Quote:
Originally Posted by PaperclipGames
I understand why the amount of skill levels per division decreases as you go up, considering it becomes harder and harder to improve to reach higher skill levels, but consider this theoretical argument. Suppose that in a decade from now, we will have a D12 for skill levels 120-122. And a D13 for 122-124 and a D14 for 124-126.
That would be absurd: why would you make a D13 when it is already such a huge achievement at that level to go up one or maybe two skill levels? Reaching level 122 would be a celebration, as well as reaching level 123 and so on. You don't need divisions anymore at that point.
I've been away for a really long time so I might be completely misjudging this, but I have the feeling that at the current top of the game, we have already reached this situation (or got real close): that going up even just one skill level is a huge feat on its own, and therefore no new labels or groups are required to make people at the very top feel a sense of progress when they improve. But I might be completely off here so take this argument with a grain of salt  |
This is also my main concern with introducing newer divisions for the leaderboards. It will get to the point where one player represents one division if we continue to extrapolate beyond what we currently observe and given that general player skill gradually increases over time alongside with everyone having more opportunities to inflate their skill rating as more files continually are added in game, this is bound to happen over time. In my opinion, this defeats the point of having newer divisions being added in the leaderboards. The smaller the number of representatives in one division becomes, the more meaningless “divisions” are.
I am also aware that there are disparities of skill in each division grouping, so if the primary motivator is to address this concern, adding a new division to better separate D9 from D8 is just a band-aid fix to the main problem (a decent one at least since it only impacts a very small percentage of the vocal minority). Low D7 vs high D7 is still an issue, low D6 vs high D6 is still an issue, etc. If this is the case, I’d rather see a redefinition of the current divisions using what we already have, since it’s clear that these problems exist beyond D8. No ideas on how to do that yet.
With my opinions stated (which I personally don’t hold too strongly to mainly because skill is just skill that will always be the same regardless whatever names or colors you choose to reflect that), to answer the questions posed here, I would prefer sticking with D(n) naming convention for leaderboards and for tournament purposes, introduce names there instead to remove the confusion for players thinking that D(n) in leaderboards => D(n) in tournament placements. Previously I made the recommendation of using “Bronze”, “Silver”, …, ”Diamond” for tournament divisions (similar to games like ranked play in League). To say that I am a D7 player in the Platinum division for OT15 sounds much more interpretable than, I am a “Legendary” player in D7 division for OT15.
In response to my “League”-inspired recommendation, I know some people are against borrowing ideas from other games to “preserve FFR’s unique identity”. But I honestly do believe that “the unique identity” of the game is primarily defined by the game itself (I.e. different timing windows compared to other rhythm games, different strategy to add new content with artist permission in game, etc.) A name borrowed from other sources isn’t going to make this game any more different (it’s literally just a name lmfao). Many games are borrowing similar ideas to Chess’s ELO system, so I don’t see the issue with borrowing ideas from other games.