SC2 Ranks are Not Accurate. The HotS Ranks Described by Browder are. Why does a "casual" game like HotS get an accurate ranking system, while a supposedly competitive game gets a progression ranking system with distortionary sugarcoating?
Dustin Browder says he wants to make the HotS rank system more accurate by displaying what is effectively MMR after placement games, and that it would be like how it works in SC2.
This is NOT how it works in SC2, but it is how it SHOULD work.
The SC2 ranking system is not accurate. It is wrong.
1. Browder talks about putting people in groups of size 2% that reflects MMR after placement games. But in SC2, people are placed in groups of up to size 32%. Thus, HotS ranks can have 16 times more precision than SC2 ranks.
2. Browder talks about making HotS ranks more accurate, and there's no bonus pool in HotS to distort ranks. But in SC2, your rank is wrong because it intrinsically declines every single hour due to the bonus pool.
3. Browder talks about adding a GM league to HotS. It won't have the bonus pool. But in SC2, the GM league is a joke because active players can't get kicked out of GM league no matter how many games they lose. Thus, players with superior MMR can't get in because that spot is locked.
4. In HotS, there are no leagues messing up the ranking system. In SC2 there are leagues. This is a charade with people complaining they're not in the league they "deserve", it creates ranking errors caused by no mid-season demotions and the distortion in the criteria for entering a league to accommodate lack of demotions and inactive players. They cause errors in league sizes which are only manually corrected by Blizzard when sufficient numbers of people notice and complain loud enough on the forums. They also cause the obfuscation of not being able to compare across leagues, even when people in higher leagues can have lower MMR.
The SC2 ranking system has no credibility, the ranks are wrong, they are not accurate, it is distortionary, it causes endless frustration amongst the player base, it is not a global ladder. On the other hand, the HotS ranking system outlined by Browder is superior in every way, the ranks are accurate, it is not distortionary, it does not cause frustration, it is a global ladder.
After 5 years of an utterly broken ranking system that wrongly ranks players, it's time to finally fix it by replacing it with something very similar to the HotS ranking system.
Improving the HotS Ranking System Further. There are a few minor improvements that can be made to the HotS ranking system for LotV:
1. Increase the number of groups from 50 to 100, to increase the precision of ranks even further.
2. A user interface that lists the ranks of all players on the server that can ideally be filtered by, for example, friends, clans, created rival list, active players and all players.
3. Define a criteria for activity (e.g. at least 5 games a week). Inactive players keep their rank but will not be on the default filter of the list of ranks of all players, i.e. by default, only active players are ranked so that your rank reflects your MMR percentile out of all active players and so that the mid to bottom of the ladder isn't clogged up by people who don't even play the game anymore. When an inactive player becomes active again, they are immediately put back on the default filter of the list of ranks of all players.
Appendix: Information on the HotS Ranking System.
Let’s start by talking about how your rank is presented and what it means.
Each player (or team) is assigned a rank that is a visual representation of their skill in a particular game mode. The lowest rank is 50, while the current highest rank is 1. Each number indicates the approximate percentile rank you fit in compared to the rest of the population, with each rank accounting for roughly 2% of the population. For example, rank 1 is intended to represent the top 2% of players in the game for their region. Not all players can climb to the highest ranks. Players will need to improve in skill to be able to beat better opponents and climb the ranks.
However, the current ranking system includes a progression aspect where players initially start at Rank 50 and climb through the ranks until they reach a plateau that accurately reflects their skill. Under the current system, a player’s rank may not truly reflect their skill if they are still making progress [in SC2, it's also wrong when you have unused bonus pool or can't get demoted]. This system has caused some confusion around Ranked matchmaking modes. While we like the idea of progression and ranking up each season, we do not want it to come at the cost of an accurate ranking. To improve the accuracy of a player’s rank, we are planning to introduce a set of placement matches that players will need to complete before they receive an official rank. During this phase, a player’s rank will not be assigned or displayed. Instead, other players will see the player is in their “Placement Phase.”
Once they have completed their placement matches, the player will be assigned a rank that more accurately reflects their skill. We are still determining the exact number of placement matches required before players are assigned a rank. Players exploring a ranked mode for the first time will have to complete a larger number of placement matches. With each new season, the system will have a much better understanding of each player’s skill and fewer placement matches will be required before new ranks are assigned. After placing into a rank, players will carry on as they do today. Players will compete against opponents of similar skill level and earn Rank Points to climb the ranks.
Rank Points
After each ranked match, players will gain or lose an amount of Rank Points. The total Rank Points earned at the end of a game are a combination of two different types: Match Points and Bonus Points.
Match Points are always gained or lost at the end of a ranked game based on whether you won or lost the game. The amount of Match Points your team gains or loses is dependent on the skill difference between the teams. An equally matched game will result in 100 Match Points being earned by the winning team, and 100 points being lost by the losing team. If the teams were not evenly matched skill wise (which hopefully should be rare), your team could potentially earn up to 200 Match Points for a win, or lose 200 Match Points following a defeat. All players on a given team earn or lose the same amount of Match Points for a game.
Bonus Points may also be awarded to players at the end of the game. Bonus Points are awarded to individual players on the winning team if their personal skill rating (MMR) is outpacing their visible ranking. This can happen if a player wins several games in a row and can help get them closer to an accurate ranking.
I want MMR numbers to be shown in SC2. One for 1v1 and one for Archon/Team modes. I dont care if there are filthy casuals who cant handle a number going up and down.
its justs stupid how people care so much, move 5 years on and the game u play may be just a mere memory . . .but recognize the time you sank into a pointless endeavor
if ur winning, ur winning. lose one . . well now you can waste more time in finding out why. Of course new players shouldnt be matched against plats and above but ive never seen that EVER happen. the bz accounts ive played are against very similar skilled all the way up to the masters. not sure why people really care so much and why ive bothered posting . . .oh yea im on cooldown after my workout
If they'll do it for HotS, they'll port it over to sc2. They did it for chat channels, they'll do it for the ladder as well. Especially since Davie mentionned updates to the ladder system coming in LotV in a previous Community Feedback thing. Just stay calm, and wait for it.
On August 08 2015 21:07 StatixEx wrote: its justs stupid how people care so much, move 5 years on and the game u play may be just a mere memory . . .but recognize the time you sank into a pointless endeavor
if ur winning, ur winning. lose one . . well now you can waste more time in finding out why. Of course new players shouldnt be matched against plats and above but ive never seen that EVER happen. the bz accounts ive played are against very similar skilled all the way up to the masters. not sure why people really care so much and why ive bothered posting . . .oh yea im on cooldown after my workout
Exactly, I don't know why people care so much. It's impossible to accurately rank players in SC2 because of the wide variety of strategies someone is good at or weak against. Someone might be good at macro play and aggression, but might lose against someone who makes 3 drops happen in the game. Or they might be good at executing one or two timing attacks and will lose automatically if the game goes into the mid game because they don't know what to do past that. There are so many variables that it's almost pointless to waste time on fine tuning the ranking system. As it is now, I think it is very good. I regularly get matched vs players around my skill level, I will sometimes get matched against a bit better than me, but that only helps me become a better player, since the end goal is for me to be better than him anyway, and now I get to see strats used at his level. I really don't see the problem with fighting someone better than you from time to time.
At the end of the day if you're good enough you will reach the top of the ladder, but the gm 200 slots is kind of bullshit. Sitting at rank 1 master for weeks on end is pretty boring.
I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks. You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league. Taking into account inactive players in league, it probably means that you need to be able to stabilise at around rank 25 of the next league in order to be promoted.
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
On August 08 2015 20:58 graNite wrote: I want MMR numbers to be shown in SC2. One for 1v1 and one for Archon/Team modes. I dont care if there are filthy casuals who cant handle a number going up and down.
Remove unranked, give us real ranks!
Playing the game casually does not make you filthy, or deserving of disrespect. Keep in mind that the majority of people who play the game (and games in general) are casual players.
With regard to ladder, I never really got the impression that the current design was the result of player pressure. I could be wrong, but I haven't read a lot of comments over the history of SC2 that praise the hiding of MMR. I could never understand why they would do the leagues the way they have. They give you very little idea of how good you actually are relative to the rest of the playerbase until you get into masters/grandmaster.
I agree with the OP, give us a more informative ladder. I wouldn't be against knowing my absolute rank, even if it was 20,124 or something. If I'm bad I'd like to know, and I'd like to track my improvement.
On August 08 2015 20:58 graNite wrote: I want MMR numbers to be shown in SC2. One for 1v1 and one for Archon/Team modes. I dont care if there are filthy casuals who cant handle a number going up and down.
Remove unranked, give us real ranks!
Playing the game casually does not make you filthy, or deserving of disrespect. Keep in mind that the majority of people who play the game (and games in general) are casual players.
With regard to ladder, I never really got the impression that the current design was the result of player pressure. I could be wrong, but I haven't read a lot of comments over the history of SC2 that praise the hiding of MMR. I could never understand why they would do the leagues the way they have. They give you very little idea of how good you actually are relative to the rest of the playerbase until you get into masters/grandmaster.
I agree with the OP, give us a more informative ladder. I wouldn't be against knowing my absolute rank, even if it was 20,124 or something. If I'm bad I'd like to know, and I'd like to track my improvement.
they do that because they dont want you to know how bad you are as a casual player. moving between ranks 250000 and 350000 seems to be too depressing. going up a meaningless ladder that consists of players you never play against with just massing games because spending the bonus pool takes you up by itself is a way better option in their eyes.
On August 08 2015 20:58 graNite wrote: I want MMR numbers to be shown in SC2. One for 1v1 and one for Archon/Team modes. I dont care if there are filthy casuals who cant handle a number going up and down.
Remove unranked, give us real ranks!
Playing the game casually does not make you filthy, or deserving of disrespect. Keep in mind that the majority of people who play the game (and games in general) are casual players.
With regard to ladder, I never really got the impression that the current design was the result of player pressure. I could be wrong, but I haven't read a lot of comments over the history of SC2 that praise the hiding of MMR. I could never understand why they would do the leagues the way they have. They give you very little idea of how good you actually are relative to the rest of the playerbase until you get into masters/grandmaster.
I agree with the OP, give us a more informative ladder. I wouldn't be against knowing my absolute rank, even if it was 20,124 or something. If I'm bad I'd like to know, and I'd like to track my improvement.
they do that because they dont want you to know how bad you are as a casual player. moving between ranks 250000 and 350000 seems to be too depressing. going up a meaningless ladder that consists of players you never play against with just massing games because spending the bonus pool takes you up by itself is a way better option in their eyes.
I understand what you're saying. All I'm trying to say is I think this a decision Blizzard made on their own, contrary to the wishes of the playerbase. I suppose this wasn't a particularly important point to make
To say sc2 ranking is inaccurate or wrong are 2 entirely different things. They are inaccurate, but not wrong. If a player has enough games played in his league, adjusted points (points - spent bonus pool but i prefer points + unspent bonus pool) are a good measure of someone's MMR. If 2 players have all the same amount of unspent bonus pool (for example 0) and have enough games played in their league, the one with the higher amount of points should have the higher MMR.
And btw, locked leagues (even gm) are a good measure against ladder anxiety. I guess they could put a very low MMR threshold for demotion (around midmaster) where if you legitly earned your promotion even at 1am season start you shouldn't go below, at least to prevent boosted accounts from stealing GM spots (8 accounts currently in bottom 10 GM EU were all boosted by the same guy this season lol).
On August 08 2015 21:07 StatixEx wrote: its justs stupid how people care so much, move 5 years on and the game u play may be just a mere memory . . .but recognize the time you sank into a pointless endeavor
if ur winning, ur winning. lose one . . well now you can waste more time in finding out why. Of course new players shouldnt be matched against plats and above but ive never seen that EVER happen. the bz accounts ive played are against very similar skilled all the way up to the masters. not sure why people really care so much and why ive bothered posting . . .oh yea im on cooldown after my workout
Exactly, I don't know why people care so much. It's impossible to accurately rank players in SC2 because of the wide variety of strategies someone is good at or weak against. Someone might be good at macro play and aggression, but might lose against someone who makes 3 drops happen in the game. Or they might be good at executing one or two timing attacks and will lose automatically if the game goes into the mid game because they don't know what to do past that. There are so many variables that it's almost pointless to waste time on fine tuning the ranking system. As it is now, I think it is very good. I regularly get matched vs players around my skill level, I will sometimes get matched against a bit better than me, but that only helps me become a better player, since the end goal is for me to be better than him anyway, and now I get to see strats used at his level. I really don't see the problem with fighting someone better than you from time to time.
The first half of your post says it's impossible to accurately rank people. The second half of your post says Blizzard's matchmaker is already accurately ranking people. Contradiction.
On August 08 2015 20:58 graNite wrote: I want MMR numbers to be shown in SC2. One for 1v1 and one for Archon/Team modes. I dont care if there are filthy casuals who cant handle a number going up and down.
Remove unranked, give us real ranks!
Playing the game casually does not make you filthy, or deserving of disrespect. Keep in mind that the majority of people who play the game (and games in general) are casual players.
With regard to ladder, I never really got the impression that the current design was the result of player pressure. I could be wrong, but I haven't read a lot of comments over the history of SC2 that praise the hiding of MMR. I could never understand why they would do the leagues the way they have. They give you very little idea of how good you actually are relative to the rest of the playerbase until you get into masters/grandmaster.
I agree with the OP, give us a more informative ladder. I wouldn't be against knowing my absolute rank, even if it was 20,124 or something. If I'm bad I'd like to know, and I'd like to track my improvement.
they do that because they dont want you to know how bad you are as a casual player. moving between ranks 250000 and 350000 seems to be too depressing. going up a meaningless ladder that consists of players you never play against with just massing games because spending the bonus pool takes you up by itself is a way better option in their eyes.
Strawman.
There is no rank 250,000 in HotS. Ranks go from 1 to 50. Moreover, rank 250,000 can be converted to something readable by dividing by the number of players.
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
On August 08 2015 22:39 KingAlphard wrote: To say sc2 ranking is inaccurate or wrong are 2 entirely different things. They are inaccurate, but not wrong.
If the ranks are sufficiently inaccurate, and they are, then they are wrong.
If a player has enough games played in his league, adjusted points (points - spent bonus pool but i prefer points + unspent bonus pool) are a good measure of someone's MMR. If 2 players have all the same amount of unspent bonus pool (for example 0) and have enough games played in their league, the one with the higher amount of points should have the higher MMR.
Correct.
But Blizzard has countered your argument: "However, the current ranking system includes a progression aspect where players initially start at Rank 50 and climb through the ranks until they reach a plateau [i.e. all bonus pool spent in SC2] that accurately reflects their skill. Under the current system, a player’s rank may not truly reflect their skill if they are still making progress. This system has caused some confusion around Ranked matchmaking modes. While we like the idea of progression and ranking up each season, we do not want it to come at the cost of an accurate ranking."
And btw, locked leagues (even gm) are a good measure against ladder anxiety. I guess they could put a very low MMR threshold for demotion (around midmaster) where if you legitly earned your promotion even at 1am season start you shouldn't go below, at least to prevent boosted accounts from stealing GM spots (8 accounts currently in bottom 10 GM EU were all boosted by the same guy this season lol).
How many complaints are there of of ladder anxiety in HotS? Zero, I searched the HotS forums (seems the HotS team, unlike the SC2 team, were smart enough to scrap the league system). As Browder now realizes, accurate ranks are important.
On August 08 2015 23:15 Plexa wrote: There's no need to quadruple post. =/
He's just very adamant about fixing a system that is indeed a poor man's choice in today's world. Games from decades ago had better ranking systems (see warcraft 3).
I've alway thought matchmaking in SC2 was pretty good--significantly better than many other games, in other genres.
They're improving ranking accuracy in Heres because matchmaking is horribly, horribly bad, atm. But, it's also a wildly different system. Not even apples to apples. More like, apples to hockey, lol.
Improving the SC2 matchmaking should--imho--have only one goal: increase enjoyment for rec-level players. It is not fun to lose a match because you never had a chance. If possible, the vast majority of games should be up against opponents of similar skill. I believe the SC2 matchmaking already does this fairly well, but could probably be improved.
So the SC2 league system appears to be clunky, and perhaps less accurate because there are a small number of divisions. These are just shiny objects to get you to play the game more, lol. I strongly suspect your league badge has very little to do with the matches you play. But *shrugs* that's just me.
The other issue is the number of players and the quality of time playing. Is it better to have longer waits and closer matches, or shorter waits and total stomp-fests? This is a user experience issue that must be addressed, and it can be a downward spiral. Less people playing means the rec-level players will have a harder time having fun with the game.
At the rec-level, it needs to be fun first. If you don't think you're recreational, then none of this matters. You're super tryhard and dedicated, and your MMR should do a decent job at keeping your W/L at 50%. But what the hell do I know?
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
On August 08 2015 23:25 TimeSpiral wrote: I've alway thought matchmaking in SC2 was pretty good--significantly better than many other games, in other genres.
They're improving ranking accuracy in Heres because matchmaking is horribly, horribly bad, atm. But, it's also a wildly different system. Not even apples to apples. More like, apples to hockey, lol.
Improving the SC2 matchmaking should--imho--have only one goal: increase enjoyment for rec-level players. It is not fun to lose a match because you never had a chance. If possible, the vast majority of games should be up against opponents of similar skill. I believe the SC2 matchmaking already does this fairly well, but could probably be improved.
So the SC2 league system appears to be clunky, and perhaps less accurate because there are a small number of divisions. These are just shiny objects to get you to play the game more, lol. I strongly suspect your league badge has very little to do with the matches you play. But *shrugs* that's just me.
The other issue is the number of players and the quality of time playing. Is it better to have longer waits and closer matches, or shorter waits and total stomp-fests? This is a user experience issue that must be addressed, and it can be a downward spiral. Less people playing means the rec-level players will have a harder time having fun with the game.
At the rec-level, it needs to be fun first. If you don't think you're recreational, then none of this matters. You're super tryhard and dedicated, and your MMR should do a decent job at keeping your W/L at 50%. But what the hell do I know?
No one is complaining about the matchmaking. A good matchmaker is only possible with a good estimate of skill (MMR). Therefore, the existence of good matchmaking implies the existence of a good estimate of skill. The problem is that Blizzard is not using this good estimate of skill for ranking. Instead, they deliberately distort ranks, deliberately making them inaccurate, when they could just use that good estimate of skill for ranking as Dustin Browder now wants to do in HotS (and that's the right decision).
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues require "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so your claim here is probably false), there are many reasons why someone is in a league. They could have just been put there after 5 placement games, rather than due to "consistency", they could badly deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (it seems, they have to calculate this manually each time) so they don't get the promotion that they do actually deserve. You also have bonus pool, intrinsically making your rank decline every single hour. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions is that people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and gives very little indication of skill with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because players' distorted ranks are different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is essentially the percentile of MMR once placement matches have been done.
What are these factors that "distort the indication [of skill], and distort it quite easily"? Performance at landing skill-shots? The meaning of ranks is clear, it's suppose to measure your ability to win games, so that's correctly taken into account. Bad teammates? That's equally random for both sides, so it increases the standard error but not bias. Compare that to distortions like no demotion in SC2 and bonus pool. That doesn't increase standard error, it increases bias. Systemic bias.
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise. If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues. You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
EDIT: Yeah, I'd definitely want a ranking system with smaller standard deviation and revealed bias than a system with a larger standard deviation.
if you showed mmr then there is no need for ranks. I think most feel this would be ideal.
since mmr is hidden, and the system is designed to give you 50% win rates..you need ranks to show improvement otherwise you feel like you're running in place.
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
No. Looking at the number of games played is not informative. The player could deserve a demotion after many games, and is locked in. Or the player could deserve to be demoted after playing small number of games because the initial placement was an overestimate. Or the player could have only a few games played but have very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played last season. Or the player could deserve to get promoted even with very few games played, but hasn't been promote because Blizzard forgot to manually adjust the league boundaries. It's also needlessly complicated to take so many things into account when you could just look at 1 number, like in HotS (behind the scenes, everything is based on 2 numbers).
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise.
They are 16 times more precise because they use groups of size 2%, which is 16 times more precise than groups of size 32%, by definition. Suppose SC2 used groups of size 50%. Does this not give less information? You could be the worst player or the median player, both are equal.
If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues.
You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
You are confused between the meaning of precision and accuracy.
"It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues." I have not made such an assumption.
Your argument is that factors X, Y and Z affect ranks, so they are wrong. This is basically the fallacy that because we don't know everything, we know nothing.
Some factors distort ranks (e.g. skill decay), some factors, contrary to your claims, don't distort ranks (e.g. changes in playerbase). These factors equally affect both games. I'm saying that there are far more factors that distort ranks in SC2 than in HotS: e.g. bonus pool and leagues. These distortionary factors don't exist in HotS. These SC2 distortionary factors are particularly bad because they increase bias, whereas bad teammates in HotS only increases standard error, but not bias. There are no distortionary factors in HotS that don't exist in SC2 in a like-for-like comparison that would even up the score. And Dustin Browder agrees, that's why he's removing these pointless distortionary factors to create accurate ranks using MMR.
On August 09 2015 00:23 Ignorant prodigy wrote: if you showed mmr then there is no need for ranks. I think most feel this would be ideal.
since mmr is hidden, and the system is designed to give you 50% win rates..you need ranks to show improvement otherwise you feel like you're running in place.
Yep.
This is exactly the reason Dustin Browder has given to refuse to expose MMR in SC2: because after around 10 to 20 games, your MMR stabilizes, and then you'll get stuck there, unchanging, unless you get more skill.
But now he has suddenly flip-flopped. Now he accepts this and says, if you want a higher rank, you can't count on grinding out many games like you can now (which works up to a point), instead you must get more skilled, otherwise, your rank will stagnate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo8CtytKAw8&feature=youtu.be&t=1683
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
No. Looking at the number of games played is not informative. The player could deserve a demotion after many games, and is locked in, distorting his rank. Or the player could deserve to be demoted after playing small number of games because the initial placement was an overestimate.The player could have only a few games played but have very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played last season. Or the player could h very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played. So the number of games is not useful. It's also needlessly complicated to take so many things into account, when you could (and the system does) just look at the MMR. HotS uses 1 number.
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise.
They are 16 times more precise because they use groups of size 2%, which is 16 times more precise than groups of size 32%, by definition. Suppose SC2 used groups of size 50%. Does this not give less information? You could be the worst player or the median player, both are equal.
If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues.
You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
You are confused between the meaning of precision and accuracy.
"It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues." I have not made such an assumption.
You're argument that factors X, Y and Z affect ranks, so they are wrong. This is basically the fallacy that if we don't know everything so we know nothing.
I'm some factors distort ranks (e.g. skill decay), some factors, contrary to your claims, don't distort ranks (e.g. changes in playerbase). I'm saying that there is more factors that there are far more factors that distort ranks in SC2 that do exist in HotS: e.g. bonus pool, leagues. And Dustin Browder agrees, that's why his removing them.
When I am looking at the information that the SC2 system gives me, games played definitely gives me a relevant indicator of how accurate the given player's position is. If you think that a systems ability to accurately place a player after 5 games is the same as it is after 500 games, then obviously there is no reason of discussing anything. Obviously previous seasons matter, but other things being equal, many games recently tend to give a better indication of recent skill.
Do you understand that the system gives you more information than that a player is in gold? That there is a point count and a rank within each league? You evaluate the system as if the only feedback the system gave you was in which league you're in. A league can't really be compared directly to Heroes' system. So the 16 times more accurate statement is not true at all.
All I'm trying to argue is that the more rigid system makes the ranking evaluation more informative. You move relatively faster between ranks in Heroes so every rank conveys less information. There are a lot of factors that distorts both systems, maybe there are more systemic distortions in SC2, but as long as those are revealed and well understood, it doesn't make SC2 ranking that much worse all.
In doesn't really make a difference, as long as the system used matches you up with people who are the same MMR. That wasn't my experience in Hero League when I played (When you would move around being awarded between 100 and 200 points out of 300 per match). Obviously, as the ranks become more rigid and advancement slower, ranks in Heroes will become more informative. It just seems like your critique is very severe as a result of a really simplified understanding of the SC2 system. It's not that bad as you would have it.
from your source, timestamps 28:02 to 29:26 before 28:02 they talk about how the matchmaker matches teams (or more accurately, tries not to match teams) of different party sizes together, not about how well your rank represents your skill. after 29:26 they stop talking about matchmaking and start talking about when the next season might be coming up.
28:02 "it really sounds like the ranked system now comes a bit closer to, like, the hidden mmr"
"it'll be, yea it'll be much more realistic, so basically while we are determining your hidden mmr we are also determining your rank and we should be able to get you, then after that if you want to go up you are gonna have to really improve your skills to get there. so that will hopefully be a lot more transparent to players, this is something a little bit more similar to what we had in starcraft and so we are sort of going back a little bit more in that direction so far it feels really good to us we've had good feedback from the people we have talked about it with but you know its, its a work in progress if we get different feedback, we're not shy we are not ashamed, we will change it again if we absolutely need to."
"that's great" "yea"
"when it comes to the core matchmaking, obviously we want to keep doing improvements there as well, we've got engineers dedicated to nothing but that, going forward we've recently introduced a few changes that have made it a little bit better, one of the concerns we had from players was 'hey, y'know I've been playing for 500 games I know I'm not that good but I just got matched with someone who've played 50 games, maybe he's coming from another game in the genre, he's actually almost as good as I am but, he doesn't know the game nearly as well as I do and I get very frustrated playing with him cause I know how the map objectives work, I know how the talent system works, I know how to fight, maybe as a team better than he does, this guy drive me a little crazy, can you, can you get him by himself with other players, you know that are new to the game' so we made that change recently and it's upped wait times by about 20 or 30 seconds, but the feedback so far from our players has been, pretty positive so we are gonna keep that change and continue to look for more changes that help matchmaking going forward" 29:26
and from this you get "Dustin Browder says he wants to make the HotS rank system more accurate by displaying what is effectively MMR after placement games, and that it would be like how it works in SC2" and "This is NOT how it works in SC2, but it is how it SHOULD work"?
as far as I can tell the system DB is referencing in this interview is pretty much exactly the SC2 ranking system. 1. you do placement matches. 2. you are put where the game thinks you belong based on your MMR calculated from placement matches. 3. adjust from there as you play. this is how SC2 works. DB is saying they want this system in heroes rather than the existing system that works like this: 1. you start at rank 50. 2. adjust from there, you cannot lose rank points while you are rank 50-40.
I just don't see how any of your points is relevant, true the SC2 rank is not your true rank, but neither will the new heroes systems rank be your true rank. the rank is just a placeholder to indicate a rough number, how good you actually are playing vary wildly based on your mood, attitude, whether you are warmed up, whether you are on tilt, whether you are hungry/full, whether you are sick, whether you are drunk, whether you are on drugs (for medicinal purposes or otherwise), etc. there is no real point in telling you your MMR is 3726 if your true mmr varies between 3200 and 3800, its better and more informative to tell you "you are platinum rank which indicates your mmr is between 3400 and 4000".
for example, in SC2 your mmr isn't actually one number, its two numbers. the first number indicates your average skill, the second number indicates the systems confidence in your skill, you can think of the numbers as x and y where the system basically counts your true mmr as: x plusminus y if you win a game you were calculated to lose or lose a game you were calculated to win, then the system increases or decreases your x value as appropriate, but always increases your y value. this means when you surprise the systems expectations your skill is adjusted and the system thinks you are more volatile than it previously thought. if instead you win/lose as expected then your x is still adjusted in the same way, but your y is decreased. so: if you win and lose the way the system expects you to, then the system considers itself to have been correct about your ranking and gets more confident. if you win or lose against the systems prediction then the system thinks it might be wrong and gets less confident.
therefore, simply displaying the mmr is not a great method since your mmr is not so clearcut.
and p.s. parallelluniverse, avoid double, triple or quadrouple posting, its better to just edit your last message to include what you want to say in your other posts than to double-post. reason: double-posting makes it seem like the discussion is more relevant than it seems by bumping the topic to the top if the forum page, this is unwanted behaviour for threads with fairly few active participants.
so 25 placement matches in a 5v5 game, where you only make out 1/5 of the skill of one side. I really wonder why they need to be more precise in Heroes. But yeah I think they will take over the Heroes system. Which removes even more informations. But people seem to like it more. Not sure if it is because its so easy to get to rank 1 though x3. Oh I think because the false progression of the system isn't that obvious !
Also MMR is also just a number, but a rather high one, so only a few will have the same one at the same time. I share my Chess Elo with around 100 people, if you add two more digits into the calculation, the number of people would drop down and it would of course be more accurate. But point differences of about 1000 Points would suddenly not matter at all.
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
No. Looking at the number of games played is not informative. The player could deserve a demotion after many games, and is locked in, distorting his rank. Or the player could deserve to be demoted after playing small number of games because the initial placement was an overestimate.The player could have only a few games played but have very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played last season. Or the player could h very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played. So the number of games is not useful. It's also needlessly complicated to take so many things into account, when you could (and the system does) just look at the MMR. HotS uses 1 number.
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise.
They are 16 times more precise because they use groups of size 2%, which is 16 times more precise than groups of size 32%, by definition. Suppose SC2 used groups of size 50%. Does this not give less information? You could be the worst player or the median player, both are equal.
If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues.
You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
You are confused between the meaning of precision and accuracy.
"It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues." I have not made such an assumption.
You're argument that factors X, Y and Z affect ranks, so they are wrong. This is basically the fallacy that if we don't know everything so we know nothing.
I'm some factors distort ranks (e.g. skill decay), some factors, contrary to your claims, don't distort ranks (e.g. changes in playerbase). I'm saying that there is more factors that there are far more factors that distort ranks in SC2 that do exist in HotS: e.g. bonus pool, leagues. And Dustin Browder agrees, that's why his removing them.
When I am looking at the information that the SC2 system gives me, games played definitely gives me a relevant indicator of how accurate the given player's position is. If you think that a systems ability to accurately place a player after 5 games is the same as it is after 500 games, then obviously there is no reason of discussing anything. Obviously previous seasons matter, but other things being equal, many games recently tend to give a better indication of recent skill.
Do you understand that the system gives you more information than that a player is in gold? That there is a point count and a rank within each league? You evaluate the system as if the only feedback the system gave you was in which league you're in. A league can't really be compared directly to Heroes' system. So the 16 times more accurate statement is not true at all.
All I'm trying to argue is that the more rigid system makes the ranking evaluation more informative. You move relatively faster between ranks in Heroes so every rank conveys less information. There are a lot of factors that distorts both systems, maybe there are more systemic distortions in SC2, but as long as those are revealed and well understood, it doesn't make SC2 ranking that much worse all.
In doesn't really make a difference, as long as the system used matches you up with people who are the same MMR. That wasn't my experience in Hero League when I played (When you would move around being awarded between 100 and 200 points out of 300 per match). Obviously, as the ranks become more rigid and advancement slower, ranks in Heroes will become more informative. It just seems like your critique is very severe as a result of a really simplified understanding of the SC2 system. It's not that bad as you would have it.
No. Games played does not given an indication of how accurate your rank is and I have given 4 examples above, where games played is not informative.
Your MMR after 500 games is more accurate than after 5 games. But your rank after 500 games is NOT necessarily more accurate than after 5 games because of all the unique SC2 distortionary factors that creates bias, not just standard error, as I've shown in the examples above. So your understanding of ranking systems is very uninformed.
Your statement that HotS ranks contain less information is flat out false. What's more information: You're MMR percentile plus a bunch of biased distortionary factors is in the top 40% to 72% or your MMR percentile in is the top 40% to 42%? The latter, is far more information and far more accurate, which is why the HotS ranking system is being changed in this way.
On August 09 2015 01:29 Roblin wrote: from your source, timestamps 28:02 to 29:26 before 28:02 they talk about how the matchmaker matches teams (or more accurately, tries not to match teams) of different party sizes together, not about how well your rank represents your skill. after 29:26 they stop talking about matchmaking and start talking about when the next season might be coming up.
28:02 "it really sounds like the ranked system now comes a bit closer to, like, the hidden mmr"
"it'll be, yea it'll be much more realistic, so basically while we are determining your hidden mmr we are also determining your rank and we should be able to get you, then after that if you want to go up you are gonna have to really improve your skills to get there. so that will hopefully be a lot more transparent to players, this is something a little bit more similar to what we had in starcraft and so we are sort of going back a little bit more in that direction so far it feels really good to us we've had good feedback from the people we have talked about it with but you know its, its a work in progress if we get different feedback, we're not shy we are not ashamed, we will change it again if we absolutely need to."
"that's great" "yea"
"when it comes to the core matchmaking, obviously we want to keep doing improvements there as well, we've got engineers dedicated to nothing but that, going forward we've recently introduced a few changes that have made it a little bit better, one of the concerns we had from players was 'hey, y'know I've been playing for 500 games I know I'm not that good but I just got matched with someone who've played 50 games, maybe he's coming from another game in the genre, he's actually almost as good as I am but, he doesn't know the game nearly as well as I do and I get very frustrated playing with him cause I know how the map objectives work, I know how the talent system works, I know how to fight, maybe as a team better than he does, this guy drive me a little crazy, can you, can you get him by himself with other players, you know that are new to the game' so we made that change recently and it's upped wait times by about 20 or 30 seconds, but the feedback so far from our players has been, pretty positive so we are gonna keep that change and continue to look for more changes that help matchmaking going forward" 29:26
and from this you get "Dustin Browder says he wants to make the HotS rank system more accurate by displaying what is effectively MMR after placement games, and that it would be like how it works in SC2" and "This is NOT how it works in SC2, but it is how it SHOULD work"?
as far as I can tell the system DB is referencing in this interview is pretty much exactly the SC2 ranking system. 1. you do placement matches. 2. you are put where the game thinks you belong based on your MMR calculated from placement matches. 3. adjust from there as you play. this is how SC2 works. DB is saying they want this system in heroes rather than the existing system that works like this: 1. you start at rank 50. 2. adjust from there, you cannot lose rank points while you are rank 50-40.
No. Browder is talking about placing people in the rank they deserve after placement using MMR instead of a progression system that trends towards MMR. But in SC2, your rank is not accurate, not based on MMR, it is instead based on a progression system that trends towards MMR as your bonus pool is used up. It is only similar in the sense that you are put in a group after placement based on MMR. But the HotS groups are precise and accurate, with size of 2%, while the SC2 groups are neither precise nor accurate, with size of 32% (16 times less precise) and you're ranks are especially distorted by bonus pool that cause it to intrinsically decline every single hours, and rules about leagues.
I just don't see how any of your points is relevant, true the SC2 rank is not your true rank, but neither will the new heroes systems rank be your true rank. the rank is just a placeholder to indicate a rough number, how good you actually are playing vary wildly based on your mood, attitude, whether you are warmed up, whether you are on tilt, whether you are hungry/full, whether you are sick, whether you are drunk, whether you are on drugs (for medicinal purposes or otherwise), etc. there is no real point in telling you your MMR is 3726 if your true mmr varies between 3200 and 3800, its better and more informative to tell you "you are platinum rank which indicates your mmr is between 3400 and 4000".
for example, in SC2 your mmr isn't actually one number, its two numbers. the first number indicates your average skill, the second number indicates the systems confidence in your skill, you can think of the numbers as x and y where the system basically counts your true mmr as: x plusminus y if you win a game you were calculated to lose or lose a game you were calculated to win, then the system increases or decreases your x value as appropriate, but always increases your y value. this means when you surprise the systems expectations your skill is adjusted and the system thinks you are more volatile than it previously thought. if instead you win/lose as expected then your x is still adjusted in the same way, but your y is decreased. so: if you win and lose the way the system expects you to, then the system considers itself to have been correct about your ranking and gets more confident. if you win or lose against the systems prediction then the system thinks it might be wrong and gets less confident.
therefore, simply displaying the mmr is not a great method since your mmr is not so clearcut.
and p.s. parallelluniverse, avoid double, triple or quadrouple posting, its better to just edit your last message to include what you want to say in your other posts than to double-post. reason: double-posting makes it seem like the discussion is more relevant than it seems by bumping the topic to the top if the forum page, this is unwanted behaviour for threads with fairly few active participants.
Is a rank based on more distortionary factors with less precision more informative than a rank based on much fewer distortionary factors and more precision? You seem to think so.
If you want to be pedantic your MMR is not 2 numbers, it is a probability distribution, that is a real-valued function. So what's the point you were trying to make again? There was no point there relevant to the discussion. Any ranking system will have to summarize the information into 1 number. So the question is, is it better that this 1 number summary be distorted by biased-inducing factors like bonus pool and no demotions than not?
there is no real point in telling you your MMR is 3726 if your true mmr varies between 3200 and 3800, its better and more informative to tell you "you are platinum rank which indicates your mmr is between 3400 and 4000".
there is no real point in telling you that the percentile corresponding to your rank is 37.26 if your true percentile corresponding to your true rank is 24.00 and 27.00, its obviously better and more informative to tell you the lie that "you are platinum rank which indicates your true percentile corresponding to your true rank is between 34.00 and 40.00".
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
No. Looking at the number of games played is not informative. The player could deserve a demotion after many games, and is locked in, distorting his rank. Or the player could deserve to be demoted after playing small number of games because the initial placement was an overestimate.The player could have only a few games played but have very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played last season. Or the player could h very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played. So the number of games is not useful. It's also needlessly complicated to take so many things into account, when you could (and the system does) just look at the MMR. HotS uses 1 number.
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise.
They are 16 times more precise because they use groups of size 2%, which is 16 times more precise than groups of size 32%, by definition. Suppose SC2 used groups of size 50%. Does this not give less information? You could be the worst player or the median player, both are equal.
If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues.
You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
You are confused between the meaning of precision and accuracy.
"It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues." I have not made such an assumption.
You're argument that factors X, Y and Z affect ranks, so they are wrong. This is basically the fallacy that if we don't know everything so we know nothing.
I'm some factors distort ranks (e.g. skill decay), some factors, contrary to your claims, don't distort ranks (e.g. changes in playerbase). I'm saying that there is more factors that there are far more factors that distort ranks in SC2 that do exist in HotS: e.g. bonus pool, leagues. And Dustin Browder agrees, that's why his removing them.
When I am looking at the information that the SC2 system gives me, games played definitely gives me a relevant indicator of how accurate the given player's position is. If you think that a systems ability to accurately place a player after 5 games is the same as it is after 500 games, then obviously there is no reason of discussing anything. Obviously previous seasons matter, but other things being equal, many games recently tend to give a better indication of recent skill.
Do you understand that the system gives you more information than that a player is in gold? That there is a point count and a rank within each league? You evaluate the system as if the only feedback the system gave you was in which league you're in. A league can't really be compared directly to Heroes' system. So the 16 times more accurate statement is not true at all.
All I'm trying to argue is that the more rigid system makes the ranking evaluation more informative. You move relatively faster between ranks in Heroes so every rank conveys less information. There are a lot of factors that distorts both systems, maybe there are more systemic distortions in SC2, but as long as those are revealed and well understood, it doesn't make SC2 ranking that much worse all.
In doesn't really make a difference, as long as the system used matches you up with people who are the same MMR. That wasn't my experience in Hero League when I played (When you would move around being awarded between 100 and 200 points out of 300 per match). Obviously, as the ranks become more rigid and advancement slower, ranks in Heroes will become more informative. It just seems like your critique is very severe as a result of a really simplified understanding of the SC2 system. It's not that bad as you would have it.
No. Games played does not given an indication of how accurate your rank is and I have given 4 examples above, where games played is not informative.
Your MMR after 500 games is more accurate than after 5 games. But your rank after 500 games is NOT necessarily more accurate than after 5 games because of all the unique SC2 distortionary factors that creates bias, not just standard error, as I've shown in the examples above. So your understanding of ranking systems is very uninformed.
Your statement that HotS ranks contain less information is flat out false. What's more information: You're MMR percentile plus a bunch of biased distortionary factors is in the top 40% to 72% or your MMR percentile in is the top 40% to 42%? The latter, is far more information and far more accurate, which is why the HotS ranking system is being changed in this way.
you ignore a very simple fact. pretty much everyone in heroes jump up and down in ranks pretty wildly. I myself vary between rank 27 and rank 22 depending on how well im playing that particular day and also of course, varing based on luck (aka unpredictable factors favouring one side over the other). so for me, if I am in rank 25 it is misleading to claim that means I am in percentages 50% to 52% when in reality I vary betweeen percentages 44% to 54%
and besides, it not like SC2 gives no indication of where in your division you are, true its built in leagues which give a wide range, but your placement within the division tells you whether you are closer to 40th percentile rather than 70th percentile.
to any intelligent person that is interested to know one own approximate standing, SC2 is no better or worse than the suggested model for heroes.
edit: also, again, avoid double-posting. I could have written this in a new post, but that would be double-posting, so I didn't. I edited my last message instead.
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
No. Looking at the number of games played is not informative. The player could deserve a demotion after many games, and is locked in, distorting his rank. Or the player could deserve to be demoted after playing small number of games because the initial placement was an overestimate.The player could have only a few games played but have very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played last season. Or the player could h very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played. So the number of games is not useful. It's also needlessly complicated to take so many things into account, when you could (and the system does) just look at the MMR. HotS uses 1 number.
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise.
They are 16 times more precise because they use groups of size 2%, which is 16 times more precise than groups of size 32%, by definition. Suppose SC2 used groups of size 50%. Does this not give less information? You could be the worst player or the median player, both are equal.
If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues.
You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
You are confused between the meaning of precision and accuracy.
"It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues." I have not made such an assumption.
You're argument that factors X, Y and Z affect ranks, so they are wrong. This is basically the fallacy that if we don't know everything so we know nothing.
I'm some factors distort ranks (e.g. skill decay), some factors, contrary to your claims, don't distort ranks (e.g. changes in playerbase). I'm saying that there is more factors that there are far more factors that distort ranks in SC2 that do exist in HotS: e.g. bonus pool, leagues. And Dustin Browder agrees, that's why his removing them.
When I am looking at the information that the SC2 system gives me, games played definitely gives me a relevant indicator of how accurate the given player's position is. If you think that a systems ability to accurately place a player after 5 games is the same as it is after 500 games, then obviously there is no reason of discussing anything. Obviously previous seasons matter, but other things being equal, many games recently tend to give a better indication of recent skill.
Do you understand that the system gives you more information than that a player is in gold? That there is a point count and a rank within each league? You evaluate the system as if the only feedback the system gave you was in which league you're in. A league can't really be compared directly to Heroes' system. So the 16 times more accurate statement is not true at all.
All I'm trying to argue is that the more rigid system makes the ranking evaluation more informative. You move relatively faster between ranks in Heroes so every rank conveys less information. There are a lot of factors that distorts both systems, maybe there are more systemic distortions in SC2, but as long as those are revealed and well understood, it doesn't make SC2 ranking that much worse all.
In doesn't really make a difference, as long as the system used matches you up with people who are the same MMR. That wasn't my experience in Hero League when I played (When you would move around being awarded between 100 and 200 points out of 300 per match). Obviously, as the ranks become more rigid and advancement slower, ranks in Heroes will become more informative. It just seems like your critique is very severe as a result of a really simplified understanding of the SC2 system. It's not that bad as you would have it.
No. Games played does not given an indication of how accurate your rank is and I have given 4 examples above, where games played is not informative.
Your MMR after 500 games is more accurate than after 5 games. But your rank after 500 games is NOT necessarily more accurate than after 5 games because of all the unique SC2 distortionary factors that creates bias, not just standard error, as I've shown in the examples above. So your understanding of ranking systems is very uninformed.
Your statement that HotS ranks contain less information is flat out false. What's more information: You're MMR percentile plus a bunch of biased distortionary factors is in the top 40% to 72% or your MMR percentile in is the top 40% to 42%? The latter, is far more information and far more accurate, which is why the HotS ranking system is being changed in this way.
you ignore a very simple fact. pretty much everyone in heroes jump up and down in ranks pretty wildly. I myself vary between rank 27 and rank 22 depending on how well im playing that particular day and also of course, varing based on luck (aka unpredictable factors favouring one side over the other). so for me, if I am in rank 25 it is misleading to claim that means I am in percentages 50% to 52% when in reality I vary betweeen percentages 44% to 54%
and besides, it not like SC2 gives no indication of where in your division you are, true its built in leagues which give a wide range, but your placement within the division tells you whether you are closer to 40th percentile rather than 70th percentile.
to any intelligent person that is interested to know one own approximate standing, SC2 is no better or worse than the suggested model for heroes.
Firstly, 44% to 54% is not 40% to 72%, which is what you'll get in SC2.
Secondly, if someone is 44% to 54%, and another person is 48% to 53%, who should be ranked higher? For any ranking system, even the SC2 ranking system, you need to collapse this information into 1 number, such as a mean, 49% vs 50.5%, so the second should be higher. The problem is that the 1 number in SC2 is wrong, and in HotS it's far less wrong.
Thirdly, why does your rank being between 44% to 54% imply it should be deliberately biased with distortionary factors like bonus pool and no demotions, and made up to 16 times (a number not chosen based on the data but pulled out of Blizzard's ass) less precise than HotS ranks?
Fourthly, division ranks are meaningless and wrong. They intrinsically decline every hour due to the bonus pool, can't be accurately compared when bonus pool is not spent, and doesn't account for the fact that some people don't deserve to be in the division but are stuck there due to rigidities in the league system.
Lastly, if you want less volatility in ranks, the solution is not the SC2 ranking system of wrong ranks, it's to apply a trend filter to the metric that is used to create the percentile ranks (approximate MMR in HotS or points in SC2).
On August 08 2015 22:10 TokO wrote: I never had an issue understanding Sc2 ranks.
No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%.
You just have to realise that there is significant overlap in leagues. To advance in league, you need to play consistently better than roughly 50% of the next league.
Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
The system requires stability in winrate because that's the best way to ensure you're correctly placed, to precede a promotion. It was just a solution they used to avoid players bouncing between two leagues, because that would screw with the idea of stable divisions in which a player could compare themselves to others.
Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
No. Looking at the number of games played is not informative. The player could deserve a demotion after many games, and is locked in, distorting his rank. Or the player could deserve to be demoted after playing small number of games because the initial placement was an overestimate.The player could have only a few games played but have very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played last season. Or the player could h very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played. So the number of games is not useful. It's also needlessly complicated to take so many things into account, when you could (and the system does) just look at the MMR. HotS uses 1 number.
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise.
They are 16 times more precise because they use groups of size 2%, which is 16 times more precise than groups of size 32%, by definition. Suppose SC2 used groups of size 50%. Does this not give less information? You could be the worst player or the median player, both are equal.
If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues.
You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
You are confused between the meaning of precision and accuracy.
"It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues." I have not made such an assumption.
You're argument that factors X, Y and Z affect ranks, so they are wrong. This is basically the fallacy that if we don't know everything so we know nothing.
I'm some factors distort ranks (e.g. skill decay), some factors, contrary to your claims, don't distort ranks (e.g. changes in playerbase). I'm saying that there is more factors that there are far more factors that distort ranks in SC2 that do exist in HotS: e.g. bonus pool, leagues. And Dustin Browder agrees, that's why his removing them.
When I am looking at the information that the SC2 system gives me, games played definitely gives me a relevant indicator of how accurate the given player's position is. If you think that a systems ability to accurately place a player after 5 games is the same as it is after 500 games, then obviously there is no reason of discussing anything. Obviously previous seasons matter, but other things being equal, many games recently tend to give a better indication of recent skill.
Do you understand that the system gives you more information than that a player is in gold? That there is a point count and a rank within each league? You evaluate the system as if the only feedback the system gave you was in which league you're in. A league can't really be compared directly to Heroes' system. So the 16 times more accurate statement is not true at all.
All I'm trying to argue is that the more rigid system makes the ranking evaluation more informative. You move relatively faster between ranks in Heroes so every rank conveys less information. There are a lot of factors that distorts both systems, maybe there are more systemic distortions in SC2, but as long as those are revealed and well understood, it doesn't make SC2 ranking that much worse all.
In doesn't really make a difference, as long as the system used matches you up with people who are the same MMR. That wasn't my experience in Hero League when I played (When you would move around being awarded between 100 and 200 points out of 300 per match). Obviously, as the ranks become more rigid and advancement slower, ranks in Heroes will become more informative. It just seems like your critique is very severe as a result of a really simplified understanding of the SC2 system. It's not that bad as you would have it.
No. Games played does not given an indication of how accurate your rank is and I have given 4 examples above, where games played is not informative.
Your MMR after 500 games is more accurate than after 5 games. But your rank after 500 games is NOT necessarily more accurate than after 5 games because of all the unique SC2 distortionary factors that creates bias, not just standard error, as I've shown in the examples above. So your understanding of ranking systems is very uninformed.
Your statement that HotS ranks contain less information is flat out false. What's more information: You're MMR percentile plus a bunch of biased distortionary factors is in the top 40% to 72% or your MMR percentile in is the top 40% to 42%? The latter, is far more information and far more accurate, which is why the HotS ranking system is being changed in this way.
you ignore a very simple fact. pretty much everyone in heroes jump up and down in ranks pretty wildly. I myself vary between rank 27 and rank 22 depending on how well im playing that particular day and also of course, varing based on luck (aka unpredictable factors favouring one side over the other). so for me, if I am in rank 25 it is misleading to claim that means I am in percentages 50% to 52% when in reality I vary betweeen percentages 44% to 54%
and besides, it not like SC2 gives no indication of where in your division you are, true its built in leagues which give a wide range, but your placement within the division tells you whether you are closer to 40th percentile rather than 70th percentile.
to any intelligent person that is interested to know one own approximate standing, SC2 is no better or worse than the suggested model for heroes.
Firstly, 44% to 54% is not 40% to 72%, which is what you'll get in SC2.
Secondly, if someone is 44% to 54%, and another person is 48% to 53%, who should be ranked higher? For any ranking system, even the SC2 ranking system, you need to collapse this information into 1 number, such as a mean, 49% vs 50.5%, so the second should be higher. The problem is that the 1 number in SC2 is wrong, and in HotS it's far less wrong.
Thirdly, why does your rank being between 44% to 54% imply it should be biased with distortionary factors like bonus pool and no demotions, and made up to 16 times (a number not chosen based on the data but pulled out of Blizzard's ass) less precise than HotS ranks?
Fourthly, division ranks are meaningless and wrong. They intrinsically decline every hour due to the bonus pool, can't be accurately compared when bonus pool is not spent, and doesn't account for the fact that some people don't deserve to be the division but are stuck there due to rigidities in the league system.
Lastly, if you want less volatility in ranks, the solution is not the SC2 ranking system of wrong ranks, it's to apply a trend filter to the metric that is used to create the percentile ranks (approximate MMR in HotS or points in SC2).
firstly, the size of a league in SC2 is 32% only for gold league, the rest are 20% or less. you are literally quoting the absolute worst case scenario and I think I am completely justfied in accusing you of cherry-picking.
secondly, mmr does not need to be collapsed into 1 number, mmr is collapsed into 2 number, the computer considers a 44-54 person as a 49 +- 5, it considers a 48-53 person as a 50.5 +- 2.5
thirdly, your third point doesn't even make sense. you are right the rank being between 44 and 54 does not imply the things you say, but thats because my rank being between 44 and 54 doesn't imply anything at all about the system at large, this point is moot. the fact that my skill is a range rather than a number does however imply that any attempt of putting a specific number on it, or for that matter putting a smaller-than-actual range on it (such as a 2% range when the real range is 10%), will be deceptive in its granularity.
fourthly, division ranks are meaningful in comparison to active players, inactive players decaying out of the system is to get rid of unwanted statistical noise for the active players.
fifthly, applying a trend estimation would let you see how you have been doing so far and let you see where you will probably be in the future, but it wouldn't be any more accurate than what we currently have without extremely unnecessary large amounts of processing. for example, after each game the current system uses perhaps 10-20 operations to record the result and adjust your mmr, is it really worth it to improve the systems accuracy by a tiny amount if doing so will require 1 000 000 - 2 000 000 operations after each game?
lastly, you do know that heroes doesn't actually use your rank to match you with people right? and it still wont after this change. it has a hidden mmr just the same as in SC2 which is used to match you, have you ever gotten a "skill bonus" in heroes? thats a bonus you get when your hidden mmr has raced far ahead of your displayed rank and the system tries to let your rank catch up. for example, a rank 45 player that has just started climbing in hero league might have a hidden mmr in the 20ies and when that player wins it gets a skill bonus to accelerate the climb up to 20ish, but when it reaches that rank it stops getting the skill bonus, and wont get skill bonus again unless it somehow becomes extremely much better very quickly. the matchmaking is completely unaffected by what rank is being displayed. the rank is literally just there to be an aestethically pleasing indication of your rough position, there is really no need to tell players exactly where in the list of millions of players they are, doing so would just give the deceptive illusion of accuracy.
I always liked sc2 ranking system. It's very rewarding to reach one of the top places in your division and once bonus pool is spent + enough games are played the ladder rank is also a quite accurate indicator for the mmr. Not 100% accurate of course but I don't think that's necessary.
On August 08 2015 23:25 TimeSpiral wrote: I've alway thought matchmaking in SC2 was pretty good--significantly better than many other games, in other genres.
They're improving ranking accuracy in Heres because matchmaking is horribly, horribly bad, atm. But, it's also a wildly different system. Not even apples to apples. More like, apples to hockey, lol.
Improving the SC2 matchmaking should--imho--have only one goal: increase enjoyment for rec-level players. It is not fun to lose a match because you never had a chance. If possible, the vast majority of games should be up against opponents of similar skill. I believe the SC2 matchmaking already does this fairly well, but could probably be improved.
So the SC2 league system appears to be clunky, and perhaps less accurate because there are a small number of divisions. These are just shiny objects to get you to play the game more, lol. I strongly suspect your league badge has very little to do with the matches you play. But *shrugs* that's just me.
The other issue is the number of players and the quality of time playing. Is it better to have longer waits and closer matches, or shorter waits and total stomp-fests? This is a user experience issue that must be addressed, and it can be a downward spiral. Less people playing means the rec-level players will have a harder time having fun with the game.
At the rec-level, it needs to be fun first. If you don't think you're recreational, then none of this matters. You're super tryhard and dedicated, and your MMR should do a decent job at keeping your W/L at 50%. But what the hell do I know?
No one is complaining about the matchmaking. A good matchmaker is only possible with a good estimate of skill (MMR). Therefore, the existence of good matchmaking implies the existence of a good estimate of skill. The problem is that Blizzard is not using this good estimate of skill for ranking. Instead, they deliberately distort ranks, deliberately making them inaccurate, when they could just use that good estimate of skill for ranking as Dustin Browder now wants to do in HotS (and that's the right decision).
The Browder conversation yesterday at GamesCom--with the lovely and talented Soe and super-fun Frodan--was specifically rooted in improving matchmaking. Again, I don't even think the ranking system in Heroes is relatable to SC2.
The leagues are for fun. For a sense of improvement. They're achievement badges. Climb through the ranks of your division, and surpass the names you'll never actually face in a match ever! *grasping heroically into the air* It's motivation. It's easy to understand for the rec players. I think it could be improved, sure, but I think it's one of the best in the business, as far as quality matches are concerned.
Your accusations seem unfounded, hyperbolic, and unfair. Are you getting good matches?
God yes I want MMR to be shown for sc2, get rid of the divisions and just have the 7 leagues and then your mmr. So if you're high masters you check your rank and you see masters 100 or masters 68 and so on. Its so fucking annoying not seeing mmr.
The current system is just a bad attempt at making us think we're better than we actually are and it's quite an insult to our intelligence.
If Blizzard thinks noobs can't handle the truth (I don't think so personally), they can keep distorting information for them but at least give us some way to see our true MMR and where we really stand compared to other players.
On August 08 2015 23:06 paralleluniverse wrote: [quote] No one does. E.g. if you're in gold league in SC2, you're in the top 40% to top 72%. This is 16 times less precision than know you're rank 20 in HotS which is top 40% to top 42%. [quote] Why is this good? Why isn't the transparent HotS system that Dustin Browder advocates better?
[quote] Divisions are meanginless, so who cares if they are stable. The leagues are wrong. You can have higher MMR than your league and not get promoted, or lower MMR and not get demoted. This is one reason why HotS scraps leagues and replaces with an accurate, fluid ranking system based on a continuum of points, not buckets that are discrete, arbitrary and wrong.
Well, the reason I think it is better is that there is more justification for anyone's rank. Looking at games played that season and placements in division, I have a pretty good idea about another player's skill that season. Obviously, I haven't played the latest iterations with 20-30 games placement in Heroes, but when I played, my team would almost always consist of a shotgun shot of different ranks, and I had no idea of how to translate that into anything comprehensive. You kinda have this image of 50 ranks system being a perfect indicator of skill, when there are so many factors that could distort the indication, and distort it quite easily.
I think a lot of people level a lot of hate towards the SC2 system because they aren't getting a promotion when they believe that they "deserve" it. The opposite is actually the case. I think promotion in SC2 is a much stronger indicator because the rigidity means that the person actually deserved his promotion when he finally achieves it. You only move in SC2 when you're consistent, and when the amount of games played is high, it becomes a consistent indicator. On the other hand, in systems where you fluctuate a lot because of unlucky teams, being carried, etc. the ranking means a lot less.
How do you justify a wrong rank? Even if leagues requires "consistency" (ExcaliburZ says that the requirement of low MMR uncertainty to be promoted has been scrapped, so this might not even be true), there are many reasons why someone is a league. They could have just been put there after 5 games, rather due to "consistency", they could so bad they deserve to be demoted but are locked in, they could deserve a promotion but Blizzard forgot to adjust the league boundary (they have calculate this manually each time, it seems) so they don't get one. Moreover, a league can be 32% of players. So really, when you know the league, you don't know anything.
As you point out, a problem with promotions because people think they deserve one and the promotion criteria is not transparent, and leagues given very liltte indication of skills, with up to 16 times less precision than HotS ranks. That's a reason to scrap leagues as has been done in HotS.
You frequently get matched to people in different leagues in SC2. That's because player's distorted ranked is different from the MMR skill rating. That's the problem that Dustin Browder says he will now fix in HotS by making ranks based off what is the percentile of MMR after placement matches.
That's why you need to look at the amount of games played. The more games, the stronger the indication. Fewer games means the rank is a worse indicator of skill. This is going to be the case regardless of system.
No. Looking at the number of games played is not informative. The player could deserve a demotion after many games, and is locked in, distorting his rank. Or the player could deserve to be demoted after playing small number of games because the initial placement was an overestimate.The player could have only a few games played but have very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played last season. Or the player could h very low uncertainty in the MMR due to lots of games played. So the number of games is not useful. It's also needlessly complicated to take so many things into account, when you could (and the system does) just look at the MMR. HotS uses 1 number.
I don't really accept your argument of ranks in Heroes being 16 times more precise.
They are 16 times more precise because they use groups of size 2%, which is 16 times more precise than groups of size 32%, by definition. Suppose SC2 used groups of size 50%. Does this not give less information? You could be the worst player or the median player, both are equal.
If the placements lack proper justification, and can more easily due to factors outside of player skill, then the ranks cease to be an accurate indicator. It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues.
You also argue with the assumption that all gold-leaguers are the same, all platinum-leaguers are the same, etc. But they are not. If we compare the two systems fairly, there is actually 700 ranks different ranks in SC2 that players can tend towards, making it a lot more precise.
Ranks will always be distorted to a certain degree, due to skill decay, rank decay, changes in skill of playerbase composition. That's why you meet people of different leagues and ranks in SC2. It's really naive to believe that Heroes will successfully have each of their 2% brackets perfectly represent the distribution of playerbase's skill in Heroes. As long as some people don't play until they are accurately placed, play deliberately worse, stop playing, only play once in a blue moon, etc. there will be inconsistencies established in Heroes. The same things that you are attacking the SC2 system for.
You are confused between the meaning of precision and accuracy.
"It seems that you've made an assumption that Heroes ranking system is always accurate when it places you, and that SC2 is always inaccurate, because of leagues." I have not made such an assumption.
You're argument that factors X, Y and Z affect ranks, so they are wrong. This is basically the fallacy that if we don't know everything so we know nothing.
I'm some factors distort ranks (e.g. skill decay), some factors, contrary to your claims, don't distort ranks (e.g. changes in playerbase). I'm saying that there is more factors that there are far more factors that distort ranks in SC2 that do exist in HotS: e.g. bonus pool, leagues. And Dustin Browder agrees, that's why his removing them.
When I am looking at the information that the SC2 system gives me, games played definitely gives me a relevant indicator of how accurate the given player's position is. If you think that a systems ability to accurately place a player after 5 games is the same as it is after 500 games, then obviously there is no reason of discussing anything. Obviously previous seasons matter, but other things being equal, many games recently tend to give a better indication of recent skill.
Do you understand that the system gives you more information than that a player is in gold? That there is a point count and a rank within each league? You evaluate the system as if the only feedback the system gave you was in which league you're in. A league can't really be compared directly to Heroes' system. So the 16 times more accurate statement is not true at all.
All I'm trying to argue is that the more rigid system makes the ranking evaluation more informative. You move relatively faster between ranks in Heroes so every rank conveys less information. There are a lot of factors that distorts both systems, maybe there are more systemic distortions in SC2, but as long as those are revealed and well understood, it doesn't make SC2 ranking that much worse all.
In doesn't really make a difference, as long as the system used matches you up with people who are the same MMR. That wasn't my experience in Hero League when I played (When you would move around being awarded between 100 and 200 points out of 300 per match). Obviously, as the ranks become more rigid and advancement slower, ranks in Heroes will become more informative. It just seems like your critique is very severe as a result of a really simplified understanding of the SC2 system. It's not that bad as you would have it.
No. Games played does not given an indication of how accurate your rank is and I have given 4 examples above, where games played is not informative.
Your MMR after 500 games is more accurate than after 5 games. But your rank after 500 games is NOT necessarily more accurate than after 5 games because of all the unique SC2 distortionary factors that creates bias, not just standard error, as I've shown in the examples above. So your understanding of ranking systems is very uninformed.
Your statement that HotS ranks contain less information is flat out false. What's more information: You're MMR percentile plus a bunch of biased distortionary factors is in the top 40% to 72% or your MMR percentile in is the top 40% to 42%? The latter, is far more information and far more accurate, which is why the HotS ranking system is being changed in this way.
you ignore a very simple fact. pretty much everyone in heroes jump up and down in ranks pretty wildly. I myself vary between rank 27 and rank 22 depending on how well im playing that particular day and also of course, varing based on luck (aka unpredictable factors favouring one side over the other). so for me, if I am in rank 25 it is misleading to claim that means I am in percentages 50% to 52% when in reality I vary betweeen percentages 44% to 54%
and besides, it not like SC2 gives no indication of where in your division you are, true its built in leagues which give a wide range, but your placement within the division tells you whether you are closer to 40th percentile rather than 70th percentile.
to any intelligent person that is interested to know one own approximate standing, SC2 is no better or worse than the suggested model for heroes.
Firstly, 44% to 54% is not 40% to 72%, which is what you'll get in SC2.
Secondly, if someone is 44% to 54%, and another person is 48% to 53%, who should be ranked higher? For any ranking system, even the SC2 ranking system, you need to collapse this information into 1 number, such as a mean, 49% vs 50.5%, so the second should be higher. The problem is that the 1 number in SC2 is wrong, and in HotS it's far less wrong.
Thirdly, why does your rank being between 44% to 54% imply it should be biased with distortionary factors like bonus pool and no demotions, and made up to 16 times (a number not chosen based on the data but pulled out of Blizzard's ass) less precise than HotS ranks?
Fourthly, division ranks are meaningless and wrong. They intrinsically decline every hour due to the bonus pool, can't be accurately compared when bonus pool is not spent, and doesn't account for the fact that some people don't deserve to be the division but are stuck there due to rigidities in the league system.
Lastly, if you want less volatility in ranks, the solution is not the SC2 ranking system of wrong ranks, it's to apply a trend filter to the metric that is used to create the percentile ranks (approximate MMR in HotS or points in SC2).
firstly, the size of a league in SC2 is 32% only for gold league, the rest are 20% or less. you are literally quoting the absolute worst case scenario and I think I am completely justfied in accusing you of cherry-picking.
secondly, mmr does not need to be collapsed into 1 number, mmr is collapsed into 2 number, the computer considers a 44-54 person as a 49 +- 5, it considers a 48-53 person as a 50.5 +- 2.5
thirdly, your third point doesn't even make sense. you are right the rank being between 44 and 54 does not imply the things you say, but thats because my rank being between 44 and 54 doesn't imply anything at all about the system at large, this point is moot. the fact that my skill is a range rather than a number does however imply that any attempt of putting a specific number on it, or for that matter putting a smaller-than-actual range on it (such as a 2% range when the real range is 10%), will be deceptive in its granularity.
fourthly, division ranks are meaningful in comparison to active players, inactive players decaying out of the system is to get rid of unwanted statistical noise for the active players.
fifthly, applying a trend estimation would let you see how you have been doing so far and let you see where you will probably be in the future, but it wouldn't be any more accurate than what we currently have without extremely unnecessary large amounts of processing. for example, after each game the current system uses perhaps 10-20 operations to record the result and adjust your mmr, is it really worth it to improve the systems accuracy by a tiny amount if doing so will require 1 000 000 - 2 000 000 operations after each game?
lastly, you do know that heroes doesn't actually use your rank to match you with people right? and it still wont after this change. it has a hidden mmr just the same as in SC2 which is used to match you, have you ever gotten a "skill bonus" in heroes? thats a bonus you get when your hidden mmr has raced far ahead of your displayed rank and the system tries to let your rank catch up. for example, a rank 45 player that has just started climbing in hero league might have a hidden mmr in the 20ies and when that player wins it gets a skill bonus to accelerate the climb up to 20ish, but when it reaches that rank it stops getting the skill bonus, and wont get skill bonus again unless it somehow becomes extremely much better very quickly. the matchmaking is completely unaffected by what rank is being displayed. the rank is literally just there to be an aestethically pleasing indication of your rough position, there is really no need to tell players exactly where in the list of millions of players they are, doing so would just give the deceptive illusion of accuracy.
1. It's not cherry picking. 16 times worse is the precision face by a pluralities of players, because there are more players in gold league than any other league. 20%, which is diamond league, is 10 times worse. The fact is 98% of players are in a system where the precision is 4 to 16 times worse than HotS. This is not cherry picked, it affects virtually all players. And thus, the rank conveys almost no information.
2. That's not what I said. I said a rank needs to be collapsed into 1 number, even when MMR is more than one number. Is (1405,30) > (1490,80)? This question is not possible to answer because R^2 is not a ordered set. It needs to be transformed into one number, then ranked. In SC2 that rank is league by points. It's also wrong due to distortion and bias.
3. Your skill is not a range, it's a probability distribution function. And even if it is a range, leagues are NOT that range, so your discussion of leagues in this context is misleading, irrelevant, and a red harring. The SC2 system does not tell you your range, points trend towards the mean of your MMR, not the range of your MMR. The league represents the percentile of the mean of your MMR, it says NOTHING about the range of your MMR. The range in the league size is arbitrary, it is not the range of your MMR, so it is useless. And it's wrong you to imply it has anything to do with the range of your MMR.
4. Division ranks are not meaningful compared to active players, because they tell you have you rank compared to 100 arbitrary players, not the entire playerbase, unlike the HotS system. It lets you lie to yourself about your rank, because giving you misleading and meanginless information, distorted by league rigidities. Even amongst active players you don't know if that person is suppose to be demoted but can't get kicked out, or promoted but Blizzard hasn't updated the league boundaries. While division ranks are meaningless, HotS ranks have a clear meaning, the percentile of the mean of MMR.
Your argument is: "The percentile of mean of MMR shown in HotS is not the MMR range, therefore, hide it and distort the ranks instead". A non-sequitur. It does not make any sense.
5. Your knowledge of math appears to be lacking. Applying a trend filter does not require "1 000 000 - 2 000 000 operations after each game". It could be as simple as a weighted average of your MMR over the last 10 games, this would require 10 multiplications and 9 additions. It's not about seeing where you are and where you're going (more players it will essentially be a flat line after 20 games or son), it's to remove variability in ranks, i.e. fix what you're complaining about.
6. Games use a skill rating call MMR to match you with people. Heroes will also use what is essentially this skill rating for ranking too. The difference is SC2 rejects the use of this skill rating for ranking, instead it distorts it until it is biased and wrong, and then uses that as a rank. That why the nonsense system has been thoroughly rejected by Dustin Browder in HotS.
I really think that your assertion that people get "stuck" in leagues and can't move up or down even though they should is dead wrong. If you win you move up, and if you lose you move down there is not one person right now in all of SC2 Battlenet that is "stuck" in a league too high or too low. When people say that they are always just wrong about how good they are.
On August 09 2015 15:31 ZackAttack wrote: I really think that your assertion that people get "stuck" in leagues and can't move up or down even though they should is dead wrong. If you win you move up, and if you lose you move down there is not one person right now in all of SC2 Battlenet that is "stuck" in a league too high or too low. When people say that they are always just wrong about how good they are.
Not true.
You can't get demoted no matter how many games you lose. So leagues are wrong.
Blizzard's league boundaries are also wrong and are only manually updated when sufficiently large numbers of people complain on the forums that they are not in the league that they deserve to be: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/18141070 So leagues are, again, wrong.
This is why it is better to scrap leagues, which are discrete groups subject to rigid rules regarding promotion and demotion, and replace it with a continuum of ranks free of these distortionary constraints, like HotS does.
On August 09 2015 15:31 ZackAttack wrote: I really think that your assertion that people get "stuck" in leagues and can't move up or down even though they should is dead wrong. If you win you move up, and if you lose you move down there is not one person right now in all of SC2 Battlenet that is "stuck" in a league too high or too low. When people say that they are always just wrong about how good they are.
Not true.
You can't get demoted no matter how many games you lose. So leagues are wrong.
Blizzard's league boundaries are also wrong and are only manually updated when sufficiently large numbers of people complain on the forums that they are not in the league that they deserve to be: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/18141070 So leagues are, again, wrong.
This is why it is better to scrap leagues, which are discrete groups subject to rigid rules regarding promotion and demotion, and replace it with a continuum of ranks free of these distortionary constraints, like HotS does.
I agree that it would be much better in every way to have a continuous ranking system, at least to the point of integers, instead of a discrete ranking system with large, arbitrary bins. I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that ranking people only on MMR would be the best way to go. The Heros of the Storm system is a step in that direction, so I think it is better, and would work even better for a 1v1 game than a team one.
However, the system is not as bad as you say it is. People are, by a vast majority, exactly where they belong. The problems with distribution in the past was not caused by the fact that there are no demotions, because it was the lower leagues that were over inflated, not the higher ones. That was a technical problem with the way the system was handling the percentages.
According to this analysis, it takes at least 600 games to have a somewhat-accurate ranking in a 5v5 elo-style system, and before that it will be nonsense. Even at 1000 games, it's a spread and not a tight grouping for 5v5 games (see comments for the 600 number).
Saying that they can place you in only 100 games is demeaning to everybody with complaints, imo.
EPT
