FAQ: new achievements & XP system

[Board_Champ]

What happened to ELO rankings in various games? I cannot see my ELO ranking on Puerto Rico.

[Grapelli]

One question I have is if 1st/2nd/etc ELO awards are permanent, how does that work for new games?

Does the first person who wins a new game when it comes out on the site get a permanent 1st place ELO trophy?

Good point.

TOP Elo achievements are now restricted to 300+ ELO. So the first player to reach 300 ELO will get the achievement first.

However, the XP points awarded by this achievement depends on the number of ranked players at the moment you earn it. So gaining an achievements early, when there are not much players in the system, does not bring you so many XP.

Now the 2 additional questions you may have:

• Does it means that if no one has more than 300 ELO, no one gets the "Top ELO achievement"? => yes. But we think the "top ELO" are not very significant otherwise.

Sorry, guys, but I don't like this. I thought the XP system is intended to make the customer happy? ... So I reached Top 20 in a popular game, didn't get the award, didn't understand why. Am I happy now? Not particularly ...

There are many people on this site, who take long evenings off, sitting there, waiting for a suitable expert opponent to reach Top 20. Or maybe they are just happy winning a bunch of games and want to celebrate Top 20. I don't want to be the person to break it to them, that reaching Top 20 actually may be not enough for their desired award ...

I understand there are more important tasks at the moment. But please try to keep things logical. Nobody wants to search the forums to find out, why he / she was denied a particular award.

[mixer_lama]

добрый день, а вы будете выдавать какие то привелегии( например членство в клубе бга) за XP потому что если не будете то в чем смысл XP
икс пи будет бесполезно копить

[Jeb_101]

I'm exited

[cosmosis]

However, some achievements will not be attributed retroactively for technical reasons. For example, the "Reached Top 1 ELO" achievement will only be attributed to the current ELO leaders (after 1 game played).

I posted earlier about this, but I think the following shouldn't be intended behavior:

Case 1: I play a game I haven't played in a while. I get top player ELO achievement, but not top 2, top 3, etc. Other people who work their way up below me get all the awards.
Case 2: I am the first to get to 300 ELO in a new game. I get the top ELO achievement, but none of the others. Other people who wait until there are 20 people above 300 ELO then get up to 1st place get all the awards.

I don't understand why this isn't treated like games played, etc. where you get all the applicable lower awards when you achieve one of the higher ones. It encourages weird behavior like intentionally reducing your ELO or waiting for players to pass you if you want all the awards.

[cosmosis]

One question I have is if 1st/2nd/etc ELO awards are permanent, how does that work for new games?

Does the first person who wins a new game when it comes out on the site get a permanent 1st place ELO trophy?

Good point.

TOP Elo achievements are now restricted to 300+ ELO. So the first player to reach 300 ELO will get the achievement first.

However, the XP points awarded by this achievement depends on the number of ranked players at the moment you earn it. So gaining an achievements early, when there are not much players in the system, does not bring you so many XP.

Now the 2 additional questions you may have:

• Does it means that if no one has more than 300 ELO, no one gets the "Top ELO achievement"? => yes. But we think the "top ELO" are not very significant otherwise.

Sorry, guys, but I don't like this. I thought the XP system is intended to make the customer happy? ... So I reached Top 20 in a popular game, didn't get the award, didn't understand why. Am I happy now? Not particularly ...

There are many people on this site, who take long evenings off, sitting there, waiting for a suitable expert opponent to reach Top 20. Or maybe they are just happy winning a bunch of games and want to celebrate Top 20. I don't want to be the person to break it to them, that reaching Top 20 actually may be not enough for their desired award ...

I understand there are more important tasks at the moment. But please try to keep things logical. Nobody wants to search the forums to find out, why he / she was denied a particular award.

I also agree that it might not be the best way to do this, although it seems like an okay decision to me. One objection I might have is that for more random games it's harder to get >300 ELO. Senet, for instance, only has a few players above 300.

It should get documented though.

[Roua]

Человек, который сохраняет первое место рейтинга в течении полугода получил за это такие же очки, как человек, который в результате курьёза стал первым на полдня.

[BobTheTurtle]

I think that the purpose of putting the 300+ ELO minimum on the Top ELO Achievements was to make it so that the awards would not go to all of the players who played a game just after it was created, but it does nothing to prevent the achievements from going to players who got lucky in their first 10 or so games without really getting good at the game. Because your K Factor is so large before you have played 20 games, it is possible to get the Top ELO achievements very early on simply by getting a lucky winning streak in your first games. Since in your first 20 games your ELO can change by over 50 points in a single game, this makes it so the Top ELO achievements can go to new players who haven't really earned them, especially in games with a larger element of luck. For example, I have played games of For Sale with people who have less than 20 games played, yet still had gotten the Top 10 ELO achievement by getting lucky in their first few games, and at the point I played them had lost rating points down to a rating of less than 200 when they have about 10 or 15 games played because their rating was changing by over 50 points a game. I would suggest making a minimum games played requirement for the Top ELO achievements to prevent awards going to new players who just got lucky, rather than from skill at the game. If a new player was good at the game, then they would still be in the top section of players after the minimum games had been achieved. It wouldn't have to be a very large number, just 20 games because that is when the K Factor is down to 20, where it will stay. This way the Top ELO achievements won't go to new players just because of the massive ELO fluctuations early on. Thus, I suggest adding a minimum games played requirement of at least 20 games for all of the Top ELO achievements. You could also consider not ranking players at all until they have played at least 20 games, because that early on the ranking is rather meaningless due to the massive ELO fluctuations.

[Peyrol]

Don't underestimate the warm fuzzy glow. It's been proven to cure cancer. Just the same as cold beer & pretzels.

[Ftarantino]

I didn't get this new achievement while I met the conditions / Will the achievements be awarded based on my game/ranking history?

It will depends on the achievement kind, but as a rule of thumb, you will have to play at least one game to get all the achievements you deserve for this particular game.

Example: if you already have 1140 games played on Race for the Galaxy, you will have to play an additional game to get the "1000 games played" achievement.

However, some achievements will not be attributed retroactively for technical reasons. For example, the "Reached Top 1 ELO" achievement will only be attributed to the current ELO leaders (after 1 game played).

As it was already said there is something that doesn't work properly with the ELo trophies. If a player (like me in Ruhr) has always been ranked 1 since the start of the new system he/she will be awarded only the top1 trophy. Instead a player that start playing on a later stage would have the possibility to acquire all the top20, top10,.... trophies. I believe that it's wrong. Either each player can get only one top ELO trophy (the highest he/she reaches) or who has always been number 1 should get automatically all the top-x trophies, similarly for top2 player should get as well the top3, top5, ...

Secondly, but this is only my personal opinion, I'm not sure I agree with taking out from the raking a player that is not playing for a couple of months. Or better it made sense with the previous system but with the new one I would avoid it or I would extend the time (let's say to 1 year) before taking a player out from the ranking.