Hello Friends,
At this time, we don't have the leader board we had hoped for. @Prussian Havoc spent a lot of time and posted a top 50. While it was a good look at who is active in multiplayer, it had a bias toward participation over skill. However, it is the best we have right now.
The following is my proposal to give us a "Top 20" Board that will be more accurate than counting who plays the most but will still be less optimal than an actual ELO rank or other official metric.
College Sports in the United States has this issue every year. 100 or so teams but no real way to determine who is the best or where they should be ranked. They have a poll system that while is imperfect, is more accurate than having nothing. Especially a "coaches" poll where the coaches of the teams rank all the teams themselves. It's done honestly and by those who understand the game from the inside out. This isn't popularity but rather an honest assessment of who is a strong opponent and who is still improving.
I propose that twice a week, the "coaches" of Battletech rank the top 25 players, as they see them. From one to twenty five. (But, Zak. You said Top 20) Yes voice in my head. I did. This is where it gets tricky. To explain, Lets look at an example:
Player 1: 1
Player 2: 2
Player 3: 3
Player 4: 4
Palyer 5: 5
Okay, easy enough. There are the top five and they are ranked one through five. But this is useless. This is one opinion and it doesn't give us enough to go on. So what if the second Coach ranked them like this:
Player 2: 1
Player 1: 2
Player 5: 3
Player 4: 4
Player 3: 5
Holy Cats! Is this guy nuts! Player 3 is way bett- Sorry. *Ahem* This is a second opinion. So how do we settle this? each rank is worth points. In a 25 player list, Rank One is worth 25 points. Rank Two is worth 24 points all the way down to Rank Twenty Five which is worth 1 point. In this tiny example, Rank one is worth 5 points and so on. So to tally up the score we get this:
Player 1: 1 (9 Points)
Player 2: 1 (9 Points)
Player 3: 2 (4 Points)
Player 4: 2 (4 Points)
Player 5: 2 (4 Points)
We get a bunch of ties. But that's because we only had two coaches. If we had 20 coaches, we'd have less ties and a better idea of who is perceived as the best. And this is why the coaches will rank 25 players, but we'll only list 20. It helps weed out ties. But the more voters, the more likely we don't have ties. Its very important that we have as many voters as possible.
For this to work we need to pull together. The more effort we put in as a community the better our top 20 board will be. I think we will need an Excel wizard. That will make this easier. (I am not that guy.) And to keep the voting as honest as possible it helps if it is as anonymous as possible.
And that last bit is real tricky. Someone needs to take the votes, remove the names of the voter, and send the numbers to the Excel Wizard. This can be the same as the excel wizard. Either way, this takes effort and volunteers.
That's my pitch. If you like the idea, give me an agree. If you don't like it or don't think it's worth the time invested, give me a disagree. If you want to volunteer to help make it work, Rodger up and we'll figure it out.
At this time, we don't have the leader board we had hoped for. @Prussian Havoc spent a lot of time and posted a top 50. While it was a good look at who is active in multiplayer, it had a bias toward participation over skill. However, it is the best we have right now.
The following is my proposal to give us a "Top 20" Board that will be more accurate than counting who plays the most but will still be less optimal than an actual ELO rank or other official metric.
College Sports in the United States has this issue every year. 100 or so teams but no real way to determine who is the best or where they should be ranked. They have a poll system that while is imperfect, is more accurate than having nothing. Especially a "coaches" poll where the coaches of the teams rank all the teams themselves. It's done honestly and by those who understand the game from the inside out. This isn't popularity but rather an honest assessment of who is a strong opponent and who is still improving.
I propose that twice a week, the "coaches" of Battletech rank the top 25 players, as they see them. From one to twenty five. (But, Zak. You said Top 20) Yes voice in my head. I did. This is where it gets tricky. To explain, Lets look at an example:
Player 1: 1
Player 2: 2
Player 3: 3
Player 4: 4
Palyer 5: 5
Okay, easy enough. There are the top five and they are ranked one through five. But this is useless. This is one opinion and it doesn't give us enough to go on. So what if the second Coach ranked them like this:
Player 2: 1
Player 1: 2
Player 5: 3
Player 4: 4
Player 3: 5
Holy Cats! Is this guy nuts! Player 3 is way bett- Sorry. *Ahem* This is a second opinion. So how do we settle this? each rank is worth points. In a 25 player list, Rank One is worth 25 points. Rank Two is worth 24 points all the way down to Rank Twenty Five which is worth 1 point. In this tiny example, Rank one is worth 5 points and so on. So to tally up the score we get this:
Player 1: 1 (9 Points)
Player 2: 1 (9 Points)
Player 3: 2 (4 Points)
Player 4: 2 (4 Points)
Player 5: 2 (4 Points)
We get a bunch of ties. But that's because we only had two coaches. If we had 20 coaches, we'd have less ties and a better idea of who is perceived as the best. And this is why the coaches will rank 25 players, but we'll only list 20. It helps weed out ties. But the more voters, the more likely we don't have ties. Its very important that we have as many voters as possible.
For this to work we need to pull together. The more effort we put in as a community the better our top 20 board will be. I think we will need an Excel wizard. That will make this easier. (I am not that guy.) And to keep the voting as honest as possible it helps if it is as anonymous as possible.
And that last bit is real tricky. Someone needs to take the votes, remove the names of the voter, and send the numbers to the Excel Wizard. This can be the same as the excel wizard. Either way, this takes effort and volunteers.
That's my pitch. If you like the idea, give me an agree. If you don't like it or don't think it's worth the time invested, give me a disagree. If you want to volunteer to help make it work, Rodger up and we'll figure it out.
