Is it possible to shut off Rankings (personal view)

[Iffix S.]

I honestly don't care an ounce if the player across the world knows what my ratings are. But frankly, this garbage ranking system has sucked all of the joy out of my gaming experience. I don't care that your AI who just beat me in Hanamikoji had a rank 200 below mine. I don't care that I lost 300 rank over the past week in my favorite games. Really if someone is so concerned about this it's time to grow up a little. But seeing my rankings plummet because your AI is good is ruining my gaming experience. I have been playing your games for several months now. It's only begun to bother me that I'm no good at anything I play. Seriously though, a button to switch off the ranks from my personal view screen would make your website 1000 times better. I want that even more than the stupid 0 fish that link me back to your own website for 20 seconds. Anyhow, I'm going to take a week off from your site. I will be back in that week. I expect an affirmative answer at least to the point of "We're working on it." Otherwise you can remove my account.

[Richard C.]

Iffix, I'm a mere member myself and not connected to the Happy Meeple team, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to demand that a free-to-access website recodes their pages to suit one member.

I must say, however, that there's a bit of a disconnect between "I don't care that I lost 300 rank over the past week in my favorite games" and demanding a change in the website as "seeing my rankings plummet because your AI is good is ruining my gaming experience".

I do hope you'll reconsider leaving - I used to get beaten every time I played one of the Bots in particular, but my game has improved because of it and I now hold my own. Hang on in there!

[Jimmy V.]

Dear Iffix,

I have just seen your message. Not sure why as I should receive a notification for every new message.

It is the first time I hear a complaint such as yours. I am not saying that this is unreasonable. You have every right to feel what you feel. I am just saying that this is not a common request.

As Richard pointed out, it is difficult for us to accommodate individual requests. If this was something very simple to do, we might do it, but it would actually require a lot of hours that we don't have. The tiniest changes always take longer than expected.

Besides, this would make our code a tiny bit more complicated. As the platform has grown, there is one thing that I have learned: don't try to be too fancy or your code will become very difficult to maintain and bug-prone. We are therefore trying to standardise things rather than giving a huge number of options. This helps a lot going forward.

I hope you'll find a way not to look at ratings.

[Marlene H.]

Iffix, I'd like to propose a workaround for you.

Though you can't completely shut off the ranking system, there already exists a method of play that largely ignores it.

Play training games instead of online games.  You could create a new account such as Iffixreboot, or Iffixreborn - or any other name that catches your fancy and play only training games. 

Win or loose, training games do not affect your ratings.  They also cost less to play than online games cost.  Now, after a few weeks, or a month, I don't remember which, your "rating" would begin to loose 5 points,  If this decay bothered you, you could again create a new account.  You could do this every 3 or 4 weeks - however much time it takes til the decay would kick in.  In this way you could play whichever games you enjoy and not have to bother with the ranking system.

I don't know if there is a way to delete an old account.  Admin would know better than I do.  But if it's possible to delete an old account, you could possibly do that and even keep you current name.

In any event, if you do enjoy the site and the lovely games this could be a way for you to play in a way that gives you pleasure and avoids the part that "has sucked all of the joy" out of your gaming experience.

Good luck in whatever you choose.   

[Andrew H.]

I dislike the entire ratings system.  I don't care to turn it off because the ratings don't matter to me except in one regard.  It is highly annoying to have a quest require playing against opponents of a particular rating.  But I have written on that elsewhere.