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Elo Ratings in Competitive Melee

Strong Badam

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I am excited for the possibility of this being used. Keep it up.
 

ES Lite

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I dont think huge invitation fees are the solution. If people wanted to have a high stakes tourny, make everyone else pay. Kind of like a good player fund, according to the amount of hype and players coming to the elo tournament:

hype x pros ( top tier chars - everyone else) = venue fee

So ofcourse the pros pay like 30 $ each, while everyone else, if theres like...50 people watching if this becomes big, will pay like 50$. So like maybe 10 pros come and play, the total pot is already like 2500 $

um yeah just in case you guys didnt know, that little equation up there is a joke.
 

PEEF!

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Lets make spectators pay more and people who will win all their money pay less. Perfect idea. Thats gonna increase tournament attendance so much!
 

ES Lite

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Well, I just thought the same system that sports use for championships.
People can watch a baseball game from home for free, but still a lot of people pay to watch the real thing.
 

Divinokage

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Yes but the main difference is that.. there's millions that watch and only a few thousands can watch it live. It's constantly supported every week! As for major tournaments in smash it only happens 1-2 times A YEAR. That's the biggest difference in between sports and smash.. we are only at most 1 thousand around the world that play competitive.
 

Divinokage

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Well if locals are usually like 20-30 people at most and then bigger tournaments could be 60-100 most of the time.. then.. how do you get more numbers when smashers in the first place REALLY have to nitpick at which tournaments they should go to?
 

Strong Badam

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smash is also not broadcast live via television (at least not now), nor does it have the sponsors and advertising budget to do so.
 

DippnDots

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as long as we NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER.

Anything is possible.

****ing Galaxy Quest, Tim Allen son.
 

Zivilyn Bane

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I would estimate around 3,000 competitive melee players world wide.

Smash cannot emulate sports for obvious reasons.

If we are really trying to grow as a community, our best bet would be to take ideas from Chess or Starcraft, since they're both community driven.

Oh and they both have elo systems too.
 

PEEF!

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I would estimate around 3,000 competitive melee players world wide.

Smash cannot emulate sports for obvious reasons.

If we are really trying to grow as a community, our best bet would be to take ideas from Chess or Starcraft, since they're both community driven.

Oh and they both have elo systems too.
Starcraft does not use an ELO system. They use a ladder ranking MMR kind of thing, but it never has anything to do with any tournaments.
 

PEEF!

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It's not used for the official tournaments like MSL and OSL but it is used a lot on TL.net.

I guess you only know know a tiny bit about SC2 and think you know Starcraft. ^^

http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players
I actually know a f*ckton about SC2, I am up at this time in order to watch a stream. But regardless, my point stands. It isn't used for big tournaments, it doesn't increase tournament attendance, etc.
 

Zivilyn Bane

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I actually know a f*ckton about SC2, I am up at this time in order to watch a stream. But regardless, my point stands. It isn't used for big tournaments, it doesn't increase tournament attendance, etc.
Actually I don't play SC2, I play Brood War.

Gosugamers uses an elo system to rank the top non-korean masters in the world.
http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft/rankings
They have for years and it's had several benefits to their community. They have used segregated events for non koreans and also use them for seeding.

TeamLiquid also maintains the TLPD-Team Liquid Player Database, which tracks several statistics including elo ratings.
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players

Coincidence that extremely successful community driven games both use elo? Possibly. But instead of just being a troll, why don't you give a real reason as to how elo could actually hurt the community?
 

PEEF!

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Actually I don't play SC2, I play Brood War.

Gosugamers uses an elo system to rank the top non-korean masters in the world.
http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft/rankings
They have for years and it's had several benefits to their community. They have used segregated events for non koreans and also use them for seeding.

TeamLiquid also maintains the TLPD-Team Liquid Player Database, which tracks several statistics including elo ratings.
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players

Coincidence that extremely successful community driven games both use elo? Possibly. But instead of just being a troll, why don't you give a real reason as to how elo could actually hurt the community?
ELO systems seem to make people want to do amateur brackets. Amateur brackets ruin the fun of getting to play pros and amateurs in the same bracket. No amateurs are deterred from GETTING to play against one of their heroes, and no amateurs are truly motivated to waste their time and weekend in order to have a shot at $27 bucks in an amateur bracket.

The ELO system also makes people want to set up tournaments that involve higher entry fees or free entry for pros. All of this comes at the expense of the regular tournamentgoer which is absolutely unacceptable. Amateurs are already going to have their money taken by the pros, they should NEVER have to pay more to make it happen.

It also promotes the setting up of some kind of respect hierarchy based purely on ability to win. Everyone knows that the best coaches are never the best players. I will listen to people like BigD 100% of the time before I listen to someone like Mango because BigD is very knowledgable and full of good experience and info, but doesn't beat lots of great players himself while Mango beats everyone while trolling and providing little useful to the community. However with ELO ratings, people would be judged and BigD would be ignored by those who do not truly know him, and that really is a tragedy.
 

Bones0

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Not sure how you came to the assumption that everyone will base respect off of Elo ratings. People don't even base too much of their respect on tournament placings as it is (whether or not that is good, I will leave up to you).
 

Strong Badam

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people generally don't judge you based on your rating in Chess, either. they play you and then make a judgment. only if you've been playing for years and have an established rating do they really care.
additionally chess is a completely different game from melee. if you know your **** in chess, you do well. if you know your **** in melee, you can still not do well because the game isn't played on a turn by turn basis.
 

Signia

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if you know your **** in chess, you do well. if you know your **** in melee, you can still not do well because the game isn't played on a turn by turn basis.
yeah - because there's more aspects of Melee than just knowing your ****. But those other aspects can also be evaluated by rating.
 

Divinokage

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Not sure how you came to the assumption that everyone will base respect off of Elo ratings. People don't even base too much of their respect on tournament placings as it is (whether or not that is good, I will leave up to you).
Well remember this.. remember the times when.. Oh hey you just joined SWF in 2011?, what the hell do you know about this game? Even though that someone made perhaps a perfectly valid point? Ya.. this will happen, smashers are trolls brah.
 

Bones0

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Well remember this.. remember the times when.. Oh hey you just joined SWF in 2011?, what the hell do you know about this game? Even though that someone made perhaps a perfectly valid point? Ya.. this will happen, smashers are trolls brah.
There will always be idiots who do stuff like this, but it seems silly to cater to the idiots. Avoiding an Elo system because some people might make snap judgments about lower rated players is like avoiding interracial marriage because some people might treat those couples with contempt.
 

Divinokage

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There will always be idiots who do stuff like this, but it seems silly to cater to the idiots. Avoiding an Elo system because some people might make snap judgments about lower rated players is like avoiding interracial marriage because some people might treat those couples with contempt.
Lol whoa there.. it's not that extreme.
 

AlphaZealot

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Peef: your first two negative points are invalid so long as tournaments don't change the way they do things-which they won't. An ELO ranking does not nesessitate the need for any changes to how we run tournaments. What you see in this thread are people brain storming-and those ideas they have cannot even be implemented until several months worth of ranking are done.

The thing about respect may be true but as it is already people base a lot of respect on how you do at tournaments and how known you are so I don't see ELO having a big impact there. Also if someone is knowledgable and a good coach it will show and be known and not discounted because of some ranking-because again people already have an idea of how that person places in tournament.

:phone:
 

PEEF!

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Bones that is the worst example ever.

The thing about respect may be true but as it is already people base a lot of respect on how you do at tournaments and how known you are so I don't see ELO having a big impact there. Also if someone is knowledgable and a good coach it will show and be known and not discounted because of some ranking-because again people already have an idea of how that person places in tournament.
So, in short, an ELO system is a pointless waste of effort.
 

Strong Badam

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Bones that is the worst example ever.
yawn
So, in short, an ELO system is a pointless waste of effort.
ugh. generally I don't mind your viewpoints, Peef, but you've just been an awful poster in this thread. you responded to his paragraph, which explains pretty reasonably why respect based on Elo Rating wouldn't really wouldn't be an issue by comparison to current standards, in such a useless and nonconstructive manner. if you are against Elo ratings then post seriously and make valid arguments. if you aren't going to, then kindly shut up.
 

AlphaZealot

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PEEF: Accurate rankings in Smash would be no more pointless than accurate rankings in [insert every single competitive game]. Rankings in general are a good idea so people understand how they stack up against competition, they encourage better result tracking, they show the exact size of the community (your estimate of 10k for Melee is probably 5X higher than the actual number). The only negative are people getting their feelings hurt, which is going to happen anyway.

ELO rankings show the make up of players in the entire community instead of having a hodgepodge estimate based on individual tournaments. Finally, once rankings are established individual TOs could decide what to do with those rankings. At the simplest level they could be used to seed pools instead of more or less biased and/or random attributes + location. Many national tournaments already do seed pools based on some estimation of skill levels-wouldn't it make sense to have a more finite number? More over, after the top 30-40 players the seeding ability drops off significantly, so why not use a database with every player in it that tracks their skill level based on real results instead of hypothetical or biased information?

It really seems like you just want the community to be lazy and/or are scared at how you would rank in such a system. The Brawl community ran into this same problem when it implemented its ranking system (which is really good but is not as accurate as an ELO based system). Now there are 531 tournaments and over 5,000 ranked players and the thread is approaching 100,000 views. You can be constructive with the community or you could belittle every effort to be progressive-I guess you like to choose the latter, in which case you should get out of this thread.
 

Vts

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PEEF: Accurate rankings in Smash would be no more pointless than accurate rankings in [insert every single competitive game]. Rankings in general are a good idea so people understand how they stack up against competition, they encourage better result tracking, they show the exact size of the community (your estimate of 10k for Melee is probably 5X higher than the actual number). The only negative are people getting their feelings hurt, which is going to happen anyway.

ELO rankings show the make up of players in the entire community instead of having a hodgepodge estimate based on individual tournaments. Finally, once rankings are established individual TOs could decide what to do with those rankings. At the simplest level they could be used to seed pools instead of more or less biased and/or random attributes + location. Many national tournaments already do seed pools based on some estimation of skill levels-wouldn't it make sense to have a more finite number? More over, after the top 30-40 players the seeding ability drops off significantly, so why not use a database with every player in it that tracks their skill level based on real results instead of hypothetical or biased information?

It really seems like you just want the community to be lazy and/or are scared at how you would rank in such a system. The Brawl community ran into this same problem when it implemented its ranking system (which is really good but is not as accurate as an ELO based system). Now there are 531 tournaments and over 5,000 ranked players and the thread is approaching 100,000 views. You can be constructive with the community or you could belittle every effort to be progressive-I guess you like to choose the latter, in which case you should get out of this thread.
what he said!

10zealots
 

Zivilyn Bane

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PEEF: Accurate rankings in Smash would be no more pointless than accurate rankings in [insert every single competitive game]. Rankings in general are a good idea so people understand how they stack up against competition, they encourage better result tracking, they show the exact size of the community (your estimate of 10k for Melee is probably 5X higher than the actual number). The only negative are people getting their feelings hurt, which is going to happen anyway.

ELO rankings show the make up of players in the entire community instead of having a hodgepodge estimate based on individual tournaments. Finally, once rankings are established individual TOs could decide what to do with those rankings. At the simplest level they could be used to seed pools instead of more or less biased and/or random attributes + location. Many national tournaments already do seed pools based on some estimation of skill levels-wouldn't it make sense to have a more finite number? More over, after the top 30-40 players the seeding ability drops off significantly, so why not use a database with every player in it that tracks their skill level based on real results instead of hypothetical or biased information?

It really seems like you just want the community to be lazy and/or are scared at how you would rank in such a system. The Brawl community ran into this same problem when it implemented its ranking system (which is really good but is not as accurate as an ELO based system). Now there are 531 tournaments and over 5,000 ranked players and the thread is approaching 100,000 views. You can be constructive with the community or you could belittle every effort to be progressive-I guess you like to choose the latter, in which case you should get out of this thread.
omg AZ I love you. I agree with everything, except with the substitution of the word "rating" where you say "ranking."
 

PEEF!

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I don't have a problem with people rating things. I have problems with the CHANGES that people are trying to tag along with it, amateur brackets and other weird ****.

That was a good post AZ, and like I said, I think that ratings would be cool, but its the changes that seem to be infecting it.
 

AlphaZealot

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It is clearly just brainstorming though. Unless you are a TO you can't actually implement an AM bracket. The first step before any of that can happen is someone just needs to step up and do the work to make the rankings. Heck, if someone gets a database started once you get passed 20 tournaments I'll give it a sticky if you promise to keep it updated on a regularly basis.
 

Orko

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X( I wish I had joined this community earlier. I'm kind of in love with this kind of thing.

Anyways, as a new player, an ELO system would be excellent. Walking into this game, I don't know who the major players are, who is around me. I think an ELO would help with transparency, and I think that's what a seemingly dead game likes smash needs.
Recognition and transparency.
 

Zivilyn Bane

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X( I wish I had joined this community earlier. I'm kind of in love with this kind of thing.

Anyways, as a new player, an ELO system would be excellent. Walking into this game, I don't know who the major players are, who is around me. I think an ELO would help with transparency, and I think that's what a seemingly dead game likes smash needs.
Recognition and transparency.
Well new guy, here's a bit of Sacramento Smash history for you.

The first big melee tournament in Sacramento was called S.P.I.T. Sacramento Paradise Island Tournament. It was won by Zelgadis, with TANG coming in 2nd. The King was in attendance and I believe he got 3rd, although this was before he got really good. I was there and lost to the king and Mikkuz, a norcal Marth/Fox player.
 

Signia

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LOL at Peef discussing the ELO rating system in the State of the Game stream when nobody else knew what it was. Hella biased explanation he gave...
 

Divinokage

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LOL at Peef discussing the ELO rating system in the State of the Game stream when nobody else knew what it was. Hella biased explanation he gave...
Uhh I disagree, i knew about this since the beginning maybe not the others but he definitely explained what it was pretty well anyway inside the melee state of the game. It's not really an alien concept or anything, it's very simple. We were trying to talk about more as to how it would influence the scene.
 
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