Re-qualifying

[Promicide]

I know I am not the only person who has had recreated accounts to see where stand as far as skill leagues are concerned. My primary gamecenter account is permanently lodged in the forgotten ranks of fluffy while I have others in Master league.

Outwitters isn't the only game I play and I am tired of being placed up against easy players. It is also frustrating to have to log into my other accounts to have a decent challenge and have the incentive of tier jumping whilst playing.

My proposition is simple. Allow me to requalify somehow. I would gladly even pay 99 cents to remove/expunge my record and re-apply. This will benefit others as there will be less server traffic and cheaper for OML to accommodate my strategic fix. Some may not feel as if paying should be necessary as us more serious players have already invested in all of the other paid aspects of the game to enhance our experience. Maybe it can be part of the uber pack, or for every so long chronologically (say 2 months) you can give us the option.

Again this is just an awesome suggestion, and I feel as if the outwitters community would benefit since the ranking system would be more accurate. I would attah a poll to see how many of you agree but id rather see credible opinions rather than shear numbers. On second thought, why not both haha.Thanks for reading.

[Gustahl]

If you are of master league skill then you shouldn't have any problem with getting promotions from fluffy, clever and gifted. Why not just try to earn your promotions the way it was intended?

The problem with allowing the possibility of re-qualifying, that I see, is that everyone in the lower leagues would do it all the time.

(Unless there would be something like league seasons implemented, where the leagues are reset every time the league starts over. That could work I guess.)

[Harti]

OML wants to have seasoning in effect at some point. The system would somewhat preserve your hidden ranking but you'll get the chance to get in a better league or something. I'd bet my ass on the fact that Alex's already got an exact plan how to do this, but adressing gameplay issues and a new team pack are top priority as of yet

[Promicide]

Gustahl- I am currently on a 10 game win streak with sign of tier jumping. There are threads that explain why I stuck high has to do with the w/l ratio and rank of yourself an opponents. Once you accrue a certain amount of total games played the number of wins consecutive required to do so is almost unattainable (on my main account we are talking hundreds of games. The same thing with Starcraft if you have ever experienced that. Thanks for the advice though.

Harti- thanks a lot for the "insiders insight". I love the game and OML as a company and appreciate the time they take to answer question like these. I was hoping you would comment and very happy you did. Your the man.

---

And yes I know you aren't part of OML, but they should get ya on the payroll.

[GreatGonzales]

I don't get the purpose of re-qualifying...aren't we being constantly re-qualified as we play league matches? If you start losing a lot, you'll get demoted, and if you start winning a lot, you'll get promoted. Why do we need to re-qualify?

Now, doing something to make divisions more meaningful, that would be cool. Cause right now they are essentially meaningless.

[bmike]

(10-07-2012 12:48 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  I don't get the purpose of re-qualifying...aren't we being constantly re-qualified as we play league matches? If you start losing a lot, you'll get demoted, and if you start winning a lot, you'll get promoted. Why do we need to re-qualify?

The main reason I would ditch my history in a heartbeat is due to a bug in the early placement. I was placed in Masters after 5 matches (yes I did beat one of the top 5 super titans at the time) and after another 5 games, I was promoted to Super Titan.

I was no where near the real ST caliber and since then I've been matched way wrong. I've thought of ending all my games and asking for a reset but a better solution would be to age out old games once you have 100 recent games to judge your performance.

Tactics evolve to match the changes in the games - and an attacking style that won some initial games before people learned how to defend are now punished by the game mechanics. New changes will certainly make some styles of play much stronger and others will have to re-adjust to FTA and wit balance.

The big problem is two fold.

1) Age - me beating or losing to someone a month ago shouldn't matter as much as me matched against someone else today.
2) Bug - the buggy placement of past means that the system has the wrong strength for many players. If the bug placed me too high - my losses to players promoted them too high as well.

The system is opaque so we all have anecdotal evidence and suspicions that may be founded or may not be founded, but I would love the chance to buy a clean slate for .99 just for the fun of trying to level up again and see if I'm really in the correct spot or if those early 200 games I played are overly weighing me in my current spot.

[CombatEX]

I voted, "No. That's dumb."

Having an in-app purchase to requalify? Even the idea of requalifying in general isn't that great. Why not just make the match-making more flexible so you can play better players more quickly if you're winning all your matches? Requalifying is a pseudo fix but ultimately isn't the solution (making people pay for it is even worse).

But I agree there is a problem here that needs addressing. It really is extremely boring playing Gifted players for 50 matches when I know there are much more exciting matches to be had (having played with plenty of Super-Titans like Eijolend, Harti, QuantumApocalypse, Da Wizerd, p1noyboypj, and blueswimmer95 in unranked)

[RandyDogz]

I like the season approach. That way, if I have some bad games then its not the end of the world, cause I'd know there's another season coming. So I guess I agree with the chance to requalify, just not at your own discretion.

And some sort of acknowledgement (or achievements )around how high in the rankings you got so its not all for naught. I'd be cool if you could unlock a different team colour, spawn point design, etc.

[Promicide]

The season thing definitely sounds like the best suggestion IMHO as well. The bottom line is that for a lot of us (I hesitate to say most of us), the ranking system is a terrible reflection of current player skill. This is, of course, the purpose of having that system in the first place. So I'm not constantly matched with players who bore the hell out of me. I just want a challenge, and I shouldn't have to come to the forums (out of the way for some) to get it.

[Ravernoth]

Seasons do sound cool, as long as the matchmaking difficulty progresses a lot faster than it does now!