Shin7-7
commented
1 year ago Nice proposal! A tier system and an "new player area" with bots seem really crucial for the general release. A system of progression is always nice to make player feel their progression. I really like the idea of promotion & limited demotion with reset between season.
timlx
Table of Content
it appears that internal links in an issue doesn't work, if you want to read it with links please access the source
CTA ranking system
Skill, Progression or Hybrid?
In chess, ELO (or chess.com rating) rules all, everything is based on your rating, and that is what people chase. This is also what we have been experimenting with in CTA since the open beta. This is what I would consider a pure "Skill" system, the alternative is a "progression system" like we know from RPGs, etc. you level up, you can have setbacks but generally, you are progressing, and finally, we got the hybrid solution which can combine the two systems, e.g., for new players, it's a progression system but for the top players it is a pure skill system. Most online card games have either a progression system or a hybrid system. In a later section I explain how some of the most popular online TCG/CCGs have implemented their system, but for now, let's dive into my proposal for CTA.
Tiered ranking system
The purpose of a tiered ranking system is to make sure people get to play with other players that are similar in strength because feeling like you can win is very important to make people come back and play again, anyone that regularly get dominated by stronger players is probably going to stop playing. It is also important to have an area where top players can face each other, and where there is real competition. This proposal comes from my personal interest in ranking/matchmaking systems and having played and read a lot about many different ranking systems.
I propose the following system for CTA:
There are 5 tiers (naming of course can be anything)
Each level is made up of 100 RP (Ranking points). When you win a game, you earn a certain number of RPs based on the tier you are in, when you lose a game you will lose a certain number of RPs, with 3 levels per tier the player needs to accumulate a total of 300 RP to get promoted to the next tier. It is not possible to get demoted from a tier, though players can move from Level 1 to Level 2.
Neophyte
Neophyte is the new player area, this is where everyone starts when they are new to the game, it's important that people "graduate" out of this area as soon as they are comfortable with the game. This area should contain bots, which can be used when a human opponent can't be found within 20-30 seconds.
To make players feel progress, in the Neophyte tier it is not possible to lose RPs, they can only be gained, each win rewards you 20 points, this means in 15 wins you will be promoted into the "Real" ranked area no matter how many losses.
Apprentice
20 RPs for wins and -5 RPs for losses, this is very generous, for every win, you can lose 4 times without really losing your progress.
Disciple
20 RPs for wins and -10 RPs for losses, for every win you can lose twice, competition will get fiercer here, but players will still feel they are making progress and climbing.
Primus
To progress in primus requires a larger than 50%-win rate, this is where it gets challenging.
Legendary
In legendary, you no longer use RPs but start using raw ELO (or whichever type of ranking system is used) to represent a user's standing. The leaderboard shows the ELO rating (as the current leaderboard). if ELO is used, everyone starts with a rating of 1200, use sliding K factor (1000-1500 = 30, 1501-1750 = 25, 1751 - 2000 = 22, 2001-2250 = 20, 2251 - 2500 = 18, 2500+ = 15). Not possible to go below 1000 ELO.
Promotion & Demotion
Promotion
Once a player goes past 100 RP for a level they are promoted to the next level (possible tier promotion, if it was Level 1). After a promotion, the player will automatically get 5 RP in the new level.
Demotion
While a season is ongoing a player cannot be demoted to a lower tier, if the player is at 0 RP at a Level 3, losing multiple times will not change the tier. if a player loses a game and ends up with 0 or less than 0 RPs, he will have 0 RPs for that level. A level demotion will only happen on the second loss while having 0 RPs. When a player is demoted a level, the new RP in the lower level will be 95 RP. e.g.
Match Making
Matchmaking finds a pool of possible opponents, and the pool of opponents is expanded in the following order, each expansion happens every 20-30 seconds, always avoid matching with the last 3 opponents as long as possible:
Note: MS/Blizzard/Riot test shows to be able to create good/optimal matchmaking you need around 40 opponents in queue per player in a given match (so around 80 players for a 1v1 game) at the time of searching for a match, this means that you should have to have at least a minimum of 60+ players per tier looking for a match at any given time, and ideally per level! using that as a basis for how many tiers, and how many levels to have for the best matchmaking. Source
Legendary matchmaking
Continue to iterate on the ELO ranking system currently being used.
Games required to reach Legendary
The following is a table of the number of games that are required to reach the next tier starting from Neophyte 3 RP = 0, with a specific win %, this does not account for the level demotion protection of 2 losses while being at 0 RP at a level.
It could be argued that these numbers are too small, and too many players might end up on Legendary status, but the counterargument is that it is good because at Legendary tier is where the real competitive play starts. Making it doable for players to qualify to that level in the first month of Leaderboard Season feels reasonable, though an easy way to slow things down would be to make each tier 4 or even 5 levels instead of the proposed 3 levels, this would slow things down, but still make people feel like they are making progress.
4 Levels per tier
If the system is expanded to 4 Levels per tier.
5 Levels per tier
If the system is expanded to 5 Levels per tier.
Season reset
CTA has already said there will be seasons, it is not clear yet if those seasons are going to coincide with the release of a new set of cards, or if the ladder reset is going to be more frequent, e.g., every 6-month based on the card set release cycle, or monthly. I will make some suggestions on how to reset, assuming a 6-month cycle for card releases (e.g., as we know Arkhante -> Mantris -> Rift, they are supposed to be roughly 6 months apart, so let's go with that assumption, and for this proposal, I will refer to it as Set Season vs Leaderboard Season.
So, Set Season = 6 months, I would propose then that Leaderboard Season = 2 Months. This would allow for 3 Leaderboard seasons for each Set Season.
Leaderboard Season reset
Leaderboard seasons can be referred to as "Arkhante LS I" meaning "Arkhante Set Season, Leaderboard Season I" Move players down according to this:
This will let players climb up again, and it will also allow for people of similar skill to face off against each other for the initial hectic moments after a reset. Each Leaderboard Season should be archived and saved, so people can go back and look at it (players do like to look at their previous ATH achievements etc.).
Set Season reset
The set will take place at the same time as the 3rd Leaderboard Season reset for the Set Season, and the same procedure will be used, but it will be possible to have a Set Season leaderboard based on their average performance across all the 3 leaderboards seasons, and thus possible to crown a Set Season winner, (default to 1100 ELO for Legendary players that did not make it to legendary for other seasons).
Climbing after reset
To accelerate Legendary players, climb back to Legendary status, a boost could be used for the first week after a reset, e.g., instead of earning 20 RP for a win ex-legendary players would earn 30 points while in disciple, 25 points in primus. This serves two purposes:
Match Making after reset
To minimize pairing legendary players with players that have never reached legendary before, all legendary players will first be matched with other Legendary players based on ELO ratings in the same tier, if no other legendary players can be found in the tier after 30-45 seconds match with other players in the tier.
Conclusion
The proposed system is an amalgamation of many of the most prominent competitive online card games currently. I have tried to include some of what I consider the best features and put them together with the purpose to make gaming the most fun for most players, where players can feel a sense of progress, but also making players feel that reaching "Legendary" status is not easy and require a certain amount of dedication but not an obscene amount of it. Obliviously there are many numbers and features that can be tweaked, but I strongly think that a system like this would greatly enhance the player experience for both old and new players. One thing that I did not delve into here, but which is closely linked to the ranking system is of course the rewards! There are 2 schools of thought on this either you give a bigger reward at the end of the season based on highest achievement, or you have one-time (ever, or per season) rewards as players reach certain milestones e.g., Levels, tiers, etc. Very common in other card games is, of course, the granting of avatars, card backs, frames, borders and other cosmetic things for players to show off how far they reached in a previous season.
ELO in CTA
Explanation of how ELO works in CTA.
The expected result of the match for player $E_A$ where $R_A$ = Rating of Player A, and $R_B$ = Rating of Player B. $$E_A= \frac{1}{1+10^{\frac{R_B-R_A}{400}}}$$
Same for Expected result of Player B $E_B$. $$E_B= \frac{1}{1+10^{\frac{R_A-R_B}{400}}}$$
to calculate the new rating of player A, $R\'_A$
$$R\'_A = R_A + K * (S_A - E_A)$$
$S_A$ is the score of the game, 1 = win , 0 = loss $K$ (K-Factor) scales, as per Quentins post^1, for ratings below 1750 $K = 40$
Other card games and their ranking systems
Magic Arena
MA uses a hidden MMR (like most games), but like most other systems they have chosen to implement a tiered progressing system for ranked games:
Channel fireball more information about the ranking system
Legends of Runeterra
LoR uses a very similar system to LoL, basically:
so climbing from Iron -> Dimond with a 50% win ratio would take almost 300 games.
Master works differently, as its more like an ELO style of gain/losses which is based on the opponent's rating, as well as a few other factors, but it has been made clear that it is impossible to climb in Master unless you can maintain a 62.5%+ win ratio.
Season Reset
Each season lasts two months. At the end of the season, ranks will be partially reset for the new season.
Master accounts will reset to Platinum 4, regardless of how much LP they have.
Diamond and Platinum accounts will drop 750 LP.
Gold and Silver accounts will drop 675 LP.
Bronze and Iron accounts will reset to Iron IV.
wiki
redit post
official article
Gwent
When you're playing in Ranked Mode, you will be matched against opponents of the same rank. The ranks start from Rank 30 and go up to Rank 0 (also called Pro Rank). To go from one rank to another one, you need to earn 5 mosaic pieces and once you reach a new rank, you cannot go down during the season. You get a mosaic piece when you win a game, you lose one when you lose a game.
Between rank 30 and 8 (included), you can get 2 pieces if you are on a winning streak (more than 3 wins in a row).
At the end of the season, after getting your rewards, you will lose 0-3 rank(s) based on your final rank. Players at Rank 0 will drop to Rank 3 unless they're in top 500. Players from Rank 1 to 13 will lose 2 ranks and players with Rank 14 to 23 will drop by one rank. Each season lasts a month and usually ends on the last working day of the month at 10 AM (CET). The next one starts the same day at 12 PM (CET) or after the patch if a patch is planned.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/wiki/ranked/#wiki_ranked_mode
Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel
there are five ranks that can be earned, all of which contain different tiers that you can rise through. The YuGiOh Master Duel tiers are Rookie, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, which all have five further levels except Rookie, which has two.
https://www.ggrecon.com/guides/yu-gi-oh-master-duel-ranks-ranked-system/
Pokemon Online
Doesn't really have a ranking system, and matchmaking is a total disaster, I only have this here as an example of what NOT TO DO. https://forums.pokemontcg.com/topic/76579-competitive-modes-on-ptcgo/
HearthStone
HearthStone tracks players' wins through the ranking system using "Stars", get enough stars and you will rank up.
Winning matches earns players stars, and stars are needed to advance ranks. Each rank contains three "star slots", so only three stars are needed to advance out of each rank. The number of stars awarded for winning each match is determined by a Star Bonus, which is given at the start of each season, and also by a winning streak bonus. Players are awarded a Star Bonus based on both the player's MMR and numbered rank in the previous season. This Star Bonus is a multiplier on the number of stars a player earns from each match win.
For example, a Star Bonus of 7x means that a player will earn 7 stars for winning a match. Every player starts with at least 2 Star Bonus at the beginning of a season.
Losing games causes players to lose a star unless they are on a level floor. At a level floor, a player can never fall below that level for the remainder of the season. level floors occur at every 5 levels on the ladder, for example at "Bronze 5" or "Gold 10". Upon climbing and hitting each level floor, a player's Star Bonus will decrease by 1, meaning that as a player climbs up in level, it will become more challenging for the player to climb up to higher ranks.
Each month of Ranked play is called a season. The first time the player logs in or enters a match following the start of a new season, they will be shown a special announcement informing them of their rank at the end of the last season, their best rank during that season (which determines end-of-season rewards and next season's initial rank), their rewards for that season, and their rank at the start of the new season.
At the start of each Ranked play season, all players are reset back to Bronze 10.
https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Ranked
Alternatives to ELO
Glicko
Glicko was designed as an improvement to ELO. The math is more complicated, but what it introduces is a variable called $RD$ Rating Deviation, to track how active a player is and how this might make their rating deviate away from the actual number. It's adding variability over time. This translates to less variability in ratings gained/lost for players that play more regularly and are generally more active. For unrated players or people that play rarely, the rating jumps can be significant, this is done in an attempt to faster find the correct level of the player. One other big difference vs ELO is that ratings are not a zero-sum, e.g. winner and loser will not gain/lose the same number of rating points, this is all related to the rating variability.
for an easy overview of the Glicko system
and of course, Wikipedia got good coverage of it and references to the original paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system
Glicko 2
Glicko 2 is an extension of the Glicko system. Glicko 2 adds a 3rd variable to the equation $\sigma$ which measures the degree of expected fluctuation in a player’s rating, based on how erratic the player's performances are. For instance, a player's rating volatility would be low when they performed at a consistent level and would increase if they had exceptionally strong results after that period of consistency. The math gets a lot more complicated.
TrueSkill (1 and 2)
This is Microsoft's proprietary system that probably requires some type of licensing to use. It was designed to accommodate team battles and infer a team's strength based on the team members and matching against other teams and create a rating system for both teams as well as individuals. The math gets a lot more complicated, though it can be slightly simplified for the 1v1 environment.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/03/trueskill2.pdf
Bayesian ELO
The idea is to take into account previous games and the relative strength of those opponents. https://www.remi-coulom.fr/Bayesian-Elo/
Great resources on the Ranking System/Matchmaking topic:
Footnotes