EPTIf he has less wins than you and is higher than you on ladder it means that he has a better win/loss =0. I think a more interesting poll would be for a flat point system for w/l, it would eliminate some of the issues with drastic differences for a win and for a loss. Not grandmaster 1v1 yet, but winning 5 points and losing 20 in 2v2s after waiting 5-10min for a game kinda makes me not wanna play =(
Poll: Bonus pool should be removed - Page 6
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Badfatpanda
United States9719 Posts
If he has less wins than you and is higher than you on ladder it means that he has a better win/loss =0. I think a more interesting poll would be for a flat point system for w/l, it would eliminate some of the issues with drastic differences for a win and for a loss. Not grandmaster 1v1 yet, but winning 5 points and losing 20 in 2v2s after waiting 5-10min for a game kinda makes me not wanna play =( | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On June 30 2011 01:59 YarNhoj wrote: Bonus pool exists solely to allow people who are not able to play often the ability to maintain their division rank. I don't agree with this way of phrasing it. Actually, bonus pool is a way of decaying inactive players' ladder positions, to encourage continuing to play. | ||
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Weasel-
Canada1556 Posts
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On June 30 2011 02:58 Badfatpanda wrote: If he has less wins than you and is higher than you on ladder it means that he has a better win/loss =0 That's not necessarily accurate either, once you get above the point on the ladder where people are using up their bonus pool. Someone with 100 games and someone with 500 games can both have 50% win/loss ratios and the 500 game player can be ranked much higher just because of a higher MMR. I'll put it in bold for emphasis: Ladder ranking roughly tracks MMR for people who use all their bonus points, and that's why ladder rankings among those players are interesting. | ||
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Azzur
Australia6253 Posts
Bonus pool is an ingenious part of the ladder system. It forces a player to be active in order to prove themselves. I for one think it is bad when a player can hit a hot streak and then camp on that rating for the rest of the season. For those people who say that you can't measure your own progress because of bonus pool - then you either don't understand how it works or have not been thinking enough. You can use "adjusted points" to measure progress (or if you're in masters, you can use it to compare the "skill" of different players). Bonus pool is a constant, and you can go here: http://sc2ranks.com/api/bonus/pool?appKey=localhost to find out how much has been generated. Adjusted points = Current points - total bonus pool generated + unused bonus pool Adjusted points correlate highly to MMR when a player has played alot of games. It can thus be used to measure progress over time. I found the poll results on the first page interesting - if this same poll were asked 6 months ago, people would've claimed that bonus pool was bad. Looks like a lot of people have finally understood how it works! | ||
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Mendelfist
Sweden356 Posts
On June 30 2011 03:07 Azzur wrote:I found the poll results on the first page interesting - if this same poll were asked 6 months ago, people would've claimed that bonus pool was bad. Looks like a lot of people have finally understood how it works! I don't think it's because people understand how it works. Just look at the posts in this thread. I think few really understands that points track your MMR, and that points and rank within your division would be a pretty good skill indicator if it wasn't for bonus pool. If they did, I think they would be pissed off, like me. The ladder has just become another achievement where you can be at the top just by playing a lot and spending all your bonus points. | ||
Excalibur_Z
United States12224 Posts
On June 30 2011 03:18 Mendelfist wrote: I don't think it's because people understand how it works. Just look at the posts in this thread. I think few really understands that points track your MMR, and that points and rank within your division would be a pretty good skill indicator if it wasn't for bonus pool. If they did, I think they would be pissed off, like me. The ladder has just become another achievement where you can be at the top just by playing a lot and spending all your bonus points. That being said, though, there is some merit to points because being active is important in a functioning ladder. If you consider that everyone is improving at a certain rate, while some are improving faster or slower than others, then players who simply stop playing then return after a hiatus will have gotten worse compared to people who kept playing. Bonus pool means that someone who was a good week 1 player can't just sit at 400 points because over time, 400 points will be considered low. If that same player took a break and stopped playing until he reached 1000 bonus pool, it's not clear whether his lack of practice or his week 1 talent would best define his performance in the evolving ladder. So, if he were to go and spend all his bonus pool, would his points increase by 600? 800? 1000? 1200? It depends entirely on how much the average player has improved over that period. If you keep your bonus pool very low, then by design you're keeping active which means keeping up with the constantly-evolving metagame. It is true that to get to the top 8 or so of your division, all you have to do is spend your bonus pool because there are simply that many players who don't. However, points do matter more within that top 8 because all those other guys have spent all their bonus pool and you start to get a better idea of where you stand among the other active players. It produces an interesting dynamic. | ||
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Mendelfist
Sweden356 Posts
On June 30 2011 03:29 Excalibur_Z wrote: That being said, though, there is some merit to points because being active is important in a functioning ladder. If you consider that everyone is improving at a certain rate, while some are improving faster or slower than others, then players who simply stop playing then return after a hiatus will have gotten worse compared to people who kept playing. Yes. If bonus pool is removed it has to be replaced with something else. I do understand it's function, but the current implementation is bad for more reasons than one. To have a bonus pool in the thousands and "real points" in the hundreds is silly in the first place. The bonus pool totally overshadows everything else. But my main gripe with the current system is its lack of transparency. It is based on deception, and with it follows confusion and irritation. Look at the bnet-forums with page after page with questions like "why am I not promoted" and "my matchups are unfair". It's even apparent in this thread where a majority misunderstands how the bonus pool works. The system really looks like a skilled based ladder, and nothing Blizzards says officially indicates otherwise. But secretly the system does everything it can to hide your true skill, with it's league offsets, division tiers and bonus pool. I would complain less if it was presented as what it really is. | ||
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Roflhaxx
Korea (South)1244 Posts
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On June 30 2011 03:56 Mendelfist wrote: To have a bonus pool in the thousands and "real points" in the hundreds is silly in the first place. The bonus pool totally overshadows everything else. It has to be that way because it's specifically designed to make your ladder ranking decay, that is to say to have enough of an effect that you'll drop all the way to the bottom of the list if you stop playing. The system really looks like a skilled based ladder, and nothing Blizzards says officially indicates otherwise. But secretly the system does everything it can to hide your true skill, with it's league offsets, division tiers and bonus pool. I would complain less if it was presented as what it really is. It is a skill (or rather MMR) based ladder for people who use up all their bonus pool, with the caveat that you can't compare between divisions except in Master and Grandmaster leagues. That there are large numbers of sporadically active players with stale MMRs (meaning MMRs that reflect their standing in the population from some time in the distant past) is an issue that no amount of redesign will make go away. | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On June 30 2011 04:02 Roflhaxx wrote: I feel like instead of bonus pool they could have done the opposite, make people lose points over time. Would have made it so that you always know what amount of points is good. Blizzard's developers have frequently talked about this in reference to WoW's "rested bonus" system. During WoW's beta, they had implemented an XP decay as you played, reflecting a character getting tired. Players HATED it. When they simply lowered XP accrual across the board and instead framed the highest rate as bonus points for being rested, people eagerly logged on to use their rested bonus. Bonus points are a ladder decay presented to the player as a bonus for being active, which is a presentation that is much more likely to encourage people to log on and play. Side effect of this though would be that people with 50% winratio would be at 0 points and that would most likely throw off a lot of the casual players. Your MMR can rise steadily with a near 50% win ratio as long as you beat stronger players regularly. Increasing your MMR does not require a long-term win ratio to be much better than 50%. | ||
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Zirith
Canada403 Posts
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GMonster
686 Posts
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Pengu
England226 Posts
 You need to remember that not everyone has time to play often or even wants to play often. I LOVE SC2 yet actually I don't play that much, maybe 10 games a week or something however I probably spend 10x that watching and reading about sc2 and mostly sc2 as an ESport. I actually started watching sc2 before i even bought the game and I only started watching sc2 as I picked up a few videos from tankspot of the game in beta and all the units and what they can do. While bonus pool does limited amounts for me I like it because it feels nice since it makes me think i get more for my short time playing. I only play in bursts might not play for a week then will come back and play the shit out of it  Long story short little things that might not have an affect on a player who plays a lot can have a bigger affect on a more casual player ( and casual doesn't always mean bad for those of you that seem to believe that) | ||
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Excalibur_Z
United States12224 Posts
On June 30 2011 03:56 Mendelfist wrote: Yes. If bonus pool is removed it has to be replaced with something else. I do understand it's function, but the current implementation is bad for more reasons than one. To have a bonus pool in the thousands and "real points" in the hundreds is silly in the first place. The bonus pool totally overshadows everything else. But my main gripe with the current system is its lack of transparency. It is based on deception, and with it follows confusion and irritation. Look at the bnet-forums with page after page with questions like "why am I not promoted" and "my matchups are unfair". It's even apparent in this thread where a majority misunderstands how the bonus pool works. The system really looks like a skilled based ladder, and nothing Blizzards says officially indicates otherwise. But secretly the system does everything it can to hide your true skill, with it's league offsets, division tiers and bonus pool. I would complain less if it was presented as what it really is. Yeah, I know you know about it. I agree that there's a lot they could do to promote transparency, and it's pretty clear that they've made design decisions that consciously obscure true rankings. I think promotions are still basically a mystery for most people, and that creates this cascading effect where people become less interested in how the ladder works, and I think that culminates in some pretty black-and-white opinions like "points are worthless." The reality is that there is a middle ground where points aren't necessarily worthless, they do a pretty good job of ranking you in a division and they become more accurate the more games you play, which makes sense. Some of the stuff like point resets and league offsets and especially division tiers really throws a wrench into deciphering the ladder, and for people like you and me who are trying to explain and solve it, it can be frustrating. They serve a pretty important role on the developer end, though. Division tiers, for example, mean that people get put into an accurate 100-player cross-section of the ladder where they can rise and fall through the ranks with players of similar perceived skill. If there were no division tiers, the gap between the highest player and the lowest player would be much wider. Because points determine your rank within a given tier, there is skill involved in who is at the top and who isn't. I would appreciate more transparency but I don't know of a palatable way to provide it for both casual and hardcore players, and I'm sure they've argued internally over the best approach many times. As it stands right now, the ladder makes sense only if you understand the context behind every component, which is no easy task to understand or to teach. | ||
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Mendelfist
Sweden356 Posts
On June 30 2011 04:02 Lysenko wrote: It has to be that way because it's specifically designed to make your ladder ranking decay, that is to say to have enough of an effect that you'll drop all the way to the bottom of the list if you stop playing. As it is currently implemented yes, I understand that. But the ladder today (at lower levels) is almost completely a competition about bonus points, not skill. That can't be good. It is a skill (or rather MMR) based ladder for people who use up all their bonus pool Which doesn't happen for the most part of the ladder. Two ideas (maybe not well thought out, but anyway): 1: Don't use point decay. Mark people as inactive and put them last in their division. Put them back when they play a game or two. 2: Use point decay, but have a "grace period" for two weeks. Your points don't start do decay until after this period. The decay maybe should be accelerating. When you start playing again it should be relatively easy to get back where you were. As it is now, you have no chance of getting back after a month or two offline with reasonable effort. The same happens if you buy the game in the middle of a season. | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On June 30 2011 04:12 GoKu` wrote: right now the entire ladder system and ranking means absolutely nothing and you cant measure skill with the point system. I'd say the system's pretty good at measuring skill, since most players get consistently even matches. Care to share with us what criticisms you have rather than just making a statement like that without support? | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On June 30 2011 04:21 Mendelfist wrote: As it is currently implemented yes, I understand that. But the ladder today (at lower levels) is almost completely a competition about bonus points, not skill. That can't be good. Arguably, what bronze league players need to improve is to play more, not simply to see that they're ranked 500,000th out of 750,000 players. | ||
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-stOpSKY-
Canada498 Posts
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4of8
Germany256 Posts
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