Is total points really due to player activity alone?

[CombatEX]

EDIT: Well, just read Eijolend's post and he puts it perfectly so mine probably isn't necessary ^^
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Clarification/Misconstrued Argument
For all intensive purposes, points represent activity. No one has said points correspond to 'only' activity. To take an extreme, obviously if you lose all your games you're going to be at 0 points no matter how active you are.

'Activity' Points
The following is what I believe people are trying to convey when they say 'points represent activity':

You cannot tell how good a player is based on their points. You can only tell how bad a player is (if they have very few points but a lot of games played then you can extrapolate that they must lose a lot). There is a way you can compare players to a very rough extent using points but that requires being able to see how many wins each player has and performing a weak estimate as to their win/loss rates. However, points are pretty much meaningless when looking at rankings in a division because you can't see the profiles (and hence the wins) from the division rank screen. As such, points end up being a more accurate estimate of activity than of skill. This is more due to the fact that it's a terrible measurement of skill while it is an okay, though still flawed, measurement of activity.

Demoralization
As for your 'demoralized' feeling when players call points useless for determining skill, I'm sorry you feel that way. However, I'm not going to lie and pretend they are meaningful just to give people a false sense of accomplishment =/ Getting promoted to a new league is what people should be after, not points. When one gets promoted that's a true accomplishment that one can be proud of! Not hitting some arbitrary point threshold. Hopefully OML can find the time to implement bonus pool (and seasons if possible) so that players can actually see improvement accurately reflected in their points, but until that day having high points is nothing to be proud of.

OML Offended?
As for OML being in some way offended that people don't like their current point system, that isn't the case. Alex mentioned a few months ago that the point system could certainly use an overhaul and he would look into a bonus pool system or something similar in the future to make points reflective of skill.

Your Poll Question
Your poll presents an issue because your proposed question makes the 'yes' option illogical and I doubt anyone believes that statement as it is worded. Remove 'alone' and you'll have a better poll. Even though I believe points are mostly representative of activity, I certainly don't believe they boil down to activity 'alone', just mostly. As such, I should technically vote 'no'. In fact, nearly everyone should vote 'no' because the 'yes' option is idiotic. However, I ultimately voted 'yes' and chose to ignore the word 'alone' as I believe the other people who likewise voted the same also chose to do.

Instead, I would ask "Are total points mostly representative of player activity?"
Even that isn't ideal, but it maintains the basic structure of your original question and I didn't want to alternate it too much. Personally I would question "Are points a somewhat meaningful indication of skill?"
I insert 'somewhat' because I don't think anyone believes they are truly a meaningful indicator, just that some may think it means more than it actually does.

[Gf!sh]

CombatEX Wrote:You cannot tell how good a player is based on their points. You can only tell how bad a player is

There.

[torontorocko]

(11-09-2012 05:28 AM)CombatEX Wrote:  Your Poll Question
Your poll presents an issue because your proposed question makes the 'yes' option illogical and I doubt anyone believes that statement as it is worded. Remove 'alone' and you'll have a better poll. Even though I believe points are mostly representative of activity, I certainly don't believe they boil down to activity 'alone', just mostly. As such, I should technically vote 'no'. In fact, nearly everyone should vote 'no' because the 'yes' option is idiotic. However, I ultimately voted 'yes' and chose to ignore the word 'alone' as I believe the other people who likewise voted the same also chose to do.

Instead, I would ask "Are total points mostly representative of player activity?"
Even that isn't ideal, but it maintains the basic structure of your original question and I didn't want to alternate it too much. Personally I would question "Are points a somewhat meaningful indication of skill?"
I insert 'somewhat' because I don't think anyone believes they are truly a meaningful indicator, just that some may think it means more than it actually does.

I voted no because of the exact reason CombatEX has stated. The question is worded as such that voting yes has to be wrong.

[terenceshiu2005]

(11-09-2012 02:00 AM)Thrutchy Wrote:  I agree that points by themselves aren't that meaningful. But, when you look at both points and wins you can get a rough measure of skill within a given league. Of course league is a more important first-order measure of skill. I look at the ratio to see points/win. I don't think you can access the number of wins when looking at the players in your division (tell me how if you can), but you can see this for your opponent (chat->player's icon). Having the total wins include 1v1 and 2v2's muddies things further, but you can still use the ratio of the sum of points vs. wins. There are plenty of flaws in using this ratio as a measure of skill, but I still think that points with wins can be meaningful.

I actually did the same thing to measure my opponents when I started playing outwitters. I would think total points/total wins > 10 would be a great players. However, it won't work if the hidden ratio is used for the top players. this explained some of the top player don't have many points.

[Thrutchy]

(11-09-2012 08:08 AM)terenceshiu2005 Wrote:  

(11-09-2012 02:00 AM)Thrutchy Wrote:  I agree that points by themselves aren't that meaningful. But, when you look at both points and wins you can get a rough measure of skill within a given league. Of course league is a more important first-order measure of skill. I look at the ratio to see points/win. I don't think you can access the number of wins when looking at the players in your division (tell me how if you can), but you can see this for your opponent (chat->player's icon). Having the total wins include 1v1 and 2v2's muddies things further, but you can still use the ratio of the sum of points vs. wins. There are plenty of flaws in using this ratio as a measure of skill, but I still think that points with wins can be meaningful.

I actually did the same thing to measure my opponents when I started playing outwitters. I would think total points/total wins > 10 would be a great players. However, it won't work if the hidden ratio is used for the top players. this explained some of the top player don't have many points.

Yep. For top players, just use the top 200 list for comparison. As I said, using the ratio has plenty of flaws, but it still can be useful for measuring skill. If the ratio is high, you might conclude a high win/loss ratio and that the player is moving up in the leagues. A lower ratio might say that the player has stabilitized in the league (but, you don't know where).

[Jacs9]

OML should also reveal how many game loses we have. Work out for us our percentage of victories. That might give us more clue on how good a player is.