Symmetry wrote:Ok- I've been looking at a few of the threads in the C&A forums recently, and there's been a lot of high ranking players complaining about low ranking players beating them. Or ruining their plans.
Almost always this is preceded by a lot of stuff in chat where the higher ranking player threatens the lower ranking player with punishment, and almost always the higher ranking player throws every accusation in the book at the lower ranking player (multi-abuse and secret diplomacy are common allegations even when a single player is being named- there's no punishment for false accusations, after all- you can always say you misunderstood the form).
The strange thing that I noticed, however, is that most of the players who do this have a history of bullying and abusive behaviour when they feel that they're entitled to a win and a lower ranked player has denied them.
If I was a more cynical man than I am, I might conclude that a lot of the cases that end up in C&A are from bullies who have someone stand up to them, instead of fold and change their tactics to what the bully finds acceptable.
This isn't intended to be a complete set of thoughts, but just an initial set of observations. How do you see it?
The problem is twofold.
First, there is a group here who are, i will say "highly competetive". They see the game as sort of "attack in any way to win". I found that idea a lot back when I played freestyle... a lot of people seemed to think they were automatically better, had "the" way to play, etc and anyone who won through different means or who was lower rank and won, was someone they should attack.
Then you have the group that have gotten a lot of success through whatever pattern they follow. Some of these have been classed as "farmers", etc, etc... again, its like one just is not supposed to win. When you do, then there is a bunch of people who want to find out why you "should not have" won.
To end this, CC needs to pay a bit more attention to plain sportsmanship and less attention to making the rankings "fair". That might seem counter-intuitive, but it is my belief that when you have such a wide range of maps, playing types and people, its just impossible to make a truly fair and objective ranking of who wins. What we CAN have is a comparitive, fun, "guess who is on top for now" ranking. That will, of ocurse, measure skill. I am not suggesting that cooks and conquerers are "equal" in skill, but I am saying that the difference between a brigadeer and major or even, sometimes, sergeant, etc. has to do with which maps a person has played, the recent luck they have had and so forth, rather than straight "skill". Only if you are assessing people playing the exact same maps with all the same settings can you assess skill, and even then, only when enough games are played to take out the luck factor (at least 30, maybe more).
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