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The distribution of player skill is not necessarily normal. Both FIDE and the USCF, for example, have switched from ELO to a logistic distribution (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_distribution ). They still call it ELO out of tradition and respect, but it is not really ELO anymore. I suspect SC maybe behave in a similar fashion.
It is clear that blizzard is using the league rating we actually see in order to get people to play more games. If you have to start at zero, you want to "keep up" with the other players of your skill. How do you keep up? Well, by playing more games! If they used a chess-style rating system, players may be inclined to NOT play in order to keep their rating. Say I got lucky and went like 15-0 against some really top opposition and my rating hit like 2600. Well, if I never play again, I'll always be 2600. Go me!
When I first started playing Go competitively, my rating would change drastically by winning or losing a couple games. If I cared about my ego, I could have stopped playing on a win streak to have that artificially high rating.
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Well this rating system seems weird to me.. I never played starcraft before. I was an age of empires II: age of kings player for years.. its the perfect game to me but its so unpopular now. Starcraft 2 is closest game to it so decided to buy it. I watched some youtube build orders, watched some day9, etc.. I play protoss.. and my build is pretty good vs most zerg players unless they are really good which allowed me to go 5-0 and get in platinum where I got destroyed by terrans.. Anyway 50 games later I was rank 6 platinum and still facing silver and gold players sometimes.. my last game as platinum I lost to a gold player and was put into diamond lol? I am rank 30ish diamond and probably would be higher if I played more.. to me the system seems to let you raise in ranking by beating worst players than you more and only makes you lose a little bit of points vs people that are at your skill.. I want to know my true rating.. I have like 2000 materials and junk sometimes so I know I am not supposed to be in diamond lol..
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Wow, quality quality OP.
Thank you to everybody who contributed. I realize Beta is down (duh) but I just found this thread. Great read, great work <3
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The important thing to know is that rating only determines your standing within your own division. And even then, only indirectly, because you are playing against opponents beyond your division's player pool.
This is wrong. There is no relationship between points gained/lost and the division one is in. If the system is like wow arena this is based on the mmr of you and your opponent. Therefore, this is actually an accurate measure of ones skill in comparison to other members in the same league.
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United States12267 Posts
On June 12 2010 11:56 Parmer wrote:Show nested quote +The important thing to know is that rating only determines your standing within your own division. And even then, only indirectly, because you are playing against opponents beyond your division's player pool. This is wrong. There is no relationship between points gained/lost and the division one is in. If the system is like wow arena this is based on the mmr of you and your opponent. Therefore, this is actually an accurate measure of ones skill in comparison to other members in the same league.
Two things:
1. You appear to be pretty familiar with the MMR system. There's a slight mistake in your post, though. This post and the one below it explain the system in greater detail with important specifics. The amount of points won or lost is based on your team's rating and your opponent's MMR, and not your MMR. I should probably clarify that in the original post.
2. You're absolutely right that your rating is directly comparable to any other in your league. The point I was trying to make with the statement you quoted is that you need to look beyond your own division in order to truly rank yourself. The problem is that the Battle.net UI doesn't make this easy because you need to have friended someone in a different division in order to browse that division and see everyone's ratings. There are several collaborative community projects that attempt to create a universal ranking website, but those are beyond the scope of my original post which is targeted toward new users whose experiences with the system are limited to the client itself. There are a lot of players who claim to be "top 10 diamond" but that could mean anything between being 300 and 1000 points depending on the division.
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Quite a bit to learn here. Thanks for putting the time into this.
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This is an amazing post, laid out perfectly.
After years of experience playing arena in WoW I sort of assumed it worked mostly the same way in SC2 but never saw anyone really lay it out so clearly.
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Great read, really clarified it for me. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
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United States12267 Posts
It's probably still a bit too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but it appears on the surface that the curve has changed. In the latter stages of the beta, the distribution was roughly close to 10/15/20/25/30 (something like 11/18/23/22/26). It could be more of a bell curve now like 10/25/30/25/10 or possibly something like 10/15/25/25/25.
We should know more in the coming days and weeks, once more players get shuffled around into new leagues. Diamond promotions are still happening frequently so it will take some time before the league distribution evens out.
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I'm sorry if this has already been explained, couldnt see it anywhere. If i play a 3 v 3 for example, but loose the overall game, but come second, by eliminating 2 of the 3 but get finished off by third player, would this affect my rating in a positive or negative way?
I presume a win is a win and a loss is a loss.
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United States12267 Posts
On August 03 2010 21:49 thipequz wrote:
I'm sorry if this has already been explained, couldnt see it anywhere. If i play a 3 v 3 for example, but loose the overall game, but come second, by eliminating 2 of the 3 but get finished off by third player, would this affect my rating in a positive or negative way?
I presume a win is a win and a loss is a loss.
A win is a win and a loss is a loss, and it's determined by the ultimate outcome of your overall team. If your partners left the game early but you defeated your opponents, your entire team gets the win. Either you all win or you all lose.
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I did not read all the posts, but my question is:
can you be demoted for being inactive? let's say you are rank 50 in platinum, and do not play any times during 2 weeks, whether my rank is now 100, or remains at 50, is it possible to be demoted into gold?
also, can they change u divisions within the same rank? (ie: you are in a plat division and get moved to another division in platinum)
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1. You appear to be pretty familiar with the MMR system. There's a slight mistake in your post, though. This post and the one below it explain the system in greater detail with important specifics. The amount of points won or lost is based on your team's rating and your opponent's MMR, and not your MMR. I should probably clarify that in the original post.
Not entirely sure this is relevant to your dispute, but this is only true of the displayed rating. The gain to your MMR is dependant on your MMR and the opponent's, and so your matchmaking "points" have no direct relation to the displayed rating.
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United States12267 Posts
On August 04 2010 07:01 phamou wrote:
I did not read all the posts, but my question is:
can you be demoted for being inactive? let's say you are rank 50 in platinum, and do not play any times during 2 weeks, whether my rank is now 100, or remains at 50, is it possible to be demoted into gold?
also, can they change u divisions within the same rank? (ie: you are in a plat division and get moved to another division in platinum)
Theoretically, you could. Let's say right now the MMR threshold for Diamond is 2200 (top 10% of players, and don't put too much weight in the actual number, everything is relative in this system) and your MMR is 2250. Now let's say you take a 1 year break, and over that time people have discovered some new strategies and the overall skill level has increased at the high end. Now the MMR threshold to get into Diamond is 2300. You'd log in and find yourself demoted to Platinum. Again, this is only theoretical, and there's no actual evidence proving this, only some anecdotal evidence of people being suddenly shifted around leagues in the very early stages of beta just by logging in.
There was also some evidence of people being moved laterally -- from one division to another within the same league -- but that was in phase 2 of beta. I haven't seen any evidence of that happening since release, so it was probably a bug. For all intents and purposes, divisions are designed to be equal with one another (as best I can tell).
On August 04 2010 07:04 kzn wrote:Show nested quote +1. You appear to be pretty familiar with the MMR system. There's a slight mistake in your post, though. This post and the one below it explain the system in greater detail with important specifics. The amount of points won or lost is based on your team's rating and your opponent's MMR, and not your MMR. I should probably clarify that in the original post. Not entirely sure this is relevant to your dispute, but this is only true of the displayed rating. The gain to your MMR is dependant on your MMR and the opponent's, and so your matchmaking "points" have no direct relation to the displayed rating.
Sorry if that wasn't clear in the post. MMR increases or decreases based on your MMR as compared to your opponent's, as you would expect (just think of a rapidly changing traditional rating system), just like you said. The quoted post only intends to explain the relationship between rating gained based on the difference between your opponent's MMR and your actual rating.
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A win is a win and a loss is a loss, and it's determined by the ultimate outcome of your overall team. If your partners left the game early but you defeated your opponents, your entire team gets the win. Either you all win or you all lose.
Seems fair enough, thought that would be the case, probably just feeling a little hard done by about a certain result, lol
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On June 09 2010 03:51 Powster wrote:
Well this rating system seems weird to me.. I never played starcraft before. I was an age of empires II: age of kings player for years.. its the perfect game to me but its so unpopular now. Starcraft 2 is closest game to it so decided to buy it. I watched some youtube build orders, watched some day9, etc.. I play protoss.. and my build is pretty good vs most zerg players unless they are really good which allowed me to go 5-0 and get in platinum where I got destroyed by terrans.. Anyway 50 games later I was rank 6 platinum and still facing silver and gold players sometimes.. my last game as platinum I lost to a gold player and was put into diamond lol? I am rank 30ish diamond and probably would be higher if I played more.. to me the system seems to let you raise in ranking by beating worst players than you more and only makes you lose a little bit of points vs people that are at your skill.. I want to know my true rating.. I have like 2000 materials and junk sometimes so I know I am not supposed to be in diamond lol..
I know this is an old post but I want to clarify since I think this might be confusing to people still.
If the silver and gold players have not played many games and haven't risen to their real rating yet (if someone has a lot of games played and is near 50% win you can say they are near their real rating) they will play people in higher divisions if that's where they are anticipated to land (although having not played many games their matchmaking is not very accurate). You can still win many points off them because they are predicted to be players around your level, especially if you haven't played enough to reach your real rating as well.
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United States12267 Posts
On August 07 2010 23:29 ZapRoffo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2010 03:51 Powster wrote:
Well this rating system seems weird to me.. I never played starcraft before. I was an age of empires II: age of kings player for years.. its the perfect game to me but its so unpopular now. Starcraft 2 is closest game to it so decided to buy it. I watched some youtube build orders, watched some day9, etc.. I play protoss.. and my build is pretty good vs most zerg players unless they are really good which allowed me to go 5-0 and get in platinum where I got destroyed by terrans.. Anyway 50 games later I was rank 6 platinum and still facing silver and gold players sometimes.. my last game as platinum I lost to a gold player and was put into diamond lol? I am rank 30ish diamond and probably would be higher if I played more.. to me the system seems to let you raise in ranking by beating worst players than you more and only makes you lose a little bit of points vs people that are at your skill.. I want to know my true rating.. I have like 2000 materials and junk sometimes so I know I am not supposed to be in diamond lol.. I know this is an old post but I want to clarify since I think this might be confusing to people still. If the silver and gold players have not played many games and haven't risen to their real rating yet (if someone has a lot of games played and is near 50% win you can say they are near their real rating) they will play people in higher divisions if that's where they are anticipated to land (although having not played many games their matchmaking is not very accurate). You can still win many points off them because they are predicted to be players around your level, especially if you haven't played enough to reach your real rating as well.
Thanks Zap. Vanick and I are working on a post today that will address and clarify some of these concerns.
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On June 12 2010 12:23 Excalibur_Z wrote:Two things: 1. You appear to be pretty familiar with the MMR system. There's a slight mistake in your post, though. This post and the one below it explain the system in greater detail with important specifics. The amount of points won or lost is based on your team's rating and your opponent's MMR, and not your MMR. I should probably clarify that in the original post.
I am pretty familiar with WoW's MMR system, and assuming they did the same sort of thing, your MMR also affects the number of points gained.
You can see this when leveling an arena team from scratch. Let's take 2 different teams at low team rating. One has an MMR of 2000 and the other has an MMR of 2500. They both beat an 1800 MMR team.
When you first start out a team, you gain 48 points for a win and lose 0, until you get closer to your MMR. This steps down to 36-24 points somewhat quickly though, when you get to about 1000 points below your MMR.
So if both of our example teams have a 1000 team rating, when they both beat this same team, the 2500 MMR will get 48 points but the 2000 MMR team will get 24 or 36 points. The only difference is the winning team's MMR.
I am fairly confident that this is how the MMR system works in WoW, and they gave us the same talk about how points were determined by your team rating and the enemy's MMR. Essentially what they are not saying is that the game tries to bring your Team Rating to your MMR as best it can. Beating good teams still helps a lot of course, because it increases your MMR.
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United States12267 Posts
On August 10 2010 04:15 fant0m wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2010 12:23 Excalibur_Z wrote:Two things: 1. You appear to be pretty familiar with the MMR system. There's a slight mistake in your post, though. This post and the one below it explain the system in greater detail with important specifics. The amount of points won or lost is based on your team's rating and your opponent's MMR, and not your MMR. I should probably clarify that in the original post. I am pretty familiar with WoW's MMR system, and assuming they did the same sort of thing, your MMR also affects the number of points gained. You can see this when leveling an arena team from scratch. Let's take 2 different teams at low team rating. One has an MMR of 2000 and the other has an MMR of 2500. They both beat an 1800 MMR team. When you first start out a team, you gain 48 points for a win and lose 0, until you get closer to your MMR. This steps down to 36-24 points somewhat quickly though, when you get to about 1000 points below your MMR. So if both of our example teams have a 1000 team rating, when they both beat this same team, the 2500 MMR will get 48 points but the 2000 MMR team will get 24 or 36 points. The only difference is the winning team's MMR. I am fairly confident that this is how the MMR system works in WoW, and they gave us the same talk about how points were determined by your team rating and the enemy's MMR. Essentially what they are not saying is that the game tries to bring your Team Rating to your MMR as best it can. Beating good teams still helps a lot of course, because it increases your MMR.
It's possible. We don't really have evidence to back up either claim. The theory was put forth because it's the simplest possible explanation. It's counterintuitive to believe that it's only comparing your rating to your own MMR, there needs to be some external comparison. We would need further evidence to support a more complex theory than the one we propose, though.
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EPT
