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Human vs Human Leaderboard Rankings = Meaningless


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Greetings!

Loki 88 and I had a disagreement about the human vs human (HvH) leaderboard rankings.

His contention is that The Bride is "lucky" to have as many HvH kills/damages as she does. He used the phrase "impressive."

I disagreed with this entirely. There is nothing impressive at all about HvH scoring. It is very easily manipulated. I feel HvH scoring is meaningless and broken.

If you have a friend who will feed you, you can rack up as many HvH kills and damages as you want. I vote to have this stat removed from the leaderboard.

:D

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If I have a friend who is willing to let me shoot him down repeatedly, then ALL of the leader board stats are meaningless and broken. I could get thousands of kills with perfect Kills/Mission ratios.

Shall we remove all of the leader board stats?

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Brian, I don't think you understand the most important factor: Time. In about one hour this morning, I demonstrated how the HvH stat is broken. With a friend helping you out, I think you could get perhaps 10 kills per hour. To break 3000, then you would need to convince your friend to feed you for 300 hours of gameplay. If your friend were willing to meet you online to play one hour every single day, it would take you over 9 months to break the record.

As far as getting perfect kills/mission records, the first thing you have to understand is that the greatest hindrance to perfect kill/mission records is the AI. The AI kills planes that you wanted to kill yourself and that messes up your record. With you playing your friend, there are two AI pairs to throw off perfection. So to game this particular stat, you would need to have 4 people colluding, not 2. It's achievable, but again, much, much harder to do.

I agree with you that all stats can be gamed this way, but there is a difference between throwing out a new leaderboard statistic which is easily gamed vs throwing out stats that have been around for over a year.

I have a history of pointing out flaws in the leaderboard and suggesting fixes:

----1) It used to be that we only counted 3 missions for the kills/mission and experience/mission stats. I demonstrated it was too easy to game that, so it was changed to 15 missions. Since that change, people have had a harder time gaming that stat.

---2) The other time there was a problem was when custom missions counted equally as normal. I created a pilot named Customs Only to demonstrate the problem and custom missions were nerfed.

Both times in the past, I was the one who demonstrated the problem. Both times I was eventually vindicated so I'm hoping people keep an open mind that perhaps I know what I'm talking about.

The bottomline is HvH rankings will never matter until we have random opponent assignments and that could only happen if we had several orders of magnitude more players. Until then, we should remove HvH rankings from the leaderboard. If people want to see HvH rankings, they can easily do so by sorting for Human Only opponent type.

[ March 17, 2007, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: Inigo Montoya ]

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Human vs Human has actually restored some of the fun.

And I havent seen anyone playing a thousand human vs human games, and no one I know has ever agreed to fight people and let them shoot them down over and over. The guys who play this game have more honour than that. And since I got home a good many of Loki's kills have been me. :( And even though you guys seem to not like eachother, Loki isnt the type of guy to do that.

I think the best way to solve this is to reset the ladder or make a new ladder that is no ED regen. Then you two can go at eachother from a fresh start.

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Originally posted by Sixxkiller:

Human vs Human has actually restored some of the fun.

Human vs Human *is* fun! No doubt about that. The new medals are fun too. My only request is that HvH not be included on the leaderboard since it is so easily broken that it is meaningless.

Originally posted by Sixxkiller:

you guys seem to not like eachother...

The reason I do not like Loki 88 is he called me a liar. He says I said I had so many HvH kills because of luck. That is untrue. Actually, he was the one who said that I was lucky and impressive to have so many HvH kills and I told him over and over that

1) luck had nothing to do with it - there was nothing impressive about it

2) HvH leaderboard was meaningless and broken

I've been very open about how easy it is to manipulate the HvH leaderboard and have requested that HvH be eliminated from the leaderboard. I have manipulated the board to show why it needs to be eliminated. At no point have I lied. I am offended that perhaps due to his difficulty with the language he does not understand that I'm trying to fix something that is broken rather than attempting to deceive. How is it deception to post it openly on the boards?!? If my goal is to have the highest HvH kills/damages, why would I request that it be removed from the leaderboard?

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I think the all-time kills should be at least 50 missions.

More realistic as to what pilots would have flown during a "tour of duty" and I think the Leaderboard stat "All Time Mission/XP" total is exploited by using a newbie wingman with an experienced leader so that would help eliminate that one.

Not that I overly care, I just play for fun. I have neither the time of patience or even willingness I guess to make trying to be the stat leader of something that in my life is not number 1 in the scheme of things (don't hate me for saying that Sixx and Bride smile.gif ) I do believe in fair play in all cases possible. smile.gif

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I disagree - I think it is good to have H v H kills listed as it encourages more H to H play. If it is broken then it is only because someone doesn't have integrity or honesty and is only interested in being top of the board by cheating and since there really aren't near as many folks here as there were a year or more ago, I don't see that as a problem.

The thing I disagree with is people setting rules on how to play saying you can't attack wingmen. If the designer wished that they could easily make it that way in the next patch update. But as long as they don't I have no problem with other people attacking my winman and me hitting theirs - what ever works for that turn by whatever cards one has.

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I think i have to say something now:

I: I don´t call The Bride a liar

II: I called him a betraying liar

Reason:

I: That honorestly guy called "Die Braut" never fought human dogfights

II: Until the time i´s an all time stat...he decided to do this...until here no problem...i´m the opinio thats good for the game

III: He made 7 kills and 9 damages in a german BERTHA against human opponents...really impressive...thats the word i used, in this sence right!

IV: There has been some guys we all know online, too...named Loki_88, Pete 67 Gbohrer...and all of us wondered about this really abnormal average of human kills in a bertha...i think you can asked everyone of us what happened, i call this guys to attest my witnesses...whats what you have BRAUT?

V: i know the your answer to my last question...your answer is a guy called "loser"...that has been the one you played your human fights...nothing wrong with this until now...

VI: We asked you to join our fights....no interest...why ever....also no problem...

VII: WE CATCHED YOU AS BETRAYER!

VIII: YOU add you have betrayed us

IX: After you got catched you say you just wanna show us its possible to betray

X: Why you don´t tell it to us before...as we asked to fight? But you tried to tell us you only shot down a firend of you who was always flying fatigued planes...and so....WOW...what a luck (right i said that in this sence) you got really much kills very fast.

XI: Nobody who has been online believed a word of what you say

XII: I never would believe a word of you anymore

XIII: My kills ( like with Senshi) are all legal...everyone who playes this game knowes that and met him...you can schoose the player...sixxkiller, fred, bardamu, pete, krid, gbohrer, lakespeed, or whoever you want...WE ARE THE GUYS WHO PLAY LEGAL

XIV: and the best...after you got catched...you tried to tell us you just have done it to show us how WE COULD BE able to betray in this game....

XV: all names of players i counted here have the chance to say: Loki is lying, he shot me down without defending myself and cheated the human kill...if anybody does this...i accept all you blame on me and go down in shame...can you tell the same?

XVI: Take a look at the squadrons, exspecially the new which i mad called "Götterdämmerung"...read whats written there...and now repeat what you are thinking about us...which means me and the guys i told upon and you can find as members on the page.

XVII: I meet you in the sky whenever you want...sent black mamba or whoever you want...no one is running because of you...there are two guys who relly know that Mr. Sixxkiller and me...so come and fight...dont cheat and lie.

I´ve, finished...and if that post is ****ing some persones and means to delete me from the game...hi DiF guys go it...but think about what written her before you do!

Thanks a lot,

Heiko, alias Loki_88.

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Originally posted by Baron von Beergut:

If it is broken then it is only because someone doesn't have integrity or honesty and is only interested in being top of the board by cheating...

BvB, I respect your position, but disagree. The reason the system is broken is because there are so few players and because matches are not randomly assigned. What I have done is revealed how the system is broken. You feel I am cheating. Again, I respect your position, but disagree. If I were cheating, then why argue for HvH stats to be removed? Why would I be saying that the stat is meaningless? Look at the title of this thread.

Here's where you guys are confused. Lakespeed, you allude to the stat leader as being number one in the scheme of my life. BvB you suggest I'm only interested in being on the top of the board. Try to put your assumptions to the side for a moment and hear me. I don't want HvH stats to be on the leaderboard. Get it? You think it's about getting to the top of the HvH leaderboard when it's about elminating the HvH leaderboard.

Now, remember that I have a history of repeatedly doing this -- showing something on the leaderboard is broken and recommending it be fixed. Doesn't it make sense then that here I am, once again, demonstrating that something on the leaderboard is broken and recommending a fix?

[ March 17, 2007, 08:31 PM: Message edited by: Inigo Montoya ]

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Hmmmm hang on - if HvH kills are due to "luck", then presumably there is no cheating involved - since cheating is all about avoiding luck.

The system could be considered "meaningless and broken" if people ARE using mules to get kills, but it is not if that is not happening - it remains a possibility, but one that is not realised.

Now you guys all go back to your corners and get new bricks in your hand bags please - I want to see some good clean hits with the masonry!

Edit: After chattign with Bride & getting some understanding of his deep seated neurosis ;) we came up with an idea:

Limit HvH games so you cannot play the same person twice in a row - that way if you're going to "milk" someone you hae to have at least 3 people in on hte conspiracy!! :cool:

[ March 17, 2007, 09:00 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organist ]

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No, this post is all about how the problem has already been realized. This isn't theory - I've manipulated the system. But you don't need mule accounts! All you need is a friend who is willing to feed you kills. You can even set up an exchange so one round I'll feed your HvH ace and the next game you feed my HvH ace. You can't prove it's not happening already. :(

Now if people want to deny this is a problem, I respect that. I will live with that decision. Personally, it makes it seem like a silly stat, but people are pretty attached to it. I'm seeing now that the leaderboard is less important to me than some others. Curiously, people *say* they don't care about the leaderboard, but when I propose removing the HvH stat, they protest. If they didn't care, why would it matter?

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Ok guys, calm down. I had a pretty hard day at work but I will try to be gentle.

First off I am not an employee of DVG. Brian and Dan make all of the decisions, I have some imput into certain things but not unless they sign off on it. That being said, this game in a way has gotten away from what Dan, the guy who dreamed up this game while he was watching booth babes (ok I made this up), but I know for a fact he never actually intended anyone to ever get to the extreme heights of kills that DIF has become. His desire to please his customers has turned DIF into a killing field where kills and experience are so easily attained without diluting the fun factor.

Then you have Brian, the guy who was a big fan of Dan's card game, who took 4+ years to program this from the ground up by himself, and on his dime I might add.

Then we have the staff members like StalinsO, Bride, Tornado, Zonzo, kuroi, and myself who have put countless hours for free into improving the gameplay for everyone who plays.

Then we have the guys who make this game fun, including Loki, Lakespeed, Bardamu, Gbohrer, BvB and a few others. That means we arent a large community, but there isnt one of you that I dont like or wouldnt fly with or against.

So all this said, Bride and Loki, you are both different individuals, and honestly you are both similar in your competitiveness. But.... you are also 2 of the better pilots in this game. Neither of you need to cheat and Loki I am 100% sure doesnt cheat.

Bride, I am positive you dont need to cheat either. I think Loki doesnt understand what you did to prove a point you didnt need to prove. Bride didnt cheat for the sake of cheating Loki. Bride is a tester. He was in this role before you even got here. He did manipulate the kills to prove that a human vs human ladder can have cheating involved. Its a valid point, even if it was already known. smile.gif Bride has good intentions and I will bet you 1 Trillion Dollars Loki that he will ask for the kills to be removed. He has done this before even to my dismay!

And to be honest, the human vs human concept was actually Loki's doing (I think) and even though it is evident that there can be cheating, this has always been the case, even against the AI. And I am a big proponent of this idea. It adds an incentive to play vs eachother instead of killing easy bots over and over.

But Bride I dont see a problem, you are in no way threatened in any of your categories by human dogfights. No way will anyone approach you by fighting humans lol. Hell if someone gets to 500 kills I will be surprised as the players who are fighting in these battles are all pretty skilled.

Ok well I lost my train of thought.

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One more thing, as I told Bride in an earlier chat, no one has cheated, and until someone actually tries to exploit the game in this manner, nothing is inheriantly broken. So if we had a vote on this, I would say keep it, but since we dont get a vote, it doesnt matter, its in and until its proven someone cheats, its a non-issue.

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The stats of human damages and kills make this game only more interesting, i don´t see any need to stop it.

And once again i wouldn´t have any problem with poor 7 kills if somebody say: LOOK I SHOW YOU HOW IT´S POSSIBLE TO CHEAT. (Even when everbody knows this.

All the problem has been, the person i´m talking about told us nothing about it...and lied to us as we ask for this impressive 5 missions...and after some discuss he told us he lied and THEN AFTER GOT CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF BETRAYING told us something about an idea to show it´s possible to cheat.

It´s like you robbing a bank and if the police catch you you say: i just wanna show it´s possible to rob the bank...don´t be angry with me because that...i just wanna do something good? If thats the way of your logic...and that means all of you..you should visit a doctor.

Shortcut of all: betraying - get catched - lying - then telling about it was a necessary cheating - saying HvH is ****.

That doesn´t make any sence for me, sorry.

I hope Pete67 and GB are posting here soon, too, to show their view in this thing, maybe then the situation becomes cleared for you guys who havent been there as this dirty **** happens.

Thanks a lot.

Heiko.

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Well said, Sixx. I'm in complete agreement.

By the way, Bride has asked me to delete the pilot with the HvH kills that he used to demonstrate how the system could be manipulated. I have removed those kills from the system.

[ March 18, 2007, 04:42 AM: Message edited by: bartbert ]

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Well, first of all if I offended you Bride, I apoligize. My statement at the Leaderboard not being the number one priority was not intended as any kind of insult to you, but merely reflects my own personal feelings that I really don't care about the leaderboard because I'm not willing to spend a lot of time playing this game. From where I sit I would have to turn playing into a second job just to catch anyone and that would kind of defeat the purpose of me playing for fun.

Having said that, I seriously think you are obsessed with needing to be at the top of every stat on the leaderboard. And having several more stats to chase after will seriously be that much more difficult for you to attain. You are the only person that I know that posts "status reports" and "breakdowns" of your leading pilot. Maybe you do this just to rag on everyone, I don't know, maybe I just miss the humor in it.

I never used to have this opinion, but there was one thing you said to me a while back that kind of revealed something to me. I remember on a Sunday night I had the kills/mission stat lead for the week, and when I logged on that Monday I noticed you took it over with a pilot you hadn't flown to that point that week. I never brought it up but that day when you were online you told me you had to do it because YOU COULDN'T LET ANYONE TAKE ONE OF THE 18 SPOTS ON THE LEADERBOARD FOR THE WEEK. Now, as I said I don't really care but to me that shows me that you seriously have some kind of issue going on there.

Or I'm crazy.

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Eric,

LOL. Bride didnt start the bragging posting, I did. I did it to get you fellers more involved. I even kind of made up records that were meaningless LOL, like Sadahara being so far ahead of the nations next highest pilot. smile.gif While its true, its still pretty meaningless (look a stolen subject heading smile.gif ).

And Bride doesnt really play that much to be honest. I am online as much as anyone usually, and Bride goes through long periods of inactivity, so I wouldnt say its his second job.

And Eric as far as your Sunday night record, that was my fault as I remember telling him he wouldnt catch you. smile.gif So that was my gauntlet to bear for throwing down the challenge. I was trying to beat it too hehe.

As for him wanting to have all of the records, why not? I am super competetive myself and I can understand that.

And BTW Eric, how the hell did 'Cuse not go to the NCAA's?

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Well, like I said it's not a big deal.

I can usually tell when things are usually tongue-in-cheek (especially with you Ray) smile.gif I just didn't get that vibe.

As for records, if I really wanted it I would have stopped when it was 4.00 ensuring I had it. I was 15/60 at the time. smile.gif But I wanted to play, not have a record. I'll freely admit the comment irked me a bit, because I don't feel like I have to play and compete here with anyone, I just want to play and for the love of God have one of my pilots finally make it to the 1000 club! smile.gif (and type a huge amount of run-on sentences. Somewhere my old AP English teacher is hearing bells ring in her ears) smile.gif

As for the cheating debate, let's face it we all know ways to "scam" the game. I found one out on accident to ensure getting any end result I want but I don't use it. I realized it when I had to leave a game prematurely and saw that the only thing affected was my fatigue. So I suppose that if I really wanted to spend the effort I could play until I got the end results I wanted and just exit out of those I didn't. Same goes for the XP/Mission deal. I could kill off a wingie and just play until I got the results I wanted.

Then again if I wanted to be King of the Hill I'd just have to be the Germans!

;)tongue.giftongue.giftongue.gif

Let's not go there with the 'Cuse, my friend. We wuz robbed! I did smile though when Stanford and Arkansas were blown out, I have to admit.

And I can't believe I find myself rooting for the Hoyas. What the hell is a Hoya anyways?

Let's hope we take it to the house in the NIT!

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Originally posted by lakespeed:

Well, first of all if I offended you Bride, I apoligize.

No worries! You haven't offended me at all! smile.gif

The only person who offended me is Loki 88, who called me a liar. If you read his post, you'll see he admits that I never said I was lucky - he did. He can't give one instance of me telling a lie. I was open that my score meant nothing and my position was HvH was broken.

With you, Eric, it wasn't an issue of offense, it was an issue of misunderstanding. That's what I was trying to clear up. This post is about me thinking HvH needed to be removed, but people misunderstanding and thinking that I wanted to have the highest HvH score. If you really think about it, it wasn't *me* who cared so much about having the HvH leaderboard listing, it was really all the people who play for "fun." So you didn't offend, you just misunderstood my intention (see below).

Originally posted by lakespeed:

You are the only person that I know that posts "status reports" and "breakdowns" of your leading pilot. Maybe you do this just to rag on everyone, I don't know, maybe I just miss the humor in it.

There are two reasons I posted the status reports. One is because when I first started playing, I wanted to know things like what was the highest kills achieved in a week? What was the highest kills ever achieved in a month? When I'm playing, I like to set goals for myself and see if I can reach them. One silly goal I've set for Black Mamba is to never kill a plane that's already been damaged. So my wingman never damages the planes because that would make it easier for Black Mamba. If a bomber damages a plane, my wingman kills it. It's just for fun to add some challenge. Similarly, last year April I thought it would be fun to break the one month record for kills. So I searched the entire DiF forum and there was no record of the highest kills in a week or month. I found out by word of mouth (Sixxkiller) what he thought the records might be. Now, if someone ever wants to know the record, it's in there. The second reason I posted results is joking around. Sixxkiller noted the forums were dead, so he started a post about Sadahara. That lead to a number of posts about accomplishments. Another post Sixx started pointed out that Loki 88 and I were competing fiercely for about a week. Humor online is difficult to express and I'm not sure if anyone other than Sixx thought my postings were funny. So you aren't alone in not seeing the humor in them. :D

Originally posted by lakespeed:

I never used to have this opinion, but there was one thing you said to me a while back that kind of revealed something to me. I remember on a Sunday night I had the kills/mission stat lead for the week, and when I logged on that Monday I noticed you took it over with a pilot you hadn't flown to that point that week. I never brought it up but that day when you were online you told me you had to do it because YOU COULDN'T LET ANYONE TAKE ONE OF THE 18 SPOTS ON THE LEADERBOARD FOR THE WEEK. Now, as I said I don't really care but to me that shows me that you seriously have some kind of issue going on there.

Or I'm crazy.

You aren't crazy at all! Above, I discussed how I set these arbitrary goals for myself. With the Sadahara post and then the other post about how Loki 88 was going to overtake me, I wanted to achieve something impressive. I thought holding all 18 records at the same time would be. It's hard to do because you need 2 weeks in a row or at least 8 days. I had 17 of the records, but I couldn't get 18 without flying a different pilot (and dropping the "wingman never damages rule"). So that was my "issue." For that 2 week period I had set a goal and I wanted to achieve it. Having this particular style has actually served me very well in life and I hope to instill the same sort of goal-setting in my children. I remember when I was a kid, I was pretty good at soccer. So my dad told me that in one particular game I could only score with my left foot (I'm right-footed). It made it really fun! I guess most people think it's abnormal to set goals in games. They are just playing for fun. For me, achieving challenging goals I've set *is* half the fun. In a WWII game, I wonder if I can capture Gibraltar as the Germans before 1941. In chess, can I reach **** ranking? In a game of hearts, can I not only win, but make my friend who was just teasing me a second ago take the Queen of Spades? Does that make sense?

Eric, I think you are thinking I'm a megalomaniac with problems functioning in the real world -- like I have to play DiF to feel good about myself. smile.gif But if you could look back over my history of demonstrating problems in the leaderboard, bringing them to the developers attention, then having those pilots deleted, I think you would agree that's not the behavior of a megalomaniac. tongue.gif

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Originally posted by lakespeed:

As for the cheating debate, let's face it we all know ways to "scam" the game. I found one out on accident to ensure getting any end result I want but I don't use it. I realized it when I had to leave a game prematurely and saw that the only thing affected was my fatigue. So I suppose that if I really wanted to spend the effort I could play until I got the end results I wanted and just exit out of those I didn't. Same goes for the XP/Mission deal. I could kill off a wingie and just play until I got the results I wanted.

Interesting! Is this something Brian could fix? It seems like it should be easy enough to do - just give people +1 to missions along with the fatigue.
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Well Loki calls me a liar too Bride, but I must say I have not been called a betraying liar. I think I am jealous to not only not have the kills lead still, but also that I am not being insulted properly! (Thats your cue Mike) I am sure I will do or say something to get me into trouble and challenge you again Peter.

Erin just said that you all should go to the corner for a time out.

But everything I post is usually in jest because even though you guys think all I do is play DIF, I did actually play Combat Mission yesterday, so there! This is just fun and most of the time I am there just to chat with you guys.

So this is over right and we can get back to talking about Stalin behind his back????

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Originally posted by Rastakyle(rastak):

I'm just curious what kind of idiot would ask a friend to fly crippled planes over and over and what kind of bigger idiot would agree to do it for hours on end?

Does anyone this stupid really exist?

Fascinating. One person assumes the one-hour effort was done for narcissism. The poster above thinks it was done out of stupidity. Another is adamant it was done for betrayal.

I completely understand the varied hypotheses, but what I find bewildering is the smug certainty that each suggestion they propose is the correct one.

As history has made abundantly evident, there is an inverse relationship between wisdom and certainty.

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