GAC ranking is irrational
December 9, 2020 9:22PM
edited December 2020
Are there any plans to fix GAC? When will winning carry the weight it should? Someone with one loss should never rank higher than someone with zero losses no matter how many banners.
What this creates is the ability for someone to be a punk and block you intentionally from ranking by setting a defense that is impossible to clear even if they lose. This would never happen in a legitimate competitive set-up. Nobody should be able to intentionally lose to punish another team.
What this creates is the ability for someone to be a punk and block you intentionally from ranking by setting a defense that is impossible to clear even if they lose. This would never happen in a legitimate competitive set-up. Nobody should be able to intentionally lose to punish another team.
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If you want to make sure that you're able to clear your opponent's defenses save enough for your offense.
I'm not asking for help on how to make sure I clear the defense. No, I don't like it and yes it is irrational. It's irrational for the same reason no other competitive structure offers a path to ranking above others who are undefeated when you have LOST. Do you understand this? Yes, it's "the way it is". And "the way it is" is stupid, hence the post. Thanks.
Nope. That player should have a record of 0-0-12. Ties don't count as a win or loss where adults set things up. Thanks for bringing up that irrationality as well.
That is not a tie counting as a win, it's a win counting as a win. They win by the rules of engagement, so not irrational, actually quite logical.
How would you measure 2 players who never face each other and face different calibers of players?
Logic would dictate that you use metrics from the battle since not all wins are created equal.
Unless you think the quoted situation makes a player better than the other due to calling all wins equal (which seems a little irrational).
No, if the score ends in a tie it's a tie and it isn't counted as a win nor a loss. That's the price you pay for not participating. It's also the price you pay for being unable to manufacture a winner. Not sure how you are reading my comment but it seems like you are trying to find an argument for the same of arguing. You don't position people who don't participate in with people who do. It's among the most remedial quality controls of a competitive environment.
D1 college football says hi
Then why do you complain about not being able to clear your opponents' defense?
If you want a higher score and rank clear their defenses. It's quite simple, really.
I understand that you feel you should rank higher. However, at the same time you don't feel the need to score more championship points - the metric by which you are ranked. That's not exactly rational thinking.
So, in your system, would those ties all have counted as losses for both players? How would that work with the second or third round of matches in the bracket? How would the second round matches be determined if 3 players had a win and 5 players had a loss? Presumably 2 of the winners would face each other, but how is it fair that the 3rd winner gets to face somebody who lost?
I’ve got another hypothetical scenario for you to explain. (This doesn’t happen often to me, but others in my guild face this regularly)
- what if Player A were drawn against several people who do nothing other than let their auto defence set? Player A then beats a solitary team (attacking nothing else) to record a win by 50 or so banners.
- Let’s imagine that happened 6 times for Player A throughout the 12 rounds, giving him 6 wins.
- Let’s imagine that the other 6 matches, Player A doesn’t bother attacking at all, resulting in 6 losses.
- Meanwhile, Player B full clears his opponent in all 12 matches. 5 matches he wins, but in the other 7 he loses by 1 banner.
Do you maintain that Player A “deserves” to be ranked above Player B, because they have “won” more matches? Even though Player A has beaten fewer teams in the entire 12 match championship than Player B beat in each and every individual round?
As Kyno mentioned, it doesn’t seem rational to consider all wins of equal merit, and whilst the situation I describe is hypothetical, there really is nothing to stop it happening for real. And even in division 1, some of my guild mates face opponents who set defence and do not attack multiple times in the same championship, so it really isn’t too big a stretch.
Did you ever hear of tiebreakers? GAC only operates with wins and losses. All ties are broken for the sake of matching players within a GA (within a group of 8). A win is a win disregarding whether it was won bye tiebreaker or not - and that's common in competitive sports (/environments).
The two clear problems are 1) playing with and/or against a strong defense is going to cost you offensive banners and 2) records aren't factored into matchmaking to make the top of the leaderboard face off against each other.
The second one is a fairly easy fix IMO. The first not so much. How do you reward a strong defense without just gifting points to people who face an opponent who doesn't attack, which is fairly common? My personal opinion is awarding banners for margin of victory instead of total offensive banners, with a cap so that there is a max score that doesn't give those with an easy matchup too much of an advantage.
It's actually very funny because there are huge amount of championships in the world (videogames included) with exactly that golden rule - all wins are equal. And if this rule cannot be applied to the GAC scoring, it just one more confirmation that GAC scoring is flawed in several ways, not that the rule itself doesn't seem rational.
Yeah, a win is a win... yet somehow in the GAC many wins and loses are different, with value often controlled not by you but by your opponent. And that's exactly the point which TS is trying to made:
Kind of does, which is why I mentioned it. Voters can’t watch every game so look at the box scores. Good teams run up the score against bad teams to move up the rankings and if #7 barely loses to #8, they will likely drop out of top 10.
That being said, it is what it is. I don’t see how it matters to the average player the way the rewards are structured. You need a GAC focused roster to worry about a top spot finish. So, eh.
Yes, you score and rank partly depends on your opponents and their strategies. Changing the scoring system won't change this fact. We're simply too many participants to have a round-Robin style tournament where we all battle each other one at a time.
No, but we could at least get a little bit closer, right? It's silly to finish GAC with a thousand undefeated accounts.
Been thinking about this suggestion, and I still see flaws with it - though more detail from you might address them.
1) what do people who lose get in your proposal? 0 points, regardless of the margin of defeat? In the present system, even when it’s clear you are going to lose the match, you still have an incentive to score as highly as possible. If the only result of someone continuing to attack when they can no longer win is depriving the victor of a bigger margin, which leads to them getting fewer points, I foresee a huge amount of players just giving up the instant it becomes impossible for them to win.
Which leads to
2) even with a cap, or some sort of scaling, rewarding people for their margin of victory is rewarding them for something they cannot control. Some opponents will fight on when their defeat is certain, others will just stop, and it doesn’t feel right rewarding people based on how quickly their opponent gave up.
My 1st round match is a case in point.
- I won with 2116-891.
- enemy attacked first, cleared one team in bottom zone, failed to beat Rey and TM loaded her
- I then attacked and beat his Rey, then cleared the rest of the board first time for a guaranteed victory
- Enemy never attacked again.
Maybe they gave up when they saw me beat their Rey. Certainly, they’d have had a fair idea I wasn’t going to struggle to beat any of their other teams. But knowing their roster and what they set on D, they had plenty in the tank to clear my top zone and ships.
I did nothing to earn or deserve my margin of victory. The only thing I earned and deserved was my banner count, which brings us back to the current system.
Why is it a goal for you to reduce the number of undefeated accounts?
If throughout the season you have the top of the leader boards face off against each other like you suggested you will reduce the number of undefeated accounts, yes, but a player with a 10-2 record who won the 10 first rounds will have much harder match-ups than a player who lost the first 2 followed by 10 wins. Seems silly to me.
Regarding you previous comment:
Awarding championship score based on winning margin instead of banners scored? Did you think your suggestion through? Why should a full clear win by 1 banner award less championship score than a full clear win where your opponent didn't attack? In both cases the winners accomplished the exact same things: a win and a full clear. Also, how much championship points do you suggest the losing player should be awarded? With the current system the losing player still scores championship points according to the accomplishment. A full clear loss is awarded much more championship points than a loss with no (or low) offensive banners. What would you suggest?
It's called a championship, so yes, the goal IMO should absolutely be to have 1 undefeated account at the end. Now, you can only guarantee 1 undefeated account for every 4096 players, but that seems acceptable to me. Going undefeated is a true accomplishment there.
As for the 10-2 record comparison, that's a simple solution. Group people up based on their record, and have a better 1st - 8th reward pool for those with more wins. But even if you don't, is it really THAT big of a deal? Seems like a small price to pay for more even matchmaking and determining a true champion.
You can still grant GAC points to losing players based on how much they clear. That doesn't have to change. Obviously the exact point values in all of this would be rescaled.
Yes, determining points based on MOV still has problems. I mentioned the free points for someone not attacking in the initial suggestion. But IMO it's a better solution, because you aren't penalized for playing a specific way. You aren't locked out of the top of the leaderboard because someone decided to go 100% defense just to try and screw you.
Although to be honest, why have GAC points at all? You don't need it if you match people up more tournament style as suggested above. Instead of points for winning battles in game and completing feats just reward GAC currency directly. Give out season rewards based on final record. There is no need for a complicated scoring system that just makes things worse.
And even if you could, with a hundred thousand or more players in a division, it would take months of matches and would end up eliminating good players who missed even a single match for real life reasons.
So CG settled for month-long GACs, matching by roster strength to give everyone many chances to prove themselves.
Agreed, and it's fine.
That's not at all what I recommended. Matchmaking groups of 4096 players. You don't need months. You don't group by people of "very different power levels." You don't need to extend the season any further than it is. What is the point of having a leaderboard if you aren't wanting to determine the best players to some degree? Just go back to individual Grand Arenas. Then we can even mix and match 5v5, 3v3, etc without having to do the same thing for a month at a time.
And you would be left with participating_player_base / 4096 (so likely at least 250) such winners with no way to determine which of them is "the best" because their rosters would span over a 9m GP range and there is no way you could fairly match them.
I rest my case. Probably the most hated ranking system ever.
I didn't complain about not being able to clear defense. Not sure where you got that from. I pointed out that your opponent can lose on purpose and prevent you from ranking by setting all hard D that nobody trying to win would do. This is "griefing" and wouldn't be allowed in a competitive setting set up by people who know better. You were too busy trying to argue that you didn't even READ.
So what is your case for this system? Can you explain why it is better than a system that doesn't allow people to grief their opponent? Are you saying that it is logical that I should have to expect someone to throw their whole top 30 on defense every time? That is poor quality control of a competitive environment. I know you know it and you are arguing just to argue because you're on the internet.
As has been explained a few times, the biggest point differential occurs when your opponent doesn’t try. You suggest you should be rewarded for when you “beat” your opponent, but people who are drawn against several opponents who set defence and no more will be rewarded far more than people drawn against opponents that try.
The problem with most of these suggestions is that the key determining factor in the banners awarded is what your opponent does. But you can’t control that. If I draw 12 successive people who all try and I win narrowly each time, I’m going to be miles behind someone who draws even just a couple of opponents who don’t try.
There should not be a higher importance given to simply winning (or even getting holds on defense for that matter). However, as pointed out over and over, divisions need to be extended. There are multiple feats that are arguably much easier to achieve in the lower end of a division than towards the higher GP brackets (especially in division 1). Some people just need to plug in the 1-3 feat specific characters in a solo team of theirs (like Wampa vs weak Phoenix) while others need to straight up lose a battle on purpose. In that sense, leaderboards are disingenuous in their current form (but could be more accurate with more divisions).
"As has been explained a few times, the biggest point differential occurs when your opponent doesn’t try." Do you mean except for when you set big D and they AFK set and you only get one territory and win? You say a "big" differential in that? I sure don't.
"The problem with most of these suggestions is that the key determining factor in the banners awarded is what your opponent does. But you can’t control that."
EXACTLY. Your opponent can set cheesy defense to not allow but 2 lands even though they lose in the process to keep you from clearing and ranking. This sucks because YOU CAN'T CONTROL THAT. There is no tenable argument FOR your opponent being able to control YOUR rank.
You have brought us back to the point and I appreciate that.
An NFL team plays in the toughest division. They go undefeated even though the games were low scoring. But, because 6 other teams play in crappy divisions they rack up more points and are awarded the 6 playoff spots even though they all managed to drop a game. Not only do they rank ahead of the undefeated team, the undefeated team doesn't even have a post season!
But as we all know that would never happen. Because that's dumb. Why bust your balls going undefeated????