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The lack of an overall ladder ranking has been discussed to death. A lot of people hate the divisions. The popular sentiment is that they simply hide information which Blizzard should show us by adding an overall ladder ranking stat while leaving the division system they obviously want to keep in place - a compromise of sorts.
I think the problem goes far deeper than these suggestions acknowledge. The division system does not hide information; it destroys information. There are probably other problems that would be more obvious if any of the algorithms for point calculations, bonus point accumulation, rank up/down requirements, etc., but there are at least two that are obvious from what we know now.
First, let's make sure we're all on the same page about how the system works. The Blues haven't told us a whole lot, but here is what we can know for certain about the system:
-It places you in an initial division based on your placement match record, probably weighting each placement match based on opponent skill.
-Once placed, you start at 1000 points and gain/lose them by winning/losing matches.
-The points won or lost vary based on relative skill, like an Elo system: if you are expected to win you gain fewer points for a win and lose more for a loss, and vice versa.
-Bonus points accumulate at the same rate regardless of when and how much you play. If you win a match and have accumulated bonus points, those points get added to your score and removed from your bonus pool, up to a maximum of the number of points you would have won normally.
-At some point after performing better or worse than the system expects for a consistent period, it decides to move you up or down a league. When this happens, your point total resets.
-Numbered divisions are purely there to divide leagues to smaller units and are not in order of skill or anything like that.
-Ranking up or down involves a complex formula Blizzard feels we shouldn't get to know, but it is not based simply on win/loss ratio or points. It seems to involve flagging you for a potential move and then giving you a series of pair-ups or pair-downs as a test, but it's not clear how that works exactly.
-The system intentionally matches people of different skill levels in some cases to help people who are mis-placed move more quickly, and to give a little change of pace perhaps.
Also for reference: the Elo system is a common, popular competitive ranking system, used in competitive chess as well as many competitive video game systems. Each player starts with a set score and gains/loses points through wins/losses. Favored players lose more/gain less. Every point gained by the winner is taken from the loser; no points are ever created or destroyed except by the addition of new players to the system (inactive players are not deleted per se, so the points per player remains fixed, although high levels of inactivity or game abandonment from unsuccessful players can skew the numbers). When run properly, such as with competitive chess, two players scores alone can give pretty accurate statistical odds of the outcome. This accurate prediction makes the algorithm for weighting gains/losses based on relative skill much more precise, as well. In theory, over the long term, each player will reach their approximate 'true' skill and their rating will stabilize, varying only a little bit in the short term without moving up or down in the long term unless the player's skill changes (or the average skill of the competition changes). It's also very resistant to non-random match assignments (e.g., players in the same areas playing in mostly the same tournaments).
On the surface, it looks like you have basically an Elo system for the points, a silly Division system tacked on for no apparent reason, and the problem is that rankings are based on the silly Division system instead of the more rational Elo system. Depending on how divisions are used with the matchmaking algorithm, there may be additional undesired effects there, but at least we have the points system, right?
Wrong. The points system as implemented, while resembling Elo, does not accomplish the mathematical goals Elo sets out to achieve. There are many reasons for this and I'm sure some math major could provide a more detailed proof or explanation, but here are two core concepts that cause the current system to destroy otherwise useful data about player skill.
1) Bonus Points: This one is pretty widely understood to be a cause of point inflation. Since bonus points are basically 'created' out of thin air, the points per player in the system is no longer fixed; there's a natural tendency to inflate points over time, based on how many semi-active or active players there are (remember, it's not like rest exp in wow - it accumulates constantly, no matter how often you play, so all that matters is whether they at least play enough to redeem those points eventually). However, it doesn't just cause the average to rise; it also severely skews the distribution of points. In an Elo-based point system, the idea is that you eventually stabilize once the system has accurately placed you. Blizzard claims they want their system to achieve this, where people will stop moving around chaotically after enough games and have a ranking that somehow reflects their skill level. The bonus point system is clearly designed to do the exact opposite, presumably so 'average' players will continue to improve slowly in ranking/point total even if their skill remains the same.
Obviously, though, not everyone can be moving up at once or they'd all balance out. The problem is, since players continue gaining points faster than losing them even once they reach what *should* be their 'equilibrium value', they get paired against more skilled opponents and start losing more than half their games, shedding those undeserved points. This is part of why we see rapid accumulation at the top of each division while the middle point value moves much more slowly. This undermines the 'carebear' goal of making average players happy, since instead of knowing they're average and winning half the time, they feel like they "should" keep moving up since they don't seem to be stabilizing in rank, but every time they start making real progress they get an 'unexplained' tough game streak and drop down again. The matchmaking system's intentional mispairings to test players to see if they should move up or down more quickly is already good enough to prevent stagnation. Adding the bonus point dynamic creates a host of new problems, all for the impossible goal of trying to create the illusion that everyone is better than average and doing better and better over time, whether this is accurate based on their in-game performance or not.
2) League Changes: this one I hear very little about, but IMO it's the single biggest problem, and the main reason that points between different divisions and leagues are not at all comparable: when you move divisions, your points reset. This is, quite literally, destroying the information about your previous point total. Numerical scores that respond to each win or loss are a much more useful measure of skill than which of five named leagues you're placed in. This creates a host of wildly unpredictable effects based on other algorithms we are not privy to, but it clearly means the system no longer functions as Elo-like and points themselves have no predictive power between divisions or leagues - your point total is ONLY meaningful in the context of the league and, arguably, the specific division you are in.
Speaking of which: as if creating five tiers of player with some incalculable, unspecified, hazy skill differentiation between each wasn't bad enough, the league change point reset system makes divisions within the SAME league impossible to compare! We don't know how the rank up/down algorithm works but we know that it's fairly complex, is not based on a preset number of fixed games and takes a lot of variables into account beyond just win/loss record over the long term weighted by opp skill. In practice, what this means is that the number of players any given division will gain and lose from this procedure over time can vary dramatically. Additionally, the average points per player in the division will change every time a rank up or down happens, since the point total that player had when the rank change happens can vary by quite a bit. Also, remember that bonus points accumulate slowly over time at a more or less fixed rate, meaning the longer players tend to stay in a given division, the more point inflation will occur.
Based on these issues, and no doubt many others that I haven't mentioned or thought of yet, I can't really imagine how they COULD use the current system to generate a meaningful cross-division ranking. This probably helps to explain why the Favored algorithm is so notoriously inaccurate (comparing across divisions accurately is impossible) - which also further distorts point distribution since that's the algorithm that determines the number of points each player stands to gain or lose. Also, this may be why Blizzard opted to make the Pro League just one really big division above all the others - they realized that's the only way to approximate a serious ladder for the top players, since relative rankings are only at all meaningful within a single division in the current system.
Thoughts? Am I way off base? Does this make sense to people? Any ideas for practical solutions to suggest to Blizzard beyond "start over"?
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tl;dr:
The ladder system is broken for two main reasons: bonus point inflation and point resetting on division change. The combined effect is that, instead of being a quantifiable estimation of player skill as with an Elo ranking system (see: competitive chess, Heroes of Newerth, many other games that aren't coming to mind off hand), points in the current ladder only tell you a bit about how you compare with the rest of your division, and make up part of the mysterious, unspecified rank change algorithm. In practice, this leaves you with Blizzard's unexplained classification into one of five tiers and a wild-assed guess in the form of a numerical score that is only directly relevant in comparison to at most 99 other players - better than nothing, sure, but hardly deserving of the title 'ladder'. It's no wonder Blizzard's "solution" for pro players at the top is to make one giant division with fixed size per ladder cycle - basically, eliminating all the unique aspects of the whole league and division system, since none of them are actually useful for competitive players who want to compare their performance.
Yes, I recognize that my tl;dr is longer than most posts. Deal with it.
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This is only speculation but in the last big thread on the topic the op assumed that there is a second hidden rating, which is used to match players together. This is probably the "best there is" ranking system that some Blizz guy talked about at some point.
This assumption makes a lot of sense, because the publicly displayed rating is obviously not a good ranking, for the reasons you mentioned (although I think that the second point should be name "leagues and divisions").
Edit: Actually, I just remembered that the op I was referring to had the Idea with two rankings from WoW, where apparently both rankings are public? Idk.
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As far as I understand it, the way SC2 battlenet is set up for beta is the system will hunt for players to give you a quicker match, so it's tuned to find you a match faster, and not find you someone closely matched to your skill level. Come launch I'm expecting the system to change so it will find you someone closer to your rating and change the ELO "hunting" range when pairing people for matches much more slowly, as well as reducing the max deviation.
As for the ladder itself, the divisions are there to give a sense of "local" competition with each other, and with multiple #1 spots spread across divisions there isn't as much pressure on competitive players to fight for ELO rating all the time if it were one global ranking (or more specifically, regional ranking in the US, EU and Asia), as hundreds or thousands of competitors fight for the top spots.
The one problem I see is the bonus points system, it completely ruins the whole purpose of ELO and seems like an arbitrary addition. It's supposed to try and let players "catch up" to those that play more, but ELO isn't supposed to reward playing more; it rewards winning more matches than you lose and improving your skill over playing match after match.
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Yea, I think Pro league is going to be straight up ELO without bonus points. It's all set up to be with the weekend gamer in mind. Nice post dude, it was a good read.
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Very nice post.
I for one am completely dumbfounded as to why there isn't an overall ladder. I have no definitive way of proving that I'm a worse, or better player than anyone close to my ranking. Very frustrating for those of us with a competitive view towards the game.
The fact that Blizzard won't reveal the ladder promotion formula is another baneling in my mineral line.
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Thanks for the replies, everyone. Some responses:
Asta: I hope that 1) you're right, and 2) that stat becomes public on launch. Based on the problems with the Favored system and anecdotal evidence of how it seems to compare W/L, League and points/div ranking in some fashion to determine that value. This leads me to believe it's actually pairing based on what we see, which is disturbing 
Spaztick: Agreed 100% that bonus undermines any Elo-like value of the points system - it's part 1 of my post  It's not *as* bad as a rested system, at least, since active players get the same bonus accumulation, but it prevents players from reaching an accurate point equilibrium that only changes as their skill relative to their average competition changes, which is the basic goal of Elo.
Part 2 is the big one, though. Since points are reset when you change leagues, and that and the other non-Elo-like characteristics introduce unpredictable changes to the average points per player between divisions within the same league, points are only really comparable within a single division, making real matching and comparison between divisions, let alone leagues, quite difficult to say the least.
baeracaed: That would certainly make a lot of sense, but depending on how big the pro league is, it will probably leave many of us who are competitive but not pro-caliber players stuck slummin' it in the broken League system instead.
The best solution I can see is to rename Pro League into Competitive League, make it available via opt-in for anyone, and have it be as close to a straight-up Elo system as possible; random team matching can't be "pure" elo, so they could either make comp league 1v1/AT only or just make the RT comp league a slightly modified Elo like many team-based games do (see: Heroes of Newerth). I would like to think Blizzard could make something *better* than pure Elo, with changes that add incentives they want to add without destroying the basic functionality of the system, but if the public ladder system we see has anything to do with matchmaking, then I have little faith in them on that department.
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I'm a bit sorry but remember, it's the beta! Also, there are plenty of tournaments for judging the overall skill pool. I actually like the system.... It's much more encouraging for players to move from spot 28 to spot 12 than spot 1078 to spot 1062 (as has been said before.)
I think it's a much better system considering the wide range of skill than, say, iccup would be for the general public.
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Blizzard seems to be making several huge mistakes with their ladder system. However, I don't think bonus points are a problem because everyone gets them equally and it stops a player from getting a top ranking, then never playing again and just staying on top even though the level of play is drastically different from when he originally got it. This is why it is hard to compare chess ratings from now to many years ago.
We definitely need an overall ladder, it's just stupid that Blizzard hasn't added one. They made an assumption about players feeling better if their rank is a lower number, they are wrong. At least for competitive players.
Though I think I can partially help with http://starcraftrankings.com 
Imo the worst problem is that the system is complex and the details are secret. You cannot create a system in which anyone will put their faith in if they cannot understand it. This is what happened to WC3 after they overhauled it and added the hidden ratings and such. Quickly everyone stopped trusting it and you will often hear the response "ladder rank doesn't mean anything" on WC3's Battle.net if you try to use it for anything.
It must be simple, complete, and easy to understand or it simply will not succeed.
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Sweden11 Posts
Im just guessing here but Blizzard probably wants the ladder to be "alive", if you do not play regularly they want you to lose your rank to more active people.
The WC3 ladder demanded that you played a certain number of games each week. If you did not reach this number, the remaining games were counted as losses (your record was not affected, just your ladder rating) so you would have a hard time getting your "real" rating and rank back after a period of inactivity
The bonus points system achieves the same goal, but it is far easier for a player who has been inactive for a few weeks to get his old rank back.
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I really don't think people want to see 25, 000 people in their silver league.
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On May 02 2010 06:31 Jonoman92 wrote:
I'm a bit sorry but remember, it's the beta! Also, there are plenty of tournaments for judging the overall skill pool. I actually like the system.... It's much more encouraging for players to move from spot 28 to spot 12 than spot 1078 to spot 1062 (as has been said before.)
I think it's a much better system considering the wide range of skill than, say, iccup would be for the general public.
I know it's the beta - that's why I'm trying to detail the flaws of this system now, while there's still some chance it can be fixed before launch. There's no indication that the division and league system is currently due for a substantial change. Blizzard reps give excuses for its shortcomings and to my knowledge have never said anything about them considering or testing any significant changes to the basic system.
I'm very sick of hearing the "it's more encouraging" argument. This is a competitive game. Ladder rankings are not meant to be friggin' participation trophies. Besides, I don't even think I agree with you - I would much rather see that every game moves my ranking noticeably, and that over time I can actually see myself improve by THOUSANDS of rank positions as I pass other players in skill and performance, and knowing that the division ranks are meaningless outside the context of my one division means I really don't care about my rankings anymore. I'm a hyper-competitive person who always has to win and be the best at everything, yet I'm currently #3 in my division and don't really feel any motivation to get to #1. It doesn't mean I'm the best at something; it means I passed two other people in a more or less meaningless score.
People who suck don't need to worry about their ladder ranking. They have a whole achievement system. Heck, they could keep the divisions but change the things I outlined and create a globally comparable point estimation of skill and corresponding global ranking. Or, they could do the comp league thing, making an Elo alternative available to everyone but sticking people in their carebear system by default.
So far, I have heard dozens of experienced players tell me bad players like divisions, but I've yet to hear a Copper player chime in and say "I agree, I love being top 10 copper and would dislike an overall ranking being added."
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On May 02 2010 06:02 Spaztick wrote:
The one problem I see is the bonus points system, it completely ruins the whole purpose of ELO and seems like an arbitrary addition. It's supposed to try and let players "catch up" to those that play more, but ELO isn't supposed to reward playing more; it rewards winning more matches than you lose and improving your skill over playing match after match.
There are two conflicting sides to the bonus point argument. Casual players are more likely to stop playing for, say, a week, and perhaps for those people the bonus point system is a good thing, so they don't feel like they need to keep playing to keep up their rank.
On the competitive side, however, the ranking system needs to punish people for not playing, to prevent people from camping their spot on the ladder.
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On May 02 2010 06:38 DrSmoke wrote:
I really don't think people want to see 25, 000 people in their silver league.
So don't have a league. People got on just fine in the SC1 and WC3 ladders with one very long ordered list as a ladder. Your point score would become a lot more meaningful since it wouldn't inflate with bonus points and reset with rank changes. Every single game you ever play on the ladder will impact your score, and that never goes away. You're telling me this would be a less appealing motivation to you to compete in a ranked ladder environment than a system that only compares you to 99 essentially random other players and makes no serious attempt to find where you "belong" as a stable ranking but rather bounces you around through a combination of undisclosed formulas and ill thought-out unpredictable variations within and between divisions? Kay, then they should make the system that doesn't suck optionally available and you can continue to enjoy the one that does.
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On May 02 2010 06:42 vAltyR wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2010 06:02 Spaztick wrote:
The one problem I see is the bonus points system, it completely ruins the whole purpose of ELO and seems like an arbitrary addition. It's supposed to try and let players "catch up" to those that play more, but ELO isn't supposed to reward playing more; it rewards winning more matches than you lose and improving your skill over playing match after match. There are two conflicting sides to the bonus point argument. Casual players are more likely to stop playing for, say, a week, and perhaps for those people the bonus point system is a good thing, so they don't feel like they need to keep playing to keep up their rank. On the competitive side, however, the ranking system needs to punish people for not playing, to prevent people from camping their spot on the ladder.
Those aren't conflicting. The bonus pool DOES punish people for not playing. If you stop playing, other people will overtake you with their bonus points. Otherwise you could just sit on the #1 spot forever and never have to play again.
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On May 02 2010 06:42 vAltyR wrote:
There are two conflicting sides to the bonus point argument. Casual players are more likely to stop playing for, say, a week, and perhaps for those people the bonus point system is a good thing, so they don't feel like they need to keep playing to keep up their rank.
On the competitive side, however, the ranking system needs to punish people for not playing, to prevent people from camping their spot on the ladder.
Except that bonus points accumulate at the same rate whether you play or not, so it doesn't really help you catch up at all - just gives inactive players a temporary boost in points that causes them to get matched against those better, more active players to shed those points, while active players get their bonus points more evenly divided between games as they mass points at the top of a division. An Elo system does not require activity to maintain your ranking; once you reach your equilibrium rank, your score should not change over the long term until your skill does, whether you play once an hour or once a month.
Bonus point accumulation doesn't differ from activity, but distribution of those points does. Inactive players will get 'streaky' point changes; active ones will get smoother point inflation. Whether this causes problems with those streaky players then getting a frustrating losing streak or not remains to be seen, but I would imagine if an inactive casual player built up a massive bonus pool, any decent winning streak would shoot them up in ranking and start getting some higher league face crush matchups. More bonus points left? Great, as soon as you finally get one win, wash, rinse, repeat. That potential issue aside, I don't see what *good* they do since everyone gets them at the same rate. I guess people who literally never win don't benefit from point inflation that way?
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I agree that a system to compare divisions would be nice, but I still say that 90% of the people that end up buying and playing sc2 are not going to want to look at their ladder and see 10K+ names to sort thru.
I look at my ladder, i have 100 names to look at. Its simple and un-cluttered that way.
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On May 02 2010 06:49 DrSmoke wrote:
I agree that a system to compare divisions would be nice, but I still say that 90% of the people that end up buying and playing sc2 are not going to want to look at their ladder and see 10K+ names to sort thru.
I look at my ladder, i have 100 names to look at. Its simple and un-cluttered that way.
So.... Give it pages like WC3's ladder, and search functionality? It's not hard. It would obviously be stupid to make players scroll through a list of every single SC2 account on one page.
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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)
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On May 02 2010 06:49 DrSmoke wrote:
I agree that a system to compare divisions would be nice, but I still say that 90% of the people that end up buying and playing sc2 are not going to want to look at their ladder and see 10K+ names to sort thru.
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.
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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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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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Calgary25980 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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Calgary25980 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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On May 02 2010 07:16 kei-clone wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2010 07:02 solistus wrote: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.
My most recent league change was within the last two hours and, while I was not set back all the way to 1000, I lost around 400 points.
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You guys are forgetting that there's an important hidden variable (similar to ELL aka Expected Ladder Level in War3 if you're familiar with that ladder system) which tracks your ACTUAL skill level as perceived by the matchmaking system. It is not related to your ladder score or win % or total wins or whatever, but this is what determines who you are matched up with and whether or not you're favored (This is why a 50% silver player can be favored vs a 60% plat player if he's been beating a lot of platinum players). Now I'm not sure about this but the amount of points gained or lost seems to be determined by the actual point difference and not the "ELL".
If you think about that for a second you'll realize that "point inflation" won't have any real downsides and the only consequence is that you can't get 3000 points in the first week then retire and expect to be ranked 1 forever because the average player score will keep increasing. This is a good thing! The system they had for this in war3 was experience point decay that actually subtracted points for inactivity which was kind of a pain in the ass but amounts to the same thing
Consider that if a player plays 500 games in the first month he might get 3000 points, but if he registers another account a year later and plays the same 500 games he might get 5000 points. Point inflation ensures only active players stay at the top of the ladder which is what you want.
The ladder system is really good and gives me good matches against equally skilled opponents after as little as 10-15~ish games. The only thing wrong with the ladder system is the lack of a league-wide ranking but i assume they'll add sometime after chatrooms.....
Also they seem to be tweaking it a lot still. Apparently every time they change the matchmaking system there's a reset so we'll see if they decide to change it up again~
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If someone wants to reformat and shorten my arguments, I'd be plenty grateful and would happily edit them into my OP if it was an accurate summary. I wrote this up off the top of my head on the Blizz forums (thus the references to Blizzard reps as 'the Blues', etc.), it was too long so I C/Ped it here and linked to it. It seems a good number of people had the patience to wade through it and many of them have left very thoughtful feedback on the issue. It's increasingly silly to have an extended debate about how much shorter my OP could be. If it bothers you enough to spend so much time on it, please make yourself useful and write that easy 1/5 length summary.
Perhaps instead of trying to re-summarize what I've already written, I'll just work on a more organized OP focusing specifically on the point system and problems with point adjustments. I was trying to insert that discussion into the larger discussion of bonus point inflation, leagues being stupid, etc. and the overall call for a 'real' global ladder, but apparently that's too much for one thread worth of attention span.
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United States12235 Posts
On May 02 2010 05:53 Asta wrote:
This is only speculation but in the last big thread on the topic the op assumed that there is a second hidden rating, which is used to match players together. This is probably the "best there is" ranking system that some Blizz guy talked about at some point.
This assumption makes a lot of sense, because the publicly displayed rating is obviously not a good ranking, for the reasons you mentioned (although I think that the second point should be name "leagues and divisions").
Edit: Actually, I just remembered that the op I was referring to had the Idea with two rankings from WoW, where apparently both rankings are public? Idk.
That's right Asta. In my comparison, the only difference between the WoW MMR and the SC2 one is that the WoW one is visible which therefore makes it trackable. It does get confusing which is why the OP here is so flustered, but I don't think there's a reason to necessarily make the SC2 MMR public because it's ultimately unnecessary information.
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On May 02 2010 13:10 andyrichdale wrote:
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.
Yes it was, it was indeed.
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On May 05 2010 08:11 Mindcrime wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2010 07:16 kei-clone wrote:On May 02 2010 07:02 solistus wrote: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. My most recent league change was within the last two hours and, while I was not set back all the way to 1000, I lost around 400 points.
And now that the servers are back up, I got all of those points back and am now #1 in my platinum division without playing a single 1v1 as platinum
rofl
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Nice post, I agree, the ranking system is broken. It's too "feel good" and doesn't in anyway summarize how good of a player you are. Everything about it feels too ambiguous, and while I know it's still beta, it would be nice to know how they plan on transitioning to release, especially bonus pools. Looking at it, advancing in leagues seems little more than win %, but there's a guy in my ladder that is way ahead in points and has been for a week, but still hasn't placed out of it.. But
I got placed in gold, won 3 of 5 games while laddering and on my last win I got knocked down to silver. How does that make any sense? The guy cannoned up all of his bases and I finally had to tech to broodlords just so he'd see there was no way he could still win. 40 minutes to get knocked down a league is pretty lame, and I refuse to play ladder until they sort it out. The way it is now, it's just confusing how anything works concerning ladder. Points? Performance? Win %?
It'd be damn nice if they explained any portion of how ladder movement or placements worked.
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I'm 39-15 in my division. There's a guy 28-17 who's above me. There's also a guy 28-17 below me.
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I was honestly going to post in here about 10 minutes ago to defend the ranking system, but I just got back from a game that I played after being transferred to platinum and after winning that first game - I am now ranked first in my division.
So now it shows: Division Rank 1 Platinum League.
GUESS THAT MEANS I CAN STOP PLAYING LOL IM THE BEST IT SAYS SO
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The problem isn't just point inflation. Presumably the true underlying score behind each player isn't affected by bonus points. A player who plays less (and thus reaps the rewards of bonus points more, relative to the number of losses they receive) gets a point advantage. If this is true, then #20 in a division could actually have an underlying matchmaking score higher than #1 of the same division. The current system actually rewards not playing once you hit your equilibrium rating (points lost = points earned over the long term).
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On May 05 2010 09:20 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2010 05:53 Asta wrote:
This is only speculation but in the last big thread on the topic the op assumed that there is a second hidden rating, which is used to match players together. This is probably the "best there is" ranking system that some Blizz guy talked about at some point.
This assumption makes a lot of sense, because the publicly displayed rating is obviously not a good ranking, for the reasons you mentioned (although I think that the second point should be name "leagues and divisions").
Edit: Actually, I just remembered that the op I was referring to had the Idea with two rankings from WoW, where apparently both rankings are public? Idk. That's right Asta. In my comparison, the only difference between the WoW MMR and the SC2 one is that the WoW one is visible which therefore makes it trackable. It does get confusing which is why the OP here is so flustered, but I don't think there's a reason to necessarily make the SC2 MMR public because it's ultimately unnecessary information.
It's been over a year since I played wow. But back then match making for arena was based on a hidden rating also.
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I really like how Blizzard implemented the ladder. Divisions and Ranks gives positve incentives for people to move up, and motivates. The division and ranks also make everything more neat and conformed.
If it was an overall ladder you would have less incentive if you were 40000000th. People would have less incentive to play ladder less.
Although I am indifferent about the bonus pool it offers a kind of positive reinforcement or reward which I guess makes the player feel better.
AND No freakin overall ladder
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The bonus points hardly matter. Anyone that is on every day, playing 10+ games a day is going to get better, faster than anyone skipping days trying to get "bonus" points.
What, or who, they are good for, is people that work, or go to school during the week, and get their gaming in on the weekend. I tend to drop a position or two just overnight while I sleep. I haven't taken a week off from sc2 since I got into the beta (haven't skipped a day really) but I would *think* that someone that did could easily drop 20+ places in 5 days.
In these types of cases all the "bonus points" are going to do, is allow said player to regain some of those places. After you win the first game, most of those points are gone anyway, and they are completely gone after 3-5 games. Meaning said player is unlikely to get back to where they were, just because of bonus points.
Another hypothetical situation: If we did have giant 100K+ person ladders, then your place would fluctuate so much it wouldn't even be funny. Those few positions you move overnight now, would be replaced by hundreds. Every time you won or lost a game, your position would change drastically, to the point that it wouldn't even mean anything anymore.
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I agree with most of the OP. I don't think the points reset, though. I got placed into Gold after my placement matches (thanks to 10 pool easily crushing 4/5 people I played against for some reason), and then I lost maybe four matches because I was outmatched. Pretty quickly the system dropped me down a league and put my point total at about ~600 in Silver league. Bottom of the league. I'm continuously getting matched against people that are "Favored" (which I imagine means that are ranked more highly than me) and winning 80% of my games. I talked to some of these people in the games and they said they were in Bronze league. So, what league you're in might not be 100% about your current skill level. All in all, something's definitely off here...
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Ok, the OP has one really big problem in it: he keeps confusing the terms "division" and "league". These terms have specific definitions, and confusing them only leads to a confused point for the OP.
Leagues are named groupings of players that an unknown algorithm has determined have similar skill. Divisions are arbitrary groupings of 100 people within the same league that you mentally pit yourself against. The only thing it is used for is to compute your division ranking (#nth of 100); it has no meaning on your point score or anything else.
You never change divisions. At least, not unless you're also changing leagues.
Now that the pedantic point is out of the way:
On the surface, it looks like you have basically an Elo system for the points, a silly Division system tacked on for no apparent reason, and the problem is that rankings are based on the silly Division system instead of the more rational Elo system. Depending on how divisions are used with the matchmaking algorithm, there may be additional undesired effects there, but at least we have the points system, right?
I'll assume by "silly Division system" you actually mean "silly League system." Since the Division system is just a psychological aid and has no real meaning for anything.
So, exactly what is so "silly" about leagues? By grouping people broadly by skill, you get essentially the same thing that you get with ICCUP's letter grade rankings, only with a more controlled metric. This system quickly segregates highly skilled players from lower skilled players on a server reset/season change. Whereas ICCUP's season changes basically became a week of hell for lower skilled players, where they could expect to be face-stomped regularly.
Remember: this isn't ICCUP. Everyone who plays SC2 in multiplayer will be on this ladder. It needs to serve their needs too.
In an Elo-based point system, the idea is that you eventually stabilize once the system has accurately placed you. Blizzard claims they want their system to achieve this, where people will stop moving around chaotically after enough games and have a ranking that somehow reflects their skill level.
Wait: when did Blizzard claim that they wanted ELOs to stabilize? I felt that the general idea was that the in-division rank would stabilize to some degree, but that your point total would keep changing.
League Changes: this one I hear very little about, but IMO it's the single biggest problem, and the main reason that points between different divisions and leagues are not at all comparable: when you move divisions, your points reset. This is, quite literally, destroying the information about your previous point total.
Yes; that would be the point.
Each league is supposed to be a self-contained entity. After the initial placement matches and first few games, league changing should be rare. It should be done only in the case of a substantial improvement (or disimprovement) in a player's skill.
The idea is supposed to be that, once you're in your league, you're in your league.
As far as I understand it, the way SC2 battlenet is set up for beta is the system will hunt for players to give you a quicker match, so it's tuned to find you a match faster, and not find you someone closely matched to your skill level. Come launch I'm expecting the system to change so it will find you someone closer to your rating and change the ELO "hunting" range when pairing people for matches much more slowly, as well as reducing the max deviation.
Actually, that's quite the opposite. One of the first patches that came out changed how the match-making worked so that it would take longer to find you a match, just so that it would find you a more appropriate opponent. In Beta, when there aren't hundreds of thousands of players on at all times of the day and night, that means it takes a while to find you a match. But once the game ships, finding matches should be much faster, simply by virtue of more players.
You're telling me this would be a less appealing motivation to you to compete in a ranked ladder environment than a system that only compares you to 99 essentially random other players and makes no serious attempt to find where you "belong" as a stable ranking but rather bounces you around through a combination of undisclosed formulas and ill thought-out unpredictable variations within and between divisions?
Psychologically, yes. Because most players don't obsess over exactly how well they're doing vs. everyone else. If they're told that they are #76th in their division, and after a game, they see that they're #74, that's progress. They don't care how that #74 came to be. They don't care whether point inflation due to bonus points cause it or whatever. All they see is that they've made progress.
I got placed in gold, won 3 of 5 games while laddering and on my last win I got knocked down to silver. How does that make any sense? The guy cannoned up all of his bases and I finally had to tech to broodlords just so he'd see there was no way he could still win. 40 minutes to get knocked down a league is pretty lame, and I refuse to play ladder until they sort it out. The way it is now, it's just confusing how anything works concerning ladder. Points? Performance? Win %?
Stop being so hung up on exactly why something happened. After all, you're not going to get kicked back up to Gold by not playing the game.
I went 2 of 5 in my placement matches because I hadn't played SC2 in a while. I got placed in Bronze, where I utterly dominated. I'm now near the top of Silver, and I suspect another League change will be forthcoming when I play some more.
The longer you play, the more likely the system is to put you where you belong. The random variables factor out, and your skill shows through.
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Bonus points will affect lower level leagues mostly - where people play rarely - anyway
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i really don't think most of u guys understand the ladder system. it works pretty darn well, actually.
the biggest problem is the disparity of skill level in the platinum ranks. they let anyone that's played a video game before in there.
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On May 02 2010 05:15 solistus wrote:
1) Bonus Points: This one is pretty widely understood to be a cause of point inflation. Since bonus points are basically 'created' out of thin air...
Hey! Perhaps they modeled this after the world financial system. You know, creating money out of thin air sounds like a good thing, right?
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EPT
