Why punish Hanabi players if we all agree to abandon the game?

[Stroom]

I am happy for you that bombing occurs in 1% of your games. I know if there was some bga stats as a whole the # is higher. Personally I have more than 5 games in which bombing occurred in my 500 game history. You can lump losing on purpose in general among those stats. Just in the last 3 weeks I've seen several topics from players concerned about people losing Hanabi games on purpose. It is very possible though that bombing occurs less now and people typically probably remember those games more than others. But it is still a problem.

Also I don't play w/ 5 colors normally. Recently I have been playing a lot w/ a friend who is still learning. That is the only person I play 5 colors w/. But my stance has nothing to do w/ my elo or me being envious of others elo. Unsure how my original comment was perceived that way.

I calculated my games. Out of 27k games, 26k are "victories". I assume that it means scores of non-0. I know that a lot of those were intentional bombs from players I red-thumbed and some of them actual mistakes or miscommunication that caused us to bomb the game. Overall, it's 96% victories, so 1 out of 25 games have been bombed. Which is quite OK to me. I guess this score will become lower the more I play as people are going to intentionally bomb the game less.

What the problem for you is that you play with players who are not masters. In that bracket, players tend to be more toxic. I do not see this as a problem from my point of view and I do not think there is a way to fix this for less skilled players. You just have to get your elo higher and play with more skilled players.

[ChiefPointThief]

I am happy for you that bombing occurs in 1% of your games. I know if there was some bga stats as a whole the # is higher. Personally I have more than 5 games in which bombing occurred in my 500 game history. You can lump losing on purpose in general among those stats. Just in the last 3 weeks I've seen several topics from players concerned about people losing Hanabi games on purpose. It is very possible though that bombing occurs less now and people typically probably remember those games more than others. But it is still a problem.

Also I don't play w/ 5 colors normally. Recently I have been playing a lot w/ a friend who is still learning. That is the only person I play 5 colors w/. But my stance has nothing to do w/ my elo or me being envious of others elo. Unsure how my original comment was perceived that way.

I calculated my games. Out of 27k games, 26k are "victories". I assume that it means scores of non-0. I know that a lot of those were intentional bombs from players I red-thumbed and some of them actual mistakes or miscommunication that caused us to bomb the game. Overall, it's 96% victories, so 1 out of 25 games have been bombed. Which is quite OK to me. I guess this score will become lower the more I play as people are going to intentionally bomb the game less.

What the problem for you is that you play with players who are not masters. In that bracket, players tend to be more toxic. I do not see this as a problem from my point of view and I do not think there is a way to fix this for less skilled players. You just have to get your elo higher and play with more skilled players.

I had to go back to see how this convo started because I feel like it got sidetracked lol. I actually agree w/ the original statement that -10 encourages players to finish. There is a percentage that clearly doesn't care and still loses on purpose anyway but I'm sure there is a large # of players who do care. I wasn't keeping stats on what level of players are the most toxic but toxicity isn't exclusive to low elo players. Looking back at my games though there are fewer games in which people lost on purpose here than I have in bang. Your 4% rate is little in comparison. Which is surprising because hanabi seems more toxic. Maybe because every little mishap here is made to be the end of the world.

[Travis Hall]

If your team average is 900s and 1000s, a perfect score probably gains 0.00 elo.

It won’t be that low. Depending on settings and exactly what that average is, it may be under 0.50, which will round down to no visible gain more often than not (but will be a small gain in the database, which stores the rating with a greater degree of precision than is generally displayed).

[Wreckage]

If your team average is 900s and 1000s, a perfect score probably gains 0.00 elo.

It won’t be that low. Depending on settings and exactly what that average is, it may be under 0.50, which will round down to no visible gain more often than not (but will be a small gain in the database, which stores the rating with a greater degree of precision than is generally displayed).

Your right. I'm estimating here, but with 5 players (the best), I think you no longer gain any ELO with a table average of about 1060. With 3 players (the worst) you no longer gain ELO with a table average of about 880. But my point still stands. It's a misunderstanding to think you could bomb every 4th game and still gain ELO. Your score would drop steadily down to probably 500s.

[ChiefPointThief]

If your team average is 900s and 1000s, a perfect score probably gains 0.00 elo.

It won’t be that low. Depending on settings and exactly what that average is, it may be under 0.50, which will round down to no visible gain more often than not (but will be a small gain in the database, which stores the rating with a greater degree of precision than is generally displayed).

Your right. I'm estimating here, but with 5 players (the best), I think you no longer gain any ELO with a table average of about 1060. With 3 players (the worst) you no longer gain ELO with a table average of about 880. But my point still stands. It's a misunderstanding to think you could bomb every 4th game and still gain ELO. Your score would drop steadily down to probably 500s.

But none of my tables apply to what you are saying. My combined elo doesn’t reach anywhere near the cap for 2p games. Also the 25% rate was an example. I actually looked at a players last 50 games who bombed on me on purpose for the sake of this discussion. 9/50. Which is 18%. Still very high bomb rate. Their elo remains the same. Mid 900s elo player. Also looking at the game log I discovered that in some of the games other players (masters) actually bombed on them on purpose. Which proves my point that you will still have people who do this even w/ the current system and it isn’t exclusive to low elo players.

[Travis Hall]

But none of my tables apply to what you are saying. My combined elo doesn’t reach anywhere near the cap for 2p games.

Because you are playing with players who are less skilled than a skill-cap rating would indicate. (You are less skilled than a skill-cap rating would indicate yourself, so every game you play has somebody with a lower rating than that.)

You know what happens, over a large number of games, when you play with less-skilled players? You get scores under 30 in some of those games. Those scores make it exceedingly difficult to reach that 3.33 mean increase per game. It’s just not happening to any significant degree.

(You can look at my own recent game history for a realistic example of what happens with highly-rated players. My rating is currently a touch over 900. My last 10 games, largely played with a mix of experts and masters, have 6 scores of 30, 2 scores of 29, and 2 scores of 0. I did not deliberately bomb out either of the 0s, so this is simply the kind of distribution of scores that occur when playing in the community. Over those 10 games, my rating change is +2, a mean of 0.2. How am I supposed to make up the other +3.1, if I’m going to add 25% deliberate triple-bombs into the mix? I even lost a point in one of those 29 games, with a partner with a rating of 515.)

Also the 25% rate was an example. I actually looked at a players last 50 games who bombed on me on purpose for the sake of this discussion. 9/50. Which is 18%. Still very high bomb rate. Their elo remains the same. Mid 900s elo player. Also looking at the game log I discovered that in some of the games other players (masters) actually bombed on them on purpose. Which proves my point that you will still have people who do this even w/ the current system and it isn’t exclusive to low elo players.

So what? Nobody said that all players who deliberately bomb out a game sometimes will drop below 700. I said that I don’t believe that anybody with a rating over 700 is deliberately scoring 0 in 25% of their games and still increasing their rating (over a decent-sized sample of games without employing other means to cheat or distort the system). You haven’t found anybody who is doing that, and remember that if they are deliberately bombing out 25% of their games, their percentage of 0 scores will be higher than 25% because there will also be games that score 0 through genuine errors, or even other players who deliberately bomb out. That 18% 0-score player hasn’t deliberately scored 0 in even 18% of games, as you point out yourself.

The ELO rating is a measure of observed performance quality (which in turn is the best proxy for skill you will find). It allows us to filter players based on their skill/performance. You come here and complain that this does not allow us to filter out all players who deliberately lose games (because they don’t necessarily have ratings below 700, and some may never have their ratings drop that low). But what you want to filter for is not skill or performance; it’s behaviour. Of course the rating filter isn’t going to solve that problem for you.

If a player actually plays at a rating of 1000, excluding 10% of games in which they choose to misfire thrice, then an observed rating somewhere above 700 when including that 10% of games thrown is still an accurate assessment of their overall performance.

Bad behaviour is harder to measure. It’s a factor in the reputation rating, in that players who are observed by the moderators to behave extremely badly can have their reputations limited, and enough non-private red thumbs relative to green thumbs will also limit reputation, but the general case is that reputation is actually a measure of how reliably players finish games. So the one reliable indicator of bad behaviour is the red thumb you assign when you observe what you consider to be bad behaviour.

So when a partner deliberately bombs out a game with you, give them a red thumb, and then you won’t have to play with them again. Use the tools for the purpose for which they are designed.

And if you want to see a better measure of behaviour put in place, feel free to petition the admins about that, but stop trying to have ELO rating turned into that measure of behaviour. It isn’t a measure of behaviour, and it shouldn’t be.

[ChiefPointThief]

You come here and complain that this does not allow us to filter out all players who deliberately lose games (because they don’t necessarily have ratings below 700, and some may never have their ratings drop that low). But what you want to filter for is not skill or performance; it’s behaviour. Of course the rating filter isn’t going to solve that problem for you.

Odd statement again. Complained? The current elo system is great to me. It doesn't account for flams or black powder. I would probably have less elo if it did. It also gives decent pts for 2p games. I see several discussion about layered finesse and bluffs. A bunch of stuff I am unfamiliar w/ but am still ranked higher than players who know far more than me. I could care less about someones elo. As long as they are compatible w/ me then everythings good.

I also said this like 5 comments ago

"No. Not overlooking anything. 1 bomb = -10. Which means to maintain their current elo they would need an average of +3.33 in games in which they aren't bombing if they are bombing at a 25% rate. This was a hypothetical math equation. Even if said person does this in 20% of games which is still a very high rate they will maintain or slightly rise as well. I've encountered such players and just took a look at a few of their elos to see if my statement stands."

You wrote me 5 paragraphs talking about 25% when I already said that that was a hypothetical math equation and that someone could maintain their elo bombing at a 20% rate. I found such a player and then you said "So What?" and wrote a whole book. But have fun talking to yourself going forward.

[Travis Hall]

You wrote me 5 paragraphs talking about 25% when I already said that that was a hypothetical math equation and that someone could maintain their elo bombing at a 20% rate. I found such a player and then you said "So What?" and wrote a whole book.

No, you didn’t. You found someone with 18% bombing rate, and confirmed that their rate of deliberate bombing is actually lower.

In other words, you keep moving the goalposts. You make a claim, then when we say it is false, you say, “Oh, I didn’t mean 25% and gaining, even though I said 25% and gaining. I meant 20% and maintaining, and that’s the same as 18%.”

Yes, it is possible for somebody to maintain a rating at around a certain level while scoring 0 in some games. That’s what ELO is designed to do. Players are supposed to reach an equilibrium, and have their rating fluctuate around it (until their skill changes).

As for how you maintain your rating while not having learnt any advanced techniques, that’s because you play only 2-player games. All you are doing there is providing an argument for separating out 2-player from 3+-player ratings (or more generally separating rating by player count). Not that this will ever happen, as BGA is not set up to support it. And yes, this is a bit of a problem, because we get 2-player specialists who don’t understand that their skills don’t translate to other player counts, and join high-level games with more than 2 players and make a mess of it. (They should join lower-level games to learn the necessary skills first.) But that still doesn’t mean the filtering we have isn’t useful.

[smallman]

Great change, just wish it happened years ago.

[ShassDow]

Repeat after me:

"ELO is not a measure of me as a human"
"I am more than my ELO score"
"I should not base my self-worth on an arbitrary skill score from a board games website"

Repeat each mantra 10x daily. And if that fails, have a nice cuppa.

You're welcome!

This exactly. People who get mad about ELO should go outside more.