Ladder runs are quite motivating in my opinion and pretty sick. Some players may it. It may boost their ego and make them play more.

Ladder runs have this benefit which none of you seem to know about.

Not mentioned here, but of equal importance, is the matchmaking algorithm. Ideally, players should be matched to other players withing their range of likely ratings: e.g. someone with a higher uncertainty should get opponents in a wider range than someone with a quite precise rating.

If only I had more time to talk about this. But yes, the matchmaking system plays a big role of course.

Bayesian or normal, the general rule that better players will be rated higher is true. This will not change if we switch systems.

I think you might've missed the entire point here. Rating inaccuracies defeat this rule; the more inaccuracy, the less this rule holds true. I think you've just been shown that Bayesian Elo tends to have more inaccuracy.

It's like converting from USA measuring system to standardised. It could be done but people too lazy.

It's not. Calculating a different rating system for all ladder games takes a bit more effort than a quick google search.

Ladder runs are quite motivating in my opinion and pretty sick. Some players may it. It may boost their ego and make them play more.

Ladder runs have this benefit which none of you seem to know about.

Depends on interpretation. When I rejoined the ladder, I got a rating of 2340 on a run. Didn't quite boost my ego, nor did it make me play more. Of course the trophy is nice and all, but it's still not fair. The people rated below me were all better in terms of skill. Therefore, I shouldn't have been rated higher than them.

What I meant is if the entire usa decided to change the measuring system. You got me wrong :D

1. Win game lose rating.
Hmm, is it that common? Usually you gain rating.
2. Inflated elo
This is not inherently bad. Depends how you look at it. To some people a perfectly fair system might be too boring. Unpredictable = exciting

----Better players will be rated higher.---- It's still true. The inaccuracy increases. However the general rule holds. Explanation: Some players can't break 1600 or 1800 rating no matter how hard they try. Some people are just bad and it's reflected in ranking.

Normal elo may be a little better. However is this a priority to fizzer? Does it change that much? It feels like some minor detail. I don't know why people make such big deal out of it :d

Bayesian is not perfect but it's good enough in my opinion. To me, warzone is a ready product, like chess or "go", so people obsess over details :P

berdan, you are saying this because you like to profit from bayeselo, which means that you stall losses.

may i remind you?

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=23454837

You are the problem, and I cant even blame you. you are just working with a broken system.

[---
1. Win game lose rating.
Hmm, is it that common? Usually you gain rating.
---]

The fact you say "Usually" is already bad enough. If you win = you gain points. if you lose = you lose points. There should Never be a case where you win and lose points or vise versa. Thats rly stupid.

[---
2. Inflated elo
This is not inherently bad. Depends how you look at it. To some people a perfectly fair system might be too boring. Unpredictable = exciting
---]

Whats not "inherently bad" about that? If someone gets something underservingly... its underserving. simple as that.
And the only people who dont care for a "perfect" fair system are people who arent even good. Because they are the ones who wouldnt get a trophy with a fair system. aka You

[---
Bayesian is not perfect but it's good enough in my opinion. To me, warzone is a ready product, like chess or "go", so people obsess over details
---]

This is just an insult to chess and go at this point.

Edited 9/20/2020 15:35:44

Let's keep the insults to a minimum. The thread is supposed to be an explanation, and discussion is encouraged. Questions like the ones Berdan posted are more than welcome, as the answers to them might explain a lot to people who don't have the in-depth knowledge about the topic. So let's go over them.

1. Win game lose rating.
Hmm, is it that common? Usually you gain rating.

Yes, 'usually' you gain rating by winning. It's explained in the first post that your rating is made up of more things than the number you see on the ladders. In fact, with BayesElo, you always gain rating when you win a game; several people might tell you otherwise though, as the end product that you see on the ladder is your perceived rating minus a factor of probable inaccuracy. As detailed in the first post, sometimes the effect of a completed game is larger on the sum of factors that are deducted from your perceived rating, so the number on the ladder may go down. Keep in mind that this is not common. It does, however, provide a bad experience to players who have no idea about this concept and see this effect on their ratings (and I doubt there's over 5 people on this site who dug into BayesElo; shoutout to Math Wolf). This doesn't happen a lot, though, so I'd say the argument that it can happen shouldn't be taken as a reason to change the system.

2. Inflated elo
This is not inherently bad. Depends how you look at it. To some people a perfectly fair system might be too boring. Unpredictable = exciting

While I'd agree that in some situation unpredictability could be exciting, that's not what we're working with here. The ladder uses a rating system to determine a player's skill relative to other players. I think it's fair to say that we should aim at making this system accurate, as its meaning decreases with inaccuracy. There is little point to rating people's skill with random parameters. Now, Bayesian Elo isn't unpredictable, nor random, but it surely is exceedingly inaccurate when it comes to rating players on a continuous ladder in the extreme cases of a lot of wins or losses.
I also don't see how a perfectly fair system might be boring. Would you be okay with your opponent getting +10 income because their name ends with the letter 'C'? Why would we try to make a system as fair as possible to rate people if we wanted to add randomness in the first place?

----Better players will be rated higher.---- It's still true. The inaccuracy increases. However the general rule holds. Explanation: Some players can't break 1600 or 1800 rating no matter how hard they try. Some people are just bad and it's reflected in ranking.

The general rule holds, but it should be broken as little as possible. Some players indeed will never break 1600 or 1800. And that's fine. When they quit the ladder for 5 months, come back and suddenly get a rating of 2200 because of a bad rating system, it's not.

Bayesian is not perfect but it's good enough in my opinion. To me, warzone is a ready product, like chess or "go", so people obsess over details :P

Bayesian is extremely good when it's used in the right circumstance. Note that this thread is not aiming to say something bad about Bayesian Elo, just to point out how the implementation on a continuous event is flawed.

I had a metaphor in mind when I was writing this response, but my cat jumped on me and I forgot. It involved a Mercedes and mattresses. Not sure what it was, but I wanted to point it out anyways. Don't buy those mattresses!

The Bayeselo executable also computes uncertainty (standard deviations, iirc) for its rating estimates. Perhaps the solution is as simple as using TrueSkill-like ranking logic and subtracting 3*sigma from its rating to generate rankings?

Alternatively one thing I personally like in terms of elegance is to compute the probabilities of you beating some standard players (say a 1500 with zero deviation, a 1200, 1800, etc.) and to convert those back into a single equivalent Elo rating. That process would account for uncertainty (a 2100 with 300 sigma would get hit much harder than a 2100 with 50 sigma, because the latter is more likely really a 2100 and therefore less likely to get upset by a 1500) without a hamfisted simple penalty that drags down early ratings so drastically and makes it hard to figure out where you stand.

Additionally, it seems MW-Elo's innovations can be readily applied on top of any rating system since last I checked they're just bonuses for activity.

Maybe we should develop a clear list of actual problems that have occurred on the ladder due to Bayeselo? That could be the TL;DR. Ladder runs, obviously, as well as unpredictable rating changes, tanking past opponents' ratings, stalling, and the ladder rule AI technically broke with Elo- they're all byproducts of using Bayeselo. Plus Bayeselo in a way punishes you for having played a lot of games- a 1400 with 150 games who improves in skill will basically have to wait until expiry for their rating to catch up to their new skill level, and we know that 1400s can actually climb in skill drastically in practice because just a few insights are enough for 1800+ skill. Bayeselo is bad at picking up change in skill, although Coulom's other system-WHR- tackles this one flaw.

Elo is simple, and elegant, and well-tested. And the predictability it provides ("if I win this game, my rating will go up by 12") makes it more enjoyable to play on the ladder and compete for your rank.

Edited 9/20/2020 17:37:07

I posted here mostly because I was surprised this bothers so many people all of a sudden. Something, which I personally wouldn't give second thoughts about.

I'm not trying to argue which system is better :P

The core gameplay, most important aspect of the game didn't change since many years. The way bonuses and armies interact with one another. Because there isn't really much to change. It's so simple in it's form.

You could remove all the fancy cards, mods, additions, updates and it wouldn't change much for me.

Because the gameplay is so nice in it's pure form. The rest is details.

Additionally, it seems MW-Elo's innovations can be readily applied on top of any rating system since last I checked they're just bonuses for activity.

Yes and no - BayesElo has expiration, which other systems don't. The activity bonus/penalty would not necessarily complement well with expiring games.

The Bayeselo executable also computes uncertainty (standard deviations, iirc) for its rating estimates. Perhaps the solution is as simple as using TrueSkill-like ranking logic and subtracting 3*sigma from its rating to generate rankings?

Same answer as before: yes, but again the expiration would cause weird fluctuations as well, e.g. if a loss against an opponent with many games (themselves having a very precise rating) expires, your variation could go up considerably meaning you could potentially lose points from a loss expiring.

Most systems work with updating ratings whenever a game finishes, while BayesElo works with a time-constrained set of games and calculates the ratings jointly. This expiration process is one of the reasons these types of relatively easy fixes aren't as obvious as they should be.

Edited 9/20/2020 18:33:13

Most systems work with updating ratings whenever a game finishes, while BayesElo works with a time-constrained set of games and calculates the ratings jointly. This expiration process is one of the reasons these types of relatively easy fixes aren't as obvious as they should be.

Seems like, given Bayeselo's inflexibility and the complexity it creates, the simplest thing would be to just use swap out Bayeselo for MW-Elo (tried and tested on the MTL, which afaict doesn't have issues as egregious as the 1 v 1 Ladder). Once that system is in place, any newfound issues (like ratings not changing fast enough early on) could be solved using trivial tweaks (like having the K-factor be higher for early games).

Won't need expiration- a 1500 with 1309 games played is to Elo the exact same as a 1500 with 0 games played. Won't need the unexpired games rule on the ladder- accounts don't have widespread indirect impacts on everyone's ratings (indeed, I see no reason why the rule can't be relaxed to just not having 2 accounts on the ladder at the same time). Won't have to worry about stalling since it will have a much smaller impact. Won't have to worry about players like NanoMidget or Nauz hurting past opponents' ratings once they go on boot streaks (my other gripe with the ladder is that this somehow hasn't been fixed yet; there's no reason to not remove players from the ladder automatically after repeated boots!).

A lot of the options for ladder manipulation and abuse just go away if Warzone drops Bayeselo in favor of a more conventional rating system, even just plain old Elo. This really isn't a complicated topic when you compare the impacts of actual, recurring issues on the 1v1 ladder against the largely theoretical (or inapplicable) and comparatively minor problems that Bayeselo is supposed to address.

And the price for that is just probably a few net points' worth of inaccuracy due to the relatively minor quirks of Elo, quirks that sort themselves out fast enough in a continuous ladder.

Edited 9/20/2020 21:52:00

Will Fizzer even see this...?

The Question is "care"... not "see"...

The Question is "care"... not "see"...

Since no one is quiting WZ cause the ladders use the wrong rating system, it doesnt hurt Fizzers income. This results in the rating system not being on his immediate roadmap.

You do not know this JK. Many people from the strat community retired from the game, was it because of this matter? Maybe, maybe not.

I should add one more flaw to BayesElo, which is more of a practical flaw than flawed theory.
When updating a players' rating, every unexpired game has to be taken into account. You could optimize for this a bit, but in theory you'd have to take every single game played into account. This means that updates have to happen in batches, instead of your rating changing on the spot. I guess I'm so used to waiting for my rating to change after a game that this completely skipped my mind. A rating system like Elo can give you your new rating after finishing a game instantly without having to recalculate the whole system.

You do not know this JK. Many people from the strat community retired from the game, was it because of this matter? Maybe, maybe not.

If people retired due to ladder ratings, I'm sure the would have made a drama forum about it....

Finally someone takes my perspective.... That this is not the end of the world :D

@AI

Is lynx the best? I don't know this. Maybe, maybe not.

Am I gonna win the membership? Probably not.

What's wrong with the concept of giving feedback to provide a better experience for users of the game? It works everywhere else in the world, large gaming companies base almost everything on feedback so why can't this natural cycle of evolution and progression happen here?

In this case, the ladder rating system is terrible so why not change it? It only brings improvement and it'd encourage participation as I know players have been discouraged playing since the rating system can decrease your rating once you've WON a game.

Apart from the usual accounting argument of "You don't fill Fizzer's pockets up why should he care", (which you or I don't actually know that's based on assumption) what I can definitely say is there's value to strategic players and it's not good principle to neglect changes to a group of players that can provide value rather's that buying colours, the google ads.

And to elements of community engagement and creating the forums a buzz you can't really put a price on that as community's are a glue to the game in the long-term. And it's my controversial opinion that there's not much of a glue, however this could be personal biasm of simply growing out of the game, and really I should play some epic fortnite.

@berdan:

We all understand you like to troll. But could you please shut up, if people raise a serious concern on a topic, which annoys people since ages?

None of your Forum posts is funny nor is interesting to read. The only result of your posts is, that every serious clan won't take you as a member.

@topic:
tyvm for the post, Farah. We all know, that the rating system causes a ton of problems and it is sad to see, that so much energy of Fizzer is put in other stuff, but not in stuff which actually bothers a ton of people in the strat community.

The rating system is the cause for stalling (which for example took place in this game brendan vs schwarz (0-1): https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=23405277) and other behaviour which longterm demotivated players (f. e. ladder runs, no interest in staying on a ladder, no interest in playing as much rated games as possible)

Edited 9/21/2020 23:10:09

@Yaxvi

That's one deep, insightful mature post. I'm sure krunx liked it

@krunx

I think we never talked before. Let me introduce myself. I'm berdan
You're a little harsh on me. How do I get your approval?

I respect your stance. You're that guy in group who calls out other's bullshit. I agree with you, the abuse of useless posts need to stop. You raised a good point here.... friend :)