it's all about the points. with 100+ games, your ELO is pretty close to the points which are displayed ingame. if you want to get above 1500, you have to be really good, because that's right around the mark where you lose more for losing than you win for winning (against equally skilled opponents), so massgaming wont help anymore.

Befree

695 Posts

April 29 2010 19:15 GMT

#122

Yes to the poll. 5 games is obviously a terribly small sample of a players skill. I'm guessing this is for beta purposes though.

I don't understand the other part of this discussion, though. I generally have judged people's skill in the past through comparison to other people's skill. I had thought goodness and badness was defined by a player's skill relative to other players. In this mind set, I have just naturally assumed the top ranks to define what is good. So this is why I find it silly to say that the top 10% (or whatever top % you choose) are bad. Your standard has no validity if it is not based in objective statistical data.

Ironclown

United States73 Posts

April 29 2010 19:16 GMT

#123

I just worked my way up the ladder from Bronze (had amazing opponents in placement matches T_T )
to rank 50 Platinum.

My first day I was placed in Plat because I got all noobs during placements.

I feel a lot more accomplished having worked my way up to plat instead of just being stuck there.

AmstAff

Germany949 Posts

April 29 2010 19:17 GMT

#124

i dont really care. i mean if they want, they oculd make only 1 platin league and yiz would still have the points. so whats the problem with newbies in platinum? if they suck, they will lose points and drop ranks. i dont get the problem, is it because people cant say "hey im platinum progamer" ???

alfybet

United States57 Posts

April 29 2010 19:17 GMT

#125

On April 30 2010 03:44 3clipse wrote:
This perceived problem is caused by two things we are used to:

1. Starcraft being a closed system of elites. Even the average D player on iccup would have been really, really good at the game in its infancy. We're used to the bottom of the competitive barrel still being pretty decent and the top being near flawless. With this being a whole new game and having an influx of non-rts players, the bottom is awful and even the top is still learning what they're doing, albeit ahead of the curve. The true skill of the competitive community is finally being reflected against a terribad general public and I'm fine with this. It's a great self-esteem boost for a mediocre bw player to be in a "high" sc2 ranking.

2. We're used to a ladder system that rises in an extremely sharp pyramid. I'm not sure what the distribution between leagues is exactly, but it's sure flatter than the madness of iccup. We're used to the highest ranks signifying progamer status (olympic, A+, A) and even the mid-ranks only comprising 3% of the population and taking a lot of skill and dedication to achieve. Of course a 1200 platinum != a 2000 platinum. If you're only interested in the absolute highest level play, a benchmark can be set at ELO. Call 2200 points A if you want. It's all fucking semantics, a system to differentiate skill does exist.

Exactly. The ladder is fine for the most part, maybe the plat % can be decreased a little.

The point is, people at TL have been used to a competitive-only ladder, whereas SC2 now has to include the other 90% of the population. If you really feel better with the ICCup way, just make some arbitrary divisions in plat rating: (2400+ = A, 2200-2400 = B, etc). Where A is the current skill ceiling (which is low right now).

shiftY803

200 Posts

April 29 2010 19:18 GMT

#126

I don't know what all this talk is about pyramids... so I am going to go a bit nerdy on you. Statistics is sort of what I do. Anyway...

The basis of most game-oriented rating systems today is a logistic distribution. The modernized FIDE chess rating and the USCF for example assume that players' performances can be approximated this way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_distribution

Now imagine you want to make a platinum league that is the top of 5 leagues, and it will encompass everyone who's performance is in the top 20% of players. Clearly, the players that are wayyyyy out there to the right are going to absolutely crush the players in, say, the 80th-percentile.

Using chess as an example, it is the equivalent of a FIDE International or Grand Master playing a USCF Master. Now, the USCF master is by no stretch of the imagination bad, but his chance of winning against Magnus Carlsen is still almost zero. He (or she) is a strong player, but not world-class strong. Starcraft is no different. Unless you want to make 100 leagues, you are never going to get that top 1% or 0.5% of players together by themselves. Or I guess you could do invite-only leagues... but god only knows how they would set that up.

Half

United States2554 Posts

April 29 2010 19:18 GMT

#127

I think the issue is that blizzard doesn't have a distribution curve. Platinum should be the top 5%, but its literally the top 20% :/

imo

Copper-Bottom (0-30%), 30%
Bronze-Middle-Bottom (30%-60%), 30%
Silver-Middle-top (60%-80%), 20%
Gold-Lower Top (80%-95%), 15%
Silver-Top (5%)

As it stands its like 20/20/20/20/20

Which is dumb.

nTooMuch

United States127 Posts

April 29 2010 19:20 GMT

#128

I think it should level out eventually. As more of the weaker platnium players continue to lose to better ones, they will drop down to gold. Usually I have a healthy mix of easier opponents and better opponents.

ROOTdrewbie

Canada1392 Posts

April 29 2010 19:21 GMT

#129

its not a big deal imo, if you are at the bottom skill level of platinum you will be matched agaisnt gold rank players a lot... isn't that how it works? Its not like being in platinum league automatically places you agaisnt all the 2000 pts players

Grumbels

Netherlands7031 Posts

April 29 2010 19:24 GMT

#130

I really think you can't do league placement by percentages. The problem is that a very large amount of people don't have a competitive mindset at all and can't be ranked according to skill-level because they don't play to win and are clueless about the game. I also think that only for the highest league besides the pro-league (since that will have only a very minor amount of people) the league should be very small, so that it's a real accomplishment.

Sentient

United States437 Posts

April 29 2010 19:24 GMT

#131

I don't consider myself a great player, but it was fairly trivial to get myself near the top of my platinum league. I have terrible mechanics, and I can't micro or multitask to save my life, but I do understand how the game works. Lately all I've been doing is amassing zealots and sentries and doing a timing push when +1 attack finishes, and it's given me a >50% win rate. I've come across many lower rated players, even some bronze players who have been quite decent, but all that seems to differentiate platinum from the rest is that platinum players pay attention how the game works.

IMO there are simply too many leagues. Players are either terrible at the game (don't even saturate minerals), decent (build an army and attack), good (understand the game mechanics and the deeper strategy), or great (proficient at micro/macro balance and multitasking). I haven't found anyone yet that falls outside these categories. If I could redo it, I would have Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum, where Platinum is the equivalent of the pro league.

ItsBigfoot

United States432 Posts

April 29 2010 19:28 GMT

#132

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?

s2pid_loser

United States699 Posts

April 29 2010 19:29 GMT

#133

yes its like the placement matches arent even viewing skill jus seeing if u win or not
so its easy to end up in the wrong league from ur initial placement win/losses

shinosai

United States1577 Posts

April 29 2010 19:29 GMT

#134

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?

Because they are gold in comparison to other players, not to your mythological world of perfection.

Haiy

Germany32 Posts

April 29 2010 19:30 GMT

#135

blizz said, that there will be a semi- pro league(league without invite but above plat).
sry, i did not read the whole thread but it seems like nobody mentioned it yet.

Kralic

Canada2628 Posts

April 29 2010 19:30 GMT

#136

Because 1000 elo players are good? Obviously if you did so well the system is working since you got out of gold asap.

Chairman Ray

United States11903 Posts

April 29 2010 19:34 GMT

#137

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.

Reborn8u

United States1761 Posts

April 29 2010 19:35 GMT

#138

I think there is some issue with matching people in different leagues, I'm bronze and I often match gold players. So I'm willing to bet ppl from platinum are matching as low as silver. Maybe it's just the points system that needs a tweak. Other games that have a worldwide rank system seem to handle this kind of thing a little better.

Disastorm

United States922 Posts

April 29 2010 19:36 GMT

#139

Is ladder even important in the first place? I think most console competitive games don't have ladders and they do just fine. I think the most important things are just tournaments and matchmaking. For example, do players in south korea become famous due to their ladder ranking or just due to them playing well?

Vattilega

United States52 Posts

April 29 2010 19:37 GMT

#140

Platinum is not the top 20%, it doesnt even have as many divisions as any other leagues. The PROBLEM now is that, Those that are skilled RTS players are more likely to find their way into the Beta. Once the game is released you'll be blown away by the sheer size of gold and below. And yes, I agree there are so many Plat players but thats only because its the beta and people havnt fully figured out the game yet, hell, i did not see 1 damn templar in sivler, 1 burrowed w/ moving roach in gold, and hardly any nukes in low plat. Really i feel like the entire ladder is just a bunch of forum reading noobs who go marauder/stalker/roach EVERY game. It has to be true because i know i dont belong in plat, my apm is a measly 55. The leagues are full of conventional laymen competiting tosee who can be the most conventional the fastest.