Ranking Nonsense - Living in Parallel Universes

[Eijolend]

TL;DR - The current system is only a reliable measure for activity. I advocate changing it to a system that is really like SC2 and not only looks like it.

(08-05-2012 09:58 PM)Harti Wrote:  ELO is no better than the system we currently have. It's well established and works for SC2 as well.

The current system looks like the one SC2 uses but actually it really is not! It is very different in what it achieves and it totally lacks the comparability SC2 has. I'm not a big ELO-fan (for all the flaws that were repeatedly pointed out), but pure ELO would be better than the current system, since the current system ONLY measures activity:

SC2's system with the bonus pool mixes activity and skill, so you have to keep playing. Once you used up your bonus pool your points correlate with your rating!
In SC2 you can directly compare players in the same division if they both used up their bonus pool. The one with the higher point value actually has the higher MMR and therefor the order in the same division means something.

The current Outwitters system ALWAYS rewards the winner with some additional points more than the loser loses. Assuming the system had perfect MMR that exactly matches your skill, you would gain as many points as you'd lose over time, if not for said additional points for each win. So the rating inflates for absolute number of wins and the MAIN thing that influences division ranking is ACTIVITY. #1 in a division will be the player that is the most active and is within the skill boundaries of the respective league without regard to his actual skill compared to others in the division. (Until you hit the MMR-barrier you will accumulate more points than someone with less skill, but from then on it's only activity that generates points and nothing else. The current influence of skill is already slim and the longer it goes on the less relevant it will become and eventually turn into ONLY activity.)

While the SC2 bonus pool is a inflation over time, the Outwitters system has inflation over number of games played, which completely eliminates the meaning of the points. I'd like to see Outwitters adapt a bonus pool system - it still motivates players to play more (contrary to pure ELO), every player has a constant rise in points over time (motivating!) but it retains the meaning of a rank.
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On a more detailed note:
There is a flaw in the SC2 system that I'd rather not carry over:
Different divisions within the same league are not comparable. (This was during the first seasons, I don't know if it was changed since then) It was discovered that in the higher leagues some divisions had a certain number of points added or subtracted from the value they should actually have, to artificially make the divisions in the same league uncomparable. It was suspected that this was done for lower leagues too, but to my knowledge couldn't be proven because of the huge amount of players.
I'd rather have a system where the comparison of points means something - at least within the same league.