Age of Strategy Forums

A combined request from several players discussed in a chat group, Mickmackmike, AndySensei, AOSGod and myself.

There is a general opinion that the Level 5 multiplayer badge should be harder to attain and retain by quite a lot. The ingame description calls Lv 5 the best and most active players, but in practice this is not really the case. We feel the top badge should be indicative of a long time and very battle hardened player. Reason being is to make Lv 5 badge matches truly a clash of the titans.

Also, does games completed still give a big boost to your badge rating? Because in the past this has been abused by people resigning by turn 3 or 4 to get the game over boost, and also skews towards players who play a lot of short games which does not necessarily equate to the level of someone who plays more longer games. Perhaps make it turns taken only?

Or is it possible to add in a 6th level or ridiculously high requirements for the enthusiasts/addicts?

that badge is not about skills. only about activeness.

about skills and XP should be the XP later to be a filter maybe in games.

Stratego, the issue is that when we post a 5 badge game we get people join who are relative beginners who either quit or who are better than beginners but not at the same level.

At the moment it seems like anybody can get to 5 stars within a few months of playing, so basically anybody who plays is already at 5 stars...
So at the same time there is nothing to achieve to get to this goal of a higher rank.. It's simply to easy to achieve.

If It is set higher so a component of playing for a minimum of 9 months for example and a minimum level of played games would be better. That way each level is harder to get to.

For me I would prefer to play with people who have enough games that would put people who are experienced at the game on a higher level. Not set up a multiplayer game and have someone quit 2 turns into the game for example, or be an unbalanced player, which is usually the case with relatively new players.

Mike.

It would be nice to have a level 6 obsidian badge for very active and long players. Like, 1 year to get difficulty or so. Because the last badge i think is a joke.

And i agree with mike and phoenix. The level 5 badge is rlly easy to achieve. I remember getting it in 1 month or less of gameplay in AoF multiplayer. Maybe make it harder to get the last badge or add another badge - level 6 shield would make match-making with actually "active" players be nicer.

Badnorth wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:33 am It would be nice to have a level 6 obsidian badge for very active and long players. Like, 1 year to get difficulty or so. Because the last badge i think is a joke.

And i agree with mike and phoenix. The level 5 badge is rlly easy to achieve. I remember getting it in 1 month or less of gameplay in AoF multiplayer. Maybe make it harder to get the last badge or add another badge - level 6 shield would make match-making with actually "active" players be nicer.

i can only repeat myself: this badge is NOT about skill!
it is very good and intentional that these badges are granted to "beginners" too who had played a few weeks and were very active.


as i said XP limitation setting will solve your needs to get experienced players, or other idea if u have - but NOT the activite badge!

Stratego (dev) wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:47 am
as i said XP limitation setting will solve your needs to get experienced players, or other idea if u have - but NOT the activite badge!

But the multiplayers have significantly lower XP than the single players - XP isn't really indicative of skill in the multiplayer arena. @mickmackmike and myself are frequent playmates, and along with others in our group of AoS regulars we would like to be able to filter through skilled multiplayers rather than experienced campaign players if such a thing was possible. Yes, it is possible to be both, but high XP from single player does not necessarily translate into MP ability.

I admit it is not easy to think of a workable system, but it would be good to have a skill ranking somehow, based on performance in multiplayer. Tbh, many of the top players are only in it for the challenge of playing against other top players, we don't really do campaigns - but our XP levels are dwarfed by those that do, even though we could smite all before us in multiplayer.

Something to think about... how can we measure that most valid of criteria, game skill.