*kind of Marcel asked to share 'my idea' of a 'perfect' ranking-system and i wrote some words already at the iRacing-forum, because the iRacing-ranking is nuts and keeping away many people from races and leaving empty servers, because of the risk of loosing iRating. The main problem with an ELO-based system is: you gain points, someone else is loosing points in the same split and so is iRacing. When 20 people are racing against each other, 10 people are gaining points and 10 people are loosing them in every split. If you don't race at all, you stay where you are. This is ridiculous stupid, because it doesn't reward participation and people are just focusing on very few series they can master so stay away out of possible trouble. All vintage-series are now almost deserted because of that system. In real racing you only gain points when getting a Top 10 position, but don't loose points. At the end of a season everybody starts with 0 points again, but certainly the better drivers gaining reputation and i have an idea to express this with ranking-points like money in capitalism by inflation and crash. For example: 20 people participate in a race. P3 to P10 gaining points, P1 and P2 don't gain points (or participation points?) because they already had the same or better results with the same combination, P11-16 don't get points, P17-20 loose points for DNF. After every season do a simple math: How much rating-points in percent are now more in the system per racer in average and delete them from every racer equally. So when the points doubled during the season, every racer looses 50% rating for the next season whatever they did. You have more points, you loose more points, but still hold more points. Seems still an ELO-system for me, kind of... The Pros are: -Participation is rewarding in general. If you are not fast enough for points, but staying clean to the end, you don't loose anything per race. The more races, the more chances to gain rating. But only the best result per combination should count IMO. -In this system you can give away points for anything, because they will be deleted anyway. -You only can gain rating or stay where you are during a race without loosing anything, but at the end of a season you will loose rating anyway, so better keep racing. A lower limit to that system is possible as well, but if you only can gain points during a season, it's easier to succeed as well even when starting low. -Stockpiling rating doesn't work. If you don't race, others gaining points and at the end of the season your rating is split to half in this example. Racing will always win, maybe with the DNF-exception. -For the best rating you need to master as many series as possible, but you still end as a master of none if you try too many and not finishing well enough. So finding a good balance is key. Very talented drivers for GT3 for example can still gain extra-points for winning more races, but the overall rating should be more a measurement what drivers doing best in several different cars. People like André Lotterer and Lucas di Grassi are for me the top-drivers and not people who are only master in one class. -The only difference compare to an ELO-based system is: The minus-points getting substracted equally to all in percent and this will hurt the people most who don't race.
I've been 3 years on iRacing and now it's a year i go only with rFactor2. I knowed the ranking system on iRacing, I arrived at about 2300 of irating... now and at that time i don't have much time to partecipate at races. Usually I play on weekend because work, family and various commitments don't allow to me to play more often. Now Studio 397 has GT3, GTE, LMP2, LMP3, USF2000, historics McLaren, Formula E, Kartsim, Renault Megane, Renault Clio, Nissan GT500, Nissan GTR, Nissan 370z, historics Eve and Spark, Brabham BT20, Brabham BT44B, March 761, Radical SR3-RSX, Formula ISI and Renault 3.5, Formula 2, Marussia, Dallara DW12, Honda Civic BTTC, Stockcar, Corvette GT2... Panoz, Howston, AC427Sc and other cars like Corvette and Skip Barber that came with Image Space Incorporated. I think it's not easy to think of a competition system well done... Cars to participate in various series of races and hotlaps there are... and I think many at the moment will throw them on the GT3. I would do a separate ranking for each series. There will be the championship for the GT3, the Endurance championship with GTE and LMP, the championship for the Historical Formula ... When I was younger the time to devote to the personal computer was much more and I think there are many users of my age ... There are those who will be able to participate in several series at the same time ... Who will have little time and maybe will only do the championship with GT3 or Historic Cars or others... And there will also be those who will participate only to make hotlaps. I think there is no hurry, you have to think about it ... the fear is that if there are too many series only some will have participants and others will be deserted ... I do a big good luck to the S397 to be able to create something beautiful
using ELO system maybe better if the players didn't know what their "rating" was and it was just used for the matchmaking in the background then people could just race without getting paranoid about a number on the screen next to their name. If you do enough races you will gain on some, lose on others and your "skill" rating should eventually hover around about the same level. I don't know how iRacing system works, but in PC2 a lot of people are put off because you lose a lot of points if you DNF or DSC whether it's your fault or not. You gain points by beating people with more points than you and lose points if somebody with less points beats you and (i think) that is calculated from who was in the lobby at the start of the race not who's left at the end. Also having the number on display is like a magnet for people to crash you out if you have more points than them so they can gain more....
I don't have an opinion yet because I couldn't get past the 'loose' everywhere. Sorry to be pedantic, but please - you don't loose anything, you lose something. The only loose on a sim racing forum is describing oversteer. Or as Seven Smiles might put it - please don't bring me down. Use lose.
In chess ELO works perfectly. It is a pretty accurate representation of someones strength/skill. Oposite to something like ATP points in tennis. I can't think of any better system than ELO (generally speaking, not just in simracing).
@Filip I guess it should work well for chess, considering that was what it was designed for. I had no idea what this was about (I gather it was in The Social Network, which I never watched) but wikipedia has a good article which appears to cover a lot of what we might talk about over a number of pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system So that's probably a good place to start.
iRacing and pCars 2 are alike in terms of ranking-points and in both i choose(d) to run only races i'm confindent to gain points, which is the biggest problem with ELO and like i wrote, it's not in real racing at all. Racing is unlike chess a game you need some luck and proper preparation to master it. You don't have to practice Chess to beat people with less skills and better ones win like 9 out of 10 times. Sim-Racing is even far worse with all the options you can pick and a rating-system should reward the ones most who are better in any class. But giving people a rank in points is certainly a great way to motivate and iRacing is the best example that this works even with the flaws. That's why 'my' inflation-/crash-system tries to combine both by punishing absence rather than participation. It's still punishing, but just once every three months for example and not multiple times. The Safety-Rating is IMO better in pCars 2. First you can't gain or loose that many SR like in iRacing and it's more a measurement of long-term driving and second: you need to race people to gain SR. Just driving slowly at the end or fast at the front not passing anyone doesn't count like in iRacing. Starting any ranking-system with too many series and races would be stupid in the beginning. SRS still often just have one race every hour and that's probably a good starting point to check if people participate enough and fine-tuning it.
This stuff is always complicated, there will be people that want to see the number on the screen, there are those that dont. Personally as long as ratings are given I dont mind. I do wish there would be some kind of split like FIA does with sports cars (bronze, silver, gold, etc) would help a lot for leagues, especially endurance to split people by class. Could have a classification for overall skill and one per car type *Every system is open to manipulation in gaming tho
What's ELP? Google doesn't know it. Some kind of an ELO-system is a must and Sim Racing System has a very clever one. You only loose points per race in case of a DNF, but the global ranks doesn't inflate. I'm just not into AC anymore and the Raceroom-implementation and participation isn't that good.
ELO is shorthand for a Music band called Electric Light Orchestra. ELP is the same for a band called Emerson, Lake, & Palmer. ELP was famous for long exploring songs featuring some of the first Moog Synthesizer arrangements and ELO first became well known because they featured a small string ensemble to augment the usual guitars and drums. I was being silly and stealing your thread for a moment of frivolity. My apologies.
