Mostly out of boredom, I have created a spreadsheet which can be used to calculate a performance rating for any Warlight player. In short, what it does is compare your actual winning percentage for each type of game to your expected winning percentage. (For example, you would be expected to win 50% of your 1v1 games, on average. Doing better than this will increase your rating, and vice versa).

A more detailed description of the method can be found in the UserVoice suggestion I made a while back for this rating method: http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1166107-simple-player-rating-system

Long story short: A rating above 1.0 means that you win more games than the average player would be expected to, and vice versa.


Here's how to use the spreadsheet:
1. Visit the Warlight profile for the player whose rating you want to check (in a game, click their name, then choose "View Full Profile")
2. Scroll own to the "Ranked Games" portion of the profile. Copy to clipboard the entire set of game results, starting BELOW the "Completed XX ranked games..." line. For most people, the first line will be "2 player FFA: ..."
3. Visit the spreadsheet on Google Docs: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AtX-tYU73JXCdGV2bFY0c3pNN21FNlptYmx5dlB2dUE&hl=en&output=html
4. Select "Edit this page" and sign in (you will need a Google account)
5. Make sure you are on the "Data" sheet (sheet tabs are at the bottom of the spreadsheet)
6. In the top left cell (A1), Paste the game results which you copied from the player profile. You may need to try multiple methods of pasting to get it to work properly (for some reason, it doesn't work for me if I right click and choose Paste, but pressing Ctrl+V works fine). Column A should now be filled with the game results.
7. Switch to the "Calculations and Results" spreadsheet to view the results.

You will be most interested in the last two columns, which are both labelled "Rating." The first rating column provides a performance rating for each game type (1v1, 3 player FFA, etc.), and the last column provides a single rating for all game types combined.


Known issues: Currently, games with uneven members on teams are not properly supported. I'm not sure there is a good way to calculate an expected winning percentage for a 4v3 team game, for example. For now, the spreadsheet just assumes that all teams have an even number of players -- in the future, I may make it ignore all uneven team games.

Hopefully some of you enjoy this! I think it's quite fun, and a nice way to get a quick idea of how strong a certain player is.

When I click "Edit this page" it tells me that I don't have permission.

Also, regarding this:

> in the future, I may make it ignore all uneven team games.

The profile page already ignores uneven team games (they won't show up.) So I bet there's no work for you to do there.

This is a poor approach to ranking players because it ignores relative strength of opponants (i.e. 3 time champ Randy Couture's won/loss record tells us nothing about his skill as a fighter). This approach yields nothing more than what we can tell by looking at the win percentages on a profile. Calling it a rating is misleading.

The assumption that the average player will win 50% of his 1x1 challenges is faulty. If every game were a random match-up of any two players it might be true, but if you choose to play very good opponants exclusively (as most good players do), a 50% win percentage only tells you that you're as good as the people you play with, it doesn't say anything about your skill relative to the average player. The converse is even more true. If you only play newbies you'll have a great win percentage and, by this method, a great rating, but that will say little about your skill relative to an average player, let alone a good player.

randy thats lame, me and n00b played loads of 2v3 and won more than half of them :/

seriously... ask me for history for proof -____-

Randy, you're right -- the sharing should be sorted out now, and anyone should be able to use the spreadsheet (google account no longer required!). Good to know about the uneven team games, I guess I don't have to account for that.

Duke,

Yes, I realize that this doesn't take into account opponent strength (I did mention that in the UserVoice suggestion). Still, I disagree that this is no better than looking at the win percentages on the profile.

First of all, on the profile, all the win percentages are separate. This provides a single number to look at and see if you are doing better or worse than average. To get this yourself you would have to know the expected winning percentage for each game type, and compare it to the actual winning percentage. Not that this is difficult to do, but wouldn't you agree that it is easier to just look at a single number? Not to mention the fact that this spreadsheet will calculate a weighted average of your performance across all game types. Good luck calculating that in your head.

Now, certainly for people who are exclusively playing against the best players, this method will tend to under-rate their performance. But for people who play a good number of open games, tournaments, etc., I think this is a really nice shorthand way to see how they're doing. All rating systems have downfalls. This isn't intended to be an absolute measurement of player strength.

one number instead of lots of numbers is always nice. But it's not a rating. It does not provide a means of evaluating the skill of one player versus another.

I don't know what this number really tells you, except an amalgomation of win percentages. Why does winning a 10x10 say anything about your skill? Your rating would weight it the same as a 1x1 (even odds), but a 1x1 says a lot more about a particular player's ability.

"Why does winning a 10x10 say anything about your skill? Your rating would weight it the same as a 1x1 (even odds), but a 1x1 says a lot more about a particular player's ability."

Now that's a valid point, and one that I can certainly address. What would you suggest? Offhand, maybe the credit should be evenly divided among the team members? So a 1v1 win would only improve your rating by 3 times as much as a 3v3 win, for example.

Your permissions are not working.

Sorry again, it seems the link changed when I changed the permissions. Try this one: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtX-tYU73JXCdGV2bFY0c3pNN21FNlptYmx5dlB2dUE&hl=en&authkey=CIHrn8IE

Shock, I agree it would be cool to reward people who win 2v3s on their profile, since that's a real accomplishment. The only reason they're left out now is because, in the current format, there would be no way to tell if you were on the bigger or smaller side. You wouldn't want people who set up 3v2s where they're on the bigger team to have their profile look the same as yours, since winning on the 2 side is something to be proud of whereas winning on the 3 isn't really an accomplishment.

I'm glad to see that this seems to be getting a decent amount of use (based on the revision history). I just implemented a slight change based on Duke's comment about team games. You will now see a new "Adjusted Rating" column at the far right. This adjusted rating basically gives less credit (and blame) for team games, depending on the team size.

Remember to use the second link that I posted (two posts above this), and not the one in the original post.

the only way to have real ratings is with an elo system. any other method will have similiar problems.

ummm, what is this supposed to be?

"ummm, what is this supposed to be?"

Did you not read the original post?

too much text in the first post. I lol'd and started from post two :p

lol

How about a bump?

The spreadsheet still works, and is still great. For anyone haveing trouble with Google Docs, here's it converted to Excel: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10983006/tmp/Warlight%20Performance%20Rating.xls