State of the V:EKN - October 2013

Greetings fellow V:TES players, As most of you may already know, I was recently elected Chairman of the V:EKN (with Antonio Cobo as my Vice Chairman) during the meeting of National Coordinators and Inner Circle members held on the 4th of October, 2013 in Stockholm. In a moment, I will talk about some of my projects as Chairman, but first I want to thank Johannes Walch for his years of dedication to V:TES and especially for his enormous efforts to bring our beloved game back in print. I can assure you all that I will also do my best to keep promoting V:TES at all levels, despite the major setback of print-on-demand not happening. And I hope to engage the community of players in several projects I have in mind, which are listed below: Video demos In order to make V:TES more accessible to new players I have asked the Marketing Team to develop a series of short videos in English to teach playing V:TES (with subtitles in different languages). Translations Nowadays, where smart phones and tablets are everywhere, thus allowing the players to have an easy access to the up-to-date card texts or to the most recent version of the Rulebook or Tournament Rules, I think it will also be very useful for those who don’t speak English to have these resources available in their own language. So I will try to form working groups in charge doing these translations. World Ranking incentives I think it would be a good idea to make the current ranking system more significant, either by granting the top X players automatic qualification for the Continental Championships and/or for the Second Day of the European Championship, or by giving the top X players some special prizes, etc. Standardization of European Championship applications In order to standardize the application for organizing the European Championships, I am going to create an application form and set all necessary deadlines to be met during the whole process. VEKN sets Another thing that keeps some players interested in the game is the release of new sets, so the V:EKN Design Team, under Ben Peal’s Leadership, will keep developing new ones. Judges’ Guide Antonio Cobo (V:EKN Vice Chairman) is going to form a team to fully revise and adapt the Judges’ Guide to what the V:TES tournament scene really needs. Rules Test for Players I want to create an online V:TES and tournament rules test as a useful tool for players to know their level of understanding of these rules and to improve it. The person in charge of developing this test is Antonio Cobo. Better communication I intend to keep the community updated on the activities of the V:EKN on a regular basis, and involved in V:EKN projects. Wait for upcoming posts asking for volunteers. Inner Circle changes Johannes Walch has been appointed Chairman Emeritus, and, whereas I am still performing the duties of Website Coordinator, this position is available to anyone suitable to take. Ginés Quiñonero V:EKN Chairman V:EKN Website Coordinator

I hate to sound like a broken record every time this comes up, but putting important incentives on the so-called "World Rankings" - which is really just an incentive point system and not a real ranking system at all - is a really bad idea. The problem is that the so-called "ranking system" is completely unfair. It rewards attendance at tournaments, which is obviously a good thing if you're promoting the game but a bad thing if you're trying to be fair to all the players who live in all the far-flung outlying places who cannot reasonably attend many tournaments or large tournaments. Back a decade ago when I tried to point this out to all the folks who were so enthusiastic about implementing the current system, I was told that it was a wonderful thing to inventivize players to attend tournament, I was told that this system of recording points scored for various feats was at least feasible to implement (unlike a real rating system), and I was told that no system of truly rating player performance was likely to be very accurate - all of which may well be true. But since there were to be no important spoils handed out on the basis of it, it didn't matter. My response, and hopefully the response of most intelligent players, was to simply ignore the stupid thing. But now Ginés proposes to start using it to determine important rewards. I believe this would ultimately have a bad effect on the game once players in tournament-sparse areas start trying to compete on this playing field and realizing that they need to make 5 or 10 times the effort (or worse) as players in tournament-dense areas make to get the same results. In the long run, such a system will only discourage players from becoming heavily involved as tournament players rather than encourage them. I would ask that any plans to elevate the importance of the VEKN ranking system be tabled unless and until a fair true rating system can be devised and implemented. Fred Scott, Prince of Phoenix, AZ, USA

The current rankings look terrible for most of the US. i liked the initial idea to only consider recent things relevant, but given recent declines, at least that i know of, nearly all of "top ten" is going to be he northern half of the eastern hemisphere. 2 years back, we had ohio tournaments alot, and john bell won a ton of them. If we looked at these numbers then, it would be skewed in the favor of all of europe and one small part of the US. Id love incentive stuff for rankings, but with pod off the table, im not too astonished by the prospect. For winning a continental championship, a trophy makes sense, but not for a,ratings system that alienates regions. Again, id be bitching just as much if not more if my region still had some weeks with two tournaments, and an average of 3 a month. It happened around 2008 ish. I bitched for a few months about being sick of celerity guns but i hadnt been able to test anything else due to no casual games. At that point, random scrub players from ohio that stopped playing when local buzz died would have outranked axtual good players. And id be annoyed. Id say make the standings only matrer for championships and qualifiers if we add prizes. Once several regions ar having even monthly tourneys, maybe consider rankings to matter. PoD dying put a hurtin on hyping the game locally. Not gonna lie, its kinda a death blow. Not getting staples hurts the game for newbees who arent looking to drop $80 on cards. Mt$ reels them in eazier. BUT I like the rest of what was mentioned. Especially making the cards available in other other languages.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > The current rankings look terrible for most of the US. i liked the initial idea to only consider recent things relevant, but given recent declines, at least that i know of, nearly all of "top ten" is going to be he northern half of the eastern hemisphere. > [...] > Id love incentive stuff for rankings, but with pod off the table, im not too astonished by the prospect. For winning a continental championship, a trophy makes sense, but not for a,ratings system that alienates regions. > I think the current ranking looks terrible for most of the US because most US tournaments do not get reported. In 2013, 49 constructed tournaments have been held in the US, but only 11 have been reported so far. In Spain, for instance, there have been 53 tournaments held in 2013, and 47 have been reported. V:EKN Website Coordinator

> fredsct wrote: > I hate to sound like a broken record every time this comes up, but putting important incentives on the so-called "World Rankings" - which is really just an incentive point system and not a real ranking system at all - is a really bad idea. > I have been implementing this idea to the Spanish ranking for several years now, and it seems to be motivating some players to travel around to play tournaments and/or to participate in as many tournaments as possible. Putting some incentives on the V:EKN Ranking is in my opinion just another way to motivate the players who care about their ranking, who in turn will encourage the princes to report events. The nature of the prizes to be awarded to the top X players in the V:EKN Ranking is still to be discussed. V:EKN Website Coordinator

> Damnans wrote: > I have been implementing this idea to the Spanish ranking for several years now, and it seems to be motivating some players to travel around to play tournaments and/or to participate in as many tournaments as possible. > Implementing the idea in a relatively limited geographical area like Spain is hardly going to give you a true idea of how vastly unfair the concept is. At least most parts of Spain are within relatively reasonable driving distance of one another. Well, OK, it depends on one's definition of "reasonable", certainly, but compared to other places in the world, players are going to be relatively equally challenged by access to the same tournaments. When you start talking about "worldwide ranking", though, comparing the opportunities to play in a dense urban area with lots of tournaments and many more within a few hours drive to people who live within driving distance of, oh, say, 10 other players - 3 of whom may be 200 km down the road one way and 2 of whom may be 300 km down another road - the comparison is insane. You are kidding yourself to frame the problems with American ratings as "reporting problems". Perhaps there are also reporting problems, too, but it doesn't matter. No incentive system such as this will ever be fair and the ratings differential everyone can see between European and American players demonstrates the point perfectly. It may even be that if American princes are less consistent about reporting tournament results than European princes, it may be because frankly, they already don't care as much: for Americans, the ranking system isn't interesting because they understand much better how unfair it is. > Damnans wrote: > Putting some incentives on the V:EKN Ranking is in my opinion just another way to motivate the players who care about their ranking, who in turn will encourage the princes to report events. > I certainly sympathize with the idea of motivating players to play in tournaments - for any reason you can find to motivate them. But the flaw in your line of thought is that you will only motivate players to care about rankings if they feel they have an equal opportunity to score well with all the other players - which is not the case in many places. Furthermore, you risk creating a political problem if, for instance, you effectively reserve a set of spots in the 2nd days of continental tournaments based on a system of qualifying that many players will view as unavailable to themselves. Fred

> fredsct wrote: > Implementing the idea in a relatively limited geographical area like Spain is hardly going to give you a true idea of how vastly unfair the concept is. At least most parts of Spain are within relatively reasonable driving distance of one another. Well, OK, it depends on one's definition of "reasonable", certainly, but compared to other places in the world, players are going to be relatively equally challenged by access to the same tournaments. When you start talking about "worldwide ranking", though, comparing the opportunities to play in a dense urban area with lots of tournaments and many more within a few hours drive to people who live within driving distance of, oh, say, 10 other players - 3 of whom may be 200 km down the road one way and 2 of whom may be 300 km down another road - the comparison is insane. > As you say, the definition of "reasonable" may vary. For example, in Spain only 20 out of 241 players have participated in more than 8 tournaments since the 13th of October, 2012. Those 20 are approximately the players who sometimes travel around to play. > fredsct wrote: > You are kidding yourself to frame the problems with American ratings as "reporting problems". Perhaps there are also reporting problems, too, but it doesn't matter. No incentive system such as this will ever be fair and the ratings differential everyone can see between European and American players demonstrates the point perfectly. It may even be that if American princes are less consistent about reporting tournament results than European princes, it may be because frankly, they already don't care as much: for Americans, the ranking system isn't interesting because they understand much better how unfair it is. > With the current rating system, US events were regularly reported in the White Wolf era, and therefore there were some US players in the top 10. This is just an example: web.archive.org/web/20080404134826/http://white-wolf.com/vtes/ > fredsct wrote: > I certainly sympathize with the idea of motivating players to play in tournaments - for any reason you can find to motivate them. But the flaw in your line of thought is that you will only motivate players to care about rankings if they feel they have an equal opportunity to score well with all the other players - which is not the case in many places. Furthermore, you risk creating a political problem if, for instance, you effectively reserve a set of spots in the 2nd days of continental tournaments based on a system of qualifying that many players will view as unavailable to themselves. > The prizes I listed in my post were mere suggestions. I will start a new topic where the nature of those prizes should be discussed. V:EKN Website Coordinator

Hello Gines (and all), my quick thoughts about the topics mentioned: Video demos Sounds OK, though I doubt grasping the concepts of the game alone is really one of the major issues in getting new players aboard. I personally think that asking people to come and join a game where they need to invest a large amount of money into buying cards no longer sold is more the issue. Obviously, this might vary by location. Overall, yes, something which I would support. Translations I supported the translation of the rules into German language years ago, and kept the work upodated whenever a new rulebook was printed (LSJ supported me in that). I was never convinced that this was foudn helpful by anybody - no feedback ever came from anybody outside of the translation team. Thus, I stopped this activity after a while. Having said this, I am sure some versions of the earlier German language rules will probably be out there (I do have my copies), and could serve as basis fora new German version. World Ranking incentives I do not like this idea at all. As far as I see, a large number of tournaments are not being rated at all. Before starting to throw prizes of whatever nature at Top X players, we need to make sure that the Ranking system is indeed used. I always report my events, even if I am not personally interested in the Ranking system since years, after White Wolf destroyed it. What is another point that I do not like is that only the Top X plyers (the "usual suspects") are supposed to get rewards. This, for me, is the same issue as only the finalist in events getting the good prize support - the additional boosters go to the guys who play for years, and probably alraedy have a big card collection. All paid for, via entrance fees (that cover the expenses for prize support) from the pockets of the not-so-strong players. Therefore, I try to make sure that players are also being rewarded for joining at all in the first place: Trying to give prize support to everybody, holding random prize drawings amongst all participants, etc. Shouldn't we reward players for attending official events, instead of giving additional stuff to players who already got additional stuff? Standardization of European Championship applications Makes sense to me. Of course, I do work as Process Analyst in a major IT company, and standardized request forms are part of my daily life... B-) VEKN sets Absolutely! The release of "Danse Macabre" was a major event for me, rejuvenating my perception of the game (and removing some of my pessimism created by the "Stalling" of the POD discussions). Yes, I would have liked to see POD materialize - but I do want new cards even more, even if they are "just" PDF. Please keep them coming. Judges’ Guide Very good idea! Rules Test for Players Also very much seconded. I do have the habit to re-read on the rules, and the rulings, before each major vent that I do organize, and every year find new suprises... after almost 20 years! Some kind of playful quiz might really be fun, and helpful. Better communication This for me is key, and the lack of regular communication was the most annyoing issue I had with the VEKN in th past (although that has improved over the last months). Please keep the news coming! Best regards, Hardy Range "It was a perfect plan - until it had contact with reality" --- Hardy Range Playgroup Tradition Compliance Manager

> fredsct wrote: > It rewards attendance at tournaments, which is obviously a good thing if you're promoting the game but a bad thing if you're trying to be fair to all the players who live in all the far-flung outlying places who cannot reasonably attend many tournaments or large tournaments. > I suggest that instead of trying to penalize people who are currently active, try to build up your player base and organize more tournaments. Also, like, Gines said, reporting the tournaments might b e, erm, a novel idea... Finnish Politics!

I admit that theres no fix for some things. Brad Cashdollar won a tourney in Atlanta with an Ezmerelda free states rant deck, but he never submitted the list. Jay Kristoff had a laptop with ALL the archons for a lng span of time die before he submitted them. Hexeventually salvaged and reported them. I dont propose that we have a problem holding tournaments, for all i know the best player in the world lives in a shack in antartica with only penguins to play with. But the frequency skews things. As i said, id be unhappy if the same theory was used back when my local seen boomed with more tournaments than casual games, simetimes making 7 tournaments a month with >12 people at all of them, averaging just shy of 20 each. But, several things need to volster playerbases. And im thinking more award trophy than packs for prizes. Or rickstock/bik76 credit.

> Damnans wrote: > As you say, the definition of "reasonable" may vary. For example, in Spain only 20 out of 241 players have participated in more than 8 tournaments since the 13th of October, 2012. Those 20 are approximately the players who sometimes travel around to play. > I'm confused why this statistic matters. Of course, in any population of players, some will be serious tournament players and others only casual and occasional participants for lots of reasons, no matter where you are or what your situation. The critical point here is that to acheive the same score requires completely different levels of effort, depending on where in the world one lives. > Damnans wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > You are kidding yourself to frame the problems with American ratings as "reporting problems". > > > With the current rating system, US events were regularly reported in the White Wolf era, and therefore there were some US players in the top 10. > Again, I am confused why this matters. Sure, at one time there may well have been areas in the United States where plenty of tournaments were held and reported - and at the exact same time, there were other areas in the United States and elsewhere in the world that didn't. The ranking system was just as inanely unfair 5 or 10 years ago - you just couldn't tell from looking at list of the very top tier of American players. Fred

> Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > It rewards attendance at tournaments, which is obviously a good thing if you're promoting the game but a bad thing if you're trying to be fair to all the players who live in all the far-flung outlying places who cannot reasonably attend many tournaments or large tournaments. > > > I suggest that instead of trying to penalize people who are currently active, try to build up your player base and organize more tournaments. > Where on Earth did you get the idea that I was trying to penalize people who are currently active? People who are currently active have an interest in not supporting an arbitrary, bad format for running a continental tournament and passing out prizes, support for which is likely to be seen as a kind of an "old boys network", not worth participating in or associating with. Fred

Just to clarify things... the kind of rewards I am proposing are immaterial, given that the V:EKN handles no money (e.g., automatic qualification for CC's, a player's portrait on a card, etc.) V:EKN Website Coordinator

> Damnans wrote: > Just to clarify things... the kind of rewards I am proposing are immaterial, given that the V:EKN handles no money (e.g., automatic qualification for CC's, a player's portrait on a card, etc.) > I assumed something like that..... Hey, i know of at least one player who was supposed to be on a card, Lawrence Snelly did his portrait, and they never used it. This was ccp era. Any way to correct this? Personally, knowing the player, hes a ventrue or a malk for sure, but they never printed him.

> Lönkka wrote: > I suggest that instead of trying to penalize people who are currently active, try to build up your player base and organize more tournaments. > And those of us living in areas with small player bases quite far removed from other groups are likely to take offense at comments like these. All this sort of initiative, especially if supported by sentiments like this, is likely to do is make my players feel even less invested in the idea of supporting the VEKN as an organisation, since it's focus is so clearly only on the major playgroups. -- National Coordinator South Africa

> drnlmza wrote: > > > Lönkka wrote: > > I suggest that instead of trying to penalize people who are currently active, try to build up your player base and organize more tournaments. > > > And those of us living in areas with small player bases quite far removed from other groups are likely to take offense at comments like these. > Oh, now people need to be PC about commenting in the forum since the ones who aren't active are likely to take offence. See if I ******* care... * > drnlmza wrote: > All this sort of initiative, especially if supported by sentiments like this, is likely to do is make my players feel even less invested in the idea of supporting the VEKN as an organisation, since it's focus is so clearly only on the major playgroups. > I do suggest your players get effin furios at me and prove me wrong and make South Africa the effin VTES capital of the world. Organize frequent tournaments and if there aren't enough active players get off your collective heinies and recruit more. DON'T DREAM IT -BE IT! * The last sentence here only reflects only reflects the personal opinions of the writer and not VEKN as official whole. If you take offense take it against the writer (who doesn't ******* care) and not the organization, hokay? Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > I do suggest your players get effin furios at me and prove me wrong and make South Africa the effin VTES capital of the world. Organize frequent tournaments and if there aren't enough active players get off your collective heinies and recruit more. DON'T DREAM IT -BE IT! > Yawn. Look, I don't think there's any need to be PC. It's just that your "suggestions" are so irrevelevent to the point. The problem is, much though I understand and sympathize that Ginés is just trying to do something to spark more interest in playing tournaments and having fun, the way the VEKN ranking system is constituted is not going to ever be relevent to much of the world no matter how much the local prince develops his player base. It's like starting a coupon collection contest when 98% of the places that give out the coupons are located in Europe. Without bothering to bore people with the challenges to creating and maintaining a player base in a city in the American west, the point is that even if I found 100 VtES players here in Phoenix, AZ and many of them became addicted tournament players - something that will never happen - it STILL wouldn't be anything like living in an area concentrated with other cities that one could easily drive to in order to play in THEIR tournaments, too. I often see the other guy's point of view - but in this case, no. There's no debate here. VEKN rankings are not fair and can't possibly be fair using the approach that was teken to create them. If you enjoy looking at them, then great. But they need to not be used in any situations where fairness is required.

> fredsct wrote: > Without bothering to bore people with the challenges to creating and maintaining a player base in a city in the American west, the point is that even if I found 100 VtES players here in Phoenix, AZ and many of them became addicted tournament players - something that will never happen - it STILL wouldn't be anything like living in an area concentrated with other cities that one could easily drive to in order to play in THEIR tournaments, too. > Well, Helsinki has some 20 or so active players at the moment (I'm counting only people who attend several tournament per year). We usually do get some people from out of city as well who drive some 2 hours to attend and often without these we'd have less than 10 people. So even if the player base is not really that big we still do manage to play a tournament a month. So I'd hardly call it something that will not be possible to make reality elsewhere too. Just yesterday we had two people attend who have never been to our local tournaments before and last month had some very new players attend too. Make the ratings more relevant to your players by organizing more tournaments. Heck, even a relatively crappy players who attend regularily can rack up come points. I do also agree that there is hardly any point of giving freebies to the highest ranking people. Legendary Vampire (which I though was excellent idea) was played in Paris EC and has not been played ever since as it has been replaced in the ECs since by Nations Cup which I consider an inferior format. Finnish Politics!

I will requote myself for emphasis: > Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > .. the point is that even if I found 100 VtES players here in Phoenix, AZ and many of them became addicted tournament players - something that will never happen - it STILL wouldn't be anything like living in an area concentrated with other cities that one could easily drive to in order to play in THEIR tournaments, too. > > > Well, Helsinki has some 20 or so active players at the moment (I'm counting only people who attend several tournament per year). We usually do get some people from out of city as well who drive some 2 hours to attend and often without these we'd have less than 10 people. > Right. Within a two-hour drive of Phoenix is a single other small city where fewer than half a dozen players who get together to play pickup maybe once or twice a year. They seldom drive to Phoenix for a tournament, although it has happened (usually just one or two people). And that's the only place. I drive six hours to play decent tournaments in Los Angeles because we can seldom assemble enough players in Phoenix for a four-player game, let alone a two-table tournament. But it's a silly debate. You may well be at a disadvantage to other far more centrally located areas in Europe, I couldn't say. The only point that's relavent is that scoring ratings points this way can never possibly be fair because the level of effort to score the same number of points will always be vastly different depending on where one lives. Besides geography, there's also the issue of local organization: you suggest fixing our disadvantages by organizing - but players living in areas that are already well-organized don't have to do that. To suggest applying effort to fix this problem demostrates that you fail to grasp the problem: the difference in how much effort needs to be applied to score points IS the problem!

How about making the entire idea region based? Let's face it: other than European players sometimes flying to Europe, and vice versa, to compete in in the Continental Championships, when was the last time an American player or European player traveled, on purpose, to Africa or ANZ or Asia or South America to play in their Continentals, or even the other way around? It's not worth arguing, Fred. Look at the forums now. Each time there is a mention of some European event, be it a win or an announcement, a whole bunch of self-fiving happens. I'm not saying that it is not acceptable. It is human nature, after all, not to be invested in people you don't know. What I am saying is that the reality is that VEKN has already fragmented along geographical regions and chances of a true global player support group has already long sailed. You can argue until the cows come home, but in a democracy, the biggest group always win, even if it is wrong. Suaku Inceptor Asian Continental Championship 興っ www.youtube.com/SuakuOz

It is quite normal that the ranking system puts player with lots of tournaments first, because the best players are very likely to be found among them. You wouldn't expect to run the 100 meters under 10 seconds by practicing in your backyard and racing against your neighbours, would you? Why should things be different for VTES? Moreover, any ranking system over a variable number of events must favor attending more events, because otherwise it has the reverse effect: if someone makes a very good result on his first tournament of the season and the ranking system does not have a bias towards attending more events, then his optimal strategy might be to sit on his result rather than risking to lower it on another event. And that is the last thing we need. Even ATP tennis rankings are skewed to allow the top players to enter more tournaments without risking to lower their ranking. It is not the ranking system that is unfair, it is the fact that you cannot attend as many tournaments as others. When you think about it, it is a bit weird to have a world ranking when there is no world championship. Maybe more emphasis could be put on continental rankings, to rank players that can actually play against each other?

There is no way to design a fair rating system involving people that have a hard time playing tournaments because of circumstances. A rating system will describe who are the best performing players within an active tournament scene. People outside of that scene are not going to be high in the ranking, but how does it matter if everything that is given out is qualification to participate in international events? Does it matter to you that you don´t qualify for Legendary Vampire if you can´t go anyway? I get that people consider the rating irrelevant for themselves and that is OK. I just don´t get the point of re-iterating this statement over and over. It´s like a vegetarian telling me over and over that meat sucks, yet I enjoy my burger.

> Non-existant user wrote: > It is quite normal that the ranking system puts player with lots of tournaments first, because the best players are very likely to be found among them. You wouldn't expect to run the 100 meters under 10 seconds by practicing in your backyard and racing against your neighbours, would you? Why should things be different for VTES? > This isn't sports, it's a hobby collectible card game named VtES and people don't behave the same way as famous athletes - so such comparisons are silly. Yes, if a very good player lives in an area with few good tournament players and not a lot of players, then neither his VEKN rating nor his attendance record will reflect his skill. > Non-existant user wrote: > Moreover, any ranking system over a variable number of events must favor attending more events, because otherwise it has the reverse effect... > So? All I'm saying is, don't give this system any more meaning than it has now. We don't need to debate any other systems. Fred

> the1andonlime wrote: > How about making the entire idea region based? > I like the idea. After all, the whole point of making the ranking more significant is giving tournament organizers more reasons to report their events. V:EKN Website Coordinator

> johannes wrote: > There is no way to design a fair rating system involving people that have a hard time playing tournaments because of circumstances. A rating system will describe who are the best performing players within an active tournament scene. People outside of that scene are not going to be high in the ranking, but how does it matter if everything that is given out is qualification to participate in international events? Does it matter to you that you don´t qualify for Legendary Vampire if you can´t go anyway? > First of all we're not debating "rating" system. The VEKN ranking system doesn't rate at all. It just awards points for various feats (and then takes them away some number of months later). The points are awarded for skillful feats, it's true, but no attempt is made to correct for things like quality of competition. We said all these things 10 years ago, Johannes. You already know them. Anyway, are you seriously questioning why fairness is important to the qualifying system or just my motivations personally? If the former, its that the idea of reserving things like 2nd day spots for a privileged group of players who will have the inside track on obtaining them will tend to discourage the other players over time and decrease, not increase participation. The latter is not a relavent to the point I'm making - which is the same whether I make it or anyone else does.

> Damnans wrote: > > > the1andonlime wrote: > > How about making the entire idea region based? > > > I like the idea. After all, the whole point of making the ranking more significant is giving tournament organizers more reasons to report their events. > Then again, you already can filter the player registery to show only players in a certain country/town/something. So this can be done already. I agree with the notion of the ratings not being really fair, though. Like, we were discussing the ratings a bit a few days ago, and it really struck me when my girlfriend asked if it's really fair or not; like, some people may have been super good back in the days and still some newcomers couldn't compete with those feats from years ago. And if you started winnin tournaments years ago some newbs, no matter how good players, might never reach the top. I really couldn't argue those points, other than saying that it's a flawed system, should always be used within a narrow horizon of discourse rather than a wide one (as in, 'who's the best IN TOWN', rather than 'who's [just] the best'), and yeah, they did discuss nulling all the ratings a few years back. What we were thinking was that there could be, like, three different kinds of ladders: Overall best ratings (history; worldwide; filters for areas) Overall best average (history; worldwide; filters for areas; average tournament scorings for players, not just accumulated points) This year's ratings (nulled every year [two years?], worldwide; filters for areas) Really, loads of extra work, but different statistics would be a bit more reasonable. I don't know if I agree with Fred's rather aggressive tone of discussion (sorry mate, that's how it translates to me! ), but I do understand his point. If peeps have time and energy, the scorings could be re-evaluated. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> Kraus wrote: > > > Damnans wrote: > > Overall best average (history; worldwide; filters for areas; average tournament scorings for players, not just accumulated points) > > > I have an amusing anecdote for this one: > Few years back, Chris K. set up a ranking system for the ACT players in Australia. One fine day, my then girlfriend, now missus, came to visit me and joined in the weekly games. On her first ever outing for V:tES, she swept all 3 games she played in. > > For months and months after that, before Chris decided to keep only recent data, she had the best average score in the entire ACT (100% GW). > > Just sayin' > Suaku Inceptor Asian Continental Championship 興っ www.youtube.com/SuakuOz

> Kraus wrote: > What we were thinking was that there could be, like, three different kinds of ladders: > > Overall best ratings (history; worldwide; filters for areas) > Overall best average (history; worldwide; filters for areas; average tournament scorings for players, not just accumulated points) > This year's ratings (nulled every year [two years?], worldwide; filters for areas) > Peetu, you might not be aware that the ratings only take into account, like, 18 previous months of points. So older history is already only hearsay... Finnish Politics!

> fredsct wrote: > This isn't sports, it's a hobby collectible card game named VtES and people don't behave the same way as famous athletes - so such comparisons are silly. > Actually, Chess is sports. And when I reserved the ferry tickets to Team Finland for this year's EC we got a sports club discount which just proves that even mundanes think that we're sports... Finnish Politics!

> fredsct wrote: > First of all we're not debating "rating" system. The VEKN ranking system doesn't rate at all. It just awards points for various feats (and then takes them away some number of months later). The points are awarded for skillful feats, it's true, but no attempt is made to correct for things like quality of competition. We said all these things 10 years ago, Johannes. You already know them. > Yes, my argument for quality of competition was and is that this evens itself out over a numbre of events. Yes there could be theoretically still the odd situation where the same 15 people in a city do a tournament each week and everyone has 8 wins eventually, but I have yet to see one case like this surface into the top 10. > fredsct wrote: > Anyway, are you seriously questioning why fairness is important to the qualifying system or just my motivations personally? If the former, its that the idea of reserving things like 2nd day spots for a privileged group of players who will have the inside track on obtaining them will tend to discourage the other players over time and decrease, not increase participation. The latter is not a relavent to the point I'm making - which is the same whether I make it or anyone else does. > I was not talking about you personal motivations, no hard feelings I agree with you that we have to be careful about "rewards" from the ranking system. I still think there are valid rewards with a seemingly "unfair" (sounds so negative, let´s say sub-optimal) system. Like having a Legendary Vampire tournament. Or like awarding a small subset of 2nd day spots to the top X (small being <=10%). Card art portraits are probably the best option of all because this is a non-monetary value outside of the competition.

> johannes wrote: > I was not talking about you personal motivations, no hard feelings I agree with you that we have to be careful about "rewards" from the ranking system. I still think there are valid rewards with a seemingly "unfair" (sounds so negative, let´s say sub-optimal) system. Like having a Legendary Vampire tournament. > Agreed. It may be harder for people from the US to be in the top 25 players (though not impossible at all), but US players that would come to a European Championship are the most likely to travel and do more tournaments. People that don't come won't care I guess > johannes wrote: > Or like awarding a small subset of 2nd day spots to the top X (small being <=10%). > I dislike this idea, even if we restrict it to a continent (eg. considering only the top X European players for the EC) because it would change the nature of the Continental Championships. This is personal taste, but giving an equal chance to access the Day 2 to every qualified player sounds more fair to me than disadvantaging players (because there will be less open spots) that couldn't attend lots of tournament a given year. > johannes wrote: > Card art portraits are probably the best option of all because this is a non-monetary value outside of the competition. > That is a nice idea, but it shouldn't reward world ranking only. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Ankha wrote: > I dislike this idea, even if we restrict it to a continent (eg. considering only the top X European players for the EC) because it would change the nature of the Continental Championships. This is personal taste, but giving an equal chance to access the Day 2 to every qualified player sounds more fair to me than disadvantaging players (because there will be less open spots) that couldn't attend lots of tournament a given year. > Yes, my feelings, too... "It was a perfect plan - until it had contact with reality" --- Hardy Range Playgroup Tradition Compliance Manager

> Ankha wrote: > I dislike this idea, even if we restrict it to a continent (eg. considering only the top X European players for the EC) because it would change the nature of the Continental Championships. This is personal taste, but giving an equal chance to access the Day 2 to every qualified player sounds more fair to me than disadvantaging players (because there will be less open spots) that couldn't attend lots of tournament a given year. > I don´t think it is the greatest idea either, but I think it might be still valid. You just have to make sure the "disadvantage" is relatively low, i.e I don´t really care if I have to be Top38 or Top40. There are precedents for both cases by the way. Some sports allow for direct advancement of high ranked players into the further rounds of a competition while others require everybody to go through the same amount of "heats/prerounds". I general I am pro rewarding a good ranking however I think that being ranked in the Top X of the world is quite rewarding itself so can afford to be careful. We could also think about passing trophy, say a #1 player in Europe cup, which changes to the person with the most weeks on #1 spot since last EC or so.

@Fred : would the "rating" system be more fair if it only took into account the best result of each player over the past 18 months (instead of the top 8 results of each player) ? How about the top 2 best? Now, the question is, if we keep this philosophy of merely selecting the top N results of each player (this is debatable, but would need way more time than available), which N provides the fairest result?

> johannes wrote: > Or like awarding a small subset of 2nd day spots to the top X (small being <=10%). Card art portraits are probably the best option of all because this is a non-monetary value outside of the competition. > I agree on both. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > This isn't sports, it's a hobby collectible card game named VtES and people don't behave the same way as famous athletes - so such comparisons are silly. > > > Actually, Chess is sports. > And when I reserved the ferry tickets to Team Finland for this year's EC we got a sports club discount which just proves that even mundanes think that we're sports... > Sure. And incidences of unbridled poker pervade the sports cable channels here in the United States. It's almost as inane as calling golf a sport. Fortunately, there are lots of cable channels and it's still easier to change your channel than shoot your TV set. But I'm just saying, such analogies only lead to insanity. It's technically possible to overcome issues of effort. Like the guy who said: > > Ankha wrote: > It may be harder for people from the US to be in the top 25 players (though not impossible at all)... > Of course it's not impossible at all. A U.S. player could quit his job, fly to Europe, rent a flat, and travel around to all the tournaments for 6 months or a year and if he was really any good, he'll have his ranking up in the top 25 in no time at all. Of course, some might then argue he'd become a Europen player but either way, it's not a value system most of us expect from a VtES player. In many sports and in the top levels of things like chess and poker, there's a different value system which doesn't apply to us - I least I hope! So such analogies should be entirely avoided, or at the very least, one needs to take the differences in value systems into account. Fred

> johannes wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > First of all we're not debating "rating" system. The VEKN ranking system doesn't rate at all. It just awards points for various feats (and then takes them away some number of months later). The points are awarded for skillful feats, it's true, but no attempt is made to correct for things like quality of competition. We said all these things 10 years ago, Johannes. You already know them. > > > Yes, my argument for quality of competition was and is that this evens itself out over a numbre of events. > You may be right about that or not. I think it really depends on whether events transpire to create some incidences of sufficiently rewarding "soft" tournaments that a player could take advantage of or not, such as the level of competition on one particular continent or geographical area varying a lot compared to others. But never mind that. As I pointed out at the time, the issue is less likely to be "players at the top who aren't good". The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere. I mean, look at Ben Peal at 118 points and Brian Moritz with 355, both far out of the top 100 list of players and tell me, with a straight face, that this number reflects player skill. > johannes wrote: > I was not talking about you personal motivations, no hard feelings > Sure. None taken. > johannes wrote: > I agree with you that we have to be careful about "rewards" from the ranking system. I still think there are valid rewards with a seemingly "unfair" (sounds so negative, let´s say sub-optimal) system. Like having a Legendary Vampire tournament. Or like awarding a small subset of 2nd day spots to the top X (small being <=10%). Card art portraits are probably the best option of all because this is a non-monetary value outside of the competition. > The tournament is obviously totally reasonable. Limiting the number of 2nd day spots to a small tournaments strikes me as limiting the damage - like, "I'm not going to cut my whole arm off, I'll just cut my little finger off instead." I don't see the reason to do it all myself but if you're going to do it, I agree, a small number is far less likely to bother anyone. As a guy who already got on a piece of card art by just being at the right place at the right time, I probably can't tell you folks what you should do about that. Fred

> fredsct wrote: > The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere. I mean, look at Ben Peal at 118 points and Brian Moritz with 355, both far out of the top 100 list of players and tell me, with a straight face, that this number reflects player skill. > Is the problem with the current ratings system or with the fact you stated ("because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments")? Which should change? Compare our system to that of Diamond League: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAAF_Diamond_League Sure, someone at Diamond League might make a new world record at one game but if they don't really attend that many games, they have zero chance of ranking high at the league. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere. I mean, look at Ben Peal at 118 points and Brian Moritz with 355, both far out of the top 100 list of players and tell me, with a straight face, that this number reflects player skill. > > > Is the problem with the current ratings system or with the fact you stated ("because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments")? Which should change? > Erm...you left off the full quote: > > fredsct wrote: > ...The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere. > Mind you, I'm not saying anything should change all. I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill. It's just an arbitrary reward system for doing "good things" and it has very bad flaw when used to compare people in different areas of the world. So the guy who pointed out that using it to hold a contest between all the players in the same city would be OK was correct, as far as that went. But using it rank players between different geographical areas is completely unfair and therefore should not done in situations where fairness is required. Fred

This discussion seems to run in circles, and honestly, im not sure its helpful. Its made me realize maybe vtes should be televised Seriously though, ive had the debate as to who the best player ever is. Good luck ever proving any one person. Its easy to use ratings to support such arfuments. For example, around when the Newark Ohio playerbase dwindled slightly, we had biweekley tournaments for a few months. The Bells drove in for many of them. Connor and Mindy did well at many of them. John won a rediculous ass ton of them. I think we may have had a running joke of "come play! Add to John Bells twda entry list!" And i think he was highly ranked then for a spell. Before a final table with him( i remember it kinda well. He and Loughman had mistress/carna and carna wall, respectively. I played 2nd trad for dom tha with dawn op, weather control, burst of sunlight, etc. We were the last three, and i lost due to refo motus in his hand after ousting loughman.) We discussed who the best player ever was. He said arguably Ben Peal, and i said Hugh. At this point, John was numerically ranked the highest. Ben hadnt been on the top of the list in awhile, due to things in real life. Hugh had been high on the list within a year or so of this converaation, and everyone played stickmen for a minute because of his decks. Also, i recall TTC master being perpetually high on the ww ranking list due to apparenly a glitch. He didnt win as many as would explain never moving at that point. Loughman was also in the list in top 5 for awhile. Point is, in previois times, we have had a rotating top list, and the only last 18 months should have served keeping it that way. If i win 8 tables annually during the WoN and NAC, i retain my points unti lthe following year, as long as origins isnt moved forward six months. If we keep the system and grow playerbases, smaller groups can get more points, and larger groups have potentialto unseat top players by them losing. The best in the world lose sometimes. Maybe we add support where we need bigger draws, if we can. My strategies all were Pod dependant, but its possible to help playerbases. Then in a year and a half, we see things slide some. I cant blame location on my rating, although it seems lower than it should be due to table sweeps and attendance. My city amd state have players. My inflexible real life schedule with work and my family make me a hard peraon to play with most weekz, but that may change once things settle more. My wife would play more with a sitter. She ignorez rating alltogether, because she enjoys playing and deckbuilding more than talking about it. Life happens to players. New ones are harx to get. I say we: Keep current system and add a "legacy" system of some kind. Build playerbases, especiay by stealing players of ccps mmorpg, to add value to our game being printed to the holder of our source IP. but i see both sides of the argument, and no easy solution exists

Thanks to Johannes for his work and to Gines for taking over. Personally, the ratings are fun and I like them.

I say forget about the rankings issues and work on making the game easier to get people into. without the ability to buy cards its a massive undertaking. the only real option isto buy specific cards to build a deck, which a new player cant really do. the website magiccards.info/ makes getting a proxie deck together quick and easy to do testing with. why doesnt V:tes have the same thing? a better "how to" of deck design covering each clan and deck archetype to help anyone new get their new deck going. now at that point it might be easier getting them to play casual. getting them into a tournament where they have to go buy 102 cards probably isnt going to happen... especially when there are no card limits so they may need 10 copies of a $10 card. im not sure on what tournament proxie allowneces are for V:tes but being out of production there needs to be some allowences (if there arent already) we have a 7 person gaming base with 5-10 who show an interest, proxies may be enough to get them on board casually, and after that interested in events.

> Lönkka wrote: > > > Kraus wrote: > > What we were thinking was that there could be, like, three different kinds of ladders: > > > > Overall best ratings (history; worldwide; filters for areas) > > Overall best average (history; worldwide; filters for areas; average tournament scorings for players, not just accumulated points) > > This year's ratings (nulled every year [two years?], worldwide; filters for areas) > > > Peetu, you might not be aware that the ratings only take into account, like, 18 previous months of points. > > So older history is already only hearsay... > I wasn't aware of that, thank you! The system's the best we're likely to get anytime soon then! And yeah, there are obvious problems with the 'average' ladders. That's why it could be just an addition to the normal ratings; with the amount of tournaments played, for that matter as well! Not likely to be any kind of a priority though, just an idea. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

On getting new players: There have been several projects dedicated to pulling in new players with small resources. Jeff had a new player acquisition challange for something similar. But i have found the easiest way to get new players is with real cards in real decks. Ive lent malk 94 to several players, and lent some of those folks Anson celerity guns 2nd trad once they were done learnimg basics. Having sapler simple decks is a problem. Namely because easy decks are doable with jyhad vamps, but freak drives and deflections cost too much. Deep songs are great, but newbies can suffice with computer hackings and ttcb. I think assembling demo decks isnt as big a problem as being able to donate starter decks. Very finite amount of cards now....

> thrasher80 wrote: > im not sure on what tournament proxie allowneces are for V:tes but being out of production there needs to be some allowences (if there arent already) we have a 7 person gaming base with 5-10 who show an interest, proxies may be enough to get them on board casually, and after that interested in events. > You can use proxies to your heart's content in your own casual games but in official tournaments they still are a no no. See the recent National Coordinator Meeting thread about the official stand at the moment. vekn.net/forum/10-news-and-announcements/55678-national-coordinator-meeting-stockholm-2013 Finnish Politics!

> fredsct wrote: > Mind you, I'm not saying anything should change all. > All this discussion an the result was thus nil or just hot air... > fredsct wrote: > I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill. > I agree to a point since it ost certainly also invloves some degree of skill -you just won't score enough points by attending gazillion tournaments and scoring zero VP or just a few odd ones here and there. If talented players don't have time to spend attending (more) tournaments (or if there's not enough tournaments held in their vicinity, they donät have money to attend ones located further away), I really can't envision a rating system that would actually take this into account and be fair. All in all, ratings are not really important to me as I get my kicks from the other aspects releated to the game. I still do get why people are interested in ratings and like someone already pointed out you can already filter the ratings by country and city to give you better feel for local meta. And here is the rest of the mail in case you again feel like I intentionally left something important out > fredsct wrote: > > > Lönkka wrote: > > > > > fredsct wrote: > > > The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere. I mean, look at Ben Peal at 118 points and Brian Moritz with 355, both far out of the top 100 list of players and tell me, with a straight face, that this number reflects player skill. > > > > > Is the problem with the current ratings system or with the fact you stated ("because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments")? Which should change? > > > Erm...you left off the full quote: > > > > fredsct wrote: > > ...The issue is much more likely to be "extremely good players who are nowhere near the top" because those players simply haven't made the effort to go play in lots of tournaments in the past 18 months (or whatever it is) - because, in turn, the amount of effort it would take them is far greater than what it might take other players elsewhere. > > > Mind you, I'm not saying anything should change all. I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill. It's just an arbitrary reward system for doing "good things" and it has very bad flaw when used to compare people in different areas of the world. So the guy who pointed out that using it to hold a contest between all the players in the same city would be OK was correct, as far as that went. But using it rank players between different geographical areas is completely unfair and therefore should not done in situations where fairness is required. > > Fred > Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > Mind you, I'm not saying anything should change all. > > > All this discussion an the result was thus nil or just hot air... > Well, errm, just in case you've forgotten, we came in on this thread when Ginés proposed: > > Damnans wrote: > World Ranking incentives > I think it would be a good idea to make the current ranking system more significant,... > ...I suggested that these changes were not good. So I'm confused why you should say this was 'hot air'? > Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill. > > > I agree to a point since it ost certainly also invloves some degree of skill -you just won't score enough points by attending gazillion tournaments and scoring zero VP or just a few odd ones here and there. > Agreed. But just because skill is involved doesn't mean a system rates skill. The problem, as Johannes and I alluded to in our exchange, is that in the VEKN ranking system no attempt is made to take other factors into account in order to neutralize them so that the remaining number reflected only skill - for instance the quality of competition encountered in a given event or (for me, what is the important thing) the relative difficulty in attending the events. > Lönkka wrote: > If talented players don't have time to spend attending (more) tournaments (or if there's not enough tournaments held in their vicinity, they donät have money to attend ones located further away), I really can't envision a rating system that would actually take this into account and be fair. > To some extent, I agree with you. Obviously, players have to attend some events to possibly be rated. The answer, if your goal is to rate skill, is to take the number of events (beyond a minimum number indicating that you have a useful amount with which to measure) out of the equation. But I don't think it's worth discussing what it would take to create an true rating system here. The point is, the VEKN ranking system isn't one and shouldn't be treated as one. And again, my purpose for commenting was merely to advocate that Ginés' proposal, vis "World Ranking Incentives" be rejected. For this purpose, it's not necessary to invent a new system here and now. Fred

> fredsct wrote: > So I'm confused why you should say this was 'hot air'? > Plenty of discussion to no effect. > fredsct wrote: > The problem, as Johannes and I alluded to in our exchange, is that in the VEKN ranking system no attempt is made to take other factors into account in order to neutralize them so that the remaining number reflected only skill - for instance the quality of competition encountered in a given event or (for me, what is the important thing) the relative difficulty in attending the events. > A lofty idea but how would the "quality of competition" be measured in concrete terms? VTES ain't golf where par number can be assigned to players to indicate their relative provess. > fredsct wrote: > But I don't think it's worth discussing what it would take to create an true rating system here. The point is, the VEKN ranking system isn't one and shouldn't be treated as one. > Yet, IIRC, it was quite an important thing to get up and working again. Since you have a strong opinion about the subject I honestly think it might be a solid idea if you proposed (in its own thread perhaps) the outilnes for the proper & perfect rating system for VTES that only shows skill. I'm pretty sure that the VEKN programmers would also appreciate some tips on how to implement this with the databases at our disposal. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > So I'm confused why you should say this was 'hot air'? > > > Plenty of discussion to no effect. > When you're concerned that a bad effect is possible and you're trying to warn people to avoid it, "no effect" is a good thing - right? > Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > The problem, as Johannes and I alluded to in our exchange, is that in the VEKN ranking system no attempt is made to take other factors into account in order to neutralize them so that the remaining number reflected only skill - for instance the quality of competition encountered in a given event or (for me, what is the important thing) the relative difficulty in attending the events. > > > A lofty idea but how would the "quality of competition" be measured in concrete terms? VTES ain't golf where par number can be assigned to players to indicate their relative provess. > You record who the opponents are in a game or tournament and take their ratings into account. > Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > But I don't think it's worth discussing what it would take to create an true rating system here. The point is, the VEKN ranking system isn't one and shouldn't be treated as one. > > > Yet, IIRC, it was quite an important thing to get up and working again. > Erm,...that's a matter of opinion. I don't think you've ever heard me say that. > Lönkka wrote: > Since you have a strong opinion about the subject I honestly think it might be a solid idea if you proposed (in its own thread perhaps) the outilnes for the proper & perfect rating system for VTES that only shows skill. > There's no particular need for that here, though. VEKN has been served just fine (IMHO) by simply keeping its ranking system as a show piece and not trying to use it for anything important. I think that's the main takehome here. In case you're curisous, I will tell you, we had that discussion 10 years ago on Usenet in the rec.games.trading-card.jyhad newsgroup. My summary is (of course) personally biased but for my purposes, it boided down to: 1) I thought you could create an interesting and arguably effective skill rating system by using the chess/ELO-based rating system VEKN once used (but bungled in a technical sense by using a really awful coeffecient). 2) Others thought that such a system was technically infeasible due to the need for ordering results in the database (that the current VEKN ranking system doesn't have). I'm pretty sure such issues could be sidestepped, but it wasn't worth arguing about. 3) Others also thought that my propsed system might not reflect skill very accurately in the end, either, when everything was said and done. I think it's hard to tell how well it would work without implementing it - but they might have been right. Fred

> fredsct wrote: > 1) I thought you could create an interesting and arguably effective skill rating system by using the chess/ELO-based rating system VEKN once used (but bungled in a technical sense by using a really awful coeffecient). > Technical requirements aside, such a system would have the same issues with locality that the present system has. > 3) Others also thought that my propsed system might not reflect skill very accurately in the end, either, when everything was said and done. I think it's hard to tell how well it would work without implementing it - but they might have been right. > In a multiplayer game, there really isn't any way to objectively and conclusively rank players. For example, if two players gang up and oust a third player, is that third player a lesser player for being ousted, or a greater player for it requiring two other players to oust them? I do think you're correct that the current system is more of a participation/achievement/merit-badgey system than a true ranking system. However, I'm of the opinion that it's "best available" or "works well enough" for a reward system. I also agree that given the issues of locality, a regional basis should be used for such rewards. All that said, the specifics and details of how the system will be implemented haven't been fully determined yet. As such, I think we should concern ourselves less with panic and more with suggestions.

> BenPeal wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > 1) I thought you could create an interesting and arguably effective skill rating system by using the chess/ELO-based rating system VEKN once used (but bungled in a technical sense by using a really awful coeffecient). > > > Technical requirements aside, such a system would have the same issues with locality that the present system has. > Nonsense. In the current system, number of rated events attended, with a distinct bias towards the largest and most important events, are critical aspects of a player's point total along with how well he does in those events. Since the effort to attend events can vary wildly, anywhere from getting out of bed and crossing the street all the way up to getting on an airplane and flying to a different part of the world, this non-skill factor clearly has a massive effect on point totals. Contrast this to an ELO system. Granted, the ELO system can be flawed based on the how well your opponents' skill are reflected in their ratings (and, perhaps other issues: metagame, deck ordering, and other chance factors), these don't hold a candle to the effect of differential attendance requirements. And they're also present in the current system, as well - so it doesn't matter. If all you're saying is that ultimately, representing skill as a number isn't possible at all, again, you might be right. But if it isn't, why even have a ranking system? I don't see how implementing a thorough unfair one helps. > BenPeal wrote: > ...I think we should concern ourselves less with panic and more with suggestions. > I'm not sure why you suggest that. I wasn't "panicing", just throwing up a red flag about what I saw as a problem with one of Ginés' proposals. Discussion raises awareness which results in more refined and intelligent choices in the end. My main proposal is, "stay away from altering the structure of continental championship tournament qualifying and implementation." If you must use it, the Legends tournament proposal struck me as a reasonable outlet. Fred

Even in ELO system more activity means a better rating, if you are good that is. Technically the database would have to be a LOT more complex. And also it would be important that tournaments would be reported in order. Also, 5 player ELO coefficients would be very difficult to put fair coefficients on. Even worse if we need to count ratings per tournament. Jussi Hattara Webmaster Extraordinaire Finnish Politics!

> jhattara wrote: > Even in ELO system more activity means a better rating, if you are good that is. Technically the database would have to be a LOT more complex. And also it would be important that tournaments would be reported in order. Also, 5 player ELO coefficients would be very difficult to put fair coefficients on. Even worse if we need to count ratings per tournament. > Some of that was conceeded earlier. Some of it isn't really true. Some of it is true...but... - that is, there are reasonable enough answers to it. If you want to start another thread somewhere else, I'll certainly be happy to go there and defend the concept for argument's sake, although I'm not personally motivated enough to go do it myself. (Once again...) The relative merits of various ways of doing player ratings and rankings are beside the point.

> fredsct wrote: > > > BenPeal wrote: > > > > > fredsct wrote: > > > 1) I thought you could create an interesting and arguably effective skill rating system by using the chess/ELO-based rating system VEKN once used (but bungled in a technical sense by using a really awful coeffecient). > > > > > > > > Technical requirements aside, such a system would have the same issues with locality that the present system has. > > > Nonsense. > No, not nonsense at all. The data points are localized, regardless of whether it's the current system or ELO. I agree with your comparison/contrasting of the current system and ELO, but the fact remains that the data points from, say, North America don't cross-pollinate with the data points from Australia. With the exception of the few players who do travel inter-continentally, the data is going to remain "siloed" whether it's ELO or the current system. > If all you're saying is that ultimately, representing skill as a number isn't possible at all, again, you might be right. But if it isn't, why even have a ranking system? I don't see how implementing a thorough unfair one helps. > I would agree with you if you said the current system is imperfect. I disagree that it is unfair. > > BenPeal wrote: > > ...I think we should concern ourselves less with panic and more with suggestions. > > > I'm not sure why you suggest that. I wasn't "panicing", just throwing up a red flag about what I saw as a problem with one of Ginés' proposals. Discussion raises awareness which results in more refined and intelligent choices in the end. My main proposal is, "stay away from altering the structure of continental championship tournament qualifying and implementation." If you must use it, the Legends tournament proposal struck me as a reasonable outlet. > The discussion part is great and very valuable, but at the same time you were decrying the proposal as unfair before first knowing how it is to be implemented - and it's still not yet known.

> jhattara wrote: > Even in ELO system more activity means a better rating, if you are good that is. Technically the database would have to be a LOT more complex. And also it would be important that tournaments would be reported in order. Also, 5 player ELO coefficients would be very difficult to put fair coefficients on. Even worse if we need to count ratings per tournament. > A column with date of tournament should do the trick. The data selection program can then process the entries in the correct order, regardless of when specific tournament results would be uploaded. You could run the program once each month and all reported tournaments are used for calculating the ranking. If at a later time an older tournament gets reported, that should be no problem at all. pckvtes.wordpress.com

> BenPeal wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > > > > BenPeal wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > fredsct wrote: > > > > 1) I thought you could create an interesting and arguably effective skill rating system by using the chess/ELO-based rating system VEKN once used (but bungled in a technical sense by using a really awful coeffecient). > > > > > > > > > > > Technical requirements aside, such a system would have the same issues with locality that the present system has. > > > > > > > > > ... > The data points are localized, regardless of whether it's the current system or ELO. I agree with your comparison/contrasting of the current system and ELO, but the fact remains that the data points from, say, North America don't cross-pollinate with the data points from Australia. With the exception of the few players who do travel inter-continentally, the data is going to remain "siloed" whether it's ELO or the current system. > No, they're not - not a long as the two sums are compared with each other for any important purposes. If Joe from Austrailia travels to Europe and plays in the European CC, wouldn't his Austrailian ranking points matter if he could potentially have a free pass into the second day based on his total? Furthermore, you don't have to go to a different continent to find a problem. Doesn't the disparity in travel effort make a difference just between different areas in Europe? It certainly does in the U.S., where no comparison can be made for players in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Fransisco, three cities in the American SW region which present very different opportunities for tournament play to an average player in each city. > BenPeal wrote: > > > If all you're saying is that ultimately, representing skill as a number isn't possible at all, again, you might be right. But if it isn't, why even have a ranking system? I don't see how implementing a thorough unfair one helps. > > > I would agree with you if you said the current system is imperfect. I disagree that it is unfair. > Of course it's unfair. How can you say the difference between lots of tournaments held in your home city and in nearby-driving-distance cities isn't completely unfair in comparison with someone who lives hundreds of miles from any tournaments? I'm confused about how you can be missing my point. > BenPeal wrote: > The discussion part is great and very valuable, but at the same time you were decrying the proposal as unfair before first knowing how it is to be implemented - and it's still not yet known. > I'm pretty sure I knew enough about it to decry where Ginés was going with it. "...either by granting the top X players automatic qualification for the Continental Championships and/or for the Second Day of the European Championship..." is enough information to want to lodge my concerns immediately.

> Amenophobis wrote: > > > jhattara wrote: > > Even in ELO system more activity means a better rating, if you are good that is. Technically the database would have to be a LOT more complex. And also it would be important that tournaments would be reported in order. Also, 5 player ELO coefficients would be very difficult to put fair coefficients on. Even worse if we need to count ratings per tournament. > > > A column with date of tournament should do the trick. The data selection program can then process the entries in the correct order, regardless of when specific tournament results would be uploaded. > You could run the program once each month and all reported tournaments are used for calculating the ranking. If at a later time an older tournament gets reported, that should be no problem at all. > If you found an error in an old event or a late report of an old tournament then all tournaments would need ro be recalculated...not only the event with the error or missing event. Each player's elo changes between each round so a database would need to store the values as they existed before and after each round. Ultimately we did make progress on fixing the ELO ratings but had to abandon the effort because WW was unable to manage something of this magnitude. _________________ Robert Goudie

> Robert wrote: > > > Amenophobis wrote: > > > > > jhattara wrote: > > > Even in ELO system more activity means a better rating, if you are good that is. Technically the database would have to be a LOT more complex. And also it would be important that tournaments would be reported in order. Also, 5 player ELO coefficients would be very difficult to put fair coefficients on. Even worse if we need to count ratings per tournament. > > > > > > > > A column with date of tournament should do the trick. The data selection program can then process the entries in the correct order, regardless of when specific tournament results would be uploaded. > > You could run the program once each month and all reported tournaments are used for calculating the ranking. If at a later time an older tournament gets reported, that should be no problem at all. > > > If you found an error in an old event or a late report of an old tournament then all tournaments would need ro be recalculated...not only the event with the error or missing event. Each player's elo changes between each round so a database would need to store the values as they existed before and after each round. Ultimately we did make progress on fixing the ELO ratings but had to abandon the effort because WW was unable to manage something of this magnitude. > Of course everything would have to be recalculated every time the program runs. Since there is a very limited amount of entries in the database, this poses no problem, performance-wise. All entries have the date of the tournament and the round number fields as key, so are historical correct. Since there are only a subset of all entries (i.d. last 18 months or so), again, performance is no factor. A periodic job can clear all entries in the database that are older than X, just to not clog the database, but OTOH, we are nowhere in 10 years expecting more then a million entries, no? A working ELO ranking/rating system is absolutely doable with widely available SQL tools. With the caveat that in the time period between any two consecutively runs things might have changed a bit. But I think VTES players are a patient lot and can wait a month for rankings/ratings to be updated. B-) pckvtes.wordpress.com

> fredsct wrote: > My main proposal is, "stay away from altering the structure of continental championship tournament qualifying and implementation." If you must use it, the Legends tournament proposal struck me as a reasonable outlet. > On this I wholeheartedly agree with Fred! Finnish Politics!

> fredsct wrote: > You record who the opponents are in a game or tournament and take their ratings into account. > So if you play against players with lowratings you get zero/low points? But if everyone starts off with 0 rating points how will anyone make progress unless we grate/rate players beforehand with some arbitary system (say, we decide that "Ben" is rated as A player and "Janne" is rated as "F" player -which is not that far from reality since I'm sure that at least 99,9% of players will rather have Janne as their predator instead of "Ben"...) I'm not saying that this wouldnät work, but I'm just curious as it is not a bad idea. But there are the problems involved: > BenPeal wrote: > In a multiplayer game, there really isn't any way to objectively and conclusively rank players. For example, if two players gang up and oust a third player, is that third player a lesser player for being ousted, or a greater player for it requiring two other players to oust them? > But all in all, checking the current World Rankings, I notice that in order to rank at the top you really need to perform well (=win) at BIG event(s). No casual player winning an occasional local tournament and being in the finals every now and then is ever going to threaten the top players. You could still make it to the high rankings if you manage to, like, win 8 local tournaments. So I'm not all that convinced that the current system is all that faulty either. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > You record who the opponents are in a game or tournament and take their ratings into account. > > > So if you play against players with lowratings you get zero/low points? But if everyone starts off with 0 rating points how will anyone make progress... > I've been pointedly trying to avoid discussing alternatives just because it diverts the subject of the thread but, since you asked, this has all been thought about by Arpad Elo when he created his chess ranking system. The answer is that you start each person off with a standard positive number, say, 3000. When any two players meet, the winner of the contest receives a sum of points from the loser (so it's a zero-sum system, so jhattara is wrong to say "more activity means higher ratings" except in regard to aberrations from new players' initial ratings) based on the inverse of the difference between their prior rankings. So the winner always gets something for winning - albeit only very little if his rating was a lot higher than the loser's. Since VtES is a multiplayer game, there needs to be a system to collapse a multiplayer game result down into a series of individual head-to-head results but that's fairly easily done. It has a number of flaws and warts which people which people (especially in VEKN - since we're all geeks here! B-) ) will talk endlessly about. None of them are so fatal you couldn't program the system and get something out but Ben's probably right to very suspicious of how meaningful the number would be. There was once such a system used by VEKN but it didn't work well because: 1) At the time, VEKN had no method of processing ratings with missing reports and then reprocessing them once a missing report arrives later on (to which Amenophobis refers in this thread). With modern technology, it really shouldn't be a problem. (I think saving the intermediate ratings calculations derived after every single report would be necessary aspect of the system, saving recalculation time at the cost of a little disk space.) 2) An arbitrary coefficient used in the system caused ratings to bounce up and down horribly, making the resulting rating totally meaningless. Your rating was essentially based only on your last few games. It was a totally fixable problem. Whether the resulting ratings would ever be that meaningful, however, is another matter. Fred

Right-ho, thanks for the info! Anyways, AFAIK, the biggest problem in your neck of woods (US of A) is the fact that Princes don't submit their Archons. It doesn't matter how crappy or nice a system we have, or would have, for ratings if the Archons aren't submitted. I think that submitting one will take up around half a minute or so. Digging up player VEKN numbers will probably take, like two, three minutes... EDIT: Players (everywhere in the world), put pressure on your Princes on this! Let the Man know what you think of slow uploading! Power to the people! Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > Anyways, AFAIK, the biggest problem in your neck of woods (US of A) is the fact that Princes don't submit their Archons. It doesn't matter how crappy or nice a system we have, or would have, for ratings if the Archons aren't submitted.uploading! > I disagree. The biggist problem in our neck of the woods is that VEKN rankings hinge on the number of events attended - which may very well be a huge part of the disincentive to bother sending them in. It may be a far easier issue to grasp in our part of the world because: 1) The smaller population densities means that enthusiastic players are starved for tournaments because other concentrations of players are far less often within reasonable driving distance. 2) The smaller population densisities frequently mean that insufficient play happens to be worth following the game at all - so even in places that have enough players to create tournamentss, organizations frequently collapse anyway for lack of interest due to (in a frustrating circular chain) lack of play. This is why other concentrations of player don't exist within reasonable driving distance: the kind of small towns and rural hamlets within driving distance of Phoenix simply aren't going to support them. This is a general problem with collectible card games, especially multiplayer cardgames like VtES that require a minimum of players to make a decent game. A board game you can buy and just stick in your closet and pull out whenever you can get enough players - even if it's many years after you bought the game. But CCGs require ongoing investments and if you have no one to play, you stop making the investment yourself - thus exacerbating the problem in your area. That's why you very seldom hear from VtES groups in the middle of nowhere. It's also why I'm so antagonistic to the VEKN point system that tends to reward attendance at events. IMHO, we just don't need yet another incentive system that in some way rewards people who are lucky enough to already live in the relatively dense areas - much though I understand that it also rewards skill. From my perspective, it's yet another circular chain of causation that tends to discourage tournament play in the areas where tournament play is already very challenging to arrange. Fred

> fredsct wrote: > I'm just saying that this system does not rate skill. > Very interesting. I disagree. In my experience people with good ranking are very good players. But I somewhat understand the problem fredsct states - I welcome any constructive ideas. Walls of text of whining I do not welcome. "My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."

> fredsct wrote: > The biggist problem in our neck of the woods is that VEKN rankings hinge on the number of events attended - which may very well be a huge part of the disincentive to bother sending them in. > I wouldnät say the ratings hinge on number of events attended. Ratings take into account the top 8 scores from the past 18 months. If spread evenly, that would be a tournament every 10 weeks. Naturally if you play in more events the better chance you have of getting better ratings. But it does me little good if I play in at least 17 tournaments annually since I'm a crappy player and won't usuallys core that well. So attending a multitude of events does me little good since the top 8 will not give me that great rating points anyways. We seem to see the system from different angles; apples and oranges if you will... Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > I wouldnät say the ratings hinge on number of events attended. > ... > We seem to see the system from different angles; apples and oranges if you will... > I think you're refusing to concede the obvious. Of course ratings hinge on number of events attended: if you attend zero events, you will score zero points. I've been very careful not to say skill doesn't matter to VEKN point system because that isn't true. In the end, both things matter. Trouble is, in order to rate skill, one of the two doesn't belong there.

> fredsct wrote: > I think you're refusing to concede the obvious. Of course ratings hinge on number of events attended: if you attend zero events, you will score zero points. > > I've been very careful not to say skill doesn't matter to VEKN point system because that isn't true. In the end, both things matter. Trouble is, in order to rate skill, one of the two doesn't belong there. > But if you are skilled the numbers don't really matter as you consistently rank high, eh? Since you've been talking highly skilled players, you just need eight, or slightly more, tournaments and you're set. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > Since you've been talking highly skilled players, you just need eight, or slightly more, tournaments and you're set. > I believe such a resonse is severely lacking in reality. In an area like Phoenix, eight tournaments in 18 months isn't happening. If you live in Anchorage, Alaska, one tournament in 18 months isn't happening. And, even besides that, it makes a huge difference how large and important those tournaments are - so if you can get to eight 8-person tournaments, your score still isn't likely to compare to someone who has done well in two or three of his tournaments, if they're, say, 50-person tournaments. And your worst omission of all is that anyone who plays more than 8 tournaments has the advantage of substituting better scores from their ninth and subsequent tournaments for their poorest scores from their first eight. And while this effect begins to mean less, the more tournaments you play in, let's not pretend it's meaningless. It's actually going to be a very important advantage. Do we really need to have this dispute? This is just a silly line of argument, IMO. Fred

We want to encourage people to attend events and play V:TES. Due to geographic and demographic issues, there will never be a way to ensure equal access to participation. As such, ranking and ratings systems, whether the format is attendance-based, ELO-based, or otherwise, will be imperfect. Programs to reward or incentivize attendance and performance at VTES events will likewise be imperfect. We're going go forward with these programs anyway, because we want to encourage people to attend events and play VTES.

> BenPeal wrote: > We want to encourage people to attend events and play V:TES. > Agreed. > BenPeal wrote: > Due to geographic and demographic issues, there will never be a way to ensure equal access to participation. > Agreed. > BenPeal wrote: > As such, ranking and ratings systems, whether the format is attendance-based, ELO-based, or otherwise, will be imperfect. > They're more than "imperfect". I'd say they're downright bad - at least, the ones are that tend to be fun for the people you already have participating and discourage the populations of players who already tend to be discouraged from starting. > BenPeal wrote: > Programs to reward or incentivize attendance and performance at VTES events will likewise be imperfect. > > We're going go forward with these programs anyway, because we want to encourage people to attend events and play VTES. > Why? I don't think the only incentives programs that are possible are based on the existing ranking system.

> fredsct wrote: > Do we really need to have this dispute? This is just a silly line of argument, IMO. > Ben thinking about exactly same thing for a couple of days now -kinda tired of this two-man-asshat show. Since, Fred here states the obvious problem among the more spread out kindred, I suggest hat we lessen the number of tournaments used to count the ratings. If 8 is too high in some locales, perhaps lower number might be deemed more fair and appropriate. True Skill TM among the players would show if we only counted one tournament, but even thus some people might have problems attending the one needed VTES tournament in 1,5 years so we could go as low as 0 too...[/asshat off] I state again the obvous, grow the playerbase, organize more tournaments, attend them and have them reported. Ain't no other way. Don't have anything more to add to this thread since I more or less said the same things over and over again even if I wasn't the only one going that road. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > Since, Fred here states the obvious problem among the more spread out kindred, I suggest hat we lessen the number of tournaments used to count the ratings. > ... > If 8 is too high in some locales, perhaps lower number might be deemed more fair and appropriate. > The obvious is that there is no number of tournaments that makes this work. The whole idea of rankings based on achievement formulas is borked due to the structure, not the exact number chosen. > Lönkka wrote: > True Skill TM among the players would show if we only counted one tournament, but even thus some people might have problems attending the one needed VTES tournament in 1,5 years so we could go as low as 0 too... > Exactly. So take the point... > Lönkka wrote: > I state again the obvous, grow the playerbase, organize more tournaments, attend them and have them reported. > This is frustrating. Your mind just does not want to wrap around the idea that what you're fighting is a physics problem, not an "effort" problem. If you just don't give a rat's ass about fairness, just say so and we can agree that we have unresolvable value difference and quit talking past each other. But if you honestly believe that it's "obvious" that the answer for players in low-density play areas is to "grow the playerbase, (yadda, yadda)...", then - as Inigo Montoya siad - "I don't think that word means what you think it means!"

> fredsct wrote: > When any two players meet, the winner of the contest receives a sum of points from the loser (so it's a zero-sum system, so jhattara is wrong to say "more activity means higher ratings" except in regard to aberrations from new players' initial ratings) > What you fail to see is that those "aberrations" are precisely how the ELO system works for someone in your situation who cannot play enough games to reach the stationary regime. In that early regime, a good player's ELO gain is a direct function (asymptotically linear) of his number of ranked games, just like the current system and the best ELO ranking he can expect is average+, nowhere near the top.

> Non-existant user wrote: > > > fredsct wrote: > > When any two players meet, the winner of the contest receives a sum of points from the loser (so it's a zero-sum system, so jhattara is wrong to say "more activity means higher ratings" except in regard to aberrations from new players' initial ratings) > > > What you fail to see is that those "aberrations" are precisely how the ELO system works for someone in your situation who cannot play enough games to reach the stationary regime. In that early regime, a good player's ELO gain is a direct function (asymptotically linear) of his number of ranked games, just like the current system and the best ELO ranking he can expect is average+, nowhere near the top. > No, I totally agree. But then, I was never suggesting we use the ELO system for anything like what Ginés was proposing, either. My interest in it is pretty much sheer curiosity: I'd love to see what numbers it would produce for their own sake. But it certainly wouldn't surprise me if they turn out to be useless for any purpose.