http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons...am.svg.png

This is a normal distribution. When things tend to be more common around one certain spot with the capability of going both directions whilst getting rarer and rarer, it's likely

normal. Heights, weights, IQs, and video game elo systems should follow this type of curve.

I'm using League of Legends to bring up a point of how skill is distributed across a game. Anyone who has played the game seriously knows that competence is a serious issue until you

start playing with higher elo players. I'm going to use Riot's website to point out exactly how much of the population is "good" and why appealing to this tiny proportion of your

userbase isn't a good idea if it comes to the sacrifice for the rest.

Riot's website shows a ladder of everyone 1200 rated and higher. 1200 is your starting elo in league, which seems like a logical place for an average. For the sake of math we will go

with this.

http://competitive.na.leagueoflegends.com/lad...page=12590


Based on the site, there's 300k people that are 1200 and above. If 1200 is the midpoint, we can assume we're talking about 600000 players..

http://i.imgur.com/NXmQc.png


I made the cutoff at 1700 to simplify calculating the amount of players since there's a normal dist property to figure this out. In reality I'm being generous, when I was an active

league player 1700 was the top 200-300 players and around that area had some questionably terrible people floating around. The amount of people "not shit" is around 2% of 600000, or

~13000 players.

People under 1200 are really, really bad. And this accounts for HALF of the people playing the game using the assumption of 1200 elo avg.


Remember how I said 1200 was an assumption average to make the math easier? Well..

http://i.imgur.com/yz11j.png

Since the actual avg elo is 900, the amount of really, really bad players under 1200 actually accounts for a number MUCH HIGHER than half of the playerbase. the 1700 elo+ players are

even more rare amongst the now higher sample size.

This accounts for ranked gaming accounts. It takes a sizable amount of time to be able to even play in these type of games..

http://i.imgur.com/DoTsv.png

among 32mil accounts total, 17000 are NOT SHIT.



Note: logical errors include that my ranked distribution analyzation only accounts for USA accounts while I include global total, a large amt of these accounts are dead, trolls, etc.

so the number we're working with is a lot smaller, the math is rough and makes assumptions for sake of simplifying to avg user, etc.



This distribution is based on a MASSIVELY popular game, and we should expect it to apply to any game we expect to be huge. If Reborn is to not be dead, the majority of the people playing it will suck. My point is catering to the game being fun for all skill levels is crucial. How do you do this?

For a game like league, it means making sure things are balanced at all levels of play(this is common in starcraft as well), rather than just at elite levels. For FPS games, your arsenel is the exact same as your opponent's, so this isn't much of an issue.

For a game like quake a big issue for people that suck is that even a small difference in skill is the difference between getting shit on and not getting shit on. it's not fun for the average player to get repeatedly killed. It's demoralizing as fuck. When making design decisions, find ways to make the game inherently LESS frustrating to lose, so that people will want to play more even after losing, rather than immediately quit. starcraft and league accomplish this by long amounts of buildup, with a relatively quick "o i lost" moment. when you're bad at those games, you don't even realize you're losing until you're 15mins into the game at which point you get shit on and move on to the next game. These long buildup periods also serve as a sideeffect great for spectators, the action slowly builds up rather than bombarding you, eventually finishing off right after a gamedeciding climax.

Timelimit based games are annoying for someone who knows he's lost and BORING to spectate. People don't want to watch a match that's already been decided. There's no tension in waiting 5 minutes to end a game that ended due to great play from one player in the first half of the game. It's a waste of everyone's time and it needs to go. Either make the ruleset fraglimit based(seriously, it's not bad and would really make spectators foam at the mouth when people chain up kills and the tension buildup when someone is approaching fraglimit would be INSANE), or adapt a hooneymode style ruleset. Either style would maintain the "quake" feel while making the game more fun to play and more fun to watch for EVERYONE.

Create interesting mechanics that give loser's advantage. I've talked about this on ESR before, but SF4's ultra system is one of the best implementations of this style. You get ultra for playing worse: You take more dmg, you get ultra meter. If you land an ultra you can easily reverse the tides of battle. Both players are aware and play their game around this. It sounds gross and noob, but it adds for excitement for spectators, gives a chance for shitty players a chance to get wins againt better players in lower skilled games, adds combat depth to high skill games, and so much more. Think of ways to apply mechanics like this because they are awesome.



This is massive, I am throwing a lot of information I've thought about regarding the success and failures of games. I worry that 2GD may be too stubborn to sacrifice quake mechanics that MUST BE CHANGED in order for the game to be successful.

Other thoughts: f2p for accessability, paid swag for creating your own "look" within the game to pay the bills

approachable movement system(qw/pk are good choices)

matchmaking so people arent getting shit on by people better than them

don't listen to q3 conservatives. adapt to the demands of the market even if it means a slight sacrifice for us competitive few. It is a far better decision for the competitive few in the long run anyways.

remember: ~98% of your playerbase IS GOING TO SUCK. make the game fun for them.