After much discussion regarding scoring systems and competition formats on this forum, and seeing the chances of any change on its own to be slim, I have decided to give the talk a rest and to walk the walk.

In the hope of helping the community to the extent that I can, I have developed a website that, not only implements different types of scoring systems, based on suggestions presented on this forum, it also serves as a platform to run more competition formats.

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/

One of the competition formats that I propose is a Championship based on tournament results - consult the FAQ for more information.

Here is my detailed proposal, which is obviously subject to change as the discussion develops.

I took the liberty of calling it WarGear Championship or The Championship for short, but am open to other titles.

The competition is not continuous, each season shall run close to a year and is inspired by the ATP Race Rankings format. I propose 10 months of regular season followed by a 1v1 Round Robin tournament exclusive to the top 8, in a pre-selected board/scenario. To this tournament I call, World Tour Finals, or WTF for short. By the end of WTF, the player with most points wins.

I propose the best 8 tournament results, in terms of points gained, to be counted - consult a player's page for a graphical understanding of what this means (e.g. http://wgchampion.x10host.com/players/redshift ). If you guys find 8 to be too much, I suggest 6. The WTF slot is an extra slot exclusive to those who finish the season in the top 8, so for those, they will count 8+1 or 6+1 tournaments.

I also propose further restrictions. In order to fill all the slots, a player must play at least one 1v1 tournament and at least two different NvNs for N > 1, during the regular season. That is, N_i must be different from N_j, and both must be different than 1. The rest of the slots can be filled with any NvN game format.

So, yes, only tournaments with NvN game format will count for The Championship. This is to prevent in-game alliances.

For the first season, I do not propose any mandatory tournaments. In the following seasons we shall have them for the players who have finished at the top of the ladder in the previous one, something like top 20 or top 30.

Furthermore, only Round Robin and Swiss System tournament formats will count.

Share your thoughts on The Championship and the alternate rankings proposals. You're free to propose other types of tournaments and/or scoring formulas.

I think it is pretty much settleda no brainer that the aggregated BS should be the new system we should guide ourselves by. As for GS, I don't have a strong opinion yet. On one hand, GS1 and GS2 still let's a player to be high ranked by playing only one board, on the other hand, one could say GS3 rewards grinding lots of boards - as an apart, funny that Amidon's proposal puts him at #2.

Maybe we should try to come up with a GS without these pitfalls. I haven't put much thought into it yet.

In that I don't see Tom making any substantive changes to the existing system any time in the foreseable future, I think the idea of an independently run system is a great idea.  Thanks for putting this up R. It would be great to see a number of good players participate.  Their input is probably what's most important at this point.

I'll second all that and thank you for setting this up Redshift

Wow, pretty impressive that you were able to transfer all the data somewhere else. However, isn't that going to be a pain to be transferring info constantly? And how many players will really be checking an external site on a regular basis?

Also, I think we should communicate with Tom first (even though he's probably read the forum threads), tell him there's a real desire to fix the ranking systems, and see if he'd allow for people to have the admin power to modify the current system once Tom agrees on the best course of action. It seems like Tom is not able to dedicate the time to this site that he used to be able / willing to dedicate, but if we have people with the know-how to make the changes, it would be a lot easier, more useful, and better in the long term to manage a scoring system internally in WGW.

I do really appreciate the time and effort that redshift put into this proposal, and maybe this will be the forum thread that finally leads to a solution. But I don't think an externally managed scoring system will be good for the site in the long term. I also don't think the current ranking system will be good for WGW in the long term. Either option, in my mind, will lead to reduced engagement of gamers on Wargear Warfare. In my mind, the only good option is an internal overhaul of the current ranking system. That's my two cents. 

Chele Nica wrote:

Wow, pretty impressive that you were able to transfer all the data somewhere else. However, isn't that going to be a pain to be transferring info constantly? And how many players will really be checking an external site on a regular basis?

Also, I think we should communicate with Tom first (even though he's probably read the forum threads), tell him there's a real desire to fix the ranking systems, and see if he'd allow for people to have the admin power to modify the current system once Tom agrees on the best course of action. It seems like Tom is not able to dedicate the time to this site that he used to be able / willing to dedicate, but if we have people with the know-how to make the changes, it would be a lot easier, more useful, and better in the long term to manage a scoring system internally in WGW.

I do really appreciate the time and effort that redshift put into this proposal, and maybe this will be the forum thread that finally leads to a solution. But I don't think an externally managed scoring system will be good for the site in the long term. I also don't think the current ranking system will be good for WGW in the long term. Either option, in my mind, will lead to reduced engagement of gamers on Wargear Warfare. In my mind, the only good option is an internal overhaul of the current ranking system. That's my two cents. 

Thanks for raising all these questions. Save for when I'm making changes, the database and the webpages are automatically updated once a day. Due to performance reasons the script deletes the rankings and player pages before writing the new ones, so you might not be able to load a given page around 9.30 pm London Time for a few minutes.

I have sent an e-mail to Tom one month ago when I started to develop the website. Have not received a reply till this day. I would prefer if I my project was integrated into WarGear.net as well, and have told him he can do it whenever he wants, no strings attached.

Yes, it would be better if Tom made a team to work on the code, but from what I know, not even Ozyman has that level of clearance.

Players that check the forum will probably check my website and it can spread to more players as people talk to each other.

Regarding scoring systems, Board Score will allways define who's best at a given board, but it's fairer if all public formats count. Since it's a weighted average, the format where a player plays more, has a bigger impact on the final score. The score of WGW in particular, where you guys have hundreds of games in the regular normal format, will hardly change by playing that board in other formats. WarGear provides the detailed board scores, I provide the aggregates. Allways better to have more info, no?

But, regarding the Global Score, what is the best option in your opinion?

Anyway, the scoring systems were not exactly my focus when I began the project. For me, it's more of an aid to find what Score should I use in the formula that calculates the points given in the tournaments for the Championship.

The tournaments will be automatically tracked and "all" players will take part in the Championship whether they are aware of it or not. This competition is tailored for the pros (like you), though, who are naturally aware of what's going on.

M57 wrote:

In that I don't see Tom making any substantive changes to the existing system any time in the foreseable future, I think the idea of an independently run system is a great idea.  Thanks for putting this up R. It would be great to see a number of good players participate.  Their input is probably what's most important at this point.

Yeah, I'd like to have more input from the community to finalise the Championship details at least. Tomorrow I'll propose some formulas for the points.

Now move your bottom and go fix the factories in Quantum Entanglement. I'd like the WTF tournament to played on Doppelganger for Two in this season. :)

I know it doesn't exactly overlap with your championship idea, but I'd really like to see data on team scores. Some of the maps are team only:

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Tug+of+War/About

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Axis+V+Allies+3v3

So have no rankings posted. I have to go into each game and look at the ranking messages to get scores. Would love to have those out in the open.

Interesting...the grey needs to be a little lighter as it currently is tough to view the names there.

I haven't put much work into the layout yet. Do you mean the grey in the table body rows or the header?

Korrun wrote:

I know it doesn't exactly overlap with your championship idea, but I'd really like to see data on team scores. Some of the maps are team only:

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Tug+of+War/About

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Axis+V+Allies+3v3

So have no rankings posted. I have to go into each game and look at the ranking messages to get scores. Would love to have those out in the open.

Go to the board rankings and select these boards, they are there. Click on BS to sort by that column, currently I have by default to show the tables sorted by BSrn (and GSrn for global rankings).

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/rankings/board/Tug%20of%20War/page1-BS

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/rankings/board/Axis%20V%20Allies%203v3/page1-BS

Regarding Team Score and Individual Score in general, I can do those, that is, aggregate Teamplay Normal with Teamplay Tournament and aggregate Regular Normal with Regular Tournament - currently I only have all 4 formats aggregated together.

redshift wrote:

Chele Nica wrote: 

Thanks for raising all these questions......

Thanks redshift, that's pretty cool you can do daily automatic updates. I'm glad to hear you tried to contact Tom already, and it's also true it's better to have more info. I think you've answered my biggest hesitations about this proposal :)

One suggestion: Please change some of the colors on your website, to make it easier to read the scores and names of players. Thanks!

I've whitened all links.

So, regarding points, to the winner:

- base = avg(BS or GS)/10 + 4N, where N is the number of players or teams in the tournament

- bonus = 30

Then, each lower place receives half of the base points of the preceding place and last place receives 0.

I thought of the bonus because without it, if there's more than one player tied at #1, he would receive the same points of the winner.

Table layout is now identical to WarGear.

Just remembered that only tournaments with 2 and 3 day turn limits should be eligible. 7 day is self-explanatory and I've seen turn skipping happening rather often with 1 day limit, specially team games.

redshift wrote:

 

Korrun wrote:

I know it doesn't exactly overlap with your championship idea, but I'd really like to see data on team scores. Some of the maps are team only:

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Tug+of+War/About

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Axis+V+Allies+3v3

So have no rankings posted. I have to go into each game and look at the ranking messages to get scores. Would love to have those out in the open.

Go to the board rankings and select these boards, they are there. Click on BS to sort by that column, currently I have by default to show the tables sorted by BSrn (and GSrn for global rankings).

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/rankings/board/Tug%20of%20War/page1-BS

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/rankings/board/Axis%20V%20Allies%203v3/page1-BS

Regarding Team Score and Individual Score in general, I can do those, that is, aggregate Teamplay Normal with Teamplay Tournament and aggregate Regular Normal with Regular Tournament - currently I only have all 4 formats aggregated together.

Board folders are now named by board id. Take that into account when writing a path directly in the address bar. Ofc, if you go through the menus, you don't need to know any of this.

redshift wrote:

I haven't put much work into the layout yet. Do you mean the grey in the table body rows or the header?

 

Korrun wrote:

I know it doesn't exactly overlap with your championship idea, but I'd really like to see data on team scores. Some of the maps are team only:

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Tug+of+War/About

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Axis+V+Allies+3v3

So have no rankings posted. I have to go into each game and look at the ranking messages to get scores. Would love to have those out in the open.

Go to the board rankings and select these boards, they are there. Click on BS to sort by that column, currently I have by default to show the tables sorted by BSrn (and GSrn for global rankings).

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/rankings/board/Tug%20of%20War/page1-BS

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/rankings/board/Axis%20V%20Allies%203v3/page1-BS

Regarding Team Score and Individual Score in general, I can do those, that is, aggregate Teamplay Normal with Teamplay Tournament and aggregate Regular Normal with Regular Tournament - currently I only have all 4 formats aggregated together.

 

 

Thanks! Nice to see those. Although my aggregate scores are significantly lower. :)

They're lower for most players, specially high ranked ones in the official rankings. You have to sort by the different scores and check where you rank in each of them.

My first tournament game was in February and already finished 6 tournaments (in 3.5 months), so 8 can be easily surpassed in a 10 month period, think I'll go with that.

Maybe I'll alow 1 day turns for 1v1 as well, thoughts?

After getting more acquainted with the rankings, I no longer support GS3 (Amidon's proposal), as for any decent player, it basically only goes up the more boards you play and there are a lot of boards to be played, 314 at the time of this writing, though a few are retired but still count for those who played them.

I've decided for simply summing the GSes of each format - non-played format is assigned 1000. I think it fixes most problems as players who play all formats are more likely to play various boards as well.

Overranked players like biggamehunter took a fair hit, down to #86 from #18.

Championship points will use this new GS, just need to tweak the formula and write the code to keep track of the tournaments and manage the championship. I guess it can start by next week. Will post again and update the info on my website once everything is ready to go.

I have increased countable slots to 10+1 and it will also require for at least 5 of the tournaments in the countables to be from different boards.

Player pages now display the ranking next to the GSes with a link to the Rankings page where that player can be found (like in the WarGear profile page).

Regarding GSrn rankings, there are some discrepancies with WarGear because I have a secondary sort by Win Ratio while it seems Tom has set none here.

Championship rules are now available under the Championship menu. FAQ has also been updated.

http://wgchampion.x10host.com/championship/rules

Looks like you have gone to a lot of work just to be able to write WTF without meaning WTF. ;-)