k1ller’s blog

Psychostats 3 is quite good ranking system but it might not tell everything about the goodness of some player. Here’s what I tried to look for from PS3 database:

Consider a player who has K : D ratio 1.0. That kind of player on average kills only one player per round. If that player has very good skill in PS3 it means that the victims of this player are ranked high on PS3. That is the ELO rating system PS3 is based on.

Now think about player who manages to kill 3 noobs in each round before dying himself. Such player might be as valuable for the team as the player who always kills just the toughest opposite team player.

Player whose K : D ratio is close to 1 with high skill could be actually more valuable for the team than the 1st ranked player on PS3. Here’s what was calculated:

Player skill / (K : D)^1/3 ::: That is “player’s skill divided by cube root of K : D ratio”

Division by cube root is done so that players with high K : D ratio would not suffer so much about the comparison to just K : D. For example player with K : D ratio of 2.5 would have his skill divided by 2.5^1/3 = 1.357. Player with only 2.0 ratio would have division value of 2.0^1/3 = 1.26. Difference between 1.357 and 1.26 is only 0.0973. If we used plain K : D ratio then the player with 2.5 ratio would have his skill divided by comparable larger value than the others. By taking cube root from the ratio the values pack closer to 1.0 and thus are closer to the real skill of the player and even players with high K : D ratio get sane value for alternative rank.

Name		Rank	K : D	Skill	Skill / (K : D)^1/3

koti	  	18  	1.33  	13992  	12724
M@rt!n 		25 	1.35 	13718 	12412
Maksiu 		13 	1.59 	14283 	12237
TupaC	 	4 	1.96 	15293 	12220
dred	 	11 	1.67 	14400 	12137
EchO* 		24 	1.46 	13752 	12122
MITAC 		16 	1.57 	14058 	12095
k1ller 		8 	1.73 	14510 	12087
ANAL .pl	10 	1.73 	14416 	12009
Perplexer	15 	1.65 	14140 	11966
Michaellsland 	12 	1.72 	14327 	11958
lWoDl windman 	29 	1.46 	13520 	11918
?oakak 		20 	1.62 	13959 	11885
emmanuel 	2 	2.24 	15539 	11876
Chinaman 	21 	1.63 	13913 	11822
[odabasz]Pazo 	14 	1.80 	14279 	11738
essim0n 	1 	2.47 	15862 	11734
AJEJ 		28 	1.57 	13614 	11714
FakFeijs 	6 	1.93 	14559 	11693
Dr.House 	23 	1.69 	13839 	11618
k!llErM@ch!nE 	22 	1.72 	13901 	11602
BaLaN 		3 	2.31 	15302 	11576
Sonic 		17 	1.78 	14019 	11567
hg.toble 	19 	1.78 	13990 	11544
voov		9 	2.00 	14469 	11484
The[Rip]Ice_Fin	27 	1.71 	13631 	11399
hg.antizero 	5 	2.30 	15011 	11372
S.G#antizero 	7 	2.28 	14552 	11056

On that list you should see players who do not necessarily get lots of kills but know how to kill the other skilled players. Notice that the values in the last column don’t actually mean anything else but the order of the list. What was expected that the players who have rushing style of playing drop somewhat lower on this ranking list. They manage to kill the first couple noobs who come across their way at the beginning of each round and thus get high K : D ratio. Players who are more careful in their play either kill these first rushers or wait for the other skilled players to come to their line of fire.

Gameplay level

Currently the plugin “nonoobs time” (reserve slots for regular players) is inactive due to some technical issues (PS2 stats are not computed anymore) and the fact that there is maybe not enough online time for all regular players to be considered as regular visitors. Plugin is custom written so it’s possible to convert it to use PS3 data instead of PS2. Sometime in the near future (during this week?) it will be active again, hopefully.

What I’ve observed is that the gameplay really suffers because there are lots of more noobs than regular players. Now, because there are lots of noobs many good players get insane scores by killing lots of noobs. Because noobs cannot coordinate their attacks the few regular players cannot do much to get their team winning.

Pay attention to level of gameplay now and after the nonoobs plugin is enabled again.

Balancing teams

Team balancing is always a bit tricky question. Most players seem to think this as trivial but then again most players are stupid. Here are some thoughts about how team balancing can be done (either in wrong fashion or correctly).

1. Admin swaps player from other team to another

This might be the most popular method of manual balancing. This method further divides to atleast two categories.

1.1 Swap “random” player from winning team to another

Swapping “random” player is not a good solution. Consider situation where team A is winning clearly and admin then “balances” teams by swapping someone to another team. Then team B starts winning and in the end scores are even - everybody happy? No. Even though the scores are even doesn’t mean that the teams are balanced. Swapping one good player (ie. anyone in PS3 top-50) can and usually does change the balance upside down. Usually players seem happy with this option even though it is clear by the next round that team B is going to start their winning streak evening the scores till the map ends.

Swapping one (good) player to another team has kind of double-effect. First it takes one good player away from the team A and gives that extra skills to team B. Not surprisingly the player who was swapped has lots of money, good weapons and kevlars and can continue his killing streak in the team B. Then team B starts winning because team A has actually lost the skill of the swapped player and team B benefits alot of this extra skill. This is the wrong way to balance teams!

1.2 Swap worst player in the winning team

This is quite much the best balancing option. Swapping some complete noob (who are omnipresent) does not change drastically team A’s tactics but gives a bit of extra firepower to team B. In 95% of cases it is just this insignificant noob who does not realize his position in the team which can make all the difference in balancing. However swapping noob in a balanced situation is not likely to have any change in the gameplay. That is, the noob does not have enough skills to play as a member of the team and as such does not affect the whole gameplay drastically. By complete noobs I mean players who get scores like 1 - 7 after 8 rounds.

2. “Fair” player swaps himself to another team

Sometimes this works but usually not in the intended way. Any player in the top-25 makes so much difference that if such player swaps himself to another team it completely changes balance. The player himself might see that he is balancing the teamplay by going to another team and make the other team win. That is not balancing! That is going to teamwhore in the other team with all the good weapons, kevlars and lots of money. The other team doesn’t expect anyone to be against them with AWP and are used to kill people with couple shots (enemies don’t have kevlars because they don’t have money). The “fair” player who swapped himself to another team now gets lots of easy kills and can quite easily make his team winning again because the other team lost his skills and the other team gained his skills. Anyone in top-25 shouldn’t change his team during one map (unless autobalanced).

3. Autobalancing

Mani admin plugin does autobalancing quite nicely even though it is completely random. There are some balancing plugins which look at the player skills, kills or other information to do balancing. However it is very common that these plugins overbalance the teams. It really kills the concept of teamplay if every round one or couple players change sides to make teams as even as possible. It’s not teamplay anymore.

4. Conclusion

Teams are balanced when it is X vs. X (X is some number). Usually atleast. Sometimes it just happens that the other team plays better than the other. That is not reason to swap some player to another team to make game “balanced” -  by “balanced” I mean that the other team starts winning so that the scores are even at the end of map. Just like in any other sport sometimes the other team is just better. Just look any national sports league and you can observe that sometimes some good teams just play badly. That is their fault! They should be improving their play rather than getting extra players! Next month the same teams meet again and the scores can be upside down.

Don’t cry for balance - just play better.