I don't think the activity bonus will work as an incentive to play more games (and thus inflate the MDL appeal, which I guess is the underlying goal here). As for me, players are already playing the maximum their personal time allow.
Hoever, this bonus will penalyze players whom time for MDL is more limited than other players. As such, this could actually play against MDL appeal.
If anything, 4 points per finished game could be reduced, to 2 or 1, for example. The incentive to play more would still be there (and 20 or 40 points per period can already make a difference versus a close ranked player), and "slow players" (by that I mean those at 2 games at once) would not be penalyzed that much.

Edited 7/31/2017 17:46:25

@Rento,

Well here's where we disagree: 40 or 50 points difference is a big deal if you ask me. I mean, I was never in top of that ladder, but from what I've heard you get literally a few points for every win up there. (Can I ask for confirmation MotD?)

To put things in perspective:
- finishing a game every 2,5 day gives you full 80 points
- every 3 days - 70 points (-10 points already! just half a day difference in playing speed)
- every 5 days - 40 points (40 points behind)
- every 7 days - 30 points (50 points behind!)

Does that really seem fine to you guys?

I can confirm that you do get a lot of points for winning games(which is great!). However, in the old system all of these points would be drained due to the games expiring(which is why it was hard to rise). We have solved that problem, so 40-50 points isn't that big of a deal even for someone at the very top(I could get +40 right now with 3-4 wins against the top 10).

When you say that this is unfair to those with lower activity, you're making an assumption that the rating of the inactive player is as accurate as the active one. Every time you play more games your rating is more accurate as you're putting more points on the line(which will be taken away if you lose). Someone who has played a hundred games to get a 1700 Elo rating has done much more than someone who got to 1700 with just 10 games(but a pure Elo rating system doesn't reflect that). My goal isn't to force everyone to play hundreds of games. Most people should be able to get a reasonable bonus from activity even if they play at their own pace.

Math Wolf's detailed reasoning is something I definitely agree with. However, like he said, we can definitely tweak the system if it is significantly skewed towards active players. Let us observe the behavior over the next week and revisit this conversation.

Edited 7/31/2017 19:01:03

@AG/Beren

Is there any way the "Best Rating Achieved" can be recalculated factoring in this new rating system? Ex. I had 1750+ on the old rating system, but with this new one, my current rating (below my former max in relation to the old rating system) is automatically above the old max rating I had on the old rating system. I'm not sure whether the data has been lost, but I think the conversion of old -> new should also apply to the former max rating achieved.

I agree with this also, though probably don't do it until you finalize the fine-tuning of the rating system. As is, the historical graphs are pretty meaningless, so it would be nice to have it back dated.

The best rating achieved could possibly be recalculated. But the history charts are going to be much harder to calculate. I do not store information pertaining to players joining/leaving the ladder. So I would need a way to reconstruct that using the existing charts. I'm also not sure if it is the right thing to do. If the competition ranked players for the last 9 months using a certain metric, the historical charts should reflect that in my opinion(Even the trophies were handed out using that metric). I'll give it some more thought and get back to you on that.

Edited 7/31/2017 18:31:05

@Mike

I don't think the activity bonus will work as an incentive to play more games (and thus inflate the MDL appeal, which I guess is the underlying goal here).

I couldn't disagree more. The intent of this change is not to "inflate MDL appeal". MDL is as appealing as it needs to be. This change is meant to improve the accuracy of the rating system with regards to estimating the skill level of a player. Someone who plays more has a more accurate rating.

As for me, players are already playing the maximum their personal time allow.
Hoever, this bonus will penalyze players whom time for MDL is more limited than other players. As such, this could actually play against MDL appeal.
If anything, 4 points per finished game could be reduced, to 2 or 1, for example. The incentive to play more would still be there (and 20 or 40 points per period can already make a difference versus a close ranked player), and "slow players" (by that I mean those at 2 games at once) would not be penalyzed that much.

It's unfortunate if this change reduces the appeal of MDL in any way. But I don't think it should influence the decisions made for the good of the ladder(which this change is, in my opinion).

Edited 7/31/2017 18:49:15

I like this update.

Good stuff.

I don't see any issue with the historical ranks staying as is, but the rating chart becomes a bit less meaningful, since you have huge jumps in rating that are simply due to the rating system changing, rather than due to actual results.

Nice update! I agree with the activity bonus, but I feel it is too large.

In general I realls like the update and I think the activity bonus is fine as it is. If it is really to much, we can reduce it later, but I do not think so. I only have one thing that I am not sure about:

This system also introduces an additional component which will converge your Elo rating towards 1500 if you have been inactive for too long. The criteria* is that if you haven't finished a game in the last 50 days, your rating will converge towards 1500 by 1 point every day after the 50th day. For ex - If my rating is 1800, and I've been inactive for 80 days, my rating starts decreasing(if rating was <1500, it increases) by 1 every day after the 51st day. So by the 80th day, my rating would be 1800-30 = 1770. Over time, if I go completely inactive,I will converge to 1500

I do not understand the necessaritiy of that. You are reducing the points within the system. For what exact reason? Why not keeping the rating as it is? And force the player to play games to rank again?

Edited 7/31/2017 19:54:33

As far as I'm aware ratings will converge to 1500. If your rating was higher, the system Will take away points. If your rating was lower, the system adds points, so should be balanced long-term. For the necessity, let's say you play in an era where 2400 rating is possible and you manage to get this. You take place 1 or 2. And you call it quits. Then two years later, the ratings have deflated a bunch and the highest rating is 2100. You start playing with your 2400 rating again. That rating is not accurate anymore. Playing a bunch of games to get ranked again may lower your rating, but with a max of 16 (k/2) points per game, it would take a long time for your rating to converge to an accurate representation of your skill level. Thst way your rating is inflated for some period of time. And that inflated rating isn't nice. The same would be true as well when your rating went back to 1500, but you'd get underrated and this way you can't abuse the rating system to get an overinflated rank. Anyways, I'm no expert on rating systems, so grain of salt with this post and everything

I do not understand the necessaritiy of that. You are reducing the points within the system. For what exact reason? Why not keeping the rating as it is? And force the player to play games to rank again?

That's actually the same "accuracy" argument at one hand, and a practical argument at the other hand:

* accuracy: after a long absence, the ELO rating when the player left is less relevant as his/her skill might have changed. Additionally, even if the skill of the player didn't change, the skill of others might have (e.g. all players may have become better), meaning that the rating does not reflect the correct skill anymore. (EDIT: plus what Master Farah explains, more or less members can also impact ratings.) If variance estimates were used, these could be increased artificially to reflect this this new uncertainty (this is what RTL should do, but doesn't). However, in the absence of variance, the next best thing is to (very slowly) move the rating back to the most neutral point, 1500.

* practical: with games themselves not expiring, people who did bad and left consequently, can stil get a new chance with less baggage similar to game expiration if they leave long enough. Meanwhile, people who did really well, can't just come back and claim a high spot with limited games, they'd have to prove themselves again. Both these effects are desired.

I think this concept itself is very good, but the parameters may be up for discussion. Is a 50 days wait to start this process to slow or too fast? Is the point per day too fast or too slow? These numbers were made up on the spot (50 days = max vacation for non-members, point per day well, it's easy?) and seem reasonable to me, but one could argue about that I guess.
With these numbers, after 5 months (150 days), you are 100 points closer to 1500. Meanwhile, very high ranked players have a cushion of more than a year before they have to start anew completely, which at that point is fair I think.

Edited 7/31/2017 20:22:42

I assume you still need 20 games to get ranked. Since you don't have game expiration, if you rejoin the ladder after having played 20 games will you immediately be ranked?

If so, I can imagine a situation where a player rejoins after a long absence, with their rating having been regressed back to 1500. Are they immediately ranked in this scenario? Then they would effectively be ranked after 0 games.

You still need 20 games in the last 5 months to get ranked. This criteria is just for ranking purposes and has no effect on the rating system.

Updates

• Fix a rounding bug for win rate on the clan page. Thanks to Kezzo for reporting it.
  
• Implemented a back-end change that should make sure that very active players who are at the cap can "bank" some activity points. If you accumulated points above the cap(up to 100), they are retained in the back-end, so that you can keep maximum bonus(of 80) for a few days after finishing the last game (capped at 100 to avoid the extremely active players remaining at +80 a month after they leave!)
  
• Added a delay system while matchmaking. If a player changes their game count, they are forced to wait for a random number of CLOT update cycles(1-3) before they are allocated new games. This is to prevent gaming the ladder and picking your opponents. I've wanted to implement this feature for a long time now,
  so I'm glad it's finally done!

I accidentally ran the activity bonus decay component twice for today. So everyone has their activity bonus decay by 3.96% today :(. Since it's quite a bit of work to give points back to everyone, I'm going to let this be. I'm sure everyone will forgive me!

"I've wanted to implement this feature for a long time now,
so I'm glad it's finally done!"

You are just affraid i will pick you and rekt you! :D

Haha jk, good updates!

deadman rigging as usual and steal our precious activity points :(

do you even got activity points Timi? :D :D

And I already got so few of those precious points. Who thought of such ridiculous feature!

It's actually in Timi's advantage. Buns, ranked just before him, has slightly more points to lose.:-)

Few ideas:
- opponent rating in game history - as far as i can see it shows current opponent rating. Rating at time the game ended could be also useful.
- popup(?) with explanation about Activity Bonus and how it's calculated - i needed to check here what it's, now it's fresh so it's easy to find, but digging in this thread to find it will become inconvenient after some time.
- "players ranked near you" tab - there are only 10 players in TOP 10, all the rest need to scrole the entire ranking to check their neighbourhood.

Also i don't know how long it take before i got annoyed by all those bizarre maps(probably sooner than later:P), but i'd like to Fizzer make warlight ladder in similar manner (or just hire you to do it ;))

Its okay, motd and me agreed that he needs to handicap me to make it fair for him ;)

i also want all those things sneeze mentioned! :)