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On May 01 2010 05:40 Dromar wrote:
I thought at first it might be to make casual players not feel like they suck as bad, but being placed in Copper league is no different than having an ELO of 325 when players start with 1000.
It just makes no sense to me.
Because metals are shiny and people like shiny things more than small numbers.
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
D+ outranks ~66% of ICCUP. Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=99016
Blizzard needs to either slice off the top 25-30% of Platinum into another league (pro league?) OR implement some regular re-shuffling of divisions to evenly redistribute the top 30% of platinum players across divisions.
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We all play starcraft for fun, and most of us TLers play for the competition, we wouldn't care about this site if we didn't. I'm sure that we would like to think that we are in the top 10% and that we should be the only ones in a specific league because a lot of people in lower plat just don't seem like D+ players in ICCup.
I think that all players should get a chance to get their butt utterly destroyed by a top plat player just so they know how far they have to go to really be good. The only way to get better at the game is to play people better than you. Because we are on the top end of the curve, we feel like we shouldn't be playing chobo newbs, and we should only be grouped with the best, and play with the best.
I enjoy a game where I get my ass kicked, I add that person to my friends list, and they help me improve my game. It's happened a few times, and its really improved my gameplay. I have done the same thing with a few people who I completely destroyed, and they are getting better, and have more fun playing the game now. If the ranks were more isolated, this probably wouldn't be happening so much.
Regardless, once you get to top level play, you just play against the top players in custom games anyways because you have to hammer SPECIFIC techs, timings, and BOs out vs specific other tech timings and BOs. You can't practice that stuff against random platnium ladder players.
That said, we definitely need a few of non-placement grades that are achievement based (not the game achievements, score achievements) after platinum. Hopefully, these top non-placement grades still pairs you up with people who are platinum, so you can have more social experience with players, because camaraderie is important in a game like SC2.
Help a fellow newbie plat out, teach him how to play so you and the rest of us can play against more highly skilled players.
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On May 01 2010 05:50 crate wrote:
I despise ICCUP's ladder system.
The bottom is way too clogged: there is too much skill variance among D-level players. Part of this is the problem that everyone starts at D so you get people who aren't actually D level stomping on people who are. Thankfully this is largely only a problem at the start of each season. Even without that though, there's ridiculous skill variance at D level. Now, maybe there's this same degree of skill variance at other levels; I wouldn't know because I'm D, but the fact that I can't log on ICCUP and expect to get a reasonably competitive game is a lot of why I stopped playing BW. I also think that there are just way too many players at D level (someone posted stats some time ago showing nearly 50% of all accounts with games played are D-level, and well over 50% are either D or below).
Admittedly this would be solved by a good matchmaking system that differentiates among players in the same rank better (whereas ICCUP has zero matchmaking system). ICCUP's ranking is not a good way to do this though, because:
You rank up if you win 1/3 of your games at D level on maps of the week. ICCUP rewards mass gaming far more than it rewards actually being good until you get to higher ranks. This leads to the interesting conclusion that anyone who belongs at D level (wins 50% of the time against D level players) actually isn't D-level ... if everyone just massed games you'd have everyone ranking up until you have almost no one at D or D+ or anywhere until you hit the rank where you need 50% winrate to stabilize.
I've always thought that people just played on ICCUP because it's all there was. I've never thought it was a good ladder.
That's true.
Mass gaming will get you up to B- before you actually have to win half your games. Then with map of the week I think you can squeeze a bit more out too.
And I guess I didn't mention this in my post before, but I do like the auto-matchmaking to place players in an approximate rank from the beginning.
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just got my key 
after 1 hour practice on the very easy ai
i go 4-0 placement atm and im baaad, really
average apm peaked in game 4 with 41..first game i was under 30 avg
wonder if im gonna end up in platinum and loose everything now 
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The highest rank w/e it is, platinum or if they make a new one, should not be part of placing. If you get 5-0, you should be placed in the 2nd to top rank, gold for now. Everyone needs to play to get into platinum or the top. It just makes more sense that way so you won't see at bunch of 5-0's in the platinum ladder.
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I just don't want the entire ladder system minus 5% to cater only to the casual player. Competitive players should have multiple leagues. Division size should be increase significantly and/or more leagues should be added, among other major changes. If they indeed want this to be THE E-sport, they are going to have to give the players who treat it as such their own distinguished 'channels' within the ladder system. The best way to do that aside from tournaments (which Blizzard damn well better be planning ) seems to be to give them more exclusive leagues.
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On May 01 2010 05:50 crate wrote:
I despise ICCUP's ladder system.
The bottom is way too clogged: there is too much skill variance among D-level players. Part of this is the problem that everyone starts at D so you get people who aren't actually D level stomping on people who are. Thankfully this is largely only a problem at the start of each season. Even without that though, there's ridiculous skill variance at D level. Now, maybe there's this same degree of skill variance at other levels; I wouldn't know because I'm D, but the fact that I can't log on ICCUP and expect to get a reasonably competitive game is a lot of why I stopped playing BW. I also think that there are just way too many players at D level (someone posted stats some time ago showing nearly 50% of all accounts with games played are D-level, and well over 50% are either D or below).
Admittedly this would be solved by a good matchmaking system that differentiates among players in the same rank better (whereas ICCUP has zero matchmaking system). ICCUP's ranking is not a good way to do this though, because:
You rank up if you win 1/3 of your games at D level on maps of the week. ICCUP rewards mass gaming far more than it rewards actually being good until you get to higher ranks. This leads to the interesting conclusion that anyone who belongs at D level (wins 50% of the time against D level players) actually isn't D-level ... if everyone just massed games you'd have everyone ranking up until you have almost no one at D or D+ or anywhere until you hit the rank where you need 50% winrate to stabilize.
I've always thought that people just played on ICCUP because it's all there was. I've never thought it was a good ladder.
Like I said, factor in the placement matches + single account per key + no clearstats and suddenly the 9999 koreans spamming new accounts grinding builds at D level are gone.
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Russian Federation124 Posts
i agree with the decision to make the plat and gold devision harder to get into, forcing population of silver and copper increase
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Yeah, seeing entire Platinum divisions filled with people at 5-0 is a load of crap.
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On May 01 2010 06:12 Rucky wrote:
The highest rank w/e it is, platinum or if they make a new one, should not be part of placing. If you get 5-0, you should be placed in the 2nd to top rank, gold for now. Everyone needs to play to get into platinum or the top. It just makes more sense that way so you won't see at bunch of 5-0's in the platinum ladder.
this, i like the fact of having to earn your way into platinum via ladder, going 5-0 in placement is way too easy
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What difference does it make? As one of the top people in my platinum division I've played almost exclusively against players who are good. I've played husky a few times, mio twice, and a bunch of players who are unknown to me who are way better than those people and who crushed me. I've also played a few games where I completely decimate my opponent, but those games are rare. Almost all of my games are with other people who are at least challenging and I have a decent chance against (i.e., my winrate against them is probably between 40%-60%). Who cares if there are a bunch of terrible players in platinum that I won't ever play against? It doesn't harm me, and it lets them feel good about themselves.
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platinum division 51 rank 9.... almost only 5-0 players there
damn this last game he left almost at once when my scout got to his base, all the other 4 was 30 minute ones
now i must prepare to loose alot and jump down to gold pretty quick
cant be good with just 5 placement matches when even i can do 5.0 !
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I think the problem is Bronze/Copper players aren't likely to play much, so it feels very top heavy. So user distribution should look like a pyramid, and the games played should come out roughly equal across all leagues.
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On May 01 2010 06:23 PJA wrote:
What difference does it make? As one of the top people in my platinum division I've played almost exclusively against players who are good. I've played husky a few times, mio twice, and a bunch of players who are unknown to me who are way better than those people and who crushed me. I've also played a few games where I completely decimate my opponent, but those games are rare. Almost all of my games are with other people who are at least challenging and I have a decent chance against (i.e., my winrate against them is probably between 40%-60%). Who cares if there are a bunch of terrible players in platinum that I won't ever play against? It doesn't harm me, and it lets them feel good about themselves.
The significance there is that leagues themselves should hold some meaning to the competitive player. Casual players should feel good about getting into silver.
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Would be nice if saying "I'm platinum" at least meant something... or almost meant something you know... Like what if you could say you're platinum and people would be know you're a decent player.
Right now being in Platinum means you could be the best or very bad, but less bad than WoW noobies.
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I'm in Gold with 6-1 and likely would have landed in Platinum if it wasn't for a disconnect on my part. Which is kinda hilarious because I am a 50 apm Random player and was D rank in Broodwar, so I expected to get into Bronze. This isn't quite right I guess
Here's my proposal to improve the placement mechanics: have players give a self estimation before going into placement matches. Say I estimate my skill to be Silver level. Instead of starting out against complete noobs, my first two opponents are Silver players. Should I beat them both, maybe the matchmaking mixes in a Gold player, and so on. Your rank should not only depend on your record over your first 5 games, but also on the quality of your opponents.
Also, I agree with the people who say Platinum should not be reachable by only placement matches.
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On April 30 2010 06:48 PokePill wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2010 05:53 FabledIntegral wrote:On April 30 2010 04:34 Chairman Ray wrote:On April 30 2010 04:28 ItsBigfoot wrote:
gold should actually matter, I dropped one placement match due to a comp crash, wound up getting out of gold in like 8 games just doing immortal pushes, gold kids are bad.
why would they call it gold if all these kids aren't good? When scaling ICCUP and Bnet, a D- is equivalent to about 1500 ELO platinum I'd estimate. Blizzard wants the game to appeal to all gamers, so they have to give seemingly good ranks to casual players that maybe play one game a week. Not even close. You mean higher right? I'd say a D-/D player would max out around 1800 or 1900.
A D- player would max out around ~1200 in platinum. Realize that a D- on Iccup was often times worse than the average Bnet player. A D player might be considered better than the average bnet player, but NOT by much.
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The leagues will balance out when vanilla is released
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EPT
