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**RoDNeY** · 02-13-2019, 04:28 PM

Great idea, i feel like Elim has lacked a real incentive for a while. Thanks claus!

**qan** · 02-13-2019, 09:06 PM

Nice idea. Seems like it'll definitely provide some binding element across elim seasons, something badly needed. Thanks for taking this on.

If needed, I can pull top 20 from the DB at the end of the season with stats. We now also record round stats per player (not just winner), and AngelGirl's been working on a really nice elim stats page to display this info, coming soon.

A couple of fine points to consider:

Under current elim rules, in order to be laddered, you need to have played once in the last week. This combined with confidence is designed to keep people from being able to try to luck a strong rating on various names and then sit on it once they have a good run, which was a major problem in early elim seasons. For the purposes of the Elim Championship, are you looking to keep this rule, or is it just top 20 across the whole season? Either way's of course fine, so long as it's clear. If it's across season, though, it might be confusing, as someone could be 20th according to the bot but 23rd across the season. Could also change the 1 week rule. Before mastersword went MIA again, we were looking at a ratings decay formula, which might be a more transparent and comprehensible method than being removed from the ladder entirely after a week of inactivity.
How will aliases be handled? The easiest would be to just require a player to use the same name across all 5 seasons. This would also prevent players from being able to game ratings as easily. Though obviously that's still possible, and done too frequently, as you'd mentioned before. Unfortunately there's no easy fix to that, as far as I can tell, though there are tweaks that can be made. Scheduling games could work, but that's more an elim tournament than elim in the traditional sense, and doesn't seem true to the format. May just be a weakness of a game with a low population and automated on-demand games. If it can't be prevented, should the gaming of ratings just be considered part of the strategy behind having a successful elim season? That's of course not a very satisfying answer...
Running seasons back-to-back is possible, and it's handy for players in that it makes it easy to remember dates. But, it also carries a few problems. The first is that if there are any tweaks to rules or to code, there's no time to test them, and as insane as our development approach is (test everything live!), not only testing it live but also in an active season can risk the validity of the season. So we'd be looking at essentially freezing elim code until October (which is not awful), or if there are changes made, we all need to accept the associated risks and not point fingers if it goes tits up. I'm fine with either.
The other issue with running seasons back to back is smaller, but just involves informing the public, adding the winners to the map and giving rewards. We're not exactly known for being prompt in TW staff. And if we're literally running the next season in 2 days, there's been 0 PR going out about this, though it may not matter all that much in the end. People will show up and play, or won't. Something to be aware of, though.

**ogron** · 02-13-2019, 09:31 PM

Nice idea. Seems like it'll definitely provide some binding element across elim seasons, something badly needed. Thanks for taking this on.

If needed, I can pull top 20 from the DB at the end of the season with stats. We now also record round stats per player (not just winner), and AngelGirl's been working on a really nice elim stats page to display this info, coming soon.

Any help is welcome. I think the trenchwars.org shows the final standings already for each season, though?

A couple of fine points to consider:[LIST]

[*]Under current elim rules, in order to be laddered, you need to have played once in the last week. This combined with confidence is designed to keep people from being able to try to luck a strong rating on various names and then sit on it once they have a good run, which was a major problem in early elim seasons. For the purposes of the Elim Championship, are you looking to keep this rule, or is it just top 20 across the whole season? Either way's of course fine, so long as it's clear. If it's across season, though, it might be confusing, as someone could be 20th according to the bot but 23rd across the season. Could also change the 1 week rule. Before mastersword went MIA again, we were looking at a ratings decay formula, which might be a more transparent and comprehensible method than being removed from the ladder entirely after a week of inactivity.

1) I disagree it was a problem, and I'm not sure other warbirds would agree having good runs was an issue. I don't know how others feel about it, though, but I don't remember it being an issue. I don't know of anyone who can "luck" into a 400-150 record in the early 2000s and reach the Top 10.

I don't feel strongly about it either way, though.

2) Not a fan of the 1 week rule. I would ignore it. Not a fan of decay, either. The confidence stuff Mastersword put in seems fine to me for a 2 month season. Personally, I would favor this:

a) Only allow main TWD registered names, but allow people to reset their elim rating
b) This would prevent being hunted on aliases. I've had multiple people hunt me on aliases to lower my rating last few days.

3) Top 20 across the whole season. By 23 instead of 20th, do you mean because of being removed for 7 days inactive? For me it's just overall, I don't care about the inactivity.

[*]How will aliases be handled? The easiest would be to just require a player to use the same name across all 5 seasons. This would also prevent players from being able to game ratings as easily. Though obviously that's still possible, and done too frequently, as you'd mentioned before. Unfortunately there's no easy fix to that, as far as I can tell, though there are tweaks that can be made. Scheduling games could work, but that's more an elim tournament than elim in the traditional sense, and doesn't seem true to the format. May just be a weakness of a game with a low population and automated on-demand games. If it can't be prevented, should the gaming of ratings just be considered part of the strategy behind having a successful elim season? That's of course not a very satisfying answer...

I don't mind what names people use. I mean Turban has switched to Cirno. Long as I know who it is. If you're changing names and we don't know who you are, it hurts you because then you're not getting all your points summed. Probably just having 1 name for consistency would be best, and avoid the aliaser issues. This is easier if you can reset your elim stats.

If there's issues with people cheating, being fed, etc. I can just remove them from the list. They can keep eliming but it won't be kept on the Championship ladder. I don't see it being an issue, most people who are good enough to be at the top don't need to cheat. Although feeding did happen once in TSLJ, but it's very rare.

Hopefully those issues don't arise.

[*]Running seasons back-to-back is possible, and it's handy for players in that it makes it easy to remember dates. But, it also carries a few problems. The first is that if there are any tweaks to rules or to code, there's no time to test them, and as insane as our development approach is (test everything live!), not only testing it live but also in an active season can risk the validity of the season. So we'd be looking at essentially freezing elim code until October (which is not awful), or if there are changes made, we all need to accept the associated risks and not point fingers if it goes tits up. I'm fine with either.

If we lose a week to changes or testing or something, it's not a big deal. I think the only big change needed is removing confidence being gained from killraces.

You can rank up to the top of elim in 2 weeks, it's not hard. 2 months is plenty of leeway for whoever is doing elim stuff.

[*]The other issue with running seasons back to back is smaller, but just involves informing the public, adding the winners to the map and giving rewards. We're not exactly known for being prompt in TW staff. And if we're literally running the next season in 2 days, there's been 0 PR going out about this, though it may not matter all that much in the end. People will show up and play, or won't. Something to be aware of, though.

That's not a big issue. I don't know who does the map stuff, but it's not urgent. People just show up to elim, whether they know the dates or not. I personally had no idea when this season ended until someone mentioned it the other day.

**qan** · 02-13-2019, 10:22 PM

Originally posted by Claushouse

Any help is welcome. I think the trenchwars.org shows the final standings already for each season, though?

I'll have to doublecheck if it uses the 7 day rule or not. It also displays the start date as the end date, looks like. Not sure what's going on there.

1) I disagree it was a problem, and I'm not sure other warbirds would agree having good runs was an issue. I don't know how others feel about it, though, but I don't remember it being an issue. I don't know of anyone who can "luck" into a 400-150 record in the early 2000s and reach the Top 10.

Was more a problem pre-confidence. It used to be you'd need I believe 50 combined kills and deaths to ladder. You could do that in 3-4 games. There were indeed such people sitting on the scoreboard, and it actually deincentivized playing elim. This was done in more recent times, maybe around 2015 or earlier, after players had figured out how to game it.

2) Not a fan of the 1 week rule. I would ignore it. Not a fan of decay, either. The confidence stuff Mastersword put in seems fine to me for a 2 month season.

It knocked off two people from the top10 in S7, and actually changed the standings of the final 3. But if the # of games required to reach full confidence is high enough, it does make it not so necessary. Could look at changing it. BTW, mastersword had nothing to do with confidence; that was my work. I stole the general idea off of you after our botched attempt to revise TWD stats. Would be interesting to base it off of the most active players in the league rather than a set number of games played, though that's a lot more complicated and the current implementation works decently.

a) Only allow main TWD registered names, but allow people to reset their elim rating
b) This would prevent being hunted on aliases. I've had multiple people hunt me on aliases to lower my rating last few days.

We had it set up this way for a short time, but a lot of people complained about not being able to play without signing up for TWD. Also, there is currently no reset period for changing names, so a TWD account is little guarantee of not being on an alias. Could look at going back to increased reset times, but that would only prevent problems for that amount of time. Having at least some delay might not be a bad idea. You'd need to talk with the leagues team to see what they think about changing this, if you want to move in that direction.

Requiring TWD registration to play is just a simple flip of a switch, though, so it could be tried again.

The other option would be to completely remove non-TWD names from ratings calculations. But that's a goddamn nightmare from the code side. Looked at it before and decided I'd rather cut my hands off. Right now you just can't earn rating on non-TWD names, but you can affect others' ratings. This is especially a problem because new names have low ratings, so despite the player being strong, not only can they hunt you and tank your rating with no risk to them, but you also don't receive as much value for killing them.

Can look at allowing players to reset elim ratings if you can't see any risks.

3) Top 20 across the whole season. By 23 instead of 20th, do you mean because of being removed for 7 days inactive? For me it's just overall, I don't care about the inactivity.

Yep, I mean due to the 7 days inactivity. Right now bot (and probably website) will show your ladder at a different position. So someone might think they're going to make the top 20 and receive points at the end of the season, but in fact would not, because for Championship standings you'd be ignoring the 7 day rule. Would just recommend keeping them both the same to make it easy to understand, and easiest would be removing the 7 day rule.

I don't mind what names people use. I mean Turban has switched to Cirno. Long as I know who it is. If you're changing names and we don't know who you are, it hurts you because then you're not getting all your points summed.

OK, makes sense.

If we lose a week to changes or testing or something, it's not a big deal. I think the only big change needed is removing confidence being gained from killraces.

OK, I'll try to get that in. If you want to look at TWD names required, though, it may require a bit of legwork with also getting increasing TWD registration reset timers approved by leagues. Also, there's removing the 7 day rule, though that's relatively minor. Warning, though: if done now it could change standings in the last 2 days of the season. Or, could run S8 with 7 days rule on, and S9 and onward with it off.

**ogron** · 02-13-2019, 10:45 PM

I meant like the 2001-2005 elim ratings, when elim was life, and being in the Top 100 was actually hard. The system back then just wouldn't rank you until you had like a combined 400 kills and deaths or something. That was the artificial "confidence" check back then. I didn't play 2006-2010, and when I came back 2011, elim was dead, so I don't know what happened between then and now.

I'm not too worried about the TWD registration thing, I'd just play it by ear. If people are hunting on aliases non-stop or feeding, can do something about it. Hard to get one by the zone, lots of people in spec always watching. I'll hear about it quickly enough. I get hunted/targeted here and there, both on mains and aliases... but over 100 games, the impact is minimal. Hard to consistently find someone on the map and to play every game they play, and if you're too aggressive you end up feeding them.

Better to just do nothing and keep it simple until something extreme happens. The only major issue I foresee is the killrace thing.

Ease is the resident elim expert, if there's something I'm missing he'll let me know. He's the one who put me on the killrace issue.

**qan** · 02-14-2019, 12:39 AM

Hell, I was even playing elim then. That's how I got recruited to my first squad, like a lot of people. That was when we were still running the old bot, the one PriitK made, so it operated on a different set of rules. Then WingZero remade it at some point, which opened up the possibility of letting various people mess around with it, not always for the better. At some point that's when the low # of combined K+D was implemented. Probably one of the things that killed it for so long. No idea why anyone would think 50 would be a good idea, especially with a formula that just multiplied ratio by average rating killed. So if you could win a few games in a row, even just by hiding and playing it very safe to keep deaths low, you could eke out a huge rating against even average players through the ratio multiplier. 300 x (5/1) = 1500 etc. Was pretty shocked to see that was the formula when I started reworking elim a few years ago with Upster. It took a while with some failed features (practice arenas, new base for javs) but through the effort of many hands we've slowly been getting to a better place (!late, confidence, only jav/wb, total ratings overhaul that's much more representative of actual skill despite still being able to be gamed somewhat). Still needs something more cohesive and long-term driving it, so I'm excited to see what you can do with Championship.

Killrace should be fixed after next reboot when the zone comes back up (...), was an easy fix that has 0% chance of causing any problems.

For the 7 day rule: revert and apply to S8 (risking a standings shakeup), or wait until S9?

**ogron** · 02-14-2019, 01:31 AM

For what it's worth, I think whatever the current formula/system is better than the early 2000s one, which was decent. It was still somewhat manipulable... it was mostly just KDA... you could go in a game with 50 people, stray a few newbies early, spec, rinse and repeat, and bloat your rating (hence the "spec4rec" motto.)

Whatever robo ref is doing now is better. Feels like it rewards big scores like 17-10 or 21-9 more than lower scores with higher KDA, which is great. Every veteran agrees it's harder to go 20-10 than it is to go 10-2. Kills get progressively harder to come by as an elim match wears down and the better players remain, making 20 kills in a game a much tougher proposition than an 8-1. So whoever did that, good job.

---

7 day rule: I mean ugandan sniper has been offline for 9 days, and he's still on the ladder on the trench wars website... who exactly is it leaving off? i'd go by that list, and keep him on.

**Jessup** · 02-14-2019, 02:12 AM

ROFL at claus saying I'm a troll while trolling. This guy has been trolling me (and others) over and over in game and out since he returned.. especially when he gets mad after I have beaten him EVERY time we have faced off in elim since he returned. He has also been posing as a Paladen captain and trolling certain players doing ?messages. I ask the mods to look up a player name called Paladen Recruiter and you will see an IP match to his/ ogrons IP. He has been trolling players doing fake invites to them while pretending to be a Paladen captain. This is why I stand up to this guy. I am not fooled at how he operates. I also have screen shots of him in elim trolling multiple people and promising that I would be benched all season in twdt after I had an elim win vs him. (which has come to fruition btw even though I showed up to EVERY twdt match). The guy is dirty to the core and people don't realize it. I'll call you out over and over until you can act decent. (Not holding my breath on this though)

That being said... I welcome a new elim playoff formula being put in place. Sounds fun. Too bad we have this rage monster in charge of it but I will be happy to slap him in the competition.

**Rab** · 02-14-2019, 04:15 AM

Jess if u cud stop making everything about u that would be cool. Quit derailling threads.

**Jessup** · 02-14-2019, 05:29 AM

Originally posted by Rab View Post

Jess if u cud stop making everything about u that would be cool. Quit derailling threads.

What type league coordinator announces a league that way.. he added my name to the announcement so I can respond. What an unprofessional twit thing to do...??.sick of this guy trolling me every chance he can get and getting away with it.

**Falconeer** · 02-14-2019, 05:59 AM

Originally posted by Jessup View Post

What type league coordinator announces a league that way.. he added my name to the announcement so I can respond. What an unprofessional twit thing to do...??.sick of this guy trolling me every chance he can get and getting away with it.

Now that i stopped trolling it looks like rab and clause gained some confidence to fill the void, everyone wants to be a troll god. =)

**Rab** · 02-14-2019, 06:29 AM

Originally posted by Falconeer View Post

Now that i stopped trolling ...

????

**Ricko** · 02-14-2019, 07:12 AM

I like this idea, except for the fact you're looking to include the current elim season in the five elim seasons that lead into the 'world championships' - it can't be announced 2 days from the end of the current season that this season counts as one of the five as there will be a vast majority of people who have been unrusting/not knowing this season means anything.

This only has integrity if the 5 season rule starts from the new season beginning on the 16th Feb, that or just have it so only the next 4 seasons count towards the championship.

Also not sure if I like the idea of the higher you finish in the top 20 the more lives you get - I think just being in the top 20 for either league across an accumulation of 4/5 seasons is enough to warrant a spot in the championship at the end, with a flat 10 or 20 lives for everyone.

**Falconeer** · 02-14-2019, 07:18 AM

Originally posted by Rab View Post

????

You know that not thinking the same way you do is not trolling right? neither is disagreeing, having an opinion, or expressing it. However, doing 1 liner attacks like 99% of your posts towards me is trolling. Clause doesn't troll here from what I can tell, but if he actually is Ogron? then he's currently the biggest asshole in the ?go elim arena. Since i see him running his mouth all day putting people down constantly for not being as skilled as he is.

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