Replacing CP (Championship Points) with a better stat has been on the table for a while. The most recent discussion is here: http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/4631/Revisiting_CP with the most popular so far being a simple formula based on each board's Board Ranking (BR):

(BR - 1000) / 50 (Round Down)

Some people have brought up the idea of replacing the GR score also or instead of replacing the CP score. Possibly with the same formula above.

Thoughts? How would that affect the current player ranking system? And the 4-star ranking proposal?

I think it makes sense to take a step back and think about what we want out of these stats.

Without going into any formulas.  What are GR, BR, and CP supposed to represent?  And what do we want them to encourage?  Any other general thoughts on them?  I feel like this might help focus later discussions if we have a list of desired attributes for these stats.

Ozyman wrote:

Without going into any formulas.  What are GR, BR, and CP supposed to represent?  And what do we want them to encourage?  Any other general thoughts on them? 

First, I feel the need to establish a clearer lexicon that describes the mechanics of the system so that we're all on the same page. It's meant to be an objective description of how things currently function, not what they represent, etc.  It's a bit awkward and wordy in places so if someone wants to fix, amend, streamline it, feel free.

Score: A result of the manner in which a "rating" moves, always starting at 1000

BR: (Board Rating) A player's score with respect to his/her play on each individual board. Players have as many BRs as are the number of boards that they have played, though I suppose we could also say they also have a BR of 1000 on every board they haven't yet played.

GR: (Global Rating)  A single score that is recalculated after each (public) game played.  GR has nothing to do with BR - they are calculated independently.

CP: (Championship Points) This is not a score. Rather it is a single number starting at 0 that currently rewards players who hold the top ten scores for each board.  BR also plays a role in determining the total amount of CPs awarded. A player's CP total is the sum of the CPs awarded from all boards he/she has played.

Board Ranking. Board Rating is how we rate boards.

Korrun wrote:

Board Ranking. Board Rating is how we rate boards.

Uhmm. Yep - Thanks - It's frustrating how these words don't necessarily align well with their meanings.

Score: A result of the manner in which a "Ranking" moves, always starting at 1000

BR: (Board Ranking) A player's score with respect to his/her play on each individual board. Players have as many BRs as are the number of boards that they have played, though I suppose we could also say they also have a 'default' BR of 1000 on every board they haven't yet played.

GR: (Global Ranking)  A single score that is recalculated after each (public) game played.  GR has nothing to do with BR - they are calculated independently.

CP: (Championship Points) This is not a score. Rather it is a single number starting at 0 that currently rewards players who hold the top ten scores for each board.  BR also plays a role in determining the total amount of CPs awarded. A player's CP total is the sum of the CPs awarded from all boards he/she has played.

So here's my understanding and assessment/critiscisms of the systems.

Score/BR: Short of getting something like TrueSkill up and running, this is probably as good as it's going to get. It's relatively simple to understand and has scaled reasonably well over time.  It has turned out to be a pretty good way of assessing a player's commitment and ability on a board.

GR: I think originally, this stat was meant to gauge players' overall ability/performance, but it has turned out to be a disappointment in my opinion.  If your play is streaky, this stat will be all over the place.  Lose 10 out of 11 games and it can easily go down 2 or 3 hundred points.  It can shoot up if you're specializing on a board, and it can tank as you learn new boards. It doesn't reward diverse play, if anything - it discourages it. This in turn encourages the practice of playing in tournaments in order to learn new boards, which then inflates those scores for players who prefer to play in tournaments (and may be 'learning' boards by play in public games (inflating those scores).   In theory at least, this can be a vicious circle. I'm not saying the problem is rampant, but I am pointing out how the systems are potentially in conflict with each other.

CPs. This system is meant to reward players who are the best on their respective boards. It is arbitrary mathematically speaking, with conveniently picked thresholds that don't scale well and are intrinsically hard to scale ..even if you wanted to. CPs disproportionally reward only the top ten players of each board.  The result is that the top 5% of players own the vast majority of CPs.  It is only relevant to the elite players, placing the very top players deep in the 100s while the majority of players hold only a handful.  CPs are harder and harder to get as the GRs for each board inflate, which makes it even more difficult and frustrating to break in, and are hence unhealthy for the site.

Korrun wrote:

 And the 4-star ranking proposal?

Here's the page, but it doesn't make any sense. Cona Chris is second with 4 stars and Mad Bomber is first with 3 stars.

http://www.wargear.net/rankings/show4ranks/

The page seems active, is it real or a proposal? I can't find any reference to it on the site Wiki. Can someone provide a iink or provide a formal description?

Anyway, based on how I understand it. I don't really care for the system at all in that it is much like CPs: created by arbitrary numbers, not scalable, and as a result increasingly hard to make gains in.  I would be much more in favor of a system that comes up with an aggregate number, where all components are similarly derived.  So for instance I would not be in favor of including both CP and GR as members, certainly not as they are currently derived.

Korrun wrote:

Board Ranking. Board Rating is how we rate boards.

Given the context, it is clear what is meant by Board Rating in this discussion. I'd rather have Board Rating having both meanings than the facade that is calling a rating, ranking.

Ranking is the position of a player in a given leaderboard, while rating is the score.

Anyway, if avoiding confusion in this regard is desirable, I'd rather call the Board Rating we're talking about here, Board Ranking Score or BRS for short than just BR.

So,

BRS - the score the player has in a given board

BR - the ranking position a player occupies in the leaderboard of a given board

GRS - the combined score on all boards, or on all played boards

GR - the ranking position in the global leaderboard

Ok, so I guess we have to drop rating from these definitions and that word is confined to the score the players give to the boards.

The function to calculate GRS should be such that provides diminishing returns as the BRS increases. In this way, a player with good scores in lots of boards could compete with players with top scores in a handful of maps but low or moderate scores in the rest of them.

Btw, Team Ranking should be displayed next to Team Score in the Player Profile, just like it does in the Global Ranking Score. I know we can get this by sorting by Team Score in the Rankings section.

Another thing I would like to suggest, would be to break down BRS to scenarios. It's just that some scenarios in a given board play really different. So, there would be no board ranking score, only scenario ranking score.  But ok, it might not be sufficiently important to warrant such a significant change.

Moving on, I think tournament rating/tournament ranking score should be abolished and the games played during tournaments should count for the GRS.

CPs could be given according to a player's finishing position in a tournament (obviously, should take into account the size of the tournament), and they could be reset at the start of each year. Then we would really have a Championship. I guess M57 already alluded to this.

M57 wrote:

Korrun wrote:

 And the 4-star ranking proposal?

Here's the page, but it doesn't make any sense. Cona Chris is second with 4 stars and Mad Bomber is first with 3 stars.

http://www.wargear.net/rankings/show4ranks/

How does one get to that page without the link?

Forgot to say that the Championship should only count the N best results of a player, so that it does not become a race of who plays more tournaments, also known as grinding.

Good comments @redshift - I agree that a lot of these monikers are misnomers.  I might amend things further and just get rid of the word "Ratings" so as not to confuse it with "Rankings."  "Ratings" should be more about how people "feel" about a board.  To further confuse things, the site already has a "Rating" system.

BS: Board Score - the higher the better.

BR: Board Rank - (position) the lower the better

GS: Global Score - The combined score on all boards (E.g. SUM(BS-1000)50 (rounddown)

GR: Global Rank - the lower the better

And you're very close to spot on with your interpretation of how I feel about CPs.  Champions win tournaments!  It really should have nothing to do with regular "public" play. That, and the paradigm of making CPs about tournament play gives playing in Tournaments gravitas.  Tournaments could have prizes (free Premium Membership for a month), or could have sponsors.  A number of players, including myself have in the past sponsored tournaments that give Premium Membership prizes.  The top tournament player should enjoy the same accolades as the top 'scoring' player.

And I like your idea of a yearly reset.  Not to long ago, Tom was giving a payout to top (tournament?) players on a monthly basis.  I'm not sure why it died, but I have a feeling that if it was supported and even run by members, it might be more popular, taking on a life of its own so to speak.

As far as breaking down Scores and Ranks by scenario is concerned, as egalitarian as that may seem, it really muddies the waters IMO. It has been discussed before. Some scenarios are very specialized or unpopular and get very little play. It's not to hard to imagine that in a BS-1000 aggregate type system, it might create a chaotic mass rush for easy points - and as a designer I can tell you that it would create in turn a dilemma for reviewers regarding whether or not to let designers release 'scenarios' as 'separate' boards.

Anyway, just my thoughts on your excellent post.

I used to follow these things a bit more, but not much now.  So, I'll probably not add much here as I skimmed the content here at best.  That said, usually when looking through either list, GR or CP, I look in conjunction with H rating.  If you are high in both you're probably a decent player, if you are high in GR or CP but not H rank, then maybe something was inflated somehow beyond one's true abilities.

As CP is now I've always seen it as a dog and pony show and I'm not sure how the proposed revisions might change that.  The only way some players like myself might be dragged kicking and screaming into it is with the introduction of an aggregate score that takes into account everything causing CP to be one's weakest link.  Without an aggregate it can be happily ignored for what it is.  With an aggregate rank as king, it would be more difficult to ignore.

I once tried to advocate for an aggregate, but those days are long gone and I'm not sure if I really want to push myself into the CP game anyways.  Meanwhile, while I have seen MB, CC and A37's names pop up recently in these threads, Luieuil is the player I'd really like to see head the list of a true representational ranking of excellence.  He was a phenomenal player and his stats speak volumes.  Sensational Eliminations per game & h rank, Great GR & a decent CP... A lot to be admired in an across the board kind of way though his tournament rank and team rank would be his weakest links...  Honourable mention to Black Dog, he has some decent across the board ranks as well.  If there were a rank that recognized what they brought to the table, it would peek my interest.

berickf wrote:

I used to follow these things a bit more, but not much now.  So, I'll probably not add much here as I skimmed the content here at best.  That said, usually when looking through either list, GR or CP, I look in conjunction with H rating.  If you are high in both you're probably a decent player, if you are high in GR or CP but not H rank, then maybe something was inflated somehow beyond one's true abilities.

H-Rating is a score we should include in the discussion.  I think the concept is brilliant, but it is quite limited when you consider what it doesn't take into account.  Because it is a measure of what percentage of games you win (adjusted for game size), it doesn't reward diverse play. Again, if anything it discourages diverse play.  The process of learning a new board almost always involves more losing at first (at least for the mortals among us).  Also, H-Ratings become more and more entrenched over time.  I could lose 40 games in a row and I doubt my H-Rating would fall but by 1%. I suppose you could say that's a good thing..

Regardless, the major weakness is that that players can much more easily create exceptionally high h-ratings by specializing on just a few boards, or even just one.

As CP is now I've always seen it as a dog and pony show and I'm not sure how the proposed revisions might change that.  The only way some players like myself might be dragged kicking and screaming into it is with the introduction of an aggregate score that takes into account everything causing CP to be one's weakest link.  Without an aggregate it can be happily ignored for what it is.  With an aggregate rank as king, it would be more difficult to ignore.

I pretty much agree on all counts.  However, in light of some of the newer proposals, I would argue that the GR (a better name might be GS) is a better category for the aggregate you're talking about.  At this point - I'm happy to leave the CP circus alone and let the folks that value it argue about how best to fix it. 

I once tried to advocate for an aggregate, but those days are long gone and I'm not sure if I really want to push myself into the CP game anyways.  Meanwhile, while I have seen MB, CC and A37's names pop up recently in these threads, Luieuil is the player I'd really like to see head the list of a true representational ranking of excellence.  He was a phenomenal player and his stats speak volumes.  Sensational Eliminations per game & h rank, Great GR & a decent CP... A lot to be admired in an across the board kind of way though his tournament rank and team rank would be his weakest links...  Honourable mention to Black Dog, he has some decent across the board ranks as well.  If there were a rank that recognized what they brought to the table, it would peek my interest.

I'm reasonably sure that  some of those names are not prominently positioned in the charts these days because of GR inflation, and the way scoring works is VERY unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a number of those players no longer play on the site.  Short of keeping yearly stats and somehow having "Legacy" Rankings, I don't see how what you describe can happen.

M57 wrote:

I once tried to advocate for an aggregate, but those days are long gone and I'm not sure if I really want to push myself into the CP game anyways.  Meanwhile, while I have seen MB, CC and A37's names pop up recently in these threads, Luieuil is the player I'd really like to see head the list of a true representational ranking of excellence.  He was a phenomenal player and his stats speak volumes.  Sensational Eliminations per game & h rank, Great GR & a decent CP... A lot to be admired in an across the board kind of way though his tournament rank and team rank would be his weakest links...  Honourable mention to Black Dog, he has some decent across the board ranks as well.  If there were a rank that recognized what they brought to the table, it would peek my interest.

I'm reasonably sure that  some of those names are not prominently positioned in the charts these days because of GR inflation, and the way scoring works is VERY unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a number of those players no longer play on the site.  Short of keeping yearly stats and somehow having "Legacy" Rankings, I don't see how what you describe can happen.

Players come and go and then come again.  Maybe we'd see their resurrection if an aggregate that rewarded their well rounded play were introduced?

Is there a thread or wiki anywhere that has the actual arithmetic for each scoring field?

berickf wrote:

M57 wrote:

I once tried to advocate for an aggregate, but those days are long gone and I'm not sure if I really want to push myself into the CP game anyways.  Meanwhile, while I have seen MB, CC and A37's names pop up recently in these threads, Luieuil is the player I'd really like to see head the list of a true representational ranking of excellence.  He was a phenomenal player and his stats speak volumes.  Sensational Eliminations per game & h rank, Great GR & a decent CP... A lot to be admired in an across the board kind of way though his tournament rank and team rank would be his weakest links...  Honourable mention to Black Dog, he has some decent across the board ranks as well.  If there were a rank that recognized what they brought to the table, it would peek my interest.

I'm reasonably sure that  some of those names are not prominently positioned in the charts these days because of GR inflation, and the way scoring works is VERY unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a number of those players no longer play on the site.  Short of keeping yearly stats and somehow having "Legacy" Rankings, I don't see how what you describe can happen.

Players come and go and then come again.  Maybe we'd see their resurrection if an aggregate that rewarded their well rounded play were introduced?

No doubt, but in the end players GO..  The system either "retires" them with recognition or it doesn't.

What is the current formula used to calculate GS/GRS? It's not in the Rankings wiki.

Anyway, as I've said, the formula should have diminishing returns. Something like this:

GS = 1/n*SUM(ABS_i),

where ABS = a*(1 - e^(-k*BS)),

where a and k are adjustment parameters.

redshift wrote:

What is the current formula used to calculate GS/GRS? It's not in the Rankings wiki.

right now all I'm aware of is this..

http://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=general:help:rankings

WarGear calls them Global Rankings (GR), but "Ranking" is a misnomer - it really should be something like Global Score (GS)  Currently there is no GS.

Nvm, it passed me by. So GS uses the same formula that BS uses. So, it can very much happen for a player to be top ranked in GS playing only 1 board or scenario.

redshift wrote:

Nvm, it passed me by. So GS uses the same formula that BS uses. So, it can very much happen for a player to be top ranked in GS playing only 1 board or scenario.

Well, the term "GS" technically doesn't exist.  But it is a more accurate description of what the acronym represents, which is what this thread is about.   To say that GR is a Ranking is confusing at best, To call it a Rating, is more accurate, except the term "Rating" implies subjective assessment (as in the WarGear Board Rating System).  This is why I suggest that we use the term "Score" and use the letter "S" when talking about the formula you reference.

But yes, currently "GR" is simply a poor implementation of "Score" - applied "globally" over all public games regardless of how many or how few boards are played, and computed in chronological order. It is not an entirely worthless score - looking at someone's GR movement over time, say the last 50 or 100 games would probably be telling.  But by and large, the number itself is far too volatile and gameable.

The Rankings page just lists it as 'Score'. The profile page lists it as 'Global Ranking Score'.