Sparring Reform
 

In the past couple days you may have noticed some of these changes we have been making in preparation of improving the quality of sparring on iClassic.

Many of the changes target the huge amount of illegitimate players (i.e: boosters, pausers) who have largely been ignored up till now.

New Features:

• The formula that determines spar rating has been changed to reflect active skill. Spar ratings have been reset in order to accommodate for this. Spar wins and losses will not be reset.
• Competitive sparring is limited to SuperNick's Spar Arena in Graal City. All other spar arenas can be used for practice and no longer affect wins, losses or spar rating.
• New rooms were added to SuperNick's Spar Arena with queue displays.
• A streak system has been added in the tournament spar, where spar winners can continue on without having to rejoin the spar.
• Brand new players can no longer participate in sparring at SuperNick's Spar Arena until they have experience on the server. New players will still be able to spar in the practice spar arenas.
• Map has been disabled in all spars.
• If two guild members end up facing each other in the spar, one players' guild tag is automatically removed, and then re-added once the spar is over.
• Guild spars now have a focus button.

Bug Fixes:

• Players who "pause" and lock their iDevices now distribute spar rating.
• Guild houses no longer distribute spar rating.
• Horses and transforms are automatically unset upon entering a spar.
• Spar score display now reflects accurate totals.
• The spar bomb no longer hurts players.

Enjoy the new age of competitive sparring on Classic!

The update I was waiting for! Excellent job to fp4 for devoting so much time and effort to fix things like this for us. Many thanks!

nice

Biggest update this year :) Thanks Rufus & FP4 & staff!

Nice update! Fantastic job staff! Now if i could only get better at sparring...

Great update, thx

I was wondering what happened to Master Li's dojo... :P

Love the update. Hopefully I can learn how to spar without sucking. xD

Love the new update, thank you to all staff who helped improve sparring!

Just an idea to improve spar even more: when a player has a certain amount of lag (like 150ms or more) they should be atomatically kicked from the spar.

Don't thank the staff as I doubt they did anything.

this is great for me. it really does suck sparring, and doing okay, then someone else comes in and destroys you and your record. example? i was having a nice winning streak, then i sparred nite twice, rufus once, some other US member, and another really good person. i can practice now and get better without my record suffering a lot. great job guys!

So happy that all boosters are now owned.

I like the update! there should be an automatic hat awarded when a person reaches a certain winstreak, like 20 wins, or 30 wins. because the most i have seen was 10, and i have gotten 5 and im decent. this would motivate people to get better to obtain that winstreak. Especially because there is no 6k hat.

Step 1. Attempt to get good at sparring.
Step 2. Still get destroyed by US.
Step 3. Go back to Graalians.com

Damn.

no. no hat rewards. people shouldnt do something just to get a hat.

YA!!! I LOVE ALL THE STAFF WHO WORKED ON THIS UPDAATE!!! <3

Amazing! Best update this year, I was waiting for this. Thank you fp4, rufus and others!

I know right! :D

I don't believe that would be fair (sine that ms is considered low) and personally thats really low. However I believe if an anti lag system is adde it should be players with a ms considered high by the server

Man, I've been dying for someone to post how they think it's unfair that _______ aka they can no longer boost. I've been prepared for the fight all day wtf!!! :(

I ended Rashard's streak at 23 ;o

But yeah, winstreaks should eventually become hats. Nice idea.

If Staff ever create a Trophy/Achievement system. I'm sure that'll be one of them.

This has I be the best update in months.

To everyone who worked hard on this update, THANK YOU.

Also people can't double queue anymore :-)

I saw that xD im like oh em gee! And then you "served" me :p

lol i did?

Nice job.

Thank you Fp4 to dedicating your time to creating this update.

this updates stupid. i wanna boost. its not fair to people who want to get their records up without actually getting good at sparring.

Now Duke has no chance.

Meet me in the top right spar room at 3 AM.

-Gets Popcorn-

Ya, i went after you ended rashard's streak :o

We gonna boost?

Awesome update, but how does this stop boosting?

And I'll kinda miss sparring at Angel Clan.

YOU TOOK AWAY ANGEL CLAN. THIS UPDATE SUCKS >:O

Players can no longer reset their spar rating through transferring a noob account to themselves, spar a few times, and end up at the top of the list. They can no longer gain a few points and only spar once to keep their rank at the top.

In addition to this, nobody can use noob accounts to spar on as alternatives to protect their statistics on their main accounts as you need experience before you can spar. This also prevents players from changing their UDID's, sparring, and merging their statistics through VIP if their wins are good enough for them.

Players can't go into another room and lame spar wins, or their guildhouse to lame spar points. The scope of "competitive sparring" is all in one place, so it is easier for both the staff and the players to identify someone who is doing something illegitimate.

Players who pause to keep their spar rating untouched when they're losing aren't able to anymore.

great update just what i wanted, stupid bomb hurting me :)

How does the game judge when a new player has enough experiance to enter the competitive spar?

Seems to be a very nice update. Will check it later on though

What do you exactly mean? Or is it just a repeated part of the point that it´s limited to SuperNick´s?

No, there should be a scoreboard in my oppinion.

@Cal... It means you can't use the map in a spar arena. I thought that was pretty obvious.

Ah lol. Seems useless to me and I thought it was disabled anyway so I didn´t think of that. Also I just have been online randomly in the last month.

Awsome Update. I love the one with the win streak.
Why not add the Spar Hats to the battle arena or this Dojo, when the chance of boosting is minor now.

Telling people how it works would remove its purpose lol. It just does.

un que!
now we need a 8k plus spar room get this moving faster.
Update is bloody brilliant

gj fp + ruf.

Might come back and beat you all sometime soon.

Edit: Nevermind actually, my PC Graal ban (for something I never even did, no idea) seems to have also been extended to Facebook Graal.
???

:]

tbh this update is everything i wanted for spar :0,now all i want is a tag team room.lol thanks !

So no more Glicko for spar ratings?

It still uses Glicko, it always has. It just uses the rating deviation in the rank calculation, it also properly enforces a minimum rating deviation so people who win a couple spars don't appear on the #1 spot right away.

Ah.

cuz peopled used it to lag and not take damage

Aww man, that means no more invincibility hacks :'(

I feel like all these updates are causing a bit more lag than usual lately. Yes, they are great additions. However, I think something needs to be done to either refresh the server to reduce lag, or compress some things on the server to make more space. It really has become a problem lately.