Player 'PlayType' Icons

Kalabalana · June 2009

<div class="IPBDescription">An idea that uses Dynamic Achievements to Promote Teamplay</div>What I'm suggesting is an icon that appears beside a player's name on the score sheet. These icon might have, say, 3 or so levels, eg. bronze, silver, gold, etc, and 3 or so categories, eg. fighter, support, commander, overall balanced, etc. (The categories and levels there within can be determined later).
These levels are an indicator of your overall play style, and skill. Using a rolling statistics system, we can maintain an up to date, average of one persons play style via counting specific acts. That is, kills, deaths, accuracy, objective's followed, CC activity, welding, damage done, healing, etc.

So all in all, it's basically an icon that changes depending on what type of player you are, and how good at that type you are. I believe implementing an idea like this would make players strive for the better awards, and then maintain them. <b>Also, using such a system would make team balancing much more effective, something most games desperately need.</b>

Harimau · June 2009

But we, ourselves, don't see the numbers right? *

I assume that bronze-silver-gold medal 'levels' are for each category (playstyle).
Each icon's colour is either bronze, silver or gold - their 'skill' level.
Fair enough.

What isn't clear to me - are there several icons, one for each category?
Or does it pick a player's best category?
Or perhaps an icon that represents a hybrid of a player's top two or three (or more) categories? I think that'd be pretty cool.

Levels are based on the average, not total, right? If so, is the denominator number of games, or time played, or something else?
I can foresee non-focus playstyles (categories) then declining in level. I don't see that as a bad thing, however, but others might.

*Sorry, I'll elaborate.
I mean these numbers: "kills, deaths, accuracy, objective's followed, CC activity, welding, damage done, healing, etc."
Also, I don't see the harm in seeing these numbers on a separate profile. However on the scoreboard, keep it strictly icon-only (as in, the system you suggested, or at least as I understand it).

Kalabalana · June 2009

Yes exactly, a rolling stats system uses maybe lets say, the last 20 hours of gameplay, collects the data, and whatever you do the most of in any category, that's the type of icon that will be displayed.

It's a good way to see what type of people are on your team, and how good they are. Would really help in knowing who's most likely to do what

Harimau · June 2009

I'm liking the idea, myself. But depending on the actual categories, would people in reality have just -one- focus playstyle? Top two or top three playstyles would probably be more accurate, imo.

crae · June 2009

I like the idea of having an icon to denote player skill based on the player score over the last 20 games or so; I, II, III, IV, V. This should help with the game balance when people can see general skill distribution while in the RR deciding which team to join, even when people change their name etc. On the other hand, could also discourage the average/mediocre players from joining the underdog - as this is what seems to happen anyway.

But I don't see much use for the categories. Play is too fluid and good players adapt to the changing circumstances/moods etc.

Hawkeye · June 2009

I could see that, but I'd only be interesting for me if it were based on recorded server history (reset by the server admin on occasion). By that I mean, if I have killed more marines using parasite than any other player on that server, I should have the option of having a gold title under my name which says "De Bugger" which only I would have. The 2nd and 3rd place of this title would have the silver and bronze of this title by their names. That way it would be truly an accomplishment (assuming the server had a large playerbase).

Winter - EFG · June 2009

I like the basic idea, but I do think this should be rewarding teamwork which can be hard to track. Tracking deaths especially might put people off from taking the lead or sacrificing themselves for the team.

Hawkeye · June 2009

Winter, you make a good point, but I think that's a reason not to use Achievements at all. If they were used, I'd like to see them visible, but of course as you said it might place emphasis where emphasis is better left unplaced.

Kalabalana · June 2009

Yes Winter you've hit the nail on the head. Currently there's no game that can really take note of who sacrifices themselves for a team unfortunately. It's such an arbitrary decision, that I cannot see how to code the detection algorithm. Luckily though, sacrificing yourself for the team is something that doesn't happen often. So it isn't quite a groundbreaking thing to take note of.

Winter - EFG · June 2009

Well most achievements are a one time thing, so even if you have got some achievements that spoil a game, people will only need to do that once (or use achievement servers like a lot of people do on TF2). Also if you do keep track of stats, leave deaths out, if you only track kills there is no way to determine a K/D ratio which usually hurts most. Besides that you could track stats like RT's destroyed, times gestated and distance flown using a jetpack. A lot of people like stats even though (and sometimes especially when) they don't actually show who is the player with the best aim/most skill.

Jimyd · June 2009

I would get the award/medal:

Pancake Lerk

As my fellow sP' and |-YsCp-| would remember.

Till the NS Devs decided to nerf my Lerk flight with adrenaline drain. =( Grr.

It Hovars Without Flapping.

Harimau · June 2009

I never really saw this idea as an 'achievement' kind of idea, and I think the subtitle of the thread topic was a bit misleading. 'PlayType' is certainly how I would describe this idea.
Should there be a minimum time, say 5 hours, that a player has to play before they get assigned a playtype? For example, the default playtype is Beginner. Because I would think that a player would experiment with different roles until they found their niche, and so their playtype would be constantly changing, and wouldn't be an accurate reflection of their play style. Nor would they yet have a great grasp of the game quite yet. So I think a default Beginner playtype, for say the first 5 hours of play, would be good. After that, it'd take say, the last 3 hours as the average used to determine a PlayType. And keep adding hours up to 20 hours (i.e. 17 more hours). After the first 20(+2) hours it'd then only consider the most recent 20 hours of play.

Player 'PlayType' Icons

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