Dealing with the Metagame

[Jamiet99uk]

If GR becomes a reliable rating system (and stops allowing the abusive manipulation of the GM ratings by quitting games in losing positions), then the GR rating encourages aggressive play, instead of draws.

Are people still doing this? If you NMR more than a few times in a year, you start getting hit with temporary bans, and it trashes your RR. Isn't that a sufficient sanction?

[Squigs44]

As the developer who finally integrated GR into webDip after almost a decade of it being on a to do list, I'll give you my thoughts:

Ghost Ratings are far from perfect. There are some obvious flaws, which I would have liked to have changed. However, when integrating GR, the aim was to preserve the historic ghost ratings as they had been for years. The only changes made were a few small bug fixes I found as I was converting it to php. The idea was to keep something that webdip was familiar with and currently used.

So yes, it doesn't handle people quitting perfectly, and it has some loopholes that can be abused.

When implementing GR, a few other users reached out about implementing other rating systems (for example using a Tru Skill model instead of Elo) and so I implemented GR in a way that could potentially lead to other rating systems being "plugged in" to the existing framework. I did this because I agreed that GR could be improved upon and wanted to keep that door open.

Unfortunately I graduated college 2 years ago and got a real job which takes up most of my time and so I stopped working on webDip. I've been a part of many many conversations about improving the rating system and the issue isn't figuring out a better system, the issue has always been putting in the time to properly implement and test the system, while getting the general user base to accept and embrace the new system. If anyone wants to take on that mantle I can answer questions and point you in the right direction, but its gonna take a considerable push to get there and GR seems to be "good enough" for now.

[chluke]

Thank you for doing the work to integrate instant GR ratings, @Squiggs44. That was a slick addition!

My personal view is that GR rating is a solid and effective rating system, except for the game-quitting loophole that needs to be closed when there is a developer available to do it (rather than creating an entirely new rating system, where players could potentially still quit games).

And to answer @Jaimet99uk, I'd say, no - apparently that is not enough of a deterrent because it happens in a large percentage of games. (For example, if someone only plays 5-10 games per year, they can selectively choose the worst 2-3 in-game performances to quit. And if multiple players are doing that, then that's a high percentage of games with GR quitters looking to save their GR points.)