Rating Servers

[Scarhand]

I don't like Patriot's suggestions much. They aren't easy to balance, and don't really fix the real issue. The problem is rating distribution, as testforecho showed. However, he didn't factor in how easy it would be in each server to get high rating.
I think an important and unused factor is who is on each team. If you join a team where all the high rated players are on it, you will have an easier time, but your rating will not be calculated any differently than if you were on the other team, where it would be very difficult for you to get a high ppm. It shouldn't use the total match averages, but the team averages. I think this would make it more accurate, and less likely to cheat with team-stacking.

[testforecho]

I don't like Patriot's suggestions much. They aren't easy to balance, and don't really fix the real issue. The problem is rating distribution, as testforecho showed. However, he didn't factor in how easy it would be in each server to get high rating.
I think an important and unused factor is who is on each team. If you join a team where all the high rated players are on it, you will have an easier time, but your rating will not be calculated any differently than if you were on the other team, where it would be very difficult for you to get a high ppm. It shouldn't use the total match averages, but the team averages. I think this would make it more accurate, and less likely to cheat with team-stacking.

I think the new K/D system will be based on team averages, unless I totally misunderstood.
But the main problem with many rating systems lies in the fact that players don't really face each other, it's like in chess elo score, where if player1 beats player2 and player2 beats player3 then player1 will have a higher elo score than player3 even if they never played together. Makes sense, but if from that elo scores difference you want to calculate the winning probability, then it's all theory until they face each other. With ET it's much worse, because of renaming, the number of servers, and because some communities of players (etpro, for example) are sort of isolated from others.

The only case when scores can actually be compared is when 2 players play the same match (in the same server, that is) and they are in the same team. But comparing 2 ppl who play in different servers is a problem that can't be solved without headaches, and maybe it can't be solved at all.

That being said, the system is not totally flawed, since if I see someone with a higher rating and I guess that he plays on an easier server, then I can join that server and the same team where he is, and then I can see if I am really better or worse. But that leads to the aforementioned problem of people joining always the same servers, penalizing new servers in a game that is already dying, and leading to a game with few overcrowded and laggy servers where everyone plays. The solution would be to be able to compare players who don't play together in the same map, but how? With arbitrary balancing factors decided by TB admins? The fact that a server can be harder than another is a fact. But finding a balancing factor without being biased is difficult.

[HellfiG]

I haven't been updated to the latest formula or whatever is going on based on the rating part. As far as I know there should be a "new" rating system coming up. Once you told me it would be here in a while, then in a month and now it seems to take even longer and longer.

Whatever, I don't really want to start any discussion about what I just said above, I'm just curious about the rating servers. The only server where you HAVE to play to get higher rating is FA #2. Will there be anything done about this? It's kinda sad to see that it has to be like this.

It's nice to see all the "better" players are all on one servers, but it's bullshit. Shouldn't be every (read: "active") server be able to get someone to the top?
I'm just saying, on FA #2 everyone just randomly uses the shit adrenaline and just sucks without it lol.

I don't want to offend anyone with this, I'm just wondering only FA #2 is "THE" server to rate. I just don't like to play there because of the adrenaline "noobs". Ruins the gameplay. But that's just my opinion, hey who am I..

Can someone fill me up with what's going on these days? I'm not really active myself, and I can't be arsed to read every topic on a forum like this.

Thanks, keep up the great job running tb Paulus.

pro*que pasa.

To get to Pasa's first point:
I think I'm THE perfect example that you can get into top 10, without even rating on A FA server and without whoring.
FA2, is easy to rate if you have (a little bit of) skills + keep in mind that Minas is THE map for ALL raters to get rate, even though if you hate that map as a rater, you still rate like hell on it and especially on FA2.

Most Raters play there (FA2).
=> Average rate is most of the time higher as other servers. Also it's a very popular server, so 'noobs' join it all the time.
Since that server is so popular that it usually has around +30 players on it (compared when most people play.) and most of them are 'not so skilled', average ppm will be low.
Combination of high average rate/map, low average ppm (and the map Minas Thirith) makes it THE perfect place to get rate.

But that's just my opinion, I guess.
For sure you can rate on other servers, but in my opinion it's harder. Nevertheless, I'm living prove it's possible. I won't be #1, where I play. But I sure can stay in top-10.

PS: Indeed I'm saying FA2 is easier to rate than somewhere else. But that's just because of that 'combination' I gave.
If you can find that combination somewhere else, than you have another good server to rate.

Edit: I'm cTRL-eXeVe.