I understand some people don't care about their rating, and just want to play and have fun, and the rating is just a number that means very little to them. I am not one of those people. I like competitive play, I like to think about how I am going to win, I want to win, and then I want my rating to reflect how good I am at winning. This is core to building a competitive segment to the community.

If you're not like that, if you don't care about rating, that's fine, nothing I am suggesting would hurt you or limit your experience in any way.

The game already uses the ELO system, so we are off to a great start. This is the single best rating system (and the medals are nice tokens to incentivize the non-competitive crowd).

Now, we need to make sure the ELO rating actually means something. This is where my suggestions come from. While its not a terrible situation right now, there are several big places where manipulation of the rating needs to be prevented.

1. Prevent multi-game dealers and multi-boxers.
Not only do they make the game significantly less fun, they also manipulate the rating. I've suggested a match-making system, but that's not necessarily the only way. This has been discussed extensively on the forums in other places, so I won't linger on this any longer.

2. Prevent/Penalize early quitters, including what I like to call, the "host advantage".
In a ranked game, once ANYONE has seen the map and their outposts, quitting should deliver a meaningful hit to their ELO rating. Your starting configuration is random (could be good or bad), and to let people quit out of bad configurations is unfair to the people who play the hand they are dealt. Imagine in poker, if competitive players could play without ever paying their blinds. They would NEVER play a hand unless they had pocket aces or ace/king. It would destroy any kind of real competitive setting. That is what is happening here in Subterfuge right now, except that eventually you can get someone who just doesn't care about being purely competitive, and they get unfairly punished for being a good sport.

This effect is extremely problematic for hosts. In theory, a host can just keep making new servers, canceling them if they dont have what they consider a perfect opening configuration, and they can keep canceling these games indefinitely forever until they have the perfect opening config.

3. Standard (default settings) games should have rating independent from other game types.
Full blown game modes should each have a rating of their own. So if I play control and standard games, I would have 2 different ratings for each. A win in one would not affect the other. "Custom" settings like altering the factory/gen ratio, should either be completely unrated, OR have a general category of ratings for "Custom" that includes any game where the settings have been altered.
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Overall I think this game has great potential for a competitive scene, and I think we will really see this come alive when tournaments come to Subterfuge. I hope the issues above are addressed before that time, otherwise that wave of enthusiasm tournaments might bring, could be drown out by the undertow of ratings manipulation. (...did you see what I did there, with the aquatic language?)

I agree with all of these points made. I think matchmaking would address both the multi-game deals as well as the host-advantage.

Also, I understand this is hard to do now with limited competitive users, but as the game continues to grow, I would love a tier system of ratings games (i.e. bronze games are open to players with a 1200 or below rating, silver games for 1201-1350, gold games for 1351+) or something like that. If my rating continues to climb, I want to play with other very competitive players, instead of winding up in games where someone is AFK for the first 48 hours and autoresigns.

Many of these ideas about ratind and things such as ranks like 'silver' and 'gold' are similar in nature to the ones that have been discussed in STOC (The Subterfuge Tournament Committee). Maybe we can implement things like these into there if the Devs don't do it.

ttalaric wrote:I would love a tier system of ratings games (i.e. bronze games are open to players with a 1200 or below rating, silver games for 1201-1350, gold games for 1351+) or something like that.

I agree. Although hosts can currently select their own cut-offs, this would make the game carry a better competitive aspect.
Of course, there are some complications - so far, there has always been a player host for each game, and with this system, does that mean either Subterfuge servers have to host the tiered games or we have to trust certain players to host them?
Also, Ratings without reward isn't much. In almost every other game with a tier system, there are rewards to move up to the next tier as incentive other than just fighting more competent players. Perhaps if purchasable aesthetic coins were a thing, being in bronze league gets you +1 for top 3, silver gets you +3 for top 3, and gold gives you +5 for being in top 3, or some other combination.
Opinions?

Ya, I agree that tiers usually should be packaged with some type of reward, even if just aesthetic. Obviously this would require a lot from the devs (matchmaking system, tiers, and rewards) so I don't know if its somethign we'll see soon, but it would definitely bolster the competitive portion of the game.

Rewards can always include unique colors, different looking subs/ outposts, or just something noted when you click on a player profile.

pandasecret wrote:Perhaps if purchasable aesthetic coins were a thing, being in bronze league gets you +1 for top 3, silver gets you +3 for top 3, and gold gives you +5 for being in top 3, or some other combination.
Opinions?

Maybe in the future there could be a few game modes which can be unlocked by buying them with these aesthetic coins, being in gold would get to enough coins to unlock the gamemode faster than if you were in bronze?

I think other than rating, the Gold, Silver, Bronze medals that the game already hands out are sufficient prizes. The only thing I might like to see added is Highest EVER Rating stat to be displayed somewhere (I could live without it though)

I generally don't actually like the idea of added rewards for high ratings because a reward to one person is a punishment to another. Aka, a person who prefers to play casually shouldn't feel compelled to play in a hardcore style because it's the only way they can earn a certain reward.

For most people who care about rating, that rating is reward enough.

4. Use REAL ELO.

I noticed today that the game doesn't really use ELO, it just looks like it does. True ELO gives you more points for beating a highly rated player (compared to your rating) and gives less for beating low rated players. From what I understand, it's a pretty standard algorithm.

That's not what happens in Subterfuge. You just gain or lose a set number of points based on what place you finish. Thus, you can repeatedly play against low rated/low skill players and rack up huge rating. This is a serious manipulation problem that would be corrected simply by using true ELO, and not this sham (forgive the dramatics :p).

kevlargolem wrote:4. Use REAL ELO.

I noticed today that the game doesn't really use ELO, it just looks like it does. True ELO gives you more points for beating a highly rated player (compared to your rating) and gives less for beating low rated players. From what I understand, it's a pretty standard algorithm.

That's not what happens in Subterfuge. You just gain or lose a set number of points based on what place you finish. Thus, you can repeatedly play against low rated/low skill players and rack up huge rating. This is a serious manipulation problem that would be corrected simply by using true ELO, and not this sham (forgive the dramatics :p).

And how do you know this?
If it is true, a fix would be to simulate (in the equation which calculates your new rating) you vs. a single opponent which is at the average rating of all the players in the game who did not resign within the first X hours. Or autoresign within the first X hours. If you come in the top half you gain points which are calculated by your % relative position in the top half multiplied by the rating you would've gained if you came first. If you finish in the middle then you draw against someone of the average rating, and a similar rule applies for losing as that which applies for winning, the only difference being that you multiply by the negative of the % relative position in the bottom half

"And how do you know this?"

While in the Intelligence Reports tab, tap on the column under Neptunium and instead of showing you Nep, it will show you how many rating points each player gains or loses if they were to finish in the position they are right now. I think for everyone, it'll show increments of 20, +\-, regardless of anyone else's rating.

For the rest of your post, I'm not really sure what you are saying. But ELO is a pretty time-tested, standardized algorithm. They use it in chess, and lots of matchmaking systems in video games (sometimes behind the scenes).