Elo Balance

[Bunny]

Suggestion type:
Forum/FGunZ/Other


Suggestion description:
The elo system on FGunZ behaves differently from how it is in other games. The most common example for this is that in other games you have a matchmaking system, whereas here you can end up fighting all ranges of elo. It makes sense then, that in order to balance elo, a high elo player should gain less from killing a low elo player in the same room as him, same goes for losing a lot if a high elo player dies to a low elo player, and lose much less if a high elo player dies to another high elo player.

To my understanding a form of this already exists in the game, but I wouldn't say its very noticeable or impacts elo balance as a whole. Personally, on the range of 6k elo, I gain 2-3 elo and lose 10-15 regardless of what elo I kill, or kills me, in a 4 player duel room, based only on my observations. If such a system is already in place (reward killing higher elos more and punish dying to lower elos more and so on), then it should be a lot more pronounced and thus create a feeling of actual competition between an individual player depending on their elo.

A lot of the times it feels like a fight not against players, but against the elo decay mechanic. Wanting to have the most active highest elo players at the top is fine, but generally your skill level is one thing and the elo you end up in is another thing which is a function, more than anything, of your activity. The greatest player may have terrible elo just because they only have 20 minutes a day to play. From my brief overlook of other popular esports games with ranked mechanics, decays either don't always exist or rely on playing enough per day in order to avoid decay altogether, and not be forced to decay on every daily reset, like on FGunZ. I'm not suggesting decay should be removed, but maybe, for example, every day you gain an activity point adds a "point" to a "bank", which loses one "point" every day. At 0 points, you start to decay like the system currently is, 1% per day. Maybe every time you hit a multiple of 1000 elo, you gain like 5 free "points" into your "bank".

If killing low elo players was much less rewarding than it is now, as I suggested, players wouldn't gain almost anything "farming noobs", and would have to fight players on their level if they want to rank up. Similarly, every small mistake against a low elo player would be catastrophic. In this case, it is perhaps best if elo became account-bound rather than character-bound, to somewhat mitigate playing on alt characters.

TLDR;

1. Gains should be more punishing for a high elo player playing against a low elo player, and more rewarding the other way around. Prevents "farming noobs" and encourages competition and consistency in the higher elos.
2. Decay is punishing which makes the elo system show active players more than good players, but can and should still exist, maybe in the form of an anti-decay point bank.
3. Elo should be account bound to prevent alt character play, and it doesn't make too much sense anyway that one of your characters can be 6k elo while the other is 2k.

[McSic]

Interesting points.

The system can be reworked to take enemy elo into account more noticeably. Applying decay only when no AP are present (= inactive character) is an interesting thought and could work well. The reason for having account-bound elo instead of character-bound is also understandable. If we were to do this we should also remove the "Reset Elo" button on https://fgunz.net/account/characters to somewhat prevent "smurfing" (player can still "smurf" using alt accounts). Though when you have 4 characters with the same elo we need to figure out how we'd like to display that at the ranking (https://fgunz.net/ranking/individual and ingame) - probably only show your last used character or character with the highest playtime?

[Bunny]

Interesting points.

The system can be reworked to take enemy elo into account more noticeably. Applying decay only when no AP are present (= inactive character) is an interesting thought and could work well. The reason for having account-bound elo instead of character-bound is also understandable. If we were to do this we should also remove the "Reset Elo" button on https://fgunz.net/account/characters to somewhat prevent "smurfing" (player can still "smurf" using alt accounts). Though when you have 4 characters with the same elo we need to figure out how we'd like to display that at the ranking (https://fgunz.net/ranking/individual and ingame) - probably only show your last used character or character with the highest playtime?

For the last point, it might be somewhat difficult to determine code-wise, but the best option is probably to show the character that most contributed to gaining elo out of the 4 potential characters, because thats the character you're most likely going to face in-game. For the decay, simply tying it to AP>0 is a good simple solution but I like the idea of decay-shield points acquired for every time you get an activity point or reach multiples of 1000 elo... kind of an incentive and protection to climb and stay active (maybe getting an activity point gives 2 decay-shield points so that you're allowed to go inactive every other day), but the implementation of such system in the first place opens up the freedom of balancing decisions, i.e how punishing decay is, perhaps even elo-dependent.