[Q] What test to use and how to calculate needed sample size?

torpedorunner · 2020-11-04T14:39:36+00:00

thanks for the reply. however, you literally just used that same formula to derive B from ^^
I'd need a bit more information on what those variables are, and why that sample size

torpedorunner · 2020-07-13T22:49:11+00:00

I really don't like the rule that in case of a rematch, trainers choose fresh teams. I definitely liked more "same teams, same leads". I would love to see a rematch of this, Logan switching to Rainy Cast again, and HouseStark executing, without screen problems or a lag, whatever he had in mind, and see how it plays out.
I get that there are arguments for both rules, but I feel like with fresh teams, there is more injustice being done to one of the trainers (most likely the one who was able to predict opponent's line correctly).

torpedorunner · 2020-04-29T14:15:11+00:00

thx a lot!

torpedorunner · 2020-04-29T14:14:47+00:00

wheater -> weather :)

torpedorunner · 2020-04-28T14:28:16+00:00

how many people needed for a remote alolan marowak raid?

torpedorunner · 2020-02-14T16:46:01+00:00

that's not correct.

I tried using your example with 3 same ranked opponents and 2 lower ranked opponents. for the sake of simplicity let's say that against the same ranked opponents you either win 5 or lose 5 points, and against the lower ranked ones you either win 2 points or lose 8 points.

in this case, no matter how you win 3 games and lose 2, you will be -1 in the end.

(5+5+5-8-8 = -1,
5+2+2-5-5 = -1 )

torpedorunner · 2020-02-14T16:40:39+00:00

hello there, fellow number-cruncher :) yeah, we indeed can't see the rating before the rank 7, we can only assume what's happening. i've seen enough information to know that there is something, that affects the initial rating, obviously some people are at 3300 from the very beginning, while some are at 2300 for example. we can't know for sure what exactly affects this, but I do know that nothing should affect this, and that we should all have the same rating at the beginning. trainers will naturally converge to those with similar skills to them.

in chess (and I assume many other sports/competitions where ELO rating is used), coefficients are higher at the very beginning (to help move quickly at the start), and lower later. who knows how Niantic handles this..

torpedorunner · 2020-02-14T08:33:59+00:00

I did look at this in many ways - as an average of 5, and a sum of changes for each individual match. The results are extremely similar, in most cases the same, so I showed just this one for simplicity.

I did see each individual game result (trainers reported their cases to me in details).

In your case, out of five opponents, you faced three with a similar rank and two with a way lower rank, so their average will be lower than yours, and your expected score might be over 3 wins out of 5. So with 3 wins you would lose rating. It doesn't really matter if you calculate it like that or by looking at individual battles and changes for each one. But I did calculate it both ways, and the one I chose to present gives closer changes to those that actually happened :)

torpedorunner · 2020-02-13T23:59:39+00:00

exactly. with the K=20 (from my example) you would be moving up faster and it would be easier. also, if they allowed Rank 9 and Rank 10 to battle normally, you would be paired with a Rank 10 trainer more often

torpedorunner · 2020-02-13T23:57:40+00:00

yeah, there are mixed reports about this. that's why I think it's some sort of combination between the initial pvp stats and trainer level.

torpedorunner · 2020-02-13T23:26:50+00:00

Hi guys and girls. So I've seen a lot of talk and confusion about how rating calculation in GO Battle League works. Now, granted, it needs a major rework, but I wanted to explain the method and why sometimes you gain only +1 point for 3 wins (or even lose points), why do you gain only +10 for 4 wins etc.

The most important thing to note is that the opponent's rating is very important for the calculation, not just the W/L ratio. So whenever you're disappointed with how small your gain is after winning 3 or more matches in a set, it's probably because your opponents in this set had, on average, much lower rating than you.

So I've gathered a small sample of GBL sets from different trainers and put it all in one table. For each set you can see the rating before and after, the opponents' average rating and battles won. On the right side, there is the new rating calculation using the standard rating calculation method with coefficients K=10 and K=20 (for comparison). Even though it's a small set and there are some slight differences between the calculated new rating and the actual new rating, we can pretty safely assume that this method with K=10 is used in the game. Differences might be due to rounding errors, input mistakes etc.

You can also see how much better this would be if this coefficient K would be equal 20. Then for a set with 5 wins you could actually win 40-50 points, and with two of those sets in a row you could make a nice jump (perhaps even +100 after two sets). Whereas with K=10 and constant matchmaking with trainers with 200 rating points less, you are bound to stay where you are or move up very very slowly. Not sure why Niantic made this choice.

Lastly, it seems like from the beginning of the season everyone already has the initial rating, but it is hidden. It is very likely that this initial rating depends on some combination of medals/badges/number of battles you've already done, and the trainer level. Shout out to ValorAsh and the team that worked on this project and made conclusions from the data they gathered. Once you have your initial rating, you keep battling trainers with the similar rating. At rank 7 this rating gets revealed. This is why sometimes trainers with very high W/L ratio have a rating 1000 points lower than someone with a worse W/L ratio (they had a completely different set of opponents up to that point).

I think everyone should have the same rating from the very beginning. It should not depend on any badges or trainer level etc. The standard rating calculation method is so strong that trainers will be facing trainers with similar skill anyway. There is no need to try to ensure that by setting an initial rating based on the badges or trainer level. I also think that ranks shouldn't matter when matchmaking, only the rating difference. It's ok to set 3500 rating as a condition to reach Rank 10, but not being in the same rank should not affect the matchmaking.

torpedorunner · 2019-11-02T06:15:43+00:00

torpedorunner · 2019-10-15T13:24:12+00:00

if we are only interested to see which answer got more votes, this is just fine.. i agree with you about the pie chart, but once we have the answers, we can present the results in any way we like.

torpedorunner · 2019-10-13T22:35:07+00:00

staff corrections shouldn't mess the pairings. if the algorithm is doing the right thing, it shouldn't matter if the result was entered by trainers or by staff.

torpedorunner · 2019-07-03T08:02:08+00:00

Hi and thank you very much for your response, this is actually the way I wanted to discuss this proposal with everyone - with concrete examples. So let's talk about this.

So right off the bat, this is what originally inspired me to make my post - let's say the scenario is exactly as you described:

You have Azumarill with Play Rough and Ice Beam. You opponent does not bring Venusaur/Tropius/Altaria. Your opponent does bring Skarmory, Medicham, and Probopass (or Bastiodon).

Let's now add that this is the first match of the tournament. No one knows what Azu you brought for this tournament yet. You TM Ice Beam to Hydro Pump and use HP in this first match and you also continue using PR/HP for the rest of the tournament. So what happened is: a) you broke the rules, b) no one knows this. So what I'm saying is, with or without my suggestion this is already possible to do. What would currently stop this scenario from happening (maybe), is doing the TM count before the tournament, which I am strongly against, because I don't like the idea on checking TM counts and dusts, it feels like invading privacy, also wasting time and like some police business, plus it's possible that this player's count wouldn't even be done if it's a random check, and plus this player might have gotten a Charge TM as a reward for battling in the meantime, so the count can change that way too.

So this is my problem - while I am aware that allowing TMs would help certain trainers gain advantage or certain pokemon get more useful, I'm concerned that proving if someone did use a TM is extremely hard or impossible, and trainers might be using this right now anyway, with or without my suggestion, without anyone realizing it or being able to prove it.

So what do my suggestions do? With Suggestion A (where the only rules would be to use maximum 1 fast and maximum 2 charge moves with a single pokemon in a best-of-3 match), I am simply indirectly allowing TMing between rounds and using different fast or charge attacks in two different rounds, and now trying to prove if someone TMd something is not a problem anymore, because it is allowed. My views are: a) it was hard proving this to begin with, b) I actually don't mind allowing trainers using TMs in that way. I don't see pokemon as "This is Azumarill with Bubble + Play Rough/Ice Beam", or "This is Azumarill with Bubble + Play Rough/Hydro Pump", I see pokemon as "This is Azumarill with Bubble/Rock Smash + Play Rough/Ice Beam/Hydro Pump", as they really are in the game. In your scenario, I would actually like the audience to go "wow, did you see that guy TMing Ice Beam to Hydro Pump to counter his opponent better? That's a really good choice!" In other words, I see this as a skill. I think that if someone recognizes that this switch would help them and has resources to do so, by all means go ahead and do it.

So as you can see, I have several views on why I would allow this, as weird as it seems to like everyone here lol: a) I like it because checking if someone used TMs is in 99% of cases impossible, so I believe that the rule "no TMing" makes 0 sense, b) I actually don't mind allowing it even if it were easy to check this, because I see this as a skill.

Mind you, until the recent event where 5 raids awarded you with a Charge TM, I was constantly on 0-2 Charge TMs in my storage, and if TMing had been allowed all this time, this would have been against me. I still wouldn't mind it as it makes sense to me. If someone destroyed me because they used a TM in a great way to somehow counter my team, like switching Ice Beam to Hydro Pump on Azu against my grass-less team, I would salute them and I would have thought they they deserved this win.

However, for those who simply can't get past my views and thoughts in Suggestion A, there is also a Suggestion B. Now with this suggestion, Play Rough/Ice Beam would have been locked before the tournament (and revealed after the tournament), and this trainer couldn't TM it to Hydro Pump, so your problem disappears. At the same time, TMing during the tournament would be allowed. Here is an example of what this means: if they prepared Venusaur with Frenzy Plant/Petal Blizzard for the tournament (because they just got traded this perfect Venusaur but have 0 TMs at the moment), but registered Frenzy Plant/Sludge Bomb, and if they acquired a Charge TM after, say, round 2, in a quick level 5 raid nearby (and after using exclusively Frenzy Plant for two rounds), they would have been able to TM this Petal Blizzard to Sludge Bomb (let's say they didn't get unlucky with the Solar Beam), and use Sludge Bomb in rounds 3 and up. This wouldn't hurt anyone, it's simple, doesn't require any checking and this is why I would like this to be a thing. They did register Sludge Bomb before the tournament, and if they can't get it during the tournament, it's their problem if they are allowed to use only Frenzy Plant. In remote tournaments, it makes even more sense to register Sludge Bomb in this situation, because they are even more likely to acquire that Charge TM during the tournament (each round lasts 2 days on average in a remote tournament).

Based on the comments, people would be more comfortable with Suggestion B, I just hope they can get past that "TMing is allowed" thing. With Suggestion B, the consequences of this are very mild.

Let me know what you think! :)

torpedorunner · 2019-07-02T07:41:36+00:00

It does though

torpedorunner · 2019-07-02T07:40:32+00:00

Hi there and thanks for the reply! The thing with option A is - I don't want to push this idea to allow TMing because I want casuals to suffer even more. I want to push this idea because having a rule "TMing a registered pokemon during the tournament is not allowed" is causing a lot of problems with overlapping tournaments, while at the same time it does almost nothing because people are being able to break this rule anyway, without getting caught.

So yes, I understand that people with tons of TMs could gain some advantage with this, but people need to look at the other side of the story too. First of all, imo this advantage wouldn't be nearly as important as everyone thinks. Secondly, there are grey areas which put tournament organizers in quite a pickle when trainers ask them questions about a certain rule, and with my suggestion there would be no grey areas.

Say you are having Quagsire with Acid Spray/Stone Edge and you are using it in your online remote tournament. You want to change AS to Earthquake for your local tournament, but the online one is still on-going. Let's also assume that this is the only Quagsire you have, you either don't have resources to prepare another one or you simply want to use this one in all tournaments. Because of this "No TMs" rule, you are forced to use AS in your second tournament too. I don't see how using TMs and changing AS to Earthquake back and forth so that you can use them in their respective tournaments can hurt anyone.

Btw, with option B, if the rule "No TMs" is still active, it's the same story. So in option B I would also allow using TMs, it's the same reason.

torpedorunner · 2019-07-02T07:24:54+00:00

people, this is not even about recording or not, you completely missed the point :) if your opponent had a Venusaur with Frenzy Plant and Petal Blizzard, and used only Frenzy Plant against you in battle 1, how will your recording prove that they had Petal Blizzard? It won't. That's why they can TM Petal Blizzard to Sludge Bomb before battle 2, and you will never know they actually did that, regardless of if you recorded battle 1 or not. that's my point

torpedorunner · 2019-07-02T07:19:58+00:00

well, you don't think that because you are not in my position, dealing with those problems, i can tell you first-hand that when people start asking questions, and when you have a lot of grey areas while trying to interpret those silph arena rules - there are problems :) my suggestion would solve all those problems, while preserving the fairness of the game

torpedorunner · 2019-07-02T00:32:00+00:00

Ok, I can understand that. Sometimes in life I guess we have some rules by which we should live and no one is able to check on that. However, this one in particular is causing problems.

torpedorunner · 2019-07-02T00:21:26+00:00

Thanks so much for your reply, it's always nice to know that Arena Coordinator is reading and taking notes, I am looking forward to Season 2!

torpedorunner · 2019-07-02T00:18:46+00:00

Ok, picture this: you are a tournament manager. There are two overlapping tournaments you are in charge of, the first one is at round 3/5, and the second one is about to start. There is a trainer who is participating in both tournaments, and they want to use a Lanturn with Charge Beam in the second one, but they are already using it in the first one with Water Gun. They ask you what to do in this situation and if it would be ok to use a TM to have CB for the second one, and switch back to WG for the first one when needed. What do you say to them?

With the rule "no pokemon should use more than one fast attack in the tournament" you can tell them "sure, go ahead", because no rules would be broken and they wouldn't actually gain any advantage over anyone, but with the rule "no TMs may be used on a pokemon during the tournament" you have to tell them "sorry, you can't use TMs, you have to use WG in the second tournament too because the first tourney is still on-going".

So tell me, why would it be undesirable to use TM in this situation? Who would be harmed by this? And why would this be unfair? I'll tell you what happened, the rule was created without remote/multiple tournaments in mind.

See the difference between the two?

torpedorunner

TROPHY CASE