So, the board championship is now considered the primary ranking method?  Not that it matters at all, but a curious change.

Yes that's right - as per the thread in the announcements area, it's intended to promote competition across all the game boards rather than being just a single measure (which can be heavily influenced by single game wins esp with large numbers of players).

Forgive me if this has already been beat to death elsewhere as it seems like the kind of topic that would be....

Regardless of the points you're using to determine ranking, doesn't using the total instead of an average result in top rankings being based more on longevity than anything else?   I can see the value of using a total on a "seasonal" basis (meaning it starts over occassionally) so that new players have an opportunity to be considered. 

I know ranking is a very complex issue for both political and technical perspectives.

From the standpoint of trying to build participation in the site, I'd recommend trying to develop a few different ranking systems that are meaningful but motivating to different classes of players. 

Mostly Harmless wrote:

From the standpoint of trying to build participation in the site, I'd recommend trying to develop a few different ranking systems that are meaningful but motivating to different classes of players. 

 

I agree, that's why I would like to see all the columns sortable so that you can see who is ranked #1 in wins/games played/lost/%.  I'd also like to see rankings or lists or something for Map Designers.

A past month or past 6 months ranking system would be cool to see too, although I still think "longevity Rankings" should be THE ranking, which should motivate players to play longer :P

personally i could give a rats ass about the ranking system. i don't monitor it, i don't use it, i rarely even look at them. my motivation is to play, usually to my utmost. i like to see how i've averaged out for myself (like have i won more games than i've lost; or have i beat the percentages), but not really compared to anyone else.

Mostly Harmless wrote:

Regardless of the points you're using to determine ranking, doesn't using the total instead of an average result in top rankings being based more on longevity than anything else?  

Harmless,

The mechanics of the scoring system mean that your total score soon "peaks out" no matter how much you play.  It only takes a few weeks to reach the top if your win % is high enough.  Someone who plays for months and months (or hundreds of games) is not going to get any higher in the rankings unless their win % improves.

Regards,

Paul.

With an overall ranking, the difficulty is that specializing in a single board you dominate would be rewarded, not mastery of several boards. Nonetheless, Harmless is right - any time you have a total-based ranking system, it can become more about effort than performance. Longevity-based rankings may be nice for the users here from the beginning, but we should assume that we want new users to feel as though they could participate in the quest for glory.

As for this scoring system "peaking out", this is the one place where I am convinced this system is flawed. With other games I've played using a different system, my ranking settles in about 20 games. On WF, it was 40-60 for most boards, sometimes over 100 for others. There was a user who reached 1600 in 25 games with a remarkable performance on this one map. Another user with a great but clearly less remarkable performance on the same map, reached 1900 in 100 games. This is a slow equilibrium.

The ranking problem for this type of game is definitely very hard.

It would be cool if along with all the other rankings there could be a "Knockout ranking" where you get 1 point every time you eliminate a player even if you don't win the game.

even a "Elimination Tracker" on your profile page would be cool.

Maybe this was obvious to everyone else, but it only just occured to me that the old method of using the overall ranking score discouraged people from playing the two player boards (or games with only 2 or 3 players) once they're score started to approach the 1500 level. Anyway, it's just another positive point of the decision to switch.