How the rating system works and why high-ratings act strangely

**Ringel** · 09-26-2011, 01:42 PM

Wow! Old thread!

The original numbers were surmised from the old rankings. Scroll down on this page to season 1: http://www.shadowera.com/rankings.php Yes, they likely are off.

**KRYPLR** · 09-29-2011, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by Codepunk

This is excellent, very comprehensive if a bit long-winded. I'm glad somebody took the time and effort to properly explain the rating system. Hopefully if we can get this stickied we'll see a couple less threads whining about how broken the rating system is and less people thinking of it as a "score".

Honestly, rating has a lot more to do with good matchmaking than anything else. It's put in place so that people can be playing against others in their skill "range", which as explained here is quite a wide category. The only thing I think is somewhat off is this idea of the top 20 highest rated players getting recignition as the "best" in a hall of fame, when in fact there may be many players in the same skill range who just didn't have the same luck with the rating system.

Then why are 220+ rated players facing off against 100 rated players, these two ate nowhere near the same level....and which the hell has a 400+ rating...come on really? Why not have a system as in professional sports where there is W-L and a W% that way people who are consistently winning will match up to others who are winning and not beating up on people who are just starting out ir are in a losing slump....idk about anyone else but I don't like to drop a couple game then be torn apart by a pro. This is demoralizing and may cause people to leave the game.

**IssacFrost** · 10-14-2011, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by KRYPLR

Then why are 220+ rated players facing off against 100 rated players, *these two ate nowhere near the same level....and which the hell has a 400+ rating...come on really? Why not have a system as in professional sports where there is W-L and a W% that way people who are consistently winning will match up to others who are winning and not beating up on people who are just starting out ir are in a losing slump....idk about anyone else but I don't like to drop a couple game then be torn apart by a pro. This is demoralizing and may cause people to leave the game.

What you are suggesting is a score system and the OP already pointed out Ratings are not scores but a system that gives a "confidence" value on your person. It gauges how 'skilled' a player is, not how many wins/losses/draws he or she has but rather how the system 'expects' you to perform.

Let me quote on this so you can better understand what it is doing

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

"In layman's terms, TrueSkill maintains a belief on the skill of each player; every time a player plays a game, the system accordingly changes the perceived skill of the player and acquires more confidence about this perception.

A player's skill is represented as a normal distribution *characterized by a mean value of μ (mu, representing perceived skill) and a variance of σ (sigma, representing how much "confidence" the system has in the player's μ value). As such *can be interpreted as the probability that the player's "true" skill is x.

On Xbox Live, players start with μ = 25 and σ = 25 / 3; μ always increases after a win and always decreases after a loss. The extent of actual updates depends on each player's σ and on how "surprising" the outcome is to the system. Unbalanced games, for example, result in either negligible updates when the favorite wins, or huge updates when the favorite loses surprisingly."