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KevinNash has been hosting a few RTTs this year at our FLGS. After three events so far, he was interested in ways of measuring the success of competitors over multiple events, to get a better understanding of the quality of a player.

He decided to look at ELO, "rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess and Go," and it looks like this could be useful for identifying quality players within a region. All theory at this time, but he has posted the results so far here:

http://www.chaoswins.com/p/40k-tournament-standings.html

with links to why he chose ELO here:

http://www.chaoswins.com/2010/06/sprue-posse-rtt-2010-player-of-year.html

I know there is a event results db floating on the internet now, but curious if something like using this sort of rating system, like the one also use as part of WOTC's DCI, would be interesting.

What do YOU think?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, please keep in mind that the sample game set used in the results so far is too small to make any claims on competitor quality. It's only a starting point.

It could be interesting, but it would take a few things happening:
Organization for gathering data:
1) An overall organization/person checking over and verifying that events happened and making sure the data was correct.
2) Some sort of registration for venues, stores, judges, etc who would be sending in the results.
3) Registration of players.
4) Effort to keep the data base clean, take out duplicates, fix errors, etc. especially as it got larger.

I expect that a couple of hard working individuals could do this. The real problems would be, however:

5) A definition of what type of events qualified.
-6)Acceptance of players, TOs, and venues to run that type of event.

I think the first thing that would happen is a call by one faction to have all qualifying events meet some sort of unifying criteria.
Next would be argueing over what the format and criteria would be.
Followed by no one wanting to do the work, and a lot of TOs and players not liking the one format picked, and not caring to sanction or report the events.

Not saying it wouldn't be a good idea, and it's certainly worth pages of discussion and arguement, but in the end I don't see it happening.

ELO (or any skill ranking) basically has no place in 40k. You can't even get into the interesting questions about the concept because the very manner in which the 40k game itself is maintained rules-wise is not consistent, not clear, and not supported.

When the rules aren't the same for everyone, it's impossible to judge rankings based on a game by game basis.

For a great example, look at the MtG comp rules. 40k will never be able to support rankings (or 'serious' tournament play*) unless they institute rules of this caliber.

*40k is not meant for serious tournament play, and GWS does not desire it to go in this direction, so this aspect is true, but largely irrelevant.

Jokorey wrote:ELO (or any skill ranking) basically has no place in 40k. You can't even get into the interesting questions about the concept because the very manner in which the 40k game itself is maintained rules-wise is not consistent, not clear, and not supported.

When the rules aren't the same for everyone, it's impossible to judge rankings based on a game by game basis.

For a great example, look at the MtG comp rules. 40k will never be able to support rankings (or 'serious' tournament play*) unless they institute rules of this caliber.

*40k is not meant for serious tournament play, and GWS does not desire it to go in this direction, so this aspect is true, but largely irrelevant.

Of course it would be meaningless unless a standard was adopted for all sanctioned events. The standard used wouldn't matter so long as that standard was consistent among all those who participated.

For our tournaments we use a INAT FAQ, Book missions and Swiss pairings. Obviously to be valid if we wanted Elo submissions from outside our tournament scene they would need to use that standard to be of any value.

I think ELO is bull because I am second and not first.

Other than that, I think it is definitely a fun thing to do for your tournaments and will eventually be a good rating for people who play in those tournaments.

I think that there is more information that probably needs to go into it before it really measures anything, and there may not be enough games actually reported every year at tournaments to get enough information on enough players. There is not a lot of dice rolling, slow playing, army building, unlucky matchups, or necrons in Go and Chess. I've done well in the two RTTs I played in at Aero...but I didn't deserve it. I've gotten very lucky, or accidentally cheated, or slow played my way to victory or a tie. None of this is really reflected in the results, and obviously shouldn't be - but until you have an absolutely huge games database, it won't really be removed as a major factor.

It's an interesting thing to see, and something that I think might have been discussed in another thread.

However, I still think it's a bit hard to have a ranking system for 40k that has any meaning. If you're trying to find out who wins the most in 40k, then a win at home on your day off it just as valid as a win in a RTT, and there's no clear way of measuring these.

To find out who's the 'best' player of 40k we want to take into account...

1. Who wins the most games of 40k against different opponents.

But if you judge based on tournament results then you're taking into account....

1. Who wins the most games of 40k against different opponents.
2. Who lives near the most tournaments.
3. Who can afford to travel to tournaments.
4. Who can get time off work on the weekend.
5. Who can afford 2000pts of models (or similar).
etc etc etc etc

Which makes the reward of 'best 40k player in the country' kinda meaningless...

I think a problem here is that ELO rankings come from the assumption that everyone [at least in Chess & Go, eg.] is using the exact same pieces to make the exact same movements towards the exact same outcome of the game. 40k is not that clear cut - there's different points levels, army compositions, objectives for winning particular games...

I dunno, I don't doubt it could work, I just wonder if it would be worth making it work?
Of course, that's what a bunch of other people posted in here, so I'm not positing anything new, sorry Nevertheless I stand by what I think, until someone can show me a better way to think [in which case I will begin to say this new way of thinking is what I thought all along!]

ArbitorIan wrote:It's an interesting thing to see, and something that I think might have been discussed in another thread.

However, I still think it's a bit hard to have a ranking system for 40k that has any meaning. If you're trying to find out who wins the most in 40k, then a win at home on your day off it just as valid as a win in a RTT, and there's no clear way of measuring these.

To find out who's the 'best' player of 40k we want to take into account...

1. Who wins the most games of 40k against different opponents.

But if you judge based on tournament results then you're taking into account....

1. Who wins the most games of 40k against different opponents.
2. Who lives near the most tournaments.
3. Who can afford to travel to tournaments.
4. Who can get time off work on the weekend.
5. Who can afford 2000pts of models (or similar).
etc etc etc etc

Which makes the reward of 'best 40k player in the country' kinda meaningless...

I don't see how it's meaningless - couldn't the same arguments (aside from the price tag one) be applied to, say, chess?

I think it's great that something like this is happening, even if it can't be made as accurate or as large-scale as for a more organized game like chess/go, it's still FUN to have it in some form.

Except that it's not happening.)
A couple of threads on the internet is not going to get something done. It's an idea, that one person or group would have to implement.

ELO is best in a campaign system where you have a set of people playing multiple games with each other. You can then grow or sink your rating and handicaps based upon the rating.

For a tourney system, I don't see how it could possibly work unless everyone who ran tourneys were in a very documented and controlled affiliation of event rules.

Also if you did true ELO, people would be forced to play people with similar ranking. It would be possible that two players who are close in rankings would be playing each other all the time at events.

Also people will duck games... Being high ranked you could lose to a newcommer or a noob and lose a ton of ranking. Lowbies have nothing to lose.

ELO needs a closed set of participants and we can't get that with tourneys.

You would need a wide spread of tournaments using the exact same formats, in all respects, just for starters ... and good luck with that.

I fully support formalizing tournament "circuits" ... but it's a hard sell in reality. The kind of people who run tournaments do it with their free time, rarely if ever make money and often lose money, and are almost always a bit controlling and Type A (lumping myself in here, haha).

Try and convince me to drastically alter my tournament to fit into some kind of meta-ranking after I've put hundreds or thousands of hours into making it as high quality as possible ... right?

A pipe dream. Maybe a level 5 lucidity pipe dream but ...

MVBrandt wrote:You would need a wide spread of tournaments using the exact same formats, in all respects, just for starters ... and good luck with that.

I fully support formalizing tournament "circuits" ... but it's a hard sell in reality. The kind of people who run tournaments do it with their free time, rarely if ever make money and often lose money, and are almost always a bit controlling and Type A (lumping myself in here, haha).

Try and convince me to drastically alter my tournament to fit into some kind of meta-ranking after I've put hundreds or thousands of hours into making it as high quality as possible ... right?

A pipe dream. Maybe a level 5 lucidity pipe dream but ...

QFT,

(well, except for the part about hundreds of thousands of hours. 365 days/year x 24 hours/day x 10 years = 87600 hours. So even a solid decade with no sleep, sex, or beer wouldn't hit the hundred thousand mark.)

Note Mikhaila he said "or" not "of"

A note here also is that this ranking is for his RTTs only so the ELO system is valid and works in this context. Mabey it would work better for specific FLGs or gamingclubs (which usally have standard they keep to) to keep standings for their members or patrions. Then you could send the best from each store/club to face each other. Then the different formats would not matter because you would still have the best from their own formats.

lambadomy wrote:I think ELO is bull because I am second and not first.

Other than that, I think it is definitely a fun thing to do for your tournaments and will eventually be a good rating for people who play in those tournaments.

I think that there is more information that probably needs to go into it before it really measures anything, and there may not be enough games actually reported every year at tournaments to get enough information on enough players. There is not a lot of dice rolling, slow playing, army building, unlucky matchups, or necrons in Go and Chess. I've done well in the two RTTs I played in at Aero...but I didn't deserve it. I've gotten very lucky, or accidentally cheated, or slow played my way to victory or a tie. None of this is really reflected in the results, and obviously shouldn't be - but until you have an absolutely huge games database, it won't really be removed as a major factor.

Obviously a small sample size means the ranking we have compiled at present should be taken with a grain of salt.

They have been using Elo in Magic: The Gathering for years now and that contains a lot of the same elements of 40k. It is a card game so players are prone to bad draws (dice). Every deck can be different and therefore subject to bad match-ups.

Sounds like a good idea. The guy who runs our local RTT has been toying with a rating system of sorts, if only to be able to create "beginner" and "advanced" divisions to make tourneys more competitive. Tabling n00bs is hardly fun and makes for an anticlimactic event, and I'd much rather take my chances against 6-8 good players than 12-16 mixed from good to "I just bought Assault on Black Reach!"

Interesting all. I do agree that consistency is vital. However, I disagree that it requires a closed set of players. Several of the online game match making systems use ELO or rating systems similiar to ELO, and while its not perfect it is functional and for the most part achieves its goal.

Now, given the consistency issue, we have no "unified rules of boxing" here, outside of the control group it would be very difficult to implement.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@MVBrandt - I agree that tournament organizers have this odd personality issue of their way is the best way and have no concept of adopting standards for the overall benefit of the community. Not to say I don't have fun, but I think a larger marketing effort by some of the players to work towards consistency might fall on the ears of some organizers and work towards increasing event attendance.

That said, people like KevinNash and I need to put up or shut up, and we are really trying to put up KevinNash's work on the RTT has been great and he is going to continue to do . It's definitely a work in progress and will require some influence in other FLGS to culturalize the standards of play, but it would be a long term goal of ours to work this into the GT environment.

To MVBrandts point though... it is a bit of a pipe dream

“All men dream, but unequally. Those that dream at night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake the next day to find that their dreams were just vanity. But those who dream during the day with their eyes wide open are dangerous men; they act out their dreams to make them reality.”

radical bob wrote:I think a problem here is that ELO rankings come from the assumption that everyone [at least in Chess & Go, eg.] is using the exact same pieces to make the exact same movements towards the exact same outcome of the game.

Everyone entering a tournament begins with the exact same access to the "pieces". Too many people identify themselves with an army. If one army is advantaged over others, then paint and play that army. With missions revealed ahead of time, no one player has some secret advantage over others. Unless he or she dedicates more time to practice or painting.

ArbitorIan wrote:But if you judge based on tournament results then you're taking into account....

1. Who wins the most games of 40k against different opponents.

Ok, good.

ArbitorIan wrote:2. Who lives near the most tournaments.

Ahh, but playing more games does not equal getting a higher rating. Living in southern california for example, I have access to many RTTs and GTs per year. But that is only due to the concentration of tournament minded 40k players. I'll get more games in, but against better players, who will lower my rating when they beat me.

ArbitorIan wrote:3. Who can afford to travel to tournaments.
4. Who can get time off work on the weekend.
5. Who can afford 2000pts of models (or similar).

This is all one thing. If you can't afford to play 40k, then you are not an active player, and are not eligible to compete. You can just call yourself "the best player in the world who doesn't compete in tournaments." A tournament ranking system does not have to cater to players who can't afford travel expenses or models. Or don't have the time off. Something like this would be for active traveling tourney players.

ArbitorIan wrote:Which makes the reward of 'best 40k player in the country' kinda meaningless...

Who said that was the title bestowed. The title bestowed is simply. "You are the guy with the highest player rating."

mikhaila wrote:A couple of threads on the internet is not going to get something done. It's an idea, that one person or group would have to implement.

Yeah, and as you see nash is slowly implementing it. And he has an active gaming group that will gladly put the time in. Things like this start with a group of a half dozen wargamers. We'd just need tournaments to report.



In all of the discussions we have had so far about national and global rankings in this forum, there has been this major press from people about a perfectly uniform system with which to run tournaments. We have skipped over exactly WHY that is a requirement...

After some basic requirements are made, like number of players, size of games, and which codexes and edition of the rules are used, there is no real need for draconic tournament restrictions. So what if some reporting tourneys have soft scores, and some are hard core battle points only. In MTG, your DCI rating could be affected by a draft, standard, block constructed, and many other formats. You might play in Japan, and only play against an insignificant cross section of magic players. Or maybe you play every friday at Neutral Ground, and play sanctioned drafts against the best players in the country every weekend. Your 40K rating could likewise be affected by a soft score tournament you attend, should you choose to, or by constantly attending the most cut-throat no soft score unpainted RTTs you can find.

The people that care about their rating are already participating in a great deal of tourneys, of both the soft core and the hard core type. Their high win percentage would slowly increase their rating to distinguish them as a difficult opponent to beat. Ratings can be used by tourneys for a NON-BIASED way to pair good players with each other. And for players to receive byes.

40k is not boxing or chess. There are different ways to compete.. "Formats" if you will. Tourneys with soft scores and painting competitions are one format, that you could either get better at competing in or decline to compete in. And cut throat prison rules 40k would be another option for you. All under the umbrella of "tournament 40k".

Shep wrote:

radical bob wrote:I think a problem here is that ELO rankings come from the assumption that everyone [at least in Chess & Go, eg.] is using the exact same pieces to make the exact same movements towards the exact same outcome of the game.

Everyone entering a tournament begins with the exact same access to the "pieces". Too many people identify themselves with an army. If one army is advantaged over others, then paint and play that army. With missions revealed ahead of time, no one player has some secret advantage over others. Unless he or she dedicates more time to practice or painting.

While this is technically true, you know this isn't the reality of the vast majority of players, even tournament players. Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to purchase a new army. Identifying with an army is normal, and a huge part of the experience of playing 40k. Players who want something like this should already be playing Chess, or some other game with standardized pieces/less variation.

Of course, if something like this took hold with a group, and everyone agreed that if you want to win, go out and buy what you think it takes to win, it would probably work well with 40k. You'd have a hardcore group, playing with W/L/D scoring, standard missions, whatever you want to standardize on. This is a lot more likely to happen with something like vassal than in live 40k. You alienate too many players by expecting them to man up and buy a whole new army or watch their rating suffer, and you aren't really measuring skill if 3/4ths of the players only play one tournament a year and have 3-5 games to their name, with whatever army they happen to like to collect.

Kevin Nash wrote:

lambadomy wrote:I think ELO is bull because I am second and not first.

Other than that, I think it is definitely a fun thing to do for your tournaments and will eventually be a good rating for people who play in those tournaments.

I think that there is more information that probably needs to go into it before it really measures anything, and there may not be enough games actually reported every year at tournaments to get enough information on enough players. There is not a lot of dice rolling, slow playing, army building, unlucky matchups, or necrons in Go and Chess. I've done well in the two RTTs I played in at Aero...but I didn't deserve it. I've gotten very lucky, or accidentally cheated, or slow played my way to victory or a tie. None of this is really reflected in the results, and obviously shouldn't be - but until you have an absolutely huge games database, it won't really be removed as a major factor.

Obviously a small sample size means the ranking we have compiled at present should be taken with a grain of salt.

They have been using Elo in Magic: The Gathering for years now and that contains a lot of the same elements of 40k. It is a card game so players are prone to bad draws (dice). Every deck can be different and therefore subject to bad match-ups.

But every game of magic has the exact same way of winning. Each scenerio in 40K completely changes how the game is played and won. Just look at how people complain about the Ard boyz missions. You are never going to hear a Magic player say, well I would of won if not for that Second round game where you could only win by drawing 7 cards at once, and my deck is not set up for that.

jbunny wrote:But every game of magic has the exact same way of winning. Each scenerio in 40K completely changes how the game is played and won.

That just comes back to the need for a standardised event structure. For this to work, you would need to have specific event 'types' which would each have their own set of scenarios that everyone uses.

Star Wars and D&D minis did this, with several different reportable game types that altered squad composition, available maps and points limits.

Hulksmash wrote:Note Mikhaila he said "or" not "of"

Ha, 20/90 vision and 2 hours of sleep strikes again! My bad.