Action, the reason why your rank moves around so much is because you are in a section of the TS level where a LOT of players are just about equal right now. In terms of tier players the top 5 are pretty much fluctating by 1 spot a day, 5-10 are about 2 unit variance, 10-15 about 3, 15-20 about 5, and then after that between 21 and 80 there is a huge chunk of closely skilled players where you might see someone ranked 25 one day, and then 50 the next. That section will ALWAYS be like this unless these players start tightening up their skills and start pushing the top 20 down. Eventually it's going to get to the point where the top 2 or 3 spots will remain static for a very long time at certain points because #1 will be far away from #2, and 2 and 3 will probably fluctuate a bit more. There are at least 10 amazing players on the list right now and if everyone keeps playing the variety of placement will continue. It all depends on "what happens"
As for the laggers, I have started making a mental list of players I simply do not want to play against because the chance of losing because of lag is too great. Fortunately it's maybe 1 in 10 players who lags beyond playability. ShynForce's lag/delay is so insurmountable at times, and a couple other guys are always red when I play them. There's one guy who gets 4 Green bars to me and still lags like Hell. I just don't play people who have any red bars at all, the lowest I'll play is 2 yellow and even that can be risky as it was tonight in a 4 Player game I had.
As far the top 5, only reason Lex is not in there right now is because he's still on the pad and he's also not quite as accustomed to netplay as me Moe and Thrower. Once MikeJ119 gets on things are going to get SICK. The fact that Lex, Moe, Thrower and myself are top ranked means that the True Skill rank is working. There's no luck at all involved with our ranks, but I would say the W/L records are slightly tainted. In my personal opinion, I should only have about 2 losses but I have 17 due to lag/gamepad issues. It's obviously not a huge enough factor at this point to skew the results that much.
Bottom line: Don't play red bars.
