1567 replies to this topic

[SockRobber]

Hello forumers,

I recently put BlitzStars.com in to live beta and would love to get some feedback.

 

There's only been a couple of us using the site before it went public and so the features and setup are geared to what we were looking for personally as 'okay, but looking to improve' players. It is just a hobby project worked on when time permits, but I hope it might be useful or interesting to some people.

 

Feedback on suggested improvements, things you'd like to see, found bugs, or whatever else, can be put in this thread or DMd or sent to the new twitter account.

 

In the future I am hoping to incorporate general (playstyle, ie. hull down, tip's n tricks, ie. sidescraping, etc) and tank specific guides, as well as clan support (we'll see what wargaming release API wise).

 

The idea is not to be a 'stats mean everything' or 'look how great I am' thing, but rather to be a resource to help improve our tanking.

 

NB. The site is responsive and 'works' on mobile but it's currently much better on the desktop or a decent sized tablet.

 

A bit of info:

BlitzStars came about with the idea of being able to see and read statistical data more clearly, with the aim that it could be easier to extrapolate from raw numbers some potentially interesting feedback on play styles and the like. For example, if my spot rate is really high (as in the screenshot below where the spots per battle is higher than 90% of all other players of the tank) - compared to my other statistics - I'm probably playing too aggressively in that tank. With BlitzStars you can clearly see these kind of statistical issues and can change up your gameplay, and monitor how the changes effect the rest of your stats thanks to the tank history graphs and data.

 

 

If you're this guy, you might consider playing more cautiously in your T49 if you're interested in upping your winrate or other stats. If you want, you can change the way you play and then check back on BlitzStars to see what effect it had.

 

 

[Kriljoy]

A bit scary to see the total time spent in battle... 

 

Thanks though, great work!

Edited by Kriljoy, 16 September 2015 - 01:21 PM.

[Huwie_]

Just a quick observation. On the player stats graph. Can you turn the dates along the bottom 90 degrees? They overlap each other even when viewed in landscape.

I like that youve included a few extra statistics in there.

 

 

Interface is good so far. Ill give you more feedback once ive used it more. 

Thanks for the service

Edited by Huwie_, 16 September 2015 - 01:24 PM.

[Mockney_piers]

very nice, great work

 

First impressions is its somewhere between pretty and slick and a bit too busy (at least with the tank averages showing), but some nice info there. Also good to get a slightly different slant on your performance than that offered by wotbstars.

 

Good stuff!!

[Xpectre]

Looks fab mate, keep it up. It's hard to get time to play and work on a website!

[Nerijus_z]

Nice job, keep going!

For me it would be interesting to see seperate data for platoon, not platoon example WR in period. Not sure if it is possible with api provided data.

[napxas]

This is excellent help ..... THANK YOU  

[ArmouredEtiquette]

I love a good Graph

[TrolLoLX]

I like all the graph thingies and such, more stats over WoTBStars. I also like the graphics much more.


BUT


I am missing all those ratings like WN7 and WN8. If you get this all running, including clans from the API (Really, I think WG will make this possible), I think you will have better server than WoTBStars.

[Sariel_]

Really nice design, only one thing missing - WN8,7

But finally some competition to wotbstars.

 

Btw. by the top players...why only players with more than 5000 battles are included? I think its too much.

Edited by Sariel_, 16 September 2015 - 05:51 PM.

[llo1]

Any chance for you to include number of Ace's awarded per tank?

[hson_hson]

The API doesn't provide number of aces just if you have one or not

[romsitsa]

Nice and shiny, love it. Thank you for taking your time. A question on platoon rate, how is this calculated? It is 0.02 for me as on wotbstars, but it should be 2/10 000 = 0,0002. Or is 0,xx he lowest number that can be calculated?

Forget it, not enough coffee this morning.

 

A

Edited by romsitsa, 17 September 2015 - 08:18 AM.

[jylpah]

Outstanding!! One feature request: add "marginal Win rate" i.e. Win rate over period (not cumulative WR)

[Sceelax]

I love it thats its mobile compatible.. great work

[SockRobber]

Big thanks for all the feedback guys. Has been great to see people using the site and mostly having positive experiences and giving positive feedback.

 

For those not wanting to read the wall of text below, I will sum up:

I have noted suggestions for additional data/statistical points (wn7,8, stats for a period rather than overall, etc). I will investigate the options.

On a more holistic level, one of the main focuses of the beta period will be improving the mobile-friendliness of the site to the point that the site is a great experience on smaller (than desktop) screens too.

 

The longer version:

 

• I know a couple of people are asking about WN7,8 ratings and that is something I have added to my list of things to look into.
• The graph x axis labels are overlapping/crowded when in mobile views. Further, I'm still somewhat undecided on how to 'run' the x-axis - should it be dates, as it is currently, or should it be the actual spread of the values - which is # of battles (as the values are currently every >~100 or >~25 battles between saved records). The first option is nicer I believe, however as the history for some players grows over weeks and months, it may be that values end up getting 'bunched' (as a tank is often played in spurts I find).
• 'Marginal winrate' or 'winrate in since last record/winrate over period' (I believe that is what is being talked about). This is definitely something I am interested in and it's just a question of how/where to have this available. One option is to replace the current system (which is just the full stats at a given point) to a new one which is each stat as different from the previous record. Another option is to add it as an option/toggle - though I am a bit hesitant to have too many options available - which takes us to the next point...
• Is the site too cluttered, with too many options and dropdowns and whatever else? I think this is a fundamental problem with trying to deal with/present large amounts of data in general, and especially on mobile - which leads us to...
• A very large proportion of people viewing the site are doing so from mobiles or tablets (which makes sense I guess). As I put in the first post, and on the front page of the site, the 'mobile friendliness' of the site is very much... questionable... at the moment and it is also something that is right at the front of my mind during this beta period. I've already made minor tweaks since the site went live a couple of days ago but I think it is apparent that - especially for smaller screens - certain things just don't work well, particularly the tables (which are one of the main features for people wanting a more in-depth look at things). Of course, how to display tabular data on smaller screens in not a problem specific to BlitzStars, but I'm hoping for a brainwave to figure out a good way of doing things in this context.

 

I have already updated the site with minor tweaks and fixes for things that have cropped up (such as adding a 'loading' indicator when toggling the tank comparisons), and other little technical, behind the scenes bugs and problems. Hopefully the site is generally working OK from a technical standpoint (any feedback on speed etc is always good).

 

I will of course continue to monitor and interact with this thread while it remains active, and I take notes of every comment and bit of feedback - so again - thanks to everyone who has tried the site and thanks to those who have left feedback - even if just to say 'I like it!' - it certainly helps keep me motivated and more likely to spend an hour or two coding rather than launching Blitz (grinding the Brit AT line at the mo, the AT2 was incredible and may be worth re-buying if it doesn't get hit with the old nerf stick too soon)!

[Drunkjedi]

Hi SockRobber,

your site looks nice.

I posted it on Asian forum too.

people liked it.

http://forum.wotblitz.asia/index.php?/topic/6149-blitzstarscom/

[SockRobber]

Hi Drunkjedi, thanks for sharing - nice to see some positive feedback from the other side of the world. When I get time I will look in to creating an asia server account.

 

---

 

BETA Update 1

 

A lot of people have asked about WN8 etc ratings. So I have included WN8.

It's worth noting that the means (tank averages) used in the calculations are from people with over 100 battles in the tank. The data can be seen on the 'Top Tanks' page, and is updated daily.

The 'overall' WN8 rating (rather than per tank) only includes your own tanks with over 50 battles.

Because of these two things, the WN8 will not be identical to other sites. But it is still the same, un-tweaked formula.

 

Over the last couple of days I have made various other minor tweaks and fixes. As I've mentioned before, one of my main goals is to get the site to work nicely on mobile, which is always hard for these kinds of sites.

 

The first thing I've spent time on is the individual player's 'Tanks' table. When you click on a row, it opens up the tank's history and extra details. This didn't really work at all when viewing on a mobile phone, so now when you click on a tank's row it opens a 'window' looking like the below:

 

 

The WN8 bar colouring is as per the standard WN8 colours.

 

The stats colourings (left and right of each stat row) are as per the percentile scoring on the rest of the BlitzStars.com site (ie. the winrate in the picture above is >= 70% of players, the damage ratio is >= 80% of players, and so on). The stat percentiles colouring key is brought up when viewing the 'Tanks' table with the 'Show tank averages' check-box ticked. Hit the '?' for more info.

 

The 'next' and 'previous' buttons will take you to the relevant tanks above or below in the table, depending on how you sorted the table. So if you sort by WN8 and click the top row/tank, you'll be able to click 'next' on each tank and it will take you through the tanks in order of their WN8 rating. And so on.

 

This window also shows the tank history graph (presuming there is any to show), and may show the extended tank info as per the normal table when I get around to it, if it seems worth adding the extra data.

 

I've tested this feature on my phone (which is an Android) and it seems to work OK. Any feedback from iOS users is appreciated.

 

These are the two main changes since the BETA began. Various minor bugs and issues still remain of course, and I will do what I can as and when. The next major thing on my todo list is figure out a way of incorporating the 'marginal stats' as talked about in the above posts. (So you can see your winrate over the last 100 battles, etc).

 

Any problems or issues post a reply or send a DM my way.

 

[Sariel_]

Thats weird. I have different WN8 with single tanks. For example M46 Patton - by blitzstars 3500 WN8 and by wotbstars 4100 WN8.

[SockRobber]

Hi Sariel,

WN8 formula compares your stats for a tank to the 'average' stats for the tank.

So - as your stats will likely be the same (or almost the same depending on the last time they were updated - on BlitzStars it is 'live', I don't know about other places), the difference would come from the 'averages' used.

 

In the case of the M46 Patton (example stats):

	Winrate	Damage ratio	Damage	Spots
BlitzStars average	53.64%	1.31	1,746	1.58
wotbstars average	47.95	?	1,395	1.38

 

So as you can see, the average player in the BlitzStars database in the M46 Patton has better stats than the average in the wotbstars database.

Therefore you compare better versus the wotbstars database, meaning your WN8 will be higher.

 

At the minute, as BlitzStars.com is new and has <5,000 total players in the database, it is likely that the wotbstars average numbers are a better average. In reality, only Wargaming can give us 100% accurate averages and even then we can argue what averages to include (ie. only players with at least ? many battles in each tank are counted).

 

Hope that helps explain how it works and why there can be differences!