Archive for the 'BallerBude & Co.' Category

I asked TheDoctor if he could explain us the details behind BallerBude stats, and he kindly sent me an extensive explanation, of which explanation he authorizes the use in this site. So here it is almost in its entirety, I only removed any reference to known players. It’s an honour for *LAME* Clan to give hospitality to such an authoritative contribution. Also thanks to @spi for his comment to previous post.

Obviously, BB stats try to measure how good players are. However, one should keep in mind, they represent just one of many possible metrics and no metric is ever perfect. What I mean here is, it is possible for a very successful player winning almost every game to be not in the top ten, while somebody who does not win every game has a higher score.

The following values are considered by BB’s xlrstats: skill, ratio and kills. Skill is the default ranking value.

Kills is the number of opponents a player has killed.

Ratio is calculated by dividing the kills of player by the number of deaths of the player (“kills/deaths”). A high kill ratio is an indicator for players who have been constantly performing well over their whole account life time. One can optimize ratio by playing very carefully and defensive, possibly by camping at good camping spots. The optimization strategy is obviously to survive as long as possible while killing other players. Ratio is a long-term value meaning, if you have a series of bad games, it will lower your ratio and it would take the same amount of very good games, to let ratio reach the previous value. In other words, it is possibly to ruin your ratio for a long time.

Skill, compared with ratio, is a much more dynamic value. Each player has a skill value (default 1000) and killing an opponent adds skill points while dying reduces skill points, both relative to the skill relationship between the player and it’s opponent. If you kill a more skilled player, you earn more points, while you lose more points if you are killed by a nobody. Similarly to the ratio, it helps if you don’t die often. But if you are really hell-bent on optimizing your skill points, you first have to check the skills of the other players before you would join a game. If you play against overrated (=”overskilled”) players, you will quickly earn points while you can lose many points if a good player decided to create a new account, starting with skill 1000. The skill value will react very quickly to your current level of playing, so one shouldn’t play if one is not a hundred percent focused.

Xlrstats support even more complicated metrics, e.g. one could define that a knife kill is more skilled than a sawed-off shotgun kill. Currently, these features are not used.

I think this explanation is quite informative. At least I finally understand the difference between skill and ratio, and why skill has so frequent fluctuations (at least for an average skilled player as me).

Let me conclude this post in rhyme with a lamerick on the topic 😉

Sir Camp-a-lot, sitting on top,
Waits for a prey (possibly a bot),
Proud of his skill,
Till he gets killed,
Falling from top, Sir Camp-a-lot.

I had forgotten that in BallerBude stats pages you can compare your performance towards that of another player.

If you are a registered user, and you clicked the “Remember” button in your stats page, when you visit another player’s page you have the possibility to click the “Compare” button.

As an example see Biondo compared to Mope:

We are very close, Mope.  The conclusion (printed on stats comparison) make me smile 🙂

Comparison Count and Conclusion
We can conclude that *LAME*Biondo ownes *LAME*Mope in 6 of 11 total comparison sections!

What makes a good player? Experience, a good hardware, a good ping, a strategy, knowing every map as his own apartment, fast reactions, the right weapon in the right moment, tweaking his q3config as a software-sadist, just luck … ?? Don’t know. And nobody knows, but I want to investigate. So, this is the first graphic I extracted from Ballerbude stats (http://bb.game-host.org/).

I took the best 10 players of today (today is 30/05/2011, Ballebude stats are not The Bible, and also there, things change from day to day) to see their 5 most used weapons. Maybe we can learn something. Or maybe not.

Are they using Colts because they are good players, or are they good players because they use Colts? Or, are they good players because of their ping, so that they can afford to buy 2 colts and sit camping on a roof? Who knows? If I could camp –with a good ping– on a roof, I’d be almost immortal… and I’d keep getting more and more money, and more and more Colts :), but I’m not a camper.

That’s it. SG is not Robin Hood, it gives more to the richest one.

I think that it’s not a matter of ping, not mainly, it’s a matter of smart strategy and prompt reactions. Why, Doppelkupplungsgetriebe doesn’t use Colts at all?

(Click on image to download infographic, 10 MB).

I know all this players. I played with them, but I also spectated them a lot when I was admin in Baller (I was always looking for cheaters. This was before ^TheDoctor^’s anti-cheater system). I’m sorry we can’t see ^TheDoctor^’s stats, because he is hidden in BB stats.

Well, Nautica and Muffin they camp a lot, and they have an enviable ping (Muffin doesn’t play when his ping is below 50) . It’s obvious they use Colts a lot. But I recognise they are wonderful players, with a strategy and good reflexes.

JippieJayeah! and Boss, they run a lot. They have amplified reflections (good headphones?). I love them 😉
I think that Jippie uses Sawedoff because he frequently plays at night, against bots. And I know what a Sawedoff can do against bots 😉

The more you go down the list, the less you see Colts and the more you see other weapons used.

But what amazes me the most is Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (Doppel): no Colts, and many S&W Schofield. Nice Dopp, a very personal strategy that seems to be working. [Do you know Doppel, that grasshopper always jumping in the middle of the road? Eh eh  🙂 Hi, Dopp].

And now let’s have a look at *LAME* clan stats.

(Click on image to download infographic, 10 MB).

As you can see we don’t follow the same pattern of 10 best Ballerbude players. Apart from JippieJayeah!, the others are each one a different story. Mope preferring S&W Schofield, Biondo having a “lame” fun with Sawed-Off, and ZaPaTa + JesseJames using pistols (but no Peacemaker). JesseJames likes also the Winchester 1897 (10%), not depicted in the graphic.

Are we lame because we don’t use Colts, or we don’t use Colts because we are lame? Who can say?

Consider it as a present for *LAME* Clan members. It’s a desktop wallpaper (resolution: 1400×1050) and it’s an imaginary map of Smokin’Guns servers as seen through the eyes of Biondo.
Not all server are represented here, and not all depicted have the same relevance… it’s the limited and personal point of view of one player.
Can you give me more ideas to make it more informative, but particularly more fun? I’m opened to suggestions.

• Download 1400×1050
• Download 1680×1050

Now a bit of an explanation.

BallerBude Confederation.
“Confederation” because it had 2 sons “Speciabude” first, and “Terra Nova” next.
The gallows represents the strong sense of legality of Baller’ s administrators (BigBrotherBot, ^TheDoctor^’s anti-cheat system, recorded demos, blacklisted words). Many cheaters had been banned permanently here.
Swamps and Mountains are at opposite sides, with TheDoctor at the top and … Lame clan at the bottom 😉 (but with the honour of a Google Maps marker).

SpecialBude.
Is the hunting territory of Doppelkupplungsgetriebe, another great player and Baller admin. Doppeltown is a tribute to him (yes, there are 2 Doppeltowns, from a joke about the German word “Doppel”, in English: “double”.)

Terra Nova.
Have fun with the Beta release of SG. With a tribute to Donut and Lon for their fun SG 1.1b4 maps. Many others contributed maps (Pardner, Steve, Dago, …), but this land is too small for so many towns. Congratulations to them and to all beta-testers.

JeuxLinux Republic.
Homeland of Bank-Robbery game and a well administered server.

Indipendent Republic of Smokingans.Fr, Lannukka, The Waste Land.
Nothing to see and to say here, I don’t know them 🙁

War Territories.
It’s sg.wars (though probably there is an error here… it’s a son of JeuxLinux, not of Smokinguns.fr.)

The Rogue Isle of Most Wanted.
A server administered and frequented by well known cheaters, banned elsewhere (http://www.smokin-guns.net/viewtopic.php?t=2426&highlight=wanted+server). That’s it.

The Ocean of Bad Ping.
Really difficult playing in the West coast for us.

Greengasradioland.
Another server of cheaters, but here cheating is explicitly allowed. Every one can type “god” or “give all” in console, to be immortal or to get all weapons at a time. http://www.smokin-guns.net/viewtopic.php?t=2463&highlight=greengasradio

United States of Rawhide (Both Barrels).
Its admins (Pardner, TheHoss and Neckerson) are represented here (don’t ask me why the dot near Neckerson is ReD 😉 )

Gamers4Jesus Missions.
Well, if you don’t know why, have a look at their site: http://gamers4jesus.org/

Steamboat.
You probably can’t read it if you don’t own a really crisp monitor, but it’s named “Nautica” … one of the best SG players (and a real cruise ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Nautica).

[Drawn with Free software: Inkscape]