"Ranking Degredation" for song scores

[Dinglesberry]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

Unfortunately, yes. In the previous tournament, I had to disqualify a user playing under two accounts (one in D3, the other in D2). There's also been instances of players having stronger players play on their accounts in an effort to progress: Starlight-Pwn3 did this in D1 last tournament and was disqualified - marthalolz had Summerschool play on their account to beat Sei-Triplex in D1 on the 5th official tournament, Go_Oilers_Go had... someone play on his account in D3 of the 5th official tournament... the list definitely goes on.

When you put it that way I completely see what you mean as well. However, perhaps that is a matter of how entry to tournament is set up? What if there was a file and your division placement depended on your score on the file? Sort of a pre-season? The entries to the tournament would still probably be vetted manually + people would have to sign up, so you could see smurfing going on more easily.

I don't really see the gain of smurfing a low division. I can probably AAA every song that will be in division 1 with very few tries, but there is literally nothing to gain from that, other than a title of "winning division 1". I definitely shouldn't argue with the person who actually sees the smurfing first hand though lol, but is it really that huge of an issue?

[TC_Halogen]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

When you put it that way I completely see what you mean as well. However, perhaps that is a matter of how entry to tournament is set up? What if there was a file and you're division placement depended on your score on the file? Sort of a pre-season? The entries to the tournament would still probably be vetted manually + people would have to sign up, so you could see smurfing going on more easily.

I don't really see the gain of smurfing a low division. I can probably AAA every song that will be in division 1 with very few tries, but there is literally nothing to gain from that, other than a title of "winning division 1". I definitely shouldn't argue with the person who actually sees the smurfing first hand though lol, but is it really that huge of an issue?

The thing that needs to change is the incentives for winning a lower division. The tough part is that because the site has grown so inactive in the lower area, those incentives are likely key towards getting respectable participation. If a user knows that they are to be placed in division x, but can join under an alternate account in division x-2 in an effort to not get caught and potentially win support tokens and other prizes, well... I can see why they would want to.

Unfortunately, doing a pre-season event does not solve the situation with alternate accounts. Players can easily enter as another name at free will and play under that in hopes of not being caught. If they get caught, they get judged off of their original account's ranks as a safety precaution. Reverting back to that makes the idea of degradation useless we're just looking back at previous scores (again, doing it with event integrity in mind).

[psychoangel691]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

Qualifiers/pre-season all just leave it open for people to pretend they suck more than they do. All these things have already been considered before.

[Dinglesberry]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

The thing that needs to change is the incentives for winning a lower division. The tough part is that because the site has grown so inactive in the lower area, those incentives are likely key towards getting respectable participation. If a user knows that they are to be placed in division x, but can join under an alternate account in division x-2 in an effort to not get caught and potentially win support tokens and other prizes, well... I can see why they would want to.

Unfortunately, doing a pre-season event does not solve the situation with alternate accounts. Players can easily enter as another name at free will and play under that in hopes of not being caught. If they get caught, they get judged off of their original account's ranks as a safety precaution. Reverting back to that makes the idea of degradation useless we're just looking back at previous scores (again, doing it with event integrity in mind).

That's a good point as well, low division prizes don't really make sense. I guess the entire issue is that the prizes in general are kind of useless.. What good is credits? Every division, its all just about getting the support tokens, maybe that's the issue.

Regardless, people are going to cheat in tournaments or in competitive games, they always will. Perhaps FFR is going to need some sort of anti cheat or something that analyzes your gameplay and detects when you are sandbagging lol.. I guess thats the issue when it comes to a small community with a 7 division system where everyone is still good, there's going to be people smurfing all along the lower divisions.

Maybe the solution is to improve the prizes and incentive to compete in tournaments by making the prizes more relevant to the skill bracket... How that's accomplished, that's the difficult part There has to be something better than throwing credits and a couple tokens that are impossible to unlock otherwise at the player...

All these things have already been considered before.

That feel when you are trying to think of new ideas in a game that's over 12 years old in a community that has people still playing from 12 years ago.. ;D

[psychoangel691]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

Yeah unfortunately a lot of ideas have already been mulled over and all we can do is the best with what we've got right now.

The only really cure all would be to have one division tournaments like most places would so that no one could cheat by way of sandbagging. But then you leave out a huge chunk of the userbase from actually having any shot at anything. I find it's not exactly fun to try to compete when you very literally are totally crushed. At least even with the gaps in divisions it's very plausible to get to the top of the division. If you're D1 against D7 players, welp..

[TC_Halogen]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

That's a good point as well, low division prizes don't really make sense. I guess the entire issue is that the prizes in general are kind of useless.. What good is credits? Every division, its all just about getting the support tokens, maybe that's the issue.

Regardless, people are going to cheat in tournaments or in competitive games, they always will. Perhaps FFR is going to need some sort of anti cheat or something that analyzes your gameplay and detects when you are sandbagging lol.. I guess thats the issue when it comes to a small community with a 7 division system where everyone is still good, there's going to be people smurfing all along the lower divisions.

Maybe the solution is to improve the prizes and incentive to compete in tournaments by making the prizes more relevant to the skill bracket... How that's accomplished, that's the difficult part There has to be something better than throwing credits and a couple tokens that are impossible to unlock otherwise at the player...

That feel when you are trying to think of new ideas in a game that's over 12 years old in a community that has people playing for 12 years ago ;D

Credits have less meaning for players that have been around for as long as they have. Offer a person like me 100k credits as the prize for a tournament win, and I might not even flinch. Offer that same prize amount as first prize to a D1 player whose credit output is so slow, they couldn't dream of getting 100k credits in their first 6-12 months of play, and suddenly it seems like a great idea.

FFR does have, and has had an anti-cheat for a while. It has been used to catch numerous players in previous official tournaments.

Prize improvements are not as easy as you think being that the site is non-profit and tournament fundraisers can only go so far. The purpose of picking an extreme difficult to unlock token is to give users something to play for -- giving the opportunity for a more common token is useless. But, this is why the site needs to go a little bit further in figuring out other content that could be rewardable (or alternatively, possible to spend a ton of credits on).

Believe us when we say that these are things that have been discussed for quite some time.

[inDheart]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

sorting people for OT is like trying to get people to sign up for Project Purple: you hope they have something to offer you, but you can't tell them what it is or what aim it serves. the blindness means they have to play a damn good cheating/sandbag game, rather than accidentally do bad once or twice.

anticheats are hard. something i played would just drop your score from the tables if you dropped x frames, which meant anyone with some degree of regular lag wouldn't get their scores recorded at all. wasn't the best idea

eta ^ what i meant to say by that is they're not everything

[Wayward Vagabond]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

falso want to add this this is a great idea for someone like me that won't ever get to previous levels of play because of an accident. This is the whole reason I made a seperate account to keep track of the scores I am able to get now without having my previous scores influence what my current skill is

[TC_Halogen]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

falso want to add this this is a great idea for someone like me that won't ever get to previous levels of play because of an accident. This is the whole reason I made a seperate account to keep track of the scores I am able to get now without having my previous scores influence what my current skill is

And unfortunately, for every person like you who wants to do it with a legitimate reason will be one or more people who will try to exploit this.

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

i agree with this proposal

i believe it is sound logical practice to reduce the value of a score based on how long ago it was attained

i also think we should expand on this

i think that the aaa equivalency should be reduced for every other player each time a new player aaa's a file. this includes the values for players that have already previously aaa'd a file

clearly we can see by applying basic logic that the value of a score is not static as time from the score achieved increases or the number of aaas on the said file also increases

additionally we should reduce the aaa equivalency of all odd ID'd songs by the cubic root of the new ID of a new song every time a new song is added

even ID'd songs will have their values adjusted by the cubic root of the new id of a new song subtracted from the id of the previous song added

the direction of the adjustment will be determined by the opacity of gerbil piss

in addition











yeah you get the idea this is stupid

[TC_Halogen]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

holy fuck lmfao

[inDheart]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

i wish i could rate mina posts 5/5

edit: of course that rating degrades with subsequent posts though so it's consolation at best

[igotrhythm]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

That's not quite the same though. Think about it for a moment: if a user has two accounts and is aware of this ranking degradation concept, they can show an older account they have - we'll arbitrarily say that this account is account A, and D5 based off of their level ranks, but gets dropped a division based off of not playing for a while... or so we thought. So, with this degrade, they're showing D4.

Again, these values are arbitrary.

They enter the tournament under a secondary account, account B, in hopes of not being detected/linked up at all with that previous account, because it shows better scores, and they get placed in D3. An IP check, along with other methods of verification, confirms that they are the same as account A, and they get placed back in D4, despite showing D5 stats due to having "degraded" level ranks.

...whoops, they've been playing offline engines and other offsite content to keep their skills sharp and are simply waiting until the tournament progresses to showcase the skill that never lost -- i.e. they're a D5 player, sitting in D4, and are playing other content continuously, only recording relevant scores that would otherwise keep them in a D4 status.

Anything even remotely close to this promotes sandbagging and will be absolute hell to accommodate for. It's shitty to have to accommodate for past skill, I get that - but, you run the risk of ruining the enjoyment of the tournament for a much larger group by inserting someone who later turns out to be a massive sandbagger. We all remember what happened when NeoMasterPie got put in D1 during the 7th Official Tournament - and yes, it's not exactly sandbagging in that case as much as it was sheer stupidity on the part of the tournament host, but... it's the same concept of skill not being effectively measured.

Bolded part is my argument in a shellnut.

Placing people based on their best scores ever, no matter how long ago they got them, is the simplest and most foolproof method of avoiding sandbaggers. Better to put someone too high than too low.

Personal experience that may or may not be relevant: I was actually in a tournament with Zenith once. The final round song was that one Virt thing with the super long trill at the end (I forget the name, but I think it's around a 70). I was working my ass off to get 20 or so, and out of nowhere Zenith gets an SDG. Much arguing ensued, and AJ ended up paying Zenith the first prize out of his own pocket if he would step down and give it to me instead.

[blanky!]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

i think that the aaa equivalency should be reduced for every other player each time a new player aaa's a file. this includes the values for players that have already previously aaa'd a file

Actually this is what chesstempo does for problems and it isn't a bad idea when there are thousands of active users and statistics actually works. Unfortunately this is FFR, so...

[Dinglesberry]

Re: "Ranking Degredation" for song scores

yeah you get the idea this is stupid

Upon reading your logic, you are right. Taking it literally, god forbid they lower the value of songs based on number of AAAs, all the tournament smurfs who make accounts to play in fake divisions are going to start making new accounts to AAA songs and troll people to lower their max rank!11!1 The same max rank they got 7 years ago.

I think this old style system of what rank is is stupid. FFR isn't a game like chess where it's all just a matter of thinking and you can retain skill. Your skill does and will degrade over time of not playing because FFR takes physical endurance to play.

It's like saying someone can be good at skateboarding, for example, 10 years ago. Sure, they could pick it up now and probably still remember things, but they would definitely be below their peak and would need to practice. You'd remember how to do the motions to flip the board but would still need to work on the physical muscle memory of doing it.