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I actually ready all of the OP... the thing is that it's pretty much impossible to "drop" a ddivision. Before the first reset I was 1950 rating and since i knew the reset was coming I intentionally lost a huge series of games and I got below 1000 and it wouldn't put me in gold. I'm not sure if this has changed or not, but going up in divisions is much easier than going down.
If you think of gold division as amateur boxing and plat as professional boxing they keep those stats separate because when someone is learning the game they might lose to people who now that they've learned the game would have otherwise not lost to. I kind of think of gold/plat as this. The rating you have in a platinum division is however a pretty decent determining of skill except for the fact that platinum players often get stuck playing gold players which as you pointed out once they move up from gold they reset.
I think the division system is retarded and is a spawn of blizzard's idea that everyone needs to be a winner and unfortunately if everyone is a winner then nobody truly wins. We all lose.
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On May 02 2010 06:58 kei-clone wrote:Show nested quote +and the main reason that points between different divisions and leagues are not at all comparable: when you move divisions, your points reset. I just moved up yesterday to plat, and started at rank 9. your points are not reset (pre-server reset i moved up from silver to gold, and i lost a significant portion of my points but i wasn't set back to 1000 either)
Mine have always been reset in the past, but it's sort of irrelevant. If you lose a significant portion of your points, it doesn't resolve any of the problems I discussed: score is still not comparable across divisions. The fact that your score has to change dramatically when you rank up means that score is only meaningful within the context of your league placement; the fact that people enter and exit at unpredictable point values still means that cross-division comparisons are meaningless.
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On May 02 2010 07:01 starcraft911 wrote:
I actually ready all of the OP... the thing is that it's pretty much impossible to "drop" a ddivision. Before the first reset I was 1950 rating and since i knew the reset was coming I intentionally lost a huge series of games and I got below 1000 and it wouldn't put me in gold. I'm not sure if this has changed or not, but going up in divisions is much easier than going down.
If you think of gold division as amateur boxing and plat as professional boxing they keep those stats separate because when someone is learning the game they might lose to people who now that they've learned the game would have otherwise not lost to. I kind of think of gold/plat as this. The rating you have in a platinum division is however a pretty decent determining of skill except for the fact that platinum players often get stuck playing gold players which as you pointed out once they move up from gold they reset.
I think the division system is retarded and is a spawn of blizzard's idea that everyone needs to be a winner and unfortunately if everyone is a winner then nobody truly wins. We all lose.
Elo type systems account for progression of your skill quite nicely. If your score is lower than it should be because you lost a lot when you used to suck and now you are better, you will win a bunch of games until your score gets to where it should be and your win/loss against evenly scored opponents approaches 50/50. If you took any one player who had reached their equilibrium in a well populated Elo system and reset their score, they would return to that equilibrium in relatively short order by simply playing matches. In any system where winning consistently moves you up, skill variance over time is pretty much accounted for by the nature of the system. Even the Division system accomplishes this to an extent - if you reset IdrA and nobody else, I would bet good money he'd be #1 plat (or maybe fighting for #1 with another top player if he got placed in the same div as one) within a week or two of active playing, tops. Think of score not in terms of individual gains/losses and whether they are 'fair' but whether your score trends upward, downward or stays stable over many games. A good system moves people up or down over time until they are correctly placed then stabilizes. The Division and League system doesn't do this.
Supposedly, they made it 'easier' to move between leagues with a recent patch, but they still won't disclose any actual algorithms or mechanics here so who knows.
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On May 02 2010 06:59 jodogohoo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2010 06:49 DrSmoke wrote:
I look at my ladder, i have 100 names to look at. Its simple and un-cluttered that way. i completely agree with this guy.
What's wrong with EVERY other ladder from ANY other game. You want to see your standings? click your name and it scrolls to you. You're in 10,025th place? No problem! Click once and you're there. Not only can you see who you compare to, but you know how many people you need to go through to get 1st. At least this system would have a meaning.
I custom a lot vs top tier players more than I ladder because the ladder has no meaning. 1800 rated in my division #1 whoopty doo. 2nd place is 1480. Looking at my division ladder means absolutely nothing. I just see a bunch of people that are too low to be matched against on most days. Does nothing for me.
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On May 02 2010 07:02 solistus wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2010 06:58 kei-clone wrote:and the main reason that points between different divisions and leagues are not at all comparable: when you move divisions, your points reset. I just moved up yesterday to plat, and started at rank 9. your points are not reset (pre-server reset i moved up from silver to gold, and i lost a significant portion of my points but i wasn't set back to 1000 either) Mine have always been reset in the past, but it's sort of irrelevant. If you lose a significant portion of your points, it doesn't resolve any of the problems I discussed: score is still not comparable across divisions. The fact that your score has to change dramatically when you rank up means that score is only meaningful within the context of your league placement; the fact that people enter and exit at unpredictable point values still means that cross-division comparisons are meaningless.
not sure how blizzard is doing things but my most recent league change (yesterday) didn't have any changes to my points at all. maybe they're trying both ways out, and most recently they decided to not reset points. just fyi.
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why not just have the divisions numbered according to skill, with division 1 being the top, and then every division after that decreasing in skill. Players can get promoted to a higher division as they move up the ranks in their own division, and same for demotion. This way everyone knows where they stand in comparison to everyone else in their league.
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On May 02 2010 07:19 mtvacuum wrote:
why not just have the divisions numbered according to skill, with division 1 being the top, and then every division after that decreasing in skill. Players can get promoted to a higher division as they move up the ranks in their own division, and same for demotion. This way everyone knows where they stand in comparison to everyone else in their league.
Then what purpose would divisions have other than to be a confusing alternative to a ladder with multiple pages? Plus, people would be getting promoted/demoted every couple games if instead of 5 tiers you had (total player population/100), each in sequential order. Think about it - at launch that could be many thousands of divisions! Imagine how small the point differentials would become between divisions, and how rapidly this means people would need to move... No more complex rank-up algorithms, if you don't move people up as soon as they pass the rest of their division then your divisions are no longer really in order. It would be pointless, chaotic, confusing and generally unworkable unless they also dramatically decreased the number of total divisions... But again, why not just scrap the broken division/league system at that point?
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On May 02 2010 07:16 kei-clone wrote:
not sure how blizzard is doing things but my most recent league change (yesterday) didn't have any changes to my points at all. maybe they're trying both ways out, and most recently they decided to not reset points. just fyi.
Interesting. What leagues did you move to/from and what ranking did you start in?
That would solve some of the problems, but not all of them, if score is no longer reset. It would introduce new problems, however; divisions within a league quite clearly vary a LOT in terms of average score and score at the top especially. If people moving in bring such unpredictable scores around with them, you'll either end up having people placed pretty much randomly in their new league, or if it picks a div in that league with an appropriate score range, then it will over time lead to diverging populations as players in higher point divisions in one league tend to move to higher point divisions in other leagues since those are the ones they would be around the middle of. Either way, new set of issues. The big plus side would be that this might mean they can 'fix' the score aspect to serve as the basis for something like the Comp League idea.
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On May 02 2010 07:26 solistus wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2010 07:16 kei-clone wrote:
not sure how blizzard is doing things but my most recent league change (yesterday) didn't have any changes to my points at all. maybe they're trying both ways out, and most recently they decided to not reset points. just fyi. Interesting. What leagues did you move to/from and what ranking did you start in? That would solve some of the problems, but not all of them, if score is no longer reset. It would introduce new problems, however; divisions within a league quite clearly vary a LOT in terms of average score and score at the top especially. If people moving in bring such unpredictable scores around with them, you'll either end up having people placed pretty much randomly in their new league, or if it picks a div in that league with an appropriate score range, then it will over time lead to diverging populations as players in higher point divisions in one league tend to move to higher point divisions in other leagues since those are the ones they would be around the middle of. Either way, new set of issues. The big plus side would be that this might mean they can 'fix' the score aspect to serve as the basis for something like the Comp League idea.
I started off in gold (around 40th) cuz I got cocky in one of my placement matches. Once I got to 4th in gold and beat a "favored" player I got moved to plat with 1115 ELO and started off in 9th place (I'm 27th now since I haven't played since I got moved up). My win ratio of 15-7 has been preserved.
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As a Copper player, I feel that a large one league list would be the best solution for most of the reasons that have already been suggested.
As for the comments about, how clunky and unorganized a single list of 12k plus players would be..
Why do they even need to put that, the ladder could show the top 100 and then below that it could show the 49 people ahead of you and the 50 people behind you. (Obviously they could allow you to override this to show a paged full view if you want) But this would give you most of the information that you would need, it would give you an idea of where you were locally and also show you the top spots.
I believe this would be easy to implement and would be fun to use.
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The entire league/division system is an attempt by Blizzard to make competitive gameplay available to casual gamers. They want someone who would be ranked 11 millionth on a global ladder to still have incentive to try to improve their skills and fight their way to that top spot (out of 100). This works great below platinum, but for truly competitive, hardcore gamers, the system is horrible. There absolutely needs to be a way to see your global rank once you've reached platinum, and that is where Blizzard has gone horribly awry. They need to renovate platinum, get rid of divisions, and let everyone have the global ladder like they want at the highest level of competition in SC2.
Of corse, this is all before the tournament system has been implemented. Theoretically, if Blizzard has done it correctly, it will be possible to view a ladder consisting of the top 8 players in every division (which still might not even be the best in the whole league). It would certainly help if that was available, but if you hold a 9th spot, how pissed would you be knowing that you won't be included on the global ladder?
The worst Blizzard fail since they refused to make [1. General] chat global.
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The ranking system Blizzard is trying to implement right now is terrible. It's completely unnecessary and useless. The best way to rank people is using the simple and basic ELO system.
The entire point of a ranking system is to measure everyone's skill so you can see how you rank in comparison with everyone else. That is all I am looking for in a ranking system. The problem is SC2's system goes completely against this. It tries to hide player's skill by dividing everyone into different leagues with hundreds of separate divisions. All this does is makes it impossible to compare yourself with everyone as a whole.
I really couldn't care less how good I am in comparison with 100 random people. That means absolutely nothing to me. I want to see how good I am in comparison to EVERYONE. I don't buy into the argument that casual players will enjoy this more. Just because they are casual doesn't mean they are stupid. They will know that being 3rd in Copper division 1532 doesn't mean anything. If anything this will stop casual players from seriously playing and trying to get better, since it is difficult to tell if you are actually climbing the ladder as you improve.
Even WoW arena handles this in a much better way. It's exciting to see yourself progress through the ladder. I have never heard the complaint, "this sucks I'm only rank 7000th out of 20000". But I have said to myself, "awesome climbed 1000 ranks last week". It's actually nice to know that you are really progressing.
The problem is without global ranking or some basic ELO rating, I really have no idea how good someone is. Because of this, the entire ladder ranking system becomes pointless. No one will care what rank you are in or what league, because it doesn't have anything to do with your skill. You could be rank 1 in platinum division 238, but still be a less than average plat player since everyone in division 238 is terrible.
If the entire ranking system is deemed pointless, then it really kills a lot of the competition. I play SC2 partly because the game is fun, and partly because I love competition. If the game goes live like this I will have little desire to climb this messed up ladder.
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to keep it short, i'd rather see that im a smaller fish in the ocean than to be the biggest fish in a tank at the fish store when i can see that the tank next to me is filled with giant man-eating sharks. Also I originally thought the divisions were going to be in a sequential order according to skill and such and it was disapointing to hear otherwise 
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The best rating system for an RTS I've ever experienced was Age of Empires 2. Straight up ELO.
Everyone started on 1600 and if you beat another 1600 you go up 16 and he goes down 16. If you beat an 1800 for example you'd go up something more like 28 and he'd go down 28 but if you beat a 1400 you'd only go up something like 8 and he'd go down 8.
You know about how good someone was at a very quick glance. Noobs / casual players were 1300 - 1500, intermediate players were 1500 - 1700, good players were 1700 - 1850, very good players were 1850 - 1950, great players were 1950+ and the best of the best were 2100+.
I like the idea that Blizzard are trying to make things more interesting by splitting up the ladder into leagues but everyone should have a rating that can be compared directly to another player. IE - everyone shouldn't start at 1000 in whatever league they get put in.
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yea ranking system is so wacked
im in gold, i just won a game on ladder
and after the game i get placed in silver..
wtf
i won and i drop leagues?
has this happen to anyone else?
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Its beta you guys send these comments to blizzard tell them what you think!
this is why the have a feedback page!
also ELO would be great!
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whats the proper email adress to contact blizzard on feedback?
i dont wanna use the battlenet forums
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On May 02 2010 16:45 s2pid_loser wrote:
yea ranking system is so wacked
im in gold, i just won a game on ladder
and after the game i get placed in silver..
wtf
i won and i drop leagues?
has this happen to anyone else?
you obviously lost alot of matches before that
On May 02 2010 07:01 starcraft911 wrote:
I actually ready all of the OP... the thing is that it's pretty much impossible to "drop" a ddivision. Before the first reset I was 1950 rating and since i knew the reset was coming I intentionally lost a huge series of games and I got below 1000 and it wouldn't put me in gold. I'm not sure if this has changed or not, but going up in divisions is much easier than going down
Since last patch it's easier to move up/down divisions. My friend went 4-1 into plat, and then on 6-6 was relegated to gold.
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@ s2pid, a few people have pointed out that it seems that there are "trial periods" every now and again where you get kind of re-assessed over a few matches. so if you lost 4 and won 1, you might well go down a division.
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My biggest worry is league stagnation.
I was going to make a similar post, but you have written up one that is almost spoton. I say almost, because I think the problem is err.. even deeper than deep.
Basically, Blizzard has stated that this system was to encourage more people to play. How? The reasoning being that if you see yourself as only rank 30th of platinum division, that will encourage you to think "Oh, well I'll just play abit more, get into the top 8. Guess I'll do a bit more". Putting aside all the other frequent arguments about the sheer ... incorrectness in implementing a system that basically treats you like a complete tool, I want to make it clear that in my belief this system does the complete opposite of what Blizzard wants.
People will not be fooled by the pretty division numbers and ranking. You are ranked out of 100 randoms that have little bearing. The only thing that people will strive and relate to is the league, because the league they are in is the only thing even remotely resembling any kind of ladder. Saying you are in platinum means a numerical value, but saying you are in division 118 has none.
What this means is that if you are ranked 30th in platinum, for many people it will encourage people to play less, as opposed to play more. If you are already in the top amateur league, they know that being #1 in their division means jack all when there are thousands of other #1's that they cannot relate too. When people play ladder, they do not compare themselves to 100 people, they will do it to the whole league. When they cannot see the league, they will not be motivated to play. The top 100 of a random division is not motivation, it is demotivation. This will result in complete stagnation of divisions, with semi-inactive players across every division that cannot see how much they should climb. If anything, being low on a huge ladder gives you more motivation to play, as you have nothing to lose.
This is just my theory, and it has many holes. However, it has just as much merit as Blizzards.
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EPT
