Town of Salem 2.0 - Ranked ELO Changes

[kosmo16]

Median is a bad idea. Imagine situation with four 2000 elo players and five 1200 elo players in a one team. Median is 1200 and it's not fair. I think the arithmetic mean is the best option.

[LRyuzakiL]

Median is a bad idea. Imagine situation with four 2000 elo players and five 1200 elo players in a one team. Median is 1200 and it's not fair. I think the arithmetic mean is the best option.

They are planning on using the median ELO? This update is going to be even more of an abomination than I thought. I wouldn't be surprised if ranked ToS dies. Seasonal resets with no carry over and the fetish for ELO relativity (ELO of others affecting how much you gain/lose) is going to kill ranked. If they are going to do seasonal ELO, they need some sort of carry over effect. You should gain ELO at a higher rate next season if you did well in the previous season. For example, if you ended with double your starting ELO, your ELO gained for each win would be 2x the normal amount in the next season. If your ending ELO was 1.4x higher than your starting ELO, all your wins in the next season should be multiplied by 1.4 and rounded. If they don't use that system, you should at least gain back a portion of your ELO over 1200. So for example, if you were 1800 and the carry over was 25%, you'd get back 25% of 600 (1800 - 1200). You'd start the new season with 1350.

ELO is supposed to match people with players of about equal skill. Many people have spent hundreds/thousands of games to get out of the pool of bad players. Why the fuck should this continuously reset with no sort of carry over? Why make people earn it just to take it all away? If they are good, they can get it back, but they shouldn't have to put in the same amount of work over and over again just to regain the status they've already earned.

[BlazinIce]

Retracted.

[wozearly]

Median is a bad idea. Imagine situation with four 2000 elo players and five 1200 elo players in a one team. Median is 1200 and it's not fair. I think the arithmetic mean is the best option.

They are planning on using the median ELO? This update is going to be even more of an abomination than I thought. I wouldn't be surprised if ranked ToS dies. Seasonal resets with no carry over and the fetish for ELO relativity (ELO of others affecting how much you gain/lose) is going to kill ranked. If they are going to do seasonal ELO, they need some sort of carry over effect. You should gain ELO at a higher rate next season if you did well in the previous season. For example, if you ended with double your starting ELO, your ELO gained for each win would be 2x the normal amount in the next season. If your ending ELO was 1.4x higher than your starting ELO, all your wins in the next season should be multiplied by 1.4 and rounded. If they don't use that system, you should at least gain back a portion of your ELO over 1200. So for example, if you were 1800 and the carry over was 25%, you'd get back 25% of 600 (1800 - 1200). You'd start the new season with 1350.

ELO is supposed to match people with players of about equal skill. Many people have spent hundreds/thousands of games to get out of the pool of bad players. Why the fuck should this continuously reset with no sort of carry over? Why make people earn it just to take it all away? If they are good, they can get it back, but they shouldn't have to put in the same amount of work over and over again just to regain the status they've already earned.

One of the players suggested median, not BMG.

Elo relativity is an important consideration for some players - but just from chatting to various people in the game, I'd suggest quite a few primarily just want to be "high enough" that they get players who know what they're doing and not be matched with the blethering nonsense merchants, because games with fairly-to-very good players are typically a lot more rewarding and a lot more fun. So I agree that some form of proportional carry-over would make sense between seasons if there is to be resets.

What wouldn't make sense is giving a boost to ELO gain to people who currently have high ELO (and, in effect, an ELO malus to those who currently have low ELO), because that just reintroduces the actual confirmed bug in the ELO calculation by another mechanism and continues to reward and shaft the same people.

I entirely empathise with the short-term situation of the high elo players, and entirely agree that timing this with a reset would have been ideal, but we are where we are. Arguing against fixing the ELO bug is either madness, pure selfishness or misplaced anger (take your pick). Good players will continue to be at the upper levels of ELO, and be matched with other higher ELO players as a priority as they are currently. Only the absolute numbers change. And while I agree with Galactik's thinking and don't want to see the high ELO players shafted or feeling like they don't want to play, I can't personally get behind an argument to favour a small minority of players who are threatening not to play if an unintentional artificial advantage they benefit from is taken away.

[LRyuzakiL]

Median is a bad idea. Imagine situation with four 2000 elo players and five 1200 elo players in a one team. Median is 1200 and it's not fair. I think the arithmetic mean is the best option.

They are planning on using the median ELO? This update is going to be even more of an abomination than I thought. I wouldn't be surprised if ranked ToS dies. Seasonal resets with no carry over and the fetish for ELO relativity (ELO of others affecting how much you gain/lose) is going to kill ranked. If they are going to do seasonal ELO, they need some sort of carry over effect. You should gain ELO at a higher rate next season if you did well in the previous season. For example, if you ended with double your starting ELO, your ELO gained for each win would be 2x the normal amount in the next season. If your ending ELO was 1.4x higher than your starting ELO, all your wins in the next season should be multiplied by 1.4 and rounded. If they don't use that system, you should at least gain back a portion of your ELO over 1200. So for example, if you were 1800 and the carry over was 25%, you'd get back 25% of 600 (1800 - 1200). You'd start the new season with 1350.

ELO is supposed to match people with players of about equal skill. Many people have spent hundreds/thousands of games to get out of the pool of bad players. Why the fuck should this continuously reset with no sort of carry over? Why make people earn it just to take it all away? If they are good, they can get it back, but they shouldn't have to put in the same amount of work over and over again just to regain the status they've already earned.

One of the players suggested median, not BMG.

Elo relativity is an important consideration for some players - but just from chatting to various people in the game, I'd suggest quite a few primarily just want to be "high enough" that they get players who know what they're doing and not be matched with the blethering nonsense merchants, because games with fairly-to-very good players are typically a lot more rewarding and a lot more fun. So I agree that some form of proportional carry-over would make sense between seasons if there is to be resets.

What wouldn't make sense is giving a boost to ELO gain to people who currently have high ELO (and, in effect, an ELO malus to those who currently have low ELO), because that just reintroduces the actual confirmed bug in the ELO calculation by another mechanism and continues to reward and shaft the same people.

I entirely empathise with the short-term situation of the high elo players, and entirely agree that timing this with a reset would have been ideal, but we are where we are. Arguing against fixing the ELO bug is either madness, pure selfishness or misplaced anger (take your pick). Good players will continue to be at the upper levels of ELO, and be matched with other higher ELO players as a priority as they are currently. Only the absolute numbers change. And while I agree with Galactik's thinking and don't want to see the high ELO players shafted or feeling like they don't want to play, I can't personally get behind an argument to favour a small minority of players who are threatening not to play if an unintentional artificial advantage they benefit from is taken away.

I do think ELO needs a reset, I just also think that it very badly needs to be done right this time. Having no sort of carry over would be doing it wrong. I was unaware that there was a bug related to the ELO "bonus" I proposed. I would be fine with a certain percentage of your current ELO carrying over, but I think it should be a hefty potion. Seriously, what is the point in repeated resets of ELO? ELO says "here is a rough estimate of my skill level, match me with the same people." What does it accomplish to seasonally reset this? I proposed the "bonus gain" system so that players could more quickly get back to their appropriate skill level. If that isn't used, a serious portion of your ELO should be carried over each season. Although I still don't see why the hell it would even be seasonal. They should reset it, fix it, and leave it.

[boysilver]

This is why a hardly play ranked. Would it hurt just to reset Elo?

[wozearly]

I do think ELO needs a reset, I just also think that it very badly needs to be done right this time. Having no sort of carry over would be doing it wrong. I was unaware that there was a bug related to the ELO "bonus" I proposed. I would be fine with a certain percentage of your current ELO carrying over, but I think it should be a hefty potion. Seriously, what is the point in repeated resets of ELO? ELO says "here is a rough estimate of my skill level, match me with the same people." What does it accomplish to seasonally reset this? I proposed the "bonus gain" system so that players could more quickly get back to their appropriate skill level. If that isn't used, a serious portion of your ELO should be carried over each season. Although I still don't see why the hell it would even be seasonal. They should reset it, fix it, and leave it.

For the very first ELO reset, given current values are the result of a bug, there could be an argument for a hard reset of ELO for the beginning of the first new Season. Note 'could'.

Equally, for clarity, I'm completely in agreement with you that some form of carry-over from season to season would be a good idea even if only to avoid a) veterans being concerned that they'll have to go through a new set of 'ELO hell' games before they can enjoy playing against a more challenging opposition and b) less able players being concerned that the early season will involve repeated punishing losses versus excellent players who the game is treating as average, until the ELO values normalise again.

IMO, the aim should be to partly normalise those values from the outset as a starting position, so players above 1200 ELO would retain a proportion of their ELO. I don't feel it's worth applying a penalty to those below 1200, to avoid encouraging people to artificially restart new accounts with a new season. However, I don't feel that this should be a large proportion - otherwise it defeats the purpose of an ELO reset for the new season.

I do, however, feel strongly that applying an ELO multiplier is a bad way to go. Having a different ELO calculation for different players could be seen as toxic, and it reintroduces the unintended effect of the ELO calculation bug where high ELO players artificially gained ELO more easily and low ELO players artificially lost ELO more easily. I appreciate that if this stopped after (x) games then it would serve the same effect as an ELO carry-over, but the ELO carry over is a simpler and more transparent way to achieve the same outcome.

In terms of "why reset ELO at all", I imagine the aim would be to encourage veteran players to dive back in to regain their status rather than bow out and preserve their ELO rating for all time, and to avoid people hitting high ELO and getting the top season rewards for never logging in. But if BMG said they had no plans to reset ELO from one season to the next, I wouldn't be that fussed.

[Meekz]

Why am i STILL getting +1 for werewolf wins?
Even if the player's i am up against are lower elo, it's unfair for ANY nk games to give +1 for a win... it's a waste of time

[kosmo16]

Why am i STILL getting +1 for werewolf wins?
Even if the player's i am up against are lower elo, it's unfair for ANY nk games to give +1 for a win... it's a waste of time

I don't agree. Recently I played a game as a Werewolf and it was very easy to win. Sheriff found me D5 and accused immediately. All Mafia were dead D5 so I had to kill all remaining Town members by myself. I literally won 1 vs 6 as WW. Skill gap between me and other Townies was huge and earning 1 point was justified.

Matchmaking algorithm should prevent these kind of situations. You shouldn't be matched with people much weaker then you (maybe longer queues for high elo players).

[andixoxo]

You literally said all mafia were dead by D5, which means town had a fairly good play (unless you killed all mafia on nights 2 and 4, in which case you're the bad player).

Werewolf ELO win should start from 6.

[kosmo16]

You literally said all mafia were dead by D5, which means town had a fairly good play (unless you killed all mafia on nights 2 and 4, in which case you're the bad player).

Mafioso was killed by Veteran N1, Godfather just left D2 and Random Mafia said he is the last member of Mafia D2. He was executed by Jailor N4.

[Rafael1703]

As we speak, ELO system is still broken.. earning +3, +4 ELO as mafia. If i lose the match i get almost always the same amount of -3 or -4 Elo. So fun. I understand that we're not supposed to reach high Elo, but can we at least keep things more fair in this game?

Please fix this (again), i guess. Sorry for bad english.

[LRyuzakiL]

You literally said all mafia were dead by D5, which means town had a fairly good play (unless you killed all mafia on nights 2 and 4, in which case you're the bad player).

Mafioso was killed by Veteran N1, Godfather just left D2 and Random Mafia said he is the last member of Mafia D2. He was executed by Jailor N4.

Thats absurd, that happens maybe 1/100 games, if that.

[xTiffanyyx]

Pretty disappointed with the new update. Spy is as useless as a medium, and is now basically a lame version of the LO. With vet not being unique now either, I've been in a lot of ranked games where real vets claim their role but get lynched anyways since its so hard to prove your role. Yes, veteran and spy were two really good roles that were easy to confirm, but i think they got nerfed a bit too much.

[Spartan001]

xTiffanyyx, I whole heatedly agree.

[enigmanerdYT]

I don"t personally play ranked, as i have only played around 40 games in ToS on my account, which may make you think that I am a noob, which isn't true. I have watched ToS videos, chatted in discord rooms, read up on the roles, and learned all the metas. (Survivor has the highest W/L ratio)
I also have been an authority in other similar games' forums and development, know a fair bit about elo systems, and can give you an honest answer:
The new ELO system is highly flawed, but workable. What I mean by this is the developers can modify the system to better include high ELO, experienced players. The system has three major flaws:
It does not let skilled players show their skill
It does not factor in the unusually large luck aspect of the game
It does not block people from leeching and farming ELO unfairly from higher ELO players

My suggestion: Rework the system, but tinker with it in some form of beta until every bracket of player thinks it is playable and fair. This may be a tall task, but it is necessary to grow and maintain the ToS ranked community.
I will be playing in ranked next season, so fix it for then!
-EnigmanerdYT

[Leonboss777]

So, before the ELO algorithm was changed we were literally living in a capitalism system that the devs hadn't noticed, i'm amazed.

[Ajdemi]

Reset elo plz

[Jerme]

Reset elo plz

Be patient, elo will be eventually reset, after the new changes hit the live servers.

[Meekz]

You literally said all mafia were dead by D5, which means town had a fairly good play (unless you killed all mafia on nights 2 and 4, in which case you're the bad player).

Mafioso was killed by Veteran N1, Godfather just left D2 and Random Mafia said he is the last member of Mafia D2. He was executed by Jailor N4.

There you have it. The way i see what you have described is either a game turning to shit because of the veteran death n1, or just a really dumb/afk town. Either way, you should treat this game as an outlier because that's not the way this game is meant to work. Also, the quality of ranked gameplay has dropped since elo has been frozen due to regular players not having the incentive to play.

On average, winning as Werewolf is significantly harder than winning as mafia or town because all factions want you dead. Simple. It doesnt matter how good I am compared to my opponents, there is NO WAY that i'll spend 20 minutes of my time to win BY MYSELF and get +1 elo for it. So i believe +5 is a good base for all Werewolf wins and should obviously be increased based on average elo of opponents etc.