For the entirely vain reason of enabling better rank opportunities for active players, I propose moving ranks of inactive players off the leaderboard.

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Antastic%21/Rankings for example

Only 4 players in the top 20 have played in the last year (and soon it will only be three).

Already, player profiles have have been changed to only show boots in the last 30 days, as opposed to prejudicially showing all the boots they may have acquired over all the years they've had an account.

I would like to see the board rankings changed to only show active players, and place rankings by players over a year old in a dormant status.  These dormant players would still retain their rankings, of course, and if they become active again then of course they would re-appear on the leaderboard.

I totally agree something like this would be awesome -

This has been discussed before.  What happens when a player comes back after a year - and only plays one game?

I think any public game in the last year keeps you on the board.  private games don't count.

M57 wrote:

This has been discussed before.  What happens when a player comes back after a year - and only plays one game?

I think this would be easy to code.  When displaying a leaderboard, for each row: IF [Player's Last Visit > 1 Year] THEN [skip that player].

As soon as a dormant player logs in, he's back on the board.  He doesn't even have to play a game.

Shouldn't there then be a Hall of Fame, or an archive to see who the all-time greats were?

Could have an opt-in leaderboard checkbox "Include dormant ranks."  (Or "Include All Time Greats" if you prefer.)

..and when someone leaves for more than a year, and then comes back - do all of the CPs and Ranks get re-evaluated??

M57 wrote:

..and when someone leaves for more than a year, and then comes back - do all of the CPs and Ranks get re-evaluated??

I assume that's the idea.  So in the case of luieuil, who is the highest CP scoring player who didn't log in for more than a year, his 333 points would be given to a whole bunch of other players (or simply disappear where noone else qualifies for them) but the gain could easily be reversed if he decided to make another appearance here.

Sounds good to me but I'm not sure how one would go about implementing it. Not the first time people have asked and I have yet to see Tom give an answer. If he has in the past maybe someone who's been here longer than me can dig that out?

I believe doing that will invalidate the concept of CPs. 

If inactive players are removed from the ranking, on most boards (other than the most played 10 or 15 boards), winning 2 matches will be enough to get you a CP. 

M57 wrote:

..and when someone leaves for more than a year, and then comes back - do all of the CPs and Ranks get re-evaluated??

"all of the CPs and Ranks get re-evaluated" every time someone in the top 10 wins or loses a game.  If a sub-top-10 player wins a big game and gets into the top 10, then all the CP below his new rank have to be redone already.  I don't see why a dormant player logging in should be any different.

I'm just saying that some pretty big shifts can occur when a dominant player returns after a hiatus.  On the other hand, I don't know why I'm bothering - I'm not a fan of the CP system and don't follow or pay any attention to its rankings any more.

Back when we had the big blow-outs over the ranking system this was one of my chief criticisms of the current CP system - in that there is not a slick way to remove dormant players - 

What about rank degradation? Every day/week/month every player's rank goes down a small percentage. Solves the problem of big shifts when a player comes back from hiatus, keeps current players on the leaderboard. Obviously has its downsides (active players who are top ranked on a lot of boards may not be able to keep up all those ranks), but it is an alternative solution. Another possibility would be ranking seasons, with everyones ranks resetting every 3/6/12 months... Don't know if that would be feasible with so many different games on this site & the length of time games can take though

I don't think any generally active player should be punished for inactivity on specific boards. I'm pretty sure it would be impossible for Mad Bomber to play on all boards he's got CPs on simultaneously.

skazai wrote:

What about rank degradation? Every day/week/month every player's rank goes down a small percentage. Solves the problem of big shifts when a player comes back from hiatus, keeps current players on the leaderboard. Obviously has its downsides (active players who are top ranked on a lot of boards may not be able to keep up all those ranks), but it is an alternative solution. Another possibility would be ranking seasons, with everyones ranks resetting every 3/6/12 months... Don't know if that would be feasible with so many different games on this site & the length of time games can take though

This (or a similar idea) has been discussed in some depth before. For any number of reasons, including what Litotes mentioned, it just doesn't work.

Litotes wrote:

I don't think any generally active player should be punished for inactivity on specific boards.

As I proposed, no one is "punished" for inactivity on a certain board.  If a player has logged in during the last year, he's "active" on every board, and doesn't even have to play a game.  Even players that haven't logged in for a year still retain their ranks; there is no rank "degradation." 

The only change I'm proposing is that ranks of dormant players become invisible on leaderboards by default (with a checkbox to make them visible if desired), and CP redistributed among active players. 

If a player hasn't logged in for a year (or many years) and isn't likely to return, I don't think he cares if his account is no longer shown as a General.  But if he does log in out of the blue, *poof*, his CP are restored.

camel wrote:

Litotes wrote:

I don't think any generally active player should be punished for inactivity on specific boards.

As I proposed, no one is "punished" for inactivity on a certain board.  If a player has logged in during the last year, he's "active" on every board, and doesn't even have to play a game.  Even players that haven't logged in for a year still retain their ranks; there is no rank "degradation." 

The only change I'm proposing is that ranks of dormant players become invisible on leaderboards by default (with a checkbox to make them visible if desired), and CP redistributed among active players. 

If a player hasn't logged in for a year (or many years) and isn't likely to return, I don't think he cares if his account is no longer shown as a General.  But if he does log in out of the blue, *poof*, his CP are restored.

Yes, I agree with your proposal if it's technically feasible. My last comment was a reply to skazai.

I like where you're going Camel. Why not have 2 seperate ranking tabs - one for active leaders and one for inactive?  That way, Tom could simply add one flag to his rankings system, for activity, and parse to each tab based on that. The flag itself, would be based on X days from playing an open game (x=365 or 60 or 180 or whatever).

Thingol wrote:

I like where you're going Camel. Why not have 2 seperate ranking tabs - one for active leaders and one for inactive?  That way, Tom could simply add one flag to his rankings system, for activity, and parse to each tab based on that. The flag itself, would be based on X days from playing an open game (x=365 or 60 or 180 or whatever).

Isn't it better to go by login date? berickf played his last public game 367 days ago but he's still an active member, he was in a team tournament that ended this week.