BGA has a serious bully problem

[tbhp]

Elo is supposed to be a measure of how skilled a player is in a particular game.

You have to be careful how you define skill here. People tend to think of skill as being able to think up strategies that other players can't, when the true definition of skill or strength of a player is the level of control that they have over the outcome of a game.

People make the same mistake in sports, like in football where they consider that a team that controls the ball better is the more "skilled" one, when in reality the more skilled team is the one that can the most consistently score more goals than their opponent. Because goals are what determines the winner in football.

Besides, like previously discussed, elo is not supposed to tell you the skill of a player in the first place, but rather where they are currently sitting in the ladder. If a player goes on a lucky streak and ends up at the top of the elo ladder, they may be ranked above players who are more "skilled" than them, but their placement is fair and correct, because what matters is that they won the games to get there, not who is actually the more skilled.

In any sports competition, what matters is who actually wins in the end, not who you think was more likely to win based on their skill. Elo measures results, not skill necessarily.

If you have a system in which a player can play at an elite level for thousands of games and fall several tiers overnight because of a bad streak then that system is flawed.

No, it simply means that an elite level player in that game is only a few losses away from having the same track record as an average player.

Elo simply relates the reality of the game. You just apparently don't like what it's revealing about the game, in this case, that the players who are considered elite don't actually have as much control over their wins as you might have thought they had.

Their understanding of the game may be far greater than average, but that understanding doesn't actually translate to a much higher winrate, because this is a game where luck is too present for anyone to really have that much control over anything.

[Ceaseless]

How many "high luck" games are there that even have players with a 500 Elo?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say zero. People conflate "high luck" with being non-deterministic, i.e., having random elements as part of the game mechanics. Games that are truly high luck, in the sense that they are really just an elaborate way of flipping a coin, don't have players in the 500s.

Captain flip for one.
I have a 68% win rate. The player above me has a 50% win rate which is a HUGE difference in any game let alone a game with a 4 luck rating. I’ve also maintained this over thousands of games and only play with players good and above (if you see someone lower than it was a game w/ a friend).

As for the whole 90% probability discussion there is a specific arena player that I am calculated to win against at that rate in a game w/ a luck factor of 3. But these win probabilities are off thus resulting in me losing 100pts throughout the arena season to this player even though I beat them 75%. People complain about top players being blocked but for me it is way more beneficial to block a player like this than a top player. After doing numbers I realized how flawed the system is. The system doesn’t gauge who has the best overall season only who finished w/ the best streak. Therefore it is flawed.

The win probabilities are laughable for team games.

The win rates described here are a display of how the pairing system is doing. A high or low win rate means your pairing is poor, and a relatively even win rate means it is solid. It's not a good way to compare two players though.

[tbhp]

One thing you have to consider is the degree of luck in a game. Take the extreme case of just flipping a coin and trying to get heads. I'm seeing this argument of "Sounds like you have a problem with the game." No. I don't have a problem with the game. I have a problem with attempting to rank players in high luck games. It's not "effective" or "robust" or anything along those lines. It's more like pointless. The more luck there is, the more pointless it is.

That's a valid opinion to have, but I don't see how that makes elo flawed.

If you had a sports that was just flipping a coin, maybe people would still enjoy that sports, and would want to see who becomes world champion in that sports (even though that would be determined purely by luck).

In that case, if you were to decide to rank players who are doing nothing but flip a coin, I don't see why elo doesn't work. It would give you an accurate representation of how well everyone did at flipping coins, even if that "performance" involved no skill at all, just luck.

This reminds me of a game we had at the yearly school fair when I was a kid. There was a board with horses, and we would all pick a horse to root for, then based on the successive rolls of dice, a horse would pass the line first and the person rooting for it would win the game. This was a game that amounted to nothing but luck, yet we still had fun with it. Humans are weird sometimes.

[Ceaseless]

Suppose I have an elo 400 points higher than someone, and it is a luck-based game where I can't win more than 75% of the time against a competent opponent. In that case, if I care about my elo, I should be a jerk and refuse to play someone who is rated substantially lower than me.

A system that encourages bad behavior is broken.

In luck-based games, it is very hard to keep an elo higher than 300. The reason is a flaw in elo, and not that "nobody is genuinely rated that high".

What happens in luck-based games is that your elo will bounce around from 200 to 400, based on whether you are on a winning streak or losing streak. Did I really become 100 points of elo worse just because I went on a luck-based losing streak?

How did you get 400 points higher than someone in a game where you couldn't win more than 75% of the time vs any competent player? That's the first question that needs to be asked. Is your opponent incompetent? Are they just underrated?

Elo is based on your performance, if you underperform, your elo goes down. Fixing that is straightforward enough, if you're underperforming relative to normal, it will sort itself back out over time as your regular performance kicks in. Nothing is going to perfectly pinpoint a player's skill 100% of the time either. I'm not going to look at 2 players at a given moment and say "this player is 2 elo higher than the other, so they must be barely better". There's going to be some variation, and I'd probably want to see more data than just this one moment.

Far not well in co-op and high luck factor games. Too easy to level up as beginner and too easy to fall down from expert level.

That’s because in those games there isn’t as much difference between a beginner and a top player. Your problem is with the game, not the system.

You could ask that the k factor be different in high luck games, so that rankings don’t move as easily, but I don’t see the justification why. That would be like hiding the true nature of the game, making the better players appear more in control than they actually are.

Counterexaple: Texas Hold'em Poker. Luck factor is very high but there IS mutch difference between beginner and top player. In normal ranking system (money) top players looking for play with less experienced players (they called fish) but with present ELO system is better to play with similar or higher ranked player to get higher ranked.

Define money being used as a ranking system, I have a few different possibilities in my head that would get different responses, so I'd like to pin this detail down first to set the context of the discussion.

[ChiefPointThief]

Elo is supposed to be a measure of how skilled a player is in a particular game.

You have to be careful how you define skill here. People tend to think of skill as being able to think up strategies that other players can't, when the true definition of skill or strength of a player is the level of control that they have over the outcome of a game.

People make the same mistake in sports, like in football where they consider that a team that controls the ball better is the more "skilled" one, when in reality the more skilled team is the one that can the most consistently score more goals than their opponent. Because goals are what determines the winner in football.

I indeed have more control over the outcome of the game than player b as stated by my 68% winrate (vs good and above players btw) compared to 50%. I am not using a single stat to determine this but the actual outcomes of our games.

Talking sports, if Shohei Ohtani goes hitless in his last 12 at bats and his teammate (player x) throughout the season bats .080 worse on average but hits 9-12 they don't suddenly become the best player on the team. Disregarding Ohtani's entire body of work throughout the season (him leading his team in all statistical batting stats) and crowning player x better than him would be absolutely insane right?

In any sports competition, what matters is who actually wins in the end, not who you think was more likely to win based on their skill. Elo measures results, not skill necessarily.

It isn't that I "think" I am more skilled than the player ranked above me. Our bodies of work indicate this. Just because the system being used to measure this has a recency bias doesn't negate that.

If you have a system in which a player can play at an elite level for thousands of games and fall several tiers overnight because of a bad streak then that system is flawed.

No, it simply means that an elite level player in that game is only a few losses away from having the same track record as an average player.

Elo simply relates the reality of the game. You just apparently don't like what it's revealing about the game, in this case, that the players who are considered elite don't actually have as much control over their wins as you might have thought they had.

Their understanding of the game may be far greater than average, but that understanding doesn't actually translate to a much higher winrate, because this is a game where luck is too present for anyone to really have that much control over anything.

You said "No" and then restated why it is flawed lol.
I am very aware of the reality of the game. It is a 4 luck rating game. Meaning that luck will determine a greater % of games than a game with zero luck. Thus, top players will have a lower win % than games with 0 luck. The higher the k factor the more recency bias. Making it easier for top players in a luck game to have their entire body of work be diminished. But that doesn't mean they aren't still top players in said game. If there is going to be a rating system there should be one that considers such factors.

[ChiefPointThief]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say zero. People conflate "high luck" with being non-deterministic, i.e., having random elements as part of the game mechanics. Games that are truly high luck, in the sense that they are really just an elaborate way of flipping a coin, don't have players in the 500s.

Captain flip for one.
I have a 68% win rate. The player above me has a 50% win rate which is a HUGE difference in any game let alone a game with a 4 luck rating. I’ve also maintained this over thousands of games and only play with players good and above (if you see someone lower than it was a game w/ a friend).

As for the whole 90% probability discussion there is a specific arena player that I am calculated to win against at that rate in a game w/ a luck factor of 3. But these win probabilities are off thus resulting in me losing 100pts throughout the arena season to this player even though I beat them 75%. People complain about top players being blocked but for me it is way more beneficial to block a player like this than a top player. After doing numbers I realized how flawed the system is. The system doesn’t gauge who has the best overall season only who finished w/ the best streak. Therefore it is flawed.

The win probabilities are laughable for team games.

The win rates described here are a display of how the pairing system is doing. A high or low win rate means your pairing is poor, and a relatively even win rate means it is solid. It's not a good way to compare two players though.

Once again, my settings are set for good players and above.

[tbhp]

The higher the k factor the more recency bias. Making it easier for top players in a luck game to have their entire body of work be diminished. But that doesn't mean they aren't still top players in said game. If there is going to be a rating system there should be one that considers such factors.

I wasn't aware elo on this site had a recency bias. That's not necessarily a decision I agree with, but I still think you are looking at elo in a way it's not meant to be seen. Elo is not supposed to tell you the long term, inherent strength of a player, but rather where they are currently standing.

If a great player recently had a bad form, it's normal that their elo would be lower, because the number is about their track record, not their potential. There are players in the games I play who I know are great players, but who their elo might not currently be very impressive. I know that I should fear those players when I play them, because I know their talent, I know that they could show up for that game and regain their greatness. But still, their current elo has to be reflective of a lower level of investment they put in the games they played recently. It's only logical they'd be ranked under players who are currently on fire.

[Gooorn]

My problem with the current ELO system is not what it measures and how accurately it measures it, because I don't really care.
I complain that this system is my ONLY option to filter my fellow players based on their expected game knowledge, but for many games the system is not really suitable for that. If I set the "good players and above" filter, then those good players who have just performed worse in the last few games and have fallen back to average level are left out, if I use the "average players and above" filter, then even those who haven't even read the basic rules of the game are included.

[ChiefPointThief]

My problem with the current ELO system is not what it measures and how accurately it measures it, because I don't really care.
I complain that this system is my only option to filter my fellow players based on their expected game knowledge, but for many games the system is not really suitable for that. If I set the "good players and above" filter, then those good players who have just performed worse in the last few games and have fallen back to average level are left out, if I use the "average players and above" filter, then even those who haven't even read the basic rules of the game are included.

But this still speaks to some of the flaws with the current system. The inability to fall below 100 and how team elo is calculated just to name a few. In bang (& other team games) it would be nice to filter out incompetent players but the current system doesn’t properly rate players. It takes elo from stronger players and gives it to weaker players keeping the pool closer together than it really should be. The 100-200 filter is also too far apart for games that have low elo ceilings.

[Gooorn]

My problem with the current ELO system is not what it measures and how accurately it measures it, because I don't really care.
I complain that this system is my only option to filter my fellow players based on their expected game knowledge, but for many games the system is not really suitable for that. If I set the "good players and above" filter, then those good players who have just performed worse in the last few games and have fallen back to average level are left out, if I use the "average players and above" filter, then even those who haven't even read the basic rules of the game are included.

But this still speaks to some of the flaws with the current system. The inability to fall below 100 and how team elo is calculated just to name a few. In bang (& other team games) it would be nice to filter out incompetent players but the current system doesn’t properly rate players. It takes elo from stronger players and gives it to weaker players keeping the pool closer together than it really should be. The 100-200 filter is also too far apart for games that have low elo ceilings.

The ratio of games played/won would perhaps be a better indicator, but only afer 10-20 played games.