The rating system

[AwesomeElmo]

Hi. New poster but been playing for a few weeks now.

I'm feeling both confused and disappointed by the rating system. It really just seems completely broken to me.

I win most of my games...I would say my win loss ratio is at least 80% if not 90+, and am currently in clever league.

To start off, when I was playing my ranking matches at least 2 of my opponents abandoned the game...which I'm not sure how the placement matches work but it seemed like that led to me being placed in fluffy league, despite winning most of my placement matches. It seemed like the system had gone "well we can't work it out since so many opponents abandoned so we'll just put him here". That wouldn't have been so bad, because I fairly quickly was promoted to clever, but this brings me to my first disappointment with the rating system. I feel like even though I win most of the games I play fairly comfortably it seems like I can't get to the next league. What's the requirement to do so? It doesn't seem to be stated anywhere and it doesn't seem to be based on performance. Do I need to be number 1 in my league?

That brings me to my second point. League points are just broken. It's not rewarding best players it's rewarding players who play the most games. This wouldn't be so bad if there was some upper limit (i don't expect to win 1 game and hit position 1), but it seems like position 1 is only available to players who are willing to play 24/7. The system also seems to be rewarding players based on the luck of who they draw against.

This brings me to my last issue. The system just doesn't seem to fairly reward players based on who they play against. In fact it seems to be even perhaps the opposite. I will give you an example of a couple of matches I recently played. I have been being placed against a lot of gifted league opponents. Even though that's the case I'm still winning a lot of matches (I'd say at LEAST 60%). Ok, no problem, I appreciate the challenge and the matches are quite grueling.

The problem I have which I will present with two examples is that the opponent I play against appears to have "NO BEARING ON POINTS". In one match I played against a player who was ranked gifted 10, I won the match, and received only 13 points (despite all odds he should have beaten me, being an ENTIRE league above me in rating) and took only a measly 8 points from my opponent. In a second match I played against a player ranked gifted 7. I put up a really strong defense and almost defended but the better man definitely won and he took me out with a great attack. No problems there, but the game gave him +18 points and took -12 from me. How does that make ANY SENSE? A "higher" ranked player gets more points for defeating a player ranked one league lower than him, than a player gets for defeating an opponent ranked one league higher.

I really enjoy playing the game, and thank you for making such a fantastic title. But the rating system is, imho, completely and utterly broken. I think you would be losing a lot of players because of this system.

I'm looking forward to clarification or thoughts. Thank you.

[awpertunity]

There are quite a lot of threads on the forum regarding the issues you bring up here. I'll say a few things here though:

Yes, you are correct in saying that the points mean just about nothing the way they are awarded right now.

Your last paragraph about winning a small number of points and losing a large number of points to players in a league higher than you is actually indicating that you are at their level or higher (You are above the player in skill that only lost 8 points to you, and about equal in skill to the one that took 12 points away from you). This actually means that a promotion is quite imminent. Just play a few more games and it is very likely you will be promoted to Gifted league

You're right, the number of points awarded and taken away does not depend on the number of points or league of the opponent, but actually depends on a hidden skill rating that we are not shown. The hidden skill rating is what will also (eventually) decide your league, but there is some lag in that while your skill rating is still fluctuating.

[wonderpug]

Like awp says, the skill-based rating is hidden. The points you see are just Fun Points! Yay points! Fun! They don't really mean much.

[AwesomeElmo]

Thanks for the reply. That makes a lot of sense. Sorry if I sounded agro. It's just all very confusing. Some more clarification to the players would probably have made me feel better. Perhaps a way to see the hidden rating that is separate to the leagues?

Sorry if I repeated a bunch of information, I did try to find similar threads but as a new poster here I didn't know a lot of the older messages.

[Gustahl]

One thing that I would like to stress as well.

When one is promoted one still keeps his/her league points, so if you are playing against someone who is nr 7 in gifted, that might be someone who was highly ranked in Clever and was just promoted.
Hence you might actually be playing against opponents who are "just" good enough to be in gifted.
And since you are being matched against gifted players you are probably very close to promotion yourself so you and your opponent might be very evenly ranked (in the hidden skill ranking I mean).