Elements PvP League - Suggestions and Feedback

[Jenkar]

I don"t know a guy who starts always with the same deck, even noobs don"t do that..

Not same deck, of course. But some people have a tendency to start with deck type x. or alternate between x & y. Or use x nearly all the time.

[TStar]

*snip*

Actually that is incorrect and your example highlights the issues with that system.  A player who went 70-130 with a 1420 rating like you WOULD get prizes.  In Season 2 of BL that player would have gotten 6th place, which is a prize spot, despite having a rating that was better than only 4 of the 92 players.  In Season 1 his/her adjusted 1620 would have resulted in a 4th place finish despite a rating that is better than only 6 of 132 players.  Same situation with CL where the player would have finished 5th in Season 2 despite a rating better than only 4 of 35 players and 5th in Season 1 despite a rating better than only 5 of 38 players.
All you've done is create a new system that rewards spamming games more than winning, the exact problem from before.  Simply put, your method places are too much value on a game versus a win.

[ralouf]

Yeah I didn' noticed that and for my part I just take a deck with which I'm feeling good, except if I already  know what my opponent is likely to play..

[bucky1andonly]

The point is being missed I guess. 

In a league of any kind, participation is expected, and if you or your team fails to participate regularly, you are usually thrown out of the league.  So the idea of 'spamming' games should be encouraged more than anything, because you want people to be more active on elements anyway.  I am not saying remove people that are not participating, but losing points for not playing on a regular basis AND gaining bonus points for playing is so much better for elements with some other system. 

ELO and games of chance do not work.  ELO measures skill, not luck, so remove the system and do some searching to find a better one.

[RootRanger]

Copy pasting a deck from the forum don't need skills. and every deck can be countered by a deck posted on the forum. Even if you make an original deck there is at least one good counter on the forum. If your noob opponent use this deck he will win. (Although I managed to loose with ghostmare vs adrenastave)

This is true, but there is still a lot of skill in the game.

1.) Most of the decks on the forum are completely terrible. In theory someone could win a league by only using decks posted on the forum, but they still need skill to choose the right decks. Only a great player will be able to realize what decks are truly worth using in the current metagame.

2.) People can be predicted. No one is going to be able to know exactly what their opponent uses every game, but a player with strong prediction can shift the odds in their favor. In the leagues, clearly some players have mastered prediction. Otherwise, luck would get the best of them much more often.

ELO and games of chance do not work.  ELO measures skill, not luck, so remove the system and do some searching to find a better one.

ELO works decently in any game that isn't 100% luck.
I'll use the examples of Elements and Chess. Let's say each person has a skill level that can be measured from 0 to 20.

In Chess, a player with a skill level of 12 will beat a player with a skill level of 8 about as often as an Elements player with a skill level of 20 beats a player with a skill level of 0. A Chess player with a skill level of 15 will beat a player with a skill level of 5 almost every single time, but an Elements player with a skill level of 15 will often beat a player with a skill level of 5 but sometimes lose.

All this means is that in Chess, the ratings have a higher range from the worst player to the best player (about 2800). The range in Elements is around 400.

ELO still measures skill. The only difference is that, with more luck, there is a smaller range.

[bucky1andonly]

What part of chess relies on luck?  I guess the only part would be on how your opponent is decided.  You can get lucky in a chess tournament and face the worst player there right away, or unlucky and face the best right away.  But the actual game is based on skill, where elements is mostly luck.  Also in chess leagues, ELO ratings are ongoing, so your skill level over a year will be very accurate, whereas in elements uses a 3 month period to decide how lucky you are, since it requires vastly less skill than chess.

Mirror matches in chess are bad, and skilled players know this, but in elements playing the exact same deck, a complete noob vs a long time player, well, the game could go either way, it is all based on the draws.  But the thing is, the noob most likely won't have all those cards anyway.  Elements is very simple, there are not many complicated decks, any noob can copy/paste a deck code and become 'pro' with the deck in a matter of a day.  Chess takes a hell of a long time to master, or even to be decent at. 

This is why chess cannot be compared to elements when talking about skill, it makes no sense, and this is also why ELO does not work with elements, it is due to the lack of skill required when compared to chess.  ELO gives a numerical value for your skill, and any noob on elements can get a high ELO just by getting lucky.  A noob chess player cannot get lucky against a pro the same way.

[ralouf]

Wow just my thoughts ^.

Except that I understand your comparison Root and got what you meant with this. But as bucky said luck is way to much imortant in elements, and luck have no part at all in chess. in chess skill is 99% of the game, or even more. In elements you SOMETIMES have choice to make when you play but that doesn't really matter : everything rely on a good draw/good deck choice.

For example, talking about an other card game I loved : MtG. For me this game is THE best card games because he managed to make skill more important than luck while staying very easy to play for noob. I wish elements can manage to do this too. Actually it looks very hard because in magic what make the game more skill-based is that :
1) you can block when opponent creatures attack
2) you can stack spells and play "in answer" when your opponent play a card.

Those two things allow some awesome situtation and they are a part of what make MtG that good.

In elements we don't have those both things but I guess we can going on this way, IMO making the game slower, adding control cards and creatures with good ability is the good way. But that's an other subject..

For the rating I think that ths one is the best but only by default.. Hope we can find an other one one day..

[RootRanger]

What part of chess relies on luck?  I guess the only part would be on how your opponent is decided.  You can get lucky in a chess tournament and face the worst player there right away, or unlucky and face the best right away.  But the actual game is based on skill, where elements is mostly luck.  Also in chess leagues, ELO ratings are ongoing, so your skill level over a year will be very accurate, whereas in elements uses a 3 month period to decide how lucky you are, since it requires vastly less skill than chess.

Mirror matches in chess are bad, and skilled players know this, but in elements playing the exact same deck, a complete noob vs a long time player, well, the game could go either way, it is all based on the draws.  But the thing is, the noob most likely won't have all those cards anyway.  Elements is very simple, there are not many complicated decks, any noob can copy/paste a deck code and become 'pro' with the deck in a matter of a day.  Chess takes a hell of a long time to master, or even to be decent at. 

This is why chess cannot be compared to elements when talking about skill, it makes no sense, and this is also why ELO does not work with elements, it is due to the lack of skill required when compared to chess.  ELO gives a numerical value for your skill, and any noob on elements can get a high ELO just by getting lucky.  A noob chess player cannot get lucky against a pro the same way.

Did you even read my post? You seem to be arguing against something I didn't say.

Basically, the skill difference between Chess players of skill levels 12 and 8 is about the same as the skill difference between Elements players of skill levels 20 and 0. ELO works perfectly fine in Chess between players from skill levels 8 through 12 as well as 0 through 20, which means it works fine in Elements with players from skill levels 0 to 20.

It's not about luck and skill as much. It's about the probability that the better player will win. Since ELO works fine in Chess even when you exclude the very best and the very worst players, it will work fine in Elements.

[CCCombobreaker]

In any game/sport the ratings are going to be an arbitrary system that tries to approximate skill. 

ELO, total wins, win % are all ways of doing this and all inherently give certain advantages or disadvantages. 
For win total it heavily advantages people who can play the most games, which is not really a measure of skill.  Yes you still have to win some, but if I played TStar 2000 times and won 10 that doesn't make me better than someone who played him 9 times and won all 9.  Win total may be the worst approximation of skill level.

For win % it rewards anyone for picking on less skilled opponents and avoiding skillful ones.  That way you maximize wins without getting many losses.  It punishes you for playing people better than you because you lose more than you win and all games have the same weight. 

ELO balances the system further by rewarding you for beating better players and punishing you for losing to worse ones.  That 'luck' plays a role in league matches is ridiculously overrated.  Knowing the meta, your opponent, and having good decks is a huge part of BL.  Yes the forums have several decks that are pretty effective and see a lot of play, but being aware of that and designing decks with those in mind is a skill.  And how the games play out is skill based too.  You guys may be too good or have forgotten but BL has a lot of players that lose games they should win (by not RTing their own guys and getting decked or unborrowing shriekers into CC or any number of other subtle play errors that result from not fully understanding a deck or matchup). 

I firmly support the ELO system.  And the community has enough honor that rarely do people hide after getting a high rating.  But that they hide doesn't even make them uncatchable.  If they can get to that rating without playing themselves  other's should be able to as well. 

Should we raise the game limit or add bonuses for playing certain numbers of games?  Then you are just trying to bend the arbitrary system towards more active players (and not better players).  If the prizes are the only thing motivating you to play then yeah I guess you want a reward for playing lots of games... But playing the games themselves should be part of the reward, if you enjoy playing at all.  Also playing more is like practice and should help you improve.  If someone wants to get better and plays lots of games I would expect their ELO to trend upwards (assuming random sample of opponents).

We could tweak the system or use a different one, but ELO really is one of the least biased ways of assessing player skill that still rewards them for playing more games and for not just playing against the newer and worse players.

[ralouf]

Yeah but actually I played 150 matches and will not win anything :p
But that was lot of fun and I think that's what is important here.

[bogtro]

I play chess a lot, so I feel I really understand the ELO system. There seems to be no reason why this should fail, even between players with varying amounts of games. A player who is ranked 1700 is expected to defeat a player rated 1500 a large percentage of the time -the ELO system does not reward not playing games. Granted, this is less of a pr, oblem in chess, where the player base is much larger, and thus there is minimal advantage to holding rating.

The players in this league are nice enough that they don't avoid matches - even Tstar, who could literaly not play a match and easily win the league at this point, still regularly plays, risking a lot more points than he will gain. In chess, a 2200 is expected to win nearly 100% of the time against an 1800. Since in EtG, the ratings are much different, this will be roughly the same stat for a 1700 and a 1400.

The argument that EtG is not a game of skill is frankly discouraging. Simply by the fact that there are players that are continually near the top of the rankings shoudl suggest that there is a lot of strategy in this game. Sure, RNG plays a great role, but this does not mean that there is not a lot of strategy involved.

Besides these argument that Elo is not broken, there exists the simple fact that there isn't a better system - if there were, it would have been adopted by chess and such. It's great to say that you should get extra points for games, but this doesn't really help much in terms of match avoiding and rewards the players who are able to be more active. There is no perfect system - we've been chasing this forever. The Elo system is the best we have, and I am an ardent supporter of it.

[bucky1andonly]

Randomness and ELO do not mix.  ELO is supposed to be about measuring skill. 

It's not about luck and skill as much. It's about the probability that the better player will win. Since ELO works fine in Chess even when you exclude the very best and the very worst players, it will work fine in Elements.

This makes no sense, you contradict yourself.  Chess is about skill and match-ups are random.  Elements is about luck, drawing cards after RNG shuffles your deck, and match-ups are not random.  Chess leagues that use ELO run for years so your ELO equalizes at your appropriate skill level.  Elements league ran for 2 months, now 3 months, which is clearly not enough time to equalize the skill of players, if ELO were even capable of measuring skill on a game built around random drawing of cards.

Picking a deck that MIGHT counter your opponents deck, based on what you know of that person and what decks they generally use, still will not guarantee a win because of RNG. 

Random match-ups in chess usually pit you against someone with an ELO around your own, and that is because there is no point in playing against someone that has an ELO 500 more than you which proves they are more skillful at the game.  But here in elements, if the lowest ranked played the highest, there is still a really good chance the lower ranked person could win. 

So if one person gets really lucky at the start of the league and get their ELO up real high, and slows down on playing, someone with a low ELO rating will be required to play a lot of games to try and catch up, and it is possible to catch up because it is not skill based.  In chess your ELO won't fluctuate all that much once you have played a good amount of games to equalize it out, unless you can get really good really fast, which usually will never happen.  But again, in elements, a player can go on a winning streak with a low elo against all the top ranked people, and their ranking will go up, and that is because of a luck based game.  But it still requires too many games to try and catch the people at the top, all the while risking your points because you MUST play to gain more, and they don't have to play at all to remain at the top.

There is no incentive to play when on top, there is tons of incentive not to play though.  And just because a few people do continue to play while on top does not mean anything about the whole league community.  It already has happened that someone on top stopped playing and was still rewarded from lack of participation once on top.

I also agree with everything ralouf said when he compared elements to mtg.  The ability to block attacks and play cards to counter your opponents cards while they are playing shows how much skill is needed in mtg over elements.