[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:

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Are you actually trying to say that winning a 20 person game is 19 times harder to do then winning a 2 person game?

Yes, Geo, that is exactly what I'm saying. And vice versa. Are you saying that if you have a 50% chance of winning a one on one game, you have a better than 5% chance of winning a 20 player game?

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Uh, huh? I don't understand the point you are trying to make here. It's probably me though.

The point I was trying to make though was in a 1v1 game it's easy to figure out the points. He lost, you were 100% responsible for him losing, so you get 100% of the spoils. If you have 20 players and one loses it's not so easy to say who is the most responsible. We could try to come up with some system to cover that, but it would be hopelessly complicated and very subjective. So the fairest thing in my mind is just divide the points up. Over the course of the game, the better player should Last longer and end up with more points anyway.

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Why should I get the same amount of points in a large game simply for outLasting Primitve, when we never met and I had no involvment in beating him at all,

Simply because you did outLast him! Either diplomatically or militarily or in some other way you were better. I feel you do deserve the full measure of points.

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Even if you never met him? Even if you never met anyone? You could be stuck in a corner and not meet anyone before 2 or three players get knocked out of the game. That's fine. It's the luck of the draw and all. But you haven't exactly earned anything. Certainly not three victories.

On the other hand why should the guy who finished second, beating out 18! count 'em, 18 other players get so much less than the winner? The power struggle at the end may well have been a close thing. The final result may have been decided by luck.

I don't think there is a huge difference between 1st and 2nd in what I am suggesting. In a 20 player game first would get close to 3x points. 2nd would get around 2x points. The farter down you go the lower the points get until you end up at -1x for the Last player. It's not a linear progression of course, The largest gap is between 1st and 2nd. But it's not that out of whack I dont't think.

No offense was taken, no appology is neccesary. Were simply having a lively debate on a subject we disagree on.

I am not totally sure the Chess system correlates directly to SEIV. You don't have 20 player games in chess after all. If the Ratings system were limited to 1 on 1 games, and we were talking about a 20 player round robin SE4 tourney then I would agree 100% with using that system. But in my mind there is a significant difference between a 20 player tournament of 1 v 1 games and a single 20 player game of SE4.

I can see your point about the lack of movement in points with my suggestion. And I did consider one factor that makes it not so bad. Since 20 player games take so long to complete, and players get knocked out one at a time over the course of the game, the winner isn't going to get a one-time 300+ point jump in their standings. It will happen gradually over the course of the game 16 or so points at a time. So in this regard it's not so bad.

But frankly human nature is what it is. You can't deny it or try to fight it. No matter how ideal we'd like to think people act, there will be a tendancy for players once they get near the top of the Ratings to "do the math" and have second thoughts about whether joining a 20 player game is worth the risk of getting ganged up on early and taking a 300+ point drop in their Ratings. Do you honestly see no problem at all with this?

I just can't think of an acceptable solution to what I see as two separate problems. It's not like we can give the winner credit for 19 victories and only give the loser credit for one loss, can we?

Wait, can we?

It sounds kind of top heavy, but what if we do that. As each person loses they get a loss equal to the average of the points of the players remaining in the game, and each player gets a win against them. So the ultimate winner gets 19 wins. The 2nd place guy gets 18 wins and one loss. 3rd place gets 16 wins, and still just one loss. 4th place, 15 wins, still one loss. et cetera.

What effect would such a top heavy system have on the Ratings. Would it cause serious point inflation?

Geoschmo

[ March 12, 2004, 13:25: Message edited by: geoschmo ]