Remove/hide ELO?
Webtrance
US Join Date: 2013-11-08 Member: 189165Members, Reinforced - Shadow
US Join Date: 2013-11-08 Member: 189165Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Is ELO critical to the game? Maybe it's been addressed before, but is it possible for the game to exist without ELO or recorded hive stats? I understand a need for a ranking system, but perhaps this can be based upon score rather than win and losses.
All I know is that with servers that don't record ELO, I feel so much more relaxed joining mid game, knowing the other team is "stacked", and not giving two cares about it. It's actually enjoyable for me to play casually and not worry about loosing 20-40 pts ELO because my team has room for improvement. This all started when servers began displaying ELO next to a players name. You could quickly see "who's who", not only by name, but by Hive skill, and the fact that you're probably going to get stomped. Once servers started displaying Hive skill on the score card, I began "fixating" on it. I know for a fact others get bent axles when loosing ELO. I see folks quit gathers when a bug occurs when a team is about to win and the server gets reset due to a bug or other bogus reason. They're like, "HEY! Nice reset...where's my ELO for the win."
Anyhoo, I just assume ELO be a hidden stat for the purpose of randomizing games.
All I know is that with servers that don't record ELO, I feel so much more relaxed joining mid game, knowing the other team is "stacked", and not giving two cares about it. It's actually enjoyable for me to play casually and not worry about loosing 20-40 pts ELO because my team has room for improvement. This all started when servers began displaying ELO next to a players name. You could quickly see "who's who", not only by name, but by Hive skill, and the fact that you're probably going to get stomped. Once servers started displaying Hive skill on the score card, I began "fixating" on it. I know for a fact others get bent axles when loosing ELO. I see folks quit gathers when a bug occurs when a team is about to win and the server gets reset due to a bug or other bogus reason. They're like, "HEY! Nice reset...where's my ELO for the win."
Anyhoo, I just assume ELO be a hidden stat for the purpose of randomizing games.
Comments
You will see that on February 11th I was at 1774 hive skill. If it showed the day before you would see I was at 1650 hive skill. You can also see that I was at a high of 1951 last night. I have gotten above 2100 before. Although I do watch my hive skill value, it means nothing to me. I watch it because I am interested in the skill system as a whole. In does not matter what it is.
I would like all hive skill values to be hidden. It is not a value people need to know. I guess it is too late for that though.
This is a topic where input from the 5% on the forums isn't sufficient to form even the most basic opinion.
I'm sure hive is something alot of people like to play for. Games like League of Legends I would have never played as much as I did in casual games. That game sucks, but ELO made me want to play more and better and in different ways. So i did for like 1800 excruciating hours where NS2 was broken with hitching for me.
The only issue with hive is that it carries from server to server. And that in order for it to be server by server and create a reasonable skill number in a reasonable number of games, Elo wouldn't work because win/loss doesn't fill in data quick enough.
Playing for hive score is kind of missing the point of the game itself. The game should be intrinsically fun on its own without the pursuit of an arbitrary number.
Don't get me wrong, it's not going to keep me from playing. Hive skill level represents overall skill of the player, though can be marginally "gamed" to garner points. However, for those who are competitive by nature, who want to win, and appreciate their higher than average Hive score, loosing matches and Hive points can be very annoying. I can be a "try-hard" and, of course, loose major points when my team looses (because my team has room for improvement). Based on my competitive nature, those stupid losses and lost points piss me off...! Hive score isn't silly when people start to focus on it because they want it. It can become a thorn in your side and makes the game....umm, not fun.
Tell that to the top 10 players.
Neither really makes all that much sense to me. I don't deny their existence. The top 10 players being a great example of that, especially novorei.
The psychology of this is very interesting.
You can see that 3000+ hive score next to their fake name (usually along with a couple badges) and recognize that they're probably one of those players that ruin games, which leads you to check their steam profile to get their real name.. Without it you won't recognize who they are until halfway through the game when their kills are skyrocketing. Hence there's no attempt to balance the teams, and no attempt to use teamwork/coordination to avoid that god-like pro and get a cheap base rush win...
Anything that clearly marks the high skill pro's and how far above everyone else they are is helpful.
It....
And at that time you coulnd't guess the outcome of a game just by looking at the average skill. Now if you start a game with 100-200 skill difference half of your team will be already defeated. You lose ? it's because it was stacked, you win ? stack too. Without hive you would only rage at the more obvious ones.
You could use a rank system to hide the exact number ( and hide this "average skill" on top of the teams, it doesn't prevent anything, it just makes people concede faster). Especially when after 3000 the hive system doesn't mean anything.
And @Nordic yeah it's an arbitrary number but it dictates how you have to play, what you have to play and with who.
My hive skill dropped 250 points this week. Did I care? No. When it returned have to my normal 1850ish, did I care? No. Did I noticed any difference between 1850 and 1650 hive points in how I was placed on a team? No.
Maybe a difference here is that, even though I like winning, it is not a big deal. I just happen to win often, at least compared to most players. I just do what I do, and if wins result of that then so be it.
@SoulRider is an interesting case because his has been dropping and probably won't be returning to his old hive score do to aging as he has described.
If you feel the game is more enjoyable when there is no elo why not just stop caring about elo? Its a rough estimate of how honed your skills at pubgrinding are.(exceptions exist)
My point exactly. Stop displaying ELO and then no one will care, and there's no problem. You can't just say stop caring about a skill number. Especially to those who normally lead a team by a 2-1 or 3-1 kill ratio over the next guy (and still loose) because of their competitive drive. Competitive players will [hyper] focus on score numbers...it's what we do. I never thought twice about it until it was readily displayed.
You speak for yourself only. And yes, you can just stop caring about the number. It is useful as a rough gauge of what an unknown player will play like but not as some precise measure of skill. It is a team game and a large portion of your score is dependent on your team. Just relax and don't take it personally?
Don't care if I lose ELO, love it when I win ELO.
Agreed... but you only covered one of two needed aspects. First, ELO does need to be hidden from the in game scoreboard. Second, you need to remove the public's ability to look up the Skill score via hive.naturalselection2.com. Even if its not visible in-game, people will still care about it if they can see it somewhere.
Hive Score/Level should be the only visible info a player can see. The progression bar on the main menu is nice as well.
Hive Skill Score is only needed for the ingame shuffle feature. There is no reason why someone should be able to see it.
That would be true if shuffle were perfect and no one changed teams and no one disconnected from the server after a shuffle and no new players joined afterwards. These are a few "and"
The point that I am trying to make is that it has been discussed a few times the problems that shuffle has, but we have only been able to know some of these problems because hive skill is public. It is harder to find the bugs of a system that is hidden in a black box, people just tend to stop trusting in it.
Sometimes I join a server and I see the hive skill of the players in an ongoing match and I know that I cant join because it would kill the perfect balance that the match has at that moment. Other times I know that I should join because someone with skill similar to mine just left. Other times hive skill help us to balance the teams a little better despite what shuffle says. And for last, sometimes someone really wants to play marines (or aliens) or he can com the other team, and we are able to rebalance this shit easily. At least that has been my experience with it.
I can understand the frustration of some players when looking at the number, but any game has a ranking unless you are playing in cooperative mode against the computer
And about hive level/score, I find it completely useless beyond level 3. I don't think it brings anything positive to the game, but it also doesn't bring anything negative to the game so I don't care much about it.
I disagree. Shuffle shouldn't be relied on as a balancing tool on its own. Hive score being visible helps with placing unknown players when you know that some players play above/under what you expect from their score.
I said it before, shuffle is not able to get balanced games and removing the ability to view the score just fosters further distrust in the system.
So posting here this thread is a bit pointless cause its an optional feature every admin can activate or not.
I think its an nice to have addition, especial in times of 0 point and 1000 point rookies so you can atleast try to balance the round manual.
Also the stacking problem can be fixed by this manual or per shuffle vote.
Two or three >3000 "friends" in the same team would end in pointless boring rounds if you cant see there skillscores.
Would be interisting to know why only high skilled players are against this option.
Maybe mofo1 while he post many bullsh** isnt completly wrong here.
Aeglos, how do you propose to perform a balance then? You need a metric. Hive Skill is that, a metric to be used by algorithms.
And overall it's a good metric. It's the shuffling algorithm that needs more work.
What servers do you play on? Every server I join is always shuffled. The only time I've seen people manually try to balance teams was pre-hive system times.