ELO system is a failure

[kaneaaa]

After playing on this site a fair few games for a long while I have to say, the ELO system is so heavily flawed that it is the one thing I think is completely below acceptable standard on this site. Everything else is excellent, at this is by far my favourite game site. However, the rating system is just a joke. It uses the words "Expert" "Master" etc. pretending to be a sign of someone's excellence. To a certain extent it may be, however mostly all it really does is swing around in an arbitrary fashion, blowing in the wind according to spells of luck. I cannot believe that the ratings system was designed by a gamer, because it is so gamer unfriendly in design.


Please listen to me when i say that this rating system needs a MASSIVE OVERHAUL. Please don't make it so that one unlucky game suddenly makes you drop 60 points. It's silly. The most expert man in the world can have a bad game, it does not cancel out 6 games of excellence, when you rating system puts them on an equal footing. Please stop the madness of this system, it is massively flawed and a real insult to anyone with intelligence on this site. It needs to be re structured from the ground, and should value actual overall performance rather than vastly over valuing the weight of a recent game and ignoring the previous results. It's really childish as a system to take remotely seriously and it makes your hall of fame totally arbitrary knowing the fact that what separates the "best player" from someone 100 places below them is the fact that they stopped playing on their luckiest streak while maybe a better player kept playing the game


PLEASE FIX NOW. As a fan of your site i want to see the rating system match the standards of the rest of the site, not to be a joke.

[Oso]

After playing on this site a fair few games for a long while I have to say, the ELO system is so heavily flawed that it is the one thing I think is completely below acceptable standard on this site. Everything else is excellent, at this is by far my favourite game site. However, the rating system is just a joke. It uses the words "Expert" "Master" etc. pretending to be a sign of someone's excellence. To a certain extent it may be, however mostly all it really does is swing around in an arbitrary fashion, blowing in the wind according to spells of luck. I cannot believe that the ratings system was designed by a gamer, because it is so gamer unfriendly in design.


Please listen to me when i say that this rating system needs a MASSIVE OVERHAUL. Please don't make it so that one unlucky game suddenly makes you drop 60 points. It's silly. The most expert man in the world can have a bad game, it does not cancel out 6 games of excellence, when you rating system puts them on an equal footing. Please stop the madness of this system, it is massively flawed and a real insult to anyone with intelligence on this site. It needs to be re structured from the ground, and should value actual overall performance rather than vastly over valuing the weight of a recent game and ignoring the previous results. It's really childish as a system to take remotely seriously and it makes your hall of fame totally arbitrary knowing the fact that what separates the "best player" from someone 100 places below them is the fact that they stopped playing on their luckiest streak while maybe a better player kept playing the game


PLEASE FIX NOW. As a fan of your site i want to see the rating system match the standards of the rest of the site, not to be a joke.

Really, if you don't want to loss lot of ELO, play with players with high or equal rank like you.

Is easy play with NEWBIES or LOW SCORE people.

[kaneaaa]

You're missing the point. Please actually think before you speak, understand first, then respod.

[stupka]

You're missing the point. Please actually think before you speak, understand first, then respod.

Childish response.

Oso's point is valid. You have missed the point.

[kaneaaa]

Not really has how does it address the fact that there are wild changes in elo based on a last game even with games that are heavily luck-based. really if you cannot see this, you have to be completely unreasonable in thinking that the elo system is nothing short of a poor system which has little bearing on the player's ability. So the comment of actually reading what i say still stands and actually you reiterating his comment just shows that the comment applies to you as well. The ELO system is a complete disaster, really. No substance to the thing, and so little of the nature of the game is taken into account in the system. Stop pointing the finger towards the players when its the actual system that is just badly implemented.

Also, what Oso is really telling me to do is PLAY THE SYSTEM. That is not acceptable, the system should not NEED to be played, i just want to play the games, and the system to not be working on an abstract logic which hasnt even really taken into account the luck swings etc that happen in games. If the system is dictating my play , the system is wrong. It should just reflect the player's ability while he is free to play with whoever he chooses on this site.

The site designers need to now review it, realise that the elo system needs to be more sophisticated, and that every game needs its own gradations which allow for the nature of the game. Saboteur should not have a similar system as, say, Caylus. It's completely crazy. The games are just so different. It's just outdated, and arbitrary.

[Jest Phulin]

OK, if the system were to be fixed, how would it be done?

What system can incorporate a player's ability to gain skill in a game over time, but not be influenced by the last several games played?

[jgbaxter]

As someone who has spent years discussing the merits and problems of elo, all I have to say is this.

It is completely accurate, and it is completely irrelevant.

Someone could try to challenge either of those statements, but here's why your challenge is ridiculous...


1) It does exactly what is supposed to do, determine statistical likelihood of a players chance to win.
1b) Any challenge a person makes to that is wrong.
1c) There's lots of way to change it up on how elo works, but see 1 and 1b above. Which is not to say it can be changed and it would still refer to 1 and 1b.

2) It is completely irrelevant. As long as there isn't a prize related to ranking then it's not important.
2b) Since it isn't at all relevant or important its' use is to make some people feel warm and fuzzy.
2c) You may want to get rid of it given the former of 2b, however given the later why bother.

In closing, argue for all you like, it's proven itself in trillions of game calculations.


I'd give advice on making it more "accurate"-however, please see 1c.

p.s. in closing the chance of me replying to this again is unlikely as I'm more into playing games and having fun then the measure of my epenis or elopenis.

p.p.s. Read how it works ("simple explanation"); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

p.p.p.s. tl;dr Elo works like this; win games, rank goes up, lose games rank goes down. Period. Luck isn't a factor, randomness is meaningless, statistically everything is all boiled down to one thing and trillions of calculations make people that are math and statistics wizards that spend 60+ years studying find that it is a solid system.

p.p.p.p.s. Ignore this post, this discussion, and go play a game.

[EllieK]

Not really has how does it address the fact that there are wild changes in elo based on a last game even with games that are heavily luck-based.

kaneaaa, Oso's point is valid. Logic fugue follows --

Losing a game to someone with a much lower rating than you should lower your rating more drastically than losing to someone rated near you. Otherwise one could continually play low rated people and wind up with super high ratings. Technically, you can continually play low rated people and wind up with high rating. You just can't lose very often to them. What you're saying is that in a luck based game you will lose more often to them because it's luck based. Yep, they're luck based. You'll lose more often in a game like that. You can't lose very often to a low ranked player, otherwise you could just play low ranked players and wind up with a super high rating. Your rating is more drastically lowered when losing to a player ranked much lower than you, as it should be.

[stupka]

I am still confused as to how you expect BGA to account for luck in their ranking system.

-10pts/loss but if your opponent was "lucky" then you only lose 5 pts????

[idum]

For me, Rating Elo is useful only for to define quality of players. Luck is obviusly part of the game, but, for example, if you play at Race of the Galaxy, you can see that the player that "live" in expert/master zone are effectively stronger than other. They can lose some games for pure bad luck against almost all players, but it is statistically rare. Normally, when there is a standard distribution of cards, better players make better decisions and won a major number of games.

Same situation in 6nimmt, where, even if there are lot of "random" elements (5 players, totally random cards etc), the ones with rating expert are always the same. It can happens that one decade at good player, because competition is hard, but in the medium terms you see the right in the elo system.

And the classic (for me) is in the Hawaii. I'm a very good player in Hawaii, and i'm normally in the first 10 players on this site. Well, i have a ridiculous rating score against Firstgrader: it beat me 8 times over 10 games. I can tell about luck, but the truth is that he is better than me. And his ELO is better than me.

So, the heart of the story is: use the rating elo as a method to select the level of your players. If you want to play with people that are statistically weaker than you , and you lose, pay the consequence and improve your game