A Guardian’s elo rating used to be something a lot of people would look into if they played Trials of Osiris adamantly. Now that Trials of Osiris isn’t the main thing that Guardians are playing now, elo certainly still is. The main problem with elo is that not many people know what it is, but it can be important if you want to keep up to date with how you rank compared to other Guardians in the same activities.
The elo rating system used to calculate the relative skill of players in player-verses-player games like chess, or the Crucible in the case of Destiny 2. It’s actually named after the creator, Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American Physics professor. Elo has been modified for Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 however, since it’s not a conventional game like chess and doesn’t directly translate.
In Destiny each player begins with an elo score of 1000. They will move up or down based on whether they win or lose a match, and the number of points won or lost depends on the estimated probability a player has of winning the match. The probability of a player winning their next match is estimated by comparing the elo of the members of both teams, or everyone in rumble. There have been some adjustments made for Destiny that account for; players quitting matches before the end, joining a matches in progress, and fireteam size.
Normally elo is a zero-sum formula, but for Destiny it is not because it needs to account for situations such as players quitting or joining a match in progress. This issue in particular is one that statisticians are still debating over for the destiny elo rating system.
Every Guardian is ranked based on their position in the Destiny elo leaderboards. There are a total of nineteen ranks across seven tiers, and ranks are broken down by percentile, which change dynamically as Destiny elo ratings fluctuate day by day. This consistently encourages improvement because even inactive players will see movement overnight. The top 200 players are placed in the highest rank, Legionnaire.
The full ranks are;
Rusted Tier: Makes up around 30% of players with the bottom 80-100% of the total playerbase.
Bronze Tier: Makes up 25% of players with the middle 50-70% of the total playerbase.
Silver Tier: Makes up 15% of players with the middle 35-45% of the total playerbase.
Gold Tier: Makes up 15% of players with the top 20-30% of the total playerbase.
Platinum Tier: Makes up 12% of players with the top 5-15% of the total playerbase.
Diamond Tier: Makes up 3% of players with the top 3-1% of the total playerbase.
Legionnaire Tier: Contains only the top 200 players in terms of destiny elo in the game.
Image Source: DestinyTracker
