Oh yeah dude, I totally get that it seems overwhelming when you look at it. If we can simplify it, you bet we will. I want it to be as easy to understand as possible, to the point where everyone can do it. I've been endeavoring to make this system as fair as possible for 5 years now - I can show you the topics. Your points system was one of the first to be suggested, way back in 2007. The issue is a system that is too simple doesn't do justice to the complexity of the scoreboard - someone who has first place on a track with 3 scores on SSX Blur is the same skill level as someone who has first place on a track with SSX 2012 with 54 scores? That's not representative of the level of skill with the scoreboard.

Ideally, with this revamp we'll a) make it as simple as possible while still reflecting reality b) get rid of any kludging and bias in standings and c) never have to touch it again.


Good! If your idea works out, more features for the scoreboard are always a good thing.


I believe we already have something pretty much like that. Example. How would this be different - in that the user can now select only the scores he wishes to see?


Interesting - this could be a very nice feature. I will ask Thoul if this would be a possibility to add once we implement the changes. This, of course, is always subject to what it will cost - if it's price-prohibitive we may have to wait for it or pare it down.


This is awfully grand in scope, while I would love to see that much flexibility, my gondee-sense is telling me this might be a bit much in cost as a result. I will ask, though.

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#3 is very tricky. You do not want to have to build and re-calculate based on the user's whims. Even if you throw it all client-side, that's mad javascript you have to write. For what? So someone can not include "Death Zone" in their score board to show they are higher than someone else?

During the initial write, and my entire rewrite of WinonaNET (coming soon!), the biggest waste of resources is the crunching of the data. You can do it entirely on the server side (and make your site slower) or you can do it on the client-side (and make your user's browser slower). Obviously it's a huge balancing act. For speed, you can cache, but then you sacrifice "newness". On WinonaNET, all calculations are live, and other than the awesomescore, it's all done client-side. I don't think #3 will have much ROI.

And, as we write this, chromemaps just BEASTED the hell outta The Dilemma. There's another datapoint to throw it all off. That graph up to is exactly the reason we can't use a simple 1, 2, 3 point system. chromemaps CREAMS the competition. The difference between 1st and 2nd is MUCH more than 2nd and 3rd. Giving him 1 point less (or more) is unfair.


Way to embarrass the poor guy...

No embarrassment intended Clawz - my apologies if that was the case. You make VERY good points dude - the rankings system is too complicated, and we'll shoot for making it easier so as many people as possible can understand and participate


Is this a serious question? I thought the whole "doing stuff with your data that wasn't intended" wasn't really the idea?

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Is it? Have people been clamouring for it? I think it would be a good idea. The submission for the scoreboard is about 10 clicks, I was just trying to shorten it a bit.

I was thinking of just linking to http://merqurycity.com/api/scoreboard.php?game=10&track=785&score=12345678&image=CERT_URL. I could send the data GET or POST, your choice. Obviously, if you were logged in, it would bypass each selection and just land you at the "confirmation" page with all the fields filled in.

Yeah, it's that long because it's specifically designed to be as user-friendly (read: idiot-proof) as possible. Instead of having users select a list from say, all of the 168 tracks from SSX 2012, it narrows it down to the tracks only involved in that mode. Do you have any recommendations on simplying it?

As far as the auto-submission goes, my concern is the same as before, are we doing something with the user data they don't want us to, not to mention what automating this would do the database, how many junk users would we have that register there and don't register here, etc and so forth.

However, a lot of that concern is not my area of expertise, so as always, I will ask Thoul about this and let you know.

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I was imagining something like the overall scoreboard. Except instead of "Best Overall", it could be "Best on Gondee's Tracks". So it would calculate one NRP scoreboard for all of the tracks the selected user has actually posted a score on.

1) Auto-Advancing - Assume the user clicks the right thing and auto-next. Currently it's 3 CLICKS per page. Click the select box, click the item, click 'Next'.
-or-
2) Javascript Loading - Dynamically load the next options in the area below the current one.

Oh no, no. I'm not saying I'd autoload 50,000 entries. I would put a "button" on my site, which says "Submit to Merq". It would act EXACTLY like the scoreboard.php does now, EXCEPT the values are all filled in, going RIGHT to the final page.

EXAMPLE:
http://merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/scoreboard.php?mode=submissions&one=8&two=22&three=151
This goes RIGHT to submit a Race It score for Africa – Kilimanjaro: Snake Bite: Race It. HOWEVER, I just need you to put some javascript on the page to fill in the other values.

http://merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/scoreboard.php?mode=submissions&one=8&two=22&three=151&min=99&sec=99&ten=99&proof=LINK_TO_CERT
Would load the SAME PAGE, but have the values AUTO FILLED IN.

Thereby making the scoreboard submission TWO (2) CLICKS total. One to click "Submit to Merq", two to click "Finish". It would still be up to a mod to validate the score based on my cert and their time, however, should completely take cut hours off of submitting multiple tracks.

Code | Click to reveal hidden content

I didn't test or try this, but this should be the idea. Grab the variables from the window location line and update the appropriate boxes. The last thing I would need is a complete list of SSX (2012) names and values (Example: Africa – Kilimanjaro: Snake Bite: Race It is 151) from the database.

Code:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getUrlVars() {
    var vars = {};
    var parts = window.location.href.replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi, function(m,key,value) {
        vars[key] = value;
    });
    return vars;
}

var min = getUrlVars()["min"];
var sec = getUrlVars()["sec"];
var ten = getUrlVars()["ten"];
var score = getUrlVars()["score"];
var proof = getUrlVars()["proof"];

$('#min').val(min);
$('#sec').val(sec);
$('#ten').val(ten);
$('#score').val(score);
$('#proof').val(proof);
</script>

I am seriously digging on the idea of "Submit to Merq"

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Okay, I've worked through the math of mahkra's proposal:

I'll leave out the previous stuff I agreed with, no sense rehashing stuff we've already mentioned.

I honestly can't believe I didn't think of that racing formula. It's so stupidly obvious. I looked back at the old topic but for some reason that was never floated as an option. I feel like there's some reason we didn't use it just because it IS so obvious.


Example Math:

SSX Example:

Racing:
Track A: 6421 points (11 users)
Track B: 2337 points (21 users)
Track C: 6745 points (17 users)

Showoff:
Track D: 9834 points (35 users)
Track E: 2109 points (7 users)
Track F: 734 points (18 users)



Track A: 6421*11 = 70,631
Track B: 2337*21 = 49,077
Track C: 6745*17 = 114,665
Track D: 9834*35 = 344,190
Track E: 2109*7 = 14,763
Track F: 734*18 = 13,212

TOTAL: 606,588

606,588 / 109 (Unique Users) = 5,564.02

1) Question: When you say "Unique Users", are you referring to the total number of scores for tracks? Each user can only submit one score per track - meaning a user who submits a score for each of the 6 tracks will be counted as 6 "unique users" - or do you mean Unique Users as in each individual member - so if we have 109 total scores on these tracks, but only 42 unique members submitting those 109 total scores?

If by "Unique Users" you mean total scores, then the numbers will be much lower than if you mean Individual Members.


Agreed. It is very simple and much better than our current racing formula.


It is the same as it used to be - if you receive zero for submitting a score, then any score is better than nothing. It is also truer to the nature of what a ranking system should be, with zeros being given to those who don't compete.


There are definitely a few surprises in there. Mahkra are you doing this in Excel? Would there be a way you could email me that spreadsheet so I could take a look at the guts of this thing?

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It's fine, I 'knew' that the idea would have been brought up or maybe even used in the past just because it's such a simple idea.

At the moment I think of the scoreboard system like the stats system in SSX, nobody really knows how it works

OOOO...a rewrite. FYI...The rotating left hand tab thing (Riders with Most Scores) is really annoying on mobile devices. It just sits on the top of the page blocking all the track names.

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That's not that far off. It's been patched so much over the years I don't think many people can understand it. Above all else Clawz, just know I want to make it accessible for everyone. If it's not, that's something we need to work on. Do you have any other ideas you can think of to make it better?


Hmm...I'm not sure what you're referring to. Can you be more specific? (Maybe give me a page URL.)

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He's talking about the REAL scoreboard, WinonaNET Take it to my thread Pemdas, this is about the Merq Scoreboard.

Okay Ozmo, I talked with Thoul regarding your suggestions, I think it's a go on them, but I'll list his responses.


That is good, and means we can probably move forward with it. He also says that as far as the API you're talking about Ozmo, it's easy as well, half an hour's work at most. So I think we can make this happen. You'll probably need a list of game and track IDs from the database, wouldn't you?

There is one thing that will need to be mandatory. You'll have to display the "Submit to Merq" option only to logged in users and only for their own scores. That might sound a little obvious, but I don't want to be bombarded with thousands of scores just because of one little oversight.


Sounds good with me. I agree the submissions screen is out of date and too much effort for score submission. This is shaping up to be quite the revamp of things, which I don't mind paying for if it's a good investment.

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That's a great observation! Yes, I would.


Logged in users to WinonaNET, right? Not logged into Merqury City, because web browsers can't do that. Given that provision, no problem. However, this is contingent on passing the score and proof variables to the autofill javascript as discussed.

(EDIT BY GONDEE: Shoot, sorry Ozmo. I hit "edit" instead of "Quote" - my bad. I will try to rebuild your post. Feel Free to edit it after the fact - my apologies.)

You did the math the way I intended. It's just supposed to be a weighted average of RP per track, where the weighting factor is the number of scores on that track's scoreboard. By "unique users" I just meant that if Minn submits a new personal best every week for the same track, we're still only counting her as one entry to that scoreboard. I doubt you're even tracking the total number of submissions to a scoreboard because you're just overwriting the old score each time, but I was trying to differentiate between total scores on the scoreboard right now and total scores ever submitted to the scoreboard, including ones that have been overwritten.

Like I said, it's a (weighted) average of your RP per track. So the NRP isn't just an arbitrary, meaningless number; it actually has the same 0-10k range as the RP for each track. If you're #1 on every SSX 2012 race, then you'll have an NRP of 10,000 for the SSX 2012 racing board. If you're getting half as many points as first place on just about every SSX Tricky showoff event, then you'll have an NRP around 5,000 for the SSX Tricky showoff board.

Okay, will do. After I change your rank to "Sass Pants".


AHH RETRIBUTION -->


Autofill javascript for the submissions page you are referring to? I think it's a given that if we do this we'll do the upgrades for the submissions page as well, provided they aren't prohibitively expensive.


Okay, then let's agree on changing the term from "unique users" to "total scores" for each track - because "Unique Users" to me means the total of unique members who have submitted for a game/mode/what have you ie. 100 unique users might submit 1000 total scores for SSX 2012.

So in that case, if I were to "layman" the formula so everyone could understand it, it would be something like this:

Total of Ranking Points = Sum of ((Ranking Points * Total Scores) for each track)) / total number of submitted scores for all tracks.


No, we haven't been keeping track of total submissions. I've thought that might be useful in the past, but given WinonaNet and how easy it may become to submit scores in the future, I think it wouldn't be all that valuable.


I really like this formula, and it's much better than using percentages of tracks because I don't believe that one large game can overbalance the equation, can it? How does SSX 2012 stand in the overall scheme of things compared with the other games? Are we getting issues with users who specialize in one game being over-represented on the Best Of Categories?

Again, if you have a spreadsheet somewhere, I'd love to take a look at it.

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I sent it to your yahoo email maybe 15 minutes ago.

I didn't look too closely at it, but at first glance it appeared the overall scoreboards had a mix of players from Tricky and 3 (because their tracks have so many more entries on the scoreboards) and 2012 (because it has half of the tracks in the whole series).

Got it! Thanks.

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If he charges you, fire him. I wrote the autofill code 13 posts up. Shouldn't take more than 13 seconds to copy and paste. I don't know what his hourly rate is, but if 13 seconds breaks your bank, I will undercut him by 50%!

Okay, after talking with Thoul, it looks like we'll be making all the changes talked about, though not all at once.

We'll start with Mahkra's base changes to the scoreboard. We're both concerned about the possibility of this using too many resources on the server given that we're on a shared (albeit limited shared) hosting environment. So we're going to test it some before we install it into the board.

Once that's up and working, we'll go forward with the scoreboard submissions screen changes that Ozmo proposed. Those should be relatively simple and take no time at all.

Finally I'll work with Ozmo on the "Submit from WinonaNet" feature.

I'd suspect it won't be any more than a few weeks before this is all built and implemented.

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Okay, it looks like Thoul is almost done coding up the ranking changes. Looks good as far as I can tell, in that there aren't any gross inaccuracies like there are currently.

We are going to freeze approving scores on Monday at midnight (meaning, Sunday 11:59PM) so that Thoul can do the work necessary on Monday and institute the rankings changes then.

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Question:

Why are the scores different on the Overall Survive scoreboard and the SSX 2012 Survive scoreboard?

SSX 2012 Survival:
1 Rocklee1113 9512.06 across 28 tracks
2 chromemaps 6924.98 across 28 tracks
3 MarcusAnnex 3312.41 across 28 tracks

Overall Survival:
1 Rocklee1113 4610.57 across all tracks
2 chromemaps 3356.6 across all tracks
3 MarcusAnnex 1605.55 across all tracks

Shouldn't the Overall scores be the same as the 2012 scores? I thought we'd decided the multi-track scoreboards would all use the same formula, and both of these should be using the same set of 28 tracks. Right?

It's possible that might be some of our other hacks still lingering around. I'll ask Thoul about that and see what he says.

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Just as an update, Thoul tracked down some legacy code that was messing up the rankings - things look pretty good now: SSX (2012) Survival is now the same as Survival Overall, and some of the wonky rankings now look right.

Next up, we're going to be instituting the changes to the scoreboard submission screen to make it much easier to submit scores, and then a week or two after that we'll institute WinonaNet integration.

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