Ability to Rate Games

[Guy The King]

When setting up a game board there used to be a toggle swith in Game Options to make a game "RATED".  That toggle switch disappeared tonight.  We play almost every night so it was immediately noticed.  I do not remember seeing "Timer" before.  Is this a bug or a deliberate change to game board settings?

[Ingix]

Hi Guy the King,

that is a deliberate change, introduced with the new timer settings. It will not be possible from now on to play rated games from a table that is set up by a player.

The reason is that over time it became apparent that players were using that option to 'cook the game'. First they set up the same kingdom again and again and waited for players to join their table. When that option was eliminated, they set up free sockpuppet accounts and played their main accounts against them (usually with a very early resign by the sockpuppet).

So its an unfotunate side effect that your evening games with your frined will now need to be unrated.

[Guy The King]

That is extremely disappointing.  We have been tracking our ratings for years and now we are not able.  Not sure I understand the rationale for removing it for subscibers that have found the feature very positive to track performance over time.  Any chance it could come back?

[Ingix]

> Any chance it could come back?

That seems very, very unlikely.

When you are playing only amongst your group of friends, you are tracking your strength with respect to each other, not within the whole playing community. While I agree that the former is an interesting metric for your group of friends, it isn't really relevant for the rating system as whole.

Say you are 4 players with ratings from 45 to 55, after playing rated games for a year only among yourselves. That doesn't say much about what your rating should be when you are playing against other players. Maybe in reality you are 50-60 players, or 40-50 players?