Ranking based on skill

[Captain Mulec]

Hi Captains,

The other day i just got an idea about totaly different ranking system, closer to the real world rankings, ranking that is based on skill not just grinding alone.

So to get further into explanation, my idea was that people still have to grind to reach a next step but after they reach it they unlock a test, test that makes you rank up and show your skill worthines of that rank. I remember some games i ve played in past that wanted "boss challenge" or certain score in limited time to be colected before passing to next level but i ve never seen it in online gaming where grinding is usually the only measure of someone strength. I am really happy that ranks here are limited and not like in other games where when the players reach max level they only add more levels and skills. BUT, i have noticed that as soon as i reached the final Rear Admiral rank game just lost some of its charm, yes its always great to have some goals, before reaching RA rank it was grinding to get there but after that it was just something missing, and i was not the only one that noticed that, also other clan members became less frequent players after reaching RA rank.

Next question that came to my mind was what would be the challenge and i thought fighting AI ships is too predictable, but fighting lets say against two players of the same rank with at least 2:1 BR in their favor would be something that could be "Rear admiral" difficult, for example. So lets say that difficulty gets harder and harder more you rank up, really difficult to get to RA rank, dificult - Commodore, moderate - Flag captain, and lower ranks easy. So yes those hight rank players would have some benefits of bigger crew numbers naturally but it would at the same time mean that PBs could finnaly become more diverse since not all would be able to crew biggest and baddest ships. This would introduce much more strategicaly diverse battles combined of lineships and frigates. Atm the system forces us that we all sail only Victorys and L'oceans in 1st rate PBs, its a huge loss if some noob player with Surprise accidently joins the battle.

But bad side is that this system could get abused if aliances, let say US and Brits are allys but they agree to become enemys for the sake of promoting themself up, cheating. So aliances would have to become fixed that oposing armys would fight fiercly not wanting the enemy to get promoted and rank up, getting stronger. Also lets face it, we havent been changing aliances a lot. Its mostly Brit-USA-VP vs FRA-SPA-Danes-Swedes. Well it could be also set to different aliances based on historical facts or some thing like that.

So to actually make this rank up there could be "Promotion event" or something like that accesible in missions window on specific hours when the server population is at its peak and opponents would be picked randomly. Defenders or lets say the ones fighting against player that wants to rank up would get certain rewards for participating or maybe something else, something to motivate them that best players would join. I was thinking that it would be even better to put this battles in OW but realised this could get abused by players with multiple accounts in different aliances.

Atm we already have a large base of high ranked players (including me) and it would be a bit dificult to convince all of them that now they wont be able to sail big ships right away. But lets say we all keep our grinding XP and people only would have to do "Promotion battles" to rank up properly to whichever skill rank is suited for them. If they are good and skilled this means only few battles for reaching RA rank and im sure that would be a epic battles.

This new rank system could surely add some excitement to the game. Just imagine how proud would a flag captain be if he sank a rear admiral player. Just imagine diverse ship port battles. 

Well its just an idea, might work or not, depends how it would be implemented to find the right ballance.

[Hethwill]

Given the XP ( and gold ) already work different in testbed and will eventually see the light into production...

... any of the new system ( or suggested system as you do ) only makes 100% sense if we ALL start totally from ZERO on release.

We are all ranked up, we don't care about what system is in place.

The upcoming one is good, actually very good. Alas only newcomers will really feel it.

[Raekur]

One slight issue would be player vs player to rank up. Too easy to 'arrange' a battle for rank vs either an alt or a friend. Not to mention the other aspect of skill level and a little bit of luck also makes the 'test' highly variable. This system would also penalize those players that do more trading and crafting than PVP. 

[Captain Mulec]

Not easy to arrange if event is at peak time only with some minimal number of participants required to start and random player selection. Yes there can be some variabilities and luck but so is in real life. When fighting 2vs1 there is mostly just skill that counts.

 

About penalizing traders/crafters, the system would go like that:

Rear admiral - very difficult

Commodore - Difficult

Flag captain - Moderate

Captain - Easy

Lower ranks - Grinding only

Since Captain can crew 350 this means he can safely crew even the largest trading ship Indiaman, especially with a skill that will be like Extra Hammocks was. We are yet to see how crafting system will look like after the wipe.

Edited April 10, 2017 by Captain Mulec

[Liq]

Personally I dont think locking the ability to crew certian ships (lineships mainly) through a skill-rank is a good idea. Many people just want to have a nice brawl in a 25v25 now and then, don't really bother too much about their 'skill' but just want to enjoy the scenery/gameplay, and I think that has to be respected.
However, in the past there were a few good proposals regarding a seperate ranking system. Zooloo came up with a good one, which focusses on something more optical rather than strictly locking crew behind a wall which might drive many players off.

I really think some kind of reputation system would really improve the general game experience for OW-PvP players and at the same time encourage them to actively look for targets, promote PvP. Might work well combined with a bounty system as suggested by Hachiroku

Admin came up with a proposal:

1. You don't like someone too much (your annoying nation mate)
2. You create bounty by paying a lot of money (maybe real money)... or lot of pvp marks or conquest marks. 
3. If someone sinks or boards him he loses a lot of XP.

In this case using alts to claim the bounty will not be desirable. In all other cases alts or friends can claim bounty and share it with the the person who was supposed to die or be captured making the bounty feature useless (or fake).

[Vernon Merrill]

Another instance of an idea being plausible except for the fact that Alts render it unusable.

[Captain Mulec]

One way to make Alts unusable is to create special event in missions tab, where event would take place at server population peak time and would still need some minimum amount of people to start the battles. Defending players would have been chosen by system RANDOMLY. System would also choose apropriate ships for all players to create perfect BR ratio needed for promotion but it would always be 2 defenders vs 1 attacker. This way even if one alt actually gets in the other defender can report it if he founds it suspicious.

Edited April 10, 2017 by Captain Mulec

[Raekur]

As i stated before, player driven promotions is a very BAD idea. Casual players will never advance and if the 2 players drawn are both very advanced players it will make the challenge very unfair with no chance to win. If this occurs too often this will drive people away from the game from sheer frustration. Or what about the person seeking the promotion being friends with one of the testers who in turn does not fight at full capacity because he wants the guy to get the promotion. Basically, there are way to many ways to abuse this kind of approach towards gaining rank. Gaining rank should always be equal and the exact same for every player. This approach makes equality for everyone impossible.

[Captain Mulec]

I agree, it can get very complicated this way (still idea in progress), way easier and fairer if the challenge would be players vs AI, but since AIs are so predictable this might be a problem. Well maybe if we go AI way and add a bit more BR diffeence. It would still be a challenge to win lets say 2:1 or maybe even 3:1 ratio BR battles. This way it would be easy to apply a new system and it would be up to devs to decide the difficulty of the challenges.

[Raekur]

Yes, I think a better approach is to increase the number of ships attacking the player or placing the player in a class 3 for instance and have him fight 4 or 5 surprises. Though they are smaller ships due to their maneuverability they can be quite deadly to a large ship with limited mobility.

[Captain Mulec]

Yep that way some serious challenges could be created and they would be the same for all players.

[Captain Mulec]

After discussing idea here i agree that this system might work better if it would be PvE not PvP based. Especially since it would be the same challenge for all players and this would as well totaly eliminate any explotation or cheating.

This sysem could be used without removing grinded XP from players, they would keep XP but rank would be returned to Master commander, then they would have to do some special rank up battles.

From midshipmen to Master commander - grinding based rank up

To Captain - Easy challenge

To Flag captain - Moderate challenge

To Commodore - Difficult challenge

To Rear admiral - Very difficult challenge

And to Admiral (if it will be added in future) - almost impossible

 

Then the only thing that would have to be decided are what are the challenges. Perhaps you vs multiple AI ships with carefully chosen BR ballance, not in your favour. Prehaps it could be different by nature, lets say challenge for ranking to captain gives your ship carronades and forces you into close combat. Then to flag captain it could be that you start in the middle of large enemy fleet being ganked up with purpose to escape them, this would mean heavy use of chains and sail triming, totaly different playstyle. Then there could be boarding oriented challenge and so on,... So challenges could be diverse and would double as a way to learn some new aproaches that some players have probably never tried before and are inexperienced in that area. It would be like a Naval Academy where you learn new skills and get promoted at the same time. But if that part is already too complicated or of no use we could just scratch that and stick to specific ship vs ship combinations of different difficulties. Any suggestions welcome.