Making Sense of the Rankings

[RemiBoncoeur]

As a guildmaster, I spend a LOT of time looking at the XD site, and checking my guild's rankings. It's been a beautiful thing to watch Square & Compass ("Pirate Guild 267") slowly rise up the charts.

HOWEVER

There have been times when I've talked with other guilds, and comparing each group is usually a point of contention. For me, it's because the rankings don't necessarily qualify skill. Let me explain...

ENEMIES DEFEATED and SHIPS SUNK are how people usually say "look how powerful my guild is, we've killed so much!" Yeah... but you can sit at the governor's mansion and cast Wither on guards all day to do that. I realize that most of us don't, but you get the point I hope - it doesn't give an idea of how challenged people are.

At the same time, TIMES IN JAIL is usually a sore point for people, when I try to point out that a high ranking in it is a BAD thing. The argument I've heard is "it just means we challenge ourselves!" Alright, I get that... but, again, how do we really know you're not just throwing your low-level players into Tormenta for fun?

So here's what I've got: A formula.

Don't cringe, I'm no math person either. Bear with me.

I've added overall enemies defeated together with overall ships sunk. I've divided that total by the overall times in jail. What this number says to me is "how many enemies or ships does an average guild member get through before dying?" In theory, a higher number means a better guild.

I realize this falls into the same argument that I made for E.D. and S.S., but I hope it gives a slightly better way to measure (i.e. BRAG) regarding your guild's status and power.


EXAMPLE: Square & Compass (Pirate Guild 267)

(As of 02/09/2008)
OVERALL ENEMIES DEFEATED: 184,615 (Ranked 18th)
OVERALL SHIPS SUNK: 31,182 (Ranked 26th)
OVERALL TIMES IN JAIL: 4,215 (Ranked 45th)

(184,615 + 31,182) / 4,215 = 51.12

This means that, on average, one of my guild members gets through some combination of about 51 enemies or ships (mostly enemies, by looking at the numbers) before ending up in jail.

Give it a try, and be as interested as I was to see that some higher-ranking guilds aren't necessarily as great as you'd think, and some lower-ranking ones are diamonds in the rough.

A FEW NOTES: Please don't take you 2 person guild that's been to jail 3 times collectively and post on here "we're amazing! lolz! we got a 95!" ... It's called "sample size." In cases like that, your guild is the margin of error for the ones this is intended for.

The size of a guild, as far as I can tell, doesn't really affect this formula. In theory, this just makes an "average guild member" out of your roster. Of course, if you invite everyone you can and have a bunch of less-than-amazing players dragging you down... well, that says something about your guild's abilities, and that's the whole point of this, isn't it?


Enjoy, and thanks in advance for good (or at least constructive) comments!