12 replies to this topic

[Hoser]

Hi guys, any plans on adding a stats api? Games like Battlefield make great use of third party sites to host and display player statistics in novel ways. Even MW4 had a horrible statistics site that tracked performance in matches, if they had added an API to pull raw data it could have been a much cooler feature.

Global Agenda, another FTP game, has even embraced third party sites and runs contests through them as a meta game. Such sites provides zero barrier for entry into the community at large because just by playing pick up matches you are taking part in a big picture.

And hey, building brand loyalty through interaction doesn't mean that you need to control all of the interactions... Just saying

[GaussDragon]

In one of the dev blogs they mentioned that they may explore the avenue of APIs however I assume that's contingent on how much work load there is on more pressing features. It'd be awesome though, for sure.

[Hoser]

I'm always of the mind that while building a multiplayer game with an active community (or one that depends on the community, like a FTP game) the developers should be logging everything. Every shot fired, speed, direction the angles, the pings at the time, everything that would be used in determining if the shot hit should get logged. Even if only for determining what should/shouldn't get nerfed (god knows that you can't trust the forum to tell you that, they'll want to nerf everything).
It only makes sense to open up a subset of the logs to the public... they're already there, just push them out

[Lightdragon]

that idea sounds cool in some ways but in others its kinda unfair to the newer players not familiar with piloting a mech, it could hurt their ability to be recruited into a decent gaming group or even worse yet... it could end up devolving into a "my efficiency is better than yours" flame war that world of tanks has suddenly turned into now that theres mods that keep track of player records

[Hoser]

I'm certainly not going to take a side in that religious war. Stats are just stats and it is up to players to interpret them.

That said: these are all pub games we're talking about Good players get a reputation all on their own, they don't need some raw stats backing them.

I know that in Tribes:Ascend the stats that people often care about (accuracy, kill/death ratio) matter very little because teamwork is more important, hopefully his game fosters the same kind of selfless play that makes team-based games so much more interesting to play. Then the stats can be used as metrics for improving our own individual skills and not so much for bragging rights.

[Spartan Leonidus]

I am a stats *****...even if mine suck sometimes I like to see them in various ways.

[GaussDragon]

Spartan Leonidus, on 28 May 2012 - 10:31 PM, said:

I am a stats *****...even if mine suck sometimes I like to see them in various ways.

Amen, metrics are always fun to manipulate and interpret. You can gleam a wealth of information from the numbers that's hard to identify through playing. It's always fun to spot patterns and correlations.

[Hoser]

A brief note on implementation details: You don't need to go all-in on stats as a feature, I am sure there are a lot of things that need updates (w/o reading the Beta feedback posts I just assume that there are already complaints about balance that should be addressed first). However, keep in mind that you could cheap out on this particular feature and put the development load on the community, here's how:

• Provide incremental gameIdentifiers. Something like "1", "2", "3" and so on
  
• Provide an endpoint to access individual games, nothing fancy, no queries, just /mwomercs/stats/12345
  
• Dump out some simple match stats via JSON and build on it when you guys have time
  
• We can link games and players and build the rest of the database as we pull in more games

The first rev just needs to return the players in the match, and who won. JSON is flexible enough that you can just add to the game response message over time, things like the map, kills, the mechs used, damage done, etc.. With JSON there's little chance of breaking clients, so you can iterate like mad.
As long as we have the players we can build a nice map of their games and connect the dots for you That means we get to do all the heavy lifting and you can just dump stats out in a simple, fast, scalable manner.

[Banditman]

I think this is a fantastic idea. EVE Online has a good API, as does EQ2 (believe it or not). Giving third parties access to MWO stats via an API will allow a lot of community coolness without taking a huge amount of dev time to constantly develop things.

[Tsaebesoh]

Eve has an amazing API, but for a game like this I think that we only need the game stats.

If someone decides to add the ability to look into mechbays and see inventory, then that would be great, but straight stats about shooting and winning is probably enough for now.

[Hoser]

Bump

I don't need to see my ELO, but I'd like to run some tournaments for my clan. There's no real way to do it at the moment, so stats tracking would be helpful.

Thanks!

[Proxzerk]

Bump x2!

I too am interested on this information and gathering it up. I would be excellent to see how tweaks affect your rig over time in both directions, in a more normalized fashion, not necessarily just the end of match screen.

[BillyM]

Deserves a bump. I would love to see this, as it would make community-driven contests possible. I know my interest in the game would increase with this offered...

Thanks,
--billyM