Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5  All

Author Topic: Leaderboard change  (Read 52797 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Fabian

  • 2012 Swedish Champion
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 666
  • Respect: +542
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #25 on: November 24, 2011, 09:56:27 am »
0

Let me add my voice to the list of players who greatly dislike this change. The reasons have already been outlined above by other posters, but please consider them.
Logged

painted_cow

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 151
  • Respect: +20
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #26 on: November 24, 2011, 09:57:24 am »
0

Delete Karumah and I am ranked #1 again :D (nice change one could think)

But I dislike the system eventhough! The argument, that games like 6 months ago should not influence todays skill is, as someone already mentioned, in the "old" system of Trueskill. Take an example. Lets say I lost 1 game 6 months ago, or maybe 10 games in a row. This drags down my Trueskill number for a short time. But in addition my future games after that losses will be rewarded with higher gainings. So in the long-run games that long ago wont matter anyway. Hope this argument is understandable :-)
Logged

Fabian

  • 2012 Swedish Champion
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 666
  • Respect: +542
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #27 on: November 24, 2011, 10:08:03 am »
0

Can we at least please have the old leaderboard back too :( This seriously is making me sad (admitedly probably more than it should though).
Logged

Geefour

  • Pawn
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4
  • Respect: +6
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #28 on: November 24, 2011, 10:16:44 am »
0

I wonder which date will be chosen as the basis of the seeding for the upcoming tournament.  I was looking at playing one of the top-ranked players in the first round.
Logged

Qvist

  • Mountebank
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2400
  • Shuffle iT Username: Qvist
  • Respect: +4085
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #29 on: November 24, 2011, 10:21:36 am »
+1

The problem with my idea (basing it on the last X games) is that you could very easily end up winning a game and going down in rank, which doesn't really make much sense.

I thought about it last night, and it seems that there's not much options beyond doing a "Top Players in Last 30 Days" leaderboard and a separate "Top Players All-Time" leaderboard.  Outside of TrueSkill's built in time decay, if you want to further encourage activity and highlight the recent stars, there's not much options other than what doug has done here. 

At the same time, the top ten of today's leaderboard has only 2 of yesterday's all-time top ten (plus Karumah, of course).  I'm currently level 27, and whoever I play with is going to have their ranking seriously distorted.  This ends up defeating the original purpose of TrueSkill, which was to promote fair and automatic matchmaking.

I don't see the problem with this. If we count the last X games, every game one game drops out of your rating. So let's say, that game that dropped out of my ranking was a win against a Lvl 40 player, and now I win against a Lvl 30 player, of course the rank goes a little bit down, but that shouldn't change so much. That's probably not more than -0.05 considering 500 games (just an estimation).
And it could happen so now too. If you play today one match and win against a Lvl 30 player, but 31 days ago you played exactly one match too and won against a Lvl 40 player, your rating drops too.

Most of the sport rankings work this way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Rankings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATP_Entry_Ranking

The problem is you are now forced to play massively. If not you get high variance. That seems not fair.
I would leave it as it was because ranking systems like ELO or TrueSkill are designed to be balanced.
If it's because some people found out how to tweak it, then not the system failed. Then you have to change which games to take into account like already suggested.

Görling

  • Herbalist
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5
  • Respect: +2
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #30 on: November 24, 2011, 10:28:30 am »
+1

+1 for reverting back to the old scoring

I do, however, think that imposing stricter rules about what games contribute to your ranking could be fruitful.

IMO The definition of being truly skilled at the game is your ability to beat any player on any board. Therefore i suggest that the only games that should contribute to your ranking are tournament games and automatches with unbiased boards and no veto. Also turning down a suggested automatch should make you lose a small amount of ranking points.

A compromise could be to have random games contribute more to your ranking than veto-games or something along those lines.

I see no reason to temper with peoples current ranking. If Karumah is such a bother to you why dont you just manually reset him or whatever?
Logged

Stealth Tomato

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 507
  • Dorkneel
  • Respect: +480
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #31 on: November 24, 2011, 10:37:38 am »
0

Also not a fan. I liked jockeying for position on the leaderboard--now it just doesn't seem right, especially with the ridiculous variance coming in.

It was also nice being able to see from the leaderboard approximately how long someone had been playing (career ranked games).
Logged

Kirian

  • Adventurer
  • ******
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7096
  • Shuffle iT Username: Kirian
  • An Unbalanced Equation
  • Respect: +9411
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #32 on: November 24, 2011, 11:12:34 am »
0

The problem with my idea (basing it on the last X games) is that you could very easily end up winning a game and going down in rank, which doesn't really make much sense.

True now anyway, since the rankings are only calculated once a day.  If I had a really good day 30 days ago, and I only play once today for a quick win against someone low-level, my ranking will drop.  THis makes it necessary to play lots of games... which isn't really the point of Isotropic, I think.

It's also (of course) now possible for rankings to drop without playing any games at all.

The analogy I thought of is this:  consider what would happen if FIDE did this for chess players.  The outcry would be instant and impressive.

Now... we played without a leaderboard for many months.  It could easily go away, and we could go back to playing whomever.  But I think the intent of the leaderboard was to be able to find people within a reasonable range of your own skill.  This completely blasts that out of the water.  I mean... theory at rank 27?  MMM at 27?  That's nuts.
Logged
Kirian's Law of f.DS jokes:  Any sufficiently unexplained joke is indistinguishable from serious conversation.

Marcus316

  • Alchemist
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 36
  • Respect: +5
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #33 on: November 24, 2011, 11:31:13 am »
0

Hmmm ... seems like there are a lot of theories about how the leader board should work. I'll throw in my thoughts ...

First, concerning gaming the system: I'm only just starting to read through details about TS, but it seems to me that perhaps the goal definition for the algorithm should be more complex than who wins, perhaps taking into account some sort of priority of goals (in the simplest case, winning by pile depletion vs winning by resign). A game played to the end is far more reliable a judge of skill over a win by resign. Is TS flexible enough to make the distinction ... and does the game log data provide enough detail to recalculate based on the two different end-states? I think this is far more likely to help with Resign-bot cheating.

Second, concerning stale skill vs current hot players: there's no easy answer. On some of the Go servers I play on, the last 6 months worth of games are taken into account, and there's a large diminish in relevance as a game falls back in months. Overly active players still have issues with stale ranking, but it usually clears up if they sow down for a week or two. The other item that helps is to provide an option for playing non-ranked games with ranked opponents, allowing two additional benefits: 1) players don't have to stop playing to ease the staleness of their rank; 2) high-ranked players can freely choose to play non-ranked games against other high-ranked payers in order to experiment with new or crazy strategies, or just to relax with a friend.

Just my few thoughts.
Logged

nsnyder

  • Swindler
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 15
  • Respect: +5
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #34 on: November 24, 2011, 12:22:28 pm »
0

I agree with everyone that 30 days is awful short.  Dominion is a game with very high variance.  If we're going to sunset old games it should be something more like last 1000 games or 3 months whichever is longer.

I'm not totally thrilled about the compression of the rankings.  My relative ranking hasn't changed (near the bottom of the top 100) but the number has gone from 37 to 31.  Seems like there's less info there.
Logged

Lekkit

  • 2011 Swedish Champion
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1253
  • Shuffle iT Username: Lekkit
  • Respect: +674
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #35 on: November 24, 2011, 12:23:07 pm »
0

I think that the leaderboard change should not matter to most of the people. Either you take the game and the leaderboard seriously, and if you do you should probably be able to play a few extra games. Or you play for fun, and then it doesn't affect you.
Logged

painted_cow

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 151
  • Respect: +20
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #36 on: November 24, 2011, 12:39:06 pm »
0

@ Lekkit: This thought may only be true for players, who a) start right now and will play a huge amount of games or b) play a huge amount of games anyway. For established players, who played their biggest amount of games already and reached their goals its a pity not to be at the top anymore.

By the way, was here even one player who liked the changes?
Logged

def

  • Conspirator
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 239
  • Respect: +166
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #37 on: November 24, 2011, 12:58:13 pm »
0

So, why is there an option to only play other players within a certain level range? To make sure that you can chose to play players who probably have a similar skill level like you.
Isn't that a main reason for the leaderboard - not to see who is better, but who is similar good, which leads to pleasant games.
The new system contradicts this, since I won't know what the real level of my opponent is, as long as he isn't playing 100 games per month.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2011, 01:00:48 pm by def »
Logged

biopower

  • Young Witch
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 149
  • Respect: +4
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #38 on: November 24, 2011, 01:07:34 pm »
0

First, concerning gaming the system: I'm only just starting to read through details about TS, but it seems to me that perhaps the goal definition for the algorithm should be more complex than who wins, perhaps taking into account some sort of priority of goals (in the simplest case, winning by pile depletion vs winning by resign). A game played to the end is far more reliable a judge of skill over a win by resign. Is TS flexible enough to make the distinction ... and does the game log data provide enough detail to recalculate based on the two different end-states? I think this is far more likely to help with Resign-bot cheating.

There are so many games where people resign because they don't want to play the game in the end, or the opponent already got more than half of the VP on the board, or each turn takes too long because of pawn/hamlet. Maybe restricting the penalty to games where one player resigns before Turn 5 would be much better than just a flat penalty on all resign games.
Logged

rspeer

  • Witch
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 469
  • Respect: +877
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #39 on: November 24, 2011, 01:43:34 pm »
0

There are so many games where people resign because they don't want to play the game in the end, or the opponent already got more than half of the VP on the board, or each turn takes too long because of pawn/hamlet. Maybe restricting the penalty to games where one player resigns before Turn 5 would be much better than just a flat penalty on all resign games.

If it counts less to resign early, that would just encourage people to say "5/2 gg" and resign instead of playing the game.
Logged

olneyce

  • 2011 DS Champion
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 245
  • Respect: +210
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #40 on: November 24, 2011, 02:04:17 pm »
0

This change 'helps' me, I guess.  #17, wooo!  But it actually just makes cracking the top 20 feel a little cheap, since it's all in one jump, as opposed to the slow slog up the charts I had been conducting.

I don't think it's a problem to include the old games.  If people really want to be free from them, they can just start a new account.  I have one I started mostly just to experiment and mess around and it only took about 100 games to get it right up into the 30s.  But I enjoy playing with the whole corpus of work, including a bunch of stupid early losses, associated with my real account.
Logged

Mergus

  • Coppersmith
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 49
  • Respect: +15
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #41 on: November 24, 2011, 02:10:13 pm »
+2

I agree with many of the opinions posted in this thread so far. For me personally, it was a nice challenge to try and climb the old leaderboard and I like checking it for that reason. With the new system being able to advance will likely become more of a time than a skill challenge to players, which I think is not an improvement.

I also think that the leaderboard is mainly meant to give an idea about the skill of your opponent, in case you never played or heard of him. The new system will not do such a good job of this, unless you and your partner are both really active players. For example, if you look at today's leaderboard, shark_bait is Level 13 and in my opinion he's one of the best players, if you judge it by his success in the two Isodom tournaments. He just doesn't play a lot and with only 22 of his games counting, TrueSkill can't rank him higher.

I know that there are probably many ideas on how to improve the leaderboard and I think it's great that dougz has tried something new and you can always go back (which I would also encourage for the recent update).

An idea I had for a while was that the leaderboard could show your skill among the players that are actually listed. I think everyone agrees that it makes sense not to list players after they have been inactive for a while. Some of these players will come back and some of them never do. So what if the leaderboard would count all of your games (like in the old leaderboard) but only against players that were active in the past X days. I don't know how much longer it would take to update the leaderboard in such a way, but if it's easy to implement, I would really like to see the results. This would be a way to show your skill as it compares to the active community. It's just a question how you would define "active" in that case. If you use X=30 days for this method it probably won't change the old leaderboard too much.

Anyways, this is a good discussion, I hope the outcome will be as well :)
« Last Edit: November 24, 2011, 02:27:57 pm by Mergus »
Logged

rspeer

  • Witch
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 469
  • Respect: +877
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #42 on: November 24, 2011, 02:18:59 pm »
+1

Okay, this is more ridiculous than I thought.

Playing some casual Thanksgiving day games with my friends -- who may play less than I do but are by no means terrible at Dominion -- I find they're all level 0 and 1. The kinds of players who may not be well-represented here on the forum have been basically wiped off of the leaderboard.

Comment from one of them: "Well, I guess this teaches me about the impermanence of all good things."
Another: "You can fix this, right?"
Logged

Lekkit

  • 2011 Swedish Champion
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1253
  • Shuffle iT Username: Lekkit
  • Respect: +674
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #43 on: November 24, 2011, 03:01:07 pm »
0

I actually like the changes. Now it's a leaderboard where you can see who the best active players are. Before it was more like a hall of fame. Sure, 30 days seems like too little to base rankings on, someone mentioned 90 days, and I think I would prefer that.

Most of the "good" players read these boards anyway, and knows that Shark_Bait (just an example) is a good player. A fast-changing leaderboard is not something I see as negative. It encourages people to actually play the game more. Is that bad?
Logged

Jorbles

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1468
  • Respect: +531
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #44 on: November 24, 2011, 03:18:03 pm »
0

I agree with many of the opinions posted in this thread so far. For me personally, it was a nice challenge to try and climb the old leaderboard and I like checking it for that reason. With the new system being able to advance will likely become more of a time than a skill challenge to players, which I think is not an improvement.

I also think that the leaderboard is mainly meant to give an idea about the skill of your opponent, in case you never played or heard of him. The new system will not do such a good job of this, unless you and your partner are both really active players. For example, if you look at today's leaderboard, shark_bait is Level 13 and in my opinion he's one of the best players, if you judge it by his success in the two Isodom tournaments. He just doesn't play a lot and with only 22 of his games counting, TrueSkill can't rank him higher.

I think Mergus brings up a really good point here. I care a lot more about the overall skill level of the person I'm playing against than I do about how they've played in the last 30 days. Especially if they've only played a few games in the last 30 days.
Logged

chwhite

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1065
  • Respect: +442
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #45 on: November 24, 2011, 03:27:44 pm »
+1

I'll forty-fifth the sentiment that this is a bad change and the old leaderboard was better in basically every way.
Logged
To discard or not to discard?  That is the question.

The Adventurer

  • Alchemist
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 35
  • Respect: +5
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #46 on: November 24, 2011, 03:42:43 pm »
0

I completely agree with all that was said on this topic (everything but that bad idea that started the topic, that is).


It is a bad idea to rely solely on this method, though it might be a fun idea to have as a supplement to the original leaderboard (by which all rankings should remain based on). Don't replace the old with this. Why do we have to pick one and only one? You could have all-time records (main), last 30-days, last 500 games, last... etc as complements of info for fun.

Logged

boloni

  • Steward
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 25
  • Respect: +8
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #47 on: November 24, 2011, 07:19:24 pm »
+1

Why do we have to pick one and only one? You could have all-time records (main), last 30-days, last 500 games, last... etc as complements of info for fun.

I would also like different leaderboards. Maybe dougz can add a player-identifier to the game logs so that councilroom or other sites can uniquely identify a player and create alternative leaderboards.
Logged

shark_bait

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1103
  • Shuffle iT Username: shark_bait
  • Luckyfin and Land of Hinter for iso aliases
  • Respect: +1868
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #48 on: November 24, 2011, 08:30:15 pm »
+2

I can't add that much to what's been said, but with the old leaderboard, I was enjoying snailing my way up the leaderboard with my limited time.  I don't really see how a ranking system that doesn't accurately portray the skill of a person can be a good ranking system. 

I'll echo what other's have suggested regarding a recent activity leaderboard and an all time leaderboard.  That way we can see what highly active players are the best and continue to see low activity veterans represented by an accurate level.  For now though, I'll just have to be one of the most fearsome Level 13's around  ;)
Logged
Hello.  Name's Bruce.  It's all right.  I understand.  Why trust a shark, right?

Is quite curious - Who is the mystical "Celestial Chameleon"?

toaster

  • Young Witch
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 133
  • Respect: +46
    • View Profile
Re: Leaderboard change
« Reply #49 on: November 25, 2011, 03:34:32 am »
0

I don't have much to add, except to agree that this change makes the rankings much less enjoyable and useful.  Here's hoping the change will be reconsidered.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5  All
 

Page created in 0.057 seconds with 23 queries.