Ranking

[Urmel]

The last days I was thinking about the Ranking list and the value of its informations. There is something wrong!


For example:

I consider myself on one of the weakest 1on1 players to be seen on earth. Still I rank in the lower middle field, while Mosaike who is way better than me ranks lower. The matter is, I played only 3 matches, while Mosaike alredy had 8 matches. I think this is quite annoying for mosaike, at least it would be for me when I were him. This is unfair and discouraging! Poor Mosaike went off Nexuiz and hangs around in poor games like "Viet cong2" though being such a hopeful offspring

A guy called Wisellama fought only one match and appears on rank 8!
Could be continued....

It seems for me the fact that there's one point disregarded at the moment, and that's the number of matches a player fought.

Unluckily I'm not a maths expert and I can't quote a solution here, but maybe some other genius minds (of which we have plenty in here!!!) could find one? I'd really appreciate that!


PS: me myself I'm thinking about leaving the ladder. Not because of the mentioned problem or any other ladder issues, just for not having enough time for getting to know the maps enough to dominate them a bit. It's just not possible for me

EDIT: oh, I can't leave the ladder! Otherwise I couldn't watch You other heroes

[esteel]

In some way thats the basic problem of the elo system. As it uses yours and your opponents points to calculate the new points after the match it diverges towards your 'real' points. Elo is said to take about 20 matches before its close enough to be called accurate. So one could say the problem is that the people in the ladder to not yet have enough matches.
Yeah it can be discouraging but on the other hand this also makes it possible to just have the ladder and not being forced to play matches and also not to have to restart the ladder for a 'season'. So new people can join anytime, the ladder is more open and once enough matches are played its more fair the other ladders..

[tChr]

REstarteing the ladder every season would have the opposite effect and add even more inaccuracy to it, you undermine the whole statistical approac the ELO system offers, so I wouldnt consider it.

However, you are right about the system noe being accurate until all players have played som 20 matches or so.

That means me and sickchiken..

[esteel]

Nah.. what i mean is that with OTHER ladder systems you normaly restart the ladder now and then and play for 'seasons' and its hard to join other ladders after they have started.
You are right the ELO system does not need this and would even make things worse as it 'corrects itself towards your real points'. You just have to be patient till the players have played a certain number of games.
Man i need more time to get into playing again

[Urmel]

Yeah, umm, and me myself, I'll pick me some n00bs to get some ELO points together, avoid battleing skilled candidates and stop fighting when I got more than 1000pts. This will keep me in the top 10 for a long long time

Refusing to play accepted challenges aren't avenged with penalty pts afaik. So Forget about playing me if You are obviously better than me.

But it shouldn't be that simple IMHO...

[tChr]

Refusing to play accepted challenges aren't avenged with penalty pts afaik. So Forget about playing me if You are obviously better than me.

You are not allowed to refuese more than 3 challenges in a row.

[GreEn`mArine]

however, he can still "accept" your challenge and just do "nothing" after that. But I still hesitate to introduce a limit there which would end in a PP, too, because there maybe too many circumstances that might change the situation and explain why playing the match takes so long (either because both players don't have much time and have problems to find a match date, or perhaps because the challenged player is not willing to respond). But I think every usual player would try to contact an ladder-admin if he/she has got a problem with a refusing opponent, the admin will doublecheck this and manually give the PP in that case. A time-span would usually be 4 weeks.

[Nil]

Ranking system is ok i think. Anybody interested in it can see what the points the players have are worth.

[Urmel]

Yesterday evening we had a little discussion on IRC again. Still I think it's NOT okay that some more or less weak players who won one or two matches by choosing the right opponents stop playing and then feel comfortable being ranked within the top 15. While other players who didn't have the lucky enemy choice in the first matches have to work really hard getting up again. I know it's kinda funny I restart this discussion everytime I lose a ladder match. Actually I don't mind where I'm ranked, I'll never make it to the top anyway. I play for fun, not for winning.

The only thing is, I've open challenges with players where I know I could have a chance to get some ELOs, but they keep hiding away. While the only available players take all my ELOs which I know before. Four or five more matches and I can't even challenge a newbie in the ranking list anymore. I'm almost forced to stop playing.

esteel already posted something in here like "yes it's not okay, but if the ladder runs longer and if everybody in the ladder will have played about 20 matches it would be equalized". But I think this will never happen.

While I suggested to give every player some points for just doing a match (or take points for being lazy, which would be very hard to code in the script), Kyre had another interesting proposition:

Not to show any players in the rankings who have played less than 10 matches.

I think this a good idea for it will be a very effective spur for the ppl to play their matches.
The bad thing is, GreEn`mArine would have to spend pretty much work to implement it into his ladder system.

So what do You think?

[GreEn`mArine]

What I meant to be hard to code was this:

to give every player some points for just doing a match (or take points for being lazy, which would be very hard to code in the script)

what would be pretty easy to include would be this:

Not to show any players in the rankings who have played less than 10 matches.

however, I'm not sure whether such a thing is really a good idea. and "10" is a too high number anyway - I wouldn't go above "5"

if I got time today I will include this to be configurable. wel'll see.

EDIT: as I DID have time at work and it really wasn't too hard I changed the code in the multiladder script. you can setup a variable "minimum matchnumber" (currently set to 1) which is the number of matches that is required to be really listed in the rankings (otherwise you're ranked in the New Players table...this table is sorted by points and the points of the players are also shown, but there is no ranking number there)

However, the function that checks whether the point-range is still okay is not adepted yet and I'm not sure whether this is even needed. I would even have to include further checks inside the function because this function is used for 1on1 AND team ladder challenges. You are currently limited to not have more than 100 points less than your enemy player/team in order to be able to challenge him (except if the enemyplayer/team has not played a single match yet...then you may challenge him/the team, even if you have only e.g. 800 points)