Scoring System

[CAP1]

My problem with K/T is that it encourages people to bail out when they run out of ammo or fuel, rather then return to base. 

hijack in progress......

i was in a p39 the last week......got into a fight with a p38....and i ran outta ammo.(was attackign a panzer when he inned me) i kept turning with him, while calling someone with ammo to come get him.....i didn't feel it wise to run, as he'd run me down....bailing wasn't an option, cause it would've given him a kill he didn't deserve , so i hadda keep fighting....it went for almost 2 minutes before he realized i had no ammo left!

hijack attempt complete

[CAP1]

No you don't.  The ones that are a mark of a true timid warrior are those with high K/D with a low K/S and low Kills per Hour along with a high hit %.  Those are your pickers and vulchers.


ack-ack

hey!!!!!  zip it you alt tard timid non turnfighting meanie!!!!!!!


sorry dude.....but it was fun watching a certain player rant at ya last night in mw

[grizz441]

I disagree with the proposed solution as I stated above, however, I do believe there are areas of the scoring system that should be addressed:

These small changes would make the scoring system simpler and more striagtforward IMO.

read it before posting, read it again to make sure. the only change I see to rank scoring is increasing the loading of points. If I missed something, please enlighten me.

If not, my question still stands - how does just increasing the loading prevent score manipulation?

I'll try to explain this in a different way.  Firstly RTHolmes.  Stat Milking is when you only fly a hand selected few missions and focus on boosting your ratios.  Obviously having a Shot Percentage of 25% and K/D of 20 and K/S of 20 etc isn't feasible if you fly a lot of missions over a campaign.  But it is feasible if you only fly 5-10 vulch missions.  If you beef up your ratios doing this you can completely ignore points for the rest of the campaign, as it is only worth an additional 20% to your overall fighter rank.  Look at Shawk's fighter score for example (again like I said before no offense to SHawk's skills, I know he is very good but knows how to game the system) Now in my system if points were weighted at 50%... Gaming your ratios would no longer be feasible since you are now sacrificing a whopping 50% of the total weight of fighter.  This concept can be applied to attack, vehicle, and bomber as well.


Now, to address your point BaldEagl, you are under the impression that all the players that play the most will have the best ranks, and that is far from true.  Although points would be worth 50%, their significance would still have diminishing returns as you fly more and more.  Going from rank 15 to rank 2 in Points is a lot of points to accumulate but it wouldn't help your rank that much.  As long as a player could achieve a point total for a campaign in the upper 50 Percentile with good ratios, he will still have a respectable rank.

[grizz441]

For the life of me I can't figure out why people complain about SHawk. He is really good at killing stuff in the MA. He flies like he has some damned sense. There seems to be some kind of expectation that once a pilot reaches a certain experience level, he should fly alone on the deck in P-40B or something into vastly superior numbers. Same goes for Steve.

The one problematic and shameful thing people do to game the game IMO, vulching a second account or the like, is something your change in the system does not fix.

Dude, fly like a total fool? People who are open to the notion of flying like a total fool sometimes have more fun.

Who was complaining about SHawk?  I said he is a great pilot who games the system.  I don't even blame him, he likes to rank high and he knows how to do it. 

[Chalenge]

Grizz it seems you want a bell curve on scoring categories and rather then consider the right hand valley as the top score you want the peak of the curve? Average performance doesnt deserve any better placement then it already has and your idea would only squish the curve not change it. I dont think the few random variables (pilot encounters) in the game will change much and thats the only thing holding the top rankers down now. Your idea will only force them to fly a little more in fighter mode and once they achieve the position they want they will stop again. So when it fails to make any difference your next idea will be to change the percentages again?

I think the community knows the scores dont mean much just accept it and have fun. 

[grizz441]

Your idea will only force them to fly a little more in fighter mode and once they achieve the position they want they will stop again. So when it fails to make any difference your next idea will be to change the percentages again?

I think the community knows the scores dont mean much just accept it and have fun. 

Actually it will force them to fly quite a bit more to achieve the rank they want and in doing so, their ratios will normalize and their stats wont be gamed anymore but more of a reflection just like any other pilot who flies in that category regularly

[BaldEagl]

Actually it will force them to fly quite a bit more to achieve the rank they want and in doing so, their ratios will normalize and their stats wont be gamed anymore but more of a reflection just like any other pilot who flies in that category regularly

Since you like math, go back and look at the top fighter pilots over the past twelve months.  They haven't really changed much but the reason I ask you to do so is so that you can "normalize" their stats.  I think you'll find that, if they can do it 1 time or 6 times they can do it 20 times or 30 times.

I anxiously await the results.

[pluck]

In a game like AH, scores will never reflect true pilot skill when compared to the rest of the community.  For several reasons I'm sure the obvious would be connection issues, and those who auger for what ever reason, be it boredom, fun, or just wanting to be quickly out of plane.

The main issue is that there is no way to calculate the quality of fights you are getting.  I don't think killing 10 noobs is equal to killing 10 guys who know who to fly.  There is no way to quantify the quality of your kills....vulches, picks, kill steals, etc.

Also given the fact that quite a few don't really care that much right there skews the rank system, not to mention the shade vulchers.  

In short, if you want to play for rank, I would just make do with what you have and learn to game the game.  If you don't want to game the game, just forget about that number.  As a personal number it might be helpfull to see if you are improving in certain areas, though always calculated against how you are flying (reasons above).  anyone worth their salt knows scores are a poor indicator of your actually cartoon airplane talent.  A better indicator is personal experience against pilots.  It doesn't matter how you change, those who want will find the easiest most efficient way to be at the top....again skewing the results.

[grizz441]

Since you like math, go back and look at the top fighter pilots over the past twelve months.  They haven't really changed much but the reason I ask you to do so is so that you can "normalize" their stats.  I think you'll find that, if they can do it 1 time or 6 times they can do it 20 times or 30 times.

I anxiously await the results.

As you requested, I looked at some of the top pilots over the last few camps to see how their ratios fared as their points increased.  I don't feel there is enough data by just looking at one campaign, you'd have to look at the ratio trends over the course of a campaign to see how they are affected.  I did notice a stat though that the majority of the 'top pilots' have in common.  Their Point stat rank is always significantly worse than the 4 ratio ranks.  This just shows you what stats they are concerned with more.

As for your points about top fighter pilots being able to duplicate their successes...you're right, the TOP fighter pilots will be able to achieve this making them the top fighter pilots. 

I feel in a campaign there will be around 10 missions that you spot on the map that are conditions for the absolute perfect kill mission so you take up your best ammo tank and go to work on the low dweebs.  If you upped the Point weight, you'd force stat milkers to fly a lot more missions in 'less than ideal' conditions.  If they are truly skilled they will still put up great stats.

Obviously there will always be ways to game the system.  But I think it is simply too easy to game the system right now and at least in my scoring system it would be more difficult to do.

[BaldEagl]

Well, I disagree about limited missions with ideal conditions.  You only have to look at all the ideal conditions that had to be in place for every top pilot for every sortie to see that those conditions are not limited.

I'll make a couple of last comments before bowing out of this though.

First, I've seen plenty of requests over the years from people who want to force a minimum number of sorties, want to make points more valuable, etc.  In general, these requests come from those who fly hundreds of hours each camp and have marginal ratios.  I haven't looked at your score, nor will I, but I would guess that you fit that mold and that this change would be beneficial to you.  I could be wrong.

Second, if you look at the top ranked pilots what you'll generally see is that their fighter sorties are limited but their attack sorties are numerous.  Further, their ratios in attack mode are generally lower than in fighter mode.  Adoption of your plan would likely have the following effects:

Instead of these pilots switching over to attack mode and getting their noses dirty after they are satisfied with their fighter ranks, you will force them to remain in fighter mode, determined to equal their past successes.  I have no doubt that they would do so.  This artificially inhibits their fun and the fun of Joe Average, who must now fight off a host of skilled players determined to kill him and unlikely to make a mistake.  This would create a rich get richer and the poor get poorer scenario.  I think that you're better off encouraging them to move to attack mode and let down some of their defenses as soon as possible.

I'm glad that you want to try to improve things.  I just don't agree with your solution.

 

[zuii]

i tried to look at the score system one time, tried to figure it out.
This line of action made my brain hurt, alot.

Now I just move the pointy part of my plane towards an enemy plane and pull the trigger, im much happier that way.


zuii

[grizz441]

Well, I disagree about limited missions with ideal conditions.  You only have to look at all the ideal conditions that had to be in place for every top pilot for every sortie to see that those conditions are not limited.

I'll make a couple of last comments before bowing out of this though.

First, I've seen plenty of requests over the years from people who want to force a minimum number of sorties, want to make points more valuable, etc.  In general, these requests come from those who fly hundreds of hours each camp and have marginal ratios.  I haven't looked at your score, nor will I, but I would guess that you fit that mold and that this change would be beneficial to you.  I could be wrong.

Second, if you look at the top ranked pilots what you'll generally see is that their fighter sorties are limited but their attack sorties are numerous.  Further, their ratios in attack mode are generally lower than in fighter mode.  Adoption of your plan would likely have the following effects:

Instead of these pilots switching over to attack mode and getting their noses dirty after they are satisfied with their fighter ranks, you will force them to remain in fighter mode, determined to equal their past successes.  I have no doubt that they would do so.  This artificially inhibits their fun and the fun of Joe Average, who must now fight off a host of skilled players determined to kill him and unlikely to make a mistake.  This would create a rich get richer and the poor get poorer scenario.  I think that you're better off encouraging them to move to attack mode and let down some of their defenses as soon as possible.

I'm glad that you want to try to improve things.  I just don't agree with your solution.

 

Hah fair enough I'm glad you took the time to analyze it though.  I'm certain my scoring system will make milking more difficult though but I don't really have a vested interest in it.  I'm actually ranked top 3 right now in Fighter under the current system so I'm not trying to give myself an edge or anything.  I always thought AW3 had the best scoring system even though it was entirely point based and I think AH has the worst scoring system which is ratio based.  Blending the two together seems fairest to me.  Anyways I've made my point already, some people agree, some don't.

[choker41]

The only thing I get from the scoring system is that I can't do anything great but i'm not terrible either.  Sure I could take stukas to a city drop 1 bomb and pray no one comes to kill me, or fly across the map afk in lancs just to drop on a city.  I could take 110's or A20's to the strats and annihilate them in attack or Gv's.  But fighter mode i'm just not good enough to make that one work for me. 

[SHawk]

OK, I don't get in here much. So I just came across this thread.

1st off each category is NOT weighed at 20%.

it's the total # of all 5.
Also 1+1+1+1+500 equals 504 but does NOT equal #1 Fighter rank. Not even close.
Last month I flew 39 Sorties in fighter and ended up with a 211 Total.

Category                    Stat        Rank (In that Category)
Kills per Death + 1      27.17      3
Kills per Sortie               4.18     16
Kills per Hour of Flight  12.20    55
Kills Hit Percentage      15.32    29
Kill Points               37912.37  108
                                               ------

                                               211 Total in 13 hours 21 mins
      Steve finished 2nd with a 272
          and Croft at 3rd with a 273

Steve finished #1 in fighter the tour before that with a 213 Total but spent 109 hours doing it.

I've rarely see A #1 fighter score total ranking over 250 and over 500 rarely gets even top 10 kudos

511 total finished 14th last tour.

You'll never ever pull off #1 in fighter with less than 30 sorties without cheating/vulching a 2nd account. I don't care how damn good you are. There is just to many variables involved. If you bail to achieve a good k/time # you'll hurt your k/d and get 1/4 points for the sortie. It takes a well rounded fighter score to get #1. Fly smart but not timid, get in, get your kills and get out. Long flights of picking will hurt some #'s but help others. Furballling will help some but hurt others. Time spent playing should NOT be a factor in rank. (just as it is now)

Take my word for it, no one knows the scoring system better than I. I'm a Math Major and work with numbers all day. I can look at your fighter score and tell you exactly what you need to work on to make it better.

[Delirium]

Frankly, as long as Pacerr is rated as high score-wise, it will never be a real yardstick of skill.