SplatStats Rankings Guide

Splatoon 2 Competitive Rankings

The SplatStats Rankings (SSR) is a rankings system used to competitively measure the success and strength of a Splatoon 2 team entering in events. The system is a combination of the Glicko-2 ratings system and an adaptation of the WTA Rankings. The ranks are based on a tournament tiering system that weights each event based on its strongest competitors. We will continue to tweak and adjust the systems as need be to encompass all sorts of instances and occasions that happen within the Splatoon 2 scene.

Glicko-2 Rankings

The current iteration of the Glicko-2 algorithm was developed by Lunaji (@Lunaji_spl2).

The Glicko-2 algorithm posits that a team’s strength is an interval rather than a singular number. Thusly, scores are presented as a measure of reliability with ratings deviation. A third number, volatility, is used to calculate the

R — rating | RD — rating deviation

The Glicko-2 algorithm also allows for ranking teams who have been absent from the scene for a while, but have returned to the current season. Their scores are thus adjusted with every season where their Ratings Deviation score is increased, representing an increase in variability of their true score. This is represented in a team’s volatility measurement.

𝞼 — volatility

In the current Glicko-2 algorithm, each game played is counted as a win or loss. This means that with a scores of 3–2 in a 5-game set, your record is recorded as three wins and two losses. The major difference between this and simply counting a set record as a singular win or loss is that each individual game has a chance to affect the rankings. This ensures that matches that come to a close contention are counted individually rather than discounted in an overall win-or-loss record.

Because we can now count teams who are absent but may return, it becomes less imperative for us to track pickup or disbanded teams, as their status will be naturally reflected in their Glicko-2 rankings. We have also attached a tag to allow us to determine the last season a team has participated in to better understand when such team is absent.

The presentation of the Glicko-2 rankings will only include teams that have participated in the current season. However, every team is still recorded in a separate list, which is used to grab a team’s most recent rating, rating deviation, and volatility for calculation in the following season.

Aliases

An important aspect for accurate ratings is differentiating the teams competing. We thus need to make sure that we have the correct spelling and names associated with a team.

For appropriate alias recognition, we employ a loose ‘majority’ rule, where if a majority of a pickup team’s members are from a certain team, then both names become associated with each other in the rankings. It becomes extremely important then that we do a regular alias check in the scene to help ensure the accuracy of the ratings.

It should be noted that if a team can request to not be associated with said team. This will result in different rankings for both teams.

Regional Splitting

• For Season 3 rankings, the OCE and LAM regions were split from INT, using INT Season 2 Glicko-2 scores.
• For Season 6 rankings, the NAM and EUR regions were split from INT, using INT Season 5 Glicko-2 scores.

Competitive Regions

The SSR emphasizes the importance of international competition. To achieve this, we have divided events into two categories: International competition and Regional competition.

It should be noted that any event can be interchanged based on the organizer’s request, pending specific circumstances.

International Competition

International competition encompasses major events in which all teams are represented from all competitive regions and mark a highly skilled pool of teams and players. Thus, the majority of points earned in the rankings will come from these events. These events are noticeably much larger than the average competitive event and usually see many high-level teams enter and play.

Regional Competition

Regional competition encompasses two aspects. One is to track events that are region-exclusive, whether based by rule or by time zones and convenience. The second is to track events that are regular or semi-regular. This second criteria is not as strict on region exclusivity and can include teams from other regions.

Determination of region is based on several factors — location of organizers, regions of competing teams, time zone, and regular returning teams. This also extends to LAN events themselves, outside of invitational or qualifying events.

Because this category of tournaments is meant to encompass all regularly occurring events, there will be no weekly/bi-weekly event that will be considered for the INT category, which is reserved for majors or large organized events. Thus, we will defer to organizer’s choice of which region to be included in if there is an equal spread of teams from multiple regions.

Amateur Events

There is a third category of events that will be counted into Regional competition for Amateur teams. This “region” is meant to encompass events catering towards new teams and lower-ranked teams. This allows developing teams to have their own environment to prove themselves before they decide to move on to other events.

We do not currently restrict which teams are eligible to compete in these events. Teams thus must defer to the rules of the tournament organizers.

Current Regions

• NAM — North America (United States, Canada)
• LAM — Latin America (Mexico, Central and South America)
• EUR — Europe
• FRA — France
• OCE — Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia
• KOR — South Korea
• JPN — Japan
• AMA — Amateur

Rankings

The SSR will be based on a WTA-style weighted points system. Points are distributed based on regions, which the majority of points in INT events.

Tournament Tiers

Tiers are determined by their overall weight.

First, the average of the top 8-highest ranked teams in a tournament is used to determine the weight of that tournament. The rank used is based on the previous season’s Glicko-2 rankings (Season 5 in this case).

After each tournament is weighted, the tournaments are then ordered from highest to lowest. The tiers are then individually decided based on a bell curve for all weighted events. Bracket and League events will have separate weight classes.

Tournaments can be manually tiered for specific reasons, such as assigning higher tiers to tournaments that are considered seeded or qualified events, or lower tiers for bottom cuts of larger events.

Tiers

• S — Invitational/Seeded
• A — Average +1 Standard Deviation
• B — Average Weight
• C — Average -1 Standard Deviation
• D — Bottom Cuts/The Rest

S-tier classification is reserved for invitational events (The Inkvitational) or seeded/qualified events (GSM Elite Finals) whose weight is at least B-tier. These represent the highest level of competition in the scene.

Regional Tiers

• Series — Average +1 Standard Deviation/Invitational/Qualified
• Circuit — Average Weight
• Local — The Rest

For events with past records (or breaking off of older records), the weight will be based on the previous season’s ratings. For new regions, however, their respective first season will be entirely based on entrant counts.

The Amateur events will always be based on entrant count rather than ratings, due to the nature of it being events for newer or lower-ranked teams.

League Tiers

• Championship — Highest Division in INT
• Major League — Average Weight
• Minor League — The Rest/Regional Leagues

Point Distribution

Total Rankings

The Final Rankings decided by the Leaderboards, representing your respective Top 5 placements at tournaments during the season. The reason to doing this is to restrict rankings based on best performances rather than most performances. This way, the quality of the tournaments you enter matters way more than the number of tournaments entered.

There will also be a similar leaderboard for each region that encompasses events within their respective regions.

Season 7 and the Future

We will be working to try and update rankings much more often and faster. One of our current plans is to have a weekly stream to show the update process while also talking about the tournaments that have taken place. Our hopes is that it becomes an educational tool for people looking to get into competitive Splatoon 2.

The Season 7 Tournament listings will be posted here.

SplatStats is an organization dedicated to tracking the Splatoon 2 competitive scene. If you would like to help support us, please check out our Patreon!

Stats — ganbawoomy, BestTeaMaker