Hey everyone, Gautam here.
On around August 12th, ranked elo is changing in a big way. Your rank on the ladder carries over exactly, but the way elo works underneath is being rebuilt from scratch.
This post explains what’s changing and why.
Why change it
The old elo system was too generous.
When you won, it gave you more than it took from the loser, so the total amount of elo on the ladder grew every single day. Over the past year the ladder has generated around 150 million extra elo this way, creating severe *inflation* and making the elo more of a play counter instead of an accurate rating.
That chart is built from every ranked duel ever played, and it shows the median elo at each level of experience. The pattern is hard to argue with: play more games, get more elo, almost regardless of results.
It cuts the other way too. We measured everyone's real skill by replaying the entire year of duels through an honest rating, and most of the game's best players turn out to be sitting between 2,000 and 5,000 elo. Only 1 in 45 of them has ever reached 10,000, not because they lack the skill, but because they haven't played thousands of games.
The new system
The new ranked will use the same classic ELO system games like Chess have trusted for sixty years. The winner takes points from the loser, meaning no more elo is created out of thin air and no more abnormal gaps between players.
What happens to your elo
On migration morning every rating converts to a new, smaller scale. The conversion keeps the whole ladder in exactly the same order, so your rank does not move at all.
| Today | After | League |
|---|---|---|
| 20,000 | ~1,600 | Nomad |
| 10,000 | ~1,340 | Nomad |
| 8,000 | ~1,270 | Nomad |
| 5,000 | ~1,160 | Voyager |
| 2,000 | ~875 | Explorer |
| 1,300 | ~800 | Trekker |
| 1,000 | ~670 | Trekker |
Legend
There's a new league above Nomad now: Legend, at 1800. It starts completely empty. The best player in the game converts to about 1,600, so the only way into Legend is to take two hundred points off the strongest players alive, win by win.
Whoever gets there first will be the first Legend in WorldGuessr history, and they’ll have earned every point of it in the new system, where points can’t be farmed.
Your progress is not being erased
If you spent months building a big number, that effort will be honored.
Your peak elo becomes a permanent badge on your profile, and the final old ladder is frozen forever as a Hall of Fame page. Heavy grinders also start the new system with a wallet of Stamps, which brings me to the next thing.
Stamps
Since rating will now only move when you outplay someone, playing a lot deserves its own reward. That reward is Stamps, a new currency for WorldGuessr earned through demonstrating your skills.
More on this in a future post.
New players
New accounts start at 500 and play their first ranked game as a placement match against a bot, where their score sets their starting rating, up to 800 for a perfect game. From the second game onward everything is real. It's all designed to reach your true skill level as quickly as possible.
Matchmaking
The queue is getting rebuilt alongside the rating. Today it gives up after ten seconds and matches you against a huge range, which is why very high rated players keep playing newer players.
After the update the queue searches near your rating and widens gradually. While this may slightly increase matchmaking times, it will guarantee much more interesting matches.
That's the whole change. A rating you can trust, a ladder where the top is earned, rewards for the road behind us, and a reason to keep grinding.
Nothing happens until August 9th, and when it does, you’ll see a summary of everything you received the next time you log in.
Write questions below, I'll answer everything.
