Gordan wrote: ↑19 July 2023, 16:12
Hello fellow Hanabi players. I haven't read all of this massive thread, but it seems I got the general idea. IT seems that most of you have a problem with ELO that can be artificially inflated one way or another, but I haven't seen anyone asking the most important question. What good is ELO as we have now anyway? The fact is that you can play a
perfect game and get heavily penalised anyway. And no, I don't consider 30pts a perfect game. I mean playing with no mistakes, optimal in every sense, and yet finishing at say 29 due to that 4r you discarded in your first move being at the bottom of the deck. (Please don't point me to flambs as I see it pathetic to play with
undo error option.) If the players have high ELO they get up to -9. At the same time, it is impossible get more than +0 for ending with 30 points. This fact alone means that ELO is utterly flawed.
Not to be solely critical (although this deserves criticism), here is a couple of constructive suggestions:
a) ELO as such is pointless in cooperative games. Instead, I suggest showing 1) number of games played (finished), and 1) average number of points achieved.
This way you could deduce the level of experience as well as relative quality of a player. This would require alternative ranking categories (master, expert, etc) and two types of filtrations (per experience, and per success rate).
b) Regarding the unlucky deck - the bottom card of the deck should be open (like in Tressette). That way players would know which card shouldn't be discarded.
Says the person who has quit 28/50 of his last games
Your elo should definitely be very low at this rate of play.
Elo is not meant to increase indefinitely. It is meant to judge your relative skill in the game. At some point, the score will stop rising. And that is where your skill level is. Sure, it will go up and down a bit with each game but that does not matter much. What you want elo to be is an infinitely rising score, which is not what it is supposed to be.
What you have been doing is quitting every game where the deck did not favor your play style. So you have not actually learned to be a good player, you have quit at the first moment where you found out that your play style does not produce a good result. You only finished games where you thought your score would improve. That is like cheating on a golf course - if your first ball does not go well, you just take another ball and try again until you get a good result.
Elo IS somewhat pointless. But it DOES help distinguish very bad players from normally performing players. I'd say that those who are still >950 elo without quitting >5% of the games they start actually do have an elo that represents their skill level.
The number of games played is not a good indicator. Some players never learn anything new and they keep making the same mistakes even after mentioning 10-20 times what they did wrong. Average number of points similarly is not a good indicator because some people try out different tactics and bombing a game takes the score to 0, completely skewing the average.
Your requests about changing the game also indicate that you are not really as good of a player as your elo would suggest.
Edit: You are clearly cheating elo with this player: *Is he your friend or alternative account? Also, after looking through some of your game replays, you do not really play that well either.
I guess players skills will finally start improving when they are forced to play through all the games they start. If you don't play through tough situations then you will keep making the same stupid mistakes and you will never learn. We will see a large elo decrease in a few days but then it will start climbing again to the level where it is actually supposed to be. Most likely a lot of players will become better at the game.
*Moderator edit: please report players to moderation instead of calling them out in the Forum. the Forum is for general discussion only
