Elements PvP League - Suggestions and Feedback

[Jenkar]

I believe i've made a krach on a gdocs. It simply needs you to input data, rest is automated.
My main problem : scores need a reference point. We either need a personn who's score is fixed at 1 forever (bad solution) or a dummy against which everyone won once and lost once.
I prefer the dummy due to a very potent problem : if you win all your matches, you get infinite rating.

Scratch all this. I need one dumb function for it to work.

Getting a system to work for a tiny sample size is fine, but will the gdocs be able to support 800+ matches worth of input and all the calculations required without taking an excessive amount of time per entry?  It does us no good if each entry takes 15 minutes for gdocs to process where in this season alone we've already had over 800 BL entries.

I tested : the sheet can't be opened now. Xeno is workin' wiht me on remaking it in javascript to enable fast computing without borks.

[RootRanger]

I would use a Dummy with 1 win and 1 loss. Some places use 1/2 win and 1/2 loss, but players with a few wins and no losses would have extremely high ratings if that were the case.

Since everyone's KRACH is based on other players, give everyone a rating of, for example, 100 for the for the first calculation. What matters for KRACH is the ratios, not differences between ratings, so the ratings can all be multiplied by the same number and it will not make a difference.

I think that it should be reasonable to calculate ratings with the amount of players in the leagues. Another site had 200 players at times, many with hundreds of games, and ran calculations once a day.

The 30 game minimum is something to keep. Without it, a player could beat the best player once and quit as the new best player. For this reason it would be a good idea to add a 5 game minimum for a player to show up on the ratings.

[Jenkar]

I would use a Dummy with 1 win and 1 loss. Some places use 1/2 win and 1/2 loss, but players with a few wins and no losses would have extremely high ratings if that were the case.

Since everyone's KRACH is based on other players, give everyone a rating of, for example, 100 for the for the first calculation. What matters for KRACH is the ratios, not differences between ratings, so the ratings can all be multiplied by the same number and it will not make a difference.

I think that it should be reasonable to calculate ratings with the amount of players in the leagues. Another site had 200 players at times, many with hundreds of games, and ran calculations once a day.

The 30 game minimum is something to keep. Without it, a player could beat the best player once and quit as the new best player. For this reason it would be a good idea to add a 5 game minimum for a player to show up on the ratings.

A) What we did =)
B)We used 1. Doesn't really matter.
C)Xeno tried around 100000 iterations. It runs in about one second.
D)Agreed.

[bucky1andonly]

Why did the old simple system fail?  Just saying it failed means nothing to me.  If more info is given as to why it failed, maybe improvements can be made upon it.  Using these over complicated systems that don't even fit in with the game anyway just seems futile.  There is no incentive to keep players playing anyway, the point system is irrelevant if there is no downside to avoiding matches or not playing at all, whether your score is high or low. 

http://www.collegehockeynews.com/ratings/krach.php

Look at 1st and 2nd.  I don't know how KRACH works, but how many games would 2nd place have to win to catch up to 1st.  2nd place already has 6 games more than 1st played overall too, but 1st has roughly double the rating.  And what about 4th place, they are 4 games ahead in games played, but are almost 1/4 of the ranking of 1st, how many games would they need.  And how do their wins affect 1st's rating if 1st doesn't play any more games.  Give 2nd and 4th each 4 more wins and calculate please.  This should be a good way to see how KRACH works.  Don't forget, hockey requires actual skill, more skill than luck, so this system would be more accurate for them because of that.

[RootRanger]

Bucky, I'm not going to make another post explaining KRACH just because you choose to ignore anything you disagree with. If you want to know what makes KRACH best, you can find those reasons. If you want an explanation of KRACH, you can find that too. Until you actually understand what you are talking about, your rants will get you nowhere.

[TStar]

The problems with the pre-ELO system have been mentioned many many times in this thread bucky.  I suggest reading the replies to your previous posts insted of TL;DRing and you will see those questions have already been addressed.

As for your KRACH requests, it's impossible to say since everything is linked.  You can't simply add 4 wins.  It depends who those wins are against since each win will help you, but may also cause the people you are chasing to decrease in rating since the common opponent is weaker.  You can't simply plug in a simple win or loss without having the entire database present to account for the linkage.

[RootRanger]

Mixed League, the answer to many of our problems

The Problems

CL does not deserve to have larger prizes and a condescending name compared to BL.

Success in CL requires a lot of electrum and/or upgraded cards. Many of the highly skilled players do not have enough upgraded cards to succeed in CL. BL is different, however. Almost all of the highly skilled players, however, have enough cards and electrum to have the resources they need for BL. This makes BL open for a significantly larger amount of skilled players, which means the top players are definitely as good as the best players in CL. I also think BL involves as much, if not more skill, as CL, because success in BL requires creative deckbuilding skill. Here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,11028.0.html) is the unupgraded PvP deck archive. There are not many decks, and all of them, including mine, are far from being perfect. I wouldn't use any of them by themself, and I would only use a couple of them if I heavily modified them. Here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,11023.0.html) is the upgraded PvP deck archive. There are 20 decks, and some of them would do very well in a competitive environment. Although I have never entered CL, I have entered many upgraded tournaments, and I know what will work well. Success in BL requires as much deckbuilding skill as CL, and likely more.

I hope I've made it clear that the winners of BL are just as skilled as those of CL. I find the names and the prize gap unreasonable because of this.

Now, I have experience as the #3 player in CL, and I am certain that CL does not take more skill than BL.

Deckbuildling in CL does not take more skill than BL. There are many decks posted on the forum that are highly effective in CL, and there is really no need for players competing in CL to make original decks. In BL, however, there are fewer forum decks that work well. In the upgraded deck archive, 2 of the first 3 decks listed are highly effective in CL, even without modifications. In the unupgraded deck archive, there are imperfect decks that do not include a large portion of the metagame.

CL games involve more luck. In CL, Supernova rainbows are impossible to hard counter, even with cards like black hole and rewind to slow them down. A skilled player with perfect deckbuilding and prediction can still lose a significant amount of games due to unfavorable luck. In BL, however, skilled deckbuilding and prediction is almost always enough to overcome bad luck. BL Players with great deckbuilding and prediction can win a larger amount of their games because luck is minimized.

Finding a match is difficult and CL and, to a lesser extent, BL.
Even during the peak hours of chat, finding a league match is sometimes impossible. Only a small portion of the community participates in leagues, and many are retired or inactive. There are few players in CL, and I had to spend hours of waiting just to complete 30 games.

Players are not allowed to play unupgraded matches and upgraded matches in the same league season.
Throughout most of my season of CL, I wanted to return to BL. I'm sure there are many other players that want to switch leagues or try out the other league. Playing in the same metagame for months can be boring for many players.

The Rules of Mixed League

I suggest combining both leagues into one league, Mixed League. Mixed League has the rules of BL with one additional rule: if both players agree that they want to use upgraded cards for a match, they are allowed to.

With Mixed League, there will be one league with one standings page. The current reward codes will all be for Mixed League. Unupgraded and upgraded matches will both have equal weight and influence ratings equally. Players can play both unupgraded matches and upgraded matches in the same league. The 24 hour rule and the match limit apply for any league match, unupgraded or upgraded.

How Mixed Leagues Solves League Problems

CL does not deserve to have larger prizes and a condescending name compared to BL.

With Mixed League, the prizes for unupgraded players and upgraded players are the same. Any player has a chance to win the top prizes if they are skilled, instead of only players that want to play upgraded games. Also, there are no longer false names given to undeserving leagues. The new name will represent the facts and truth instead of misunderstandings.

Finding a match is difficult and CL and, to a lesser extent, BL.

Because of Mixed League, there are more people that a league player can battle. When it becomes easier to find a match, the leagues become more fun, more people join, and soon there will be hardly any problems finding a match.

Players are not allowed to play unupgraded matches and upgraded matches in the same league season.

With Mixed League, players can play unupgraded and upgraded matches in the same season. Players will no longer have to be missing out on half of the game; they can now play both types of matches.

[ralouf]

Don't need a long comment, this a VERY good idea

[TStar]

The biggest problem with allowing players to essentially set their own rules is that it's not consistent for everyone.  A player can refuse to play anything but unupped or upped matches, which would completely skew the results since they are allowed to essentially dictate the terms of their matches compared to players willing to be more flexible.  That creates an advantage to players who want to be stubborn in refusing to play outside of their specific comfort zone.  This is the same reason Leagues do not recognize any "special rules" players agree to for matches, like no Nova/Discord/etc.  You can agree to anything you like, but if a player lies that's tough luck, it's not official.  This Mixed League format would basically create a legalized way to restrict decks to upped or unupped for a player.  This type of situation should NEVER be encouraged, nor should LOs be forced to act as referees to determine whether players followed custom rulesets or not.

[RootRanger]

The biggest problem with allowing players to essentially set their own rules is that it's not consistent for everyone.  A player can refuse to play anything but unupped or upped matches, which would completely skew the results since they are allowed to essentially dictate the terms of their matches compared to players willing to be more flexible.  That creates an advantage to players who want to be stubborn in refusing to play outside of their specific comfort zone.  This is the same reason Leagues do not recognize any "special rules" players agree to for matches, like no Nova/Discord/etc.  You can agree to anything you like, but if a player lies that's tough luck, it's not official.  This Mixed League format would basically create a legalized way to restrict decks to upped or unupped for a player.  This type of situation should NEVER be encouraged, nor should LOs be forced to act as referees to determine whether players followed custom rulesets or not.

There are only two options for Mixed League, unupgraded and upgraded. There are no special rules, and there are very few cases when LOs will need to determine if players follow the ruleset.

With the current system, players already benefit from playing inside their comfort zone. Players that prefer unupgraded play usually join BL, and players that prefer upgraded play usually join CL. The change in Mixed League is that players that want to step outside of their comfort zone for fun now have the option to do so. There will be many "stubborn" players that only play unuppgraded or only play upgraded, but this is already the case since we have two leagues.

[TStar]

Except everyone in the league currently plays by the same set of rules.  That wouldn't be the case in your suggestion.  A player who will only play upped is using different rules from a player who will only play unupped.

[bucky1andonly]

If you join CL and want to play unupped matches, just play friendly pvp duels, and vice versa. 

CL is for those that have played a lot to save up for a lot of upgraded cards.  The reason why the prize is higher, was probably due to the fact it involves upgraded cards and because there was a minimum score requirement to join.

BL, being called beginners league, should be for beginners only.  This gives new people, even with very little cards, a chance to compete and win something, but there are a lot that join that own every card unupped already, which gives them a clear advantage, since they can build decks based on what their opponent uses on a regular basis because they might not own a lot of cards. 

There should be a maximum score requirement on BL and a minimum on CL.  Since everyone believes that skill is more involved than luck anyway, those that are more "skilled" should be in CL, since new people are pretty much forced to play BL due to lack of unupped cards, but they could join and get stomped almost every game.

If anything, a 3rd league should be introduced for this mixed league idea, not combining the 2, with no score requirement allowing anyone to join, with the reward slightly greater than BL and noticeably lower than CL.

Now don't start raging about anything, BL is called beginners league for a reason, and it should be for beginners.  CL is for those that have been playing longer and have more experience and cards.  ML would be for those that can no longer join BL and don't feel they can compete in CL.