New Rating and Balance System

[Bottiger]

We have a new rating system and balance plugin. The rating system replaces the inaccurate Hlstats system. It is based on a state of the art algorithm with many modifications to make it suitable for TF2.

Our goal was to make balances as fair as possible. Initial statistics show imbalances of at most 15% compared to 30% when we used KD. Our new plugin replaces Gscramble which many people complained did not work well or randomly stopped working. Teams will now be scrambled according to this rating system unless you are on Class Wars.

Important Facts

• Rating gain or loss is only based on wins or losses.
• You will not be penalized for playing a low KD class like medic or sacrificing yourself for the objective.
• Your rating gain or loss is scaled to the time you spent on the team.
• If the round lasts too long, it will be considered closer to a tie. This means the winning team will gain less rating or even lose rating, while the losing team will lose less or even gain rating.
• Blue has the advantage on some maps. Adjustments have been made today to the rating system to account for this.

Your rank can be displayed in-game with the !rank command.

If you find yourself on a bad team, please be patient and let the rating system work. The more you lose the higher the chance you will be placed with skilled players.

Feel free to report any suggestions or problems.

For those of you who want to know the rating algorithm: http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf

 

[Bottiger]

We have added adjustments to the win ratios per map because there are some maps where being on blue had a large advantage.

In order to get the ratings stabilized to accurate values without deleting everyone's rating, we have increased the rating deviations for everyone below a certain amount instead. This means you may initially appear to lose some rating, but you will be gaining a larger amount for each win.

 

[KinCryos]

For those of you who want to know the rating algorithm: http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf

wow, I didn't expect the actual science behind it.

somehow I was expecting a goofy flowchart with layman's terms like the following:

 

[Bottiger]

Ratings/Rankings have been rescaled so new players with a few lucky games do not fill up the top of the leaderboards.

Rating gain/loss is increased the shorter a match is from its average duration.

A few players had their ratings reset due to some bugs caused by these changes.

 

[Bottiger]

We need comments whether the rating system is accurate or not and if there are any biases or ways to exploit the system.

 

[KillerZebra]

The only problem I see is people being able to restack the teams.

At the end I sometimes see "SkialBalance. To big odds ##% - ##%" . But right after that scramble people just restack the teams.

I assume that means one team has a higher chance to win and the other team has a lower chance (by a marginal number). Perhaps we can make it where people can't swap teams after a balance if it makes the odds above 70% or something.

All I know is I don't feel like playing anymore because everytime I do teams get stacked again. I feel like it has gotten worse since our new system.

 

[Bottiger]

We need to be absolutely sure the rating system is as perfect as possible before preventing restacking.