[L4DDER] Feedback and Suggestions

[Gondorian]

The 40 card ladder has been live for about ten days and 139 matches have been played.

People have already starting giving useful feedback, but it could do with being all in one place, so please post your feedback here, so I can see what works and what improvements you'd like to see.

Thanks!

[MattOG]

I was thinking last night that given the other coding chops you've shown on your site, you probably would be able to whip up a "challenge queue" interface of some sort on your site. Typical user flow could be something like:

1. I fill out a challenge form (basically list that person's name and press a "Challenge" button.
2. On each player's own profile page (which currently lists your rank and game results etc.), there's a new section that lists the incoming challenges in the order received. Each challenge has two buttons "Accept" and "Reject", but the Reject button is disabled if the person who made the challenge was within 5 ranks of you at the time they issued the challenge.
2a. If you press Accept, a time-stamped entry is created on both player's profile pages. If you have multiple accepted challenges, these are listed in the order that acceptance was made so that you know which accepted challenges to get out of the way first. The entry on each person's profile page also shows each player's CURRENT rank (updated on each page refresh) and a "Cancel Challenge" button only on the Challenger's instance of the entry. Why? Because if the person they challenged played other games before getting around to the challenge match (such as ad hoc challenges from the IRC channel) and their rank subsequently dropped *below* the challenger's current rank, there's not much point to continuing the challenge unless you just want to play that person anyway for fun and give them a chance to jump past you in the ladder.
2b. If you press Reject, a "Rejected Challenges" entry is made on each person's profile page.

Finally, in the list of currently accepted challenges on each player's profile page, not only are each player's current ladder ranking shown (plus the "Cancel" button on the Challenger's instance of that challenge entry), but also each player's respective "best times to play" from their profile page.

Hmm, I guess there should also be a list of challenges that you've issued but for which the challenged player has never hit either an Accept nor Reject button. After the 7 day challenge period has elapsed, that entry suddenly sports a "Report Auto-Loss" button that effectively logs the auto-loss for the unresolved challenge in favor of the challenger.

For reference.

[BDK16]

What MattOG showed and maybe make the ladder end in one month or two. At the end of the month, maybe the top 5 ranked players could get shadow crystals. Then restart the ladder based on rating again or keep the ranks the same. Maybe get Kyle to look into this to make it an official shadow era ladder

[iClipse]

The one thing I think is a bit.. Doubtful, is the fact that you can get to the very top of the ladder with only 1 lucky win.

Like, if someone loses ALL his games, but then on the last day, he challenges the number one, and he accepts (I know he doesn't HAS to accept, but in reality, it happens a lot, so..) and loses, that guy who always loses, is instantly number 1.

So then you have a player with a winrating of like 5% on top.

[doianhkhoviai]

The one thing I think is a bit.. Doubtful, is the fact that you can get to the very top of the ladder with only 1 lucky win.

Like, if someone loses ALL his games, but then on the last day, he challenges the number one, and he accepts (I know he doesn't HAS to accept, but in reality, it happens a lot, so..) and loses, that guy who always loses, is instantly number 1.

So then you have a player with a winrating of like 5% on top.

+1
I think we should play as a football league, a player must play with 63 other players

[paddy55]

....Like the football league idea allot!!

[arebelspy]

I don't like that the defeat makes the victor take the winner's place.

I think a defeat should move you down one rank, and a win move you up one rank (two ranks if the person is five or more above you).

Right now if I'm in the top spot (theoretically), I HAVE to accept all challenges from people in spot 6 or below, and if they beat me, they jump up to #1.

Instead they should only move up 2 spots, IMO. Jumping up 20 spots from a lucky matchup is silly.

I immediately signed up for the 30 card ladder when I read about it, but then when I realized this flaw it seemed a bit silly to play games with it, I'll just wait and only challenge the #1 ranked player. He has to accept.

IMO, one should have to "climb" the ladder through wins.

[shannong]

I'm on the fence about the current "if challenger wins, the loser drops down one rung and challenger takes his place". Arebelspy's idea has merit and so does the football league idea.

Me? I play the ladder more casually. I don't stress my exact rank at all: I'll take any challenge no matter how far away from me the challenger is. Likewise, I'll challenge anyone in IRC who's available to play and doesn't mind that I'm more than 5 rungs below them. For me, it's just nice to see direct positive or negative movement result from every match. Even though I explain/defend the Glicko-style rating system used on the live server, I too really dislike that after the system thinks it knows your relative rank you'll never budge unless you start winning a long string of games, and even then the backpressure pushes you back far towards the mean with just one loss.

So because I'm more casual and care less about exact ladder rank, the current system is okay by me. But I can see how more competitive types would prefer something more like arebelspy's slower movement scheme or the idea of a huge swiss followed by a reset followed by another huge swiss, etc.

[Flycheung]

perhaps next to ladder position, show their win/loss ratio? then people will know if his/her #1 spot is by luck (as explain by arebelspy) or by merits (i know not exactly correct).

Or maybe a point system, it's not a league where you need to play all other players, instead just plain simple point system where you award points by win - 3 pts, draw - 1 pts and lose - 0 pts. This way you will encourage more players to participate in ladder games. Once you get all the players immersed into the ladder, then perhaps introduced a better ranking based on their match results.

[MattOG]

I think a defeat should move you down one rank, and a win move you up one rank (two ranks if the person is five or more above you).....

.....Right now if I'm in the top spot (theoretically), I HAVE to accept all challenges from people in spot 6 or below.....

.....IMO, one should have to "climb" the ladder through wins.

1. I like the idea, could do +3 places if they are 10 or more above you. I'd been wondering the same thing, even though it was one of my ideas to allow players to accept a challenge from anyone, this makes more sense in terms of movement.

2. No you don't. Top spot only HAS to accept challenges from 6th or HIGHER.

3. See number 1.