Are the Various Pilot Competenciy Ratings Meaningless?

Werewolf13 · Feb 21, 2015

See subject...

'Cuz I don't get it.

Harmless to Deadly to Dangerous, Expert, Master??? Don't seem to mean much.

Why do I ask you may wonder.

For one thing curiosity. For another I find it a pretty trivial exercise to kill NPC pilots all the way up to Master and Expert that fly Cobras and Vipers (with the occasional exception for NPC pilots rated expert - some of those are pretty tough. So I expect the ratings for NPC pilots to be barely a gauge of how tough they'll be.

Humans on the other hand are an entirely different matter. I'm rated in game on the status panel as a Novice - yet this morning I quite easily took out a human rated at master level flying a Cobra with my Viper.

No way should I have been able to do that especially in a Viper with just G1 Multi-Cannons and G1 Burst Lasers if the competency ratings had any real meaning/worth.

I didn't get lucky either. I just plain out flew the guy.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Khan · Feb 21, 2015

Harmless, Mostly Harmless, Novice, Competent, Expert, Master, Dangerous, Deadly, Elite.

For starters.

GunnerBill · Feb 21, 2015

Perhaps there should be an exam?

vjek · Feb 21, 2015

I've never seen any difference, personally. If it's not Elite/Anaconda, it dies trivially. /shrug

Ydiss · Feb 21, 2015

It's not a ladder system, you know? The worst pilot in the world could get elite before you simply by virtue of having long enough time to play.

roderick · Feb 21, 2015

Yes there meaningless, because no one who is a combat focused player will be around long enough to obtain any titles of substance.

Jerakeen · Feb 21, 2015

It's not a measure of skill. It's how many kills you've had. It could be that he was rubbish but had killed a huge number of novice NPCs. He's probably been playing for a lot longer than you too so had more time to build up his kill tally.

Cmdr Thrudd · Feb 21, 2015

The combat ratings really don't mean much they are just a kill count, nothing to do with 'skill' just time spent shooting stuff. I could sit in my anaconda blowing sidewinders up for a few weeks and be Elite and you'll still kick my ass in a viper as a novice.

As to why, Elite at it's core isn't really a competitive game despite the wishes of many of the pvp crowd it's vision is/was more of a cooperative pve game with pvp options and the design sort of reflects that. The game hasn't got to realising that aim yet but that's another discussion.

dioogio · Feb 21, 2015

Going from harmless to elite does not mean you have improved dramatically it means that you have killed a lot of ranked npc's.
Are you suggesting that someone who is crap at combat should not be allowed to rise above harmless?
Perhaps if you are that good you should have started at master..
GunnerBill gets it, we should all take a test and get a rank and then we can resit every so often and see if we can progress. Yawn!

Defacto · Feb 21, 2015

Ydiss said:
It's not a ladder system, you know? The worst pilot in the world could get elite before you simply by virtue of having long enough time to play.

Which, I think, is a bit problematic, since it goes against the whole ''Elites are rare and complete badasses'' thing that the lore and books give us.
I would rather have a system like the one we have now up to dangerous, and then a comparative system from there, or even a per-month rated system where a set amount get ''promoted'' to the next rank and then compete with their rank-mates during one month for the possibility to ascend to the next level. I don't think that demotions are necessary.

Acarin · Feb 21, 2015

To answer your original question: yes.

All that the rankings indicate is a broad bracket of how 'successful' a player has been in the game. I'm currently ranked Expert in combat, but I have zero PvP kills (and one death); I have quite a lot of experience vs NPCs, however. That does not mean that I am any kind of good pilot, just means that I have killed over 1400 NPCs of varying ranks and ship sizes.

My Trade rank is Broker. All that means is that I have made somewhere between 50-ish million and 100-ish million in trading. The ranks are nothing more than metrics of how much you have 'scored' in that field, with no indication of any actual skill level. And they can't go down, either.

Eleazaros · Feb 21, 2015

"Humans on the other hand..." - sorry. I've played plenty of PvP games and finding someone who'll "gank the newbies" to rank up... That's pretty trivial and easy to do. It doesn't mean diddly squat for "skill".

The only skill oriented ones I've played are were you *FORCE* players to fight those of the same ability and rankings, not when it's left to the player. They will "rank up" by avoiding the top players while picking only those fights they feel they can win and that is of less value for determining true skill.

As for the rest - yes it has meaning.

Acarin · Feb 21, 2015

It's like driving. 80% of drivers think they are "above average"...

Werewolf13 · Feb 22, 2015

Hmmmm...

So the current ranking system is based purely on number of kills.

Creating a real skill based system shouldn't be that difficult. Simple points would do. Something like:

1) You kill a higher ranked human pilot and you get 5 points for each level difference. If the higher ranked pilot won he loses the amount of points the opponent won.
2) You kill an NPC pilot and you get say 25% of the points you'd have earned against a human (unless the DEVS actually program decent AI pilots).

Then its a simple your rank is based on the points you've got.
AND YES - you could get demoted.
It wouldn't take too long before a guy rated deadly was really deadly and a guy rated harmless was really harmless.

A ranking system like described above is over simplified. But it could be developed and tweaked so that the competency rankings meant something so that if a harmless rated pilot ran into an expert he'd get the heck out of dodge post haste. If he chose to fight - then there's always insurance.

IMO - not that it matters much - devs are gonna do what devs do which is what they want - the current system as described in all the previous posts is worthless.

Abil Midena · Feb 22, 2015

So it seems it's just based on # of kills. How hard would it have been to be based on # of kills of higher ranked opponents. Then, if you are 'competent' and kill 100 harmless guys (player or npc), you get squat towards rank up. If you kill those ranked higher than you, then you get progress.

freehotdawgs · Feb 22, 2015

Yeah, the ranks don't mean a whole lot. The NPCs are pretty much pushovers unless they are in an anaconda. I've killed elite pilots with hardly any trouble at all. The combat rank really needs to be based on actual skill like werewolf13 is describing. Unless you can lose points for getting blown up and the skill points you attain are based on the other pilot's skill as well, it doesn't really mean anything.

*edit* I think it needs to be based on pilot skill level and the quality of ship and equipment that the opponent has. Basically, everything would be worth "skill points" higher tiered equipment is worth more and higher skill rank is more. Your total skill points are compared to the target, and then the points you gain are based on the difference in skill points between the two. If you are destroyed it determines how many skill points you lose. If the opponent is much higher, then you don't lose anything, if they are much lower, you lose a lot. Pretty simple.

Acarin · Feb 22, 2015

In some respects, that is a good idea and would work. However, what if there are plans to release content which only becomes available once you hit Deadly (or Elite) and receive your invitation to the Pilot's Federation Elite Club? Your initial briefing way back when you started suggests that this is something which may be planned, and if they implemented a system similar to that above then they would be denying content to a whole swathe of the playerbase. As it currently stands, that content would be available to anyone who has dedicated the time to the game (rather than actually having to be in the top X% of players).

Eagle Eye · Feb 22, 2015

Well they can (and have already tried) an AI that can annihilate you regardless of your skill level by flying perfectly. But then you all would say it's cheating.

Remember that the challenge of these games are not making a hard enemy, they always start pretty much unbeatable as you show then your movements so they have perfect knowledge. The challenge is making one that is believably hard without players screaming AI cheat. Often this makes them "too easy" for the dedicated players, but they have ro take into account the "casuals" that is the majority of video games player. For them, the current difficulty is hard enough.

kaaldesh · Feb 22, 2015

Werewolf13 said:
Are the Various Pilot Competenciy Ratings Meaningless?

Yes. But this makes sense really. An incredibly good pilot who just started the game would be seen as "harmless" and an average pilot (like my sorry self) might get "Elite" by grinding easy NPC.

What would be saweeeeeet (imo) would be for these rankings to incorporate a 'Talent Tree' of sorts where you could spend points customizing your pilot as you progressed in rank which could enhance a good pilot's already superior effects and give everyone else something to go for as well.

Alexios Komnenos · Feb 22, 2015

I vote that there be a ladder system, in that if you die or run away from a fight, you 'lose' the fight, and your combat rating goes down. If you beat someone, your rating then goes up, depending on the ladder score of the person you just beat. This would be a little like the ELO system that chess has, and I'm sure we could use a more advanced system once wings goes in so we can measure the ladder ratings of group battles too.

Eagle Eye said:
Well they can (and have already tried) an AI that can annihilate you regardless of your skill level by flying perfectly. But then you all would say it's cheating.

Remember that the challenge of these games are not making a hard enemy, they always start pretty much unbeatable as you show then your movements so they have perfect knowledge. The challenge is making one that is believably hard without players screaming AI cheat. Often this makes them "too easy" for the dedicated players, but they have ro take into account the "casuals" that is the majority of video games player. For them, the current difficulty is hard enough.

I challenge any perfect AI in a sidewinder to actually beat a player anaconda, given that I could fly backwards with FA off. One single burst salvo of all my fixed weapons is enough to take it from full shields to 0% hull. Ships have innate advantages over each other, and I think a few AI cobras or vipers (elite rating only) that fly perfectly will add a lot to the game, since we will now actually fear these perfect pilots. Maybe an assassination mission with a huge payout (say 20 million) for an elite Anaconda who is a perfect pilot would be fun too, as we would have to team up with multiple other players to take it down (use x4 anacondas if you chicken out and just want the cash!).