I would like to share my concerns about the formula that will be used to calculate everyone’s rating.
They must come up with a formula that does not give an advantage to the ppl who play the most, nor to those who play very little, though that should still be taken into account. (For instance the simple formula that gives +10 points for a win, and -10 points for a loss would be wrong, because a player with a 90% win/loss ratio will have 80 points over 10 games -9 wins, 1 loss- but a guy with a 60% win/loss ratio can have the same score by playing more, here 40 games – 60% wins so 24 games worth 240 points and 40% losses so 16 games worth -160 points, for a total of 80 points).
So I figured it would help if we could give them some guidance while it’s still a work in progress.
First, if one day this game wants to make it to eSports, it needs first of all a proper and reliable match making system. And imho that should be a mandatory basis for building a reliable leaderboard ranking.
(Because you are all happy about the leaderboards, but you have no idea how biased it’s going to be given the current matchmaking system. You rarely face opponents of your level, if you play on busy hours you are a lot more likely to face a PUG team of PvE players getting their laurels than a competitive team seeking PvP challenge, whereas if you play in the late night you are more likely to face hardcore gamers, or Asians :p. Just this makes the rating system biased if the formula does not take everything into account as I suggest below.)
Then it needs a fair formula for calculating the leaderboards, and MAKE IT PUBLIC. (If the formula is 100% fair like we hope, I guess Anet won’t have any concerns making it public, if they don’t, you can rightfully assume that the formula is biased/wrong, and showing it could lead to exploiting it.)
So, here is my little contribution.
The rating system should have the following features:
-Points cannot be created nor deleted, they must be swapped between teams. After each game, the winning team must earn as many point as the opposing team loses. Otherwise it will lead to exploits.
-The difference in the average win/loss ratio of each member of each team should be taken into account (If you are in a team with an average win/loss ratio of 50%, winning against a team with an avg w/l ratio of 90% should gives you more points than winning against a team with an avg of 10% w/l ratio)
PS: this rule would not be needed if the matchmaking system worked properly
-The difference in the avg of games played should be taken into account (Again, winning against a team which has an avg of 90% win/loss ratio over 500 games must give you more points than a team with the same w/l ratio -ie 90%- but over only 5 games.)
PS: this rule would not be needed if the matchmaking system worked properly
-For lack of making a separate category for competitive 5-players premade team tournaments, the formula should take into account how many members of each team queued together. (If you are 3 guild mates queueing and get 2 PU players who soloqueued, your team should get something like a -20% on the loss of points after a loss against a 5-players premade team -and obviously the winning team will have a -20% penalty on the points earned as well- to compensate for the PUGing)
PS: this rule would not be needed if the matchmaking system worked properly
-Prevent players from changing characters AFTER the game has begun.
-Dealing with AFKers / Leavers: Huge point penalty like the equivalent of 20 losses, and provided that the matchmaking system works properly, after afking or leaving a few games they will only face r10- teams.
-Reset the leaderboard every so often (every month?) in order to kick out players who don’t play anymore, and give a chance for new players to get in.
I really hope that this thread will be useless because everything has been accounted for.