helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

here’s an open game design problem i have:

let’s say you have 100 teams you want to put on a leaderboard against eachother.

the sizes of the teams range from 3 to 1000 players.

everyone on the teams is playing the same game.

what’s a fair way to put these teams against eachother?

i want players to feel included, but i don’t want anyone to feel like they’re “bringing their team down”, so the obvious “average score” doesn’t work

rawspeech,

@helvetica Average the top n players in the team where n is the size of the smallest team?

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@rawspeech yep this is roughly what we just settled on. median of top x% of all teams

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar
helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

thanks everyone i knew there was a clever answer to this!!

jakeu,

@helvetica Fall Guys has an interesting version of this—every squad has a score which is the addition of points scored based on where you finished. I've had a lot of situations where the "slower" squad mates actually sway the result because they push the point total over the line, which rewards them finishing and actually makes them feel far more valuable than they might otherwise.

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@jakeu oh that’s very interesting! though requires same sized teams

gray17,
@gray17@mastodon.social avatar

@helvetica in this scheme, it's still beneficial for the team to remove anyone who isn't the top player.

I'm not sure it's possible to meet all your goals with just one ranking? It's probably possible with two?

gray17,
@gray17@mastodon.social avatar

@helvetica ok, more rigorously:

"no individual brings the team down" means that removing any person cannot improve team rank, or adding a person cannot decrease team rank.

"every individual matters" means that adding a person must (potentially) change team rank. since it can't decrease team rank, it must increase it.

so any such scheme that meets those criteria will be biased toward larger teams. but the bias can be made small, eg it might take +100 weak players to match +1 strong player

gray17,
@gray17@mastodon.social avatar

@helvetica ok, here's a scheme that feels somewhat intuitive to me:

compare two teams by matching the players up in 1v1 battles, strongest first. they're pure hp battles, 100hp defeats 90hp, leaving 10hp left. the winner then heals n% and battles the next in line. adjusting n% adjusts how much size of team overcomes strength of team

glitchypixel,

@helvetica that feels hard to do. Brainstorming here a little and came up with multiple scores based on different skills. You could be bad at one type of score but better on others, bonus points to make each score orthogonal to another, like rock paper scissors (i.e. being better at one will affect another).

Grab the best of all teams (or median) and have four leaderboards. One per each skill and one for all best scores combined. Multiple awards ensue plus the combined one. A triathlon of sorts

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@glitchypixel yeah i really like this but it still privileges larger teams eventually

glitchypixel,

@helvetica hmm probably need to give either handicaps on large teams or advantages on smaller ones similar to the upkeep system of warcraft 3 maybe. Or segment by team size range to minimize bias.

But yeah probably you'd need to iterate and test those. You probably need to see the system in motion or at least simulate it on a excel or something, seems hard to easily test anyway :p. It's an interesting challenge for sure.

krystman,
@krystman@mastodon.social avatar

@helvetica Average score but keep the actual numbers hidden

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@krystman hahah boo that’s a sneaky trick

grapefrukt,
@grapefrukt@mastodon.social avatar

@helvetica that's a really good question! are you ranking a single score per player or is it across multiple days/entries?

grapefrukt,
@grapefrukt@mastodon.social avatar

@helvetica thinking about it some more, would splitting out small/large teams be acceptable? most of the fancy bottom/top n% just falls apart on less than ten players I think?

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@grapefrukt i like weight classes but you need enough teams for that to work

aaronschendel,
@aaronschendel@twit.social avatar

@helvetica Maybe take the score of the players in the top half of the team and average them. Whoever is at the bottom doesn’t have to worry about actively bringing their team down. Could add some sort of weighting depending on team size to even out two people being excellent on a team of 3 vs two people being excellent on a team of 1000.

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@aaronschendel this is a great idea. i just had someone in slack pitch something similar and i think it is the answer

JoeWelch,

@aaronschendel @helvetica We didn’t want to go with only top half averages because then players would just make small teams of only fast players and their average would easily be better than a large team with a variety of skill levels.

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@JoeWelch @aaronschendel yeah that makes sense!

in my situation i don’t think i mind that particular problem

jmb,

@helvetica Combined team score, weighted by team size? (So larger teams have fewer points-per-person, while smaller teams have more).

Probably fiddly to get the weighting right, but might work.

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@jmb this feels like technically people would still bring down the team even just a little

joelanman,
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

@helvetica A 'champion' model where the highest score on your team counts

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@joelanman i’ve got something like this right now but it still privileges huge teams

joelanman,
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

@helvetica tricky, split the leagues so you're playing similar sized teams?

Dwemthy,

@helvetica Isn't not allowing for a player to feel like they're "bringing the team down" directly at odds with team based leaderboards? Individual achievement of team members is what drives a team up or down the leaderboard.

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@Dwemthy nah there are definitely ways to only uplift

marcel,
@marcel@mastodon.social avatar

@helvetica Only score wins? One win = one point for the team. That‘s it. (Might only work with more balanced teams, though)

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@marcel the games have a lot of differently valued win states :/

JoeSodium,

@helvetica Possibly the next most obvious: median score?

helvetica,
@helvetica@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@JoeSodium i still worry people will feel like they’re bringing the team down. ideally there’s something that is just positive contributions

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