FrigginCrab: forum

Found, thank you!

Right there with you. Looking at our own faction history, I'm genuinely curious at how much of an impact "performance" had when making these changes. It feels heavily based on stats and nothing else. 

Definitely not a great sight to see Warband get the largest drop in this list after we've pushed hard on the idea of only doing real wars regardless of how hard the matchups are. Dropping here our latest wars to show the ranks we've fought before this update, and the ranks these factions are showing currently (call me out if I messed any up, I just did it manually to get a sense of where we stand). 

BEFORE THE CHANGE

AFTER THE CHANGE

Curious if they had anyone take a look at the new ranks before releasing the change. 

It seems either they 

• Did not have a single human that plays the game actually take a look at the numbers and the system before rolling it out
• Decided to do the right thing and are going to roll back the previous ranks that many factions dedicated many weeks/months getting to (whether they fought for it, or paid their way up I suppose)

Seems some factions that rarely ever war, or don't do the real wars they supposedly want to encourage, got boosted all the way up solely based on stats, and other factions that were punching above their weight class made it through hard matchups probably got paired with much lower factions as a "free win". Both scenarios smell like math that I truly hope real people worked on, and that those people can come ahead and back up rather than blindly believe in the "true rank" their calculations spat out. 

Was the point of ranked wars not to pit factions against each other and let them duke it out with the mechanics available to them? Wasn't early discharge introduced to push for 1v1 wars with as little outside interference as possible? Then why force these new "true ranks" in a player driven game? This is the time and effort that real people behind the screen put into, and they did not think much of just shoving them around to make it look neat and tidy. Definitely would like to hear actual words from the people involved, and to know for a fact that this was built and verified by people that actually have time playing and understanding the game they have applied these changes to. Please don't tell me this was some AI slop calculations that are being tested on us, that would be an insult.

I'm going to clarify the questions I'm asking in case the people who are going to respond aren't bothering to read and just want the TL;DR

• Were the factions that got changed more than one full division (3-4 places up or down) double checked by multiple people? Were those people admins/torn players?
• Was the old system so flawed that the ranks that were reached and the associated rewards no longer mean anything? 
• Does performance matter, or should we just care about the battle stats of our members to reach higher ranks (newbies will have to start in bronze I guess)
• Is there a proper channel to connect with the dev(s) that worked on this change to understand this hidden rank and how performance plays into it?
• Do you actually want to encourage real wars, or do you just want people to farm the resources to grow as much as possible and will continue to punish those who don't play optimally?

Since people are still going to term wars, the data you want will continue to be messed up and full of outliers. I hope there is a plan within this "tweaking" that involves human verification and communication with the factions involved.

Speaking less about one specific faction and more about the issue I see here: Providing a ladder system that requires irl time and effort to climb and seeing the ranks be shifted without some ease in period or observation feels like a joke. It is inconsiderate to boost inactive or laidback factions while other involved factions moved down and wasted the resources invested into climbing (dedication or money for those that paid for those wins). 

Those that play other competitive games probably understand the frustration best, and those that only know Torn should think about their grade in school being changed from an A- to a C+ without warning because the school decided to revamp their curriculum in the middle of the year. Weird retcon situation, but hey, it's just a game I guess.

To see people that benefit from this change acknowledge the unfairness and thoughtlessness is refreshing, and as with every situation there will be some that only comment on results from afar since it doesn't affect them personally. Enlisting in the first two weeks was frustrating for sure, but yes, it is a new system. Maybe the solution is to wait for them to make a decision on how the system will work before they choose to do another shuffle in the near future... Or maybe we all term to get the cash out of it before they change their mind and just remove Ranked Wars from the game. 

"All is fair in love and war"

Real war = anything goes, right? Flying, bountying, flight delays, mercs, syringes, group attacks. We may have been in miscommunication if that's no longer the case 💀

It seems either they 

• Did not have a single human that plays the game actually take a look at the numbers and the system before rolling it out
• Decided to do the right thing and are going to roll back the previous ranks that many factions dedicated many weeks/months getting to (whether they fought for it, or paid their way up I suppose)

Seems some factions that rarely ever war, or don't do the real wars they supposedly want to encourage, got boosted all the way up solely based on stats, and other factions that were punching above their weight class made it through hard matchups probably got paired with much lower factions as a "free win". Both scenarios smell like math that I truly hope real people worked on, and that those people can come ahead and back up rather than blindly believe in the "true rank" their calculations spat out. 

Was the point of ranked wars not to pit factions against each other and let them duke it out with the mechanics available to them? Wasn't early discharge introduced to push for 1v1 wars with as little outside interference as possible? Then why force these new "true ranks" in a player driven game? This is the time and effort that real people behind the screen put into, and they did not think much of just shoving them around to make it look neat and tidy. Definitely would like to hear actual words from the people involved, and to know for a fact that this was built and verified by people that actually have time playing and understanding the game they have applied these changes to. Please don't tell me this was some AI slop calculations that are being tested on us, that would be an insult.

I'm going to clarify the questions I'm asking in case the people who are going to respond aren't bothering to read and just want the TL;DR

• Were the factions that got changed more than one full division (3-4 places up or down) double checked by multiple people? Were those people admins/torn players?
• Was the old system so flawed that the ranks that were reached and the associated rewards no longer mean anything? 
• Does performance matter, or should we just care about the battle stats of our members to reach higher ranks (newbies will have to start in bronze I guess)
• Is there a proper channel to connect with the dev(s) that worked on this change to understand this hidden rank and how performance plays into it?
• Do you actually want to encourage real wars, or do you just want people to farm the resources to grow as much as possible and will continue to punish those who don't play optimally?

Since people are still going to term wars, the data you want will continue to be messed up and full of outliers. I hope there is a plan within this "tweaking" that involves human verification and communication with the factions involved.

Also defeated by the faction that was reassigned to Gold 0 with this update. Not to throw shit on them as they were good opponents, but this is just another example of stats carrying all these predictions and calculations.

In the meantime, they get some sweet payouts even on a loss while the factions that put in hard work to defeat similar opponents will have to claw their way back up until the system blocks them due to battle stats according to your automated system's "true rank".

Right there with you. Looking at our own faction history, I'm genuinely curious at how much of an impact "performance" had when making these changes. It feels heavily based on stats and nothing else. 

Definitely not a great sight to see Warband get the largest drop in this list after we've pushed hard on the idea of only doing real wars regardless of how hard the matchups are. Dropping here our latest wars to show the ranks we've fought before this update, and the ranks these factions are showing currently (call me out if I messed any up, I just did it manually to get a sense of where we stand). 

BEFORE THE CHANGE

AFTER THE CHANGE

Curious if they had anyone take a look at the new ranks before releasing the change. 

https://www.torn.com/page.php?sid=factionWarfare#/ranked/36457

The game is trying to stop our real wars with strong foes, but we persevere!

Found, thank you!

Let's do this

• Manual labor 68,777
• Intelligence 74,254
• Endurance 64,595

• Manual labor 61,073
• Intelligence 73,619
• Endurance 60,493