ELO Gain/Loss is so unbalanced in masters

[MadBaron]

Can BMG please revise how elo is gained/loss? Especially in masters where I know it changes quite a bit so you gain/lose fewer elo per game.


It just seems so random a lot of the time.

Sometimes it's perfectly fair, like I will gain +1 elo from winning as ret. I think this is understandable and fair.

However I recently won a game as WW and was shocked to see I only gained +1 elo from that win! How does a WW win compare to a win as ret?!

Equally I've had a game as doctor where I died N1 and yet town won, giving me +7 elo for the win. I literally did nothing all game bc I died N1. Why should I be gaining 7x more elo for a win where I died N1 compared to a WW win?


As I said, it just seems so random and a lot of the issues in ranked probably stem from this. Like I know now that there's literally no point in me trying to win a game as NK because it will only net me +1 elo and I only lose -1 elo for a loss.

It also simply means that it's near impossible to consistently lose elo as the gain/loss is so broken that every player will end up rising the more they play. I've noticed this heavily myself as I've managed to climb from silver to masters in 1 season and tbh the standard of play is hardly any different.

[Yemac]

Yup. ELO system is literal trash right now, but there are so many problems with ToS right now from bots, to throwers, to unity port, that BMG can't focus on everything at once.

I just had Arso only win +1. Lost as mafia -4. Won as town when I, just like you, died N1 without doing anything, got +8. I know ELO is based on the ELO of other players, but that system is just really stupid. It's also stupid that you can lose more games than you win, or equal out and still climb in ELO. My ranked win/loss ratio is about 50/50, but somehow I got from 1300 to 2200. This shouldn't happen. Sometimes you can't even do anything about a loss. Like mafia leaving but still losing 4 ELO because you played against lower ELO's.

I liked the idea someone else gave. That ELO for WW is gained based on kills, not on wins (dying by BG wouldn't gain you ELO, to counter jailor N2 attack meta). LO's finding visits etc.

[wozearly]

For information: resurrecting a post I made about the ELO calculation before, which explains the way it works and some of the oddities it creates at Master Tier
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Daft and unintuitive though it seems at a glance, the ELO calculation is working exactly as designed - though not perhaps in an ideal way for the reality of high ELO TOS.

Assuming the people you're playing against are not all Master ELO, and some are quite some way below you...

When you play as a solo faction, your ELO average is high enough above the others that between that and the Master K factor, you only gain +1. In effect, the calculation is already predicting you will very likely win based on your ELO, so doesn't want to move your ELO score much in response to a win. The K factor should similarly be shielding you against severe losses vs low ELO opponents as a neutral; but you can expect to get -2 or more for a neutral loss.

When you play as a group faction, the calculation takes the average ELO of the group. Your effective ELO drops substantially in the calculation's eyes when you're grouped with lower level players (a lone Master in the Town is heavily mitigated, a lone Master in the Mafia less so) so it doesn't see that faction's win as being so certain. Therefore you gain more ELO from Town/Mafia win because the calculation believes the match as a whole is more even. In effect, it expects your allies to bring you down to their level.

And yes, the net effect of this can be a bit silly. To a player, it seems to be madness that at Master Tier a win with a Werewolf would gain +1 where a win with Retributionist would gain +7. But, as it stands, that's the calculation working as designed - albeit not necessarily working as intended.

One fix that has been suggested already by Flake is to massively tone down the impact of other players' ELO in the calculation, and gear it more heavily towards outperforming your faction's winrate - or, preferably, your faction's winrate for the ELO tier in which you're currently playing.

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Added to this, although Ranked does adjust ELO to an extent to balance between the expected faction winrates, these winrates (as far as we know) are taken from Ranked as a whole. In lower tiers, Mafia and NK wins are notably more likely - in higher tiers, Town is typically using one or more meta-game strategies which, statistically speaking, raise their chances of winning more often than not. This imbalance means that Mafia and NK games are slightly 'punished' in terms of ELO gain/loss at higher winrates, where Town games are slightly 'rewarded' in terms of ELO gain/loss.

Once you move into Gold/Diamond Tier or above, assuming you're a decent player, the combination of Town's higher win-rate, the 'reward' for Town games and the increasingly greater chance you'll be placed with Town members of a lower ELO all contribute towards a tendency for ELO to rise over time.


In terms of fixing this, it isn't practical to base ELO on actions as Yemac floated (e.g. WW gets ELO for kills, LO gets ELO for seeing visits). Although its attractive in principle, it would require an incredibly complex calculation system, introduces inherent unfairness between roles (e.g. a more passive role, such as Mayor or Spy, has fewer options to gain ELO) and may also encourage counter-productive behaviour (e.g. people acting to try to maximise their potential ELO gain over actions that would be more likely to contribute to a win).

[RetsamElddir]

^ this. So heartbreaking to actually win as arso and get +1 idc how low the people I played are arso is hard! Should be at least +5 for Nk wins maybe +3 but plus +1 as ww and worse arso not fair. That's 14 to 1

[eriel9]

So much of this. Mafia/Ne/NK wins get so little elo gain, even in some of the most unbalanced games. Games where you do nothing and die night one, you get massive tons of elo. Mafia/Ne/NK losses however drop you a lot more than any other town role or anything, and I never understand. It's so disappointing.

[RetsamElddir]

Ne isn't as bad as I have noticed it seems , to me at least, the longer you live as jester before being lynched yields more elo same for getting your target hung day one you might get +2 if you are lucky but if you wait it seems again to me at least yield a little more.

[eriel9]

Ne isn't as bad as I have noticed it seems , to me at least, the longer you live as jester before being lynched yields more elo same for getting your target hung day one you might get +2 if you are lucky but if you wait it seems again to me at least yield a little more.

If this is the case, then at least this makes sense. Witch, on the other hand, suffers from the same problem that the other evil roles do, at least from what I've seen.

[Sting]

Ne isn't as bad as I have noticed it seems , to me at least, the longer you live as jester before being lynched yields more elo same for getting your target hung day one you might get +2 if you are lucky but if you wait it seems again to me at least yield a little more.

Elo gain/loss isn't factored in by in game mechanics except if you get lynched as an Exe turned Jester. Think it's +9 you get regardless of what rank you are.

If you died N1 in the past, you'd lose the least elo of your faction in a loss. No idea if they changed this or not.

The elo system in general is worse than ever, even the legacy one years ago made a lot more sense because at least the -15 elo town losses mitigated bad players to an extent. Now you lose like -4 so it's almost impossible not to gain Elo in the long run regardless of one's "skill"

[lalasex]

tbh the day when NK is getting +1 for win and -1 for lose just tells how much BMG literally gives zero fucks about balance and such stuff LOL.

[wozearly]

When Flake was bouncing ideas about a rework, he suggested tying ELO gains primarily to whether or not you outperformed your faction's average winrate for the tier that you belong to, and toning down the influence your ELO vs others' ELO has.

It's a pretty good underlying suggestion. Assuming faction winrates that look something like Town 60%, Mafia 30%, NE 25%, NK 10%, and you're playing against people in a pretty similar ELO range to yourself, what you would get is something like this:

Town win: +4 ELO
Town loss: -6 ELO

Mafia win: +7 ELO
Mafia loss: -3 ELO

NE win: +9 ELO
NE loss: -3 ELO

NK win: +18 ELO
NK loss: -2 ELO