Fortress ranked update, November

What changed

Even lobbies count as even. Every result is weighed against how favoured you were going in. That used to be your own rating against the enemy team's average. Pickup teams barely depend on who you are, so in practice it measured how good you were: strong players were always the favourite and earned less, weaker players were always the underdog and earned more. It now compares your team's average with the enemy team's.

Subs and new players count properly. A player who joined for one round no longer counts as a full opponent. New players without a rating used to be left out of team averages, which made their team look stronger than it was. They now count at a low starting rating.

Great games pay more. Performance had a hard ceiling, and half of all games by top Masters hit it, so past that point every game paid the same. The ceiling now tapers off instead. A perfect game below Diamond is worth 50 role RP instead of 43.

Getting centred no longer ends your clock. Defense protection time and Sweep's sweep-up time used to stop the moment you were centred. They now pause until the centerer dies or their trail leaves the zone.

Short rounds cost less. Both clocks are now adjusted for round length, so a fast match no longer drags them down on its own.

Fewer fake holes and cuts. Reported events turned up two hole bugs. A death in line with a wall but past its end counted as a hole. And a hole near the back end of a wall could be missed when someone went through it, which recorded a cut instead. Across all 2,498 matches, holes drop from 77,507 to 66,059, while taken holes rise from 16,994 to 18,159.

What it does to the ladder

Today's ladder against the same season re-scored, for the 137 players with at least 10 games this season.

88 players finish higher and 44 lower. The average goes from 500 RP to 517, and the order barely changes. The top of the ladder goes from 1922 RP to 2148.

The biggest losses are players who gained the most from always being rated the underdog.