Plea for an annual ladder

[Copper]

Well, officially, ELO is not a primary stat for a reason, it had to be fudged to make it work for wargames. There are threads in the archive that discuss the work arounds and limitations that had to be used when this stat was taken from the chess world to ours, and for that reason, it is not, and never will be, a prime stat on the ladders. It's just not accurate enough. It's a nice to have, or a luxury stat if you prefer.

Having said that, all of the existing prime stats are sortable so that you can run an annual ladder by using the filters, and I'm sure if you coordinate with the Ladder Commander before hand, he may even be willing to support such annual competitions with bonus points and/or medals. But annual ladders will not become the default views by the Blitz as we prefer the all time view (not many Clubs have our 8+ years of history and the current view helps portray that storied past), but have given you the players the tools necessary to view it as you personally prefer with a few mouse clicks.

Regards.

I remember back in the day when Umbro used to kick my ass at CS, he manufactured the ELO system and got it running... took a lot of time and effort for him to do that.

ELO is definately flawed, but like democracy, is perhaps the best thing going. Scenarios can unbalance the rankings, but I do not see one person in the top 20 ELO that does not deserve to be there... these are the best of the best... evidence that flawed or not, the ELO system is a good proxy for ranking skills and capacity.

That being said, what if we went to a win percentage ladder that ran yearly then. It is also flawed as well, as top players may only play new players or less capable players and really shine... but I guess that's all part of the race I would suppose? Also, win % doesn't crowd out the guys like me who are 12 hour a day job guys and don't have the time to manage 10 games at a time.

I'd volunteer to help put this together though, and make the requisite posts, awards, battle summaries and top leaders bios, etc. and even montly prizes, etc... I don't think you would have to make any changes to the ladder system for this to be done...

Cheers!

Leto