i agree with aberu and kiante.. you legitimately reached a rank when you've legitimately (read: no ladder abuse, wintrading, hacking etc) reached that rank. there's nothing more to it. if you barely squeezed into a c- with 3004 points, cheesing every game after 500 games, you still reached C-. you may not be a solid C- player (in fact it's quite likely that you're not), but you still reached C-.

being a solid C- or A or whatever rank is different than just reaching it. it's more subjective, but for me, being a solid X rank is you playing quite some games on that rank, not really ranking down (or if you do, you bounce right back up, etc). the actual strategies you use don't matter at all. saying that 10-0 2050 point cheeser is less deserving of D+ than a 10-0 2050 point standard player is ridiculous.

also, giving higher credit to standard plays than effective cheeses is also silly. who is better in this scenario? (this is a real scenario btw, i am one person, and my friend is the other)
player A -- played for a while, but lately not active with bad mechanics.
player B - started playing recently, and is active, better mechanics than A
A vs B -- in a standard macro, no early-aggression game, B will usually win
in a non-standard game (read: totally unorthodox strategies, cheeses, new maps etc), A will usually win.

and when we'd play, (i'm A btw), i would use weird strategies, abuse maps, super-early aggression until B plays very defensive/careful early on and then i'd open up with super greedy builds, etc. overall i won every BoX we ever played over like 2-3 months until i stopped playing completely, although i don't recall winning a single standard macro game.

Liquid`Drone

Norway28665 Posts

January 01 2011 21:26 GMT

#22

two options
a) you are whatever rank you achieve
b) you are whatever rank you can maintain a 50% winrate at.

playa

United States1284 Posts

January 01 2011 22:20 GMT

#23

There's some flawed logic going on if you ask me. The OP has already made a simple example that illustrates just because you achieve a certain rank with cheese doesn't mean you are truly as good of a player as your rank suggest. I have seen players who 4 pool 100% of the time reach b-. If half of the D ranked players were to 4 pool every game against the other half that are playing normally/standard, everyone that 4 pooled should be guaranteed to get at least c-, despite them not being anymore skilled than the other half that remain D.

Anytime your skill level can disappear by someone simply knowing your reputation, you're using smoke and mirrors. As for the you should do w/e strategy you think will give you the best chance to win mentality, I think that makes sense in a tournament; on a ladder, that is nothing but short-sighted. Sure, you might win more games in the short term using that mentality, but in the long-term, practicing becoming a better player (macro and micro) should yield more wins, thus that shouldn't be your line of thinking.

Hamster1800

United States175 Posts

January 02 2011 03:21 GMT

#24

To me you are the rank that you achieve. I call myself a (peak) C- player (I now estimate my skill to be D/D+ level since I haven't played for a while) because I reached C- near the end of one season with a 62-112 record. The reason for this is very simple. The way that the iccup ladder is set up, at D/D+ level you will rise in rating with anything over a 1/3 win rate. Everyone knew it, and I knew it, so I rose through the ladder by simply playing games and maintaining the 35.6% winrate that you see.

Do I claim to be able to beat borderline C- players 50% of the time? Yes (talking about when I was in practice). Why? I have a 35.6% winrate! Well, there is a very simple reason why you will rise in rating with less than a 50% winrate: everyone starts at 1000 points. You might think, now wait a second, anyone who's any good will get out of D in about 10 games. That is true, but it isn't actually relevant. The relevant factor is the number of players who are better than D level and for whatever reason reset their stats or start a new account or just start laddering for the new season. This number is quite high, and it will drive down legitimate D level players' winrates substantially below 50%, with the number rising regularly as rank increases until at A level you actually have a 50% winrate if you are at your real skill (since there are fewer people who are better than C climbing through C than there are better than D climbing through D, and so on).

If you look at my iccup profile (http://www.iccup.com/starcraft/gamingprofile/[AdeaD]Hamster.html) you will see that I have terrible records for most of the seasons that I actually played. This is because when I was active I would use the first week of the season as a time to seek out the best players (who now had to ladder out of D again) and play against them and get horribly outmatched. By doing this, I got the honor of playing names like (Z)

Hyuk (got crushed PvP) and (T)

Rudy (an amateur who some people thought might be the next big thing but then didn't pan out) Therefore, I would usually start the second week of the season with a winrate probably under 30%, and those wins would be against the real D level players. The losses would mostly be from people who seriously outclassed me, so I never felt like a 35% winrate at the end of a season was something to be ashamed of.

This is actually the first time I've thought about the iccup system seriously, and I'm more confident now than ever that your real ranking is pretty close to the number that iccup says you are (although these are deflated early season and inflated late season -- that is pretty much undeniable), and that iccup actually has very good protection for noobs against smurfs, by giving them so much leeway in their winrate in order to maintain a constant rating. If you are going to comment on how ridiculously low the 33% cutoff is, and you are a C or higher player, then you should realize that there are a lot of D+ players who get tired of losing at D+ or feel like their 33% record is terrible and reset stats to go 7-0 against D players. You just don't notice them because you're better than them so you beat them like any other D player.

Good work iCCup on designing your ladder system. After writing this post I believe it was extraordinarily well thought out.

CoMaS

United States39 Posts

January 02 2011 04:25 GMT

#25

Personally I believe that if you can't beat those cheesy plays you don't deserve to play at a higher level.

If you've made a rank then you are that rank.

Adeeler

United Kingdom764 Posts

January 02 2011 04:34 GMT

#26

Because I never pooled early. I've 9 pooled once on steppes zvz telling my opponent 1st also.

OMin

United States545 Posts

January 02 2011 23:36 GMT

#27

On January 02 2011 12:21 Hamster1800 wrote:
To me you are the rank that you achieve. I call myself a (peak) C- player (I now estimate my skill to be D/D+ level since I haven't played for a while) because I reached C- near the end of one season with a 62-112 record. The reason for this is very simple. The way that the iccup ladder is set up, at D/D+ level you will rise in rating with anything over a 1/3 win rate. Everyone knew it, and I knew it, so I rose through the ladder by simply playing games and maintaining the 35.6% winrate that you see.

Do I claim to be able to beat borderline C- players 50% of the time? Yes (talking about when I was in practice). Why? I have a 35.6% winrate! Well, there is a very simple reason why you will rise in rating with less than a 50% winrate: everyone starts at 1000 points. You might think, now wait a second, anyone who's any good will get out of D in about 10 games. That is true, but it isn't actually relevant. The relevant factor is the number of players who are better than D level and for whatever reason reset their stats or start a new account or just start laddering for the new season. This number is quite high, and it will drive down legitimate D level players' winrates substantially below 50%, with the number rising regularly as rank increases until at A level you actually have a 50% winrate if you are at your real skill (since there are fewer people who are better than C climbing through C than there are better than D climbing through D, and so on).

If you look at my iccup profile (http://www.iccup.com/starcraft/gamingprofile/[AdeaD]Hamster.html) you will see that I have terrible records for most of the seasons that I actually played. This is because when I was active I would use the first week of the season as a time to seek out the best players (who now had to ladder out of D again) and play against them and get horribly outmatched. By doing this, I got the honor of playing names like (Z)

Hyuk (got crushed PvP) and (T)

you make some good points here - i agree its well thought out and explained, and your points are 100 percent valid. but it kinda misses the point of my OP... you are just looking at the end goal (the numerical rank) when you are considering the trueness of rank, but i am questioning the means of reaching this end goal (via lots of cheese or via standard play or a mix of both) which makes 2 people with similar numerical stats different from each other in skill level.

On January 02 2011 13:25 CoMaS wrote:
Personally I believe that if you can't beat those cheesy plays you don't deserve to play at a higher level.

If you've made a rank then you are that rank.

my op isnt against other people cheesing. i know how to scout and deal with most cheeses and adjust my build accordingly. my point is i cant comfortably call myself a C rank player if i just BBS'd every game up to that rank, versus if i played mostly long macro games to earn the same letter. i really dont think you can say that the BBSing way makes you C in terms of skill; undeniably, they are C rank since they have the numbers, but their game skills are inferior to those who reached the rank through normal builds.

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