hex4 🇲🇹 · @hex4MT
15th Feb 2021 from TwitLonger
THESPIKE.GG Rankings further explanation
Hi everyone,
I'm hex4, CTO/CoFounder at THESPIKE.GG and also the Lead on Team Rankings. Seeing how much of an impact our Ranking is having on the VALORANT scene; today I wanted to expand on more details about this subject to make it a bit clearer how things work in the background.
Similar to what other sites out of VALORANT have implemented (there is no ‘template’ for this; everyone has their own method) we opted for 2 metrics to determine a team’s ranking: Achievements and Form. For each of these metrics, we consider the past 4 months for our data. Anything older than 4 months is forgotten.
The weight for the final ranking between Achievements and Form is not equal; it’s not 50% achievement and 50% form. We prioritize Achievements over Form and the main reason for this is because if a Tier 3 team is winning all the tournaments they’re playing against other Tier 3 teams, their Form will be going up a lot; but their achievements will still be low since they are winning T3 events which has a lower weight when compared to Tier 1 events. Hence; while a team’s Form is considered in our ranking; WHERE you are playing to get that Form is what matters most.
Form uses a similar system to ELO, so basically it reflects how much the team is in form based on the direct results of each match they play. Every single match that we cover for the team will have an impact on this number. There are some exceptions though that we have implemented which are explained down below
Achievements focuses on what each team achieved in the events they participated in. For each event we assign a number of points based on the prize pool and the teams participating in it. After the event is finished; based on the final position of the team; we give points to each team accordingly.
As an example of this: VCT NA Open Qualifiers 1 will have slightly more points available when compared to Open Qualifiers 2, since Open Qualifiers 1 had all top tier teams participating while Qualifiers 2 had less (since 4 teams made it to Challengers 2 already)
Basically, in order for a team to gain points in both metrics; all they need to do is win as much as possible (easy right?) - that is quite straightforward. Participate in lots of events and win as much as possible.
On the other hand, losing points has 3 factors:
- Losing head to head matches (effects Form only)
- Decay: if your team had good results 2 months ago, while they will still be considered in the Achievements points; they would have decayed already by half of the original points you got. We start decaying achievements every X days after an event has passed 2 weeks.
- Roster Changes: What a team achieved with a set of 5 players should not reflect on a new roster. When a team changes between 1 and 3 players; the rating is penalized accordingly to the number of players changed. 1 player change has less penalty than a 3 player change. If a team changes 4 or whole roster; the rating is reset completely. (this affects both Achievements metric and Form metric).
A note with regards to Roster changes, if a team playing under a name XYZ is signed by an organisation; the ranking will move accordingly. If the organization signs only 4 players out of the original XYZ roster, they will be penalized for the 1 player change. Unfortunately these changes need to be done manually; hence why our Ranking does not update on a daily basis. If you happen to be in this scenario and you see there is something wrong with the Ranking, do not hesitate to contact us directly on our Twitter account; we are always here to help.
As we have said multiple times before; we are open to discussions to improve our Rankings as we have done already. I’m quite sure our Ranking is not perfect so if you have any ideas how we can improve it; we’re all ears. Make sure to catch up our Ranking update next week :)