Top 100 - Do you have what it takes?

**Durfs** · 07-01-2015, 05:26 AM

Originally Posted by wongheungwing

My rating is 239 and my in game name is Wongtinlong.
My current score is 500248 and should become the player with the highest score this season.

The original poster has ignored the fact that it takes much longer for high rating players to find opponents, thus limiting the total number of games they can play each day. From my personal experience, the best rating for getting scores should be between 230 and 250. Games played within this range usually end within 7 minutes and it normally takes less than 10 seconds to find opponents. So one lunch break allows me to play 7 to 8 games. Plus another 20 games during commute. It is extremely easy to play and win 30 games a day without even knowing it.

If you compare the chart of scores and that of ratings, you will see that players of high ratings are rarely players with high scores. While some high rating players may be campers who quit playing any games after reaching 3xx, the true reason is that it takes an extremely long time for high rating players to find opponents. I was once 366 rating in this season. And in the worst scenario, it took me over five minutes just to get a match. Since the system only matches 3xx players with other 3xx players, if all other 3xx players are busy or sleeping, then there will be no games!

It was so annoying that I needed to deliberately lose a few matches to lower the rating in order to shorten the time it took to get opponents.

I do understand that the scores I can get from each victory will become lower if my rating is low. But I keep getting scores while others with higher ratings are still waiting.

I was under the impression that the "highest rated players" determined the overall winnings for the month, but I figured out today when I received only 900 sc for placing 51st in highest scoring that is not the case. When I played this game around November 2014, I placed top 100 for highest rating and received around 2000-3000 sc, which makes playing everyday worthwhile. Why the game doesn't take the rating and score and average them or do rewards for rating and scoring doesn't make sense!
Only 900 sc for playing everyday for the past 2 weeks (spending 30 mins sometimes to win a game to increase rating) to make 31st for rating is pointless now, knowing that the rewards are only based on the amount of games played.
At lowering ratings (200-250) you played less skilled players and are more likely to finish games faster, at higher ratings (300+) the games last longer and players mostly want to win, not simply complete the game for score.

I noticed many of the "highest scoring players", did not even rank in the top 100 "highest rated players". This is a sad scenario to me.
What is the point of highest rated players anymore? Truly no incentive for players to spend time on games for wins to increase rating when you can obtain a much higher score by losing games.
Wongtinlong there is no way you won 30 games a day without having a rating above 300. You may have played 30 games a day, but you certainly did not win 30 a day. If play 3 hours 30 mins everyday (30 x 7mins = 210mins) and win all 30 games then your rating would not be so low.
I'm on summer break from college and the past 2-3 weeks I have been playing shadow era all day, trying my hardest to win games and increase rating.
Time I spent on a game was usually 10-15 mins or longer, I'd play about 7 hours or more a day which equates to about 30 games a day and I would not win all of them. I'd say I lose 5-10, win 20-25.
Wongtinlong, with your rating it makes perfect sense that you won games so quickly, at that rating almost everyone you play will be a noob. But you would have to purposely lose games to keep that rating.
At a rating of 300+ one misplay (such as a wrong sacrifice) will cost you the game because players are better at reading cards in hand, but at a rating of 239 most players are average.
Honestly, now I know that skill is not factored into the overall reward system for shadow era now, but the player that plays more games receives the goodies.
Lose some, win lose, doesn't matter as long as finish games quickly!
----Why do highest rated players not receive rewards anymore? Was something wrong with it?----
A response would be awesome because it is so disappointing to know that most of the time I spent winning games at a higher rating is worthless when I can just as easily lose more games and still have a better reward.
A higher rating = higher win ratio, but now wins don't matter? Wongtinlong did not even place top 100 highest rated, does that not show something?
His win ratio was not high, but games played was.

**jacqui** · 07-01-2015, 05:56 AM

Highest rated players have never been rewarded as far as I can recall.

**Kylt** · 07-01-2015, 06:20 AM

Originally Posted by Gondorian

The pairing system will progressively increase the allowable gap if you are waiting a long time, but I can see how just being lower rating would get you paired up faster.

You know this doesn't really work in a way it was intended. Say A is at 300 waiting and there's B at 200 waiting. You say these two will eventually be matched after enough waiting time, but it never happens from my experience. I'm guessing this is because B gets matched with C at 240 who hit QM button later than those two, resulting A is always left out until another 280-320 player joins. The system only works if there are only 2 players in QM, but it never is the case since many players with different rating joins QM one after another.

But maybe I'm wrong. If so, please correct this!

**Fionn Maccumhail** · 07-01-2015, 07:31 AM

The score system goes by both number of games played and rating. And fair dues to wongtinlong for playing so many games. I'm glad they brought the rating back even if there is no reward. You can maintain a high rating from playing a lot of games the first day and then one game every few days to prevent decay. Score should be rewarded rather than rating since it requires playing more (and thereby offering other people an opponent to play).

Losing games will not get you a better reward, the longest I've had to wait all season was 2 minutes to get a game.

**wongheungwing** · 07-01-2015, 09:54 AM

Originally Posted by Durfs

I was under the impression that the "highest rated players" determined the overall winnings for the month, but I figured out today when I received only 900 sc for placing 51st in highest scoring that is not the case. When I played this game around November 2014, I placed top 100 for highest rating and received around 2000-3000 sc, which makes playing everyday worthwhile. Why the game doesn't take the rating and score and average them or do rewards for rating and scoring doesn't make sense!
Only 900 sc for playing everyday for the past 2 weeks (spending 30 mins sometimes to win a game to increase rating) to make 31st for rating is pointless now, knowing that the rewards are only based on the amount of games played.
At lowering ratings (200-250) you played less skilled players and are more likely to finish games faster, at higher ratings (300+) the games last longer and players mostly want to win, not simply complete the game for score.

I noticed many of the "highest scoring players", did not even rank in the top 100 "highest rated players". This is a sad scenario to me.
What is the point of highest rated players anymore? Truly no incentive for players to spend time on games for wins to increase rating when you can obtain a much higher score by losing games.
Wongtinlong there is no way you won 30 games a day without having a rating above 300. You may have played 30 games a day, but you certainly did not win 30 a day. If play 3 hours 30 mins everyday (30 x 7mins = 210mins) and win all 30 games then your rating would not be so low.
I'm on summer break from college and the past 2-3 weeks I have been playing shadow era all day, trying my hardest to win games and increase rating.
Time I spent on a game was usually 10-15 mins or longer, I'd play about 7 hours or more a day which equates to about 30 games a day and I would not win all of them. I'd say I lose 5-10, win 20-25.
Wongtinlong, with your rating it makes perfect sense that you won games so quickly, at that rating almost everyone you play will be a noob. But you would have to purposely lose games to keep that rating.
At a rating of 300+ one misplay (such as a wrong sacrifice) will cost you the game because players are better at reading cards in hand, but at a rating of 239 most players are average.
Honestly, now I know that skill is not factored into the overall reward system for shadow era now, but the player that plays more games receives the goodies.
Lose some, win lose, doesn't matter as long as finish games quickly!
----Why do highest rated players not receive rewards anymore? Was something wrong with it?----
A response would be awesome because it is so disappointing to know that most of the time I spent winning games at a higher rating is worthless when I can just as easily lose more games and still have a better reward.
A higher rating = higher win ratio, but now wins don't matter? Wongtinlong did not even place top 100 highest rated, does that not show something?
His win ratio was not high, but games played was.

Assuming that your opponents were all in the 280~300 range, let's say 280 to be conservative, your scores for each victory should be at least 800.
And assuming again that you won 20 games a day for the last 2 week as you said, you should get 800 x 20 x 14 = 224,000 scores for just playing half a month.

It means that if you had played full season from day one, theoretically you could have got over 440,000 scores, which would make you #1 in scores. So it is not the system that sucks. It is just that your summer break started a bit too late.

As for why I won so many games but the rating was so low, my win / lose ratio was constantly at 7:3 last season. But the problem is that when I lost a game, my rating dropped 2 to 3 points while it only went up by 1 point or even had no change sometimes when I won. So for every ten games with 7 victories, I got promoted by 7 x 1 - 2 x 3 = 1 point. And there were times when I needed to quit early due to "your game has started" bug or opponents without any response at the 1st turn.

During my last season, my highest rating was 366. That's no joke, 366! I first got all the way to 320 from 280 something by defeating a 340 opponent and stayed in the +300 range for a few days. If I had stopped playing any games then, I would have easily become the highest rating player. Most of the so-called high rating players are campers who stop playing after reaching a 3xx rating. With 3xx ratiing, each victory would have granted them 900~1000 scores. So with 5 victories each day, they should have got at least 150,000 scores. But as we can observe, it is far from the case. The highest rating players mostly earned fewer than 120,000 scores.

**Durfs** · 07-01-2015, 07:45 PM

My score was 148,914. (150,000) So if you multiply that by 2 (only playing 2 weeks for the month for the 150,000 score) for 300,000 then I'd be in the top 10 for the season.
The amount of time spent waiting for players in the higher ratings does not allow an equal playing field; like you said wongwing, while the higher rated players are waiting you are playing games. If this can be fixed then it would be a much better system.

**Durfs** · 07-01-2015, 07:48 PM

wongwing, how many shadow crystals did you obtain for 1st place? Just wondering to see if 1st is worth the amount of time spent playing.

**Durfs** · 07-01-2015, 07:56 PM

A loss of score when defeated would be a nice addition to the game; we have loss of rating, why not loss of score? This would certainly make the top spots more of a competitive scene. With the introduction of a loss of score, players would be determined to win the game and not simply finish it.

**FDL** · 07-01-2015, 08:10 PM

Quoting myself (yes, I'm that kind of guy):

Originally Posted by FDL

Could a system that keeps track of your 100 highest scoring games be a nice compromise?

You get awarded points for each win (like in the current system): Rating * Opp rating / 100.

If the system only remembered your 100 most valuable victories, it would reward players that play at a higher rating, but you don't get punished as much for losing and camping isn't really an option (at least, it's not a way to move forward). You might get to a point where improving your score is hard, but at least, you don't risk losing everything with a loss (at worst, you gain nothing).

Winning 100 games would give you: 62k pts at 250, 75k pts at 275 and 90k pts at 300. Winning 75 games at 300 gives you 67k points.

It still requires a lot of dedication, but it makes spamming less of an issue (not that spamming games is a bad thing, it's better than camping IMO, but I don't think it's a great way to establish the 'best' players).

It still makes the initial rating climb very valuable though.