Expanded Rankings System: Feedback & Questions
Throwing up this thread so you give your input on this new system, and ask your questions about how it works, since I've already had quite a few of those. Fire away!
Here's the post for those that can't access it:


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Similarly, do they count against you if you haven't opted in?
speaking of which though... I would like to see something almost more like the inverse of the death counts. Though with a limiter to not include everyone right off the isle. Maybe like everyone circle 80 or 100 who has died the /least/ to PvE. Kind of curious if anyone has made it all the way without dying >.> hardcore mode Aetolia
Omei gives the corpse of a headless cadaver to you.
Omei offers you a quick wink.
"idol56015" a golden idol depicting a Atavian.
Ideas, thoughts?
- Essence contributed (someone already mentioned this)
- Crafting represented somehow (# of owned designs?)
- Languages spoken
I don't necessarily know if they should contribute to overall rankings, but I love weird statistics and would love to see the data regardless!
Why?
Why put in a new ranking system and add everyone back in that decided to opt out of the old ranking system? Don't take this as my being ungrateful, or not wanting this change. I've wanted back into the experience rankings since sometime last year. Hunting just isn't the same to me without getting to see where I rank against others. I'm just curious as to... Why?
1: If we go to the gold standard, Bartle, on player taxonomy, the player style of Achiever is the target of this addition. This playstyle is an acting playstyle, focused on the game world and not so much its players. For the playstyle to be validated it needs a means of comparison to itself, its environment, and its peers. By providing a more robust means of analysis and comparison, everyone who likes this style of gameplay is enriched. And while I enjoy adding sweeping changes to the game, I do encourage my staff to work on things that simply enrich and enhance existing gameplay. While no new content is added by this work, existing content is refreshed and made visible.
Being a bit of a statistician, I adhere to a design philosophy where I look to the status quo as my null hypothesis. In this case, I prefer to take a large addition and make the assumption that it is a positive change, then test against the null of status quo. To do so, everyone needs to be added into the current set and allowed the option to revert to null, otherwise I'd be testing for desire to try new instead of desire to remain null. It's just a design philosophy choice.
2: I need to approach this elsewhere and in a far more sweeping manner, but let's touch on it a little here. Aetolia seems to have a uniquely flippant and adversarial relationship with the game's staff. In this case, I do not see a way to read your comment as not insulting to the level of effort Razmael applied. Perhaps it is your phrasing? In any case, please be careful not to insult staff or treat them with less respect than they deserve.
Ah Idols are a relic that existed before we had a relic system. I'll need to convert them in for it to show up there. I'll poke at that later. I like the idea of total essence offered ranking. I'll see if it's feasible. Essence/Offering code is notoriously terrible and I could get into a long rant about it otherwise.
I don't like the idea of number of owned designs - I don't want to encourage people to spam the design queue. Maybe counting how many times you've actually crafted designs or something. Languages spoken, not sure if that data would have the variance we need to make a real ranking out of it. From what I remember, there's quite a few people running around with all languages learned.
O_o
Like I said, it was purely because there isn't anything related to RP within the rankings, but I don't know what could be offered up as a solution so that there's some sort of representation. As @Tiur said, it could either be abused or would need an excessive amount of work to police.