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Author Topic: Goko rating system  (Read 20735 times)

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ftl

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Goko rating system
« on: April 29, 2013, 02:43:51 pm »
+3

They posted some stuff about the rating system, reposting it here. It was originally at https://getsatisfaction.com/goko/topics/summary_of_rating_calculations .

Quote from: jqs
Each player gets a rating between 0-10,000.  All registered players are rated the same way, including bots.  The system for calculating ratings is complicated and depends on many factors:
 * Ratings are adjusted based on what place you came in, rather than how many victory points you won by.  If you resign a game, it is treated as a loss.

 * Ratings are also adjusted based on the ratings of your opponents. Beating a higher-rated opponent will help your rating much more than beating a lower-rated opponent.

 * The system is conservative with its calculations, so that is reasonably sure you deserve the rating before it awards it to you.  In other words, your rating may be low when you haven't played many games and rise as the system gains more confidence that you deserve the higher rating.

 * Your rating will fluctuate more when the system has little data about how skillful you are.  As you play more, the system's confidence in its estimate grows and your rating will be affected less by results. Unexpected results, such as a win over a much higher-rated opponent, affect ratings the most.
 * Your rating will fluctuate more with results against players with very established ratings

Also responded to some questions, including why you could sometimes lose points after a win:

Quote from: Lord Humanton
>So why exactly can you lose points by winning?
 The purpose of a rating system is to estimate your skill so it can be used predictively, not to make you feel good about winning.  Suppose you have played one game, losing to a 6000 player.  The rating system has to assign you some rating arbitrarily lower than 6000, say it picks 5000.  Now suppose in your second game you beat a player who has a rating of 2000.  Your overall data is:
 * loss vs. 6000
 * win vs. 2000
 From that limited data, a logical guess for your rating would be right in the middle: 4000.  That's all mathematically fine, but to the player, all he sees is that he just lost 1000 points (from 5000 to 4000) by winning.  This is an extreme example and very simplified compared to what actually happens, but it illustrates the principle, which is a feature of most rating systems.

 That said, we no longer allow you to lose points by winning.  Instead, we're perverting the rating system a little to prevent this, only because it upsets players who have a hard time believing it's the best thing to happen in order to model their ability.

 >Can't you just give us the exact formula you use?
 Sorry, it's too complicated a system to plop into a formula, otherwise we would. But you shouldn't stress out over ratings or their calculation. It's better to understand the above principles if you're curious, use ratings as an aid to matching up opponents, and then just go out and enjoy playing the game!
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Watno

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2013, 02:56:54 pm »
+3

I really wonder hpw they calculate their ratings if you cant't put it into a formula^^
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ftl

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2013, 03:25:28 pm »
0

The main things I am curious about in the rating system formula are:

1) How much does "playing a lot" versus "actually being good" factor into a high rating?
2) ...does it matter who you play? On average, will you gain more rating for playing lower or higher-ranked opponents? Obviously, for playing a lower-ranked opponent, you gain fewer points if you win and lose more if you lose, but you also have a higher probability of winning; does that balance out right, so that the expected value is the same whether you play up or play down?

...I'm mistrustful is because right now, I'm #3 in the pro ratings, and I completely don't believe that I'm *actually* the third-best player on goko. I suspect the rating system is doing something wrong to put me there, I'm just not sure what. I was never particularly high on iso...
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2013, 03:34:34 pm »
+10

That's a load of crap. Let's run down the problems:
Having a lower and upper cap is not good - artificial cut-offs and truncations disturb things, no question.
The rest of the first blob is fine, except: "The system is conservative with its calculations, so that is reasonably sure you deserve the rating before it awards it to you.  In other words, your rating may be low when you haven't played many games and rise as the system gains more confidence that you deserve the higher rating."
Now, being conservative is fine (well, conservative is a relative term, but whatever, being more conservative than, say expectations, is fine and probably good). BUT being conservative does NOT mean giving you a lower rating when it's less sure, it means giving you a bigger range to both top and bottom. Every argument you can make about the top you can also make about the bottom. Of course, it's possible to have an underlying assymetric curve which will lead to differences - however, there is absolutely NO substantive evidence to support this, and the amount of groundbreaking research needed to put such a curve on good fitting would be incredibly irresponsible for them to have done.
But ok, this is mostly a gimmick to get you to play more, and to continue to encourage you as you go on, as the overall trend of the ratings is upwards. And well, it's not an uncommon gimmick, so I will try not to complain too much about it, even though it drives me nuts.


However, it's the second bit that is particularly... let's just say wrong.

"The purpose of a rating system is to estimate your skill so it can be used predictively, not to make you feel good about winning." This is actually fine, though I actually doubt that it's true. But if you want to be able to use the thing predictively, then why do you not allow people to, you know, predict anything with it? Like, have some way to convert rating differences into expected win percentage? Or at the very least, show going into a matchup what the system thinks the win% is. Because if you don't make predictions, you aren't being predictive.
So saying that the ratings aren't supposed to make you feel good is a true if not-very-good-for-PR statement. But support it!

"Suppose you have played one game, losing to a 6000 player."
Ok.
"The rating system has to assign you some rating arbitrarily lower than 6000,"
This is absolutely false. The system doesn't have to give you a rating at all, particularly in this situation. Indeed, an entirely reasonable - and in some cases used - approach is to not assign a rating at all until (at least) the winning percentage of a player is neither 0 nor 1.

"say it picks 5000. Now suppose in your second game you beat a player who has a rating of 2000.  Your overall data is:
 * loss vs. 6000
 * win vs. 2000"
Actually, this isn't true. Or rather, it isn't thorough. At the very least, our overall data contains not only these things, but that the win vs. a 2000 came AFTER the loss vs. the 6000.


"From that limited data, a logical guess for your rating would be right in the middle: 4000." I guess you could say that that is "a logical guess", but in reality, it's a bad guess. This treats all data as if it happened simultaneously, which throws out the highly important recency information. Actually it's hard to know what we know without knowing what 1000 points mean. But if we look at it in a very very clear way, we can see that this is wonky. So after one game, we have some (vague) idea of what X's rating is, and we've (perhaps questionably) said that our best guess is 5000. Now this guy wins against a 2000. And our estimation of his skill goes down? This is telling me that his previous sum total of results (a loss against a 6000) is better than his current result (a win against a 2000).

What he is saying here is that it's better to lose against a 6000 than to win against a 2000.

Actually, if we look at it more closely, it seems that he's suggesting that winning against someone is a result that will always pull you towards their rating +1000 points, and a loss will always pull you toward their rating -1000 points. However, it doesn't take much thought to realize that this is one of the stupidest ideas for a rating system you've ever heard of, particularly when they allow ranges of values which are 10,000 points wide - and that a 2000 point spread here effectively represents at least 100% win rate. Actually, it's worse than that, really. Because if this is the case, then imagine you have a player who is rated 3000 and another rated 5000. If the second guy plays the first, his rating *necessarily* decreases, and the other guys *necessarily* increases. That is, your expectation is that the 5000 needs to win something like 200% of the time to *maintain* his current rating, and the other guy needs to win something like -100% of the time to maintain his. This is a linear curve, and it appalls me how bad of an idea it is.


"That's all mathematically fine," Actually, it rather clearly is NOT.

"but to the player, all he sees is that he just lost 1000 points (from 5000 to 4000) by winning."
And to the system, this guy just achieved the best result possible given his situation, and it now estimates him to be a worse player for it. Indeed, if this is the system, no one ever has incentive to play anyone worse than 1000 points below them, ratings-wise, as they can't even tread water. And the system thinks that by agreeing to the game, you're a worse player.

"This is an extreme example and very simplified compared to what actually happens, "
Ok...
"but it illustrates the principle, which is a feature of most rating systems. "
This is total B******t. Most rating systems aren't nearly this bad. Please, provide any evidence for this. (Now of course, I am sure there are systems out there which have this supposed feature, but the VAST MAJORITY of them do not).

"That said, we no longer allow you to lose points by winning.  Instead, we're perverting the rating system a little to prevent this, only because it upsets players who have a hard time believing it's the best thing to happen in order to model their ability. "
Okay, now you're just contradicting yourself. You said that the point of the rating system is to have predictive power and not to make you feel good about yourself. Now you're saying that you're changing your system because people are upset? Which is it? Because you're actually doubly wrong here. This is not a perversion of the rating system (well, it probably is in some sense, i.e. it's less true to the system's terrible foundations, but not in the sense of making the system better/worse in terms of predictions), and it is moreover not following in what you supposedly are upholding as your principles.


" >Can't you just give us the exact formula you use?"
Now actually, I don't have a problem with not giving the exact formula. In the ideal world, you would have it. But there are a number of legitimate reasons for not giving it, so that's fine.

"Sorry, it's too complicated a system to plop into a formula, otherwise we would."
But this is again total baloney. I mean, go look at some of the rating systems that are out there. Go look at Glicko-boost or something. You're telling me it's *more complicated* than that? What 'geniuses' do you have who came up with such an elaborate formula, and how can you afford to pay them? I can't even fathom something that can qualify as a rating system which spits out NUMBERS and is supposed to be numerically predictive and CAN'T be plopped into a formula. Would it be a complicated formula? Yes, of course. Could someone else figure it out? Are you seriously trying to tell me that you're arrogant enough to think that nobody ever could work it out? No, you have other reasons for this, and it gets my craw that you give this "it's too complicated to put in a formula" nonsense rather than actually just giving your real reasons, which may well be legit, but which because you won't give them to us, start to look less so.

"But you shouldn't stress out over ratings or their calculation. It's better to understand the above principles if you're curious, use ratings as an aid to matching up opponents, and then just go out and enjoy playing the game!"
Now I'm fine with a "ratings don't matter that much" standpoint. But now you are telling me what I should stress out over and what I should enjoy?

Watno

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2013, 04:00:35 pm »
0

Don't tell us, tell them.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2013, 04:02:17 pm »
+1

Don't tell us, tell them.
Working definition of insanity.


Lightning edit: And in all honesty, they have bigger fish to fry, even though this fries me.

ooksoo

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #6 on: April 29, 2013, 04:06:00 pm »
0

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Kirian

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #7 on: April 29, 2013, 05:57:59 pm »
+5

>Can't you just give us the exact formula you use?
 Sorry, it's too complicated a system to plop into a formula, otherwise we would.

I... but... how....



COMPUTERS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY
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DStu

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2013, 01:41:52 am »
0

"That's all mathematically fine," Actually, it rather clearly is NOT.
Mathematically, it's maybe alright, just the model they apply the math on seem to be crap.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2013, 08:04:30 am »
+1

"That's all mathematically fine," Actually, it rather clearly is NOT.
Mathematically, it's maybe alright, just the model they apply the math on seem to be crap.
Well, but I would say that is the math. If you have:

You have 60 feet of fencing and you want to build a rectangular fence with fencing on three sides and the natural barrier of a river on the fourth, what dimensions should you build the fence with to cover the maximum area?

And you answer with "I have a system. Every side is equal length. And 60/3 = 20 feet on each side." Is that 'mathematically fine'? Because 60/3 does come out as 20. But the math really is in the set-up. And that's what they have wrong.

DStu

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #10 on: April 30, 2013, 08:18:40 am »
+1

First, I was joking and not really confident of it myself, so not much point in arguing.

Anyway, I think what is math and what is model depends on what axioms you see as given.  You can have a "rating system" with absurd requirements, fulfil them and make perfectly fine math on them, in this case your model i.e. the requirements is crap.  Or you can have good requirements and apply bad math on it.  From our view on goko these are probably indistinguishable.
You can probably also say that the task "build a good rating system" includes identifying the right requirements. Probably depends on what you see as "the task".

Edit: @example: Here of course you have a mathematical error. There is a well-defined task and you make an error in one step assuming the heuristics solves the problem.  But I don't think there is such a well-defined task in "build a rating system".  Defining what that actually means could be understood as modelling.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2013, 08:20:41 am by DStu »
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LastFootnote

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #11 on: April 30, 2013, 11:28:07 am »
0

You have 60 feet of fencing and you want to build a rectangular fence with fencing on three sides and the natural barrier of a river on the fourth, what dimensions should you build the fence with to cover the maximum area?

And you answer with "I have a system. Every side is equal length. And 60/3 = 20 feet on each side." Is that 'mathematically fine'? Because 60/3 does come out as 20. But the math really is in the set-up. And that's what they have wrong.

Oof, I'm ashamed to admit I had to relearn some algebra for that one. To think I got a B.A. in Mathematics not 10 years ago.
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pinkymadigan

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #12 on: April 30, 2013, 11:46:42 am »
0

Regarding figuring out the proper answer to the river/fence example - what is the proper setup? Assuming I could vary the lengths by 1 foot increments I wrote a quick script to find the maximum configuration which gave me 15, 30, 15 sides for an area of 450 square feet, but from a mathematical standpoint, what's the proper way to setup that problem? This seems like something I should know, but anymore when I have a math problem like this I find it easier to program something to find the answer for me.
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Kirian

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2013, 11:56:03 am »
+6

pinky:

Call the sides perpendicular to the river length x.  Then the side parallel to the river has length 60 - 2x.  The area of the enclosure is x(60 - 2x) = 60x - 2x2.  To find the maximum of that quadratic, we determine the derivative and find the zero of the derivative, which is the highest point on the quadratic because the squared term is negative.  So:

(d/dx)(60x - 2x2) = 60 - 4x

Find the zero: 60 - 4x = 0... which means x = 60/4 = 15 ft; that's the two perpendicular sides.  Then the parallel side is 60 - 2x = 30 ft.
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pinkymadigan

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #14 on: April 30, 2013, 12:26:30 pm »
+1

pinky:

Call the sides perpendicular to the river length x.  Then the side parallel to the river has length 60 - 2x.  The area of the enclosure is x(60 - 2x) = 60x - 2x2.  To find the maximum of that quadratic, we determine the derivative and find the zero of the derivative, which is the highest point on the quadratic because the squared term is negative.  So:

(d/dx)(60x - 2x2) = 60 - 4x

Find the zero: 60 - 4x = 0... which means x = 60/4 = 15 ft; that's the two perpendicular sides.  Then the parallel side is 60 - 2x = 30 ft.

Yep, that all looks familiar.

Thanks. I gotta get out of programming financial stuff. It's boring, and seeing stuff like this really makes me wish I had ended up in simulation programming, where you really get to flex your math muscles all the time.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #15 on: April 30, 2013, 01:19:53 pm »
0

First, I was joking and not really confident of it myself, so not much point in arguing.

Anyway, I think what is math and what is model depends on what axioms you see as given.  You can have a "rating system" with absurd requirements, fulfil them and make perfectly fine math on them, in this case your model i.e. the requirements is crap.  Or you can have good requirements and apply bad math on it.  From our view on goko these are probably indistinguishable.
You can probably also say that the task "build a good rating system" includes identifying the right requirements. Probably depends on what you see as "the task".

Edit: @example: Here of course you have a mathematical error. There is a well-defined task and you make an error in one step assuming the heuristics solves the problem.  But I don't think there is such a well-defined task in "build a rating system".  Defining what that actually means could be understood as modelling.

The problem I have here is that they define what it means - they say it is supposed to be predictive of future matches. And actually, by any criteria I've ever heard for a rating system, the math doesn't add up.

By what you're saying, ANY math could be correct.

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #16 on: April 30, 2013, 02:33:45 pm »
+8

There's a cute trick for the river and fence.  If you reflect your fence in the river then you're just building rectangular fences, and it's easy to show that the square has the largest area among rectangles with the same perimeter.
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theory

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #17 on: April 30, 2013, 02:44:28 pm »
0

There's a cute trick for the river and fence.  If you reflect your fence in the river then you're just building rectangular fences, and it's easy to show that the square has the largest area among rectangles with the same perimeter.

I think this one belongs in The Book.
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DStu

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #18 on: April 30, 2013, 02:44:37 pm »
+2

I think we both agree on what they have done wrong, and if that could possibly called math or model or whatever is quite unimportant.
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dsc

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #19 on: January 28, 2014, 11:04:44 pm »
+4

I don't understand why they spent time on this at all. It's basically a solved problem. ELO has been around since the 30's; it's used for a bunch of serious competitive games (like Chess, Go, some MLB player ratings, etc). Microsoft's TrueSkill[1], the multiplayer variant, has plenty of solid open-source implementations[2]. I think we all know this because Iso used it.

But like, even if TrueSkill doesn't suit your fancy, skill-estimation rating systems are well-studied and there are tons of them. You really need a good reason to come up with a new one. If their argument was "we decided TrueSkill didn't suit our needs and here's a careful discussion of the differences" then I'd be totally open to blazing some trails. For example, Blizzard didn't use it for the StarCraft 2 ladders[3]. They wanted matching to maintain a sort of camaraderie if you played frequently. So they traded off on precision of skill-estimation in favor of making the humans have more fun. That seems reasonable.

But that's not what we get. We're told that math is hard and everybody should just chill out or go shopping. In fact, we're explicitly told that the system wasn't there to make us happy, which seems suspicious. In fact, it mostly sounds to me like "we didn't do our homework (also we can't keep our servers up haha suckers have some lag!!1)". I, for one, do not find this argument compelling.

[1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/
[2] https://github.com/search?q=trueskill -- The implementation isotropic used: https://github.com/dougz/trueskill
[3] http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/7/24/analyzing-starcraft-2s-ranking-system.html
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yed

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #20 on: January 29, 2014, 04:08:49 am »
+1

Comparing with Isotropish when it was up, they probably use Trueskill with different parameters (and some bugs). I think they can't say that to avoid licensing problems.
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Schneau

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #21 on: January 29, 2014, 07:10:54 am »
+2

Since this thread was zombied, might as well make use of it. Here's a quote from the new forum FAQ:

What should I do if I'm losing so badly, I just want to end the game?
If it is a two-player game, you should resign the game. You can resign by clicking on the options button and then choosing Resign. Resigning a two-player game is fine etiquette: you admit you have lost the game and your opponent's time is not wasted playing out to a foregone conclusion. On the other hand, simply closing the browser tab or leaving the window so it times out is known as "quitting" and is considered bad sportsmanship. In this case, your opponent must wait for you to move until the system finally determines you are not there and adjudicates the game. In games with three or more players, leaving the game in the middle ruins the dynamics of the game for the remaining players, so please stick it out to the end in those games.

Is "ruins the dynamics of the game" a euphemism for "quits the game entirely because its coded poorly", or do they not know that this is what happens?
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #22 on: January 29, 2014, 07:22:42 am »
+2

I don't understand why they spent time on this at all. It's basically a solved problem. ELO has been around since the 30's; it's used for a bunch of serious competitive games (like Chess, Go, some MLB player ratings, etc). Microsoft's TrueSkill[1], the multiplayer variant, has plenty of solid open-source implementations[2]. I think we all know this because Iso used it.
Minor point: Elo (which I prefer to capitalizing it ELO, considering it's named after a man) has been around since the 50s. It was first implemented in 1960.

And actually, there have been problems raised with all of these systems, and they look for alternatives for these reasons. Of course, I wouldn't think Goko are really the people to solve them, especially considering where they have been with staffing and how many bigger problems they have. But there are reasons why you might want a different system, to be fair.

factotumjack

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #23 on: January 29, 2014, 11:34:02 pm »
0

Just wanted to mention how much, as a grad student in Statistics, this thread makes me feel at home.

I knew this game attracted a lot of math fans, but this really drove it home for me.
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dsc

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #24 on: January 30, 2014, 08:50:30 am »
+1

1. raar brains.
2. It's not so much the perfection of the existing solutions as the fact that Goko has a bevy of bigger and more obvious fish to fry. Like, say, keeping the servers up. Or reducing lag somewhere below geologic timescales. As a software engineer, `pip install py-trueskill` sounds pretty great when I've been awake for 3 days patching things with duct-tape and tears.
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GeoLib

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #25 on: February 11, 2014, 04:37:11 pm »
+2

http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?4259-Rating-System

I asked the question again, and someone's giving responses that are a little more helpful. I like these new guys a lot better.
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silverspawn

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #26 on: February 12, 2014, 06:34:09 pm »
+1

i hate this statement:
Quote from: Jeff
but we encourage people not to get too obsessed about ratings. It's much better to enjoy playing the game.

it basically says being competetive is a bad thing.

also, without knowing anything about rating systems, i find this really strange:
Quote from: Jeff
For example, in your very first game you lose a game against a 2000 player and get a rating somewhat lower, say 1600. In your second game, you beat a 1000 player. If you just look at your results so far -- a win vs. 1000 and a loss vs. 2000 -- a best guess for your rating is reasonably 1500. However, assigning you 1500 means that your rating has just gone down 100 points for the win.
If your only game is a loss to someone with a 2k rating, why would your estimated ranking me 1600? that suggests that it matters how high ranked the guy you played is. but why does the system think you're a better player when you lost to a 2k rating instead of a 6k rating? or let's hypothetically say you lost against someone with a 10k rating, then your estimated rating is like 7k? how does that make any sense, it doesn't require skill to lose games. why isn't your estimated ranking just zero until you win a game?

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #27 on: February 12, 2014, 06:43:28 pm »
+2

it basically says being competetive is a bad thing.
No, that's not what it says. Being competitive means playing for the win because you enjoy playing for the win, not playing for the win because you want some stupid rating points.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #28 on: February 12, 2014, 07:39:46 pm »
+2

it basically says being competetive is a bad thing.
No, that's not what it says. Being competitive means playing for the win because you enjoy playing for the win, not playing for the win because you want some stupid rating points.

No, I think silverspawn is right. Winning for the sake of winning is not being competitive. If that were the case competitive people would only want to play the weakest opponents. Properly accumulating 'stupid rating points' is how you find evenly matched opponents which leads more often to an interesting, competitive game.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #29 on: February 13, 2014, 12:56:39 am »
0

it basically says being competetive is a bad thing.
No, that's not what it says. Being competitive means playing for the win because you enjoy playing for the win, not playing for the win because you want some stupid rating points.

No, I think silverspawn is right. Winning for the sake of winning is not being competitive. If that were the case competitive people would only want to play the weakest opponents. Properly accumulating 'stupid rating points' is how you find evenly matched opponents which leads more often to an interesting, competitive game.
You misunderstood me. I didn't say "playing for the win because you enjoy winning", I said "playing for the win because you enjoy playing for the win".
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silverspawn

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #30 on: February 13, 2014, 08:31:35 am »
0

being competitive = wanting very much to win or be more successful than other people

the rating is supposed to reflect your skill. that means being competitive = wanting very much to win or have a higher rating than other people = caring about your rating

Quote from: Jeff
but we encourage people not to get too obsessed about ratings.
= caring to much about ratings is a bad thing = being competetive is a bad thing.

seems pretty explicit to me.

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #31 on: February 13, 2014, 08:46:48 am »
+3

That's not how I read it at all. They encourage people to not get too obsessed with ratings = They prefer casuals. Prefering one thing is not the same as saying the opposite is bad.

The fact that they want to market this towards casuals should NOT come as a surprise to anyone.
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silverspawn

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #32 on: February 13, 2014, 10:48:42 am »
0

That's not how I read it at all. They encourage people to not get too obsessed with ratings = They prefer casuals. Prefering one thing is not the same as saying the opposite is bad.

The fact that they want to market this towards casuals should NOT come as a surprise to anyone.

it kind of is. encouraging someone not to do a certain thing at least implies that this certain thing is bad. he could've said something like: "we're trying to have our ranking reflect the skill of each individual player, but you don't have to be obsessed with it. it's completely fine to enjoy playing the game without caring about your ranking."

it's the difference between: "X is just as fine as Y" and "it's much better to do X than Y".

I also didn't say I was surprised by this statement. I wasn't. the vast majority of all players are casuals. I just said I didn't like it.

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #33 on: February 13, 2014, 10:59:18 am »
0


the rating is supposed to reflect your skill. that means being competitive = wanting very much to win or have a higher rating than other people = caring about your rating


That doesn't follow. Wanting to win doesn't necessarily mean you care about your ranking on a stupid leaderboard, it just means you want to win. A competitive person will be more concerned that the leaderboard ACTUALLY measures skill, and if it does, then they will care about their position. If it can't be shown that the leaderboard accurately measures skill, competitive people will find some other way to track "who's the best".
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #34 on: February 13, 2014, 11:03:09 am »
+1


the rating is supposed to reflect your skill. that means being competitive = wanting very much to win or have a higher rating than other people = caring about your rating


That doesn't follow. Wanting to win doesn't necessarily mean you care about your ranking on a stupid leaderboard, it just means you want to win. A competitive person will be more concerned that the leaderboard ACTUALLY measures skill, and if it does, then they will care about their position. If it can't be shown that the leaderboard accurately measures skill, competitive people will find some other way to track "who's the best".
And thus, the Isotropish leaderboard came to be.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #35 on: February 13, 2014, 11:09:50 am »
+1


the rating is supposed to reflect your skill. that means being competitive = wanting very much to win or have a higher rating than other people = caring about your rating


That doesn't follow. Wanting to win doesn't necessarily mean you care about your ranking on a stupid leaderboard, it just means you want to win. A competitive person will be more concerned that the leaderboard ACTUALLY measures skill, and if it does, then they will care about their position. If it can't be shown that the leaderboard accurately measures skill, competitive people will find some other way to track "who's the best".
And thus, the Isotropish leaderboard came to be.

And was thus compared to Goko's leaderboard and they were found to be eerily similar.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #36 on: February 13, 2014, 11:13:17 am »
0

If they thought competitiveness was bad, they wouldn't have ratings. They have ratings but encourage people not to get too obsessed about them. Even if we assume that encouraging someone to do one thing implies the opoosite is bad (to which I strongly disagree) he says that it's bad to get too obsessed about the ratings. And I'm pretty sure getting too obsessed by anything is not a good thing.

I agree that he could've phrased it slightly better, but that doesn't mean I think he phrased it bad.
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markusin

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #37 on: February 13, 2014, 11:29:42 am »
0

That bit about the provisional ratings is curious. It might be related to why winning against players with very few games played tends to give you more points than winning against a not-so-new player with a rating that's 1000 or so points higher than the new player.

My only real issue with the Goko ratings is that it feels very unforgiving sometimes. The whole "XXXX+" requirement for games is a by-product of that. Players with a high ranking have lots to lose and nothing to gain from playing against people with a ranking that's lower than their own by more than 2000 points.
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silverspawn

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #38 on: February 13, 2014, 11:31:06 am »
0


the rating is supposed to reflect your skill. that means being competitive = wanting very much to win or have a higher rating than other people = caring about your rating


That doesn't follow. Wanting to win doesn't necessarily mean you care about your ranking on a stupid leaderboard, it just means you want to win. A competitive person will be more concerned that the leaderboard ACTUALLY measures skill, and if it does, then they will care about their position. If it can't be shown that the leaderboard accurately measures skill, competitive people will find some other way to track "who's the best".

that's true. it's just that i don't actually have any problem with the leaderbord, players who have higher rankings generally seem to be better. but i agree, if you thought that the leaderbord is arbitrary, you wouldn't care about it even if you're competitive

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #39 on: February 13, 2014, 11:32:51 am »
0


the rating is supposed to reflect your skill. that means being competitive = wanting very much to win or have a higher rating than other people = caring about your rating


That doesn't follow. Wanting to win doesn't necessarily mean you care about your ranking on a stupid leaderboard, it just means you want to win. A competitive person will be more concerned that the leaderboard ACTUALLY measures skill, and if it does, then they will care about their position. If it can't be shown that the leaderboard accurately measures skill, competitive people will find some other way to track "who's the best".
And thus, the Isotropish leaderboard came to be.

And was thus compared to Goko's leaderboard and they were found to be eerily similar.
True, but the Goko leaderboard fluctuates a lot more, no? Plus, we now have games played on Goko that contributed to Goko ranks but were never logged. That shouldn't have much of a lasting effect in the long run though.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #40 on: February 13, 2014, 11:39:25 am »
+3

To say Goko is gearing their platform towards casuals is strange to me. At least as far as online dominion is concerned, I can't think of anything that would be desirable to hardcore players that wouldn't be desirable to casuals. We all want a reliable way to play a game, an intuitive, responsive UI, automatch based on a rating system which accurately measures skill, etc. The big difference between us and those filthy casuals is that we gripe about these problems on a forum, and even occasionally discuss solutions. Casuals just move on to another game.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #41 on: February 13, 2014, 11:55:23 am »
+1

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #42 on: February 13, 2014, 12:12:48 pm »
+1

True, but the Goko leaderboard fluctuates a lot more, no?

A little more; I wouldn't say a lot. One way to interpret this is that Goko's leaderboard better reflects how you have been playing recently. I think the Isotropic leaderboard was too rigid, not allowing people to improve fast enough and allowed people to more easily "protect" high ratings through periods of bad play (not just bad luck) by only playing (other) highly ranked players.

I go through periods where I play badly (e.g. two weeks where I only play while watching a good tv show at the same time). My Goko rating drops a lot, but seems to be more accurate reflection of the skill I am actually displaying at the time.

Both Goko and Isotropish seem to function very similarly -- the differences seem to be because of differences in parameters rather than major differences between systems. They've told us in the past that at the heart the ranking is a mean minus some multiple of a standard deviation and it's updated in a Bayesian fashion using only win/loss/tie as the input. These things are true of TrueSkill, too.

And the Goko/MakingFun rep is completely right when he says wonky things happen with rankings in TrueSkill, too. You just don't see them presented to you on a game-by-game basis and much of the wonkishness is rounded off by presenting fewer digits. You effectively see 2 digits more information with Goko than Isotropish. Level 42. Level 5834. Maybe if they want to stem complaints, they should just change this.

WW has made some good arguments in other threads about just displaying and using the mean, too, for regular players, but that argument applies to many popular rating systems in use.

Of course, Goko is not taking advantage of the primary reason of having a rating system  -- matching people of like skills to ensure more competitive games. That's what we should be pushing them on, especially since it was in the works at some point.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #43 on: February 13, 2014, 12:14:15 pm »
+1

The whole "XXXX+" requirement for games is a by-product of that.
I don't know whether this is true for other people, but this is not the case for me. I put XXXX+ in my game because I want to play against a decent opponent. I don't care about the consequences for my rating.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #44 on: February 13, 2014, 12:25:51 pm »
0

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.

What if you ask to play a non-rated/casual game if you are interesting in playing to learn and a highly ranked player is just sitting around in a lobby? Non-rated/casual is an underutilized option, I think.

Maybe players significantly higher in rating are able to easily find games with each other (which might be more enjoyable to them).
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #45 on: February 13, 2014, 12:28:29 pm »
0

Maybe players significantly higher in rating are able to easily find games with each other (which might be more enjoyable to them).

Exactly. Ideally things would work as a gradient, but instead they've turned into tiers. If that makes sense.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #46 on: February 13, 2014, 12:41:05 pm »
0

those filthy casuals

+1 purely for "those filthy casuals". If only I could +1 twice!

Oh, save us from the swarthy unkempt masses! (The Rabble, if you will)

Of course, Goko is not taking advantage of the primary reason of having a rating system  -- matching people of like skills to ensure more competitive games. That's what we should be pushing them on, especially since it was in the works at some point.
Yes, exactly.

 
non-rated/casual is an underutilized option, I think.

An issue I have with the other ratings is that (with salvager) the board can be manipulated due to the kingdom generator.
Of course, if you know how to code & are Familiar with Salvager you could also altar the board in pro. Such a Saboteur would be an unwelcome Develop-ment but given enough time you can Count on it.

Sorry. I don't know what came over me.
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Polk5440

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #47 on: February 13, 2014, 01:10:13 pm »
0

An issue I have with the other ratings is that (with salvager) the board can be manipulated due to the kingdom generator.

Actually, this is part of why I think they are underutilized options. Sometimes I just want to know I am not going to be playing a Rebuild game or randomize between two sets or set up an interesting kingdom. I am not bothered by the possibility people could practice or set up a trap kingdom since you can see the cards before joining.

I thought many others would feel the same way. But I guess many people really do just like pure random.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #48 on: February 13, 2014, 02:42:05 pm »
0

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.

The only time this annoys me is when I see someone rated 5100 who is requesting 5000+.   I usually try to leave a 1000 point or so gap below my rating; there's no good reason to play *only* people who are better than you.

However, this is really just a reminder that real matchmaking is needed.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #49 on: February 13, 2014, 02:51:55 pm »
0

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.

The only time this annoys me is when I see someone rated 5100 who is requesting 5000+.   I usually try to leave a 1000 point or so gap below my rating; there's no good reason to play *only* people who are better than you.

However, this is really just a reminder that real matchmaking is needed.
The only time this annoys me is when I see someone who is requesting 5000+, and after joining the game, realize that their own rating was something like 4700 and that they already started the game.

I'm usually playing against 5300+ regardless of my own rating, because with 5200+ I sometimes get to play against people who aren't very good, with 5300+ those games happen but are very rare. I would decrease the number if my rating went like below 5500 though.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #50 on: February 13, 2014, 03:01:02 pm »
0

I use 4600+ because that appears to be the sweet spot for avoiding quitters/jerks most of the time. I don't mean to block out players, it's just in the interest of saving time.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #51 on: February 13, 2014, 03:05:03 pm »
0

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.

The only time this annoys me is when I see someone rated 5100 who is requesting 5000+.   I usually try to leave a 1000 point or so gap below my rating; there's no good reason to play *only* people who are better than you.

However, this is really just a reminder that real matchmaking is needed.

Well, it makes sense if you are returning after a break and your current rating doesn't reflect your actual level of play.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #52 on: February 13, 2014, 05:03:07 pm »
0

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.

The only time this annoys me is when I see someone rated 5100 who is requesting 5000+.   I usually try to leave a 1000 point or so gap below my rating; there's no good reason to play *only* people who are better than you.

However, this is really just a reminder that real matchmaking is needed.

it's legit though. there is no law that requests that your own ranking has to be in the scope that you're asking for. if you open a game you make an offer for others to play with you. and you can offer whatever you want. you could be 3000 and ask for 5k+ if you wanted, and even that would be fine. it only annoys you because you automatically assume a certain ranking from the host based on what he's asking for. so it's kind of your problem.

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #53 on: February 13, 2014, 05:34:46 pm »
+1

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.

The only time this annoys me is when I see someone rated 5100 who is requesting 5000+.   I usually try to leave a 1000 point or so gap below my rating; there's no good reason to play *only* people who are better than you.

However, this is really just a reminder that real matchmaking is needed.

it's legit though. there is no law that requests that your own ranking has to be in the scope that you're asking for. if you open a game you make an offer for others to play with you. and you can offer whatever you want. you could be 3000 and ask for 5k+ if you wanted, and even that would be fine. it only annoys you because you automatically assume a certain ranking from the host based on what he's asking for. so it's kind of your problem.

Well, really it's not my problem at all, as I don't join other people's games unless it's been set up beforehand.

However, it's a matter of... courtesy?  Maybe.  Given that the intent of most rating systems is to match players of similar rating, it's a bit silly to ask for 5000+ when you're 4000.  Obviously that's up to the game's host, and anyone joining the game can check the host's rating first.  I'd probably just blacklist someone trying to do it, though again it doesn't matter to me because I host.
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #54 on: February 13, 2014, 06:24:59 pm »
0

The whole "XXXX+" game thing is incredibly aggravating to me as someone whose Dominion skill seems to pretty clearly be 4800 on goko's system. I rarely get to play games with players better than me, and as such I don't get to increase my skill by learning from those better than I am.

The only time this annoys me is when I see someone rated 5100 who is requesting 5000+.   I usually try to leave a 1000 point or so gap below my rating; there's no good reason to play *only* people who are better than you.

However, this is really just a reminder that real matchmaking is needed.

it's legit though. there is no law that requests that your own ranking has to be in the scope that you're asking for. if you open a game you make an offer for others to play with you. and you can offer whatever you want. you could be 3000 and ask for 5k+ if you wanted, and even that would be fine. it only annoys you because you automatically assume a certain ranking from the host based on what he's asking for. so it's kind of your problem.

Well, really it's not my problem at all, as I don't join other people's games unless it's been set up beforehand.

However, it's a matter of... courtesy?  Maybe.  Given that the intent of most rating systems is to match players of similar rating, it's a bit silly to ask for 5000+ when you're 4000.  Obviously that's up to the game's host, and anyone joining the game can check the host's rating first.  I'd probably just blacklist someone trying to do it, though again it doesn't matter to me because I host.

I think it's... pathetic, in a way. It's like saying: "I'm actually better than other players at my rating, I've just been unlucky." that's something a lot of people want to believe, especially if they're unhappy with their current rating.

also, they could see their rating being more likely to go up when playing vs high ranked opponents. i generally feel like, if your only goal was to get your rating up, you should choose opponents that are as high ranked as possible. you're obviously less likely to win, but i feel like goko factors rating differences too much. and even if that isn't correct, some people will think it is.

either way, it makes you look kind of bad, but it's still legit.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2014, 06:39:52 pm by silverspawn »
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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #55 on: February 14, 2014, 12:30:11 pm »
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Playing against strong players is a good way to learn, so it's possible these 3723 pts players with their 4000+ games are trying to learn.

I do find it a little odd, and I always check before I play.

5k is of course an arbitrary cutoff.  Some players at 5k are less than 25 isotropish (due to goko ratings being more responsive to a winning streak), and I'd prefer not to play against people at that level.  5.3k+ might be better, but with the lobbies being what they are it's hard to make that work.  I do +- 1000 in my automatch, so i will accept matches from people above 4700 that way.  i guess that's inconsistent...
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hsiale

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #56 on: February 15, 2014, 07:15:02 am »
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I also use +/-1000, which sometimes means 4500-6500, but sometimes moves way lower.
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Destierro

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #57 on: February 15, 2014, 07:31:14 am »
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Playing against strong players is a good way to learn, so it's possible these 3723 pts players with their 4000+ games are trying to learn.
This. One thousand times this.

I think it's... pathetic, in a way. It's like saying: "I'm actually better than other players at my rating, I've just been unlucky." that's something a lot of people want to believe, especially if they're unhappy with their current rating.

also, they could see their rating being more likely to go up when playing vs high ranked opponents. i generally feel like, if your only goal was to get your rating up, you should choose opponents that are as high ranked as possible. you're obviously less likely to win, but i feel like goko factors rating differences too much. and even if that isn't correct, some people will think it is.

either way, it makes you look kind of bad, but it's still legit.
The best way to learn is to watch better players do their magic. Be that through videos, articles, or playing against them, it doesn't matter. If you mind playing against lower rated players then that's fine, just don't play with them. But keep in mind that it is the best way to get better at the game.
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silverspawn

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #58 on: February 15, 2014, 12:24:41 pm »
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i don't think that's the reason... it's possible though.

flies

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #59 on: February 16, 2014, 01:22:48 pm »
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i'm not convinced it is either.  I just like to pretend that these strangers have love in their heart.
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Stealth Tomato

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Re: Goko rating system
« Reply #60 on: February 18, 2014, 02:27:00 pm »
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the rating is supposed to reflect your skill. that means being competitive = wanting very much to win or have a higher rating than other people = caring about your rating


That doesn't follow. Wanting to win doesn't necessarily mean you care about your ranking on a stupid leaderboard, it just means you want to win. A competitive person will be more concerned that the leaderboard ACTUALLY measures skill, and if it does, then they will care about their position. If it can't be shown that the leaderboard accurately measures skill, competitive people will find some other way to track "who's the best".

that's true. it's just that i don't actually have any problem with the leaderbord, players who have higher rankings generally seem to be better. but i agree, if you thought that the leaderbord is arbitrary, you wouldn't care about it even if you're competitive

Even independent of leaderboards, some players would rather make the correct decision and lose than make the incorrect decision and win.
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