kostka's blog

Rating decay
By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

We probably all noticed that the rating inflation still occurs [citation needed].

In several games, there's a thing called "rating decay", when your rating decreases when you don't play ranked games (in our world: if you don't participate in contests). Please compare:

What do you think about implementing such a solution to the Codeforces rating? It should slowly drain some of the unnecessary rating (especially from people who do not participate anymore). Similar to many sources above, I think it should affect only highly rated users (maybe with 2100+ rating?). It can also serve as an encouragement to participate in contests more often.

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +65 Vote: I do not like it

It might serve as an encouragement to participate more, but

  1. I am assuming one can play a game at any time, but for contests you can't just sit at your preferred time.

  2. If rating decays below a certain level then, there might be many coders who are actually at a high level and they will dominate a div2 contests since they did not / could not participate in previous contests.

Just my thoughts though

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    Something like to participate once a month is feasible

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it -45 Vote: I do not like it

    So you say people which playing video games r jobless? there are lost of people in dota 2 which earned more than lots of people in codeforces.

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      When did I say that? And I have played dota2 and I know about TI.

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        5 years ago, # ^ |
        ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it -33 Vote: I do not like it

        "I am assuming one can play a game at any time" it is not like that at all , you will suffer a lot when u lost lots of mmr at pro scene which some times make you reluctant to play ranked , thats why they put an option like normal ranked , to make play in some cases without stress.

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +27 Vote: I do not like it

          I think you misunderstood, he is saying that one can play a game at any time because if you have time and want to, you can just queue and play a ranked game, but you can't do that in codeforces because the contests are in fixed time, so I even that I have 3 hours free today I can't participate in a rated contest because there is not a contest today

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          5 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +26 Vote: I do not like it

          Pro scene

          MMR

          OMEGALUL. Nobody gives a shit about your MMR in pro scene. Are you Herald btw?

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +27 Vote: I do not like it

rating is just a number. who cares!?

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +7 Vote: I do not like it

    Oh really , do u even heard "god created the natural numbers all the rest is the work of man"

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it -82 Vote: I do not like it

      That's the dumbest quote ever. God gave man the intelligence and ability to reason as well, so calling it "work of man" is stupid.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        1. That comment is 14 months old.

        2. Come on, that is not the point of the quote. It's like "this quote is wrong because I choose to interpret the meanings of words in a way that makes it wrong".

        3. That comment is 14 months old.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +56 Vote: I do not like it

    Rating mostly stands for skill. Increase in your rating should give you satisfaction by proving progress, and decrease could (should?) give you motivation to work to fix your mistakes... at least that's how I view it.

    money is also "just a number", this statement is weak.

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      5 years ago, # ^ |
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      In my opinion, satisfaction and good feeling after solving a (hard) problem are enough and also good motivation to solve more problems. I'm talking about CF rating so your last sentence does not make any sense.

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        5 years ago, # ^ |
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        In my opinion, they are not.

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        5 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +24 Vote: I do not like it

        I agree, solving a hard problem is satisfying... this doesn't diminish from rating satisfaction. As I said, CF rating is like proof that you are skilled and you put effort into improving yourself. If you're stating your opinion, don't be surprised that I disagree.

        Also my last sentence was just to say that a lot of people call rating just a number, even though there's a meaning behind it.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
    ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +32 Vote: I do not like it

    Bank deposit is just a number, do u care? The number grows, I am happy.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
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    You care enough to comment here.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
    ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

    The biggest thing is that people classifies people by their color. Even some programming contest platforms classify users and give some permissions to only high color users. This is prevalent to whole CP community; which might be toxic in some cases. In this atmosphere, many people are going to focus in their rating.

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +37 Vote: I do not like it

It should slowly drain some of the unnecessary rating (especially from people who do not participate anymore).

If they don't participate, then they are not causing rating inflation. So it doesn't matter in this case.

encouragement to participate in contests more often

This does the opposite — it causes rating inflation.

I see no reason why this should be considered to help at all. Even in your final starcraft2 link they removed rating decay 4 years ago.

And a big problem in these sort of games is some dude who gets deranked from rating decay basically ends up getting a couple of smurf matches and dominating everyone else (aka: 10 reds coming back to get their rating again and crushing a bunch of div2 people). You know how there are always a ton of unranked shady guys winning div2 contests? It will be like that, but with more people.

So basically, nah.

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    5 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it
    This does the opposite — it causes rating inflation.

    Could you please elaborate? I never looked into it closely, so the rating system of CF isn't intuitive enough for me to be confident about this claim being correct (or about it being wrong).

    I used to think that the main source of inflation is new accounts that "give" rating to the system and get abandoned with a rating lower than their initial rating. Is this idea wrong? Or is there a different key reason? Sum of rating changes for arbitrary CF round is negative, so it sounds like by participating there you are "expected" to decrease your rating (though it would be wrong to assume that things are this simple: it is not clear how the fact of your participation affects overall sum of rating changes in the round).

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -24 Vote: I do not like it

Plot twist : You are paid by Heroes of the Storm . :D

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +38 Vote: I do not like it

Next blog be like: Let's hide rating numbers from people and show color only (CS:GO), and devs do what ever they want.

(Actually calibration (In CS:GO you play 10 matches before your rank gets defined) makes sense, most of one-time accounts will be eliminated)

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5 years ago, # |
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I fully agree your opinion. Like other video games, if you don't do competitive programming for a long time, then your cp-optimized observation skill is going down.

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5 years ago, # |
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(especially from people who do not participate anymore)

But why would we care about them?

They are effectively not a part of the rating ecosystem if they don't participate; they don't affect rating re-distribution in any way.

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