What exactly determines the links of the servers? Is it the rating of the host servers and the population of the guest servers? Or is it the population of the host servers and population of the guest servers? If has something to do with the host sever’s rating, I see how that would make sense, however, there appear to be more rating issues with the most recent server linking.
It’s weird because the server rating (which is only applied to the host server) is not only the rating earned from the host server but rather the rating earned from the combination of the host server and their guest servers. After a re-link is done, the new rating is not necessarily representative of the server since the rating is what resulted from the previous linking. For example, Yaks Bend will get a much lower rating than some of the servers who have less people than them. When the new re-linking is done, Yaks Bends’ rating won’t make sense initially since it will come from the rating of the previous server linking. Crystal Desert will have a much higher rating as a result of the 3 servers they are paired with but that may cause their rating to be way higher than what it should be after the next set of server-links if they don’t get much help. I don’t have any affiliation with either of those servers but they appear to be affected the most by this and so they make the best examples.
Also, not having the top 3 servers receive a partner appears to have a downside. I will explain. Before the most recent server linking, these servers had a rating that came from themself plus their linked server. After the most recent server linking, they did not receive a linked server and the rest of the servers did. Thus, each of these three T1 servers now have a rating that is greater than what their population represents since they didn’t get anyone. If the T1 servers keep playing each other, then it’s not that weird. However, the instant that any T1 server RNG’s down to T2, it’s over. They will lose tons of rating because they are not as good as their rating since their rating comes from the previous server linking where they had a partner.
I am thus noticing many servers having a rating that is not representative of their population. By the time they finally get close to their deserved rating, there will be a re-link and this process could repeat for a different server. Right now, CD represents this concept the best.
What is everyone else’s thoughts on server links and server rating? Does anyone else feel that it is weird that the server rating after a re-link still comes from the server rating earned with a previous partner? I’m not saying they should reset glicko after every re-link…that would be even worse. The way it is now might be the best way to do it (I don’t have any idea what would be better) but it certainly brings up a few complications that are not trivial to correct.