ICCUP: New Rating System

I think its a good approach by iCCup admins to change the rating system to boost activity on the server, although I believe some tweaking to the numbers would create a more fair ladder experience and assist in minimising the amount of abuse.

Here are some recommendations:

a) Points for wins and losses should be based on the rank difference between players
Based on the current rating system, a B+ player shall be awarded +50 points (or +65 for MOTW) when winning against a player that can be more than 8,000 points lower in rating (e.g. B+ 8,999 vs D- 400), and shall lose -75 points for each loss against that same opponent. Effectively, this means that the B+ player requires a winrate of at least 60% (or 54% when playing on MOTWs) against vastly inferior opponents to advance to the next rank. Although this may appear as an extreme example, it is already being encountered on iCCup with players abusing this to achieve high ranks while obtaining winrates far superior than those noted previously. This is only possible due to the fact that points are awarded based on the grouping of ranks (e.g. D-, D and D+ are all treated as the same rank by the rating system). To minimise this occurance, points can be awarded as follows:



Based on the proposed rating system above, the B+ player would now be awarded +50 points (or +65 for MOTW) when winning against a player that can now only be up to 6,999 points lower (e.g. B+ 8,999 vs D+ 2,000), and shall lose -100 points for each loss against that same opponent. This increases the minimum required winrate to 67% (or 61% when playing on MOTWs) while playing against slightly better opponents this time. Overall, the proposed rating system would slightly minimise the rating gap that would be required to win the same amount of points as before. It shall also provide additional incentive for the lower ranked players to play against higher ranked players, as the points awarded for a win increase per rank and not per three ranks as it is for a loss.

Below are a couple of examples how points would be awarded to the B+ and D- players in our example:




b) The rating system should become harder for players as they advance through the ranks
The current system has a +100/-50 win/loss policy from D- to B+, which means that as long as a player competes against others of equal rank and maintains a winrate above 33%, they will eventually reach A-. This required winrate to achieve an A- rank can be lowered even more if that player is only playing on MOTWs (28%). In my opinion, players should lose slightly more points when competing at higher ranks against equal opponents to make the ranks meaningful and indicative of skill level. This is how the previous rating system operated, however the numbers can be modified to allow players to climb the ranks slightly easier. For example (as shown in the previous table as well):

• D vs D: +100/-50 (required winrate 33% and 28% for MOTW)
  
• C vs C: +100/-60 (required winrate 38% and 32% for MOTW)
  
• B vs B: +100/-70, (required winrate 41% and 35% for MOTW), etc...
  

Thats it for now, going for beers so I might include further recommendations later.