PBW League Idea...

[tesco samoa]

a win would be victory... which is decided between the players in the game... or just a standard Last man standing

[geoschmo]

I don't think we need to compare game settings to determine the value of a win. A win is a win. Everybody in that particular game is playing by the same rules, so beating them all is no more or less impressive than someone winning a game played with different settings.

Geoschmo

[Slaughtermeyer]

I used to play rated games of Age of Empires on the Microsoft Gaming Zone, which uses a scoring system similar to that described by LazarusLong42. It seems to work reasonably well both for head-to-head and multiplayer games, including team games. For details you may go to: http://zone.msn.com/conquerors/Ratingsfaq.asp

[Gozra]

Well a multiplayer win is diffrent than in a head to head game. When you don't have to use diplomacy who ever is better at expansion and production wins. In a multiplayer game that ablity is muted. I am in a game now where the lead player outproduces everyone but they are losing because everyone has ganged up on him. So I still think it takes diffrent skills to win at diffrent types of games. Not all games are created equal.
I would go for a published ranking system. Based on wins and participation. 3 point for a 'Win' 2 for second place and 1 point just for being in the game. and -5 for dropping out. All these points would be divided by the amount of games played. And Ranked players could advertise games and you could join based on your ranking. New folks could still play with experienced folks and still walk away with something.

[ August 30, 2002, 19:56: Message edited by: Gozra ]

[LazarusLong42]

OK, because no one asked about it... my suggestion for a ranking/ladder system, in full fledged mathematical glory. Math-impaired people may wish to stop here.

OK. For any given game, assume you have N players, each of whom has a rating, R1, R2,... RN. These players will "donate"--virtually--a portion of their Ratings to a pool which will go to the winner of the game. The total pool of points would be equal to 50*N.

The "donation" for player i will be equal to Di = (50 * N * (Ri^2))/(R1^2 + R2^2 + ... + RN^2). This donation is equal to the total amount the player will *lose* if they fail to win the game. If the player wins, however, they gain (50 * N) - Di points -- or the total of the donations of the other players.

Let's take two examples. A two-player game is simple. The total point pool is 100 points. Now, let's take two players with rating 1000 and 1200 respectively.

Player 1 donates 50 * 2 * 1000000 / (1000000 + 1440000) = 41 points.
Player 2 donates 59 points via the same math.

So, if player 1 wins, he gains 59 points and player 2 loses 59 pts.
Conversely, if player 2 wins, she gains 41 points and player 1 loses 41 pts.

In other words, if the stronger player wins, he gains fewer points than the weaker player does if he wins. In a two-player game that ends in an agreed draw, each player loses their inital donation, then takes back 50 points. So, player 2 would lose 9 points to player 1 if this game had ended in a draw.

Now... because I'm a masochist, let's take the case of a *5* player game. Total pool is 250 pts. I'm not going to show the calculations, but I'm going to give you a quick table:

code:

---

Player  Rating  Donation

1       1300    80

2       1200    68

3       1000    48

4       800     30

5       700     23

---

Which ever player wins gains the sum of the other players' donations; each player who lost loses his donation. Of course... that's assuming a Last-man-standing game.

In some games, team games for instance, players will know going in that they plan to cooperate. In some games, mainly large games, players will agree to a cooperative win rather than fighting a final battle. Both of these are parts of the SE experience. However, they muddle a Ratings system of this sort. I'm not going to write out the math here because without being able to show real equations they'd become hopelessly illegible.

Suffice to say: if two people win, take the other three players and add their donations together. The two players each take a share of those points proportional to both their initial donation, and to the total number of points they would have earned had they won. So if, for instance, players 1 and 3 in the above example share the win, player 1 earns 71 points and player 2 earns 51 points.

I'll leave the math on that as an exercise for the reader <EG>

Comments? Flames?

Eric

[Rollo]

Thanks Eric,
now I got a headache .
Nice system (I guess... ).

I got another idea for a system. If you win, you get one point. If you lose, you don't.

Rollo

[Zanthis]

Good post Laz. Like the system. I've always favored point swapping ranking systems, as opposed to those that generate points. However, the system will still suffer some inflation as new players come, lose some points to better players and then leave. The players that stick around will slowly amass large numbers of points (although, given the speed of a SE4 game, that might take many years).

Of course, seasons would eliminate that problem. Or, instead of just resetting everyone each season, you could rescale them all to be within say a 1000 to 2000 point range.

If inflation is too bad, adding a "cost" for each game of a few points may handle that. So if the loser's donation is 40 points, the winner might only get 37 leaving 3 points to be removed from the system.