Well, it has been 10-11 months since the much heated “PRS” debates…
How is it going? Anyone proud of their scores? Most of the best players I know show up “not to high” on the list. I was on a top 5 grudge team until we changed our captain… now we’re not even top 25…
Is there any interest in re-visiting my 11 month old proposal for an alternate player rating system? Would this be something more people would brag about and try to score well at?
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Player Rating System 2.0
For a game as complex as MEPBM, it would be impossible to design a Player Rating/Ranking System (PRS) that accurately reflects how good a player is. Measuring “skill” is not the intention of PRS 2.0. Instead, the PRS is designed to reward certain behaviors, punish other behaviors, and generally encourage increased game participation.
The goal of the PRS is for all players to be proud to rank well.
Behaviors a ranking system should reward:
Winning games
Playing games
Playing challenging games
Picking up dropped positions
Neutrals that decide early
Neutrals that help game balance
Encouraging new players to join
Things it should punish:
Leaving a game prior to the end of the game
Experienced players stomping on newer players
The PRS must remain within the Box of Possibilities. This means the PRS must:
Not require a change to the game code (No new Victory Point system or different Victory Conditions)
Be reasonably easy to understand
Not be labor intensive
Give new players a “decent shot” of eventually moving toward the top
To accomplish these things the PRS is based on:
Adjusted Win %
Game Activity Adjuster (GAA)
Opponent Strength Adjuster (OSA)
These 3 scores will be multiplied together to determine Player Rating.
ADJUSTED WIN %
Win % is based on the last 10 positions completed for each player. Every player is given 1 free win to provide new players a rating even before they’ve gotten their first win. This free win will fall off once a player has completed 10 positions.
Adjusted Win % is calculated as:
The sum of points for positions completed divided by the number of positions completed (1-10).
Points Status
1 Alliance wins and you’re active at game end
0.5 Alliance wins but you were eliminated prior to game end
0 Loss (active or eliminated)
-0.5 Transfer (you found replacement)
-1 Drop (ME Games had to find a replacement)
Special Circumstances:
When half or more of an alliance quits at the same time, it is a loss, not a drop.
Any time that one alliance has 30% more nations than the other (average of the other for FA) you may drop and the game will count as
a “win but eliminated” if your alliance had more nations or
a “transfer” if your alliance had fewer.
Any time that one alliance has 50% more nations than the other (average of the other for FA) you may drop and the game will count as
a “win” if your alliance had more nations or
a “loss” if your alliance had fewer.
The only time a transfer would not count against you is if you’re trading positions within a game. That is, transferring a position but remaining in the game.
If MEGames determines a dropped position to be not viable due to its condition (doesn’t even try to find a replacement), then it counts as being eliminated, not dropped.
Games lasting fewer than 10 turns are not counted as a win, but are counted as a loss, transfer or drop for the losing team.
If you’re playing 2 or more positions at game end and the team wins, then it counts as one game completed per position. This encourages picking up teammate’s positions before they hard drop. (Add a limit that you had to be playing the position for at least 5 turns to prevent transferring a lot of positions on the last few teams to one player to up their rating?)
If you’re playing 2 or more positions at game end and lose, it only counts as one loss per position you started the game with. This is to encourage you to pick up teammate’s positions, even if it looks like you’re losing.
For a player that starts as a neutral,
Third Age:
The game doesn’t count as a win or loss unless:
successfully change allegiance on or before turn 12
successfully change allegiance at least 10 turns before the game ends
and are one of the first 3 to join the side.
Fourth Age:
Nations neutral on turn 13 are considered on the neutral alliance meaning the game is a win if the neutrals win, but a loss if FP or DS win.
If not neutral on GT13, then must have
changed 10 turns before game end
be first kingdom or one of the first 5 non-kingdoms to join the alliance.
(Exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis, such as 6 neutrals joining one side and both kingdoms joining the other and game ending in a means other than strategic victory)
GAME ACTIVITY ADJUSTER
The Game Activity Adjuster (GAA) is a measure of how many positions you play over time. You receive one point per position played per game season. Each time the season changes within the game, each player receives one point for each position they are playing (2 points for 1-week games). Additional points are added for each position started or picked up during the season.
To give newer players a decent chance of moving up, only current plus 19 seasons (5 years) will be tracked. GAA points will be reduced at a rate of 5% per season. That means that the most recent half of the 5 years of activity will account for 75% of your score. If you want to climb up the list, or stay at the top, you must continue to play a fair number of games.
To get the GAA, sum up the products of current + 19 prior seasons and (20-seasons ago)/20.
Where n = 0 is current season and n=20 is 5 years ago
GAA = ∑(n = 0 to 20) positions played(n) * (20-n/20)
A player that has played 1 position at a time for 5 years, would have a GAA of (1 * 20/20) +(1 * 19/20) + (1 * 18/20)… + (1*1/20) for a total of 10.5.
Twice as many positions gets double the adjuster.
A player that has played 1 position per season but has only been playing 2.5 years (current + 10 seasons) would have an adjuster of (1 * 20/20) +(1 * 19/20) + (1 * 18/20)…+ (1*10/20) = 8.25. That is about 75% as much as a player that had been playing 1 game per season for the full 5 years.
It is unlikely a player would take up 10 positions in one season to be considered as active as someone that has been playing 1 position at a time for 5 years. However, a year of playing 3 positions at a time, and a new player could get an adjuster as high as a player that has been playing 1 position at a time for 5 years. Again, it isn’t a measure of experience or turns processed. It is a measure of how active you are in the game. Three positions at a time for a year is more active than one position at a time for 5 years.
OPPONENT STRENGTH ADJUSTER
The Opponent Strength Adjuster (OSA) is by far the most complicated factor. It is an approximate measure of the difficulty of the games played. It updated on a turn-by-turn bases, and it compares the ratio of nations and relative experience per alliance.
Each player starts with an Opponent Strength Adjuster of 1. The amount of adjustment, over the course of a full year(26 turns), is approximately:
The % difference in number of active positions, and
1/10th the % difference in experience.
Playing 1 position in a game where your alliance has 30% fewer nations, for 26 turns will result in about 30% increase in OSA. Playing 1 position in a game where the players of your alliance have 30% less experience, for 26 turns, would get you about 3% increases in rating. If the enemy has less nations and/or experience than yours, you’ll receive drops instead of increases.
The gory details
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Player Experience = sum of positions played per season for current + 19 previous seasons (GAA without the 5% per season aging).
IF opponents are more experienced
Experience Adjustment = 1 + (sum of opponents experience - sum of allies Experience)/ sum of opponents experience *260). If you have 25% less experience than them, you gain 2.5% over 26 turns.
IF your allies are more experienced
Experience Adjustment = 1 - (sum of allies Experience - sum of opponents experience) / sum of allies experience *260). If they have 25% less than you, you lose 2.5% over 26 turns.
If opponents have more nations
Nations Adjustment = 1 + (# of enemy nations- # of ally nations)/ (# of enemy nations26).
If opponents have fewer nations
Nations Adjustment = 1 - (# of ally nations- # enemy of nations) / (# of ally nations26).
New OSA = Old OSA * Experience Adjustment * Nations Adjustment
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Neutrals aren’t counted except for FA games beyond GT12 where they are considered a 3rd alliance and the number of enemy nations is averaged before being compared to the number of friendly nations.
The result of this system is that playing 26 turns (against players with similar experience) with a 14/11 split in your favor (opponents have about 20% fewer nations and experience) would result in a 21% drop in your rating. OSA goes from 1 to 0.7893.
This is a huge shift, but a 14 vs. 11 game shouldn’t go a full year.
Playing a 12 v 12 game, for 26 turns where your team averages 5+ years of playing 3 games at a time (60 XP) against a team that averages 2 year of playing 2 games at a time (16XP) (they have 70% less experience) results in a about 7% drop in rating over 26 turns.
This may seem like a small change, but it is almost the same as the difference between winning 6 of your last 10 games instead of 7 of your last 10 games.
To discourage lone hold outs from trying to get big changes in their OSA by continuing to play with 90% fewer nations, OSA will stop adjusting for any game where there are twice as many nations on one alliance as the other (or average of the others for FA).
OVERALL RATING/RANKING
Rating = (Adjusted Win %) X (Game Activity Adjuster) X (Opponent Strength Adjuster)
All players that have been in at least 1 game this season or last season will be sorted by rating. Sort position determines Ranking.
