Tier allocation

[Lee]

Over the last few months there have been some interesting tier changes for certain pilots on the ladder with some receiving promo/demo challenges whilst others have just been insta-moved. I'm sure that some of these can be explained away pretty easily and a couple of others were caused by a bug however, this still leaves some unaccounted for and I'd like to know what prompted these tier movements if thats okay (noted that inactivity causes problems for the algorithm). Please can someone explain to me how 'tier allocation' is being handled and how this has changed since the build up to the Early 2017 season. Also, please can you use the following examples, thanks:

* Lady Silver - demotion to bronze (first time, accounted for by failed promo bug)

* Lady Silver - demotion to bronze (second time, not caused by failed promo bug and no demo challenge)

* Rethink - demotion to bronze (no demo challenge)

* Rethink - promotion to silver (promo challenge)

* Rethink - promotion to gold (no promo challenge)

* Sirius - gold promotion (unranked after unretiring but promoted to gold before playing his first match in L17)

* Skywarp - demotion to bronze (no demo challenge)

* Vainiac - demotion to silver (accounted for by failed promo bug)

[roncli]

Demotions to a lower tier *should* give you the option to take a demotion challenge or to just demote yourself outright.

I cannot explain Rethink going to gold without a promotion challenge unless there was a bug involved.

Sirius was gold before his retirement, so he maintains that ranking, should his skill rating support it, which it does.

[Lee]

Yeah you're right. Some of them could be explained away pretty easily because the pilot accepted a demotion rather than fighting for it but other tier changes have got me thinking again.

How the hell did Rethink's rating drop as low as bronze? It happened after we played a three game series together and reported them in bulk afterwards with the first game reported as Rethink being silver then the next two showed him as bronze. If this was a bug then why make him play the silver promo and not the gold promo?

Sirius was a solid gold before he retired but he didn't play in forever then unretired and became unranked initially (red text) and in between then and before playing his first game back he then became gold.

Again, it could well be inactivity causing issues but it would be nice to know regardless.

[birdseye]

[LotharBot]

Sirius being unranked is a bug. He was (probably) manually corrected back to gold.

[Phyrex]

[Drakona]

You are not supposed to be moved or unrated without a challenge now, ever. Clearly there are more bugs going around than I knew about.

Rethink did play, though. I was there.

I think Lady Silver and Rethink got hit by the same bug. For some reason, the ladder thought they were new pilots or something? I never did figure out what was happening. The database was giving me a lot of timeouts for like a week there, and I think it may have incompletely recorded something. At any rate, it appears to have stopped now. I'm sure that inspires a lot of confidence...

I caught Lady Silver's quickly and changed the matches she played as bronze to silver and the stats to match. I didn't catch Rethink in time, and now a lot of matches have been played. I presume Skywarp got hit by the same thing? That's quite a few matches, too.

I'm open to suggestions as to what's the fairest thing to do. I think the fairest thing to do is go back and adjust the stats, medals, streaks, history, etc., as if these had been played as the proper rating. The only objection I can think of is that you shouldn't change the stakes of a game after the fact -- but these demotions never should have happened, which makes the resulting records untruthful.

Sirius' is an old bug - if you retire for a season, it doesn't pick up your rating when you come back. It should. I need to fix that. I had been trying to catch them as they happened and fix them by hand for a while. Sounds like it righted itself. I can adjust the stats for the unranked game if that seems fairest.

Vainiac - wut? What is this failed promo bug you speak of?

[Lee]

Drakona:
Yeah thats fine they can be pretty hard to spot. Its reassuring to know some tier movements may have been caused by bugs so thanks for acting upon it between seasons. I think its fair to change the records but only if you can be 100% certain that a tier movement wasn't legit or initated by the pilot. If you're not certain then its probably best left as is. Also thanks for explaining it to me.

So when Vainiac got demoted to Silver he had just played Sirius in a DCL for the first time in forever. Vainiac was meant to play Sirius in the final match of his first gold promotion challenge but they never did because Vainiac was already too far below the promotion target. When they finally played this match it was recorded on the failed promotion challenge and Vainiac was insta-dropped to Silver tier (see Vainiac>Lifetime then click on the scores of the last two promo games to see how much time had passed between them). That may have just been a symptom of the bug rather than a cause by the way, otherwise hence the 'Vainiac promo bug'.

BIRDS BIRDS BIRDS:
Ah gotcha sorry about the Rethink to gold promo I had no idea.

Lotharbot:
Ah ok thanks for letting me know. Its not like its caused any problems but I thought I'd mention it along with the others.

Phyrex:
Nice catch. Same thing happens with Vainiac's first promo attempt to gold and Naleksi's first promo attempt to silver.

[roncli]

[roncli]