"Ranking Degredation" for song scores

[Walrusizer]

yeah unless youre like mid d7+ you could recover skill in a few weeks max if you actually try. obviously injurys are an exception as halogen said

[devonin]

Counting song 16-30 won't make much of a difference either. I came back and am now playing actively, and my only top -100- song that isn't at least 5 years old (most are 8/9 years old) is song 95.

If you wanted to account for skill degradation due to inactivity, what you'd want to do is either have separate stats that only account for scores obtained in the last X time, or have your actual skill number (and I assume there's an actual number that the level is derived from) be reduced by a certain percentage every month that no new score is entered in your top 15 scores. Keep the scores, keep the knowledge of peak level, but degrade that number some small amount (like, one tenth of one percent a month) that no new scores are obtained.

The sort of "relative" ranking system that would make sense if it were implemented (not that a relative ranking system actually makes sense for FFR IMO) would be to do what the MUD I work for does with quests. There's arguably no objective way for us to rank quests by difficulty, unless they contain combat, which not all of them do. So what they did was assign a fixed total amount of XP gainable by completing every quest. And as each quest is solved by a player, the percentage share it carves out of that total is decreased (It being solved again means it is easier than one that hasn't been solved) and the percentage share of all other quests is slightly increased.

If you did something like that with FFR keyed to AAAs or FCs, basically the more people who have an FC on a song, the less xp it is worth, meaning the most difficult songs are also worth the most xp. This makes no real sense for a game that adds songs as often as this, and that has a decreasing userbase where many skilled players don't even bother playing easier songs etc etc, but that's how I'd do it if I were forced to create a relative skill system.

[Dinglesberry]

Also this is making me realize, I feel like FFR should be more designed around the level system, especially the xp bar, just wanna say developers great job, that xp bar and levels are like the tokens of FFR 2016, gotta catch em all.

Make that stuff blatant and at the center, throw your xp bar at the top right of the page under stats, show how much xp you get for songs, express your xp bar and level better on the game itself, show a progress bar between tiers etc.

I have a dream where FFR has an extremely accurate ranking system with bronze silver gold etc, sub tiers between then and an extremely solid satisfying sense of progression. The ranking system is what FFR has going for it compared to other rhythm games, just want to add my 2c.

[inDheart]

Originally Posted by Dinglesberry

it really is a problem. It's a factor that causes new players to not want to stay, it causes returning players frustration, and it has issues with tournament seeding and makes it so some people are unable to compete UNLESS they make a new account, which is counter intuitive and obviously from other posts, alt accounts aren't wanted. The place where it isn't really an issue is at the very top level where you are at, which is understandable why it seems useless to you.

Isn't the whole intent to have the game grow? Fostering the game for the couple thousand or so active players is great and all, but I think you underestimate how amazing this ranking system is for new lower skilled players.

this post has been really confusing to read because i'm not sure i've seen evidence of the problem you describe. you're talking about the current system in that first paragraph, right? because i do not see how your proposal is even a net positive on addressing any of the issues listed.

- it causes new players to not want to stay
does it really? now flip it around: if you tell a new-ish player (after they figure out what a AAA is) that their AAA equivalency is going to decline with inactivity, will they stay?

- it causes returning players frustration
how so? it seems like the main people it would frustrate are those who've gone cold on rhythm games for a time and then try to jump back into FFR, but for whatever reason can't match their old ranks. by giving their equiv scores a penalty you devalue those old ranks.

- the place where it isn't really an issue is at the very top level
._. wat. sure, if you're just basing it on there being a smaller amount of players overall at the top

[MinaciousGrace]

Originally Posted by Dinglesberry

I find it funny how everything I say makes no sense. I'm a returning player who unfortunately had literally 0 involvement in the community when I did play, and you don't even want to know what my initial impression is of you is, not that you care (I'm an irrelevant new player, after all). Just the fact that people react to when you started to post says enough. I'm happy for you that you are well liked in your small friend group though, congratulations.

That aside, it really is a problem. It's a factor that causes new players to not want to stay, it causes returning players frustration, and it has issues with tournament seeding and makes it so some people are unable to compete UNLESS they make a new account, which is counter intuitive and obviously from other posts, alt accounts aren't wanted. The place where it isn't really an issue is at the very top level where you are at, which is understandable why it seems useless to you.

Isn't the whole intent to have the game grow? Fostering the game for the couple thousand or so active players is great and all, but I think you underestimate how amazing this ranking system is for new lower skilled players.

EDIT: Also, I disagree with the fact that "unless you are d7 you can get your skill back in weeks", do I need to start posting examples?

sigh... fine... ok one thing at a time

First, I'm neither well liked nor do I care about anyone's opinions of me, new player or otherwise. I'm just usually right about everything and even when I'm not i'm fairly good at convincing people I am anyway.

Now let's back up. What you want is a system that attempts to dynamically estimate a player's current level of skill. Fair enough, this is doable.

But let's consider why you want it; ostensibly for the purpose of more "fairly" seeding players into a tournament that has arbitrary divisions to begin with, that is manually seeded to begin with, through a process that already involves firmly aligning the potential skill level of a given player with their maximum observed skill level. This is the prerogative of the tournament organizers and it is the result of years of experience and it's a safe bet.

Game skill is constructed around muscle memory and the physical capacity to execute the given muscle memory and the level at which you have to be in order for physical atrophy to become a serious detriment to play after an extended break is already within the d7 range. Players who haven't played in many years are capable of regaining the bulk of their skill if not entirely surpassing it after a few dedicated weeks of play.

Now let's take a look at the tournament structure. D1-6 are created by drawing arbitrary dividers within the games content. Players are then seeded into those divisions based on the aforementioned methodology.

Let's assume that we didn't want to do this for an upcoming tournament, and indeed we wanted to capture as closely as possible every player's skill level at the point in time in which they signed up for a tournament. Let's also assume that there is no intention of sandbagging from any of the participants.

Now you need to realize that you can never know the true skill level of a player. You can only estimate it. Scores are the primary resource used to estimate levels of skill. More accurate estimations require more points of data. More points of data in this case means that you are expecting every participant in the tournament to be actively playing to the point in time in which they will sign up for the tournament, if of course you give a damn about your estimations being accurate, which apparently you do for who knows what reason.

You're faced with a dilemma. You care about accurately assessing the skill level of players at a specific point in time for which you need a certain amount of scores to have any faith in your result. Not everyone who signs up is going to be actively playing the game up until that point. Are you going to deny entry to all players who are inactive during this period due to an inability to accurately gauge their current skill level, or are you going to cede that the estimation of entrance skill level is not a primary concern of the tournament which would totally invalidate the entire point of this thread..?

But forget that. Let's assume that we have a perfect methodology for estimating the current skill level of a player that is immune to manipulation. Players are seeded into the tournament and placed into divisions that span a range of skill. Now why do we care about accurate seeding based on current skill level in the first place? It's to give players a fair chance at winning the division they have been seeded into relative to the competition they face. Let's for the moment also assume that I don't think the entire division system is an asinine waste of time and resources.

The winners of d1-d6 are most likely going to be the players who fell least short of entering the division above the one they were seeded in, in which case whether or not they were going to win is decided not by how accurately they were seeded, but by where the arbitrary division cutoffs were set.

In the event that the winner is not the player who was the best in his division at the time of seeding, the winner is then the player who has improved the greatest amount from their skill level relative to the highest level in said division. In this case the determinant of the winner is a combination of the arbitrary cutoff lines, the players with which they are grouped, and the relative rates of improvements of all players within the division.

Now, even if you could argue that a player may not necessarily be able to recoup a given level of skill they previously held quickly, you will not find a single player who would argue that it's just as easy for a player to improve to a level they have never attained as it is for another player, all other things being equal, to improve back to a level they have previously attained.

Imagine your system results in a previous d6 level player being seeded into d3, and over the course of the tournament they had effortlessly regained a skill level somewhere in mid d5. No other players in the said division have ever pushed beyond d3 in their past and even the players who improve the most struggle to find themselves at a d4 level by the end of the tournament.

In this scenario the very system that you insist should be implemented has monumentally failed in your touted goal of producing a fair environment for competition in a totally random splicing of players with vastly different ranges of skill.

What if the previously d6 player didn't win? Well then they didn't win despite having a massive advantage over every other player within their division.

In the best possible scenario involving a large number of assumptions that will never be the case in practicality your proposed system is either useless and has no bearing on the outcome of the tournament or is entirely antithetical to the supposed purpose of its existence.

And remember when I said we'll skip over the fact that I think divisions are a stupid waste of time? I do think that. Winners are not determined by the merit of their abilities they are determined by a predisposed set of conditions that either give them massive advantages or disadvantages. Sure each player has a degree of control over how well they play and how hard they practice but in the end what you want is just going to exacerbate a pre-existing problem.

Even if we assume that for some reason a universe exists in which nothing I just said is logically true, even if we assume that your proposed system produces seeds that provide for the most "fair" divisions, the overwhelming influential factor in determining who wins a given division is still how the divisions are arbitrarily spliced.

So even in a universe in which there is nothing wrong with what you want and it works perfectly it's still pointless.

Let's continue.

You think the AAA equivalency system convoluted by at least one dynamically scaling modifier to your player rank based on your activity, not just play activity, your activity specifically concerning your capacity to continually improve your top 15 scores is somehow appealing to new players? Dude i can't even work with this. You might as well tell me that you think chocolate is a periodic element.

Ok, you possibly have a valid point with causing returning players frustration. Nobody likes playing like shit, least of all, nobody likes playing like shit when they used to be awesome. Nobody likes looking at old scores and wistfully remembering the days in which they achieved them. Nobody likes seeing their legacy as a player slowly diminish in the eyes of a ranking system because they didn't spend every week grinding out scores and improving at the game just to upkeep a ranking on a website. Oh no wait, that's what you want.

You really honestly think players who have moved on from the game would be less frustrated when the achievements that they rightfully earned in due past are diminished below the level of some other player that has just been grinding out scores worse than theirs more recently? Returning players are already frustrated by the fact that they are playing like shit, and what you want to do is tell them "haha remember that time you were good, well if you don't get there again you were never really good in the first place".

Retired players don't deserve that. Returning players don't deserve that. People have the right to take pride in their achievements and to showcase them to others.

And to your last point, players aren't able to compete? What is stopping you? Nobody is stopping you from trying. Nobody is banning your account. Nobody is removing you from a tournament. Nobody is chopping off your hands. What are you just going to give up just because someone else is better than you right now? You're just going to stop trying because clearly there's no point since the outcome is a foregone conclusion?

Then you don't know what competition is.

You had it good when you caught me misreading what you said. But you pushed yourself into an untenable position and now it's my turn to make rash assumptions about you.

You took a break from the game. You come back to the game. You're bad compared to what you used to be and you want to be told you're a special snowflake and that it's all going to be ok. That and you want to implement a confusing, cumbersome, inefficient and ineffective system that singularly benefits players in your current situation in order to validate your effort into the game under the guise of creating a fairer play environment in a tournament setting that is essentially a lottery in the first place.

You think you're hot shit and that your opinion matters and that everyone else is just brainlessly circle jerking over a status quo because change is scary and hard. When people don't listen to you, you think it's because they're just lazy or dismissive to anyone new with an opinion. But you're so desperate to be the initiator of change to the degree that you would offer a suggestion with no forethought placed into it without an understanding of the system you're trying to change in the first place.

Or don't.

Mod Edit: I get where the anger is coming from, but lets keep it to a dull simmer please?

[Charu]

What seems to be going on here, good sirs?

Oh, I skimmed that mina post.

If it's that, then yeah. Naw, if you were D6 or whatever before, then you'll stay D6, no exceptions, why is it hard for players to understand this, lmao.

[Xiz]

Uh oh run it's the fun police

[YoshL]

holy


shit

[ilikexd]

Originally Posted by Walrusizer

Ranking degeneration more like sandbag regeneration

thread over already

[Hakulyte]

The cons outweight the pros for Ranking Degradation sadly.

Making a complex Divisionless Tournament with layers of prize distribution/rewards and multiple insensitives for making players compete against each others looks like a more reasonable approach for creating a competitive environment that's as fair as possible.

..but that's probably off-topic as OP is more trying to do something about players for compensating peak scores which shouldn't be something that should be a problem.

Originally Posted by Dinglesberry

I feel like the rank it shows on your profile is supposed to be reflective of how good you currently are and not your peak rank,

Well, the problem here is that FFR only keep your best scores, it cannot calculate and tell how hard you've been struggling to achieve certain scores therefore it's difficult to create a measure that calculates how good you are doing currently.

You would need an entire system dedicated at consistently checking how good you currently are based on some benchmark. Something like seasons where you play key songs would make sense, but since players won't necessary play at their "current best", it's still going to be inaccurate. Objectively speaking, current skill rating remain relatively more accurate than trying to calculate the "current level" of a player as it's impossible to validate that the player is playing at its best during that time.

I also agree that more features related to a sense of progression (xp/token/etc.) could be interesting and increase replay value for the game or simply giving players a reason to want to play more songs.

[Dinglesberry]

Just wanna add that I got reamed pretty hard boys.





Jeezo.

[Figlar20k]

Highly Highly HIGHLY disagree!!!

It takes minimal effort to get back to your peak performance and way longer to improve past that.

There will always be people at the very low end and very high end of each division and there is nothing that can be done about that.

Shouldn't the goal of the tournament be to improve past your peak performance? Sandbagging in a lower division just so you can get as good as you were before and not better to crush everyone who you were better than anyways is a terrible idea. You should be better than you were to win. And if you need a week or two to get the rust off your back well that's the effort you need to put into it.

[Figlar20k]

Originally Posted by blanky!

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...

Most chess websites including FIDE do not do this at all. What they do is if you are inactive for a long period of time your rating goes +/- to a much higher degree to place you at your current skill level faster depending on the length of time you have played. However your current rating is not adjusted in any way whatsoever, meaning that tournament results and placings are completely unaffected unless you go on some significant loss streak.

There is no way to do this in FFR as obviously you are competing against yourself, not against other players.

[happyhardcor3]

^mina typing up essays

[emulord]

I get wrecked in every tournament. My absolute peak was just barely getting Token Whore. This means Low D5, which I've degraded to an actual skill of D3.

No one is suggesting to put D6 players in D3. Its more like putting a D6 player who plays like a D4 because of rust into D5. That way they have a chance to compete. 200+ Goods on first round of a tournament is not accurately placed.

Or, because divisions are arbitrary we should just have the officials be "Past Winners/Placers" vs Everyone else.

[YoshL]

tell me:

whose fault is it that they stopped playing FFR and their skill degraded
whose fault is it that they had a peak that corresponded to where they got placed in the tournament
whose fault is it that they didn't feel like regaining skill for the tournament

and you're suggesting that divisional placements be modified so people have a "chance". Divisions were created to allow people to have a chance. unless you think we should make the system 100% fair and remove divisional placements, and only let the best player win

Mina's post pretty much outlines every problem with placing people at current skill. Mod devonin's mod edit doesn't really have much merit because people advocating for ranking degradation or placing based on current skill is actually pretty infuriating and kinda insulting for those who decide that they'll play to get better, instead of trying to make their competitive lives as easy as possible

[TC_Halogen]

Originally Posted by emulord

I get wrecked in every tournament. My absolute peak was just barely getting Token Whore. This means Low D5, which I've degraded to an actual skill of D3.

No one is suggesting to put D6 players in D3. Its more like putting a D6 player who plays like a D4 because of rust into D5. That way they have a chance to compete. 200+ Goods on first round of a tournament is not accurately placed.

Or, because divisions are arbitrary we should just have the officials be "Past Winners/Placers" vs Everyone else.

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...0&postcount=13

post i made way earlier in this thread addresses it

as many others have said, unless you are suffering from some sort of severe injury that inhibits play there is no excuse for you to not get the previous skill that you had back with a little bit of dedication

you can either run the risk of upsetting a single user who doesn't want to dedicate the time and effort to get their skill back, or you can run the risk of upsetting an entire division's worth of players by placing someone who indicated a level and had their "degradation" accommodated for to put them lower

[Dinglesberry]

Tournaments are a part of it, but I don't think rank is solely just there for tournament seeding.

I think it's been established a couple times that its pretty easy to get back to your skill level by putting in the effort. Though I've seen many examples where this isn't true, for me it was (I'm currently at my peak, far better than I was back in the day) and I'm sure it is for many players as well.

Obviously it's possible to get back to your rank, but why not have some sort of progression to show how you are coming along getting back? Lets say a returning player was able to SDG mid 60s in the past.. If they return and are now only able to SDG low 50s, I just find it odd how let's say they got a good score on a 58, even though relative to their current skill it's great, it has no effect on their ranking. Obviously the person has the accomplishment in their mind, but there really isn't any significance in terms of their top scores or rank even though they are clearly improving.

I guess it depends on perspective, to me your rank is a sign of progress and I feel It would be good to focus on this more with the xp bar and such, but I can tell a lot of people view rank as an achievement, and would feel discouraged if their previous rank was stolen from them.

The biggest thing I dislike is that players who were a high rank in the past don't get anything to display their progress in getting back to their prior skill, but it's not too big of a deal because obviously the progress is still there.

[remedy1502]

I don't have much to add or fight about really but
if my tell 4g was pointless because I got it 5 years ago I'd be fucking mad

Originally Posted by Dinglesberry

The biggest thing I dislike is that players who were a high rank in the past don't get anything to display their progress in getting back to their prior skill, but it's not too big of a deal because obviously the progress is still there.

if one really cares to display their progress, post scores in scores threads

or even better, just smash past your old skill and wipe out those old scores
if it's hard, it's fucking hard. Don't be a baby; you can always get better.
obviously this doesn't go for losing skill due to injury etc

[hi19hi19]

lmao I read mina's post and it's fucking hilarious how right he is.
Might I remind people that every division (D7 included) is most likely to be won by whoever is closest to the top of the division when it starts.
That's... how competition fucking works.

I'm starting to realize the response "or you could just get good" answers pretty much every complaint in this thread.