I've been getting a little frustrated as I attempt to climb the rankings that as many of the top players are inactive, it is hard to gain enough points to unseat them. On certain boards, the only active players are so far down the list that defeating them barely moves you and it will take forever to enter the top ten - assuming it's possible.

Any chance something can be done about this? Say, retire accounts that have been inactive for extended lengths of time (5 years?) and remove them from the rankings? They can always be re-instituted if they come back again.

In all honesty, that sounds reasonable and something i'd be curious how you could implement that... Not sure how hard that would be to implement without breaking things;

I have no clue about the inner workings of the site, but at the very least you could probably go by hand (or create a program) to remove accounts that aren't active. That sort of info is already available. Then, pull them from rankings, or hide them. Hiding might be better, because that could allow people to measure up against the all-time greats, while still getting ranking points and championship points.

This has been discussed before. For example it has been suggested that high scores/rankings for inactive accounts be moved to a "Hall of Fame." ..but I can only imagine the coding nightmare that would present to Tom. I don't know that it's even possible given how rankings are calculated.

For what it’s worth, if climbing the ranks is your goal, play fewer duels.

You get more points by winning big games. With more players, the luck of a particular dice roll or starting position also (in my opinion) tends to matter less, giving your strategic skills a chance to shine. Assuming you win more often than random chance, winning against 3,4,5, or 15 players will move you up the ranks much much faster than wins against a single opponent.

I am the fourth-ranked player on the board Pipeline, with 10 championship points there. I played it four times and won it twice — in 8 and 16 player games.

BTdubs wrote:For what it’s worth, if climbing the ranks is your goal, play fewer duels.

You get more points by winning big games. With more players, the luck of a particular dice roll or starting position also (in my opinion) tends to matter less, giving your strategic skills a chance to shine. Assuming you win more often than random chance, winning against 3,4,5, or 15 players will move you up the ranks much much faster than wins against a single opponent.

I would, but I usually only have time to play in short spurts, so I lean heavily on real-time and Fischer, making it hard to get big games.

Not to complain for the sake of complaining, and I'm not fishing for compliments, but I recently entered the top 10 on 7 Wonders, and can't help but notice that no-one above me is active, and there are only three other active players in the rankings. By removing (or hiding) players who have been inactive for more than 5 years, that would remove 142 of 256 players, and remove two off the top 9.

Not sure how that'd affect points/rankings, but at the very least the active players could get rewarded for being the best on the site.

We had a fairly intense discussion many years ago around CP's and how to compute rankings and such. I was one of the people arguing against CP's mainly because of the two weaknesses brought up in this thread.

1) There is not really a clean way to remove inactive players from the rankings since CP's are given to the top 10 players on a board. Player's do come and go (I was just away for a year and in the top 10 on many boards - taking me out and then putting me in would have majorly affected the rankings of other players both times).

2) Like BT said, it rewards players who play larger games.

So, I do agree with you that it would be great if we had a system that ranked "current" players, but I am not hopeful that we will get one.

Ironically I pointed out that inactive players remained high in the rankings, then became an inactive player for ~5 years and returned this year to discover basically all my championship points remained intact. It helps that some of the niche boards I like are not very popular anymore

BTdubs wrote:Ironically I pointed out that inactive players remained high in the rankings, then became an inactive player for ~5 years and returned this year to discover basically all my championship points remained intact. It helps that some of the niche boards I like are not very popular anymore

You know I thought so (that you had just come back after being away for awhile), but people come and go so much that I lose track of who I haven't played against in a while. Welcome back!

The worst case is when the goal posts have been moved, so that not only do you have to usurp retired players in the rankings but you also have less player options than was allowed previously.

Amidon37 wrote:BTdubs wrote:Ironically I pointed out that inactive players remained high in the rankings, then became an inactive player for ~5 years and returned this year to discover basically all my championship points remained intact. It helps that some of the niche boards I like are not very popular anymore

You know I thought so (that you had just come back after being away for awhile), but people come and go so much that I lose track of who I haven't played against in a while. Welcome back!

Thanks! Prepare to be CRUSHED.

BTdubs wrote: ...returned this year...

Well, there goes the neighborhood!!...

Welcome back BTdubs! it's nice to see some other old-timers come back outta retirement. Here's to many more years and many more wins.