AoE2 Tournament Points

[Huehuecoyotl22]

I think there is just a difference between "inviting" someone, because of personal reasons or based on data not shown and
having players or teams enter a tournament at a later stage, because of their seed which is based either on ratings, a mixture of ratings and previous performance, or just previous performance.
From my own tournaments, I just have this case in 3 TG tournaments, but it is the same as in several other tournaments, that the same seeding method was used for all registered players/teams and a number of players/teams with the highest seeds (e. g. top 6 or top 8) started in the Ro16/Ro32/group stage instead of in the first round.
Robo and most other people know this, so I think it is just a word or two that need to be changed to differentiate between

• "directly qualified via seeding" - e. g. top 8 seeds of Terra Nova Duos
• "qualified via open qualifier"
• "invited/qualified by using a different seeding method than the other participants" - e. g. RBW Legacy invited players based on previous wins/tournament placements which were not RBW qualifiers
• "invited by TO not based on objective/published criteria" - e. g. DauT and hoang in King of the Americas 3.

 

[Michaerbse]

I think there is just a difference between "inviting" someone, because of personal reasons or based on data not shown and
having players or teams enter a tournament at a later stage, because of their seed which is based either on ratings, a mixture of ratings and previous performance, or just previous performance.
From my own tournaments, I just have this case in 3 TG tournaments, but it is the same as in several other tournaments, that the same seeding method was used for all registered players/teams and a number of players/teams with the highest seeds (e. g. top 6 or top 8) started in the Ro16/Ro32/group stage instead of in the first round.
Robo and most other people know this, so I think it is just a word or two that need to be changed to differentiate between

• "directly qualified via seeding" - e. g. top 8 seeds of Terra Nova Duos
• "qualified via open qualifier"
• "invited/qualified by using a different seeding method than the other participants" - e. g. RBW Legacy invited players based on previous wins/tournament placements which were not RBW qualifiers
• "invited by TO not based on objective/published criteria" - e. g. DauT and hoang in King of the Americas 3.

Agree although I don't even understand the confusion around the term "invite". It is defined as "to request the presence or participation of" (1). There are two relevant things:

1. The organizer asks the player to join
2. The spot is guaranteed (else it would be an invite to sign up, not an invite to the tournament)

Whether or not case 3 (RBW) is invitational or directly qualified simply depends on whether the players were asked or signed up independently (as they were announced together with the tourney announcement, they must have been asked before).

There is nothing subjective here, it is really just applying the definition of the terms.

 

[nimanoe]

As others have mentioned here and in the other thread, I think the criteria for invited players needs some sort of overhaul.

There's currently 4 different groups: No invitations, invites based on results, half of the players are invited and less than half of the players are invited.

This seems a bit odd, as you can have multiple categories apply to the same tournament. You can have over 50 percent of players invited by tournament results. This is true for multiple tournaments, but only one of the categories can apply.
I think it would be better to have two categories: One where it says how many players had to qualify and one where it says how players got seeded/invited.
For example: For TTL 100% of the people get invited based on the ATP rankings, which gets treated the same as KotD4, where half of the people get invited based on Membs tournament rankings and those get treated the same as RBW1-4, where half of the people get invited based on 1 previous tournament.

That seems especially harsh to tournaments where people can sign up and nobody is "invited", but the top seeded players get through to the main event or have to play less qualifier rounds.

It also does not seem to be very consistent. For example for JMB it says nobody got invited, but only the highest rated players can play. Then for World Rumble it says less than half of the players got invited, even though only the players that got "invited" were seeded based on tournament-elo and ranked ELO.

Another inconsistency I found was that Visible Cup 4 got the ELO restriction and the Other restriction for Tournament Settings, but World Rumble only got the other restriction. Shouldn't they both get either both or only one of those restrictions?

 

[LowEloNobody]

Instead of doing a non-linear decay based strictly on time (which I think is a bit harsh in Adico's system) could you try a decay that is based on the importance of the tournament?
I.e., if the tournament has a high multiplier (like a RBW or KOTD) it decays at a slower rate than the low multiplier B-tiers like Regional Discord Cup 17.
I think this would rightly value performance in the biggest S-tiers higher and for longer than the frequent lower-tier tournaments

 

[Hera_]

Looked through the ATP system briefly to try to understand why mbl was almost out of plat league and why heart couldnt even get into gold league.

So i will start by listing a few things that honestly shocked me and i will give some suggestions for the system that I think will make it much more accurate. I noticed Viper got 2000 for redbull 5 and 1900 for kotd4 and villese got 1000 for master of hyperrandom.

So 2 Major S tier 75k+ tourneys give only double a B tier tourney points? This makes absolutely no sense. There are multiple examples of this on the sheet aswell where smaller tourneys are giving way too much value compared to the true majors. Also, we are rewarding people for winning regional events like king of americas 3 where its my understanding not everyone is allowed to participate? If we're actually counting regional events thats obviously a huge red flag because that gives some players more opportunity and the competition in those tourneys will be weaker.

I mean just look at the top 10 of TTL plat league, its so clearly far off what most players consider the real top 10 ranking and immediately shows the flaws in the system. Then having some top players excluded because they didnt stack up random B tier wins feels so unfair.

As i said its not all 'bad' and I think having a tournament elo system is a good idea. My proposition is this:

1. All B tier tourneys dont count -> Simply too many of them and in practice many fly under the radar of most pros. Competition is usually way lower is hardly comparable to S tier tourneys, let alone the big S tier majors. I suggest we only count A tier and S tier tourneys towards this ranking system to make it more manageable for the players' schedule and more representative of the tournament competition/system points ratio.

2. All regional events dont count -> pretty straight forward we cant have an event counting that isnt open to everyone. Same can be said for invitationals

3. Major S tier tourneys give way more than A tier or smaller S tier tourneys -> The scale should be tipped higher in favor of the big majors. Not only for winning them but just for placing highly in them.


---------------

Overall I think the system needs to represent how strong players are and not how active they are playing smaller tournaments. I do agree we have to reward players who do play the A tier events and do well, but as I said above B tier tournaments just dont represent much in terms of player skill and merit. I think with these 3 changes it should be a good balance between rewarding tournament activity for up and coming players, and rewarding high placements in major tourneys.

 

[Festivus]

Overall I think the system needs to represent how strong players are and not how active they are playing smaller tournaments. I do agree we have to reward players who do play the A tier events and do well, but as I said above B tier tournaments just dont represent much in terms of player skill and merit. I think with these 3 changes it should be a good balance between rewarding tournament activity for up and coming players, and rewarding high placements in major tourneys.

I personally agree with pretty much all 3 points, but I do think a limitation of removing B tier tournaments from consideration should also be met with a greater scrutiny of how those tournament tiers are given. For example, JMB season 1 finals appears to have been given a B rating on liquipedia. While I admit this tournament may not have had the biggest prize pool, and was missing some (for justifiable reasons) some big names in the scene (viper, liereyy etc) it has pretty much everything else I would consider necessary for a competitive tournament. Players had to be active and near the top of the ranked ladder to participate. Compete for several weeks, and face some very tough competition. Surely the finals deserve to be 'A' tier? I don't see how it is in the same tier as some of the other recent B tier tournaments, Lady of the elephant, Aorus League, Battle for Scottland etc. I'm sure there are other examples, and I don't just bring this up because Hera won it, but because it seems particularly egregious to me looking at the recent list on liquipedia.

I'd also be curious what peoples thoughts are about using ATP in conjunction with other systems. Off the top of my head for a big tournament I'd be curious to see how something like 50% ATP, 25% average of highest and current ranked ladder scores, and 25% a manual ranking of say top 32 players by some sort of panel of players/tournament admins or something. I think Memb has used some sort of combos like this in his tournaments before and the seeding always seems to come out mostly fair to me by taking into account each criteria Tournaments, Ranked Ladder, and a manual created list from experts.

 

[derpina276]

1. All B tier tourneys dont count -> Simply too many of them and in practice many fly under the radar of most pros. Competition is usually way lower is hardly comparable to S tier tourneys, let alone the big S tier majors. I suggest we only count A tier and S tier tourneys towards this ranking system to make it more manageable for the players' schedule and more representative of the tournament competition/system points ratio.

2. All regional events dont count -> pretty straight forward we cant have an event counting that isnt open to everyone. Same can be said for invitationals

3. Major S tier tourneys give way more than A tier or smaller S tier tourneys -> The scale should be tipped higher in favor of the big majors. Not only for winning them but just for placing highly in them.

I think smaller tournaments should definitely count less but to not make them count would hurt the system massively. Keep in mind that this rating is also used for seeding in B tournaments so it is a very usefull stat to have even for the lower rated players. If you only count S/A rated tournaments a lot of <top 50 players would suddenly have no atp rating. This is not an issue with the ATP rating imo, but choices made by the tournament organizers because i checked and they can simply pick this sheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...fBCgPdISp_cdXzSKyXIPT5FTY/edit#gid=1628131725) if they want to only weigh the S tier tournaments, which would be exactly what you are suggesting here.

 

[Degaussed]

I think smaller tournaments should definitely count less but to not make them count would hurt the system massively. Keep in mind that this rating is also used for seeding in B tournaments so it is a very usefull stat to have even for the lower rated players. If you only count S/A rated tournaments a lot of <top 50 players would suddenly have no atp rating. This is not an issue with the ATP rating imo, but choices made by the tournament organizers because i checked and they can simply pick this sheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...fBCgPdISp_cdXzSKyXIPT5FTY/edit#gid=1628131725) if they want to only weigh the S tier tournaments, which would be exactly what you are suggesting here.

In addition to this, there is also the "Historical STier" tab which measures the performance of all S Tier tournaments in the DE Era which could be used. Would many people's idea of the top 32 look particularly different from this?

1	TheViper
2	Liereyy
3	Mr_Yo
4	Hera
5	DauT
6	TaToH
7	Villese
8	Vinchester
9	JorDan
10	MbL
11	ACCM
12	dogao
13	Nicov
14	Capoch
15	BacT
16	TheMax
17	Vivi
18	slam
19	Barles
20	Sitaux
21	LaaaaaN
22	F1Re
23	Badboy
24	miguel
25	Daniel
26	saymyname
27	Kasva
28	SongSong
29	Dark
30	bruh
31	Valas
32	classicpro

 

[pete26196]

One of the main critiques of ATP is the weight of lower tier events compared to higher tier. Partially because of the frequency, but also I haven't seen mentioned much the fact that top players situations aren't equal - we have full time players and those who work or go to school etc and have less time to sign up for random events esp around major S tier tournaments. Keep in mind these rankings are for all competitive players and not just the very top, so it needs to be applicable outside of the top 20.

With that in mind I suggest not changing the points allocated, but the timespan for which they're applied to rankings.

So my suggestion is make S tier relevent for 18 months (from 1 year), and reduce the timespan of b tier events to 6 months (from 1 year).

Long term performance matters less for lower tier players, more for top players.

Having a shorter time window on b tier events a) keeps their points at the same level as current allowing for weaker players to score points for upcoming tournaments but not skewing because these results aren't necessarily consistent

B) reduces impact on top players who don't or can't play regularly in events because they aren't full time e.g. MBL working compared to tatoh.

 

[paradox303]

Taking B tier tournaments completely off would massive hurt competitive AOE and the scene.

Everyone has to start somewhere, that’s including players and hosts. These events provide important launch pads for these individuals and also provide content throughout the year for a lot of steamers and keep players fresh on competitive settings.

They ratio to what points are awarded definitely needs to be looked, but should be treated carefully.

The ATP system has had A LOT of work done to it and people just calling out trash while putting minimal effort to understanding has been rather depressing. The system is still in its infancy and definitely needs refinement, but the creators are genuinely attempting to make it better. This is an objective measure (similar to what’s being used in pro sports, not only tennis, hence the name ATP 11) and any suggestions of ranking based on opinions is not the correct step in professionalising the scene.

Take a look at cycling for example. The lower tiered events still have a good amount of points on offer and the ratios are not stupid to the point where there would be no value in them at all.

The UCI - https://inrng.com/2020/01/uci-points-and-rankings-explainer/

The three grand tours are worth the most and there are A LOT of sub category events, and much like age of empires you can’t enter them all (there’s just too many) and also not every event will be suited to your capabilities.

I really hope we don’t get to the point where B events are massively outweighed that even having them on the ranking list is essentially pointless.

 

[Potkeny]

So unless I misunderstood something, player can get invited into Event A based on popularity (or any other not-aoe2-skill reason), lose their only set, then get ATP points for... what exactly? Would they get points if they don't show up and get AL?

Is that fine? Desirable?

Yes, I have a name and tournament, but the problem is separate from that.

 

[TheCapybara]

So unless I misunderstood something, player can get invited into Event A based on popularity (or any other not-aoe2-skill reason), lose their only set, then get ATP points for... what exactly? Would they get points if they don't show up and get AL?

Is that fine? Desirable?

Yes, I have a name and tournament, but the problem is separate from that.

I'm pretty sure I know exactly who you mean and which tournament. These are issues which are being discussed, especially as part of the wider question about what constitutes an invite and how to score them in a fair way, as there is a balance to be had depending on things like whether there were qualifiers alongside the invites, for example.

 

[robo]

So unless I misunderstood something, player can get invited into Event A based on popularity (or any other not-aoe2-skill reason), lose their only set, then get ATP points for... what exactly? Would they get points if they don't show up and get AL?

Is that fine? Desirable?

Yes, I have a name and tournament, but the problem is separate from that.

The current option I am considering is extending the qualifier rule to the entire tournament, where a player must win a match to earn any points.
If you are invited to the Ro32 and skip a 128player qualifier, and then lose to a qualifier you get nothing. Just like currently losing in the opening round of a qualifier is not worth any points.

This would be in combination with completely scrapping the invitation modifier system, as now players are no longer gaining 'free' points for just being invited for various reasons, but could have some larger consequences where players decline invites if they care about ATP points enough (or better yet, events do away with invites entirely, and everything is open qualification) and general inflation in the number of points available on the whole (as negative modifiers are removed) but depression for specific players as they lose some points due to losing after an invite.

 

[robo]

Instead of doing a non-linear decay based strictly on time (which I think is a bit harsh in Adico's system) could you try a decay that is based on the importance of the tournament?
I.e., if the tournament has a high multiplier (like a RBW or KOTD) it decays at a slower rate than the low multiplier B-tiers like Regional Discord Cup 17.
I think this would rightly value performance in the biggest S-tiers higher and for longer than the frequent lower-tier tournaments

That is something being considered, but the math and implementation into the sheet for it is a tricky one, so I think it is less likely to be introduced in the short term, rather than the simpler expansion of prize modifiers and investigation into invites & admin losses.

 

[robo]

1. All B tier tourneys dont count -> Simply too many of them and in practice many fly under the radar of most pros. Competition is usually way lower is hardly comparable to S tier tourneys, let alone the big S tier majors. I suggest we only count A tier and S tier tourneys towards this ranking system to make it more manageable for the players' schedule and more representative of the tournament competition/system points ratio.

2. All regional events dont count -> pretty straight forward we cant have an event counting that isnt open to everyone. Same can be said for invitationals

3. Major S tier tourneys give way more than A tier or smaller S tier tourneys -> The scale should be tipped higher in favor of the big majors. Not only for winning them but just for placing highly in them.

1) Is not going to happen. C-Tier tournaments are already excluded, we aren't going to exclude more events. Instead (as has been said many times) the prize modifiers are being increased for larger prizes, and decreased for small prizes.
In the current implementation, we are looking at introducing, RBW5 increases to 2.4, KotD4 2.0, and Master of HyperRandom drops to 0.6. Only listing these as they were your specific examples, but as can be seen, it is now 1/3 to 1/4 of the largest tournaments that we have.

2) Currently wider-ranging regional events (All of (South) America, all of Europe, all of Asia etc.) events are allowed as a reasonably large number of participants can join, but they have a corresponding negative. Single country tournaments are completely ignored as some countries have more than others, and some have none.
I think this system could be entirely scrapped, or the negative modifier increased, happy to have wider discussions about it.

3) This is also being adjusted by the above changes, but also by increasing the standard points allocated to each position other than the winner, so placing well in all tournaments (but especially large ones as they have the largest modifier) will be worth more, while small tournaments will be worth less to the winner.

To read more about the proposed initial changes, see this post in this thread.

Other things that are being investigated include limiting the total number of events that can be counted (say top 15 results in a given year as a random example), a limit on each tier other than S (all S-Tier events, 6 A-Tier, 3 B-Tier as another random example), or having differing fall off times for events, such that B-Tiers only count for 6 months or so (again example) or gradual decay over the year, where smaller events decay faster.

---

Something I would like people to remember is this system is not designed to cater to the top 10-20 players specifically, it is designed to give all players a pathway to improve and earn their place at the top of the rankings. This means rewarding players who are attempting to be part or full-time pro players but does not include players who show up once a year for a tourney and don't participate otherwise.

As a side note, TTL is aiming to achieve similar goals.

 

[robo]

Major overhaul trying to address some of the issues that have been brought up.

In addition to the following changes, a lot of extra match/game win/loss results have been added.

Key Changes

• Increased the points allocated to each placement, other than the winner.
• Prize modifiers are split further split to increase the importance of major events and reduce the impact of small events. As seen here
• Participant modifiers are also further differentiated, with a 128+ category added, and a tournament with less than 32 players is punished more heavily.
• The invitation modifier section is removed entirely. Instead, players must win a match to earn points, being invited to the main event and then immediately losing is worth 0 points.
• Currently, players are not punished for offering an Admin Win (assuming that they won a match beforehand). It is possible that in the future those results might only be worth half points.

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

I think now some of the "low-money" events have a little too few points in comparison to big ones.

E. g. winning Double Cup gives bruh 50 points, which is less than what is listed for RMS Cup 2 #33-64.
However, bruh won against Vinchester (directly defeated him twice) and top 3-6 were BacT, JorDan, Dziamdziak and ACCM, which you would never leave behind you by only reaching a top 64 in any tournament.

Here, it's probably because of the number of participants, which were only 23, but the quality of the later rounds was quite high, so I feel like 100 points for the winner would fit more if the other points are kept at 75. I have not thought about how it should be implemented the best, but non-invitational events which have a good number of top players and now end as 0.05 modifier are not placed too well now;
some B tier events which are only slightly better in terms of prize money and/or top 8 player ratings end at 0.5 or 0.6, which sounds decent for a ~500 € B tier event in relation to ~2-2.5 for the top tournaments, but it should not be 10x the points of tournaments just barely below.

 

[LowEloNobody]

Ok but the only question we want to know the answer to is what Sitauxs new ranking is

 

[robo]

Ok but the only question we want to know the answer to is what Sitauxs new ranking is

Still outside the top24

 

[But I Had More Relics]

Firstly, I think the spreadsheet is great as a data source so thanks for putting together. Nice having all the historic results in one place and with a methodology for sorting them.

I very much agree with the above comment around how the S-Tier tab feels a lot more accurate in terms of who the best players actually are (e.g. how likely various players are to win a big tournament if it was starting today).

There seems like a big "participation" bonus on the overall rankings, i.e. players like Lierrey (7) Hera (12), MBL (22) and Sitaux (28) who haven't done as many tournaments seem too low and players who do huge numbers of events like Tatoh (2), Vinch (4) and and Capoch (11) look too high. Maybe the suggestion around reducing total number of events which count is the solution here? If you capped this at say your best 10 results even this should help (still a benefit to playing more events because more bad results would get ignored).

I think the regional penalty could be increased, e.g. winning King of the Americas being worth 500 when players like Lierrey, Viper and Yo are not eligible seems too high.

 

[LowEloNobody]

I'm not sure there needs to be any chance to the "overall" vs "S-tier" rankings
Tournament organizers can choose what ranking system to use.
If they feel the "S-tier" only tab is more accurate... then use that one.
If they want to reward players who are more active in the community / tournaments, then use the "overall" rankings
Not like Robo has a gun to anyone's head making them seed their tournaments with his spreadsheet

 

[oozkan]

why heart couldnt even get into gold league.

I kind of agree with rest of the post, but I really admire your dedication to put Heartt into Gold league. I wish he had same dedication to play just a few more 1v1 tournaments. It is really hard to defend him without playing enough.

 

[robo]

Maybe the suggestion around reducing total number of events which count is the solution here? If you capped this at say your best 10 results even this should help (still a benefit to playing more events because more bad results would get ignored).

The last time I tried this (which was all S-Tier results, and your 3 best A & B Tiers, there did not seem to be enough of a difference between the standard rankings and these limited rankings to continue pursuing it over other improvements to the sheet (and just other stuff getting in the way).

I have replicated it where instead it just counts the best 10 and 15 results respectively, regardless of what sort of event it was.
Personally, I think the upper limit should be closer to 15, rather than 10, as imho playing 1 tournament per month isn't an outrageous ask, as the majority of these events are free scheduling whenever suits the players, for the most part.

It may look like there is no difference in points between some of the tables, even though players have more than 10/15 participation, that is because of the new implementation of invites, where players must win a match to earn points, losing in their first available round(s) earns nothing, but are still counted for participation.
BacT is a key example here where he has 18 participations, but 3 of them are No Wins, so in reality, there is only 15 point earning results.

Edit: Match/game winrates are not updated to only account for the best matches, they include all tournaments participated in.

 

[Aten]

The last time I tried this (which was all S-Tier results, and your 3 best A & B Tiers, there did not seem to be enough of a difference between the standard rankings and these limited rankings to continue pursuing it over other improvements to the sheet (and just other stuff getting in the way).

I have replicated it where instead it just counts the best 10 and 15 results respectively, regardless of what sort of event it was.
Personally, I think the upper limit should be closer to 15, rather than 10, as imho playing 1 tournament per month isn't an outrageous ask, as the majority of these events are free scheduling whenever suits the players, for the most part.

It may look like there is no difference in points between some of the tables, even though players have more than 10/15 participation, that is because of the new implementation of invites, where players must win a match to earn points, losing in their first available round(s) earns nothing, but are still counted for participation.
BacT is a key example here where he has 18 participations, but 3 of them are No Wins, so in reality, there is only 15 point earning results.

View attachment 201708


View attachment 201709


View attachment 201710


View attachment 201711​

I support your efforts Robo. I agree that if we want to move towards a more competitive/fair/professional ranking system it is not unreasonable for players to maintain a certain level of participation.