Battlemaster Rankings

[Shizzle]

If you create a new noble, it often is difficult to find a realm that might offer what you are looking for. Unless you get a twin character, or a char on the same continent as you've been on before, there's no way to determin what realm you might like. This counts double for new players, of course.

For that a ranking system might help. As we have in WI, although completely different.

The rankings could include:

military affairs: total CS, regions gained in the last months/weeks, battles won/lost, monster/undead dispatched, top soldier types (training, armor, ...?)...
culture: average daily amount of letters, roleplays (perhaps character count?), religions, guilds, ...

Not only would this be handy to inform yourself on a realm before joining, it would also encourage competition, not only in wars but also in roleplays etc.

Because now it only shows the 'amount of knights needed', in a way.

Thoughts?

[Foundation]

It is a good idea, and we've thought of these things as well, like "popularity of realm" and some measure of "fun-ness of realm", but many of these measures can be manipulated and gamed, and so it is difficult to come up with something good.

For example, "letters per day" can be spammed, religions and guilds can be spammed in every region with no real thoughts, CS can be simply a lot of militia but actually nothing happens, regions lost/gained is a little more telling, but in all seriousness, most realms have that at about 0 most of the time. :P

Your ideas are certainly a great start, now we need to continue to refine them and understand what we *really* want to measure and how we can do so in a fair and simple to understand way. :)

[Shizzle]

Well, I don't think (or certainly I hope so!) that nobles in a realm would tolerate spamming like that... Although it's true that these rankings would be very easily manipulated by powergamers :/

[egamma]

Not everyone wants to play in a hyperactive realm. I deleted one of my characters because I couldn't keep up with the message traffic. So I don't think people would game the system, or they would simply end up with unhappy characters.

[Shizzle]

well the rankings would help to find low-activity realms too... at the bottom of the activity ranking   ::)

[Alpha]

Maybe it would be good to allow someone creating a new character the ability to read the last x number of realmwide RP-marked messages. That would allow someone to see how active a given realm is, as well as to give an indication of the style of RP.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

A good majority of the time a player would have no idea about what actually happens in the realm without being part of it. One can always leave, but for new players who might have a bad first experience, it would be just as unfair if the system somehow gave inaccurate ratings about an awesome realm.

[Igelfeld]

Maybe it would be good to allow someone creating a new character the ability to read the last x number of realmwide RP-marked messages. That would allow someone to see how active a given realm is, as well as to give an indication of the style of RP.

I don't think you could do this because it would compromise realm security. If for example a realm wide order was given to march somewhere, someone could see that.

I like the idea, and I think it could be quite useful, but we would need to put considerable limitations on information transmitted. I would have to say that reports, OOC, and orders should not be included as the information can be sensitive.

I thing I think would be a wonderful idea would be to allow a new character to look at the archive of massages from the realm they join. It would allow them to get a general idea about what is going on in the realm.

[Foundation]

I don't think you could do this because it would compromise realm security. If for example a realm wide order was given to march somewhere, someone could see that.

I like the idea, and I think it could be quite useful, but we would need to put considerable limitations on information transmitted. I would have to say that reports, OOC, and orders should not be included as the information can be sensitive.

I thing I think would be a wonderful idea would be to allow a new character to look at the archive of massages from the realm they join. It would allow them to get a general idea about what is going on in the realm.

Ah, you mean random realm-wide messages/rps/orders, say, two week ago.  That doesn't really compromise security and gives a decent sample. (if it does compromise security, then the realm is...not functioning very well. :P )

[Alpha]

I don't think you could do this because it would compromise realm security. If for example a realm wide order was given to march somewhere, someone could see that.

I like the idea, and I think it could be quite useful, but we would need to put considerable limitations on information transmitted. I would have to say that reports, OOC, and orders should not be included as the information can be sensitive.

I thing I think would be a wonderful idea would be to allow a new character to look at the archive of massages from the realm they join. It would allow them to get a general idea about what is going on in the realm.

Only give access to messages marked as RP.  Orders would have to be off limits for obvious reasons.

Or this works too:

Ah, you mean random realm-wide messages/rps/orders, say, two week ago.  That doesn't really compromise security and gives a decent sample. (if it does compromise security, then the realm is...not functioning very well. :P )

[Igelfeld]

Ah, you mean random realm-wide messages/rps/orders, say, two week ago.  That doesn't really compromise security and gives a decent sample. (if it does compromise security, then the realm is...not functioning very well. :P )

That, I think is a good idea. You would still get the sense of typical realm activity levels without the security concerns.

[Perth]

Not all realms are RP heavy... or RP hardly at all. However, that doesn't make them not very active realms.

[egamma]

Not all realms are RP heavy... or RP hardly at all. However, that doesn't make them not very active realms.

I agree with this completely. Even a "heavy" RP letter, such as one sent by my priest, is still marked by me as a letter as long as it's not describing an activity.

[Perth]

I agree with this completely. Even a "heavy" RP letter, such as one sent by my priest, is still marked by me as a letter as long as it's not describing an activity.

Very, very true. I do the same thing, here.

[Shizzle]

Hence why I proposed to have rankings with different variables. :) Or perhaps the Ruler should be able to elect RP's into a Hall of Fame of sorts, like the best RP a realm has to offer? Could be added to the realm summary.