Toribash
Original Post
Reinstate a Past Ranking System (An Argument for Change)
Please think clearly about what I'm going to say about the ranking system before you just say no.

This ranking system was a cool attempt at making the "better players" have a higher rank but it simply didn't work.

To quote [RAWR]Dargon:

The problem is ELO systems don't work in a game like toribash.

My main argument is that the current ELO system supports the absolute opposite of what Nabi Studios would want to have in an atmosphere to acquire new players. It also casts out enthused players who want to try lots of different things and learn from better more experienced people.


1) The current system rewards those who don't try a variety of mods.

Most high rank people (Read: 1-35) are there because they played the hell out of 1 mod and didn't venture off to try other mods. The point being that it's way easier to go 60 wins 2 losses in a game like jousting with one decent opener against new players and have a super high ELO (proof... well me) than it is to go 20-5 in a slower mod like Wushu.

Playing MORE mods should be what the game encourages; however, if you start playing aikido and only have an ELO of say 1610, when your jousting ELO is 1700, your rank plummets. Thus playing more mods currently is a bad thing.

2) The point system doesn't work and frustrates members.

A good example is what happened to me yesterday. I played brushu, and won a game against [fl0w]Deprav (a highly ranked brushu player), then a game against [Alpha]Logic (the #1 ranked brushu player in toribash), followed by a loss to the ranked 120th player or somewhere in that region. The net result? I actually lost 2 ELO points. I won 2 games, and lost 1, my 2 games were incredibly quality wins, and actually got a WORSE rank.

This just goes to show the math simply isn't working here. If you can beat the absolute best player, a fantastic player, and then lose to a great player, and be worse off when you started... well that's simply counter-intuitive isn't it?


3) The current system discourages playing people who aren't good (the Ambassador argument)

Better players of toribash are really the ambassadors for Nabi studios more than even GameMasters from time to time. They give new people a chance of what could come of them and the beauty of highly skill play. But the current system deterrs amazing people to play those who aren't good because one lost game can make the great player lose a LOAD of ranking. Getting a streak of 5, then losing once, only to have the same or worst ranking as you started is completely disheartening. You should want great players to want to play with not-so-great-ones to really show what your character can look like, what toris can do, and learn from them.

http://forum.toribash.com/tori_ranki...?username=Mojo This is the #1 Ranked player in Toribash. Check out the stats. Notice anything? Outside of JOUSTING and KATANA this player, the player who will represent all of the thousands of thousands of players who some started in 7 years ago as NUMBER ONE has a 1600 ranking in almost every skill mod out there. Has Wushu3, aikido, taekkyon, you name it. 1600 is the starting elo...

4) Our current top ranked leaders aren't role-models (a continuation of the Ambassador argument)

SEVEN of the top TEN players ranked globally in toribash haven't reached 3rd Dan Black Belt. Two of them haven't even reached black belt yet. These members aren't well-known good people in great clans that people aspire to. There are absolutely amazing players in clans like [RAWR] whos rank is near the 2000's meanwhile players you and I have never even heard of are sporting the highest of ranks. Is that really who you want to learn is the "best"? Who would you feel more comfortable being rank 5: TIcux, or "BigClitor" or "BigPrick" (I kid you not, those last 2 are both in the top 10)

5) Promotes rage quitting. It's simple: if you have a 1700 mmr in jousting and someone has a 1590 mmr rating, and they are about to lose to you, they'll lose a shit ton of ranking unless they ragequit. We should be encouraging people to stay the whole match.



TLR Summary

The current system makes unaccomplished players look like heroes to new players, tells people not to play a variety of mods, encourages the play of simple fast mods like judo and jousting over a variety of mods that might take more skill (aikido, aikidobigdojo, lenshu, wushu, taekkyon, judofrac) to name a few, mathematically seems to not work, and discourages the great players who should serve as ambassadors from playing with new players, and RAGE QUITTING.



The Solution? Bring back the QI system!!!

The highest rank people should be the people with the highest QI because that's what actually works in Toribash. Why?

1) Because rage quitting sucks and we should encourage people to stay through the whole match. Rank 15 whoever should want to accept defeat against rank 500,000 white belt honorably because he might be getting closer to Rank 14. Meanwhile, that white belt's DAY WAS MADE beating you.

2) It give quantifiable reason to PLAY TORIBASH. The more you play, the more QI you get, the higher your rank. The old people who have given years and years don't feel like idiots with thumbs up where the sun don't shine because they're rank 3000, and the newer players WANT black belt, 2nd dan, 5th dan, 10th dan, WHATEVER to improve their rank! Isn't a line-up like Tripstone, DJ, TIcux, Nuthug, Kamiko, Dargon a better top 6 than .... Mojo, Kindercat, zaeby, PREY3R, and pedart?

3) It doesn't discourage you from playing any mod you want. Sure, jousting is faster than aikido, and a person who only plays jousting will get QI faster and have a higher rank. But at least if you like jousting, and you decide to play some aikido, you won't completely f over your rank playing it.

4) It encourages coherency AND LEARNING throughout toribash. When you want to get good at a mod, you typically surround yourself with people much better than you (ergo, want to be an aikido player? Play team sambo members. Etc). But you're going to lose a lot doing that. I don't think you should hate yourself from trying to learn a mod because it dropped your rank from 200 to 1700.



And I ALREADY know the major criticism. THIS SYSTEM PROMOTES FARMING!!!

Yes. It does. Having QI determine your rank absolutely promotes farming. But what sounds better of a problem? Farmers farming, and more than likely getting caught because we have ways to catch farmers pretty easily (check out that community ban list!) or having hundreds of people rage quitting to save their rank? Losing rank by the hundreds from trying something new? I think the choice is obvious.


A last point

All of toribash has ever been is playing more toribash. Since you first joined, you probably wanted to wear a color that required you play more games, or get a belt you want, even a custom belt, etc. Make the system reflect what toribash is actually about-> stress-free fun, punishment free, playing. We already have our win-loss ratio publicly posted. If you want to prove your skilled try to increase that. There's no need for this system which 100% DOESN'T work.




To those of you who have read all of that, thank you. I appreciate it. To those of you who didn't, I recommend you do, because you're going to probably make posts that I've already addressed in this argument.
Last edited by Bodhisattva; May 23, 2013 at 03:21 AM.
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Originally Posted by Hxcbbqimo View Post
Danoob:

I'd like to contest you on two points.

1) Your mod rank now matters. Absolutely not. In every wushu mod out there, a guy named "Pr3yer", a stiff unimpressive player holds near rank 1. In brushu, it's by a gigantic amount. Meanwhile there are guys who are in triple digits that outclass him in every way.

I stated that mod rank holds weight now. Its still not a dead on accurate indicator of skill, but if a person can reach and hold onto a two digit mod rank in a heavily populated mod, he most likely knows how to play that mod well.

I haven't seen Pr3yer fight before, but based on what you've said about him, he sounds like a farmer. Farmers will be present in any type of ranking system implemented but its a problem that can be fixed with tweaks to the current system.

Scale the amount of ELO that you win against the same person if you manage to go on a long enough streak.

Impose ELO deductions for Ragequiting.

These are simple and obvious additions to the system imo, but they have been opposed by the majority (or everyone?) since no one wants to be "penalized" for beating someone too much and because no one wants to penalize Ragequitters.
Originally Posted by Hxcbbqimo View Post
2) The better player having a "good chance" to come out on top isn't apparent enough for ELO to work. There have been times where I won 4 games in a row in wushu, lose to someone, and my ranking is lower than what it started out. So even if there's a pretty decent advantage, it's not good ENOUGH.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make.

Maintaining a decent rank with the ELO isn't an easy feat. If you lose to someone who is ranked lower than you, you definitely deserve to lose a noticeable amount of ELO points. Its a good (arguably frustrating) ranking system and it just shows how good of a player you have to be in order to get a good rank.
"Fear not the Tori who has practiced 10,000 openers once, but fear the Tori who has practiced one opener 10,000 times."
So what's your resolution since you at least admit it's broken??


HUGE EDIT

You keep missing how different Toribash is than any other game with an ELO system. When a diamond league plays a gold league player in Starcraft 2, and loses. Yeah, he should be punished. Punished really heavily. But a game of Starcraft 2 is more systematic, you can see what both people are doing at once with decent scouting, and lasts a lot longer per game. Thus... you allow to have the better player win 99 times out of 100.

Toribash is NOTHING like that. Who's your #1 pick for all-time greatest wushu player? Kamiko? Odlov? Sahee? Begotten? Whatever. Now stick him in a public wushu room, and watch how they'll barely pull a 75% win ratio in a 1 day span. And that's probably being a hopeful person. That's 3 out of 4. And as I've mentioned before, You can lose 1 game out of 4 and go down in rating. Now if these... icons/legends would've struggled to MAINTAIN, not improve, MAINTAIN their rank, the hell do you want for the world?

And that's why, and I've said it like 12 times now: ELO systems will never ever ever ever ever ever ever work in the game of luck that is Toribash. Terrible people spazzing out with dumb luck, changing the ghost enough, it crushes the point. And that doesn't mean the game isn't great. It doesn't mean that great people can't have a "good shot" at beating people in duels. But it does mean we need to back the f away from what we have going on here, and stick to what works.






QI based ranks WORK. They've been proven to work. People with higher ranks have played more games, and while it doesn't assure they are in fact great members, it means a couple of things:

1) They probably have experience in a multitude of mods.
2) They probably have contributed to the economy (purchased rare colors, flames, textures, etc)
3) They actually 100000% are accurate. The rank corresponds directly with games played. Period. The higher the rank, the more experience you have. No negotiation without stretches.
4) Ranks based off QI gives reasons to play the game for longer periods of time. Which means they buy stuff. Which means Nabi is all-set.
5) Ranks based off QI means losing isn't as big as a deal. Which means.... playing the game as a whole is fun and rewarding. Because you only get better by playing people better than you, and that means losing a lot. So losing a lot dropping your rank immensely is counter-intuitive experience.
6) There aren't these "rank farmers" anymore. Which only negatively impact the community anyways. Unless you mean just... farmers. But we have an actual system to find and ban those people. We don't have a system to ban, catch, etc. rating farmers.




The system is way too anyways. I've played almost 30,000 games, and yet in an hour my global rating quadrupled during an aikido session a week ago. If you want to fart around with ideas of a decent system of ranking that involves "skill", fine. We can bounce around ones on a thread just like this one. But until then, let's stop being silly about this and let's choose one that actually works.
Last edited by Bodhisattva; May 26, 2013 at 04:34 PM.
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Creati0n says: still my favorite. <3
I sacrificed my firstborn for this great human being to join (M) ~R
Just Use Thunder!
Well damn... lol

You prove a damn good point on why ELO systems do not belong in Toribash. I still want to believe that a modified ELO system might work for Toribash but I'm starting to have massive doubts about that now...

Either way, I still cannot agree with you on essentially making Rank = QI. When people look at fighting games, they automatically look at rank as an indicator of skill. QI is an indicator of experience not only that, but its pretty much just given to you without that much effort on your part. Going back to the old system may have its benefits, but by doing so, you're pretty much stomping on the general consensus on ranks.

With that being said, while I would hate going back to the old QI system, I wouldn't mind it if we had the ELO system or some other different ranking system for individual mods. Pretty much:

Global Rank = QI
Mod Rank = ELO or some other ranking system
"Fear not the Tori who has practiced 10,000 openers once, but fear the Tori who has practiced one opener 10,000 times."
Other games do not provide as many opportunities to cut corners with the ranking system like toribash (amount of mods). Remove the ranking system altogether, there shouldn't even be a reason to give a damn about it (again in a game like this).
But why's the rum gone? :v
My suggestion is to make ranking based on the Number of wins.
Its a mixture of both experience and skill.

K6vamees's suggestion isnt bad either
Last edited by eazi; May 27, 2013 at 12:59 AM. Reason: ,
(╯°□°)╯︵ pɐǝɹɥʇ ʎɐldǝɹ
@Danoob: Excellent point.

We can't make an ELO system based off "important" mods because what pretentious prick is going to tell someone that their mod they play doesn't matter? It's all subjective anyways and if you're skilled at something, it should show.

So GLOBAL RANKS being based off games played, and MOD RANKS being based off a current ELO system (that still needs tweaking) sounds great.


@K6vam: Remove ranks all together is fine by me. But I think the above suggestion is better.

@Eazi: That's a solid idea too.



So far I like DAnoob's idea the most, followed by Eazi, then k6vams.



If we can all get behind an idea like DAnoob's, I'd really like a further step being done. That is: to actually implement what we said. I'd hate for an actually strong and clever conversation that leads to a better game go to waste.
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Creati0n says: still my favorite. <3
I sacrificed my firstborn for this great human being to join (M) ~R
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Oh god, no.

Even tho I agree with most things said in here, the old Qi ranking thing is, was and will be worse than this ELO one. ..Really, everyone (and I mean literally everyone) hated that old QI = rank system. It made no sense, nor did give any kind of indication about anynoe's level of skill.

People actually requested ELO for a quite while.

I'd rather see something like modified ELO system, with added ELO decay, and possibly "ranked servers" or something.

And I'm one of the guys who'd benefit most from the rollback. I'd get from tank 800-1200 range to rankt 42nd or something.
Last edited by Dargon; May 28, 2013 at 05:30 AM.
Originally Posted by Dargon View Post
Oh god, no.

Even tho I agree with most things said in here, the old Qi ranking thing is, was and will be worse than this ELO one. ..Really, everyone (and I mean literally everyone) hated that old QI = rank system. It made no sense, nor did give any kind of indication about anynoe's level of skill.

People actually requested ELO for a quite while.

I'd rather see something like modified ELO system, with added ELO decay, and possibly "ranked servers" or something.

And I'm one of the guys who'd benefit most from the rollback. I'd get from tank 800-1200 range to rankt 42th or something.

How would what you're suggesting work. If you agree with most of what's been said, I don't see how you're not repulsed by this current system. Why not remove rankings?
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Creati0n says: still my favorite. <3
I sacrificed my firstborn for this great human being to join (M) ~R
Just Use Thunder!
I haven't read past the second page, but that pr3yer dude just sits in his own brushu.tbm room, playing newbies and beating them, and when better players come along he kicks them if he loses too often. You could even say it's a form of farming, but I won't go there.

I do agree that the ranking system(s) should be changed, but I am not sure how.

And it is true what you said, Hax, that in wushu at least, you can win a good four or so times, and lose once, and yet your rank in that mod drops far too much for the single win. But once again, I'm not sure how this should be approached.
Originally Posted by Hxcbbqimo View Post
How would what you're suggesting work. If you agree with most of what's been said, I don't see how you're not repulsed by this current system. Why not remove rankings?

Seeing how ELO is the best ranking system so far*, I'd rather not get rid of it.

Instead I'd add ELO decay, meaning that if you are inactive (=don't play games) for X ammount of time you start slowly losing your ELO.

Also, I'd remake the ranking system, so that you wouldn't gain GLOBAL rank when playing in player made rooms. You would still gain mod rank, because there are just too many mods in this game.

I'd add "ranked" servers, which would replace the (always so empty) official Black Belt and Ultimate rooms. Preferably with some kind of (automated) mod rotation.

That would help with "Rank farming", and somewhat standardize speed you gain ELO/wins.

*It is. Just not well suited to a game as diverse as Toribash is.

Imo biggest problem with QI ranking is the fact that you can actually BUY Qi.
Also, farming Qi is even simpler than farming ELO. You don't even have to win.
Last edited by Dargon; May 28, 2013 at 02:41 AM.