Since we're barreling ever faster towards enabling multiplayer, what do you want to know about your opponents before you commit to a game? In RTS & FPS games, it seems that folk most want to see ping and some sort of ranking number (often ELO). For a TBS like Elemental, what numbers do you want to see?
Just brainstorming, here are some things that I thought of:
Generic:
- Percentage of games played to completion (% finish rate)
- Some "skill" number (we should argue how to measure this!)
Simultaneous Play
- Ping/Latency
- Average Weighted Turn Time Number (average time spent on a turn, with a normalization curve to account for early game turns, and yes, this should be pretty controversial so argue about it!)
Asynchronous Play (Such as PBEM or Pitboss-style)
- Average time to turn a turn around.
- Current number of active Asynchronous Games (how many PBEMs are you playing right now)
Thoughts, comments?