Toribash
Original Post
Reinstate a Past Ranking System (An Argument for Change)
Please think clearly about what I'm going to say about the ranking system before you just say no.

This ranking system was a cool attempt at making the "better players" have a higher rank but it simply didn't work.

To quote [RAWR]Dargon:

The problem is ELO systems don't work in a game like toribash.

My main argument is that the current ELO system supports the absolute opposite of what Nabi Studios would want to have in an atmosphere to acquire new players. It also casts out enthused players who want to try lots of different things and learn from better more experienced people.


1) The current system rewards those who don't try a variety of mods.

Most high rank people (Read: 1-35) are there because they played the hell out of 1 mod and didn't venture off to try other mods. The point being that it's way easier to go 60 wins 2 losses in a game like jousting with one decent opener against new players and have a super high ELO (proof... well me) than it is to go 20-5 in a slower mod like Wushu.

Playing MORE mods should be what the game encourages; however, if you start playing aikido and only have an ELO of say 1610, when your jousting ELO is 1700, your rank plummets. Thus playing more mods currently is a bad thing.

2) The point system doesn't work and frustrates members.

A good example is what happened to me yesterday. I played brushu, and won a game against [fl0w]Deprav (a highly ranked brushu player), then a game against [Alpha]Logic (the #1 ranked brushu player in toribash), followed by a loss to the ranked 120th player or somewhere in that region. The net result? I actually lost 2 ELO points. I won 2 games, and lost 1, my 2 games were incredibly quality wins, and actually got a WORSE rank.

This just goes to show the math simply isn't working here. If you can beat the absolute best player, a fantastic player, and then lose to a great player, and be worse off when you started... well that's simply counter-intuitive isn't it?


3) The current system discourages playing people who aren't good (the Ambassador argument)

Better players of toribash are really the ambassadors for Nabi studios more than even GameMasters from time to time. They give new people a chance of what could come of them and the beauty of highly skill play. But the current system deterrs amazing people to play those who aren't good because one lost game can make the great player lose a LOAD of ranking. Getting a streak of 5, then losing once, only to have the same or worst ranking as you started is completely disheartening. You should want great players to want to play with not-so-great-ones to really show what your character can look like, what toris can do, and learn from them.

http://forum.toribash.com/tori_ranki...?username=Mojo This is the #1 Ranked player in Toribash. Check out the stats. Notice anything? Outside of JOUSTING and KATANA this player, the player who will represent all of the thousands of thousands of players who some started in 7 years ago as NUMBER ONE has a 1600 ranking in almost every skill mod out there. Has Wushu3, aikido, taekkyon, you name it. 1600 is the starting elo...

4) Our current top ranked leaders aren't role-models (a continuation of the Ambassador argument)

SEVEN of the top TEN players ranked globally in toribash haven't reached 3rd Dan Black Belt. Two of them haven't even reached black belt yet. These members aren't well-known good people in great clans that people aspire to. There are absolutely amazing players in clans like [RAWR] whos rank is near the 2000's meanwhile players you and I have never even heard of are sporting the highest of ranks. Is that really who you want to learn is the "best"? Who would you feel more comfortable being rank 5: TIcux, or "BigClitor" or "BigPrick" (I kid you not, those last 2 are both in the top 10)

5) Promotes rage quitting. It's simple: if you have a 1700 mmr in jousting and someone has a 1590 mmr rating, and they are about to lose to you, they'll lose a shit ton of ranking unless they ragequit. We should be encouraging people to stay the whole match.



TLR Summary

The current system makes unaccomplished players look like heroes to new players, tells people not to play a variety of mods, encourages the play of simple fast mods like judo and jousting over a variety of mods that might take more skill (aikido, aikidobigdojo, lenshu, wushu, taekkyon, judofrac) to name a few, mathematically seems to not work, and discourages the great players who should serve as ambassadors from playing with new players, and RAGE QUITTING.



The Solution? Bring back the QI system!!!

The highest rank people should be the people with the highest QI because that's what actually works in Toribash. Why?

1) Because rage quitting sucks and we should encourage people to stay through the whole match. Rank 15 whoever should want to accept defeat against rank 500,000 white belt honorably because he might be getting closer to Rank 14. Meanwhile, that white belt's DAY WAS MADE beating you.

2) It give quantifiable reason to PLAY TORIBASH. The more you play, the more QI you get, the higher your rank. The old people who have given years and years don't feel like idiots with thumbs up where the sun don't shine because they're rank 3000, and the newer players WANT black belt, 2nd dan, 5th dan, 10th dan, WHATEVER to improve their rank! Isn't a line-up like Tripstone, DJ, TIcux, Nuthug, Kamiko, Dargon a better top 6 than .... Mojo, Kindercat, zaeby, PREY3R, and pedart?

3) It doesn't discourage you from playing any mod you want. Sure, jousting is faster than aikido, and a person who only plays jousting will get QI faster and have a higher rank. But at least if you like jousting, and you decide to play some aikido, you won't completely f over your rank playing it.

4) It encourages coherency AND LEARNING throughout toribash. When you want to get good at a mod, you typically surround yourself with people much better than you (ergo, want to be an aikido player? Play team sambo members. Etc). But you're going to lose a lot doing that. I don't think you should hate yourself from trying to learn a mod because it dropped your rank from 200 to 1700.



And I ALREADY know the major criticism. THIS SYSTEM PROMOTES FARMING!!!

Yes. It does. Having QI determine your rank absolutely promotes farming. But what sounds better of a problem? Farmers farming, and more than likely getting caught because we have ways to catch farmers pretty easily (check out that community ban list!) or having hundreds of people rage quitting to save their rank? Losing rank by the hundreds from trying something new? I think the choice is obvious.


A last point

All of toribash has ever been is playing more toribash. Since you first joined, you probably wanted to wear a color that required you play more games, or get a belt you want, even a custom belt, etc. Make the system reflect what toribash is actually about-> stress-free fun, punishment free, playing. We already have our win-loss ratio publicly posted. If you want to prove your skilled try to increase that. There's no need for this system which 100% DOESN'T work.




To those of you who have read all of that, thank you. I appreciate it. To those of you who didn't, I recommend you do, because you're going to probably make posts that I've already addressed in this argument.
Last edited by Bodhisattva; May 23, 2013 at 02:21 AM.
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I love your 4th and 5th idea, OfUnknown. Mostly because it works so well in LoL and other games like that where it is very competitive.
If ranks were to be reset yearly, that would be great. It means that if you want to keep a high rank, you need to actually play the game instead of just attaining rank 1 and then quitting the game.
Perhaps if this was implemented there could be a large-scale event each year where players from different leagues/tiers compete against each other for a prize of some sort (eg. tier 1 players vs tier 1 players: big prize because it has bigger competition / is hard to win. tier 5 v tier 5: small prize because not as competitive /easier to win than tier 1 comp).

Some further ideas for this:
1) To rank up between each tier you need to do a series of ranked matches and if you fail to win then you have to wait a certain period before having the chance of ranking up again.

2) If you're inactive after a while and fail to complete ranked matches within a certain amount of time then you are demoted to a lower tier / if your rank drops too low you get demoted.

I feel this could work if ranked servers were put in place with a limit on how many ranked matches you can do per day.
I didn't mean just wait a few matches, I meant like couple of weeks. You can still do ranked matches and raise your ELO, but won't be able to get into the next tier until you complete the series of matches.

Limiting the number of ranked matches won't stop players from playing Toribash just because the next matches won't count towards your ELO. They'll continue to play for TC / fun. Majority of players do not even care about their ranks, this is just something for the minority of players that actually care about a number and the limitation is just there so they don't go overboard and farm. Surely waiting a day to do another 10 ranked matches won't hurt so much would it?

The resetting of ranks won't be useless, because as I said there could be an annual event put in place for this where players compete against other players in the same tiers for a prize of some sort.
Small prize for the lower tiers (not small as in low-priced items/small amount of TC but small as in a medium-priced item/s) and larger prize for the higher tiers. Since it would be a yearly thing the large prize could actually be a large prize like 1mil TC or something, just an idea.
The demotion thing wouldn't be demanding so that you have to play, but if you want to be rank 1 then you should at least play occasionally.. (note: you don't have to play if you don't want to)
Last edited by Holotor; May 7, 2014 at 11:02 AM.
I don't know about the qi system you suggested, but everything else is a 100% must. The ELO system sucks and it would be nice to have a healthy promoting system. Where if you only play one mod, your rank wouldn't be that high, etc. Thanks. I hope this gets implemented.
Last edited by WAPOW; May 7, 2014 at 01:25 PM.
Chickster: I literally don't know why I did it.
Sorry, I wasn't talking about that. Clarificationnn

I don't read that much. ;)
Chickster: I literally don't know why I did it.
it can give a goal for some ppl.

also, season thing is a really nice idea, a system like League of legends who have rank and tier in it.

would be nice to see that
no u

Rank is about skill not amount of games played, Just because you found toribash at the start doesn't mean you get a good rank. Also what about all the in-active people with a high qi...

Playing a mix of mods doesn't make your rank bad either.. I reguarly play a mix of around 8 competive mods and my rank is around (100 - 400 )

Althou the current rank system sucks and I dont like that alts get a good rank, QI rank system seems worse.
Last edited by FistofLife; May 14, 2014 at 10:43 PM.
How about if global rank is not related to mod rank and you click a matchmaking mod where it pairs you with someone of simmilar 'elo' (i think elo is right word) and you play like 5 games then your both backed out of the lobby, You click matchmaking again and find a new opponent of simmilar skill. Say a rank 35 and 36 are paired and the rank 35 wins the majority of games, they would then go to rank 34 and the loser goes to rank 37.


This would reset everyone's global rank to 0 for now and people would start again only obtaining rank threw matchmaking matches.

The matchmaking mods could be random selection of 5 competitive mods, e.g wushu, aikido, lenshu, rk-mma, TK.

Mod ranks could stay the current way but are not effected or effect global rank.

Seems like a lot of work so I guess it will never happen XD
Originally Posted by FistofLife View Post
How about if global rank is not related to mod rank and you click a matchmaking mod where it pairs you with someone of simmilar 'elo' (i think elo is right word) and you play like 5 games then your both backed out of the lobby, You click matchmaking again and find a new opponent of simmilar skill. Say a rank 35 and 36 are paired and the rank 35 wins the majority of games, they would then go to rank 34 and the loser goes to rank 37.


This would reset everyone's global rank to 0 for now and people would start again only obtaining rank threw matchmaking matches.

The matchmaking mods could be random selection of 5 competitive mods, e.g wushu, aikido, lenshu, rk-mma, TK.

Mod ranks could stay the current way but are not effected or effect global rank.

Seems like a lot of work so I guess it will never happen XD

Matchmaking of some sort was implemented before, which didn't work out, but I don't see why something like this couldn't work.

Currently there's already a few complex server commands like duel mode which have effect in forum as well as ingame regarding tc totals.

How about just taking the current elo system and restricting it to a mode similiar to duel mode where you win and your rank/elo is updated on forums and ingame.

Allowing you to learn would be easy to do if ranking was seperate from casual play, you could play anything with no reprocussions. You always get qi, but rank can only be obtained via something similiar to this idea.

Maybe tweak one thing, though. Belt based ranking is removed and replaced with a system that rewards you with more elo for beating people with higher ranks instead and discourages you from playing people with lower ranks. Hell, people always complain about alts but if an alt is of any decent skill level they'll have a high elo and low rank. If they have earned it via this rank system then it's a level playing field for higher belts to get higher ranks and low belts as well. New players can still get rank quickly if they improve enough to beat people with high ranks, so there's that as well.

One problem was pretty much that higher belts have a handicap when it comes to ranking up and lower belts have an advantage so the same person could achieve a high rank much easier just by using an alternate account. Also Hax brought up that you're discouraged from playing lots of different mods. This seems like it would solve both issues.

Ynvaser also said remove global rank and tbh a global rank 1 player even if earnt properly probably doesn't deserve rank 1 all mods considered. Why not set a system up where your modrank updates to match the mod you're playing instead of global. Global rank then gets removed entirely. I actually wouldn't mind seeing that either as well and it adds more value to modranks which right now don't feel so special
Last edited by N3WB; Aug 17, 2014 at 04:08 PM.
If you want to gain mod rank farm (as in consistently play) noobs. The exact same as global rank. If you are gonna remove global rank you may as well remove mod rank.

I think a match making system is the only way, it would be a load of effort but a menu like halo reach (i think) where you can veto the maps, instead you would veto the mods.

So seven competitive mods come up, you and your opponent both get to eliminate one and then you play 5 games in 5 mods. Winner of the majority gains rank. Loser would lose rank.

This would only work if losing wasn't a massive penalty. So you 3 our of 5, you would lose 1 rank. If you were to win 3 out of 5 you gain one rank. This basically means you gotta win over %50 of games against people with similar ranks in order to be moving up the rank ladder.

After you get into the top 20, only the best would be able to start winning %60 or more and then rightfully gain rank 1.

Once you get to rank 1 then a system would have to be implemented so that you have to play something like at least 3 games a weak other wise your rank would fall.

I guess the flaw in this would be that, once you are say rank 10 there probably would be very few rank 5-20 players online, in order for a fair game.

I think one of the largest benefits to this is that you would be able to play 50 unranked games in fun mods and your rank would not be effected.

New improvement came into my mind, since everyone hates alt accounts being good ranks, how about to start playing ranked games there is a 3,000 QI limit (like ultimate lobbys). This is totally fair, since anyone below 3rd dan would not be in the running for the 'good' ranks.
Last edited by FistofLife; Aug 21, 2014 at 08:16 PM.