BlackDog wrote:

Well for instance, if you are in an elimination tourney with 6 player games where the top two players advance to the next round, then playing for second place would be a legitimate (if lame) strategy.

A good point, although I wonder how often this actually happens.

How about using SODOS alone ..or in conjunction with the TRS?

I thought only the winner advanced in an elimination tourney.

CK66 wrote: I thought only the winner advanced in an elimination tourney.

If I remember correctly (and it's been a few years), on Tos when you created an elimination tourney you were able to choose how many in each game advance.

For instance, you could have four players in each game where the top two advance then next round.  I seem to remember this was a pretty common tournament set-up and it definitely had a huge impact on game strategy.  As you can imagine, alliances were not just common - they were all but necessary.  I think the WG single player/team advance system is the way to go.  So does BlackDog's argument still hold water?

M57 wrote:

CK66 wrote: I thought only the winner advanced in an elimination tourney.

If I remember correctly (and it's been a few years), on Tos when you created an elimination tourney you were able to choose how many in each game advance.

For instance, you could have four players in each game where the top two advance then next round.  I seem to remember this was a pretty common tournament set-up and it definitely had a huge impact on game strategy.  As you can imagine, alliances were not just common - they were all but necessary.  I think the WG single player/team advance system is the way to go.  So does BlackDog's argument still hold water?

Nope and I like it that way. Although I would like to see double-elimination tournaments, I hope the "top two advance system"  from TOS does not make its way over here.

BlackDog wrote:

Well for instance, if you are in an elimination tourney with 6 player games where the top two players advance to the next round, then playing for second place would be a legitimate (if lame) strategy.

As others have stated...on this site you can't play for second place.  It really just means that you are the first loser...actually the last loser since you got second and were the last to be eliminated.

Hello everyone who has already contributed to this thread!

This is my first post in the forums, as I think that this is an important issue to lend my voice to because I think that an aggregate ranking is good for more then just bragging rights.  Indeed, a properly constructed aggregate ranking's true value is in getting players to get involved in all that WarGear has to offer, so here I go with a simple idea.

I was thinking about the WarGear rankings, and I think that I have something to contribute to this subject of an aggregate ranking.  For starters, there are two main types for standard type of game play, championship points (CP), which looks at one's map mastery, and score (GR), which evaluates one's overall success.  On top of that, their are two other non standard game ranking's, team and tourney, which are self explanatory.  One thing I always liked was that Luieuil was on and near the top of every list.  He did it all.  Tournament, team, championship, score, everywhere.  For awhile Falker1976 held him off for GR, but he has since passed him.  I think that players should be rewarded for excelling in all areas of Wargear, and I also think that those who think they're the best should be encouraged to participate in all facets of the game.  To this end, and after reading this thread, I came up with a new twist for the idea of an aggregate ranking which combined these 4 rankings on an equally weighted basis.  Unlike the aforementioned equations which struggled with how to compare 300+championship points to a GR of of 3000+, I figured it'd be easier to throw out the math all together and just give an equal weight to the rank of each category. The formula is simple, you'd just add up the individual rankings of any player, and whoever has the lowest total ranks 1st, 2nd lowest total would be 2nd, and so on.

For instance, a sample of some of the top players in one area or another might consist of:

(please note, I made this list a week ago and some minor shift in rank has occurred since then)

That seems to make sense to me...and I can't think of any big drawbacks of it.  It would be nice if the numbers could somehow get inverted to where a big number is good, just to line up with the norm of higher is better.

I'd assume this would still exclude Private games.  Just my initial thinking through and it seems like a good proposal to me, simple yet touches multiple areas.

I really like the idea. Is there any reason H-ratings can't be included? (by rank, of course)

M57 wrote:

I really like the idea. Is there any reason H-ratings can't be included? (by rank, of course)

Lol, I figured that was going to come up 

Yertle wrote:

M57 wrote:

I really like the idea. Is there any reason H-ratings can't be included? (by rank, of course)

Lol, I figured that was going to come up 

Yeah - I know.  On the one hand, it's not a 'prize,' so maybe it shouldn't be included in the aggregate of the other prizes.  But for me personally, it's the first stat I look at when sizing up an opponent.  If the intent is to have a number that is useful, then surely H-Ratings belong.

+1  I think this is a cool idea.  I'm not sure about H-Ratings.  It seems like they cover the same ground as GR, right?

I see a pretty big problem with this system.  Let's take Cona Chris for example,  At 2nd in CP, 10th in GR and 11th in tourney he is obviously one of the best players on the site.  However, with 1694 team ranking, he would be ranked below someone who is 400th in CP, 400th in GR, 400th in Tourney, and 400th in Team ranking.  How does this make sense?

BD

If it's best "All-Around" then it would make sense, unless you wanted to give some more (or less if lower is better) weight to certain categories.  I still like CPs overall, but a cumulative should take into account all areas and if you are weak or don't play in one area then that cannot be assessed and would result in a drop of your "ranking". 

Maybe take a logarithm of each value?

Yeah BD, but Cona Chris could pretty quickly "fix" that, and IMO, that is one of the benefits of the system - encouraging players to try something they don't normally do.

BTW, Cona Chris clocks in with an 81% H-rating.  #2 overall.

I like it.  Very simple.

M57 wrote:

I really like the idea. Is there any reason H-ratings can't be included? (by rank, of course)

Hello M57,

Let me get to your concern first.

Their are multiple reasons why I excluded H-ratings. 

First of all I believe that it's calculated on standard games and therefor introduces additional weight to standard games over tournament or team play.  By including it, standard play with three categories would weigh in at 60% of the overall value of the aggregate. 

Secondly, it's not a "traditional" or "intuitive" category for most of the new players to follow, whereas, the other four are quite easy to understand right off the mark. 

Thirdly, if someone wins their first 4, 5, 6... 11, 12 games their H-ratings could be artificially elevated for quite some time and would be the top of that ranking simply because of the small sample size of games played.  (none of the other categories I included are affected like this, you can't tie for first place after your first game!) In order to incorporate H-ratings all the "top" ranked players (100% ranking) will obviously have an extremely small number of games played.  So then to deal with this we would have to introduce a minimum games cut off that would exclude new members from showing up on the aggregate ranking till they reach that cut off.  For instance, for ConaChris to be #2, you had to set that cut off at 100 games played!  Is that fair to JaredCunningham or RECON to ignore them because they have not reached their 100 games yet both rate higher then ConaChris with their 39 and 82 games played respectively.  I would say no.  39 and 82 games played is a respectable number, so they should be included.  If set to be in effect immediately then you have 217 players who are all at 100% due to small sample size, if you set it at 10 games then you still have 3 players that clock in before Luieuil due to their small number of games played.  Maybe 20 would be the most "natural" cut off for this category because it seems to get it about the most "right", but I don't want to ignore new players for even 1 game, which is what including H-Rating forces us to do.

So, in summation, I'm not denying the value of H-rating, and that can be looked up quite easily on the rankings page.  Maybe even a "top 20 - minimum 20 games played" table could be created for that, but, for the purposes of an aggregate, I want to keep it simple and practical and have it start from game 1 and I think that H-rating deviates us away from this.

Thanks a lot for all the positive feedback that we've generated here and I'll try to address all questions as I envision such a ranking to work as I get the opportunity!

Cheers,

Erick

BlackDog wrote:

I see a pretty big problem with this system.  Let's take Cona Chris for example,  At 2nd in CP, 10th in GR and 11th in tourney he is obviously one of the best players on the site.  However, with 1694 team ranking, he would be ranked below someone who is 400th in CP, 400th in GR, 400th in Tourney, and 400th in Team ranking.  How does this make sense?

BD

Hello Black Dog,

You've hit the nail on the head!  Cona Chris is exactly the type of player who could see the most immediate gains with a system like this.  He has been a "lone wolf" type, tearing up the rankings in everything except team play.  Well, wolves are pack animals too, and WarGear is a community!  He needs only find another good player, or two, to join his pack and tear up the team rankings and shoot, nearly instantaneously, into the top of the aggregate ranking!  The point of the aggregate is not to punish players for not getting involved in one aspect or another, it is to encourage players to play outside of their specialties and to incorporate themselves into all aspects of the WarGear community.  In the Case of Cona Chris, if he were to care about such a ranking, and he does play well enough that he probably does, then the effect of such would be to encourage him to play team games!  I, for one, would gladly play as his ally, and I would not shy away from playing against his team either!  Mad Bomber and Falker are in the same boat with regard to their team play ranking... Is that a natural alliance in the making to grow all of their team scores?

I hope my response has given you something to consider as I do believe that an aggregate ranking is the best way to encourage cross-over play and your point really highlights the strength of the aggregate ranking to encourage this.

Thanks for the feedback Black Dog,

Erick

I dunno. It's an "aggregate" ranking that doesn't tell us who the strongest players are; that depends on how good your partner is for a quarter of your score; where losing a few points in a component where you're near the center of the bell curve could drop you a 100 spots in the ranking, swamping, say, a tough climb from 15th to 5th in another; that would provide essentially random and meaningless results to players outside the top ranks; that allows a "specialist" in a board or two to rank with or above someone who ranks in the top 4 on 20+ boards.

The benefit is that it encourages players to take part in different types of activities? Somehow, the site will benefit if Cona Chris plays more team games and Toto plays a greater variety of boards?   

I'm dubious. Combining scores by combining ranks seems a reasonable approach -- I thought about it for GR and CP when Atilla first launched this thread (really, I did. No, really) --  but it breaks down badly when you get below the top ranks and the scores start to bunch up. Some math might solve this. But, also implicit in this approach is equal weighting by component, and no weighting by number of games played. Doesn't matter for combining GR and CP, but here we're saying that 1 team game has the same impact as 100 tourney games and 1000 regular public games. 

I think this approach is just too simple. I'd be like 5th if we did it, though, so that's cool.