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Okay this is a rather touchy subject but I'm coming at this from a different angle than you might expect. When Patch 6 came through and reset the ladder then redid the formula for getting promoted and demoted at first I thought this was a good thing but now I'm actually thinking it's a bad thing. How could this possibly be a bad thing Rael you ask? Well let me explain now hold your horses.
Okay let me start by explaining how it used to be, before the reset and the ladder changes it took a lot more effort to get bumped up a league; for sake of ease I'm going to refer to Gold and Platinum throughout. If you were a gold player in the top 8 and doing very well it was not guaranteed you'd get promoted and it took a lot longer to get that bump up into the higher level. What this did was it made it so that a player who is a candidate for promotion had to play a lot more people on the higher level of play before they got moved up therefore decreasing the chance they'll just get demoted back again. It was annoying trying to get promoted but it seems like once you got promoted you were much better prepared than under the new system.
What happens in the new system is these players are getting bumped up faster so their ELO never gets to the level where they're regularly being matched against an even number of Gold and plat players. When a Gold player is getting into the high ranks of Gold instead of playing against people who are a little worse than them, top level gold and pushing promotion into Platinum and Platinum players; they instead are versed against people who are worse than them and platinum players. So basically whats been happening in my experiences is you play a large volume of people who are gold and not that good basically just ladder points fodder and then you get randomly matched up vs a pretty good Platinum. Basically what this does is you're playing the Gold players and they're not putting up much of a fight and then when you do get put up vs a Platinum they steamroll you because they're using tactics you haven't been playing against thus far in the Ladder, or you've only been going against them in those rare games where it says "Opponent Favored."
So the reason I say this is bad is that you never get a chance to practice for the Platinum level of play the occasional game where they're actually a good Plat player and are using real builds doesn't give you enough practice on how to play against those strategies so that if/when you do get promoted you're going to be completely overwhelmed. Let me make this clear you may know -how- to fight against the tactics of Plat level players but if you have no practice at it you're going to struggle much more heavily so players on the bubble in between can get caught in this sort of no man's land where the occasional games against Plat players keeps them from moving up higher and they're stuck playing against the medium to bad Gold level players for the majority of their games.
I know that the old system was frustrating... first hand, but it seems like it handled it much better as when you were getting close to being promoted you got put up vs a lot of people who were on the same level instead of only against people who are no challenge and players who are clearly a cut above. It gave you practice against the mechanics of the higher level players before you got moved up to that level so that you actually had a chance once you got there.
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Well, it doesn't seem to be working that well for me currently. I''ve been consistently at the top of various leagues for a while now, but it just wont let me move up.. ):
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So whats your point? Go back to the old system where it was really hard to get a promotion/demotion?
The faster you get grouped to play better players the better. Every league/promotion/demotion system for games works in the way that the new player/team gets promoted and has a hard time in the higher league as expected. If they can survive the season they deserved to be that level of player.
It sounds like you expect to be in the top10 solidly when you got into a higher league just cos you stomped the previous league; thats just not how life works so what is the point i'm missing to this thread?
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I've got an account at the top 8 of platinum and another one that's rank 1 in gold. Personally, I think this is hiliarious.
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Personally, I think this is a problem with the AMM more than anything. In my division (gold), there are people who are above me with a losing record and yet have an ELO of like 1200+. While for me I kept getting matches where I was "slightly favored" for like 20 games straight. Some of those players would be silver league scrubs while others of those opponents would actually be top ranked gold players and I didn't even understand how I could be favored against them.
Basically, for some people, they get matched up against good and better players often, allowing for them to actually get decent games. For others, the AMM makes strange matchups with odd favored distinctions so it's impossible to really play against good players consistently.
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So what's the problem? If you haven't gotten enough practice to compete in platinum, you'll eventually be bumped back down, at which point you claim said person can easily just be bumped up again for his "second try" at platinum.
Given enough tries, assuming the player has the potential to actually stay in plat with enough practice, he will be able to stay?
It's way better than losing to cheese you had never seen before during matchmaking and being stuck in silver with no way to get up except wait.
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On April 08 2010 07:50 Perseverance wrote:
I've got an account at the top 8 of platinum and another one that's rank 1 in gold. Personally, I think this is hiliarious.
Those without beta keys wouldn't agree.
More on topic, I think the real problem lies in how quickly they try to group players. I think they're only doing 5 games as of now because they had to reset beta again, and wanted things to run faster. I myself have been put in gold but I demolish a lot of platinum players easily. However, often it says "teams even" when I'm up against a platinum player, I don't really understand how that works. However, it's not that I'm unhappy about being put into gold, it's just that I don't come across many "skilled" opponents and, like the OP said, I get steamrolled half the time when I do. I honestly don't care about the points, I just want to play people that are on my skill level or better so I can improve.
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I see no issue since even if you get demoted after getting put in plat you'll be in gold for more practice and then after a little bit be back in plat for try #2 or how ever many it takes. I'm sure a lot of people at some point in their SC2 experience fall in between two leagues skill wise and just bounce back and forth until they are good enough to swing with the higher league.
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United States12235 Posts
I'd like to see some more empirical evidence of promotion and demotion pre- and post-reset before assuming that the algorithm has changed, such as match histories of you and your recent opponents.
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@OP I agree that it is hard to play against high league players when you are in a lower league.
On April 08 2010 07:50 Perseverance wrote:
I've got an account at the top 8 of platinum and another one that's rank 1 in gold. Personally, I think this is hiliarious.
First, you are wasting a beta key. You are disobeying a TL commandment. Oh wait, it isn't a TL commandment? IT SHOULD BE!!! And second, I see a lot of people doing this as well, can you stop making posts where the main point is exuberating your ego. This post is to everyone who does that. Come on, stop it. :asy:
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United States4126 Posts
I actually have a friend who was at #1 gold for a few days, and then he got bumped into platinum. He's actually doing pretty well at 1200elo right now.
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I started out in bronze and worked all the way to silver then to gold then to platinum. almost 200 games total played to do this, and after all that i just realized leagues don't matter at all. very early in bronze i was playing vs platinum players, and still am (obviously)
the weird thing is each time i got moved up a league i got more points from a platinum player for a short period of time, when i got moved to silver each plat player would get me 36-40 points, then later on it would be 12-20 points depending on their platinum rank. Then i got bumped up to gold and it i would get 36-40 again, then back to 12-20 when i was top5ish gold. Now im in plat and what do you know, 36-40 points per win...i dont get the points/rating system....
edit: i kind of got off topic, anyway the point is moving up in leagues faster or slower does not matter at all since youre always playing people at your level because of the "hidden rating" or whatever
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A lot of things about matchmaking and leagues and what not I do not like. Personally I would just like everyone to start at the same ELO of 1000 in bronze or something and move up and down from there. Also not through matchmaking but by choosing your own games like iCCup...
Kinda of topic I guess but I think the new system allows people to even out more than the older system.
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The current system, in my view, both has a working function and a fail function. I'm currently locked at ~1-3 in my gold division and I hope to jump up to platinum sometime soon. However, I get consistently placed against #2, #4 players in platinum leagues. There's just no way I can stand up to many of these people and entire division above me. The matchmaking fails because an entire division difference is a joke. Either you win dramatically or get crushed. I rarely see myself playing people of the same current rank as me.
However, this isn't to say the entire system is flawed. Blizzard describes a division as a group of equally-skilled players. In theory, the #1 and #100 in each division should have a fairly similar level of skill. Therefore, I shouldn't expect myself to be promoted to even the bottom of a platinum league if I can't beat the top of the league. Despite this system, there's somewhat of a problem when your current division is too weak for you, but you can't get promoted because the division you deserve keeps sending its best players against you.
That's just what I've felt during my time with SC2. I don't expect being promoted to be an easy task, but there's a limit to how much a prospective rank-jumper can handle in game.
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I kinda agree with Raelcun on the most part, but then again the old system was far from perfect 
ps;>
I know this is kinda off topic, but i didnt wanna make a new post about it, and its rank related, or rather match-making related 
recently i have been playing a few 2on2random, i really dont get that how they are macthin it..
I so offen see the "teams-even" thing.. and sometimes i look up my ally after and he is in bronze ( im plat) and when i look at the other players they are both in top of gold or somethin like that.. I get the point that as a team we might be "even" but where is the fun in it for him, if he is way behind in "skills" and such...?
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I think the system has a hidden rating that it places you amongst everyone on the server. So when you choose noob, amateur, pro at the start it gives you a set hidden rating and then goes about finding a game with someone who has a hidden rating as close to yours as possible. If you had a hidden rating of 1000 and were searching (im making these numbers up as an example) it would look for someone with a hidden rating of 975 to 1025. Then if it finds no one after a certain period of time it will search for someone with a hidden rating of 925 to 1075 and so on.
When you win or lose a game it will give you points based on your actual rating and your opponents actual rating. It will then also adjust both of your hidden ratings. If the game adjusts your hidden rating higher than your actual rating it will give you a bonus pool so that you reach where it thinks you should actually be at a faster rate.
So at the start of the season you may of been put in the silver league after losing a few games against good players. Then after more players have risen and fallen in hidden rating and you go to play some matches it will match you up with someone around your hidden rating and if the players around your skill level have been playing and gaining rating then you will likely be placed against a lower skilled opponent (or perhaps someone else who has just started out). If you win it will increase your hidden rating exponentially until it figures out where you should be with your hidden rating. Then I assume after a X amount of games or perhaps Y amount of time it will check to see if you do not belong in your league based on your hidden rating.
This theory is all assumption based on what ive seen and how the TFT ladder system works. The system I described is very similar to the TFT system with small improvements to prevent you from abusing the system. My examples and assumptions could be totally wrong.
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I somewhat like it when people can change faster. It gives the sense of accomplishment or an easier goal. "Okay lets get bumped up a league," or "Okay lets stay in this league." It keeps people motivated. They might get discouraged never moving around a bunch and always being this rank in this league. :/ I'm fine with a little jumping around as the ladder doesn't really seem that important.
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On April 08 2010 10:10 David Mudkips wrote:
A lot of things about matchmaking and leagues and what not I do not like. Personally I would just like everyone to start at the same ELO of 1000 in bronze or something and move up and down from there. Also not through matchmaking but by choosing your own games like iCCup...
Kinda of topic I guess but I think the new system allows people to even out more than the older system.
I'm super-glad that this isn't the case. I'm a silver/gold player, and I don't need to get demolished by platinum players, and I don't need to demolish copper scrubs. Neither game is very fun.
The hidden number seems to work pretty well - almost all of the "I can't rank up" stories seem include something like "I get matched up with and beat a bunch of platinum players". Maybe I should set up a poll about league vs challenge - is the problem that people are getting bad (too easy or too hard) matches, or just that they feel that they should be in platinum?
@perseverence: Do you get noticeably easier matchups on the gold account, or are they basically the same?
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Either the system is really bizare or people are lying when you ask what league their in. #1 gold should not get matched with #1 silver and have the match be "even".
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I think a lot of problems were caused by making players only have 5 placement matches instead of 10. I've heard several cases of players who are bronze/silver level at best but got into gold/platinum just because of a lucky win streak in their placement matches. While I'm sure it evens out over time, I don't think 5 matches is a really good indicator of someone's skill.
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I played my 5 games, lost 1, ended up in gold. Played around 10-15 more games, was ranked #1 gold in my division by roughly 50-70 points above #2.
Played maybe 5 games as #1 in gold and was bumped to #7 in plat. I managed to get to #1 in plat (due to the reset), then stopped playing for about 3 days and found myself at #37.
Still unsure if I really should be in Plat or I got in by luck and timing, I kept playing games and dropped to around 40-50th. I've droped to 67th once or twice due to trying something new every single game. IE VR rushing, or Immortal Timing Pushes to practice the strats.
Bottom line, I'm not sure if i should be in Plat, but I assume since my rank has stayed around 40 something, I'm where I should be.
What does this indicate: There is no better way than playing ALOT of games to get placed where you should be.
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I'm in similar position as Inori:
I've screwed my placement and got bronze, lucky I got promoted to silver with <20 games... but now I've played ~90 games overall I'm rank 1 for like 5 days ~1450 rating and still no promotion is coming. I'm always playing with platinum opponents and very rarely against top gold.
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Seems like your all forgetting that all this is happening in launch conditions. It will take time for the system to level everything out and for everyone to get where they are supposed to be. Your not going to magically be placed where you need to be within the ladder without time for blizzards system to sort everyone out. Also...this is still a beta. Things will change, again with time.
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On April 08 2010 14:54 Spawkuring wrote:
I think a lot of problems were caused by making players only have 5 placement matches instead of 10. I've heard several cases of players who are bronze/silver level at best but got into gold/platinum just because of a lucky win streak in their placement matches. While I'm sure it evens out over time, I don't think 5 matches is a really good indicator of someone's skill.
5 matches is not a good indicator, but neither is 10 in the big scheme of things. I think it's more important to not discourage the player to play those placement matches because there are too many of them. A lot of newbies might be put off by having to play so many placement matches. I think it' fine the way it is. In a week, everyone sort of ends up where they should be.
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OP has no clue exactly how their system works, yet calls for a change. Makes no sense when you don't know what is "inside the box" at all so to speak.
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i went to gold after the last ladder reset and then played 90% of the games against 'opponent favored', the rest were 'even match'. i still needed 40 to 50 games for my promotion with over 60% win rate. so i didnt feel it the way you explained it. (I only had 1 (!!) game since the last reset in which i was favored O.o played over 100 though)
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I was placed in bronze where I was rank 1 in my division for about a week, then yesturday after losing a match to a silver player, it promoted me to silver but at a higher rank than the person who just beat me. I don't get it 
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I still wonder what on earth is the point of these separate leagues is in the first place.
To me they just look like some arbitrary color to give you some distinction and make the whole ladder process needlessly complicated. Just throw everyone into one league and go off of ELO...it's not that hard 
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EPT
