Altitude Ladder Change Log: newest change May 29, 2011

[nobodyhome]

May 29 2011
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- Tweaked the balancer so that it attempts to balance teams within at most a 40/60 win probability spread, while still keeping the player pairings of 1 with 2, 3 with 4, etc.

May 12 2011
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- Adjusted the balancer to be now more random. Now it sorts players by rating, and then pairs the players (1 with 2, 3 with 4, etc), and then assigns each pair to separate teams randomly.

April 8 2011
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- Launched season 2! Stat recording system launched, rating system changed.
- Changed password of servers to reflect new season.
- Upped the capacity of servers to 22 for tbd and 26 for ball.

Jan 11 2011
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- Made custom_random not pick the same map as was played last game, for reals this time.
- Added new command: /rating <player> <mode>. Tells you the rating of a player (currently only works for a player in the server).
- Added new command: /status. Tells you whether a match is playing, what map is being played, who is on which team, and the start time (currently in Chicago time where the servers are located, will change to Altitude time (GMT) soon).

Dec 15 2010
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- The ping-limited servers (#1 and #3) now have a maxPing=300, down from 400.
- Removed the ability to vote kick.
- The command start_random now picks from amongst maps that were not just played so that it will never make you play the same map twice in a row.

Nov 15 2010
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- Added the ability to play test games on new maps. To do so, simply /vote custom test_(name of map), similarly to starting an actual ladder game. Games played on test maps will not count toward anyone's ladder rating, but it will balance and select the teams.

- Added the following eleven maps for testing:
- tbd_blackhole
- tbd_chess
- tbd_shard
- tbd_origami
- ball_atmosphere
- ball_hardcourt
- ball_gymnasium
- ball_sideshow
- ball_stadium
- ball_thorns
- ball_ufo

Nov 11 2010
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- Fixed the bug that was causing a lot of the games to "break", i.e. games would start as 5v6 or 6v7 if people tried to join after the custom start tournament is passed.

May 31 2010
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- You can now have more than 10/12 people on a team before you start the game. The ladder code will automatically spectate people at random until there is an appropriate number of people playing, spectating first the people who have just played.
- Fixed the bug that was causing most of the previous ladder crashes.
- Fixed the bug that was causing a very delayed stop tournament after the game ended, making players who weren't just playing to have a low chance of getting in the next game.

Apr. 28 2010
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- Added tbd_bowserscastle, tbd_focus, tbd_scrapyard, tbd_underpark, and ball_asteroids to the map pool. Removed ball_mayhem from the map pool. Updated tbd_justice to the most recent version. For more info on these changes, see this thread.
- Removed the ability to vote stopTournament. Replaced it with a custom command stop_tournament--to invoke, type /vote custom stop_tournament. This custom command does stopTournament as well as changes the current map to the ladder lobby. This was done so that the threshold for stopTournament (which was hard coded at 50%) can be changed (to 80% for custom stop_tournament).
- Increased the number of player slots in the tbd servers from 14 to 18 and in the ball servers from 16 to 20.

Mar. 6 2010
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- Code has been ported over to the JSON logs from the debug logs. Since the code has been reworked, there may be some new bugs, if you encounter any, please post them here.
- Implemented in-game autobalance. To use, first make sure the map is the ladder lobby, and have 10 people go into teams (it doesn't matter if there are 5 on each team or not as long as there are 10 people in). Then use the command /vote custom start_map, where "map" is one of the maps playable on the server.
- Also added the command /vote custom start_random, which picks a random map for you.
- Disabled the commands /balanceTeams and /startTournament. From now on, /vote custom start_map is the only way you can begin a ladder game (this means there is no longer the options of picking teams through captains).

Feb. 22 2010
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- Servers have been moved to a more reliable and faster VPS. Much thanks goes to phong for hosting for us. If you had the ladder servers tagged as favorite, you will need to retag them as they are now at a new location.

Feb. 15 2010
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- Ball ladder is now up! The accepted match configuration is 6v6, make sure your game is in that configuration otherwise it would not be counted.
- We have removed one tbd ladder server. There are now two servers of each tbd and ball, one with max ping = 400 and the other with no max ping.

Feb. 2 2010
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- Added autobalance. The "balance" tab of the website now shows who's in which server. Select the players that will be playing and click balance; the website will sort the players into teams balanced by rating. You will then have to manually follow the website's recommendation, as currently there is no way to force players to join a particular team.

Note that the in-game /balanceTeams still works as it had earlier (i.e. not optimally). We have no control over the game itself so we cannot change how /balanceTeams works.

- Leavers be warned: tracking of leaving and getting ping kicked during a tournament game is now in place. There is nowhere on the site that displays this yet, but this will come in the next few days. In the future we will be implementing an automatic system that bans you if your leave percentage goes above a threshold. We take game-ruining leavers seriously; here is one tool we will use to combat it.


Jan. 25 2010
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- Rating system updated to more accurately represent the chances of a team winning or losing. Old games have been run through this new rating system; your may notice a rise or drop in your ratings as a result.

To describe more precisely, remember here is the old rating system:

New Rating = Old Rating + [ 50 * ( S - E ) ]

Where S is the score for the game with 1 for a win or 0 for a loss.

The value of E will be calculated individually for each player.

E = 1 / [1 + 10^ ([(Avg rating of the opponents of Player 1)-(Rating of player 1)] / 400)]

E has been adjusted so that it is now calculated once for the team:

E = 1 / [1 + 10^ ([(Avg rating of your opponents)-(Avg rating of you and your teammates)] / 400)]

- A third server has been added.
- Servers #1, #2, and #3 are now at maxping = 200, 400, and unlimited, respectively. This keeps the ladder to be for everyone, yet gives the choice to play in a minimal-lag environment to those who choose to do so.
- All servers are now at 10 player limit. This is to facilitate faster game start times--if you are in the server, you know you must play. Players can feel free to /vote kick anyone that is idling in the server and afk or refusing to play.
- Ladder website now allows you to sort the list of players by any of the header columns. This has already been in place a few days before, but is documented here for posterity.

[nobodyhome]

The most important thing to note here is the new rating system. With the old system, it didn't care if you played with good teammates or poor teammates, the only thing that mattered was your own rating and those of your opponents. Now, your potential gain or loss is adjusted accordingly to the skill level of your teammates.

What this does is that it more accurately represents your team's probability of winning. You no longer have to worry about the composition of your team--if your team is full of lesser skilled players, the expected value of your gain or loss is adjusted to account for that.

Hopefully, this will reduce a lot of the problems with games taking too long to start. People can just jump in and no longer have to worry about who they're playing with.

[proggies]

thanks for the hard work guys! really appreciate it =)

[CCN]

thx guyz!!!

[Tosconi]

hmmmm....

this new system made the gap between the best and the worst player from 200 points (earlier 1700-1400) - to 900 points (2100-1200). Are you sure this is a good idea?

[DMCM]

Good job guys.

The ladder is the biggest thing that happened to Altitude. It's good to know you're working to make it better and better. thank you.

[Beagle]

I really liked spectating the Ladder games or sitting one out every so often without losing my spot and never being able to get back in because there is absoloutely no room.

Does having a 10 player limit REALLY make things faster? Before if people were AFK clogging up the server, you could kick them. Now if people are AFK clogging up the server, you can kick them, and then you have to get another person in.

How is it faster? Nothing is changed except there can't be specs now. I liked Ladder because it was a great place to hang out and either play or sit out and watch others play, which you can't really do in the officials because suprise suprise, everyone who doesn't breath out their mouth is in Ladder games.

[Flyngbanana]

I know why you've decreased the number of people, but even so the ability to spectate was good. It gave me something to do whenever I wasn't picked. It also probably means that it will be hard to get in the server unless you get messaged by the people in it.

If anything make one of the servers 14max. I'd bet money on it being the most popular one.

[proggies]

I was just wondering if it was possible to at least allow a few to spectate and watch the game.. Ladder servers were a good place for someone of us to chat as Beagle said..
Maybe allow 2 spectators?

[-MH-CaptainVogez]

Making one server 200 max ping is leaving us high and dry because noone will use the 400 ping one now - everyone waits for 200 ping because they don't want to play in slight lag.

Now noone will play against us Aussies and we have nowhere to compete.

[DMCM]

I like to spectate in the ladder servers too.

Sometime I chat with other spectators, sometimes I get to watch great games. Or sometimes I just wait for the game to end so I can have a place in the next one. I actually think the 16 player limit was perfect.

[combat]

Please allow at aleast two spectator slots. This way on can watch or record the game. If there's 10 spots there's no way to get into a game until one finishes. I love all the other changes, but that was a bad move guys please allow some spots in at least one or two of the servers.

[Beagle]

I think four is still tiny. Specs were fine as they were. The server size change was nothing but bad.

I'm not trying to be a naysayer, I love the update, but the server size thing really really sucks.

[ORYLY]

Someone resurrect the suggestion thread for spectator slots.

[eth]

Yeah.. real spectator slots/spectators that couldn't vote would solve all of our problems. Until then I'm not sure what we do, but we'll talk about it later today.

[Pieface]

Overall I like the changes, but I do agree that it would be better to have at least a couple of spectator spots in each server. Spectator slots sometimes make it easier to get games going (there are at least as many people there as are going to play) as well as enjoy watching the game.

How are we supposed to record competitive matches for your video competition now? :P Anyway, those were my first thoughts but I'm sure I'll have more once I get a chance to play.

[Ajplagge]

Not that I don't think 5v5 is a great game size but it seems to be unpractical a good chunk of the day given the altitude population. We don't have a any great 3v3 maps but 3v3 and 4v4 can be pretty fun as well. They also have the benefit of decreasing the likelihood of someone leaving mid game and making it easier to get a game.

Honestly the system as it is now would work great, if there were another 100-200 ladder players.

-bob

[nobodyhome]

Originally Posted by Tosconi

this new system made the gap between the best and the worst player from 200 points (earlier 1700-1400) - to 900 points (2100-1200). Are you sure this is a good idea?

Yes, this is intended. What the new rating system asserts is that, given a team of players that are 400 points higher than their opponents, the 400-points-higher team will win ten out of eleven times. If you look at the ladder right now and do a thought experiment where you select a bunch of 2100-rated players and judge how they'd fare against 1700-rated players, you'd actually see that they'd probably win more often than that. This means that ratings will continue to shift until they adjust themselves to that level.

Originally Posted by Beagle

Does having a 10 player limit REALLY make things faster? Before if people were AFK clogging up the server, you could kick them. Now if people are AFK clogging up the server, you can kick them, and then you have to get another person in.

What we were envisioning is that if you wanted to play a ladder game and all slots were full, you would put yourself on auto-join while you went and did something else. That way, the 6 people that would previously be on spec are simply now on auto-join, with the exception that once they join, there would be no question as to whether they play or not--from this we were hoping that game start times would be reduced. The 10-player limit also gets rid of problems where spectators would come in and sway votes certain ways; ideally, we'd like only the players to be able to vote because they're the ones that will be affected by the vote outcomes. Lastly, this change prevented problems where many newer players would come into games and never get picked and thus were never able to play--now, if you manage to auto-join your way in, you're pretty much guaranteed to play unless the other players vote-kick you (in which case, you guys are dickbags, but we can't do much more about that) .

If this new 10-player limit causes more problems then it solves, then we are definitely willing to look for other solutions. Keep in mind that sometimes what we do is simply experimental. We'll keep it like this for the next few days and if things don't get better, we'll do something about it.

Originally Posted by -MH-CaptainVogez

Making one server 200 max ping is leaving us high and dry because noone will use the 400 ping one now - everyone waits for 200 ping because they don't want to play in slight lag.

Now noone will play against us Aussies and we have nowhere to compete.

One of the foremost goals of ladder is to provide a competitive environment for people to play in. Most top players agree that <200 ping is the ideal area for competitive play, and we are going to provide that. If that is what players gravitate toward, there is nothing we can really do about it. Now, we do want the ladder to be for everyone and that's what the other two servers are for. I am generally not on altitude during Aussie peak times, so I don't know what the servers are like, but I see a lot of times during my hours where more than one server is full, and that means that a 400 server is full. Also, if it is indeed Aussie peak time then I'd imagine that a large share of the players are Aussie, does this not mean that the 400 server would be more popular at those hours?

Ideally, what we'd like to have is a server for Aussies so that they can finally play in low-ping-harmony, but this sort of thing costs money. Unless someone can provide us with a server I don't see that any of us would be willing to shell out 30-40 USD a month out of our own pockets just so Aussies can play ladder without ping.

Originally Posted by Ajplagge

Not that I don't think 5v5 is a great game size but it seems to be unpractical a good chunk of the day given the altitude population. We don't have a any great 3v3 maps but 3v3 and 4v4 can be pretty fun as well. They also have the benefit of decreasing the likelihood of someone leaving mid game and making it easier to get a game.

Honestly the system as it is now would work great, if there were another 100-200 ladder players.

As I said again, I am on altitude at very specific hours of the day so I don't know what the activity throughout the day is like, but during my hours I see at least one server full all the time, but I could be wrong.

Also, we are not going to provide 3v3 or 4v4 tbd--the point of the ladder is to have competitive rated games, and 3v3 and 4v4 games simply cannot be rated along with 5v5 games. In the future, we might provide separate game modes for these (I see 3v3 as a fun and competitively viable tdm mode), but as you said, the viability of this depends on a larger player base.

[CCN]

10 isn't working all that well :/

[Beagle]

Nobo, if you're putting yourself on auto-join and then 'doing something else' you'll be joining AFK.

Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of fast games?

As for 'newer players not getting picked', like you said they can just be kicked. You can't do anything about the players being picky dickbags.

I just hope we see the higher player counts come back sooner rather than later, that's all.

[Stormich]

While I do agree that games start quicker now cause you just have to pick everyone the time needed to start a game has prolonged cause it's really hard to get 10 players exactly. I spent 90 minutes in the server today playing random scrims with people waiting to get 10 people before most people and I decided to quit.

[Sarah Palin]

You have exchanged a bad implementation of the ELO system for a worse one.

[nobodyhome]

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

You have exchanged a bad implementation of the ELO system for a worse one.

Without explanation as to why you think so, that is an entirely useless comment, and you know that.

[NomNom]

The 200 max ping server is great, thanks.

[nobodyhome]

Palin, lemme try to address your comment with what I think you're complaining about based on a previous post you had about the old rating system.

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

OK im starting to see major issues with the current equation.

My rank is fluctuating wildly based on whether I recently won or lost. I was up to #11 last night after I won 4 in a row, I logged off tonight after losing a few games with top ladder players and I'm all the way down to #97, and I'll be back up to the teens after I play some newb games tomorrow afternoon.

The fact that the formula has no way to keep track of the uncertainty of a player's skill (or to narrow that uncertainty over time), means the scores will randomly track all over the place.

Even a perfectly average player, such as tec27 who has a 16-15 record and 1525 score right now, has seen his score fluctuate hundreds of points during each gaming session.

Someone who has 100 wins 50 losses, having played against a wide sample of the ladder, should see their score fluctuate MUCH LESS than someone who has 20 wins 10 losses. Major changes in their score should only happen when they play against other players who also have very low uncertainties in their ranking, and the underdog wins, because that proves the current ratings are wrong. But if the expected player wins in a matchup between two players the ranking system is very confident in assigning scores to, that proves the current ratings are RIGHT and players should NOT see large point gains or losses.

Since the ELO system has no metric for confidence, there's no way to distinguish tec's 16-15 rating from my 10-11 rating from some newb's 2-2 rating.

When everyone's score is doing a random walk, a standard deviation or more around their true skill level, the rating at any given point in time has very little information.


Let me point out this is the case for average players as well as players on either extreme of the ladder, because the sum of the potential gain and potential loss for your next game, no matter where you are on the ladder, is 50 points.

I think the TrueSkill system is worth a look. Dunno how challenging it would be to code however.

I agree that with this new system, you can still fluctuate easily upwards to +/-100 points within several games. This is not a problem, as if you remember, here is the scale on which the ratings are based:

A team that averages 400 points greater than the opposing team will, on average, beat the other team ten out of every eleven games.

As you can see, fluctuations of ~100 points actually aren't very great. The system estimates that a team that averages 100 points greater than the opposing team will win 64% of the time. This isn't high at all.

You also argue that your ladder rating should stabilize the more games you play. Sure, this might make sense in a system where the goal is to very precisely measure skill or to do auto-matchmaking of opponents. However, our goal is to provide a ladder that people can climb up or down, in which games are competitive and fun. I argue that games become much more competitive and fun when you realize that every single game matters greatly. If your possible gain or loss started dropping after you play too much, the excitement level would go down accordingly.

Not only that, but our system is very much so (even more than before) modeled after the ELO system, a tried-and-tested system which is in widespread use in such games like chess. A system like you described, one where point gains and losses would diminish over time, goes against fundamental principles of the ELO system. If we implemented your system, it would no longer be ELO at all. If you want our system to be more like yours, well, then you are no longer arguing that our implementation is bad so much as you are arguing that you simply dislike using ELO in the ladder.

This is not to say that our ladder doesn't judge people at some level of precision. Take a look at the ladder page right now and you tell me if you don't think that on average, a team of players at the 1700-1900 level wouldn't generally demolish a team of players at the 1500-1700 level.

[Sarah Palin]

No, the scores undergoing stochastic walks isn't my objection to the new equation (although of course it is a major flaw with both equations).

The reason I didn't explain is, hmm, because I know you know much moar maths than I do and thus figured u were perfectly aware of the flaws of the new model and chose it cuz it's easy to code.




The old version gave you points based on wins minus losses. This was bad because wins minus losses is a poor measurement of skill.

The new version is based on the exact same system only easier to game.



That's basically the nub of it. Putting the explanation behind a spoiler cuz maths r boring.

Explanation:



The old version basically gave you +25/-25 points at 1500 ELO, then drained off more points as you rose in ELO up so you were wagering +20/-30, then +10/-40, etc. Similarly it buffed you as you went down, so at a sufficiently low ELO you were wagering -10/+40.



Now I know that isn't exactly what the formula said. It supposedly incorporated factors that gave you more or less points based on the difficulty of the enemy. Truth is though that the difference in point gain or loss this caused was insignificant compared to the 50-point gap you were wagering at any instant.



The proof of this is that players who were 22-19 and 6-3 found themselves with the same points.



Like a waltz, a player who had taken X steps back and Y steps forward (i.e. losses and wins) ended up in the same place as someone with a different X and Y as long as they summed to the same thing.



The quality of their games turned out not to matter at all.



A rewrite of the old formula that said "Look at how many more games the player has won than lost. Then give him 1500 + 25 points for the first surplus win, 22 for the second, 19 for the third etc etc" would have ranked the players in almost exactly the same order as the old ladder.



Thus my statement, the old version was based on a "wins minus losses" method.



As everyone saw, there were obvious problems with this. Since the enemy team didn't matter at all to your score, the fastest way to a high score was to play a bunch of stacked games to add "fake wins" to your score. 













The new system is, hmm, exactly the same except that your wagered reward does not asymptotically decline as you increase in skill, because your wagered reward is now based on the AVERAGE of your team's ELO. So now you can rack up points by winning games regardless of your contribution to victory. A player who plays many such games (say with unranked 1500 newbies) will have a higher score than a player who wins fewer hard fought games.



I guess the new system is somewhat more opaque than the old. In that whereas before it was obvious that 26-20 and 9-3 were getting ranked the same and thus something was fishy, in the new version the correlation between games won and rank is a bit looser.









Now is this bad? Well that depends on your definition of bad. Obviously the new system (just like the old system) isn't broken, it's good ENOUGH to sort players into rough quintiles let's say. But is it good ENOUGH to really sort the players? Nah.

edit- What no spoilers? HARESY. Very well, I will delete this after a day as I don't want to clutter the thread.

[Esoteric]

Sarah, the old system was...very bad. By far the most glaring issue was that it didn't take into account your teammates at all. Every time you played with people better than you, it was flawed in your favor. Every time you played with those worse than you, it was flawed in their favor. The asymptotic decline you recognized was, in fact, the pattern you saw when solely facing opponents ranked 1500. It was particularly noticeable because so many teams were ranked 1500, as ladder was (and is still) in its infancy. Your approximation would have become increasingly poor as opponents drifted from 1500. As a note though, you always could rack up points regardless of your contribution to victory--just play with better people than you. This was also an actual, abuseable way to game the system (which no longer exists.)

Now your issue is that people who play many games with unranked players will have a higher score than a player who wins fewer hard-fought games. This is true, and does demonstrate a flaw, but it's not the one you think it is. The problem is the face that they are unranked newbies, not the system. If you played many games against correctly ranked newbies, there would be no issue. Players who are out of practice or playing an off-plane will have a similar skill-rank mismatch.

The consolation here is that, time and (specifically) more games will solve the issue. Until then people are getting additional bang for their buck whenever they play people who are rated higher than they should be and less when playing people rated lower than they should be. Don't worry, they'll bleed the points off when they play correctly-ranked (or under-ranked) players. There is only a small potential for different "shards" of the playerbase, such as australians only playing with other australians. They would be correctly ranked among themselves but without crossover, the ratings wouldn't make sense compared with everyone else. Those issues are slowly corrected each time there is a meeting of the two shards (and, by extention, with time.)


But all this and I haven't actually explained what ELO is. ELO is based a simple principle. Rating is an exponential approximation of relative skill. In this case, a team rated 400 points higher than the other has a 10/11 chance to win. Specifically, 1/(1(10^(difference/400))+1) is the estimated chance that the lower rated team wins.

For each game, it predicts the odds of each team winning in this method.
Ex: a team with an average of 1400 plays a team with an average of 1640. The system predicts that the lower ranked team has a 20% chance of winning due to the difference of 240. If the ratings are accurate and they play 50 times the lower ranked team will win around 10 games, and get about 40 points each time, and lose around 40 games, and lose about 10 points each time. They finish at the same place they started (on average.)

However, ratings are very often incorrect (especially so until people have played more games.) If those same teams played and ACTUALLY had a 50% chance of winning, the initially lower rated team would get more points for each win and less for each loss and they would meet in the middle at about 1520, a 120 point loss or gain despite a 50-50 win rate.

Every time you play a game the system better fits the two teams to the "400 points is 10x the player" formula, as does your contribution to the team. ELO is simpler than similar systems, as it doesn't include uncertainty (such as Microsoft's Trueskill and Chess's Glicko.) Part of this is because Altitude is a very variable game--the uncertainty is always high by its nature, unlike chess. In chess there is one map, no teammates, no plane balance to worry about--far fewer variables to account for. Another part is to combat stagnation--you always have a chance to move up (and down) without requiring a streak to begin moving.

It's a decision to make it so you can't "get comfortable with" your rating. There's positives and negatives but personally, I like the extra tension. Note, however, that except for the uncertainty factor ELO is identical. There is always the issue of incorrectly rated players, no system can eliminate that. They just alter the "K-value" of games based on newness, recent performance and/or ratings difference. But Altitude is, and always will be a game of fast-paced action; enjoy life in the fast lane.

[nesnl]

Just a quick note on the rating system. We spent a long time debating over what system to change to and it included Esoteric, nobodyhome, myself and many others who spent a long time understanding the issues at hand. Let me point out that you are welcome to search the web for a team based ladder system and all you will find is that a good one hasn't been devised yet. We choose a system that seemed to best fit our needs. We have a low population, no matchmaking system, and no balancing mechanism. Taking all those into account we decided the system we implemented was best for the time being. This was because most games are going to include a wide variety of player ratings and most likely will not be balanced all the time.

If you have a better system or want to offer suggestions then please do so. Saying something like "this rating system sucks" doesn't do any good. First, take a look at the rating system and after you fully understand it, offer potential changes if you want.

Also, I looked into Mircosoft's TrueSkill system. It wouldn't work well with our ladder because of the same reasons above (low population, no matchmaking, no balance). In that system it would take roughly 60 games in a 5v5 setting in order to develop an accurate rating for someone and that is only if you have quality games (ie closely rated opponents, good balance). In a situation where this isn't available (ie our ladder) it can take often 3 times as many games or more. Do you really want each player to play 180 or more ladder games before the rating becomes accurate?

[nobodyhome]

bump for new changes.

[CCN]

this is just a suggestion but if/when you decide to make a downloadable addon to overlay balance or whatever could you somehow integrate ventrillo. I could provide a server we could all go to and if it allows people to get there quicker/easier or by actually putting them in their teams (one click get into server) ventriillo that could be a benefit.

Just a thought.

Thanks for all your hard work!

[tec27]

Originally Posted by CCN

this is just a suggestion but if/when you decide to make a downloadable addon to overlay balance or whatever could you somehow integrate ventrillo. I could provide a server we could all go to and if it allows people to get there quicker/easier or by actually putting them in their teams (one click get into server) ventriillo that could be a benefit.

Just a thought.

Thanks for all your hard work!

I think a ladder ventrilo server would be pretty cool, personally. I used to do PUGs in CoD2 and whenever you were assigned to a team, you were assigned a Vent channel as well. Worked out pretty well imo, and added more teamwork to the game.

[argonide]

Protip: its easier to select up to 4 people not playing than the 10 people playing.

[Loli.ta]

I have a question concerning the Rage Quit / Ping Kick section that was recently added. Would a "connection lost" count toward a rage quit, I'm just trying to figure out when I did the quitting. ( I do recall manually leaving once for dinner, but that was once.)

[nobodyhome]

What do you mean by a "connection lost"? You mean if the server kicks you? Or if you idle for 5 minutes?

Keep in mind that because of the way the mechanism works, a ton of people will have at least 1-2 leaves. This is fine--that is why there will be a threshold.

[Loli.ta]

The issue I'm trying to state can be related to the Proleague server lag out, then Alty states "Connection Lost" in a small window. Sometimes my internet loses it's connection sometimes and I can't join servers until I restart ( or wait bout 3 minutes or so. )

[nobodyhome]

That kind of disconnection should not cause you a +1 leave count. I am working from the logs and there might be certain types of disconnects that I have not seen, so let me know if you or anyone else ever encounters a +1 leave count that you think is inappropriate.

[Pieface]

If you're kicked for ping but immediately rejoin, does it count as a quit? Or do you have a certain amount of time from when you leave to come back before the system counts you as absent?

[nobodyhome]

Ping kicks are counted separately from manual leaves. Manual leaves will be counted once per game, while a ping kick is logged every time you get kicked. Immediately rejoining will not change this (for either leaves or ping kicks).

Since ping kicks do not indicate malice, I do not anticipate a system for banning people if they get ping kicked too many times, but this will be logged anyways to serve as an indicator for potential teammates that the player does not have a stable connection.

[protest boy]

What exactly is a rage quit? I have two listed on my account but to my knowledge I have been present at every game I've ever played in, all the way to the end.

Twice I have volunteered to sit out to even the teams when an enemy disconnects. Could this be the cause?

[Stormich]

Yeah I think it's some kind of bug. I mentioned it cause to to eth. I have 2 myself and am sure that I didn't leave.