Top 100 Player position challenge?

I would like to know how does the ranking system work if you want to be within the top 100 players?
Do you have to play for the specific position on the ladder once you progress to high level play?
The reason for me am asking is, if there are so many players(76%) inactive for such long periods, how do you progress,must you wait for them to be active?

I made the following observation by counting the activity of the Top 100(2017-05-09).

15 Players were active within the last 24hrs.
6 players -last activity 48hrs ago.
3 players -last activity 72hrs ago.
76 players - last activity 96hrs to +30 days ago.

Thank you.

I would like to know how does the ranking system work if you want to be within the top 100 players?

After 1 Month you get "H" in your playercard/ profil. So other people can get your rank position.

Also after not playing 3 weeks you still get or atleast got in the past ladderdecay.

When you play 1 game after 2 month afk, you will change the "H" to a Rankposition back.

Another point is when you are not playing 1vs1 brits for example, but many other people play--> You can dropp or climb up. Depends if the others lose or win^^



Behind the Rankpositionnumber is a hidden Elopoint system. So its possible that the rank 1 has collected soo many points, that even with being long time afk, he still has more points then the rank 2 player.

What SturmPanther said, but also yes there are a great deal of inactive players in the top of the ladders. If you beat LOADS of low level players you might climb up, but you are kinda right in your assumption that if very few of the top 100 play often you will lack a chance to play and beat them.

Its been a problem for a long-time now, old game and what not...

The ranking system is based on a hidden ELO value. The person with rank 1 has the highest ELO value for that specific faction and game mode.

So, in order to get to a high ranking, you have to increase your ELO by - well - winning games. And that works regardless if the people ahead of you in the ladder actually play or not.

Inactivity is dealt with like Sturmpanther said: After 4 weeks you keep your ELO, but get kicked of the ladder. So, say, if you are currently rank 101 and the 100 top players wouldn't play for four weeks you'd be number one. I wouldn't bank on that happening, obviously . Also, they only would need to play one game and their rank would be restored.

After 2 weeks of inactivity, your ELO is supposed to decay, which means that you likely will use ranks as well. That said, I was looking briefly if that actually happens and the results are - uhm - not too clear.

Here are the ranks of one specific player that I looked at at the time; the x axis is "days after having played last".



The minor fluctuations you see are due to the ELO values of the other players gaining or losing ELO. So, for example due to not playing, his UKF improved from rank 300 to about 290. However, his Soviets decreased from 300 to roughly 320.

You can see that after 14 days his OKW rank drops sharply from about 130 to 160. However, for all other ranks, however, this is not apparent. So, it might be that the decay only happens for top 200 or so players, maybe? Dunno...

There is more info on the ladder
here.

What SturmPanther said, but also yes there are a great deal of inactive players in the top of the ladders. If you beat LOADS of low level players you might climb up, but you are kinda right in your assumption that if very few of the top 100 play often you will lack a chance to play and beat them.

Its been a problem for a long-time now, old game and what not...

Not sure if that's true, though.

Just for the fun of it I looked at how players got into the top 100 or (even top 10).

So, here's the most recent example:

The first game for this specific player started playing 22nd of February this year (ok, this guy is actually a smurf, but the initial matchups show that he went through the typical placement part in the first 10 games.

First round he won 5 games against players at rank 25, 165, 1597, 1892, and 259.
The next session he beat players rank 134, 132, 225, 118 and 891. After these matches he ended up at rank 20.

The next round he happened to be matched with Vipuks three times in a row (rank 17 after this), winning all three games which brought him to rank 13.

The he won vs. a rank 38 (=> got to rank 10) and a rank 228 which ultimately got him to rank 8...

Is it not true that if you never beat a player who has a higher rank than you (say you are rank 150 and the top 100 rarely play) then it will take a much longer time of grinding to get to top 100.

Also from a competitive point of view an ambitious player want to play and beat those top 100 people not just out grind them.

its a problem because the game is running out of steam not because the elo system isn't good.

Is it not true that if you never beat a player who has a higher rank than you (say you are rank 150 and the top 100 rarely play) then it will take a much longer time of grinding to get to top 100.

Sure, if you expect to get to the top 100 by only grinding rank 1000 players, this will probably take a while (yes, the 1000 is a arbitrary, high number).

That said, while player numbers are not stellar, how likely is it that that happens? According to coh2charts, the top 250 played 3334 games last week, which still is about 20 games per hour. Of course those are not distributed evenly over the day, but if you manage to play around the evening hours in Europe I think it will be very unlikely that you will only be matched up with 500+ rank players.

Found another example, which is probably closer to what the OP is asking about. So, this guy is currently around rank 100 with SOV. He managed to get there in 11 games;

His opponents were 63 (won), 676 (won), 1058 (lost), 526 (won), 577 (won), 85 (won), 174 (lost), 217 (won), 106 (lost), 244 (won), and 1052 (won).

So, yeah, he had to play several much weaker players (5 times), yet he still got paired with 6 top 250 and 2 top 100 players. And I see no reason why this should work out differently for the OP...

Edit: Not saying that it always is possible in 11 games or so; of course you can be more or less lucky with matchmaking, in particular depending on what time zone you are in. I'm merely trying to make the point that it is not true that breaking into the top 100 necessarily is a tedious grind because of the veteran players...

Of course if you play at peek times you will find someone, and i think the OP should be able to get into the top 100 without too much trouble (if he is good enough). But if we look at the top 100 players themselves we do see horrible play rates and a huge number of players who have left leaving 'gaps' where it seems there is the top 10 >>>>>> top 20 >>> top 40 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> top 100 etc. So apart from the 'try hards' at the top its pretty empty.

I dont have the statistics to back this up, tho i do have a lot of auto-match experience. This is my 'feeling' of how its changing.

Of course if you play at peek times you will find someone, and i think the OP should be able to get into the top 100 without too much trouble (if he is good enough). But if we look at the top 100 players themselves we do see horrible play rates and a huge number of players who have left leaving 'gaps' where it seems there is the top 10 >>>>>> top 20 >>> top 40 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> top 100 etc. So apart from the 'try hards' at the top its pretty empty.

I dont have the statistics to back this up, tho i do have a lot of auto-match experience. This is my 'feeling' of how its changing.

That has always been the case, specially after they implemented decay/hidden ranks (before you had to really grind out those who had several smurfs at the top occupying slots without playing on those).
It's not the same a top200 4 years ago, than at the present.

That has always been the case, specially after they implemented decay/hidden ranks (before you had to really grind out those who had several smurfs at the top occupying slots without playing on those).
It's not the same a top200 4 years ago, than at the present.

I think it´s better to have not so much valued top 200 than having top 200 with 20 Paula alts, for example

I think it´s better to have not so much valued top 200 than having top 200 with 20 Paula alts, for example

Unfortunately i'm not sure if that could be hyperbole (20 alts from Paul) since the amount of Smurfs at that point clogging the leaderboard was high (10/15 wins and you were pretty much there). But as Finndeed says, the merit of getting to top100 (when the only leaderboard was here) has been devalued pretty much. Even when they implemented decay/hidden, there was much more players/competition than in the current situation.

Of course if you play at peek times you will find someone, and i think the OP should be able to get into the top 100 without too much trouble (if he is good enough). But if we look at the top 100 players themselves we do see horrible play rates and a huge number of players who have left leaving 'gaps' where it seems there is the top 10 >>>>>> top 20 >>> top 40 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> top 100 etc. So apart from the 'try hards' at the top its pretty empty.

I dont have the statistics to back this up, tho i do have a lot of auto-match experience. This is my 'feeling' of how its changing.

It does really feel like there are some clear tiers of skill at the various leader board levels. I'm sure smurfs/old accounts cause this. At the risk of bragging, I personally find:

top 200 is very hit or miss, some people are skilled and other people really don't seem to deserve to be such a high rank

top 100 everyone knows how to play

top 50 people start to really be legit, tournament contenders etc

And TBH because I play at off-hours I haven't played more than 4 or 5 people in the top 30 or higher so I can't comment too much. I did lose more of those games than I won I think.

Ladder rank in coh2 is really not all that meaningful.