Ranked Mods Idea + mock ups

These mock-ups show what you would get after clicking "Create Game" in the hosts list screen.

the idea is that after this screen you could set up your game and that in the host list, games of all sorts (ranked or not) would be listed together.
even a stock PA host would have the option to unrank.



https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22720750/new.psd
Mod integration to PA... I've stipulated my idea before about mods being ranked with their own ladder by one idea or another :

I wish to have a ladder for certain mods for which Uber (or the community by majority vote) has validated the balance as well as the stock ladder. Hence once into PA, you would have a list of different ladders to play on and playing mods would be extra motivating since you would get your points from them too.
person B says : "I'm very well ranked on the stock mix ladder (mix for 1 v 1; 6 v 6 ; 2 v 2 v 2 v 2 v 2 v 2 ...ect) but I'm also very good at the whatsawhosie mod. Oh I wish that it was also ranked sooo much!! I could play this mod without feeling like I'm wasting time!" (yes time is of the essence for a gamer, no I will not accept criticism)
-"fear not!", says tatsu,"did you know that there is a ladder candidate section in PA?"
person B replies : "Oh golly-gee no I didn't! Does that mean I can vote up a mod listed there to be reviewed and validated by Uber for balance, this way if it passes validation it becomes one of the ladder options and I can show everybody how good I am on that mod compared to everyone else???"
tatsu : "Yes it does ! run along now, person B, be free"


I see this as a very important feature because mods are generally hurt by "vanilla puritans" who are astonishingly numerous, and numbers of players are what makes a game fun, but my experience with faf has been that having a ranked safe haven for mods counteracts this phenomenon entirely, and people shed themselves of the fear (and loathing?) of mods and discover a world where cohabitation is possible.
Unfortunately, a single person is in charge of all the choices there (zep) and he doesn't see pushing this experiment further than with UI mods as a good use of his time, whereas, say in the case of nomads this means the difference between the life and death of said mod.
And slowly, because of this phenomenon, the whole modding scene is going decrepit; what I mean is Nomads, phantom, murder party, Total Mayhem, Wyvern, Black ops, king of the hill, claustrophobia, supreme destruction, zone control (which are all very fun game modes, if you have a copy of supcom I highly recommend you try them out, I guarantee that you'll want to see them in PA) hosts have disappeared in favor of stock ranked.


It doesn't matter that the modders are still active, their mods aren't being played.
maybe the clarification of my idea needs a precise set of event->result explanations



Mod Ranking :

• they are a seperate category from the stock ranking there should only be one stock ranking but the stock ranking is not more important
• points from each ranking could commute over to other categories of rankings in the same way that 1v1 ladder on faf gives points to the general ranking which applies to all types of games.

New Ranking Candidacy :

• the following rules delimit what rankings are admitted and added to the list of available rankings. The reason for limiting in the first place are 1.) the increasing number of available rankings dilute their individual value 2.) If there is to be distribution of points which ups the ante, the gameplay must be fair and balanced
• a group of mods can be combined and the code refined and optimized, the balance perfected and the be considered "complete" by a community or even just one person and submitted to the ranking candidacy section.
• in this section (a part of the PA UI) players can upvote and downvote mods for reviewal. The higest mod on the list every month is sent to a committee, the persons of authority.
• I have I no idea who the persons of authority would be, IMO this is for Uber to decide. Either : 1.) Uber evaluate it and tests it 2.) the entire community evaluate it and tests it 3.) A community-elected team of elder players that are good with balance tweaks evaluate it and tests it 4.) other, ect..
• the mod is either denied entry to ranking and must propose extra content, balance tweaks (other changes) to satisfy a completion/stability/balance criteria or is by nature unfit to ever be ranked and will never be accepted or fits the criteria and is accepted henceforth the mod shows up side by side with the stock version of PA in a list for which mode to play PA in.
• "complete" is an elastic term. almost the same criteria delimiting possible monetization of a mod determines if it is "big enough a change" to warrant it's own ranking. The addition of a single unit or a UI mod or a Macro-tool mod isn't eligible. A DOTA-like of PA is (even if said mod is offered for free!). There are futher meanings to the term "complete" ... :

Updates Sub-versions, variants, look alikes, remixes

• Modders can of course (even at present) provide updates to their mods (which could possibly change everything). Considering ranked mods passed validation by a committee for a very specific set of rules, values and balance, a mod version proposed and accepted to ranked is out of bounds to the Modder (not talking about revenue).
• This means the new tweaks, balance changes, addons and eccetera will only be updated on the Mod market version of the mod, not it's Ranked one.
• When this happens the mod updates must pass validation through the exact same procedure as explained above. This way a mod is not struck by sudden dislike from the community simply because of bad balance changes or other : the changes have always been agreed upon in the first place by the persons of authority (be it the entire PA community, if this is the system which is chosen).
• New case : say Phantom X is a Ranked mod option (Murder Party having been the only Uber-made game mode of the sort). Someone makes Phantom N. that's two very similar game modes to have in Ranked, especially considering Murder party is already one of the ranked game modes and is also similar. Phantom can stay but only one of the two : the committee warns that validating Phantom N for ranked will invalidate Phantom X's status. It is now up to people to decide whether they want to carry through with pushing the mod towards the committee or abort and up to the commitee if it gets pushed to determine which one is still most deserving of a ladder.
• this keeps the ranked mods count under a certain count to favor their popularity.

this whole system will allow for an engaging mod/game mode experience.
Rookie players will find the interface intuitive. a big button with an image and the game mode name and statistics on the mod such as how many have tried it, how many regular players ("regular" being determined by such things as one game per week) and the explanation on what it does will allow them to host/join a game of that type, the mod downloads and off they go! Ranking included! Eventually opening it up for the first time will open a tutorial of either the interactive or video type.
Users may eventually be curious enough to venture over to the Ranked Candidacy tab in the UI and sift through mod trending, give upvotes and downvotes to this or that mod, tag an uncandidated mod for "would want as candidate" so that modders know even just the idea for their mod has support and that it's worthwile that he invest himself in it and try to "complete" it to take it to candidacy.

So what about my idea?
how about them mod hunger games?
"May the Mods be ever in your favor"

I may have missed alot, please ask questions.

TL;DR : errr.... start again from the top, sorry. ://

I'll admit I only skim read, but think this sounds like a good idea (I liked how upvoting custom games in Starcraft put them on the front page). A mod manager should undoubtedly be integrated into the game menus, soooo many people would simply never find out about the modding potential without in game support.

+1 for the opening pun

I think this idea is brilliant! I too think that if people are going to be building mods. There should be some legitimacy behind them. I think a democratic approach to mods would be an asset. I think that also, like technology, it inspires modders to make better and better mods. Nothing drives people more than competition.

Overall I like the idea, but its easy to say "and then a committee handles this" but this is much more complicated in practice... Who chooses them? What qualifies them to be on a committee? Etc etc. Also, all of this voting for things and validation every time the mod changes, seems rather... overcomplicated.

-1 for bad pun.

You got my vote. Thumb up!

well.... as you might have noticed I left this open ended.

In the end this is not a decision for me to make but for Uber, should they choose to go forth with this.

If they do, they can either retain the full final word on accepted ranked mods ...or choose to distribute the power to the community. they will choose a correct distribution method.

who knows? maybe they put it up to majority vote by the community?

Great Idea! I would fully support something like this!

thanks guys!

so just to clear up, all of you got my gist entirely ? (this rarely happens, usually I'm so bad with my words that noone understands).

I didn't understand a word.

really?

what do I start with?

did you get that this was an idea so that there would be points given for winning modded games, not only for stock games?

(ooohhh waiiiiit a second)

Of course! I was kidding

I really need to lighten up xD

It was obvious, really.

I have a few issues overall, for one I think this is a bit premature as of yet, second is that I don't like the idea of "design by committee". Lastly I think there is some counter-intuitive reasoning.

So to start I think this is overall a bit premature. It has been discussed that doing some Mod ladders would be a neat idea but honestly it's hard to say how feasible/practical it is when we know so little about Uber's approach to modding. For example, we know that Uber likes the idea of doing some form of monetization with mods, but we have no idea what exactly will happen with that or the specifics of how it'll work. We also should keep in mind that he idea of Uber Sanctioned Mod Ladders does delve a bit into being a business decision(I'll touch a bit more on that in a bit) and I don't hunk it's unreasonable to assume that using monetization to offset server costs will factor into Uber's thinking. So we can agree its a decent enough idea to try pursuit, but Uber holds all the cards making I hard for us to know what's on the table as it were.

Now about the "design by committee" aspect, I don't like it. As I said earlier if Uber is going to Sanction a Mod and support it'a ladder the "business" aspects of that are very important. For example if someone made a "C&C" modit might be very popular with the community but to Uber it's more akin to a ticking timebomb. I don't think that The community needs more input than simply playing the mods they like, I imagine with an integrated Mod Manager Uber will have hooks to see what people are playing anyways.

Lastly just some general things, I do agree that "vanilla puritans" are out there but I'm not sure Mod ladders are the best way to convert them. My experience has been less to do about not being able to play on a ladder and simply that they don't really want to learn a second balance we and split their time between stock and the mod. I'm not sure what the best method is for conversion but I'm not sure that trying to convert them is even a feasible option really. Obviously making sure that mods are visible is important but I'm not sure if Uber should really be pushing it beyond visibility honestly. Lastly I don't see how "vanilla puritans" hurt gameplay mods like phantom. As long as they use he same balanceit's easier for a "VP" to hop into a gameplay mod compared to a balance mod. Again I think just plain old visibility is the best way to go if you want to get mods played more.

Mike

like I said really the O.P. could not have been formulated with any more openness/indecisiveness in regards to who/what will be the decision-makers in this process.

perhaps you have a suggestion as to how I could reformulate the O.P. to make that clearer?

as for the C&C mod, say you were part of the committee would you really carry through with validating it? wouldn't you use your veto? plus say, it's really really good, better than stock PA even, the committee could decide that it will only accept it if the mod title and all the units are renamed.

After all it's what is always done right? In a sense noone has had an original idea since DOTA, and EVEN THAT was using copyrighted material. People cut slack, that's how it is. ...I mean common : Planetary ANNIHILATION, who owns the IP?

but close enough, nobody's gonna throw a fit. 'specially not CT, he's best buds with Neutrino.

plus most modders will probably just have their mods up for free.

Like I said in the O.P. I want to only use the same kind of criteria for determining if a mod is eligible for mod ranking as mod monetization.

But in no way are the two linked, heck, I'd even find it a winning factor when choosing over one mod or another for Mod Ranking that the mod be available to players for free.

i think you should have posted this in modder's forum

are you serious @melhem19 ? this isn't a mod, or even a mod idea. this changes the core UI in the PA main menu and alot of other things, read the OP entirely if you haven't already

ho, my bad

no worries, go ahead and tell me what you think once you've finished reading.

BTW I'm categorical, I want Uber Dev input. It's not too early to call the shots, look where that argument left us for the unit idea thread, for the scale megathread, ect ect.