Introducing: The Altitude Ladder

[Triped]

Originally Posted by nesnl

Not really sure what you are getting at, but in situations like this there is constant cross over between who plays who. This means that although I may never play you specifically, I will most likely play a lot of the same people that you play. This means that the ratings of you and I, while we have never directly faced each other, should skill somewhat represent our skill as the ratings are based off the same population of people.

I was thinking about what would happen if you guys encouraged players to join different servers based on skill. For example, say Ladder 1 was where pros tended to go, mediocre players don't get picked, etc. And Ladder 2 was where the mediocre/good players went, made a good effort to pick fairly, etc. Like you say, there would inevitably be enough crossover to make comparisons.

If one group barely ever played against another, though, you'd have some funny rank behavior. For example, say Player A, who sucks, got on a good team and managed to beat Tyr's team. If he never played Tyr again, he'd be inflating the ranks of everyone he played against who hadn't played against anyone else within X degrees of separation from Tyr. This is all speculation since you aren't segregating the ladder, of course.

[protest boy]

I think you guys should extend the cutoff for this ladder 'season' from March 15th to something much later. For those of us who can't afford to play many games a day (thereby getting a more accurate rating) it's hard to compete for the top spots in such a short time period (1.5 months). How about seasons that last 3 months?

[Tosconi]

well i just really hope, that after the dead line - the ladder will either go further in the way it is, or gets restarted. The main point is that it remains. Coz i'd never played so many wonderful competitive games so often, before the ladder was introduced.

[nesnl]

We haven't decided what we are going to do come March 15th. We may reset the ratings or we may not. We might adopt a new rating system that incorporates things such as map of the week or other things. Ideally we are going to be incorporating all the new stats in the logs so that we can print out plane usage, perk usage, kills, deaths, base damage, etc.

The ladder will continue after March 15th, no matter what happens with the ratings or the system. We are continually working to make it a better system everyday. We also hope to expand the amount of servers as well as game types available.

[Flyngbanana]

So you're thinking of resetting the ladder? o.0 Please don't. People will be finally getting towards their actual skill level ratings. I see no reason to delete these games from the system. It would annoy a lot of people who have put a lot of time playing in order to see where they are in the altitude community.

[Triped]

Don't forget the third option: archiving the rankings from old ladder seasons for review. And possibly keeping an all-time ladder score alongside the current ladder season.

[Tosconi]

"It would annoy a lot of people who have put a lot of time playing in order to see where they are in the altitude community."

eeh - you mean the first 15? I'm pretty sure, that 80% (like 300 ppl of 350 right now) would't get annoyed with that :/

[Flyngbanana]

Originally Posted by Tosconi

"It would annoy a lot of people who have put a lot of time playing in order to see where they are in the altitude community."

eeh - you mean the first 15? I'm pretty sure, that 80% (like 300 ppl of 350 right now) would't get annoyed with that :/

I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of those who are not in the bottom 50 of the ladder don't want it to be reset. I for one would probably stop playing the ladder if it gets reset.

What purpose would a reset achieve?

[Tosconi]

well, I would only reset the ratings while having games played and win/loss stats stay.

[[Y]]

Maybe a complete reset while keeping the current stats, resulting in two leaderboards; one with stats from since the beginning of the ladder and a second one that gets reset after each ladder season.

[eth]

Originally Posted by Flyngbanana

I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of those who are not in the bottom 50 of the ladder don't want it to be reset. I for one would probably stop playing the ladder if it gets reset.

What purpose would a reset achieve?

To give everyone a fresh start, newbs and pros alike. Hopefully we will be able to find a new prize for Season 2, and assuming we do, a rating reset at least seems necessary to me - if we don't, people who are at 2200 rating now can just camp it out in Season 2 and collect the prize at the end.

[protest boy]

Originally Posted by Triped

Don't forget the third option: archiving the rankings from old ladder seasons for review. And possibly keeping an all-time ladder score alongside the current ladder season.

Once again, a Lobstar rises his antennae out of the briny deep and comes up with a good solution.

I understand we don't want people to just sit on high ladder rankings without playing games to maintain those rankings. But at the same time, the more games are played, the more accurate those rankings are. That's why I think a longer ladder season might be a good compromise. I also like the idea of keeping 'all-time' ladder statistics.

But whatever is decided, excellent work guys! I really don't care so much about the ladder as I do about the good games it produces!

[tec27]

I don't really care what you guys do as long as you add a snazzy graph for ratings so I can see my ascent to greatness.

[Flyngbanana]

Originally Posted by Triped

Don't forget the third option: archiving the rankings from old ladder seasons for review. And possibly keeping an all-time ladder score alongside the current ladder season.

Originally Posted by protest boy

Once again, a Lobstar rises his antennae out of the briny deep and comes up with a good solution.

I understand we don't want people to just sit on high ladder rankings without playing games to maintain those rankings. But at the same time, the more games are played, the more accurate those rankings are. That's why I think a longer ladder season might be a good compromise. I also like the idea of keeping 'all-time' ladder statistics.

But whatever is decided, excellent work guys! I really don't care so much about the ladder as I do about the good games it produces!

I just see the ladder as a general board for seeing peoples ranking in the community. The more games played, the more accurate the ranking. What I don't get is resetting everything arbitrarily at the end of a 'season'. Perhaps if you're worried about people sitting on their rankings, add a decay to the scores each month.

An all time scoreboard would be a great solution too

[nobodyhome]

The reasons why the ladder should be reset is manyfold:

1. As indicated by the stamp on the upper left corner of the banner on the altitude ladder website, this ladder is clearly in "BETA". What this means is that we have tons of new features coming soon, especially with the onset of lam's recent patch, and that we would like to start off with a clean slate sometime in order to let these features kick in cleanly too. This is also why our ladder is going to reset sooner rather than later.

2. The ladder, in my mind, is more like competition as opposed to a lifetime rating. This is why we have prizes at the end of it--we are rewarding you for your achievement and strong play during the particular ladder season, as opposed to rewarding you for just being good. As such it wouldn't make sense to carry these points on over to the next.

3. In my experience with iCCup and the D2 ladders, a ladder reset is the most exciting time of a ladder. Everyone starts playing at a frantic pace and at greater volumes during the beginning of the ladder, as everybody vies to get at the top of the ladder before others do. If we just leave the ladder all the time without resets, we would never get to enjoy times like these.

[eth]

I think having a separate page for all-time ladderstats is a good idea though.. if we could update it once per season it might even be efficient to implement!

[protest boy]

To whomever has access to the ladder data in an easy to use format:

I would love to see an "average game duration" organized by map.

[Flyngbanana]

Okay those are good reasons. Go ahead and reset it
An all time ladder stats would be nice though

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by protest boy

To whomever has access to the ladder data in an easy to use format:

I would love to see an "average game duration" organized by map.

We are planning on implementing map specific pages that will include stats in the future. We were originally working with limited information, but now that lamster/karl has been so kind and come through so fast on providing us with basically every stat imaginable. So taking this into account, we will probably work on implementing all the new stats and try to roll them out in the best fashion possible. The TODO list grows longer everyday. I now appreciate what lamster/karl do more now than ever.

Also, as a quick update to the ladder website. Eth has finished the "Match Details" page. This new page is accessible from either the master match list (which can be found by clicking on the "Total Games" Number on the News page) or by navigating to someone's profile and clicking "Match List" followed by clicking on "Match Details" next to the match you want to view.

This new Match Details page provides many stats for each player in the game including their average point gain/loss on that specific map as well as if they disconnected in that match or how many times they were ping kicked. It also includes a display of whether the match was autobalanced using the website's autobalance feature as well as giving a "Match Quality" score. The Match Quality is a percent that is based on both how well balanced the teams were (as in percentage to win) combined with how much variance there are between the ratings of the players in the game.

[Tosconi]

I've got a question on a ping kicks stats. Right now I have 7 of them. But the point is that i was ping kicked 6 times from 1 single match (coz my flatmates started to download something like 5 minutes after the match was started). Can maybe the ping kick stats be connected with the numbers of matches, from which ppl get kicked and not with the number of actual kicks?

[eth]

Originally Posted by Tosconi

I've got a question on a ping kicks stats. Right now I have 7 of them. But the point is that i was ping kicked 6 times from 1 single match (coz my flatmates started to download something like 5 minutes after the match was started). Can maybe the ping kick stats be connected with the numbers of matches, from which ppl get kicked and not with the number of actual kicks?

Mmmmyeah I can see where you're coming from but like, if we were to display that in addition to the other ping/leave stats, it'd be a lot of stuff just centered on that. If you only have 7 pingkicks, your % should be really low either way and I don't think you should worry about that(if that's what you're worrying about). Right now it displays total kicks / %, if anyone has any good ideas about how to display even more stats about it(or replace maybe?) I'll be happy to hear it!

[Varonth]

Originally Posted by eth

Mmmmyeah I can see where you're coming from but like, if we were to display that in addition to the other ping/leave stats, it'd be a lot of stuff just centered on that. If you only have 7 pingkicks, your % should be really low either way and I don't think you should worry about that(if that's what you're worrying about). Right now it displays total kicks / %, if anyone has any good ideas about how to display even more stats about it(or replace maybe?) I'll be happy to hear it!

What about:
Total Number of Ping kicks
In "#amount of matches"
Ratio "#amount of matches you got kicked" / "#amount of matches played in total" / 100

[Tosconi]

I mean - i was kicked only from 2 matches, but 9 times - which is 7% of my overall matches. If it gets growing with such a speed it is really scary somehow. Coz another 2 matches, another 10 kicks and it'll be 15%, although it would not represent the actual picture.

[nesnl]

I think ideally it would show the number of times ping kicked as a number and then show the percent of total matches in a percent. I don't know if this is possible or not, but we will keep you posted.

[Sarah Palin]

The interface features you added (worst opponent, best teammate, Match Details) are great.

btw re: match quality, you're spot on that variance affects it... a lot of people have noticed that when there's very high variance among the ten playing, one really good (or bad) player in ladderbalance can "force" a team stacked with players of the opposite skill level.... usually with hilarious results in game.

[-MH-CaptainVogez]

Gah guys hopefully I'll be on again soon.
I bet my ranking is destroyed...

[Zero]

Vesuvius need to be banned from ladder being a D*ICK and noob thank you

[nobodyhome]

that's.... not quite an adequate explanation.

[Kuja900]

Originally Posted by Zero

Vesuvius need to be banned from ladder being a D*ICK and noob thank you

You know some tact wouldn't hurt.

[Ajuk999]

Kuja I am surprised to see you in this thread. From what I have learned, you have kept yourself as far away as possible from the Altitude Ladder in a whole, I haven't seen you once on any Ladder server, why?

[Smushface]

Kuja still has way too many fanboys.

The ladder community as a whole needs to discuss dodging. I can understand not wanting to play if certain players are on your team, but making an entire server go through the team picking process and then deciding not to play because you are unhappy with the results is stupid. I think dodging should become a kickable / bannable offense. Teams aren't always going to be fair, and yea, sometimes you're going to get a nubby reverse HC biplanes on you're team, but so be it.

[wolf'j'max]

Originally Posted by Zero

Vesuvius need to be banned from ladder being a D*ICK and noob thank you

No great explanation but i had to unmute him because he was in my team and he started swearing at me again.

[[Y]]

Originally Posted by Smushface

sometimes you're going to get a nubby reverse HC biplanes on you're team, but so be it.

You're right, Beagle. Those subconscious "bagle is bad" feelings are pretty strong.

[Kuja900]

Originally Posted by Ajuk999

Kuja I am surprised to see you in this thread. From what I have learned, you have kept yourself as far away as possible from the Altitude Ladder in a whole, I haven't seen you once on any Ladder server, why?

Eh was away for a few days when it launched, im getting into it now however its quite fun. I must say having 3 rev thrusting stubborn bips on my team is quite frustrating . Oh and as of last night all fLb and former fLb in top 3.

[Kuja900]

Originally Posted by Smushface

Kuja still has way too many fanboys.

The ladder community as a whole needs to discuss dodging. I can understand not wanting to play if certain players are on your team, but making an entire server go through the team picking process and then deciding not to play because you are unhappy with the results is stupid. I think dodging should become a kickable / bannable offense. Teams aren't always going to be fair, and yea, sometimes you're going to get a nubby reverse HC biplanes on you're team, but so be it.

If the result of the game is obvious before it begins the teams should be rebalanced.

[nobodyhome]

Originally Posted by Kuja900

If the result of the game is obvious before it begins the teams should be rebalanced.

There is never a point at which one of the teams will for 100% probability win the game. If the odds of the game are stacked in favor of one side, then the rating system will take care of it by forcing the expected value of both teams to come out to be 0.

If however one side consists of underrated players and thus the game is balanced poorly, then the underrated players deserve to have an expected value of higher than 0, so that they could get closer to their true rating.

[wolf'j'max]

Go watch my matchlist. You will br surprised to see with what kind of players i won from some kind of players. They sometimes don't trust me whenni pick them ( >.> tgleaf) but it's not about getting the best players. More about having good plane compositions.

[Ajuk999]

Originally Posted by Kuja900

Eh was away for a few days when it launched, im getting into it now however its quite fun. I must say having 3 rev thrusting stubborn bips on my team is quite frustrating . Oh and as of last night all fLb and former fLb in top 3.

Glad to hear that Kuj, well we will be seeing ya in the ladders! Oh and yes as I recall fLb members are at the top. Good Luck Kuja!

[Evan20000]

Originally Posted by Ajuk999

Glad to hear that Kuj, well we will be seeing ya in the ladders! Oh and yes as I recall fLb members are at the top. Good Luck Kuja!

Why are you talking to yourself?

On topic: The ladder drama is dying down a little, but we're still having pointless kicks. D:

[Zero]

-_- im calling abuse, noobs keep kicking me from the server, Sarah palin and the $E noobs, i didnt even do anything

PS:wtf now i cant go in the server for 25 mins thats ****ing bull