Rated and Unrated battles, Ladder functioning

[coyotte508**]

Ladder / Ranking Explanation:

Each player has ladder points, which turns into a ranking.

The ladded points system is very similar to chess' ELO rating. In short, when battling an opponent of same strength, you lose or win 16 points. You win more against a superior opponent and less against an inferior opponent.

The number of points the winner wins is the same as the number the loser loses.

So when you battle an opponent say, like 400 points under you in the ladder, don't expect much points if any. Anyway, at the beginning of the battle, is told the number of points you can win / lose.

That system is cool, cuz even taking in account the luck, points lost are quickly gained back if there lies your real level. After all, against an opponent of same strength, one win = one loss.

PS: For the 6 first battles, the amount of points won / lost vary much more.

Rated / Unrated Battles:

Battles change your ladder points only if they are rated. A battle is rated if:

• You have Ladder Points enabled (Options -> Enable Ladder)
• Your opponent has Ladder Points enabled
• You and your opponent are in the same tier
• Challenge Cup is not enabled (except for Challenge Cup tier)

Also, if the server ticks the corresponding options, a battle can be unrated if:

• You and your opponent have the same IP
• The opponent is registered in the last X IP you've fought for the last few hours, where X is a number the server choses

You can see if the battle is rated at the top of the battle chat.

A safe way to always have rated battles is go in "Find Battles" and tick "Force Rated Battles". That way, even if you have ladder disabled, the battle will still be rated. And you will always be matched against players who have ladder enabled and are in the same tier as you.

If a player ragequits or simply forfeits, it still counts as a loss for him and a win for you.

[zeroality]

Is there a cap to how much you lose? Yahoo games uses a system similar to ELO and losses are capped at 32 points. I mean, who wants to lose mass amounts to a new player who is actually more skilled than their rating shows?

[coyotte508**]

Edit: It's the shape of the mathematical curve, so it's limited to 32.

[eric the espeon]

One thing I've encountered is someone using an OU team and turning Sleep Clause off, then utterly abusing it being off to win. Even if both teams were set up to deal with a lack of sleep clause, it's a totally different game from normal OU and you should not really get OU points for winning in it. Would it make sense to force rated battles to follow the rest of the standard clauses?

[Steve**]

I'm 50/50 with the idea, ete.
People can just refuse a battle if sleep clause is off.

[eric the espeon]

true, but you don't always notice it. You don't expect people to be turning the basic clauses off to abuse them. After that I checked more carefully, but it's clearly abusing a loophole in the system to get points.

[coyotte508**]

Then the server owner should make a script to be able to block unwelcomed challenges :s

[zeroality]

I remember that on many of the top NetBattle servers, sleep clause was scripted in as being required for any rated battle. It's also required for matches via Find tab on Shoddy.

[coyotte508**]

With Find Battle it's always on. And yeah it can be scripted, so i'll do that.

[zeroality]

What rating is given to 'unknown' players? I just battled one and the battle was rated but neither one of our ratings changed. Sucks because I won! Does it work differently with unranked players?

[Steve**]

Unknown means they have the ladder turned off.

[Lutra]

If you challenge someone with a rating displayed as "unknown", then that means they are not enabling rated battles. Therefore the battle isn't rated.

[coyotte508**]

The battle wasn't rated. Check the beginning text of a battle, it's said there if it's rated or not.

[zeroality]

Ahh, I thought unknown just meant unranked. Thanks. Yea, I didn't check at the beginning because I assumed it would be. I think I'm done asking questions about this now.

[Raish]

I've noticed that if I haven't played for a while, my ranking will drop. What is the system controlling how my rating drops, and how often do I need to play to prevent these drops from happening?

[Weavilewinz]

The system is known as "decay". The more battles you do the longer time it takes for decay to kick in. A large amount of battles will get you about a week before you decay while lesser numbers will get you a couple days. The exact formula is probably kind of complicated and I don't know it.
Basically
- It's called decay
- Large number of battles = Longer time until decay kicks in
- Idk the exact formula

Also please refrain from bumping very old threads in future this is coming up on 3 years old