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[GeoLib]

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.

[silverspawn]

i hate this statement:

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:

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?

[Awaclus]

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.

[jonts26]

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.

[Awaclus]

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".

[silverspawn]

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

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.

[Lekkit]

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.

[silverspawn]

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.

[serakfalcon]

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".

[markusin]

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.

[Polk5440]

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.

[Lekkit]

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.

[markusin]

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.

[silverspawn]

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

[markusin]

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.

[jonts26]

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.

[Voltaire]

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.

[Polk5440]

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.

[florrat]

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.

[Polk5440]

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).

[Voltaire]

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.

[serakfalcon]

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.

[Polk5440]

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.

[Kirian]

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.

[Awaclus]

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.