the holy text as justification. Its not like UncleCrunch doesn't have a point, I don't agree with his conclusions but I think some of the problems he identified are correct.
Improvements are needed. Reverting the "keep players in same team as far as possible" with vote force even will be a good start. It seemed like a good idea at the time because it was irritating to be switched to another team when you want to play the other team, but it doesn't work when people try to use vote force even to dissolve a stack.
It might also be worth a try grouping people into tiers based on their hive score and balance by that rather than average value and see how that works out.
Edit - I dislike the idea of an invisible system. I think its putting the cart before the horse. What use is there in removing the incentive of improving the value when people refuse to vote force even after they lose trust in the system when they can't see why it doesn't work when it doesn't work? Congrats, people stopped trying to manipulate the value. Oops, people stopped voting force even too.
I don't really see the point when manipulating the score is already hard (and pretty pointless if you have faith in the system) in the first place. I don't know what to do to change it other than winning/losing and I'm pretty sure most people don't either. I mean, the comments here are not saying "those people" but "that person".
I've written dozens of manuscript pages worth of comments and explanations in at least three previous threads, but when the same misguided opinions by the same misguided people based on ignorance of the inner workings of the system keep popping up, there are few alternatives to curling up in the corner and crying.
Anytime you tag a player with a value, it becomes personal. In their mind it's a reflection of their ability, even if technically it isn't. Higher means you're good, lower means you're not good. It gets attached to self-worth. It's that simple. Just look at all the posts from people saying 'I lost XX points in that game, WTF!'.
If you hide it, this won't happen anymore. It will also stop people doing things like leaving a team when they think it's going to lose to preserve their score. People are gaming the hive rating, instead of the game itself.
Hide it.
Yes but don't go too far. I would see something like; no data is displayed publicly, but you can see your stats in the Hive website. So the new comers can see progress or what they don't do enough. Of course excluding the K/R so they get the point about it.
I've written dozens of manuscript pages worth of comments and explanations in at least three previous threads, but when the same misguided opinions by the same misguided people based on ignorance of the inner workings of the system keep popping up, there are few alternatives to curling up in the corner and crying.
NO ONE did a simulation to make a graphic looking like a sound analyzer. You can compare that to any plug-in in Winamp or your favorite music player. NO ONE. Not even the author. If you do, you will see the BIG problem. If group A and B play with the same team forever it will be somehow OK. If you add some salt like new players and shuffle the teams, the ripple effect are like tsunamis. No one published any results on that... i know why.
It's a system that reacts because it found unexpected results. We put aside the bile bomb rush exception that is crippling the Hive score of those who have a pinkie problem. This system can only be good when the teams are always the same. Even in competitive it's not gonna happen. So it's condemned to correct value over and over and over. As soon as you encounter and event (AFK, farmers etc) it becomes more and more unstable and the ripple effect does the rest. In the end you have something that looks like a constellation.
Anyone can rip some equation from some stat/math book to make a system (Yes even from a holy DEK book). The thing is that system isn't changing value for all registered player after each game. As any system describing another system should do. It only changes values on a local range (the players who played). So you can have a guy in the Artic with 3000 and a guy in Togo with 1000 but in reality the Togo guy worth 3 times the Artic guy. It's not only bad as a skill rough indicator... you know what let's put aside skill and let's use RANKing. Even as a ranking system it's bad, by localizing (reducing the effect range) it just allowed many if not all the problems that i describe. It clearly demonstrate the lack of analysis before implementing this. See video in previous posts.
So, your "not that difficult" solution? The implementation could use improvements, but there really isn't a better system. Again, your expectations are too high. There is no system that will ensure perfect balanced games.
If what i describe is too complex, the Hive system could not be born. It includes some stat/math concepts that are far beyond what i describe (and sometimes counter intuitive stuff). What i describe is collecting data, categorizing (grouping) them (aim, demolition, all that can matter, etc.), adding and averaging. Any decent DBA (with free software) can make a data model that can almost do the job for the programmer. The programmer is still required to print data on the screen . Trust me; a high school student can do that with common sense. Unless it's not taught anymore. I would be sorry for that of course.
If you do, you will see the BIG problem. If group A and B play with the same team forever it will be somehow OK. If you add some salt like new players and shuffle the teams, the ripple effect are like tsunamis. No one published any results on that... i know why.
I was going to leave this alone but this bit of nonsense actually made me come reply because it is exactly the opposite of what is actually true. The optimization method we are using, stochastic gradient descent, is very slow at teasing apart correlated variables like players who usually play together. For that you'd want to use something like BFGS, but this would make for a much more computationally complicated system.
Let me repeat, teams that shuffle randomly is the best possible circumstance for the algorithm converging. Having the same team every time is the worst possible circumstance.
Implementation is a issue. There's a snapshot of the AVG team skill at the beginning of the game. If anything happens during the game like people come and go; there should be another snapshot. I think you get the point.
This is actually what happens, except that it integrates over the whole round rather than taking another snapshot. It exponentially weights each second so that the beginning of the game is worth more than the end.
Who know a rookie (no smurfing & exploit involved) that went from 0 (or 1000) to +1.5K ? I doubt there is one. Even if he is good he will fall in one of the case mentioned before.
Yes actually, there was one in one of the other hive threads that I'm sure you posted your complaints in. A new player joined with near godlike accuracy, he started with 0 skill and climbed up to the 2000s within a month.
"This is the best we have"... NO! This is the only thing that was implemented. It's different. Being the best is when there is a competition.
Well... Hive and FET did something that is more armful than good to NS. It clearly encouraged stacking and bad behavior and now it's rookie farming. It led to some great steam comment on the community. Words like "Toxic" are accurate when i think about it. Sad story.
Perhaps you remember the previous system that did exactly what you are advocating for? It rewarded based on points in the round, and resulted in spawn camping for hours and emptying servers.
Actually, that should not even work. But i dont remember if its already fixed or will be fixed in an upcomming patch.
It works, but it's not as simple as just leaving the team. I won't say how he does it, but I can think of one player in particular who has a hive score of +4k PURELY because of this method. I hope that fix is upcoming, or at least w/ the hive rework. I will not play on the server if I notice this player is on. Ultimately it will not be a fair game, not interested in playing.
I think I know the exploit you are talking about and it is fixed for the next patch.
Actually, that should not even work. But i dont remember if its already fixed or will be fixed in an upcomming patch.
It works, but it's not as simple as just leaving the team. I won't say how he does it, but I can think of one player in particular who has a hive score of +4k PURELY because of this method. I hope that fix is upcoming, or at least w/ the hive rework. I will not play on the server if I notice this player is on. Ultimately it will not be a fair game, not interested in playing.
Edit - I dislike the idea of an invisible system. I think its putting the cart before the horse. What use is there in removing the incentive of improving the value when people refuse to vote force even after they lose trust in the system when they can't see why it doesn't work when it doesn't work?
I think visible hive values is also a problem. People seem to think it is their bank account number and want to see it go up and get upset if it goes down People should not care what the value is. Why do they need incentive to improve their score? Winning should be incentive enough.
People do want to see the value go up over time. The OP was asking how the hive skill system worked so he could try to improve it. For me this is proof enough hive skill values should be hidden.
4 other problems with hive skill system. Most agree on them. Most solutions are pretty easy.
-People move teams after a FET vote. Force even teams should be forced. You should not be allowed to change teams after, unless other conditions are met. Such as team numbers are not even.
-Sorting of teams is a problem with FET. Shine's shuffle already sorts better than FET. If I remember correctly it takes the top player and puts them on team A, then the next best player on the other team and so on. It essentially does rankings.
-Combined marine and alien scores. They should and will be separated.
-Then there is the skill diversity issue. As it is now, if you FET it sometimes can not get very close average values. Yesterday I had a game where the best average hive could do is 1011 team vs 1437 team. The skill values of the players were just that diverse and hive did the best it could. The only way to solve this is some sort of skill gating. I think rookie gating is the only realistic way to do this.
People don't leave a team to preserve their score, they leave it because they don't like losing horribly. When you know you can't win, why play? Hiding the information only makes them suffer more.
Oh no I agree. You should be able to F4. But some people are also doing it in an attempt to preserve their hive score. If that score was never visible or known to them, this incentive is removed.
I regularly check other peoples hive scores on my team to get an "idea" of how well we are going to perform, specially if I command, if I cannot see someones hive score I have no idea how well our team will potentially play out and adjust accordingly.
My mind is also at ease if I know a 1500+ commander jumps into the chair than a player who has only played 20 hours.
You can hide the hive score and still see hours played. I think that's a better indication than any other. Someone with say 200 hours for eg is unlikely to have a really bad score, and even if they do, Force Even would have allocated them with that in mind.
Since it doesn't actually help preserve hive score in any meaningful way, the only people who do it that way are just plain idiots. The amount of points lost or gained does depend on how long you spend on the team, but unless you leave only a couple minutes into the game AND are on the hive-favored team to start with, it won't help.
Meanwhile, competing to improve your skillscore is a very valid motivation for trying harder and taking the game seriously. If gaming the system is minimized, then the remaining effects of a visible hive score are a very large net-positive.
Edit - I dislike the idea of an invisible system. I think its putting the cart before the horse. What use is there in removing the incentive of improving the value when people refuse to vote force even after they lose trust in the system when they can't see why it doesn't work when it doesn't work?
I think visible hive values is also a problem. People seem to think it is their bank account number and want to see it go up and get upset if it goes down People should not care what the value is. Why do they need incentive to improve their score? Winning should be incentive enough.
People do want to see the value go up over time. The OP was asking how the hive skill system worked so he could try to improve it. For me this is proof enough hive skill values should be hidden.
4 other problems with hive skill system. Most agree on them. Most solutions are pretty easy.
-People move teams after a FET vote. Force even teams should be forced. You should not be allowed to change teams after, unless other conditions are met. Such as team numbers are not even.
-Sorting of teams is a problem with FET. Shine's shuffle already sorts better than FET. If I remember correctly it takes the top player and puts them on team A, then the next best player on the other team and so on. It essentially does rankings.
-Combined marine and alien scores. They should and will be separated.
-Then there is the skill diversity issue. As it is now, if you FET it sometimes can not get very close average values. Yesterday I had a game where the best average hive could do is 1011 team vs 1437 team. The skill values of the players were just that diverse and hive did the best it could. The only way to solve this is some sort of skill gating. I think rookie gating is the only realistic way to do this.
What does it matter if they care or not? The end objective is still to win either way. So what if some people are more vain than others? What does it change? Does it encourage stacking? No. People still want even games, stomps aren't fun for anyone and people being grumpy about their hive score does not affect anything.
@UncleCrunch
So your solution is things that are hard to track and/or easily manipulatable? Hang on while I fire a clip into ceiling and another into floor so that I can tank my hive score. Or maybe I should turtle so that I can shoot more Onos and improve my score. Maybe I should destroy every powernode and cyst I see so as to add to my demolition score. As for all that matters, I look forward to you missing out on some or weighing them differently from how others would.
@UncleCrunch
So your solution is things that are hard to track and/or easily manipulatable? Hang on while I fire a clip into ceiling and another into floor so that I can tank my hive score. Or maybe I should turtle so that I can shoot more Onos and improve my score. Maybe I should destroy every powernode and cyst I see so as to add to my demolition score. As for all that matters, I look forward to you missing out on some or weighing them differently from how others would.
These values are already sampled. Yes it can be manipulated but you will only arm yourself. In the current system you can have an influence on other player score. Just being AFK can make a team loose.... i bet you can imagine the consequences (good or bad) or the means to achieve it. Many examples are already listed.
@UncleCrunch
So your solution is things that are hard to track and/or easily manipulatable? Hang on while I fire a clip into ceiling and another into floor so that I can tank my hive score. Or maybe I should turtle so that I can shoot more Onos and improve my score. Maybe I should destroy every powernode and cyst I see so as to add to my demolition score. As for all that matters, I look forward to you missing out on some or weighing them differently from how others would.
These values are already sampled. Yes it can be manipulated but you will only arm yourself. In the current system you can have an influence on other player score. Just being AFK can make a team loose.... i bet you can imagine the consequences (good or bad) or the means to achieve it. Many examples are already listed.
Yes, and as mattji showed, these stats are devoid of context. That is why it is complicated, because you have to do more things to put in context and some things just aren't immediately measurable. How are you going to rate positioning for example? And then even if you can measure them, how are you going to weight them? Which is more important? The further you think, the more complex it becomes.
The current hive system on win/loss ratio also tries to promote good(winning) behaviour. Placing emphasis on things such as structure damage may encourage bad(selfish) behaviour, such as refusing to cover teammates because you want to get more damage. Or refusing to help pack so you can chew on a powernode.
I think the OP has got his answer, there is what? 4-5 other threads that go into more Detail about how Hive really works. The simple answer - It dose the job we need it to do. Some say not good enough, some say it dont work at all, but after over a year off being live, its doing its job, and "some" games that force random are more even than before.
Comments
Actually, that should not even work. But i dont remember if its already fixed or will be fixed in an upcomming patch.
It works, but it's not as simple as just leaving the team. I won't say how he does it, but I can think of one player in particular who has a hive score of +4k PURELY because of this method. I hope that fix is upcoming, or at least w/ the hive rework. I will not play on the server if I notice this player is on. Ultimately it will not be a fair game, not interested in playing.
People don't leave a team to preserve their score, they leave it because they don't like losing horribly. When you know you can't win, why play? Hiding the information only makes them suffer more.
If the score is personal, it's only a motivation to try harder. As has been made perfectly clear, there's no real way to game the system, not without a LOT of help.
My mind is also at ease if I know a 1500+ commander jumps into the chair than a player who has only played 20 hours.
In other games if you leave in the middle of a match you get a ban that prevents you from playing for hours or even days.
I know how annoying it is when you are turteling in a team full of rookies that doesn't concede, but if you are so sure that your team already lost, then what do you care?
The only exception to that rule should be when you find yourself on team balance. If an unbalance on the number of players prevents you from playing (or if you want to balance those numbers), then you should be able to switch teams without being punished for it
Different style of game. Games with a "no leaving" policy generally don't support mid-round replacements, so if anyone leaves everyone gets screwed. In NS2 the only thing lost is your res, but most times when are ready to leave you've already spent most of it anyway.
And I care because I don't like feeling helpless. Stuck in a turtle or other slow defeat with nothing to do but die over and over is literally worse than sitting around doing nothing waiting for a game to start. So either concede quickly, end it quickly, or more likely then not I alt-f4 because an extended loss kills my desire to play at all for a while.
I'm sure the TGNS servers implemented an anti fortunetelling mechanic, Ill try and tag the guy *edit* got him lol @Wyzcrak
*EDIT EDIT* Rofl, damn google auto correct, anti fortunetelling mechanic **Turtleing** Gonna leave that in that just because haha
I actually blame this approach on the tons of games we have where people prematurely concede. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People look at the hive scores and conclude that they can't win and so they fuck around waiting for the round to end instead of playing to win.
^^This, players should just play, no matter what the hive score is, if its somewhat even, great then you know you may win, but if its not even, then you dont even try? i hate seeing commanders telling players something, (in this case the commander knows better) and they dont even listen, aliens - only 2 gorges - start with 4-5, things like this and what Santa says are what forces players to not even try, and who can blame them.
why would you want a cooldown from leaving mid-match on public servers?? the games that actually do have this feature only have it for ranked matches, not casual.
And by the way, it is not cool to leave in the middle of the match because you have signed in a gather which is finally starting. Saying "F#&$ them, it is just a pub game" it is not a nice in-game practice. But I guess that this is only my very unpopular opinion.
You're right, I'll probably leave. That's how it won't happen. Then again I only care about my hive skill because I've got it all on the same server.
Yes there are people who exploit it. I don't see that very often at all.
Yes people try to stack with it. Before hive, they tried to stack teams using badges. Before badges they tried to stack teams using name recognition. There has always been stacking and always will be attempts at stacking.
Are there people who try to get as many kills as possible just to get their score up? Yes, those uninformed people exist. They also acted the same way before hive skill.
Do any of that prove that hive does not work? Nope.
Whats also quite funny is that players call stack even if the teams are even, if your on the losing side, other team must have been stack. :P
Does it proves it works : Nope
Now we-re fairly stuck isn't it...
Yup!
You can hide the hive score and still see hours played. I think that's a better indication than any other. Someone with say 200 hours for eg is unlikely to have a really bad score, and even if they do, Force Even would have allocated them with that in mind.
So, your "not that difficult" solution? The implementation could use improvements, but there really isn't a better system. Again, your expectations are too high. There is no system that will ensure perfect balanced games.
It also results in evangelists who preach faith in response to criticism and pointing to the holy text as justification. Its not like UncleCrunch doesn't have a point, I don't agree with his conclusions but I think some of the problems he identified are correct.
Improvements are needed. Reverting the "keep players in same team as far as possible" with vote force even will be a good start. It seemed like a good idea at the time because it was irritating to be switched to another team when you want to play the other team, but it doesn't work when people try to use vote force even to dissolve a stack.
It might also be worth a try grouping people into tiers based on their hive score and balance by that rather than average value and see how that works out.
Edit - I dislike the idea of an invisible system. I think its putting the cart before the horse. What use is there in removing the incentive of improving the value when people refuse to vote force even after they lose trust in the system when they can't see why it doesn't work when it doesn't work? Congrats, people stopped trying to manipulate the value. Oops, people stopped voting force even too.
I don't really see the point when manipulating the score is already hard (and pretty pointless if you have faith in the system) in the first place. I don't know what to do to change it other than winning/losing and I'm pretty sure most people don't either. I mean, the comments here are not saying "those people" but "that person".
NO ONE did a simulation to make a graphic looking like a sound analyzer. You can compare that to any plug-in in Winamp or your favorite music player. NO ONE. Not even the author. If you do, you will see the BIG problem. If group A and B play with the same team forever it will be somehow OK. If you add some salt like new players and shuffle the teams, the ripple effect are like tsunamis. No one published any results on that... i know why.
It's a system that reacts because it found unexpected results. We put aside the bile bomb rush exception that is crippling the Hive score of those who have a pinkie problem. This system can only be good when the teams are always the same. Even in competitive it's not gonna happen. So it's condemned to correct value over and over and over. As soon as you encounter and event (AFK, farmers etc) it becomes more and more unstable and the ripple effect does the rest. In the end you have something that looks like a constellation.
Anyone can rip some equation from some stat/math book to make a system (Yes even from a holy DEK book). The thing is that system isn't changing value for all registered player after each game. As any system describing another system should do. It only changes values on a local range (the players who played). So you can have a guy in the Artic with 3000 and a guy in Togo with 1000 but in reality the Togo guy worth 3 times the Artic guy. It's not only bad as a skill rough indicator... you know what let's put aside skill and let's use RANKing. Even as a ranking system it's bad, by localizing (reducing the effect range) it just allowed many if not all the problems that i describe. It clearly demonstrate the lack of analysis before implementing this. See video in previous posts.
If what i describe is too complex, the Hive system could not be born. It includes some stat/math concepts that are far beyond what i describe (and sometimes counter intuitive stuff). What i describe is collecting data, categorizing (grouping) them (aim, demolition, all that can matter, etc.), adding and averaging. Any decent DBA (with free software) can make a data model that can almost do the job for the programmer. The programmer is still required to print data on the screen
Let me repeat, teams that shuffle randomly is the best possible circumstance for the algorithm converging. Having the same team every time is the worst possible circumstance.
This is actually what happens, except that it integrates over the whole round rather than taking another snapshot. It exponentially weights each second so that the beginning of the game is worth more than the end.
Yes actually, there was one in one of the other hive threads that I'm sure you posted your complaints in. A new player joined with near godlike accuracy, he started with 0 skill and climbed up to the 2000s within a month.
Perhaps you remember the previous system that did exactly what you are advocating for? It rewarded based on points in the round, and resulted in spawn camping for hours and emptying servers.
I think I know the exploit you are talking about and it is fixed for the next patch.
Sure isn't Tap or Wob, wonder who it can be
People do want to see the value go up over time. The OP was asking how the hive skill system worked so he could try to improve it. For me this is proof enough hive skill values should be hidden.
4 other problems with hive skill system. Most agree on them. Most solutions are pretty easy.
-Sorting of teams is a problem with FET. Shine's shuffle already sorts better than FET. If I remember correctly it takes the top player and puts them on team A, then the next best player on the other team and so on. It essentially does rankings.
-Combined marine and alien scores. They should and will be separated.
-Then there is the skill diversity issue. As it is now, if you FET it sometimes can not get very close average values. Yesterday I had a game where the best average hive could do is 1011 team vs 1437 team. The skill values of the players were just that diverse and hive did the best it could. The only way to solve this is some sort of skill gating. I think rookie gating is the only realistic way to do this.
Since it doesn't actually help preserve hive score in any meaningful way, the only people who do it that way are just plain idiots. The amount of points lost or gained does depend on how long you spend on the team, but unless you leave only a couple minutes into the game AND are on the hive-favored team to start with, it won't help.
Meanwhile, competing to improve your skillscore is a very valid motivation for trying harder and taking the game seriously. If gaming the system is minimized, then the remaining effects of a visible hive score are a very large net-positive.
What does it matter if they care or not? The end objective is still to win either way. So what if some people are more vain than others? What does it change? Does it encourage stacking? No. People still want even games, stomps aren't fun for anyone and people being grumpy about their hive score does not affect anything.
@UncleCrunch
So your solution is things that are hard to track and/or easily manipulatable? Hang on while I fire a clip into ceiling and another into floor so that I can tank my hive score. Or maybe I should turtle so that I can shoot more Onos and improve my score. Maybe I should destroy every powernode and cyst I see so as to add to my demolition score. As for all that matters, I look forward to you missing out on some or weighing them differently from how others would.
I get significant damage about 1/3 the time for, say, 6.5 accuracy, at absutely no risk to my safety or position.
How the fuck do I track that and relate it skill besides how it helps me win
These values are already sampled. Yes it can be manipulated but you will only arm yourself. In the current system you can have an influence on other player score. Just being AFK can make a team loose.... i bet you can imagine the consequences (good or bad) or the means to achieve it. Many examples are already listed.
Yes, and as mattji showed, these stats are devoid of context. That is why it is complicated, because you have to do more things to put in context and some things just aren't immediately measurable. How are you going to rate positioning for example? And then even if you can measure them, how are you going to weight them? Which is more important? The further you think, the more complex it becomes.
The current hive system on win/loss ratio also tries to promote good(winning) behaviour. Placing emphasis on things such as structure damage may encourage bad(selfish) behaviour, such as refusing to cover teammates because you want to get more damage. Or refusing to help pack so you can chew on a powernode.
I think the OP has got his answer, there is what? 4-5 other threads that go into more Detail about how Hive really works. The simple answer - It dose the job we need it to do. Some say not good enough, some say it dont work at all, but after over a year off being live, its doing its job, and "some" games that force random are more even than before.