Just win Pinburgh and you won't have to worry about super league or any other small tournament points.

I participate less in leagues because my schedule rarely allows me to commit the same time each week to pinball. Has nothing to do with WPPRs. As evidenced by my relatively frequent participation in the pin-golf ---- I'm certainly not banking a bunch of WPPRs there. I'm playing for fun (which is thankfully what I can say about each event I play in)

This is why the new system is far superior.

No more grabbing 4 or 5 people and having a tournament that essentially guarantees you 25 points.

As if that would isn't bad enough, they then throw a side tournament into the mix for an additional 12
points.

The players that have gamed the system in the past will be easy to spot. They will be the one's that will have their over inflated rankings drop like a stone under the new system.

I applaud Josh's efforts to continually tweak the points system to accurately reflect the skill level of the players.

I am not clear on what happens when EVERY player at the tourney has less than 5 rated events.

The base value would be zero, and the final calculation is a multiplier of that value,right?

It might be rare that it occurs, but for a TD who wanted to promote a local event with the sole purpose of attracting brand new players to the tourney scene, how would the final value be calculated?

Seems there has to be a minimum, non-zero value of the tourney.

EDIT. I think I see it. The base value will be zero but then each player starts with a provisional 1200 rating. That would be used to determine what rating value is added to the zero base value. I was assuming the players would still have no rating at this point and it would all be zeroes.

Am I on the right track?

Any player with a rating of 1285.71 or less will have no impact on the strength of the tournament.

From the ifpa website

Yes, I just saw that too.

At this point I am not going to edit my edit

I'll just wait for Josh/Brian to explain what happens if nobody playing the tourney meets the 5 established event requirement.

All this WPPR talk is making me hungry.

image.jpg

http://www.ifpapinball.com/wppr-v5-1-details#comments

Some good thoughts and insight being expressed there.

Jeff - I actually joked with Brian about that if there's a tournament that starts in Iceland or something and there's actually no rated players.

We'll deal with it if/when that happens

The interesting thing about pinball is that it's really hard for something to be created out of nowhere without an existing player base being the group to make that happen. We're a little too niche at this point to have large groups of random new players organizing an event to submit to our calendar.

I second the notion.

Good point. There could be a way to circumvent this.
Players with 5+ events worth 0.5 for base value
Players with 1-4 events worth 0.1 - 0.4
New players worth 0.05...

A tourney involving 20 total noobs would have a base value of 1.0.

The lack of value for league play is too bad. In a league of 20 players our 9th place finisher received less points than a participant in a high score tournament that uses a single game for qualifying. You can earn more points plunging a single ball than being part of a league that meets for months and plays over 40+ games to establish final standings.

This is BY far the best compromise I have seen tossed out.

This is very logical and makes it slightly more fair to all while still incentivizing players that are point hounds to get their buddies to come play and to also return.

This also is logically the inverse to the current TPA (I think that is what it is called) value that a good players adds to the base. If someone has fewer than 5 competitions the assumption is that thye are not as good and hence less of a challenge to beat by experienced players. However, with pinball there are times where even a 1st timer can win an entire event. Also times where someone may not have IFPA experience but is a damn fine player and can win a big event without even being rated yet.

What do you think about this compromise Josh?

I can dig it.

The biggest issue becomes the way our tables are setup, and the implementation of being able to make something like this happen (this falls on Brian). The way everything is structured sometimes even the easiest proposals would require an entire rewrite of the process, and we're still a bunch of volunteers doing this on free time

I believe that the logic behind the base value calc is to simply look at the player count. It currently doesn't involve having to look up individual profiles and assign a value based on the activity of those profiles (much more complicated).

I think the "Rated Player" thing was the easiest implementation as we already have another table in the database that flags players as someone that can be rated after 5 events, or not. Since that already exists I think it becomes easier to adjust player count to look at that table to find the number.

Once you get into something other than an on/off variable for whether a player is rated or not, things of course become increasingly complex. We don't actually assign base point values per player, it's simply based on the "player count". We'll look into the possibility of adding 'fractions of a player' to the player count based on the experience of that player. If we can pull it off without too much trouble I like the idea.

Nah, no drama here...

Established rated player = 1.0 base points

Newbie = 0.1 base points

And from the dark depths of fractional hell emerges the established pinball nemesis METRIC MAN, who can boldly claim he is 10 times better than mere mortal players LOL

All in fun. Keep up the good work, Josh and Brian.

What about making the metric whether the player is ranked, rather than rated. Effectively making it so that a player will add to the base points value as long as they have played in ONE IFPA event previously, not FIVE. This would eliminate the brand new player artificially inflating the event value, but reward a league or tourney that gets repeat customers. We have a lot of local players who don't travel much, if at all. Having them have to compete in 5 events locally could take 1-2 years.

I appreciate the efforts going into preventing abuse of the system. I understand that those abuses can happen no matter what system is in place. If I tried to pull the crap that is listed in the examples my guys (and gals) would call me on it for sure. The funny thing is that we have run into the opposite in the past where we started as a best of 5 and had to do 3 in the finals because we were going to have the power turned off. I have the timing pretty well down for the events I run and we can ask for an extra 15 minutes if it really comes down to it.

As to the complaining about new player not counting for a while, do they really care? New players in anything I put on only know what I tell them unless they research for themselves. If I tell them that they don't add points for 3 or 5 events because is the way it is, what is the damage?

I can track any event I put on as a series on a spreadsheet an embed it into a web site. Shoot, that is what I do for TPL. I submit events to IFPA because there are players that want it, myself included. Personally, I don't really care what my intl ranking is, but my state ranking is important to me. Bringing in new local players helps that, and if they don't add anything for a little while, everyone else is impacted the same way.

this pretty much sums up my thoughts with respect to the base value changes.

i just started running tournaments here in Ottawa, Canada. i have a mix of competitive players (locals and out-of-towners), "collector" crowd players (know pinball well, but don't actively seek out competition), and pinball novices. it's essentially an 80%/20% mix of casual:serious competitive players.

players from the collector crowd and novice crowd can and will (and HAVE in my tourneys) give the competitive players a run for their money. i understand that gaming the system needs to stop, but completely discounting a 'casual' competitive players abilities and giving 0 base value (!!!) to their participation doesn't make sense. some sort of discount to the base value or lowering the # of events would assist in deterring those from blatently abusing the system, but still give credit for real quality of competition.

essentially, in my case, you are telling me that ~20% of the participants, being the competitive players, may as well have played a tournament amongst themselves rather than playing a full field of players that CAN and WILL provide real competition...

This will also create a new biais for tournament organizers: instead of promoting tourneys to attract new players, you now rely on your hardcore competitors. No need for noobs who will play 1 tourney and leave. Better increase the number of games between the ranked players.

Remember that any new law/rule/metrics creates adaptative behavior; to correct one abusive attitude, you promote another one.

Whatever the base point you allow to new players, it should not be zero (and I like the 1.0 vs 0.1 range as well).

It's entertaining to see that over the past 9 years where player count didn't mean anything towards base value that organizers still found a way to try and get everyone they possibly could to participate.

Wppr's are clearly a valuable thing to many, but the idea that now giving base value points to rated players leading to organizers suddenly not trying to get new players involved in our game seems a little over the top.

I'm hopeful that whatever changes happen to Wppr's in the years to come, or if they possibly ever go away for good that the motivation of getting new players to participate in our sport will all be a self fulfilling thing for organizers.

sent you an email

How about striking a balance and allowing new players to add to the base after 3 events, instead of 5?
This would curb the abuse, and set a more reasonable barrier to entry.

It's on the table but we're working on a dynamic solution between 1-5 events. A new new player would most likely still add 0 to the base for their first event.

I really like the 5.0 move to give a base for each player. It makes sense that the more people you beat, the more skilled you are.

I did not like the previous style of limiting the events at 1 location as the new format is more conducive to promoting pinball play.

5.1 is a step back (not the end of the world) as new players are not treated fairly in their respective value. This to me does not fit a logical assumption, esp with a base of zero and for 5 events. In WI, it will take a new players likely 6-8months before they add to the value, yet they can win at any point.

I understand there are limitations to the current system and algorithm, but please don't let that constraint make the decision.

I want to continue to see competitive pinball grow, both through the direct efforts of organizing events and through the latent effects of friends bringing someone else along. Please don't put up barriers to WPPR points or make it more convoluted than it needs to be. As you know and say, points are an incentive to many, so lets use that incentive to promote even more. There must be some level of compromise to fine tune it.

Like Steve Ritchie says if 2 respected people tell you it sucks then it probably sucks. I know that is in regards to pinball design, but I think it is applicable here also. We have seen quite a few of the more active organizers say that they feel it needs some fine tuning. To me that speaks volumes

cheers

say this after hitting send post

thumbs up!

FYI: Trying to submit results and getting this error:

Error establishing a database connection

How does preventing an exploit stop the growth of pinball? Allowing inflated events is more of a detriment IMO and renders the current system as useless unless others decide to utilize the same exploits. My league just went from having some value to being absolutely worthless under the current system in regards to qualifying for the SCS.

Many rankings/ratings systems do this in some fashion, since the new player is basically a unknown variable in the system.

They will still get points, it's just that their overall value to the tournament isn't as good as it previously was. My parents, who have flipped 3 games in their life shouldn't be valued the same as someone who has been playing for 10 years though. We already do this in some aspects of the formula, this is just applying it in another spot.

Please be aware that decisions are not made lightly and before they are even posted to here they have been bounced off many people internally include the country directors. Hit me up sometime at Expo and I'll talk your ear off for hours on why we've done some of the things we've done.

But like anything in pinball, some like it, some hate it and we can only take all the input and go with what we feel is right.

This is the key thing about the .1 changes and any mid year changes that have ever been done. We're not doing this screw with people

Also consider this: We are trying to maintain a system that allows competitive pinball to enjoy the use of many tournament formats that have many, many permutations. This, along with some other reasons, makes the system somewhat complex (unfortunately) and also opens the doors up for exploits. The day will most likely come where the IFPA will stop endorsing some tournaments (my personal opinion) due to their format because it's impossible to create something that covers everything fairly.

My league just went from having some value to being absolutely worthless under the current system in regards to qualifying for the SCS.

Sorry

Depends on your state and how many tourneys you hold if worth wppr's or not. Beside's, tourneys are for fun, not wppr's.

I sent Josh an email with specific concerns so waiting to hear back. We may just ditch "league" and have monthly tournaments.

Taylor - won't have a chance to really analyze the email until later this week.

At a quick glance your issues are simply not a ton of players, and how that impacts the value for 1st place and the rate at which point drop from 1st to last.

I believe you league was 20 players which means your base value is 10 points at max, no matter how many games you end up playing.

My issue is comparing the value of our league to a high score tournament in which less than 20 people qualify for. The players that don't qualify receive more points than a player in a 9th place finishing position in our league. Seems very unbalanced.

thanks for pointing out the base limitations. Looks like we'll need to plan some more events. Thanks.

TaylorVA, yes plan more Richmond events. I'll try and bring a van full of Northern VA players but I won't allow people in the van unless they've played 5 IFPA events.

I agree with John's suggestion regarding the game threshold - five seems to be too many, especially for areas with limited events. Perhaps start the cutoff at three, at which point a newer player would add SOME base value (.1); from there the value would increase slightly for each additional event until they were fully rated (sort of like vesting for a 401k). People in general, whether new to pinball or not, have an innate sense of fairness. I think to deny them all added value until they meet an arbitrary threshold would turn some people off. I understand there are cheaters and those who game the system, but whatever you do, there always will be that element. A fair system strives to satisfy the bulk of its participants, while recognizing that there will be some who will attempt to take advantage of the system. Would it be worthwhile instead to have a feedback system which could serve as a check to this problem instead? A weighted system based on complaints, for example?

Afraid WPPR has been losing relevance as time goes by. The latest need to play a minimum number of machines was put into light Saturday when the tourny was running late and the organiser wanted to change the rounds to best of 3 rather than best of 5. Couldn't do it as it would impinge WPPR points. Ludicrous situation where players had lost after 3 games but still had to carry on playing.

Here's what I'd like to see.

1) Pre approved WPPR sanctioned tournaments, as a series (like PAPA), only events 3 years or older to qualify (gets rid of "birthday tournament" etc)

2) Base value dependant on style of tourny and a maximum amount of each type per season per series. Low starting value but based on perceived difficulty of qualifying.
e.g.
One shot qually, round based finals: 5 points
One shot qually, one joker, round based finals: 4 points
Pump & dump: 3 points
Double elimination: 2 points
Head to Head: 2 points
League format: 1 point

3) Most points calculated from player skill (as now but all count)

4) Last 15 events count. At the moment you drop your worst score but WPPR is supposed to be who is best right now. I have seen not so great players get higher rankings because they attend 2-5x the amount of tournys, law of averages says that eventually they are going to have a better result.

5) Decay of points over 2 years, 33% of live value.

Once set in place (and I know that needs more it's just an example), stop dicking with it!

Ive been quite confused about this issue. Currently, it seems after 1 event a player gets rated. Is this "5 events" rule a change as well?
I finished tied for last in my first ever tournament last year, so my rating for the 2nd tournament I competed in was 933 or something like that.
For a player in Super League player (example), their first tournament was January, finishing 15th out of 245 people (a great feat indeed). For Feb Super League (their 2nd tournament), their rating was listed as 1609.69

You guys have a ton of WPPRs floating around the DC area. We need to try to keep up, the DMV league's high score tournament is what has really made me take note of how undervalued league play is compared to holding a tournament in which single game qualifiers earn points for not doing anything.

I do realize WPPRs are secondary to playing, but as director of our league I want to give my players the chance to compete in events like the SCS.

i hope people don't think this way. i would continue to run tournaments, WPPR points notwithstanding. for me personally it's just a matter of rewarding the serious competitors (it incents players to travel) plus having a "level" playing field with respect to tournament grading. when there was no metric for player count towards base value it was a level playing field. proposing to completely discount newer players from the base value imbalances the scoring system - new players still provide an element of competition and a tournament winner should still be compensated for coming out on top of a tournament comprised of X # of players.

i think your dynamic solution is a GREAT step to reduce instances of gaming the system but still give some value to the participation and added competition of new/inexperienced players.

appreciate all the work and effort the IFPA team puts into the system and thanks for listening to Directors' input here - much appreciated.

For a league could we summit the results ever month.

I do for the Tucson Pinball League.

IFPA's league submission area isn't really set up for that, so Josh had me submit events as if they were any other event, but they are categorized as "League" like you would also have "Main Event" in the submission form.

It is said many times by many people that WPPRs are secondary.
Secondary to socializing, playing, having fun etc.

But man do changes in the WPPR system send shockwaves through tournament formats!

How many side tournaments (yes I realize that they are not classified side anymore) do you think that we will see this year compared to the last few years?

When I would run WPPR 4.0 tournaments, people would contact me for assurance that the event would be an annual rather than a periodic and that they would get full points.

Other people were stunned that I do not plan to change the Maryland Pinball Championship format this year so that the WPPRs would be maximized.

People are so serious about WPPRs and maximizing the WPPR potential at events.
As though having a high WPPR ranking legitimizes a player.

Some WPPRs are just much easier to get than others.

PAPA WPPRs? Pretty tough. Certainly tougher than local tourney WPPRs.

Super league WPPRs? Look pretty easy to get. As do the DMV tournament ones ( I did not actually go to the tournament, so I'm guessing a little).

Yes, DC has a lot more opportunities for WPPRs than Richmond, but it is nothing like Portland, Seattle, or NYC.

I can't say that I care for the trend of tournaments putting such a priority on maximizing WPPRs.

Considering we haven't had this big of a change to the WPPR formula since 2009, we'll consider v5.0 a chance to win back the hearts of people like yourself. My experience is that the interest in WPPR's continues to grow at an insane pace. The number of emails I get with feedback (both good and bad), along with things like profile updates, calendar submissions, results submissions, general questions, interest in setting up IFPA Country Series . . . it's almost gotten the point of needing to ask some people for help handling it all.

I know there's a group of players within the UK that are opposed to the latest changes, and that's okay. To speak for 'everyone' that it's losing relevance across the board is a little over the top IMO.

Some more direct answers to your proposals:

So how would you propose we approve what tournaments are sanctioned? (Assuming the same 2464 events apply for sanctioning)

Limiting events 3 years and older means that not even a tournament like Pinburgh would be included for the first two years? Most of the emails we get in from people looking to get competitive pinball going in their area, get people their first taste of WPPR's and qualify events for the SCS (at least here in the US) . . . is it the best idea of the IFPA to tell these people to get 2 years experience under their belt before we would even consider looking at that event?

So a one shot qualification tournament (similar to the launch party formats we run) should be worth more than a tournament like PAPA where you get unlimited qualifying attempts?

The idea behind WPPR v5.0 is that the more games played as part of a tournament, the better chance players have to display their skill. The better chance players have to display their skill, the better those results should reflect to skill level of the players participating.

Rather than judging what format is "better vs. worse" between eachother, which I think is very subjective, we've tried to put an objective metric in place (meaningful games played) to help cover any format an organizer wishes to come up with - including the formats you listed along with a slew of others I know exist that you haven't mentioned.

Do you have any examples of these players that aren't so great but get higher rankings because of their attendance?

The big problem using the most recent 15 events, you run into situations with respect to World Championship qualifying where it might be in the best interest for a player NOT to participate in an event (should they not perform well and their average moves down). So far the WPPR system has focused on one constant through the 5 iterations of our formula . . . you can NEVER hurt your ranking by choosing to play in a pinball tournament. This is at the highest of our priority list when analyzing potential changes to the system.

We feel the 3 years works well to give players an opportunity to fill out a full resume of events. If anything we looked into changing things from 3 years to 4 years, but the adding in of that 4th year at 25% had virtually no impact on the rankings for the top 200 players.

Our idea of dicking with our system is always to help make it better. If we had the attitude of leaving the system as is 'just to not dick with it', we would still be awarding 25-15-10-5 points for the top 4 finishers for each tournament (WPPR v1.0). Continuous improvement is always something we'll focus on with WPPR, so I wouldn't anticipate us waiving our Mission Accomplished banner anytime soon.

It sounds like you would be far more interested in the IFPA Ratings system.

Based on Glicko it hasn't been dicked with since it was launched back at the end of 2011. Players are simply judged on who they beat and who beats them at every tournament they play in. There's no TVA, no TGP, no other mumbo jumbo done to the numbers. Play well, IFPA Rating goes up, play poorly IFPA Rating goes down.

Shocking enough the top 3 players by IFPA Rating are the same 3 guys ranked at the top via WPPR.

I might have been confused as well

I believe that the player gets an IFPA Rating after their first event, but it's not 'active' (counted in the value of a tournament) until they've played in 5 events to establish a more accurate IFPA Rating. I think it's an accident that it's displaying after 1 event on the results pages (hence why I was simply counting the number of players Not Rated in my example)

I think the key difference here is that PAPA separates their skill divisions into an A/B/C and now D division. Instead of ~400 players being judged collectively (where ~40 players would be seeing double digit WPPR's), you end up taking the top 100 players separately.

A better comparison would be to Pinburgh . . . how easy are those WPPR's in your opinion? You could finish in 50th and still earn nearly 10 WPPR's, versus 50th earning half that for PAPA A.

As someone who is now suppressed from the WPPR system not sure why you would care one way or the other

Is there a previous version of WPPR that you prefer? I remember a certain Chris Newsom circa 2006-2007 who was pretty into WPPR v1.0/2.0

I only have been to one Pinburgh, the 2012 one. After some changes to the WPPR system, I think that 11th place ended up being around 30 something points. It seems like a lot for just coming in 11th out of 200 something. It's hard to say whether or not that is tougher than winning a local tourney. But for WPPR 5, where 30 something points could be the same as winning 3-4 small tourneys, yeah I think that is too many points. Or maybe that is a good thing. Now it will be hard to go up high in the rankings just on small tourneys.
You do make a good point about why the PAPA points are tough to get.

Because I like to play in fun tournaments, and now people are planning strange formats for tournaments to max the WPPRs.
Some of the tournaments now, you don't play the same games as the people you beat and never even set foot in the same building as the people that you beat.

I can appreciate what y'all are trying to do with WPPR 5, but I can see Taylor's PoV as well. (Speaking of 1.0 and 2.0, there were no WPPRs for leagues back then Mr. VA!).

I played in more tournaments than anyone from 2002-2005, flying all over the place.
At that time, as you know, not many people cared about pinball tournaments compared to now. Many of today's best players were playing back then, but most of our league players didn't play in our local tournaments.
We would get people to come to our FPO, but I would be lucky to get ten players to come to some of my other events pre-WPPR.

I liked playing in tournaments. And running tournaments where people would show up.
So, yes I liked the way that WPPRs got many more people to participate.

It is difficult to come up with a system that gives out participation points and gives points to players of small and large events that use different formats and tries to fairly rank all of the players in the world and tries to prevent competitive people from exploiting the system. Maybe unreasonable for one list to take on all of this.

My favorite version?
When did people start going cuckoo for WPPR points?
The version right before that is my favorite.

People started that with 1.0?
Damn. So yeah I liked it right before that when you were establishing what would get points and what would not for 1.0.
I would send you an email - I ran these tournaments last year, can my players get some points?
Response - this tournament gets half points, this one gets zero.

Thanks for the info. Will that accident be getting fixed with the new roll out of version 5.1?