@exselsior said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:
@ftxcommando Honestly I apologize, it seemed like people were just wanting to get rid of it off hand while implementing more matchmaker queues but I should have clarified better.
No point in apologizing, conversation was intended to frame it as so.
I've been annoyed with some conversations in the past about global rating being incredibly unreasonable and that carried into what I was saying here. There are reasonable ways we can either make global rating better or sunset it eventually with the right data showing it'll be fine, so if that's the approach taken I am more okay with that. Though you'd also have to be willing to accept that there might not ever be a state for FAF in which getting rid of global rating actually makes sense.
I dislike global rating because it is a fundamentally flawed implementation of TrueSkill. It is impossible to make it work better. You simply introduce yet more sieves that either complicate it into being a worse system, create new exploits, or worsen general user experience.
I have spent a long time trying to make global rating better because for a few years it was the only real way to look at players as competent teamgame players. But nothing is actually feasible.
There are several proposals ranging from having global rating impacted by matchmaker games to having global rating hidden but still adjusting itself for games to removing global rating but having say the highest matchmaker rating shown in lobby and balancing through that.
For the most part, I haven't really put much thought into what is better because we aren't even at Step 0 of a sufficiently integrated matchmaker. Odds are, it wouldn't even be me considering the issue but some PC 3 years down the line or whatever. My concern is in optimizing the matchmaker to then get into a situation where global is obsoleted and can instead take a new role where it instead operates more for casual play.
Something that I think is an important precursor that's in my opinion a more sure "win" so to say than more matchmaking queues is better stats available, e.g. overall w/l and breakdowns of w/l like per faction and per map, similar breakdowns for number of games played, your average K/D for your units, apm, etc. There are a lot of possibilities here. That coupled with working achievements, unless they're already working again, are things that'll be nice to have for new and experienced players alike. These are also the kinds of non gameplay related things that can get people playing more and get them more invested in the game even if they're not competitive. Not sure I've really seen this talked about much in this thread; it's possible I just missed it in this mess. I know this takes development work and time, but so does a ton of what else has been talked about in here. Better stats and achievements are things I'd love to see considered and talked about more
Stat-wise I don't have a problem with more information. Just comes down to presenting it in a fluid and intuitive format that doesn't end up confusing people even more. I do not think that this information helps players at all with regards to improving themselves and falls into the "neato" category. It doesn't really feel that pertinent to improving the player experience to me, IMO.
With regards to achievements that is actually something that would warrant a poll for me. I genuinely do not understand what the value of achievements are or how much of FAF actually values them at all. Do people actually look at this stuff? If so, I'd actually think about how to utilize them for FAF because honestly I just do not really think about them at all.
I don't even know why they were initially put into the client, just seems like such a weird thing because I've never seen someone achievement hunt in games. In fact it seems like it might incentivize behavior that you don't want to see if you make them more of a big deal with things like "make 500 GCs" and people intentionally stall games to fill some achievement dopamine hit.