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8371 Posts
The current format of the ladder qualifiers has allowed many problems to emerge while adding little or no value to the scene or the competition. I've got an idea for a basic format change that would solve or avoid or lessen these problems while adding value to the scene. Whether my suggested format is adopted exactly or partially or only serves to spark a conversation for change, the fact that the current format is not the best we can do is undeniable.
Problems with the current format:
1. Very few of the 100+ games each player plays are actually meaningful. The competition takes place during the first days of the season and it ends before the initial surge of inflation in points. At the start of the season, all of the players have MMR much higher than their points, which means many of the games they play when first ranking up are meaningless. Players win far more points for winning than they lose for losing. Players can coast to the top of the ladder by winning 50% or even just 40% of their games. Conversely, anyone who works extra hard early in the competition to get a lead will only be punished for it by the system as the points gained and lost are no longer in their favor and everyone's points are inflating to catch you anyway. Beating top players 70-80% of the time early on just means you can skip a day or two. The only time performing well matters is in the final 36 hours or so. Even if the final day wasn't so close to the start of the season, this issue would still exist. And if you did that, there'd be a depressingly long time when the ladder qualifier was "active" during which the ladder doesn't matter.
1A. Because very few games actually matter, the unique value of having a ladder competition is lost. A ladder is able to reward the player who has sustained success. Instead of having their fate decided by a single elim bo3, they can play 100's of games across all 3 matchups and 4+ maps and show a 60% win rate over their opponent's 55% win rate, for example, and thus get a higher ranking. But with so few games mattering, the ladder ends up essentially being like any other qualifier, except instead of being seeded into a bracket, you are at the mercy of the ladder matchmaking. In a bracket, you'll play maybe 10-20 games and need to win most of them to qualify. Similarly, the bottom spots of the top 16 are decided by players going on win streaks like how they would through a bracket, with a similar number of games played. A 5% better chance of winning each game is a nice advantage but could easily not be visible in the actual results.
1B. Because very few games actually matter, the ranking becomes especially susceptible to all kinds of manipulation (intentional or not). It could be match fixing or someone not treating a ladder game like the Blizzcon finals or a technical issue or illness or whatever. With a bracket, there is a lot more control over the situation. On the ladder, the situation becomes extremely murky.
2. There's little or no value to doing these ladder qualifiers over traditional open bracket qualifiers. The only value I can imagine is that the ladder qualifier introduces some variety to the qualifiers, adds a little spice to the top of the ladder for people with no chance of qualifying (trickles down from people who do have a chance), and some of the very top players who are very good at grinding ladder (good enough to avoid the final shuffle) can avoid failing to qualify due to an off day in a bracket. Pretty minor stuff. Compared to a bracket, it's got more chaos and variance in some ways and less in other ways. It's really just different. But for all the problems it's causing, just being different hasn't been worth it.
My proposed format:
Make the period longer. Make the ranking at the end of each day matter. That's it. I would make the period start on the Tuesday after a season Championship and it would go all the way until about 5-6 weeks before the next Championship. Some time would be necessary to do final checks for cheaters and for the players to prepare after being given the official Challenger bracket (more time than they're currently given). Once a day, a snapshot of the current ladder rankings would be taken. Your actual ranking in the qualifier would be determined by your average ladder ranking over every day of the period. The ranking on the last day would not matter more than any other day.
Good things about this format change:
1. The games players play every single day matter. Consistently winning a game or two more every day will mean having a higher average rank. It will feel really good to go up just a few ranks because it will permanently matter.
2. Having off days or even not playing several days will not be devastating.
3. The ladder will be competitive for a longer period of time, providing pros and aspiring pros a healthy place to simultaneously practice and compete.
4. The competitive atmosphere at the top of the ladder trickles down to players for whom the competition doesn't actually matter.
5. Unintentional manipulation would just be a blip that could be ignored rather than potentially ruining a player's career over a false positive.
6. Intentional manipulation would only be effective if it was sustained and therefore took a lot more effort and left a more obvious pattern.
7. The fans get a sustained ranking to follow.
8. Despite playing so many meaningful games publicly, players still have over a month to play anonymously or privately in order to prepare for the Championship.
Finals Thoughts
We need to decide what we actually want out of a ladder qualifier. Is it supposed to actually affect the ladder or is it something that very briefly inhabits the ladder and then leaves it just the same? Is it supposed to be purely a competition or should it care about improving the quality of practice players get on the ladder? Is it supposed to foster a sense of community among the players? Is it supposed to entertain the fans? Is it supposed to get different kinds of players into tournaments ("ladder heroes")? Whatever the answers to these questions, I think the current format is so bad that it can be improved at least in some ways without actually sacrificing anything or making anything else worse. At the very worst it could be scrapped and we wouldn't be missing out on much.
Moving forward, we do need to answer these questions to guide the parameters of changes to the ladder qualifier. My suggested format assumes that we value improving the competition of the ladder and we value the quality of practice a player can get on the ladder. It assumes we're doing a ladder qualifier specifically because it requires a different kind of performance out of players than a bracket.
 
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This is great. If we could get events to organize in a way that this became possible, it would really increase the quality of ladder over a long period of time and help get better practice in a region outside of just "3 days" where as you stated, everyone gets +36 points per win and don't lose anything
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100% spot on Blizzard please, these ladder qualifiers have gotten really out of hand.
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Excellent thoughts, great incentinves, overall just a far better solution than what's currently in place.
Having a meaningfull ladder for for a long period of time.... the dream.
We're already seeing that everyone's back to using barcodes and ladder is far less interesting. For it to only have been 3 days with all it's flaws was a shame.
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Denmark145 Posts
Great post! The ladder qualifiers really have potential to be amazing, but this 3 day format they're using currently is definitely not the way to go. Hopefully this gets some attention
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Great suggestions, really would like blizz to take a look at this
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agree completely with it. if this "snapshat every day" formal was used i dont see why whole top32 couldnt get points as well. in go4sc2 u get like 5 pts for top8 in weeklys even though u didnt win cash (winners get like 50pts afaik). that way floating top32 is at least better than not participating at all for a week or so
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Really, at this point, it's really up to the pros to find out how to use ladder at its best.
I hope this great post will start a movement that will end up in pro players proposing a widely approved solution that Blizzard will accept.
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Agreed, also because every player was gaining soo many points and not losing much for a loss it meant that every player would have to play as many games as possible or risk falling behind. We had some players complaining that they had to grind out 10+ hours of ladder each day just to stay in the competition.
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I believe there are additional problems, as well.
1) Ladder points tend to just go up. They do not really stabilize, which means that grinding ladder points is way more influential than it should be. It's silly for the quantity of games to have such an impact instead of the quality of games (like, who you are winning against).
2) Players are rewarded for winning games fast, which means that the quicker the game, the better it is for them. This obviously favors cheesier games. One would rather have two games that finished in 10 minutes than a game that finished in 30 minutes. This is especially the case as the qualifier is coming to a close.
3) A large number of the players on the ladder have no chance or interest in actually reaching top 16. As a result, there is conflict of interest. Tournaments should always try and minimize the number of meaningless games for players. Naniwa, Major, pretty much anyone who was not intending to qualify, all have influence on who qualifies. Naniwa sees, "Oh I am against my good friend, Steve, I will just do a new build I am still testing out instead of playing a normal game." There is no reason for him not to do this. He essentially has nothing to lose.
I definitely think that your format would be an improvement though, helping to alleviate some of the major flaws with it. I really do hope Blizzard looks into ways of improving this format, as it is not ideal. At least it did add variety?
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When you lose with bonus pool, you lose points (from bonus pool), which means when you win and you have no bonus pool there is no points to add, am I missing something? It's like instead of just setting everyone's points at exactly 1500, you just "generate" those 1500 points over time as you play which was specifically done to encourage players to actually play the game if they want to maintain their high-ranked position in the division
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At the start of the season, all of the players have MMR much higher than their points, which means many of the games they play when first ranking up are meaningless. Players win far more points for winning than they lose for losing.
Your misundertanding how bonus pool work. Its completely irrelevant when you win. Every single game matters just as much.
Your actual ranking in the qualifier would be determined by your average ladder ranking over every day of the period. The ranking on the last day would not matter more than any other day.
Too difficult too follow. It needs to be very easy to log in and see who leads the ladder. Also this is a ton less exciting as players can secure their spots very quickly.
If anything this increases the incentive for throwing games if you always have a spot.
Btw I am still confused. Are you getting paid to write this? Because if not, you should get back to focus on your job and let Blizzard figure this out.
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8371 Posts
On April 11 2016 15:43 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +At the start of the season, all of the players have MMR much higher than their points, which means many of the games they play when first ranking up are meaningless. Players win far more points for winning than they lose for losing. Your misundertanding how bonus pool work. Its completely irrelevant when you win. Every single game matters just as much. Show nested quote +Your actual ranking in the qualifier would be determined by your average ladder ranking over every day of the period. The ranking on the last day would not matter more than any other day. Too difficult too follow. It needs to be very easy to log in and see who leads the ladder. Also this is a ton less exciting as players can secure their spots very quickly. If anything this increases the incentive for throwing games if you always have a spot. Btw I am still confused. Are you getting paid to write this? Because if not, you should get back to focus on your job and let Blizzard figure this out.
It has nothing to do with bonus pool. It's about MMR vs actual rank. When your MMR is much higher than your actual, which is always the case at the start of a new season for players who played the previous season, you can maintain your MMR and gain tons of points by winning 50% of your games. It is always very easy for players to get into the vicinity of the high ranks. Losing games before you get into the vicinity of the high ranks doesn't mean much. It's just a small waste of time. The only meaningful games occur at the high ranks at the end of the qualifier period. Players basically have two options for qualifying under the current format: Get in the vicinity a while before the cutoff and win a ton of games against high rank opponents to get way ahead of everyone else and avoid having to play at the end (only the best players can do this) OR make sure you're in the vicinity at the end and play on the final day and try to win a majority of your games that day. Everything before that is pretty trivial and meaningless.
I'm not sure what's difficult to follow about it. And why wouldn't players be able to log in and see who the leader is? It'd just be a ranking the same as the current rankings are displayed except it'd be calculated differently.
Yes this is less exciting but the ladder qualifier is just one type of qualifier. If you want to follow a qualifier over a short period and follow exciting games, then follow the other qualifiers. The ladder qualifier is a chance to improve the ladder and to support sustained success. Besides, it's only the preliminary stage of the Challenger qualifier. It's such a minor part of the whole WCS that we can do without considering what a tiny percentage of the fans want. This could be the part of the WCS that directly improves things for the players in the community by improving the ladder. Too bad for the people who like F5'ing a forum thread three times a year. Hundreds of actual players would benefit for many months every year from improving the ladders.
And I don't know why you use this blog as an opportunity to take a shot at having my last blog explained to you again. If you already read it and read all the replies and you still don't understand it (which clearly you don't because your attempted jab just betrays you), then I don't know what else to say to help you. You would've also read my final reply saying that I'm not going to keep replying and trying to explain to people who haven't gotten an understanding of it.
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United States11882 Posts
I'm actually okay with how the current system works. Sure, high MMR players rocket to the top of the ranks, but that's not a bad thing. It should be a race to get as many games in as possible until your points approach your MMR. Once your point gains even out, that's when it becomes an actual measure of skill against other players.
So for example (and for the sake of the example let's say points and MMR are on the same scale), if you have 2500 MMR and 2500 points, then yeah you're gonna end up hovering around there and it's gonna be tough for you to get much higher. You see all these 2200 and 2400 players with like 1000 points but they're getting +24 points per win and catching up fast. However, once they reach 2200 and 2400 points, that crazy point gain is going to slow way down, just like it did for you. The difference is you're still higher than them, when all is said and done. Your 2500 vs 2400 vs 2200 point comparison is going to be something that's actually meaningful. Sure, the final 36 hours are when everybody starts trying hard and grinding games, but in the end they're only going to get as high as their MMR will allow. Once that happens, it's really all about who's the most skilled.
The final 36 hours are kind of a problem not for the crazy finish-line dash, but because players don't take the ladder seriously outside of that home-stretch period, as you said. The GM refactor with its daily rotation will probably help with this somewhat, just like you're asking.
I will say that the one wrench that has no solution is the randomness of the matchmaker itself, as you mentioned. If you were unlucky and drew Innovation 2 games in a row and lost 16 points, that might put you behind the guy who got lucky and drew 8 weaker players in a row and earned 48 points. The law of averages plays a role here and it's based on volume of games. There's not really a solution for that, though it's possible those bottom-16 players haven't played enough games, or the skill gap is too wide across those slots.
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the 3 day format was a nice toe in the door, but lets see them keep going with it!
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EPT
