First, a little context: Ever since I started making suggestions for this game around 10 years ago, I've always worked from the perspective of a new player, and how to help them.
Anyway, here's the very simple suggestion:
When someone fights an SR they should know that they have done so. - The information is already public, just not very accessible
- It will help them judge the hiddens of their own fighter better
Now; there are going to be several teary-eyed vets in this thread worried about their SRs, here's some responses to the inevitable:
1# PEOPLE WILL DUCK MY SR I don't believe they would. You might get less challenges from people with weak, untested fighters at the same "active years" who you previously can crushed, and more from fighters who want to test themselves against higher tier fighters. That's not a problem. You have an SR, you don't need a steady stream of cans challenging you.
Anyone who knows anything about MMArmy knows ducking tough fighters is a waste of time that just means you won't know your fighter. If someone wants to do that screw em as always.
#2 SOME SRs ARE TERRIBLE! DON'T YOU KNOW?! ;(Some are not great, but almost every single one is worth bringing to term and most of them will go on to capture EFC gold. The goal of the player with a new recruit is to decide whether their recruit is any good, getting lucky or unlucky - and whether they deserve a place on the roster.
This is achieved by testing them out in the lower orgs, we can see by the years active who we should be testing them against. If you fight an SR and you don't know, you've fought a guy who you SHOULD know has better hiddens than average.... this leads me to:
3# AN SR IS NO DIFFERENT FROM A GOOD REGULAR RECRUIT! HOW ARE THEY MEANT TO KNOW IF THEY FOUGHT A DIFFICULT REGULAR??! WAHaahhThis is where you have to acknowledge the way averages play into this game. We all know this is a game of averages, SRs on average have MUCH better stats than the average regular recruit.
The fact it is an SR is public information sitting on the page of the fighter. Why shouldn't the graphical user interface let you know you fought a better than
average recruit?
4#
THERE ARE ONLY 2 SR CHAMPS NOW OUT OF 13!!!!! ONLY 15%!! HOW IS THAT EVEN WORTH TALKING ABOUT ReeeeeeeThis is not the correct calculation to make. 2 SRs are champs out of 13 and you think ~15% is a meaningful figure?
No, take the #regular recruits Y, and divide 11 by that figure, *100.
Take the #SR recruits X, and divide 2 by that figure *100. That's a different story.
5# Hey WHAT ABOUT AH RECRUITS! They have a star level! WHADDABOUT THAT?!That's not something I am addressing in this suggestion and I consider it "out of scope".
6# YOU JUST WANT TO DUCK SRs OLIR!I have no interest in ducking SRs. I just want to know when I have fought one so that
public info about the average ability of the recruit informs my decisions on my fighter.
7# YOU JUST DON'T HAVE ANY SRs
I've had my fair share of SRs
8#
WELL WHY STOP THERE? LET'S GIVE YOU ALL THE INFO ABOUT ALL THE FIGHTERS HIDDENS AND STUFF HURRRRRSRs are a public thing, hiddens are a private thing. If you spend enough time on MMarmy you could catalog every SR on the game. This is info like preferred style (you can see opp's last 10 fights) and top stats (you can compare your fighter's stats vs theirs on the fight page). Take us back to the MKick days all that info was difficult to access, you loved it when Chief made it easier to access.
Really this is nothing more than a continuation of "Years active" becoming available on the fight screen, which everyone liked.
So all this change will do is make the GUI BETTER. Saving players time.
9# You'd get the info you need if you just see that they were an SR on the results page.A decent point, and that would be a step in the right direction. I still think it's better to have the knowledge before you pick the fight, to allow you to actively decide when to test your new fighter in an (on average) tough fight.
I mean, the range of expected your 0 day old recruit vs a 11 month old SR has got to be something like 90% loss rate and probably like 80% finish to pull the numbers out of the air, no matter how good your recruit is. They'd have to be seriously f-ing good or lucky to get a result that reflects their average ability vs a 0 year fighter.
HOWEVER, I acknowledge that situation is a rare occurrence, at least with this point you'd be able to tell after the fact, which is the important thing. You wouldn't hit retire erroneously.
10# There's not enough SRs, it's not a problemI don't like this attitude to problems/improvements in the game. If something can be made better, let's make it better.
11#
Chief has better things to do than thisA favorite of the MMArmy suggestions board when they run out of excuses. I'm not ChiefDB's project manager, if he doesn't wanna do it, fine. That doesn't make it any less worthwhile of a suggestion to make.