Leaderboard D9 new name and color

[PaperclipGames]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

since D1 no longer exists, we might as well just move everyone down a division and D9 would be D8 lol. but

D1 no longer exists? What? If that is so, then shifting everyone down one division is the only thing that makes sense to me honestly.

[_Zenith_]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

D1 no longer exists? What? If that is so, then shifting everyone down one division is the only thing that makes sense to me honestly.

D1 still exists, however, he is only saying that because there was no D1 participants in this years Official Tournament.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

This was going to happen eventually. What's the cutoff though?

For now, probably 107 would be the start of D9.

There should be some normalisation of leaderboard division boundaries after the OT to make the progression of level gaps more natural (i.e. there shouldnt be more levels in division X than in X-1). Velo had decided some boundaries during a discussion we had; his list respected that concept.

So for D9, if you look at D7 that one has 7 levels (94 to 100). D8 being 101 to 106 would be 6 levels for example, leaving D9 as the only exception from 107 to 113/114 (likely 115-116 when most hard content gets released). There is literally enough of a gap to the very top players to justify (in theory) a D10 (starting at like 113), however we dont make divisions for 2-3 people and the game lacks content to justify that too.

[sff_writer_dan]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

Will the lower divisions be adjusted too? I'd suggested something like

D1 00-30 (31)
D2 31-50 (20)
D3 51-62 (12)
D4 63-72 (10)
D5 73-82 (10)
D6 83-92 (10)
D7 93-101 (9)
D8 102+

A while ago, with the goal of making the divisions be smaller or at least not larger as you moved up the divisions. D3 being 9 skill ratings big and D5 being 14 just really made no sense except from a perspective of placing the divisions around the player list to make the number of PLAYERS in each division get smaller, which is sort of the backwards way to go around it when we don't have a system where people gain ranking at the expense of others losing ranking.

D1 still exists, however, he is only saying that because there was no D1 participants in this years Official Tournament.

There were definitely D1 participants in the OT. There were just too few, combined with not enough low level songs, to split low level players into 2 divisions. At the start of the OT, there were players as low as Skill rating 7, 10, 12 and 16 in division "2" along with players as high as skill rating 51. So the "low division" ended up being basically "Everybody at 51 and under" so the dozen or so people under 30 were sort of hooped from the get-go.

There is literally enough of a gap to the very top players to justify (in theory) a D10 (starting at like 113), however we dont make divisions for 2-3 people and the game lacks content to justify that too.

Do you think this problem gets solved by just finally making completely explicit the lack of connection between "Division on the leaderboard" and "Division placement in the OT"?

Like, creating D10 for the people over 113 isn't forcing you to add a D10 to the OT and put only the D10 people into it with 8 songs just for them. The division placement in OTs should be the thing shaped around the players who sign up to create the most balanced tournament in terms of players per division and skill rating range per division. There's really not much difference between a 58 and 59 player, so creating this gulf between them for official competition seems very weird compared to putting 50s in with 10s and 69s in with 82s rather than looking at "Just the subset of people who signed up for the tournament" and splitting them up in a vacuum.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

Will the lower divisions be adjusted too? I'd suggested something like

D1 00-30 (31)
D2 31-50 (20)
D3 51-62 (12)
D4 63-72 (10)
D5 73-82 (10)
D6 83-92 (10)
D7 93-101 (9)
D8 102+

A while ago, with the goal of making the divisions be smaller or at least not larger as you moved up the divisions. D3 being 9 skill ratings big and D5 being 14 just really made no sense except from a perspective of placing the divisions around the player list to make the number of PLAYERS in each division get smaller, which is sort of the backwards way to go around it when we don't have a system where people gain ranking at the expense of others losing ranking.

Do you think this problem gets solved by just finally making completely explicit the lack of connection between "Division on the leaderboard" and "Division placement in the OT"?

Like, creating D10 for the people over 113 isn't forcing you to add a D10 to the OT and put only the D10 people into it with 8 songs just for them. The division placement in OTs should be the thing shaped around the players who sign up to create the most balanced tournament in terms of players per division and skill rating range per division. There's really not much difference between a 58 and 59 player, so creating this gulf between them for official competition seems very weird compared to putting 50s in with 10s and 69s in with 82s rather than looking at "Just the subset of people who signed up for the tournament" and splitting them up in a vacuum.

You essentially reached the same conclusion that I reached, so most of what you say I agree with ^^ Let me address this point by point.

For the division distribution you suggested, I am personally 100% ok with it. I dont think it's the same exact one Velo had ended up with, but it follows the same principles. I think if we wanted to make it even more relevant to how skill gains work, we could make it so the gaps are only decreasing (never equal), but that's a nit pick imo.

For the distinction between leaderboards division (LB div) and official tournament division (OT div), there has been people who voiced their concern regarding the confusion that it creates. I really do not want to step on Goldstinger's toes here so I'd prefer if he took the lead on a solution to this whenever he feels like it's a good time to do so.

Finally, regarding a D10, I think that although it would make sense with the normalisation of the ranges, the general opinion isn't favorable for LB divs that are that incredibly small. I personally wouldn't mind it, but I think it's fair to start by building up D9 first (which includes unlockables, tokens, usergroup, leaderboard name and color, etc) before we even think about a D10. Making these divisions meaningful outside of just a different section of the leaderboards gives proper incentive to reach it, and therefore makes the division less trivial to the rest of the community.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

For colors, here's what I would suggest:

Dark mode left: #6c8d97


Light mode left: #7b96a0


The screenshots show both the mix of D9 color with D8 color (which we'll see inverted in high D8) and mix of D9 color with the unexistant "D10" which is just black or white depending on the theme.

[RenegadeLucien]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

Wow, another division? I get the feeling that the division system as a whole just breaks down at the top end because there's always going to be a gap between the top few players (potentially even just the top 1 player) and everyone else in the top division that isn't going to be possible to close in the span of an OT. This isn't a new thing either, I remember back in the 6th official where Dossar was so far ahead of everyone else that people were basically viewing D6 as a contest for second place.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

Wow, another division? I get the feeling that the division system as a whole just breaks down at the top end because there's always going to be a gap between the top few players (potentially even just the top 1 player) and everyone else in the top division that isn't going to be possible to close in the span of an OT. This isn't a new thing either, I remember back in the 6th official where Dossar was so far ahead of everyone else that people were basically viewing D6 as a contest for second place.

I'm aware of the confusion that leaderboard vs OT divisions bring (see the rest of this thread). Now with that being said, and at the risk of being blunt, why is anything tournament related brought up? I tried to keep the OP short and the second line explicitly says that it's not related to tourneys (or at least yet). I'm quoting your post but this is meant for a few others who have posted too.

We're not making a D9 because people are too good in tournaments vs the rest of D8, we're making it because it follows a logical progression of how we (FFR) defined arbitrary skill level brackets to represent milestones. Skill gets harder to gain the better you get, therefore the top divisions shouldn't have a huge level range just because we don't have many players filling it. The fact that the top player is that far ahead is a mere coincidence; they could all be close in skill at some point in time, and that's not a predictable thing.

[RenegadeLucien]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

why is anything tournament related brought up? I tried to keep the OP short and the second line explicitly says that it's not related to tourneys (or at least yet).

...oops. Well I'm a moron, sorry about that, haha.

But honestly, my mind jumped to OTs without even going to the OP to confirm because as far as I'm concerned, OTs (and tournaments in general) are the only reason divisions even need to exist anymore. What purpose do divisions serve other than for OTs? We don't need them to designate player skill in general like we did in 2006 when they were used for the 1st OT; we have a skill rating system that does that job better than any divisional system could ever hope to.

Maybe I'm in the minority on this next point, but I don't think there's much of a point in having divisions as arbitrary skill thresholds either. As someone else said:

There's really not much difference between a 58 and 59 player

Why should level 58 to 59 be given more weight or emphasis than 59 to 60? Or 60 to 61? Outside of an OT/tournament context, I don't consider myself a D5 player, I consider myself a Level 74 player. The level does the job already.

Yeah, I realize I'm being "that guy" that's rehashing the "divisions are outdated" argument that's been done to death, but every time we tack on a new division I feel more and more in agreement towards it.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

I don't think there's much of a point in having divisions as arbitrary skill thresholds

They are great milestones. Skill level is the main skill metric of FFR, and leaderboard divisions provide checkpoints to achieve with meaningful/concrete rewards (even if just aesthetics). By dividing the entire skill level range in multiple divisions, you make it so that people dont just see a number going up or stalling. It's the same reason why so many other games have emblems and icons for specific level ranges; they could make it just a floating point number, but that's very boring and monotone. I hope that gives you at the very least food for thoughts.

[RenegadeLucien]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

Yeah, that's where I might just be an oddball here because to me leveling up and division-ing up don't feel any different. If anything, I prefer the less discrete progression of the skill rating system. But I can totally understand if others don't share my opinion here.

Since all of my actual beefs with the divisional system are directly related to its use for tournaments which (as established) isn't the point of this thread, I won't derail this thread any longer than I already have, haha. I will echo sff_writer_dan's suggestion of adjusting the lower divisional thresholds though.

[ToonE156]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

It actually doesn't. Just listing the divisions, and songs with numbers, is more than good enough. I frankly dislike D7 folks getting their own user group.

It would make the Divisions boring tho

[rushyrulz]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

shift D7 and D8 titles up and rename D7 to Grand-Master.
Novice D1
Intermediate D2
Advanced D3
Expert D4
Master D5
Guru D6
Grand-Master D7
Legendary D8
Godly D9

"Revolutionary" comes off as cheesy / gimmicky and doesn't fit the skill bracket IMO.

[s1rnight]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

the mysterious part is that i already thought d8 was like for three people only, but it seemed to expand to fit a whole lot of people that were like "high to mid d7" in the end... and eventually d7 seemed like it has a lot of people that were originally d6... yes, i know, maybe the players got even better!!! but i wonder if there is a danger of inflating the ratings for things like this...

(its interesting to me that dossar's score for death piano, still about a decade old, is still the fourth place entry on the song. its higher than "d9" players on the song! and he was "d7" at the time he scored it!)

(im not sure of the reason for there being a division inflation (if there is...), if there is, it might be down to there being substantially more charts for higher difficulties now... since if there is more hard charts, there is more "hard charts a person can consistently equiv well" and thus their rating will probably be high compared to the range of difficulties of the charts (because there is now more charts at that difficulty range they can use to fill out their equivs with). i wonder if something like this can be solved by having a "ddr LIFE4"-like requirement for divisions instead. (this would also be similar to how chess does their titles too...) which is to say that a person may need a certain equiv rating, BUT also he may need to show that he can AAA X songs above Y difficulty (to show that he is not stacking near-scores on easy-to-equiv hard songs... i know that sounds silly, but there are easy-to-equiv easy songs so maybe its the same!)

[sff_writer_dan]

Re: Leaderboard D9 new name and color

That's largely done by just weighting the top scores such that one or two spiked scores, while they would be the largest contributors aren't the sole contributors.

And while it is definitely possible for somebody who can AAA a 114 to continue to gain ranking as more songs at 112+ are added resulting in the kind of inflation you're discussing, the MAIN reason there's division inflation is just that one player's score going up does not result in another player's score going down, so naturally over time, the top end gets larger and larger.

Whether that justifies making more divisions is a different question, but it's inevitable that more and more people will be in the current top division both over time, and as more high difficulty songs are added.