thebigeasy707:
If folks say they don't get VEM'd well.......if it's in the game that each of us all play, how can they say it's not happening to them?
The VEM patent clearly states to the contrary that VEM is based around the skill level of performance of a player at a given time. Play good and it'll come at you....play not as good and it'll ease off.
OK TBE here's a theory on how some of the best players like BiB and mrenn don't get VEM'd.
The patent says there is a threshold that must be crossed for VEM to take action. If a player's skill level increases or decreases enough to exceed that threshold the game acts to either challenge the player, or back off and make it easier. The patent also says the threshold is non-zero to prevent the Virtual Equipment Model from changing too rapidly.
Player's skill level, according to the patent, is determined from several (if not many) factors. The patent says "In one implementation, user skill level is quantified as a number."
Each one of the factors determining skill level must also be measured and quantified as a number. For ease of discussion say there are 10 factors each receiving a maximum performance level of 10 points. Your skill level value goes from 0 to 100.
As an example say one of the factors they measure is our average distance to the pin on approaches over the last 20 shots. If your average is greater than 50 feet you get 0 points, 15ft you get 5, inside 5 feet you get 10 points.
The same is done for the other 9 factors.
Each factor has a min and a max.
In theory then, a player would never get VEM'd if they maxed out the Skill Level value of 100.
And if the threshold was set at 3, once a player reached skill level 98 they are home free of VEM because a 98 to 100 jump is still below the threshold.
What if the programmer who implemented the Skill Level Monitor and Virtual Equipment Model was not a golfer or a gamer? He probably set max scores of 10 for values he never thought reachable ("No one will ever average less than 5 feet in their last 20 shots"). But then there's the 0.1% of the population who are just that good.
To summarize, in order to get VEM'd in the bad sense, you have to show an increase in total Skill Level greater than a threshold value. If a player's total Skill Level is at or near the maximum Skill Level computed by WGT, they cannot show improvement, so they never get VEM'd.
And that, IMO, would be a bug in WGT's implementation.