I am in favor of lowering the number of players needed for
records as much as possible. I see a limit of 3 players as the best compromise. I am also in favour of implementing a stat system that scales the number of
stat points given to players depending on the number of players in the server.
First let's analyse the current system. We'll start with
stat points. As I'm sure everyone knows by now, we have a hard limit of ten players that enables stat points for all players in the server. The point system is static, in that players get the same number of points for wins, second places etc. when stats are enabled, no matter if there is ten, fifteen or 32 players in the server.
Now let's look at the idea behind stats. Obviously they are here so that people can race to climb the "stats ladder" and gain fame in the server community. They should also give people an incentive to play more on the server. Ideally there should also be some kind of of way to compare individual skill from the stats.
Personally, I think the current system achieves neither of these goals. First of all there is no way to compare individual skill. Assuming your skill level stays the same, your stat points
scale linearly with the number of races you race. In other words, the more you race, the more points you get regardless of skill (obviously you gain them a bit faster if you're better, but still only by a constant factor), thus you can't use stat points to compare skill. Instead people try to use the win ratio to compare skill, but this fails too because of the hard limit on stats. If you want a high win percentage, you just have to play when there are about 10 players and avoid peaks (sadly peak is right about when stats are enabled thee days). Thus we give people that race for win ratio incentive to stay away from the server at peak - not what you want when the server is dying.
So stat points can't be used to compare skill. It can't, however, be used to compare how much individual players have played on the server either, since your stats points might actually decrease! Thus, if you join the server with stats enabled, you'd better perform your best at all times, or your stats will hurt. This makes people quit sooner, when they don't want to play 100% focused any more and additionally make players want to avoid DD maps, since they hurt their stats - again, not something you want on a dying server.
So we've seen how the 10 player limit gives people incentive to speculate and in general to play less on our server. Obviously these are not good things. But what about the limit itself? It seems somewhat arbitrary. Why 10 and not 12 or 8? I assume it was set to make things more "fair". But fair how? Well, back then the focus was mostly on stat points, not records as is true today. Thus I assume that the limit was set to avoid the obvious flaw we would have without a limit, namely the scenario where we have two players on the server, where one players repeatedly wins to quickly ramp up points. By having a limit of 10, at least you need to be a lot luckier and probably also better to win every time, than you have to be with only 2 players.
This is, of course, a valid problem, but the solution of a hard limit just isn't fair. Sure it fixes the problem mentioned above, but it's still a lot easier to win with 10 or 15 players than it is with a full server. Thus we still have unfairness and the hard limit only partially fixes the problem. If we instead make stats that smoothly scale with the number of players in the server, we could have stats all the way down to two players in the server (or maybe even one) and be completely fair. Of course the exact details of how this scaling is going to work to be fair will require some thought, but the idea is good.
Now let's look
records. Like with stats, they are enabled for 10 players and up. But what is the idea about records? I think most people can agree that records should reflect the very best times the players on the server can achieve. Here the hard limit causes a problem. By having a limit of 10 players, obviously people can only set records with 10 or more players in the server. This in turn means that there is a lot of luck involved in setting a record (do you start in front? do you avoid getting rammed at the start? how often does the map get voted etc.) and thus the time it takes for the records to converge to the optimum time is rather long. So in effect, the so called records, don't really reflect the best the server has to offer most of the time, but instead are determined largely by luck!
You may argue that if we lower the limit, people playing at night will grab most the records. This is probably true, but with a dying server, I think we should give every incentive for people to stay, and I think it's a lot better to have records that actually are good and reflect skill, than most records being very weak (as is the case now) and not reflecting the skill of this server but instead reflecting luck. You can clearly see this by the semi-recent drop in players causing a lot of records to be set. Now what's the fairness in that? In other words, why have an artificial limit causing more luck in setting records, than just abolishing the limit and having real skilful records? After all, it's free for everyone to play at non-peak to try and set records. This will also have the added effect that people are going to stay even with e.g. only 3 players to set records, which in turn means the server won't empty and (hopefully) more people will join.
Second, as discussed above, there is still a lot of unfairness involved in having a hard limit, since it requires a great deal more luck to set a record with 32 players than with ten. We also make sure that people that race for records don't have any incentive to stay with less than 10 players, so people will start leaving and thus the server often empties quickly if there is a drop to less than 10 players. Again, not something you want on a dying server.
Now, why did I say a limit of 3 players in the beginning and not just no limit? This is for practical reasons. If we have no limit, a person can join an empty server and retry the same map over and over until he or she sets a record. Obviously if the map is publically available, you could do this anyway, but on your own server, and come back when you think you're good enough to set a record, so this might not be a problem. It does, however, mean that it is easier to cheat and set records without being detected, so it's probably better to have some kind of limit. If we have a limit of two players, a person with two computers could just join with both of them and proceed as mentioned above. Same goes for three or more, but now it's getting increasingly impractical to do it, so I think a 3 player limit is about as low as we can go.
That's my two cents on stats and records. Let me know what you think.
