Never saw that, a gain of 0 for a risk of 100...

There should be a way to choose who is going to join the games you are in (as the enemy status doesn't work for premium players)

Toto wrote:

There should be a way to choose who is going to join the games you are in (as the enemy status doesn't work for premium players)

I really hope this is never the case for Ranked games.

Yertle wrote:

Toto wrote:

There should be a way to choose who is going to join the games you are in (as the enemy status doesn't work for premium players)

I really hope this is never the case for Ranked games.

There could be a option like : only premium members (it could be a perk for WG). I did not mean to choose namely some people, or it would be a private game.

Toto wrote:

Yertle wrote:

Toto wrote:

There should be a way to choose who is going to join the games you are in (as the enemy status doesn't work for premium players)

I really hope this is never the case for Ranked games.

There could be a option like : only premium members (it could be a perk for WG). I did not mean to choose namely some people, or it would be a private game.

I really hope this is never the case for Ranked games.

Toto wrote:

a gain of 0 for a risk of 100...

I really hope this is never the case for Ranked games.

I agree with your thought that you should not be able to limit who can join public games (save for the standard member not being able to join a premium members game if they have the set as enemy). Part of playing the game is you do have to 'risk' your points every game you play. But to have it where you gain 0 points.....there has to be a minimum of 1.....and if you somehow reach a 0 Global Rating, your account should not be allowed to join public games.

..or your Global rating goes negative..

Hmmm.. which means that the next person that wins a game with you in it loses points for beating you.  

Actually, a minimum of 1 to lose/gain and a maximum of 100 isn't too bad.  Beating someone with a negative rating doesn't change things for the victor:  It's still worth only 1 point.  The difference would be that the player who manages to acquire a negative global rating just has a hole to climb out of.

A minimum of 1 would be nice. Alternatively, if we could adjust the ranking system so that only members from certain pre-defined groups (call them "conferences", perhaps?) were allowed to win ranking spots, immaterial of actual rank score, that would also be useful. We could get together once a year and determine who should be in these "power conferences" and who should be kept out. Then we could play the top ranking players a set amount of money and let them participate in highly publicized "Bowl Games" or something.

Oh, and if the ranking scores could be calculated by a combination of computers and human voting, that'd also be great.

There does seem to be a bit too much volatility as the system stands right now.  My rating was over 2000 for a few weeks, then it shot down as low as 1300 or so and now it’s hovering at around 1450.  I don’t have any solutions – or even suggestions about how to go about creating a better system, and even if I did, I don’t think folks here want to change it at a fundamental level.

Certainly, we will always need to have an egalitarian system where any and all can play indiscriminately and a ranking is calculated, ..but Oat’s idea is intriguing.  It reminds me of major and minor leagues in base ball.. Perhaps a better analogy is soccer ..where top teams move up to better leagues and the bottom teams move down.

It also brings to mind ladder systems, where to move up, you play people closely ranked to you.

But with any of these ideas, you are essentially playing private games, and any statistical information that can be mined from these games can’t legitimately be included in with the global data.

I see nothing wrong with someone organizing leagues or tournaments like those mentioned above, but unless ALL are invited, it needs to be its own entity.

My idea about an optional conference for premium members would also be a good way to fight cheaters. It's so easy and so cheap to create tens of standard members accounts (cf. http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1257/Jarpan_Genkiwi_and_Alumina).  I believe quite a lot of players do it.

Genesis: 95/2268 x20 = 0

This guy wasn't too bad a player for awhile and then he created/joined 100 games and then left the site.

My suggestion was strictly tongue-in-cheek. It was "inspired" by the BCS, the current method of choosing a national champion for college football.

Personally, I think ranking is a little overblown - you're either good or you're not, and some weeks are going to be better for you than others. As you get more games under your belt, your score will settle toward the mean of whatever it should be, meaning that, one way or another, it will be a reflection of your skill over your fellow WG player. If you have 1000 games under your belt, one or two bad games against even the worst player won't catastrophically destroy your ranking (or, at least, it shouldn't). If it does, it's easy enough to get those points back by winning the games you normally win in the first place.

I do think a minimum of 1 point is necessary, with perhaps the system spotting the point out of thin air in the unlikely event that an opponent has 0 points. This is something that should happen so infrequently that it won't seriously endanger the integrity of the ranking system. Outside of that, I don't really think the system is broken at all, unless your view of broken is "I have a really high ranking and I'd like to tweak the system so it's nearly impossible for me to hand over ranking points to other players now."

Point taken and agreed with, a loss to Genesis would be devastating and a win should be worth something.  With a minimum though it would be possible for someone to have 0 points or worse go negative.  This seems like a situation which would not have been planned for.  Was it?

That is, if a player has 0 points and wins, how are points calculated?
Further, can a player go negative (currently, I think the calculation would prevent this), but should it be possible?
Should there be a minimum points won from each player? like 5?
Should there be a lower maximum points loss by a player? like 40 or 50?

If there is a minimum points gained/lost, then I think a player should not be allowed to go below zero (maybe 1 is better).
If a player wins with a score of zero, then I think points should calculated as if they have 1 point so that essentially they will get the maximum possible from each player.

I think I mentioned this before, but I see no problem with accruing a negative score.

..and I like your idea of a minimum and a maximum loss per player.  5-50 seems pretty reasonable.

Only problem with asserting both a minimum loss and a minimum ranking score of zero is that the system stops becoming zero sum - those points would have to be gifted by the system. Not a huge problem though as it's relatively unlikely.

The current max loss is 100, 5-50 range does sound reasonable enough.