Adjust decay for non-official formats

[Felucia]

Decay is a great system and works really well for active ladders, but for inactive ladders there's a reasonable problem, the 1500 (or 1499, I can never properly remember) floor. Because the standard decay function doesn't go below 1500 (or 1499) after a while of watching relatively inactive ladders you get something that looks a bit like this. In this case, many many players who haven't played a ladder game in forever obstruct the bottom of the ladder, blocking out more active players who are unable to reach 1500. This is fine for some ladders where reaching 1500 elo isn't an impossible task, but there are also ladders out there where because of the low amount of players it's virtually impossible to reach 1500 at all, which means you'll realistically never stand a chance of competing for leaderboards.

My solution to distinguish between active and inactive ladders would simply be to assume all official metagames (gen 8 Ubers, OU, UU, RU, NU, Monotype, Random Battles, and maybe Challenge Cup 1v1) are active, and everything else is less active.

I realize that this is somewhat of a minor issue but figured I'd suggest it anyway and see what comes from it

 

[vapicuno]

Just so I understand your suggestion, are you recommending that the ladder you posted (gen3ou) be given a 1400 decay floor with fast decay just like current gen OU?

I happen to be part of the community that plays that gen and we had a discord discussion on this. The active members of this discord server comprise of experienced players and new players with maybe a 3:1 ratio, so I do acknowledge the presence of bias. Notwithstanding, the prevalent sentiment was instead the opposite of what you suggested. These arguments include

1. Having a high decay floor encourages players to strive harder so that they feel that it is an achievement to make it permanently on the ladderboard.
2. (From a new player) the presence of several new players on the ladderboard have shown that the current decay floor of 1500 is achievable with hard work, dedication and help.
3. If elo decay is constructed to compensate for players getting better as time goes on, then the decay still happens on too short a time scale that people improve (this in the context of an old gen, yet its hard to remain on top without playing for a week). I'm not sure I'm explaining this right, help Hclat

Some have gone further to propose raising the bar with the following arguments

4. The decay is too fast, discouraging players from pursuing really high elos because they can't find the activity to maintain them there.
5. Raising the decay floor to 1600 would set a new milestone that encourages ladder activity without affecting the 1500 accounts
6. A counterproposal to display the top 1k instead of merely top 500.

Some counterarguments made were

7. Your point about tending to lower elo players who remain at low elo, which admittedly form a smaller group in my server
8. That raising the bar would cause a similar saturation anyway

I am personally in favor of not lowering the decay floor or increasing the decay rate. Responding to the counterarguments, I feel that the ladderboard should be reserved for players who want to be on it, and it doesn't require stupendous effort to get there. I like the alternative of expanding the ladderboard and slowing the decay. I'm ambivalent about raising the decay floor though as it seems like a reasonable target for gen3ou right now. Actual numbers would be really meta dependent. I'm saying all this in the context of gen3ou, but correct me if im wrong; this is the meta that is most plagued by the oversaturation right now.

Thoughts?

 

[Hclat]

To further explain vapi’s point #3:

A benefit of decay is keeping the top of leaderboards “current”. What I mean by this: Nobody wants there to exist an unreachably high account from dominating an earlier (easier?) form of a metagame. To take an example from the ADV ladder, it’s a good thing that the 51-1 “beerlover” account does not remain at the top of the ladder in 2020—the account was so successful (in part) because it exploited the metagame it existed in. It would be “bad” (ie unfair, uncompetitive, uninteresting) for current accounts to have to contend with it, given that the game and playerbase have changed since then.

That said, in ADV (and I would assume old gens in general), changes in the metagame and player base occur at a far slower rate than ladder decay. While changes to the metagame are tough to quantify, I speculate most players would agree that ADV evolves on approximately a semi-annual basis. Ladder decay will usually take an account from the top of ladder (which is usually somewhere 1600-1625) out of the top 10 (1550ish) in about a week and a half.

If decay was changed such that rankings fell at a slower rate, it would make laddering more engaging and rewarding.

 

[Icemaster]

This is a slightly seperate but similar suggestion, but I feel for non official less active formats decay is way too high. While laddering a less active ladder for example National Dex AG, it already becomes extremely difficult to even find games at around 1.9-2k elo and winning games often wins you 3 elo... with decay being 11 elo a day (around 3 games worth!!) you pretty much have to play 2 games to even maintain your ladder which takes upwards of half an hour due to how long it takes to find and complete matches. Playing 6 matches to completely prevent decay is pretty much unthinkable without spending hours. Speaking from experience, the hardest part of peaking on these ladders often isn't the opponents but the fact that you have to spend so much time daily. It favours playing lots of games in a short time which is inconvenient and just unfun. Anyway, my suggestion would be in addition to what Felucia posted, to reduce the number of games daily required to prevent decay on less active ladders or to reduce the extent of decay and possibly make decay happen only once every 2-3 days.