It is necessary to have rankings. With rankings people can relate to each other and have something to work for. Beating a better placed player is a big motivation at all levels. It's also the number one indicator of progress.
"With rankings people can relate to each other". This means that rankings are all about relative strength. Players that are very close in rating should get similar results on most maps. For players that are far apart in rating it should be clear which player will perform better on most of the time.
The better a ranking system, the better it can predict a player's result at any given moment. But if the only data that we have is every player's best submitted result on every map, then the rankings can only make a representation of the player's potential. Whether the potential is far off from the expected performance is another question.
The big difference between PP and TP is the kind of measurement they are based on.
TP wants to be objective at the low level. In tp all the points are translated from numbers directly recorded from the plays and the hitobjects on the map. How much points a beatmap is worth is determined by its composition and is in theory invariable. (In practice there is no perfect formula, things will always eventually change)
But 2 maps that are very similar in their basic composition could yield very different results for a lot of reasons. Maybe one of the maps has "wtf-patterns" that make you never play the map again, or the flow is incompatible to your gameplay, maybe some parts have tricky timing that put you off every time, or you don't like the song itself. Those are negative reasons, but positive reasons exist as well. Maybe the map is so popular that it's too ridiculous to even get a top 1000 on it, or you got a streak of tries where you always miss near the end making you a bit too nervous each time you get there.
It doesn't matter what the reasons actually are. While the maps are objectively just as hard, it takes more to achieve the same score on one map than on the other.
PP wants to be fair when it comes to these meta-difficulties. In pp the points are highly affected by how hard the map seems to be considering all the plays that have been done on it.
"These guys are supposed to be pretty strong but their scores are meh. You're not that pro of a player yet but you did a little bit better. Props to you for doing the extra effort, here are some extra points." The initial idea that pp would be not farmable is clearly refuted. That said, it's still an improvement to the previous score-based rankings. I like giving a little boost to people who care about their ranking. But it should remain limited.
Both systems have their merits. Anyone who denies that is keeping a closed mind or is simply provoking.
Now comes a sensitive topic.
Rankings are a social concept. The decision about who's better than someone else should really be done by a generally accepted method. If the ranking system is undermined by the community, it loses its purpose.
When I look at my country rankings, I see 2 players above me that for the time being aren't quite at my level yet. It's not only me saying it. They say it and the other players around say it too. It was socially accepted that I competed in owc instead of them. A good ranking system must be backed up by the socially accepted standards.
The 2 players are ahead of me now because of meta-difficulties that pp values. Maybe pp is right and those meta-difficulties are simply too hard for me and it's legit that their achievement outweigh my achievements. But while the community thinks otherwise, it shouldn't be the imposed as the official ranking.
But how do we assess which skills are more respected? I don't have an answer for that.
I can tell that many of you are now thinking: "speed? speed? speed!!!???"
However I'm confident that the collective consciousness of the community isn't so one sided.
I may hope that anyone working on ranking systems keep this in mind.
Do you disagree with anything I said or can you build further on this? I invite you to share your opinions in the same respectful manner that we expect the rankings to have with us.
"With rankings people can relate to each other". This means that rankings are all about relative strength. Players that are very close in rating should get similar results on most maps. For players that are far apart in rating it should be clear which player will perform better on most of the time.
The better a ranking system, the better it can predict a player's result at any given moment. But if the only data that we have is every player's best submitted result on every map, then the rankings can only make a representation of the player's potential. Whether the potential is far off from the expected performance is another question.
The big difference between PP and TP is the kind of measurement they are based on.
TP wants to be objective at the low level. In tp all the points are translated from numbers directly recorded from the plays and the hitobjects on the map. How much points a beatmap is worth is determined by its composition and is in theory invariable. (In practice there is no perfect formula, things will always eventually change)
But 2 maps that are very similar in their basic composition could yield very different results for a lot of reasons. Maybe one of the maps has "wtf-patterns" that make you never play the map again, or the flow is incompatible to your gameplay, maybe some parts have tricky timing that put you off every time, or you don't like the song itself. Those are negative reasons, but positive reasons exist as well. Maybe the map is so popular that it's too ridiculous to even get a top 1000 on it, or you got a streak of tries where you always miss near the end making you a bit too nervous each time you get there.
It doesn't matter what the reasons actually are. While the maps are objectively just as hard, it takes more to achieve the same score on one map than on the other.
PP wants to be fair when it comes to these meta-difficulties. In pp the points are highly affected by how hard the map seems to be considering all the plays that have been done on it.
"These guys are supposed to be pretty strong but their scores are meh. You're not that pro of a player yet but you did a little bit better. Props to you for doing the extra effort, here are some extra points." The initial idea that pp would be not farmable is clearly refuted. That said, it's still an improvement to the previous score-based rankings. I like giving a little boost to people who care about their ranking. But it should remain limited.
Both systems have their merits. Anyone who denies that is keeping a closed mind or is simply provoking.
Now comes a sensitive topic.
Rankings are a social concept. The decision about who's better than someone else should really be done by a generally accepted method. If the ranking system is undermined by the community, it loses its purpose.
When I look at my country rankings, I see 2 players above me that for the time being aren't quite at my level yet. It's not only me saying it. They say it and the other players around say it too. It was socially accepted that I competed in owc instead of them. A good ranking system must be backed up by the socially accepted standards.
The 2 players are ahead of me now because of meta-difficulties that pp values. Maybe pp is right and those meta-difficulties are simply too hard for me and it's legit that their achievement outweigh my achievements. But while the community thinks otherwise, it shouldn't be the imposed as the official ranking.
But how do we assess which skills are more respected? I don't have an answer for that.
I can tell that many of you are now thinking: "speed? speed? speed!!!???"
However I'm confident that the collective consciousness of the community isn't so one sided.
I may hope that anyone working on ranking systems keep this in mind.
Do you disagree with anything I said or can you build further on this? I invite you to share your opinions in the same respectful manner that we expect the rankings to have with us.