The Red Village: New Class System and ELO Rankings

The Red Village team has rolled out ten new smart contracts for Tournaments, which act interoperably and give delicate control over the ecosystem. A new Class, Immortal, and ELO based rankings, are part of the upgrade.

Only brave and daring fight To-The-Death,
Round by round til final breath,
For gold and riches, for glory’s sake,
On burnished armour, swords shall break,
Leaving bodies battered, bruised and ruptured,
For the Queen wants nought but destruction…

As part of a giant upgrade to the famous The Red Village Tournament mode, The Red Village team have rolled out ten new modular smart contracts, which act interoperably and give the team the ability to finesse many different elements of the ecosystem independently. As part of the upgrade, and as a response to Community suggestions, a new class will be rolled out: Immortal. There will also be a shift to ELO based rankings, and a new game mode; To-The-Death.

The new smart contracts give us the ability to tinker with and make modifications to the system on-the-fly, making it easier to respond to community, and be more adaptive to changing circumstances as they arise. With them, we can create On-Demand Tournaments (to be released shortly), run To-The-Death (1v1) Tournaments, have flexibility over buy-in prices, whitelist certain Champions for a particular Tournament, and restrict Tournaments by things such as Win Rate % and Character Class.

What’s Changing?

Class Systems

The Class system in TRV currently consists of Bloodbath, Outlaw, Heroic, and Legendary classes, which are separated by virtue of Battle Class Points (Fight Points), which are earned or lost depending on a Champion’s finishing position in any given Tournament. Click here for a full run-down of the current system. The current Class system was launched as a test, and was based on significant statistical modelling undertaken before game launch. In the real world, after thousands of Tournaments have been run, we’ve gleaned a multitude of data from player behaviour and are making some changes.

In response to Community suggestions and data analysis, the new Class system will be based on an ELO Ranking. An ELO Ranking is a method for calculating the relative skills of Champions (and their Battlemasters), and is a dynamic way of representing their comparative, rather than absolute strength. While often associated with chess, ELO Rankings, or variations thereof, are also widely used in professional sports and eSports.

As a result, Classes will now be set by percentiles, rather than a set figure. The contract has been designed in such a way that we can have rolling percentiles within each Class, rather than static amounts. We can also add or remove Classes at any time as needed, which will be incredibly useful as our player base, and number of Champions in the ecosystem, increases over time.

This means that the TRV Class system will be a much fairer representation of the ecosystem, and also means that each Class will have an appropriate number of Champions in it to allow for the most vibrant and fair levels of competition.

This will be achieved by a weekly rebalancing of Classes, based on ELO Rankings, which will be done on Monday AEST (Sunday ET). To begin with, Bloodbath will remain open for all Champions (although we are working on specific types of Bloodbaths, which will have different requirements), Outlaws will be the bottom 20% of Champions as rated by ELO, Heroics will be between 20.01%-60%, Legendary between 60.01%-90%, and the fabled Immortal Class will be between 90.01%-100% of Champions in the ecosystem.

This means that every Monday (AEST) when these classes are rebalanced, the Class of any given Champion may change, despite its ELO score remaining the same. Again, this will keep competition balanced, and provide a fair representation of Champions across classes, and is a much more dynamic way of dealing with the distribution of Champions as the ecosystem grows due to both new players joining, and Summoning (our breeding protocol) being rolled out.

Keep in mind, that Class systems and the way that they are defined are not set in stone — we are always evaluating and re-evaulating life in the village and will continue to update and improve over time on as as-needed basis.

Other Important Features of the New Smart Contracts

On-Demand Tournaments: With the new, modular, contracts, we are able to create the infrastructure for On-Demand Tournaments. These are likely to be rolled out over the coming 2–4 weeks, and will allow for Battlemasters to create and enter Tournaments at their will. On-Demand Tournaments will run alongside the current Tournaments, and give Battlemasters more flexibility and variety in their fighting; Battlemasters will have the option to book in early, or play according to their own schedule (or both!).

Flexible Buy-In Prices: The Red Village team will have complete control over Tournament buy-in prices, and the ability to adjust these as needed. This may come in handy for special Big Purse events, or for running customised Tournaments for content creators and streamers

Whitelisted Tournaments: These allow the TRV team to host Tournaments with entry requirements — by gating a Tournament to only certain Champions, the team can create a Tournament that only, for example, the winners of a Play-For-Keeps To-The-Death match can enter, or that only Champions that have beaten Jinxbreacher can enter. This allows for some super fun and ingenious Tournament structures, and for us to respond to Community desires and creations.

To-The-Death (1v1): These were not possible on the old contract; the new modular contract allows for the flexibility needed to set up and run these bespoke Tournaments. And as we all know; these will be huge. Read the full break down of how these innovative high stakes matches work by clicking here.

Restricted Tournaments: Similar to a Whitelisted Tournament, Restricted Tournaments will give huge customisability for Battlemasters. The TRV team can now create Tournaments that are restricted by a Champion’s Win Rate %(WR) and Class — for example, a Tournament that only Rangers with a greater than 20% WR can enter. The possibilities are endless.

In Summary

The technical complexity of The Red Village far surpasses almost any other project on the blockchain, and the addition of our 10 new modular smart contracts are living proof. While the addition of To-The-Death will be a game changer for web3 games, future additions such as On-Demand Tournaments, Seasons, and Summoning are all made much more possible through the creativity and ingenuity of our technical team.

Of course, migrating from one smart contract to 10 is not without its challenges; we will have to take The Red Village game offline for around 24 hours as part of the update process, while we migrate the data between contracts. This is scheduled downtime, necessary to ensure that the process is done smoothly, accurately, and without issue.

Once we are back up and running, well, the future is truly red.