New WARS Ladder

Should the Ladder points be recalculated for all previous matches?

  • Yes, it would present a more accurate rating.

    Votes: 7 50.0%
  • No, it is too much work.

    Votes: 2 14.3%
  • Yawn... roll the dice, eh!

    Votes: 5 35.7%

  • Total voters
    14

ToxicShock

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I've noticed some inconsistencies in the 'new' Ladder which I have started to address with the management.
I would like to poll the membership to see what the prevailing mood is for any revision.
 
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ToxicShock

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WestPointer said:
I'd be interested in a listing of "inconsistencies".
The main one is that the points structure has changed.
From previous experiences with OARS/AREA, when such a change occurs, the ladder either recalculates all games submitted or starts over again by dropping the previous game results.
With changing the points structure in midstream, it makes the 'ladder by points' and the 'ladder by rating' inaccurate.
 

CyberRanger

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ToxicShock said:
With changing the points structure in midstream, it makes the 'ladder by points' and the 'ladder by rating' inaccurate.
No, it doesn't.

When players reported games under the old ladder, they expected to earn a certain number of points. Those points have been carried over with 100% accuracy. So to state that the points or the rankings are inaccurate is inaccurate. Before the first W.A.R.S. report was submitted, the rankings and points displayed in W.A.R.S. matched the rankings and points on the old ladder.

Yes, W.A.R.S. has a different scoring system, but that scoring system applies equally to all players. So players who don't report any more games will drop in the rankings, those that do will go up, and everyone knows what the scoring system is. I don't understand how doing it any other way would be better. Why drop the old game reports? Why change the scoring for the old games? Players received what they expected at the time and everyone is playing by the same standard now.
 

CyberRanger

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Hey ... I have an idea! What if we add two more "Select Games Played" time options to the LCC. The first option would be "WARS Reports ONLY". The second option would be "Pre-WARS Reports ONLY". That way ... players can decide for themselves how to view the ladder!
 

Dr Zaius

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I understand the concern guys and we do value your input, however, the comparrison to ROAR isn't entirely practical. For starters, when we first began designing the new ladder we weren't even sure what was going to be possible and what wouldn't. After if became clear that we could indeed do the things we wanted to, we had to sit down and come up with a plan of how to make it happen. It wasn't a smooth process.

We knew we had to carry forward the data from the old ladder, but we also knew there were serious problems with the way the ladder scored certain things. WARS is different than ROAR and OARS in one key respect: it has to be able to handle reports from many different types of wargames and still put them into some type of rational order. In TacOps, for example, the potential victory levels are entirely different than they are for TOAW. In TacOps, it is even possible for BOTH sides to lose a scenario! If WARS had been designed just for ASL the process would have been much smoother.

We had a lot of internal debates among the staff personnel and we pulled our hair out trying to come up with a system that made sense. We knew if we changed the scoring system there would be some grief, but we also knew that simply using the old system wasn't an option either. It is true we could have solicited feedback an ideas from the whole community, however, we made a concious decision not to do this. Why? Because the TOAW players would have wanted it one way and the ASLers another, TacOps another, etc. We would have had to sift through all of the feedback and find out which ideas were practical and which ones simply wouldn't work.

But we didn't want to do this without some feedback. Here is the scheme we did use. Each wargame was represented by a staff member arguing for the features and ideas that particular wargame needed. We also brought in several "beta testors" from the general membership. These individuals gave us invaluable feedback about what looked good and what didn't. We simply couldn't bring the whole club into it or we never would have gotten it done at all.

Is WARS perfect? No, but I think its a very fine system considering all the different wargames it supports and their various characteristics. And bear in mind we are steadily improving it.
 

ToxicShock

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Don Maddox said:
Is WARS perfect? No, but I think its a very fine system considering all the different wargames it supports and their various characteristics. And bear in mind we are steadily improving it.
Thanks for the explanation, Don. If that is the way it was decided upon between the staff then I have no qualms about it.
I just do not see what the point is if WHQ is going to try and incorporate the OARS ladder into the WHQ Ladder without mucking up the system between the various other games and ASL.
 

Dr Zaius

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ToxicShock said:
I just do not see what the point is if WHQ is going to try and incorporate the OARS ladder into the WHQ Ladder without mucking up the system between the various other games and ASL.
And that is a valid point. We're not exactly sure what's going to happen with the OARS data. We've been so busy with the updates to the main webpage that we haven't really had a chance to thoroughly examine that yet.

One issue that has been raised is this: should we combine the existing OARS data with the ASL potion of WARS, the current ladder leaders will surely drop way down. OARS has a great number of reports in it and just dumping them into our current database will definately some rather wild results. We're going to have to take a much closer look at this when things settle down with the main webpage (which is now almost complete).
 
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