Why ELO doesn't suit to BGA

[demiurgsage]

Also, what types of achievements did you have in mind? If the reason for the leaderboard is time to compete in every game (which I'm not sure how allow that), achievements could not be things such as "Most Games Played" as these would clearly be time-dependent.

On Competition tab of BGA you can see the current leaderboard of BGA, where you get Prestige Points for every trophy in every game.
The greatest number of points you can get for being 1st rank in any game (50k), 2nd place in rank give you 25k PP and so on.
My last suggestion is to change this main leaderboard. First of all I mean the tropies for the highest places in the rank. You are right about achievements such as "Most Games Played", but they give you far less points and you can't get the 1st place in the leaderboard having only them. And I'm sure administration will be against removing them as they give bonuses to the most loyal players. I treat these achievements as consolation prize.

As I wrote above I suggest to change the main leaderboard to count only most prestigeous trophies of a player not all trophies. So the player can focus on getting rank in his favorite games not in all games on BGA. Also I suggest to make trophies in popular games more prestigious than trophies in unpopular games as it's more difficult to achive 1st place in a popular game.

[demiurgsage]

Reading topics about ELO boosting and cheating I think the system should include restriction how much ELO you can win against one player. It will not stop cheaters but will make cheating more difficult. Also it will encourage players to play with different opponents.

[LSC]

We have in mind a system based on "Season points" like this :

_ when you beat an average player : +1 pt
_ when you beat a Good Player : + 10 pts
_ when you beat an Expert : + 100 pts
_ when you beat a Master : + 1000 pts
_ seasons points are reset to zero when each period (ex : year or season) begins.
_ at the end of the period, we attribute trophies based on who get the most points.

Note : only the first match against a player during a given period gives you season points, otherwise you'd just have to play 100+ games against the same player to be champion.

Note : ELO would remains as a simple "indicator", and to determine who is Master/Expert, ...

I'll image everyone would invite a Master to play with while no one would like to play with average players. As many of BGA games are luck based, if one can have average 45% chance to beat the best possible player, why not try 2/3 games and earn +1000 pts while you need to win 10 (and maybe playing more than this) with Expert?

I think ELO is a good system by itself and we only need to adjust the parameter in ELO to reflect the level of luck/skill balance and it looks like able to solve many of the problems mentioned.

Provided no method convincingly better than that we would better use the system. Bear in mind that no matter what rating system is used, people would exploit over-rated players.

Also, though I am not good at every game, for the games that I am better at, I often like to play with players with higher level of skill like me. That's is not a concern of keeping a good ELO, but playing someone with similar level with create a tense game experience that can go either way, rather than a dull one where it ends early. I guess GBA purposely allow this option becoz of this reason

[LSC]

I think one of the things that need to be due with is inactive players. Post before said that ELO system discourage high rating players from playing games. I suggest GBA inactivate the ELO for players playing less than certain amount of games in a certain period of time. Their names would not be shown on the leaderboard (or GBA is already doing that?)

Another thing I saw in the posts are the claim that there are no restriction how much ELO you can win against one player. In the formula as seen in the Wikipedia link the max ELO is restricted by K-factor, with K=32 for weak players and 16 for masters. I don't know if and why someone said there is no such thing (or GBA has modified the ELO? If yes, reverse bad would be better for it?)

[demiurgsage]

Another thing I saw in the posts are the claim that there are no restriction how much ELO you can win against one player. In the formula as seen in the Wikipedia link the max ELO is restricted by K-factor, with K=32 for weak players and 16 for masters. I don't know if and why someone said there is no such thing (or GBA has modified the ELO? If yes, reverse bad would be better for it?)

K-factor limits the number of ELO points you can win in one 2-player game. You can win any number of points against one player by playing many games.

P.S. On BGA K=40 (and 60 if less than 30 games).

[LSC]

I think it is fine to play any number of games with your friends if among you are close enough. It is fine not restricting the points winning among the group, as long as the games are not purposely boosting ELO of player(s). If someone deliberately want to boost ELO or rating, I don't think restricting the points you can win from one another does not help much as one can just keep opening more accounts and it would be harder to spot out by other means as fewer of games would be played with dummy accounts.

We need a good mechanism to spot ELO boosting

[demiurgsage]

The question is not only in stopping cheaters. Do you think it's fair when you get top place in rating playing only against a couple of players?

[glitter and doom]

Am I the only one who likes the ELO system?

No, you are not the only one. Quite the opposite, I think the most of the players are fine with elo.

I do agree that it's not a perfect system, but I don't think any rating system is perfect. ELO is a good, mathematically fair, well-known-and-tested system though. I think switching to a new one would be a lot of unnecessary work, and then people would just complain about the new system. From the forums, I have seen some people complain about the ELO system but it's mostly been a few, very vocal complainers. For the vast majority, the system works; and I think BGA has other areas it should concentrate its efforts on.

I fully agree. Elo is the least imperfect ranking system. Considering the number of players on BGA, there haven't been too much complains about the elo. I agree with those who say the system could be improved, but I don't think it should be replaced with totally different (probably inferior) system.

[sourisdudesert]

Thanks you all for your continuous feedback on this question. This is very helpul as we are still thinking about improving the ranking system.

What we have in mind at now has slightly evolved compared this this "Seasons point" system, but our objectives remains the same :

• We want to introduce regular "Seasons", to give you permanent achievements when you reach the top, in replacement of the current "volatile" trophy that you lose as soon as you lose your ranking.
• We want to give "Seasons trophies" to players who really deserve it, which means you won't be able to win a trophy just by beating a beginner every month.
• We want a system than is less discouraging for weak players. At now they starts at 1500, and then decrease to 1200-1300 after few games which is quite discouraging.

What we have in mind at now :

• Keep the ELO for ranking.
• At the beginning of each Seasons, decrease the ELOs of everyone to a starting point (ex : to 1900 for those above 1900, to 1700 for those between 1700 and 1900, ...).
• From that point, this would be the start of the "ELO race" for this new Season.
• At the same time, there would be a minimum for ELO (beginner level) to make sure no player could not get a lesser rank than a beginner.

The "ELO reset" seems quite rude, but each time we are launching a new game on BGA everyone is starting at 1500 and the first month there is a really good competitive atmosphere to "take the first trophies" for this game. Our idea is to re-create this dynamic each Season for each game to avoid a "static" competition like it is right now.

... and of course current ELO leaders would automatically received the "first" Seasons trophies to materialize their achievements with the previous system.

[demiurgsage]

What we have in mind at now has slightly evolved compared this this "Seasons point" system, but our objectives remains the same :

• We want to introduce regular "Seasons", to give you permanent achievements when you reach the top, in replacement of the current "volatile" trophy that you lose as soon as you lose your ranking.
• We want to give "Seasons trophies" to players who really deserve it, which means you won't be able to win a trophy just by beating a beginner every month.
• We want a system than is less discouraging for weak players. At now they starts at 1500, and then decrease to 1200-1300 after few games which is quite discouraging.

What we have in mind at now :

• Keep the ELO for ranking.
• At the beginning of each Seasons, decrease the ELOs of everyone to a starting point (ex : to 1900 for those above 1900, to 1700 for those between 1700 and 1900, ...).
• From that point, this would be the start of the "ELO race" for this new Season.
• At the same time, there would be a minimum for ELO (beginner level) to make sure no player could not get a lesser rank than a beginner.

This sounds much better. The result depends on how your system will be realized. Can you give more details?
How will ELO formula work with beginner in play?