Please clean up top10 ranking in race for the galaxy

[ksasaki]

As far as I can tell none of them (at least I checked top 3) have played a ranked game in months. LeonFR especially got his score by just playing dummy games against a friend. I suggest you implement a new rating system on an old website I used to play (innovation.isotropic.org). It is called TrueSkill:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueSkill

In this ranking, your rating is based on a combination of your skill + your activeness. If you are not active, your rating will go down over time. Also, I suggest that if you look at the top10 rankings filtered by rated games, you will see they are probably playing against some second account. There is no way if you consistently play against top competition that you would be able to receive a rating of 800 / 900. I've played over 4000 games (you will see that all my games are ranked), and I have maybe come close to 700 once, let alone 900, and I consider myself a pretty good player! Well, you can play against me and see for yourself

I did more digging, not everyone is cheating. d1man and yzemaze look legit. Please look into top 3 though.

I do a lot of database queries for my daily job, so if you would like a volunteer, I am happy to Also, I'd be happy to implement the rating system as well, it'd be an interesting exercise.

Thanks,
William

[ksasaki]

I thought carefully about it. Without big changes this could be the parameters to stay ranked:

active defined as:
1) played a ranked game within last two weeks
2) 10 unique ranked opponents in the last month

If someone wants to cheat and create 10 fake accounts, more power to them lol

[N_Faker]

Some games have so few played games/players your current limits may not be suitable.

Other than that, I wholeheartedly welcome a ranking overhaul.

[Liallan]

I thought carefully about it. Without big changes this could be the parameters to stay ranked:

active defined as:
1) played a ranked game within last two weeks
2) 10 unique ranked opponents in the last month

If someone wants to cheat and create 10 fake accounts, more power to them lol

Solutions like this have already been presented about 300 times, and I'll just post the same stuff I always do. Although I would like to state first that Yucata also uses the Trueskill system, and it doesn't stop anyone from complaining about people who find a way to cheat the system, so I think the first thing everyone has to learn is that there isn't a perfect system. Occasionally I see someone over there suggest using ELO instead! (And I tell them it hasn't solved the problem over here.)

One difficulty with requiring a minimal amount of play and staying "active" is firstly, if someone is highly ranked in several or numerous games, that's a lot of games to have to play. Second, people get burnt on games and I don't think they should have to be forced into playing anything they don't want. Third, playing 10 unique opponents can become extremely difficult if you are one of the top players because often other people don't want to play them, and the other top players might also be getting sick of the game, etc. Seems like all they would be doing is playing each other all the time... and that it would turn into a sort of "win trading" situation. I'm not sure I see the point of that. This gets even more difficult with a 2 player game. It's difficult to even apply rules like this equally to all games.

And the one thing no one ever seems to think about is that this doesn't work for people who play turn-based. It takes too long to finish them, and becomes darn near impossible to keep up with a scheme like this, especially again if someone is ranked highly on several games.

At least if a requirement similar to this is made, it needs to be made a lot less restrictive, otherwise coming here to play starts getting over-regulated with what games people get forced to play, instead of just coming here and having fun. (And keep in mind that not all top players are doing anything to cheat the system but would also have to follow these rules.) Like I would be something like 14th in China Gold if I were ranked and I don't think it would be a lot of trouble to get in the top 10. But do I want to play a game of this every two weeks? Heck, no!! And this is a 2 player game, and the only way to find 10 unique opponents in a month is playing 10 games in a month, and unless I want to play people way below me (which undoubtedly would start someone complaining) it might be impossible to find 10 different people to play. I really wouldn't want to come here and have China Gold crammed down my throat. (Just one example, but hopefully you get the idea.)

Perhaps you didn't think as "carefully" about it as you claimed?

[Liallan]

(I guess there's also a good point to be made about the fact that I'm not currently ranked in China Gold, although I have been in the past and used to have a trophy-thingie for hitting top 20. I've never known why those come and go, but perhaps there's already a time-lapse thing in effect? But there's just no way for me to keep up playing every game I know that often, so it seems an over-restrictive requirement.)

[N_Faker]

(I guess there's also a good point to be made about the fact that I'm not currently ranked in China Gold, although I have been in the past and used to have a trophy-thingie for hitting top 20. I've never known why those come and go, but perhaps there's already a time-lapse thing in effect? But there's just no way for me to keep up playing every game I know that often, so it seems an over-restrictive requirement.)

Trophies/rank is lost after 60 days without a game.

[ksasaki]

Thank you for the response. I agree an overhaul of the rating system is impractical. But can you please look into LeonFR specifically (the #1 player). I've played him before, he only plays unranked games, and if you win he insults you and says you were so lucky. But if you look at how he got his rating, he just played against another dummy account. I can't verify this because he has not played a ranked game in a long time, but I'm sure you can look into this. Please, don't encourage this sort of behavior.

[N_Faker]

Report him if he is insulting you in the chat.

On the point of his rank... it is legitimate within the current ranking system for this site.
I suppose it is a good example for how the site rank may not be reflective of a players actual skill.

[Liallan]

(I guess there's also a good point to be made about the fact that I'm not currently ranked in China Gold, although I have been in the past and used to have a trophy-thingie for hitting top 20. I've never known why those come and go, but perhaps there's already a time-lapse thing in effect? But there's just no way for me to keep up playing every game I know that often, so it seems an over-restrictive requirement.)

Trophies/rank is lost after 60 days without a game.

A little late back to the party here, but thanks for the info.

Which kind of says they already have something like this in place. So this is kind of a good example of the effects this type of rule can have. I should bookmark this thread. I care about rankings, so it sort of bugs me that I don't have a rank in that game when I'm in the top 20. And I don't play any worse than I did two months ago. Thing is... I don't care about rank enough to dictate what games I play. I play what I want.

[SunnySlight]

it is your problem that you cannot catch up the best timing to boost elo (when the game is published / before the elo system changes / when the game is popular among high elo players)
top players have no reason to play the game more than once per 2month (using their top account)

for example, the best player in Caylus who almost wins all the game stops playing here because others are too weak. You cant require him to play quite often.