Totally agree!
There is no reason not to submit your non-optimized solution for puzzles with a golfing version or an optimization challenge. 
Cool! Thank you so much! (joke). Weâve got 50 single player puzzles. And only 4 of them can be used in golf and optimization (3 Golf and only 1 optimization one)
The new system doesnât implement that âtiming competitionâ idea either.
Clash of clans is different as it contains only trivial problems that can be solved in couple minutes
Except for Contests, thereâs no time limits for other coding activities.
You can code/improve your AI or optimization, or golf solution for months or years. And it will be compared to a solution that someone coded in only an hour.
I didnât say that limiting the time might be a good idea. I think it is the only way of comparing players on puzzles with exact solution. When you talk about AI and optimization, there is a notion of score to obtain, maximize, etc. And the limit is really hard to reach, so it is way easier to compare the quality of the solution of two competitors. Whereas, if we make a ranking for only puzzles, then everyone who has already solved the puzzles will end up first ex-aequo ⌠That doesnât mean anything does it ?
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My point was that even 1 codinpoint for any âmultiplayerâ game (including optimization puzzles) is enough to get you quite far from the last spot in the ranking. Nothing more.
I really agree with @Magus this system is a good one for good players or for top hackers who moreover got plenty of time to tinker with stochastic problems, AI, or eight days/200 hours of programming contest.
But clearly for guys who just came here to improve their skills and scratched their heads solving problems and monitoring their progress through the leaderboard, thatâs really not the case in my mind. If I use sth in here itâs just a fun way to watch me âprogressâ: the pleasure of solving a problem and gaining even just one rank and be proud, I know it may sound just ridiculous for top hackers like @Aveuh or @Magus but when youâre just trying to find a way to keep you motivated on the bumpy âlearn programmingâ road, that f*ckin help!!!
As far as the âproblem is not competitiveâ thing as @Aveuh and others pointed it, thatâs half-truth/half-false. As iâm searching another place to have fun solving programming problems while gurus played with AI, that ranking change fallacy helped me: I read closely the scoring rules (I dont want to be f*ckin tricked again!! I do hate that!!)
On (no pub!!) for example youâve got a clear distinction between practice problems and competitive problems. The weights of each are 10: an easy practice problems itâs 10, an easy competitive itâs 100 for example. On the competitive one youâre ranked not only on the complete problem achievement but also on the time you used to solve it. So had Codingame decided to make a distinction between practice/tutorial problems and competitive one, it would have been ok. But here itâs a bit: you like enjoying problems? right, just go elsewhere (no more f word!!).
A final note: for those like me solving problems here was NOT a waste of time. You guys could use that investment on some other website and find anew a decent way to watch your progress!! I do hope I wonât get tricked againâŚ
Had I known it would become a multiplayer website, I would have never begun in here (my bad :â( ).
2 Likes
Plop, my two cents on something nobody has talking about yet.
Contest achievements.
So contest is giving multiplayer ranking points, like it used to, but also contest achievement reward, which award exp? So your skill in multiplayer strenghen your skill in solo? That doesnât really make sense to me.
Maybe those achievements should award CP instead, it would be more logical.
Also, I agree on the new system, but also agree on the frustration. The ranking is better left for multiplayer, since itâs the competitive part, but some sort of comparison is necessary in solo too, so this idea:
is awesome.
After reading most of the comments here, I donât understand why the new system gets so much hate. Itâs not perfect for everyones wishes (nothing is), but I would say itâs a step in the right direction.
Well a leaderboard is not for tracking personal progress, itâs for comparing different players⌠I would say the current format (level/xp) is well suited for tracking personal progressâŚ
The problem with a leaderboard is: If you were rank 300 before and now you are rank 320, you donât know if you got worse or other players got better. And why would you want a system where your progress level (= ranking) can go down over time if you want to âtrack progressâ? The progress bar (level/xp) handles this betterâŚ
Also in the current format you either complete it a solo puzzle or you donât, there is no âbetterâ completion of a solo puzzle, so why would there be a leaderboard that assigns rankings to players based on completion of puzzles? It would just result in âwho completes the most puzzlesâ. But especially if you have a certain level of skill, most of the puzzles become really uninteresting. So higher skilled players should just farm CP on puzzles or get ranked lower than someone that does?
For multiplayer games a leaderboard is a fitting representation because here there are no âcorrectâ or âwrongâ solutions, itâs all about how many players you can beat. --> leaderboard
Another related thing:
I always disliked that you get compared to every registered user (400000+) in all categories even if most of them never were active in certain categories: For example just spending 10 minutes on an optimization game and getting 50CP gets you in something like the top 0.1% for optimization. Some people seem to love the idea that they are better than almost everyone no matter how meaningless it is, but seriously please grow up and accept a system reflecting reality more closely, even if it doesnât tell you youâre the best.
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your skill in solo
There is nothing which measures the solo skill (and it has never been present on CodinGame previously) and concept of XP is not intended to be competitive.
Aka, we can add xp to anyone, anytime without fuck up the rankings with daily quest or whatever we want to.
Plus:
Iâve never played a game that increase my multiplayer ranking while doing the solo campaign.
Achievements are personals and there is no point for those to reward CP.
4 Likes
At the same time, with the old system, my friend who started learning programming a few weeks ago was already ranked âMasterâ after doing just the easy problems, this made no sense.
In the new system, she has a âRookieâ rank and something like level 7 which is obviously much better.
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Yes, makes sense but I donât know if we can do it with the actual plugin, Iâll dive into it asap.
Totally agree.
Hi all, I have read all the post here and I think the problem is mixing solving puzzles with getting upvotes or send great post to the forum in the same xp ranking.
You canât really say âthis one is good because he solved X puzzlesâ but you can really say âthis one is better because he solved X very hard puzzles than the other who solved X easy puzzlesâ.
If you need 6 month to finish a very hard puzzle, you are not really a good coder but you are better than all the coders who never will finish a very hard puzzle in their life.
So I suggest to add something who tell us how good is the coder solving puzzles, and not only a level experience like now.
My solution is to show a letter and a number. The letter stands for the maximum difficulty of all the puzzles solved (A=Easy, B=Medium, âŚ). The number stands for the amount of puzzles solved at that difficulty.
Example:
Coder1 have solved 10 easy puzzles and 3 medium puzzles: B3.
Coder2 have solved 3 easy puzzles, 1 medium puzzle and 2 hard puzzles: C2
Thanks for reading!
3 Likes
Hi all and thank you for your feedback.
I really understand the frustration to have your rank name moving from guru to master. Thatâs why I want to clarify why we have changed it:
Non meaningful Rank name
Before the new system, Guru was given to all people that are in the top 0.1%. Our community is about 400k users and growing. So the Guru name was given to 400 codingamers and this number will continue to grow. Other rank names were created on the same mechanism : top 1% for Grand Master, top 3% for Master, etc. The problem with that is what @francois2 says: you are given an important name for just doing some easy puzzle because your name is based on the community size. With the new system, we have fixed these steps: top 100 for Guru, top 500 for Grand Master, etc. and top 20k for the last name. This is easy to understand and really reflect your rank in a competitive environment.
Levels & Custom profile
Solo puzzle and levels are the very first step of a big update. They will become more important that you think. We want to change the user profile to reflect what kind of coder you are and what are your skills. Some ideas (and not a roadmap!): at each level you can unlock some kind of rewards that you can display on your profile : Iâm master on Javascript, Iâm a social coder that helps others, Iâm a guru in Java, I masterize pathfinding, etc. And levels will be a great opportunity to build such a profile. So you havenât wasted your time by doing solo: you have learned a lot, you have a good level, and you will probably use it to create a wonderful coder profile in a near future. Whatâs good with this is that the profile clearly define you and itâs not just a rank name that somebody else can have.
Competition fluctuation
Rank can change every night. This is the way competition runs. When you finish a solo puzzle, we canât remove your rank because another players canât beat you. With the new system, you can lose rank if other players are better than you. Your rank name is never acquired, you can lost it at any moment. At the opposite, you canât lose levels and XP. This is why it better fits with one time rewards like achievements or solo puzzles (that are based on achievements!).
I hope you have a better understanding of why we have decided to move to that new system. We will also have a discussion based on your feedback soon to improve the whole system. This is the first step and as all new systems, it will probably need some tuning!
7 Likes
Thank you for your clarifications. From this point of view it is understandable.
I agree with the change and I like the way CG improve this site so often, but I think you should to distinguish the achievements in a better way:
To solve several easy puzzles gets the same xp points than solving a harder puzzle and definitely it is not the same.
Solve an easy puzzle in several languages is easier than solving different puzzles.
Actual system donât tell us what kind of puzzles a coder can solve.
I hope you take in account all of this in future changes.
The points are simply lost. Lots of hard work down the drain.
Totally agree
1 Like