ELO in cooperative games
Posted: 18 October 2020, 10:51
I will be talking mostly about Hanabi, but similar problems most likely exist in all the cooperative games. Feel free to share your experiences on those other games. The ELO system for Hanabi is the following:
1) Once you reach a certain ELO (far above mine, but still a lot of peoples have reached it), anything which is not a perfect game at maximal difficulty result in loss of ELO.
2) Abandoning a game doesn't cost any ELO, meaning that top Hanabi players might ask for abandon at the first mistake.
Some peoples of the community have recently expressed their discontent with the rampant number of abandoned games.
(See the discussion here https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=1224913 on the announce of the upcoming expansion)
Why do we even have ELO in cooperative games?
1) Because every game has an ELO system on BGA, and I don't think you can opt out of that.
2) Because it communicate whether or not the players are beginners or experienced, and whether or not they tend to play at high difficulty or not.
3) Because peoples like to have some internet points increase each time they win a game.
What are the possible solutions?
1) Punishing frequent abandon with negative points similar to a defeat.
2) Make it so you never lose ELO in cooperative games, removing the main incentive for abandon. (Yes, that mean that you will be able to grind high ELO by spamming games, even if you lose most of them, but is it really a problem? It's not like this is a competitive ranking of some sort.)
What's the problem here?The ELO is averaged over all players.
That average ELO is compared against a fictional opponent ELO which is different for 2,3,4,5 and per variant and is basically a table.
All players get exactly the same ELO gain or loss after a game, however the rounding to whole numbers sometimes makes it look different.
ELO gain/loss is capped at 10 points. (unless in first games, where you have a multiplier on, which also causes those with the multiplier to get different gains than their teammates.)
1) Once you reach a certain ELO (far above mine, but still a lot of peoples have reached it), anything which is not a perfect game at maximal difficulty result in loss of ELO.
2) Abandoning a game doesn't cost any ELO, meaning that top Hanabi players might ask for abandon at the first mistake.
Some peoples of the community have recently expressed their discontent with the rampant number of abandoned games.
(See the discussion here https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=1224913 on the announce of the upcoming expansion)
Why do we even have ELO in cooperative games?
1) Because every game has an ELO system on BGA, and I don't think you can opt out of that.
2) Because it communicate whether or not the players are beginners or experienced, and whether or not they tend to play at high difficulty or not.
3) Because peoples like to have some internet points increase each time they win a game.
What are the possible solutions?
1) Punishing frequent abandon with negative points similar to a defeat.
2) Make it so you never lose ELO in cooperative games, removing the main incentive for abandon. (Yes, that mean that you will be able to grind high ELO by spamming games, even if you lose most of them, but is it really a problem? It's not like this is a competitive ranking of some sort.)