I'm reproducing the "Endyss Plan" from the thread Whut linked to here, so you can see exactly what he's talking about:

Something important is missing from that chart. "Time played".

Ranks 20-1 have an average play time around 18 days.

Ranks 40-21 have an average around 10 days.

Ranks 60-41 have an average around 8 days.

Ranks 80-61 have an average around 5 to 6 days.

Ranks 100-81 have an average of 3 to 4 days.

 Why should someone with 3-4 days play time have anywhere near the accumilated points of someone with 18 or even 30 days play time? The points are more about length of playing rather than any sort of skill. So trying to give newer players with less time more points... well, I don't know, especially since those points are almost solely going to be coming from your core 80 players who spend the most time on the servers.

I don't like the idea of points resetting monthly, but I *would* support a reset of them right now so that everyone starts on a level playing field. Maybe a yearly or bi-annual reset.

 

I think you just want a pds/hax/gwdr person in the top 2... YOU'RE ALL CONSPIRING AGAINST ME!!!!! lol :D

Your gf said she would not be for changing it so my advice is that you retract your statement if you know what is good for you.

 

 

As far as which is more important, Skill or Time Played, I think philosophically we need to decide what the Ranking system is designed for.

If the point is to keep people coming back and playing as a means of growing the community, then Time Played should be the emphasis and the graph in the previous post proves the current system is more or less doing its job.

If the point is to reward skill and promote regulars that do well, then we need to up the point loss and follow it with a reversal of the minimum kill # to keep skilled one-timers from decimating the regular players.

The discrepancy in points within the Top 50 is pretty large already, not taking into account the other 600 making up the riffraff of the 1000 kills league. As of now, if Rank 1 is killed by Rank 50, Rank 1 loses a minimum of 19 points, but with any normal melee weapon, taunt, or reflected shot, loses the cap of 50 as it is now.

Things should be weighted as to how important they are to the game itself. Huge point values might work in a deathmatch setting, but the goal of Team Fortress 2 is typically some form of attack/defense territory control (except for you 2fort bastards where it is a deathmatch). Capturing a control point and helping your team reach its objective is worth 50 points whilst Rank 1 getting killed by a reflected rocket of Rank 650 is worth -1175 points. Is it really balanced in terms of the game's objectives that killing one person is worth the same number of points as capturing a flag or control point 24 times? I don't think so.

Even now, at rank 8, I have trouble breaking even in games of 12 players or more, I don't think going from +10 or -10 points per hour in large games to -4500 points per hour will be much fun. This will just promote more turtling or objective-ignoring from most players which will make games worse. It's hard enough to coordinate any sort of team movement towards the objective as it is now. If everyone were to stay in the spawn the entire round out of fear of losing 1000 points, nothing will ever happen.

Some servers have a point cap on the points that can be lost by the killed but not on the points gained by the killer. For instance, if I killed someone with a much greater number of points, I would get, say, 200 points for killing him or her, but that person would only lose 50. I'm not a huge fan of this method because it inflates scores too much, but at least it will ultimately balance them more if that's the plan.

Ultimately, though, I'd be most happy with raising the kill threshold back to 1000 kills and keeping scoring the way it is. If the point cap is removed, though, think about significantly raising the point values for in-game events like kill assists, captures, et cetera. This might not keep scores lower, but it will keep them more balanced. Now, we 'high rankers' get the vast majority of our points from objectives like asssists and point captures while 'low rankers' get a greater percentage of their points from kills as you go down the ranks. The risk-reward for trying to play the game as it is meant to be played for most middle/high ranked players will be too high for some players.

Yeah, I already hesitated to play on 2fort because there was NO way to make back lost points if there were too many recent "normal points" players on the other team, but it's going to be 10x worse now. As much as the points mean NOTHING it still feels BAD to see them go down. Even holding steady is fine by me.

Let's say one of us top 20 players has 100 outright kills in a night. And let's say we have a 1.5:1 KD ratio. That would mean 75 deaths. Let's say 50% of those deaths are by people collecting 50 points (which is quickly going to be a reality during prime time). That's about ~1850 lost points in a night. Now let's see how we can make those points back:

1) Kill 1,850 people individually. As few as 925 people if we get the bonus points.
2) Kill Ducktor BBQ at least 185 times (boy will he be steamed).
3) Assist in killing 370 people.
4) Personally cap the intel or capture point 37 times. Or be on a team that caps the intel or capture point 74 times.
5) Personally defend the intel or capture point 123 times. Or be on a team that defends 370 times.
6) Build a complete engy setup (sentry, dispenser, teleporters) 132 times and hope they're blown up by the enemy.

Whew, I think some of us are going to be busy!!