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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.
That was fixed. I also tried it before reset and after around something like 80 games left and 100-200 points below the last player in the division, I still didn't drop a league.
Before the last reset I left around 100 games and during that I dropped down one league at a time all the way down to copper. I did that after I was hit with the bug where I'm always favored or "slightly" favored(how it can be "slightly" favored when I'm losing around 18 points if I lose and winning around 6 if I win is beyond me), even against other plat players with roughly my points, that bug continued up until I was in copper and then reversed right away and I was winning 18+ points each game(without taking the bonus into account, which would double the amount) and that continued even when I reached the first position in a gold league. The reset happened before I could get back to plat to check out if I could easily reach first place or it would reverse again.
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Regarding some of the claims you make like you get preemptively flagged for demotion or promotion is just complete speculation, what do you mean it "seems" that way, you mean out of the whopping four promotions you've experienced? Well, for what it's worth, out of all the promotions I've experienced, I basically got placed in a lower league and won every game until I got a promotion (about 8 or 9?). Personally, I'm convinced win/loss ratio plays a large role in promotions and demotions.
You say bonus points grow at a fixed rate regardless of your activity or win/loss ratio. I don't know if that is true. Now, I'm not saying that's absolutely wrong because I haven't really kept track of it too closely. Can you show the source of this information or prove this?
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+1 that, like WC3, SC2 probably has two skill rankings. One "no gimmicks / behind the scenes" one that the AMM uses to pair you up with opponents, and one used for the ladder.
For the ladder one, bonus pool isn't as bad as you may think. Sure it's points for nothing, but it does three things:
1) Encourages people who don't play as often, to... well... play.
2) Motivates people to play "super good this time" when there's at least a bonus pool (snap them out of "zombie mode," which in turn could make them improve in the general sense).
3) I could be wrong, but bonus pool should cause point inflation across the whole ladder, which is good so a player doesn't get #1 and stops playing. He has to continue playing games and proving his skill in order to beat "bonus pool inflation." This is a more elegant solution than "you lose points if you don't play," since it's much less transparent than just losing points after X days (and therefore people won't complain). This would assume that, like WC3, the ladder resets seasonly, else we'd see people with 9999 points eventually.
Another thing you should keep in mind is that bonus pool points should spread out to the deserving players rather quickly. So long as players keep playing, it shouldn't effect the order of rankings too much in the long run.
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Imo the annoying thing is just the league change, since i was on a 5 game wining streak but didn't get bumped, but when i lost i went from bronze to silver.
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This may have already been said, but wouldn't the simplest solution to all of this just be to keep everything as it is, but have a little option to see an overall ladder for the entire region/global?
Even if the division system was to reset your score everytime, Blizzard could keep the score in a separate database, only for use with this "global ladder".
It seems like a really simple solution which doesn't require massive overhauls of the system.
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On May 03 2010 05:02 chung wrote:
Regarding some of the claims you make like you get preemptively flagged for demotion or promotion is just complete speculation, what do you mean it "seems" that way, you mean out of the whopping four promotions you've experienced? Well, for what it's worth, out of all the promotions I've experienced, I basically got placed in a lower league and won every game until I got a promotion (about 8 or 9?). Personally, I'm convinced win/loss ratio plays a large role in promotions and demotions.
You say bonus points grow at a fixed rate regardless of your activity or win/loss ratio. I don't know if that is true. Now, I'm not saying that's absolutely wrong because I haven't really kept track of it too closely. Can you show the source of this information or prove this?
I don't have any definite proof but virtually everyone I've spoken to agrees that, in their anecdotal experience, promotions are preceded by a series of more difficult matches. Whether this is because of a flagging mechanism or simply the way matchmaking handles streaks of wins, which also happen to be generally required to achieve a rank up, isn't really relevant to anything. That point was pretty clearly indicated as speculative, so unless you have a counter-argument and an explanation as to how this affects the end outcome of the division system, I'm really not sure what to make of this critique. I never said win/loss was irrelevant, just that there is a lot more to it that goes on behind the scenes.
Bonus points accumulate constantly whether you are online or not and are intended as a way to "help players catch up if they haven't played in a while" - as I explained earlier, the combined effect is that active players get a constant trickle of free 'point inflation' and inactive players get huge boosts that then move them up faster than their win/loss ratio would normally allow and lead to inaccurate pairing and ranking. Think of it this way: the less often you play, the higher a proportion of your wins get bonus points added to them. Blizzard thinks this is good because less active players get an extra boost. I think this is bad because it shows that making casual players feel good about themselves is a higher priority than ranking people accurately for competitive comparison and accurate matchmaking, which are the goals I would like to see any ranking/ladder system use.
What official info we have can mostly be found here - http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24401613718&sid=5000&pageNo=1#5
On the question of resets: I moved up a league yesterday in 2v2 RT and my points reset to 1000 with a lot of bonus points (though not as many as the difference between my score and 1000, it was around 80 bonus points and my previous league score was in the 1200s). They are still destroying information with league changes at least some of the time, at least given the premise that the numerical scores are the only potentially accurate or meaningful element in the current system despite being flawed due to bonus points and hidden algorithms for favored status and point allocation. Since they have told us nothing except that they don't plan to tell us anything regarding league changes, and we know divisions within a league are not ordered by skill in any way and are there simply to divide up the total population
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On May 03 2010 08:28 Subversion wrote:
This may have already been said, but wouldn't the simplest solution to all of this just be to keep everything as it is, but have a little option to see an overall ladder for the entire region/global?
Even if the division system was to reset your score everytime, Blizzard could keep the score in a separate database, only for use with this "global ladder".
It seems like a really simple solution which doesn't require massive overhauls of the system.
The problem is, the score is NOT comparable between divisions - the points you gain/lose are based on the points you have now, so if you just keep a separate "real" score with no bonus points or resets, it would inflate or deflate significantly if a player's "displayed score" got reset. For example, if my score goes up to 1500 in Bronze and then I move to Silver and get reset to 1000, then move up to 1500 and get sent to Gold where I 'really belong' and stabilize at around 1100 score, I now have a "real score" of 2100, whereas someone who placed straight to Gold and got to 1300 would have a 'real score' of 1300. He's better than I am, but the system thinks I am MILES better than him based on real score. Everyone would want to 0-5 their placements to have more room to move up, and the whole ladder system would be a sad joke full of exploits for anyone who cared about maximizing their ranking.
You would have to redesign matchmaking and score changes to be based on this 'real' hidden value to prevent such problems. This means you would have to design a whole new set of rules governing this "real score" and calculations to change it - in other words, redesign the ladder. That's the whole point of my OP - the system destroys information rather than merely hiding it. This exact suggestion is what I was responding to in the first place. Please go back and read my post with all of this in mind. We need a new subsystem or something (assuming there isn't a completely different hidden system in place, as many believe) that is not in any way based on their league assignment nonsense if there is to be a global ladder ranking that makes sense.
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The ladder should be like iccup, it should be a pyramid making a Platinum rank harder to achieve. juts like A was hard to reach on iccup
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Calgary26003 Posts
I'm sorry, but these essay-length posts are getting out of hand. How could you need that many words to talk about the ranking system? I'm pretty sure I can rewrite your entire post in 1/5 the length and keep all the information.
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I don't even have to read it but i assume it goes along the lines of the system blizz uses doesn't work point inflation or deflation occurs because of divisions with in the ranks and you don't play people with in your division and rank, along with reset points to 1000 when you rank up adding more points into the system along with bonus points adding more points making it ever increasing etc.
Okay now time to read it and see if i got it right! And by read i mean have my text to speech program read it in hopes of making it more interesting.
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people want to make names for them selves on TL.
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On May 05 2010 07:25 Chill wrote:
I'm sorry, but these essay-length posts are getting out of hand. How could you need that many words to talk about the ranking system? I'm pretty sure I can rewrite your entire post in 1/5 the length and keep all the information.
It's a big and contentious issue at the heart of a game 10 years in the making, and there's a lot to say. People who think they get the point and that it's "simple" have, thus far, pretty consistently missed the point. Sorry to make you spend more than 30 seconds thinking about something.
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On May 05 2010 07:27 semantics wrote:
I don't even have to read it but i assume it goes along the lines of the system blizz uses doesn't work point inflation or deflation occurs because of divisions with in the ranks and you don't play people with in your division and rank, along with reset points to 1000 when you rank up adding more points into the system.
Okay now time to read it and see if i got it right! And by read i mean have my text to speech program read it in hopes of making it more interesting.
Sort of, but the problems with bonus points run far deeper than point inflation, and the point resets are the single biggest problem that destroys TONS of information each time it happens, and the ultimate reason no part of the current system could function as the basis for a global ladder ranking. This is why Blizzard has to go with the hacked together 'pro league' that bends the division system as much as it can to resemble a flat ladder rather than just making one global ranking based on points or something - points, leagues, etc. are all smoke and mirrors and contain little meaningful information for accurate ladder ranking or matchmaking.
If you want to simplify it all to one sentence: As the current league/division system stands, none of the information it collects - that we know about, at least - could simply be compared across all players to add a new global ranking on top of the current system.
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Calgary26003 Posts
On May 05 2010 07:28 solistus wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2010 07:25 Chill wrote:
I'm sorry, but these essay-length posts are getting out of hand. How could you need that many words to talk about the ranking system? I'm pretty sure I can rewrite your entire post in 1/5 the length and keep all the information. It's a big and contentious issue at the heart of a game 10 years in the making, and there's a lot to say. People who think they get the point and that it's "simple" have, thus far, pretty consistently missed the point. Sorry to make you spend more than 30 seconds thinking about something, pop another Ritalin or go back to counterstrike.
Learn to be concise. Like this: Don't be a dick.
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Sorry, the snipe at the end was out of line (I was midway editing it as you posted, actually). If you don't want to read it, you don't have to, but I will repeat: the people who think it's simple and try to "sum it up" are mostly repeating the exact arguments I was responding to. This happens every time I bring up these issues, which is why I'm trying to spell them out clearly.
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Kind of skimmed, Point inflation will occur at platinum league other places as soon as you move up there will be a gap of points loss which will help curve the inflation in lower leagues, but this doesn't occur in platinum becuase there is no reset as you can no longer rank up.
Bonus system is a flawed idea in terms of it will cause inflation no way around it, a better way would be to write it so that loss or gained points can be adjusted for inactivity or your K/C/N value w.e equation you want to use the constant used to determine the maximum loss or gain of a given match when comparing the two players scores.
But Blizz probably wants a bonus system becuase it's like an incentive you know a cookie for players to continue playing faster rank ups and slower rank downs.
Depending on blizzard formula there could also be issues with people outside of point range causing a win for one player introduces more points into the system, something that occurs when you use elo as K/C/N is not dynamic but static values given at rank, such as 32 for sub 1400, 1400-2100 is 16, 2100+ is 8 as it assumes points = skill and makes it more static formula.
What blizzard is likely to do is regular ladder seasons which will reset the rank so people don't get 9999999 points etc due to hyper inflation of heavy play.
Imo if they do, do a pro level it's likely to not have bonus points and have something similar to microsoft's "true skill" kind of formula
I also noticed as i wanted to explore sc2 i deleveled my self down to copper, and you get more points for being inactive the lower your rank is, copper bronze silver gold plat, i mean i don't remember getting to many bonus points in plat but i get plagued with them at copper and bronze, i'm inactive for a day and i get like 150 points.
I'd also point out the between rank matches, as i haven't lost a match sense i deleveled myself, a streak of like 24 wins now, as bronze i player gold players i'm going to see if i play plat players at gold or silver as that can also cause problems for points.
Imo your op isn't that it's long that bugs me it's that it rather not formated pretty, you could do better to break it up into sections and give bullet points etc, it's too much like an essay when a forum is better for a presentation.
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I would presonally rather be ranked 4531 on an overall ladder than be ranked top 20 in my current Gold League. Right now it doesn't indicate my actual skill compared to the rest of b.net, and while I'm no pro, I would like to know where I really stand.
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On May 05 2010 07:42 semantics wrote:
I also noticed as i wanted to explore sc2 i deleveled my self down to copper, and you get more points for being inactive the lower your rank is, copper bronze silver gold plat, i mean i don't remember getting to many bonus points in plat but i get plagued with them at copper and bronze, i'm inactive for a day and i get like 150 points.
I've been inactive for a few days at the gold level and I don't even have 50 bonus pts yet.
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nah writing well and being concise doesn't allow people to flex their gigantic brains
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EPT
