If there are 107 players that can beat AI more than 1 in every 3 games, then I’m starting to seriously doubt the accuracy of your ELO system.

For the record, I 100% agree with Tog. He speaks for all in Harmony.

of course not, but the problem is that he assumes my CWR is accurate which of course is not the case.
anyway, doesn't really matter for this discussion besides the point that long-term, someone like me would always play against the same opponent which of course is quite boring.

I agree with WarTog for the record.

WarTog am always puzzled by suggestions and how to improve on Clan Wars, because they almost always come from players who don't seem to understand what Clan Wars is. And it is hard to know what to do with suggestions primarily aimed at turning CW into a completely different thing that it never set out to be in the first place.

Hello, WarTog, apparently you are also very keen to start off with unbased personal attacks. I do understand what clan wars are. You don't understand what I am talking about. How about that?

First, and most important, one must understand that Clan Wars is clearly not intended to be the Olympics of WarZone. There are plenty of highly-competitive Clan Ladders and Clan Tournaments and individual events that are specifically designed to weed out the chaff and crown the Greatest Athlete(s) of WZ.

Clan Wars is not that. At all.

Who claimed it was that? Not me.

As peculiar (and sometimes puzzling) as Clan Wars is, it is actually a surprisingly well-designed game when you understand that Clan Wars was specifically designed to create an activity that ALL MEMBERS OF A CLAN can play together as a team. A single Clan Wars team can include one of the All-Time Great Champions of WZ and the newest of noobs who just joined two days ago - and everyone in between - and they can all play together and contribute to their team's success in their own way.

It is not well designed game if it wants to be engaging to ALL MEMBERS OF A CLAN. In fact my main issue is that it isn't engaging for all members of the clan. In fact what it does it, it gives easy wins to some and impossible mathcups for others. I don't want to change clan wars into anything, I want to make it fun for everyone, not just the mid-range players in the clan. The way it currently works, the strongest players in a clan get 0 challenge games, the weakest get impossibly hard games and a few guys in the middle get decent games - unless the clan has all players of equal quality. My aim is EXACTLY to create a system that will be engaging for both the newest noob in the clan and the most seasoned pro. The current matchmaker does not achieve this.

Clan Wars is NOT intended to be an Olympian event where only the world's greatest athletes should even think about competing.

This was the point of this whole thread actually.

Clan Wars is much more akin to The Boston Marathon.

It is nothing like that. It would be like that if we would be dumped into a large F4A, but instead we play a bunch of independent 1v1 games.

Most runners (and spectators) are just there to have fun. Challenge themselves a little. Maybe break their own personal record. Maybe beat their best friend's time.

Again, not comparable to bunch of separated 1v1 games. Losing all the time might (and is apparently) be fun for you, but for most people it isn't. In a marathon you run against your old time, the challenge of finishing it, and to compete against a guy you picked who runs at the similar speed you do. In CW you compete against 1 player that the matchmaker gave you.

So if someone were to start suggesting changes to the Boston Marathon that would make it "better" at accurately determining a winner - (Special lanes for the pro runners? Give the elite athletes a 10-minute head start so they don't have a bunch of randos bumping into them at the starting line? Maybe establish restrictions to eliminate runners who aren't "serious"? (I mean, seriously, why are there wheelchairs out there?)) - such suggestions would be a complete waste of everyone's time, because they completely miss the whole point of having the Marathon in the first place.

The problem with the current system that it IS geared towards the top clans and is actually causing all the issues that you say you don't want to happen to the Marathon, which is still the worst possible example you could give for CW.

To clear up one of the biggest misconceptions I see over and over: CLAN WARS is absolutely NOT designed to honor the team with the BEST CWR!

What are you even on about? The current matchmaker specifically is designed to give the best possible matches ONLY to the clans with the BEST CWR. You keep bringing up the exact failings of the current clan wars and then pretend that changing the matchmaker would cause them. Under what rock are you living, exactly?

If it *was* then First Place would go to the team with the best CWR! Python would win every season, and probably solved. But clearly Clan Wars is not about obtaining the highest CWR, so all these are idea about how to create a more 'accurate' CWR are ultimately pointless.

Again, you completely misunderstood every single thing in this thread.

One of the most wildly misguided of the well-meaning suggestions is the idea that CWR should be by Individual Player rather than by Clan. This sounds unquestionably fair, but is also, I'm sorry to say, an incredibly terrible idea.

Why? This is one thing you actually failed to explain. Why is giving the noob player a noob opponent and giving the pro player a pro opponent bad, exactly?

The obvious reason is that if CW switched to an individual CWR - you would see a lot more of the same players matching each other over and over. (Which, see above, is not the goal of CW)

That already happens. To me at least, in the last season I faced one same dude 3 times in a row. Also, you are judging something that doesn't exist based on something that is easy to fix.

The second, perhaps less obvious reason, is that it would be devastating for all of the smaller clans. There are many many clans that are essentially built around one experienced player (usually the Clan Founder) and a couple of their friends plus a bunch of noobs that they are training to get better. If you strip out a fledgling Clan's only reliable winner and dump them into a talent pool where their WinRate will automatically drop to 50%, you will inevitably crush any hopes of a bright spot in that clan's day.

Yes, because having 1 guy with 100% win rate and 5 guys with 0% win rate is better than having 6 guys with 50% win rate. How?

You want all the players on a team to be competing in roughly the same talent pool, so that your team has something in common. My Clan (Harmony) is currently in a close race with Prime (who also have a similar CWR) So very often, when we go out to play, our whole team draws Frogs as their opponents. This is a good thing, because we get to be a little competitive with each other to see who beats our rivals, or who beats them fastest, or etc. The sense of camaraderie and shared purpose simply wouldn't be the same if Texx was always fighting an MB and Old Yeller was fighting a Prime and WarTog was fighting a Clanzilla.

This literally started 1 day after I made this thread. Before that we were fighting with Prime and you guys were fighting randoms at the bottom of the pool. Now you're fighting Prime and we are fighting randoms at the bottom of the pool. Did your clan have no camaraderie and shared purpose a week ago when every single of your players was facing a different tiny clan as opponent or getting free wins and no games? I don't see more of you playing now than a week ago.

If there are 107 players that can beat AI more than 1 in every 3 games, then I’m starting to seriously doubt the accuracy of your ELO system.

It is harder to get wrong than to get right, as long as you are not Fizzer. However you have to keep 2 things in mind:

- OrangeSpider has not revealed his K factor. If he put a very low K factor then AI might have not reached his true rating yet. However if he has put a very high K factor, AI might have been punished by a few losses at the end.

- The rating depends heavily on the templates you play. E.g. I am certain that there is a lot of rating moving towards strong players playing 2v2. I have run into some exceptionally strong players in Medium Earth Local Deployment. It does not mean that they necessarily beat AI at random templates but they go something like 19/20 in a particular CW season. Of course they would get trashed by the M'Hunters bomb meta if they dare showed up but well... they don't.

There also might be a temporal aspect when comparing clan war players who played at a different point in time. I believe the current playing field is quite weaker than it used to be. However this is difficult for me to quantify and I am just adding it as a possibility to influence the rating.

Edited 9/28/2023 11:38:24

It is harder to get wrong than to get right, as long as you are not Fizzer.

Actually I have the same data on this as he has. There is no more data.

- OrangeSpider has not revealed his K factor. If he put a very low K factor then AI might have not reached his true rating yet. However if he has put a very high K factor, AI might have been punished by a few losses at the end.

I did. I use sliding K from 320 for 0% confidence and 32 for 100% confidence. Start ELO is 1200 and I use 10^(ELO / 400) for the probability calculations. Pretty standard stuff actually.

There also might be a temporal aspect when comparing clan war players who played at a different point in time. I believe the current playing field is quite weaker than it used to be. However this is difficult for me to quantify and I am just adding it as a possibility to influence the rating.

This is true actually if you have islands of players that don't have crossover players then they might have completely different ELO scales, this is actually something I haven't considered, but will have to check. Because comparing people from different islands is pointless. This might actually introduce errors in my calculations that I wasn't aware of. It can't be too bad though because when I used the ELO I got from the first 5200 or so time slots to predict the results for the current season, the predictions were spot on.

If there are 107 players that can beat AI more than 1 in every 3 games, then I’m starting to seriously doubt the accuracy of your ELO system.

Well, perhaps we should test it, according to the ratings, I should be able to win about 2 out of 10 games against him, I'd be willing to play 10 S1V1, SEAD or SE1W to see what would happen. Or even 20 or 100 to get a better sample size. I like to play this game. :)

You sure you want to lose 10 games on S1v1? We can do it, if you want :)

This is true actually if you have islands of players that don't have crossover players then they might have completely different ELO scales, this is actually something I haven't considered, but will have to check. Because comparing people from different islands is pointless.

I don't believe this to be completely true. If e.g. next CW season, for the sake of the argument, 5000 complete noobs joined CW, then a currently average player would turn above average which would reflect in his then higher rating. However another average player who stopped before the 5000 noobs have joined will keep his average rating.

I don't believe this to be a very extreme effect but I do believe that this is also what is happening in practice. CW used to be actually a relatively high level competition for a small amount of time. The "idlers" flooding CW is something which then later happened along the line.

People aren’t attacking you if they’re sharing opinions. This is a forum board :P

Edit: more bo11???

Edited 9/28/2023 11:58:25

You sure you want to lose 10 games on S1v1? We can do it, if you want :)

YES! I'm making the game right now!

I don't believe this to be completely true. If e.g. next CW season, for the sake of the argument, 5000 complete noobs joined CW, then a currently average player would turn above average which would reflect in his then higher rating. However another average player who stopped before the 5000 noobs have joined will keep his average rating.

Well if that happened then the ELO of the current players would go up as a result. And they would seem to be better compared to old players who stopped playing but it wouldn't affect a matchmaker as soon as the points stabilize in their new position. So that shouldn't be a problem, unless you want to compare old players for new ones.

People aren’t attacking you if they’re sharing opinions. This is a forum board :P

Not when they are sharing opinions, but stuff like this are actual personal attacks:

WarTog am always puzzled by suggestions and how to improve on Clan Wars, because they almost always come from players who don't seem to understand what Clan Wars is.

There were quite a few of those in this thread alone.

Yes because you’re suggesting to individualize a team event ;)

It’s part of the MAJOR problem in team ladders right now. It is impossible to give your teammates a gold trophy unless you all started at the same time with same rating. The system is rigged against playing with your friends. We don’t want similar stuff in clan wars i think, but stats are always super cool and fun

YES! I'm making the game right now!

Haha, sure, this is fun.
I'm not really sure which result would actually prove something from either side, but anyways.
While we're at it, it should be noted that Elo is not very good at comparing players who are far apart, it's better at comparing peer groups. But that's a side note.

Yes because you’re suggesting to individualize a team event ;)

It’s part of the MAJOR problem in team ladders right now. It is impossible to give your teammates a gold trophy unless you all started at the same time with same rating. The system is rigged against playing with your friends. We don’t want similar stuff in clan wars i think, but stats are always super cool and fun

Not really. I don't think how giving people more fair matches would individualize clan wars. If one of my sons would start to play right now I wouldn't recommend them to join in for clan wars because I know that they wouldn't get beginner opponents if they are in the same clan with me. (Well maybe they would because our CWR is that low at the moment, but let's just ignore that). In fact I think giving bad players bad opponents as well would encourage them to play more. We are still a team and still collecting points together, but now they can have fun too.

Haha, sure, this is fun.
I'm not really sure which result would actually prove something from either side, but anyways.
While we're at it, it should be noted that Elo is not very good at comparing players who are far apart, it's better at comparing peer groups. But that's a side note.

Honestly with a sample size of 10 it is unlikely we would prove anything either way. But I am actually curious if I could eek out 2 wins out of 10 or not. Also we play this game for fun, so who cares what we are proving anyway. :) Also, just to be fully transparent, according to the ELO probability calculations, I should win 2.6412255589852359431801899530496 games out of 10, but if I win 2 I will be VERY happy.

Edited 9/28/2023 12:09:42

Well if that happened then the ELO of the current players would go up as a result. And they would seem to be better compared to old players who stopped playing but it wouldn't affect a matchmaker as soon as the points stabilize in their new position. So that shouldn't be a problem, unless you want to compare old players for new ones.

Ah, sorry for the confusion. My comment was not regarding the matchmaker but with regard of you saying that a certain number of players are better than AI. I was just pointing out numerous reasons why this is a difficult statement and one of the reasons was that you are potentially comparing players who played in different points of time.

Ah, sorry for the confusion. My comment was not regarding the matchmaker but with regard of you saying that a certain number of players are better than AI. I was just pointing out numerous reasons why this is a difficult statement and one of the reasons was that you are potentially comparing players who played in different points of time.

Nah, I was only looking at players who played at least 10 games in the last 3 months in that specific case. No point in looking at people who are no longer playing.


edit: Just to jump back into the no game problem. The timeslot that just ended:
https://www.warzone.com/Clans/War?ID=37&Timeslot=5596
SEAD - 2 players from my clan got no games even though there were enough players
SECB - 2 players from cats got no games (1 free win + 1 ngf) even though there were enough players (one cat could go against OP instead of PE going against OP and one could go against PE (pi actually has higher personal ELO than the PE player)

Edited 9/28/2023 12:38:58

@OrangeSpider: That is another topic from the individual matchmaking. The current algorithm goes from highest to lowest rated clan and always looks for the next lower rated clan and assigns an opponent from that clan. This does not necessary maximize the amount of played games.

Thinking really quick I believe that a fix would not be that difficult, if you assign not starting from the highest rated clan but always pick the clan with the current highest amount of not yet assigned players. I also did this in the M'Hunters ladder and there always is at maximum 1 player without a game. However the result might cause the side effect here of the ladder sometimes pairing clans which are not next to each other in terms of rating under some corner cases.

Edited 9/28/2023 13:00:07

Thinking really quick I believe that a fix would not be that difficult, if you assign not starting from the highest rated clan but always pick the clan with the current highest amount of not yet assigned players. I also did this in the M'Hunters ladder and there always is at maximum 1 player without a game.

That's just 1 of the issues I am trying to address. You're right though, you can match all clans unless a clan has more than 50% of the players in the time slot.

For anyone interested, we reached halftime in our series and have a break now. It's 5-0

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=35732205
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=35732301
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=35732420
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=35732487
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=35732572

I was sweating in 2nd game.

SEAD is newbie friendly enough

A bit offtopic, but anything with 1 minute boottime is absolutely terrible for beginners. I stopped playing SEAD and SE1W solely because it's simply unplayable for me. Had this been my first multiplayer experience (instead of 5 min boot autogames on ME), I'd have left this site immediately, instead of sticking around for over a decade.

Yeah if there's anything newbies hate it's when games move fast and end quickly

You don't introduce absolute newcomers to chess by having them play the bullet variant.