@Gaffelspoon Can we get your sick animation to see the timeline of players by tournament elo till 2020 at least?
I actually did the exact same thing 2 weeks ago and came up with a similar result:I know this thread errs on the trollish side, I think this is an interesting question to try to answer.
At the end of 2020 I thought on how we keep comparing competitive Age of Empires to other sports or e-sports (typically, StarCraft and CS:GO for the latter, Football and Tennis for the former). Another issue that keeps arising is the need for accurate seeding in tournament, even though this has been less true of recent tournaments that have showed almost everyone can beat everyone at the top of the ladder.
I tried to create an "ATP-like" system to rank players. The ATP is the association of tennis professionals and the governing body for pro tennis. Their ranking system awards points based on tournament performance only, adding all points earned during the last 52 weeks to create the ratings. In this system, you earn points only based on your tournament placements, irrespective of who you played. The ATP also recognizes 4 categories of tournaments, with the more prestigious earning you more points for a similar finish.
This applies fairly well to the AoE pro scene, and, with Liquipedia "tiers" of tournaments now being used, we have tournament categories all prepped up.
I looked at all S-tier and A-tier events from the past two years, starting with NAC 3 and finishing with RBW 3. I did not include team game tournaments as I did not find a satisfying way of count them, and I did not count the DM World Cup either, as DM feels like a totally different game. I also chose not to include the Mixer Matchups: Creator Challenge as I have no clue why this event even appears in A-tier on Liquipedia.
Now let's get into how points are awarded. This part is a bif iffy and there is a lot of approximation, but I think it gives a decent idea of how the top should look like.
- S-tier: Winner gets 1000 points, runner-up gets 600 points, semifinalists get 360 points, quarterfinalists get 180 points, etc. Minimum you get is 25 points.
- A-tier: Winner gets 500 points, runner-up gets 300 points, semifinalists get 180 points, quarterfinalists get 90 points, etc. Minimum you get is 20 points.
In addition, if you qualified for an event, you earn an extra 40 points. If you were invited, no extra points for you.
With that in mind, here is the top 15 for the past 52 weeks (this means NAC 3 does not count anymore, the first tournament on the list is Fair Civs Cup):
View attachment 188719
Some comments:
- Despite his recent struggles in tournament, TheViper remains number 1 thanks to his stellar early 2020... but Liereyy is catching up fast.
- In terms of winrate in sets/matches, Viper, Liereyy and Hera are noticeably ahead of the rest of the pack, highlighting their impressive consistancy in tournament. Yo falls a bit behind in sets won but tends to do well in games and has a comparable winrate with the other three there.
- Every top 10 player has made at least one semifinal appearance in a S-tier or A-tier tournament over the past 12 months.
Food for thought: if, instead of considering the last 12 months, we only take the past 6 months into consideration, the rankings change completely.
In that case, Liereyy would be a runaway number 1 with 3080 points (2-2-1), followed by Hera with 1580 (1-1-2) and Viper with 1430 (1-1-1). DauT would be 4th, passing Yo thanks to his RBW 3 victory, followed by Villese, MbL, and ACCM. TaToH would drop from 5th to 9th, and his countryman LaaaaaN falls outside of the top 15 to 21st place.
Comments on the system:
- Because of the different bracket systems (SE, Group stages of all sorts into playoffs, etc.) and bracket sizes (from 64 players for KotD3 to 4 for Hera's Tournament Champions League), awarding points for "quaterfinals" or "second rounds" can be a bit tricky. I've always given the same amount of points for victories, finals and semifinals, but "Round of 8" can award either "quarterfinal" or "second round" points depending on the bracket size.
- Even more hybrid systems such as KotD3 and RBW 3 can lead to other headache situations as group 3rds did better than group 4ths somehow.
- Scoring is taken from the ATP. I like how it rewards consistency (e.g. losing 2 finals is better than winning 1) but it's also very subjective. A-tier events essentially count half (which matches the ATP system in which every tier of tournament awards half as many points as the higher tier) but we could potentially argue S-tier should count even more than double in AoE.
- Obviously, the more tournaments we have, the more accurately this will represent the scene.
Anyways, keep in mind it's all for fun and let me know what you think.