"gambling" games

I was responding to someone who left a comment on one of my games.

I saw on that person's message board a complaint from someone else about 'gambling' games. Those would be games in which you can't get 100% by skill, only by luck.

I will not name the person who made the complaint, but the basis of the objections seems to be that such games should be avoided because they hold down your average, and keep you from rising in the leaderboard. (i.e., you get a low score at an 'impossible' game, and you'll never get 100%.)

The specific game in question was "How Lucky Are You?", but there are others.

One of them is my own, mis-named game "How Lucky Are You? Quiz-style" (should be "multiple choice-style".)

Anyway, the person had a point. Games like this should not be considered in the leaderboard rankings. There should be a way to get games like that stricken from the list.

Yes, on my part for my game, I could reset the high scores, freeing people from low scores in that game. I could delete that game. But it is one of my more popular games, and I don't want to deny somebody their ATH (87%), take the 'number of games played' away from a lot of people, or lose a game that actually does make a point regarding probability.

And that still wouldn't address the problem of similar games.

Is there something that can be done about this?

If not, my apologies to all who have lower stats because of it. (Oh, I'm 0% in that game--not as difficult to get as 100%, but still not likely.)

Its funny because I have had the same exact thought too, before reading this topic in the forum. I would also be at 100% if it wasn't for the "luck" games. I played those games based on curiosity but it is statistically unlikely that one can get a perfect score playing them.

I'm currently enjoying the top spot overall thanks to this problem so I have nothing to gain by supporting the removal of these scores from the rankings calculations but I must agree in principle. It's obvious to me that top ranking players with percentages just under 100% must have played a game where 100% cannot be acheived by learning the game.

I can appreciate Tickman's idea that such games demonstrate probabilistic concepts and have an elegant educational component to them in that way but they do represent games that cannot be won except by chance and so we should not be evaluated based on our performance in such games.

For what it's worth, I also disagree with the 20+ ATH rule separating Grandmasters from Grandmasters+ but this rule enables me to keep Dalle away from the top spot by pushing him under 20 ATHs whenever he displaces me so I've had a bit of fun with it.

I agree with tickman. I don't want to spend on avarage 5040 games on 7 ***** dwarfs just to have a clean 100% overall

You know what, Peto ? actually what you say lingered unexpressed in my mind for a while and now i am conscious of that: yes, at the moment i am restrained from playing some games that i could just try for the sake of curiosity.
Maybe this is bad, i don't know, but it is surely happening to me

People have different reasons for being addicted to purposegames, and the competitive element is very attractive to some people. Many people. Okay, I'm cool with that.

I think that a rating system that encourages people to play as wide a variety of games as possible is best, however, while a rating system that discourages experimenting is less than optimal. I was just wondering (since I'm not a speedster myself) if any of the dedicated purposegamers were restraining themselves, consciously or not, as a result of the new rating system.

Answer to BoboLo

I see at least 3 reasons why a game can't be completed:
- it is random
- it is so long that it causes software problems
- it is too hard (but deterministic)

The last one isn't a real problem in view of trying to get a good ranking (with present rules). Just write down the answers and then play again and follow your notes. You will get a horrible timing but you'll get the 100%

For the second problem there are no solutions until the bug is found and solved.
For the first one, there is no sure solution. One should just play and play... quite boring.
I think that excluding gambling game is a better solution than lowering the threshold. For any threshold you can find there will be a random game that leaves you probably with a lower score.

I do not personally find the present rules for ranking very good but surely they are intresting and i am trying hard to get the best score I can. I would not ask to change these rules ; i'd prefer to take away possible problems like the unfair fact that some games are not connected to some ability, let alone purpose. I am happy to have random games in PG because they are fun, but I would exclude them for "more serious" part of PG like rankings.

If i correctly understand what Bobolo suggests, the rounding up would occur on the percentage of the game.
"How lucky are you" has 7 answers, if u make just one error your percentage is 87.5% and the 99% threshold would not count.

If instead he is suggesting to round the percentage of the ranking, i don't think it's a good idea because there are tons of ppl with percentages higher than 99% and it wouldnt be fair

As it is now a player who has played 1000 different games at 100% is rated higher than someone who has played 10.000 at 99.99%.
I think the current rating system is a bit unfair to long time members who has played a lot of games out of curiosity and never bothered to get 100%. Now they need to find these games and try to get a 100% score in order to improve their rating. If they had known this was to be important they probably wouldn't have finished the games in the first place in order not to get a score lower than 100% on a game they aren't that interested in..
My idea would be to multiply the number of games played with the average percentage to get a rating.

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