about ranking

[Exotic_Retard]

recently zep mentioned that there is a problem with unranked games ebing played too much and that it is affecting the rating system and that it should be hidden

while i preferred it the way it was before (i can explain why if you wish),
I'm not too worried about the change of hiding the rating as that would at least make me calm down a bit

the reason I'm making this post is to suggest to zep a way of balancing games, because rating was a tool to do it with, and thats being hidden, so there must be an alternative.

first, let us consider what we need from a tool to balance games : essentialy it should be at least as good as rating is/was.

what this means is :
it must be able to determine the skill level of a player to the nearest 200 points.

this is quite a big range, but if you look at a players rating statistics, you see that there is a chance that they will be 100 rating lower or higher than they most probable rating.
for example, when i last checked the rating of voodoo (he is a good example because he played many games and so has a "very" precise rating)
his rating was 2275, but his actual rating was 2423, with a 66% chance of being anywhere in between 2374-2472, and with his deviation being 148 points either way

trueskill is not very accurate, but it is accurate enough to balance games properly.

the reason a lot of people what unranked games is mostly psychological - they don't want an intense game sometimes, they want a casual one, and if its unranked, they have nothing to lose, especially if they teams are unbalanced or they are training a player

also, game quality is not accurate; if rating has its inaccuracies, then so does game quality, but on top of this, a fair (>90%) team game could still be very stacked if each player on one team is 100 points higher, also testing and playing unbalanced games


what i propose is this:
hide the original rating system but keep it functioning
replace rating number with "ranks" or "divisions" which give an approximate value of you rating to the nearest 100 points
e.g. a 1245 rated player will be rank 12, a 1999 rated player will be rank 19 and a 110 rated player will be rank 1
this will allow you to balance games but not be affected by the psychological pressure as what you see changes little

a few other things:

no rank 0, theres no point demoralising new players. this could be extended to the bottom 300 rating

on top of this, the ranks should overlap by 20 points either way.
this means if you were 1210 you must be 1180 to drop into rank 11 and 1220 to go back up to rank 12 if you have dropped
why?
because if you are on the breadline between 1100 and 1200 you don't have to worry about it. if you drop a rank, you wont frantically try to regain it as it will take 40 points, and if you gain one, you know you're not going to lose it straight away

replace "game is ranked" with "no mods enabled" or "standard conditions"
no need to remind people their rating is actually changing in the background

[Sulo]

what i propose is this:
hide the original rating system but keep it functioning
replace rating number with "ranks" or "divisions" which give an approximate value of you rating to the nearest 100 points
e.g. a 1245 rated player will be rank 12, a 1999 rated player will be rank 19 and a 110 rated player will be rank 1
this will allow you to balance games but not be affected by the psychological pressure as what you see changes little

a few other things:

no rank 0, theres no point demoralising new players. this could be extended to the bottom 300 rating

on top of this, the ranks should overlap by 20 points either way.
this means if you were 1210 you must be 1180 to drop into rank 11 and 1220 to go back up to rank 12 if you have dropped
why?
because if you are on the breadline between 1100 and 1200 you don't have to worry about it. if you drop a rank, you wont frantically try to regain it as it will take 40 points, and if you gain one, you know you're not going to lose it straight away

So baisicaly - scores rounded to 0.1k resulting in scores like 0.6k and 1.4k.

Honestly - there is no point.
It changes nothing, most of the time you dont even notice the two last digits of score as they are so spread out you have to balance units hundreds not tens.

The biggest problem with the game quality (and therefore balance) is gaussian distribution of possible rank of player, sure it's not wrong on its own but if you just calculate overleaping area of those two slopes to see if game will be fair it will be wrong in many cases.
You can get two players with rankings close, like 200 or 300 apart and they will get very high % of fair match but most of the time it will be one sided.

[E8400-CV]

That whole plan sounds like it's made up by a government employee / politician.

In short you propose:
-Obfuscating data
-Rank inflation
-"Sticky" rankings

Not that it would solve anything; people will still try hard to achieve a higher ranking, it's just that they can no longer see if they are closer to losing one or gaining one.

[Exotic_Retard]

yes, that is essentially what i'm proposing,
but this solution is to a problem which is just as sketchy - people don't want to lose those 4 points of rating

the problem is psychological, and so is the solution, by obscuring data, there is less stress on the player, some people don't care, but those who do will miss unranked games the most.

this will help people think that they are playing games which it doesn't mean as much to lose, simulating unranked games, while actually being ranked.

this has been tried and tested in other games and seems to work quite well, so why not make it like this here, because a balancing tool is needed, but zep mentioned he will be hiding rating anyway, so this to minimize the change.

my preferred system would be like it was before: ranked and unranked games, with rating
but since this is being changed, this is my second best choice.

and rank inflation, if i understood you correctly, is only for 300 rated players and below, because their rating is most likely inaccurate anyway as they have just started playing.

so yes, i stand by what i say, this will relieve some subconscious stress from some people while actually not changing much, that what kinda the point of this.

[Marko Box]

That whole plan sounds like it's made up by a government employee / politician.

Sako is a goverment employee, and judging by his posting it wouldnt suprise me one bit if he ran for office this year.