We are working on an overhaul of our online competition structure. This feature is our attempt to create a satisfying long term online experience and we are interested to know what you think.
The details below are for a planned feature and are subject to change.
New Long-Term Competition Structure Overview
Players will be broken up into tiers: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. We may release a diamond tier in the future.
Every week or two, there will be a tiered competition. Players will gain and lose ranked points based on their performance within the competition
Players in tiered competitions will be divided up by rank, essentially making separate sub-competitions. Playing against players in their own tier will provide a more satisfying experience for all users
Fully placed Competitions
In Single Round Elimination, more than half of all players are knocked out in the first 2 rounds, after playing 1-2 games. These players have no idea about how they placed or how well they did, and were barely able to participate. In a fully placed competition, additional brackets will be formed recursively for the losers of any round with more than one loser in it. All entrants will play log(n) games, and will receive a single specific placement. (This placement is used to determine ranked point gains/losses)
Misc details
We plan on setting things up so these competitions are automatically created and run. We plan to cast once a month, casting the highest tier competitionâs top 4 and 2-4 highlights from the lower tiers
Rewards
We will be working out a rewards structure and will keep you posted on the details.
We still plan on having occasional special competitions with special configs or other special characteristics occasionally
We will be running an early version of this system in the coming few weeks as a test. Keep an eye out for new competitions. We will be starting users out in either bronze or silver tier based on their leaderboard rating.
I have one concern: usually in other games, your rank is based on the history of all games played
and if you get stronger in the game ⌠the rank reflects it over time.
Here the rank is tied to an algo ⌠we have multiple of them or none at a moment,
it will be tricky to make the ranking persistant âŚ
Rank tier and points will be tied directly to the user, and will be based on the performance of the algos they enter into the competition. This seems similar to how your algos would participate in ranked play and your rating would be based on their performance. I donât think it will be more tied to an algo then it was in the past.
These are neat!
Iâm curious though, after the first round I went to register for next week (in gold) and found all of the other top-of-the-board algos from this week still in silver. Does this mean that only the winner of each week is promoted to the next tier? (and by extension also mean that Iâm the only Gold at the moment and can take the week off for an auto-win? )
Is there a hierarchy to the bracket numbers? For example the winner of bracket 2 (scott-hanpa), bracket 3 (Paprikadobi) and bracket 4 (myself) all finished with 2 wins and 1 loss while never playing each other. Would we all get the same number of ranked points or is bracket 2 worth more than bracket 3 etc.?
Yes there is as this is a fully placed competition.
For example, the bracket 4 is to determine the third (quincyc3) and fourth place (demorf)
Maybe having a tree or at least the rank of everyone would be easier to read this.
Everyone makes some progress, but only a first place win can move someone up a tier in one competition. You are currently the only gold player.
Im going to add a table with everyones final placements soonâ˘
Everyone gets a single, specific placement at the end of the competitions, and gains or loses points relative to their position. First place is automatically promoted, but it may take a few competitions before other players change tiers. Consistently placing in the top 40% or so should result in a promotion fairly soonâ˘
Im going to split the table into multiple tables soon⢠with headings like âBracket X: losers from bracket Y round Zâ to make the results a lot more readable.
We are going to keep putting out these weekly competitions, streaming them occasionally. We will be adjusting the formulas and user experience related to them over time. We are considering a structure that could allow people to earn entry into the season finale through performance in tiered competitions (In addition to the top players).
The feature is still being worked on a lot, but there will be prizes for the highest performing players in ranked competitions
Thanks for your questions, keep them coming if you have more!
Would being in the last few places (or especially, not participating) eventually cause demotion to the previous tier? Seems like a typical mechanic for this sort of system but I couldnât find it confirmed
Players above Bronze 50 will soon⢠lose a small number of points when competitions are run if they did not participate that week.
We are also planning on setting it up so that players are automatically enrolled into competitions after they participate in their first rank tiered competition of the season, to avoid any potential gaming of the decay system.
When the last round of the competition completes, competition completion was resolving before placements were readjusted for the final time. You were rewarded as if you were 2nd place, and Alex M was given the award for 1st place. I manually re-adjusted your standings, and those of your teammate, to be correctly silver. I did not re-adjust Alexâs score.
The silver competition was unaffected by this issue as KauffK was already the 1st seed.
A patch for this is complete and will be released before next weekâs competitions are run.
Is it possible to submit algos for the specific competition, and get priority matchmaking vs the other players in that competition ?
Currently when you submit a new algo it may take up to sever hours before you get a âusefulâ match vs the players you are competing.
With the current Tier system it is more important to optimize your strategy for the current Tier group, as your result at the end will be determined by several direct matches, not overall global rating.
I really appreciate the Tiers change, but in my opinion, current matchmaking does not support it very well.
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