A level system based completly on skills would be much better.

I would agree, but that could also be called the ladder.

Something which mixes both (which I think he is hinting at) would be the best. Many games + many wins + beating players who have a high rank = better ranking. Take out any one of the three and you have a system which is easy to be gamed, and doesn't actually show real skill.

Maybe a way to find everyone's "true" level would be where people can only get so high without beating those of a higher level. Once they do they can continue getting points and leveling themselves.

Come on guys, when was the last time you remember Fizzer implementing a new feature sloppily or without thinking it through?

I'm aware this post may sound a little fanboyish, but WL has an incredibly low number of bugs and just about every game play mechanic (with the possible exception of multi-attack; maybe it's just me, but I never figured out how to defend against that??) works rather well. Sure, the AI is not perfect and there are a few "exploits" (multiple negative-sanctions cards at once comes to mind), but it's not like any of the cards are massively overpowered, the built-in maps unbalanced (or ugly) or the default settings horribly broken...

Unless you can tear the paragraph above to shreds (with good counter-examples!), how about we give Fizzer the benefit of the doubt? If there's any huge problems / issues / oversights / bugs / whatever with WL 2.0, we can always complain after it's been released. So far I've never seen a change to WL which, for instance, stabbed members in the back, so why would it happen now?

My suggestion: let's all just look forward to WL 2.0, because (statistically speaking :p ) it's probably going to be awesome! Let's not spoil the anticipation with endless discussions of "but maybe it will be bad", because honestly, I see no reason to seriously worry about that possibility.

Agreed.

2.0 = perfect time to introduce ELO and leagues

ELO "ladders" (all-time + last 30 days) including members and nonmembers give motivation/incentives to play. currently, too many people (wrongly) think the 1v1 ladder is the measure of all things. many players get to #1 and think they are the best for a day and stop playing. a website that fails to motivate some of the best players to keep playing is not as successful as it could be. an ELO system and top 100 list (on the dashboard's home page) would provide motivation.

also, if there is an ELO, making leagues becomes so much easier and playing them would be more enjoyable. without ELOs, players waste hours trying to prove their worth or memorize the patterns of one template. without leagues players spend hours organizing shit and counting results (and then spend too much time writing shit on the forum).

ELO = definitive rating, motivation to keep playing
automated league system = saved time, more fun

as it is, when i finish 3-4 more games to win 2 tournaments i plan to stop playing. the only thing that would keep me interested would be ELO and/or a league system. i think there are a dozen or so other top players that are on the fence about quitting. the more of us that quit, the more that will follow.

myhand, Qi: Are you guys getting sponsored by the sacred church of ELO or something? Would be cool to have, but i don't see how it'll make the whole world (or the whole warlight experience in this case) a better place.

yeah. +100. for this i plan to retire to and i stop to join new tourney.

As long as there are features beyond what members already get, older players will have some incentives as well

official music of the sacred church of ELO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYzbViYoWmM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

post script:

ps, wl has to appeal to all levels of players.

level 1: singleplayer: for learners, solitaire type
level 2: multiplayer games: have fun, learn/experiment
level 3: tournaments, ladders

levels 1-2: wl 2.0's cute badges

i've won 30+ tournaments, reached #1 on the 1v1 ladder twice and on the 2v2 ladder three times. i need a new or interesting challenge to remain active.

no challenge = no motivation = no desire to play.

an easy example: make a list of all the players who have been #1 on the ladders. if you could count their game count before they became #1 and after you would notice a significant decrease in their activity (games played). i'd guess there is a drop off of at least 50%. you might also be surprised by the number of players who stopped playing or became semi-active after they reached their "level 3" goals. how many times do i need to reach #1 on the ladder before i become tired of playing those templates? how many tournaments does myhand have to win before he stops joining them? how many live tournaments does tim need to join before he stops playing? brisk is #1 on two ladders now and has been #1 on the 2v2. how much longer will he remain active on the ladders before he runs out of motivation/desire to keep beating the same people?

level 4: ELO/leagues: once you reach a certain skill level on more than one map, you seek out new challenges. ELO/leagues is the only challenge left. they dont exist now so top players have no reason to keep playing.

to keep top players around the site needs a bigger challenge (leagues) and a universal rating system (elo). it's a simple question of psychology.

why do we (myhand, gnuff, others) care about this? bc the first three levels dont interest us anymore. to keep us active we need more. cute badges are a great innovation. 2.0 will be a big improvement. but i wont stick around just to collect badges.

I agree with Qi 100%. I plan to retire for similar reasons. Ladder is only a determinant of skill in standard settings against the people who >happen to compete on the ladder at the same moment in time<, stats are irrelevant as they are very dependent on the quality of games you play, and there are to many rubbish tournaments, that have no worth or fun in them.. So i see not much to keep me playing. An ELO system would make the experience much much better (at least for the top players).

+1002 on global ELO... :(

now that i read the post scriptum by Qi, i agree with him 200%. He perfectly named exactly all i've been thinking of lately as far as Warlight is concerned...

I agree with RvW and Qi.

In Fizzer we trust.

you're sending mixed messages here...

Guys you shouldn't talk like this :D Ok you want an ELO rating system; put it on uservoice. If you don't get it, fine quit. IMHO, the best players are those who stick around here and do what they can to improve their (and the community's) WarLight experience. Those players embrace and enjoy the updates Fizzer codes (single-handedly O.o) and then try to work with what Fizzer provides to make great tournaments/leagues/rating systems etc. These players are awesome :)

Look at the Nations Cup, the Clan League, Ineffables take on the WPA, ps' ladders, the Promo/Relegation League. The players who made them could easily say; oh we don't have this feature on the game yet; lets just retire. But no, they decided to try and make it themselves, and most succeed.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is, sure, it would be great to have ELO and thousands of other features on WarLight. But don't harp on about it. What happens will happen, and you should either enjoy the changes that come and work with them to have a great WL experience, or, you can quit. It makes no difference to me which option you chose; you aren't irreplaceable :P

qi with your theory then over time people will soon start getting bored of level 4 then what do we do after ELO do we give them a level 5 what could that be.

I just hope that the "member only" rewards for this system aren't useless things like additions to profiles or new colors or anything similar. I'm not saying that's what I'm expecting, but I've seen a lot of useless stuff like that in other games and I don't want to see WL become one of these places where your membership is just for show, to make you 'look' better.

Yeah I hope that doesn't happen Eagle. But I'm not going to speculate anymore. I think these levels are great so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy WL 2.0 :)

@Fizzer: I wish you had asked some input from the player-base for this, although i haven't seen it play out yet(if i understand correctly, i will even have to create an alt to unlock things one-by-one, i think this is actually quite good, although it would be best to just add a button to reset your level to 1)
I would have suggested that unlocks not be tied to a level for which "X" games have to be played/won, but tied to certain game-settings used.(for example, you wouldn't be able to unlock multi-attack before showing you understand how transfer only/attack only orders work)

@ELO:
I think warlight has quite some features for players who simply wish to show they're the best(games(showable on profile) tournaments(showable on profile) ladders(showable on level) and stats(showable on level).
It's up to the player(s) themselves as how important to regard them.
(Which is quite nice, put up that 1v1-strat 512 players prerequisite:1v1 65% won on your profile if you want to show something impressive, or just that mirror-earth-game that you might even have lost but that you enjoyed a lot or thought it was funny)
So i'm not realy sure whether some players do truly miss something, or are just done with Warlight, or just haven't realized their options and used them.
(Or just haven't managed to put competitive players on their invite-list)

I would make an extra category in games for ELO though(like unranked, ranked, ELO-ranked) since i would consider ELO-games full competitional, because you wouldn't play ELO-games for fun/try-out-something-experimental kinda gameplay yet you might wanna keep that gameplay-style in most of your games)

I have to agree with Qi as well. I was never #1 on the 1v1 ladder but I would have been had Beelzebub not stalled his game against me. I also believe I could have been #1 on the 2v2 ladder when I borrowed the Scorched Earth account from Nauz to make my run, but I lost interest after winning my first 4-5 games. Right now I feel like I am at the very top level, and the only thing I have yet to do is prove that to people. That's not enough to keep me very active in warlight. I still enjoy occasional warlight games but not more than 5 or so multiday games at a time. I would love to see an ELO system in 2.0 :)

To respond to RvW:

Come on guys, when was the last time you remember Fizzer implementing a new feature sloppily or without thinking it through?

Never. You can't think of everything yourself though. While Fizzer is truly amazing for everything he has done here and all he continues to do, not everyone can think of everything. That's why big companies use multiple people working on projects, not just setting each person on their own and letting them loose on the world.

I have never voiced negative opinions of Fizzer, or WarLight, in the least. I've actually had no issues, and in my years spent playing, I have only found one bug (which I reported and he fixed within 20 minutes). You can call me a fanboy too if you want, but I think those who truly care will voice an opinion if the care deeply about something. I wouldn't have bought my membership, another player's membership, and pledged a third to the winner of the Dr. Typesomething tournament if I didn't care about this game.

The only issue I see at all is a minor annoyance from people such as myself, or HHH, or Gui, or anyone else with 4,000+ games who could potentially be a high level, put 1,000+ hours into playing this game, and have nothing to show for it in the new system. Give those players a "before" score, or an honorary score, or a star or something on their profile even. I know it is meaningless, but at least acknowledge them or something.

My suggestion: let's all just look forward to WL 2.0, because (statistically speaking :p ) it's probably going to be awesome! Let's not spoil the anticipation with endless discussions of "but maybe it will be bad", because honestly, I see no reason to seriously worry about that possibility.

I think everyone should be looking forward to this. This game has improved very steadily for the entity of the game. Fizzer has been very diligent in dealing with updates, dealing with players, and taking suggestions. I'm very excited to keep up with everything, I just don't want it to almost be like a soft reset of the stats, where what he had before 2.0 means nothing. I would fear that many of those players who are close to quitting would just go ahead and quit because they feel like all their time has now been spent wasted. I'm not at that point, it would just be a minor annoyance for myself.

Don't let my one possible criticism overshadow my excitement for this. When I saw there was a blog post about WarLight 2.0, I nearly jumped out of my chair. I think everything he is doing, he is doing for the right reasons. I wish more people could buy memberships and help the game become profitable. He deserves something for all his hard work and right now he isn't getting it. Again, hopefully this can change things for him.