After years of wanting it and months of testing, Populous finally has a skill based league table! The system used is based off the Trueskill System that is used for ranking on Xbox Live with modifications made to work with Populous. It is a comparative system where ranks are changed based on wins and losses, similar to the Elo ranking system, but with the addition of skill uncertainty and it works with team games instead of only 1v1. Here are the details of the implementation for anyone interested.
The old league system will remain in place same as always, but will not be used in matchmaker rankings.
The ranks in the matchmaker are based on this system and distributed across players based on how many points they have. Any player that has played less than 10 ranked games since mid-February will have a rank of wildman until they get enough games. Currently, the distribution of players across the ranks (different colors are different ranks) looks like this:
Not all games played will change your ranking in the new system. The biggest item is free for all games are not used at all as there isn't a way to get a meaningful comparison out of them. Any quits, loss of connection, or game crashes will be counted as a loss. 'Tied' games are also not counted - these are games where the majority of players changed allies at the end of the game (allied up).
Games watchers will not be considered in a ranking, only the two players actually competing will be compared. To designate yourself as a watcher, ally all the players in the match at the start of the game, and remain allied for the first 10 minutes of the game.
With this new system, a variety of new tools are available that will be linked into the site as time goes on. One nifty tool is the Best Team Generator. Just put the usernames of the four players in the game into the form on this page, and the best team matchings will be generated as well as displaying the 'Match Quality' of all the team combinations.
Players can see how their ranking has changed over time with the experimental skill graph. To use it, replace the number in the address with the number of your user-account (can be found in address bar of your user profile). For example, here is the graph of skill for the player Nefarius. This is currently the only way to tell your skill level if you have under 10 games played - something that will be fixed soon.
After a lengthy delay since the previous version, the latest Matchmaker has finally been released!
There are several new features that have been added, the most controversial probably being the removal custom ranks. Players will no longer be able to pick a rank lower than their actual rank (sorry noob bashers). This is in connection with the advanced game reporting built into the matchmaker. Over the next month or two there will be a new ranking system implemented using the data collected. Currently players will get points as normal, but anyone can view the results of game on the game log page.
Another more popular feature is the built in port check. This sends a test packet to the client on port 7575 UDP to check if it is open. If it is open, then you can host. If the check fails, then you will not be able to start a game until it passes. You can run the test again by clicking the [Port Test] button.
