Alliance Scoring

[omaster]

I think the way the Alliance scoring is a little bad.

I would like to recomend a better way of doing it. I think right now older alliances get tooo much benefit and it makes younger ones virtually not be even able to be in the competition. I understand why there is a "cummultative score" But I think this should be capped at say 500 or something. That way it is like CI in an airline. It can go up and down depending on things. This way in the end the best alliance comes down to those doing well. (Because they will be able to maintain the 500 cummultive score) and the additional variable score depending on the airline rankings for the airline.

I think it would give a much better and fairer scoring that means that the alliances can compete more with each other with scores.

Note: This is just a quick and easy solution I thought might be good. I do not know what others think?  Maybe there are other methods people think are fairer?

[Sami]

http://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,48187.0.html

[Infinity]

We really need to talk about alliance scoring as it is definitely broken. Take a look at game world #3. We (Elite) have been at 25 members for pretty much most of the game, and our variable score vastly exceeds (as a point of percentage) that of any other alliance.

For reference, these are the scores in #3:
     Name              Variable   Cumulative   Overall
1. Global Express     651          2585          3236
2. Sky Alliance         575          2193          2768
3. Elite                   1072         1664          2736

As you can see, the ratio of variable to cumulative goes to such extremes as 1:4.

I absolutely fail to see why there is so much emphasis on keeping a rather arbitrary number of airlines at all times compared to maintaining a high average quality of airlines. Cumulative score should be of much lower importance than variable score, yet it is exactly the other way around.

Now, you may call me a whiner because we are not winning, and that may be true, but that's how it is. We focus on a member pool with low fluctuation and don't just invite any random airline once a spot opens up. This focus on community makes us lose the game, and I don't think that's right.

I also think that penalties for strikes etc are far too high. We have had a couple of those because real life commitments changed for a few members, and you can see the effect of this (it's not all due to lower member numbers). It's still only a game - if a member can't login for some time to raise salaries regularly, that should not punish an alliance as much as it does.

[Teadaze]

also, i think variable score(such as LF, utilization) should have contribution to the overall score each year, or else why should you try to shape up your airline? Just find 25 player first second the game started, and just worry about it near the end of the game.

you deduct point on performance issue(such as strike, CI drop) but no reward are given to airline that is properly kept, it hurts for long game world.

[Mr.HP]

We really need to talk about alliance scoring as it is definitely broken. Take a look at game world #3. We (Elite) have been at 25 members for pretty much most of the game, and our variable score vastly exceeds (as a point of percentage) that of any other alliance.

For reference, these are the scores in #3:
     Name              Variable   Cumulative   Overall
1. Global Express     651          2585          3236
2. Sky Alliance         575          2193          2768
3. Elite                   1072         1664          2736

As you can see, the ratio of variable to cumulative goes to such extremes as 1:4.

I absolutely fail to see why there is so much emphasis on keeping a rather arbitrary number of airlines at all times compared to maintaining a high average quality of airlines. Cumulative score should be of much lower importance than variable score, yet it is exactly the other way around.

Now, you may call me a whiner because we are not winning, and that may be true, but that's how it is. We focus on a member pool with low fluctuation and don't just invite any random airline once a spot opens up. This focus on community makes us lose the game, and I don't think that's right.

I also think that penalties for strikes etc are far too high. We have had a couple of those because real life commitments changed for a few members, and you can see the effect of this (it's not all due to lower member numbers). It's still only a game - if a member can't login for some time to raise salaries regularly, that should not punish an alliance as much as it does.

I remember that Alliance variable score system has been changed and applied right in the middle of on-running-gw3, in favor of mega airlines. Gw3 hasn't finished, yet and you guys whines already?

Also, don't think that any random airlines will do the job. They're the most risky one, as Alliance might pay for their neglect in missing check, staff strike and sudden BK. We have put in a lot of effort in guiding our members, and we're paid off with good cumulative score. Why don't you guys achieve the same? Too thin resources? Maybe you should change your strategy and focus on a few ones instead of all game world. You don't see the best football/soccer team to win all league/cup they're enrolling in, do you?

[Infinity]

As I said we focus on our community. This means keeping our members together and offering them a presence in all game worlds. We certainly won't limit ourselves to one single game world just to win that.

As I said, the number of 25 airlines is completely arbitrary and there is absolutely no sensible reason why there should be more importance on that than on the quality of airlines in an alliance. An alliance with 3 top airlines should not win against an alliance with 3 top airlines and 22 mediocre ones, but the way we are losing against an alliance with 60% of our quality (as in variable score) just because said alliance has maintained that arbitrary number for a bit longer than we have is absolutely ridiculous.

By the way, if you bring sporting analogies already - what would you say if your favorite sports team lead the league by a vast amount but still got beaten by another team for the championship because that team had the maximum allowed number of players in the squad for longer and fewer injuries over the season? There would be one hell of an uproar if that happened.

[Mr.HP]

As I said we focus on our community. This means keeping our members together and offering them a presence in all game worlds. We certainly won't limit ourselves to one single game world just to win that.

Yes, you can still focus on community, have a great time with friends and acquaintances, why worry about the results?

As I said, the number of 25 airlines is completely arbitrary and there is absolutely no sensible reason why there should be more importance on that than on the quality of airlines in an alliance. An alliance with 3 top airlines should not win against an alliance with 3 top airlines and 22 mediocre ones, but the way we are losing against an alliance with 60% of our quality (as in variable score) just because said alliance has maintained that arbitrary number for a bit longer than we have is absolutely ridiculous.

Sorry to say, but is that how you define "quality"? Top 10% in those criteria means quality? Then AA, Delta, United and the like are top quality airlines, and not the 5 star Asiana Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Hainan Airlines, Qatar Airways, etc...

If you want score, try using the new airlines score, and see average score per airlines of each Alliance. I don't say the new airlines score is a good measure, but at least it includes everyone and have a wide judging criteria

By the way, if you bring sporting analogies already - what would you say if your favorite sports team lead the league by a vast amount but still got beaten by another team for the championship because that team had the maximum allowed number of players in the squad for longer and fewer injuries over the season? There would be one hell of an uproar if that happened.

I tell you another story. At the beginning of the season, A team who got many big stars in their squad, achieves win after win and created a big lead over B team who only has a few good players and many mediocre ones. Closing to mid season break, A team's players started to switch their attention from the league to the national cup and Europe cup. Because of playing too many games, their players were showing fatigue, lack of focus, and losing form. In addition to that, injuries kept coming. A team coach refused to recruit new players during the winter break to replace injuries, and said they could fight with 20 players, oh even 16 players, even though the rule allows 25 players in the squad

Now the league is about to end and B team manages to lead because they focus only in the league, have full 25 healthy players in the squad so they can rotate. And you think it's wrong for B team to win?

Moreover, A team is now calling to change the rule:
- 45 minutes per game, 19 rounds per season so their stars have enough stamina to finish the league soon, and can go on to cups
- Only 15 players maximum in the squad
- 1 on 1 game, so star players can win the game on their own. No more team work, coz they don't want to work with new recruited players, and junior players will only screw the game

[gazzz0x2z]

The 25 limit is arbitrary, as is the 11 players limit in football. So what? Anyways, my own alliance is little behind the pack, so whatever method is used, we couldn't win that one.

It's up to the game designer to decide what are the scoring criteria. If, as it seems to be, regularity is decided to be the most rewarded element, then why not? It's in the rules, it's written down. That's the game. In football, you score when the ball goes below the bar. In rugby, the reverse. That's a choice.

There are choices to be made, according to the rules. And according to your own identity. What is your purpose in that game? Win? Have fun? I'm currently around the 60th place in airline value rankings, struggling to pass the european bird flu pandemics. And I'm having fun. I'm forced to make hard choices, scrapping planes with a good sellling potential, wasting loan money that I'd better invest in new planes, etc... And I'm having fun. My alliance is far behind the top trio, and we have noone in the top 30. And I'm having fun.

But it's a different purpose. If you focus on winning, you'll have less fun. If you focus on team building, you'll have less wins(and probably more fun also). Life is a matter of choices. Hard choices. The best to make. Sometimes, you make wrong choices(as I made when settling in Reus). Happens. You seem to imply you were plagued by strikes at some of your companies. Happens. From the manual, I can see they can be extremely costly in terms of cumulative scoring. If you underperformed those, and as those are the written rules, well, you were not as good at this game than your 2 opponents.

At this game. you focused on other objectives, that you seem to have fulfilled with skill. You won your game. But that was another game. In life, each person, each organization sets its own goals. Your complaint sounds as if Greenpeace was complaining to have lower bank ratings than Goldman & Sachs. But they don't play the same game! You obviously did focus on other elements than the alliance score victory, & did achieve your goals. I did aim for surviving for my first game, and I am still in the top 60 in terms of airlines value. I did succeed. As you did. But don't complain for a "failure" that is not a failure, just a goalpost you didn't aim for, and therefore missed.

[Infinity]

Now the league is about to end and B team manages to lead because they focus only in the league, have full 25 healthy players in the squad so they can rotate. And you think it's wrong for B team to win?

But you don't. You didn't overtake us in a quality related measure (which variable score is, no matter what you say about those ridiculous bought Skytrax ratings that have nothing to do with the game), you only win due to a quantity related measure which doesn't even come into play in competitive areas like sporting. Nobody f***ing cares if Real Madrid has fewer players and more injuries than FC Barcelona, in the end they win because they have scored more points in the league - but we don't because the scale is f***ed up.

I don't know why I am even trying to argue against your ridiculous points, anyone with the least bit of common sense can see that it's broken the way it is.

If you want score, try using the new airlines score, and see average score per airlines of each Alliance. I don't say the new airlines score is a good measure, but at least it includes everyone and have a wide judging criteria

Doesn't change anything about my argument (it would still restore a fair battleground), but completely removing any quantity measure would mean an alliance with 3 top airlines wins if there is even one lackluster in a larger alliance, which is crap.
Quantity has to play a role, but a much smaller one than it does currently.

[spiff23]

I'd use the analogy of the Yankees.  Just because the owners can afford to break the salary cap every year and hire all the best elite talent doesn't guarantee them a World Series victory, let alone even an automatic spot to the World Series every year., albeit they aere always  competitive with the best bench depth in the league.  That being said, they've only been to the World Series  once or twice the last 10 years as lots of teams with 3-4 star players, if they even have that, keep getting in because they simply played better and sometime luck of one single clutch hit / pitch after a 160 game season (Kansas City comes to mind).

Ultimately it's how the 25 (or whatever number) perform and pull their weight over the course of the season.  Actual game play and clutch hitting/pitching wins a championship, not statistics.

You guys have been around long enough and know the rules  that this thread seems pointless.

you can have plenty of comraderie without tanking your alliance if personal situations change during the course of the game (or why not have a manager proactively follow up with your team members when they hit a slump).  Good players understand when they need to go to the farm league to sort out some issues while a new guy gets his shot.

I'll leave it at that as I'm not even in that game vs. a whole new set of rule changes when the current system seems to be working as intended.

[[ATA] frimp]

I agree that the alliance scoring is far from optimal but we all know how these are scored and alliance managers/members should all try to maximise their efforts if they want the alliance to succeed and win. It's interesting though that it was never an Elite problem when you won 10 consecutive gameworlds but after defeat in last gw#2 and imminent defeat in gw#3, the system now appears broken and needs to be fixed... It's also no secret that in past gameworlds new members would join late to skew the variable scoring by targetting a few of the key statistics which is an easy way to score additional variable points.

We really need to talk about alliance scoring as it is definitely broken. Take a look at game world #3. We (Elite) have been at 25 members for pretty much most of the game, and our variable score vastly exceeds (as a point of percentage) that of any other alliance.

If you have been with 25 members for most of this gameworld then your cumulative score should be really high and up with the levels of the other 2 alliances, the likely reason why this isn't the case is because of negative points that have affected your airlines and brought this down or you haven't been with 25 members all game..

Aoitsuki mentions something about annual score contribution which could be a good idea but it should only be a small portion of it... If we stick with the analagies of sporting events.. If a national soccer team goes through the qualification process of the World Cup and wins all their games, qualifies for the world cup, makes it to the final but then loses the world cup final, then they still haven't won it.. I see the alliance scoring similar to that.

I already wrote some proposals in this thread (see link below) which would partially solve some of these problems and give a fair approach to the scoring  of an alliance. It would be good if we could perhaps work from that basis and start adding/tweaking suggestions with a view of coming up with a new scoring system that works for everyone and shows a true reflection of an alliance's strength.
http://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,51698.0.html   (read reply #11)

At the end of the day, Sami has set the rules and current scoring mechanism.
Perhaps all main alliances should brainstorm together and suggest a fair mechanism (for small & large airlines) on how this scoring to be implemented/ updated..

From previous experiences, I sense that we shouldn't come to Sami with problems but come with solutions on problems.. That tends to speed things up.

[Teadaze]

I agree that the alliance scoring is far from optimal but we all know how these are scored and alliance managers/members should all try to maximise their efforts if they want the alliance to succeed and win. It's interesting though that it was never an Elite problem when you won 10 consecutive gameworlds but after defeat in last gw#2 and imminent defeat in gw#3, the system now appears broken and needs to be fixed... It's also no secret that in past gameworlds new members would join late to skew the variable scoring by targetting a few of the key statistics which is an easy way to score additional variable points.

the problem doesn't start until long game world is introduced. In fact the recent changes in how airline score point seem to have links towards alliance points. Which was never really mentioned. And yes, it is no secret every alliance is doing it /trying to hinder it if they are getting close, worse of all some even comes with brand new registered account and without any assistance doing everything right with alliance backing.

If you have been with 25 members for most of this gameworld then your cumulative score should be really high and up with the levels of the other 2 alliances, the likely reason why this isn't the case is because of negative points that have affected your airlines and brought this down or you haven't been with 25 members all game..

This brings up another point I want to make, sami has introduced long game world and will be sticking most of the future games in this format, but seems like some tools is missing(e.g. quicker way of changing massive amount of fleet... etc). A simple log/history on point awarded and point deduction due to strike, missing check should be essential to alliance management and should be relatively easy to create, right now 3/4 game world takes a year to complete, people take time off, get sloppy after a while or simply vanish from the earth for a week due to unexpected situation. In the case of gw2 a certain airline who has a mega fleet and tens of billion of cash reserve + scoring all kinds of variable score all of a sudden lost the alliance over 400+ points because he lost internet, with almost no way of finding out. Yes he could of turn on auto everything and there will be no problem. But the fact is overall the alliance interface is severely lacking of features.

Aoitsuki mentions something about annual score contribution which could be a good idea but it should only be a small portion of it... If we stick with the analagies of sporting events.. If a national soccer team goes through the qualification process of the World Cup and wins all their games, qualifies for the world cup, makes it to the final but then loses the world cup final, then they still haven't won it.. I see the alliance scoring similar to that.

I agree it should not be major, but at least some contribution should be awarded. I personally see aws more like premier league then world cup since there is no process of elimination(cumulative points).

I already wrote some proposals in this thread (see link below) which would partially solve some of these problems and give a fair approach to the scoring  of an alliance. It would be good if we could perhaps work from that basis and start adding/tweaking suggestions with a view of coming up with a new scoring system that works for everyone and shows a true reflection of an alliance's strength.
http://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,51698.0.html   (read reply #11)

At the end of the day, Sami has set the rules and current scoring mechanism.
Perhaps all main alliances should brainstorm together and suggest a fair mechanism (for small & large airlines) on how this scoring to be implemented/ updated..

From previous experiences, I sense that we shouldn't come to Sami with problems but come with solutions on problems.. That tends to speed things up.

/signed

[[ATA] frimp]

the problem doesn't start until long game world is introduced. In fact the recent changes in how airline score point seem to have links towards alliance points. Which was never really mentioned. And yes, it is no secret every alliance is doing it /trying to hinder it if they are getting close, worse of all some even comes with brand new registered account and without any assistance doing everything right with alliance backing.

It's called recruiting and training... .. Some alliances offer intensive training, others like to recruit established players... Every alliance offers differentiation..nothing stops other alliances from doing the same. I was personally accused by someone (from a competing alliance) of opening another account and running 2 airlines, which was proven not to be the case by admin..

This brings up another point I want to make, sami has introduced long game world and will be sticking most of the future games in this format, but seems like some tools is missing(e.g. quicker way of changing massive amount of fleet... etc). A simple log/history on point awarded and point deduction due to strike, missing check should be essential to alliance management and should be relatively easy to create, right now 3/4 game world takes a year to complete, people take time off, get sloppy after a while or simply vanish from the earth for a week due to unexpected situation. In the case of gw2 a certain airline who has a mega fleet and tens of billion of cash reserve + scoring all kinds of variable score all of a sudden lost the alliance over 400+ points because he lost internet, with almost no way of finding out.

I agree with most of that statement... In the new gw2 our main LHR guy was on a 2 week cruise in the caribbean and had huge dip in profits due to lack of access but thanks to excessive cash balances he survived... Fortunately he's a dedicated member and kept us in the loop of what happened.. To lose internet for over 2 weeks seems excessive.. AWS can even be accessed by 3G which should cover a lot of places.. Ultimately it depends on member's dedication which is a big challenge from a management point of view which I've personally found out on several occasions as well..


I'm not sure if you've had a chance to look at the other thread but I personally believe that if cumulative points get allocated to airlines rather than the alliance it will be much better. This way it ensures that an alliance benefits from players who stay from start to finish in the alliance...
I feel that based on sami's current scoring of (individual) airlines we could add a cumulative variable as well... (5/10/15/20 points per year + usual negative points).. The sum of all members should then form the alliance score. If a member, BKs or Restarts then they would lose the cumulative score bit and be reset to 0.. (in long gw's this would be a big drop if they BKed after 20yrs or so, like I did in gw2).
Currently alliances ask members to leave b4 BKing to avoid losing cumulative alliance points... By adding cumulative points to the members it would negate this and offer a better scoring representation of alliance performance throughout the long gameworlds and reward those airlines/alliances who have run from start to finish as they would not lose cumulative points and would sort of guarantee that you get rewarded for doing well throughout the years.

Look forward to hearing other people's thoughts on this and also welcome constructive feedback.