Puzzle standing

Pirates have a standing or ranking in their puzzle performance relative to all of the other players in the ocean, and in their home archipelago. This standing or ranking is shown on the Ultimate list, as well as on the pirate's individual info page. In addition to performance ranking, there is a list of pirates with the most experience in a puzzle, which is stored in a separate list.

Since the Ringers wanted to keep numeric scores out of the game, this is expressed on the standings in the form of a descriptive word. From lowest to highest, they are:

• Able
• Distinguished
• Respected
• Master
• Renowned
• Grand-Master
• Legendary
• Ultimate

Puzzle ratings never go down as a result of playing the puzzle in a blockade.

How Puzzle Standings Work

Your puzzle standing is calculated over the most recent "x" puzzles or fights, where "x" is a number that the Ringers do not release to the public. This means that a person's standing can change in directions that sometimes seem illogical. For example, it's possible for people who lose to highly-ranked opponents (relative to their own standing) to go up in standing, or for people who beat low-ranked opponents (again, relative to their own standing) to have their standing drop a bit. Both occurences are rare, but do happen on occasion.

This is because of old scores dropping off. If a puzzle's standing tracks their last 5 scores, and they were 10, 8, 10, 10, and 9, but a player beats a low-ranked opponent and only picks up a 3, their standing may drop because the average drops from 9.4 to 8. Likewise, a player with a record of 3, 4, 2, 2, 4 who loses to a highly-ranked opponent may see their average increase despite the loss, pulling their standing up to match.

In addition, if other players near the borderline of a standing level have moved down in the standings slightly, a completely different person in a similar standing range could rise in standing because of their descent. The system recalculates a player's score at the end of that puzzle, and checks it against the other active players in the ocean, so any recent changes will be reported at that time.

In player vs. player puzzles it is possible to manipulate a pirates ratings by deliberately having one player lose to another. With enough fixed matches, one can artificially change one's rating to be anything from Able to Ultimate. One should keep this in mind when gambling--an Able rated player who is willing to bet 10,000 PoE on a match could be an Ultimate-level player who has deliberately lowered his or her rating. Do note that it is forbidden to artificially raise or lower your standings in this way, and that it may result in a reset of your experience and standing in that puzzle, and even in a permanent ban.

See Also

• Experience
• Anti-cheating mechanism

History

• Blockade duty always affected standing before Release_2006-12-08.

Other Links

• Commonly discussed ideas about Account-wide standings from Game Design
• Viridian Ocean Ultimate Standings - http://duplo.non-prophet.org/standings.php
• Ultimate Tracker - http://www.glowie.com/~onyx/ult_info/
• Lizthegrey's official declaration that fighting yourself and throwing matches is cheating from her post 'Do Not Cheat' and the subsequent player forum discussion