Bladeworks Network
The Bladeworks Network (BWN) is an online gaming network designed to govern and manage dueling servers. Their goal is to enhance the JKA gaming experience by providing gameplay improvements, accurate player ranking, profiling, and a central location for competition and collaboration between JKA players in Duel Mode. To do this, the Bladeworks servers run blademod to send duel results to a central server for recording. From those results statistics are made for each registered fighter and server. BWN is ran by Darkstar, Moria, and SiNiStaR.
The BWN's competitive nature attracts some of the best fighters around. It's very unregulated and one can expect to find a lot of hostility and abuse on the servers. One can expect to find a lot of tough fights and few friends there. The rating system on the BWN becomes the focus of many fighters in JKA. BWN servers are currently only found in North America. The Europeans use the ESL for their duel ladders.
Features
- Player ratings loosely based on the chess CXR scoring system.
- Detailed player profiles and match histories.
- Server specific ranking and player profiles (by server owner for 1 or more servers).
- League rankings (all servers).
- Live server listings, show which servers are active, who is playing and their rating.
- In-game player score reports.
- In game match announcer.
- More realistic gameplay with increased damage accuracy.
- Enhanced gameplay balance between no force and force jump settings.
- Score keeper, automatic tracking and reporting of clan and player matches.
- Abuse reporting and abuse management system.
The Scoring System
While the actual algorithm used by the BWN is probably only known by Moria, it is very easy to assume how it works. Players start with a rating of 1250. Until they have completed 5 fights againist registered fighters, their scores are "provisional". Despite the inability to see one's score during this period, the fighter is being scored and his rating is being adjusted. How many points one gains or loses per round depends on the difference between the two fighters ratings. If a lower rated fighter defeats a higher rated fighter, he will gain many points. If a highly rated fighter beats a lowly rated fighter, he will gain only a few points. The fewest number of points that can be exchanged is 2 and the highest is 32. Each fighter's rating is compiled from the statistics of their last 500 rated duels. The BWN system keeps track of players by their in-game name and matches it to the one registered in the database. This system probably isn't the best way to really track player performance, but it is very difficult to remain a high-scoring player for a long period of time.
Flaws
The BWN system is trivial at best and doesn't accurately reflect the true abilities of the fighters. It is easily subject to abuse and poor reporting. Since fighters are identified only by their player name, there is nothing to stop another player from fighting under a different name. A common problem on the BWN is known as "stat whoring": where someone destroys another's score by playing under their name. Also it is very easy for someone to "rig" the scores by fixing matches with another registered player. Fighters can chose quickly when they want to be rated and when they don't. They will almost always chose to be rated when it favors them. Fighting for rating on the BWN is still entertaining, but no one should consider those numbers to carry any weight. Believing that a number can really represent who you are as a fighter is a fool's errand.
BWN2
There has been some hype recently about a revision to the Bladeworks system called BWN2. It is supposed to address many of the common problems the BWN has and make it a much better system. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to show that BWN2 will become a reality. Some new map concepts have surfaced, but no proof of a new scoring system or blademod have been seen yet.