WPPR v6.0 sneak peek . . .

General
1

Tilt Forums exclusive . . .

Another sneak peek into what’s currently being talked about and proposed among IFPA leadership. As always, everything is subject to change prior to the end of the year.

Since the first World Pinball Player Rankings were posted back in February 2006, there have been complaints about the fairness of trying to compare players from around the globe where the access and opportunity to compete in IFPA sanctioned events vary so greatly.

WPPR v6.0 is focused on trying to answer a systemic problem regarding the advantages of access and privilege that certain players have at their disposal, giving themselves more opportunities to compete in IFPA sanctioned events and earn WPPR points towards their ranking at a level that is above and beyond their peers. There’s privilege when it comes to players that live close to more opportunities, and privilege when it comes to players that can afford to travel and create those opportunities for themselves. Ultimately this leads to situations where the accuracy of players we’re attempting to rank is flawed due to the inconsistent level of opportunities some may have over others.

Starting in 2024 we will be splitting the World Pinball Player Rankings into two lists.

Players ranked 1-1000 will be listed on the WPPR-PRO rankings.

Players ranked 1001+ will be listed on the WPPR-AM rankings.

The WPPR-PRO rankings will include this v6.0 adjustment, while the WPPR-AM rankings will receive no adjustment.

How will WPPR v6.0 work?
We will be calculating what we consider to be a reasonable amount of play that is acceptable for a top 1000 player. Players will continue to be allowed to play as much as they would like, however players that play in excess of this reasonable amount will see an adjustment made to their total WPPR points earned towards their world ranking.

WPPR v6.0 is an attempt at measuring to what extent your Top 20 card (or likely your Top 15 card as that’s the current plan) is a representative sample of all your comp results over the past 3 years.

To the extent that it is representative, your relative rank will go up.

To the extent that it is not representative, your relative rank will go down.

The WPPR v6.0 calculation process:
STEP 1 → Calculating the “WPPRtunity” metric
We will be incorporating a player’s Efficiency Percentage to help define what we’re calling the “WPPRtunity” metric. If a player has an Eff% of 20% and a WPPR point total of 200 WPPR’s making up their top 15 resume, we calculate this WPPRtunity metric at 1000 WPPR’s (WPPR’s / Eff%).

STEP 2 → Defining what a reasonable level of “WPPRtunity” is for players in the top 1000
We will be calculating this WPPRtunity metric for every player in the top 1000, finding an average across those top 1000 players. This average will be where the line is drawn with respect to what we consider a reasonable level of access and opportunity for players to compete.

STEP 3 → Calculate the percent of excess play over average for anyone in the top 1000 that would be subject to adjustment
If the average WPPRtunity metric is 1000 and my WPPRtunity metric is 2000, then 50% of my WPPR’s would be subject to this adjustment.

STEP 4 → Calculate the adjustment for anyone that has a WPPRtunity value that is higher than average.
The adjustment is calculated by this excessive play being awarded at the Eff% value of the player rather than at full value. For example: if I have 500 WPPR’s on my card, and my excess play value is 50%, and my Eff% is 20%, there would be an 80% reduction of 50% of my WPPR point total.
Instead of 500 WPPR’s under this old formula, there would be an adjustment of 200 WPPR’s based on this excess play. (500*50%*80%)

There is a sample worksheet showing this WPPR v6.0 calculation here:

Some things to note:

  • This worksheet is a homebrew version of this adjustment that I’m calculating based on the current WPPR rankings. The plan is for this adjustment to be integrated into the rebuild after every event so we can use this WPPR v6.0 rank value in the formula used to calculate the value of each event. The homebrew version uses a player’s top 20 resume, not top 15 resume. We have a simulation privately running on our website that is actually tracking this correctly and have confirmed the results are ‘similar enough’ to the worksheet.
  • The simulation we are currently tracking has the adjustment reducing a player’s Top 20 card back down to the Top 15 results (it was previously Top 15 until WPPR v5.0 was launched).
  • Efficiency % stat before people ask = WPPR’s earned/ WPPR’s available for all active events on your resume (not just the events on your top 20 card)
  • This change would be retroactive with a starting date of 1/1/22 once it’s implemented on 1/1/24.
6 Likes
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How does Top 1000 get calculated? Every ranked player is calculated against WPPR-AM and then if you are in 1-1000 of WPPR-AM, your WPPR-AM gets hidden, and you are ranked based on your adjusted WPPR-PRO? Does this mean rank 1001 could appear to have more WPPRs than rank 1000, or even rank 900, but they have 130 WPPR-AM while rank 900 has 126 WPPR-PRO?

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I believe you have it right.

The system will first calculate things using the v5.8 formula, then make the adjustment for those top 1000 players using the v6.0 formula and apply that to the value of the event being calculated.

Before the rankings are displayed to the public we’ll chop off the top 1000, throw them in the PRO rankings and make that adjustment calculation.

Anyone ranked 1001+ will have no adjustment and simply be listed in the AMATEUR rankings.

It will be possible for players ranked in the bottom of the PRO rankings to have less WPPR’s than the top of the AMATEUR rankings, which is why we need to split the lists into these two categories for this thing to work.

4

How fitting you announced the WPPR Tax in the same week as the United States’ Tax Day :wink:.

Honestly to me (whose WPPRtunity count is fully covered by the standard deduction) it seems like a pretty elegant solution and I’m curious to see what everyone has to say.

5

Is this likely to lead to reduced participation in events by certain people?

3 Likes
6

Doubt it … Most people play for fun right and not WPPR’S right?

This change impacts 1.6% of the players that are ranked in the world.

I’m sure there are certain people that will try to exploit this system similar to every system before it and it’s possible that leads to certain players avoiding more volatile events where they feel their skill won’t be accurately represented, thus risking lowering their EFF% via a poor performance.

“Those people” should reevaluate why they play competitive pinball :wink:

6 Likes
7

Will there be any WPPR-AM Exemptions that can let some players have an jump over events that use the qualifiers top WPPR-PRO players?

Any other changes to lessen the points bomb that just one big event can have over an full year of smaller ones?

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Overall, I think this is a good change and will result in more accurate rankings. Rankings are absolutely inflated in certain areas today and this seems like a good course correction. However, I’m struggling to understand how the players ranked ~100 to 1000 and are over the WPPRtunity threshold make any significant impact to their ranking in any short term. Can they? Or, not really?

Using myself as an example - I’m in the top 1000, over the threshold by a decent amount, and my eff % is relatively low. Yeah, yeah, play better, all that jazz. (And you’re not wrong.) But - I’m now in a situation where even if I play in a large tournament and get pretty dang good points, my eff % will move up by a hair, and my new points will be taxed at my eff %. Using your example above, let’s say I’m taxed at 80% on these “new” WPPRs, as I’m over the threshold. It’s now 5x harder for me to move my ranking than it was before hitting that WPPRtunity threshold. (And my actual eff % is lower than 20%, so even worse.)

Again, I understand this is kinda the point of these changes, as I’m someone who does play a lot and travels some. But once I hit that threshold, my (upward) ranking changes will be reallllll slow relative to before. My two levers to improve it are either to grind a lot of WPPRs at a taxed rate (hopefully increasing my eff % and not reducing it further), or wait 2-3 years for active events to drop off and eff % to start resetting at (hopefully) a higher value - right? Feels like WPPR jail once you’ve hit your WPPRtunity threshold.

To @joe’s point above - I think people who look at rankings this way will likely play less after they’ve hit that threshold. Sure, you can make a case they’re looking at it “wrong,” but for better or worse I think there will be some real-world dropoff in participation for top 1000 players, especially in larger events, who are used to chasing WPPRs.

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Your “new points” won’t be taxed.

If you increase your Eff%, then less of your WPPR card is adjusted.

We’re not using ‘actual participation’ as a metric in this. The only two numbers that change your WPPRtunity metric are:

  1. WPPR’s on your top 15 card
  2. Your Eff%

You can continue to play without worry as long as you’re playing at an Eff% rate that is equal or better than your current rate. The only time that playing more will hurt you is when you play poorly (at a rate that is lower than your current Eff% rate).

Using myself as an example. If I played at my normal skill level, and I STOPPED when I hit the average WPPRtunity level, I would be at 442.33 WPPR’s (ranked 82nd). My rank increased due to my excessive play (I earned nearly 200 additional WPPR’s even with that excessive play being taxed).

1 Like
10

Just to reiterate this change will (hopefully) show rankings based in reality with more accuracy. If players wanna decrease their attendance in big competitive events to preserve an inaccurate ranking, that’s on them. I just think they’ll miss out on a lot of fun.

I personally welcome the change as I can only afford to travel a few times per year, yet know I’m better than a lot of players ranked higher than me. And sorry, I’m not trying to boast; I’m just being real.

Thanks Josh.

1 Like
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Of the players that were active in the past year what percentage will be affected by this change?

I’m somewhat curious how many competitive players stick with it. I know we’re over 90k that have played in at least one event but I’ve never looked to see how many have played in x events in y time frame.

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No

Show me where one big event can impact things that much. For fun I did a sample calculation for Raymond where he finished in last place at the latest Certified+ event up at D82. His rank in v6.0 went from 4th . . . to 4th.

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24,750 players played in an event last year.

24,344 of those players will see no adjustment of their WPPR point total.

1.64% of these players will be impacted.

2 Likes
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I’m tracking this a lot better now, thank you for the clarification @pinwizj.

And absolutely @iDrink2Much - I do think these are good changes, making rankings more accurate and more fair. I’m just trying to understand it from all angles :slight_smile:

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If people play for fun and not wpprs when why do you get your event sanctioned at all? People play for WPPRS.

3 Likes
16

for players on the bubble of AM and PRO, how often will they be switching between them? I could see this being a useful tool for excluding players from a B division for example

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As often as players bounce in and out of the top 1000 today … It’ll be that often :slight_smile:

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I guess what i’m confused by is players at the top of WPPR-AM will be ranked ahead of players at the bottom of WPPR-PRO?

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No. Players ranked 1-1000 will have their own list (the PRO list).

Whoever is ranked 1001st will be ranked #1 on the AMATEUR list.

We don’t do the adjustment until AFTER we split that list into PRO and AM every time it’s calculated.

This allows us to eventually do WPPR A, WPPR B, WPPR C, etc if we ever wanted to do the same adjustment for groups 1001-2000, 2001-3000, 3001-4000, etc.

1 Like
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and what happens to points into events?