TWDT Star Caps: Discussion

[Nipple Nibbler]

I agree with Claushouse that the manual ratings are pretty damn close and adding .5's should solve most problems with the current rating system.

qan That math thing you posted got me thinking, I am only 8/9* spider and I can take out two 6* spiders one handed. I have seen 10* Warbirds take on 2-3 opponents that are lower * and honestly it's a joke to watch. Maybe we just need larger gaps between the skill differences. Maybe instead of having 6-7-8-9-10* we could try skipping numbers something like (this is an example no math behind these numbers) 4-6-8-10-12? a 10* really should be able to carry, and I know for example Lasenza easily worth at least 3 of me in warbird and Zidane probably the same for Javelin. Having two 10* in a DT-D lineup back on Demacia was hilarious to watch and if I am to be honest should probably not be allowed for DT-D or DT-J with *caps.

[zidane]

Poseidon the ratings last season were done by averaging out 6 peoples ratings, .5s were all rounded down. We then put the ratings on forums and let the public talk about them. Any subsequent changes that were made to ratings were then edited and clearly shown in the OP.

I took advantage by drafting old returning vets with high draft picks (sarger, mouse) whose current rating would be underrated based on their prime. It was a gamble and it worked out, however it had nothing to do with how ratings were done. This stuff has always happened and it's up to the captain to take that risk. For example weak just signed up, he hasn't played in 6 years.. if he ends up being as good as he was before he will almost certainly be underrated. There is nothing sinister about this, we cant predict the future and there has to be an aspect of rewarding good captaining or taking risks.

[qan]

I'll take people with 20,000 hours eyeballing ratings over Euler's curve. The vast majority of the ratings are accurate and within .5 of the player every season.

You've missed the point here, and if even you have missed it, I'm sure everyone else has as well. Nothing needs to change with ratings or how they are done. How those ratings contribute to the makeup of a team is what's at issue.

It's far too late to think about changing anything, but this is something to be worked on.

[Cape]

Hello nerds in chat, please give me 7.5 / 8.5 / 9 . Ty.

[Poseidon]

as i mentioned at the time, the ratings last season were p suspect. I referenced zidanes team above, which won the title last TWDT by taking advantage of the 6 understarred spiders on the roster; unsurprisingly, last TWDT, Ogron was on this team.

they win the championship and now u got the guy on here really saying "people just love to complain about the 3 people out of 200 whose rating is 1* off."

[ogron]

The games have been very competitive, people just love to complain about the 3 people out of 200 whose rating is 1* off.

There's enough granularity among veterans for all of us to conclude that adding .5 would be beneficial and make it a little bit better. I can name a bunch of people who are too good at 8 and will get benched at 9.

But there is no problem with the star cap system in terms of its effectiveness, the past four seasons have been good. It's more of a question of if people wanna go with a star cap system in the first place.

I'll take people with 20,000 hours eyeballing ratings over Euler's curve. The vast majority of the ratings are accurate and within .5 of the player every season.

There are 10 nerds in chat debating right now about whether turban is an 8 or 9 in warbird and analyzing his stats, how he's "better against good players in LD than actually carrying" and "being an elite support player doesn't make you a 9" and how he "isn't great at hunting low stars in TWDT-D" and doesn't "put up big numbers", basically that his skillset translates better to TWLD than TWDT-D, and the stats and his success level and testimonials bear that out, and how ro is a much better TWDT-D type player despite turban outperforming him in LD and how ro should be a 9 and turb should be an 8. If you wanted to add granularity you would probably put turb at an 8.5, but without .5s he's prob an 8.

These forums are populated by players have no idea how much actual work goes into ratings most seasons, and how accurate they are on the whole. I've had nothing to do with ratings for years and I think they've generally been good and produced strong seasons.

[qan]

New name is a decent low-tech solution. Could be standardized by using the same name + a tag such as (spider).

[Poseidon]

Rab Good analysis -- that's all true. WingZero was the man who took on the job of reworking how TWDT is handled by the bot/in the db. Changing to have three different ratings is fairly trivial (assuming specials use Spid rating), but the issues with subs and switches aren't.

Validating manually might be the easiest solution. Have the bot print out current star totals based on the ship in play, with arena message and PM if over the limit indicating that keeping the line as-is would result in an invalid line.

quote from qan in thread cited. basically what im reading in that post is that it would be hard to code multi-ship ratings and have it all run smoothly. theres an easy solution however:

if someone wants a second ship rating, they must make a new name. they would play the ship with that name, and it would be a separate star. the question then is: would it be difficult to program the bot to say "this player may only enter game in ship X and none other". If this is too much trouble... simply make the team forfeit the game if they try to cheat or "accidentally" put a 10*spid player in spider instead of the 8* shark their name was registered to. really dont think we'd have any problems.


Nipple, the reason for allowing only one extra rating, and only when requested is multipart:
- it helps the whole thing from becoming too convoluted
- makes it easier on raters
- makes it easier on captains doing line/drafting
- the limiting factor serves as a unique strategic element in ways
- considering 2 would be easiest to implement and integrate, its sensible to first see how it goes with 2 and later explore the idea of 3+ in future seasons

[Rab]

If I was going to change the players rating to anything I'd want it to be something automated that completely removes the need to have this discussion ever again. The fact of the situation is that none of our ongoing stats actually represent us because it's either twd that is too casual or twl that is more of a reflection on your team than on you.

So I think using our judgement is still the best way we have. That doesn't mean it can't be improved though. We have a really good stats spreadsheet from TWL so we should use that as a basis for ratings adjustments.

[qan]

I talked to an old friend who's got his math PhD and he recommended I play around with a formula along the lines of this to arrive at real star value. A value that accurately represents a player's skill that is extracted from their star value. If you don't understand why this is important, please ask.

Here's what he suggested I start with: C1 * e^{(C2 * stars)}

e is Euler's number, 2.71something. C1 and C2 are small numbers in this case (<1 seems to yield decent results). For an example I'm using .8e^0.2526x

Notice how you get a smaller difference between star ratings the lower the rating goes. It might be useful to add an offset to this value in order for it to work in practice. For instance, +10.

Stars	Adjusted value (approximate)
1	1
2	1.3
3	1.7
4	2.1
5	2.8
6	3.6
7	4.6
8	6
9	7.8
10	10

NB: I don't think these are the right numbers (for example, look at 7 vs 10) but this is what should be done to arrive at an adjusted star value.

To play with it, tweak C1 and C2. (Which in this link are set at .8 and 0.2526) Mouse over points on the graph to see exact values. Anyone can do this, it just requires monkeying around. Our current linear function where x=y is garbage, though, and needs improvement. This is evidenced by the fact that half of the numbers are completely unusable. I don't hold out a lot of hope that the community would opt to change even with the right formula, because let's be honest, we're a pack of very stubborn mules, but I'd at least like to make clear what the issue is so that we understand what we're dealing with.

Pinging the numbers crew: Turban Claushouse Rab Nipple Nibbler @anyone else I forgot

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/fxc1xojlfi

[Gkyde1234]

1/2 ratings can be abused by raters. Last time we tried that I got rated 7.5 an could only play the 8 star slot. Keep that in mind if you get bumped up .5 this year

[qan]

Yep, as Rab quoted -- that analysis still stands. Subs and switches get tricky if forcing star caps. We're always doing league botwork last minute as we change all the rules, which is absolutely insane, but also kind of the norm due to it all being volunteer-run.

[Nipple Nibbler]

.5 option feels nice!

qan or someone - would it be simple enough to have TWO ratings per baser? one is the Primary Rating or their highest rated ship; the second a ship of their choice, only per request. Primary rating = rating of all ships aside from the secondary choice.

Some of us play all 3 ships, if we are going to separate the ratings you may as well go to all 3 not just 2.

Also +1 for .5 ratings, we have needed these for awhile there are so many of us that are half way between numbers.

[Rab]

Qan can probably elaborate, but the current bot star counting system wouldnt work with multiple ratings. That feature could he disabled with staff manually counting instead.

https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...15#post1330715

[WillBy]

.5 option feels nice!

qan or someone - would it be simple enough to have TWO ratings per baser? one is the Primary Rating or their highest rated ship; the second a ship of their choice, only per request. Primary rating = rating of all ships aside from the secondary choice.

Qan can probably elaborate, but the current bot star counting system wouldnt work with multiple ratings. That feature could he disabled with staff manually counting instead.