Just something that really annoyed me. In Brood War, your iccup level pretty much was set in stone. If you were C- skill level in one season, then that would be your skill level for the next both since the seasons reset your stats and because it gets harder to get points the further up in the ladder you get. Sure, there was a slight bit of inflation, but not too significant.

In SC2, points are always going up. Right now, I'm a 1300 player. There's a huge difference between a 1300 player now to a 1300 player a month ago. From here on, the points will keep going up. It's ridiculous. This means that whenever you need to quote your skill level, you'll have to get the date too for future reference. Obviously, this isn't a set in stone rule but it's still annoying.

village_idiot

2436 Posts

September 22 2010 15:53 GMT

But the skill level of players increases as well. 1300 player a month ago is not comparable to 1300 player now even without point inflation. It's like comparing Boxer to Flash.

ToeJam

United States282 Posts

September 22 2010 15:57 GMT

I believe Blizzard is artificially created a higher ELO, and will stop giving us free bonus pool when we are ~1400-2000 average. This would be a better gauge of skill compared to having only a total of 500 points.

MrBitter

United States2939 Posts

September 22 2010 16:00 GMT

A lot of smart, statistics people have predicted that the inflation will fall off after most people cross over 1500.

Reason being 1500 is median value used in these ELO systems.

I'm not going to try and explain it, because I don't really understand it. I'm sure someone that does will come along sooner or later, though. =)

sixghost

United States2096 Posts

September 22 2010 16:03 GMT

On September 23 2010 00:53 village_idiot wrote:
But the skill level of players increases as well. 1300 player a month ago is not comparable to 1300 player now even without point inflation. It's like comparing Boxer to Flash.

I don't think this is true. A 1300 player a month go who hasn't gotten any better will still increase his rating because of the bonus pool.

Carnac

Germany / USA16648 Posts

September 22 2010 16:04 GMT

On September 23 2010 00:57 ToeJam wrote:
I believe Blizzard is artificially created a higher ELO, and will stop giving us free bonus pool when we are ~1400-2000 average. This would be a better gauge of skill compared to having only a total of 500 points.

Blizzard is not using ELO, see Excalibur_Z's ladder analysis threads

They also said that there will be ladder seasons, although they have not yet specified how long seasons will be.

But yeah, points will slowly move up within a season, I don't think it's much of a problem though

ToeJam

United States282 Posts

September 22 2010 16:04 GMT

Maybe that's the median in ELO that doesn't have a bonus pool?

That's how it is in chess anyway. (There is no bonus pool in chess).

huameng

United States1133 Posts

September 22 2010 16:10 GMT

The median Elo isn't shared between every Elo system. TLPD's Elo is centered at 2000.

Also ICCUP had point inflation problems--a C- in the first week of the season is a much stronger player than a C- in the last week of the season. Over a long enough season, everyone on iccup reaches A-.

Pandain

United States12979 Posts

September 22 2010 16:18 GMT

Eventually it'll get to a true representitive state; Where the tip top calibar players will be constantly players against their own bretheren, and all its doing now is seperating those. In order to do that, it needs a large amount of points to significantly seperate the tip top from the average joes.

Basically, in about a year we'll see that kind of system.

Armathai

1023 Posts

September 22 2010 16:29 GMT

#10

Yes there is point inflation to a degree, and we can always wonder why Blizzard didn't just adopt ICCup's system instead of catering to the xbox division and achievement kiddies.

Purind

Canada3562 Posts

September 22 2010 16:30 GMT

#11

On September 23 2010 00:45 neobowman wrote:
Just something that really annoyed me. In Brood War, your iccup level pretty much was set in stone. If you were C- skill level in one season, then that would be your skill level for the next both since the seasons reset your stats and because it gets harder to get points the further up in the ladder you get. Sure, there was a slight bit of inflation, but not too significant.

Not completely true. A lot of people, when talking about ICCUP ranks, will say "C- early season" or "C- late season." Going from D to C- in the first week was much harder than going from D to C- in the last week. And really, the definition of "early season" and "late season" is completely arbitrary. What's late season? Week 2? Week 15?

You saw a lot of talk about this during TSL2. All of a sudden you had ~50 foreigners that were magically A-. I don't play at that high a level so I'm only going from what I've read, but people have said it was harder to get A- in TSL1 because that was early in the ICCUP season (though I guess playing against friends that were already at C+ helps a lot in giving a quick boost in points).

If you had 2 evenly matched D players play each other nonstop, they would eventually hit A-.

Part of the difficulty of early season was that EVERYONE gets dumped into D, so if you get unlucky you might play a bunch of B players, but even beyond the first few weeks when a large chunk of those players have been promoted, inflation was pretty big as the season went on

Yurie

11631 Posts

September 22 2010 16:51 GMT

#12

On September 23 2010 01:04 ToeJam wrote:
Maybe that's the median in ELO that doesn't have a bonus pool?

That's how it is in chess anyway. (There is no bonus pool in chess).

There is point inflation though. Any person that quits below starting rating (whatever that is in his/her country/club) has added to the overall rating pool.

As for points, ignore them and say you were #14253 in NA according to SC2 ranks.

Trap

United States395 Posts

September 22 2010 17:13 GMT

#13

On September 23 2010 01:30 Purind wrote:

Show nested quote +

ICCUP can be abused but it provides a better metric given the transparency and simplicity of its system. You can check people's match profiles and see if they're being a naughty person.

TSL2 had so many A- foreigners because every foreigner was playing more than usual, were therefore able to find more foreigners at the top ranks, and most were dodging Koreans/the best players (read the ladder threads / I remember watching people dodging Ret on his stream). Then you had people like Morrow/Kwark playing mostly people under their rank until that was prohibited by the TSL admins. ICCUP rules prohibit you from trading wins and they do ban people for it (ala CombatEx).

At the highest ranks of ICCUP you start to lose way more points for losing than you gain for winning, so it becomes more difficult to get 'above your rank'. SC2 tries to place you at 50%+ winning rate, and then there's bonus pool, etc. So you will gain points, albeit slowly, mass gaming in SC2. Whereas you will rapidly plummet on ICCUP on a bad day or once you get 'above your rank'. However, given the new state of SC2 and that there isn't a clear distinction between good/great players on the SC2 ladder, which is further complicated by server segregation, it's unclear when you're 'above your rank'. Blizzard needs to run its ladder for a few more seasons before people can start using the point system as an indication of 'how good they are'.