Update:Blog - Clan Updates: Wars and Scores
This blog was written by Mod Jack and dates to 7 April 2011.
With the release of the Clan Camp now imminent, I can finally talk about the gameplay elements that are going to be released at the same time.
Rated Clan Wars
First, there's Rated Clan Wars (RCW). Clan Wars as an activity is primarily about us getting out of the way and just letting you stomp on each other, and I've tried to keep to that as much as possible. We have a brand new map, based loosely on the demon ruins. The rules are simple and, in order to guarantee fair matches, players won't be able to customise the rules before the match. We’ve gathered feedback from players to try to build the best rule set compromise we can.
The rules are:
- Each side brings between 10 and 500 clanmates.
- Matches last between 30-120 minutes, based on how many players are in the battle.
- Players respawn during this period and total kills for each clan are tracked.
- No weapon types or combat types are prohibited
- You can't leave the fight and come back in.
- The battles are always safe.
- If the match is played on a free world, all free-to-play rules apply
After the match, both clans are awarded points. This is an intentionally obfuscated process. One of the problems that afflicts all tournament systems is that, while the majority of the players will respect the spirit of competition, there will always be a small number that try to exploit the structure of the tournament in order to rise to the top. This means that if we exposed all the details of the scoring system, the more devious clans would quickly figure out how to get the most points with the minimum risk. These clans would quickly dominate the rankings, rather than the clans who were actually good at playing Clan Wars.
What I can tell you is how your score is calculated at the end of each match. Your clan's proportion of the total kills is multiplied by the number of enemy participants, and then multiplied by the enemy clan's performance rating. This performance rating is tracked over time, but remains hidden. If you play against and beat good clans, your hidden rating will rise. You'll have to qualitatively assess your opponents in order to work out who's the most skilled. These points are accumulated over time and, once earned, are never lost. You can earn more points by playing bigger matches, more frequent matches, scoring better than the enemy in matches, and playing against more highly rated opponents.
Clan Hiscores
Then there are the Clan Hiscores tables. These work a lot like the player hiscores, but on a clan-wide basis, and include information like combat levels, total skills, individual skills and XP earned. You'll be able to sort clans by any of these stats so you can choose the area you want to compete in. Rated Clan Wars will have its own dedicated hiscore table, one for matches played on free worlds and one for matches played on members' worlds.
If you're more into dangerous PvP than safe Clan Wars, you'll be glad to know we’ve also implemented clan hiscores for kills and deaths in the Wilderness (and, most importantly, kill/death ratios). Rather than being the total of the all-time kills and deaths for each of your clanmates, this data is actually tracked only for kills and deaths from your clanmates while they're in your clan.
Lastly, I know there's been a sentiment from some players that these clan updates aren't intended for them because they've never been in a clan. Our whole mentality going into this clan project was not simply to create tools useful to existing clans, but also to reduce the difficulty involved in running or belonging to a clan at all, to encourage more players to get involved.
Our hope is that many more players will find this new system useful to them in the long run. As well as more serious combat, skilling and minigame clans, we're hoping to see many more casual and social clans, and clans of players just helping each other.
We'll be looking closely at your feedback on Rated Clan Wars and the clan hiscore tables once they're live, so please let us know what you think. We'll also be looking closely at the performance of clans on the hiscore tables and tweaking the calculations if necessary.
To discuss this blog on the forums, visit this forum thread.
Mod Jack explains how the scoring for Rated Clan Wars is going to work, plus a little about the clan hiscore table.