Doom2 Ratings

[Guest Xenos]

Introducing: The DRC (Deathmatch Ratings Calculator(TM)) rating system.
The DRC has been developed to allow tracking of frag-based deathmatch matches. The rating system is designed to accurately access playing strength. The goal is to have all players register under one roof in a worldwide Internet database. The system will make it easier to find opponents of similar strength.
Only one on one matches are rated. The scoring is done as follows: 200 points of difference in ratings means that the higher rated player doubles the lower rated one. 400 points means 4 to 1, 600 = 8 to 1, etc.
The individual frags are counted, not games. So winning 50 to 49 will declare the player as almost even. Winning a game that only lasted a few frags is not going to upset the ratings, since a single frag counts precious little.
A strength classification is introduced by the System, similar to one practiced in chess. 2200 to 2399 means deathmatch Expert, 2400 to 2599 is Master, 2600+ is Grandmaster. The titles will be awarded for life and will be considered as basis for selection for participation in future LAN tournaments with cash prizes. There will be class events held later on (such as Masters or Grandmasters sections only). The upcoming Frag4 tournament in Dallas, TX, which is held by the Cyberathlete Professional League and has a slot on national TV in the US, will use the DRC System to rate their games, both in Quake 3 Arena and in Doom2. The time has come to make deathmatch a real sport that it should be.

Go to http://www.newdoom.com/doom2rankings / and register.

Yes, the site says rankings instead of ratings. It will be corrected in time. The site is (temporarily?) run by Ferrari, and will be overhauled in due time to give it the professional look it warrants. All the scoring will be automated in the future, but you can begin rating your games now, as long as both players agree to rate a game beforehand and it is played without technical problems. The gaming platform you use (Doom2, csDoom, Legacy, ZDoom...) doesn't matter, the choice is yours.

BTW, on the subject of what does or doesn't constitute a Doomgod. My personal belief is that a Doomgod is a Grandmaster strength player. You cannot have hundreds of Doomgods by definition, sorry folks. A Grandmaster should be able to beat the average player with a ratio of at least 8 to 1, average player's rating being 2000.

You are not automatically a Doomgod by your single-player achievements, no matter how impressive. Competition titles are your game, but Doomgods are a deathmatch-only phenomenon.

Please email me at agate@usa.net with comments/questions/suggestions. Put DRC in the subject line so that your message doesn't get dropped.

Regards,

[Guest Sir_Fragsalot]

Ever read the Doom FAQ? All the way through? If so, then you must know about the single-player ranks (e.g.: Doom Master, Grandmaster) To achieve these ranks, you need to be able to beat any level of Doom in Ultra-Violence mode (for Master rating) and to be able to beat any level of Doom in Nightmare mode (for Grandmaster rating). Could you also set up a registration for these ranks?

[Guest Xenos]

I haven't forgotten about single-player ranks. But, like you pointed out, a single-player ranks system is already in place. There is no need to introduce another one. DRC is Deathmatch Ratings Calculator, to fill the void presently existing for deathmatch players.

Am I posting my announcement to the wrong forum? Judging by replies I am getting, it seems that all readers of this site are almost exclusively into solo Dooming.

Speaking of the Master solo titles you mention. I feel that the criteria for Master titles were set too low. I haven't seen anyone in my life who was unable to finish one level of Doom on skill 4. That makes everybody a master. Flattering but wrong.

[Guest Rambo]

Xenos said:

You are not automatically a Doomgod by your single-player achievements, no matter how impressive. Competition titles are your game, but Doomgods are a deathmatch-only phenomenon.

Hmmm... I thought that finishing Doom2 on NM from scratch made
you automatically a Doomgod.

BTW, that DRC is very interesting, perhaps I'll register.

[Guest Anders Johnsen]

>You are not automatically a Doomgod by your single-player >achievements, no matter how impressive. Competition titles are >your game, but Doomgods are a deathmatch-only phenomenon.

And who are you to state something like that? Someone who can finish doom2 on nightmare, someone who have done tasks like map07-046 - sure as hell qualifies as Doom-gods, maybe not in your prefered field of playing, but that dosnt change squat. The term doom-god have been used by compet-N players and others for a long time, and stating that its a DM-only phenomenon must come from someone who suck ass at SP. Sorry to say, but this was surely a dumb-ass comment comming from someone with your experience Xenos....

[AdamW]

Xenos said:

I haven't forgotten about single-player ranks. But, like you pointed out, a single-player ranks system is already in place. There is no need to introduce another one. DRC is Deathmatch Ratings Calculator, to fill the void presently existing for deathmatch players.

Am I posting my announcement to the wrong forum? Judging by replies I am getting, it seems that all readers of this site are almost exclusively into solo Dooming.

Speaking of the Master solo titles you mention. I feel that the criteria for Master titles were set too low. I haven't seen anyone in my life who was unable to finish one level of Doom on skill 4. That makes everybody a master. Flattering but wrong.

to all...xenos' original post wasn't meant to be quite as inflammatory as it came out sounding...all he meant was that, in his opinion, DoomGod is a term really only applied to dm players, it wasn't a comment on the merits of sp or sp players. he's wrong of course, but hell, he's entitled to his opinion. =). the rankings referred to are basically the DHT titles, although they've been renamed somewhat in the intervening time (the last Doom FAQ version was a LONG time ago), and DHT is still active...someone with a better address book than me can probably give the address :). the main problem with those titles, Xenos, is that (as you noted), with one or two exceptions, they're all set too low. i did all the repeatable titles for both games in the space of two days a few months back, and any reasonable doomer could do something similar probably. (except for d2t, that can be pretty hard, i had a real bitch of a set for that one so i'll try again soon). the only titles which can really do justice to the skill of their holder are D1S and D2S (Doom1 and Doom2 Schwarzenegger), and as we use them in COMPET-N they've been modified. the first D1S had to complete any doom1 episode on Nightmare (Hoof i think it was, and to his credit he did all 3 available episodes anyway). the first D2S had to complete the entire game, but was allowed to do it in episode segments. nowadays a D1S is someone who has completed all episodes of Doom1 on nightmare (inc e4). there's two, Vincent Catalaa and Adam Hegyi. A D2S is someone who has completed all of Doom2 on nightmare. (compet-n rules apply here, of course...it's lmp'ed, one single run, no dying, no saving, no pausing, etc etc etc). there's three of these, to my knowledge - Thomas "Panter" Pilger, Vincent Catalaa, and Henning Skogsto. You can be assured that anyone who holds one of these titles is a pretty hot player :). The other titles, though, are far too trivial to count as reasonable distinctions between players, there must be hundreds who could achieve them. you seem surprisingly adamant that we have our own terminology Xenos...in actual fact we don't, really, seeing as virtually no-one outside the people who actually _make_ the speedruns give a damn about them, hehe. but single player players have been referred to as DoomGods for quite a long time (Yonatan Donner is probably the obvious example) and trying to reserve the term for DM seems to be a pointless action with no real reason or justification...to me, anyway. =). oh, and i'm now registered on DRC, and will be happy to play anyone at all over CSDoom, and UK residents modem to modem (i hope)...only after September, probably, because i'm in America from tomorrow to the 27th. cya!

[Guest Xenos]

Anders Johnsen said:

>You are not automatically a Doomgod by your single-player >achievements, no matter how impressive. Competition titles are >your game, but Doomgods are a deathmatch-only phenomenon.

And who are you to state something like that? Someone who can finish doom2 on nightmare, someone who have done tasks like map07-046 - sure as hell qualifies as Doom-gods, maybe not in your prefered field of playing, but that dosnt change squat. The term doom-god have been used by compet-N players and others for a long time, and stating that its a DM-only phenomenon must come from someone who suck ass at SP. Sorry to say, but this was surely a dumb-ass comment comming from someone with your experience Xenos....

No need to get personal or insulting to make your point, is there, Anders?

For as far as I can remember, a Doomgod meant a deathmatch player of such skill as to be found with only a handful of players in the world, possibly numbering less than a dozen. The term first appeared in text files accompanying deathmatch lmps and was later apparently applied to the likes of Donner and other single-player standouts.

Doomgod is the ONLY term that have been used to distinguish a player in deathmatch. The DRC ranks have not yet taken hold, and deathmatch players presently are a motley crew where most good players believe themselves to be invulnerable until they encounter one of the Doomgods in a game.

Single-play Dooming has Masters, Grandmasters, and Schwarzeneggers. What do you need the term Doomgod for? In single-player Doom it becomes a subjective term, does it not? You don't have a set norm for it. You say that becoming a D2S makes you a Doomgod, but you just made that up on the spot.

Getting a D2S is an astonishing achievement, it takes discipline, planning, skill, and a very sizable chunk of time spent on every map. But it doesn't necessarily make you a Doomgod-class deathmatcher. Deathmatch uses a different set of skills, and psychology plays a central role. No Doomgod to my knowledge has ever announced himself a Schwarzenegger. Yet most, if not all of nightmare solo players seem to believe that they can hold their own against a Doomgod in deathmatch, ceteris paribus. That assumption comes from using the deathmatch term. Some single-player Doomers are perfectly capable of holding their own, but only due to their deathmatch experience. One can be a D2S and a Doomgod, but he would have to obtain each separately.

Solo Doom is not unlike an arcade. All the monsters are in the same locations try after try, the task is clear, and the path to victory can be found with careful planning. You beat a map on skill 5 by carefully executing a well-thought out plan, and a wrong step means you have to start over. It makes for subconscious imprinting of repetitive patterns of movement and aim. It is detrimental to your deathmatch skills, which is why you don't see deathmatch Doomgods playing competitive solo games.

I am by now fully convinced that by my first post I have thrown an unintended rock into a hornet nest. Perhaps I should have separated the comments from the DRC announcement, since they appear to have eclipsed it completely, as I haven't received a single reply related to it.

The fact however remains that deathmatch is bigger than Doom. Before you get fired up by this, think about it a while. Deathmatch is a sport, while Doom is merely a game providing the environment for it. Deathmatching skills are transferrable form game to game as long as the games have comparable physics and playing controls. I imagine that in the future, after low-ping broadband takes hold, deathmatch will be as big as any other modern day sport. The proposed DRC rating system is an early-bird attempt to get the ball rolling in the right direction, and allow the Doom deathmatch community to finally realize the benefits that are sure to come from it.

[Adam Hegyi]

AdamW said:

I pretty much agree with Adam Williamson's post, he made some good points here. No need to flame Anders, I don't think Xenos wanted to say deathmatchers are any way superior to single-players. I think the misunderstanding is there with the word Doomgod. I don't really like this term myself, it's kind of confusing. If I'm right, Xenos refers to a Doomgod when he's talking about the best of the best deathmatchers (like Noskill, Xoleras, you know.) While usually us, single-players refer to a Doomgod when he's EITHER a deathmatcher of that caliber, or a single-player doomer of the highest. So basically, we don't exactly mean the same thing on the same word.
Anyway as I'm reading Adam Williamson, he's telling the same thing just better english, so I'm shutting up.

(I don't really want to comment Xenos's view on deathmatch vs singleplayer, he plays only DM and I play both. That's fine with me! :))

[Guest Anders Johnsen]

Xenos said:

Let me start by saying that I'm sorry if my last post turned out like a flame, that was not my intention Xenos, I just found yours to be pretty arrogant. As Adam W explained very well, your intentions was probably not to offend SP players in any way, and I realize this now.

The reason why I reacted like I did to your post is that I'm fed up with DM-only players who talk down to SP-only players and vice versa. Personally I enjoy playing both fields, and I respect the "gods", (stupid term, I agree Adam) or superior skilled players if you want, on both sides. DM and SP are very different fields...and I won't argue that it takes more to play DM as succsessfully as yourselfe than to get 50 compet-N points. I see both as different sports, with different players who stand out. To me, Daniel Lindgren is as much a "doom-god" as Noskill or Dasa...

>You say that becoming a D2S makes you a Doomgod, but you just made that up on the spot.

Well, I'm pretty sure I'm not alone behind that statement. Afaik noone ever sat down and made some official rules for whats a "doomgod" or not. It all comes down to personal opinions. And that was pretty much my point.

>Getting a D2S is an astonishing achievement, it takes discipline, planning, skill, and a very >sizable chunk of time spent on every map. But it doesn't necessarily make you a Doomgod-class >deathmatcher

Agree...but it does make you a doomgod-class Singleplayer. (and again, thats my mere perosnal opinion, I didn't look it up in any book :). Its funny though, that discipline, tactical planning, skill and a sizable chunk of time spent on every map are most likely what it takes to become a DM-god as well.

>psychology plays a central role

Oh, belive me...it does in SP as well :)

>No Doomgod to my knowledge has ever announced himself a Schwarzenegger.

Well, I wonder who announced themselves as a "doomgod" in the first place. Its a pretty floating term, a person could be reffered to as a such based on alot of different stuff imo. A "scwarzenegger" title is something you get from a specific task...so there is not alot to discuss there really. Either you have done all of doom or doom2 on NM or you havn't.

>you don't see deathmatch Doomgods playing competitive solo games.

Well, you sometimes do imo :) Marijo Sedlic comes to mind...but thats another discussion.

>Deathmatch is a sport, while Doom is merely a game providing the environment for it. >Deathmatching skills are transferrable form game to game as long as the games have comparable >physics and playing controls

I agree completely....

Well...Hopefully I didn't turn out as a flaming ass in this post. Doom is taking up too much of my life, guess I just get touchy from time to time when discussing it :) I sure hope that DM (and SP comeptitions for that matter) can be accepted as serious sports in the future. And the DRC rating system sounds like a good idea to me.