Welcome to Altitude Ladder Season 2!

nobodyhome · #1 04-10-2011, 01:54 AM

Welcome to Altitude Ladder Season 2! If you are new, you should first take a look at the rules page first. For new and old players, the new password to enter the servers is also in the rules page.

What's new in season 2?

1. Stats recording is now in place! In your profile page as well as the match details page, there are now detailed stats recorded including kills, assists, deaths, bomb hits/goals. There is also a new stats leaderboard page that shows who averages the most stats.

2. The rating system has been updated. Full details of this are explained here.

3. The balancing mechanism has been loosened a bit. Games are now no longer balanced so that average ratings are as close as possible, but are balanced in a 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 vs 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 fashion. This change has been implemented as a possible solution to the problem of the top ranks of ladder being skewed towards bomb runners and goal scorers.

When does season 2 end?

Season 2 ends on Friday, August 5th, 2011. Yes, no joke. There are no new features that I have to wait for in order to start season 3 so there will be no delays this time!

Special thanks to King! and cipso, without whom season 2 would be delayed even longer, for contributing significant chunks of coding work.

Jrathje · #2 04-10-2011, 02:07 AM

Thanks for all of your work, Nobo, Ladder 2 is great! I really appreciate it!

beefheart · #3 04-10-2011, 07:44 AM

Great! Thanks a lot guys!

wolf'j'max · #4 04-10-2011, 09:39 AM

wow.. season 3 aswel? thanks nobo, king and cipso! =o
(didn't expect you guys (king cipso) to do that kind of stuff)

Nikon · #5 04-16-2011, 11:32 PM

Great work, thank you for all the work you put into it, I know you put a LOT into it.

I was just looking at the matchlist, that's even more insane, I didn't know you kept track of all the planes they played for how long and all the other stats. It's an insane amount of coding.

Thank you,
Nikon

shrode · #6 04-18-2011, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nobodyhome

3. The balancing mechanism has been loosened a bit. Games are now no longer balanced so that average ratings are as close as possible, but are balanced in a 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 vs 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 fashion. This change has been implemented as a possible solution to the problem of the top ranks of ladder being skewed towards bomb runners and goal scorers.

Hey nobo, any chance you could explain how this will reduce the chance that the ranks are skewed towards bomb runners and scorers? I feel like this balancing scheme will greatly benefit the best of the best and make it much more difficult for the worst of the worst to win a game.

Ribilla · #7 04-19-2011, 12:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nobodyhome

3. The balancing mechanism has been loosened a bit. Games are now no longer balanced so that average ratings are as close as possible, but are balanced in a 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 vs 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 fashion. This change has been implemented as a possible solution to the problem of the top ranks of ladder being skewed towards bomb runners and goal scorers.

I feel the problem with this is that the best player online at the time (i.e. Mled or Donk) always gets a (sometimes significantly) stronger team, which kind of skews the win stats a little.

It also means that in terms of match set up there is no difference between Mled now (2465 points) compared with Mled at 7000 points, the only difference is he will get less reward for the win. This means there is no upper bound skill level which the best player tends to.

I might be wrong because I am not entirely sure how everything works, but this doesn't seem like a desirable state of affairs.

Rainmaker · #8 04-19-2011, 05:46 AM

My guess, is that the previous balance system tended to group the top player (1) and the lesser 3 of the table (10, 9 and 8).

With the new system the mixing is a little bit more even, but there might be a higher variance into the average team rating comparison. (maybe a difference in 3 to 10 points; 3*5 ~ 10*5 =15 to 50 total points)

elxir · #9 04-19-2011, 07:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ribilla

I feel the problem with this is that the best player online at the time (i.e. Mled or Donk) always gets a (sometimes significantly) stronger team, which kind of skews the win stats a little.

It also means that in terms of match set up there is no difference between Mled now (2465 points) compared with Mled at 7000 points, the only difference is he will get less reward for the win. This means there is no upper bound skill level which the best player tends to.

I might be wrong because I am not entirely sure how everything works, but this doesn't seem like a desirable state of affairs.

it just means that nobody is good enough to unseat mled from #1, that's all. if anyone who got the 2/3 slots against mled were good enough to lift their team above his, it would show in the W/L.

i think it would be fun if the actual 2/3 ranked players conspired to be online at the same time as mled and try to take him down.

Ribilla · #10 04-19-2011, 03:17 PM

This is my point though, if rank 2 and 3 are online, then Mled will still have a stronger team, no matter what.

EDIT: Also this system means it is much easier to get destroyed by having a single bad player on your team. Say everyone playing has 1600+ rating apart from one person who has 1500, this game is probably going to work out fine; but what if that last person has a rating of 600? The second team will be stuck with a non-player but won't get better players for it, in fact each of them will have a slightly better counterpart on the opposite team. This means there is NO LOWER BOUND for players so they will continue to trend downwards and will remain forever unbalanced.

lemon · #11 04-19-2011, 03:29 PM

If that happens the bad player's team will have an expected win of 40% or whatever and win more/lose less rating points. Which I dont mind at all, because having 50/50 games do get kinda boring after a while. Being an underdog and having much higher win reward is fun.

Also this doesn't skew the stats in any way whatsever. Yes maybe mled can win more games now for higher win% but each of his loses will be that much more costly.

CCN · #12 04-19-2011, 05:25 PM

Here's a tip, man up. Get better, pick up the holes. Hes one person, he's not everywhere. Stop being little girls.

Ribilla · #13 04-19-2011, 05:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CCN

Here's a tip, man up. Get better, pick up the holes. Hes one person, he's not everywhere. Stop being little girls.

Here's a tip, read my posts.

I'm not making this just about Mled, I am fine with killing him. My problem is that this generates unbalanced teams and neither the best nor the worse players ever tend to their true rating, mean they are always going to be handicaps/instawins for a lot of their games. For instance, kanteh will never be at a 50/50 win rate this season unless he changes playstyle or others of the same ranking are on.

elxir · #14 04-19-2011, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ribilla

This is my point though, if rank 2 and 3 are online, then Mled will still have a stronger team, no matter what.

EDIT: Also this system means it is much easier to get destroyed by having a single bad player on your team. Say everyone playing has 1600+ rating apart from one person who has 1500, this game is probably going to work out fine; but what if that last person has a rating of 600? The second team will be stuck with a non-player but won't get better players for it, in fact each of them will have a slightly better counterpart on the opposite team. This means there is NO LOWER BOUND for players so they will continue to trend downwards and will remain forever unbalanced.

what? obviously if one player is super ****ty somebody is going to get stuck with him. and under the new system, the team with the best player also gets the worst player. have you ever played like, 3v3 pickup basketball, man? you always give the best player the worst player.

the rest of your post makes no sense. under the new system, the actual rating doesn't matter. the only thing that matters is that the 600 is the worst player. averaging teams to account for a 1000 point difference between the worst and second worst player will often **** teams even worse...oh wait that already happened last season.

if the top 9 players are playing, and then some dude who is rated like 900...guess what, who cares? if the 1 is better than the 2/3, the game will play out accordingly. if the 4 is better than the 5, the game will play out accordingly. if the 9 is worse than the 10, the game will play out accordingly, and subsequent ratings will reflect this.