{BLuT}KrebS is unhappy with the BHG ratings.

I can make a nick and play 4-5 games and get a 2.1k rating. Now think about the 30-40 best players doing that. The result will be that the top 500 ranks will be covered by just a few smurfs (greetings from AOM). Imo this cannot be the aim of a rating system. It is defenitely too easy to get high rated nicks. BHG has to change this if they don't want smurfing to destroy the rating system.

Actually I think the point of the rating system is to accurately display your rating -- as quickly as possible. It shouldn't take more than 20 games to establish where you are supposed to be -- in BHG's case it is 8 games, but that's another matter. A system that requires you to play 200 games before your rating is "accurate" isn't a true rating system, but a play for points system. Where you are not measuring skillas much as you are measuring time invested.

Richter says to "just stick with the O4B rankings" ;-) I appreciate the plug, but even the O4B rankings would be subject to this manipulation.

However, I could just increase the threshold for appearance to 50 or even 100 games. That won't stop serious smurfs, but it would clean out 95% of them (all except the Spam .. err... TuF clan :-)

Their rating system is excellent, however, the biggest flaw is the ability to create an unlimited number of nicks. They oughta just make it one per CD key. "But what about my brother?" yada yada yada Buy your own game! Until they make it so you can only have ONE (or at least limit it to a small number) nick per CD, then they'll always be subject to this (you'd also need to allow for changing your nick to allow clan turnover and the like). You WANT to be able to get to 2100 in 4-5 games if that's where you belong.
posted by Tim at 3:44 PM