What is your opinion on the Ranking system? What system would work better? One thing I wish would change a little is something that wouks benefit solo players. I feel like if my team loses 90 percent of the time I’m better than my teammate so my rank suffers. I also found FFA un reasonably easy to reach onyx
The Halo 4 system, while extremely opaque, seemed to match me more accurately than any other Halo ever did. I can understand why people hated the lack of visibility (although I think that a lot of good comes out of that too), but the actual mechanism for judging player skill was much more complex than a relatively simple win-loss formula. And you know what? Turns out that more data is a good thing. If you care about accuracy, that is. Just my two cents.
What system works and what doesn’t is not for me—or anyone else without access to matchmaking data—to judge. I can only hope for 343i to push the needs of accurate matchmaking over any subjective experiences of players. That said, I have only ever seen evidence that win-based rating systems are sufficient for fast determination of player skill in all circumstances, so I have no reason to believe that complicating the process of analysis would add anything to matchmaking quality. But as I said, my opinion is that players, based on their subjective experiences, are not qualified to judge the quality of a rating system, more often than not can’t judge their historical performance compared to players they have played with accurately, and ultimately have poor understanding of the statistical principles that go into determining a skill rating based on performance.
> 2533274873843883;2:
> but the actual mechanism for judging player skill was much more complex than a relatively simple win-loss formula. And you know what? Turns out that more data is a good thing. If you care about accuracy, that is. Just my two cents.
On the contrary, “Statistically sophisticated or complex methods do not necessarily provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones” (Makridakis and Hibon, 2000).
> 2533274825830455;3:
> What system works and what doesn’t is not for me—or anyone else without access to matchmaking data—to judge. I can only hope for 343i to push the needs of accurate matchmaking over any subjective experiences of players. That said, I have only ever seen evidence that win-based rating systems are sufficient for fast determination of player skill in all circumstances, so I have no reason to believe that complicating the process of analysis would add anything to matchmaking quality. But as I said, my opinion is that players, based on their subjective experiences, are not qualified to judge the quality of a rating system, more often than not can’t judge their historical performance compared to players they have played with accurately, and ultimately have poor understanding of the statistical principles that go into determining a skill rating based on performance.
>
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> > 2533274873843883;2:
> > but the actual mechanism for judging player skill was much more complex than a relatively simple win-loss formula. And you know what? Turns out that more data is a good thing. If you care about accuracy, that is. Just my two cents.
>
> On the contrary, “Statistically sophisticated or complex methods do not necessarily provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones” (Makridakis and Hibon, 2000).
I totally agree that the goal should be accurate matchmaking. But how is that defined exactly? If a 50% W/L ratio is the only goal then every game can be 50-10 or 10-50 and accomplish that. I think that is the issue people have with the MM in H5. Those games (though not the lopsided extent of my example) happen too often.
Your last quote is the key and also poses the same question. Forgive me for not reading your reference, but forecast what exactly? If you’re forecasting competitive games that end 50-48 or 48-50 then it’s a great system and the W/L ratio will settle appropriately around 50%.
The MM in FFA must use more than just W/L. Since only one player out of six can win most players would rank much lower if it was based only on that stat. Due to bad MM there are still plenty of FFA games that are very unbalanced with Golds and Plats facing Onyx. However, smurfs aside, once I settle into Plat, the majority of my FFA matches seem the most balanced because I think the system uses more or different data for MM. Then again, this is just my subjective experience 
As a side note it’s gotta be very hard to match games in a balanced manner as the population continues to decline, which is inevitable with any game.
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Well considering I can play a CTF game, lose and still go 44-0, that’s should mean something. People see me Silver in Team Arena and complain when I’m just taking advantage of the system
> 2535464313430433;1:
> What is your opinion on the Ranking system? What system would work better? One thing I wish would change a little is something that wouks benefit solo players. I feel like if my team loses 90 percent of the time I’m better than my teammate so my rank suffers. I also found FFA un reasonably easy to reach onyx
You must be on an alternate account, because your record does not indicate Onyx in FFA, but Diamond 2 as your highest rank in Slayer. As I stated to tsassi above I believe the MM in FFA is based on a system using more data or weighting it differently than other play lists. That’s why you were able to get to Onyx in FFA. It’s my opinion that if you can reach mid Diamond solo queuing in Slayer you should be able to get Onyx in FFA fairly easily, as you stated.
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> 2535464801356957;6:
> Well considering I can play a CTF game, lose and still go 44-0, that’s should mean something. People see me Silver in Team Arena and complain when I’m just taking advantage of the system
You probably don’t get the “Flag Runner” medal too much LOL But seriously I like having slayers like you on a CTF game because I’m not a great slayer and I get killed way too often playing the objective.
> 2533274968722829;4:
> I totally agree that the goal should be accurate matchmaking. But how is that defined exactly? If a 50% W/L ratio is the only goal then every game can be 50-10 or 10-50 and accomplish that. I think that is the issue people have with the MM in H5. Those games (though not the lopsided extent of my example) happen too often.
There are multiple metrics that can be used to determine the quality of a rating system. In a game where there is a significant possibility of a draw, the percentage of games that result in a draw can be taken as indication of the quality of the rating system. After all, if players are being matched with players close to their level of skill, we would expect more games to end in a draw.
However, in many games such as Slayer in Halo, plain draws may be incredibly rare, if not impossible. However, the same principle of studying the closeness of the game still works. After all, if we know what the objective of the game is, then we also have an idea of what a close game should be. For any arbitrary game, we can threfore always look at how close the result of the game is.
Another approach that comes from a completely different direction is not to look at the outcomes of games, but to follow the advancement of different players. If players are being matched well, then the win ratio of an average player should approach 0.5 as the player plays more games. Your objection that every game could end with huge margins between opposing teams and yet give players win ratios approaching 0.5 is purely hypothetical. If you did have a body of evidence that the win ratio of a player has no correlation with the closness of their games, then yes, the validity of this method would need to be re-evaluated. However, under our current knowledge, our intuition that a player who wins as often as loses will also have extremely close games seems to adequately fit what happens in reality.
> 2533274968722829;4:
> Your last quote is the key and also poses the same question. Forgive me for not reading your reference, but forecast what exactly? If you’re forecasting competitive games that end 50-48 or 48-50 then it’s a great system and the W/L ratio will settle appropriately around 50%.
The paper I cited discussed forecasting as it relates to economic and business data, and strictly speaking, the results are not necessarily generally applicable. However, it’s the message of the quote that I think is important, rather than the specific results of the paper, as there’s no reason a priori why a more complicated system should necessarily produce better predictions. This is to combat the confusion many players seem to have about rating systems that putting in more parameters would necessarily give better ratings, while in reality there is no rational reason to believe that this would be the case.
> 2533274968722829;4:
> The MM in FFA must use more than just W/L. Since only one player out of six can win most players would rank much lower if it was based only on that stat. Due to bad MM there are still plenty of FFA games that are very unbalanced with Golds and Plats facing Onyx. However, smurfs aside, once I settle into Plat, the majority of my FFA matches seem the most balanced because I think the system uses more or different data for MM. Then again, this is just my subjective experience
I feel like this comment represents well the confusion that players have about the rating process. In a game where there are multiple teams “winning” and “losing” are not binary terms. If you only consider the best performing players as a winner, and everyone else as losers, you are throwing away a great deal of useful data. In reality, you should consider how each player performs relative to every other player, e.g., if you have three players: Alice, Bob, and Charlie, then the rankings
- Bob - Charlie - Alicetell us not only that Bob beat both Alice and Charlie, but also that Charlie beat Alice. In this three player case, this only gives us one additional piece of information: that Charlie beat Alice. However, when we have more players, we get more information, and in general for N players, we can deduce N(N - 1)/2 such relations.
In any rating system, this sort of process is easily implemented, because it only requires you to consider the game as N(N - 1)/2 two-player games, instead of one N-player game. So, there is no problem in using wins to rate FFA matches. You just need to treat every possible pair of players as an individual match, which then reduces the usual binary case of one player winning, and the other losing.
To be fair, I can’t speak for the Halo 5 rating system, because we don’t know how it works. So, I can’t say that this is definitely how Halo 5 does things. I can only say that this how it could very likely be doing things.
> 2533274968722829;4:
> As a side note it’s gotta be very hard to match games in a balanced manner as the population continues to decline, which is inevitable with any game.
This is a very true point, and relates to something else that people often miss. Criticisms directed towards the rating system more often have to do with sloppy matchmaking (possibly caused by low population, among other things), rather than the ability of the system to rate player skill.
> 2535471565259874;5:
> My idea way would be to rank based on individual performance. The more skilled players would naturally perform better and get ranked together and the worse ones would play against others of a similar skill range.
>
> Win/Loss is absolutely the wrong idea as only those that have a team can consistently rank up. I went 19/6 today and we lost at something like 30/50 meaning my other team mates had 11 kills combined and 44 deaths combined. Yet I rank down.
>
> How is that a fair ranking system?
You’re falling prey to the false assumption that because you had one game where you were significantly better than everyone else in your team, this must be the norm. In reality, it’s highly likely that on average, you fall in the bottom half of your team as often as you are in the top half. You also blame the system for your own unwilligness to use teamwork, whereas in reality your lack of teamwork is only reflection of the fact that you’re not as willing to work as hard as your opponents, in which case you rightly lose to a more organized team. if you want to be judged without your ability to work as a team being taken into account, then you want to play FFA.
> 2533274825830455;3:
> What system works and what doesn’t is not for me—or anyone else without access to matchmaking data—to judge. I can only hope for 343i to push the needs of accurate matchmaking over any subjective experiences of players. That said, I have only ever seen evidence that win-based rating systems are sufficient for fast determination of player skill in all circumstances, so I have no reason to believe that complicating the process of analysis would add anything to matchmaking quality. But as I said, my opinion is that players, based on their subjective experiences, are not qualified to judge the quality of a rating system, more often than not can’t judge their historical performance compared to players they have played with accurately, and ultimately have poor understanding of the statistical principles that go into determining a skill rating based on performance.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274873843883;2:
> > but the actual mechanism for judging player skill was much more complex than a relatively simple win-loss formula. And you know what? Turns out that more data is a good thing. If you care about accuracy, that is. Just my two cents.
>
> On the contrary, “Statistically sophisticated or complex methods do not necessarily provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones” (Makridakis and Hibon, 2000).
I can agree that, generally speaking, “simpler is better,” but there’s a difference between “not necessarily” providing more accurate forecasts and “not ever” providing more accurate forecasts. And this also supposes that the basic premise of Halo ranking, “good players win and bad players lose,” is sound. I don’t personally believe that every Halo player enters every match with the purpose of winning. I think that the farther down the rank ladder you look the more likely you are to see player psychology and behavior that is inconsistent with the win-loss premise and which consequently compromises the system. Maybe I’m projecting my own motivations onto others because I assume that, as an average person, many other players must think and act in ways that are similar to me. But regardless of the motivations or the behaviors, I don’t feel as if I’m seeing the outcomes (in the form of balanced matches) that good ranking should provide. And blaming a matchmaking system that fails to use ranking system data to full effect may be an honest answer but it isn’t a very satisfying answer. I’d still like to see improvements to both systems, and I can’t believe that there is no room for improvement.
> 2533274825830455;10:
> > 2533274968722829;4:
> > I totally agree that the goal should be accurate matchmaking. But how is that defined exactly? If a 50% W/L ratio is the only goal then every game can be 50-10 or 10-50 and accomplish that. I think that is the issue people have with the MM in H5. Those games (though not the lopsided extent of my example) happen too often.
>
> There are multiple metrics that can be used to determine the quality of a rating system. In a game where there is a significant possibility of a draw, the percentage of games that result in a draw can be taken as indication of the quality of the rating system. After all, if players are being matched with players close to their level of skill, we would expect more games to end in a draw.
>
> However, in many games such as Slayer in Halo, plain draws may be incredibly rare, if not impossible. However, the same principle of studying the closeness of the game still works. After all, if we know what the objective of the game is, then we also have an idea of what a close game should be. For any arbitrary game, we can threfore always look at how close the result of the game is.
>
> Another approach that comes from a completely different direction is not to look at the outcomes of games, but to follow the advancement of different players. If players are being matched well, then the win ratio of an average player should approach 0.5 as the player plays more games. Your objection that every game could end with huge margins between opposing teams and yet give players win ratios approaching 0.5 is purely hypothetical. If you did have a body of evidence that the win ratio of a player has no correlation with the closness of their games, then yes, the validity of this method would need to be re-evaluated. However, under our current knowledge, our intuition that a player who wins as often as loses will also have extremely close games seems to adequately fit what happens in reality.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274968722829;4:
> > Your last quote is the key and also poses the same question. Forgive me for not reading your reference, but forecast what exactly? If you’re forecasting competitive games that end 50-48 or 48-50 then it’s a great system and the W/L ratio will settle appropriately around 50%.
>
> The paper I cited discussed forecasting as it relates to economic and business data, and strictly speaking, the results are not necessarily generally applicable. However, it’s the message of the quote that I think is important, rather than the specific results of the paper, as there’s no reason a priori why a more complicated system should necessarily produce better predictions. This is to combat the confusion many players seem to have about rating systems that putting in more parameters would necessarily give better ratings, while in reality there is no rational reason to believe that this would be the case.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274968722829;4:
> > The MM in FFA must use more than just W/L. Since only one player out of six can win most players would rank much lower if it was based only on that stat. Due to bad MM there are still plenty of FFA games that are very unbalanced with Golds and Plats facing Onyx. However, smurfs aside, once I settle into Plat, the majority of my FFA matches seem the most balanced because I think the system uses more or different data for MM. Then again, this is just my subjective experience
>
> I feel like this comment represents well the confusion that players have about the rating process. In a game where there are multiple teams “winning” and “losing” are not binary terms. If you only consider the best performing players as a winner, and everyone else as losers, you are throwing away a great deal of useful data. In reality, you should consider how each player performs relative to every other player, e.g., if you have three players: Alice, Bob, and Charlie, then the rankings
> - Bob - Charlie - Alicetell us not only that Bob beat both Alice and Charlie, but also that Charlie beat Alice. In this three player case, this only gives us one additional piece of information: that Charlie beat Alice. However, when we have more players, we get more information, and in general for N players, we can deduce N(N - 1)/2 such relations.
>
> In any rating system, this sort of process is easily implemented, because it only requires you to consider the game as N(N - 1)/2 two-player games, instead of one N-player game. So, there is no problem in using wins to rate FFA matches. You just need to treat every possible pair of players as an individual match, which then reduces the usual binary case of one player winning, and the other losing.
>
> To be fair, I can’t speak for the Halo 5 rating system, because we don’t know how it works. So, I can’t say that this is definitely how Halo 5 does things. I can only say that this how it could very likely be doing things.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274968722829;4:
> > As a side note it’s gotta be very hard to match games in a balanced manner as the population continues to decline, which is inevitable with any game.
>
> This is a very true point, and relates to something else that people often miss. Criticisms directed towards the rating system more often have to do with sloppy matchmaking (possibly caused by low population, among other things), rather than the ability of the system to rate player skill.
It’s just too bad that we don’t have access to the process that is used. A system that works as you indicated in FFA, where every player in every game is rated in respect to how they perform vs each other player as a W/L would work a lot better than a system that just looks at total team W/L. As you also stated the classification of a W or L should be dependent on the objective(s) of the game. Like Ultra Banshee indicated, a player can go 44-0 in CTF with no Caps or Returns, but a ton of Carrier kills. In another game I can go 4-20 with two Caps and three Returns. Who gets rated better? If we always play together we might both be Onyx, but solo queuing only gets us both Gold (I know it’s Team Arena). Every applicable game stat needs to be compared between all players to be accurate. Which also means using a lot more data, and choosing how to weight it. That’s why FFA or Slayer is easier to rank than Strongholds or CTF. Each individual comparison only comes down to K/D.
I put a lot less emphasis on my actual rank these days, but I’m still curious about what goes into it, as I’m sure you are too, and these discussions interest me a lot.
> 2533274873843883;11:
> I can agree that, generally speaking, “simpler is better,” but there’s a difference between “not necessarily” providing more accurate forecasts and “not ever” providing more accurate forecasts.
And that’s precisely why the quote uses “not necessarily”. What I mean with that quote is that until it can be shown that a proposition can make better predictions, there is no reason to adopt it. This is in contrast to many players who demand that their “individual performance” should be taken into account without having any understanding even of the system they’re objecting. This goes together with my view that players aren’t qualified to judge rating systems.
> 2533274873843883;11:
> And this also supposes that the basic premise of Halo ranking, “good players win and bad players lose,” is sound. I don’t personally believe that every Halo player enters every match with the purpose of winning. I think that the farther down the rank ladder you look the more likely you are to see player psychology and behavior that is inconsistent with the win-loss premise and which consequently compromises the system. Maybe I’m projecting my own motivations onto others because I assume that, as an average person, many other players must think and act in ways that are similar to me. But regardless of the motivations or the behaviors, I don’t feel as if I’m seeing the outcomes (in the form of balanced matches) that good ranking should provide. And blaming a matchmaking system that fails to use ranking system data to full effect may be an honest answer but it isn’t a very satisfying answer. I’d still like to see improvements to both systems, and I can’t believe that there is no room for improvement.
This is a curious argument. However, the problem I have with it is that the fundamental assumption that underlies a skill-based rating system is that players are at some level trying to win at the game. If players are not at all trying to win at the game, then the whole notion of their skill at the game is ill-defined, and as such it makes no sense to even try to rate them based on skill. In fact, if we assume that players aren’t considering winning as their goal, how can we speak of a “balanced match”? By any standard meaning, a match is balanced if both players are approaching victory at a similar rate. So, as I see it, how balanced a match is is inherently intertwined with the notion of winning.
> 2533274968722829;12:
> Like Ultra Banshee indicated, a player can go 44-0 in CTF with no Caps or Returns, but a ton of Carrier kills. I can go 4-20 with two Caps and three Returns. Who gets rated better? If we always play together we might both be Onyx, but solo queuing only gets us both Gold (I know it’s Team Arena). Every applicable game stat needs to be compared between all players to be accurate.
Which is exactly why taking every statistic into account is a bad idea. The people who want other statistics taken into account don’t understand the severity of the problem of trying to determine who contributed more when there are multiple factors to consider. I could literally give you hundreds and hundreds of mock game results, and you would in all of them have to be able to rank the players in such an order that we can agree that the order reflects the performance of the players. And this is impossible, because while we don’t know it, we all value different performance metrics differently. One player may consider assists more important than another, one may believe that kills barely matter in CTF, while another may believe that the player with 44 kills was as, if not more, valuable to the team than the player who captured two flags. And there’s nothing we can do about it. In fact, it might even be that there’s no unique set of weighs for all parameters that guarnatees the best predictions in all matches, but that the correct set of parameters might depend on the set of players who play the game, because player strategies can affect significantly which skills are prominently displayed in the game, and which skills determine the end result.
The reason win-based ranks just work is that the objective determination is simple: winning is better than losing. It’s a binary system where there can be no ambiquity over who performed better. There can certainly be ambiquity inside teams, but there is no ambiquity regarding how the rating process should go. This lack of ambiquity is ultimately why rating players based solely on whether they won or lost is better than mixing in every statistic imaginable. Win-based rating is simple, and the major systems in use today have been shown to be extremely good at rating players.
> 2533274825830455;13:
> > 2533274873843883;11:
> > I can agree that, generally speaking, “simpler is better,” but there’s a difference between “not necessarily” providing more accurate forecasts and “not ever” providing more accurate forecasts.
>
> And that’s precisely why the quote uses “not necessarily”. What I mean with that quote is that until it can be shown that a proposition can make better predictions, there is no reason to adopt it. This is in contrast to many players who demand that their “individual performance” should be taken into account without having any understanding even of the system they’re objecting. This goes together with my view that players aren’t qualified to judge rating systems.
>
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> > 2533274873843883;11:
> > And this also supposes that the basic premise of Halo ranking, “good players win and bad players lose,” is sound. I don’t personally believe that every Halo player enters every match with the purpose of winning. I think that the farther down the rank ladder you look the more likely you are to see player psychology and behavior that is inconsistent with the win-loss premise and which consequently compromises the system. Maybe I’m projecting my own motivations onto others because I assume that, as an average person, many other players must think and act in ways that are similar to me. But regardless of the motivations or the behaviors, I don’t feel as if I’m seeing the outcomes (in the form of balanced matches) that good ranking should provide. And blaming a matchmaking system that fails to use ranking system data to full effect may be an honest answer but it isn’t a very satisfying answer. I’d still like to see improvements to both systems, and I can’t believe that there is no room for improvement.
>
> This is a curious argument. However, the problem I have with it is that the fundamental assumption that underlies a skill-based rating system is that players are at some level trying to win at the game. If players are not at all trying to win at the game, then the whole notion of their skill at the game is ill-defined, and as such it makes no sense to even try to rate them based on skill. In fact, if we assume that players aren’t considering winning as their goal, how can we speak of a “balanced match”? By any standard meaning, a match is balanced if both players are approaching victory at a similar rate. So, as I see it, how balanced a match is is inherently intertwined with the notion of winning.
>
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> > 2533274968722829;12:
> > Like Ultra Banshee indicated, a player can go 44-0 in CTF with no Caps or Returns, but a ton of Carrier kills. I can go 4-20 with two Caps and three Returns. Who gets rated better? If we always play together we might both be Onyx, but solo queuing only gets us both Gold (I know it’s Team Arena). Every applicable game stat needs to be compared between all players to be accurate.
>
> Which is exactly why taking every statistic into account is a bad idea. The people who want other statistics taken into account don’t understand the severity of the problem of trying to determine who contributed more when there are multiple factors to consider. I could literally give you hundreds and hundreds of mock game results, and you would in all of them have to be able to rank the players in such an order that we can agree that the order reflects the performance of the players. And this is impossible, because while we don’t know it, we all value different performance metrics differently. One player may consider assists more important than another, one may believe that kills barely matter in CTF, while another may believe that the player with 44 kills was as, if not more, valuable to the team than the player who captured two flags. And there’s nothing we can do about it. **In fact, it might even be that there’s no unique set of weighs for all parameters that guarnatees the best predictions in all matches, but that the correct set of parameters might depend on the set of players who play the game, because player strategies can affect significantly which skills are prominently displayed in the game, and which skills determine the end result.**The reason win-based ranks just work is that the objective determination is simple: winning is better than losing. It’s a binary system where there can be no ambiquity over who performed better. There can certainly be ambiquity inside teams, but there is no ambiquity regarding how the rating process should go. This lack of ambiquity is ultimately why rating players based solely on whether they won or lost is better than mixing in every statistic imaginable. Win-based rating is simple, and the major systems in use today have been shown to be extremely good at rating players.
All your responses are well informed and well thought out, but the words I bolded are very true and convince me the most that especially in Objective based games looking at team W/L seems most effective. The very best players will possess a varied skill set and adjust the skills they display in game to move toward a W. That’s why some very good players are able to solo to Onyx in multiple play lists every season.
To get more specifically to the OP’s question the system you are looking for that favors solo players (as tsassi already noted) is the one you found in FFA. You are a good enough solo slayer to easily reach Onyx there. As to other play lists I have to rely on evidence from watching very highly skilled players solo in TA. They are all Onyx in multiple lists and some of them are pros. Of course they possess the manual skills and knowledge to do well. They also have the empirical ability to very quickly access the skills and strategies of both their team mates and their opponents. Then they adjust their play around those parameters to achieve a win. They push, support and pull back with the team’s objective as the priority, slaying when they should and capping when they should, and they do it all efficiently. Sure they lose when they get all lousy team mates, but throw in one or two good ones and they always win. And they get ranked accordingly.
Unless they make an extremely complicated system that they spent years perfecting they ranking system will never be “better” if they changed it, it might be better for you but on the other hand someone else who had it “better” in the old system could now be experiencing what you felt therefore no progress was made. It’s just a thing we sadly have to deal with and hope that one day someone comes up with a solution that works for it not everyone then most because you can’t please them all.
> 2533274825830455;13:
> > 2533274873843883;11:
> >
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> > 2533274873843883;11:
> > And this also supposes that the basic premise of Halo ranking, “good players win and bad players lose,” is sound. I don’t personally believe that every Halo player enters every match with the purpose of winning. I think that the farther down the rank ladder you look the more likely you are to see player psychology and behavior that is inconsistent with the win-loss premise and which consequently compromises the system. Maybe I’m projecting my own motivations onto others because I assume that, as an average person, many other players must think and act in ways that are similar to me. But regardless of the motivations or the behaviors, I don’t feel as if I’m seeing the outcomes (in the form of balanced matches) that good ranking should provide. And blaming a matchmaking system that fails to use ranking system data to full effect may be an honest answer but it isn’t a very satisfying answer. I’d still like to see improvements to both systems, and I can’t believe that there is no room for improvement.
>
> This is a curious argument. However, the problem I have with it is that the fundamental assumption that underlies a skill-based rating system is that players are at some level trying to win at the game. If players are not at all trying to win at the game, then the whole notion of their skill at the game is ill-defined, and as such it makes no sense to even try to rate them based on skill. In fact, if we assume that players aren’t considering winning as their goal, how can we speak of a “balanced match”? By any standard meaning, a match is balanced if both players are approaching victory at a similar rate. So, as I see it, how balanced a match is is inherently intertwined with the notion of winning.
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We’ve all experienced this to a greater or lesser degree - or even have been that guy. We’ve already talked about the CTF kill farmer who ignores the flag. The complexity of Warzone makes it an even better example. It’s possible, as we’ve all seen, to kill farm in warzone. Admittedly that behavior is often attached to a win, but there are some players (many perhaps?) who treat warzone as slayer and play only for their own kd or kda, regardless of the larger objectives set by the game’s creators and regardless of the performance of their teammates. If they can do this and it comes with a win then so much the better, but for this player a 30-7 match can come with a loss and it’s unlikely to be viewed as problematic. Or even as a loss, whatever the leaderboard or the ranking system may have to say. And if that behavior is repeated often enough you end up with a high-skilled player who is viewed by the ranking system as something other than the lethal force that he is.
I guess I’m one short step away from suggesting that skill be calculated on kd or kda and on nothing else. And I’m not under any illusions about the susceptibility to manipution of such a system. It just seems at a glance to have simplicity and equity on its side. Win/loss rankings are simple and they may also be fair, but they don’t always have the appearance of fairness. And I’m that guy that would rather feel good about something than know empirically that it’s good. Especially in this case where empirically all I can do is take someone else’s word for it.
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> We’ve all experienced this to a greater or lesser degree - or even have been that guy. We’ve already talked about the CTF kill farmer who ignores the flag. The complexity of Warzone makes it an even better example. It’s possible, as we’ve all seen, to kill farm in warzone. Admittedly that behavior is often attached to a win, but there are some players (many perhaps?) who treat warzone as slayer and play only for their own kd or kda, regardless of the larger objectives set by the game’s creators and regardless of the performance of their teammates. If they can do this and it comes with a win then so much the better, but for this player a 30-7 match can come with a loss and it’s unlikely to be viewed as problematic. Or even as a loss, whatever the leaderboard or the ranking system may have to say. And if that behavior is repeated often enough you end up with a high-skilled player who is viewed by the ranking system as something other than the lethal force that he is.
The player contributes some amount of skill to their team. Their particular set of skills may not be the most important for the particular gametype, and so they will be rated accordingly. You see, you think of skill as something universal thing here, whereas in reality, the skill in a given game is purely a measure of the player’s ability to complete the objective of the game. If the player is really good at something that’s related to, but not the main purpose of the game, then they’re good at that particular thing, but not necessarily at the objective of the game.
You can also consider what will happen eventually to our player. As you said earlier yourself: “the farther down the rank ladder you look the more likely you are to see player psychology and behavior that is inconsistent with the win-loss premise”. So, if the player is low in the rankings, they are highly likely to run into other players like them. But if they kill more than their opponents, then they are more likely to aid those players in their team who are trying to play the objective, and so they are more likely to win, and so their rating will go up, and they’ll rise in the rankings. However, what you will find as you move upwards is that players get better not only at the objective of the game, but also in the basic skills that aid at completing the objective. So, what you would likely see happen to this players could be schematically represented as
- Players who are really good at killing and playing the objective - Players who are really good at killing - Our player - Players who are sort of good at killingThe player will not be able to dominate at the low end, because everyone around them has a similar playstyle, because the players who are actually good at the game, and not just a subset of it, are pushed to the top of the system, beyond the player’s reach.