hey everyone,

wanted to start a thread about this and get people's thoughts on the matter.

for me, there is one good argument in favor of having a single winner, and one good argument in favor of multiple:

ONE WINNER: these games are simply more exciting. i've played a bunch of games with multiple winners and i just don't have to work as hard, nor do i have the motivation to try to hustle and negotiate alliances to take down the winner so that i stand a chance at 1st place. i miss that.

MULTIPLE WINNERS: unlike the single winner model where all alliances have to end in a neptunium race or betrayal, this model leaves room for true alliances where both players win.

so choosing one or the other of these models doesn't seem satisfying, we lose something in both cases.

the alternative we're considering now is giving out gold/silver/bronze medals. the number of medals given out in any game will depend on the number of players, same as with multiple winners. so in a way, we will still have multiple winners and open up some room for true alliances, but hopefully still keep the motivation to go for gold.

(and before you ask, yes, we would retroactively give everyone gold/silver/bronze medals based on their past games)

thoughts?

I like the 1st, 2nd, 3rd place recognition but certainly with a single winner.

Augmenting this it would also be nice to be able to see peoples medal collection.

It may also be good to see those from regular matches and those from ranked listed separately somehow. I'm really into analytics so I'd love more data.

I think the problem with multiple winners was that generally in a larger game there are 3 or so major players after the first 3-4 days. With multiple winners these players just cruised to victory whilst the smaller players tried to do something to scrape themselves into 3rd position. The fight for 1st actually became irrelevant because getting 3rd was the same result.

But after going back to single winners I noticed that almost nobody had stats on their profile that looked decent. If you play 10 player games often then statistically the average player will only win 1 in 10 games, and this looks terrible when shown in your profile. And then if you compare your stats with somebody who has been playing a lot of 6 player games then you can't get a good comparison. Adding the podium positions in the same way multiple winners was assigned seems like a good idea.

And if I was to ask for 1 other thing I would like shown in my profile I think that this would be the top of my list: number of players I have eliminated. I think that's a stat worth bragging about!

I like the stat idea of the number of Queen's you've captured.

And with that, how many times you've been eliminated .

Im in favor of the 2 winner format.

The 2 winner format allows for the player to determine if they want to maintain or betray their alliances, the 1 winner format forces you to attack the player who may have been helping you all week long.

Being that the most important party of this game is diplomacy, why not leave the option of betrayal up to the players instead of the format forcing our hands?

Just a thought..

yup, totally agree, which is why we now have medals for 1st / 2nd / 3rd. number of medals depend on number of players.
0-3: no medals
4-5: 1 medal (gold)
6-7: 2 medals (gold, silver)
8+: 3 medals (gold, silver, bronze)

The new formatting looks great.

This may only be visually possible on the iPad but within an active game, might there be a way to see all the players stats at once? (Maybe a third display in intelligence reports. Drillers, Outposts and Stats.)

Will there also me a leader board style view available outside the games?

One last question (for now), this may not be a real issue, but should other players stats be visible within a game (outside of a leader board) before a game starts? I would hate to see a flood of players choosing to leave ranked or even standard games and not compete due to the stats of the other players in their game. Being recognized as high up on a global leader board is one thing, but players getting to kind of sculpt their opponents is another. Hiding in game player stats in inactive or pre-launch games may not be a complete answer but it might be a decent one (though it will potentially have a negative impact on pre-game diplomatic efforts.)

hey fate,

we're not doing any custom UI for tablets for launch. that's more of a maybe later kind of thing. mostly we expect people to play it on their phones because they have their phones with them.

a global leaderboard would be awesome, i added this to our list of things to discuss. if' it's not too much work we'll do it.

and finally, regarding making stats visible, i see this differently. if i don't want to play against super-players, then better i see that before i join the game and simply not join it than have a not fun game, or resign when i realize what i had gotten myself into.

A thought after reading the above 2 posts;

I don't mind the system in place for normal/friendly games. People like to see who's in the game and I have chosen a game before because I recognised a name in there.

However, do you think the same visibility should be available in ranked games?

Would it be worth having player names blanked out and only having a players current ELO ranking showing? This way you get to see the relative skill of the player but are not aware of who is in the game until you join or the game starts.

In another online multiplayer game I have played (Outwitters) you have the ability to setup custom friendly games, however if you wish to play a ranked game you have no say in the opponent that you face. The game has a hidden ranking and you are assigned an opponent close to this. The longer it takes to find an appropriate opponent the wider the allowed ELO difference becomes to make sure you are not waiting days for a match.

Would a similar system work in Subterfuge? This would also have a secondary effect of preventing players from having secondary accounts to help boost their own rankings (it happens!) because they can’t pick specific opponents.