Conquer Club

The idea is to integrate guidelines into the rating themselves as a way to elicit more accurate and reliable ratings from players with less element of interpretation. It is well known that how you ask a poll question can have a large effect on its outcome. So if there is better control over how that question is asked, poll results should improve.

Some possible examples:

Fairplay:
(a pull down list)

• (default) Did not do anything particularly fair or unfair.(unlisted rating of 4)
• Used some cheesy tactics. Nothing particularly bad.(3)
• Went out of the way to play fair & be considerate, even if it made victory more difficult(5)
• Really cheesy tactics, maybe nothing illegal but very questionable.(2)
• Certain or almost certain this player broke the rules. Perhaps you should report them(1)
• I am undecided what to rate this person. (no rating)

Remember, the value attached to these responses would be hidden. Though we could tell anyone who bothered coming to the forum what they indicated anyway.

You could do that with the other two attributes as well. Except giving them a default rating of 3. Fairplay would default at 4 because it is ismostly decided by lack of unfair play in a game like this.

Attitude you might consider starting out with a default of no rating. Since if someone doesn't talk then there isn't anything to go by. To assist with this you could have peoples languages (or in rare case illiterate) listed by their name so you can know if that is the cause of their silence (then a friendliness rating of two if they intentionally ignore any chatter?)

You might consider renaming one or two of them. Like instead of gameplay, "skill".

TruePurple wrote:[
Remember, the value attached to these responses would be hidden. Though we could tell anyone who bothered coming to the forum what they indicated anyway.

Those values would be figured out almost instantly though so any such effects would be quickly lost.

TruePurple wrote: You might consider renaming one or two of them. Like instead of gameplay, "skill".

Ratings isn't supposed to measure a players skill, that is left to the ranking.

Those values would be figured out almost instantly though so any such effects would be quickly lost.

It is perfectly fine if they figure it out. As I said in my post, we could even make it public for anyone to read on the forum. But the guidelines will be in there and it will still influence decisions I think. People want guidelines for something like this I think.

Ratings isn't supposed to measure a players skill, that is left to the ranking.

Then explain "gameplay" rating.

TruePurple wrote: It is perfectly fine if they figure it out. As I said in my post, we could even make it public for anyone to read on the forum. But the guidelines will be in there and it will still influence decisions I think. People want guidelines for something like this I think.

Better definitions of what behaviour that deserves what rating would probably be helpful, not sure it would make that much difference though in the end product if you keep that as a numbered average. Would probably need to delete all ratings given at start over fresh to get it to fully work.

TruePurple wrote: Then explain "gameplay" rating.

From the Instructions page.
Rating Attributes

• Fair Play: Covers suiciding, secret alliance suspicion, breaking or respecting alliances, chivalry, etc...
• Gameplay: Measures the player's ability to play an enjoyable game (not the player's ability to win). Covers strategy, diplomacy, teamwork, etc...
• Attitude: Covers behaviour in chat, foul language, sore losers, gracious winners, "great chatters!", whining about luck, etc...

Yes I did read that

Covers strategy, diplomacy, teamwork, etc.

AKA skill.

Would probably need to delete all ratings given at start over fresh to get it to fully work.

That may be true. But I think it would help anyway.

But yeah, when we have a fully working new system, it may be worth deleting all ratings for a fresh start. Or making those ratings have no effect on the averages. Maybe existing players with enough plays could get a rating that does count to averages to start them off equal to their averages from before. (just so they don't fall back to "not rated")