Ozyman wrote:

Kind of related - having some sort of filtering for players could help with some of these issues.  I'd love to have some way of limiting boards I am learning to other newbs, and conversely filtering newbs from games where I am an expert.

The best example of where this would be helpful is a game like 'hex'.  Basically if I want to try a public game of this and I start a game up, it is likely to be joined by someone like Hugh or some other top player.  I am almost 100% certain to lose this game, as well as the next game, and the game after that, and probably every game ever.   So now, even though I kind of like Hex, i'll probably never play a public game on it.  

I'm still not a fan of this due to the ability to filter out top (or whoever) players from joining your games.  I could possibly get it if it was more system based by players have "levels" or something similar in which they have the option of playing within their levels, but that's still a bit iffy IMO and slight fear of spreading the player pool thinner for starting games.

I haven't dredged up any of the old threads related to this issue, but one suggestion I seem to remember making was for members to have the ability to host un-ranked non-private games. (maybe this could be a Premium feature). There are 30-40+ games on the open list on any given day so I don't see the thin list argument as holding as much weight.

I'm still not a fan of this due to the ability to filter out top (or whoever) players from joining your games. 

You could only due this if you were low ranked, which seems fair.   The filtering is just basically "I want to play people around my same skill level (i.e. within N points of my score or n% of my score)".   If this limits things too much, the game never fills and you have to try again without any filter.

members to have the ability to host un-ranked non-private games.

I don't like this as much, but it's better than the current system & makes sense as a premium perk.

Agree with Ozy -

Of course an achievement system would be nice also

(Just trying to reference as many previous threads as possible.)

Amidon37 wrote:

...

(Just trying to reference as many previous threads as possible.)

And what about an overall ranking system ?

Amidon37 wrote:

(Just trying to reference as many previous threads as possible.)

I think ***** is cheating because they keep on attacking me/joining my games/surrendering too early/not surrendering soon enough/taking too long on their turns/not taking long enough on their turns/winning/losing/using a different strategy than I am used to/using fog/not using fog/discussing cheating ad nauseam on the forums.

Korrun wrote:

Amidon37 wrote:

(Just trying to reference as many previous threads as possible.)

I think ***** is cheating because they keep on attacking me/joining my games/surrendering too early/not surrendering soon enough/taking too long on their turns/not taking long enough on their turns/winning/losing/using a different strategy than I am used to/using fog/not using fog/discussing cheating ad nauseam on the forums.

How can we factor that in properly into the proposed scoring system?

Korrun wrote:

Korrun wrote:

Amidon37 wrote:

(Just trying to reference as many previous threads as possible.)

I think ***** is cheating because they keep on attacking me/joining my games/surrendering too early/not surrendering soon enough/taking too long on their turns/not taking long enough on their turns/winning/losing/using a different strategy than I am used to/using fog/not using fog/discussing cheating ad nauseam on the forums.

How can we factor that in properly into the proposed scoring system?

Create track of which games you won or lost rating points in, and who was there.  Then calculate the difference between what was expected to happen, and what did happen on games shared with other people.  Based on this you can, for each player, rank the other players they have played against by the excess outcome of playing in games they were in.

This does not stop the behavior you describe.  But it does give visibility into tracking it.

Please note that I consider this "possible but not recommended".  Unfounded accusations of cheating combined with large chance variation "I did worse when X played with me" would not seem to me to be an improvement.

What would be an improvement is for any premium player to be able to, for some small amount per month (50 cents?  A dollar?), block another premium player from joining any games they are in.  Then heartfelt whining has a better outlet.  Of course if any premium player is being blocked by too many others, then that is a situation that should be looked at.

btilly wrote:

Korrun wrote:

Korrun wrote:

Amidon37 wrote:

(Just trying to reference as many previous threads as possible.)

I think ***** is cheating because they keep on attacking me/joining my games/surrendering too early/not surrendering soon enough/taking too long on their turns/not taking long enough on their turns/winning/losing/using a different strategy than I am used to/using fog/not using fog/discussing cheating ad nauseam on the forums.

How can we factor that in properly into the proposed scoring system?

Create track of which games you won or lost rating points in, and who was there.  Then calculate the difference between what was expected to happen, and what did happen on games shared with other people.  Based on this you can, for each player, rank the other players they have played against by the excess outcome of playing in games they were in.

This does not stop the behavior you describe.  But it does give visibility into tracking it.

Please note that I consider this "possible but not recommended".  Unfounded accusations of cheating combined with large chance variation "I did worse when X played with me" would not seem to me to be an improvement.

What would be an improvement is for any premium player to be able to, for some small amount per month (50 cents?  A dollar?), block another premium player from joining any games they are in.  Then heartfelt whining has a better outlet.  Of course if any premium player is being blocked by too many others, then that is a situation that should be looked at.

We could just make every whining forum post automatically deduct a few points from global ranking.

I think we should add some categories to "friend/enemy" such as "idiot" and "whiner"  and "all around nice guy"

Amidon37 wrote:

I think we should add some categories to "friend/enemy" such as "idiot" and "whiner"  and "all around nice guy"

Can you be all three?

Since this thread is totally hijacked anyway I use it more as a "trustworthy" - "untrustworthy"

Can we label ourselves? How bout: "Misunderstood" or "very very sneaky"?

I think anyone should be able to play anyone else if they want to. But an option to set a minimum, maximum, or range of points to play a given game would be cool. I think this is what these earlier posts are suggesting. For example, you could set up a game and one of the options would be to choose to only allow players with a score over 1200 to play. I've played games before when I had almost a 2000 point rating and some guy with something like a 600 joins and gets Australia on the first turn. It sucks to lose 50+ points on something like that.