Win/Loss is back! yay or nay!

On November 23 2012 18:13 Hairy wrote:
Unless you can see individual race matchup statistics, or map winrate statistics, this data is of no value.

On November 23 2012 18:15 DemigodcelpH wrote:


You can. There's a new stats page to my knowledge.

On November 23 2012 18:19 emc wrote:
OP, you are literally the only person on TL who detests seeing W/L, you are a minority in this forum.

On November 23 2012 18:13 Hairy wrote:
Overall win/loss values are absolutely useless;

On November 23 2012 18:13 Hairy wrote:
Overall win/loss values are absolutely useless; due to matchmaking, your overall win/loss is always going to trend towards 50/50 unless you are at the very extremes of the top or bottom of the ladder. If you want to see how many wins you have right now, just take your total matches played and halve it and you'll be pretty much spot on. Individual race matchup statistics or map winrate statistics hold value, but overall winrate is irrelevant. It's 50%!

To elaborate on this, it doesn't even matter what league you're in. Silver players will have a 50% win ratio. Gold players will have a 50% win ratio. Diamond players will have a 50% win ratio. Unless you're at the very top or bottom of ladder (or have played very few games), your win ratio is ~50%. If you're looking for a metric by which to measure your skill or progress, you would be hard-pushed to find something worse.

EDIT: just glanced at my sc2gears history since my harddrive exploded;
Guess what my win ratio is out of 229 games?
+ Show Spoiler +

On November 24 2012 01:13 korona wrote:

It is odd how people keep claiming that win - loss statistics are meaningless. W-L-stats are not meaningless, but cannot directly be used to deduce the player level, but are a progress statistic. In simplest form they provide information how many games have been played, but can also e.g. be used to _roughly_ estimate what kind of changes there have been to your MMR in those games.

On November 24 2012 01:13 korona wrote:

It is odd how people keep claiming that win - loss statistics are meaningless. W-L-stats are not meaningless, but cannot directly be used to deduce the player level, but are a progress statistic. In simplest form they provide information how many games have been played, but can also e.g. be used to _roughly_ estimate what kind of changes there have been to your MMR in those games.

After a player reaches his typical MMR range and is stable on his all mu:s, win-loss ratio typically approaches 50% for games played _after_ that moment as Battle.net tries to provide similar level opponents for him. But Win-loss _difference_ (short term) still provides good short term progress information as you can roughly estimate based on it has your MMR dropped or risen lately. For every win your MMR increases and for every loss decreases (E.g. if your W-L difference is -10 for last week and you generalize that you faced always 'similar level' opponents, you deduce that your MMR has roughly dropped about half league MMR range (based on the MMR tool, MMR range for each league other than bronze & master is roughly 18 wins wide (wins against similar MMR level opponents))). Also by looking at other's win-lose differences it quickly tells if the player has risen or dropped (large difference) based on MMR (highlights especially MMR abusers quite nicely).

Win - loss difference is a meaningful progress stat, but you cannot deduce a player level based on it. Even in masters the system aims for 50% matchmaking when you have reached your typical level (it is not more meaningful in masters than the lower leagues). Also people rarely have exact 50 % ratio even if the system aims for it. The thin top of the ladder of course will get better than 50% ratios as the population in their level is too thin to get 'equal level' opponents all the time.


To get more accurate idea where the system ranks you with its hidden skill rating (MMR), it is recommended to try out the MMR tool, which provides quite accurate relative ratings.

On November 24 2012 01:33 Fenris420 wrote:


So basically what you want is a graph showing your MMR over time? That I can understand, hell, it would even make sense.
However, since W/L is a metric derived from a system that strives to keep the ratio as close to 50% as possible, you only really need to know games played per season. In fact, the more you play, the more accurate this system will be at pinning you on 50%. We dont want to know a single number, we want to know how that number relates to other numbers.

So in response to the OP: I don't care either way.

On November 24 2012 01:29 sevia wrote:


This guy has it right. Seeing overall W/L is nice, and I'm not opposed to it, but in the end it doesn't really matter.

You can go 25-5 in Diamond league and feel like a fucking superstar, but since each win or loss affects your rating differently (beating a gold vs. beating a master), the 25-5 itself is useless as a metric.

On November 24 2012 01:29 sevia wrote:
Likewise, if you're a masters player who goes 2-10 vs. grandmaster players, your rating still might go up, as each win is worth much more than each loss.

On November 24 2012 01:29 sevia wrote:
Edit:


Then why not simply display it in match history rather than on the ladder board? Maybe add a league icon next to points gained and date played. The problem is that people use W/L as a scoring metric when looking at the ladder ("oh, I'm 5th in my division but I'm down 6 games so I must be doing bad"). Like you said, W/L can be used to track short-term progress, but it's useless for long-term.

They are progress statistics that tell how many games you have played and distribution of the end results of those games.

[...] but can also e.g. be used to _roughly_ estimate what kind of changes there have been to your MMR in those games.

Win-loss stats are not for deducing player skill level due to how the ladder system works

Also by looking at other's win-lose differences it quickly tells if the player has risen or dropped (large difference) based on MMR (highlights especially MMR abusers quite nicely).