Hey guys, for a long time we have had list juggler which is great for finding lists and seeing how they did at individual tournaments, So one day, I thought it would be really awesome to have a top 50 like the NCAA does with basketball etc. So, I created this website!

NationalTabletopGaming.org

It is very basic as of right now and only has the rankings entered into it from US nationals. But please send in more! I would love to get this data moving so we can have a top 100 list and more! Feel free to send emails and results to [email protected]. I don't need any list information just the standings with the TOTAL attendees for the event.

As of right now, this is US only but I will be expanding it and hopefully adding in other systems as well!

Interesting idea. It would be great if you had access to all the data rather than just those whatever data (accurate or not) people happen to send you.

So that is what I am going to be working on actually is calling stores and event organizers to send me data directly from events. I can also gather it from list juggler but with the proliferation of tome I need to spread the word.

As of right now the equation I'm using is very good at balancing size of events as well, so large events won't blow small events out of the water for people can't make all the big ones but consistently preform well.

I think this is a bad idea from the perspective of the community. What is the point of this sort of website, and does the value the ranking offers offset all of the negative things that will come with it? I am skeptical.


This sort of site will have the potential to inflate egos, to facilitate "hero worship," to falsely reify a hierarchy of players, to cause arguments over the ranking metrics themselves, and to give hyper-competitive players one more thing to stress over as they play the game.

For starters, there is no objective metric that can be used to make the results of all events commensurable to even allow the ranking of players in any meaningful way. How much is a National Championship first place finish in Singapore with 22 players in attendance worth when compared to a first place finish at a Minnesota Summer Kit with 74 players? Does Doug Kinney's first World Championship count as much as Paul Heaver's 2015 World Championship? When Doug won, the game was brand new, most people didn't even own more than three or four TIEs, and the entire World Championship was like <25 people, whereas with Paul's most recent win there were hundreds of players and the overall skill-level and experience with the game had drastically increased. Does a world class player who drops after two rounds plummet on the standings simply because they'll be behind everyone who finished with one win and six losses? There's no objective answer to these questions of comparative value, so you'd have to make the decision about how the ranking system is scored, and some people will agree with your methods but many will find them problematic or objectionable for a wide range of reasons. Also, not all events have TOs or Players who record and post final standings for every player, especially many past events whose results have now been lost to the ether of mere memory. So expect a lot of "well if so-and-so's win from this ____ 2014 tournament was considered, they'd be ahead of so-and-so-two..." and other such inane arguments. How do you handle players who drop, especially at a big convention like Gencon where there are so many other better things to be doing?


You want to know who the best X-Wing Players are? Ask competitive players who have been around for awhile and have a sense of the competitive game. You'll hear the same names, and you'll get a short list of players like Paul Heaver and Jeff Berling. Also, even the best players can have "off days" or a string of bad dice luck or match-ups, but if 'rankings' were some aggregate of every event finish you'd lose the forests for the trees. For instance, Paul went 0-3 at Gencon last year before dropping, but no one would doubt that he had suddenly ceased being one of the top players in the World.



So, my advice in a tl;dr fashion : It's a fun idea and I see the appeal, but it's an unrealistic endeavor and will spawn a ton of headaches and pointless arguments, so best to just drop it and move on.

So, I'm guessing that you didn't actually look at the website then.

There is an equation involved that takes into account the level of event, the attendance, and eventually will take into account the other people in attendance. In addition, it pools everyone's four best finishes, so if you drop or have a bad showing that doesn't effectt your score whatsoever. It also says that this is a year by year standings not all time, because you're right that would be impossible. Last but not least, it's also stated to be US only at this point. Basically, every point that you brought up is discussed on the site.

I am all for hearing about problems with the idea, but I would prefer if you at least look at it before you condemn it.

I like the idea. I'm wondering if people might want to "opt-out" though, for privacy reasons. That's up to you and them, because it looks like you're just working with publicly available data. Just a thought.

My main thought for posting was, do you intend to reveal your algorithm? Or keep it proprietary?

Thanks for the effort on this.

Sounds like a fun idea, great job!

I like the idea. I'm wondering if people might want to "opt-out" though, for privacy reasons. That's up to you and them, because it looks like you're just working with publicly available data. Just a thought.

My main thought for posting was, do you intend to reveal your algorithm? Or keep it proprietary?

Thanks for the effort on this.

Darnit! forgot to make the take me off submission form thanks! In it will also be a "list me under" tab for using a gamer tag or something instead of your real name. Thanks for the catch!

As of right now, I'd like to keep it in a small circle but am more than willing to share if you would like to help fine tune the variables! Shoot me a pm.

Hi, I have intentionally kept player name out of the search features of list juggler for privacy reasons. For the op - it is not much code at all to add the player ranking feature to list juggler, and the code is open source I would want the community to back the idea first though.

Listjuggler has a RESTful API btw if you get annoyed with hand collecting the data

Hey guys, for a long time we have had list juggler which is great for finding lists and seeing how they did at individual tournaments, So one day, I thought it would be really awesome to have a top 50 like the NCAA does with basketball etc. So, I created this website!

NationalTabletopGaming.org

It is very basic as of right now and only has the rankings entered into it from US nationals. But please send in more! I would love to get this data moving so we can have a top 100 list and more! Feel free to send emails and results to [email protected]. I don't need any list information just the standings with the TOTAL attendees for the event.

As of right now, this is US only but I will be expanding it and hopefully adding in other systems as well!

After hearing horror stories from the WH40k and WFB rankings over here in the UK, I'd be inclined to echo the thoughts in the post AllWingsStandingBy made.

Not saying don't do it, just saying be really careful, lest this fractures an incredibly inclusive and friendly community.

Hey guys, for a long time we have had list juggler which is great for finding lists and seeing how they did at individual tournaments, So one day, I thought it would be really awesome to have a top 50 like the NCAA does with basketball etc. So, I created this website!

NationalTabletopGaming.org

It is very basic as of right now and only has the rankings entered into it from US nationals. But please send in more! I would love to get this data moving so we can have a top 100 list and more! Feel free to send emails and results to [email protected]. I don't need any list information just the standings with the TOTAL attendees for the event.

As of right now, this is US only but I will be expanding it and hopefully adding in other systems as well!

Great idea, reminds me of the official ranking system used with Infinity...

So, I'm guessing that you didn't actually look at the website then.

There is an equation involved that takes into account the level of event, the attendance, and eventually will take into account the other people in attendance. In addition, it pools everyone's four best finishes, so if you drop or have a bad showing that doesn't effectt your score whatsoever. It also says that this is a year by year standings not all time, because you're right that would be impossible. Last but not least, it's also stated to be US only at this point. Basically, every point that you brought up is discussed on the site.

I am all for hearing about problems with the idea, but I would prefer if you at least look at it before you condemn it.

Well, I did glance at your website.

For starters you only superficially addressed the point I brought up about there being no single objective metric to determining the ranking scores. Yes, of course you have a system that will assign values based on player number, event level, etc. but my critique wasn't that you didn't have a system. My critique was that it's your system, but that it's just one of many possible metrics one might use to rank the nebulous concept of "player skill". Some people will like your system, others will find issues with your assumptions about how weights should be assigned, and expect ample disagreement about this if this project ever gets legs and takes off. That is an unvavoidable methodological issue inherent in any and every ranking system (just look at how much drama and disagreement goes into the ranking system used in College Football (American): there are different systems ( e.g. the coaches' poll versus the BCS' panel of experts which are supposed to consider a wide variety of things like SoS) and people are always arguing about the flaws and bias within each system. By undertaking this, you become the sole arbiter of ranking, so be prepared to endure all the flak that will come with people being unhappy about your given metric.

Secondly, and more importantly , you actually didn't address any of my main concerns about your project, which are non-methodological: " This sort of site will have the potential to inflate egos, to facilitate "hero worship," to falsely reify a hierarchy of players, to cause arguments over the ranking metrics themselves , and to give hyper-competitive players one more thing to stress over as they play the game. " As others have noted, similar ranking efforts in games like WFB and WH40k have only served to become an overall negative aspect of the community, just for these sorts of reasons. Others brought up another very good issue that I had not considered, which is privacy . I know quite a few players who prefer that their employer (or future employers) not know that they spend large chunks of their time traveling to play with toy spaceships on over-sized mouse pads. Some people don't mind, of course, but some people do. How are you going to plan to respect such players' privacy concerns, if at all? That is, will you have an opt-in or an opt-out policy at the heart of your system?

You asked for feedback, I gave it to you. You can consider it or simply dismiss it all again, but please don't boil it all down to me not understanding your project or looking at your site. Also, given the number of likes to my initial post (already 3x more than the likes on your suggestion), I think it would be wrong to simply assume that others in the community don't also share my sorts of reservations.

The privacy issue seems to me to be somewhat moot, as people enter tournaments publicly and have their names printed up on score lists, which are then photographed and plastered all over Facebook. By definition there is not much privacy to be had by showing up at a tournament for a game you don't own, and using your real name.

I would just suggest an opt-out capacity to the website.

Also, I suspect that, to be highly regarded in the community as a viable ranking system, the algorithm would eventually have to be fully disclosed after the bugs are worked out.

Doesn't this kinda try to duplicate what's already in use here:

http://www.challengeboards.net/boards/standings/2167

This project could potentially add another dimension to the ultra-competitive spirit that (a growing?) part of the community harbors. Not sure if it is a good idea.

NO, just NO. You want to know the "Best" players? Listen to a podcast or two, or more. Listen to who they talk about. Nathan Eide, Aaron Bonner, Paul Heaver. All great players.

What about the guy from the US who won the System Open in Chicago? Great player, sure, lucky, absolutely, one of the top players? Who knows.

We don't need this kind of crap here. We don't need to add elitism here. This is about a FUN SOCIAL game. Not some elite jerks. YOu want that, play magic!

So, I'm guessing that you didn't actually look at the website then.

There is an equation involved that takes into account the level of event, the attendance, and eventually will take into account the other people in attendance. In addition, it pools everyone's four best finishes, so if you drop or have a bad showing that doesn't effectt your score whatsoever. It also says that this is a year by year standings not all time, because you're right that would be impossible. Last but not least, it's also stated to be US only at this point. Basically, every point that you brought up is discussed on the site.

I am all for hearing about problems with the idea, but I would prefer if you at least look at it before you condemn it.

Well, I did glance at your website.

For starters you only superficially addressed the point I brought up about there being no single objective metric to determining the ranking scores. Yes, of course you have a system that will assign values based on player number, event level, etc. but my critique wasn't that you didn't have a system. My critique was that it's your system, but that it's just one of many possible metrics one might use to rank the nebulous concept of "player skill". Some people will like your system, others will find issues with your assumptions about how weights should be assigned, and expect ample disagreement about this if this project ever gets legs and takes off. That is an unvavoidable methodological issue inherent in any and every ranking system (just look at how much drama and disagreement goes into the ranking system used in College Football (American): there are different systems ( e.g. the coaches' poll versus the BCS' panel of experts which are supposed to consider a wide variety of things like SoS) and people are always arguing about the flaws and bias within each system. By undertaking this, you become the sole arbiter of ranking, so be prepared to endure all the flak that will come with people being unhappy about your given metric.

Secondly, and more importantly, you actually didn't address any of my main concerns about your project, which are non-methodological: " This sort of site will have the potential to inflate egos, to facilitate "hero worship," to falsely reify a hierarchy of players, to cause arguments over the ranking metrics themselves , and to give hyper-competitive players one more thing to stress over as they play the game. " As others have noted, similar ranking efforts in games like WFB and WH40k have only served to become an overall negative aspect of the community, just for these sorts of reasons. Others brought up another very good issue that I had not considered, which is privacy . I know quite a few players who prefer that their employer (or future employers) not know that they spend large chunks of their time traveling to play with toy spaceships on over-sized mouse pads. Some people don't mind, of course, but some people do. How are you going to plan to respect such players' privacy concerns, if at all? That is, will you have an opt-in or an opt-out policy at the heart of your system?

You asked for feedback, I gave it to you. You can consider it or simply dismiss it all again, but please don't boil it all down to me not understanding your project or looking at your site. Also, given the number of likes to my initial post (already 3x more than the likes on your suggestion), I think it would be wrong to simply assume that others in the community don't also share my sorts of reservations.

I just don't understand why people get all wound up. Yes, it's you. You play with plastic toys. Some guy says your the #90/100 but you think you're better than that. All of these things are fine. People who become devisive and ego inflated over something like this have bigger issues. If we all don't take ourselves, others and our game too seriously then it could be fun. Btw I have loved debating friends and acquaintances over the College Football rankings over the years. It's fun. This should be too.

Pretty certain there was someone using a psuedonym at Worlds last year...

And I can assure you, this won't be nearly as fun. Because the debate gets a whole lot less fun when the ranked joins the discussion.

So will you be creating rankings for Agricola, Summoner Wars, Diplomacy, Pandemic or any other game that is played competitively?

Otherwise I'm a bit confused about the 'tabletop' in the name. .

Hi, I have intentionally kept player name out of the search features of list juggler for privacy reasons. For the op - it is not much code at all to add the player ranking feature to list juggler, and the code is open source I would want the community to back the idea first though.

Listjuggler has a RESTful API btw if you get annoyed with hand collecting the data

Thanks for the offer, I would love to discuss ill send you a PM.

Allwingsstandingby (your post is long didnt want to quote)

I have added the opt in opt out to the website. Privacy is an issue, and one that I am going to take seriously. Though, I for one was tired of hiding who I am and what I do in my free time from my employers. I put that stuff on my resume nowadays, and actually its gotten me job offers. Employers love to hear that you are active in any kind of organized environment. In fact, my entire office knows that I play and asks me how I did after big tournaments etc. Don't be afraid to be yourself, and there may be people out there that look down on you for it. Those people are bad humans and you're better off not being around them anyway. However it is not my place to make anyone do that so If you would like to be removed from consideration or change your name please let me know!

I cannot do anything about people's egos getting inflated/ bruised. I could add a disclaimer that says "Hey guys, this is just a ranking system for plastic spaceships". Though I think the internet has a rather inflated sense of the egos of the top players. Take Duncan for example, he is vilified all over the Internet. But in real life the dude is super nice and fun to play against. He is always willing to teach and always willing to help you out with your list or your flying.

(the following is not necessarily aimed at you) The thing is though, that a lot of people really enjoy the competitive aspect of the hobby. They like going to tournaments and playing hard and against the best and being competitive themselves. Who are you to tell them that they are wrong for wanting to enjoy the game in their way?

Pretty certain there was someone using a psuedonym at Worlds last year...

And I can assure you, this won't be nearly as fun. Because the debate gets a whole lot less fun when the ranked joins the discussion.

I added an opt out section to the site and also wrote in if they want to use a pseudonym they can use one as long as its appropriate. I have heard of a couple people that don't want to have their real names out there for a few reasons and I definitely want to respect that.

So will you be creating rankings for Agricola, Summoner Wars, Diplomacy, Pandemic or any other game that is played competitively?

Otherwise I'm a bit confused about the 'tabletop' in the name. .

Well, one day I would like to add other competitive games to it, plus the domain was free so why not!

So here's my thoughts on this. The casual only people will obviously not care about this since they don't do tournaments. The casual tournament goers will most likely not care because again they do it for fun. The top level players who usually win these events and consistently make top 4/8 will most likely not care because they already know they're some of the top players in the country. So I feel like this website is for the B and C level players the ones who think they're really good but the results don't prove it. This way there will be a numerical value to give them validation if there rank gets high enough. This is for the tryhards out there.

This idea harkens back to the who's who of x-wing a couple of years ago where some guys wanted to list those who simply had an impact on the community and the game. They just wanted to name those individuals and list them. That's all.

It was rejected by the community.

It a nutshell it flew in the face of Fly Casual and it gave rise to arbitrary reasons for people being included on a list against people who weren't going to be on the list. Also, how important was this list and why was it needed?

Ranking players puts you in a position to judge them and their performance based on your standard. No good can come of this.

And who's to say a good player is the one who wins versus the player who allows another player to put that cloak token on his Whisper after a missed opportunity (which did happen at a finals table).

There's no need and it's simply not something that this community has ever needed. We already know who the good players are and want to play with them. The poor players are the ones we don't want to play with again. And that's all that an X-wing player needs to ever know.