Ranking systems

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

Hi

This is actually a question i posted at rcworlds forum,
but i would like a larger froum to discuss the issue too. :

Hi

It looks like the ladder is active again.

Still no plans to use it at rcworld ?

I understand that one issue is letting highly ranked players at
rcworld get a high rank at the ladder too. But does it go both ways ?
I have a relatively high rank at the ladder, and i consider myself an
expert player, so i really dont want to have to play a lot of games
against newbies at rcworld, before i can join higher ranked games.

One problem is that the two ranking systems are not compatible. The
ladder is the only ranking system i have seen that actually penalizes
people for NOT performing well.
All other ranking systems mainly awards people for QUANTITY(played
turns) over QUALITY(games won)
and doesnt penalize people for performing poorly.

This policy creates players i like to call "tossers".
Players who joins many games, and plays halfhartedly, because it is a
more effective way to gain rank.
At most autotroll hosts, there is not even any penalty for dropouts,
so the "tossers" regularly drop out of games where they get a not so
good start, and join new games, in order to get a good start, so they
can survive longer with their weak effort.
The ladder automatically punishers tossers, since surviving isnt
enough, and dropouts are punished with the reliability system.

Im glad to see that rcworld has a hard policy against dropouts,
but i would also like to see quality of play awarded over quantity.

I know that you get an additional ranking for winning games, but do
you ever start games with minimum requirements in the additional rank
?

Basically what i want is a host, where i can join games where there is
a very low possibilty of dropouts,
and games where i can play against other players that try to win
games, and not just survive.

Or to put it another way, let me bring a soccer analogy.
Some years ago, a new rule was introduced in most leagues, so you get
3 points for winning a game, instead of 2.
The meaning was to award offensive play, so you can use a more risky
tactic, win one game, and loose another, and still get more points
than if you played boringly defensive in both games, gaining 2 points.

And in vga-planets, i would also like i to be more worth playing with
a full effort. Doing well in 3 games should be more worth just
surviving 10 games...

Dines Petersen

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

See http://www.planetsserver.com/help/ranks.html for a detailed
overview of how the ranking system of planetsserver works.

And see http://www.planetsserver.com/statistics.html for an overview
of the scores for the current games (just the ptscore) and more to the
point: de current standings on the ranking list.

--
Maurits van Rees | planets.maurits@xs4all.nl
http://maurits.vanrees.org/ [Dutch/Nederlands]
"The question of whether computers can think is like the question of
whether submarines can swim." - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

Hello Dines,

Long time no see!
How are you?
At NAVGAP there are (still) games. Maybe you can join one ...

Dacus (Dacian)

"Dines Petersen" <dinesconrad@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6336031d.0408020426.234eb36a@posting.google.com...
> Hi
>
> It looks like the ladder is active again.
>
> Still no plans to use it at rcworld ?
>
> I understand that one issue is letting highly ranked players at
> rcworld get a high rank at the ladder too. But does it go both ways ?
> I have a relatively high rank at the ladder, and i consider myself an
> expert player, so i really dont want to have to play a lot of games
> against newbies at rcworld, before i can join higher ranked games.
>
> One problem is that the two ranking systems are not compatible. The
> ladder is the only ranking system i have seen that actually penalizes
> people for NOT performing well.
> All other ranking systems mainly awards people for QUANTITY(played
> turns) over QUALITY(games won)
> and doesnt penalize people for performing poorly.
>
> This policy creates players i like to call "tossers".
> Players who joins many games, and plays halfhartedly, because it is a
> more effective way to gain rank.
> At most autotroll hosts, there is not even any penalty for dropouts,
> so the "tossers" regularly drop out of games where they get a not so
> good start, and join new games, in order to get a good start, so they
> can survive longer with their weak effort.
> The ladder automatically punishers tossers, since surviving isnt
> enough, and dropouts are punished with the reliability system.
>
> Im glad to see that rcworld has a hard policy against dropouts,
> but i would also like to see quality of play awarded over quantity.
>
> I know that you get an additional ranking for winning games, but do
> you ever start games with minimum requirements in the additional rank
> ?
>
> Basically what i want is a host, where i can join games where there is
> a very low possibilty of dropouts,
> and games where i can play against other players that try to win
> games, and not just survive.
>
> Or to put it another way, let me bring a soccer analogy.
> Some years ago, a new rule was introduced in most leagues, so you get
> 3 points for winning a game, instead of 2.
> The meaning was to award offensive play, so you can use a more risky
> tactic, win one game, and loose another, and still get more points
> than if you played boringly defensive in both games, gaining 2 points.
>
> And in vga-planets, i would also like i to be more worth playing with
> a full effort. Doing well in 3 games should be more worth just
> surviving 10 games...
>
> Dines Petersen

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

Dines Petersen wrote:

>One problem is that the two ranking systems are not compatible. The
>ladder is the only ranking system i have seen that actually penalizes
>people for NOT performing well.
>All other ranking systems mainly awards people for QUANTITY(played
>turns) over QUALITY(games won)
>and doesnt penalize people for performing poorly.
>This policy creates players i like to call "tossers".
I partially agree, that some systems indeed reward wrong kind of playing.

However since RCWorld uses PHCC, it should be possible to create games that
can be joined only by players that have played many turns, or/and by
players that have a certain amount of "skill". The possible problems that I
see are that with the system just joining a lot of games and submitting
empty turns, you can become a "reliable", or by playing only rookie games
and winning them, one can become "skilled" in the eyes of PHCC. But I don't
see neither as a problem, because it's rather rare that someone plays empty
turns all the time, or that someone playes only rookie games where he wins
most of the time. I mean, it has to be the dullest hobby I've heard of, and
I used to collect poststamps and lisence plates.

>I know that you get an additional ranking for winning games, but do
>you ever start games with minimum requirements in the additional rank
>?
In Lair there were such games, and Pick used PHCC. I recall I played at
least in two games that had such requirments. He also had games where you
could not play if you had won a game before, rookie games.

OK, PHCCs ranking is very simple, there are more complex ones like RCCL
ranking, but the problem with any of those, is that they are nowhere near
universal. If you switch to another host, you start from nothing. And at
least with RCWorld, your account can expire too.

Most ranking systems, I guess, can be cheated.

Personally I don't that much care about different rankings.

 

[help]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

G'day Dines,

On 2 Aug 2004 05:26:57 -0700, dinesconrad@yahoo.com (Dines Petersen)
wrote:

>It looks like the ladder is active again.

Yep.... took a bit of effort to get it going after moving it to a new
PC and having to reload all the software that was needed to get it
going. (I now have "Agent" running for newsgroup interaction.)

>One problem is that the two ranking systems are not compatible. The
>ladder is the only ranking system i have seen that actually penalizes
>people for NOT performing well.

I think that is a good thing.

>At most autotroll hosts, there is not even any penalty for dropouts,
>so the "tossers" regularly drop out of games where they get a not so
>good start, and join new games, in order to get a good start, so they
>can survive longer with their weak effort.
>The ladder automatically punishers tossers, since surviving isnt
>enough, and dropouts are punished with the reliability system.
>
>Im glad to see that rcworld has a hard policy against dropouts,
>but i would also like to see quality of play awarded over quantity.

On the RCC Ladder players also get a penalty for dropping out of games
and depending on how the host applies the penalty system, the penalty
can be high.

>Basically what i want is a host, where i can join games where there is
>a very low possibilty of dropouts,

At NAVGAP a player leaving a game before game turn 20, without the
Host's expressed permission, will get a 500 point penalty.

The RCCL also calculates a players reliability (in percent) and this
is another measure hosts may use.

NAVGAP uses a combination of player reliability (in percent) and in
points as the filtering device for allowing players to automatically
join a game.

>and games where i can play against other players that try to win
>games, and not just survive.
>
>Or to put it another way, let me bring a soccer analogy.
>Some years ago, a new rule was introduced in most leagues, so you get
>3 points for winning a game, instead of 2.
>The meaning was to award offensive play, so you can use a more risky
>tactic, win one game, and loose another, and still get more points
>than if you played boringly defensive in both games, gaining 2 points.
>
>And in vga-planets, i would also like i to be more worth playing with
>a full effort. Doing well in 3 games should be more worth just
>surviving 10 games...

Hmmm... interesting idea...let me think about how such a thing could
be used on the RCCL (then I need to work out the way to program that
in to the code, how to display it and how to make it a parameter that
hosts might want to use.

Neil Grigg
(NAVGAP & RCCL Operator)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

G'day Akseli,

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 11:14:22 +0300, Akseli Mäki
<newsgroups@spam.akseli.net> wrote:

>OK, PHCCs ranking is very simple, there are more complex ones like RCCL
>ranking, but the problem with any of those, is that they are nowhere near
>universal. If you switch to another host, you start from nothing.

RCCL is probably as universal as it can get.

It is host independent as far as player reliability percentage scores
as they use number of game turns played or missed, unless you count
that a host could tell the RCCL that a player left the game with a 500
point penalty and the RCCL will allocate that player 0% reliability
for that game (a 100 penalty will get a play only 50% of their actual
reliability for that game).

Skill rating/ranking is based on finishing position in game and the
amount of skill points allocated to a player is adjusted based on the
skill level of the other players in the game.

A player that always wins in games with other novices will find that
the amount of skill points they get will decrease with each game they
play, as the RCCL will see that a player with high Skill Points is
playing in a game where the other players have lower skill points.

It is by no means a perfect way of stopping good players from being in
a game and beating up the not so good players.

Ta-ta,
Neil Grigg
(RCCL Administrator)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vga-planets (More info?)

RCCL Admin wrote:

>RCCL is probably as universal as it can get.
I know, still it's not enough unless a majority of hosts use it. That is to
say, it's not enough to compare rankings of most players. Even if one plays
only at a host supporting it, playing more games at a time gives you faster
rate of growing your score, while someone who plays less gets less score.
That is to say, someone who has played more games, his RCCL rank is closer
to his "actual" skill&rank, while someone who has played just few RCCL
games, his RCCL rank&skill can be quite a different from his actual
numbers, up or down. As such, you can't trust the ranking system so much.

Do you see possibilities in abusing the system? (I could email you a few if
intrested)