1) The ladder is now for real. I used to play the same people on multi-day games and had gotten to think that these were the best on the site. If I wanted different opponents I played real-time based, challenge games. However, these players, with only the odd exception, I could usually beat without much effort.

I am pleased to say that there are now a whole whack load of players I enjoy playing with now. All the usual suspects (you know who you are) and many new members that have taken the time to learn the nuances of the game, and have become quite the challenge as a result. I feel as though I need to play my very best game against most of the top 25, otherwise I won't win.

2) The one downside to better quality opponents is less games and slower moves. But that it produces better results is just a myth. I want to apologize to those below me for resting on my laurels and being relatively ladder inactive. My sloth-like mentality may have held my position but it has also produced plenty of rust in my game. I have lost 4 of my last 5 matches and fear that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Alas, I find comfort in the ol' adage that sometimes you must take a small step back before making a big leap forward.

I have just increased my game count to 3 and will be leaving it there for the duration of the summer* Its time to put up or shut up and get the hell out of the top 10, a place were bravery should be rewarded, not timidness.





* Note: I will be using my first vacation block next week, so don't hold this against me.

I've taken your advise and gotten the hell out of the top 10... HTH

I hadn't checked how far I'd fallen when I no longer saw myself in the top 10, turns out I'm no longer ranked at all. Nor can I see any of the games played more than 3 mos ago. I'm essentially a ladder newb now. Is that really how the ranking system is supposed to work? You play a whole lot, then play a lot less and then go to being unranked. Seems odd to me. Even if the games no longer count toward weighting, I expected them to stay accessible and count toward qualifying ont he ladder. Of course, I also think they should count toward rank.

Given how friggin slow games are, losing games at 90 days is a pretty weird system .

I think the reasoning for 10 games being required for being ranked is because less then 10 games can give an unreliable ranking..

say I play 100 games, and my last one was a win against Impaller.. once the first 99 fade away if we can still stay on the ladder with just 1 game in the ranking period then I would be the top player, despite having been inactive for a considerable amount of time

Also it's bogus that Ace Windu waited until just before the 3 day limit expired on our 1x1 ladder game to even pick territories (after waiting to join) and then turned on his vacation mode. Not even the courtesy of a heads-up posting. The 1x1 ladder was an extremely slow, increasingly boring exercise before, now that players can pause their games for up to 50 additional days with vacations and take up to 3 days per move, it's ridiculous. A game can literally expire and not count before it even ends (if you push it to the max, getting to 90 days is not that hard, you can do it in 14 turns).

Perrin -- which is why games should count for less over time, not have an arbitrary expiration date.

Assuming Ace pushes it, he'll have gone 16 days in a ladder before he picks territories. What fun!

Players must have ten unexpired games to qualify for a rank. As Perrin pointed out, the current algorithm is unreliable with fewer data points.

Duke - it sounds like all of your complaints in this thread have to do with only playing one game at a time. You keep complaining about how slow it is, yet you're the one limiting the speed. Bump up to 5 and I doubt you'll be complaining about it being slow.

Also - playing one game at a time is a right that's supposed to be earned by maintaining 30 or more unexpired games. Unfortunately, if someone gets to 30 and changes to 1 game at a time and then suddenly slows down considerably, WarLight doesn't automatically bump them back to 2 automatically when they fall under 30 games. This is something I intend to fix.

In the last 3 months, you've only played 8 games. If this was fixed, the ladder would have long ago bumped you up to 2 games at a time. This means you would have finished 16 which would qualify you for a rank.

Thanks for increasing your game count. Now let's see if you can put an end to our 2v2 lucky streak :-)

A second for Fizzer's response! Getting bumped off the ladder for inactivity is a great idea. It keeps the ladder dynamic and makes sure you have to fight to keep your ranking. If the top ranked players refuse to join games, then how can players below them advance? If you care about your ranking that much, add a few games and get it back. Easy solution to a non-problem.

Also, this partly explains why the entire ladder jumped up 5+ places with no-one going down. A whole bunch of people were either moved off the rankings or left on purpose. I was wondering what happened. One of the things you can notice easily now that the up/down arrows are on the ladder rankings.

yes! Everyone increase your counts! I have four open slots out of my five ^^

I have 5 open slots out of my 5 :/

variety is nice, but I'd rather have 4 new games against heyheuhei than nothing ^^

Fizz -- I agree I could address the problem of not finding an active game by playing more simultaneously. That wasn't really my point with regard to the possibility for extremely slow play by exploining the vacations feature. It was really more of a complaint about Ace.

It so happens that I'm going on vacation for two weeks on August 8th to a house on an island where I'll have no land line or internet access. Just a blackberry and a cell (to the extent there's signal). I've been avoiding tournaments or longer games sicne these plans were made and was going to withdraw from the ladder next week until I return. I thought 3 weeks would be enough lead time. I didn't count on a 16 day delay to start my game though.

I don't like how the hard cut off at 3 mos works with the ladders. I suppose it's been discussed elsewhere and my comments are mostly repetitive of those comments. Although it was a surprise to see myself unranked again. In some ways it's fun to get some easier matches and reclimb the ladder, but I don't think access to old games should disappear and I don't think one should become unranked. I suggest that games be weighted to a number greater than 0%, so that does not happen. Do you think the concensus is that people want a hard cut off for all ladder games at 3 mos? Or is this something on your list to address at some later point?

lol -- while I was typing people expressed that they like the switch to unranked status. So I guess it's somewhat popular.

To the advocates -- I'm fine with my rank dropping due to inactivity, I just didn't want to switch to unranked and lose access to my historical ladder games. It's a more nuanced distinction.

I think it would be nice if it was possible for the ↓↑'s to not recognize when the change in ladder position is due to a player leaving ranking..
I don't know if it would currently be possible with how the ranking system is.. but would be nice :P