Decay ranking?

[supersexyy]

I don't see the point of decay when seasons are in place.

[dweiler]

Mb if you bother to look 1 post above you you can see the point. Or at least say why you think my logic is wrong...

[supersexyy]

There's no reason why the second half of the season should be scaled better than the first half.

[dweiler]

That's not what I am saying.. I am saying to win a league you should be the best player throughout the season. Maybe an example can clarify this for you. If a tennis player plays very good the first 6 months of the year and wins the Australian open and Roland Garros, he will probably be nr 1 at that point. If he stops playing after that and doesn't play the 6 months after it, he probably will not be rank 1 anymore. That is because to get rank 1 you have to be consistent throughout the league. There is really no reason to make a league if you do not add an element of consistency into it.

Take any league in the world in your mind and it will always have 1 of 3 of these characteristics:

1. Compulsory matches (for example every player will have to play 20 matches)
2. Decay system.
3. Only points to gain, no points to lose.

All those rules are there to guarantee consistency.

Consistency = league and LIHL = no consistency needed. I can't make it anymore clearer.

If you mean that people who did not sign for the beginning of the season when Beep played did not get decay, then I would suggest you don't accept people to start after the beginning of a league anymore - since that is the only method to avoid this in a proper league.

Edit: Also I want to remind you of those advantages I gave which you ignored (or not? Then why do they not suffice?):

1. the top of the game will be more exciting, (for example, because there is always action and because the nr 1 cannot idle)
2. playing games is stimulated (instead of discouraged if ur rank 1 now) so there is more activity in your league.
3. you get active players to be in the top of the league. I think most people wouldn't want inactive players to be on top of their league.

[BeepBoopBeep]

Just relax friend, no need to get offended when somebody doesn't agree with your suggestion.

how about you open up a poll and see the results from there to see if the people in the LIHL community would like to see your suggestion added. Like just we did with the antistuck rule. I suggest starting a new thread.

Edit: Hold your horses, firstly we have to check if a decay of any kind is even able to be added @uakf.b

[dweiler]

Sure, I would be in favour of that. I don't get offended, but it is impossible to get a healthy discussion on the matter if all the moderators do is say "no change" and give no serious justification or notice that they have read the arguments. I'm hoping to convince supersexyy to give good arguments of his stand point by repeating my arguments.

[Iznogood]

That's not what I am saying.. I am saying to win a league you should be the best player throughout the season. Maybe an example can clarify this for you. If a tennis player plays very good the first 6 months of the year and wins the Australian open and Roland Garros, he will probably be nr 1 at that point. If he stops playing after that and doesn't play the 6 months after it, he probably will not be rank 1 anymore. That is because to get rank 1 you have to be consistent throughout the league. There is really no reason to make a league if you do not add an element of consistency into it.

Take any league in the world in your mind and it will always have 1 of 3 of these characteristics:

1. Compulsory matches (for example every player will have to play 20 matches)
2. Decay system.
3. Only points to gain, no points to lose.

All those rules are there to guarantee consistency.

Consistency = league and LIHL = no consistency needed. I can't make it anymore clearer.

If you mean that people who did not sign for the beginning of the season when Beep played did not get decay, then I would suggest you don't accept people to start after the beginning of a league anymore - since that is the only method to avoid this in a proper league.

Funny that you're compairing LIHL with tennis.. why not a soccer,basket, football or hockey league?
Beep still played around 223 games - I'm pretty sure he has the most games played in LIHL - all players in top 10 needs at least 50+ games to catch up games played.
Players should play in LIHL when they have time and as long it's fun.. not from some kind of decay pressure.

[BA_Fail]

Players should play in LIHL when they have time and as long it's fun.. not from some kind of decay pressure.

I agree players should be playing lihl for fun, Elo decay doesn't, well shouldn't affect whether you have fun.

The main issue is whether its fair for someone to sit on the elo they earned, or if they need to be active throughout the season to be considered the winner.

[Iznogood]

For me it's just adding another rule.. think we have enough rules at this point.
Beep earned his ELO at an early stage.. agreed.. but still in a fair way.
If he wants to play or wait and see if someone can threaten his position there shouldn't be any rules against.

There's no reason why the second half of the season should be scaled better than the first half.

And i completely agree.

[dweiler]

@Iznogood the reason I compare it with tennis is because in tennis you can play (with a maximum) as many games as you want. Hockey, soccer, et cetera have a fixed amount of games. This would mean we would get a scheme of fixed games we have to play. The comparison does not work. But I can see your points. Season-based leagues have a 'form' of decay in the fact that every few months the stats are reset. As Ba_Fail pointed out, the question is whether this form of decay is enough, or that within a league we should ensure players to keep playing instead of sitting it out. In my opinion, a league is about consistency and therefore players who want to be the rank 1 should play throughout the season.

I don't really see the 'negative' side you see to this. If you want to become rank 1 in a league you will have to put in a lot of time. If you don't want to put in the time needed in a season, then you do not meet the reqs to become the best player of the league. People who want to play casually and want to have fun do not have the character traits needed to become rank 1, so for them the decay should not matter. Again, I am not saying that a few hours of not playing should lead to decay, but complete inactivity for an extensive amount of time should. It is in my opinion not unreasonable to ask for the best player of the season to not be completely inactive for a long period of time during the season.

However, I can understand the point of the seasons being a decay in itself and I think it is a valid point. If my arguments that I brought up against it have not convinced many people until now, I think the best thing to do is to stick with the current format.

[Iznogood]

I don't really see the 'negative' side you see to this. If you want to become rank 1 in a league you will have to put in a lot of time. If you don't want to put in the time needed in a season, then you do not meet the reqs to become the best player of the league. People who want to play casually and want to have fun do not have the character traits needed to become rank 1, so for them the decay should not matter. Again, I am not saying that a few hours of not playing should lead to decay, but complete inactivity for an extensive amount of time should. It is in my opinion not unreasonable to ask for the best player of the season to not be completely inactive for a long period of time during the season.

Maybe beep is inactive at the moment.. but he still played +50 games than everyone else in top 10.
There shouldn't be a decay punishment for playing 223 games at the start of the season compaired to playing 223 spread out all over the season.

Can't follow your argument about putting a lot of time into league playing for being worthy as rank 1 - winner isn't the one with most time played.. but the most ELO.

[dweiler]

The point about playing a lot of games at one time in a league and then idle is that it defeats a couple of characteristics of the league. Firstly, it is, for example, impossible for any player in the league to battle the number 1 at this point. I think it would be a plus for the league if the conditions were that way that people are at least able to play vs the number one. This would enhance the attractiveness of the league.

Secondly, people lost the ELO the number one gained. Now this ELO is not in play anymore, so this might lead to even bigger differences in ELO. If, for instance, I have gone to 800 ELO because of losses vs Beep, then I could win that easily back winning vs a Beep with high ELO. However, he went inactive, and with my 800 ELO I have to fight new 1000 ELO players. In this way it is much harder to win back my ELO than it should be if the ELO conditions stayed the same. This also counts for the number 2, it is harder to overtake an inactive number 1 because you cannot fight his high ELO, and he already took ELO from the lower skilled people. So if Beep made me go from 1000 to 800 ELO, the number 2 will have to do the same fights vs me, but will gain less ELO because I am 200 ELO lower. In this way, at this moment, the first half of the season is better scaled than the second.

I hope you can follow what I mean. Besides this, all of my other arguments are still in place too, but I feel I would repeat myself a lot if I mention them again (for example, the attractiveness of the league and the bigger activity)

EDIT: Thirdly, and I think people did not take this into consideration of their opinions yet, in the beginning of the leauge, the league was not balanced. ELO is their to measure your skill: So, for example, Beep's 1485 ELO says he has a lot of skill, and my 800 ELO (which I in fact don't have) says I am less skilled. In the beginning of the league, however, everybody had 1,000 ELO. So it was possible for a high skilled player to take ELO from a low skilled player that was higher than it should have been. During the league this becomes impossible. Players now have to fight the 'real' skills, whereas in the beginning of the league you can easily gain ELO because the skills have not been decided yet. Therefore it is vitally important for players to play in the 2nd half of the league, to show they are really worthy of their ELO.

[Iznogood]

Did Beep have any 1500 Elo players to steal from at the start of the season? obviously not.
Does the bot automatic balance the team Elo since you can't play 1v1? I guess so

[dweiler]

I am sorry, you do not understand my point. Forgive me if I was unclear.

Consider those teams: A + B vs C + D (or 4v4 doesn't matter). At the beginning of the league all had 1,000 points (or a bit higher/lower ofc). So this was a balanced team 2,000 ELO vs 2,000 ELO.But now A+B have 1,400 ELO and B+C 700 ELO. In the beginning of the league A+B would have gained an easy 15 ELO since the game was balanced, but the skill levels very different. If this game was played now, the teams would have been A+C vs B+D, which is not an easy win for anyone, and 1 high ELO is bound to lose a lot of ELO.

Now consider player E, F and G, who started playing later and A+B+C went inactive or are not in the game. They have 1,000 ELO and will therefore the teams will be E+F vs G+D. Consider E+F are as skilled as A+B and G as skilled as C. E+F will gain LESS ELO than A+B (because D has 700 ELO instead of 1,000) even though they have the same skill as A+B and fight the same skilled team as A+B. A+B have therefore had an unfair advantage over E+F only because they played in the first half of the season and not in the second half.

During the time A was playing a lot of new players joined who all had 1,000 ELO. This means he could take out all the 'free ELO' from lower players who actually have a skill level of 700 ELO. He also had a big chance of getting unfair teams. Because he is a high-ELO player who did not have a high ELO back then, he always had an unfair advantage. The scenario's are then as follows for him (H= high skilled, L=low skilled). Those are (for simplicity's sake, I know there are nuances but this is to show the principle) the possible options: HH v HL, HH v HH, HH v LL, HL v HH, HL v HL, HL v LL. This means that in 3 out of 6 games he gets an unfair advantage, in 2 out of 6 games the teams are balanced and 1 out of 6 games he gets an unfair disadvantage. At this period of time the teams will always be balanced and so the the games that are balanced are 6 out of 6 (because if it is not balanced this will be compensated by a lower ELO gain if you win) and so no unfair advantages will arise anymore. ( Of course, A mainly played 4v4 and the statistics are not as harsh as in 2v2, but the logic stays the same, the options are just too many to write out here.)

To compensate for this unfair advantage, A has to keep playing in the 2nd half of the season or otherwise get a decay. I hope I am clearer now.

(If you want to make this less abstract you can read A= Beep. My intentions are not personal, however, so I do not wish to make this an attack vs Beep, I just want to explain the logics of a league and the flaws the current league system has)

[Feor]

For a lot of ladders leagues stats, an xp/elo/point decay system has been implemented over years.

I would not be opposed to this as a thought even if myself I am inactive since I came back home for vacations.

The pros and cons of both arguments have been roughly described but let me help introducing a bit more complex idea I have seen in the past and can help both sides come into a deal.

Elo decay due to inactivity, based on 2 conditions, games played and and time passed since last game:
Player A has played 100 games over 4 weeks, has not played a game for 2 weeks.
Player B has played 20 games over 4 weeks, has also not played a game for 2 weeks.

Now given that the basic elo decay both players should lose same amount of elo for their inactivity, which is simply wrong.
However you can also take into account the time they have already spent over their last activity period so player A would lose less elo that player B as his total activity has been higher.

I am not sure which way i should vote for this scenario if there was a poll open, as I feel that any person that has made an effort to make his stats look good and push up his elo, he has earned those stats and deserves them. However mickey has a point and I agree that It just doesn't seem right going inactive when you are on top with a safety distance, it is slighly unfair play ( opposed to what we 've been promoting on and on again in forums ).