Announcing Smashboards Rankings

[Warchamp7]

We have introduced a major feature addition to Smashboards in the form of a tournament rankings add on. This add on allows tournament organizers to submit their events on Smashboards for archiving and easy viewing. It allows for importing brackets from Challonge, Tio and TioPro, as well as manual submission of results. Bracket images can be included in submissions, as well as a YouTube playlist from the event, which will automatically be embedded on the results page. Players can 'claim' a placing in a tournament - approved by the organizer - to receive the points for that placing on their Smashboards account, and can set up to 3 characters used for the event. Organizers can also specify the corresponding Smashboards account for a player if they so choose.

This system will allow you to view stats by player, by character and spanning various time frames and events. The system can be configured to count only a persons most recent x events for their point total, and only events within the last x months. The points awarded for an event will be dependent on the number of entrants in that tournament. It will take some time for us to reach the ideal settings but in the end we will have accurate stats for players, characters and games themselves across the Smash universe.

You can view the rankings system here.

Results threads can then easily embed their results using the bbcode listed in the sidebar.

Example:

Spoiler

The Break Smash Bi-Weekly #01 - Smash Bros. Melee

Rank

Player

Characters

Points

Earnings

User

1st

Mew2King

28

$84.00

Mew2King

2nd

MGFC|StriCNYN3

25

$42.00

S StriCNYN3

3rd

Tec0

21

$14.00

Teczer0

4th

MGFC|Chain-Ace

18

LLDL

5th

Internet Explorer

14

Dan Salvato

5th

CopyCat

14

CopyCat

7th

smokely

10

S Smokely

7th

RedEyeZ

10

OverFlow

9th

DC-Scribz

7

DCScribZ

9th

POOPFACE

7

9th

Zelko

7

Z Zelko13

9th

DekuNut

7

TheDekuNut

13th

KYJ

4

Xx swift xX

13th

Wide

4

Retroactively reviewing and approving brackets as they are submitted will take some time, so bear with us during the initial surge of submissions.


Information for Tournament Organizers.

To submit an event to the Smashboards rankings, you will visit the link above and click Submit Brackets in the secondary navigation bar. From there, you will need to choose if you're importing from Challonge, Tio/TioPro, or manually submitting the results by hand.

Importing from Challonge

Spoiler

This can only be done by a user with user/score management privileges for the event. You simply need to link the Challonge bracket URL, and grab your Challonge API Key from your settings on Challonge. Go to your settings and select Password and API Key, and then click Generate a new API key if you have never done so before. The bracket image will automatically be grabbed for the event.

Importing from Tio

Spoiler

Though the icon simply shows TioPro, you can use a bracket file from Tio or TioPro. Simply click the icon and then select your bracket file. On the next page, you will be able to choose which event from your Tio file you wish to import, as Tio files can contain multiple events. If you have multiple events from one file to submit, you will have to do each one individually.

Manual Submission

Spoiler

Choose to manually import brackets on the submit page. Fill out the information for your event and then click Import Bracket. On the following page you'll be able to start adding results for the event.

If you have a YouTube playlist for the event, add the URL as a 'Media' link type on the submission page. You can link the event thread with the 'Thread' link type and finally, you can link any relevant websites such as Facebook, Twitter or event sites via the 'Website' link type.

Once you have submitted your bracket, you can click Finalize results to save the event, and reward points. Make sure everything is as it should be prior to this, as you cannot update results after you have finalized an event.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Thanks!
-Smashboards Crew

 

[Coastward]

hype, time to be #1 ganondorf

 

[StylesX2]

Lemme get dat #1 DK or #1 Ness

 

[Gardex]

Amazing addition, love this.

Should we add previous tournaments, or start freshly from now and out?

 

[Warchamp7]

Tournament organizers should feel free to retroactively submit their tournaments!

 

[Nguz95]

Noooooo!!! I can't pretend I'm good at this game any more! Warchamp, you exposed me!!!

 

[Gardex]

Alright, so I see this is pretty much the Smash4u system, so I have some questions:

Regarding tournament size: Certain countries, like my own, don't really get that many attendees, even when people from all over the country show up. Would a 20-man tournament with entrants from the entire country count as a local, regional or a national?

Regarding entrance fee: Should all tournaments without entrance fee just go under unranked? Or should it be up to the TO to decide?

Regarding currency: If a tournament file has a set entrance fee in a different currency, the rankings will ignore this and put it up as USD, this would make scewed numbers. Would it be possible to just add a drop-down menu to choose currency?

 

[Warchamp7]

Category of a tournament is decided by size, as noted in the descriptions.

Local < 50
Regional 51 - 120
National 120 - 200
International 200+

Unranked exists as an option where it was a fun tourney, or something to that effect. Any tournament where the players were playing seriously should be submitted as a ranked, so I suppose any event with a prize pool

 

[Strong Badam]

This is some stuff.

 

[Terral]

So, basically, whoever ended up making this took everything we learned from the SSBPD, all of the discussions from the ratings project in general, and.. threw it out the window in favor of something easy? I guess it's really good even just having a good central place to collect tournament results, though. I'm glad someone had the time to get it done.

 

[| Kailex |]

I feel like im never going to get a single point for a few years

 

[Zeonix]

Love this idea, and have been generally surprised that it didn't exist years ago. Back when "trophy points" came out, that's exactly what I thought they were.

 

[Jaxel]

Yay! Smashboards finally using my ranking software!

You can see a working examples here:
http://8wayrun.com/rankings/soulcalibur-v.1/league
http://virtuafighter.com/rankings/virtua-fighter-5-final-showdown.1/league

More in-depth videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r354IKeCCLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4oKf8DiK44

 

[ScubaF_ingSteve]

This is awesome. This is the perfect direction for smashboards to go in. I can't wait to see the impact this has in a few months when the balls get rolling.

 

[Jaxel]

The points awarded for an event will be dependent on the number of entrants in that tournament.

This is not actually the case, with the way you have categories set up...

http://smashboards.com/rankings/categories

The "Modifier" column defines how many points a tournament is worth depending on the number of entries in the tournament. So if you have a category, with a modifier of 10, and the tournament has 16 players in it... the the tournament will be worth 160 points. The "Maximum" column defines the maximum number of points a tournament can be worth. So if you take that same category and set it's maximum to 100.... then the tournament will only be worth 100 points, instead of 160; since it's exceeded the cap. The purpose of this system was to limit the value of local tournaments that have unnaturally large number of players; where the number of players doesn't necessarily reflect the aggregate skill of the players. For instance, a local should never be worth more than a monthly, simply because it had more players (provided the monthly has a higher maximum setting).

However, if you look at your categories, you set the modifier to be EQUAL to the maximum. That means a tournament with ONE player, automatically reaches the maximum cap. So all regionals, whether they have 16 players, or 160, will always be worth 200 points. If this is what you intended; thats fine. But I'm not sure if thats the way I would do it... in fact, thats not the way I did it on 8wayrun at all...

http://8wayrun.com/rankings/categories

I simply value any player at 150 points (with your maximum numbers, you may want to try setting your modifiers 2 points). The only reason the last 3 categories in my list have modifiers above that is because in those specific cases, I did in fact want to force them to the maximum. Because those results are usually only listing top8/16 of a 200+ person tournament, so they don't reflect the total number of players in the tournament.

 

[Warchamp7]

However, if you look at your categories, you set the modifier to be EQUAL to the maximum. That means a tournament with ONE player, automatically reaches the maximum cap. So all regionals, whether they have 16 players, or 160, will always be worth 200 points. If this is what you intended; thats fine. But I'm not sure if thats the way I would do it... in fact, thats not the way I did it on 8wayrun at all...

This is indeed intended.

Edit: You've missed how we set up our categories:
Local = <50 players, Regional = 51-120 players, National = 121-200, International = 200+

The names aren't to be taken literally. Indirectly though, entrants matter in this way, without having the minor impact of 'per person' up to the max

 

[Morphine]

I'll be submitting brackets tomorrow after Delaware's first ever road to power rankings! twitch.tv/DE_Official

 

[Jaxel]

I just added 6 brackets to the results...
http://smashboards.com/rankings/super-smash-bros-melee.2/league/events

I'm not well versed with the smash community, so I don't know people's accounts, or what characters they use... so can someone fill those out for me?

 

[Skrlx]

I thought Sveet was working on that old ELO program to use on Smashboards.

 

[Strong Badam]

never panned out

 

[Bones0]

Hopefully the whole points system can eventually be replaced with Elo, but just getting the whole interface of tournament submissions is a great foundation.

You guys forgot Sheik in the manual bracket submission for Melee, though. lol

 

[Warchamp7]

Hrm, that's cause Sheik doesn't have any sort of character icon in Melee. I'll have to make one

Edit: Bam

 

[Jaxel]

Hopefully the whole points system can eventually be replaced with Elo

The problem with ELO is that it has flaws in tournament design. Its really made for 1 on 1 matches. It is considered a "race" system, it can end up rewarding people simply for attending the most events... and it has a problem where it can severely punish people for simply having a bad day (something very common in fighting games). The Association of Tennis Professionals Entry Ranking system was designed to combat a lot of the inherit issues in ELO.

 

[Louie G.]

Hmm...
Once I start getting into competitions and such, there will be nothing stopping me from #1 Luigi and #1 Peach.

 

[Bones0]

The problem with ELO is that it has flaws in tournament design. Its really made for 1 on 1 matches. It is considered a "race" system, it can end up rewarding people simply for attending the most events... and it has a problem where it can severely punish people for simply having a bad day (something very common in fighting games). The Association of Tennis Professionals Entry Ranking system was designed to combat a lot of the inherit issues in ELO.

Interesting. I guess I will give the points system a shot before dismissing it, but what do you mean by "1 on 1 matches"? Melee singles is obviously 1 on 1, so I'm guessing you mean something less literal.

 

[Mahie]

Jaxel might have meant a match without any context ?

Just the one match, by itself, with the 2 players concerned and that's it, as opposed to taking the whole bracket into consideration or something.

EDIT : Though I don't understand because ultimately the bracket would only be a sum of individual matches without any context, and the quality of opponents would increase with each subsequent match ( most of the time), reflecting the player's progress in the tournament.

--> I don't know what Jaxel meant.

 

[Terral]

I personally think that the algorithm that's being used is the worst rating system someone has expected to be taken seriously, but that's based only on the descriptions here without any real context for how accurate the Soul Calibur rankings are. If there were more details on how it worked then that might change my mind. With Elo, at least it was public how it all fit together instead of "very loosely based on some system developed specifically for a certain real-world sport".

The problem with ELO is that it has flaws in tournament design. Its really made for 1 on 1 matches. It is considered a "race" system, it can end up rewarding people simply for attending the most events... and it has a problem where it can severely punish people for simply having a bad day (something very common in fighting games). The Association of Tennis Professionals Entry Ranking system was designed to combat a lot of the inherit issues in ELO.

I also think you might have a lot of misconceptions about how Elo works, since it doesn't really have any of the traits you mentioned aside from working on individual matches (I assume that's what you meant by "1 on 1 matches"). But that discussion can be saved for later if people don't like how this rating system works for Smash, no need to consider switching if everyone's happy.

 

[Jaxel]

ELO is also sensitive to the ORDER of matches... because each match is representative of itself. Its not just about who you beat, but also when you beat them. Yes, there are algorithms to take care of ELO ranking in single events, but not if events are submitted in the wrong order. For instance, I submitted an event that happened yesterday. The rankings would be handled based on that date and would preclude the adding of new events before that date; since ELO is based on order. In order to add new events previous to the date; you would have to rebuild the entire ranking system after every single tournament that is submitted. The ATP system allows a rolling ranking, without a concern for the order in which events are submitted into the system.

The tennis ATP system is probably the best "neutral" ranking system; since it bases itself solely on tournament results. It doesn't care who you played against, just how you performed. Player A can be the best player in the world, who only ever loses to one person, his training partner Player B... but Player B has never won a tournament... with ELO, there is a chance Player B could be ranked higher than Player A. Since ELO would consider B beating A, as a "bad beat", and include it in the rankings. Meanwhile, B gets a large windfall because he beat the top ranked player.

The issue with the tennis ATP system is that it takes a bit more work to monitor to make sure TOs aren't gaming the system; while ELO just handles itself. I've been developing this ranking system since 2009. Its the best way to handle fighting game events in a non-league style fashion I have found.

 

[Jaxel]

ELO also suffers from the issue where it actually promotes top players into NOT attending events. If you are high ranked on the ladder, you may not want to attend anymore events because you put your ranking at risk. This is where you have issues of when a new game comes out and some player abuses the meta; in time people will learn how to beat him, but by then he has earned himself a top ELO rating. Then he drops out from tournaments and simply plays online and trolls the forums. Unless you do a yearly ELO rating reset, he's going keep that rating forever... and a yearly reset would upset the people who still attend events, by throwing their hard-earned work in the trash... for a non-league tournament structure, this is not recommended. In addition, you may have issues where tournament players will selectively choose what events they go to, depending on who else is going to be at that event. Maybe they don't want to play against a specific player and ruin their ranking?

The ATP system is designed to "stale" older rankings. So it promotes people to continue attending events to meet the minimum event requirement. In addition, it automatically rolls retired players out of the rankings. As well, since it doesn't care who is actually in the event, people don't have to be selective about what tournaments they attend. Basically, the issue with ELO is all social problems; not mathematical problems.

 

[goateeguy]

This could be a pretty cool project. I submitted the Melee, PM, and Brawl brackets from a tournament at Arizona State. Hopefully claims will start coming in soon.

Quick note on importing brackets: When I was filling in the details for the tournament, the date came up, apparently from the Tio file I imported, but it was one day behind (it read Nov. 22nd and the tournament was on the 23rd). I moved it up one day, but then when I looked at the brackets from the queue page it said Nov. 24th, the day after the tournament. Very minor, but something I thought you might want to be aware of.

 

[Terral]

ELO is also sensitive to the ORDER of matches... because each match is representative of itself. Its not just about who you beat, but also when you beat them.

People who prefer Elo consider this a strength, because player skill doesn't exist in a bubble determined by tournament placement. I might place 9th at a large local, but I'm not as good as someone in California who places 9th. Elo knows that because of who I beat and lost to. It can adjust and calibrate in the middle of a tournament to try to get the most accurate ratings. I would argue that someone placing third at a tournament with five top players says more about their skill than someone placing first at a similarly-sized event with only weak players.

As for the comment on rolling recalculations, when I worked on the tournament database project I had a functioning Elo-based system that didn't have a problem updating every time a new tournament was added, even if it was old. I actually didn't work on it long enough to optimize recalculations based on the time the tournament happened, so it was running over one hundred brackets including some of the enormous Apex events every time, taking maybe a couple of seconds on an 11-year-old laptop. I'm not sure where your concern here is.

The tennis ATP system is probably the best "neutral" ranking system; since it bases itself solely on tournament results. It doesn't care who you played against, just how you performed.

I haven't seen another system that's only based on placement, so I can't disagree with it being the best that only cares about overall performance. I don't think this is a strength, though. It's like bragging that it uses the least amount of data possible.

ELO also suffers from the issue where it actually promotes top players into NOT attending events. If you are high ranked on the ladder, you may not want to attend anymore events because you put your ranking at risk.

This isn't something that most people are concerned with, because the top players will always have the highest ratings and inactive players get phased out of the ranked lists until they start playing again. This is just a really odd concern. It's also assuming that people play a game for the sole purpose of rankings, which I don't really see happening in a game with as high of a skill floor as Smash.

The ATP system is designed to "stale" older rankings. So it promotes people to continue attending events to meet the minimum event requirement.

Minimum event requirements are also really bad, in my opinion. I have to drive over an hour to get to the nearest tournaments, which are one per month during certain parts of the year. To get to the next-closest, it's 3+ hours. It causes people who don't live in big areas to be unable to get a meaningful rating.

 

[Warchamp7]

There is no such thing as a perfect ranking system, otherwise multiple would not exist.

We have the system configured in a way we feel is as fair as possible to all players and of course, can always tweak point numbers if they're not currently ideal.

 

[Zach777]

So how am I going to get my rankings on this? Do I have to wait until a TO posts results on the ranking system or can I just claim my placement in the tourney as long as its posted to Smashboards? What happens when a tourney's results aren't posted to Smashboards? Because there is a tournament series where I live that gets 128 entrants on average and it's results are never posted.

 

[Warchamp7]

The event will need to be submitted on Smashboards, and then you can claim your result in the results list. Convince them to submit the results!

 

[Strong Badam]

So how am I going to get my rankings on this? Do I have to wait until a TO posts results on the ranking system or can I just claim my placement in the tourney as long as its posted to Smashboards? What happens when a tourney's results aren't posted to Smashboards? Because there is a tournament series where I live that gets 128 entrants on average and it's results are never posted.

...why not?

 

[Zach777]

Thanks Warchamp7 for answering my question, but I have another one. If the TO posts the results but doesn't submit them to the rankings could I do it for them?

Strong Bad. I wish RU Game? Store would but they don't. You can find the video they made on how many entrants and who won it for the first one but nothing was put up for the second one.

P.S. If your a TO and want 128 entrants like they get then the prize has to be the winner's choice of either an XBox one, PS4, or WiiU with a side choice of cash.

 

[Warchamp7]

Yes, you can post on behalf of another organizer. Make sure to include a link to the event listing and results thread if they exist when you submit it so mods can verify it

 

[Warchamp7]

I made some additions to the event embed bbcode.

Previously your only option was the following:

[event=full]ID[/event]

This would embed your full event results, as well as the bracket image if applicable.

You can now also add nobracket, to hide the bracket image, like so:

[event=full,nobracket]ID[/event]
[event=nobracket,full]ID[/event]

Finally, you can also show just the top # of entrants by using it like this:

[event=8]ID[/event]

This will show only the top 8 of your event. It can also be combined with the nobracket part mentioned above.

Enjoy!

The Big House 3 Singles Bracket

Rank

Player

Characters

Points

Earnings

User

1st

Kirk

2,400

$374.40

Kirk

2nd

PikaChad

2,160

$144.00

-Chad-

3rd

VaNz

1,920

$86.40

Cia

4th

Mew2King

1,728

$57.60

Mew2King

5th

Rat

1,536

$21.60

Rat

5th

Oracle

1,536

$21.60

Oracle

7th

Hungrybox

1,344

$7.20

hungrybox

7th

Scythe

1,344

$7.20

Scythe

9th

Yakal

1,152

Yakal

9th

SFAT

1,152

SFAT

 

[Ori_bro]

How far back are we allowed to submit results? I have all of Michigan's Brawl Tournaments I can upload and most of Michigan's Project M stuff.

 

[Warchamp7]

As far as you like! Ideally we'd have every tournament archived eventually