Blood God Ratings

[Nate]

There was a bug in the ratings code after this most recent update. I made a change so a win would always at least award 1 point since sometimes wild card matches happen with much lower ranked gladiators and the math works out so the winner gets a fraction of 1 point and we don't deal with fractional points in the Blood Gods thus they would be awarded 0 points. This bug awarded 1 point to losing gladiators instead of the negative amount that they should have gotten which is why everyone's ratings increased instead of some increasing and some decreasing. Everyone was affected equally so the end result is everyone just has a higher rating.

This has been fixed, losing gladiators will now start losing points again and winners will always get at least 1 point.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Cynaidh]

Nate,

What about the deal with first place in blood gods, i know Apoca1ypse and I have both run into this now, if first place gets 150-200ish point ahead of 2nd place its near impossible to gain points. On a win you get 1-5 points it seems max but on a loss your loosing 25 or more points. So you can win 5 in a row and then loose 1 and you'll go down in points. Now that you've given us hard set goals of 1700 and 2000 for gear, this seems very harsh.

[Apoca1ypse]

tbh, i think this is in part to having so few glads in blood gods. it means there are less points available to be distributed. if we had 100 glads, things would be different.

I'd still a PITA with how much you can jump around with a win or loss though.

[Nate]

Legendary items will indeed be difficult to attain, ensuring your gladiator's storied and epic journey is worth remembering throughout generations as a true legend and weapons are named after them in the future!

"Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory" - General George S. Patton :)

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

P.S. If it turns out nobody even comes close by the end of the season we'll make adjustments accordingly.

[Apoca1ypse]

P.S. If it turns out nobody even comes close by the end of the season we'll make adjustments accordingly.

yay!

Next thing would be to work out how to get bruce up there again :(

[Stormcloak]

The issue with the application of the elo system is that it's all relative. Since we have the best of the best alone being evaluated there will likely be very little movement. If we look at chess a new player starts at 1200 (with scrubs being below that). Master status is attained at 2000, grandmaster at 2400 and the inhumanly strong masters hit 26-2700. However even within this system there exists discrepancies due to the measurements being local and relative - the old scoff against American players of 'every Russian schoolgirl knows'.
What we have in bloodgods is a bunch of 2400 players all starting at 1200 and playing only other master strength players, so there may not be much movement. The elo system can be represented through probability. If one is 200 points above another, the expectation is that the higher player would win 3 matches out of 4 (thats a pretty good glad if he can hold that win ratio). If a player is 800 points lower then the expectation is winning one game out of a hundred!
So, to apply typical titles when the pool of talents is drawn only from the elite of the elite would be misdirecting. I do suspect adjustments will need to be made and that it's great that Nate is so openminded.

[Apoca1ypse]

blood gods would be pretty cool if it incorporated every lvl 50 glad or most primus glads or something.

just something to make it more than 40 glads.....

[Stormcloak]

Maybe even have the HOL retired glads in there fighting as npc's?

[Cynaidh]

My problem with it still is this a tournament scoring system and its being used to score individual fights not tournaments. In Chess you would do a tournament where you'd do a round-robin style, Swiss system style or single-elimination style tournament more then likely. You'd have all kinda match-ups with high rank and low rank players depending on how they are doing in that specific tournament. In our current system if your in first place with a good lead in points, all you will fight is 2nd place most of the time, you never get that effect of entering a tournament and facing a variety of players where yes you might face the number 2 ranked player but it would probably only be 1 time in the whole tournament (and a highly watched match probably). So the high ranking players don't just only match up against other high ranking players, they have a chance to face everyone who singed up for the tournament. All we are doing is swapping points back and forth between people at the same level as you with our current system as your just fighting people right around you with that 15% chance to get a wild card fight or what ever the exact % is. Honestly i think that's how all the fights should be just a random match up with anyone in the blood gods, that would be more reasonable then what we have now and more in the spirit of a round robin tournament where you face everyone multiple times and the one who wins the most is the winner at the end.

[Apoca1ypse]

I played another game where the elo system was used on a fight by fight basis and it worked just fine. in saying that, there were over 300 people in the ladder.

[Dainoji]

World of Warcraft uses elo on a per fight basis in the arena, pretty sure Guild Wars does as well. Most video games that use an elo do it on a per fight basis. Usually top ranking scores like 2000 aren't hit until toward the end the season and if this is a three month long season we're only 1/3 of the way in. I should probably add that unless there is a clear imbalance what I say above seems to hold. I have seen players shoot up the ratings quickly but it was pretty obvious they were of a much higher caliber then the rest of the field and never lost.

[Cynaidh]

I see what you guys are saying that it works for other games, I did competitive pvp in WoW and saw it work there, it was a hell of an accomplishment to get in the high ranks of it back when i was doing it.

My problem is there just is no point right now in the pits, you can easily go from the bottom of the rankings to the top in the blood gods in less then a week, so right now, today, the fights we are doing are meaningless wastes of time, in this 2 to 3 month tournament everything will be decided in the last week. Honestly I feel now that the best strategy would be to stop spending trophies on achievement slots/extra fights/stable memberships and just wait till near the end, then used those saved up trophies to max out the achievements on my glads, and use the trophies for extra fights to jump up to the top of the rankings and win. So trying to stay at the top is pointless to me with how this is structured, hell there isn't even an achievement for being in 1st place for x number of fights like every other bracket, that doesn't even exist.

The other goal for the blood gods is getting to 1700 and 2000 ranking points. The Returned is trying to chase this goal she is currently over 200 points above the nearest glad that can fight her, she had 4 fight tokens this morning, she won all 4 and gained less then 10 points but if she would have lost she looses nearly it seems 24-28 points on a loss. So 12 win's worth of points are erased with 1 loss. So to have any chance of getting to 1700 points she is going to have to have a 95% win/loss ratio. I don't know about you guys but I don't think there is any glad that will be able to pull that off for the fights it would take to get to 1700 points much less 2000.

EDIT: Just to go into this more, I have brought this up several times but this is from us using a set K-factor (the max number of points you can gain or loose per fight) of around 30, all the major chess federations scale your K-factor: the USCF starts you at a K-factor of 32, but once you get up the ranks some it drops to 24, and once your at the top of the ranks it drops to 16; the FIDE starts you at 30, soon as you have 30 matches it drops to 15 and then once you hit the top of the rankings it becomes 10; some use a formula that lowers your K-factor the more games you play. This makes it more fair to people at the top of the rankings, if your at the top you won't gain many points per win so the k-factor will not come into effect on a win, but on a loss instead of loosing 30 points and wiping out 12 wins worth of points, you loose a max of 16 or 10 in the USCF and FIDE which still is a big hit but at least then its only removing the points you gained from 4-6 wins instead of 12.

I am sure everyone who knows me here knows i am a very goal orientated person. I like setting goals for glads/teams and trying to make them happen. The lack of achievable goals in the blood gods that would actually mean something has just changed the game a lot for me. Hell i miss the top 10 battle of primus, it was better then the musical chairs that the top 10 of the blood gods is.

[Dainoji]

Personally the use of an ELO system in anything where chance is a factor doesn't really work very well but that is what the video game industry has embraced due to there not being a better solution. WoW uses a K-Factor of 32 and it doesn't scale and it mostly works for them, they also do it on a per fight basis. I don't think the Blood Gods or this game are any different, it works given the circumstances. The top 3rd are who I would expect, the middle 3rd the same and the bottom 3rd likewise. I've also yet to see someone go from #1 to the bottom and back up without it being due to some kind of respec or something like that and even then Bruce is the closest I've seen and I don't think Bruce is spec'd right to match up against the top War glads currently which is why he fell and likely won't regain the #1 spot again without more work. In one week a glad might fight 100 or more times so it seems completely reasonable to me that if a glad losses enough times in 100+ fights to go to the bottom they likely deserve their new position.

If someone in WoW wanted to sandbag they could and drop a bunch in the rankings and then they could turn it back up and raise in the ranks. The same would be true for a chess player, this isn't a failing on the systems part. The difference is the person sandbagging would have a shit rating each week and have less BGP to buy gear. You are welcome to do the same and the result would be the same, you can sit at the bottom of the rankings sandbagging it and get minimal BGP while the top glads each week get a lot more and buy a lot more gear than your glads. The last few weeks you can turn up the heat and maybe and I say maybe because who knows how high the top glads will be at that time you'll reach the top spot and "win". Congrats you won and got your goal, but you failed to win the real prize which were all the BGP and top gear your glads missed out on sitting at the bottom. I also have to imagine that there will be some additional goodies at the end like achievements and such so I wouldn't get too down about that.

Anyhow, enough arm chair speculation on my part! Now...back to dreaming about the new Blood God gear and whipping Thunder Lips for sandbagging in Primus! :)

[oedi]

Im not sure why but I had an idea about the winner would be the gladiator with most bgp in the end of the season. If the only criteria being #1 on the last sever reset, its possible, very unlikly but still posible to win after being promoted into Blood gods the last week. Maybe thats Thunder Lips plan;)

My only real concern about the current system is that now we fight even fewer opponents than in the old primus. We have counters for # of wins and # of fights initiated, could we possibly add a new counter for # of opponents. The effect would be that you cant fight one glad twice until you`ve met X different opponents that week.

[Cynaidh]

Ya I've been reading all day on the different ranking systems to see if there is something better, a lot of games have gone away from a straight ELO system, WoW went from the elo system to their MMR system at the end of season 5, the differences between the systems are an interesting read, with each person having 3 rankings in WoW, Personal MMR, Team MMR, and Arena Ranking. League of Legends also just swapped from the ELO to a MMR system in February of this year. Starcraft II also uses a MMR system.

Some of the differences are cool like in WoW your personal MMR sets a cap of how many BGP's (well conquest points, their version of BGP's) you get per week when doing the arena fights: a 1500 rating can get 1343 points per week up to a 3000 rating able to get 3000 points per week. You gain BGP's at the end of each fight, no waiting to get them once a week. This gives your ranking a larger purpose i think as it greatly changes how many BGP's you can earn per week, and makes it so you stay active to earn the points since you get them per fight. Another reason I like the though of getting BGP's per fight is that way if you where say 50 BGP from being able to buy an item, instead of having to wait a whole week to get some points, you'd be able to get those 50 points in a couple of fights. Is an interesting change from how they did it back in season 2 when i did WoW PvP when it was a system very much like the Pits.

Another thing i like is that they have removed your ranking TOTALLY from buying gear, their system now just works on how many points you have to spend and how many total points you've accumulated this season. Basically the purple armor would be available to buy at the start, you just need to save up points to buy it, once you have earned 7500 points total (including your spent points) then purple weapons would become available, at 27000 points earned total in a season the orange gear becomes available. Now those points are high compared to us since you can earn up to 3000 points per week in WoW, I would half those numbers for our system, so purple armor unlocked at the start, purple weapons unlocked once you've earned 3250 points total in a season, and then the orange gear unlocked once you've hit 13500 points total for the season.

I see why they did this, when eventually we get enough people in the blood gods, 1 glad will hit 1700 points, and i am sure that glad will have near max BGP's saved up, so that glad will go from wearing purple armor to half their armor being orange gear (if they use trophies to help buy the gear rather then straight BGP's) and have a HUGE advantage, thus keeping others from getting to 1700 ranking. And then eventually the same thing would happen at 2000 ranking.

So our system is basically what WoW had at the start pre-season 5. You get BGP's once per week, there are rating requirements on the gear, uses ELO for rankings. I'd rather look at what WoW is using now (BGP's per fight, No rating requirements on gear, rather its based on total points earned per season, MMR rating system) as they have already gone threw the pains and seen what works and what doesn't work.



Im not sure why but I had an idea about the winner would be the gladiator with most bgp in the end of the season.

Cool idea Oedi.

[Cynaidh]

Just the icing on the cake for me but The Returned was up to 1542 points, got 2 match up vs power rages, lost both, now at 1488 points, that's 54 points lost in 2 minutes that took 3 days of wins to make.

[Jervaj]

The point is what Stormcloak says I think. Ussually ELO ranking is used when theres a lot of players playing in the same ranking so as everyone is there (the good ones, the average and the worse) so if you are good you will rank up easily and stay there, because if for some reason you are kicked down in ELO you will start fighting less skilled players normally and as you are better you will get your ELO up.

The point is that when the amount of people involved in the ELO ranking is small and the level is quite similar between then geting high ELO is very difficult as even when you are fighting people that by ranking are supossed to be worse than you you have high chances of losing and you will tend to lose more points when you lose than earn them when you win as this is how ELO works when you are over the average) so staying high is very difficult in this cases.

Thats exactly what happens in blood games I think. The problem relies in the ELO ranking itself. If you want people to be able to get higher ratings when they are only fighting other top players you need to think something arround, but thats very difficult. And maybe the movements helps motivating people so one or a few glad doesnt just dominate. But it can be very frustrating on the other hand as Cyna said.

[Apoca1ypse]

Just the icing on the cake for me but The Returned was up to 1542 points, got 2 match up vs power rages, lost both, now at 1488 points, that's 54 points lost in 2 minutes that took 3 days of wins to make.

I hear you man. Bloody Lady keeps smacking up Bruce for 30 points a match whenever I get to the #3 or #4 spot....

[Dainoji]

Just the icing on the cake for me but The Returned was up to 1542 points, got 2 match up vs power rages, lost both, now at 1488 points, that's 54 points lost in 2 minutes that took 3 days of wins to make.

I don't expect what I'm going to add to change your mind as you've made yours known at this point ;) however, I think you are missing what is happening on a larger scale. You are only focusing on your top glad and his inability to pull away from the pack easily. If you look at the top half of the rankings you'll see they are steadily moving up in rating points. You get more points when fighting someone of a similar rating and as a result the group as a whole moves up which in turn allows the top ranked glads to climb higher. In just 5 weeks the top 10ish have gained 200-400 points and the top ranked glads around 500. If you make some assumptions and do a little math I wouldn't be surprised to see top ranked glads kissing 1700 by the end of the month. Patience is a virtue!

[Cynaidh]

I see what your saying Dainoji, and I agree we have a system that is trending to the top glads gradually increasing.

What i don't like is its a system that punishes you for doing good and being the top guy.

[Dainoji]

The point is what Stormcloak says I think. Ussually ELO ranking is used when theres a lot of players playing in the same ranking so as everyone is there (the good ones, the average and the worse) so if you are good you will rank up easily and stay there, because if for some reason you are kicked down in ELO you will start fighting less skilled players normally and as you are better you will get your ELO up.

The point is that when the amount of people involved in the ELO ranking is small and the level is quite similar between then geting high ELO is very difficult as even when you are fighting people that by ranking are supossed to be worse than you you have high chances of losing and you will tend to lose more points when you lose than earn them when you win as this is how ELO works when you are over the average) so staying high is very difficult in this cases.

Thats exactly what happens in blood games I think. The problem relies in the ELO ranking itself. If you want people to be able to get higher ratings when they are only fighting other top players you need to think something arround, but thats very difficult. And maybe the movements helps motivating people so one or a few glad doesnt just dominate. But it can be very frustrating on the other hand as Cyna said.

I think there is a lot of truth to this as well although I'm not sure the number of participants matters as much given the sheer volume of fights in the Blood Gods bracket.

EDIT: Nevermind, after some thought, number of fights doesn't matter so much. Lack of glads does. :)

[Dainoji]

I see what your saying Dainoji, and I agree we have a system that is trending to the top glads gradually increasing.

What i don't like is its a system that punishes you for doing good and being the top guy.

Yeah, it's rough but that's how the system is designed. As Storm pointed out a top ranked player is simply not supposed to lose to an opponent much lower than them and if they do they're punished. The more I think about it I don't really think the elo is the problem, the problem is we only have 40 or so blood gods so getting matched up with someone near your own rating is a lot harder at the top. If we had 1000 blood gods there would be a lot of glads around 1400 or 1500 right now and they wouldn't be getting 1 or 2 points per fight. This is not a problem that is solved quickly since it takes time to get glads up the rankings ladder. My vote would be to see this season though and see how it plays out and then offer up alternatives for the next season if it doesn't feel right.

[Cynaidh]

Would probably help.

Also got to remember ELO was made for chess, in chess you do tournaments, in the tournaments the number 1 ranked player doesn't do 10 matches in a row vs the number 2 player, they get matched up with lower level players and then will meet topped ranked players at the end of an elimination tournament. So for every match they have vs someone who could beat them they already played 3-4 matches vs lower ranked opponents. That doesn't happen in our pits, all our high rank guys do is fight each other, so they have no chance to "pick up points" from lower ranked players like how it happens in a chess tournament. That's the biggest flaw to me with our system.

[Narol]

I agree with Cyn, the system would probably work better if you could meet randomly any other glad from the blood god category and not just the ones close to you in rankings...

Seasons should work kinda like a championship, if you play enough matches you would meet everyone in the competition and the leading glads will be those with the better W/L ratio overall...

[Nate]

We've had quite the lively discussion recently regarding the new Blood Gods bracket haven't we? :)

The long and the short of it is there is no perfect solution, even the MMR that some games are moving to have their issues as well. Is it better than an elo system? Maybe, maybe not. We won't really know what is best for us until after we play enough seasons and collect enough data to make informed decisions. Having said that it's clear that one main concern is the lack of variety with a low population bracket and strict matchmaking. In addition there is some concern that Seasons could afford to be more tournament like. So to that end I've made a few changes, nothing drastic and all to do with how matchmaking is handled.

The old system tried to match gladiators up with similar ratings, since we don't have an abundance of gladiators in the Blood Gods bracket this lead to a lot of similar matchups and a lack of variety. The change I've made basically turns Seasons into a Round Robin format. Every gladiator will fight every gladiator one after the other and circle back around when they've reached the end of the list and this will continue as new gladiators are introduced or removed.

What to expect and what not to expect:

- Since this is now a round robin tournament format, gladiators from the same stable will be getting matched up against each other when it's their time to face off.

- High rated gladiators losing to low rated gladiators will lose a good chunk of points just as before. That is simply how elo works and most other rating systems out there that try and factor in the participants level of skill and mastery.

- I would not expect to see the #1 gladiator create a large gap between themselves and the #2 unless they figure out how to win a heck of a lot more than they lose.

- Legendary items are very rare and as such will be very difficult to attain, don't expect to have one tomorrow, probably not next week either. If you brush your teeth every night, make your bed in the morning and clean you room you might get one later though...but I'll have to talk to your parents first and see if it's ok with them! ;)

- As someone mentioned in one of the threads the real prizes here are the BGP you earn and the gear you buy with them. We'll have titles and achievements for the top spots for sure but the main prizes are the ones you pick up on a weekly/bi-weekly basis.

- BGP are not awarded on a liner scale, the higher your rating the more BGP you are awarded so maintaining a high rating each week is definitely worth it.

One thing I'd like to bring up is in creating seasons one of the goals was to create an environment that any glad could jump into at anytime have fun and feel like they had a chance to do well and if they happen to be the biggest badass around they move to the top where they belong. We already have the Blood Games which are a closed tournament with nobody being added or removed for the length of the tournament, hence, Blood Gods is a dynamic environment with gladiators entering each week and some leaving at anytime. Would it be possible for a newcomer to finish the Season in the #1 spot? Maybe, but I doubt it and as mentioned earlier they will have missed out on the main prizes and rewards the old timers had been getting for many weeks or months.

As always, thanks for your feedback and I hope you all find this change pleasing. I'll be focusing all my efforts on conquests now so major bugs aside I don't have plans to make any more changes to Seasons until Conquests is much further along. We'll learn from Season 1 and make changes accordingly down the road for Season 2.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[oedi]

the old system tried to match gladiators up with similar ratings, since we don't have an abundance of gladiators in the blood gods bracket this lead to a lot of similar matchups and a lack of variety. The change i've made basically turns seasons into a round robin format. Every gladiator will fight every gladiator one after the other and circle back around when they've reached the end of the list and this will continue as new gladiators are introduced or removed.

What to expect and what not to expect:

- since this is now a round robin tournament format, gladiators from the same stable will be getting matched up against each other when it's their time to face off.

awesome :D

[Alba Kebab]

Round robin? I like.

[Prinny]

- Since this is now a round robin tournament format, gladiators from the same stable will be getting matched up against each other when it's their time to face off.
I love you

[Cynaidh]

Ha, I did my morning fights before reading the forums, my first fight was Belgarad vs Belwraith, I actually thought my wife had spiked my coffee or something.

Cool change! Got my ass kicked a lot this morning, but they where all new fights so that's a plus, got to change up some strategies now to be more generic instead of running counter defensive strategies since all i normally fought where Oedi's defensive monsters. :)

[Narol]

Nice change, Nate, thank you !

The way you listen to the feedback of your player base is what makes PoW so great and enjoyable !!

[Cynaidh]

Just wanted to say this change has hugely made blood gods more fun for me, not knowing who the next fight will be against has made the fights fun again.

On a side note I picked up the scribe today, if anyone was wondering how much number 1 fought number 2 in the blood gods before this change here you go:

[Apr 07 04:13 pm] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 04:13 pm] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 04:13 pm] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 04:13 pm] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 04:13 pm] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 12:49 pm] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 12:49 pm] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 10:41 am] ARENA - Ahhnold vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:19 am] ARENA - Belgarth vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Arrrpirate vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Banjo Lewis vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:02 am] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned
[Apr 07 09:01 am] ARENA - Razael vs The Returned