- The brilliance and color of one’s leadership dot represents what percentile the player falls into within the leading population.
- The leadership points a player has expire 3 months after being awarded
- The minimum points a player can have is 10% of the highest total they ever achieved
- Players who have never been given leadership points or whose points have expired don’t count in the leading population.
The above aspects keep the dots relevant over time while respecting the strategic and tactical skills that good leaders have that are not affected by new mechs coming out or slight tweaks to the meta they may have missed during a time of inactivity. In short it keeps the leadership fresh while respecting timeless skills.
- Example 1: Someone is top of the heap but goes inactive for a month. Points from 3 months previous are constantly expiring and other people are doing good work so the subject is surpassed and pushed down in the percentiles, their dot fading to reflect that. They come back to the game and, being a great leader, climb back up to their rightful place.
- Example 2: Someone is top of the heap but goes inactive for 4 months. All of their points have hit their expiration dates and the subject is reduced to the minimum 10% of their former glory. This could still put them high enough in the percentiles to be listened to in games but if they aren’t gaining leadership points faster than the rest of the population (either through intensive gaming and pretty good leadership or outstanding leadership over fewer games) they won’t be climbing back up.
The lesson? Either:
- Stay current and competitively competent,
- Be so amazing for a while that you can get by on residual points once you have faded,
- Or just plug along being as good a leader as you can and getting points here or there.
WALL OF TEXT BREAKUP PARTY!
More nitty-gritty stuff!
- Every player gets 1 leadership point to award per week. If unused, these expire every week. These do not count toward a player’s own leadership points.
- At the end of a match a player can only give a point to a lance or company commander on their team but only if their team won.
- Players with significantly more (20% maybe?) leadership points can take over a lance or company commander position from another player at any time.
The first aspect here makes leadership points rare, causing people to only award them when they see something truly worthy. Basing it on time instead of number of games played avoids an obvious source of abuse.
The third aspect here ensures that the best available and willing commander is always in control. There isn’t really an effective way to abuse this system, as discussed below in a snippet from my original thread (yes, I am necroing my own thread (
http://mwomercs.com/...ven-leadership/) from over a year ago. I botched the survey portion and wanted to present the same idea in a better way):
Example: Noob starts playing MWO, decides he/she wants to be a respected leader but fears he/she will get booted from a leadership role by a player with a higher leadership score or not listened to.
- First, the only people that can boot you from lance commander role are the 3 other PUGers in your lance. If they don't care to do it then you've got a chance.
- Second, by trying you open yourself up to as many as 11 leadership points per match, something that is definitely worth a little effort.
- Third, a green-dotted leader is still at least 1 leadership point better (read: 1 victory in a leadership role that impressed somebody) than someone with no dot at all and at present that’s all we are following anyways.
What about friends upvoting each other? Yes, such circle jerks will definitely exist. However, while they are slowly taking turns getting a few leadership points (with only 1 per week to use, if they are taking turns they are only earning 1 per week on average) actually good commanders dropping with new groups every time will likely be winning a leadership point or two every victory or two. If a good commander spends 1 hour a day 5 days a week and 2 hours a day on weekends, average of 4.5 games an hour that's 40.5 games a week and exposure to 445.5 possible leadership points. Figure half are wins and on average 1 player each win thinks the commander did well then that's 20.25 leadership points per week.
TL;DR: Circle-jerks = 1 leadership point per week average, good commanders = 20+
WALL OF TEXT BREAK UP AFTER PARTY:
Yes, this takes on another dimension once clans/guilds get involved but they'll circle-jerk their choice commanders up to high levels all for what? So PUGs will listen to them? They're in a clan/guild, when do they ever play with PUGs? And even if/when they do they DO still want to win so what would it hurt to listen to them?
To be a problem a group would have to spend months upvoting themselves to blazing yellow dot stardom, then go into PUG matches, steal the commander roles, and either work to sabotage the match (which honestly wouldn't be much worse than just having an average terrible team) or work to win the match and hog all the possibility for leadership points. Either way, the experience is either no different or actually better for everyone else. Remember that potential leadership points aren't even being wasted with this maneuver and the likelihood of dropping with the same dingbats again isn't high enough to worry about.