Since: Monday, December 22st 18:47 1998
Ranking last updated on

Ranking:
...How many players made it into the Ranking ?
...Why not rank every player ?
...How to get into the ranking ?
...Why is ranking so Complicated ?
...What's with these ranking Matrices ?
...What's the Data Basis of ranking ?
...How is the Rank Calculated ?
...What Rank Values are possible ?
...Why is the Rank data different from the Player data ?

Notation:
...What are Incidents ?
...What are Netto % values ?
...What do F, D, & S mean ?

FAQ...

Frequently
Asked
Questions...





Ranking

How many Players made it into the Ranking ?
Only the top (in Incident counts, and high in Netto %) Players will show on the pages here. Of the Players (with unique names) seen on this server, made it into the stats.


Why not Rank Every Player ?
The "quality" of ranking can only be as good as the statistics. Let me explain this :)...

If you have players that play a lot and thereby score many frags then Æstats will be able to judge these players very accurately. The calculated average player ability will then be very much the player's "real" ability. These stats try to say something about how a player is doing on average, no attempt is being made to determine the day to day fluctuations.

If you have players that don't play much, and want to compare them with the above players who do play a lot, then this will not be very fair, since there is no sufficient data available to calculate the average behavior of these infrequent players. E.g. a player enters a game gets "lucky" with his rocket launcher and frags 5 (even 1 frag is enough) players without getting hit and then leaves the server. This player will have a rank of 100. A perfect player in other words. But this rank is meaningless, because he did not play many other players and did not play much!

Therefore I try filter out players that have not played much.


How to get into Ranking ?
As mentioned above not everyone gets ranked.. for good reason as I hope you will agree :)...

All players seen on this server (currently with unique names), are sorted by their number of incidents in the 1st step.

In the 2nd step, from this list the top * 2 players are picked and sorted by their Netto % scores.

In the 3rd step, those top players that are left are then Ranked.

What this means :)... Play a lot to ensure that your incident counts are high. Then try to be good ;)... frag a lot, without getting hit much, and avoid suicides, this will lead to high Netto % values. If you are then among the then you will be seen in ranking.

All this is strictly academic ;) if there are less than players in that server log file. In this case simply all players are ranked.


Why is Ranking so Complicated ?
As mentioned above, players are picked in 3 steps for ranking.

Why has it got to be so complicated ?...
Because through 3 generations of parsers, I have come to understand how "Rank Possessed" players tick and how they will do anything to be N° 1 in ranking ;)...

In step 1 I try to make the rank as fair and "significant" as possible, and this can only be done for those players that have played enough on this server. This translates to picking players with high incident counts.

In step 2 only players with high Netto % are picked. The Netto % values are a primitive sort of ranking, that lets me find those players that play pretty well. In the very beginning I did not check for this. This led to situations where good players along with weak players that got fragged a lot (both have high incident counts) where ranked against each other. What happened was this: The strong player expressively picked out the weak players and ripped them off so badly, that the weak (I am not saying bad) players, lost all fun in playing. Personally I hate that! Gaming should be fun and not spoiled by a few idiots that always have to win and be on top. Therefore to avoid such a situation, now only the strong players are ranked against the other strong players.

In step 3 only those players that are left are actually ranked. This ensures good statistics (as good as possible with the provided data, that is) meaning high incidents counts, and also fair ranking, for only those who beat the best are really good, and not those who rip off the "weak".

As you can see I have given the matter a lot of thought... and this is the reason why I call my ranking a real ranking. Most other rankings are something like the Netto % I also use here :)


What's with these Ranking Matrices ?
To be able to calculate real ranking, Æstats uses 2 dimensional arrays (Matrices) that contain the data for each ranked player in form of Frags, Deaths and Suicides.

There are 2 matrices: One is the Ranking matrix, that lets you see in absolute counts how many frags you scored against every other player, how many suicides happed to you (diagonal), and how many deaths where induced on you ;). Find out who your problem opponents are...

The second matrix does not really contain new data, it just displays the above matrice's data in a different way, to make frag comparison a bit easier. See the Difference Matrix for this. Shown are not absolute frag counts but relative counts. The difference was calculated between, the frags you scored against one specific player, and frags he scored againt you. Positive values will mean you scored more frags against him. You'll want that to be the default :).


What's the Data Basis of Ranking ?
Basis of all ranking is the socalled Ranking Matrix. It nicely sums up all the data in a 2 dimensional array. It shows your frags, deaths, and suicides (for more info see that page).


How is the Rank Calculated ?
Using the Rank Matrix, for each pair of players i and j, we calculate: For all i!=j (frags/deaths) matrix[i][j] - matrix[j][i] (Frags i scored against j minus the Frags j scored again i). This is done for all possible other players j, telling us how good player i has been doing against all these other players. Summing up these differences, and subtracting player i's suicides, we get a "netto performance". The latter still has to be devided by the number of contacts (e.g. the N° of possible other j players).


What Rank Values are Possible ?
The above rank calculation yields the normed Rank values, that run from 0 to 100. 50 is your average player that does not suicide, and gets hit as much as he hands out. So you will want to have values above 50... trust me ;).


Why is the Rank Data Different from the Player Data ?
You may have noticed that the frag, death, suicide counts along with the netto % values on the Ranking page differ from those shown on player's stats page. E.g. Pick a player name on the ranking page, then follow the player's link to the player stats page.

Why is this so ?
On the ranking page only the data is used that is essential to ranking, read: only the frags, deaths, suicides between the top 90 ranked players are used. All the other info in the log file is ignored. Therefore the F, D, S counts will almost always be lower than the total counts. On the player stats page on the other hand, *all* F, D, S events are counted.

Why not simply show the same data ?
The ranking page can only show useful data, so it would not help to try to show more data there. The player stats page could show less data, the data that is used for ranking, but personally I like to have as much data available as possible, even if it may not be ranking relevant.





Notation
What are Incidents ?
Incidents are things that can happen to a player during multiplayer gameplay. To be exact they are the sum of frags, deaths and suicides:

        Incidents = Frags + Deaths + Suicides

What are Netto % Values ?
The so called Netto % values are a primitive sort of ranking. The advantage of this value is that it can be calculated for each player, without having to take all the other players into account. The disadvantage: It's sorta wish washy :)... the Netto % value only hints at the player's real in-game quality. The latter can only be properly estimated if one uses the data of the other players that interacted with you. So done on the Ranking page.

How is the Netto % value calculated ?


        Incidents = Frags + Deaths + Suicides
        Netto = Frags - Deaths - Suicides

        Netto % = ( Netto / Incidents ) * 100
This yields values from 0 to 100%.


What do F, D, & S, mean ?
These are abbreviations that are used in tables:
  Frags F, you scored.
  Deaths D, you got hit.
  Suicides S, you did it onto yourself ;).



This page was generated with AEstats (c) 1998-2000 by Æon ...
Commercial use prohibited !
... More!