M57 wrote:

At one point I was thinking about a global player inactivity penalty, ..which could possibly be forgiven when activity resumes.  I still don't see how the H-R problem you describe is all that different from that of the player who steps away as they hit one of the peaks on their GR ride.

Sure, I think I can do that for you. 

I'll start off by saying that to understand an aggregate, the greater public must be able to follow the component parts, so, a roving-h would need to be tabled and added to the ranking page.  Next as people want to grow their aggregate, they'd actually be looking at and growing their component parts because to strengthen one's aggregate it's more important to focus on one's weaknesses then their strengths.

Now, even if someone sat on their GR peak and left, they still would be ranked competitively and would not act as a discouragement to others since it is still possible to pass them where they sit idle. 

The roving-h, meanwhile, is impossible for regular players to overtake if the person ditched Wargear and left a 100% h-rating on the board after winning their first two games.  Since it's virtually impossible to win 50 games in a row to now only just tie them for first, by letting 219 people sit idle at 100% is a discouragement from others wanting to compete to be at the top of that ranking, because, regular players will be fighting for 220th place, page 8 of the ranking table.  What kind of reward is that for someone who perfected and played out a winning h-strategy for 50 games?  I don't mind including active players to hold a 100% h-ranking with a small sample size played, I can stomach that because by continuing to play games they are constantly putting it on the line.  But, if players are inactive, and with 219 100% h-rated players, I suspect many of them are, I think that they become a disincentive to those who might want to build up their roving-h, for the fact that so many players are impassable in that ranking.

Simply put, players want to compete to be at the top, not locked out and fighting for the 220th place.  So, if we were to include a roving-h in the aggregate, then shouldn't players feel that they are fighting to be the best player in that component category?  Idle players can not affect any other ranking the way they could a roving-h simply because of the fact that roving-h is based on percentage and susceptible to a small sample size, while all the others build up, or lose, points game by game to reach their respective levels and idleness is not a good strategy as others can still pass the idle.

Does that explain it, or should I try again?

Erick

I've been following fairly closely and looks like good discussion.  I'd vote to keep it simple and keep H-Rating out, at least at first.

As for the moving scale, wouldn't it be better to have it Time/Date based rather than Game based?  Look at the past 30/60/90/180 Days rather than the past 50 games.  Seems like that would be cooler and help new people to jump in the rankings in accordance of when they started or really started trying.

....replies must be limited to 500 characters or less 

berickf wrote:

Simply put, players want to compete to be at the top, not locked out and fighting for the 220th place.  So, if we were to include a roving-h in the aggregate, then shouldn't players feel that they are fighting to be the best player in that component category? 

I'm not sure I understand this argument.. In theory, they are already competing for a top spot in this category as an individual stat.  To the degree that maximizing H-R performance adversely affects other areas, anyone who is trying to game the aggregate has one more headache to deal with.. 

Idle players can not affect any other ranking the way they could a roving-h simply because of the fact that roving-h is based on percentage and susceptible to a small sample size, while all the others build up, or lose, points game by game to reach their respective levels and idleness is not a good strategy as others can still pass the idle.

Does that explain it, or should I try again?

Erick

A roving GR is for all intensive purposes susceptible to small sample size.. No matter where you begin, if you win a high percentage of games, you can leave yourself pretty high in the standings.  As for the argument that others can still pas the idle, with GR, there is a theoretical limit to how high you can go. Players looking to maximize GR are best off limiting play to highly rated players because this is where the greatest upside lies, as well as the least downside. If this is the case, and I suspect it is (I rarely find myself in games with the stratospheric GR players), then there is even more value to including contrarian factors in the aggregate.

M57 wrote:

I'm not sure I understand this argument.. In theory, they are already competing for a top spot in this category as an individual stat.  To the degree that maximizing H-R performance adversely affects other areas, anyone who is trying to game the aggregate has one more headache to deal with.. 

A roving GR is for all intensive purposes susceptible to small sample size.. No matter where you begin, if you win a high percentage of games, you can leave yourself pretty high in the standings.  As for the argument that others can still pas the idle, with GR, there is a theoretical limit to how high you can go. Players looking to maximize GR are best off limiting play to highly rated players because this is where the greatest upside lies, as well as the least downside. If this is the case, and I suspect it is (I rarely find myself in games with the stratospheric GR players), then there is even more value to including contrarian factors in the aggregate.

Hey again M57,

I can think of strategies that are both complimentary to growing one's roving-h and their GR, so, they need not be adversarial statistics to grow simultaneously.  That's why I had earlier stated that the inclusion of a roving-h component in an aggregate would be more beneficial to those who already have a high CP.  So, not a headache to some.  Of course others need just grow their CP and then once they get that high enough then they could turn to doing their GR and roving-h together. 

The debate I was making though, was that as an individual category, a roving-h should be competitive and trackable, and a top ranking should be attainable to those who target it as a ranking they want to improve upon and be "the best" at.  by weighting it to the most recent 50 games played and allow the previous history to become cleared, it now definitely becomes competitive, check.  By including it on the ranking page it would be made trackable by those that want to target it, check.  But, by allowing it to fall prey to small sample size players ruling the top spots, those who tailor a strategy to be successful on it will be limited to the 220th position... I think that the result of limiting where people can get to, is that most people will decide not to develop strategies for it and will just end up playing for their GR or CP ranking and will largely ignore the roving-h and let it be what it is.  This is because they won't show up as top ranked and would only be fighting for 220th.  Why get it put into an aggregate if because of the way it's designed people don't bother to fight for it.  In other words I could say that by allowing 219 people to be tied for first simply due to their small sample size and everyone else fights for 220, 221, 222... It loses it's prestige.  People play a ranking for the prestige of having a fair shot at being first, or top ten at least.  We've lost that part of the competition here.

In your second paragraph, I believe that you mean Roving-h, not roving GR.  The GR, as I see it, would be as is, and if it were to be modified, the way I see a GR being dampened to control for oscillations would simply be to take an average of the last 10 or 20 or so totals.  So, even if that were done to it, it would still be pretty typical to how it is now, just dampened.  But, I say leave GR it as it is right now as dampening it is merely cosmetic and just creates a new thing that would then need to be explained to everyone.  Whichever way it is managed, however, it would still be a cumulative total, so, not susceptible to a small sample size.  The GR is already variable and competitive so it need not be truncated to a small sample size like the h-rating would need to be in the creation of a roving-h such that h-rating could achieve competitiveness.

My brain is melting ;-)

Erick

Yertle wrote:

I've been following fairly closely and looks like good discussion.  I'd vote to keep it simple and keep H-Rating out, at least at first.

As for the moving scale, wouldn't it be better to have it Time/Date based rather than Game based?  Look at the past 30/60/90/180 Days rather than the past 50 games.  Seems like that would be cooler and help new people to jump in the rankings in accordance of when they started or really started trying.

 

....replies must be limited to 500 characters or less 

Hey Yertle!

500 characters... Sounds like twitter 3.0 ;-)

The roving 50 game game count was just to make h-rating competitive such that it could make sense to include it in an aggregate.  I will put some thought to your time based concept.  I think that it would be best, for simplicity sake, if CP, GR, and tourney and team ranking stay as is, as simplicity is one of my fundamental principles in the creation of an aggregate.  But, I'm also waiting for everyone to digest the concept here and give their feedback so we can tweak as necessary to find a consensus.

I didn't count, but I tried!

Erick

>or has a ruptured appendix

Gee.  That's awfully specific...

>My appendix ruptured

ooohhh.  Hope you're feeling better MB.

Mad Bomber wrote: I think team ranking should be worth half value............... If my teammate has poor Internet acess or has a ruptured appendix I could lose out. My appendix ruptured and a few of my turns got skipped.....cost Amidon37 a trophy

Hey Mad Bomber,

Such a division is inbuilt into the aggregate by weighting the aggregate to be 50/25/25 or 60/20/20 Standard/tourney/team.  In effect, team is 1/2 or 1/3 weighted compared to standard depending on what set of components (GR/CP/tourney/team) or (GR/CP/roving-h/tourney/team) that the majority here agree upon.

Also, by what you were writing, it sounds like if it cost Amidon37 a trophy that that was a team game in a tournament... Tournament games are weighted the same as team, so, tournament and team rankings are counted equally and standard is given the lions share of the aggregate.

Thanks for bringing this point to the forefront.  I think it's important for everyone to know that team and tourney are subsidiary to standard in the aggregate and therefore everyone ultimately controls their own destiny on it by being solid standard players first and then tourney and team are secondary achievements to augment and fill out their aggregate score as they compete more completely by participating more fully on the site to build up their aggregate in all it's component areas.

Erick

On a side note, I live in Africa and I don't think many are plagued with annoying power outages and a poor internet connection more so then I am.  I think most smartphones can manage the "native" player with their inbuilt browser, although, that is an expensive data suck and it's unfortunate that the Opera browser keeps failing me in this regard.  But between sometimes having to go to cyber cafes, or playing (tediously slowly) from my phone, or pray the power/internet returns in time, I still manage to take nearly all my turns.  The only ones I have actually missed are lightning so far, and that is because sometimes when the power goes off here the internet crashes as well and by the time it comes back I've been dropped.  I've pretty much stopped playing lightning for that reason, and if I do, I go outside and check the weather first as if it looks like it's going to rain, then, a power outage is going to follow and the internet connection will be hit or miss, so, no lightning games when it's windy and clouds are in the sky... how counter intuitive as that should be the perfect weather for lightning, hahaha ;-)

I have not had my appendix rupture, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that, but there was one time when I went mountain hiking when my father came to visit me here and I had to play my turns from the top of Mount Kenya, -10 Celsius, hands shaking, on my phone, because, from the first camp I didn't have phone network again until I reached the peak.  Interestingly, we peaked at 5am and as soon as the sun came over the horizon my phone lost it's connection.  I don't know why, but, luckily I had already finished my turns by then and was onto checking my email when the connection was solar disrupted. 

I don't know what you can say about that, except that maybe I'm a crazy fanatic, but, you gotta do what you gotta do if you don't want to miss your turns and disappoint your allies in team games, nor lose steam in one's own standard games as well.  In fact, since you do have ally(s) in team games then depending on the maturity of the game or it's composition then some team games may not be a loss without one member of a team? I think that such problems of life intervening are more deleterious to ones standard games then to their team games.  One might feel more guilty about their team games, sure, but missing a whack of turns would be far more harmful to one's standard rankings I'd say?

Rambling on with my stories, sorry,

Signing off for a second time,

Erick

Yertle wrote:

I've been following fairly closely and looks like good discussion.  I'd vote to keep it simple and keep H-Rating out, at least at first.

As for the moving scale, wouldn't it be better to have it Time/Date based rather than Game based?  Look at the past 30/60/90/180 Days rather than the past 50 games.  Seems like that would be cooler and help new people to jump in the rankings in accordance of when they started or really started trying.

 

....replies must be limited to 500 characters or less 

Yertle,

As per your request, I'll really try to keep this short.  I thought about game # vs. a time based game counter.  I'm thinking that because different players play with a different kind of style/intensity and that in a month one guy might have finished 5 games and another might have finished 100, that, to be fair to both, that game # equalizes between different styles of play.  A time based sample could also make a roving-h susceptible to small sample size and make it overly erratic.

Thanks for the food for thought,

Erick

Hey again everyone,

Does anyone else have any questions, concerns, or anything else that they want to hash out on this subject?  I keep coming back to look for more discussion on this idea, but it's been quiet for some time now.

Thank you all for all your support, encouragement and for helping me brainstorm all the details for the creation of a simple, fair and intuitive aggregate.

Erick

I haven't read everything on this thread (I've been behind on the boards and this one is long) - so if this has been brought up I apologize: I see that in discussions for one ranking system, tournament ranking is considered and global ranking (among others).  I never did understand exactly why these are separate, but think if global team ranking is included then tournament team ranking should be included as well.

Cona Chris wrote:

I haven't read everything on this thread (I've been behind on the boards and this one is long) - so if this has been brought up I apologize: I see that in discussions for one ranking system, tournament ranking is considered and global ranking (among others).  I never did understand exactly why these are separate, but think if global team ranking is included then tournament team ranking should be included as well.

This is in place so that if players wanted to continue to play Public games on a favorite board they could without putting their Ranking/Championship Points at stake.

Cona Chris wrote:

I haven't read everything on this thread (I've been behind on the boards and this one is long) - so if this has been brought up I apologize: I see that in discussions for one ranking system, tournament ranking is considered and global ranking (among others).  I never did understand exactly why these are separate, but think if global team ranking is included then tournament team ranking should be included as well.

Hey Cona Chris,

I think that the reason that the tournament-team ranking often gets overlooked is because it is not, unfortunately, highlighted anywhere.  Is there even a place that one could go to see where they rank in an overall listing?  That's what I thought :-( 

That said, it's definitely a very good point that you've brought up and perhaps tournament team rank should be brought more to the forefront.  By including it, it would definitely encourage people to create and play in more team tournament games, and the more types of games that WarGearians are encouraged to participate in, the more successful the aggregate ranking is in accomplishing what I envision it to accomplish for the site.  If such a tournament-team rank and a roving-h (as proposed by M57) were both included then the inclusion of tournament-team would:

a) return standard play to 50% of the aggregate, while tournament, team and tournament-team play would be worth 16.67% each.  Of consequence it reduces the weight of general team play, which some had complained giving a 25% weight previously (20% previously with the inclusion of a roving-h).  I'm not a big fan of having component sections of the aggregate worth a non prime percent of the total, but, there is also some appeal to having a cross over category like a tournament-team ranking to compliment the other rankings of team and tourney on that half of the aggregate... So, I'm definitely intrigued by the idea.

b) elucidate the largely ignored rank of tournament-team play and would encourage yet another facet of WarGear to be explored by those hoping to achieve a high aggregate ranking.  Big + on this aspect of it's inclusion!

c) in order to keep to my "simple" criteria such a ranking would need to be tabled and easily sought through the ranking tab so that those following the component parts of the aggregate can easily track their "success", and what they need to do to improve their place on it.  I like the idea of this rank being tabled and easily followed as I've been curious before to see such.

That's my initial thoughts on it and I thank you for this valuable nugget of a contribution.  It's great to use the aggregate to pull out more site participation, and a more varied game play for those seeking to be the "best of the best" and not just the best of one area, so thank you!

Erick

berikf said:

I really don't get why you or anyone else should have a "fight" over this Smoke?  An aggregate is just a way of saying that player A is great all around and tries to accomplish everything that WarGear has to offer, whereas, player B might only be specializing at CP or GR only... What exactly do you find unappealing about rewarding players for wanting to excel at every aspect the site has to offer for their game-play through the creation of an aggregate ranking that incorporates such?

Similar to this achievement system being implemented right now, I'd even go as far as to say that the creation of an aggregate ranking would be one of the most benefiting things that could be created as it would encourage players to be more active in all aspects of what WarGear has to offer.

The only players who might want to fight such are ones that are conservatively bent on not playing outside their niche and feel that their choice niche is all that matters... Which isn't you, so why fight against something which can only be seen as a clear benefit to the site? 

Can you explain why you'd have a fight over such, because I can't bend my mind around why there should be one at all?

 

My suggestion for a cumulative measure is this:

For each category set the maximum score at that time to 100% and then scale everyone else according to that and add both numbers up.  Maximum score is 200, if you want you could rescale it so the maximum is 100.

Alternatively, give everyone a rank for each category and add them up. Highest score is a rank of 1, etc.  Arrange from lowest to highest.

Both of these plans avoid trying to create some formula to account for the discrepancies between the two systems.  Simply, if you are the best at each, you are the best overall.

If I get a chance I will run the calcs for an example.

How do I post an Excel spreadsheet? 

I have the results for the method suggested above.  Someone let me know the best way to post an Excel spread sheet

makes sense to me squintgnome, but can you come up with some metric that puts me in the top 10?

more seriously, it sems like "ratio rank" and "rank" track each other pretty closely, so it probably doesn't matter too much which one you do.  In my opinion using ratio rank is better.  Using rank seems like you lose information.  Seems like in theory it's better to use actual scores (i.e. % scores) rather than rank, (since knowing someone is 3rd vs 5th is less information than knowing 3rd has twice as many points as 5th), but in practice there is not much difference.

I think the real disagreement will be over including team ranking & tournament ranking. 

IMO, just include them as equal weight to the GR and CP ratios, but I know some use tournaments as opportunity to learn a map without it counting against them.   The best way to address this (again IMO), is to add public non-ranked games so that players can more easily learn a new map without having to put together a private game.

Ozyman wrote:

makes sense to me squintgnome, but can you come up with some metric that puts me in the top 10?

more seriously, it sems like "ratio rank" and "rank" track each other pretty closely, so it probably doesn't matter too much which one you do.  In my opinion using ratio rank is better.  Using rank seems like you lose information.  Seems like in theory it's better to use actual scores (i.e. % scores) rather than rank, (since knowing someone is 3rd vs 5th is less information than knowing 3rd has twice as many points as 5th), but in practice there is not much difference.

I think the real disagreement will be over including team ranking & tournament ranking. 

Really like the idea of folding all public games in.

IMO, just include them as equal weight to the GR and CP ratios, but I know some use tournaments as opportunity to learn a map without it counting against them.   The best way to address this (again IMO), is to add public non-ranked games so that players can more easily learn a new map without having to put together a private game.

+1 for public non-ranked games.  Concerns are that it might dilute the availability of ranked games. Is membership big enough to support it?  Maybe there could be a limit on the number of non-ranked public games you can play at a time.  E.g., one at a time for Standard Members and two for Premium?,  or is that too convoluted?

I think trying to add in team and tourney ranking will make it almost impossible to get consensus because there are legitimate concerns how team games may skew an attempt at individual achievement.

Perhaps it is best to take a step-by-step approach.  Combine GR and CP points now.  Then get consensus on how to add the others later.  If we try for the perfection of a 'Unified Theory' we may never get there, better to take what progress we can for now.