As we are in the midst of fixing the user leagues after a significant update of the HWBoints back-end code, we will also deploy a much requested patch for the exotic global benchmark rankings. This HWBoints patch is mainly to address the guaranteed minimum amount of points for exotic benchmark rankings. When we use the word exotic, we refer to the amount of participants. In the current revision, the first place in any global benchmark ranking has a guaranteed 60pts, regardless of the amount of participants. Yes, even if the amount of participants is just 1.

That was the good news. The bad news is that because of the complexity of the HWBoints algorithm, we had to adjust more than just the global points for exotic categories. We want our algorithms to be future-proof as much as we want them to be resource-efficient. To ensure both, we decided to go with a more simple logarithmic distribution. The maximum number of points for each position within a ranking is still determined by the number of participants. The main idea is that First place will receive 100% of this pre-determined value and lower ranks will receive a lower percentage. The points given are largely the same as with the old system. The major changes are:

• No guaranteed 60 points for more exotic categories
• A lot more points can be gained from medium-popular categories (100 to 500 participants)
• Slightly more points for lower rankings

There is a little hiccup for last place though, you actually gain points when more participants join for exotic categories. That's something that can't really be fixed but the impact is relatively minor, we believe.

We ran the new algorithm on a test server with a database snapshot of 23/02/2013. You can have a look at the differences in the Top-20 in each league below. The main thing to notice is that rankings largely remain the same, but Dead Things (one of the most active in the exotic global categories) dropped to position 40 with 383 points.

More information: see forum thread.

Points for first and last place (global): Old versus New algorithm

XOC Ranking Difference (snapshot 23/02/2013)

EL Ranking Difference (snapshot 23/02/2013)