PVP Rankings
You may have seen PVP ranking boards in towns and/or arenas (as well as on MyABCUO), and wondered where those numbers come from, and why the rankings don't seem to correspond with the players' win/loss records.
When you participate in a duel in the "I challenge thee" system, or when you fight in an automated PVP event, the result of your fight will be recorded in the rating system.
The board technically is not a ladder board. It looks like one, it has ranks, etc., but you don't go up and down the rankings rung by rung. Instead, you are ordered strictly by rating.
The rating system is a variation of the Elo system; see the details here. In summary, each player has a rating. If you beat another player in a fight, you gain a few points and your opponent loses a few points. How many points are exchanged depends on what your previous ratings were. If you were rated much higher than your opponent, you were expected to win anyway, so very few points would be exchanged. If your rating was about the same as your opponent, a moderate number of points are exchanged. If your rating was far below your opponent's, then you managed an upset win, and your rating will go up a lot while your opponent's will go down by a lot.
There are a few tweaks in the system:
There is special handling for players who have not fought in many fights; their ratings may be 0 for a while as they work to become established fighters.
Fights only count if you are fighting a variety of players. For example if you fight the same person ten times, you will not continue to gain or lose rating points in every fight.
Ratings decline in time. If you haven't fought a meaningful opponent recently, you will start to lose points as time goes on. A meaningful opponent is someone who the rating system decides is a threat to your ranking.
You are penalized for declining challenges from meaningful opponents. The definition of a meaningful opponent is too detailed to be described here; just know that there are a category of players who, if you decline their challenge, will result in a penalty to your rating. However, once you are penalized for declining a challenge, you have a sort of immunity from further penalties for a period of time.
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