Play Points: A Detailed Suggestion

UPDATE: See this post.

So what are Play Points?

• These points hold value in competitive reputation. Play Points is a system of how well you do against other players you challenge or get challenged by. It is a system akin to the Performance Points (PP) system, but where the PP system is based on proficiency to play a map well, the Player Point system is based on the proficient to beat other players.

Summary (for those who get freaked out by walls of text):

• 
  - Players send requests to other players as a challenge to any map (ranked or unranked) or play in a designated competitive play multiplayer lobby
  
  - Players with 0 play points cannot challenge other players, and need to be challenged to instead or play in a competitive lobby.
  
  - The number of play points you receive is based on your rank compared to others you played against and the difficulty of the map
  
  - A fractional amount of the play points you have goes into your clan's vault as upkeep. The more players in your clan, the less is the amount.
  
  - A loosing player in your clan will take away the lost play points from the clan's vault based on the fractional amount mentioned.

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Details:

How does it work?

• 
  To start the system, players will need to make and play in competitive lobbies in multiplayer. Then, players will be able to send challenge requests to other players in the chat much like an invitation to a multiplayer game online, but with a random password to prevent others from joining. That player can choose to accept or to reject the offer. This match is 1 vs 1 and the winner gets the points.
  
  
  peppy challenging me to a game (seems legit):
  
  SPOILER

  
  
  The calculation may go along these cases:
  
  Winning:
  [list:1337]
  A) You are rank #1,000 and beat rank #1 on a 1 star map: You get some Play Points
  
  B) You are rank #1,000 and beat rank #1 on a 6 star map: You get tons of Play Points
  
  C) You are rank #1 and beat rank #1,000 on a 1 star map: You get less Play Points then in case A.
  
  D) You are rank #1 and beat rank #1,000 on a 6 star map: You get less Play Points then in case B.

Loosing:

• 
  A) If you are rank #1,000 and lose to rank #1 on a 1 star map, you don't loose too many Play Points.
  
  B) If you are rank #1,000 and lose to rank #1 on a 6 star map, loose less Play Points the in case A.
  
  C) If you are rank #1 and lose to rank #1,000 on a 1 star map, you loose some Play Points
  
  D) If you are rank #1 and lose to rank #1,000 on a 6 star map, you loose a lot of Play Points.

Multiplayer

• 
  The team's rank is calculated as the average of all the players challenging. Multiplayer lobbies should be color coded and have a permanent setting upon creation indicating whether it is a competitive play lobby or not to avoid hosts from switching to competitive play at the last second (and snatch the Play Points).
  
  Competitive Play lobby indicated red
  
  SPOILER

  
  
  Case 1: One vs an army (see Team Play Points under Other features for full explanation of this example)
  [list:1337]
  One extremely skilled player from a team of 3 may go on 8 other players from the other team. If that skilled player wins 30 Play Points, the Team gets 10 Play Points, and he gets 20. The 8 players from the loosing team would each get their points reduced, and the team's Play Point's would be the sum of the 1/8 of each point lost (that is some destruction). If the skilled player looses, the player will loose the Play Points, but the team's Play Points is not going to get reduced as much as the other way around.

Case 2: Players vs Players

• 
  3 players go up against 4 players. So this depends on the scoreboard. #1 gets the Play Points based on the ranks below the player, #2 gets the Play Points based on the ranks below the player, and loses based on the ranks above, etc. A failed player will certainly be below most other players.

How it will break down:
Special Cases:

• 
  -- Disconnecting on the first 10% of the song gives no penalty. Otherwise, these points get split among everyone that is still connected.
  -- Disconnecting before the match is over after 10% of the song gives a penalty equivalent to half of the Play Points the player would lose at last place. These points get split among everyone that is still connected.

Other features of the Play Point system:

• 
  Help I've hit 0 Play Points!!!
  [list:1337]
  When players hit 0 Play Points, they can no longer challenge other players and need to be challenged by another player to get their Play Points back or play in a competative lobby. A player cannot get less than 0 Play Points. This essentially makes them the source of Play Points; If a player is at 0, at least 1 person will win, getting the Play Points. While there is no real way of giving Play Points to players like currency, you can supposedly "give" Play Points to other players by losing on purpose at the player's risk.

Challenge to Unranked maps!

• Beatmaps don't need to be ranked to be able to challenge other players to them. Since this system is based how well you go against others and not the ability to play a map to perfection, there is not need to have this system be dependent on ranked maps. So go ahead, challenge a player to a 20 star, and have a split second duel!

Team Play Points:

• 
  With clans/teams being implemented soon, teams should also be integrated with the Play Point system. Players count as a fraction of their team (a team of 8 would have each player count as 1/8). When players challenge or get challenged by players from another team and loose/win, that fraction gets added/reduced from the team's Play Points.
  
  For example if you are part of a 6 player team and are going 1 on 1 against a player from another team and get 60 Play Points, 10 Play Points go to the team Play Points, and you get to keep the other 50 for yourself. If you loose 60 Play Points, then the Team looses 10 play points and you loose the rest. This is what I like to call a team upkeep, and would require players to think about who should join their team (1 player may reduce the Team's Play Points to 0). Note that the losing player only effects the Team Play Points, not the Play Points the individual players have.

• Why is this a good idea?
  [list:1337]This will make players be more interactive with each other (or beg for points). It will give players more competition and a better experience playing maps, especially unraked maps.Players stuck/hit a wall and can't progress in ranks could challenge others and improve this way, making the game a less boring experience. I would love to see the osu! culture expand and this is great way to do it. Players will be talking about players like cookiezi who would annihilate an elite team. Well what are your opinions?

An excellent quote by Bobbias (from p/4127521)

An excellent quote by Tear (from http://pastie.org/pastes/10080655/text)

Not sure, personally I'd prefer ELO Ranking: t/115405

And I don't like the idea that a player cannot challenge others if he has 0 play point.

Just have a player/friend challenge you. This is one of the interactive parts of this system.

EDIT: A player can join/make a competitive play lobby as a way of challenging other players, but won't be able to challenge 1v1 privately. So it must be a public lobby.

Oinari-sama wrote:

Not sure, personally I'd prefer ELO Ranking: t/115405

And I don't like the idea that a player cannot challenge others if he has 0 play point.

Win a challenge then
simple

this would be nice

I added a summary since I'm assuming people just skim through the thing and don't get this.

There can still be the case of a lonely player having 0 PP and not being able to do anything. Cant win against better players (because theyre better) and worse players dont want to lose their points.
There has to be >some< way to gain PP w/o winning a competitive match. May it be from playing alot, gaining Performance Points or just being a person in the osu! universe.

Other than that, interesting take on a competitive ranking thing, but Im not too sure if that's a "great" thing to have. Eventually it might end up like the score ranking - It's there but not many care about it in the mid/endgame stages.

This will make players be more interactive with each other
- Interactive players will remain interactive, non-interactive players will remain non-interactive

It will give players more competition and a better experience playing maps, especially unranked maps.
- I am not looking forward to players dishing out 7 stars ar10 maps so they can win against me by mashing through the whole map

I would love to see the osu! culture expand and this is great way to do it.
- osu! is pretty much international now, I can play with Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Australian and German depending on what time I play

Players will be talking about players like cookiezi who would annihilate an elite team
- we are already talking about how doomsday, WWW, rrtyui and MathClass could carry their team

While I think it may be a good suggestion,
there isn't any reason for me to pursue anything other than pp points and rank up in general (unless play points is somehow related to my performance points)
And competitive reputation comes naturally when you play a lot of multiplayer and add friends on your way

Yauxo wrote:

There can still be the case of a lonely player having 0 PP and not being able to do anything. Cant win against better players (because theyre better) and worse players dont want to lose their points.

I wouldn't expect beginners to be into competitive play, but players who feel confident would take part in competitive matches.

Yauxo wrote:

There has to be >some< way to gain PP w/o winning a competitive match. May it be from playing alot, gaining Performance Points or just being a person in the osu! universe.

The point of this is to have a scale of performance against other players, not from anything else. Performance points measure how accurate you can do a map, and the points shouldn't come from thin air. It does rely on performance points to calculate how many play points to award or take away from you though.

Yauxo wrote:

Eventually it might end up like the score ranking - It's there but not many care about it in the mid/endgame stages.

Score ranking doesn't rely on difficulty and your rank compared to others. It's just measures your accuracy and how often you play, which tells little to nothing.

[MY] yummy90 XP wrote:

- I am not looking forward to players dishing out 7 stars ar10 maps so they can win against me by mashing through the whole map

Who says you need to play it? There is no penalty for quitting before or within 10% of the map. Play at your own level.

[MY] yummy90 XP wrote:

- Interactive players will remain interactive, non-interactive players will remain non-interactive
- osu! is pretty much international now, I can play with Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Australian and German depending on what time I play
- we are already talking about how doomsday, WWW, rrtyui and MathClass could carry their team

Perhaps true

[MY] yummy90 XP wrote:

there isn't any reason for me to pursue anything other than pp points and rank up in general (unless play points is somehow related to my performance points)

Performance points are used in play point's calculation, but if they were closely related, then what will be the difference between the 2?

*There are performance points, which players do the same maps over and mod them to obtain higher performance.

*Then there is the proposed play points, which players VS other players and factors such as your current state of performance and not maximum performance is a factor.

Im not gonna go in-depth to some points, I'll just let them be there as they are.

Though, if I really understood your concept of the "Well, you're at 0PP, good luck doing whatever you can or cannot do" point correkt, it still buggs me alot as it's bad game/program design.

I dont believe that Ive ever seen a gameconcept (or any other concept, really) that rendered you basically "useless" when youre not good enough to keep up with something. There should always be a failsafe for these kinds of things.
If he happens to lose matches and falls down to 0, he's basically effed, unless he's got a super nice friend that loses on purpose against him - which will reduce the friend's points, putting him in a possibly bad position as well. If there's noone else around? Well, rip. No chance for him.

Let me give you an example
It's like as if I'd program my car racing game to have a limited amount of cars in the game and whenever you crash one of those cars they wont be available anymore, forever. Eventually the player crashes all the cars, no matter how careful he drove - because mistakes or accidents with random reckless NPCs can always happen. What then? Well, game over. Nothing to do for him there. Time to move on to the next best other car racing game.

If you'd keep it like how you stated above, it'll most likely end up in creating two or three tiers
1: The Pros. Got almost unlimited supply of PP since theyre ... well, good at the game. You support these people.
2: The guys, that are inbetween. They fight for their PP and probably have fun doing so. Some crawl their way up to tier 1 and some fall down to tier 3.
3: Those, that have little to none PP left and dont know what to do. They might be not good at the game, so theyre literally unable to play with others in this program. They might have friends in the same tier, but why would they risk falling down to 0PP just to get someone else out of that dead point? A frustrating flaw.

Fast forwarding, eventually only Tier 1 will actively exist, Tier 2 will have a low activity and Tier 3 is Tier 3. Dead, most likely. Cant participate in the program and just play something else.

Just add something like a softblock. Less lost points the lower you are on points. Special exceptions where if you're below x PP, you get x PP a day for being active or x PP bonus for every played match (so that you stay positive, even on a loss against a slightly higher ranked player). Anything, really. There are many options to choose from.

If you want to add a system for Tier 1 and Tier 2, youre better off just planning a tournament with some modified rules (your PP system)

Also, there's this: t/165834
You might be able to somewhat work that idea together with yours.

Sorry, if my post seems harsh (or whatever) in any way to you, I dont mean to offend you. I just want to add some input on the flaws it'd have in my eyes.

Yauxo wrote:

"Well, you're at 0PP, good luck doing whatever you can or cannot do". If he happens to lose matches and falls down to 0, he's basically effed, unless he's got a super nice friend that loses on purpose against him - which will reduce the friend's points, putting him in a possibly bad position as well. If there's noone else around? Well, rip. No chance for him.

I added this yesterday, and not sure if you read it: Players are also able to gain play points in competitive lobbies, so they won't necessarily need to beg for another player. Play points can't go below 0, so they are not effed (although if you read the next point, it makes me question if it is possible unless you do something stupid or the following). The only reason I can think of when a player would be in risk of hitting 0 is when they haven't played the game for long enough and lost their previous skill. When they do hit 0 and can't anything no matter how much they try, though, they can always improve. Play points is an optional system unlike performance points (and even at that it is optional if you play unranked), so there are options, given time, to get up from 0.

Yauxo wrote:

Just add something like a softblock. Less lost points the lower you are on points. Special exceptions where if you're below x PP, you get x PP a day for being active or x PP bonus for every played match (so that you stay positive, even on a loss against a slightly higher ranked player). Anything, really. There are many options to choose from.

I guess the XP system can be integrated into the calculation as well, to have something like

• Actual play points = ((XP earned for the day) * (some factor) + 1) + Playpoints earned.

Now that I think about it, that should balance out the newcomers with the experienced players. Newcomers can earn up to 10 XP the first week or so (at least I did), which can be put into the play point formula. When going up against players, the XP part will greatly outweigh the play point part. As they continue to progress, the safety net will get less and less. As players gets more and more experience, the play point side would take over and the XP side would not be much effective. Tell me if you agree and I'll add it to the main post.

Yauxo wrote:

1: The Pros. Got almost unlimited supply of PP since theyre ... well, good at the game. You support these people.

They won't be able to get an unlimited supply. High ranking players can't gain much play points unless they challenge each other maps 1 step above their level. If a rank 1 vs rank 2 were to go at each other on a 6 star, the play points gained/lost won't be too terribly great (if that's that rank's average star level). If they chose to go on an 8 star, then that amount might be higher. I will need to compile data for how the star difficulties relate to what rank you are and come up with a formula that correlates (a bit ambitious, I know). In the meantime, these suggestions should fix that major issue you are speaking of.

Don't be afraid to criticize the idea, help make it better. Make suggestions on how to fix potential problems with the proposed system like what Yauxo mentioned. I found a flaw within the system today which I'm working on a solution to fix (involves expert players with high ranks vs low rank players). So again, I definitely did not come up with a bullet proof system like Performance Points, but you can help me get it there.

I dont have the time to write a real answer right now (it's late here), but it's good to see that there's interest in finding a solution
(and no, I didnt read the edit ;w;)

Ok there was a problem I mentioned: Players with low PP but high skill can beat players with high PP on high star maps and get tons of play points (without end on unranked maps). To solve this problem, the calculation should take account of the highest PP a player gained form a single map. However, this resolves half of the issue. What if a player abandoned osu and played another rhythm game for some time to come back with pro skills going into competitive play before doing any ranked maps on his/her level? I will still be thinking on the solution, but if you guys have any ideas, feel free to share.

abraker wrote:

Ok there was a problem I mentioned: Players with low PP but high skill can beat players with high PP on high star maps and get tons of play points (without end on unranked maps). To solve this problem, the calculation should take account of the highest PP a player gained form a single map. However, this resolves half of the issue. What if a player abandoned osu and played another rhythm game for some time to come back with pro skills going into competitive play before doing any ranked maps on his/her level? I will still be thinking on the solution, but if you guys have any ideas, feel free to share.

Something of a trial?
Like, a player is given few maps to play and based on his performance, the PP calculations change?

No I don't see that working either. A player can easily fake it.

Edit: Conducting research on skill level. Results and decision pending.
My decision: p/4253436

abraker wrote:

No I don't see that working either. A player can easily fake it.

And what about automatic check-on on player's performance? One can't fake their overall performance.

i need friends and or clan members for this ;-; which i dont have T^T but its a nice idea but i'd prefer more something like ELO score

Transformau5 wrote:

abraker wrote:

No I don't see that working either. A player can easily fake it.

And what about automatic check-on on player's performance? One can't fake their overall performance.

Look at this and tell me how to make it fair for this player and others if she didn't get 219 PP before going to competitive play: https://osu.ppy.sh/u/4024541. What would the check involve?

(in case the user profile is no longer valid to the situation)

Magicsz wrote:

i need friends and or clan members for this ;-; which i dont have T^T

No you don't. Just make a competitive play lobby, you don't have to declare a challenge on someone.

abraker wrote:

Look at this and tell me how to make it fair for this player and others if she didn't get 219 PP before going to competitive play: https://osu.ppy.sh/u/4024541. What would the check involve?

I thought of comparison of one's skill to the one before in some period of time or stuff

Transformau5 wrote:

abraker wrote:

I thought of comparison of one's skill to the one before in some period of time or stuff

Ok... then what? We can't predict a player's max skill if the top ranks are lacking in data, so how many play points to award if the pro player wins?