Rankade ranking system and new feature: ghosts!

Netrunner General
1

Hi Netrunners.

Some time ago, regarding SHL3 setup, someone suggested our ranking system (then, despite some thumb up rankade received, the league was planned using traditional Elo system), while in another thread rankade was mentioned for use in actual netrunner clubs rankings. In these posts, some netrunners pointed out that using rankade in a group needed mandatory registration for all members, and it seemed to be a problem. We told that we were working on it, to provide a more flexible system, and now…

We made it!

We recently introduced a significant new basic feature that allows the use of rankade ranking system without necessarily needing to create a personal account for all members of the gaming group. Many user have requested this feature - and we thank them for their suggestions - both here on StimHack and through other channels.

A ghost is a user that is not linked to an email address. Like regular users, ghosts belong to a group, participate in matches, are ranked, have activities and rewards. The ghost’s name and icon can be edited only by the group’s admin.

Ghost users can be turned into regular users at any time by linking them to an email address. Therefore you can create a group where users who want a personal account have a user linked to their mail while others have a ghost user, managed by the admin, fully usable within the group but without mandatory registration. As we said, these users can be linked later to their email address, if need be.

Therefore, it is now possible to create:

  • Groups with regular users (linked to an email address) only
  • Groups with ghost users (not linked to an email address) only (except, of couse, the admin)
  • Hybrid groups with both regular and ghost users

An important note: ghosts can be created (and later, if ever, linked to an email address) exclusively via the webapp through the group editing and ghost management feature. Unlike regular users, ghost users cannot be added while you are recording a match. Ghost users created via the webapp can however be used in matches exactly like regular users, through any of rankade’s interfaces (webapp, iOS app, Android app).

Here’s a good starting point for more details on ghost, and these are some public group pages

We trust this new feature will be welcome and satisfy the many request we received, we await your feedback, and we are (as always) available for clarifications or anything else.

Happy gaming!

.mr - rankade staff

11 Likes
2

So how would things like achievements work? Say in ELO I want a achievements to be a “free” win against 1450, 1550, or 1650 based on the difficulty of the achievement.

Could I replicate that with a bot somehow?

I also am a huge fan of analytics. I see there are some stats, but for Netrunner things like faction wins, plays, matchup stats, player win percentages with factions, flatlines (net, meat, brain) would be awesome. Is there anyway to possible replicate that?

Are the algorithms proprietary? I’m very math-oriented and would love to poor over equations and reasoning for them.

3

Hi Nungunz, thanks for writing.

Yes, you should use bot option (available when selecting number of factions in match, that in Android: Netrunner is obviously two) to give ‘free wins’ to a player with achievements, and eventually use different weights (choosing in our 6 weights list) depending from difficulty.

I’d like to point out that a skill based ranking system, like the one rankade implemented, should be used with matches results only.
However, we’ve got a good solution for your task. If you’re interested in tracking achievements, we suggest you to record it under a different game name (like ‘Netrunner achievement’, or something like this), in the same group. Due to partial ranking feature (partial rankings are the aggregated standings from subsets of matches within the group, built automatically), you’ll get three rankings:

  • main ranking including both Android: Netrunner matches and ‘achievements matches’,
  • pure ‘Android: Netrunner’ ranking, including actual matches only,
  • ‘Netrunner achievement’ ranking, including ‘achievements matches’ only.

Players winning stats are available, while others, yet implemented (including matchup, and more), will be published in future releases. Regarding factions stats, you can use the new ghost feature creating a ghost for each Android: Netrunner faction and defining a ‘team’ composed by the actual player and the ghost connected to the faction he’s playing.

Rankade’s algorithm (ree algorithm) is not in the public domain, for the time being.

Here you can find a comparison between most known ranking systems.

Thanks again, and happy gaming!

.mr - rankade staff

2 Likes
4

Now at 750+ matches!

1 Like
5

I will need to really look into this for the next main SHL I run for OCTGN.

6

[quote=“bahram, post:5, topic:5391, full:true”]
I will need to really look into this for the next main SHL I run for OCTGN. [/quote]

Knowing that rankade better shows his worth only after some week and many matches, glad if you want to go on trying. Probably the best way to “look into rankade” is testing it (with your local group, or inserting archived data from previous tournament, or more).
We are (as always) available for clarifications or anything else, and a thank you in advance for the feedback that you possibly will let us have.

Happy gaming!

.mr - rankade staff

1 Like
7

so if i pm you a questionaire of what my next league would entail… you would respond? sounds like a deal to me. :3

8

Our system is designed to manage different groups and/or leagues, and it has some features and options that can fit your needs (i.e. admin approval or not, and more). If you don’t need something ‘very custom’, we’re ready to host netrunners.
For further details and pm, check our contact page.

Happy gaming!

.mr - rankade staff

1 Like
9

Here’s a (young) public group recording matches using this scheme

You can switch between rankings using ‘Select ranking’ button.
As explained in previous post, ‘Android: Netrunner’ ranking is a ‘pure’ skill based ranking, while main ranking merges results from matches and achievements. Both rankings have their ree scores, and badges, and stats. And the belts will come shortly.

.mr - rankade staff

1 Like
10

Founder/Admin of the above mentioned group here. While we’ve only been using Rankade for a couple of weeks, I can say that we’ve found it really good so far. The ghost feature in particular was really handy in getting the league set up and people recording games without having to wait for their opponent to sign up.

We love achievement and stats, so we’ve followed Rankade’s suggestion of setting up our achievements as a separate ‘game’ which has worked nicely so far. You can see from our page that it’s easy to separate out the pure games rankings and the main list including everything.

One added bonus we’ve got is that we can now apply different weight categories to certain achievements. So some of the harder achievements give a greater points boost than others.

If anyone is looking to use Rankade, I’d be happy to answer any Netrunner Specific queries.

3 Likes
11

[quote=“Fridan, post:10, topic:5391, full:true”]
Founder/Admin of the above mentioned group here. While we’ve only been using Rankade for a couple of weeks, I can say that we’ve found it really good so far. The ghost feature in particular was really handy in getting the league set up and people recording games without having to wait for their opponent to sign up.[/quote]

Hi Fridan, and thanks for your review, and for your support.

As I said, ghosts feature was implemented on users’ request, and, yes, it works well for an easier build of a new group. Happy to hear you saying this.

And you could enjoy more data in next future, when we’ll release stats for matchup features (win percentage for every 1-vs-1, and so on), and more.

Yes.
And you can use weights even for actual games. For example, you can set casual matches as ‘mid-light weight’, tournament matches as ‘normal weight’, and semifinals and final as ‘heavy weight’ .

Stay tuned for our forthcoming releases.

Happy gaming!

mr - rankade staff

1 Like
12

Autumn is coming, leaves are falling again, as usual, and finally the new rankade webapp v1.8 is out. It’s a major release, chock full of new features you can immediately see and try, as well as a host of behind-the-scene additions and improvements.

More in detail, these are the newly implemented features:

  • Group messages in a dedicated widget (add comments to match results and rankings, schedule future games, challenge your adversaries!)
  • Group badges (check them to see how to improve your group!)
  • Notifications about new matches and messages (stay tuned about what’s happening in all your groups)
  • …and more!

Meanwhile, our flagship Netrunners group - Norwich Netrunner - is at 1000+ matches, and we host more and more groups.

Good gaming, and have a great autumn!