Proposal: Elo rating should be Arena-only, Play Mode-only, split into separate ratings, or apply under equal conditions

[Ceaseless]

the relative ELOs are driven as much by volume as skill.

What do you mean by this? What impact are you thinking of for volume?

[Jontia]

the relative ELOs are driven as much by volume as skill.

What do you mean by this? What impact are you thinking of for volume?

Imagine two people who win every game they play. One plays one game a week, the other one game a day. Which has the highest ELO?

The same is true for two players of any positive win rate. If you play more, your ELO will be higher over time.

[LPV123]

My instinct is to agree with you. That said, I could use some additional clarification about the purpose/benefit of higher ELO. Is it just a question of the being happier with a higher number? Does it affect who we are randomly paired with in regular play mode? Does it impact the Arena rankings? I just don’t know how it all works.

I tend to think play mode and arena and tournaments should be entirely separate (no shared ELO), both for the reasons originally mentioned and others, some of which have already been raised, such as the often-dramatic difference in game elements between/among play mode, arena, and tournaments. Yahtzee is one example of a game where earning wins can be much easier depending on the rules, which are locked in for arena but vary in play mode. A player might choose to skip a difficult arena season altogether because the risk to ELO, for instance.

[Ceaseless]

the relative ELOs are driven as much by volume as skill.

What do you mean by this? What impact are you thinking of for volume?

Imagine two people who win every game they play. One plays one game a week, the other one game a day. Which has the highest ELO?

The same is true for two players of any positive win rate. If you play more, your ELO will be higher over time.

No, the same is not true of players with any positive win rate. Elo doesn't go up just because your win rate is positive, nor does it go down just because your win rate is negative. If you beat a player 3 times for every 1 time you lose, then the elo will set itself so that you lose 3 times as much for a loss as you gain for a win.

[Ceaseless]

My instinct is to agree with you. That said, I could use some additional clarification about the purpose/benefit of higher ELO.

Elo is like a weight around your neck, the higher the number the heavier it gets. The higher your elo, the more points you lose for losses and the fewer points you gain for wins. In other words, the higher the elo, the more effort it takes to keep it where it is when playing. So if a 300 played certain set of games with a different opponent each game with no rating change, then a 400 somehow replaced the 300 for that exact same set of results vs the same players at that time instead, the 400 would lose rating. If a 200 did it instead of the 300, they would gain rating. It doesn't matter if the results had been 6 wins and 3 losses or 3 wins and 6 losses.

Players carrying roughly the same weight can play each other are expected to get roughly even results. The larger the gap, the less even the results. It gives players a ballpark of who they can play to get reasonable competition, or I guess a player can use it the other way around and target easy wins or impossible odds, though their opponents have access to the same information as they do.

Yahtzee is one example of a game where earning wins can be much easier depending on the rules, which are locked in for arena but vary in play mode.

As an aside, how difficult a ruleset is for elo is a player-by-player thing. Ruleset A may be easier for some players and harder for others compared to Ruleset B, and vis versa. The players will have different ratings for each ruleset. If one player exclusively played under ruleset A, then they'll probably do worse in ruleset B, and vis versa.

[Jellby]

Collusion to game the elo system is a punishable offense. If you see it, report it. No amount of tweaks will eliminate it.

[Nils meeple]

Collusion to game the elo system is a punishable offense. If you see it, report it. No amount of tweaks will eliminate it.

That's the theory, but in practice a lot of obvious cheating reports go unanswered and unrelieved for months, if ever. That's exactly the point of this proposal — make it structurally harder to manipulate Elo in the first place, so the system doesn't rely so heavily on manual reporting and moderation, since moderators clearly don't have the resources to keep up with it.

[Jontia]

What do you mean by this? What impact are you thinking of for volume?

Imagine two people who win every game they play. One plays one game a week, the other one game a day. Which has the highest ELO?

The same is true for two players of any positive win rate. If you play more, your ELO will be higher over time.

No, the same is not true of players with any positive win rate. Elo doesn't go up just because your win rate is positive, nor does it go down just because your win rate is negative. If you beat a player 3 times for every 1 time you lose, then the elo will set itself so that you lose 3 times as much for a loss as you gain for a win.

Eventually, yes. But fresh players are always coming in and there is always more ELO to gain. The more you play, the higher your ELO will go compared to someone just as good as you that doesn't play much. Say in your example we play each other 4 times, you win 3 and I win one, but those are my only games whereas you've been playing against other people and are winning all those games. Who's ELO has gone up over the period?

[Ceaseless]

Imagine two people who win every game they play. One plays one game a week, the other one game a day. Which has the highest ELO?

The same is true for two players of any positive win rate. If you play more, your ELO will be higher over time.

No, the same is not true of players with any positive win rate. Elo doesn't go up just because your win rate is positive, nor does it go down just because your win rate is negative. If you beat a player 3 times for every 1 time you lose, then the elo will set itself so that you lose 3 times as much for a loss as you gain for a win.

Eventually, yes. But fresh players are always coming in and there is always more ELO to gain. The more you play, the higher your ELO will go compared to someone just as good as you that doesn't play much. Say in your example we play each other 4 times, you win 3 and I win one, but those are my only games whereas you've been playing against other people and are winning all those games. Who's ELO has gone up over the period?

If you intentionally set up bizarre outliers like the supposedly invincible player that can never lose, of course you'll get weird results. "Say in my example I win all my future games" is just silly. Players aren't generally like that. They lose games too. Adding more games to your game count promises nothing. Your rating will still go up and down the same intervals unless you add something else to the mix. BGA has accounts with thousands of games in a given game under their belt showing this. They don't keep going up, they stagnate and stick in the same area, even though there are levels above them occupied by players that play better.

Are there always going to be new players adding elo to the mix? Not necessarily. Even if a new account joins, they might only play a few games then stop for good. That can result in a net loss for everyone when this new account barely lost anything for defeats and sucks away more for victories since their rating is low. The created rating from the increased k-factor won't get the chance to flow into the general pool. Also, accounts eventually stop playing. So sure, those ratings may still be laying around in the most literal sense, but they won't be in use for the active players. If we're talking BGA specifically rating also gets deleted due to the consecutive win penalties. So there is no guarantee the active rating isn't getting reduced over time.

[Silene]

I like that my profile gives a rough overview about which games I am good at and which not so much. I have played over 400 different games. In about a third of them I have reached over 100 ELO and some of them I reached strong/expert/master. If ELO was limited to Arena then my profile would look really sad with maybe 2 games above 0 ELO. That would bother me. A handful of cheaters surely is a bit annoying (but in some obvious cases reportable and I have done that and succeded in the past) but not nearly as annoying as essentially deactivating the ELO system alltogether for many players like me.