The Ladder Team Assigner System

[elxir]

Could ladder conceivably do this...

Let's say you have 20 players in a tbd server.

Ranked 2000, 1990, 1980, 1970, 1960, 1950, 1940, 1930, 1920, 1910, 1900, 1890, 1880, 1870, 1860, 1850, 1840, 1830, 1820, 1810.

Why not have ladder just take from this pool, the ten highest rated players. Thus, 2000-1910 play in game 1, sorted by the current method.

In game 2, 1900-1810 would play, due to the "play every other game" rule, sorted as usual.

In game 3, once again the ten high ranked players would play. Repeat ad infinitum.

Using this method, these two groups of players would always face off against their same opponents, with the only changes being which players are assigned to which teams based on (a) new ranks and (b) the randomizer for 3/4, 5/6, etc.

The only way these two groups of players (higher ranked, lower ranked) would ever interact is via the introduction of a new variable, e.g someone leaves or joins the server. In the former instance, a leave would then promote the next highest ranked player (or low ranked) into the other group, due to the need for an additional player.

In the latter instance, the newly introduced player would automatically replace the player in his "group" who is closest in rank, and the randomizer for team selection (not player pool selection) would then do its work.

The effects of this system are simple: you are placed with players most similar to your skill, and you play with that group until either (a) someone leaves and changes the system, or (b) someone joins and changes the system.

This would result, in my opinion, in what everyone wants: games that are within their skill level.

The original idea for an "elite" ladder server was squashed due to a lacking player base. This system would not be such a thing. Instead, it would look at all the players available in the server, and pick the group that are closest in skill.

Now, minor problems would arise (e.g. it would be the same as it is now) when the server was not at double-game capacity, but for the most part I believe that sorting players in a more skill appropriate set would be of great value to ladder.

[sunshineduck]

what do you do when the server isn't at 20+ players?

and this wouldn't work as well as in your theorycraft because the odds of having a group of players in that server whose ratings are that close are extremely low

[nobodyhome]

A lot of the misconceptions that people have about ladder is due to the fact that people think your rating should be based off of your entire history of play. It isn't and it should not be--ideally, your rating is representative of how well you perform in the here and now (more practically, how well you performed in your past 20 games). If you play like crap for the first two months of ladder, dropping to a rating of 1000, and then suddenly you start playing like a 3500+ rated player, your rating should shoot up to 3500, once again ideally instantaneously but more practically in a few games.

This may sound funky but with some thought it should make sense. You should never be held back by your previous play--you should be instantly rewarded for improving play and instantly punished for crapping it up. This also serves to make things like balancing work, because people are rated accurately as to their current level of performance.

This is what the rating system strives to achieve as of today, and has been what it has always striven to achieve even in season 1. As a consequence of this, things like winning percentages as well as number of wins and losses are completely irrelevant to the discussion of the rating system. Unfortunately, people tend to gravitate toward those kinds of numbers but they really cannot be used to argue to whether the system is working or not. I would not worry in the least if it happened to be that the top 100 players all had a winning percentage of 10% while the bottom 100 players all had a winning percentage of 50%. Conversely, if there was an exact correlation between rating and win percentage I would never point to that as an argument for the system working 100% as intended.

[Rainmaker]

^this; seems a perfect explanation of how it should (and most probably does) work the ranking system.

Win % isn't correlated as "how good you are"; analogy to "how good you are" to the kill's scoreboard.

[Fartface]

Why are the ratings in ball ladder so much higher than the ones in tbd? Just wondering, didn't want to clutter the forums with a new thread

[nobodyhome]

There are a lot more games played on ball ladder than in tbd, thus points get injected into the system at a much faster rate.