About ELO

Paradigm2 · Post by **Paradigm2** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:43 pm

Greator, I think your post is mostly accurate, but saying comms do not matter is inaccurate regarding people who stack.

Sure there are rare occasions where a major vet will anti-stack causing a stack to shift to some unknown comm, but 95% of the time the stack will go to the better commander. I know this doesn't disprove your point at all, in fact it strengthens it... people stack on the team most likely to win.

What I contest is the fact that the system we have now will "autobalance" to make an equal number of ELO on each team at any given time. However, it has no way to account for commander skill.

All else equal, lets say Aarm (a 24) is commanding vs. Malice42 (a 1, I think). Now, lets say they use the autobalance button. Then, Aarm's team of 5 (for simplicity) might include 2 (1's) and 2 (15's), adding to an ELO total of 45. Now assume that Malice's team is given weedman (let's pretend he's also a 24 for the example), another (1), and 2 (15's). Therefore, ELO will be balanced, but because it does not take commander skill into the formula, it is going to be a slaughter.... AND people will stack Aarm because of his known skill.

This is an oversimplified example, but it still holds true in 20v20 games with closer skilled comms. That's why I think there should either be a requirment that commanders of similar win threshold should have to play each other OR commander's ELO should be weighted in some other way to take the skill levels into account.

If your commander sends assault refs, lets his IC miners rip to a camped tp, buys counter 2 vs rix, etc etc etc it does not matter if ELO thinks the teams are even and that needs to be accounted for.

Lykourgos · Post by **Lykourgos** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:45 pm

Yeah, Ang, I made that argument a long time ago. I think someone thinks (maybe subconsciously) that we should try to punish stackers by giving them low ELOs. Because obviously stackers are bad players.

Greator, really if you want my opinion in response to your post, stacks will continue to occur regardless of the system we have in place to prevent them. The reason I'm interested in improving ELO is that, if we can get an accurate ranking, if everyone online is willing, we can get even teams instantaneously without picking, because people won't abuse the system. That's worth working towards.

Raveen, your pitiful attempt at fishing will be met with the answer it deserves. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> With respect to even comms, though; that problem is complicated. First there has to be motivation to command, which there currently is not, and that is part of what this thread is trying to address. Second there have to be a lot more competent comms, which is what Shiz is working on (hopefully I can help with that).

Paradigm2 · Post by **Paradigm2** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:48 pm

My personal opinion is that the commanders skill should be weighted so an oppossing crappy comm will get better players, not that we should enforce even commanders every game.

Lykourgos · Post by **Lykourgos** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:53 pm

It's impossible to enforce even comms every game because there are so few even comms. We should still try to get even comms when we can. The ELO system should be a tool to help us, not something to tell us what to do.

jgbaxter · Post by **jgbaxter** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:06 pm

Lykourgos wrote:QUOTE (Lykourgos @ Feb 6 2007, 03:23 AM) bax: Go look at the leaderboard and note the pilots who have kills/game greater than 8 or so.

The thing is, people like Weed will have thier elo/ranks shoot up, he's played about half the games (that counted) I have since r3, so even though we're the same rank currently, his will increase much faster then mine. He's on winning teams ~75% of the time, me ~55% of the time (of course I anti-stack more which helps me gain point disproportionately faster). I do take your meaning in general though, and the system can definately be improved on. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

fermi · Post by **fermi** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:13 pm

I d like to propose following fact.
Instead stacking at start must be prohibited by ourselves. that should be possible...
Most stack is created by late joiners so far.

In my opinion. Do not leave any information out. Do not make Noat see who is flying with whom and / or against...
Except ... well maybe that Sum of Ranks...(dunno name for that).
Then chances to choose a side are 50% and stacking would be sort of luck...
Furthermore the difference of that [Sum of Rank] numbers IS to be only slightly different. If it varies too much, lots of players will be afraid of joining.

This is my advice.
1.Make game-constitution nearly invisible
2.a)Use that [Sum of Rank] for the Team's to influence probability of choosing team.
< it should not say team A:57 , Team B:80, but Ratio "slightly B, or even equal".>

jgbaxter · Post by **jgbaxter** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 11:40 pm

The thing is, elo helps give approximate gauges of a players skill... however, knowing the players skill yourself is much more accurate. This is why so many games with picked teams are stacked, forget about the elo, stacked by players skill.

Informed commanders will always choose the expert8 or nov4 that they want, even if those rank names are only in their head and elo says that the expert8 is really a veteran2 and the nov4 actually a vet5 that's been away 6 months but is back in the saddle.

Greator_SST · Post by **Greator_SST** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:05 am

fermi wrote:QUOTE (fermi @ Feb 6 2007, 06:13 PM) Do not make Noat see who is flying with whom and / or against... Except ... well maybe that Sum of Ranks...

...hmmm, that's an interesting thought /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

fermi · Post by **fermi** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:56 am

This is clear. BUT at the beginning of the game BOTH COMMANDERS have to agree starting. It is on them to decide if starting teams are stacked or not.

And while playing. You re right. Comms can choose whom they take. They don t have to use Autoaccept. But what if AutoAccept can not be deactivated...

Then it might get slightly fair... (if we do as i described above).

Mikhail · Post by **Mikhail** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:49 pm

QUOTE The problem is that this process is slow, and that it will be made slower if people don't play autobalanced games much, which seems to be the trend right now. And the main reason I, at least, don't like playing with autobalance on, is that there's no way to pick your commander. Do you guys think there would be someway to implement a commander preference option? That way all the people who didn't mind flying for Voob1 against Hider1 would get assigned to Voob1's team, at least.[/quote]

This is exactly the problem. If you don't fly for voob1, hider1 will always win. I'm sorry but that is why games are stacked. Exactly because of this behaviour. Fly for other commanders and give them a chance to get better.

Picking your commander != autobalance

I would rather force autobalance on servers and if somebody joins a server he is adjusted to a team instead being on NOAT. And he can't even pick his team. That would be real autobalance (right now autobalance means stackers still wait for others to go to the "looser team")
Btw how about hiding ranks completely? Everytime I play somebody complains about his ELO and that he have to get it back up. Everybody think this is a rankingsystem for their personal ego. Hide ELO and implement another rankingsystem based on basekills and/or normal kills and give them their ego in some other way than misled them to stack games to keep their ELO high.

Mik