Win Percentage Seems Cool, but is Actually Pretty Useless

[greenoaks]

my win percentage is 28% and i hardly play 1v1 or 3 player games. at the moment its mostly 8 players with some 4's & 6's. i would like to get it to 29%.

i don't really care what the win % of other players is as it tells me squat. lack could get rid of it completely and i wouldn't care.

[Timminz]

All that win% tells me, is vaguely what type on game someone prefers, and even then, it only really works for the top 10% of players or so. If they're above 50%, they play 4 player dubs, trips, quads, or 1 on 1 mostly. if they're below 40% it's likely that they prefer 6-8 player standard. Really, I learn more about opponents by score, experience (games played), and feedback (given and received). viewing all games with a player will give you a good idea opf what to expect. If someone above 2000pts joins one of my 7 player esc classic games, and when I check their game history, and see almost entirely AoM:magic 2 player fog games, I'll know that they aren't likely to be as good as someone with the same score who plays mostly 6-8 player esc games. The only time I look at win % is when I'm perusing the top of the scoreboard.

[owenshooter]

lack could get rid of it completely and i wouldn't care.

yet again... someone with a win percentage under 29%... still waiting...-0

[greenoaks]

lack could get rid of it completely and i wouldn't care.

yet again... someone with a win percentage under 29%... still waiting...-0

coming from a bloke who plays mostly team games (1 winner, 1 loser) and can only manage a 59% win rate.

[gdeangel]

Once again, I have to jump in and say that 59% win rate is very respective for 1v1 or 2v2.

There is only one piece of the puzzle missing from the win rate, and that is the "chance" component as it relates to the outcomes. Every person reading this thread probably has a mental idea of the percent of games they take on skill, and the percent on good luck, so that's it. I really thing ppg, whether rolling or starting points adjusted or whatever, is not going to be as good a predictor of skill.

I do like the idea of adding something that says the # of days/games over which a person has held their current rank...

[owenshooter]

I do like the idea of adding something that says the # of days/games over which a person has held their current rank...

i don't like that idea either... you are going to get people just trying to hold rank instead of playing the games. i just played a slew of doubles games with a new partner and due to the volume of games he plays, i watched his rank go from major to corporal first class, to Lt, to major, to captain in the span of 4 days. my own rank has gone up and down for the past week, due to the volume of games i play. for someone that is a freemium, that plays 4 games at a pop, it is much easier to maintain your rank. for people that play 15, 20, 30, 50 or more games at a time, you can easily fluctuate ranks greatly. soooo, as usual, your arguments are based on the world of freemium, and how to best server the freemium needs, and they don't really apply to me...-0

p.s.-how's the freemium hall of fame coming along?

[detlef]

Once again, I have to jump in and say that 59% win rate is very respective for 1v1 or 2v2.

That was, after all, the winning percentage of the World Champion Boston Red Sox last year and they played absolutely nothing but 1v1 games. I've got to guess that Owen's got a few singles games vs more than one opponent in there.

All that said, winning percentage alongside what your pure odds of winning (with respect to the average number of opponents you face (teams counting as one opponent) would be the best.

[Itrade]

I agree that win % is a silly stat (considering how it depends on the type of game you prefer). But I think PPG could be a silly as well for reasons mentioned above. I'd be up for improving win % to weigh in the number of opponents.

I personally like amount of players beaten divided by amount of games lost as a way to tell how good a player is. It doesn't take into account the skill level of the other players, though.

Not bad, but how about something simpler: instead of wins divided by games we use wins divided by # of opponents?

Wait, what's the difference?

Also, I've forgotten what PPG stands for. Points or players per game?

[Robinette]

I agree that win % is a silly stat (considering how it depends on the type of game you prefer). But I think PPG could be a silly as well for reasons mentioned above. I'd be up for improving win % to weigh in the number of opponents....

....Not bad, but how about something simpler: instead of wins divided by games we use wins divided by # of opponents?

Wait, what's the difference?

Also, I've forgotten what PPG stands for. Points or players per game?

There is no difference if you play 2 player games...

And PPG stands for Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, of course...
but these days they're into much more that just glass,
in the 1920's they made the roll-up windows for the Ford Tri-motor,
and look at where that took them...
http://corporateportal.ppg.com/na/aerospace/default.htm

[oVo]

The Red Sox play 9v9 and often play with a few spares.

[MajorRT]

PPG= avg. points made per game, which, I think is a more accurate reflection of ability than win% (and,btw Owen, mine is >60% ) ; i think Itrade's and Lac's idea of # of opponents beaten per game is also more accurate than our current system.....I vote for change and let the feedback roll in....

[owenshooter]

coming from a bloke who plays mostly team games (1 winner, 1 loser) and can only manage a 59% win rate.

says the person rolling in at a killer 28%...-0

[greenoaks]

you put me down for it yet my 28% is good for the number of 8 player games i play & much better than 59% for the two player/team games you play.

which is why i think it is pointless to have. it says nothing about the quality of the player if it is not coupled with info on the number of players in those games. i think lack's idea is much better than win %.

[owenshooter]

you put me down for it yet my 28% is good for the number of 8 player games i play & much better than 59% for the two player/team games you play.

which is why i think it is pointless to have. it says nothing about the quality of the player if it is not coupled with info on the number of players in those games. i think lack's idea is much better than win %.

i would crush you. period. jOKING!! and i'm not putting you down for your win percentage! i'm only stating that people with LOW win percentages, INCLUDING LACK, seem very keen on changing the way the % is worked out. if i look at your games, and see what type of games you play and how many you have played and won, i could easily determine if you were a decent, good, great or on the level of GOD (basically me) player, with ease... i am not dogging your win percentage, only pointing out that people with low %'s are eager for change...-0

[oVo]

Actually the win % does give you a slight clue as to your opponant's ability.

[owenshooter]

Actually the win % does give you a slight clue as to your opponant's ability.

we have all basically said that... but you have to look at the type of games. if i challenged greenie to a game that i prefer, greenies percentage wouldn't translate over that well. same as if i went into an 8 player standard of freestyle game... in those instances, my % would be pretty meaningless... anyway... it ain't broke, don't fix it!!-0

[greenoaks]

i too am happy to leave it as it is, or remove it completely.

i just don't want points per game.

[BaldAdonis]

Actually the win % does give you a slight clue as to your opponant's ability.

It does if it's 0.....

[Itrade]

i too am happy to leave it as it is, or remove it completely.

i just don't want points per game.

Why would you want to remove it? Even in it's flawed state it works okay as a rough indicator, and even when it fails at that it's still pretty neat.

[joriki]

It seems the discussion in this thread mixed a couple of objectives, and I want to try to disentangle it somewhat.

The objective of Itrade's original post, as I understood it, was to fix a specific problem with the win percentage, namely that it doesn't take into account the number of players per game. I found this post searching this forum because I wanted to make the same comment and a similar suggestion.

A lot of the ensuing discussion was about things like points per game and how best to reflect the skill levels of the opponents. This is an interesting discussion in itself, but it goes way beyond the original remark and proposal. The win percentage is a very simple stat whose attraction (it's clear from this and other threads that many people like it) lies in its simplicity and obviousness. A scheme for taking into account skill levels is inevitably more complicated and contains more free and somewhat arbitrary parameters, and no matter how nifty it is, there will inevitably be people who disagree with some detail of it.

So while I personally find the point system more interesting and would like to see a points per game stat (perhaps as a rolling average), this is a somewhat different topic from Itrade's proposal, which was about fixing a simple problem in a simple stat that people seem to value even though, or perhaps precisely because, it doesn't try to take into account player skills.

The solution Itrade proposed doesn't introduce any arbitrary parameters; it just ensures in a straightforward way that the stat tells you the most basic thing that one might want it to reflect, namely whether a player is doing better or worse than if the winners had been determined randomly.

So I second Itrade's proposal to introduce a comparison between # of players beaten and # of games lost. This could be instead of the win percentage, or if people really want to keep that, in addition to it.

One post that did comment on Itrade's original proposal was this:

lackattack wrote:

Itrade wrote:
I personally like amount of players beaten divided by amount of games lost as a way to tell how good a player is. It doesn't take into account the skill level of the other players, though.

Not bad, but how about something simpler: instead of wins divided by games we use wins divided by # of opponents?

A subsequent post seconded this, and Itrade asked what the difference is.

In #wins/#opponents, the correction for the opponents is the wrong way around -- the more opponents you have, the less your wins count. So if you want to use the number of wins, the opponents would need to be in the numerator, with each factor normalized by the number of games: #wins/#games * #opponents/#games. That's not quite right yet, though, either: a player winning an average number of two-player games would get a score of 1/2 on this, whereas a player winning an average number of eight-player games would get a score of 7/8. What we need is actually #wins/#games * #players/#games. That would yield a score of 1 for an average player, no matter what sorts of games they play. It would have the advantage of looking like a slightly corrected version of the current stat #wins/#games. However, it still has a major disadvantage -- among good players, it favours those who tend to play more opponents. In the extreme case of a player who always wins, their score would be 2 if they only play two-player games, but 8 if they only play 8-player games.

Itrade's original proposal, #opponents beaten/#games lost, on the other hand, has none of these disadvantages: It's always 1 for an average player, it's always zero for a player who always loses, and it's always infinity for a player who always wins, irrespective of the number of opponents per game.

It also has the nice feature that it's similar to the point system, just without depending on the other players' skills. You earn points from players you beat and lose points to players you lose to, just instead of the points depending on your own and your opponents' current points, it's always exactly one point, and instead of starting out with 1000 points, you just take the ratio between the number of points you've earned and the number of points you've lost.

One more thing that I personally would like to see but that might perhaps seem too "mathematical" to others is to take the logarithm of the ratio -- that would remove the arbitrary asymmetry of putting one of the numbers in the numerator and the other in the denominator, and would transform the asymmetric range of 0 to 1 for below-average and 1 to infinity for above-average into the symmetric and more "natural" range of -infinity to 0 below average and 0 to infinity above average.

[owenshooter]

It seems the discussion in this thread mixed a couple of objectives, and I want to try to disentangle it somewhat.

2 months later... Ka-BUMP! now let me go try to wade through your mini-novel.
*reading... reading... reading... reading...*
you should take your entire post and put it in the suggestions forum... some good ideas.
nice first post...-0

[Timminz]

However, it still has a major disadvantage -- among good players, it favours those who tend to play more opponents. In the extreme case of a player who always wins, their score would be 2 if they only play two-player games, but 8 if they only play 8-player games.

I really like your ideas, but I disagree with the quoted bit. I wouldn't call that a disadvantage to the system. I would say that someone who plays only 8 player games, and wins every game, is better than someone who wins 100% of the time, but only plays 2 player games. Beating one opponent is a whole lot easier than seven.

[owenshooter]

However, it still has a major disadvantage -- among good players, it favours those who tend to play more opponents. In the extreme case of a player who always wins, their score would be 2 if they only play two-player games, but 8 if they only play 8-player games.

I really like your ideas, but I disagree with the quoted bit. I wouldn't call that a disadvantage to the system. I would say that someone who plays only 8 player games, and wins every game, is better than someone who wins 100% of the time, but only plays 2 player games. Beating one opponent is a whole lot easier than seven.

he's played 3 games... hmmmm, whole lot of knowledge for a newb... anyone gonna say it?-0

[MOBAJOBG]

^I'm not going to say anything, that's for sure.

[bayou]

you put me down for it yet my 28% is good for the number of 8 player games i play & much better than 59% for the two player/team games you play.

which is why i think it is pointless to have. it says nothing about the quality of the player if it is not coupled with info on the number of players in those games. i think lack's idea is much better than win %.

i would crush you. period. jOKING!! and i'm not putting you down for your win percentage! i'm only stating that people with LOW win percentages, INCLUDING LACK, seem very keen on changing the way the % is worked out. if i look at your games, and see what type of games you play and how many you have played and won, i could easily determine if you were a decent, good, great or on the level of GOD (basically me) player, with ease... i am not dogging your win percentage, only pointing out that people with low %'s are eager for change...-0

Hey baby! I'm still at my 27%. Let's play Age of Merchants.