New Season!

[Drakona]

The new season is here! Here are the changes. This may not be well written since it's currently 2 AM. I shall edit for clarity tomorrow.

- Diamond is a real, actual class! Mark and Jeds are the initial qualifying members. The blue orbs have been retired in favor of the new class.
- There are now real criteria for getting into diamond! They are: (1) demonstrated broad dominance over gold, reflected by a dominance factor of 90% or higher over 50 qualifying games. (2) demonstrated deep dominance over gold, reflected by a skill rating 4 kills higher than the (typical) top gold pilot. (3) demonstrated competitiveness with diamond by passing a promotion challenge against existing diamond pilots. Challenge has some special rules; details to be written when it isn't 2 AM.

- New stat -- dominance factor. Designed for getting into diamond, but fun for everyone! Look in your profile near your win% against each tier. It's a win% that has been adjusted to collapse games against the same pilot-level pair down to only 1 game, and to limit the contribution games against any individual pilot and in any individual level can make to the statistic. Click on it for calculation details.

- New medals: Top pilot, for the #1 spot. Diamond bus driver, Diamond streak breaker, Diamond streak. And of course gold/diamond and silver/diamond dark horses.

- Updated core level list to Logic, Athena, Flea, Lurk, Mindtrix, Crimson, Ascend, Vamped, and Fuzed. That's the same as last season except that we've lost Black Rose and Take2.

- The random level page gives you the option to use the extended core level list of Logic, Athena, Flea, Lurk, Mindtrix, Crimson, Ascend, Vamped, Fuzed, Wrath, Take2, Black Rose, Salute, Nysa, RIP, Forte, Ugh, Neptune, and IO

- You can now request a reroll on the random level page if you don't like what you get. The other guy has to do the same, and then it'll give you a new level.

Season-ending awards have been given, with the exception of props. As per usual, we'll be discussing those on the forum.

. . . I think that's it. Have fun!

[Morfod]

AH CANNAE SEE ANYTHIN!

[roncli]

Suicides in match results! YAY!

[PFunk]

I love all the changes except my crappy dominance %!

[Rooster61]

Black Rose and Take2 are no longer core? Boo hiss I say

Also, what are the rules on these "extended" core levels?

EDIT: Nevermind, saw all the hooplah in the general discussion area around core levels. Still, boo hiss on taking out BR.

[bahamut]

Hear Hear

[Sirius]

The solution to Black Rose is to play it more... convince other people to play it more... which may require convincing other people that they like it.

One potential way of doing that is, well, conditioning. If you give people free cookies for playing Black Rose, they will see it and think "mmm cookies" and be more inclined to play it from that point forward.

[bahamut]

if that's the case then why is fuzed still on core? I'm sure black rose got more play than fuzed did

[LotharBot]

[Sirius]

Fuzed is also top 10 in another unofficial popularity metric (Cyrus's favorite levels).