Why FAF competitive scene is dying

[Farmsletje]

10 games / 3 months seems too much though. You would lose another 7/10 top 10 players with that 4head

[Blodir]

would it be possible to change that to sth like 10 games in last 3 months (with near 0 devtime needed)?
since y game/year isnt much more than cosmetics

Nexus suggested 6 months imo that sounds good, also only ladder games should count.

(Thanks brutus!)

[armacham01]

Everybody's rank was just about cut in half, so it's not just "cosmetic," especially to Blodir. (Congrats btw.) But I do agree with having more aggressive screening.

I am in favor of a leaderboard that is meaningful, which is to say it should only include people who play often enough that they are relevant to the community AND often enough that (assuming they get rusty from not playing very much) would actually end up losing rating points just by playing the bare minimum number of ladder matches to stay on the leaderboard.

Even if they're not losing a lot of points, if they drop 50 points every 6 months, that would have a huge impact on their leaderboard ranking. It would definitely stop barely-active players from coasting on past glory. But if they still have the skills to win high-level ladder matches, and they prove it by winning a small number of high-level ladder matches every 3-6 months, then they should get to keep their spot.

I don't see the leaderboard cleanup as a mechanism to encourage INACTIVE people to play ladder (as in: gotta keep playing to stay on the board) but as a way to encourage ACTIVE people to play ladder by giving them a chance to advance.

Also, it might make sense to make "all-time" leaderboards (perhaps only available on the web, I doubt we need access to them through the client itself) as a permanent shrine to the glory of Zock as a nice thing to do for the players who just got cut. One of the things I like about FAF is the long memory, including that we have a vault that goes back half a decade.

[FtXCommando]

Again, if you increase sigma, you are not touching the mu value used to determine matchups. A 1500 with 500 sigma will still be matching up with roughly the same people as a 2700 with 100 sigma. The system functionally doesn't change while adjusting the output of people's ranking.

[Bennis-]

the scene is dying because biasss is a freak

[Brutus5000]

would it be possible to change that to sth like 10 games in last 3 months (with near 0 devtime needed)?
since y game/year isnt much more than cosmetics

Could be done within one evening, yes. However, needs approval from the Player Councilor.

[FtXCommando]

Already talked with ladder team about this but I’ll post my rationale here as well.

The monthly game requirement: No

Functionally it just duplicates the league system while eliminating the only easily accessible player database for who to look at for replays. The game does not change often and significantly enough for say 8 month old replays to no longer be really relevant. If we do this monthly system, like 70% (estimate) of the current top 16 will be off the leaderboards. This means if a new player asks for a BO on a map like Abhor, you can’t point him to Tagada without first properly explaining how to spell his name and that the guy just has GOTTA take your word he knows a good bo.

It also really destroys the reputation of the rating system if say for 4 months before November a vast majority of the “serious” competition for LotS just isn’t on the leaderboard and then just suddenly pop up as random dudes raping the leaderboards.

This is also why I decided on a yearly rather than a biyearly or whatever limit for the leaderboard. A lot of the top players don’t play except for LotS prep or occasional games when super bored. On a catalogue of top ladder players, their names are still relevant as they are still relevant in the competitive scene. If you want a list of whether they are active for that month, I direct you to the league system.

[armacham01]

You make a good point that someone can be "relevant" to the community even if they are away for more than 6 months.

I think the point is, for a 12-month window of time, requiring only a single ladder match is not enough.

At this point, if Zock came back to play a single two-minute ladder match tomorrow (oops my BO is bad time to ctrl-k), he would get to be #1 on the leaderboard until Feb 19, 2021? If he did that once every 12 months, Blodir wouldn't catch up to him until 2028.

If the window if time is to be 12 months, then at least 12 ladder matches should be required, probably a lot more.

A 15- or 18-month window would be fine, as long as a sufficient number of games were required. It's not hard to play 30 ladder matches in an 18-month time window.

[FtXCommando]

Your requirement already fails just looking at the example of Blackheart or Petric. Blackheart comes back from being afk for 3 years, wins 10/11 ladder games. Petric can do the same when he plays his yearly splurge of games. You want none of the "top 3" golden standard on the leaderboard? Your leaderboard is garbage. End of discussion really. If we have people worse than them regularly able to compete against them on ladder, I would feel must safer in adding more strenuous restrictions on ladder activity requirements. However, I'm not seeing it happen so a yearly restriction seems like the best position to hold to synergize accuracy with activity.

Zock is an anomaly credit to a small map pool that extremely favored his playstyle and farming rusty mephi + petric on it. Same factors can be attributed to keyser's rating. I am quite certain if Zock came back and that in turn gave Petric motivation to play ladder, he would very quickly fall to 2300 or even 2200.

[JaggedAppliance]

Requiring at least 5 or 10 ladder games in a year is fine imo, requiring only one game is something that can be abused. I know that Luxy has played a single game just to have his name reappear on the leaderboards in the past and he hasn't been a relevant player for years.