Re: [pbmserv-dev] ratings

[John Williams <williams@morinda.com>]

On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, Benjamin Good wrote:
> >>Of course, I can't program.
>
> me neither, or i'd look into doing it myself (boy was that easy to say).

I can program, but unfortunately, the stats doesn't tickle my interest
as much as, say, 4-player quoridor.

> how difficult would it be to separate the chushogi and daishogi ratings?

It's closer to 5 minutes of work (maybe an hour to test, build, etc), but
the thing with daishogi is the number of games played.  Counting all of
chushogi, daishogi, and either with drops, there is still not a single
established player after two years since the big crash.  There are other
optional games I would split out long before daishogi.

> and while i'm on the subject, i more recently discovered the -long option on
> chch, and again, it would be nice if the ratings were split for -long and
> not long also.

This one you could talk me into, especially if you think it would rouse
more interest in the game.  I suppose it would be called
SuperChineseCheckers, or "such" for short.  BTW, feel free to challenge me
to a game of chch -long.

> on bughouse, which i guess we are still testing (was it publicly announced
> yet?).  right now, if your partner wins, you lose, because the current setup
> only allows for one winner per game.  this means we're getting ratings and
> win/loss records that are meaningless, which is a little frustrating.
> sharkey told us that this would *not* be easy to fix, but i'm wondering if
> anybody feels like looking into it anyway.

Bughouse was publicly announced, although there might be one or two bugs
left.  En-passant moves are probably still risky.  It does support two
players if you "bughouse challenge me me you you".

There is no way to handle a joint win with the current rating system.
I finally found out what happened to the fabled "new rating system" which
was going to be integrated in at one point, but I have not looked at it to
determine whether it supports joint wins, or how much work is left to make
it work at all.

> i don't know how much people have discussed having an -unrated option for
> all games, it's frustrating to build up a rating and then have it drop
> because you play a multiplayer game where the outcome is somewhat random, it
> would be nice if we could turn off ratings for multiplayer games.

It is possible to turn off ratings completely for Bughouse, but the
ratings are also useful to know which players are interested in the game
(#games, active, limit, seeking) and you do not even appear on that list
until you have one rated game.

> and yes, i realize the server is really about playing games and having fun,
> but ratings are fun too and a way to track your progress.

We like happy gamers, but we are only volunteers, after all.

~ John Williams
  "sharkey"