150cc Lounge Season 3 - Launch Notes

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Cynda

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After almost a year and over 22000 matches, Season 2 of MK8DX 150cc Lounge has come to a close. In the last few months the server has grown to sizes larger than we could have ever imagined; between March and June of this year, over 10000 matches were played at an average of 110+ matches per day. While this is obviously a great thing for overall activity, there were some very clear flaws that came to light in the process. With the launch of Season 3 we've corrected nearly all of these problems to hopefully improve the competitive experience for all players.

RANK/TIER CHANGES

Near the end of Season 2 our current ranking system started to show its flaws when applied to a higher population of players. In late 2019, a majority of the players in our server had been in our community for a while and had some experience in the competitive scene. Jumping forward to March 2020, a large influx of newer players joined the Lounge and many immediately plummeted to 0 MMR. An estimated 300+ players have reached that point at some time during Season 2, which causes quite a few problems.

- The first and most obvious problem is that when a large number of players hit a cap of how much MMR they can lose, it becomes impossible to accurately rate them. Looking at the leaderboard, seeing several people all stuck at the bottom tells you nothing about how they compare to each other. If the system allowed it, a player could theoretically be hundreds or thousands of MMR in the negatives due to losing every match, yet they would still be forced to play against the same competition.

- The second problem this causes is that lower tiers could be incredibly unbalanced. For example, Tier-D, by far the most active tier in the server, could have players who perform considerably well in higher divisions of MKU matched up with players who are playing competitive for the first time. This caused many matches in tier to be almost entirely decided based on the random teams produced by BooBot.

- Lastly, the large number of players hitting 0 MMR caused another very significant problem: MMR inflation. Any time a player at 0 MMR loses an event and would normally lose MMR, they lose none. Because each lounge match is intended to be zero-sum with MMR gains and losses, this means that matches where 0 MMR players lose creates more MMR in the system. Since this was not a rare occurrence, MMR inflated quite significantly over the course of the season. This affects all tiers, not just Bronze and Silver players, since MMR inflation makes it easier for players to get into ranks that they might not be entirely ready for. It was not uncommon for Silver players to get to Gold by playing Tier D and get destroyed by the higher ranked players in Tier B. This, in turn, would cause those higher ranked players to have more MMR than before, and the cycle continues.

To solve these problems, we are going to completely revamp the ranking system. Since it's a new season, all players' MMR will be moved closer to the median, but will all also receive +1500 MMR. This is to expand the range of MMR that lower tier players can reach in order to achieve more accurate matchmaking tiers. We have also added 3 new ranks: Iron (below Bronze), Sapphire (between Platinum and Diamond), and Grandmaster (above Master). The new ranking system is as follows:

Iron: 0-1999 MMR (Placement: 1000)
Bronze: 2000-3499 MMR (Placement: 2500)
Silver: 3500-4999 MMR (Placement: 4000)
Gold: 5000-6499 MMR (Placement: 5500)
Platinum: 6500-7999 MMR (Placement: 7000)
Sapphire: 8000-9499 MMR
Diamond: 9500-10999 MMR
Master: 11000-12499 MMR
Grandmaster: 12500+ MMR

The tiers have also been changed to account for these new ranks:

Tier E: Iron + Bronze
Tier D: Bronze + Silver
Tier C: Silver + Gold
Tier B: Gold + Platinum
Tier A: Platinum + Sapphire + Diamond + Master
Tier S: Sapphire + Diamond + Master
Tier X: Diamond + Master

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RULE CHANGES

The ruleset has been moved off of individual Pastebin files to one thread on MKCentral, which can be found here:
https://www.mariokartcentral.com/fo...k8dx-150cc-lounge-rules-updated-6-21-20.4716/

MKCentral Account links

From now on, players must have created a profile on the MKCentral registry to join lounge. Instead of sending your forum account, players must send the link to their registry account (Ex. https://www.mariokartcentral.com/mkc/registry/players/4)

Nickname changes

Players can now only change their nickname once during Season 3. Changing back to your registry name is still allowed, but this will count as your name change if you haven't done one already. Players who have used their one name change can still change back to their registry name.

Additionally, to keep the leaderboard clean and to reduce the amount of work for updaters, we're introducing guidelines for nicknames:

I. b. i. Nicknames may only contain letters (at least one), numbers, spaces, or underscores, and must be between 2-15 characters. They also may not contain any vulgar language or impersonate another MKC user. In most cases, if your name can be used as a Twitter username, you can use it in lounge. Exceptions may be granted on a case-by-case basis.


Team Captains
g. If the event is 6v6, the two players with the highest elo will become captains of each team and will select players in a snake format (1-2-2-2-2-1).

i. Players who refuse to captain will receive -50 MMR.

ii. The captain which picks first is chosen randomly using the _choose command.

We've added a new rule to encourage lineups to find a host for an event:
h. If there is no host for a mogi 20 minutes after the poll ends, the entire lineup will receive -50 and a strike.

Recently there have been a lot of hosts causing issues during events, so we added this new rule:
k. Hosts that start the room with less than 12 players, close the room for no reason, or otherwise cause unnecessary disruptions will receive -50 and a strike, and may be prohibited from hosting in the future. Typing !hostban in any channel will show the list of host-banned players.


NEW CONDUCT SECTION

The ruleset during Season 2 had no mention of toxic behavior or other kinds of disruptions, so we've added a section in the ruleset to clarify that:
VII. CONDUCT

a. Players who consistently cause disruptions in the server such as trolling, flaming, spamming bot commands, etc. will either receive a chat restriction (only allowing them to send certain messages), or a mute.

b. Any NSFW content in the server will be promptly deleted and the user that posts it will receive an indefinite chat restriction.


RESULTS

We're now requiring hosts to take screenshots during events to make sure no tables are missed:
c. Room hosts are responsible for taking screenshots of results. If an event fails to have a screenshot or table posted within 24 hours, the host of the room will receive -100 and a strike.

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PLACEMENTS

From now on, new players that join the lounge will receive a Placement role which has access to Tier E only. Based on how players with this role perform in their first match, they will either receive Iron or Bronze (or higher in rare cases).

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MMR FORMULA

The MMR algorithm has been updated: see this document for explanations. (All credit goes to Valence of MKW lounge for this formula)

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QUALITY OF LIFE FEATURES

- Players can now use Carl-bot to make suggestions by typing !suggest in the #suggestions-disc channel. A message will appear in #suggestions-vote that other Lounge players can vote on. Staff decisions on these suggestions will be put in #suggestions-log. Please ONLY use this for making suggestions, testing the system or making joke suggestions will be met with a deletion and possible restrictions.

- The server now has a new GIF icon (seen at the top of this post), as well as a custom background that appears when players click the invite link.

- Players who played the last event in a tier chat can veto the last format played. Example: The last event played was a 2v2, a player can type veto 2 and potentially prevent that format from being played. Two vetoes results in the format not being picked, even if it gets the most votes.
 
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