A shiny new ranking system for the most experienced Pirates!

*edit:

The preview for this article showed a picture of our indexes which I had included, but the article got posted without the picture. Here are the indexes, both with colour codes:

Both indexes have colour codes:
white - green - yellow - orange - red - purple

Renown index
Cursed 1-300
Common 301-700
Rare 701-1000
Legendary 1001-1800
Mythical 1801-2200
Ethereal 2201 +
Shininess index
Gem in the rough 1-1000
Polished 1001-2000
Sparkling 2001-3000
Glowing 3001-4000
Radiant 4001-6000
Luminous 6001 +

@chlodovicus Everything makes sense for the most part but how do you determine how much solo play time someone has? This can clearly skew things as a crew of 3 or 4 is much faster in completing world events and turning in loot. Is that what the efficiency rating is for? You don't explain how that is collected and works.

Feel free to use my stats to explain btw.

@kommodoreyenser You are right! It's kinda implied in the equations though. We do however fx have a very profitable former solo-slooper amongst our members, who really had his doubts. But after comparing our results across all our members, all our ranks made sense. This solo-slooper had a "radiant" shininess, outshining most members, yet still a common "Renown" within our system.

I don't think I have access to your stats, but you can post them here and I'll trust they are correct and rank you with our system. T
hanks for the offer.

@chlodovicus said in A shiny new ranking system for the most experienced Pirates!:

@kommodoreyenser You are right! It's kinda implied in the equations though. We do however fx have a very profitable former solo-slooper amongst our members, who really had his doubts. But after comparing our results across all our members, all our ranks made sense. This solo-slooper had a "radiant" shininess, outshining most members, yet still a common "Renown" within our system.

I don't think I have access to your stats, but you can post them here and I'll trust they are correct and rank you with our system. T
hanks for the offer.

3029 chest, 1055 ships, ~62 days total play time.

@kommodoreyenser Thanks! Your Renown index is 180 and your shininess index is 1480, which yields the following ranks:

Cursed Renown and Polished Shininess.

I'm guessing based off of your stats, that you have a lot of xp with solo slooping and evasion, which reveals a valuable skillset.

This system is made for the most experienced Pirates, so even the lower ranks are hard to achieve. We have members who span the entire board, yet are clustered toward the middle.

@chlodovicus close. I have done about ~80% of my time as a solo. A good chunk of the last ~20 days of play time has been solo hunting emissary ships so that presents a significant challenge vs full ship crews.

@kommodoreyenser Thanks for your feedback. You present some excellent points. Yes, the efficiency rating is naturally connected with how you choose to play the game and that's the whole point. Working with 1-3 other Pirates presents a different set of challenges and advantages when compared to sailing solo. For solo-sloopers the Renown index will typically be low, while the Shininess index seems to be considerably higher. For pirates who mostly play in teams and also seek pvp, the data-set reveals that the numeric difference between their individual indexes is much lower when compared with solo-sloopers. This is clear from gathering lots of stats from ~20 highly skilled Pirates. Most of our members are clustered towards the middle of our indexes. So it's basically the difference between the indexes that has a correlation to our known gameplay-style amongst our members.

If we can quantify that somehow, that might give an indication of how much solo-time each pirate has. I haven't gotten to this yet and I think I need more data to properly analyse the results. Otherwise it is apparently clear from our available data that we can gauge each other's xp by viewing the difference between each individual Pirates indexes.

Our discord is basically for Pirates who enjoy teamwork on all ship types, and who are very skilled at it. So I don't really sea the point in favoring members who strictly sail solo. However, skilled Solo-Pirates are always welcome to join us and experience our teamwork, after we've begun recruiting new members.

@kommodoreyenser Well spotted btw.

During our the process of creating our new shiny ranking system, we quickly spotted exactly what you are referring to with regards to skewed results when using the efficiency rating alone. As we know each other well in our discord, we sought and found plausible explanations for the "outliers", which seemed unfair. So to compensate, the overall xp had to be multiplied with the efficiency rate to make things fair and realistic. If only I could post a screenshot of the excel-sheet with all our stats and calculations (with the players names redacted), you could see the results for yourself. We found the results of the simple calculations surprisingly accurate, after we took the overall xp into account. The efficiency-rate could not stand alone.

This appears to be a ranking system that has a (strong) bias towards being a part of a larger crew. A medium skill/efficiency galleon will be able to outpace a highly efficient solo sloop in every metric you've taken into account. Note: I'm not saying a highly skilled solo slooper can't sink a medium skill galleon. I'm simply saying that in every non-PvP metric (which is what this ranking system is geared towards), the bigger the crew that you have, the higher your ranking will likely be. Couple size with general game knowledge and experience and you've got a recipe for a broken ranking system.

This is also a ranking system that would heavily favor users of the more efficiency focused discord alliance servers...which...maybe that's what your discord is, IDK.

I'd LOVE if they had more individualized statistics available.

@sweetsandman Thanks for your feedback. You could also argue that the system has a strong bias towards a medium sized brig crew as brigs are currently OP imo. In any case, however you choose to play, this system only takes a few simple stats into account. And that's completely fair. However you interpret those results are entirely up to you. But this system is solid. If you want a higher Renown, then sink more ships. If you want a higher Shininess level, then cash in more chests. I can't sea how that's broken.

Naturally, this is a very simplified system but it does really give a fairly accurate, albeit superficial measurement of our xp.

This system is naturally geared towards rewarding PvP and not PvE, at least regarding the Renown index. Our members with the highest Renown are truly hardened PvP'ers (also from the Arena). No doubt, so I don't really sea your argument there. PvE'ers won't rank highly with Renown, but might do so with Shininess.

Our discord is heavily focused on PvP and all-round gameplay. It's not an alliance server. Again, our discord is for the most experienced Pirates. Even experienced Players from alliance servers would probably only score the lowest ranks in our system.

Feel free to post your stats and I'll post the results. But it's very hard to rank up in our system, as it should be.

@sweetsandman Just to clarify, I'll share my stats:

Ships sunk = 6257 (mostly from 500+ wins in Arena)
Chests cashed in = 10401 (I really love shiny stuff)
Days played = 169

What do you think my stats say about my playstyle and xp?

I don't do alliance servers, but I do often dream of infiltrating one or merging into an active alliance server. Our system assures that alliance-server-players won't rank highly. Personally I think alliances should be limited to 3 ships and the discord-pve-alliance-servers would hopefully disappear.

@chlodovicus said in A shiny new ranking system for the most experienced Pirates!:

If you want a higher Renown, then sink more ships. If you want a higher Shininess level, then cash in more chests. I can't sea how that's broken.

No, your system takes efficiency heavily into account. It's not just about sinking more ships or handing in more chests. It's about doing both of those things in the least amount of days played as possible. It's more efficiency based than anything, and it's indisputable that a larger crew can outpace a solo sloop when raw skills are equal.

This system is naturally geared towards rewarding PvP and not PvE, at least regarding the Renown index. Our members with the highest Renown are truly hardened PvP'ers (also from the Arena). No doubt, so I don't really sea your argument there. PvE'ers won't rank highly with Renown, but might do so with Shininess.

Completely inaccurate. A PvE crew could hop for skeleton fleets and sink 6 ships per 45 minutes on average (including stocking up and sailing time). Skeleton ships count towards the "ships sunk" stat. For that reason, a PvE crew could easily outpace any PvP'er because there's no way (aside from Arena (RIP)) you're sinking player ships with the efficiency that you can sink skeleton ships....even just focusing on roaming skeleton ships I'm confident you could outpace dedicated PvP sinks.

Our discord is heavily focused on PvP and all-round gameplay. It's not an alliance server. Again, our discord is for the most experienced Pirates. Even experienced Players from alliance servers would probably only score the lowest ranks in our system.

It's a system based on efficiency (it's effectively a "points per day" system). But an efficiency that does not take crew size (or focus) into account. That is indisputable. It's not to say it's wrong, it's just a number, but it's not truly indicative of any individual's actual skills or capabilities in the game any more than taking any of those individual stats at their face value.

@sweetsandman Thanks for your feedback. Yes, the efficiency rating is a thing. And if you sink more ships and turn in more chests at a constant efficiency rate, your ranks will increase. This is a logical fact. The function for this system is basically an exponential equation, do you know how that works? I'm just curious, because it seems like you don't get the math.

You are correct that a PvE-crew in theory could hop for skele fleets, and that would also contribute to their xp. But show me the stats from any PvE-player that comes anywhere close to mine. You can't. Your theory is just a theory which has no validation regarding actual gameplay. Besides, you haven't seen the data or the calculations for our members, and you don't know our playstyles, so you can't possibly comment on the accuracy of my statements.

It's a system based on both efficiency and over-all xp. Please have a look at the math again. And it really does give a fairly accurate indication of our xp amongst our members.

Please post your stats if you dare, and I'm quite certain the results will give a fairly accurate indication of your preferred gameplay and xp as well.

It's easy to just be a nay-sayer, but you haven't tested anything at all and apparently struggle with the math behind the indexes. Therefore, your arguments hardly seem valid. Again, this system is mostly for PvP'ers and not PvE'ers. I think you might be a bit salty over the fact that you don't score highly in our system and therefore disagree. Post your stats and prove me wrong, assuming you're honest with your stats that is.

You didn't answer my question btw; What kind of gameplay do you honestly think resulted in my stats?

Seems like incentive to mercilessly sink noob solo-sloopers. "Sunk Ships" is not an indication of skill at all. Especially in a game where it can be 4v1. Not saying that the "1" cannot ever beat the "4", however the odds are not ever going to be in the solo sloop's favor. Because there is no metric for adjusting due to crew size as well as crew of ship sunk, and doesn't differentiate between skelly's vs player ships, it's basically just a high number for those who were in Arena. Basically anyone who spent a good amount of time will always have a much higher score than even the sweatiest of Adventure players.

So, nice work on your Arena rankings scale.

@maximusarael020 Yes, xp from the Arena is also taken into account. Would it be fair otherwise? But the ranks are still achievable for all.

It might be an incentive for you to mercilessly sink noob-solo sloopers, but not for us. We don't look to kindly towards Pirates who are toxic towards new pirates. In fact, hunting for Reaper 5 Galleons is our favorite thing in SoT!

However you choose to play the game, your stats reflect that within our system. It's equally unfair and fair for all.

Please understand the math. Even though Arena players get a well deserved boost in Renown, based on their gameplay, all ranks are still achievable for all. How come you can't understand this? Former Arena players will not always outrank even the sweatiest Adventure players. That statement is categorically false.

But thanks for your condescending and false remark regarding my "Arena rankings scale". This is elementary school level math we're dealing with here. Perhaps you shouldn't comment on things you don't understand if you want to avoid embarrassing yourself.

Still, feel free to post your stats and I bet the results from our system will give a fairly accurate indication of your gameplay and xp. It works like a charm with our ~20 members who represent multible playstyles. We don't have any server-hoppers or alliance-pve'ers amongst us though.

@maximusarael020 You also try to argue that the indexes isn't an indication of skill at all. But will you not agree that there is a correlation between experience and skill?

The amount of sunk ships and chests turned in most absolutely relates to overall experience. How can it not be so? And since there is an obvious correlation between xp and skill, the indexes definitely reveal this fact.

Our discord is for the most skilled and experienced Pirates, and our system reflects that. It seems like you are salty because you wouldn't rank highly with us. Prove me wrong.

@chlodovicus said:

Our discord is for the most skilled and experienced PvE-efficient Pirates, and our system reflects that. It seems like you are salty because you wouldn't rank highly with us. Prove me wrong.

Fixed it for you.

Pretty weird flex but ok.

@wolfmanbush I don't have the time for your toxic comments.

This serves the highly experienced pirates who love the game and basically have achieved almost everything there is to achieve. By introducing a ranking system for these highly experienced players there's a new and effective way of comparing stats.

In our discord we're not acting superior at all. In fact we're a rather humble bunch.

What we're working for is exactly inclusiveness. There are so many discords out there with weird ranking systems. Ours is universal and effective.

So, this absolutely serves part of the community, but maybe not you. Which is absolutely fine. I just wanted to share our new system.

I'm naturally open towards valid feedback, but I will respond in kind towards toxicity.

@chlodovicus I understand the math. It's a "per day" calculation. So, if you can increase the metric being divided while minimizing the increase in days, your rank goes up. It's a pretty basic calculation with fancy names and colors tied to it. You just added an exponent and an additional division component in there.

To answer your question about your stats, they tell me you're a player with a lot of hours under their belt who probably loot stacks with a crew and (by your own admission) spent a lot of time in Arena. It would be impossible for any player who didn't spend significant time in Arena to compete with someone who did spend a lot of time in Arena. Even hopping exclusively for skeleton fleets, there's no chance you could keep pace with former Arena sweat. But, Arena's dead and there's no stats that Rare puts out that exclude Arena time. Remember, one cannonball into a ship counted towards a "sink" regardless of whether you were the 3rd or even 4th party firing a shot at that ship. Just another fact that helped to inflate that "ships sunk" number for anyone that spent significant time in Arena...and subsequently inflate the number for your renown system.

My numbers put me low on your scale and that's to be expected given my playstyle.
3,888 chests
1,096 ships
101 days

119 = Cursed Renown
1496 = Polished Shininess

Some details behind my numbers:

99.9% of my time is on a sloop
80%+ of that is solo
I spent (regretfully) little time in Arena (73 contests completed, 29/240 wins) and most of those were also solo

If it's simply a metaphorical 'P' measuring contest, any seasoned Arena player would have a higher "renown" on your chart than any Adventure PvP focused player could. The "ships sunk per day" metric in Arena is incomparable to anything in Adventure. I'd bet players like Beardageddon or Flotsam have a relatively low Renown level because they didn't play much Arena. There are no players that come to your discord who could compete on your "renown" system of players that spent a lot of time in Arena.

Ultimately, if your discord of seasoned players enjoys trying to push their numbers up the chart, that's the only thing that matters.

@theblackbellamy Thanks for the troll!

Why are you even commenting here, when you have nothing constructive to contribute with?

It's pretty hard to find like-minded pirates to sail with as it is. And instead of wasting my time with open crews I would much rather use a system for discord that instantly reveals a few stats.

It saddens me to receive such idiotic and trolling remarks from the likes of you. I've played this game a lot and my stats reflects that. Why is that such a bad thing for you?

In our discord we do PvPvE and play the game as intended. And we love player interactions which don't always result in combat.

Seriously though, what are your arguments for calling us PvE'ers? Most of us are LSD and TSD and I have personally 500+ wins in the Arena. You should stop making a fool of yourself.

@chlodovicus said:

Thanks for the troll!... I've played this game a lot and my stats reflects that. Why is that such a bad thing for you?... Seriously though, what are your arguments for calling us PvE'ers?

I have no issue with your stats. Good for you and your stats.

I find you using these stats to talk down to others pretty ridiculous & unwarrantedly pompous. Especially when you're labeling it as a measurement of "skill and experience," while only measuring efficiency in sinking ships and turning in chests, both of which others have pointed out are skewed by PvE activities, larger crews, and in peaceful servers.

When others disagree with your premises, you call them "toxc" and "salty," while suggesting they wouldn't fit into your cool kids club. I wasn't trolling. I genuinely have contempt for that.

@chlodovicus

Do me lol

102 days
207 ships
2847 chests

It seems your system is a little shallow on stats you consider tho.
Also 1170 voyages
3370 skulls
3188 cargo
10507 islands visited
13.4 mil meters Sailed

Can you tell I avoid pvp yet?

@sweetsandman Thanks for your honest feedback. I appreciate it.

This system is meant to be fair for all. We had to take Arena rep into account. It's far from perfect, but it's what we got. Maybe you could have played more Arena? Why should any Pirates xp from Arena be excluded at all?

This is a grindy and competitive game, and the ranking system reflects that fact. It's not a "P" contest. The goal was to make a working ranking system for our discord. Do you have any better suggestions?

You admit yourself that sweaty Arena xp adds a lot to the Renown level, and that's exactly the point. My 500+ wins should count for something, right? Or maybe that's irrelevant according to you.

Your stats aren't bad at all btw. It's just our ranking system that's admittedly insane. And yes, they do indicate that you sloop a lot which we know gives you a lot of valuable specialised xp. But it is part of the human condition to compete and this system provides that, when everything else is achieved. We do also have awesome Pirates who rank lower than you with our system. One of the sweatiest Pirates I've recently met only has the lowest of our ranks, but we still know he's awesome at the game and at teamwork. And he's one of us.

These are sub-ranks within our discord. Overall we have 2 ranks, Initiate and classified, and a council. This is to discourage divisiveness, which is prevalent in many other discords. If you were to join us, which you probably wouldn't want to, you would find us all as equal Pirates. Some are just more experienced than others. We are a pretty chill bunch after all. And oh do we love SoT. Maybe I should have explained that our new ranking system only provides sub-ranks in our discord.

There's an important factor you haven't taken into account. Retirement. Those of us who've really spent a lot of energy on the SoT need to go into retirement once in a while. Currently I'm not sailing much at all and I barely got the last adventures done, due to RL. Meanwhile, the others are catching up with me within our ranking system, as they should be. If you keep playing as you do, you'll catch up to me within in a couple of years, which isn't that bad.

You're basically right about my stats, although I don't loot-haul as much as you might think. I prefer that other ships do the loot-haling for me. I basically play PvPvE as the game was intended, though I admittedly lean towards the PvP aspect of the game. Noobs and Tall Tale'ers are unprofitable to attack and sink which is why we don't. We also actively encourage new players to keep sailing if we can (we often ally with noobs to give them a share), and hopefully they'll have loot for us when they are more experienced.

@chlodovicus
I mean, your first mistake is believe I at all care if I "rank" among your little group. That would assume I play SoT to maximize sinks and cashing in chests. I don't, and therefore don't care.

I do data analysis and evaluation for a living, so trust me I understand the "math". What you don't understand is that, due to the large amount of variables, your metrics of "skill" are potentially and probably wildly inaccurate to any real truth. Firstly, there are my points about what size crew one was on and what size crew it was against for sinks, as well as vs player or skelly ship. Skelly galleons can be very difficult for a solo sloop depending on situation, but not really that hard for a brig or galleon. Players, on the other hand, are wildly variable. Say you sink a ship that's docked at an island and has no players on it. Counts as a sink, but is there skill there? Not really. How about a brig that just had 2 members leave the session and so it is 1 person on an under-sailored ship vs a full brig, galleon, or even a duo sloop? As the metrics don't take this into account, there are huge variables. Also, there's the fact that it counts Arena sinks. In Arena, you had the potential of sinking multiple ships in about a 15 minute timeframe. If you were on Arena for an hour and lobbies were full, you could potentially be sinking a ship every 5 minutes or so for an hour. That's 12 ships! Players in Adventure can go an hour and only meet 1 or 2 ships total! So depending on if someone never played Arena, even if they are the sweatiest double-gunner hunting down pirates wherever they can see and sinking every one, they still will not be able to balance out the advantage of the number of sinks someone could get in Arena in a very short amount of time.

Now that doesn't even take into consideration gaming platform. Players with keyboard and mouse have a pretty big advantage over those on controller, yes? That's pretty much universally agreed, and the reason there is a way to separate yourself from keyboard/mouse players if you are on console. So if someone plays on controller-only servers and has a high number of sinks to a low amount of play time, they will rank highly in your system, however if they encounter good players with keyboard/mouse they would likely still lose. Your metrics don't take that into account either.

As for "experience" equaling skill? A long time ago someone told me "Practice doesn't make perfect. Good practice makes perfect." In this case it means fighting against good crews, even if you lose often because you are 1v4 or 1v3, would be better "experience" than if you are 4v1 or 3v1 and sinking them easily.

As for anything with chests turned in equaling experience, well talk to the Alliance Servers.

Another thing from my actual job, your cohort of "~20" is not a statistically large enough sample size to determine if your scale is right on the money or completely and fundamentally incorrect. With a large player base and many variables, to actually determine "skill" you would need access to much more data, and to throw out outliers like "Arena sinks", or at least find some statistical way to normalize that data.

Perhaps you shouldn't pretend to know things about statistics and evaluating what data means so you don't embarrass yourself further.

@sweetsandman By the way;
We have a Pirate who's played 99% solo-sloop like you and he has the following stats:

7031 chest = Radiant
2203 ships = Common Renown
101 days

Coincidently he has the same time played as you. And he barely played Arena.

He has however stacked a lot of vaults in the DR.

By viewing his stats we can easily tell how he plays, and that he must be one of the most skilled solo-sloopers out there. Furthermore, we can tell that he's very profitable and must be highly succesful. Therefore he's absolutely highly skilled at SoT.

@chlodovicus
I think that counting ships sunk per day played isn't really an epic comparison. Really, it's just a test to see if someone has done more PvP than PvE for their time. Being a commendation hunter made me grind out a lot of Arena, but also spend a lot of time fishing and filling out commendations. Sure, I've done a lot of sinking ships, but I've spent a lot of time waiting for a fish to bite my hook.

Chests cashed in only counts for chests, though it is usually the higher stat between all the others. In fact, my chest count on Your Profile is 3,000 lower than what's on my Xbox profile.

If I were to make some sort of ranking system, the number I would use would be distance sailed. It doesn't count idling on the title screen, and every activity on every ship involves sailing around. It's the perfect "experience" rank, regardless of ship type or session leanings.

To count for PvP, there's really no better way than importing titles from the game. Maybe some relationship between ships sunk and distance sailed? Though that would still be basically a PvP vs. PvE counter. But it could be useful for determining the hardcore PvPers. I'd still say, use titles if possible, because a player with identical PvP stats to me could've just been a helmsan who can't PvP very well but still gets credit (my helmsman is kinda bad at close combat at times, but can sail a ship well and fire the cannons well).

So, I'd have one ranking for just ships sunk, to show if someone has been in PvP, and another for distance sailed to show experience.

@chlodovicus I'm not saying your ranking system is wrong or irrelevant. I'm saying that it's a narrow view that has no sympathy for crew size or playstyle.

I'm also not saying that Arena stats shouldn't count. It's your ranking system. Do it however you want. There's no way to exclude those metrics the same as there's no way to exclude the experience gained from it. I'm simply pointing out that the calculation used for your "renown" system heavily favors those that spent time in Arena based on shear volume. Flotsam is a great example of a highly skilled player that would absolutely wreck the majority of players in a 1v1, but has virtually no Arena seat time, and thus, would have a considerably lower "renown" than someone who spent a lot of time in Arena.

If you keep playing as you do, you'll catch up to me within in a couple of years, which isn't that bad

Since I play mostly solo and don't have access to 500+ Arena wins, there's literally no way on earth I could catch you in any number of years simply because it's impossible to have that many PvP encounters per hour in Adventure. There's literally no way I could get 3+ sinks in 15 minutes in Adventure and do it back-to-back-to-back. Again, your system is based on efficiency of a "per day" basis. No part of Adventure could ever match Arena in efficiency. Ever.

Side note: I'm also noticing that the stats are potentially wildly inaccurate for some folks...

On the SOT website, my "Chests cashed in" is 3,888....but on the xbox SOT statistics page it shows 4,609 GH Chests cashed in, 5,128 OOS Skulls cashed in, 4,826 MA Cargo Pieces delivered....to compliment 1,232 Voyages completed and 15,614,143 meters sailed and 9,333 islands visited....meters sailed and time played appear to be the only ones that are consistent between the two sources. Odd, but definitely something to note

@grumpyw01f Thanks for your honest feedback.

We use the chest and ship count from seaofthieves.com and only days played from the xbox-app. These stats seem to track properly across the Steam and Xbox-versions of the game.

My chest count in the xbox-app is 20000+ while only around 10000 on the website.

Also we can't use distance sailed although we'd really love to. The Steam version doesn't track distance sailed, so we can't. It was our original thought to base our system on distance sailed quite like you suggest.

We tested the system with our known group and it really is fairly accurate. It's far from perfect, but it's what we got.

In reality some people will always complain. But I recommend that someone from a larger SoT discord than ours to test it and sea for yourselves. It's a simple calculation to input into an excel sheet. Or DM me and I might be able to share it, colourcoded and all. The results might surprise you. They surprised us.