State of the V:EKN - October 2013

Lönkka wrote:

Kraus wrote:

What we were thinking was that there could be, like, three different kinds of ladders:

Overall best ratings (history; worldwide; filters for areas)
Overall best average (history; worldwide; filters for areas; average tournament scorings for players, not just accumulated points)
This year's ratings (nulled every year [two years?], worldwide; filters for areas)

Peetu, you might not be aware that the ratings only take into account, like, 18 previous months of points.

So older history is already only hearsay...

I wasn't aware of that, thank you! The system's the best we're likely to get anytime soon then!

And yeah, there are obvious problems with the 'average' ladders. That's why it could be just an addition to the normal ratings; with the amount of tournaments played, for that matter as well!

Not likely to be any kind of a priority though, just an idea.

On getting new players:

There have been several projects dedicated to pulling in new players with small resources.

Jeff had a new player acquisition challange for something similar.

But i have found the easiest way to get new players is with real cards in real decks. Ive lent malk 94 to several players, and lent some of those folks Anson celerity guns 2nd trad once they were done learnimg basics.
Having sapler simple decks is a problem. Namely because easy decks are doable with jyhad vamps, but freak drives and deflections cost too much. Deep songs are great, but newbies can suffice with computer hackings and ttcb.

I think assembling demo decks isnt as big a problem as being able to donate starter decks. Very finite amount of cards now....

thrasher80 wrote:

im not sure on what tournament proxie allowneces are for V:tes but being out of production there needs to be some allowences (if there arent already) we have a 7 person gaming base with 5-10 who show an interest, proxies may be enough to get them on board casually, and after that interested in events.

You can use proxies to your heart's content in your own casual games but in official tournaments they still are a no no.


See the recent National Coordinator Meeting thread about the official stand at the moment.

vekn.net/forum/10-news-and-announcements/55678-national-coordinator-meeting-stockholm-2013

fredsct wrote:

Mind you, I'm not saying anything should change all.

All this discussion an the result was thus nil or just hot air...

fredsct wrote:

I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill.

I agree to a point since it ost certainly also invloves some degree of skill -you just won't score enough points by attending gazillion tournaments and scoring zero VP or just a few odd ones here and there.

If talented players don't have time to spend attending (more) tournaments (or if there's not enough tournaments held in their vicinity, they donät have money to attend ones located further away), I really can't envision a rating system that would actually take this into account and be fair.


All in all, ratings are not really important to me as I get my kicks from the other aspects releated to the game. I still do get why people are interested in ratings and like someone already pointed out you can already filter the ratings by country and city to give you better feel for local meta.



And here is the rest of the mail in case you again feel like I intentionally left something important out

fredsct wrote:

Lönkka wrote:

fredsct wrote:

The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere. I mean, look at Ben Peal at 118 points and Brian Moritz with 355, both far out of the top 100 list of players and tell me, with a straight face, that this number reflects player skill.

Is the problem with the current ratings system or with the fact you stated ("because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments")? Which should change?

Erm...you left off the full quote:

fredsct wrote:

...The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere.

Mind you, I'm not saying anything should change all. I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill. It's just an arbitrary reward system for doing "good things" and it has very bad flaw when used to compare people in different areas of the world. So the guy who pointed out that using it to hold a contest between all the players in the same city would be OK was correct, as far as that went. But using it rank players between different geographical areas is completely unfair and therefore should not done in situations where fairness is required.

Fred

Lönkka wrote:

fredsct wrote:

Mind you, I'm not saying anything should change all.

All this discussion an the result was thus nil or just hot air...

Well, errm, just in case you've forgotten, we came in on this thread when Ginés proposed:

Damnans wrote:

World Ranking incentives
I think it would be a good idea to make the current ranking system more significant,...

...I suggested that these changes were not good. So I'm confused why you should say this was 'hot air'?

Lönkka wrote:

fredsct wrote:

I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill.

I agree to a point since it ost certainly also invloves some degree of skill -you just won't score enough points by attending gazillion tournaments and scoring zero VP or just a few odd ones here and there.

Agreed. But just because skill is involved doesn't mean a system rates skill. The problem, as Johannes and I alluded to in our exchange, is that in the VEKN ranking system no attempt is made to take other factors into account in order to neutralize them so that the remaining number reflected only skill - for instance the quality of competition encountered in a given event or (for me, what is the important thing) the relative difficulty in attending the events.

Lönkka wrote:

If talented players don't have time to spend attending (more) tournaments (or if there's not enough tournaments held in their vicinity, they donät have money to attend ones located further away), I really can't envision a rating system that would actually take this into account and be fair.

To some extent, I agree with you. Obviously, players have to attend some events to possibly be rated. The answer, if your goal is to rate skill, is to take the number of events (beyond a minimum number indicating that you have a useful amount with which to measure) out of the equation.

But I don't think it's worth discussing what it would take to create an true rating system here. The point is, the VEKN ranking system isn't one and shouldn't be treated as one. And again, my purpose for commenting was merely to advocate that Ginés' proposal, vis "World Ranking Incentives" be rejected. For this purpose, it's not necessary to invent a new system here and now.

Fred

fredsct wrote:

So I'm confused why you should say this was 'hot air'?

Plenty of discussion to no effect.

fredsct wrote:

The problem, as Johannes and I alluded to in our exchange, is that in the VEKN ranking system no attempt is made to take other factors into account in order to neutralize them so that the remaining number reflected only skill - for instance the quality of competition encountered in a given event or (for me, what is the important thing) the relative difficulty in attending the events.

A lofty idea but how would the "quality of competition" be measured in concrete terms? VTES ain't golf where par number can be assigned to players to indicate their relative provess.

fredsct wrote:

But I don't think it's worth discussing what it would take to create an true rating system here. The point is, the VEKN ranking system isn't one and shouldn't be treated as one.

Yet, IIRC, it was quite an important thing to get up and working again.


Since you have a strong opinion about the subject I honestly think it might be a solid idea if you proposed (in its own thread perhaps) the outilnes for the proper & perfect rating system for VTES that only shows skill.

I'm pretty sure that the VEKN programmers would also appreciate some tips on how to implement this with the databases at our disposal.