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**devonin** · 08-4-2019, 10:22 AM

I think making decisions about divisions based on how many people would end up in them is part of what got us into trouble in the first place. The barrier levels were pretty arbitrary in order to make the number of players in each division map onto what you'd expect in other ELO-style tier systems.

But we don't have anything like an ELO system, when a player moves up a division, nobody gets moved down. Your specific ranking number can change but once you get into D6 you're in D6 no matter how many people move ahead of you.

So to me, the point of divisions should be to separate players into discrete chunks where everybody in that chunk is capable of meaningfully competing with everybody else in it.

So if you look at D3 (50-58) I think that it is entirely possible for a level 50 player having a good week to compete against a level 58 player having a bad week and have a meaningful competition about it. When you look at D5 (69-82) a division that is 155% the size of D3's level range, I don't think a 69 and an 82 can have an especially meaningful competition. That 82 is going to win at least 95% of the time.

95 and 105 is an -even larger gap- AND at the top end, 1 level is actually bigger than a level at the low end because of how few ways there are to actually increase it.

D7 as it stands has no competition. The people at the bottom just -can not compete- with the people at the top, more than literally any other division. So if the actual primary purpose of divisions is "For sorting players in tournaments by their skill level" we not only need a D8, we probably need 4-6 additional divisions on top of that to actually break up the difficulties by ranges where internal competition is possible.

I've always had to point out to people that 95% of people who sign up for an OT basically have no chance to win, and that's no less true now. And I also know that anybody who is actually currently fully and correctly placed, that 5% chance to win probably drops to 1%, every division under 6 and 7 is won by somebody on their way to D6 and D7 who just happens to be in the lower division at the start of the tournament.

And so yes, an appropriately defined top division might have only 1-5 players in it currently, but I don't actually think that is a compelling reason not to do it. We're averaging an OT once every 2 years? That means we've got 2 years to either see some D7 players move up into D8, or, with an actual meaningful distinction for D8 players vs D7, and the intention from several of us to try and improve the breadth of top-end song selection, we can bring over more D8 players from other games.

Build it, and then design to support it, and they will come.

08-4-2019, 10:22 AM	#58
devonin Very Grave Indeed Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Ontario, Canada Age: 40 Posts: 10,098	Re: 12th Official Tournament I think making decisions about divisions based on how many people would end up in them is part of what got us into trouble in the first place. The barrier levels were pretty arbitrary in order to make the number of players in each division map onto what you'd expect in other ELO-style tier systems. But we don't have anything like an ELO system, when a player moves up a division, nobody gets moved down. Your specific ranking number can change but once you get into D6 you're in D6 no matter how many people move ahead of you. So to me, the point of divisions should be to separate players into discrete chunks where everybody in that chunk is capable of meaningfully competing with everybody else in it. So if you look at D3 (50-58) I think that it is entirely possible for a level 50 player having a good week to compete against a level 58 player having a bad week and have a meaningful competition about it. When you look at D5 (69-82) a division that is 155% the size of D3's level range, I don't think a 69 and an 82 can have an especially meaningful competition. That 82 is going to win at least 95% of the time. 95 and 105 is an -even larger gap- AND at the top end, 1 level is actually bigger than a level at the low end because of how few ways there are to actually increase it. D7 as it stands has no competition. The people at the bottom just -can not compete- with the people at the top, more than literally any other division. So if the actual primary purpose of divisions is "For sorting players in tournaments by their skill level" we not only need a D8, we probably need 4-6 additional divisions on top of that to actually break up the difficulties by ranges where internal competition is possible. I've always had to point out to people that 95% of people who sign up for an OT basically have no chance to win, and that's no less true now. And I also know that anybody who is actually currently fully and correctly placed, that 5% chance to win probably drops to 1%, every division under 6 and 7 is won by somebody on their way to D6 and D7 who just happens to be in the lower division at the start of the tournament. And so yes, an appropriately defined top division might have only 1-5 players in it currently, but I don't actually think that is a compelling reason not to do it. We're averaging an OT once every 2 years? That means we've got 2 years to either see some D7 players move up into D8, or, with an actual meaningful distinction for D8 players vs D7, and the intention from several of us to try and improve the breadth of top-end song selection, we can bring over more D8 players from other games. Build it, and then design to support it, and they will come.