[Freeciv] Re: summary of ranking problems/questions

[Thomas Strub <ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 02:10:03AM +0200, Horn G?bor wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I'd like to summarize a bit the problems regarding to the ranking on
> pubserver, and the solutions which i etiher know about or suggest. I
> think the goal is to have a fair and representative ranking system,
> which motivates all players from newbies to tops, and doesn't make them
> turn away from certain type of games. The current system is based on the
> ELO, and a nice one, but it has a few problems:
> 
> 3, Players can use more nicks to cheat their ranking (only use 'primary'
> in games when they're almost sure they'll win, eg againts much weaker
> players). It's forbidden in every 'serious' ranking system afaik, and
> usually means a ban from the system if somebody does this.
[...]
> 
> 3, It's very hard to prevent this, so i think we should aim to make it
> useless. Ranking decay partly does this, but not completely. I think we
> shouldn't provide info about the name of players of the ranking ports'
> pregames. Only the number of them. So if a player join, he can decide if
> he wanna plays or not, but cannot use the playerlist info w/o connecting
> to decide what nick he use in that game. If he leaves and reconnects w/
> the same ip in a few mins, players should recognize it and could tell it
> to the admin. It needs modification of the client/server code i think.
> It's not a 100% protection still, but might be enough againts 90 percent
> of these cheats. If somebody really wants cheat he can, i see no way to
> prevent that. And i think if somebody is cought on cheating, he should
> be deleted from the ranking and banned permanently from the ranking. For
> this doranking script has to be changed to save more detailed data from
> every game, so ranking would be recountable w/o the cheaters points (i
> can do this modification if we agree). I think no serious player would
> risk this.

I don't like that you don't want to give information about the players
who are connected. The time i wanted to get better i connected to ports
where good players were or they joined to a pregame with me.

And deleting a player after you found out that he has found a hole in
the system isn't a good idea too.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Strub  ***  eMail ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jb: people are stupid, they don't want to learn.