EPT/signature
An Open Letter to Blizzard Regarding Divisions - Page 18
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AncienTs
Japan227 Posts
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StayFrosty
Canada743 Posts
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ven
Germany332 Posts
On May 25 2010 00:47 Excalibur_Z wrote: [...] To respond to your War3 reference, I thought the levels were inflated as a result of how the matchmaking system worked, where it searched for opponents based on level difference. If the top players were level 10-12 and everyone else was level 5-6, a very poor player could fight a top player. That's not effective matchmaking. However, by thinning out each level they are more likely to pair players who are closer in skill. If SC2 matchmaking works as I've guessed, more dynamically based on the population as a whole rather than arbitrary breakpoints, that's a much better system. Sure, if the top players were 10-12 and everyone else was 5-6 it wouldn't be a very good system. Save for the very beginning that was never the case though. I admit they had a few issues with match making and even a few easily exploitable holes to give you the worst possible opponents but this was never about match making because that's really not an issue with SC2. Having a clear representation of where you stand is, though, and Warcraft 3's ladder before they butchered it did an excellent job of that. Levels actually meant something and were a pretty accurate (and thus comparable) gauge of your ability and how a global ranking works well to get a look at the very top should be obvious. | ||
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lim1017
Canada1278 Posts
Because i didnt want to go on a losing streak and fall to 10th or w/e, it acted as a disincentive for me to play on my off days. im sure there some saying about how people at the top most fear their fall from grace or w/e. Even though i KNEW i wasn't anywhere near "top" world wide, this division system gave me the illusion that i was. If there was a global ranking and I was ranked something like 1000th i wouldnt really care if i fell to 1100th or w/e | ||
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Severedevil
United States4830 Posts
On May 26 2010 05:41 lim1017 wrote: I dont know if im the only one but before when i was hovering between 1-3rd of my plat division i would actually avoided playing games when i was tired or didn't feel "serious" or what have you. This was common advice for ICCUP at all levels - don't play on your main if you feel tired/distracted/angry, because you'll play bad --> lose & lose ranking --> feel worse. | ||
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antelope591
Canada820 Posts
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Kardiss
Korea (South)21 Posts
It is exhaustively more expensive to calculate the true ranking against 100 million people in real time versus having to calculate the true ranking for a partitioned sub-divisions. Due to an extremely frequent nature of the changes in ranking, you're almost forced to calculate ranking every time if the ladder system was just one giant ladder. Also it makes any type of caching and database partitioning strategy a lot less challenging when dealing with with small set of data called "division." Perhaps they didn't want to set up 10,000 real-time replicated database services. Instead they could just set up 1,000 partitioned databases with little lags in between replications (in conjunction with partitioned distributed caching layer). This could also potentially explain some discrepancies with "Favored" status due to the latency in replication of data across different databases. Well.. may be it's just my crazy idea. But if I had to architect a massive infrastructure like that, the current implementation actually makes a lot of sense. | ||
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lim1017
Canada1278 Posts
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m3rciless
United States1476 Posts
On May 26 2010 06:17 Kardiss wrote: I myself is an architect/developer and it just dawned on me that the current division ladder system might be related to the underlying system architecture. It is exhaustively more expensive to calculate the true ranking against 100 million people in real time versus having to calculate the true ranking for a partitioned sub-divisions. Due to an extremely frequent nature of the changes in ranking, you're almost forced to calculate ranking every time if the ladder system was just one giant ladder. Also it makes any type of caching and database partitioning strategy a lot less challenging when dealing with with small set of data called "division." Perhaps they didn't want to set up 10,000 real-time replicated database services. Instead they could just set up 1,000 partitioned databases with little lags in between replications (in conjunction with partitioned distributed caching layer). This could also potentially explain some discrepancies with "Favored" status due to the latency in replication of data across different databases. Well.. may be it's just my crazy idea. But if I had to architect a massive infrastructure like that, the current implementation actually makes a lot of sense. i'm only a freshman cs major, but given that blizz is already calculating elo and favored status dynamically, across all divisions, a general ranking would be only marginally harder to implement. An easy labor saver would be that your ranking only updates once ever 24 hours at 0:00 server time, or every time you finished a game, instead of truly dynamically. I don't think database management should be a real concern here. | ||
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Kardiss
Korea (South)21 Posts
 You see, Blizzard can never escape from angry users no matter what they do. In order to calculate ELO and favored status, you only need the real time rating for your opponent (which is simple). You don't need full data sync for that. But for general ranking, you need the entire set. Database management for small scale is easy. For a massive clustered databases of this scale is definitely not. A lot of times these challenging problems are over generalized and simplified by non-technical people - which is understandable.But I have a high expectation that Blizzard will deliver what we want eventually. | ||
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Gibybo
United States229 Posts
2) They are already doing it for the matchmaking ratings, they just hide them. Sure they don't need the full rankings for that, but it is trivial to maintain real-time rankings when you have real-time ratings, I don't know why you think it wouldn't be. | ||
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Tindermate
United States19 Posts
All has been said more than enough times regarding the ridiculous divisions and their nonexistant overview. I just feel obliged to sign once more. Sadly I doubt Blizzard gives a fuck. | ||
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Afterhours
United States125 Posts
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Bibdy
United States3481 Posts
![[image loading]](http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/8946/screenshot002tt.jpg) HEY GUYS, IM TIED RANK 1 / 2!! CAN I PLAY IN TOURNAMENTS, YET!? | ||
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Afterhours
United States125 Posts
On May 26 2010 13:38 Bibdy wrote: An example of how stupid this system is: HEY GUYS, IM TIED RANK 1 / 2!! CAN I PLAY IN TOURNAMENTS, YET!? Pretty sure this has to do with the fact that the #1 place player has played 2 times the games you have. Still, that blows. XD | ||
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blabber
United States4448 Posts
On May 25 2010 12:46 Bill307 wrote: I understand what Blizzard is doing. For the average player, having divisions so that your rank feels more motivating and satisfying is a very good idea. The same principle is used in other places, such as XBox Live games that allow you to view your rank in a game compared to just your friends. It is a great improvement over being ranked #57,136. It gives the average player a much more realistic goal: to be one of the best among a small group of players. And they SHOULD feel good about an accomplishment like that. They SHOULD feel good about moving from #57,136 to #56,814, because they have accomplished something, and yet it feels meaningless. That is a big problem with an overall ranking. That said, I think this thread is evidence enough that an overall ranking is a far superior method for, say, the top 10% of the players. There is an easy way to satisfy most players in both groups. Have divisions for the vast majority of the players, but once you reach the highest level (diamond, titanium, plutonium (because you're HOT STUFF), whatever), group all the players at that level into a single division, creating an overall ranking. Having 2 systems works great because of how the players are distributed. If you're a player who gets more out of the division system, then you're probably in the lower levels. If you're a player who gets more out of the overall ranking system, then you're probably in or close to the highest level. So you're pleasing far more players like this than you would be with just one system or the other. Adding a top level with an overall ranking also adds an additional incentive or milestone for the high-level players who want to be ranked in that manner: no only do you get to take pride in being in the top level, but you also get to take pride in stepping out of the divisions and into the overall ranking. agreed. It'd be more cool if the overall ranking was called "The Ladder" or something and only top players could ascend to "The Ladder" while everyone else plays in "The League" (with all the divisions nonsense). Just an idea | ||
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v3chr0
United States856 Posts
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MamiyaOtaru
United States1687 Posts
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AlecPyron
United States131 Posts
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inTheMood
Norway128 Posts
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