6 ms·

The "newbie suppression" mechanic doesn't make much sense to me. If you play against someone substantially lower in rating than you and lose, shouldn't you lose

The "newbie suppression" mechanic doesn't make much sense to me. If you play against someone substantially lower in rating than you and lose, shouldn't you lose a significant amount of points? After all, you lost to someone you should have easily beaten.

krallja 6y ago
Newbies have a low rating because they’re new, not because they definitely suck.
- edaemon 6y ago
  Sure, but the suppression described doesn't apply only to new players, it applies to "someone substantially lower in rating than you."
mlyle 6y ago
It doesn't make sense as part of a rating system, but it may be good for community. Chess is pretty toxic with people refusing to play lower rated people, sometimes, because of danger to rating. Also, people with very low ratings are more likely to have their rating not represent their true ability (my son lost a game against a girl rated 300 that played a very accurate 1400-ish looking game against him... turns out she hadn't been in a rated game for 3 years despite being very active with her local chess club for that time; meanwhile it takes two tournaments or more to get those rating points back).
- edaemon 6y ago
  It seems reasonable to cap the number of points you can lose, but it strikes me as odd that you'd lose fewer points in an upset than in an even match-up.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Agreed on that point. A better mechanism, IMO, even though it doesn't catch all the cases: provisional ratings, where you don't affect other peoples' ratings much for the first n games (and where your rating moves faster, too). Effectively it acknowledges you have less of a prior when you've played few games.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Lichess is using glicko-2 which does pretty much that.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  This is why you have two rating systems; one you show to people and is geared towards making players happy, and one that is used internally to create fair matches.
ganonm 6y ago
I agree, and the proposed solution which is to limit point gains/losses to one point per game feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Specifically, convergence takes a long time, the result of which is that a very good player on e.g. a new account (smurf) will end up being the cause of a lot of unbalanced games for an awful long time. Having played a lot of ranked LoL, I saw a few recurring but irrational gripes players had with the Elo based system: - "I get matched with bad teammates and they drag me down". On average your teammates are the same Elo as you. All players get their fair share of games where they are/aren't the underdog side. On average, it averages out. Deal with it. - "I've been stuck at the same Elo for ages but I should be higher". Nope, Elo only cares if you win or lose. It doesn't care about kill/death ratio, creep score or how many ganks you pull off. Focus on winning more. Incidentally, focusing on winning instead of secondary metrics like kills/CS was one of the biggest mindset differences between high/low Elo players. "I should be higher Elo but I play support roles so can't climb". It may be true that you climb slower but here's the rub - think of your matchups as you being compared to the enemy team's support player. The other four roles on each team are actually a constant factor (by symmetry arguments you could not consistently find that your four teammates are any better/worse than the enemy support player's teammates). As a result, the only remaining factor in the statistical equation is you weighed up against the enemy support player. If you can provide even a slight statistical advantage towards winning vs them then you will climb the Elo ladder.
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  > As a result, the only remaining factor in the statistical equation is you weighed up against the enemy support player. If you can provide even a slight statistical advantage towards winning vs them then you will climb the Elo ladder. An alternative explanation is that the skill ceiling is lower for support players.
- ecdavis 6y ago
  Being a low skill player playing exclusively with and against other low skill players sucks. Imagine playing doubles tennis where all four players hit the ball directly into the net 80% of the time. Win or lose it would be an unpleasant experience. I think that's the root of many people's frustration with ranked matchmaking in e-sports games. I mentioned this in another comment, but I think if e-sports wants to become truly culturally significant the games will need to figure out how to more elegantly bridge the gap between ranked and unranked play, and how to make it fun to play at low skill levels. I don't think it's a coincidence that Fortnite has done both.
gizmo686 6y ago
There are 2 issues being solved by "newbie suppression". 1) Cases where the ranking of the opponent is not well known. Either because they are on a new account, or recently had a massive change in skill level (say, practicing on a different account; or not playing and loosing ranking points due to the decay mechanic). 2) Inconsistent play. Ranking systems generally assume skill level is mostly static, with gradual changes over time. In practice, people have bad days. Limiting the influence of any single game reduces the noise introduced by inconsistent play at the expense of making convergence a slower process.
- edaemon 6y ago
  I agree that those are real problems that need to be dealt with. I don't think suppressing the effects of a loss against a lower-rated player solves them very well, though. The suppression could just be applied in those cases instead of in every case where there's a large rating disparity. There are plenty of cases where a highly-rated player loses to a low-rated player fair and square. In those cases there should be significant rating adjustments -- at least more significant than a normal game between similarly-rated opponents -- but this system removes those to combat edge cases. I think it would be more effective to deal with those edge cases directly.

krallja 6y ago

Newbies have a low rating because they’re new, not because they definitely suck.

edaemon 6y ago
Sure, but the suppression described doesn't apply only to new players, it applies to "someone substantially lower in rating than you."

mlyle 6y ago

It doesn't make sense as part of a rating system, but it may be good for community. Chess is pretty toxic with people refusing to play lower rated people, sometimes, because of danger to rating. Also, people with very low ratings are more likely to have their rating not represent their true ability (my son lost a game against a girl rated 300 that played a very accurate 1400-ish looking game against him... turns out she hadn't been in a rated game for 3 years despite being very active with her local chess club for that time; meanwhile it takes two tournaments or more to get those rating points back).

edaemon 6y ago
It seems reasonable to cap the number of points you can lose, but it strikes me as odd that you'd lose fewer points in an upset than in an even match-up.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Agreed on that point. A better mechanism, IMO, even though it doesn't catch all the cases: provisional ratings, where you don't affect other peoples' ratings much for the first n games (and where your rating moves faster, too). Effectively it acknowledges you have less of a prior when you've played few games.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Lichess is using glicko-2 which does pretty much that.
cortesoft 6y ago
This is why you have two rating systems; one you show to people and is geared towards making players happy, and one that is used internally to create fair matches.

ganonm 6y ago

I agree, and the proposed solution which is to limit point gains/losses to one point per game feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Specifically, convergence takes a long time, the result of which is that a very good player on e.g. a new account (smurf) will end up being the cause of a lot of unbalanced games for an awful long time. Having played a lot of ranked LoL, I saw a few recurring but irrational gripes players had with the Elo based system: - "I get matched with bad teammates and they drag me down". On average your teammates are the same Elo as you. All players get their fair share of games where they are/aren't the underdog side. On average, it averages out. Deal with it. - "I've been stuck at the same Elo for ages but I should be higher". Nope, Elo only cares if you win or lose. It doesn't care about kill/death ratio, creep score or how many ganks you pull off. Focus on winning more. Incidentally, focusing on winning instead of secondary metrics like kills/CS was one of the biggest mindset differences between high/low Elo players. "I should be higher Elo but I play support roles so can't climb". It may be true that you climb slower but here's the rub - think of your matchups as you being compared to the enemy team's support player. The other four roles on each team are actually a constant factor (by symmetry arguments you could not consistently find that your four teammates are any better/worse than the enemy support player's teammates). As a result, the only remaining factor in the statistical equation is you weighed up against the enemy support player. If you can provide even a slight statistical advantage towards winning vs them then you will climb the Elo ladder.

aaronblohowiak 6y ago
> As a result, the only remaining factor in the statistical equation is you weighed up against the enemy support player. If you can provide even a slight statistical advantage towards winning vs them then you will climb the Elo ladder. An alternative explanation is that the skill ceiling is lower for support players.
ecdavis 6y ago
Being a low skill player playing exclusively with and against other low skill players sucks. Imagine playing doubles tennis where all four players hit the ball directly into the net 80% of the time. Win or lose it would be an unpleasant experience. I think that's the root of many people's frustration with ranked matchmaking in e-sports games. I mentioned this in another comment, but I think if e-sports wants to become truly culturally significant the games will need to figure out how to more elegantly bridge the gap between ranked and unranked play, and how to make it fun to play at low skill levels. I don't think it's a coincidence that Fortnite has done both.

gizmo686 6y ago

There are 2 issues being solved by "newbie suppression". 1) Cases where the ranking of the opponent is not well known. Either because they are on a new account, or recently had a massive change in skill level (say, practicing on a different account; or not playing and loosing ranking points due to the decay mechanic). 2) Inconsistent play. Ranking systems generally assume skill level is mostly static, with gradual changes over time. In practice, people have bad days. Limiting the influence of any single game reduces the noise introduced by inconsistent play at the expense of making convergence a slower process.

edaemon 6y ago
I agree that those are real problems that need to be dealt with. I don't think suppressing the effects of a loss against a lower-rated player solves them very well, though. The suppression could just be applied in those cases instead of in every case where there's a large rating disparity. There are plenty of cases where a highly-rated player loses to a low-rated player fair and square. In those cases there should be significant rating adjustments -- at least more significant than a normal game between similarly-rated opponents -- but this system removes those to combat edge cases. I think it would be more effective to deal with those edge cases directly.