Guild Wars 2

Didn’t read all of the responses, because of reasons, but the way I see it is rather simple.
MMR + Rating + Decay
You get/lose MMR and Rating based on mmr of opponent team, your rating is what matters in leaderboards and is what decays.(pretty similar to wow arena system, I think)

example.
You have 150 rating and ~175 mmr, your opponent has got ~190 mmr. Win gets you 7 rating pts, opponent loses 10 rating pts cuz they had higher mmr. In similar fashion mmr should be added/deducted you get less mmr then rating if your mmr>rating, else you get more mmr then rating.
Similarly should you lose(same mmr situation) your mmr doesn’t drop or drops barely and your mmr drops only a little, same for enemy they hardly gain anything from such match.
Now after X time of inactivity you lose Y rating, but your mmr stays the same – you come back you get to play with players of similar mmr but your position on leaderboards dropped but is rather easy to regain(if you still play well) cuz your rating<mmr.

Important part is not to give away too much mmr for nothing. We don’t want new/bad players who got lucky and won 3/4 matches in row to suddenly have mmr of actually good players.

Also a nice touch would be drastically slashing down rating for leaving. First leave max(enemy possible rating gain, your possible rating gain). Second leave 3*xmax, Third 5*max.. and so on

Killthehealersffs.8940:

They are using WoW model ….

Are you joking?

BlueDragon.7054:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I still don’t think using MMR directly is a good idea for a leaderboard, but I fully understand why people would want it: It is perceived as a better indicator of skill most of the time.

Here is why it doesn’t work well:
Random jumps: Glicko is used to make the best match possible. It does this by adjusting quickly which can result in very large jumps up and down before settling.
No Decay: We can’t decay MMR directly, which causes the problem of people sitting inactive at the top of the leaderboard.

Our best bet is to create a system that lives side-by-side with the Glicko MMR. The original system does its thing and makes good matches while the new one can be a new algorithm, or a filtered glicko algorithm to give us more friendly numbers without negatively affecting matchmaking.

Thoughts?

This can be solved by having short seasons (1 month seasons) and setting a minimum number of games to play per season to appear in the leaderboards for that season, like 50 games.

So you reset the leaderboards every month but keep the mmr of players. The minimun number of games would prevent people from not playing and getting in the leaderboards and also to adjust their position accordingly.

And also reduce the volatility for not playing to avoid people from playing only the last week and boosting their mmr. If their skill level really decreased the mmr should adjust fast even without volatility, and it s very unlikely that someone improves without playing.

I don’t think it s good to have a high volatility for not playing in a month. I think that the skill level of someone doesnt change much from not playing in a month, even 2 months, because there are very few balance patches, and even if there s a balance patch, they just need to read the patch notes to see what changed.

I actually agree with this a lot. Short seasons can/will solve those issues.

Evan – this is a problem with a pretty well understood solution under Glicko – you rank players by their point estimate MMR, minus a multiple of their rating deviation (2 or 3 typically). So your ladder rating would be something like

LR = MMR – 2 * RD

This has several convenient properties:

- New players do not immediately shoot up to the top of the board even if their MMR is high, as their RD is also high until they have settled at that level for some time.

- It is a ranking system that, for most players, will have their rating generally move up with games played – as even a 50% W/L ratio at the same skill level will lower their RD, and thus increase their rating. This helps immensely with new players, who get to see some ‘progress’ when they are most likely to be discouraged – brand new players will go up in rating even with losses.

- It handles decay easily, as a player’s RD should increase with inactivity – which consequently makes them fall back down the ladder.

Sure there are some complicated systems you can use that can feel better (various league systems), but unless those are forthcoming a visible MMR – 2 RD is a quick and dirty system that works surprisingly well.

I can link relevant papers if you are interested.

Jasher.6580:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

They are using WoW model ….

Are you joking?

Ofc i wont joke , when i speak to the blockheads PvP community ….
Not when they had 7 years to matture and see their past mistakes ….

In the previous expansion in WoW there where 2 teams in 2v2 and 3v3 , where they had 31 games played and they where 4th in their Leaderspot .
If you search my history , you wil see that , when i get argue with an other player from WoW , where he claimed in that game ‘’newers player would never play minimul amount of games and be in the top spot’’ …..
HE WAS WRONG !

So in the revious leaderboards we had the same system and some players playing some games , then go afk (do you rememeber any whining back then , and we forced them to change the system ?)

And now with the current system , (as you said) :
Play more games like WoW = more points = we dont have to deal with afkers
Do you see any whiining about changing this ‘’grindy ladder’’ ?

Any Leaderboard . where the other 4 team8s is not organized/in your team/without voice chat/you cant control their actions/you dont know them = worthless ….
Ad you want visible Personal Rating (and not Team Rating) , when we have these issues ?….

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Jasher.6580:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

They are using WoW model ….

Are you joking?

Ofc i wont joke , when i speak to the blockheads PvP community ….
Not when they had 7 years to matture and see their past mistakes ….

In the previous expansion in WoW there where 2 teams in 2v2 and 3v3 , where they had 31 games played and they where 4th in their Leaderspot .
If you search my history , you wil see that , when i get argue with an other player from WoW , where he claimed in that game ‘’newers player would never play minimul amount of games and be in the top spot’’ …..
HE WAS WRONG !

So in the revious leaderboards we had the same system and some players playing some games , then go afk (do you rememeber any whining back then , and we forced them to change the system ?)

And now with the current system , (as you said) :
Play more games like WoW = more points = we dont have to deal with afkers
Do you see any whiining about changing this ‘’grindy ladder’’ ?

Any Leaderboard . where the other 4 team8s is not organized/in your team/without voice chat/you cant control their actions/you dont know them = worthless ….
Ad you want visible Personal Rating (and not Team Rating) , when we have these issues ?….

I can’t respond to this because I genuinely do not understand anything you are saying.

Lets try this :

Jasher.6580:

With the WoW system it’s IMPOSSIBLE for someone to play just 30 games and AFK with a rating of 3201 and have the number 1 spot. You simply can’t get that rating unless you play a certain number of games.

Their arena system would be perfect.

1 year ago was posible , 27 wins , 9 losses = 2704 rating , 4th place (boring to check my history)
While the 1st team had 230 + games played
Now it emphasize more on amount played , As the Dev told you

Evan Lesh.3295:

Jasher.6580:

This way we don’t have to worry about decay or inactivity, we rectify position on the leaderboard based on wins and losses.

This is one thing that the current point system has going for it. We don’t need decay because players can pass each other. However, this gives the impression of grind being how to climb. The point system would have to be much less granular for wins to be a good tie breaker.

The majority of the community hates this ‘’grindy feeling’’ and you want to contunue with it ?
(fine by me … i simply i want master Helseth to play seriously this games again…..)

Evan Lesh.3295:

Ensign.2189:

Evan – this is a problem with a pretty well understood solution under Glicko – you rank players by their point estimate MMR, minus a multiple of their rating deviation (2 or 3 typically).

We actually do this during matchmaking to err on the side of inactivity dropping skill level. If we had a strict Glicko leaderboard now, I think this is an approach we would take.

One problem we really want to solve for a new ladder system is how easy players can understand their rating. With Glicko, we don’t really get that. This is one benefit of the point system we’ve been testing (Though it needs some in-game info).

Ensign.2189:

I can link relevant papers if you are interested.

Sure, link all the papers.

Ease of understanding the leaderboard shouldn’t take priority over having a respectable leaderboard.

That said if you want to maintain a respectable leaderboard with the points system, you should drop any and all glicko-based matchmaking what so ever and make it a truely random arena. Only then would a points-based system somewhat hold weight.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

The majority of the community hates this ‘’grindy feeling’’ and you want to contunue with it ?
(fine by me … i simply i want master Helseth to play seriously this games again…..)

We don’t want the leaderboard to be a grind either. We’ve changed the system over the course of testing to remove elements of grind.

You broke the 3 years unwritten rule !
For Love and Justice, the pretty sailor suited soldier Sailor Moon! In the name of the moon I will punish you for quoting me !

(was talking to the other)

Evan Lesh.3295:

We actually do this during matchmaking to err on the side of inactivity dropping skill level.

This makes sense as long as you don’t mess with the match prediction part of the algorithm – basically, players who have been away for a while are paired down in matches that Glicko would say they are favored to win, but due to unmodeled decay should actually have a 50% chance to win.

Evan Lesh.3295:

One problem we really want to solve for a new ladder system is how easy players can understand their rating.

You hit a trade-off between legibility and accuracy. You can clearly use something like the latest ladder test season, which is pretty transparent in what it’s doing, it just also clearly doesn’t map onto performance well. Glicko and Glicko2 are pretty transparent though require pretty sophisticated statistical training to understand. Not sure how much simpler you can make it without it losing any semblance of accuracy.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Sure, link all the papers.

I presume you’ve read through most of Glickman’s stuff. The most relevant papers for building a ladder are those by Graepel and Herbrich regarding the TrueSkill system.

Going over the basics laid out by H. A. David is worthwhile, or even the original system by Elo; I don’t say it lightly, because all of these systems are founded on certain normality assumptions, and I am a bit worried that your own modifications have started violating those.

If you’re going to take a stab on your own, you should be very familiar with the Kalman filter and Tikhonov regularization, both of which are at the core of the math of any sort of rating system.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

The majority of the community hates this ‘’grindy feeling’’ and you want to contunue with it ?
(fine by me … i simply i want master Helseth to play seriously this games again…..)

We don’t want the leaderboard to be a grind either. We’ve changed the system over the course of testing to remove elements of grind.

Are you referring to changes after the first week?

Because it’s true you gave more weight to loss BUT games played are always a huge component.

Basically if a player plays 5 games daily and he is super strong he can’t compete with a bad player Who plays 30/40 games daily (it’s always a team game)

And this is linked to the fact that soloer/duo compete for the same leaderboard with 4+ full premade.

I hope you can solve these issues.

Everyone wants pure Glicko2 leaderboards back, just make it so it takes 50 games before someone can start rising through the leaderboard and cap how many mmr points they can gain each day. In the end the good people will be on top and they can’t make alt accounts and shimmy up in 2 seconds either.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Sunshine.5014:

Have 2 lists, one for the true MMR, and one for leader board rating.

After every match, do the following:

• leaderboard_rating += (true_MMR – leaderboard_rating) * 0.1f

This effectively means the volatility of the true MMR is guarded and can only get closer to the real MMR by 10% each game the player played. Leaderboard rating starts at 0, and is reset to 0 every month (season).

I personally really like this idea.
A goal we’ve had for PvP is to make the game very approachable and understandable. While I think this algorithm would solve some of the MMR leaderboard problems, it still uses hidden numbers (Glicko MMR) that people wouldn’t be able to really understand and calculate themselves. I think there are options that will probably give us the best of both sides, though.

Praise the Sunshine.

Hey Evan. It’s good to see you’re well aware of the current problems with the leaderboards, and not that good you’re still not sure about possible solution.

But in the discussion here I can see who has a clue (programmers maybe?) and who is able to help you. So why don’t you gather together online with your PvP group and these guys here, like Sunshine, timmyf, Rekou, Ensign, and figure out something really quickly? It’s urgent Evan, it’s urgent.

1……..627……….Tibs.2783……..Tibs Ironblood……..W762……..L357……..68.10%
2……..564……….darres.8203………..Xdarresx…………..W720……..L583……..55.26%
Idk about yall but that looks kitten impressive compared to the past leaderboards. There’s no way I could play that many games with a near 60 or 70% win rate.
I’ll call this progress.

What I wholeheartedly believe is that every player should receive a monthly cap and when reached, that player’s “Season” would be completed. Must like a Golf player finishing a game early. He has his score card ready but he still has to wait for everyone else to finish. This way, everyone is on the same page.

Please tell me that you’ll try that out as a last resort?
I’m glad ya’ll are continually trying to improve the system but I feel the “grindiness” is inevitable; players who play 9 games a day will always be ahead compared to casual 3 games-per-day players

Hum interesting post,

but i have a question, what’s next ?
A third test saison ?

since december we don’t have a fix leaderboard ! soon 6months !

Firebird.8324:

Everyone wants pure Glicko2 leaderboards back,

Really? How do you know that? Seems like a pretty unsubstantiated statement and in fact, as it turns out, an incorrect one.

I’m late to this so this will be quite long as I try to consider a lot of issues already mentioned.

(Part 1)

Evan Lesh.3295:

Here is why it doesn’t work well:
Random jumps: Glicko is used to make the best match possible. It does this by adjusting quickly which can result in very large jumps up and down before settling.
No Decay: We can’t decay MMR directly, which causes the problem of people sitting inactive at the top of the leaderboard.

Our best bet is to create a system that lives side-by-side with the Glicko MMR. The original system does its thing and makes good matches while the new one can be a new algorithm, or a filtered glicko algorithm to give us more friendly numbers without negatively affecting matchmaking.

Thoughts?

This sounds good, but in reality it’s extremely problematic. Players want:
1. MMR based leaderboard
2. Increase rating by increasing skill level, not by grinding to increase game-count
Devs want:
3. Reduced element of grind
4. Decay on leaderboard so inactive players don’t hold positions/can be passed
5. Deviation mechanic for matchmaking

1 results in 2, achieving 3. The problem points are 4 and 5.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Do we want people coming and going from the leader board, but still having the same ’skill’ level behind the scenes?

No. Being inactive for a time brings rust, which as you said is currently accounted for with Glicko’s deviation mechanic. However, the deviation isn’t actually decay, it’s a deviation which isn’t compatible with leaderboard rankings.

The decay mechanic must actually affect the value being used to rate players on the leaderboard for it to be reflected in the leaderboard. If the leaderboard is a "true MMR leaderboard," then the true MMR value must be modified. A way to get around this would be to use a proxy MMR value, which is used by the leaderboard and modified to decay the rank, allowing the true MMR to remain the same, independently affected by Glicko’s deviation mechanic. This starts to create a side-by-side system with Glicko. The problem now is that when a player returns and wins a match, their skill level (MMR) is treated as if it never dropped, when in reality it might have. This is a problem that will likely be encountered in any system that does not have the leaderboard working with the "true MMR" value, however, because a player’s skill cannot be determined by just one match; introducing complexity for more accurate measuring per match would be a lot of work for little benefit.

So the question is, do you want the decay system to snap a returning player back to their MMR and leaderboard rating before they went inactive, or for the calculated decay/"rust" to be true, thus affecting the true MMR, so a returning player has to work to either restore the skill level or prove it never changed by playing matches? Let’s call the former system the "proxy decay system," and the latter the "true decay system."

(Part 2)

With the proxy decay system, if the drop is real, the leaderboard rank will be accurate and the player’s drop in skill will be accommodated by Glicko’s deviation mechanic dropping their true MMR over a few matches, and if it is not real, the Glicko deviation will reduce, the proxy MMR will re-sync with the true MMR, and the player will jump up to the appropriate spot on the leaderboard. This is good, except for the "snapping back" on the leaderboard. This could be addressed by instead of "re-syncing" the true MMR with the proxy MMR, the true MMR slowly restores the proxy MMR so the player appears to be working their way back up the leaderboard. The problem with this though, is that it creates the appearance of some hidden point system, and the leaderboard becomes no longer truly an MMR-based leaderboard. As a programmer myself, I can’t see the devs liking the idea of creating the appearance of functionality that doesn’t exist. It does raise another idea though - a hybrid MMR and point-based leaderboard. However, this would introduce elements of grind which neither the community nor the devs want.

With the true decay system, the value used by Glicko in match making is affected. This has advantages and disadvantages. Excluding the deviation for a moment, if the decay is accurate, then both the decayed leaderboard rank is accurate and the returning player immediately gets matches suitable for their skill level. However, if it is innacurate, returning players could be put against players slightly to significantly less skilled than they, depending how long they were inactive and how real their decline in skill was. This creates the risk of making players feel punished for not playing the game, and some might even find the competition so boring that they re-consider returning. If the true decay approach is to be taken, the decay would have to be a very low rate, multiplied by how many days the player hasn’t played a match. It would have to be as accurate as possible to avoid "punishing" and possibly losing returning players. Now regarding Glicko’s deviation mechanic, if the Glicko deviation mechanic and the decay mechanic are both in place, it can create hugely inaccurate estimations for returning players’ skill. The deviation would have to either be removed, or modified to work alongside or perhaps more ideally WITH the decay mechanic to create more accurate estimations yet.

Ideally, the solution would be drawn from the above two approaches, with a balance between the speed at which Glicko can correct an out-dated MMR value and the accuracy of a predicted decay algorithm.

Evan Lesh.3295:

We actually do this during matchmaking to err on the side of inactivity dropping skill level. If we had a strict Glicko leaderboard now, I think this is an approach we would take.

One problem we really want to solve for a new ladder system is how easy players can understand their rating. With Glicko, we don’t really get that. This is one benefit of the point system we’ve been testing (Though it needs some in-game info).

Hi Evan

How about this solution:

Separate the players in 10 leagues (or any other number) using their glicko rating
In each league sort the players during the season using the new point ladder.
Restart the ladder at the beginning of each season and let the players only switch leagues off season if their mmr rises high enough.

That way we get a leaderboard reflecting skill (leagues) while being volatile and easy to understand during seasons (point system in each league).

With luck it could even be programmed in the existing system without having to scrap the whole thing

Cheers!

And thank you for your commitment even if I only PvE

Evan Lesh.3295:

This is one thing that the current point system has going for it. We don’t need decay because players can pass each other. However, this gives the impression of grind being how to climb. The point system would have to be much less granular for wins to be a good tie breaker.

It’s not an “impression” Evan, it’s actually true. Because of how forgiving the current system is for losses, and because of the lack of granularity in points awarded/lost per game, the best way to amass leaderboard points is to amass a large number of wins. It doesn’t matter if your win ratio is only around 50% or your wins were against mediocre or bad opponents, if you have the most wins you will easily score the most leaderboard points.

Not that this is ENTIRELY a bad thing: I don’t think anyone should be able to start playing in the last day of the season and climb to the top of the leaderboard, it would make everyone who sweated blood for weeks to gain their spot feel cheated. Non-participation should equate to no reward, no matter how good you are. But it’s easy to take the current system and make it less grindy, giving better players a chance to shine even if they don’thave the time to farm the leaderboard 24/7, with one simple change:

Currently, the amount of points you gain or lose after each game is determined by how the game calculates your odds of winning, based on, among others:
a. average MMR of each team
b. party size of each team (eg. premades vs soloers)
c. a few other lesser-weighed metrics like rank

The change I propose is the following: in the above formula, replace average MMR of each team with average ladder rank of each team. Therefore beating the top-ranked player on the leaderboard should award you more points, and would cost that #1 player more points when they lose to someone who’s ranked 19,508th.

This would make it harder to maintain a leaderboard rank that’s far in excess of your relative skill level as determined by your MMR (not that MMR is a perfect metric but it’s better than leaderboard rank). Sheer number of wins should still count for A LOT, so participation will still be rewarded, but it will be impossible to just farm points by scoring wins against terrible opponents, as you’ll occasionally come up against better players who, due to having fewer games, are lower-ranked than you, and when they beat you your ladder rank will drop sharply. In short, leaderboard rank will tend towards MMR, but won’t be determined by it.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I still don’t think using MMR directly is a good idea for a leaderboard, but I fully understand why people would want it: It is perceived as a better indicator of skill most of the time.

Here is why it doesn’t work well:
Random jumps: Glicko is used to make the best match possible. It does this by adjusting quickly which can result in very large jumps up and down before settling.
No Decay: We can’t decay MMR directly, which causes the problem of people sitting inactive at the top of the leaderboard.

Our best bet is to create a system that lives side-by-side with the Glicko MMR. The original system does its thing and makes good matches while the new one can be a new algorithm, or a filtered glicko algorithm to give us more friendly numbers without negatively affecting matchmaking.

Thoughts?

Create finally a guild leaderboard and close the 3 years old beta test.
Ty

Saiyan.1704:

1……..627……….Tibs.2783……..Tibs Ironblood……..W762……..L357……..68.10%
2……..564……….darres.8203………..Xdarresx…………..W720……..L583……..55.26%
Idk about yall but that looks kitten impressive compared to the past leaderboards. There’s no way I could play that many games with a near 60 or 70% win rate.
I’ll call this progress.

What I wholeheartedly believe is that every player should receive a monthly cap and when reached, that player’s “Season” would be completed. Must like a Golf player finishing a game early. He has his score card ready but he still has to wait for everyone else to finish. This way, everyone is on the same page.

Please tell me that you’ll try that out as a last resort?
I’m glad ya’ll are continually trying to improve the system but I feel the “grindiness” is inevitable; players who play 9 games a day will always be ahead compared to casual 3 games-per-day players

Just showing the top 2 is pretty deceptive. And you don’t know that there weren’t players that couldn’t have won at least as much over that many games but didn’t have the time to grind like this. Its stupid to have to play anywhere near that many games to have a chance to be ranked high. The progress was moderate at best.

+1 I agree with this 100%, hard enough to find a team out there when you have no proof of your skill

bubby.5798:

+1 I agree with this 100%, hard enough to find a team out there when you have no proof of your skill

True, before people were stating things like “top 100 on the old leaderboards”. But now, 7 months later, even this is already pointless.

When the leaderboard will be operational ?

brannigan.9831:

Saiyan.1704:

1……..627……….Tibs.2783……..Tibs Ironblood……..W762……..L357……..68.10%
2……..564……….darres.8203………..Xdarresx…………..W720……..L583……..55.26%
Idk about yall but that looks kitten impressive compared to the past leaderboards. There’s no way I could play that many games with a near 60 or 70% win rate.
I’ll call this progress.

What I wholeheartedly believe is that every player should receive a monthly cap and when reached, that player’s “Season” would be completed. Must like a Golf player finishing a game early. He has his score card ready but he still has to wait for everyone else to finish. This way, everyone is on the same page.

Please tell me that you’ll try that out as a last resort?
I’m glad ya’ll are continually trying to improve the system but I feel the “grindiness” is inevitable; players who play 9 games a day will always be ahead compared to casual 3 games-per-day players

Just showing the top 2 is pretty deceptive. And you don’t know that there weren’t players that couldn’t have won at least as much over that many games but didn’t have the time to grind like this. Its stupid to have to play anywhere near that many games to have a chance to be ranked high. The progress was moderate at best.

Oh I agree that this many games is ridiculous. A person shouldn’t play anywhere near this amount. I understand they’re making participation a grade but it shouldn’t be a person’s score. I was just impressed with the numbers, is all.

What should be added is *Points Earned Per Game" next to Win Percentages since a person with a 50% win rate could still theoretically outscore a 60% win rate player. Everyone looks at Win Rates and think that, that player should be ranked higher… in points and MMR. That’s not necessarily the case in most scenarios.

Even with the changes to make losing more impactful, the leaderboards still don’t reflect player skill at all. Since players are matched against similarly skilled opponents, an average player can climb the leaderboard at the same rate as a top player. Except that once you realize that a top player has longer queue times, they actually end up behind an average player. Skill needs to factor in somehow.

An older thread suggested a hybrid scoring matrix where the amount of points awarded [using the existing matrix] for a win was scaled with the average rating of the teams involved. Winning a game between high-rated players would provide more points. So you can climb by playing more often or by being a better player.

However, the leaderboard should not reflect win ratios. If matchmaking is working, everyone should have a win ratio near 50% except for the ends of the spectrum. The outliers are people who aren’t rated or matched correctly or are at an extreme e.g. the average rating of the opponents for top players will be significantly less than that top player’s rating because there aren’t higher players for them to lose against more often.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Our best bet is to create a system that lives side-by-side with the Glicko MMR. The original system does its thing and makes good matches while the new one can be a new algorithm, or a filtered glicko algorithm to give us more friendly numbers without negatively affecting matchmaking.

Thoughts?

Referencing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

First off – I kinda do this looking at it O.o mind-poof
(I’m not a fan of statistics mumbo jumbo)

Starting off with gauging player skill

Player skill is difficult because of many factors. So much so that it may be almost worth it not to use this metric at all, but rather derive assumptions of “skill” from other more measurable data. I draw this conclusion from the following statements…

Looking at the personal scoring system you have in place objectively – I can gather that the larger your personal score, the more you’re doing in the match. But, I can also see how it leads to inconsistency.

Assume we look at PK’s for personal scores:

1 v ‘X’ fights:
Any kill points are rightfully yours.

‘X’ v ‘Y’ fights:
Things change here because of the ways to abuse the PK point system.

1 person downs the enemy > you run in and hit them a few times > you get points for the kill (bad)

The team downs multiple enemies > you use AoE > you get all the points. (bad)

Assume we talk about Captures

You cap the point alone – you deserve the points

1 person kills the defender (if present) and you come in and stand on the ring right before it caps – you get the points (bad)

You bunker a capture point the whole game – no additional points given (bad)

There are other variations on each of these that lead to inconsistent scoring thus there is no direct way to gauge player skill.
(I’m not even considering the point system in place since team wins should not directly impact personal performance scoring).

Proposed Solution

Metrics for “Player Skill”

Kill Count: Scoring based on a 5 -> 1 metric. You gain +5 points if you are the only person to have damaged the foe, and +4 points if you are one of two people damaging the foe AND have the lowest contribution rating, etc. Contribution rating would need to be determined by damage, condi’s, and CC’s used successfully on the target. This system would also need to account for OOC time. If a player runs from a fight and has temporary OOC, but doesn’t refill their HP bar or skill set all the way – the system should reduce the metric proportional to their peak status.

Captures: Scored 5 -> 1. If the point is neutral +1. If the point is capped and you neutralize it and leave +2. If the point has a defender and you only neutralize it before getting killed +3. If it was capped and you fully capped it +4. If it was capped with a defender and you fully cap it +5. For each ally who assists in the capture you get -1 (maintaining a +1 minimum if the capture is successful). This accounts for combat on point.

Bunkers: Scored For bunker players holding points – take the total time they stay on all points through out the match in seconds (rounding up or down to the nearest 10) – divide by 10 – and give points equal to that value. Note: They must stay on point for at least 10 seconds to have their time on the point counted (though they should not lose those 10 seconds so the timer should start at 0:10 if they meet the criteria). If the point neutralizes the timer stops. This way if you are an active cap’er or bunker your scores should be similar after the end of the match.

Revives: +10 per ally revived.

Metric for “PvP Dedication” (larger numbers to help with tiering)

PvP Presence Rating: Total number of games played multiplied by [the number of days the account has been active in the PvP arenas divided by the period] (“arenas” =/= the lobby and omits custom arenas – period could be anything – a month or the account’s active lifetime, etc), and then multiplied by [wins/loses] (Note: 1 < wins or loses < X). Remainders should round up or down accordingly. This way we can solve the “no decay” issue you mentioned since time is involved and the “random jumps” will be smaller if you tier this rating score and assign each tier a value. Example: 300 games in 10 days of play time over a 30 day period with 200 wins and 100 losses results in a score of 200. You could either use this raw score or assign it to (let’s say) Tier 10.

(To help default avid players into higher tiers when using time metrics)

PvP Rank Consideration: Scored 900 -> 0. Rabbit +0, Deer +100, Dolyak +200,…, Dragon +900.

PvP Achievements: Scored 5900 -> 0. Per Champion [Class] Title +100, Champion Brawler +5000.

Wins: +(Total wins within the selected time period * 2). Given how large the numbers are this allows “PvP Dedication” to somewhat adjust based on performance.

Continue…

…

Putting it all together

First: Theorize a maximum value obtainable from the PvP Dedication Metrics and then create an appropriate scale dividing players into tiers of a chosen size.

Second: Sum the values of the PvP Dedication Metrics and assign the selected tier to that player.

Third: Pool 10 combatants based on the tier of the PvP Dedication Metric.

Fourth: Divide the teams in a way that keeps the sum of the team member’s Player Skill Metric sum as equal as possible.

My numbers may be off, but my goals were these…

1) Create a numerically less complicated way to rate player performance.
2) Personal performance metrics become more accurate.
3) Include a decay method.
4) Default players with PvP accomplishments into higher tiers.
5) Scale players beyond default tiers using activity and wins.
6) Find a way to balance teams through player metrics

As I said, my numbers may be off but the above was my aim.

Hopefully this gives ideas?

@Dragonruler X
Such suggestions have been made in the past, but in more detail.

You would have to list every single Element in the game to have it reflect a “skill base” system. That includes the amount of buffs a single player gave out, the effect of these buffs, all the debuffs, damage, damage negation, etc. The list goes on.

Same goes for a Bunker who’s at his lonesome on a point. Who’s to say he’s doing good or bad for the team? Who’s to say anyone was benefitial at all?

I think “amulets” should have their own rating algorithm as well as a person’s trait set up. To be honest, this is all too risky and extensive to implement… it’s never going to happen. Especially since Glicko has worked in other games in the past, it’s hard to not accept it. That said, this game differs on many levels where Glicko has trouble too.
____________________________________________

MMR in this game is vastly different than other videogames. It doesn’t act like Starcraft, Mobas or other MMO’s. This is due in part that there are several build diversities and roles a player can have. No one knows what people are running, how much cc they have, sustains, damage, etc. The fact that people constantly change their builds adds another layer of inconsistency.

The roles and play styles between people are so diverse, MMR rating is hard to pin point for solo players. It’s not until you’re on a competitive, consistent team, will MMR be better governed.
In Solo Queue, there’s no way to know what works and what doesn’t. The inconsistency is so great, you’d need 500 – 1000 games to see any type of “accurate” result.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Ensign.2189:

Evan – this is a problem with a pretty well understood solution under Glicko – you rank players by their point estimate MMR, minus a multiple of their rating deviation (2 or 3 typically).

We actually do this during matchmaking to err on the side of inactivity dropping skill level. If we had a strict Glicko leaderboard now, I think this is an approach we would take.

One problem we really want to solve for a new ladder system is how easy players can understand their rating. With Glicko, we don’t really get that. This is one benefit of the point system we’ve been testing (Though it needs some in-game info).

Ensign.2189:

I can link relevant papers if you are interested.

Sure, link all the papers.

I think you should test Ensign’s approach internally, just to see for once how the outcome of the last ladder test season would have gone. It makes a huge amount of sense, and I think if you had an MMR-based leaderboard with that sort of natural downward push applied to players with large deviation, and deviation was increased gradually over time, you wouldn’t see those inactive players at the top like we did once before. Each day of AFK should add a little to the player’s rating deviation, progressing them down the ladder, but if they hopped back in and were still as good as ever their deviation should quickly expire and shoot them back to where they should be, if they really are top players.

You’d probably see more consistent win/loss ratios grouping up then. Players who can consistently win (75%+ ratio over a period of two dozen rating periods) after several games that ought to decrease uncertainty, and therefore deviation, should climb the ladder much more quickly since the ladder will be reflecting the combination of MMR gain and DR decreasing.

Evan you need to look at it from another perspective. Its not about what system you create to do it, but why you create it in the first place.

The main reason is to avoid a conflict of interests between players. You basicly want similar minded people in the same games. If you dont you, have yourself a breading ground of negativity. A situation where new players get “dumped” in to the same game as game as tournament level players is never a good thing.

What we have now is a an everlasting loop that works something like this:

Programmer creates an MMR system that places everyone with everyone -> -> both veterans and new players get frustrated as … -> the community doesnt grow as much as it could -> programmer and developers decide that the MMR system should stay the same to avoid long queue times (since the community is allready quite small). Both veterans and new players get frustrated as … -> the community doesnt grow as much as it could -> etc etc

Instead u/they rely on non gameplay related tools to provide peaks in activiy. Like rewards for example, something that doesnt enhance the quality of the gameplay itself. This is and will always be a temporary thing that doesnt push the pvp in a direction where the popularity is above par.

You need to seperate new players from veterans. Even if that means longer queuetimes for now.

Basic glicko system with a hard cap on how many points a players can drop/rise and rating decay scaling up with the current rating of that player.

kthxbye

Edit: Also show player rating as a stat on their pvp panel forchristsake.

Locuz.2651:

Its not about what system you create to do it, but why you create it in the first place.

Why do you have an MMR system? To place similar minded / skilled and experienced players in the same games.

Does the current system do that right now? No it doesnt. It focusses on keeping the queue nice and short which means everyone plays with everyone.

Tournament champions play with guys who dont weapon swap or guys who have never set foot in pvp before that day.

Divide people up based on MMR and create tiers and let us play PvE while wait in the longer queues.

Mysticjedi.6053:

Divide people up based on MMR and create tiers and let us play PvE while wait in the longer queues.

No! Cannot divide the small playerbase!

Instead enjoy this horrendous matchmaking, which will certainly not reduce the playerbase further.

Jelle.2807:

No! Cannot divide the small playerbase!

Instead enjoy this horrendous matchmaking, which will certainly not reduce the playerbase further.

Yes, it’s Catch 22. Small player base leads to bad matchmaking. Bad matchmaking leads to decreasing of the playerbase, which leads to even worse matchmaking, which reduces the playerbase further…

The good news are, if they focus on improving any of both indicators, this will cause a snowball effect, where the good matchmaking will increase the player base and this will lead to better matchmaking. All of this is obvious for everyone, I’m sure. Then why nothing happens?

Better matchmaking will increase the player base, so will more carrots for the PvPers, like more titles, achievements and rewards. But the first step should be working skill based leaderboards. This is something that will have an immediate effect. That’s why I keep repeating it’s urgent. We need this, asap.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

The majority of the community hates this ‘’grindy feeling’’ and you want to contunue with it ?
(fine by me … i simply i want master Helseth to play seriously this games again…..)

We don’t want the leaderboard to be a grind either. We’ve changed the system over the course of testing to remove elements of grind.

you haven’t done a very good job of that