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On October 27 2012 01:07 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2012 00:56 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 23:28 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 22:31 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 21:11 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 20:32 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 02:54 tritonice wrote:
I'm fine with this, and it will have some holding power, but not for very long. I am in the wait-and-see mode at the moment. Blizzard seems to be rolling out several features for HOTS, and some more will probably be revealed. There are some good improvements, and hopefully more will roll out. I will play SC2 no matter what with a mix of ladder and monobattle customs for the most part.
My main complaint is the ladder. I am a big boy, just show me where I rank across the entire silver ladder. What is the purpose of the 100 person group? I know they made some changes to better reflect where you are relative to promotion, but that has a limit in given 100 person groups. If I know I am ranked 24,637 out of 54,382 current season silver players, that gives me more incentive than rank 24 of an arbitrary set of 100 players. With having so many players, the random noise is a big factor. You can lose 10 or 20 ranks with doing nothing. The devision also allows for a more personal experience "oh that damn zerg on rank 1 is always 50 points above me". You remember his name and compete against the rank of a name instead of just looking at large numbers. This is just nonsense. That damn zerg on rank 1 doesn't matter because rank 1 in a division is utterly meaningless. It means nothing. You're being ranked with 100 arbitrary, faceless men. It has no meaning. It says nothing about how good you are. Even with noise, a global ladder is still better because it gives you an approximation of your position compared to the entire playerbase, instead of 100 pointless players. You talk about noise as if it's the death of the global ladder. But this can be address by using a percentile (e.g. 67th percentile), or incrementing percentiles by 5 (e.g. top 5%, top 10%, top 15%, etc). But guess what, changes in division ranks are also completely meaningless due to the fluctuation caused by bonus pool. You log off for a 2 days and you've fallen 10 ranks because everyone else has used up their bonus pool. That's noise that distorts the already worthless division rank. Why don't you complain about that? The division system is literally the worse ranking system ever devised in any serious competitive video game. It makes your rank utterly meaningless, worthless, unimportant. There is absolutely no reason to care about your division rank because it can't be compared with other player's. Ranks are for measuring epeen. It's impossible to measure epeen with division ranks, because division ranks are incomparable and meaningless. Division ranks now no longer have a hidden modifier, so you get a rough picture where you stand. You get no accurate account, but this is intentional as you should play the game, not the ladder. The 100 players in the division are not "pointless". A group of about 100 can be understood by a human mind. Numbers like tenthousands on the other hand are mepaningless. We can compare them, but not really grasp them. Of course you need to compare ladder rank with bonus pool, which you have to do manually. Division rank rewards constant playing. If you are a competitive player, you could play online tournaments and see who you can beat. It makes little sense to create a really competitive environment for the most of the players. Why would you know "how good you are"? You get a rough idea by your league. Most players make little or no progress anyway, because the MMR does not increase (unless someone really commits.) If would be frustrating to see that you are stuck or even falling behind compared to the general poulation. If you like real competition, again, there are online tournaments. No, division ranks continue to be meaningless. Division modifiers apply to points, not division ranks. For more than 2 years points have also been completely meaningless. It's only since this season that points can be compared. 100 can be understood, but not 100,000? Are you just too stupid to understand large numbers or do you like strawman arguments? Have you heard of division? You can divide 230,130 out of 502,010 to get 46/100. Where are you getting this idea that a global ladder would suddenly create an ultra-competitive environment and that this would be bad for the game? In the recent UI update, Blizzard basically admitted that they lied about why they were hiding losses, and admitted that the true reason was ladder anxiety. They argue that we can have stats in HotS because unranked play solves ladder anxiety. Why doesn't Blizzard's logic apply here? After all, a global rank, or percentile, is just another stat, like win ratio. You say that you have to take out bonus pool before comparing rank, but that's got nothing to do with what I said. It's a dodge. I asked you why you aren't complaining about bonus pool adding noise to the division rank. Why are you hypocritically using the noise argument against a global ladder but not against the bonus pool system? You also say that division rank rewards constant playing. If this were true, then points would be completely meaningless, because it would imply that the more you play, the more points you get, and the higher your division rank. But it's not true. The ladder system rewards playing only to the extent that bonus pool is used up. Not only is this statement wrong, it's also irrelevant to the discussion. Next, you talk about leagues giving an idea of how good you are. But this is very broad. If you're in diamond this means you're in the top 20%-40%. This is a very large skill range, and gives very little information. This is why there should be a global ladder or percentile. Even if it's in increments of 5%, it would still provide like 4 times more information. Also, how does a tournament solve anything? Does it reveal your true rank? How can I compare my rank to yours? This is basically the argument behind Master's league: 98% of the players don't deserve to see their true rank. It's very condescending. Despite the fact that most player's MMR won't tend to improve, it is a horribly bad argument to claim that a global ladder discourages playing due to the feeling of getting stuck. Firstly, there's no reason why anything needs to be taken away. If you're encouraged to play because you really care about how you're ranked in your division of 100 faceless randoms, then there's no reason why that can't continue to motivate you. Secondly, the new level system is designed to encourage people to play. Thirdly, why don't you complain about bonus pool discouraging people to play? Blizzard claims that bonus pool is to help people to "catch up", but this is completely wrong. The bonus pool CAUSES the gap in the first place. When you log on, your meaningless division rank would have fallen BECAUSE other player's have used their bonus pool. The bonus pool is the problem, not the solution. Why doesn't the fact that everyday the bonus pool is the cause of seeing your rank fall, which is psychologically worse than stagnating, discourage people from playing? Why don't you use this argument to complain about the bonus pool. Fourthly, a global ladder would continue to rank using points, so there will be no stagnation because of the bonus pool system (it's worse). So you're completely wrong, But even worse, it is utterly hypocritical for you to claim that the problem is noise and fluctuation in your previous post and then claim that the problem is actually stagnation in the above post. What is it? At least get your story straight. I find the level of your cognitive dissonance in defending Blizzard's flawed and contradictory design very troubling. Did you read Sirlin's thoughts about the ladder? (He was involved at the early stage.) Did you hear DBs statements at Blizzcons and other interviews? I don't think it is useful to just present own thoughts without knowing why the decision were made in the first place. You use a lot of strong words like "hypocritical" and "uterly" and so on; you try to construct contradictions without addressing the actual issue Blizzard is facing. There has been a lot said about the bonus pool, the actual reason is to implement ladder point decay for not playing but do it inversly with rewarding playing so that the player on a break doesn't feel punished. Keep dodging. Yes, I've read Sirlin and I've listened to Pardo and Browder at Blizzcon. Sirlin didn't design the ladder. There's no evidence that I've seen to suggest that he's even consulted on it. It's all just spin and it's entirely wrong. Just look at Pardo tell us how fun it is climbing the ranks in your own little, insignificant, faceless and meaningless division, when the ladder system was first revealed at Blizzcon. It's laughable. No amount of you sheepishly regurgitating their bad logic will change the fact that these arguments are contradictory, hypocritical, and just plain wrong. Blizzards reasons are a bit contradictory, that is right. They try to do some things at the same time which cannot be done at the same time. But they learn.
Sirlin stated himself that he was contacted by Robert Pardo. Some features of the ladder are probably caused by Sirlin. In an interview some weeks ago (i believe with a TL guy) Dustin "Rock" Browder was quite self-critical about the ladder. He joked about the "most awful way" to experience Starcraft.
I believe it was ExcaliburZ who asked at a Blizzcon about hidden modifyers. Blizzard was not clear about this at the first place. This can be criticized because the ladder with the division modifier was very confusing. Now the "but" part. I know personally some guys who cannot stand losing ladder points. They gave up laddering. I think that Starcraft could be a good game for almost everyone. We don't need to force every gamer into a competitive or even comparative mode. This includes hand-holding and head patting. The game cannot tell someone who sucks, how hard he sucks.
The game is too valuable for this shit.
The new XP system seems to be good for most of us. I am just laughing my ass off of Xlord jokes. Starcraft is much more than world wide ranking.
It's now Darkforce vs. Hasuobs. GL HF. I need Starcraft an german beer.
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I don't think there's a thing you can do to make casuals more interested in playing... This game is not well-suited for casual play!
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On October 27 2012 03:40 tehemperorer wrote:
I don't think there's a thing you can do to make casuals more interested in playing... This game is not well-suited for casual play!
Warcraft 3 was such a great casual game because of customs, starcraft should be able to do the same.
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On October 27 2012 03:22 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2012 01:07 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 27 2012 00:56 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 23:28 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 22:31 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 21:11 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 20:32 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 02:54 tritonice wrote:
I'm fine with this, and it will have some holding power, but not for very long. I am in the wait-and-see mode at the moment. Blizzard seems to be rolling out several features for HOTS, and some more will probably be revealed. There are some good improvements, and hopefully more will roll out. I will play SC2 no matter what with a mix of ladder and monobattle customs for the most part.
My main complaint is the ladder. I am a big boy, just show me where I rank across the entire silver ladder. What is the purpose of the 100 person group? I know they made some changes to better reflect where you are relative to promotion, but that has a limit in given 100 person groups. If I know I am ranked 24,637 out of 54,382 current season silver players, that gives me more incentive than rank 24 of an arbitrary set of 100 players. With having so many players, the random noise is a big factor. You can lose 10 or 20 ranks with doing nothing. The devision also allows for a more personal experience "oh that damn zerg on rank 1 is always 50 points above me". You remember his name and compete against the rank of a name instead of just looking at large numbers. This is just nonsense. That damn zerg on rank 1 doesn't matter because rank 1 in a division is utterly meaningless. It means nothing. You're being ranked with 100 arbitrary, faceless men. It has no meaning. It says nothing about how good you are. Even with noise, a global ladder is still better because it gives you an approximation of your position compared to the entire playerbase, instead of 100 pointless players. You talk about noise as if it's the death of the global ladder. But this can be address by using a percentile (e.g. 67th percentile), or incrementing percentiles by 5 (e.g. top 5%, top 10%, top 15%, etc). But guess what, changes in division ranks are also completely meaningless due to the fluctuation caused by bonus pool. You log off for a 2 days and you've fallen 10 ranks because everyone else has used up their bonus pool. That's noise that distorts the already worthless division rank. Why don't you complain about that? The division system is literally the worse ranking system ever devised in any serious competitive video game. It makes your rank utterly meaningless, worthless, unimportant. There is absolutely no reason to care about your division rank because it can't be compared with other player's. Ranks are for measuring epeen. It's impossible to measure epeen with division ranks, because division ranks are incomparable and meaningless. Division ranks now no longer have a hidden modifier, so you get a rough picture where you stand. You get no accurate account, but this is intentional as you should play the game, not the ladder. The 100 players in the division are not "pointless". A group of about 100 can be understood by a human mind. Numbers like tenthousands on the other hand are mepaningless. We can compare them, but not really grasp them. Of course you need to compare ladder rank with bonus pool, which you have to do manually. Division rank rewards constant playing. If you are a competitive player, you could play online tournaments and see who you can beat. It makes little sense to create a really competitive environment for the most of the players. Why would you know "how good you are"? You get a rough idea by your league. Most players make little or no progress anyway, because the MMR does not increase (unless someone really commits.) If would be frustrating to see that you are stuck or even falling behind compared to the general poulation. If you like real competition, again, there are online tournaments. No, division ranks continue to be meaningless. Division modifiers apply to points, not division ranks. For more than 2 years points have also been completely meaningless. It's only since this season that points can be compared. 100 can be understood, but not 100,000? Are you just too stupid to understand large numbers or do you like strawman arguments? Have you heard of division? You can divide 230,130 out of 502,010 to get 46/100. Where are you getting this idea that a global ladder would suddenly create an ultra-competitive environment and that this would be bad for the game? In the recent UI update, Blizzard basically admitted that they lied about why they were hiding losses, and admitted that the true reason was ladder anxiety. They argue that we can have stats in HotS because unranked play solves ladder anxiety. Why doesn't Blizzard's logic apply here? After all, a global rank, or percentile, is just another stat, like win ratio. You say that you have to take out bonus pool before comparing rank, but that's got nothing to do with what I said. It's a dodge. I asked you why you aren't complaining about bonus pool adding noise to the division rank. Why are you hypocritically using the noise argument against a global ladder but not against the bonus pool system? You also say that division rank rewards constant playing. If this were true, then points would be completely meaningless, because it would imply that the more you play, the more points you get, and the higher your division rank. But it's not true. The ladder system rewards playing only to the extent that bonus pool is used up. Not only is this statement wrong, it's also irrelevant to the discussion. Next, you talk about leagues giving an idea of how good you are. But this is very broad. If you're in diamond this means you're in the top 20%-40%. This is a very large skill range, and gives very little information. This is why there should be a global ladder or percentile. Even if it's in increments of 5%, it would still provide like 4 times more information. Also, how does a tournament solve anything? Does it reveal your true rank? How can I compare my rank to yours? This is basically the argument behind Master's league: 98% of the players don't deserve to see their true rank. It's very condescending. Despite the fact that most player's MMR won't tend to improve, it is a horribly bad argument to claim that a global ladder discourages playing due to the feeling of getting stuck. Firstly, there's no reason why anything needs to be taken away. If you're encouraged to play because you really care about how you're ranked in your division of 100 faceless randoms, then there's no reason why that can't continue to motivate you. Secondly, the new level system is designed to encourage people to play. Thirdly, why don't you complain about bonus pool discouraging people to play? Blizzard claims that bonus pool is to help people to "catch up", but this is completely wrong. The bonus pool CAUSES the gap in the first place. When you log on, your meaningless division rank would have fallen BECAUSE other player's have used their bonus pool. The bonus pool is the problem, not the solution. Why doesn't the fact that everyday the bonus pool is the cause of seeing your rank fall, which is psychologically worse than stagnating, discourage people from playing? Why don't you use this argument to complain about the bonus pool. Fourthly, a global ladder would continue to rank using points, so there will be no stagnation because of the bonus pool system (it's worse). So you're completely wrong, But even worse, it is utterly hypocritical for you to claim that the problem is noise and fluctuation in your previous post and then claim that the problem is actually stagnation in the above post. What is it? At least get your story straight. I find the level of your cognitive dissonance in defending Blizzard's flawed and contradictory design very troubling. Did you read Sirlin's thoughts about the ladder? (He was involved at the early stage.) Did you hear DBs statements at Blizzcons and other interviews? I don't think it is useful to just present own thoughts without knowing why the decision were made in the first place. You use a lot of strong words like "hypocritical" and "uterly" and so on; you try to construct contradictions without addressing the actual issue Blizzard is facing. There has been a lot said about the bonus pool, the actual reason is to implement ladder point decay for not playing but do it inversly with rewarding playing so that the player on a break doesn't feel punished. Keep dodging. Yes, I've read Sirlin and I've listened to Pardo and Browder at Blizzcon. Sirlin didn't design the ladder. There's no evidence that I've seen to suggest that he's even consulted on it. It's all just spin and it's entirely wrong. Just look at Pardo tell us how fun it is climbing the ranks in your own little, insignificant, faceless and meaningless division, when the ladder system was first revealed at Blizzcon. It's laughable. No amount of you sheepishly regurgitating their bad logic will change the fact that these arguments are contradictory, hypocritical, and just plain wrong. Blizzards reasons are a bit contradictory, that is right. They try to do some things at the same time which cannot be done at the same time. But they learn. Sirlin stated himself that he was contacted by Robert Pardo. Some features of the ladder are probably caused by Sirlin. In an interview some weeks ago (i believe with a TL guy) Dustin "Rock" Browder was quite self-critical about the ladder. He joked about the "most awful way" to experience Starcraft. I believe it was ExcaliburZ who asked at a Blizzcon about hidden modifyers. Blizzard was not clear about this at the first place. This can be criticized because the ladder with the division modifier was very confusing. Now the "but" part. I know personally some guys who cannot stand losing ladder points. They gave up laddering. I think that Starcraft could be a good game for almost everyone. We don't need to force every gamer into a competitive or even comparative mode. This includes hand-holding and head patting. The game cannot tell someone who sucks, how hard he sucks. The game is too valuable for this shit. The new XP system seems to be good for most of us. I am just laughing my ass off of Xlord jokes. Starcraft is much more than world wide ranking. It's now Darkforce vs. Hasuobs. GL HF. I need Starcraft an german beer.
So you're not going to explain your contradictions? In 2011 you wrote about the ladder system as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=209790
Surely there's a reason, why you've heaped praise on Blizzard in 2011 for hiding all stats, and somehow you're OK when they've flip-flopped on that and brought the stats back? Surely, there's a reason you're not criticizing them for this? No? Is it because unranked played made it all OK? Then why does unranked play not make a global rank, just another stat, OK too?
You say that the game can't tell you how hard you suck, well the game already does that. Do you think anyone takes bronze league players seriously? Blizzard's league system stigmatizes bronze league players. Blizzard gives them a icon to display to the world: "hey look, I'm in bronze, no one will take anything I say on SC2 seriously".
Sirlin said he talk to Pardo, but there's nothing to suggest that he had any influence. In fact, he basically admits that he was persuaded by Pardo and not the other way around:
I'll give some background info from three years ago when I talked with Rob Pardo (VP of Game Design at Blizzard) about me possibly taking on the role of ranking-and-tournament systems designer at Blizzard. I ended up having to back out of that race because the Street Fighter HD Remix project suddenly became a reality, and I couldn't pass that up. The reason I want to tell you about the ranking stuff from back then is to illustrate two points of view--mine and Pardo's--and to explain how it took me three years to understand that his point of view is probably best after all. Source: http://www.sirlin.net/blog/tag/starcraft-2
Not that it matters at all, because I find his reasoning, which is basically the same as Blizzard's, completely wrong, as I've explained in the previous posts.
And now you're suddenly criticizing Blizzard for having division modifiers because it's "confusing". How does that square with your relentless focus on having the ladder system appease casuals? After all casuals don't know about division modifiers, when they existed. So did it really confuse them? Or was the confusion because Blizzard refused to explain the ladder system in any sufficient detail?
Division modifiers were an under-the-hood system that made the skill range in each division 7 times more narrow than it is now, given that there were 7 division tiers per league. So the existence of division tiers made it far easier to climb division ranks. Conversely, the recent removal of the division tiers makes it harder to climb division ranks. And given that you've also basically praised the division rank as being great for casuals, why are you now suddenly criticizing a system that actually helps casuals do better in their division?
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its sorta impossible to judge without actually trying and testing it out so i will wait and see.
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this only rewards for xp are portraits -.-. nothing @ all like LoL
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On October 27 2012 03:42 Zorgaz wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2012 03:40 tehemperorer wrote:
I don't think there's a thing you can do to make casuals more interested in playing... This game is not well-suited for casual play! Warcraft 3 was such a great casual game because of customs, starcraft should be able to do the same.
War3 WAS great for casuals because of the customs. Now it's just DOTA DOTA DOTA Legion TD Legion TD Legion TD. Unfortunately, BW customs are like that too today. No new creative stuff is publicly played today and finding them is such a huge effort.
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On October 27 2012 04:22 czylu wrote:
this only rewards for xp are portraits -.-. nothing @ all like LoL
Don't expect to get in-game advantages for leveling up in an RTS. It would take away such a huge amount of the integrity of the game.
In my opinion, stuff like this is cool. Bnet is still really plain.
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United States12267 Posts
On October 27 2012 02:04 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2012 01:32 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 27 2012 01:07 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 27 2012 00:56 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 23:28 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 22:31 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 21:11 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 20:32 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 02:54 tritonice wrote:
I'm fine with this, and it will have some holding power, but not for very long. I am in the wait-and-see mode at the moment. Blizzard seems to be rolling out several features for HOTS, and some more will probably be revealed. There are some good improvements, and hopefully more will roll out. I will play SC2 no matter what with a mix of ladder and monobattle customs for the most part.
My main complaint is the ladder. I am a big boy, just show me where I rank across the entire silver ladder. What is the purpose of the 100 person group? I know they made some changes to better reflect where you are relative to promotion, but that has a limit in given 100 person groups. If I know I am ranked 24,637 out of 54,382 current season silver players, that gives me more incentive than rank 24 of an arbitrary set of 100 players. With having so many players, the random noise is a big factor. You can lose 10 or 20 ranks with doing nothing. The devision also allows for a more personal experience "oh that damn zerg on rank 1 is always 50 points above me". You remember his name and compete against the rank of a name instead of just looking at large numbers. This is just nonsense. That damn zerg on rank 1 doesn't matter because rank 1 in a division is utterly meaningless. It means nothing. You're being ranked with 100 arbitrary, faceless men. It has no meaning. It says nothing about how good you are. Even with noise, a global ladder is still better because it gives you an approximation of your position compared to the entire playerbase, instead of 100 pointless players. You talk about noise as if it's the death of the global ladder. But this can be address by using a percentile (e.g. 67th percentile), or incrementing percentiles by 5 (e.g. top 5%, top 10%, top 15%, etc). But guess what, changes in division ranks are also completely meaningless due to the fluctuation caused by bonus pool. You log off for a 2 days and you've fallen 10 ranks because everyone else has used up their bonus pool. That's noise that distorts the already worthless division rank. Why don't you complain about that? The division system is literally the worse ranking system ever devised in any serious competitive video game. It makes your rank utterly meaningless, worthless, unimportant. There is absolutely no reason to care about your division rank because it can't be compared with other player's. Ranks are for measuring epeen. It's impossible to measure epeen with division ranks, because division ranks are incomparable and meaningless. Division ranks now no longer have a hidden modifier, so you get a rough picture where you stand. You get no accurate account, but this is intentional as you should play the game, not the ladder. The 100 players in the division are not "pointless". A group of about 100 can be understood by a human mind. Numbers like tenthousands on the other hand are mepaningless. We can compare them, but not really grasp them. Of course you need to compare ladder rank with bonus pool, which you have to do manually. Division rank rewards constant playing. If you are a competitive player, you could play online tournaments and see who you can beat. It makes little sense to create a really competitive environment for the most of the players. Why would you know "how good you are"? You get a rough idea by your league. Most players make little or no progress anyway, because the MMR does not increase (unless someone really commits.) If would be frustrating to see that you are stuck or even falling behind compared to the general poulation. If you like real competition, again, there are online tournaments. No, division ranks continue to be meaningless. Division modifiers apply to points, not division ranks. For more than 2 years points have also been completely meaningless. It's only since this season that points can be compared. 100 can be understood, but not 100,000? Are you just too stupid to understand large numbers or do you like strawman arguments? Have you heard of division? You can divide 230,130 out of 502,010 to get 46/100. Where are you getting this idea that a global ladder would suddenly create an ultra-competitive environment and that this would be bad for the game? In the recent UI update, Blizzard basically admitted that they lied about why they were hiding losses, and admitted that the true reason was ladder anxiety. They argue that we can have stats in HotS because unranked play solves ladder anxiety. Why doesn't Blizzard's logic apply here? After all, a global rank, or percentile, is just another stat, like win ratio. You say that you have to take out bonus pool before comparing rank, but that's got nothing to do with what I said. It's a dodge. I asked you why you aren't complaining about bonus pool adding noise to the division rank. Why are you hypocritically using the noise argument against a global ladder but not against the bonus pool system? You also say that division rank rewards constant playing. If this were true, then points would be completely meaningless, because it would imply that the more you play, the more points you get, and the higher your division rank. But it's not true. The ladder system rewards playing only to the extent that bonus pool is used up. Not only is this statement wrong, it's also irrelevant to the discussion. Next, you talk about leagues giving an idea of how good you are. But this is very broad. If you're in diamond this means you're in the top 20%-40%. This is a very large skill range, and gives very little information. This is why there should be a global ladder or percentile. Even if it's in increments of 5%, it would still provide like 4 times more information. Also, how does a tournament solve anything? Does it reveal your true rank? How can I compare my rank to yours? This is basically the argument behind Master's league: 98% of the players don't deserve to see their true rank. It's very condescending. Despite the fact that most player's MMR won't tend to improve, it is a horribly bad argument to claim that a global ladder discourages playing due to the feeling of getting stuck. Firstly, there's no reason why anything needs to be taken away. If you're encouraged to play because you really care about how you're ranked in your division of 100 faceless randoms, then there's no reason why that can't continue to motivate you. Secondly, the new level system is designed to encourage people to play. Thirdly, why don't you complain about bonus pool discouraging people to play? Blizzard claims that bonus pool is to help people to "catch up", but this is completely wrong. The bonus pool CAUSES the gap in the first place. When you log on, your meaningless division rank would have fallen BECAUSE other player's have used their bonus pool. The bonus pool is the problem, not the solution. Why doesn't the fact that everyday the bonus pool is the cause of seeing your rank fall, which is psychologically worse than stagnating, discourage people from playing? Why don't you use this argument to complain about the bonus pool. Fourthly, a global ladder would continue to rank using points, so there will be no stagnation because of the bonus pool system (it's worse). So you're completely wrong, But even worse, it is utterly hypocritical for you to claim that the problem is noise and fluctuation in your previous post and then claim that the problem is actually stagnation in the above post. What is it? At least get your story straight. I find the level of your cognitive dissonance in defending Blizzard's flawed and contradictory design very troubling. Did you read Sirlin's thoughts about the ladder? (He was involved at the early stage.) Did you hear DBs statements at Blizzcons and other interviews? I don't think it is useful to just present own thoughts without knowing why the decision were made in the first place. You use a lot of strong words like "hypocritical" and "uterly" and so on; you try to construct contradictions without addressing the actual issue Blizzard is facing. There has been a lot said about the bonus pool, the actual reason is to implement ladder point decay for not playing but do it inversly with rewarding playing so that the player on a break doesn't feel punished. Keep dodging. Yes, I've read Sirlin and I've listened to Pardo and Browder at Blizzcon. Sirlin didn't design the ladder. There's no evidence that I've seen to suggest that he's even consulted on it. It's all just spin and it's entirely wrong. Just look at Pardo tell us how fun it is climbing the ranks in your own little, insignificant, faceless and meaningless division, when the ladder system was first revealed at Blizzcon. It's laughable. No amount of you sheepishly regurgitating their bad logic will change the fact that these arguments are contradictory, hypocritical, and just plain wrong. I think the basic intent was just to create tangible goals. For most people, even the very hardcore, there is a common understanding of "let me just get higher than this person above me." Even though points mostly don't tell you anything, even though division ranks aren't comparable, even though there's no unified skill-categorized ladder, you still look at your division and think "let me get past this guy, then that's it for tonight." SF4 has a points system and a global ranking. I can tell you from personal experience that I think no differently of my opponent whether he's rank #7,854 or #16,210 or #21,822. It's so easy to shift hundreds of positions in just a short time. Therefore, I have to mentally create new skill definitions: "okay if he's got 1K player points he's probably not very good, 2K is okay, 3K is pretty good, 4K is tournament level". The rank number is mostly meaningless to me unless the opponent is in the top 1,000 or is in the top 100 in the character-specific rankings ("wow that was the #2 Sagat? that wasn't so bad"). Of course divisions don't help you understand where you are in the grand scheme at all, and that becomes a major complaint especially for people who are in the top ranks of their division because they lose their incentive to play. For what it does, however, I think it's mostly fine (maybe they could show a league rank by points in-client on a separate leaderboard?) because the alternative is honestly not very spectacular. This is the same strawman argument that [F_]aths used. No one is arguing that divisions should be removed. While I suspect that removing divisions would have little to no effect on motivation, it's not what I'm arguing. This idea of "let me get higher than someone higher than me" makes no sense to any rational player. Because rational players know that the division rank is meaningless. You hear about people on the forums talking about wanting to get promoted into the next league. That's a real goal. That has meaning. Leagues have meaning, they can be interpreted. When's the last time you read about someone wanting to achieve the goal of getting to the top of the division ladder? People don't care, and they are right to not care, because it's meaningless. In fact, this argument about motivation to play on the ladder is something we've already gone over: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=341648¤tpage=20#399And talking about rank #7,854 and #21,822 is the exact same sloppy logic and strawman argument that Blizzard used to try to sell this terrible ladder system in the first place. Of course, such a rank cannot be interpreted without context. But that's why it should be displayed as a percentile as I've already said in this thread: Show nested quote +You talk about noise as if it's the death of the global ladder. But this can be address by using a percentile (e.g. 67th percentile), or incrementing percentiles by 5 (e.g. top 5%, top 10%, top 15%, etc). But guess what, changes in division ranks are also completely meaningless due to the fluctuation caused by bonus pool. You log off for a 2 days and you've fallen 10 ranks because everyone else has used up their bonus pool. That's noise that distorts the already worthless division rank. Why don't you complain about that You've been defending Blizzard's ladder system for a long time now. So why don't you stick to those arguments and use them to criticize Blizzard for deciding to re-implement losses in HotS?
Actually I'd say that even when a "rational player" knows his rank is meaningless (I mean it's been discussed how many thousands of times?) he still falls back into "let me just get one rank higher". That's how I play, that's how my friends play, that's how people I know at the top and bottom of the ladder play. And it's not surprising why that happens, because that's all the game ever shows you. I'd further argue that most of the forum posts I read about the ladder (and I've encountered a number of them on the Battle.net forums) do care about their division rank because they're prefaced with "I'm rank 1 in my division why am I not promoted" or "I was rank 20 why did I get demoted" or "I'm top 3/5/8/10 masters here are my balance thoughts". Even if they knew their rank was meaningless, the limited information provided forces them into using that as a skill metric. Sometimes they invoke their ranks in reference to expected league changes as in my first two examples but that still counts as players caring about their division rank.
I already explained that my SF4 example was anecdotal and I'm certainly not apologizing for the division system, if that's what you think. I'm just saying that the traditional way of global rankings gets confusing and muddied when you get into larger numbers and I think Blizzard noticed that too, so they adopted a new approach. I'm also not passing judgment on your percentile concept, maybe that would make things better or maybe not.
I've never defended the removal of displayed losses, only explained (or speculated) why it was done, as I usually do. I actually thought removing losses was bizarre because it was information that was previously available (and still available for the top level of players). As expected, players found it jarring and confusing so they flipped out. I believe I also said that even though I don't agree with taking away losses, it's pretty evident that it's at least partially geared toward getting casual players to play ladder, so if that goal is met then it's a net positive for the health of the ladder (more active players is always a good thing).
Your comment about
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Smart move.
I'm guessing they were TRYING to do the same thing in WoL through points, leagues, and achievements... but it makes much more sense (from a casual gamer perspective) to have achievements that feed points into a leveling system. This should definitely increase people's interest in the long term
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On October 26 2012 02:19 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 02:17 Danzo wrote:On October 26 2012 02:15 Aeromi wrote:
Look like Call Of Duty ^_^ Is that necessarily a good thing? At least Blizzard is trying to take an initiative and come with interesting ideas. Not sure how I feel about it yet but can't wait to try it soon. It's a great thing to copy the most succesfull and profitable game in the world.
Not if it alienates your core audience.
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The way to make the game fun is to implement something like Chobo Team League on a large scale. Make many teams with various skill levels and let them compete in weekly tournaments. The team offers comraderie and gives a social aspect to the game. The weekly tournaments could feature custom maps, FFAs, etc.
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Then add in clanchat and a buttload more achievements in multiplayer. The singleplayer ones were great and offered some extra replay value to that campaign, so I think a lot more should apply to multiplayer as well.
Even simple things like "Get 200 supply in a 1v1" or "Have 100 kills with Siege Tanks in a single 4v4 game" would make the game a lot more fun without taking anything away.
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On October 27 2012 04:48 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2012 02:04 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 27 2012 01:32 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 27 2012 01:07 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 27 2012 00:56 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 23:28 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 22:31 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 21:11 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 20:32 [F_]aths wrote:On October 26 2012 02:54 tritonice wrote:
I'm fine with this, and it will have some holding power, but not for very long. I am in the wait-and-see mode at the moment. Blizzard seems to be rolling out several features for HOTS, and some more will probably be revealed. There are some good improvements, and hopefully more will roll out. I will play SC2 no matter what with a mix of ladder and monobattle customs for the most part.
My main complaint is the ladder. I am a big boy, just show me where I rank across the entire silver ladder. What is the purpose of the 100 person group? I know they made some changes to better reflect where you are relative to promotion, but that has a limit in given 100 person groups. If I know I am ranked 24,637 out of 54,382 current season silver players, that gives me more incentive than rank 24 of an arbitrary set of 100 players. With having so many players, the random noise is a big factor. You can lose 10 or 20 ranks with doing nothing. The devision also allows for a more personal experience "oh that damn zerg on rank 1 is always 50 points above me". You remember his name and compete against the rank of a name instead of just looking at large numbers. This is just nonsense. That damn zerg on rank 1 doesn't matter because rank 1 in a division is utterly meaningless. It means nothing. You're being ranked with 100 arbitrary, faceless men. It has no meaning. It says nothing about how good you are. Even with noise, a global ladder is still better because it gives you an approximation of your position compared to the entire playerbase, instead of 100 pointless players. You talk about noise as if it's the death of the global ladder. But this can be address by using a percentile (e.g. 67th percentile), or incrementing percentiles by 5 (e.g. top 5%, top 10%, top 15%, etc). But guess what, changes in division ranks are also completely meaningless due to the fluctuation caused by bonus pool. You log off for a 2 days and you've fallen 10 ranks because everyone else has used up their bonus pool. That's noise that distorts the already worthless division rank. Why don't you complain about that? The division system is literally the worse ranking system ever devised in any serious competitive video game. It makes your rank utterly meaningless, worthless, unimportant. There is absolutely no reason to care about your division rank because it can't be compared with other player's. Ranks are for measuring epeen. It's impossible to measure epeen with division ranks, because division ranks are incomparable and meaningless. Division ranks now no longer have a hidden modifier, so you get a rough picture where you stand. You get no accurate account, but this is intentional as you should play the game, not the ladder. The 100 players in the division are not "pointless". A group of about 100 can be understood by a human mind. Numbers like tenthousands on the other hand are mepaningless. We can compare them, but not really grasp them. Of course you need to compare ladder rank with bonus pool, which you have to do manually. Division rank rewards constant playing. If you are a competitive player, you could play online tournaments and see who you can beat. It makes little sense to create a really competitive environment for the most of the players. Why would you know "how good you are"? You get a rough idea by your league. Most players make little or no progress anyway, because the MMR does not increase (unless someone really commits.) If would be frustrating to see that you are stuck or even falling behind compared to the general poulation. If you like real competition, again, there are online tournaments. No, division ranks continue to be meaningless. Division modifiers apply to points, not division ranks. For more than 2 years points have also been completely meaningless. It's only since this season that points can be compared. 100 can be understood, but not 100,000? Are you just too stupid to understand large numbers or do you like strawman arguments? Have you heard of division? You can divide 230,130 out of 502,010 to get 46/100. Where are you getting this idea that a global ladder would suddenly create an ultra-competitive environment and that this would be bad for the game? In the recent UI update, Blizzard basically admitted that they lied about why they were hiding losses, and admitted that the true reason was ladder anxiety. They argue that we can have stats in HotS because unranked play solves ladder anxiety. Why doesn't Blizzard's logic apply here? After all, a global rank, or percentile, is just another stat, like win ratio. You say that you have to take out bonus pool before comparing rank, but that's got nothing to do with what I said. It's a dodge. I asked you why you aren't complaining about bonus pool adding noise to the division rank. Why are you hypocritically using the noise argument against a global ladder but not against the bonus pool system? You also say that division rank rewards constant playing. If this were true, then points would be completely meaningless, because it would imply that the more you play, the more points you get, and the higher your division rank. But it's not true. The ladder system rewards playing only to the extent that bonus pool is used up. Not only is this statement wrong, it's also irrelevant to the discussion. Next, you talk about leagues giving an idea of how good you are. But this is very broad. If you're in diamond this means you're in the top 20%-40%. This is a very large skill range, and gives very little information. This is why there should be a global ladder or percentile. Even if it's in increments of 5%, it would still provide like 4 times more information. Also, how does a tournament solve anything? Does it reveal your true rank? How can I compare my rank to yours? This is basically the argument behind Master's league: 98% of the players don't deserve to see their true rank. It's very condescending. Despite the fact that most player's MMR won't tend to improve, it is a horribly bad argument to claim that a global ladder discourages playing due to the feeling of getting stuck. Firstly, there's no reason why anything needs to be taken away. If you're encouraged to play because you really care about how you're ranked in your division of 100 faceless randoms, then there's no reason why that can't continue to motivate you. Secondly, the new level system is designed to encourage people to play. Thirdly, why don't you complain about bonus pool discouraging people to play? Blizzard claims that bonus pool is to help people to "catch up", but this is completely wrong. The bonus pool CAUSES the gap in the first place. When you log on, your meaningless division rank would have fallen BECAUSE other player's have used their bonus pool. The bonus pool is the problem, not the solution. Why doesn't the fact that everyday the bonus pool is the cause of seeing your rank fall, which is psychologically worse than stagnating, discourage people from playing? Why don't you use this argument to complain about the bonus pool. Fourthly, a global ladder would continue to rank using points, so there will be no stagnation because of the bonus pool system (it's worse). So you're completely wrong, But even worse, it is utterly hypocritical for you to claim that the problem is noise and fluctuation in your previous post and then claim that the problem is actually stagnation in the above post. What is it? At least get your story straight. I find the level of your cognitive dissonance in defending Blizzard's flawed and contradictory design very troubling. Did you read Sirlin's thoughts about the ladder? (He was involved at the early stage.) Did you hear DBs statements at Blizzcons and other interviews? I don't think it is useful to just present own thoughts without knowing why the decision were made in the first place. You use a lot of strong words like "hypocritical" and "uterly" and so on; you try to construct contradictions without addressing the actual issue Blizzard is facing. There has been a lot said about the bonus pool, the actual reason is to implement ladder point decay for not playing but do it inversly with rewarding playing so that the player on a break doesn't feel punished. Keep dodging. Yes, I've read Sirlin and I've listened to Pardo and Browder at Blizzcon. Sirlin didn't design the ladder. There's no evidence that I've seen to suggest that he's even consulted on it. It's all just spin and it's entirely wrong. Just look at Pardo tell us how fun it is climbing the ranks in your own little, insignificant, faceless and meaningless division, when the ladder system was first revealed at Blizzcon. It's laughable. No amount of you sheepishly regurgitating their bad logic will change the fact that these arguments are contradictory, hypocritical, and just plain wrong. I think the basic intent was just to create tangible goals. For most people, even the very hardcore, there is a common understanding of "let me just get higher than this person above me." Even though points mostly don't tell you anything, even though division ranks aren't comparable, even though there's no unified skill-categorized ladder, you still look at your division and think "let me get past this guy, then that's it for tonight." SF4 has a points system and a global ranking. I can tell you from personal experience that I think no differently of my opponent whether he's rank #7,854 or #16,210 or #21,822. It's so easy to shift hundreds of positions in just a short time. Therefore, I have to mentally create new skill definitions: "okay if he's got 1K player points he's probably not very good, 2K is okay, 3K is pretty good, 4K is tournament level". The rank number is mostly meaningless to me unless the opponent is in the top 1,000 or is in the top 100 in the character-specific rankings ("wow that was the #2 Sagat? that wasn't so bad"). Of course divisions don't help you understand where you are in the grand scheme at all, and that becomes a major complaint especially for people who are in the top ranks of their division because they lose their incentive to play. For what it does, however, I think it's mostly fine (maybe they could show a league rank by points in-client on a separate leaderboard?) because the alternative is honestly not very spectacular. This is the same strawman argument that [F_]aths used. No one is arguing that divisions should be removed. While I suspect that removing divisions would have little to no effect on motivation, it's not what I'm arguing. This idea of "let me get higher than someone higher than me" makes no sense to any rational player. Because rational players know that the division rank is meaningless. You hear about people on the forums talking about wanting to get promoted into the next league. That's a real goal. That has meaning. Leagues have meaning, they can be interpreted. When's the last time you read about someone wanting to achieve the goal of getting to the top of the division ladder? People don't care, and they are right to not care, because it's meaningless. In fact, this argument about motivation to play on the ladder is something we've already gone over: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=341648¤tpage=20#399And talking about rank #7,854 and #21,822 is the exact same sloppy logic and strawman argument that Blizzard used to try to sell this terrible ladder system in the first place. Of course, such a rank cannot be interpreted without context. But that's why it should be displayed as a percentile as I've already said in this thread: You talk about noise as if it's the death of the global ladder. But this can be address by using a percentile (e.g. 67th percentile), or incrementing percentiles by 5 (e.g. top 5%, top 10%, top 15%, etc). But guess what, changes in division ranks are also completely meaningless due to the fluctuation caused by bonus pool. You log off for a 2 days and you've fallen 10 ranks because everyone else has used up their bonus pool. That's noise that distorts the already worthless division rank. Why don't you complain about that You've been defending Blizzard's ladder system for a long time now. So why don't you stick to those arguments and use them to criticize Blizzard for deciding to re-implement losses in HotS? Actually I'd say that even when a "rational player" knows his rank is meaningless (I mean it's been discussed how many thousands of times?) he still falls back into "let me just get one rank higher". That's how I play, that's how my friends play, that's how people I know at the top and bottom of the ladder play. And it's not surprising why that happens, because that's all the game ever shows you. I'd further argue that most of the forum posts I read about the ladder (and I've encountered a number of them on the Battle.net forums) do care about their division rank because they're prefaced with "I'm rank 1 in my division why am I not promoted" or "I was rank 20 why did I get demoted" or "I'm top 3/5/8/10 masters here are my balance thoughts". Even if they knew their rank was meaningless, the limited information provided forces them into using that as a skill metric. Sometimes they invoke their ranks in reference to expected league changes as in my first two examples but that still counts as players caring about their division rank.
Yeah, that's a good point. You get similar when people say I am high Gold/Plat etc when really, at that level, it does not matter. And personally, I like having a star next to my badge when I log into BattleNet. Even if, substantively, it is meaningless.
It will be nice to have losses back though, not to mention better stats across the board.
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The problem I see w/ this kind of system is in COD, your rank, however inaccurate it may be, is a symbol of skill, while in this game, you have leagues that place you based on your skill, meaning there is no real incentive to level.
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On October 27 2012 06:32 czylu wrote:
The problem I see w/ this kind of system is in COD, your rank, however inaccurate it may be, is a symbol of skill, while in this game, you have leagues that place you based on your skill, meaning there is no real incentive to level.
I don't think it will detour the casual people that much though. Even some people who aren't casual players still like to have the extra incentive; and you can look all over the board to show that the leveling system works well. Tons of games use it, just look at, to go along with the trend. Call Of Duty. That game, without the leveling system, would have hardly anyone playing it, with a few exceptions.
I agree that the leveling system won't be as effective in attracting more players, unless blizz makes it very in your face in the UI. But even then, it's a start, considering all these threads of "Starcraft is dead! Abandon ship."
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Levelling system would be very good for casual players and people who love new portraits  like me
However most of us won't care. All we need is good balanced units
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I am for this if it means that there will be additional unit models/skins per level.
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For those who know nothing about social mechanics in game design. The illusion of progress has always been the single greatest tool to help people boast about their achievements. Since in Starcraft 2, the only way to get to boast is if you are Masters or higher, this system helps a lot of people 'feel' good about themselves - even if they are mediocre at the game.
This is a good development to keep more people from leaving the franchise under the argument that the game is too hard, without changing the skill cap of the game. This is probably the best decision Blizzard could make to help keep SC2 alive in the future.
Also, imagine this: Leveling up has always been an illusion of progress, even in RPGs. They could replace it entirely with 'skill X requires Y monsters to kill before can be used'. But then you wouldnt feel awesome at 'leveling up' anymore, because there is no more leveling up.
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On October 26 2012 02:15 Aeromi wrote:
Look like Call Of Duty ^_^
I don't like games where people can get good by playing a lot but not using skill at all. Maybe blizz should make it much harder to level, but increase experience gain in higher leagues. Another thing: Portraits are not enough to encourage ladder play in casuals. The rewards should be big things to get really excited over, even for competitive players. Maybe awesome unit skins that also work in customs. But thats just my idea. It really needs something cool for it to have an effect, or people won't care about leveling at all.
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EPT
