What AW needs the most in my opinion...

... Is a true individual ranking system.

I have been thinking about the best way to go about this. Obviously we can't base it off win/loss of every random game, and doing it by duels would be easily abused. So I think the only possible answer would be tournaments.

Here is my thought process on the matter: Tournaments should be a part of AW, not just made up by the community. There should be a tab, (possible by Causal and Quick game types), that says "Tournaments." This tournaments should run monthly, with the first week of every month being the sign up period.

When you click the tournaments tab you will be prompted to either sign up for a tournament (if it is the first week of a month) or view current brackets. To keep it as fair as possible, there will be 3 brackets running continuously every month. These will be beginner, intermediate, and expert. Beginner would be ranks 0-5 and expert would be ranks 6-15. Anyone can sign up for intermediate.

The way the individual ranks would work would be off a point system. There would be ladders of players based off how many points they have accumulated. Here is an example, the final system can be way more fine tuned.


Expert:
1st place - 40 points
2nd place - 30 points
3rd place - 15 points

Intermediate:
1st place- 10 points
2nd place - 8 points
3rd place - 5 points.

Beginner:
1st place - 3 points
2nd place - 2 points
3rd place - 1 point

(The finals for these tournaments would be intense with I presume I a lot of spectators.)


My thinking behind this is that expert competition would be much stiffer, so the winner gets way more points then the winner of the other two tournaments. I realize this isn't a perfect system for determined skill, but there really is not perfect way. This would just be better then nothing (like there currently is).

Players would input what times they are available when they sign up, and the system would match games up accordingly. If you miss a game time twice, then you forfeit. Players can theoretically choose whatever map and game settings they both agree on.

Everything is open for discussion (Singer Elimination/Double Elimination/Round Robin) but I believe AW needs something more skill based. This system may not be completely fair, but at least it adds a bit of real competition to this game. It is really late and I assume there are a lot of holes in my plan as it is now, I will look at it again the morning.

Also... maybe tournaments could be expanded for Coalition play at some point. Another way for coalitions to earn CP.

Very good idea. This would be better for an activity standpoint. Since people are signed up they will be more willing to play their games than in a tournament forged by a player.

Citer:

Players would input what times they are available when they sign up, and the system would match games up accordingly. If you miss a game time twice, then you forfeit. Players can theoretically choose whatever map and game settings they both agree on.

In a tournament, it should be the same settings for all players since this would abuse the whole ranking system which is the point of this idea.

I don't think every game should be locked in to Eu + 10k. If both players agree on a different map, why shouldn't they be allowed to play it?

Why not have tournaments that alternate maps?

Because most people only want to play Europe...

I like this idea

This is a great idea Nateballer ! You have my fully support! Problem is now that there is no real competition (neither in personal ranking, nor coalition ranking). It's only about the total amount of points that is not a fair way too look at skills. Rankings like you suppose are seen in many other games too, and are working very good because people come back to try to gain positions on the ranking and ladder list. I really hope Ivan and/or Amok will do something with this idea!

Cow had such ideas before it was cool on my ELO inspiration.