The more luck in a game, the more luck is going to determine who has first at whatever arbitrary time has been set. The first place ranking matters less and less, with proper play it just gets shuffled around with more frequency.
1000esqrtn1 wrote: ↑26 February 2024, 18:57
In my experience, I think that players on top of rankings tend to play very few games, afraid of losing many points. The top 10 ranking looks pretty much the same during several days. Hence, once you start reaching high rankings (Top 100 - Top 50) you play most of your games against weaker players and here is where the problem begins. If you win those players, you get little reward, while if you lose, you drop many points. I have done some series of 3-4 wins and then one loss, my ranking didn’t vary as the loss compensated all wins. Should I play those games then? I understand that we are playing just for fun, but if we do a competition it shouldn’t have a negative effect to play those games, otherwise I prefer to switch to regular play.
Assuming the players are rated properly, there's no reason not to play those games. The reason you get so little vs them is because you're expected to beat them by that much. You should only expect to have your rating go up if you think you are underrated, (or I suppose if you happen to think your opponent is overrated). But the ideal outcome for players is no change on average, not without a change in their play level. Now, as rating gaps get further away, I think the rating's predictions get less accurate, and frankly I find the idea of players regularly playing rated games with such large gaps distasteful as a result. The higher rated players are either getting unfairly nabbed in the greater variance games or they're boosting in the lesser variance games. The main issue here is the lack of depth in the player pool for that game on BGA.
1000esqrtn1 wrote: ↑26 February 2024, 18:57
That way of handling rankings can lead to unfair outcomes as well, as what makes you climb is a streak of wins, not an overall good result. For example let’s imagine 2 players on Elite league, A and B who play 100 games against random players. Player A wins 3 games and then loses one every time, while player B loses the first 80 games and then gets a 20 win streak to close it up. What is the outcome? Player A is likely to reach a ceiling. When he gets high in the rankings the 3 wins will likely not be enough to compensate that loss, considering that most of their games will be played against lower ranked opponents, hence the loss will deduct more points than the ones won. Meanwhile player B will drop to bottom of the rankings at first, but when it starts to win it will climb very fast as it plays better opponents. When he catches player A maybe the winning streak is not over yet and those final wins will be sufficient to surpass the ceiling that player A was never able to break. Is it fair that a player with 20% of wins ends up higher than one with 75%?
Yes, it is fair. Winning percentage is largely irrelevant to what rating you deserve, it just says how good your opposition was relative to you. So beat up a bunch of weak players and you get a high win rate, face quality opposition of your caliber for a 50/50 win rate, and get in over your head for a low win rate. If Player B broke Player A's ceiling, then it looks like they outperformed Player A. To break that ceiling they had to reach that same rating issue Player A had, and they got through it. If Player B's gameplay quality has made such a drastic improvement, I see no reason to judge them for their previously weaker play. Also, if Player A is losing rating for playing people, then it sounds like they weren't properly rated, as their rating isn't reflecting the high success expectations, or they're playing too many rated games with large rating gaps, which is also not a good idea. There would need to be issues specific to what happened with Player A/B, such as if someone thought something sketchy happened to cause those win rates, but the general case of an overall 20% win rate topping an overall 75% win rate in the ratings I have no theoretical problem with.
1000esqrtn1 wrote: ↑26 February 2024, 18:57
The current method bases everything (or at least most of it) on “the last winning streak”. It seems that this is all that matters to get a good ranking. Hence, when players get that good streak they stop playing, which in my opinion is a big problem. It clearly shouldn’t be the way to handle a 3 month competition.
That's if you're looking at high variance games. That's what you get for trying to refer to a best player in a game of luck. There's no real top player, the variance is going to shuffle players around too much. the top Arena player is just going to be a snapshot of whoever happened to be on top at the time. If you're worried about player activity levels stopping upon hitting a peak, then your best solution for Arena is probably to just shorten the season, as apparently the peak ratings don't need that long to hit in the first place.
1000esqrtn1 wrote: ↑26 February 2024, 18:57
I consider that there are 3 main parameters when valuing player performance during an arena season.
1 Games played - A player needs to play a significant number of games to consider his ranking legit. Currently this is somehow adressed by playing multiple leagues before reaching elite, but you can reach elite in around 10-15 games, which might be a little bit low.
2 Winning percentage - The overall perfomance through the whole season is a defining parameter as it tracks all of your games, not just the most recent ones.
3 Average ELO of opponents played - This is an important parameter as well, if someone tends to play easier games it should be penalized for that.
I agree with 1, there should be a minimum threshold of games played to get to an established rating rather than one still swinging from k factor, etc.
I think 2 is not only meaningless, but even detrimental. High win percentages generally mean you're not playing proper opposition. The ideal win percentage for players is roughly 50% after the initial set of games to determine rating have been smoothed out. That percentage should not meaningfully change even if your proper rating increases/decreases, as things should smooth out again upon hitting as proper rating. Also, if someone performs at a 300 level for half the season, then moves up to 400 level for the rest of the season, they're playing at a 400 level, there's no reason to penalize an improving player.
I think 3 is important, and this is something ratings do apply. In fact, that's one of the things you were complaining about, a player not moving up despite winning at a 3-1 rate is the penalty for facing such weak opposition being applied.
1000esqrtn1 wrote: ↑26 February 2024, 18:57
We could also have a more objective way to track our own progress, if we have a winning % of x one season, targetting to improve that for the next looks like a realistic goal.
In my opinion, this switch is a must on games with a significant size of its games (I consider 10-20% already significant) decided by luck. Thanks!
Trying to increase your winning percentage is not good. The way to do that is to play weaker opponents. In a proper rating system and player pool, improving performance doesn't improve your win rate, it improves your opponent quality. So improvement should be having a roughly 50% win rate vs 200s, but now you have a roughly 50% win rate vs 300s instead. A larger issue holding back game ratings on BGA is the player pool for a game not being deep enough to properly pair people looking for games.