Major Additions - Forum Ladders

** This modification has been merged with Forum Tournaments!!!**

Description:
This mod allows ladders/ leagues management within vBulletin. Users can join ladders, and challenge other players.

Features:

• Adding and editing ladder uses vBulletin Editor.
• Players/ users can sign up to ladder only once.
• Permissions can be set per usergroup(AdminCP -> Usergroups -> Usergroup Manager -> {Select Usergroup} -> Ladder Permissions)
• Ladder Creator and User to Last Edit Ladder Shown at bottom of page
• Ladder View Counter
• Unlimited players in ladder
• Players must agree on score before it submits
• Editing scoring (points for win/ lose/ draw) for each ladder

Installation:

1. Follow instructions included in .zip
2. Click Install

Future Features:

• Teams
• notified via pm when a challenge has been made
• If you can think of new feature, please request it in a reply to this thread

Suggestions: If you have a suggestion about this modification, please get in touch
Donations: If you want to donate please click 'Support Developer'

[stickskills]

Ah, glad to see the initial release. I'll be installing once it gets a few more features like:

- Team support
- Stat tracking (kills, wins, losses, etc)
- Overall team rankings
- More in depth stats

Bananalive is becoming one of my favorite users.

[OcR Envy]

Bananalive is becoming one of my favorite users

Agreed, *cough* Teams *cough*

[bananalive]

Originally Posted by Chris11987

1) Can there be an option to edit the ladder description after it's made? I didn't see it.

Ladder Links -> Edit Ladder

2) On the main ladders page, is there a way to limit what is said there? I'd like to have an image or formatted text as the Description for the ladder, but I basically end up with somehting like this:
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/827/ladder1nj7.png

I'll be altering this in next release

3) I noticed the scoring goes by +2 for a win and 0 for a loss. I HIGHLY SUGGEST you look into using the "ELO Rating System" It's a definite must for any ladder and is what all the big ladder sistes use. It basically calculates the points based on the difference in rank between two people.

I'm confused by the ELO rating system, do you know of a site with all the formula(e) simply explained

EDIT: 4) The link for the ladders breaks the quicklinks menu a little bit: Observe below:
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8055/ladder2hg7.png

not sure whats causing that for you, it works fine on standard vbulletin style

Originally Posted by Dark Cynicus!

how do i change the name of ladders in the navbar

Edit phrase:
$vbphrase[ladders]

Originally Posted by john102774

*Not installed yet but will this ladder system work in like a race environment where the fastest time is the winner instead of the person with the highest score wins?

Not yet

[GrendelKhan{TSU]

OMG!! been waiting forever for something like this!!

THANK YOU!!! will let you know how it goes and give feedback as I'd love to see this continue to develop, but in the meantime, thanks again!

<<< happy camper

[TCattitude]

ELO? This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

I play in a FPS community some times (when work and family allows :P ) and they have a Ladder (and old one: medal of honor). They use a ladder system from mygamingladder dot com.
They used to have that kind of scoring, by points, years ago. The problem was some clans was always playing with newbie clans, or even "clon"-clans, and they was just sum points and keep in the top of the ladder 4 ever. So they change the rating/scoring (don't know if was their idea or a change in mygamingladder).
When two clans play, the loser report the loss, and when the winner confirm the victory, the points are given (when loser not want to report, they can go to the forums, post screenshots of the matchs and scores, and reclaim their victory anyways, with a penalty for the loser). If the winner was the most higher rated clan, then nothing happen, the higher clan just wins another "victory"; and they sum the number of victories in a row to give you your best run of all the time. But if the lowest clan wins the match they go up in the ranking by the half of the point that was separating them from the higher loser clan. So, A and B play; A is in position 10 in the ladder, B is in position 20 in the ladder. B wins. A just stay in position 10. B go up to position 15, the middle between 10 and 20.
That way, whatever clan can climb in the ladder, and are no points, just positions in the ladder, and no clan can climb to the top and get far away from the others accumulating too much points.

[bananalive]

Originally Posted by TCattitude

ELO? This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

I play in a FPS community some times (when work and family allows :P ) and they have a Ladder (and old one: medal of honor). They use a ladder system from mygamingladder dot com.
They used to have that kind of scoring, by points, years ago. The problem was some clans was always playing with newbie clans, or even "clon"-clans, and they was just sum points and keep in the top of the ladder 4 ever. So they change the rating/scoring (don't know if was their idea or a change in mygamingladder).
When two clans play, the loser report the loss, and when the winner confirm the victory, the points are given (when loser not want to report, they can go to the forums, post screenshots of the matchs and scores, and reclaim their victory anyways, with a penalty for the loser). If the winner was the most higher rated clan, then nothing happen, the higher clan just wins another "victory"; and they sum the number of victories in a row to give you your best run of all the time. But if the lowest clan wins the match they go up in the ranking by the half of the point that was separating them from the higher loser clan. So, A and B play; A is in position 10 in the ladder, B is in position 20 in the ladder. B wins. A just stay in position 10. B go up to position 15, the middle between 10 and 20.
That way, whatever clan can climb in the ladder, and are no points, just positions in the ladder, and no clan can climb to the top and get far away from the others accumulating too much points.

Thanks, your explanation is a lot less confusing than the formula i found I will try and add it next version

[butler312]

I never liked ladders where there are no points and you just move up so many spots for winning. I prefer a scoring system, but one that has an actual formula (probably like ELO, not sure what that is). Maybe what you could do is have an option for members to put in their own scoring formula (or to use a true ladder system with no points). That way you can make everyone happy.

Also, one question. Is there a way to edit members score or position, so that I could transfer my old ladder (done by hand) into this?

Edit: Just went and read about the ELO rankings, and they look very nice. I would definitely install this if you were able to put that formula in. The formula itself looks pretty complicated, but if you read the mathematical details section in the wikipedia link above, it really isn't that difficult. I'm not a coder so I don't know how much work that would take, but it doesn't seem like it would be overly difficult.

[VGPelega]

Ladders can work in 2 ways, TCat has given one way for a ladder to work, but I personally dislike that form of ladder, as it is somewhat flawed.

Its not the same as the ELO system, but not too different either.

The other way to do a ladder system is to base it on a "Only able to challenge upwards" format. This means, you restrict all teams/players from challenging downwards (I.E. worse teams, or new teams) ranked below them, and you can limit the number of places a challenger can actually "climb" in one challenge.

I used to run the set up, of only allowing teams to challenge up to 3 ranks above them. This worked well, as the key teams all held positions 1, 2 and 3, and it stopped clans ranked 45th, from taking the first place on the ladder with only one win. Basically forcing them to "climb" the ladder progressively, as well as gaining far more match experience.

I currently use a simple version of sums, to work out a points value, and that is how a team is awarded points, based on the reported result, of a Win, loss or draw. These points are admin configurable, and also tied into my vB database.

BananaLive if you want any help in figuring more of this out, I would be happy to contribute my assistance as best as I can, but I don't build or write mods for release, as my time is pretty well consumed as it is. I am currently playing around with your tournament script, and wouldn't mind being allowed to edit some of that myself as well.

[butler312]

That isn't a bad system, but I have had problems with that in the past as well. Oftentimes there will be groups of inactive players that make it painful to move up the ladder. Some programs have it set so if a player doesn't respond within 3 days or something, then they lose the match, but new players don't really like to have to wait 6 or 9 days sometimes to move up far enough so they are challenging active players. There would have to be a counter to this as well.

[john102774]

Thanks for the Response.

If possible can you give me an estimate when the feature below will be implemented?

*Implement a way where the ladder system work in like a race environment where the fastest time is the winner instead of the person with the highest score wins.

Thanks again! :up: