For years I’ve heard people talk about wanting a universal ranking system for the fighting game community, and since my competitive gaming background originated in Magic: the Gathering I’ve seen how a company can handle a monstrous number of players.
There is currently a website that does a decent job of tracking how players do at majors, and it assigns points based on the event, but it doesn’t pit the players rankings against each other like the system that chess uses, The Elo System. This system allows a player’s rating to be affected by his opponent’s rating, and once the system is established this rating will effectively reflect that opponent’s strength. This system accurately reflects a player’s skill level better than assigning points based on where they placed at an event. Works very similarly to the SFIV online rating system (they may have even used the Elo system).
The beta test will be one month long, beginning in late July, and I have a lot of long-term plans after the beta test period, including weekly prizes, quarterly prizes, and an invitational based on rating. For this beta, I would need the voluntary organizers to have their players fill out a registration card (that I will provide), and send the main portion back to me, schedule the month’s worth of events in advance with me, and email an accurate copy of the completed bracket to me. I will keep an up-to-date event calendar on dromstruction.com and update ratings weekly.
Restrictions are: the tournaments must be live, open to the public, and only one tournament per game, per week (so if there is a Marvel tournament scheduled on Wed and Sat, only one of them can be sanctioned, but another day could have KoF and/or AE).
To give a full description of how this will work from start to finish:
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[]Events will be scheduled, then submitted to Jenkins@dromstruction.com and added to the tournament calendar.
[]Players will arrive at the tournament, and give the tournament organizer their player number when they sign up. If they do not have a player number, the organizer will assign them a Dromstruction provided number.
[]When tournament is completed, the tournament organizer will email a copy of the complete bracket to jenkins@dromstruction.com
[]Once a week, the Dromstruction website will be updated with each player’s rating based on the matches played at “sanctioned” events.
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How exactly does the rating system work?
[INDENT=1]Each match matters. Every player will start with 1600 points. For each match, the players will gain or lose points based on if they win or lose, and based on their opponent’s rating. If their opponent has a higher rating, then the player gains more points for winning, or loses less points for losing. The exact formula used to determine the points change can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system (Don’t worry, I’ve tested it against other sources to be sure it’s the right formula and that it works properly).[/INDENT]
I’d like to start out with: Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition; Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3; and King of Fighters XIII. Other games will be supported after the test period is over.
Some of the reasons to use a system like this:
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[]Seeding will become more consistant, less biased, and will involve less guesswork.
[]Accurately reflects a player’s skill level better than assigning points based on where they placed at an event. Simply assigning points based on how many players are at an event isn’t always accurate, since the quantity of players does not reflect the quality of players at that event.
[*]Everyone gets rated at participating events, not just top 8 or top 16.
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I hope other organizers are willing to work with me on this, as I think this can be beneficial to the community as a whole.
Please no new startup organizers for this test period.
Please let me know what you think, and if you are interested in your events being a part of this.
Deadline for organizers to contact me to be considered for the test period is July 22nd.
Confirmed Participating Organizers:
X-Ray - X-Factor Friday, Sacramento
Tyram - Ramnation, Fairfield
Number1ricky - UC Davis Fighting Game Club, Davis
Romeo - TapEx, Elk Grove
Schmidtnurface - NorCal Downtown Throwdown, Stockton
JayGist - Capitol Fight District, Sacramento