Ribbons question(s)

[Hohenfels]

Too late!!

Well, but to be honest, it was only something like an offline database where an administrator had to enter the data manually, then an HTML page was generated from it, which in turn had to be uploaded manually via FTP. Not very advanced.
For a real online ladder you would have to program a frontend in PHP (which I haven't done for 15 years), and a SQL database, which I have actually never done. And the FGM website would have to support the whole thing technically, not to mention possible security aspects.
I am quite good at data extraction and VBA programming in Excel, which would be enough for a ladder like say in 2003, but an online ladder is a different matter altogether.
This is not to say that I am unwilling.

 

[Stafford]

Some ideas I was toying with regarding an online ladder.

In its current form the ladder formula is extremely simple, factors are only that a game was played, whether it was a win or a draw, and the ratings of the two players involved.
One particular thing that has always irked me is that even if the top player plays the bottom player, and wins, he will still get a point for it. This means that those at the pointy end of things can farm newbies and kid themselves that they're Patton reincarnated, so, to prevent this - once a players score has increased to a point past his opponents (lets say 50-100 points), he will receive no points for a win.
This encourages people to play those closer to their own skill level if they wish to climb the ladder further.

Score varying depending on what type of win it is. At the moment the win is either 1 or 0, I feel that score should be based more on how much the game was won by, ie, a minor victory nets a lesser score than a major or total, surrender obviously means full points to the winner. This incentivises the loser of the game to fight it out, and try to mitigate the loss to an extent.

Point multipliers for larger games? At a guess, most CM games are in the 1500-4000 point range, longer games take considerably more time and effort to setup and play, so there should be some sort of small reward for putting in that effort. As an example, tiny, small, and medium games stay at the 1.0x score multiplier, large games get 1.25x multiplier, huge games get 1.5x multiplier. Larger custom games can be agreed on by the players.

The input for the ladder would be via a fill-in-the-blanks page which generates the report, this then immediately gets added to the live ladder and is updated in real time, however, periodically the site admin would have to go through and check/confirm the entries to make sure all is above board. After confirmation these entries are then 'cemented' into the ladder. Prior to them being confirmed, if the loser of the game wishes to dispute the result for whatever reason, he may do so. Once the game is confirmed and 'cemented', no challenge may be accepted.

There would be an annual ladder, and an all-time ladder. The annual ladder would have the top 10 players fight it out each year in a finals knock-out series. Winner is crowned ladder champion for the year. (Ending top of the ladder would merit an award too, like minor/major premiers in many sports titles).


Anyway this is just my thoughts on the subject, unless my back problems get to a point where I have to give up truck driving and take up coding I doubt I will be doing any of this myself, but it's food for thought.

 

[Redbully]

Doesn't the ladder use an ELO system? If so wouldn't a point multiplier hurt the loser of a big game even more as ELO should be zero-sum.
I do like the idea of modifying the calculation based on the grade of victory, but if not automated it might be a bitch.

 

[Stafford]

It does, and it would. Another way to do it would be to allow folks to set their own multiplier sort of like a wager, nothing too drastic, default is 1.0x, settings could be 1.25x, 1.50x, and 2.0x.

Most of these ideas are contingent on the process being automated, not sure anyone has the time to do all the working out manually. (Nor would anyone want to!)

I'm just throwing ideas out here for discussion, get an idea of what people would like to see.

 

[mTk]

I think an investigation into how I missed a ribbon is still in order.

 

[Hohenfels]

Too late!!

Anyway, I would need to know how the ladder is been done now, what the website hosting technically allows, and what Bootie allows. Finally it's his site, not mine.

 

[Gnarly]

I think an investigation into how I missed a ribbon is still in order.

For the most esoteric/quirky sense of humour??

 

[Stafford]

As far as I'm aware, the page for ladder results makes a post in the ladder section of the forum, and the result is added to the ladder database. This is then checked/confirmed by the forum staff, then @Bootie does the final tally and manually posts the updated ladder.

 

[Lethaface]

Well, but to be honest, it was only something like an offline database where an administrator had to enter the data manually, then an HTML page was generated from it, which in turn had to be uploaded manually via FTP. Not very advanced.
For a real online ladder you would have to program a frontend in PHP (which I haven't done for 15 years), and a SQL database, which I have actually never done. And the FGM website would have to support the whole thing technically, not to mention possible security aspects.
I am quite good at data extraction and VBA programming in Excel, which would be enough for a ladder like say in 2003, but an online ladder is a different matter altogether.
This is not to say that I am unwilling.

I know my way around SQL so I could help with that. It's not my day job but designing some tables and queries shouldn't be a problem. Also know a couple of things about security.
PHP is also long ago for me (2010~) but quite some experience with it back then.

Time would be my greatest challenge, but assisting here and there where I can: my pleasure.

 

[Lethaface]

Overall normally I'd advise to first look at the requirements and than start thinking of possible solutions. But perhaps in this situation it would be wiser to think what kind of solutions will be doable (to create, support and maintain). For example if the ladder is in a SQL database, any manual changes would need to be done using queries (with a DB admin tool or directly from a command prompt). So the person(s) responsible for that would need to be able and willing to do that. Alternative is HTML forms for every function but you would need some form of authentication / authorization on those forms so not everyone can do it. The workload / scope can quickly creep

If a 2003 ladder VBA & excel ladder would thick off all requirements AND is better doable for the people involved, could be worth contemplating about even if the tech is considered legacy for a decade ;-).

 

[Stafford]

Yeh that was my reason for setting out ideas here, brainstorm what people want to see in a ladder, figure out what's good and what's not - and then build it based on a consensus.

Once the formula is worked out, I'd be reluctant to change it.

 

[Hohenfels]

...

If a 2003 ladder VBA & excel ladder would thick off all requirements AND is better doable for the people involved, could be worth contemplating about even if the tech is considered legacy for a decade ;-).

Yes, that's a very interesting and important point, I hadn't even thought about it!
I once thought up an extremely complex ranking system, it would be fun to try that out. I guess I still have it somewhere.

 

[Bootie]

I don't have much to do with the ladder but if you guys wanna work with Stafford and Ithikial I can give access to whatever folk need to make this work. I would like to remove the impetus on Ithikial who has been maintaining it for years.

 

[Hohenfels]

Okay, here are my thoughts on a ladder.
The basic idea of a ladder is, of course, to reach the top. But if you just count the points, it is almost impossible for every newcomer to catch up to the top after a certain point.
Another approach is to use the ratio of victory to defeat. Here again, the problem is that on the one hand, players with few games counted have a very very clear ratio in one direction or the other, while players with very many games theoretically come closer and closer to the 50% range.
My idea is a combination of both. Like in the military, you have groups of ranks. You can climb the ladder by simply collecting points by reporting games. The comparison with reality would be that you do a certain amount of service and then you get promoted automatically. That's how I knew it from my military service. But of course that takes time, and as written above, at some point it is impossible to catch up to the top. My idea to speed up promotion is what I call 'field promotion'. A player has to be a member of a ranking group for a certain amount of time (a number of reported games or a certain number of experience points). Once this is done, his win:loss ratio is used to check whether he qualifies for a field promotion. If so, he will be promoted to the lowest rank of the next group. If not, he must continue to earn points. However, it is checked at every match report whether his win:loss ratio has changed in favour of a field promotion. However, I have not yet worked out which win:loss ratio is reasonable, whether it is fixed or variable, or whether, for example, only the last 20-30 games should count, and so on.
However, in this way one can make it to, say, Colonel. The top group of generals should be reserved for the best players. To get in there, you have to a) be a colonel and b) have an appropriate win:loss ratio. I haven't yet thought about how to proceed within this group.

 

[Stafford]

Some very cool ideas there @Hohenfels , certainly more detailed than I had envisioned - but good stuff!

I was wondering for newcomers if there might be some sort of qualifying period, say the first five games - but was unsure how to work that into an ELO system, if in fact it is.

There is an issue in the current ladder whereby someone can end up at the top of the ladder on points alone, ie, farming those at the bottom, without actually having to prove himself against his peers at the top. I guess the sort of ladder you propose will address that.

 

[Hohenfels]

Yes, modifiers can be used in one way or another. For example, a formula like player in Group-6 vs. player in Group-1 = 1+(6-1)/10) as a bonus to experience points or something.

 

[Stafford]

What sort of parameters will this ladder require?
If it's going to allocate points dependent on the type of victory won (minor, major, total, etc) as well as the player rankings, it will mean a clean sweep of the current ladder (not that I have an issue with this, the current ladder is basically non-functional), however some of the games that have been reported could be used as test samples if the report also provides a screenshot.

We could run a trial for the remainder of this year, and launch live starting next year? Obviously that's more up to you, I can brainstorm ideas a-plenty, but you're the brain who can actually bring it into reality!

 

[Hohenfels]

I do not think that a complete sweep of the old ladder is necessary. I can also convert the existing data and replace missing values with standard values for each old battle.I, for example, would be a bit pissed off if I had reported 100 battles and then all of them were suddenly gone.

 

[Hohenfels]

Okay, I'm developing in the background, but I have a question.
1) I saw that in one thread the reported battles are listed back to 2014. Is this done automatically when using the Ladder Report form or are they entered manually?
2) I also noticed that in the very old battle reports, much more detail was conveyed as in the new reports. Is there a particular reason for this and would it be possible to return to the detailed reports?
3) If there are older battlereports or a ladder from before 2014, I can probably use it somehow, too.

If 1) is true and 2) is too, then I'll probably be able to just read out all the old reports from this forum thread, like I did with the ribbons.

If I can do that, it would be good because we wouldn't need a special SQL database any more, and apart from the fact that I would welcome more detailed battle reports, we wouldn't need to program a complicated frontend.
I can then program a beefed up excel spreadsheet similar to the one I did for the ribbons, so that I or some other poor bastard can retrieve the new battle reports on a regular basis at the push of a button.
The same excel can then be used to generate a simple HTML table with the updated ladder data. Then we just have to find a solution for getting this data back to the server. Theoretically, there are ways to do this with a relatively simple web form. It just depends on what is possible on the server side... But it's not really witchcraft. Even if a little help would be very welcome at this point.
Then we wouldn't have a full online ladder with cymbals and bells, but a functioning system that can be updated relatively quickly, and it would also be relatively easy to edit battle reports this way, I think, at least for anyone who knows how to use excel.

 

[A Canadian Cat]

then I'll probably be able to just read out all the old reports from this forum thread, like I did with the ribbons.

If I can do that, it would be good because we wouldn't need a special SQL database any more, and apart from the fact that I would welcome more detailed battle reports, we wouldn't need to program a complicated frontend.

Very clever.