Hi there,

We have had the same rating system for a long time in Age of Mythology and it is showing it's flaws in my opinion. In this thread I'd like to start a discussion with the community on if we should change things up a bit. We have the option to implement some changes to our wishes.


Problem I - New players
New players start at a rating of 1600 even though their real skill more reflects the skills of a 1350 player. In team games having a new player on your team will make the game significantly harder for you. It would make sense if you wouldn't lose a lot of rating for losing with a new player, but because of their relatively high starting rating, you will lose a lot more points than what would be fair.

Players know this and therefore this is a strong motivation to kick new players from their rooms or to have room descriptions like "no 0 games". As a result, new players often don't feel welcome in our community. When they get kicked time after time for a couple of days and also get a good dose of harassment, they leave us.

Understand that the ability for a platform to live is provided by the new people signing up. Existing players eventually get less active or leave altogether and if there are no new players, the community shrinks and eventually dies. Keep this in mind the next time you kick someone for being new.

In 1v1 players abuse new players to boost their own ratings. If you are under 1700, you can get a decent amount of points from destroying a new player in 10 minutes.

An example from my own games where having a new player took a good bite out of my rating. (I welcome all players in my rooms, from 1350 up to 1900.)


The example game with a more forgiving rating change result. I used the Voobly Rating Calculator.


Play around with Voobly's Rating Calculator yourself to test the outcomes for your own games.



Problem II - "Real rating"
We have used the term "real rating" (RR) in our community for years. For those who don't know: "real rating" is not the actual rating number you have on Voobly, but it is an imaginary number that you and others think reflects your skills the best. Example: say my Voobly rating number is 1712, but I perform more like a 1650 player. Then my "real rating" is 1650.

Isn't it weird that we invented a term called "real rating"? It basically means that we think the Voobly rating system doesn't reflect our skills. I have heard countless times in medium and high level rooms: "The number doesn't mean anything." It makes the whole system pointless if we just throw its results in the bin.

This problem is caused by having big rating shifts in Age of Mythology, by which I mean a player can get from 1600 to 1700 in just 5 games and vice versa. We win and lose a lot of points per game. We have seen 1600 players balloon to 1780 and 1700 players tank to 1580 in just an evening of playing. This causes our rating system to be untrustworthy.

Is there another way? Yes, there is. Take Age of Empires II for example, where the maximum amount of points a player can win or lose is limited to a small amount. If you could only win/lose 1-10 points per game, the rating numbers will be a lot more stable and therefore reflect the skills of the players better.

Just think about it: the term "real rating" is complete non sense and shouldn't exist.


What parameters can we set for our rating system in this regard?
*Change the starting rating for new players.
*Set a maximum points won/lost per game for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, etc.
*Make all teammates in team games win/lose the same amount of points.
*Set a multiplier for rooms containing a new player so less points are won/lost for all players.


I just shared my opinion elaborately, but now I want to hear the opinion from the community. What do we want as a community? Which changes would we like to make or do want to keep things as is? I would like to hear what you guys have to say.

All the best,

Bombus

Games with noobs are useless, should just convert outcome to unrated. If noob is on winning team give the noob points if on losing team take points from noob but no one else should change rating. Exception if both teams have a noob. But noobs can also be smurfs so really just continue to boot them is best solution.

Before you reply: a change in the system does not necessarily mean that all ratings will be reset, so please don't worry about that!

Agreed, these are some polished ideas with precise reasoning, it will definitely help the newcomers in aot and make them feel comfortable and interested.

Hi guys , i joined voobly community 1 month ago it was first time for me to play aom online and of course we cant compare an offline player with online game .at first 3 weeks i found it very hard to play aom online but since this game is my childhood game i didnt gave up and i decided to learn how to play aom online and never giveup because of pro people bullying and rush and i thank bombus he took me from zero to semi hero he helped me from first day i joined voobly and never called me noob when i was newbie and i also thank my voobly friends who didnt care about my wins or rate and played with me ,my message for new players is never giving up and never care about negative people criticism

My suggestion:

- Give starting players 1300 rating, and a x2 bonus rating wins until they get to 1600
- With the same tools you use to detect AKA rating, give new accounts with aka of at least 1600 normal starting rating (1600) to allow new accounts of decent players to start at decent ratings so that new players will not face unless they decide to

In my opinion, real rating doesnt exist solely because of the rating system. It exists because people go on breaks and return to the game rusty, or because people like to try new gods and that impacts the actual rating.

I've just thought of the TG rating as a random number so far, only considering it to have any validity in the current system if the team's roster is fixed, which is rarely (never) the case. And by team roster here I mean the players you regularly play with in the same team rather than those who have a "main account" registered to some forum but don't actually appear in your team in actual day to day games. Usually rating ladders that rate teams rather than individuals require the core of the team to be fixed for the rating to make any sense.

That said, what +Bombus suggested in his starting post sounds reasonable to me and it might make our rating system to make sense, and also more welcoming to any newcomers.

Good to have +Bombus here starting these useful discussions!

I don't think people kick players from team games because they are new and worried about losing points, more like you don't know what you're getting - possibly a player who has never even played AoM, therefore guaranteeing their team a loss, which is a risk they don't want to take as they don't want to waste 30 minutes of their day for nothing.

Or, you have the other end of the spectrum: an expert level player on a new account - which also guarantees the outcome of the game (their team wins).

As for players playing new players to boost their rating in 1v1 - is that even a thing? If so, sad.

Voobly will be owned by GoDaddy in 5 years time, your ratings won't mean sh*t.

the idea is good, but the problem is that everything that should be thinking about new players, unfortunately smurfs should also be considered in this, because they abuse this or anything that appears to be a beginner.
Perhaps one of my recommendations would be to post a notice that it is new players or , until you have registered 30 games regardless of the type of rr.

Another option may be to modify the ELO behavior and make it like other games. Clearly if someone has 1600 and loses with a 1700 he must lose about 2 points. but if a 1600 loses to a 1400 within his first 5 games (reference) he should lose more than 120 points.

They are just ideas

my only issue is decay rate which was changed from 1699 to 1799, its hard for most ppl to get to 1800 and once they do they stop playing and let it decay to 1799, which you can see theres like a hundred 1799 accounts. People that play multiple games to get to like 1780-90 etc wont see them on ladder cause they are hidden under 1799 accounts, makes it less motivating to play imo (thread wasnt really about this but ive always talked about this and no one listens) lmao

First of all, thank you all for sharing your opinions. I appreciate you taking the time to tell us your experiences with the rating system.

Ragnerox, we haven't talked about decay yet in this thread, so thanks for bringing it up. I myself agree with you and think the high decay rate is a problem. I think this is something we should definitely discuss. What decay rate did you have in mind? Should we revert it to 1699 or did you have different number in mind?

I feel like this should definitely be at 1699 for all rate types, it's just a matter of seeing the other rate types getting stuck at 1799 in a very unusual way. However the decay should be smaller and slower. Maybe instead of 20 points... about 5. and that it be every 2 weeks.

Also, if it were possible in the leaderboard, it would be a good idea not to count people who reach 1699 due to inactivity, simply not count them in the table as inactive, until they show activity, perhaps placing them with a different color or something; to it

1699 was fine 1799 was mainly for 1v1 idk why it was included in tgs. Also theres a guy m107 #16 on ladder that was a hacker and got banned and for some reason hes still taking a spot on ladder.

Thanks for the clarification guys. We will take 1699 into consideration. No promises yet.

When players originally transitioned from ESO to Voobly, there was alot of dislike for the ELO system. Hence one of the reasons why we eventually changed to ESO. I'm not a fan of the ELO system. I don't like the minimal rating changes it has in team games, nor do I like players winning the same amount of points across the entire team. The ELO system results in top players feeding off of lower rated players, because of how forgiving the system is when playing down rating. This is true for 1x1s and team games. Players can beat someone 200 points less than them and still get a handful of points. ESO prevents that.

There is some reasonable argument that the ESO system is a bit too unforgiving when it comes to rating differences, and I think there is merit to that, especially due to the small size of the playerbase. This would be the best fix; to change that win/loss curve so that it doesn't fall off so quickly. 20 points is the average, up to 1 to 39. At 120 point difference, the win/loss comparison is 2 to 38. That's too punishing. But ELO is way too forgiving.

I like that new accounts win/lose alot of points. It gets them out of the 1600 range more quickly if they are a much better/worse player.

People don't boot 0 gamers for fear of losing rating, they boot them because they have no idea if they will be decent or terrible. No one wants to waste time playing a game where a player is so bad it's pointless. This problem remains regardless of the rating system used. Similarly, that's also why some people ask for real rate. I've only ever seen that used for people with new accounts, not people with 20+ games. Again, changing the rating system won't fix that.

Switching back to the ELO system will create just as many problems as it will theoretically fix.

The best solutions:
1) Alter the current rating system so it's a bit more forgiving. The points won/lost differs too quickly. Keep the min/max at 1 to 40, but give it a wider span of rating differential.
2) Lower the decay floor to 1699 (it used to be that, along time ago). Especially needed for team game ladder.