Enemy Territory implements XPs, which measure player scores based on specific actions, such as kills, construction, or revive. They are also used to control the various skill levels, similarly to a RPG. While not part of the original game, the ability to accumulate XPs indefinitely, as known as "XP save", has been a popular addition in many mods. We all know it: players crave for their XPs. Players accumulate XPs like coins map after map, and they love exhibiting XPs on servers to show how hard and how long they worked to earn them.
However, XPs don't give any indication of the real global performance of a player. At best, they merely give a hint about the time the player has played on a specific server. Saving XPs also create some imbalance by enabling special abilities given by skill levels permanently, such as adrenaline for medics which directly leads to the infamous "Rambo medics" that everyone hates. This has never been accounted for in the original game balance, where XPs were reset at the end of matches or the end of campaigns. With Legacy mod aiming to stay close to the original game design, it makes sense to not encourage the use of XP Save as so many mods do.
Starting from the next 2.76 release, only the XPs earned in the current map or campaign will be displayed. Instead of the total accumulated XPs, we're introducing a new metric, known as "Skill Rating".
The idea is simple: Skill Rating is a new, proved metric that can be used to compare skill of players over time. As FPS require skills in multiple areas like reflex, planning, tactical analysis or teamwork, with the relative importance of these skills depending on the map, game mode, player roles or team compositions, a skill rating can be defined as a measure of "all parameters of a player that help his team to win" and calculated using a statistical approach.
The idea of using statistics to estimate the skill of players isn't new. ETPub implements such a metric with its "Player Rating" that gives a normalized skill score. However, "Skill Rating" of Legacy mod is modeled after TrueSkill, a more modern algorithm that has been developed by MicroSoft for its XBox matching service. It has many advantages over the ETPub's PR, and is very well documented. It has been extended to take map bias into account. Ranks will also be adjusted to reflect the rating of the player, instead of reflecting the skill levels and XPs.
The Skill Rating has been gradually implemented in the past Legacy release, with the final version being currently tested on our official test server. Connect now to etlegacy.com to have a preview of the system!
Frequently Asked Question
It is a value between 0 and 50 assigned to each player. It represents its ability to help his team to win the map. Rating will be updated after each map played at intermission. New players will have a rating of 0, and it will increase over time.
The rating value determined by using the strength of the team, time played in each team and the map. The performance of disconnected players is taken into account.
- What do I need to do to have a good Skill Rating?
Do whatever is necessary to win the map.
- What are the percentage numbers displayed on scoreboard (using double Tab)?
The first value represent the real time estimate of each team winning the map, while the second is the map bias.
- The number show that the current game is unbalanced!
The rating system takes balance into account when updating rating. It is thus "fair" to lose an unbalanced map.
Winning a map against a much weaker team will not increase your rating much, but losing against a weaker team will make your rating drop sharply.
Conversely, to increase your rating quickly, join the weaker team and win as an underdog!
- Where do I learn more about this Skill Rating system?
For interested people that want additional details, see the related wiki document and implementation ticket.
written by Spyhawk 7 years ago
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