i like it darwyn. but at 17 different levels ....isn't that a wee bit too many?

i think maybe something like 6-8 would be more manageable.

im just worried that we would all get a bit too confused and forget what all the little symbols mean.....is a yellow circle higher than a yellow box etc.

but i like the idea of a little mark/symbol next to your name. Then we could keep the dip points game bet system entirely intact.

Yes, I think the point system should stay. I did a bunch of different levels to break the monotony of the possibility of stagnation. The more you gain rank, the more incentive or motivation you have to keep going. In fact, the more levels the better. "Oh, I'm a Rep now...time to get my Master Rep medal!!"

As far as managing it, I'm thinking it wouldn't be hard at all...a simple script that checks your elo rating and assigns the appropriate graphic. I'm no programmer though, so I may be wrong.

But again, the more levels the better to gauge your progress with. Imagine a good, big game you win that allows you to skip a few rankings. How sweet a victory would that be, aside from just the points?

Of course a legend could be permanently installed on the Hall of Fame page.

I tried to make the medals sollow somewhat of a logical order so it shouldn't be too hard to differentiate them. It'd take some familiarity with it, but that goes with any system.

It's basically a way to achieve something without it being another number (elo rating).

I think that you need to take some of them out, and possibly make some a little more ornate.

And taking away stripes doesn't work too well, you should go from 1 to 3 greens, then begin with a single dot.

As to taking some out...is there a reason to take some out? Cuz I think more is better. As I tried to explain, it would allow for a greater range of ranks and give incentive to achieve higher and higher. With 6 - 8 rankings, I'd be afraid there would be a lot of stagnantion...seeing the same medal next to your name for long periods of time. It might give the medals less impact.

As to being ornate...I definitely hear you on that. In fact, I tried looking up medals on google to get an idea of the type that are given to non-military types. And some are ornate...However, it's difficult to get ornate in a 16x16 pixel graphic. It just won't happen.

And finally, all new players would actually start out at the "Apprentice" level with an introductory ELO rating of (what I think would be, correct me if I'm wrong) around 100. So yes, the single dot denotes a new player with no games completed.

Since the ELO rating can fluctuate below this entry level, I chose a green (as in inexperienced, new, fresh...or tarnished) medal that represents a backwards progression.

The game of Diplomacy assumes you are the controller of a country. If you are new to this (at least as far as phpdip is concerned) you'll start out as an apprentice like in any job market, or one who is new to the controller-of-countries markets as a graduate of the school where controller-of-countries go.

Backwards progression at the apprentice level would result in "going back to school". Thus you will have been deemed a graduate, with a single green bar. More backward progression will lead you to being a Senior and another green bar. And at the bottom of it all, is the student with three green (inexperienced, new, fresh), tarnished bars.

I'm just trying to explain fully the method behind my proposition, so if there's a better idea, I'm all ears. That is if there's interest in this.

Again, an ELO rating as a number would suffice just as well, I suppose. But then we'd just be staring at two different numbers...points and Elo. Might as well make the rankings fun and even funner to look at. :)

Players tend to have an average Elo- of about 60 when the come in, and then to increase in skill with experience. However for each new player 100 points must be introduced, so I have decided that it is best to give them a starting rate of 60, and then give them 4 points at the end of each of the first ten games. This makes for a fairer representation of skill early on, reducing skew from playing new players and being inexperienced when you join.

Hmm, very nicely said Darwyn... Still, I feel some of the graphics (especially the cookie-cutter looking ones) are rather bland. The top 3 are quite nice, and I do like the idea of the dot. Let me see what I can draw up and I'll post in a few hours.

Sounds good! I can't wait to see them.

I agree with lots of levels to keep players from stagnating, but the medals themselves are not intuitive enough. Given two symbols it is not obvious without the table what is higher than what. Even a noob needs to be able to make a reasonable guess what outranks what. Given that, I'd make as many ranks as you possibly can, so long as the symbols are in a resoanbly obvious order.

I really like the top ones, but the cookie cutters don't work at all.

Here is my suggestion. Keep the symbols for Apprentice. Double up the symbols for Journeyman to Director by having a tab under bar or color marked version. Then duplicate the whole group of seven, in green for a lower group and gold for a upper group.

Seventeen symbols that are pretty easy to keep in order.

I'd love to see icons used for rankings, but as others have said that's probably too many, and the icons themselves aren't very clear as to which icon is better than which. Perhaps the number of rankings wouldn't be so bad if they progressed more clearly, but it is hard to tell at a glance which are worth more, and I think that should be the top priority, with increasing the number of possible ranks a distant secondary priority.

I have to say though, those icons are very nice indeed. I wouldn't have thought yellow would fit into the existing palette phpDip uses, but in the example you gave I think it looks great. They'd definitely be a very nice touch either to a new ranking system or to make the current ranking system more visual and clear

My suggestion, based on which icons are my favorites, would be to use the Apprentice -> Director icons, with a Director icon with a blue circle in the middle the same size as the Master Diplomat one. That'd give six levels, including a medal-less level for newcomers, which would line up pretty nicely with the number of current "titles" in the existing ranking scheme. (Not that that is a big priority, but it would be convenient, and I think provide enough levels)

But I'm just throwing out my thoughts based on which icons are my favorites

And good work, by the way. Good to see something a little more solid come out of the never-ending ranking system discussions

Ok, I've had some delay on the graphics, but I have, so far, 5 'below' ranks, 1 newcomer rank, 25 'above' ranks, and 1 unique rank.

-5 Trainee V
-4 Trainee IV
-3 Trainee III
-2 Trainee II
-1 Trainee I
0 Recruit
1 Basic
2 Soldier
3 Solider First Class
4 Sergeant
5 Petty Officer
6 Petty Officer First Class
7 Sr. Petty Officer
8 Officer Cadet
9 Officer
10 Sub-Lieutenant
11 Lieutenant
12 Senior Lieutenant
13 Sub-Captain
14 Captain
15 Brigade Captain
16 Sub-Commander
17 Commander
18 General
19 Major General
20 General of the Armed Forces
21 Emisary
22 Consul
23 Diplomat
24 Master Diplomat
25 Grandmaster
26 Sovreign

A small change: take out Basic, and add Command Petty Officer above Sr. Petty Officer.

rank icons would be great!
and seeing as it would probably be an easier addition then the elo ranking system they could be added first and correspond simply to points (relative percentage as ranks are determined now) / win average and other stats, or a combination of the two

i think rankless as a newcomer is a good idea but i also think it'd be best for someone to pick up a rank even if they are below 100 points. perhaps the first rank should be gained after your first game or two on here on php regardless of points or win rate. after that icons can be distributed by a relative percentage system as they are now.

darwyn, i meant more "manageable" in relation to the players seeing and intuitively knowing what symbol was higher ranked than others not in a coding sense.

something like this

http://sympatico.gamexl.ca/images/ranks/ranks_english.gif

http://files.bungie.org/beorn_ranks/wp/H3RanksDesktop01_1440.jpg

however it is a bit silly having U.S insignia in a European game.
i agree with most here, the top three rank insignias on your intial post look really cool.

Darwyn:

Here they are! I 'borrowed' your ideas for the under-newrank people, and the two before the last

sean:

That's what I've worked towards, except using much simpler shapes that would be unique to phpDip (with some relevancy in rank names).

Let me know what you think!

http://b.imagehost.org/0754/Overview_copy.jpg

I've got them saved independently with the original paths in CS2, so I can easily edit them if needed. These were just something I threw together for demonstration.

they look good churchill.
but do we need 5 levels of trainees?
i really like the blue and yellow mid levels but its a bit difficult to determine the which of the ;ast two red medals is higher.

whats PO?
are you thinking that only one player on this site can have the "sovereign" tag at one time?

cant wait for this to be coded. will that be difficult? and will it be based on elo or simple win percentage.

Here's an example of the intergration:
http://b.imagehost.org/0625/ExampleIntergration.jpg

sean:

The Trainees are all below a certain determined ELO score that is determined. It's not necessary to have 5, but that illustrated the options.

I wanted a clear color progression black - white - green - blue - gold - red, that would be pretty intuitive, so I'm glad it worked out.

As far as discerning the fleur-de-lis from the cross, I propose we use darwyn's with the circle in it.

PO = Petty Officer, all of the abbreviations are mentioned in their full form once on the page

I was thinking that Sovereign would in fact be the top player.

In my ideal world, the ranks would be assigned to a certain ELO ranking.

As I said, Darwyn put an idea out there, and a mix is always good, so I put my idea out there.

I just thought of a better comparison. Think of a trainee as someone who has than a hundred points. i.e, they are below the level they started at.

So, a player would start out as a Recruit, and when they finish their first game they would become a Soldier (or more) if they went up or stayed the same, or would be Trainee I (or less) if they went down.

Diplomacy is the name of the game, not military conquest. After head of state why not use diplomatic ranks?
From wikipedia:
* Ambassador
* Minister
* Minister-Counselor
* Counselor
* First Secretary
* Second Secretary
* Third Secretary
* Attaché
* Assistant Attaché
Perhaps then some joke ranks for novices
chief cook and bottle washer
sharpener of pencils

Hmmm... possible. It's all up for discussion.

Although, the images are going to be the most important.

(Notice how I used more political/diplomatic names up top)

This is a really good idea, that doesn't delve too much into the 'my ranking system is better than yours' debate. I really like the symbols, and the debate, the only thing that I am worried about is making it abundantly clear which symbol is higher than another. That is why using the ranks from the army might make it easier to understand?

Great work by the way. The joke ranks would be funny ;)

Thankfully, for once our points are all constructive (for once in this forum)!

Personally, I tried to use rank names that I felt created a clear hierachy. However, I thing that more Dip-appropriate names could be funny, (such as political ones) and fit right into our community (some themed ones like hobo or police might be ideas).

For me, the main thing is that the graphics cleary represent who is above who. That is why I have a clear color structure: black - green - blue - gold (with white being newbies and red being very, very high). I've also kept a theme in all of the ranks that people will generally understand (beginning with enlisted-like ranks, following onto officer-like ranks, and then moving to high-command ranks, then to more ornate ranks. Each group has a clear advancement progression, with incresingly better-looking (not to mention cooler) ranks as the player advances (more of a specific symbol is better than less of that. i.e. 3 stars beats 2 stars, 3 echelons beats 2, 2.5 stripes and a circle beats 2 stripes and a circle).

Recap:
For me, as it is proposed the graphic is going to be displayed (possibly with the full name of the rank as a tooltip) it's important the pictures be in a clear order. I've just tried to use ranks people will recognize as being in a specific order.

Like I said, I've kept them open for change, so we might want to switch some elements arounds (as it's actually pretty easy).

You could always embellish the diplomatic corps ones:

Ambassador
* Minister
* Minister-Counselor
* Counselor
* First Secretary
* Second Secretary
* Third Secretary
* Attaché
* Assistant Attaché

And then add things like this in reverse order, the top being the bottom rank (can't be bothered to retype)
Pen pusher
Photocopier
Tea-maker
Bag-carrier
Aide
Researcher
Senior Researcher
Chief of Staff
Special Advisor
Gatekeeper

etc. That's another 10 ranks with ease. It took me nearly three years to get two thirds of the way up that list in real life ;)

Some thoughts:

(Assuming the ELO system is being used, the point system does not have this problem.)

1 - There are three distinct ways to handle what happens with new players:

A - New players should have a Rank of "initiate" or something until they have finalized their first 5 games. They start with 100 points, but they are unlisted in the Ranking.

Pros: Diferentiates clearly a new player from an "average" player. That player's rank depends solely on his own performance after the first 5 games.

Cons: New players are, in terms of the ELO system, just as good as an average player. Therefore, they are more likely to win than a below par player, and get less points from wins than they do. However, it is to be expected that, as newcomers, they should be less likely to win than most.

B - They get a fraction of their 100 points, and they are given back the difference over time.

Pros: The newcomer is cut some slack, he will join games with a fairly low chance to win (in terms of ELO) an thus will get more points from good or acceptable performances.

Cons: More complicated, would generate lots of "why do I have 60 points/why was I given 4 points if I lost" questions. Winning the first two or three games might make them go up a lot.

C - They just start with 100 points

Pros: Simple as hell

Cons: Inhability to tell the new players apart from the average players.

Sure, whatever players want. The main issue is what the graphics look like and can they be implemented.