Competitive Ranked algorithm changes
Hi folks,
We'd like to thank all the dedicated ranked players so far! At the time of writing, we're just a few matches off a 1000 full matches and 2500 rounds played. The in-game ranked matchmaking system is a first for Soldat and we're very happy with the reception it has got! Do you remember #soldat.gather on IRC?
Obviously there are kinks and bugs to work out when such a system gets introduced. This is why besides the regular bug fixes, we've changed the ranking algorithm a bit to make your wins and losses have a bit more impact, and this works retroactively: all 1000 matches have been re-analysed and ranks have shifted already. So keep in mind next time you run the game your rank may have changed already, for better or for worse!
A summary of the changes (by Norbo):
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Summary of technical changes for those who are interested:
- Previously, the "Tiers" (Bronze I to Champion III) used to be a simple mapping of TrueSkill's mu across all available tiers. Uncertainty was not taken into account when putting a player in a tier (only when choosing how to balance teams).
- Now, the two numbers (mu=skill, sigma=uncertainty) are combined to give a lower bound on player skill (skill - 3 * uncertainty) and this is mapped over the Tiers instead. This allows Tiers to better reflect what TrueSkill believes a player's skill to be and how they affect the team balancer.
- The system used to re-rate people at the end of every round, which meant that winning 2-0 resulted in more ranked points than winning 2-1. This was completely equivalent to a single-game format and thus defeated the point of a best-out-of-three format designed to encourage players to make comebacks. Now, winning a single round no longer guarantees any points until your team secures the whole game. The additional side-effect is that ratings now better reflect a player's W-T-L game record, rather than their round record.
- In addition to this, the Tau parameter (which controls the magnitude of adjustments in a single re-rating) was increased 10x, to allow for faster progression (and offset the fact that we now re-rate 2x-3x less frequently).
- The Beta parameter (which controls how far apart in rating teams must be to identify an 80% win probability) was halved, to reflect the fact that Soldat is a high-skilled game. The effect of this is that it will be harder to see a 50% win probability in a given game, thus amplifying the effects that imbalanced teams have on rating. Those who over-perform will be rewarded more, those who under-perform will be punished more.
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We hope you continue enjoying ranked, and feel like your match outcomes are a little more impactful than before, as with these changes the emphasis lies on match results rather than round results, combined with faster rank "movement".
Last but not least, another EU server has been added to minimize the waiting time between servers restarting.
Have fun!
