AoE2 Tournament Points

[willdbeast]

How would you start determining which opponents merit a positive impact on modifiers and which lower it?

The obvious way that comes to mind that's consistent within this system is you add up the ATP score of the participants at the start of the event (or top 8 or whatever, so it doesn't just get bloated by 256 players) and use that to make some kind of multiplier. So there is no subjective judgements needed, other than those already existing within the system.
This would work better the longer a history you have so you have more accurate readings with more time to filter through. Not given it a tremendous amount of thought though.

One idea is you take the sum of the top 8 ATP players in the tourney and divide it by the top 8 ATP generally and use that as a multiplier, so any tourneys where all top 8 players are involved will be unaffected (since we assume these must be highly competitive, perhaps not exactly true but seems a decent estimation) and any where the participants are less accomplished - as measured by ATP - will be scaled down since they are deemed to be not as high level. One big problem with this is you can't do it from the start of the ratings since it doesn't work until there are somewhat sensible ratings for at least 8 players and it gives 0 puntos for tourneys where no players are rated yet which seems wrong, so maybe u can add like 0.2 to the multiplier at the end to fix both of these. Idk this was basically just the first most obvious and simplistic idea and is obviously not fine tuned, just wanted to give it as an example of how a system to judge the participants could work.

Yes this does mean that if a player with a higher ATP rating joins a tourney it makes it worth a bit more but it wouldn't be a huge impact since they are only one of 8 whose scores are being taken, so the "bonus" will still be pretty low unless there are also other top level participants (which seems to fit well with what we want to measure, if you accept that this is a reasonable thing to do - which it may or may not be).

 

[USC_kiky]

One idea is you take the sum of the top 8 ATP players in the tourney and divide it by the top 8 ATP generally and use that as a multiplier

Yeah, that way we can quantify the multiplier of each regional or continental tournament as well. For example, a European cup where Viper, Jordan, Lierey, Vinchester, Tatoh, MBL, Sitaux, etc signed up, deserves a higher multiplier than North America Cup where there are Hera, Chris, Slam, Daniel and ... oh Bloodless in the top 50

 

[The Bloodless]

Granting more or less ATP points based on ranking tournaments according to the participants sounds like it goes against the principle of the ATP. The point of it was as an alternative ranking to tournament or ladder rating, based on favoring more activity rather than less. This idea of giving less points to -after-the-fact "less prestigious" tournaments solely because The viper didn't register for it doesn't seem logical. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Lokalo]

Granting more or less ATP points based on ranking tournaments according to the participants sounds like it goes against the principle of the ATP. The point of it was as an alternative ranking to tournament or ladder rating, based on favoring more activity rather than less. This idea of giving less points to -after-the-fact "less prestigious" tournaments solely because The viper didn't register for it doesn't seem logical. Correct me if I'm wrong.

What's not logical there? Even if we pick Resurgance, Villese did a great job and even though Yo almost got kicked out by ACCM, he was highest seed and top4 player in the world and he won. Hera, Lierreyy, TheViper didn't participate. Sure is not Villese's problem, but he would have had harder time to get into final with all those 3 there for sure. As people said before, one player won't change multiplier much, but tournament without 3 top3 players is obviously easier to win for top8 player. Similar would be in TG tournament if you take out GL, aM, Suomi and then give same credits to other winner team as they would have beaten them all.

 

[The Bloodless]

What's not logical there? Even if we pick Resurgance, Villese did a great job and even though Yo almost got kicked out by ACCM, he was highest seed and top4 player in the world and he won. Hera, Lierreyy, TheViper didn't participate. Sure is not Villese's problem, but he would have had harder time to get into final with all those 3 there for sure. As people said before, one player won't change multiplier much, but tournament without 3 top3 players is obviously easier to win for top8 player. Similar would be in TG tournament if you take out GL, aM, Suomi and then give same credits to other winner team as they would have beaten them all.

I guess one theory is if viper, Hera, lierrey don't play at all, they'll get worse. So villese, accm, vinch, etc may well be better, or closer in skill to them, due to having high level competition, and so the ATP points are well earned (and don't need to be reduced). Let's say, for illustration, there was straight tournaments after tournaments that the top 20 didn't participate in for 9 months straight. You might expect the top 20 to become rank 20-40, and the rank 20-40 to take their place as they're more in shape.

In addition, the ranking is not purely a comparison of skill, if I'm interpreting it right. If it was, it would ignore forfeits and give points, for example, to a player who reached the ro16 and then withdrew. Instead, in this situation, that player receives no ATP points for that tournament performance. The ATP ranking is a rating of tournament engagement rather than pure skill. So any situation that encourages a player to not play any tournament (such as decreasing the ATP point value if viper stays away) is to be avoided, and any situation where tournament participation is encouraged (such as only awarding points for a tournament, not taking away points) is the point of the ATP system.

So basically, what you're asking for is already there in "tournament Elo". Not in "ATP"...

To give another example, let's say Lierrey plays only 1 tournament a year and he wins it. Do you give him the highest ATP rating? No, not even though he may well be the most skilled player out there. The tournament results simply wouldn't be there.

 

[Lokalo]

I guess one theory is if viper, Hera, lierrey don't play at all, they'll get worse. So villese, accm, vinch, etc may well be better, or closer in skill to them, due to having high level competition, and so the ATP points are well earned (and don't need to be reduced). Let's say, for illustration, there was straight tournaments after tournaments that the top 20 didn't participate in for 9 months straight. You might expect the top 20 to become rank 20-40, and the rank 20-40 to take their place as they're more in shape.

Well if they are off for 9 months or a year, sure, that makes sense. But if they are off for a month or two or even like currently, Lierreyy still plays at some tournaments, although didn't sign in for other, so don't think he is in that bad shape.

Although is not that big of an issue, in my opinion this sheet/calculation is already quite complicated and way better than I would expect to have, so all is good. But still winning tournament where there is no Lierrey/Viper/Hera is much easier obviously.

 

[willdbeast]

The point of it was as an alternative ranking to tournament or ladder rating, based on favoring more activity rather than less.

It still favours activity. A lower weighted tourney is still a hell of a lot more points that then 0 you get for not playing. It just means you get more for playing in a smaller tourney with tough competition (like DWL for example) compared to a smaller tourney without much competition. Also with this you can be less harsh with other multipliers on settings and stuff since how competitive it is is partly accounted for by this.

This idea of giving less points to -after-the-fact "less prestigious" tournaments solely because The viper didn't register for it doesn't seem logical.

I'd disagree with it being after-the-fact. You know the signups (and their ATP) before a game as played, same as you know the settings and prize pool (you don't even necessary know prize pool before it finished cos usually donations or subs or whatever go into it) so it's not like you're just looking at the results afterwards and going "oh viper didn't win this tourney sucks".


Obviously there are a lot of other issues though, like you could have most of the top 8 arena players in an arena tour and be missing a lot of top ATP players.

 

[USC_kiky]

Let's say, for illustration, there was straight tournaments after tournaments that the top 20 didn't participate in for 9 months straight. You might expect the top 20 to become rank 20-40, and the rank 20-40 to take their place as they're more in shape.

I just wanted to add that, there will probably be a lower bound, e.g. 0.4, for this tournament competitiveness metric that measures how many top players sign up. In the extreme case when none of the top 8 players, i.e. players A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, sign up, this multiplier will still be 0.4, but not 0.

I looked at the rule and it seems that winning a tournament would get 1000 base points, being runner up will be 600, and getting into SF will be 400. So with this lower bound, winning a tournament when none of the top 8 players sign up amounts to reaching the SF when all of them are present, which seems fair in my opinion.

Now in a hypothetical scenario where A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H were absent for 9 months (imagine World War III happened in Europe, Asia and America) but there were straight tournaments after tournaments (No war happens in Australia where robo lives). If the ATP of the top 16 players were close enough, and assume that player i (the 9th best player in the world), j, k, l, m, n, o, p played the quarter-final, it's likely that players i, j would earn a great amount of ATPs from this tournament and then became one of the top 8 players. Now the new ATP ranking becomes A, B, C, D, E, F, I, J. In the next tournament, with the new ATP ranking, as long player I and J sign up, this multiplier will be more than the lower bound since these two players are now one of the top 8 players. As more and more tournaments were organized, the top 8 spots will be replaced by the previously lower-ranked players, and the multiplier of the new tournament will become higher and higher because of the increase of ranking of play I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P. This matches people's expectation that, if Viper is absent for 1 year and Lierrey won every tournament during this period, Lierrey may be the new No.1. However, if Viper's ATP was 10x of Lierey before he retires, it will take sometime for Lierey to catch up, and I think that also makes sense because it only proves how dominating Viper used to be and it's hard to reproduce that dynasty.

 

[robo]

Looking at the recent discussions, I'm looking at implementing the following changes, which should hopefully make larger prize tournaments more valuable and earn players more points in general for placing.
Early looks suggest there will be an increase in total points in the system (over the entire lifespan, not just the last year) of ~8000 points.

Smaller tournaments will in general be worth more points on average, but slightly less to the winner, while larger tournaments will be worth more to everyone, but especially the non winners.

These changes would not be implemented before TTL Seeding date as I feel they require more thought and testing before just throwing it out there to try and make a few people happy.

Current:

Proposed Change:

Current:

Proposed Change:

The image that is most pressing on people's minds.

Spoiler

Sitaux is not brought into the top24 ranked players, he would not qualify for the Platinum League and he would still be below bruh in points.

 

[Paulad]

1 - The more you play, the more you can earn points, am I right ? Don't you fear that if this system become popular and used for every tournament, that could lead to burn out some of the players ?
I can actualy see 28 B - Tier tourney, 10 A-tier, 7 S-tier event for 2022. It is almost 2/weeks.
It also allows players who have more time to play to earn more points, regardless of their level. It also tend to force 1v1 instead of TG due to less time if you wan't to be on the 1v1 event which is the majority.
But maybe the change you will do later will change that, I have not access to the future data so I can't figure it.

2 - Shouldn't restricted tourney having more than - 0.4 minus ? Half invited player is -0.5 while it seems less restricted than an elo/people who didnt qualify restriction, cause no matter what, you won't be in possibility to earn points. It's actualy "free points" for players who can play it over than those who can't.

3- Could it be possible to put dynamic number for the prizepool of the tourneys ? 600$ tourney would be -0.4 and 400$ -0.8 in the future change. Isn't possible to automate the thing so 600$ is something like -0.7, 750 -0.6 etc. ?

4- Do you plan to add a decay over time ? 1 year is a realy long period. I'm not saying that the tourney who have been played 11 months ago shouldn't count but something like a -0.3 could tend to reflect more the present performance of a player. (6 months tourney, -0.1 for example, not a linear function)

5- Don't you want to take 1v1 ranked elo in consideration at all ? ELO x0.3 or 0.4 added to the total points of a player. It would be small enough not to prevail over tourneys but could reward player that invest the ladder (and keep the game alive).

 

[robo]

1 - The more you play, the more you can earn points, am I right ? Don't you fear that if this system become popular and used for every tournament, that could lead to burn out some of the players ?
I can actualy see 28 B - Tier tourney, 10 A-tier, 7 S-tier event for 2022. It is almost 2/weeks.
It also allows players who have more time to play to earn more points, regardless of their level. It also tend to force 1v1 instead of TG due to less time if you wan't to be on the 1v1 event which is the majority.
But maybe the change you will do later will change that, I have not access to the future data so I can't figure it.

That is correct, so far over the past year, there are 10 S-Tier, 11 A-Tier, and 20 B-Tier events being recorded. In total on the list, there are 17, 21 & 28 respectively, so there is a clear uptick in the number of events in recent times. This could be due to more tournaments being hosted, or less information existing about older tournaments and so they weren't added.
Note that not all tournaments are added, for instance, any tournament that is locked to a single country is excluded, as not all countries have events or have as many and so it would favour the larger nations more. Regional events like King of the Americas or Euro Rumble are included as they allow a wider range of participants.

There is certainly some concern about players participating in too many small events and that overwhelming larger event in terms of points awarded. At the moment I don't believe it needs to be addressed, but in the future, it would be possible to limit it to the top x A-Tier and top y B-Tier events.

2 - Shouldn't restricted tourney having more than - 0.4 minus ? Half invited player is -0.5 while it seems less restricted than an elo/people who didnt qualify restriction, cause no matter what, you won't be in possibility to earn points. It's actualy "free points" for players who can play it over than those who can't.

That is a fair point and was something that I didn't consider when updating the invite negatives a while ago. That will be changed in the next major update.

3- Could it be possible to put dynamic number for the prizepool of the tourneys ? 600$ tourney would be -0.4 and 400$ -0.8 in the future change. Isn't possible to automate the thing so 600$ is something like -0.7, 750 -0.6 etc. ?

Ie scale the negative/positive modifier for events in between the values? I assume that would be possible, but I'm unsure if that would add much value (at least on the negative side) as most events tend to cluster around the existing $ values.

4- Do you plan to add a decay over time ? 1 year is a realy long period. I'm not saying that the tourney who have been played 11 months ago shouldn't count but something like a -0.3 could tend to reflect more the present performance of a player. (6 months tourney, -0.1 for example, not a linear function)

If that were to be included it would be a non-linear like Adico uses for the AoE IV ATR rankings, where points slowly decay early in the year, then start to trail off much faster as time goes on. It is something actively being considered, but unsure if it's a good idea or not, there are lots of pros and cons

5- Don't you want to take 1v1 ranked elo in consideration at all ? ELO x0.3 or 0.4 added to the total points of a player. It would be small enough not to prevail over tourneys but could reward player that invest the ladder (and keep the game alive).

I'm not sure if that would be worth the time to find how to include the elo api in a spreadsheet easily.

Assuming most players in the top ~50 are 2k3+ you're talking about something like 200*0.3=60 or so point difference at most between the highest-rated and lowest rated player in that region, which when we're talking about players with only 200 points it might be a lot, (they are also more likely to be closer rated to their peers) but for the higher rated players with over 1000 points it would be pretty meaningless (and again I would assume players are more closely rated to their peers in similar brackets)

 

[Adico]

Something I've been playing around with for ATR 2023 is to actually lower the base points by an order of magnitude.

For example, a WIP of base points and modifiers:

The main benefit of it is that you end up with a much bigger landscape for both negative and positive modifiers.

Basically, It boosts all event's points greatly (since you can feel better about adding bigger modifiers before the numbers get crazy big) while also keeping relevant negative modifiers without tournaments suddenly having 0 or fewer points.

Here is another WIP of it applied in a few AoE4 events:

Obviously, WIP and tweaks have to be made. But I think going with fewer base points and bigger modifiers is the way to go potentially.

 

[Paulad]

Ie scale the negative/positive modifier for events in between the values? I assume that would be possible, but I'm unsure if that would add much value (at least on the negative side) as most events tend to cluster around the existing $ values.

Yes that's was my point !

If that were to be included it would be a non-linear like Adico uses for the AoE IV ATR rankings, where points slowly decay early in the year, then start to trail off much faster as time goes on. It is something actively being considered, but unsure if it's a good idea or not, there are lots of pros and cons

The decay function in Adico post is way more important than I think it should be, he completely annihilate to fast past tourney where they should be considered at the minimum -0.5 IMO.

I'm not sure if that would be worth the time to find how to include the elo api in a spreadsheet easily.

Assuming most players in the top ~50 are 2k3+ you're talking about something like 200*0.3=60 or so point difference at most between the highest-rated and lowest rated player in that region, which when we're talking about players with only 200 points it might be a lot, (they are also more likely to be closer rated to their peers) but for the higher rated players with over 1000 points it would be pretty meaningless (and again I would assume players are more closely rated to their peers in similar brackets)

Yeah, but it matters for those players, having one ore two more places cause of those points looks good for them.
I said -0.3 but it is obviously depending on the importance that you would like to give to the ranked games for seeding the players.
In my opinon, it's something that it should not be neglected. Some of pros players play a lot of ranked game while some are lazy on it. It's common to see 2k4 players playing 1k8. I think it is important to not go into a vicious circle where players doesn't play ranked because other players doesn't play it either.
Obviously, taking ranked lobbies in consideration wont change the face of the world (unless you are giving a x10 multiplicator ) but looks like something to keep in mind

 

[flightlessbird]

I really respect the work and dedication which has been put into making the Tournament Point sytem, and I think it is a cool idea, but I am going to be completely honest it makes 0 sense outside of maybe the top 30 use as the only method for tournament seeding. There just isn't enough data for lower rated players to be accurate. Furthermore, a lot of points are given for participation rather than skill.

For myself for instance I have (A tier)55 points for getting stomped by a top player, another (B tier) 55 points for beating an 1800 player then getting stomped by a very strong player, then (A tier) 15 points in a tournement beating 2 higher rated players (2k2+) while also losing to a few similar rated players. In other words, most of my points in this system comes from getting 0-3ed by top players, and not actual achievements (not to mention many other tournaments aren't taken into account).

I don't think my own ranking is particularly inaccurate (despite the bizarre way I got the points) but Looking at the ladder as a whole, there are players better than me a good 50 ranks lower, and players 30 or so ranks higher which are probably similar level.

So while it doesn't really effect me much imo, I think a tournament using these for seeding should at most use them along with 1v1 rating for seeding, and not as the sole method.

 

[TheCapybara]

Furthermore, a lot of points are given for participation rather than skill.

For myself for instance I have (A tier)55 points for getting stomped by a top player, another (B tier) 55 points for beating an 1800 player then getting stomped by a very strong player, then (A tier) 15 points in a tournement beating 2 higher rated players (2k2+) while also losing to a few similar rated players. In other words, most of my points in this system comes from getting 0-3ed by top players, and not actual achievements (not to mention many other tournaments aren't taken into account).

I don't think this is strictly a bad thing. Part of the point of the ATP system is to encourage tournament participation on a wider scale and offer more reward for performance in A-/B-Tier events. I think there are a couple of problems overall with how AoE2 tournaments are run and perceived, which feed into any seeding/ranking system.

1) There is no standard for format. This isn't automatically a bad thing, but it means we get 'S-Tier' events ranging from having <10 players up to 100+ (I would personally favour those smaller tournaments being considered separate and not subject to ranking points with maybe one or two exceptions). We also have some tournament hosts doing full open brackets, others doing 50%+ invites.

2) Sort of following on from #1, but the habit of full seeding tournaments meaning we always see 1 vs lowest rated player is not one I like. Would far rather the tennis system of seeding the top quarter of the draw, mapping their route out and then random draw for the rest. Would offer more scope for lower rated players to put together a bit of a run, whilst still providing incentive to be seeded and keeping the top handful away from each other till the latter stages.

3) The obsession with which players were beaten in a run. This is in part why I'd like to see what I suggested in #2 implemented. You can only beat the player in front of you, whether that's a 2k5 or a 1k5. This system opts down that route. It goes for recognition of the fact both players are at the same stage of the competition. Just like in the Premier League you get 3 points whether you beat Liverpool or Leeds, or in tennis you get the same ranking points whether you had to beat Djokovic or the world number 150.

 

[willdbeast]

2) Sort of following on from #1, but the habit of full seeding tournaments meaning we always see 1 vs lowest rated player is not one I like. Would far rather the tennis system of seeding the top quarter of the draw, mapping their route out and then random draw for the rest. Would offer more scope for lower rated players to put together a bit of a run, whilst still providing incentive to be seeded and keeping the top handful away from each other till the latter stages.

I completely agree with you that if you win rounds you win rounds and that should be reflected by the puntos, but I also agree with the point that @flightlessbird raises where he's getting puntos for losing round 1, where it could literally be me playing and it would get the same result. It does still somewhat reflect player ability because of how participants were selected through seeding and stuff, but this doesn't seem to be what the system wants to reflect.

The sheet already says you don't get points for losing r1 in a qualifier so it seems fairly natural to extend this to main events (if they don't have a qualifier), since to me there isn't much difference being seeded into a ro32 in a qualifier by rating and losing r1 and being seeded into ro32 in a main event by rating and losing r1.

 

[archxeon]

Some suggestions to address some of the concerns from this and the other thread.

1) Use only N number of tournament results from a time period.
You can add more restrictions if needed,
a) Exclude best and worst result.
b) If participated in greater than N, use last N results. Or best N results. (Or whichever is higher).

2) Instead of giving subjective weights to tournaments, weight tournaments based on average ATP rankings of participants at the time. (not sure if this is possible to do retroactively for previous tournaments).

Are players rewarded for performing well against better opponents like tournament-elo ? (or ladder or any type of elo).

 

[felix.feroc]

Use only N number of tournament results from a time period.

This is what professional tennis does! They started with 14, and are now at 19. This would seem to address issues of burnout and B-tier point farming.

 

[Tarsiz]

This is what professional tennis does! They started with 14, and are now at 19. This would seem to address issues of burnout and B-tier point farming.

Well tennis counts all 4 Slams + 9 Masters 1000 ("A" tier - they are also mandatory to play if the players' ranking and their injury status allow, imagine if we had that here... ) + 6 best results from other tournaments.

I imagine here we'd count all S tier, most A tier, and some of the other events.

 

[felix.feroc]

Taking a point from the T90 thread, there seems to be some inconsistency around "invitational", where OnlyBans was labelled mostly invitational, though it used seeding as a cutoff, and other tournaments (KotD3, Battle for Scotland) have no penalty whatsoever. I thought it was a documentation error, but the diff suggests @robo identified it as invitational, so I am not sure what the rule is.

 

[Degaussed]

Taking a point from the T90 thread, there seems to be some inconsistency around "invitational", where OnlyBans was labelled mostly invitational, though it used seeding as a cutoff, and other tournaments (KotD3, Battle for Scotland) have no penalty whatsoever. I thought it was a documentation error, but the diff suggests @robo identified it as invitational, so I am not sure what the rule is.

At the moment, as a competitive scene, I don't think there is any real thought given to what's invitational and what's seeded and there is probably a lot of overlap.

One of the KOTDs had this:

It literally says "invited players", but then they are invited based on tournament performance!

I'm wondering if our perspective should be: what % were allowed to actually qualify, rather than how many were invited, but it seems like quite a tough issue to really solve.

 

[doacid]

This is what professional tennis does! They started with 14, and are now at 19. This would seem to address issues of burnout and B-tier point farming.

It could be a good idea to avoid possible exploitation of the system by participating in let's say... 50 tournaments just to farm points.

I can't judge what that number would be. However I have to note that in tennis the tournaments seem way more challenging than in aoe2, both mentally and more importantly physically.
They have to travel all around the world, they need time to adjust to timezones, different climate, different surface (clay, grass, etc) AND the stakes and therefore the pressure is WAY higher than in aoe2.

If they they picked 19 as the maximum number of tournaments counted for ATP....surely in aoe2 it shouldn't be any lower than that.

 

[Michaerbse]

It could be a good idea to avoid possible exploitation of the system by participating in let's say... 50 tournaments just to farm points.

I can't judge what that number would be. However I have to note that in tennis the tournaments seem way more challenging than in aoe2, both mentally and more importantly physically.
They have to travel all around the world, they need time to adjust to timezones, different climate, different surface (clay, grass, etc) AND the stakes and therefore the pressure is WAY higher than in aoe2.

If they they picked 19 as the maximum number of tournaments counted for ATP....surely in aoe2 it shouldn't be any lower than that.

You gotta consider though that there is at least one tournament per week throughout the entire season (apart from Davis Cup weeks) with only a few weeks of break between the seasons. Unless there are Grand Slams or Masters going on, there are even multiple tournaments simultaneously. Actually even then there are Challenger tournaments going on simultaneously, which also count towards the points, even though there are much less points to gain. Apart from Grand Slams, tournaments are done within a week, which isn't the case for AoE2. Also I think that it's worth considering that there aren't many AoE2 full time players.

Ultimately I think the number should not be selected based on how challenging the tournaments are but on how many tournaments you need to get a meaningful representation of a player performance.

 

[Aten]

Hi robo, big fan - keep up the good work.

 

[Michaerbse]

Yes, that is exactly what ATP, Panda, myself and others are saying. Anything where players don't have to go through a qualification process are classed as invited. I have no issue with that system, I think it makes sense to do it. I am just clarifying that they are, by definition, invited and that ATP reflects that.

Carrying this discussion over here as it has nothing to do with TTL.

So basically what you are saying is that if Memb had labelled the Ro32 as last qualifier round instead of First round of the main event (which is nothing but a name), it would not have been classified a invited?
If so, this is honestly not just a different perspective, it's just plain wrong to do it that way. (Same goes for OnlyBans, which had been mentioned earlier)