Proper ranking system

_Melkor

(I posted this same topic on steam chat in case anyone checks both)

Hey, Just wondering if anyone knows of the existence of an all time ladder which compares win/loss statistics. I'm trying to figure out who the best players are and its difficult because the main ladder only measures XP which sadly is not equivalent to actual skill. For context, I'm only rank 47, but seem to have a better winrate than the vast majority of players
My profile:
https://account.czechgames.com/profile/detail/89108/2-through-the-ages

The best win rate I've been able to find so far is a player called Dazzy who has a whopping 80% winrate in 1v1.
Dazzy's profile:
https://account.czechgames.com/profile/detail/39757/2-through-the-ages

Its very annoying to be trying to find who my main competition are and having to click accounts one by one in the main ladder searching for players with decent statistics. The TTA pulse matchmaking system is a proper ELO system but the problem is that not enough players are active on it at a given time. Its nice finding some players who are roughly the same level or maybe a bit better than me, but its kind of sad not knowing if that is the tip of the iceberg or not.

Tournaments are an OK way to measure skill but unfortunately they still involve some variance so you have to play a lot to get a proper idea of where you rank. And personally, I don't have the time to commit to a tournament. Maybe if there was a way to get email notifications about when its my turn so that I don't have to check my phone every day ....

MruczekW

_Melkor
If you consider yourself a very good player and want strong opponents, then I definitely recommend tournaments. I certainly agree that CGE ranking tells little about actual strength of gameplay. In one tournament I had a situation where I easily beated 4 times players ranked 44-46 (myself just hitting 40th rank), while in the other I struggle against relegation with players of average 43-44 rank. You can observe that players from top 100 of CGE ranking rarely excel in tournaments (with notable exceptions like LaoHuang or Himmelstosh). The thing is that in non-tournament games people tend to be more relaxed, often time out etc. while in the tournaments they usually put extra effort. Also, I assume top CGE ranking players gain XP mostly from fast 2p games and they may quite struggle in 4p or asynchr games (where the opponent has more time to think and the game is more phisically exhaustive)
It is true that a good search tool is lacking in TTA. But there is one very simple solution - just go to international, intermezzo and world championship pages, click grandmaster and master divisions and you will find most of best players. Or upload a few of Weidenbaum's videos on YouTube as he is hands down the best TTA player nowadays (although being like 200th in CGE ranking).
And if you want to be more interactive and/or recognizable in this game, join discord TTA channel and there you find best players discussing gamę, strategies, tournaments etc. If you consider yourself decent, want to make fun and also contribute, why not starting recording or streaming your games on YouTube like Weidenbaum or DJ Parson?
Cheers and all the best for You

mm34nn

"Tournaments are an OK way to measure skill but unfortunately they still involve some variance so you have to play a lot to get a proper idea of where you rank." Yes, you need at least 2 years to climb ladders in tournaments. It has a long period. It's impossible to design a short-term Real-time elo system for this game.

_Melkor

mm34nn
Who said short term?I don't suppose there is any chance for there ever to be an "all time" ELO ladder? Like the TT matchmaker ELO system except its permanent and doesn't just last for a season. Like, I played some RTS games online which had a ELO system which gave everyone a very good idea of who the actual top players were at any given time. Don't get why it can't be done here.

At the very least, there should be a way to search for someones profile name and find their account . Maybe I'm just dumb, but I can't figure out where a search option is in the leaderboards page.

mm34nn

_Melkor you know. RTS is REAL TIME strategy.

mm34nn

_Melkor

Do you know ttapulse.com? Although it doesn't have too many players lately, you can try it.
To be honest, I don't think we have that many players to support a real-time Elo system today.
For an Elo system, the best strategy for a player who tries to get a rank as high as possible is to make a continuous enough win streak and then stop playing any game to keep your rank.
pajada is a CGE employee. He has a rank system like Elo. You can take his rank system as the official system. As you said, you have to play a lot of tournament games to climb his rank ladder. You must join his International Championship, Interme... Championship, and another 2p tournament.
pajada's rank system is the only choice now. For climbing pajada's rank system, you must spend 1-2 hours every day in tournaments for 1-2 years at least. For a RTS game, it will not be a question. You can play for 3 months to get a stable position in an ELO system. But for TTA, 3 months is just a season of a tournament. Since you had to spend tons of your time on it, you must ask yourself a question before climbing the TTA rank ladder: "Why do I play this game? For a higher rank or what?"
Designing an ELO system doesn't fit the design philosophy of the board game company(CGE). A good game should stress how to make players have fun not how to make players more competitive. Nonetheless, they offered the World Championship in 2022 and in 2023. But remember, CGE is not an electronic game company. Most players play for chilling and kill time on their weekends. Competitive players are not the majority of players. Adding an ELO system implies that players should play for a higher rank. The majority of players play games not for that. You know. RTS like StarCraft is not a popular type of game today.

_Melkor

mm34nn
Yeah, I know, but the ELO system it had was really good! Same format. Join a game, play a game, someone wins/loses. 1vs usually take 30-40 minutes. Not so different from through the ages.

_Melkor

mm34nn

Yes. I'm using it right now. Its the closest thing to what I want.
If thats the problem , than I guess its case closed.
Not for ELO systems that have rate decay. The ttapulse.com has a pretty good system. Also, the game I used to play had rate decay as well. You could go at any time to the website and see the 1v1 ladder rankings. Could search for any player and see their game history etc.. It was a very good indication of who was the best at the time. If the actual best player was inactive for a while, then yes he would decay and others would take no1. Can't ask for miracles though.

4-5-6 . Yeah, 1-2 hours a day for 1-2 years is quite a lot if you are never sure what a season is going to be like. Indeed, for an RTS game its very different. I used to play age of empires 2, and you could spam games for even 2 weeks and get a pretty stable ELO. Still don't see why this isn't doable. If the reason is that there is not enough demand, then I guess there is nothing I can do. I just think this game would be more fun If I could see at all times who the players above me in the ladder were. I have an idea at the moment of some players who are better than me through the ttapulse.com but there are certainly more, and I would like to see it somewhere. I don't mind keeping the XP system for players that want to chill, but feels like there is something missing. Its like you have no incentive to improve unless you want to commit big time over the next 2 years.

I think my biggest complaint though is simply that it is extremely hard to track down players. There doesn't seem to be a search option on the main leaderboard. I have to search for players via ttapulse.com past seasons, and then click page by page in the leaderboard to find them. What a pain in the neck.

mm34nn

_Melkor "Its like you have no incentive to improve unless you want to commit big time over the next 2 years." I can't agree anymore. A player has two choices: "2 years" or "don't take it seriously". We don't have a middle way even if we have ttapulse.com (coz ttapulse.com doesn't have enough active players today).

_Melkor

mm34nn
The way its set up currently, I agree. But we clearly have different mindsets here. I enjoy improving, even if its over the course of 3-4 weeks of grinding. Sometimes its fun to see how fast you can improve in a short amount of time. I mean, sometimes you know you have a month before things start getting very busy again. The issue is that its very hard to quantify this improvement as it is. Would be nice for the system to also cater to people who's schedules are a bit more random (If thats impossible than whatever).

I repeat though, I would be less annoyed about the leaderboard structure, if there was at least a search option !!

mm34nn

_Melkor “We clearly have different mindsets here. ” I enjoy improving too. But when we talk about what function an app should have, we are discussing a commercial product. It's not a discussion about whose preference is better, yours or mine. We are acting as the Product Manager.
If I were the CGE Product Manager, I would not design an ELO system, either. It's about the original purpose of designing a game. Of course, we can add an ELO system to the game, but the question is "Why?" "Does it follow our original purpose?" "If someone doesn't like having an ELO system, how to make them feel happy at the same time?" If someone plays a huge number of TTA games and tries their best to improve the game skill but the ELO system tells them that "you can't be an excellent player" and "your effort is worth nothing" again and again, it can be a real-life situation, but a game should make players away from the reality and the frustrated situation. That's why RTS is not popular today. I guess that's why the TTA product manager didn't add an ELO system. You know, a lot of board game apps have an Elo system. And it's not hard to code for programmers.
If I were a competitive player, I would want to get an ELO system. I would want to improve myself and win more games. I would desire a more obvious rank system to know who is better than me and who is not. It depends on our roles.

Thisisnotasmile

I don't think Pajada works for CGE (but he has in the past and is still in contact with them). Many tournaments contribute to the Glicko rating run by other organisers too. The list is updated every 3 months and you do not have to play for 2 hours every day for 2 years to be included (although naturally, the more rated games you play, the more accurate your rating will be).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10mrIwZNchMz7FMYgddUnniqm82VCYFJJPZJqEDP75F0/edit?usp=drivesdk

MruczekW

Also, I was trying to put forward the idea of live TTA tournament, close to those known from SC, but was rejected by majority on discord. But maybe you can support my cause and one day we will have such live tournaments. Cause currently as far as I can see all of them are asynchr.
Regarding ELO system, I believe it would not serve the game and community well. A distinct example for me is Twilight Struggle which has also its own app and is played in ELO system. It is not uncommon there to run into players that (in my opinion) deliberately keep their rank low to have a field day on newcomers seeking for their level of opponent. There is also imo much rudeness, envy and abandoning of games by players that find themselves behind in game (and it hurts much more in a game where you commit 1 hour of your time as compared to 10-20 minutes SC games)

_Melkor

@MruczekW
Thanks for that!
I can't seem to find the discord channel. Can you put a link to it here?

On the topic of the ELO system, you still find abandoning of games in the current XP system. Don't think an ELO system will change that. Also you find players smurfing on this XP system as well. How many times now I play a relaxed game against someone levelled between 20-30 and then realise halfway through when they are playing a solid game that they have a 70% winrate and have only been playing 1v1s. Theres no easy way to avoid players smurfing.

Anyway this comes down to preference. I didn't mind so much getting smurfed in the game I used to play since It was always interesting that the player I was against might be a much higher rank and I could learn some things. Whereas maybe I wouldn't get the chance to normally play against these players.

pajada

_Melkor you can join the discord server here: https://discord.gg/aC7SQtbkGq
I can confirm @Thisisnotasmile words that I'm not a CGE employee (I was for 3 months in 2021 but I worked on Lost Ruins of Arnak not on TtA). I'm curating Glicko rating and I'm eager to hear ideas how to improve it.