

Evaluating Splatoon's Ranking System - smcgivern
http://www.evanmiller.org/evaluating-splatoons-ranking-system.html

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lost_name
If memory serves, Nintendo hasn't been very enthusiastic about traditional
multiplayer mostly due to negative player interactions (I recall seeing people
being autobanned from Smash Bros because of repeatedly attacking the same
person). They just want their players to have fun, and I think that it's
possible (likely?) that Nintendo wants the ranks to be inflated. I'm sure
there's some correlation to the fun factor and improving your own rank, and
the server does not need to use that letter grade to make matches.

I think there may be an inflated letter grade for the players to show off, but
the server ranks players against each other by another metric that is only
loosely tied to that grade.

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lookbothways
I don't believe the reward system works as described, because I have
personally seen rewards of anywhere from 8 to 12 points for victories in B and
A ranked games. My guess is that rewards are based on the difference between
your rank and the average rank of the enemy team; being lower rank confers a
bonus, and vice versa.

The more important missing factor, however, is that the game penalizes players
for disconnecting, making you eat the 10 point loss regardless of your team's
performance. This makes sense, as otherwise, cheaters would disconnect or turn
off their console as soon as they started losing. However, because the game is
riddled with connection errors and network bugs, it is extremely common (and
frustrating) for a match to go well for you, only to be kicked out near the
end due to network errors and count a loss anyway.

If only one player disconnects, then their team will almost always lose, and
the model remains unchanged. However, it's usually the case that a significant
portion of _both_ teams will disconnect. This results in a point deficit that
this model does not account for. Example: normal games are 4v4, resulting in
(ignoring my previous comment about rank-relative rewards) an even exchange of
+40 points (to the victors) and -40 points (to the losers). However, if two
players disconnect from each team, then only 20 points total will be rewarded
to the remaining victors, while both the losers and the two "winning"
disconnectors will lose 10 points a piece, resulting in a loss of 60 points,
and a deficit of 40 points.

I would estimate that I have lost several ranks worth of points due to
disconnects alone; just yesterday I lost around 50-70 points after a series of
infuriating network errors. So my guess is that in the long run, disconnects
more than compensate for the occasional +10 point bonus this blog post
exposes.

Splatoon is an innovative take on the team-based shooter genre, and probably
the most fun I've had with such a game since Team Fortress 2. But problems
like frequent network errors and lag (probably exacerbated by the fact that
matchmaking is cross-region and a significant portion of the active
playerbase, especially in higher ranked games, is Japanese), flaws in the
ranking system (sharing ranks between wildly different game modes, making
players suffer the full loss penalty when their teammates disconnect) and
matchmaking system (frequently pairing players up on imbalanced teams of e.g.
4 snipers, with no opportunity to change your weapon after the fact) do put a
damper on my enjoyment.

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smcgivern
I don't know if this is what you're referring to, but the article does say:

> (The reward or penalty is sometimes adjusted when lopsided battles occur,
> for example, rewarding an extra 2 points to an underdog team. For purposes
> of this analysis, we'll ignore those adjustments.)

The disconnection penalty does sound interesting, though. You could even argue
that the network errors are a kind of balancing away from the trend that this
article describes, by forcing ranks downward - although I doubt that was
deliberate on the part of the developers :-)

~~~
lookbothways
Ah, I did miss that.

Also, lest I scare people off from Splatoon, I should note that I spent $300
on the Splatoon Wii U bundle just to play it, and would do so again in a
heartbeat. The core game design is very fun and innovative, especially in the
way that it makes (through the art style and the deliberate lack of text or
voice chat) a very competitive/"scary" genre palatable to people that don't
consider themselves to be "hardcore gamers." And believe it or not, the
(optional) gyroscope-based aiming controls (tilting the gamepad in your lap to
make minute adjustments to aim, not uncomfortably pointing it directly at the
screen like a wiimote) are (IMHO) significantly more precise than that of any
other twin-stick-based console shooter (though nothing can hold a candle to
the ol' keyboard and mouse, for sure).

My only complaints are due to flaws in the "meta-game," like the matchmaking
system and map/mode rotation systems. And it's only because I like the core
game so much that I can be annoyed by the meta-game.

