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Okay, so a while back some of my first posts here were explaining why the division system is actually pretty good. I made a good number of posts (came out to several pages on microsoft word) explaining why it's a good system, and I thought I got through to people with it.
Recently, I've seen a lot more crying about how awful the division system is from people who likely don't know what the fuck they're talking about. I'm going to go ahead and quote what I said months ago here. This will be edited for clarity (because it's one big post instead of several) and there may be some mention of division numbers (a system which is no longer in place); in addition, spoilered parts are things I've said that may be confusing in the context of this one long post, but that may prove interesting to read. In the case that a post of mine was in response to a quote from another poster, I will explain the post I was responding to inside "=====" if I feel the quote is too long and will reduce the clarity of what I'm saying.
I hope this turns into an educational read and, further, I hope that it will quell some of the whining about how awful the division system is. Anyway:
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Your division is a sample of the entire population of the league in which you place. This means that your rank in your division is, over a long period of time with many games played by the community as a whole, indicative of your rank as a whole compared to everyone in your league by percentile
That means if you play 300 games and you're rank 89 in your division... You're as good as 89% of the other people in your league.
I'm not sure if that wording was really very clear. What I mean to say is that someone who, over time, becomes #1 and holds it is very likely in the top 1% of the league as a whole (they may be the #1 player, or the #2, or the #231, but it's top 1%), and someone who is consistently and over time rank #2 is very likely in the top 2%, etc. The division system is NOT perfect, but it is a MUCH better indicator of actual skill than a more traditional "everyone's in the same ladder" style of ranking when viewed at a glance.
+ Show Spoiler +Edit: I suppose this means that, over many many many thousands of games played (in total - perhaps a few hundred per person), division rank is in fact a VERY good indicator of skill. For now, though, due to the small population size (relative to the number of people that will play when the game is released) and constant ladder resets, rating IS a better indicator of skill.
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To explain my next post, it was in response to someone who thought that divisions were not capped at 100 people. He then said "Oh. Well in that case ratings are rather more comparable, but there's still the possible issue of different divisions being full of much higher quality players than another" to which I responded thus.
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Well, since the matchmaking system doesn't take your division into account I can't imagine how being in a division with less skilled players would matter at all. By their very nature you'll have a division with someone who's bad relative to the total population of the league and someone who is very good relative to the total population of the league. There may be some overlap, which I think is what you were getting at, but it will be very minor in the grand scheme of things - in the cases in which the top two players are both, perhaps, top 1% of the league, their rating will be more reliable forms of comparison between the two players than their rank.
Again, though, a top 1% player will more than likely have rank 1 anyway, so in this case you would use rating 100% of the time anyway since rank 1 = rank 1 otherwise.
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This next part was in response to someone who I don't think understood percentiles, though my original response may be confusing. In this case I will clarify in (bold).
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I'm not sure you're using percentiles in the correct way here. Someone who is rank 3 platinum over a long period of time will be in, I suppose, the 97th percentile or the top 3% of all platinum players. They will actually very likely be in a percentile of less than 1 relative to the total population of players, and saying "you're in the top .003% out of everyone!" is a lot less helpful than "you're in the top 3% of those against whom you actually compete." (If this is unclear, I'm simply stating that an overall percentile of your rank relative to everyone is a meaningless statistic since you aren't competing against everyone that plays, only those in your league)
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Being a low level player myself I have to say the division system has been very discouraging to me. The reason is that the leagues I am placed in are essentially dead, with only 5-10 players racking up more then 20 games (in a silver league, it's probably even more inactive in bronze and copper).
Being ranked against people that are not playing is heart breaking and has made me feel like somewhat of a fool. "I guess I shouldn't be playing, nobody else this bad is".
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I think you're misinterpreting what the division system means.
If you're, say, rank 8 in your division, that doesn't mean much for this beta. Over a long period of time with no resets, rank 8 would be a very good indicator of your skill.
For now, though, your rating should likely be considered a better indicator of skill than rank simply because of what you described - many people (though probably not most) are inactive, so the data is a bit unreliable. I think blizzard may implement some way to weed out inactive accounts from the calculations for rank in the future.
As more games are played, your rank will become a much more significant indicator of your overall skill level in comparison to your league.
You also seem to assume that you only get matched against people in your division. This is not true. In fact, if you do well, you begin to be match against people who aren't even in your league. Due to the fact that this is a short period of time relative to how long you might be playing at release, this amount of time matched against higher leagues is insignificant. It does, however, invalidate your ranking until you are promoted (or, alternatively, you begin to lose again and the matchmaking system begins to match you with players at your new rating and current league) and have the chance to play many more games in that league.
Overall, I feel the division system is (or perhaps has the potential to be) a MUCH better way of indicating player skill level than other systems.
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I do think that low numbered divisions are better btw. Not by purpose but simply because they were created earlier and people that reached platinum the first few weeks are generally better than people only reaching it right now
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Also keep in mind that the beta has fewer players playing fewer games than the game will at release, and thus is susceptible to flaws such as the one you have described for new divisions.. Over a period of perhaps a few weeks, though, the division system will not mean anything other than a convenient way to see how well you play in comparison to people in your league. It may end up being even shorter than that, perhaps a few days, given the large number of people who will be playing. (note: this is still pertinent now and will be after each reset Blizzard does post-launch, even without division numbers!)
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This is another response to the person to whom I explained percentiles and value of information a few responses above. This time he says, I just made up some numbers to demonstrate. With the way the bonus points work, older divisions are generally always going to have more points than younger divisions, simply because they have had more time to accumulate bonus points. The younger divisions can feed off this to some extent by earning more points for winning, but I don't think it fully compensates. I would also expect the older divisions to contain more people who placed directly into a league, while the younger divisions contain people who were promoted. The older divisions should have more points in this situation (because they are generally better players, which is basis of the OP), but the ranking does not reflect this. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the top 10 players of the first few divisions are better than the top players of the last divisions, simply because the last divisions were probably created from promotions, while the early divisions were placed directly.
But I suppose you are right about the total population of players. On the flipside, copper players probably don't want to see they are worse than 95% of all players. I still think showing your percentile for your league would be excellent, and it would allow a direct comparision between divisions (and finally give us an empirical clue as to how the point distribution really works between them)
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The thing is, though, that your rank IS your percentile for your league. If you're rank 3, you're in the top 3% of the players in your league. That is why the division system is so good an indicator of skill - it just requires some time to get to that point.
Regarding the bonus pool - isn't the bonus pool only very large for newly-qualified people (and maybe promoted? my rating reward is massively bugged right now so rather than being promoted for doing well I'm losing many many many times more points than I should per loss vs people two leagues higher than me - 62 points vs a gold team when it should have been only two, so I haven't been able to be promoted) and people who are inactive for an amount of time?
Someone could, then, purposely wait or go inactive in order to have a high bonus pool, but it must be kept in mind that the bonus pool IS limited, and so when they start to be matched against players of higher skill, they will be brought down to their appropriate rating/ranking once again. They may be promoted if they're in the right position, but, again, they will be quickly demoted when the system decides that they can't perform in the league to which they are promoted.
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Here, I've responded to someone who refuted my statement that rank is percentile.
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I see what you're saying, but I also think you're misinterpreting what I'm saying. Right now, due to relatively small populations and inactivity, ranking is not really the most reliable way of rating yourself. However, in the release, there will be more players, and so the chance of a top 1% player being in any given league is a lot higher (given, perhaps, higher population caps for leagues, but this would make interpreting rank much harder to do for a player). This means that a player capable of top 1% play will quickly overtake a player who is incapable of such play. There is a chance, though, that NO player in any given league is capable of such high level play, and THEN you can use ELO/rating to decide who the better player is. For the most part, though, ranking will become a very good indicator of overall performance relative to the league in which a player is playing.
While rank is certainly relative to your division, the way the rating/ranking system works essentially means that most (though not ALL) rank 1 players should be in the top 1% of players in any given league. Also keep in mind that people shuffle in/out of leagues due to promotion/demotion, and so there is always the opportunity for a better player to enter a division and overtake the rank 1 player, increasing the validity of the rank as a way to compare a player to their league
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This is perhaps the post I enjoyed writing most in this thread. Here's the quote: Show nested quote +ME: While rank is certainly relative to your division, the way the rating/ranking system works essentially means that most (though not ALL) rank 1 players should be in the top 1% of players in any given league. This is where we disagree I think. My view is that old divisions will contain players who placed directly into a league. For platinum, my hunch is that these players are better than players who get promoted from a lower league. Is there a reason you disagree with my hypothesis?
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Although obviously I can't offer real data for why I disagree, I think simply thinking about it a little bit will show why your hypothesis is flawed.
We know that matchmaking is entirely independent of which division you've placed. This means that you get matched one one of two (or perhaps more) criteria: 1.) your rating. This is used most often for most people. 2.) how well the matchmaking system thinks you're doing and what it thinks your true rank SHOULD be. This system is not perfect, but it allows people who are perhaps wrongly low-ranked or low-rated (perhaps a person newly promoted in to a league). In the first case, you play against people who are only slightly better than you (and when it gets to the point that they start beating you - slightly worse). In this way, you have a fairly consistent rank that is a good indicator of your place in your league.
In case number two, the system has to make a few guesses. This system is necessary, though, to allow rankings to be a more significant indicator of rank. This system is made more effective by way of the favored/slightly favored system and bonus pool. A player who qualifies into a league has an easier time of increasing their rank than someone who plays consistently and often. This may seem somewhat of a bad idea at first consideration, but upon further thought, you should find that it is a very good way of running the system. A player who jumps too high in ranking will quickly begin losing games and will be brought down to their appropriate ranking fairly soon. In a similar regard, a player who SHOULD be much higher will have an easier time of ranking up, and thus bonus pool encourages players who were perhaps wrongly placed to actually continue playing. It allows the amount of games necessary to play to be much lower than it would be without bonus pool, and so the game grind is, in fact, less of a grind.
Now, what this means is that a player who is promoted into a league is allowed to more quickly begin playing against people who placed into a league. What this means is that any player who may be promoted into a league is just as good as a player who placed into a league given that their ranking is the same. This is why the number attached to a division is irrelevant in the consideration of what a player's ranking really means. Because these promoted players are playing people who placed into these leagues, their rank is just as indicative of their skill as the player who placed into the league in the first place (again, given a fairly significant volume of games played at the rating at which they belong).
I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here.
+ Show Spoiler +===== This is in response to someone complaining of the matchmaking system, which is not really what this post is about. I found it interesting, though, so I'll share here. Here's what he said: the system itself is flawed in the match making system imo.
you have games were u are having a quailty match far to few inbetween the crap were you either get rolled by someone better, or smash someone who has no clue wat they are doing (yes there still there in plat) ===== Yes, this is true to an extent. I feel that with more players, this will happen less and less often. I'm sure they'll also make the system more reliable - keep in mind that we are here to test the matchmaking system's quality just as much as the balance of the game.
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This discussion began to wind down with my last post. Here are the responses. Anything by me will be bolded here for clarity.
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My head hurts now  . I'll have to think about this some more.
I'll hope you end up realizing how great the division system is in comparison to other systems. Have fun!
<3,
Issorlol
I droped out of some of my 5 placement matches, so i got into silver. When I moved up from bottom silver to top silver to top gold, I honestly could tell little to no difference in skill. I hope that upon release your league will actually reflect your skill level more. In my opinion the highest rank you can get into off of your placements should be silver or gold. To get any further you would have to show you good enough to compete there. I know i should just play more games and try to move up to platinum, but it is still annoying to play platinum players who are clearly worse than numerous players in gold/silver.
I agree. I feel that the highest league is something you should have to be promoted to, but don't they have something like that set up for release? (FUKKEN CALLED IT?)
From what i understand the highest league (pro league) will be extreamly exclusive and not something that normal players will be able to get to. While im not sure about this it seems like what blizzard was implying.
I hope that is the case. I doubt I have much of a chance of ever getting in to such a league (I'm silver-quality right now, and perhaps gold with some more practice), but it should make finding good replays a lot easier.
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Here, the discussion was furthered a little more, so I tried to explain the benefits of division systems once again. The post I'm responding to:
Another problem i have with matchmaking is that the division one isn't necessarily better than division 100. Although division one has been around for way longer and therefore probably has some pretty good players, but when a new player finishes their placement matches or ranks up from a previous rank, they might get placed right at division one.
Keep in mind i am talking mostly about levels below platinum, as platinum players will most likely not leave their division. When release hits and there are thousands and thousands of divisions you will really have no idea what your overall rank is because you are in the exact same slot as thousands of people who could be better, or worse than you.
I would like to see some kind of overall ranking system besides just points.
I know this isn't a great example because of the huge difference in player size, but in ICCUP you can know your exact place in the ladder, something that I really liked.
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As I've said in a few other posts, this rank is actually not very indicative of your overall place with so many people. The division-based rank is very close to what percentile you are of all of the players in your league, and so is a much better indicator of your relative rank in your league than a number like 3560/46031.
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Anyway, back to less-serious-stuff-time. Again, my responses will be bolded.
Has anyone discovered it division actually affects Rating? I used to hear things like divisions with more people would gain ELO at a different rate then divisions with less people or something like that.
That would remove all meaning behind the ranks and, thus, the reason for using divisions, so I highly doubt that is the case.
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After this there was some small explanation that happened, but it's mostly just a restatement of what I said because someone decided not to read anything I wrote.
I hope that this post will prove useful in defusing some of the hatred for the division system. Enjoy~
PS: The original thread, if anyone is interested, is here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=124085
PPS: If anyone has any further insight, or disagrees with what I've said here and can back it up with logical, well thought out sentences, feel free to post here! I'd love to read it.
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So to sum it up you're saying if you're rank 10 out of 100 in your current diamond league, you're in the top 10% of diamond players? If you look at it this way, it does proportionally reflect except in "uber" leagues.
You do bring up an interesting point, but the main issue I see with this is that many Gold and Platinum players are probably better than what you're ranked as in whatever league you're in, but this "should" sort itself out as people begin to converge to their actual points level (1000 diamond for example) and be more permanently placed into their respective leagues
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On July 13 2010 04:58 tathecat563 wrote:
So to sum it up you're saying if you're rank 10 out of 100 in your current diamond league, you're in the top 10% of diamond players? If you look at it this way, it does proportionally reflect except in "uber" leagues.
You do bring up an interesting point, but the main issue I see with this is that many Gold and Platinum players are probably better than what you're ranked as in whatever league you're in, but this "should" sort itself out as people begin to converge to their actual points (1000 diamond for example) level and be more permanently placed into their respective leagues
well, in two paragraphs that's the gist of it, yes.
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I never hated the division system, but I did have my doubts. Well written post, and it gave me some confidence that Blizzard is doing the ladder system correctly.
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On July 13 2010 05:02 ForKvatch wrote:
I never hated the division system, but I did have my doubts. Well written post, and it gave me some confidence that Blizzard is doing the ladder system correctly.
This is all I hoped for while writing it and when I decided to repost it. Thanks for taking the time to read it!
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you are bringing up a very good point here. everything you said is obviously correct statistic wise (this guy knows what he's talking about). Therefore nice write up for everyone not that similiar with statistics overall (or someone like me who didn't thought about that topic yet)
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I don't see how rating isn't a better indicator of skill. More math please.
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Your rank will only eventually reflect your real position among the entire league if there is enough promoting and demoting of players. Otherwise people will stay in the divisions they initially got put into and the rank will only reflect the ranking among their division. And since Blizzard tries to get the league right as quickly as possible the shuffling will be limited.
Maybe it'll be enough for most leagues. But most likely not for top diamond. Players at the bottom of diamond can drop down and climb back up, hence shuffling the bottom of diamond. But the better diamond players will stay on top of their division. They can't be promoted (except for that pro league thing maybe but that'll be limited), and they won't be demoted. So the top of diamond will most likely end up quite static.
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ok... wow... wall of text crit for over 9000 but was a pretty good read 
but I would like to ask you something, do you really think that in the long run #ranking will be better than #rating? Cause I doupt it. Many many divisions gets created everyday... and saying that a #1 from new division is equal to the #1 in the older division (which probably have 1500 points over the other) isn't accurate.
Sure the new division will take about a month (just throwing a number on the top of my head) and will probably look alike any other division but to say that this is the case for each divisions......
Also... lets look at the fact that some division in phase 2 are pretty jacked like: Lurker Sigma and Argo Echo which are the 1st 2 divisions of SC2.... they are amasing. Saying that the #12 of this division is equal to any other #12 is... kinda asking for trouble no?
anyways I might be TOTALY wrong... but that's what I'm thinking
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Not to be an ass, but I'm not gonna read that much about a ranking system (I did dimly read it though, or this would just have been a bitchy comment). I've read a lot of the long articles about the ingame stuff and found it very interesting because it's quite complex, but a ranking system is not (should at least never be) complicated. Seriously, how can one write a wall like that to explain a point. It's not that interesting, especially considering you're writing statistics about a beta system.
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On July 13 2010 05:12 Konsume wrote:
Many many divisions gets created everyday... and saying that a #1 from new division is equal to the #1 in the older division (which probably have 1500 points over the other) isn't accurate.
I don't think he's saying that #1 in a division is equal to #1 in another division. I think he's saying that they are both in the top 1% of that league. So one may be better than the other.
Also, of course new divisions aren't going to be accurate. Just like ranking won't be accurate within the first few hours of release. It takes time for stuff like that to settle. If someone is consistently at the same rank for an extended period of time, then I'd say that's a pretty good indicator of where they are at.
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On July 13 2010 05:16 XsebT wrote:
Not to be an ass, but I'm not gonna read that much about a ranking system. I've read a lot of the long articles about the ingame stuff and found it very interesting because it's quite complex, but a ranking system is not (should at least never be) complicated. Seriously, how can one write a wall like that to explain a point, especially considering you're writing statistics about a beta system.
if you don't care, don't read of it.
the rest of us enjoyed it.
improve your posting
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I still loathe the current system. I don't care about my percentile. I want an actual rank =/
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On July 13 2010 05:10 Mindcrime wrote:
I don't see how rating isn't a better indicator of skill. More math please.
Did you actually read the post?
On July 13 2010 05:12 Konsume wrote:ok... wow... wall of text crit for over 9000 but was a pretty good read but I would like to ask you something, do you really think that in the long run #ranking will be better than #rating? Cause I doupt it. Many many divisions gets created everyday... and saying that a #1 from new division is equal to the #1 in the older division (which probably have 1500 points over the other) isn't accurate. Sure the new division will take about a month (just throwing a number on the top of my head) and will probably look alike any other division but to say that this is the case for each divisions...... Also... lets look at the fact that some division in phase 2 are pretty jacked like: Lurker Sigma and Argo Echo which are the 1st 2 divisions of SC2.... they are amasing. Saying that the #12 of this division is equal to any other #12 is... kinda asking for trouble no? anyways I might be TOTALY wrong... but that's what I'm thinking
I did address your first concern somewhere in that wall of text, and you're absolutely correct. A rank 1 from an old division might not equal a rank one from a new division, but over time, when that newer division is filled and has more players, they will be pretty close (percentile-wise). In regards to the stacked divisions, beta is beta is a beta beta beta. I can only hope that Blizzard will fix situations where a division has 20 top 1% players after the game is released.
I did add a caveat when I said division rank was a good indicator of skill - it takes time and a volume of games before ranks even out.
To sum, yes. I do think that division rank is a better indication of skill at a glance. Blizzard's intent with the division system is likely to make it easier to tell how well you're doing compared to to others in your league without having to do long division. I hope they'll release an online ladder with everyone that plays listed with ranks, though, just for completeness's sake.
On July 13 2010 05:11 spinesheath wrote:
Maybe it'll be enough for most leagues. But most likely not for top diamond. Players at the bottom of diamond can drop down and climb back up, hence shuffling the bottom of diamond. But the better diamond players will stay on top of their division. They can't be promoted (except for that pro league thing maybe but that'll be limited), and they won't be demoted. So the top of diamond will most likely end up quite static.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, that's the entire point of the division system. If the top of the diamond league is static, all that means is that those players are the best of the best. If it shuffles in the top, maybe someone pulling a Kolll just started playing sc2, which is a good thing since it reflects a change in who the top players in the league are.
On July 13 2010 05:21 Tsagacity wrote:
I still loathe the current system. I don't care about my percentile. I want an actual rank =/
I agree
i just think that divisions are a good way to tell your rank relative to those against whom you compete, moreso than global rank. They're both valuable statistics with totally different purposes.
On July 13 2010 05:16 XsebT wrote:
Not to be an ass, but I'm not gonna read that much about a ranking system (I did dimly read it though, or this would just have been a bitchy comment). I've read a lot of the long articles about the ingame stuff and found it very interesting because it's quite complex, but a ranking system is not (should at least never be) complicated. Seriously, how can one write a wall like that to explain a point. It's not that interesting, especially considering you're writing statistics about a beta system.
Okay.
On July 13 2010 05:17 ForKvatch wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:12 Konsume wrote:
Many many divisions gets created everyday... and saying that a #1 from new division is equal to the #1 in the older division (which probably have 1500 points over the other) isn't accurate.
I don't think he's saying that #1 in a division is equal to #1 in another division. I think he's saying that they are both in the top 1% of that league. So one may be better than the other. Also, of course new divisions aren't going to be accurate. Just like ranking won't be accurate within the first few hours of release. It takes time for stuff like that to settle. If someone is consistently at the same rank for an extended period of time, then I'd say that's a pretty good indicator of where they are at.
Exactly!
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is from people who likely don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Ah ok i understand you know it and the rest of the world dont. So you will explain it to us. THX!
To explain my next post, it was in response to someone
Oh and now you quote all anwers from other thread and make a new one with it. GREAT!
Sorry but when i reading the text i dont see someone who want to discuss over the system i see someone who wants to say his opinon and dont like other ones.
BTW: rating of player is not a sc2 problem. its not a e-sport problem. its an OLD OLD game problem. People think over this over 1000 years. And they found solutions. All solutions have some problems. I think the ELO system is one of the best. and dont really know why blizzard thinks it must come with a new system. they will NOT make a new system thats bedder than the 100 of systems mathematics work on for so long time....
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It was a hell of a long read but it has some good info.
This is all based around the leagues being up and running for a significant amount of time. A week or two isn't going to properly balance the system. However yes after a month or two we should see that the the the top ranked in their division will probably be in the top 1% of their league, assuming your not in a super low scoring league.
I would like a top 100 or 1000 ranked along with this system... and maybe just do away with the retarded names or numbers of divisions all together.
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On July 13 2010 05:17 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:16 XsebT wrote:
Not to be an ass, but I'm not gonna read that much about a ranking system. I've read a lot of the long articles about the ingame stuff and found it very interesting because it's quite complex, but a ranking system is not (should at least never be) complicated. Seriously, how can one write a wall like that to explain a point, especially considering you're writing statistics about a beta system. if you don't care, don't read of it. the rest of us enjoyed it. improve your posting
I disagree, he didn't need a huge wall of text to get the very basic point across (at least could have had a "too long didn't read" part). Either way I still fail to understand the point of the OP after reading the first half of the huge block... I'm at work so I don't have anything better to do (covering the receptionist for her lunch break so no actual work haha) so maybe I'll see his point in the latter half of it.
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On July 13 2010 05:22 skeldark wrote:Ah ok i understand you know it and the rest of the world dont. So you will explain it to us. THX! Oh and now you quote all anwers from other thread and make a new one with it. GREAT! Sorry but when i reading the text i dont see someone who want to discuss over the system i see someone who wants to say his opinon and dont like other ones. BTW: rating of player is not a sc2 problem. its not a e-sport problem. its an OLD OLD game problem. People think over this over 1000 years. And they found solutions. All solutions have some problems. I think the ELO system is one of the best. and dont really know why blizzard thinks it must come with a new system. they will NOT make a new system thats bedder than the 100 of systems mathematics work on for so long time....
It's not an opinion, it's math. I wasn't trying to sound like an asshole as you seem to think, though. The people in that thread really had no fucking clue what they were talking about.
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Even with a large amount of games played, this system is still flawed in some ways. For example, consider a diamond division that contains Flash, Jaedong, and IdrA. No matter how well these players play, they will not get promoted (unless they go into the pro league). That means if Flash is #1, then Jaedong is considered to be top 2%, which is a massive under-representation of his skill level. IdrA may be a few leagues behind those two in terms of skill, but compared to the world, he is well within the top 1% percentile, yet he is shown as #3. IdrA's ELO may very well be higher than most #1 players in other leagues, even if they are #1 for a long time.
I don't believe we even need a division system. The ICCUP system was perfect. All I need to know is someone's letter grade to determine their skill level.
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Maybe I missed it or misinterpret you post (I'm tired and skimmed through it), but let say I'm ranked 50 in gold, what does that tell me of my skill level in relation to the whole player base, from the top of diamond and bottom of bronze?
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It's not an opinion, it's math.
you mix math with opinion.
As more games are played, your rank will become a much more significant indicator of your overall skill level in comparison to your league.
Ok. i understand that you pissed of because people dont understand that most rating alg. need time... if it dont get bedder with time its a terrible system.
So your right that the people who think the system dont work after all players start by 0 dont really understand the problem of a ranking/rating system. When 90% are placed right the new 10% will placed bedder. its hard/impossible to place all 100% right at beginning.
Sure blizz dont come out with a terrible system. My Problem is thes diamond gold think.
they said they make it because they want you to have direct oponents.
but this screw with the math a little bit and this is the problem.
A rating for all system is bedder mathematical but you have the problem that the people top and under you are switching all the time by 100k players.
I suggest elo system. this system also starts with wrong placement but you see faster results.
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On July 13 2010 05:17 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:16 XsebT wrote:
Not to be an ass, but I'm not gonna read that much about a ranking system (I did dimly read it though, or this would just have been a bitchy comment). I've read a lot of the long articles about the ingame stuff and found it very interesting because it's quite complex, but a ranking system is not (should at least never be) complicated. Seriously, how can one write a wall like that to explain a point. It's not that interesting, especially considering you're writing statistics about a beta system. if you don't care, don't read of it. the rest of us enjoyed it. improve your posting
I care a lot about the division/ladder system, as I find it utterly important for the achievement-aspect of the game. However, I want your points to be straightforward and at the very least not more complicated than the actual system you're talking about.
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This post was not intended to say that the division system isn't flawed or anything like that, just that it's a pretty good indicator of the skill level of most of the population of the game. There are improvements that can be made.
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Isn't blizzad's ELO constantly inflating because of bonus points? If so using their ELO to determine how good someone is seems like and awful idea. A 1000+ diamond player from 2 weeks ago will be equivalent to at 1500+ diamond player today.
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On July 13 2010 05:31 XsebT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:17 Mora wrote:On July 13 2010 05:16 XsebT wrote:
Not to be an ass, but I'm not gonna read that much about a ranking system (I did dimly read it though, or this would just have been a bitchy comment). I've read a lot of the long articles about the ingame stuff and found it very interesting because it's quite complex, but a ranking system is not (should at least never be) complicated. Seriously, how can one write a wall like that to explain a point. It's not that interesting, especially considering you're writing statistics about a beta system. if you don't care, don't read of it. the rest of us enjoyed it. improve your posting I care a lot about the division/ladder system, as I find it utterly important for the achievement-aspect of the game. However, I want your points to be straightforward and at the very least not more complicated than the actual system you're talking about.
There is a difference between lengthy and complicated. If you take the time to read the post I'm sure it will be quite clear.
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It is all relative, if you are ranked anywhere between rank 100 in Bronze and rank 3 in diamond the division system is perfect and for any competitive player it should be all the comparative data you need to judge your relative skill.
But if you are rank 1-5 in diamond then the system is useless. Because then you are among the top 1% of the people playing the game. I say 1-5 instead of just rank 1 because the top five in division A might all be better than the first player in division B so there is some grayzone but even if it is precise.
No matter what though as soon as you are ranked 1 in your division then you can't actually climb any further. If there are 500 divisions then you will have to settle with being one of the top five hundred players on your region. But that number is just retarded for anyone who plays competitive games. For example, in League of Legends the top 300 players are listed on the forums each month. The lowest positions is higher than what you can assume being ranked 1 in a diamond division.
But since the division system will be great for 99.9% of people playing then all that is needed is some slight additions to give the top 500 players a chance to see if they are in fact the fifth best player or the five hundredth.
Easiest possible solution to implement would just be that once you reach fifth or higher in diamond, your global rank will appear next to your name as well, based on comparing elo between all top 5 players in all regions. If you are ranked lower than fifth then you have little reason to see your global rank because you are not even topping your own local division.
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On July 13 2010 05:32 Issorlol wrote:
This post was not intended to say that the division system isn't flawed or anything like that, just that it's a pretty good indicator of the skill level of most of the population of the game. There are improvements that can be made.
Flawless. Why didn't you write that in the OP? 
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What happens if for some reason say Idra and TLO are both placed in the same platinum division. They both should be rank 1, but obviously 1 will be higher than the other. so one of them now looks like he is in only the top 2%.
If I understand the OP right then in this case we should look at their points, wouldn't it be better if instead it moved TLO to a separate division so both are now listed as rank 1??
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On July 13 2010 05:33 Toids wrote:
Isn't blizzad's ELO constantly inflating because of bonus points? If so using their ELO to determine how good someone is seems like and awful idea. A 1000+ diamond player from 2 weeks ago will will be equivalent to at 1500+ diamond player today.
The hidden rating used to determine matchmaking is not the same as the rating visible to all players (the rating actually affected by the bonus pool, that is).
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On July 13 2010 05:33 Toids wrote:
Isn't blizzad's ELO constantly inflating because of bonus points? If so using their ELO to determine how good someone is seems like and awful idea. A 1000+ diamond player from 2 weeks ago will will be equivalent to at 1500+ diamond player today.
yes. thats the elo problem.its infalting.
BUT over years!
its hard to compare a chess player at 1920 with one of today.
But over 1 or 10 year its totaly ok!
Chess runs elo long time with only few problems. but there are discussion over bedder systems.
you could take one of them.
I DONT KNOW THE ALG behind your Nummber. Perhaps this nummber dont mess with the liga.
And this number is a good indicator over time. I dont know lets see
BUT THE FACT thats it is rasing is the problem.
More games = higher nummber is no good system over time.
in elo everyone starts at 1500 and get down and up with the games.
if you start you see a very good rating after 10 games!
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On July 13 2010 05:34 XsebT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:32 Issorlol wrote:
This post was not intended to say that the division system isn't flawed or anything like that, just that it's a pretty good indicator of the skill level of most of the population of the game. There are improvements that can be made. Flawless. Why didn't you write that in the OP?
I think I did :<
On July 13 2010 05:34 rastaban wrote:
What happens if for some reason say Idra and TLO are both placed in the same platinum division. They both should be rank 1, but obviously 1 will be higher than the other. so one of them now looks like he is in only the top 2%.
If I understand the OP right then in this case we should look at their points, wouldn't it be better if instead it moved TLO to a separate division so both are now listed as rank 1??
Yes, moving them to different divisions would be ideal, but in the current system rating is then the only reference we have to compare skill. Again, it's not perfect but it is certainly not the WORST IDEA EVER OMG as some seem to think.
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On July 13 2010 05:33 VanGarde wrote:
It is all relative, if you are ranked anywhere between rank 100 in Bronze and rank 3 in diamond the division system is perfect and for any competitive player it should be all the comparative data you need to judge your relative skill.
But if you are rank 1-5 in diamond then the system is useless. Because then you are among the top 1% of the people playing the game. I say 1-5 instead of just rank 1 because the top five in division A might all be better than the first player in division B so there is some grayzone but even if it is precise.
No matter what though as soon as you are ranked 1 in your division then you can't actually climb any further. If there are 500 divisions then you will have to settle with being one of the top five hundred players on your region. But that number is just retarded for anyone who plays competitive games. For example, in League of Legends the top 300 players are listed on the forums each month. The lowest positions is higher than what you can assume being ranked 1 in a diamond division.
But since the division system will be great for 99.9% of people playing then all that is needed is some slight additions to give the top 500 players a chance to see if they are in fact the fifth best player or the five hundredth.
Easiest possible solution to implement would just be that once you reach fifth or higher in diamond, your global rank will appear next to your name as well, based on comparing elo between all top 5 players in all regions. If you are ranked lower than fifth then you have little reason to see your global rank because you are not even topping your own local division.
I agree with most of what you've posted, however comparing between regions makes the overall rank useless since the top players in the world aren't playing against each other since the matchmaking is region-based.
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On July 13 2010 05:35 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:34 XsebT wrote:On July 13 2010 05:32 Issorlol wrote:
This post was not intended to say that the division system isn't flawed or anything like that, just that it's a pretty good indicator of the skill level of most of the population of the game. There are improvements that can be made. Flawless. Why didn't you write that in the OP? I think I did :< Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:34 rastaban wrote:
What happens if for some reason say Idra and TLO are both placed in the same platinum division. They both should be rank 1, but obviously 1 will be higher than the other. so one of them now looks like he is in only the top 2%.
If I understand the OP right then in this case we should look at their points, wouldn't it be better if instead it moved TLO to a separate division so both are now listed as rank 1??
Yes, moving them to different divisions would be ideal, but in the current system rating is then the only reference we have to compare skill. Again, it's not perfect but it is certainly not the WORST IDEA EVER OMG as some seem to think.
Thanks, I agree and just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious. I think in 99%+ cases that won't be an issue. also thanks for posting the op, it gave me a much better understanding of how the system would work.
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On July 13 2010 05:21 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:11 spinesheath wrote:
Maybe it'll be enough for most leagues. But most likely not for top diamond. Players at the bottom of diamond can drop down and climb back up, hence shuffling the bottom of diamond. But the better diamond players will stay on top of their division. They can't be promoted (except for that pro league thing maybe but that'll be limited), and they won't be demoted. So the top of diamond will most likely end up quite static. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, that's the entire point of the division system. If the top of the diamond league is static, all that means is that those players are the best of the best. If it shuffles in the top, maybe someone pulling a Kolll just started playing sc2, which is a good thing since it reflects a change in who the top players in the league are.
The thing is this: assume that most of the top players get into diamond quickly, and thus clump up in the the first divisions created. Then as more players enter diamond over time, there will be new divisions and thus new people claiming #1 spots. Those may or may not be top 1% of diamond. Their ranks definitely won't tell you anything about that.
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I don't understand how "over time," means much if you don't move around in your division. If I'm placed in upsilon sigma tau or whatever, I'm stuck with those 100 people. Because 100 is a relatively low number relative to the population, it is likely many people are going to suffer from a variety of skill within their own division. Maybe if division size was ~1,500-2,000 you'd have a more valid point. But as it stands, players could get placed in a shitty division and make it to rank 1 relatively easily, while they might only be rank ~25 elsewhere in another division. That rank 1 person could not even compare to the other rank 1 people elsewhere in the beta. And the same situation can happen in reverse. The more divisions you have, the more this discrepancy will occur. Without any division system you have no discrepancy - you are where you should be.
At an extreme, imagine each division had only 2 players. If you were constantly ranked 2 in that division, would that be enough data to reliably say you're in the bottom 50%? Most likely not. Although 100 would seem like it's a large enough originally to separate people, given the total number of people in your league (especially at the silver/gold/plat levels), more and more outliers are going to happen. Yes, while the "general" population we could say would be roughly where they should be (still, 100 is NOT a very large indicator in this case), the amount of outliers would be enough that it wouldn't be an amazing indicator.
So I have no idea why you suggest that this division system is better than a straight ladder system - which I would very much prefer. I have no problem seeing I'm ranked 13,500 if I know that's still within the top 10% because it gives a total 13,500/150,000 for the Diamond league, etc. That gives you a much more defined rank on where you stand.
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On July 13 2010 05:37 rastaban wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:35 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 05:34 XsebT wrote:On July 13 2010 05:32 Issorlol wrote:
This post was not intended to say that the division system isn't flawed or anything like that, just that it's a pretty good indicator of the skill level of most of the population of the game. There are improvements that can be made. Flawless. Why didn't you write that in the OP? I think I did :< On July 13 2010 05:34 rastaban wrote:
What happens if for some reason say Idra and TLO are both placed in the same platinum division. They both should be rank 1, but obviously 1 will be higher than the other. so one of them now looks like he is in only the top 2%.
If I understand the OP right then in this case we should look at their points, wouldn't it be better if instead it moved TLO to a separate division so both are now listed as rank 1??
Yes, moving them to different divisions would be ideal, but in the current system rating is then the only reference we have to compare skill. Again, it's not perfect but it is certainly not the WORST IDEA EVER OMG as some seem to think. Thanks, I agree and just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious. I think in 99%+ cases that won't be an issue. also thanks for posting the op, it gave me a much better understanding of how the system would work.
That was what I was hoping for when I posted it! Thanks for reading.
On July 13 2010 05:38 spinesheath wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:21 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 05:11 spinesheath wrote:
Maybe it'll be enough for most leagues. But most likely not for top diamond. Players at the bottom of diamond can drop down and climb back up, hence shuffling the bottom of diamond. But the better diamond players will stay on top of their division. They can't be promoted (except for that pro league thing maybe but that'll be limited), and they won't be demoted. So the top of diamond will most likely end up quite static. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, that's the entire point of the division system. If the top of the diamond league is static, all that means is that those players are the best of the best. If it shuffles in the top, maybe someone pulling a Kolll just started playing sc2, which is a good thing since it reflects a change in who the top players in the league are. The thing is this: assume that most of the top players get into diamond quickly, and thus clump up in the the first divisions created. Then as more players enter diamond over time, there will be new divisions and thus new people claiming #1 spots. Those may or may not be top 1% of diamond. Their ranks definitely won't tell you anything about that.
Yeah, this is an issue with the current system. I can guarantee you they're discussing this at Blizzard and, hopefully, will implement a system to fix things like that.
On July 13 2010 05:40 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand how "over time," means much if you don't move around in your division. If I'm placed in upsilon sigma tau or whatever, I'm stuck with those 100 people. Because 100 is a relatively low number relative to the population, it is likely many people are going to suffer from a variety of skill within their own division. Maybe if division size was ~1,500-2,000 you'd have a more valid point. But as it stands, players could get placed in a shitty division and make it to rank 1 relatively easily, while they might only be rank ~25 elsewhere in another division. That rank 1 person could not even compare to the other rank 1 people elsewhere in the beta. And the same situation can happen in reverse. The more divisions you have, the more this discrepancy will occur. Without any division system you have no discrepancy - you are where you should be.
At an extreme, imagine each division had only 2 players. If you were constantly ranked 2 in that division, would that be enough data to reliably say you're in the bottom 50%? Most likely not. Although 100 would seem like it's a large enough originally to separate people, given the total number of people in your league (especially at the silver/gold/plat levels), more and more outliers are going to happen. Yes, while the "general" population we could say would be roughly where they should be (still, 100 is NOT a very large indicator in this case), the amount of outliers would be enough that it wouldn't be an amazing indicator.
So I have no idea why you suggest that this division system is better than a straight ladder system - which I would very much prefer. I have no problem seeing I'm ranked 13,500 if I know that's still within the top 10% because it gives a total 13,500/150,000 for the Diamond league, etc. That gives you a much more defined rank on where you stand.
100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate.
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I do like the system. It's really good for everyone except the absolute top-tier players. Who cares if they are 10453th rank or 10236th. A percentile indication is really good here.
On the other hand, there is not really any good system for who is the absolute best player anyway. Elo kinda works but isn't perfect either. When you are a top-tier player tournaments and stuff like that is the important thing do figure out your standing.
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On July 13 2010 05:43 Keniji wrote:
I do like the system. It's really good for everyone except the absolute top-tier players. Who cares if they are 10453th rank or 10236th. A percentile indication is really good here.
On the other hand, there is not really any good system for who is the absolute best player anyway. Elo kinda works but isn't perfect either. When you are a top-tier player tournaments and stuff like that is the important thing do figure out your standing.
Pretty much this exactly. Any system I can think of that would work for the majority of players wouldn't work for the small minority who are world-class.
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its not as good as 1 big ladder. from what I understand, you're saying that over time someone's rank will correspond to their spot in the overall playing population such as rank 15 means you're in the 15th best percentile of the population. but if it was 1 big ladder that would mean that you can see what you rank is there and then divide to get a percentage right there. and you're not guestimating, it's your real rank.
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I admit I haven't read it all, but I fail to understand why the division system need so much math and talk. In the end all the players care about is if they are pleased with being only 100 in their little ladder ranking.
In my opinion it isn't the division system that is the problem but the fact that there is only one ranking. The division are really good for low and average players because being ranked 10404th doesnt mean anything. But for the good players it IS important to have an overall ranking. Having two ranking, the actual one in the division and say, another like warcraft III's one, where you can check your overall ranking (maybe by league or by rating), would be ideal.
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You're right in basically everything you said.
However, two points:
1) The main problem people have is that (to some degree now and definitely in the forseeable future) there's a severe ceiling effect for the #1 slots. If the game reaches say a million players in any given region (which is an extremely conservative estimate), and if we are to assume diamond is the top 5% then you have 50,000 people in diamond. If we're to assume 1%, then we will have 10,000 people in diamond. Now divide by a 100 and you have one or five hundred people wondering where they place relative to those other 100-500. For most everyone else, it's basically the same as a percentile, but it would be nice to know how many diamond leagues there are.
2) Without a lurking variable (maybe early playtime/qualifying time? Was that the first diamond league?) http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=135691 the chances of those players all ending up in that bracket seem extremely low to me. It's possible they did some sort of "tier" within diamond. I'd also like to point out that the top 1 person in my league point wise would rank in at #9 in that league and that our #2 person wouldn't even make that top 12 list by a longshot (325 points)
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Although I am not top-tier, personally I would like to know my specific ranking in all the players that play... I would rather be 10236 than 10237 / rank 5 in one league of 100s or something.. Anyway.. right now I am around rank 4 platinum and the ranking seems pretty accurate overall to me.. Although I was in diamond in phase 1 and I am way better now than I was back then so its confusing why I am not at least like rank 80 or something in diamond..
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On July 13 2010 05:49 Ideas wrote:
its not as good as 1 big ladder. from what I understand, you're saying that over time someone's rank will correspond to their spot in the overall playing population such as rank 15 means you're in the 15th best percentile of the population. but if it was 1 big ladder that would mean that you can see what you rank is there and then divide to get a percentage right there. and you're not guestimating, it's your real rank.
The point of the system is to be easy to decipher at a glance, without doing math.
On July 13 2010 05:54 Roggay wrote:
I admit I haven't read it all, but I fail to understand why the division system need so much math and talk. In the end all the players care about is if they are pleased with being only 100 in their little ladder ranking.
In my opinion it isn't the division system that is the problem but the fact that there is only one ranking. The division are really good for low and average players because being ranked 10404th doesnt mean anything. But for the good players it IS important to have an overall ranking. Having two ranking, the actual one in the division and say, another like warcraft III's one, where you can check your overall ranking (maybe by league or by rating), would be ideal.
It needs math because it is math. The division system is based on a sample size of 100 of your league (which is a perfectly reasonable size for a sample) which allows a player to easily figure out how he's doing in his league in terms of percentile. I think a website will probably be set up with global/region-based xxxxx/yyyyyyy rankings but such a system is not what blizzard will implement in-game, I'd bet on it.
On July 13 2010 05:55 Andtwo wrote:You're right in basically everything you said. However, two points: 1) The main problem people have is that (to some degree now and definitely in the forseeable future) there's a severe ceiling effect for the #1 slots. If the game reaches say a million players in any given region (which is an extremely conservative estimate), and if we are to assume diamond is the top 5% then you have 50,000 people in diamond. If we're to assume 1%, then we will have 10,000 people in diamond. Now divide by a 100 and you have one or five hundred people wondering where they place relative to those other 100-500. For most everyone else, it's basically the same as a percentile, but it would be nice to know how many diamond leagues there are. 2) Without a lurking variable (maybe early playtime/qualifying time? Was that the first diamond league?) http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=135691 the chances of those players all ending up in that bracket seem extremely low to me. It's possible they did some sort of "tier" within diamond. I'd also like to point out that the top 1 person in my league point wise would rank in at #9 in that league and that our #2 person wouldn't even make that top 12 list by a longshot (325 points)
Yeah this is an issue. I don't think blizzard would purposefully group up all the best players in one division (that would completely defeat the purpose of divisions in that it makes it impossible to determine percentile based rankings with such a pool of talent in one division) but I hope that they'll implement a system to guarantee something like that doesn't happen. To address the first point, that is an issue, yes, but for a vast, vast majority of players the system works very well. I hope they do make it so that the top 5 in diamond don't have to "guess" at their rank, but we'll have to see if that happens in the future.
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On July 13 2010 05:41 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:40 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand how "over time," means much if you don't move around in your division. If I'm placed in upsilon sigma tau or whatever, I'm stuck with those 100 people. Because 100 is a relatively low number relative to the population, it is likely many people are going to suffer from a variety of skill within their own division. Maybe if division size was ~1,500-2,000 you'd have a more valid point. But as it stands, players could get placed in a shitty division and make it to rank 1 relatively easily, while they might only be rank ~25 elsewhere in another division. That rank 1 person could not even compare to the other rank 1 people elsewhere in the beta. And the same situation can happen in reverse. The more divisions you have, the more this discrepancy will occur. Without any division system you have no discrepancy - you are where you should be.
At an extreme, imagine each division had only 2 players. If you were constantly ranked 2 in that division, would that be enough data to reliably say you're in the bottom 50%? Most likely not. Although 100 would seem like it's a large enough originally to separate people, given the total number of people in your league (especially at the silver/gold/plat levels), more and more outliers are going to happen. Yes, while the "general" population we could say would be roughly where they should be (still, 100 is NOT a very large indicator in this case), the amount of outliers would be enough that it wouldn't be an amazing indicator.
So I have no idea why you suggest that this division system is better than a straight ladder system - which I would very much prefer. I have no problem seeing I'm ranked 13,500 if I know that's still within the top 10% because it gives a total 13,500/150,000 for the Diamond league, etc. That gives you a much more defined rank on where you stand. 100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate.
If it's a really large population, then there will be even more outliers (yes I'm aware there may be the same percentage of outliers and thus you'd encounter them around the same frequency) but to have so many outliers has little to no advantage over a global system which lets you know exactly where you're at.
When the game is released we can expect the userbase to absolutely EXPLODE. I just feel 100 users is far too small of a division size if you want to accurately say you're around that percent. "over time" won't fix that your division skill could be different than anothers, it only fixes where you are within your own division.
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Rank means nothing. Rating is everything. My current rating is like 140 Diamond. That puts me at rank 40 or so in my division. In my friend's division, that exact same rating puts me at rank 80. At various points in the beta, I could have been anywhere from lower 50s to top 10 with the exact same rating. What that essentially tells me is that ranking is worthless while rating is everything. Saying that you are #7 in Dropship Uncle means nothing because there is no reference point. You could have a rating of 400 to be #7, while in Omega Infestation, that rating puts you in the low 30s.
In fact, I'd argue that win: loss: rating ratio matters far more. Being rated 400 with a win:loss ratio of 2:1 is far more impressive than a 400 with a .9:1 ratio. I'd put rank only slightly above what league you placed into as a superficial determinant of skill.
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All I know is that I'm tired of being 500+ rated in gold and going 70%w/l against non-stop 300+ diamond players. I would prefer if it was just like iccup or had some kind of global ranking. The problem with the ratings is that unless you are in diamond you have no point at which to base what your rating means.
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100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate.
Acceptable doesn't mean optimal. You make some good points, but to be honest I don't understand why you are fighting so hard for this system. After the change from division numbers into names it became quite obvious that blizzard is intentionally trying to create ambiguity not for the average casual gamer, but to for the hardcore community who were putting a fair amount of effort into creating an accurate way to rank players among regions. Why defend something that goes out of its way to remain unreliable. Sure it might work out to be an ok reference, but it will never be an optimal reference.
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On July 13 2010 05:21 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:10 Mindcrime wrote:
I don't see how rating isn't a better indicator of skill. More math please.
Did you actually read the post?
I certainly did. In order for this "#1 diamond = top 1% of diamond players" reasoning to work, there needs to be not only similarity between divisions, but near-parity. Everyone has to deal with the same rating system and matchmaking system, but some people will have the luxury of being compared against a division in which the majority of players are below the mean skill level in a league.
Sure, I'll accept that ranking may become a better indicator of skill than it is now, but rating will always be better.
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On July 13 2010 05:59 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:41 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 05:40 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand how "over time," means much if you don't move around in your division. If I'm placed in upsilon sigma tau or whatever, I'm stuck with those 100 people. Because 100 is a relatively low number relative to the population, it is likely many people are going to suffer from a variety of skill within their own division. Maybe if division size was ~1,500-2,000 you'd have a more valid point. But as it stands, players could get placed in a shitty division and make it to rank 1 relatively easily, while they might only be rank ~25 elsewhere in another division. That rank 1 person could not even compare to the other rank 1 people elsewhere in the beta. And the same situation can happen in reverse. The more divisions you have, the more this discrepancy will occur. Without any division system you have no discrepancy - you are where you should be.
At an extreme, imagine each division had only 2 players. If you were constantly ranked 2 in that division, would that be enough data to reliably say you're in the bottom 50%? Most likely not. Although 100 would seem like it's a large enough originally to separate people, given the total number of people in your league (especially at the silver/gold/plat levels), more and more outliers are going to happen. Yes, while the "general" population we could say would be roughly where they should be (still, 100 is NOT a very large indicator in this case), the amount of outliers would be enough that it wouldn't be an amazing indicator.
So I have no idea why you suggest that this division system is better than a straight ladder system - which I would very much prefer. I have no problem seeing I'm ranked 13,500 if I know that's still within the top 10% because it gives a total 13,500/150,000 for the Diamond league, etc. That gives you a much more defined rank on where you stand. 100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate. If it's a really large population, then there will be even more outliers (yes I'm aware there may be the same percentage of outliers and thus you'd encounter them around the same frequency) but to have so many outliers has little to no advantage over a global system which lets you know exactly where you're at. When the game is released we can expect the userbase to absolutely EXPLODE. I just feel 100 users is far too small of a division size if you want to accurately say you're around that percent. "over time" won't fix that your division skill could be different than anothers, it only fixes where you are within your own division.
I understand what you're saying, and you are correct, but the difference in accuracy with the division system if the divisions were ten times larger than they are now is really not all that large. If the divisions were ten people, you would have a very valid point and my post wouldn't be defending the division system at all, but with 100 people you have a nice number (your rank) to determine your percentile (again, your rank). It has flaws, yeah, but they're not as large as you think they are.
On July 13 2010 06:00 Wr3k wrote:
All I know is that I'm tired of being 500+ rated in gold and going 70%w/l against non-stop 300+ diamond players. I would prefer if it was just like iccup or had some kind of global ranking. The problem with the ratings is that unless you are in diamond you have no point at which to base what your rating means.
If you never faced people out of your league, you would never be promoted.
On July 13 2010 06:00 0mar wrote:
Rank means nothing. Rating is everything. My current rating is like 140 Diamond. That puts me at rank 40 or so in my division. In my friend's division, that exact same rating puts me at rank 80. At various points in the beta, I could have been anywhere from lower 50s to top 10 with the exact same rating. What that essentially tells me is that ranking is worthless while rating is everything. Saying that you are #7 in Dropship Uncle means nothing because there is no reference point. You could have a rating of 400 to be #7, while in Omega Infestation, that rating puts you in the low 30s.
In fact, I'd argue that win: loss: rating ratio matters far more. Being rated 400 with a win:loss ratio of 2:1 is far more impressive than a 400 with a .9:1 ratio. I'd put rank only slightly above what league you placed into as a superficial determinant of skill.
Did you read my post? "Rank means nothing" is an absolutely incorrect statement. Rank means this: Your percentile-based rank in your league given a volume of games and a period of time lengthy enough for you to stop shuffling around leagues. This is not nothing. The ONLY TIME the division system is inaccurate in this regard under those conditions is in the very top of the diamond league.
On July 13 2010 06:01 Toids wrote:Show nested quote +
100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate.
Acceptable doesn't mean optimal. You make some good points, but to be honest I don't understand why you are fighting so hard for this system. After the change from division numbers into names it became quite obvious that blizzard is intentionally trying to create ambiguity not for the average casual gamer, but to for the hardcore community who were putting a fair amount of effort into creating an accurate way to rank players among regions. Why defend something that goes out of its way to remain unreliable. Sure it might work out to be an ok reference, but it will never be an optimal reference.
It's not that I'm "fighting" for the system as much as I'm trying to point out that it's not the worst thing in the world. Blizzard's intent behind the division name change, by the way, was the make it perfectly clear that divisions were NOT ranked based on their numbers.
On July 13 2010 06:01 Mindcrime wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:21 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 05:10 Mindcrime wrote:
I don't see how rating isn't a better indicator of skill. More math please.
Did you actually read the post? I certainly did. In order for this "#1 diamond = top 1% of diamond players" reasoning to work, there needs to be not only similarity between divisions, but near- parity. Everyone has to deal with the same rating system and matchmaking system, but some people will have the luxury of being compared against a division in which the majority of players are below the mean skill level in a league. Sure, I'll accept that ranking may become a better indicator of skill than it is now, but rating will always be better.
I completely agree.
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On July 13 2010 05:59 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:41 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 05:40 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand how "over time," means much if you don't move around in your division. If I'm placed in upsilon sigma tau or whatever, I'm stuck with those 100 people. Because 100 is a relatively low number relative to the population, it is likely many people are going to suffer from a variety of skill within their own division. Maybe if division size was ~1,500-2,000 you'd have a more valid point. But as it stands, players could get placed in a shitty division and make it to rank 1 relatively easily, while they might only be rank ~25 elsewhere in another division. That rank 1 person could not even compare to the other rank 1 people elsewhere in the beta. And the same situation can happen in reverse. The more divisions you have, the more this discrepancy will occur. Without any division system you have no discrepancy - you are where you should be.
At an extreme, imagine each division had only 2 players. If you were constantly ranked 2 in that division, would that be enough data to reliably say you're in the bottom 50%? Most likely not. Although 100 would seem like it's a large enough originally to separate people, given the total number of people in your league (especially at the silver/gold/plat levels), more and more outliers are going to happen. Yes, while the "general" population we could say would be roughly where they should be (still, 100 is NOT a very large indicator in this case), the amount of outliers would be enough that it wouldn't be an amazing indicator.
So I have no idea why you suggest that this division system is better than a straight ladder system - which I would very much prefer. I have no problem seeing I'm ranked 13,500 if I know that's still within the top 10% because it gives a total 13,500/150,000 for the Diamond league, etc. That gives you a much more defined rank on where you stand. 100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate. If it's a really large population, then there will be even more outliers (yes I'm aware there may be the same percentage of outliers and thus you'd encounter them around the same frequency) but to have so many outliers has little to no advantage over a global system which lets you know exactly where you're at. When the game is released we can expect the userbase to absolutely EXPLODE. I just feel 100 users is far too small of a division size if you want to accurately say you're around that percent. "over time" won't fix that your division skill could be different than anothers, it only fixes where you are within your own division.
100 sample size is actually pretty gigantic statistically speaking. What you'd be concerned about is more how people place because then the distribution is not really random. Once the population explosion has happened, people will quit and the original leagues will have the more practiced players which is going to skew things. I really don't think it matters except for diamond league though.
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Technically, a single ladder where everyone is in the same boat and just using a straight elo rating is the best indicator of where you lie in terms of skill. Just calling out your phrasing really.
I like the league/division system, although I'd agree that a universal rating viewer would be a good asset to have, so players who care could see where they rate. Maybe if they implemented it for diamond only, as plat and below it wouldn't really matter anyway, as they're bound to be past the first 1,000 ranks
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On July 13 2010 05:35 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:34 rastaban wrote:
What happens if for some reason say Idra and TLO are both placed in the same platinum division. They both should be rank 1, but obviously 1 will be higher than the other. so one of them now looks like he is in only the top 2%.
If I understand the OP right then in this case we should look at their points, wouldn't it be better if instead it moved TLO to a separate division so both are now listed as rank 1??
Yes, moving them to different divisions would be ideal, but in the current system rating is then the only reference we have to compare skill. Again, it's not perfect but it is certainly not the WORST IDEA EVER OMG as some seem to think.
Which is why your rating/points is still more important than your rank. You can be tenth in your diamond league and still be better/ a higher percentile than someone who's ranked number 1 in a different diamond league. You may just be in a stacked league, with more players who are better.
And PLEASE don't say "Oh it's simple math." It's not simple math. I know you're not saying it's perfect, but claiming that rank = percentile (even "in general") is completely wrong, which is why we keep asking for rating over rank on TeamLiquid when we're evaluating how good people are.
~An actual mathematician
(Most of your post was good though, so it was worth the read.)
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On July 13 2010 06:09 Stropheum wrote:
Technically, a single ladder where everyone is in the same boat and just using a straight elo rating is the best indicator of where you lie in terms of skill. Just calling out your phrasing really.
I like the league/division system, although I'd agree that a universal rating viewer would be a good asset to have, so players who care could see where they rate. Maybe if they implemented it for diamond only, as plat and below it wouldn't really matter anyway, as they're bound to be past the first 1,000 ranks
Yeah my phrasing at points is pretty bad. Thanks for pointing out my flaws .______.
But yeah, thanks for taking the time to read the post and for the input :3
On July 13 2010 06:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And PLEASE don't say "Oh it's simple math." It's not simple math. I know you're not saying it's perfect, but claiming that rank = percentile ("in general") is completely wrong, which is why we keep asking for rating over rank on TeamLiquid.
~An actual mathematician
(Most of your post was good though, so it was worth the read.)
Not trying to be a smart-ass here, genuinely - can you explain this? The depth of my stastics knowledge is... AP stats. -_-
~An incoming freshman math major
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From my observations on TL what the division system has done very well is convince a large number of pretty useless people that they are actually good at the game.
This is a great thing. People feeling good about themselves (I'm in DiamondYeah!) -> people playing a lot -> longer lasting and more popular game.
Unfortunately I played BW so I already KNOW that I suck. Reality sucks :p
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On July 13 2010 06:13 Klive5ive wrote:
From my observations on TL what the division system has done very well is convince a large number of pretty useless people that they are actually good at the game.
This is a great thing. People feeling good about themselves (I'm in DiamondYeah!) -> people playing a lot -> longer lasting and more popular game.
Unfortunately I played BW so I already KNOW that I suck. Reality sucks :p
Sadly I kinda agree with that.
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My friend is good enough to be #1 for the entire US server, how does being #1 in diamond even reflect his skill? He like 4-1'd whitera when EU servers were down
being in top 1% of diamond is not an achievement
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Very simple here. There will be a pro-league that does not use division a month or two after launch as Blizzard has stated before. Pros/high-level players need not worry soon enough you will be able to see what you want and that is an accurate ranking amongst all your peers
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On July 13 2010 06:11 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And PLEASE don't say "Oh it's simple math." It's not simple math. I know you're not saying it's perfect, but claiming that rank = percentile ("in general") is completely wrong, which is why we keep asking for rating over rank on TeamLiquid.
~An actual mathematician
(Most of your post was good though, so it was worth the read.) Not trying to be a smart-ass here, genuinely - can you explain this? The depth of my stastics knowledge is... AP stats. -_- ~An incoming freshman math major
Sure, no problem.
Since some divisions may be stacked (which was talked about), it's incorrect to assume that every division's third place is truly in the top 3% of their respective leagues. Therefore, you can't apply percentile rank unless every single player of a specific league (like diamond league) was on the same single ladder. Since there are so many different ladders with different players (and therefore different ability levels), you can't properly apply one sweeping percentile rank to apply to all of them.
When you apply percentile rank to something like a standardized test, it's because every single student in the country took the EXACT same test (not different "divisions" of "similar" tests). All the same questions (like all the same players), not different kinds of questions or groups of players.
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On July 13 2010 06:16 iopq wrote:
My friend is good enough to be #1 for the entire US server, how does being #1 in diamond even reflect his skill? He like 4-1'd whitera when EU servers were down
being in top 1% of diamond is not an achievement
I take it you read some of the first post, none of the responses, and then posted this?
On July 13 2010 06:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:11 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And PLEASE don't say "Oh it's simple math." It's not simple math. I know you're not saying it's perfect, but claiming that rank = percentile ("in general") is completely wrong, which is why we keep asking for rating over rank on TeamLiquid.
~An actual mathematician
(Most of your post was good though, so it was worth the read.) Not trying to be a smart-ass here, genuinely - can you explain this? The depth of my stastics knowledge is... AP stats. -_- ~An incoming freshman math major Sure, no problem. Since some divisions may be stacked (which was talked about), it's incorrect to assume that every division's third place is truly in the top 3% of their respective leagues. Therefore, you can't apply percentile rank unless every single player of a specific league (like diamond league) was on the same single ladder. Since there are so many different ladders with different players (and therefore different ability levels), you can't properly apply one sweeping percentile rank to apply to all of them. When you apply percentile rank to something like a standardized test, it's because every single student in the country took the EXACT same test (not different "divisions" of "similar" tests).
Oh okay, yeah, thanks. I can see now I definitely could have talked about the percentiles and ranks in such in a much clearer (more correct :x) way. I think this will be less of an issue, though, if blizzard ensures that divisions aren't stacked in the future. I don't see why they won't do this, since otherwise there is literally no reason to use divisions and I doubt blizzard would invest time into creating divisions just to nullify them because of weird placement. It won't be exact, but it will be pretty close. I don't have much of an issue with that.
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On July 13 2010 06:08 Andtwo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:59 FabledIntegral wrote:On July 13 2010 05:41 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 05:40 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand how "over time," means much if you don't move around in your division. If I'm placed in upsilon sigma tau or whatever, I'm stuck with those 100 people. Because 100 is a relatively low number relative to the population, it is likely many people are going to suffer from a variety of skill within their own division. Maybe if division size was ~1,500-2,000 you'd have a more valid point. But as it stands, players could get placed in a shitty division and make it to rank 1 relatively easily, while they might only be rank ~25 elsewhere in another division. That rank 1 person could not even compare to the other rank 1 people elsewhere in the beta. And the same situation can happen in reverse. The more divisions you have, the more this discrepancy will occur. Without any division system you have no discrepancy - you are where you should be.
At an extreme, imagine each division had only 2 players. If you were constantly ranked 2 in that division, would that be enough data to reliably say you're in the bottom 50%? Most likely not. Although 100 would seem like it's a large enough originally to separate people, given the total number of people in your league (especially at the silver/gold/plat levels), more and more outliers are going to happen. Yes, while the "general" population we could say would be roughly where they should be (still, 100 is NOT a very large indicator in this case), the amount of outliers would be enough that it wouldn't be an amazing indicator.
So I have no idea why you suggest that this division system is better than a straight ladder system - which I would very much prefer. I have no problem seeing I'm ranked 13,500 if I know that's still within the top 10% because it gives a total 13,500/150,000 for the Diamond league, etc. That gives you a much more defined rank on where you stand. 100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate. If it's a really large population, then there will be even more outliers (yes I'm aware there may be the same percentage of outliers and thus you'd encounter them around the same frequency) but to have so many outliers has little to no advantage over a global system which lets you know exactly where you're at. When the game is released we can expect the userbase to absolutely EXPLODE. I just feel 100 users is far too small of a division size if you want to accurately say you're around that percent. "over time" won't fix that your division skill could be different than anothers, it only fixes where you are within your own division. 100 sample size is actually pretty gigantic statistically speaking. What you'd be concerned about is more how people place because then the distribution is not really random. Once the population explosion has happened, people will quit and the original leagues will have the more practiced players which is going to skew things. I really don't think it matters except for diamond league though.
100 is not gigantic whatsoever statistically speaking... almost no survey will use a sample as small as 100 ppl if you're trying to compare to the rest of the population.
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WolfBlizz employee in sheepsnetizen disguise.
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On July 13 2010 06:21 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:08 Andtwo wrote:On July 13 2010 05:59 FabledIntegral wrote:On July 13 2010 05:41 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 05:40 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand how "over time," means much if you don't move around in your division. If I'm placed in upsilon sigma tau or whatever, I'm stuck with those 100 people. Because 100 is a relatively low number relative to the population, it is likely many people are going to suffer from a variety of skill within their own division. Maybe if division size was ~1,500-2,000 you'd have a more valid point. But as it stands, players could get placed in a shitty division and make it to rank 1 relatively easily, while they might only be rank ~25 elsewhere in another division. That rank 1 person could not even compare to the other rank 1 people elsewhere in the beta. And the same situation can happen in reverse. The more divisions you have, the more this discrepancy will occur. Without any division system you have no discrepancy - you are where you should be.
At an extreme, imagine each division had only 2 players. If you were constantly ranked 2 in that division, would that be enough data to reliably say you're in the bottom 50%? Most likely not. Although 100 would seem like it's a large enough originally to separate people, given the total number of people in your league (especially at the silver/gold/plat levels), more and more outliers are going to happen. Yes, while the "general" population we could say would be roughly where they should be (still, 100 is NOT a very large indicator in this case), the amount of outliers would be enough that it wouldn't be an amazing indicator.
So I have no idea why you suggest that this division system is better than a straight ladder system - which I would very much prefer. I have no problem seeing I'm ranked 13,500 if I know that's still within the top 10% because it gives a total 13,500/150,000 for the Diamond league, etc. That gives you a much more defined rank on where you stand. 100 is a perfectly acceptable number to use as a sample size of a large population. you would find larger divisions only marginally more accurate. If it's a really large population, then there will be even more outliers (yes I'm aware there may be the same percentage of outliers and thus you'd encounter them around the same frequency) but to have so many outliers has little to no advantage over a global system which lets you know exactly where you're at. When the game is released we can expect the userbase to absolutely EXPLODE. I just feel 100 users is far too small of a division size if you want to accurately say you're around that percent. "over time" won't fix that your division skill could be different than anothers, it only fixes where you are within your own division. 100 sample size is actually pretty gigantic statistically speaking. What you'd be concerned about is more how people place because then the distribution is not really random. Once the population explosion has happened, people will quit and the original leagues will have the more practiced players which is going to skew things. I really don't think it matters except for diamond league though. 100 is not gigantic whatsoever statistically speaking... almost no survey will use a sample as small as 100 ppl if you're trying to compare to the rest of the population.
You are incorrect.
On July 13 2010 06:21 Iplaythings wrote:
WolfBlizz employee in sheepsnetizen disguise.
Think about it more like this:
![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)
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I stopped reading after this paragraph:
On July 13 2010 04:42 Issorlol wrote:Your division is a sample of the entire population of the league in which you place. This means that your rank in your division is, over a long period of time with many games played by the community as a whole, indicative of your rank as a whole compared to everyone in your league by percentile
Because you are wrong.
Sure, if the division composition was made a random basis, that would hold, but there is a serious selection bias as we have seen since the beginning of the beta: all the better players which start massing games from Day 1 pretty much all end up in the same diamond division (equivalent of early platinum). During the beta, only a couple days are enough to get placed in a division which is MUCH softer - can you image what will happen with divisions that get created months after the release?
I have to admit that in 5 years from now, when all expansions of the game will be released and will have a decent amount of balancing done and all the pros will have quit bnet and all the players left will have a lot of experience under their belt, then it will be much less of a concern. That's 5 years to wait for an easy to fix problem to fix itself... I hope you are not calling this ladder system good by any measure?
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In my opinion it isn't the division system that is the problem but the fact that there is only one ranking. The division are really good for low and average players because being ranked 10404th doesnt mean anything. But for the good players it IS important to have an overall ranking. Having two ranking, the actual one in the division and say, another like warcraft III's one, where you can check your overall ranking (maybe by league or by rating), would be ideal.
Agree. When you have a good alg for a overall ranking its easy to compare 2 player
and players have this direct compare too that a division gives you.
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On July 13 2010 06:22 Tamerlane wrote:I stopped reading after this paragraph: Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 04:42 Issorlol wrote:Your division is a sample of the entire population of the league in which you place. This means that your rank in your division is, over a long period of time with many games played by the community as a whole, indicative of your rank as a whole compared to everyone in your league by percentile Because you are wrong. Sure, if the division composition was made a random basis, that would hold, but there is a serious selection bias as we have seen since the beginning of the beta: all the better players which start massing games from Day 1 pretty much all end up in the same diamond division (equivalent of early platinum). During the beta, only a couple days are enough to get placed in a division which is MUCH softer - can you image what will happen with divisions that get created months after the release? I have to admit that in 5 years from now, when all expansions of the game will be released and will have a decent amount of balancing done and all the pros will have quit bnet and all the players left will have a lot of experience under their belt, then it will be much less of a concern. That's 5 years to wait for an easy to fix problem to fix itself... I hope you are not calling this ladder system good by any measure?
I don't even know the number of times I've said that this doesn't apply to top diamond
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On July 13 2010 06:18 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 13 2010 06:11 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And PLEASE don't say "Oh it's simple math." It's not simple math. I know you're not saying it's perfect, but claiming that rank = percentile ("in general") is completely wrong, which is why we keep asking for rating over rank on TeamLiquid.
~An actual mathematician
(Most of your post was good though, so it was worth the read.) Not trying to be a smart-ass here, genuinely - can you explain this? The depth of my stastics knowledge is... AP stats. -_- ~An incoming freshman math major Sure, no problem. Since some divisions may be stacked (which was talked about), it's incorrect to assume that every division's third place is truly in the top 3% of their respective leagues. Therefore, you can't apply percentile rank unless every single player of a specific league (like diamond league) was on the same single ladder. Since there are so many different ladders with different players (and therefore different ability levels), you can't properly apply one sweeping percentile rank to apply to all of them. When you apply percentile rank to something like a standardized test, it's because every single student in the country took the EXACT same test (not different "divisions" of "similar" tests). Oh okay, yeah, thanks. I can see now I definitely could have talked about the percentiles and ranks in such in a much clearer (more correct :x) way. I think this will be less of an issue, though, if blizzard ensures that divisions aren't stacked in the future. I don't see why they won't do this, since otherwise there is literally no reason to use divisions and I doubt blizzard would invest time into creating divisions just to nullify them because of weird placement. It won't be exact, but it will be pretty close. I don't have much of an issue with that.
I think it's tough because people all join the ladders at different times. For instance, it's impossible to "reserve" different #1 division spots for each of the (assumed to be) best players. They get stacked early on because the better players get the beta early and play more often, so there's a greater chance they'll be in the lower-numbered divisions. Plus, if you get on super early, what's stopping you from *stealing* the name "Idra" or "White-Ra" or some other pro's name, causing him to make a new name? There are a lot of variables to take into account, and so I think it's pretty impossible to make the divisions truly even. Again, that's why we ask for rating/points over rank. If I'm in a high-number ladder, I can probably climb it easier
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On July 13 2010 06:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:18 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 13 2010 06:11 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And PLEASE don't say "Oh it's simple math." It's not simple math. I know you're not saying it's perfect, but claiming that rank = percentile ("in general") is completely wrong, which is why we keep asking for rating over rank on TeamLiquid.
~An actual mathematician
(Most of your post was good though, so it was worth the read.) Not trying to be a smart-ass here, genuinely - can you explain this? The depth of my stastics knowledge is... AP stats. -_- ~An incoming freshman math major Sure, no problem. Since some divisions may be stacked (which was talked about), it's incorrect to assume that every division's third place is truly in the top 3% of their respective leagues. Therefore, you can't apply percentile rank unless every single player of a specific league (like diamond league) was on the same single ladder. Since there are so many different ladders with different players (and therefore different ability levels), you can't properly apply one sweeping percentile rank to apply to all of them. When you apply percentile rank to something like a standardized test, it's because every single student in the country took the EXACT same test (not different "divisions" of "similar" tests). Oh okay, yeah, thanks. I can see now I definitely could have talked about the percentiles and ranks in such in a much clearer (more correct :x) way. I think this will be less of an issue, though, if blizzard ensures that divisions aren't stacked in the future. I don't see why they won't do this, since otherwise there is literally no reason to use divisions and I doubt blizzard would invest time into creating divisions just to nullify them because of weird placement. It won't be exact, but it will be pretty close. I don't have much of an issue with that. I think it's tough because people all join the ladders at different times. For instance, it's impossible to "reserve" different #1 division spots for each of the (assumed to be) best players. They get stacked early on because the better players get the beta early and play more often, so there's a greater chance they'll be in the lower-numbered divisions. Plus, if you get on super early, what's stopping you from *stealing* the name "Idra" or "White-Ra" or some other pro's name, causing him to make a new name? There are a lot of variables to take into account, and so I think it's pretty impossible to make the divisions truly even. Again, that's why we ask for rating/points over rank. If I'm in a high-number ladder, I can probably climb it easier
Frankly I think that giving either your division rank (given enough time for it to be reflective of the division as a whole and such). To address your concern with "stealing" names, it's not possible. There could be a billion different IdrAs but they'd all have different identifier numbers
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On July 13 2010 06:29 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 13 2010 06:18 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 13 2010 06:11 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And PLEASE don't say "Oh it's simple math." It's not simple math. I know you're not saying it's perfect, but claiming that rank = percentile ("in general") is completely wrong, which is why we keep asking for rating over rank on TeamLiquid.
~An actual mathematician
(Most of your post was good though, so it was worth the read.) Not trying to be a smart-ass here, genuinely - can you explain this? The depth of my stastics knowledge is... AP stats. -_- ~An incoming freshman math major Sure, no problem. Since some divisions may be stacked (which was talked about), it's incorrect to assume that every division's third place is truly in the top 3% of their respective leagues. Therefore, you can't apply percentile rank unless every single player of a specific league (like diamond league) was on the same single ladder. Since there are so many different ladders with different players (and therefore different ability levels), you can't properly apply one sweeping percentile rank to apply to all of them. When you apply percentile rank to something like a standardized test, it's because every single student in the country took the EXACT same test (not different "divisions" of "similar" tests). Oh okay, yeah, thanks. I can see now I definitely could have talked about the percentiles and ranks in such in a much clearer (more correct :x) way. I think this will be less of an issue, though, if blizzard ensures that divisions aren't stacked in the future. I don't see why they won't do this, since otherwise there is literally no reason to use divisions and I doubt blizzard would invest time into creating divisions just to nullify them because of weird placement. It won't be exact, but it will be pretty close. I don't have much of an issue with that. I think it's tough because people all join the ladders at different times. For instance, it's impossible to "reserve" different #1 division spots for each of the (assumed to be) best players. They get stacked early on because the better players get the beta early and play more often, so there's a greater chance they'll be in the lower-numbered divisions. Plus, if you get on super early, what's stopping you from *stealing* the name "Idra" or "White-Ra" or some other pro's name, causing him to make a new name? There are a lot of variables to take into account, and so I think it's pretty impossible to make the divisions truly even. Again, that's why we ask for rating/points over rank. If I'm in a high-number ladder, I can probably climb it easier Frankly I think that giving either your division rank (given enough time for it to be reflective of the division as a whole and such). To address your concern with "stealing" names, it's not possible. There could be a billion different IdrAs but they'd all have different identifier numbers
I suppose so. It's still impossible to balance out the leagues in a division though, unless they switch people around according to rating (which just proves that rating is a better indicator of ability anyway).
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On July 13 2010 05:21 Tsagacity wrote:
I still loathe the current system. I don't care about my percentile. I want an actual rank =/
same here.
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On July 13 2010 05:57 Issorlol wrote:The point of the system is to be easy to decipher at a glance, without doing math.
What math? You mean percentile of total players? Blizzard could very easily display such.
I'd argue that the point of the system is a psychological one. Blizzard is known for employing psychological tricks such as this. When WoW was in beta they changed the experience system from reducing bonus experience points when not rested, to gaining experience points when rested (with no net change, just a psychological one).
They're not using this ladder system because it's easier to decipher, or to hide information, or to spite hardcore gamers. They're using this ladder system because it makes everyone feel like a winner when they're only #12th in their division instead of #738572 in the world. There's no way to know if all divisions will be even remotely equal, thus people will have to go to third-party sites to find their actual standing. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few people that already have a site planned to make some money off of this stupidity.
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I see alot of "the system is not perfect". So why not just let it be perfect and revert to what we're used to.
Ranking systems are used to tell how well you play in relative to the top players. Think about it, if Hockey or soccer would implement this system, we would have 20 different winners with no conclusion.
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I don't understand this, will the ladder be linear or non-linear/progressive?
if the first one, getting into diamond league will be quite easy.. and it is a good advise to not boast alot saying you are a diamond player, because it says not much after all only that you probably play more than average.
that's what will happen:
we have 500'000 players playing ladder 1on1.
that will be 100'000 per league. you get 1000 diamond divisions.
probably you played warcraft 3... there were lots of players for the solo-ladder and it was no problem to get into the best 1000 with a bit of playing. if you were in the best 1000 in wc3 you'll be in the best 10th (probably 1st) of your diamond division if you play as good as you played wc3 :D
it is obviously just an estimation, but I think that will not be far from reality.
and now go and challenge a good player from a diamond league. The skill level in the best 10 of the diamond league will be so vastly widespread that a linear ladder with hundreds of divisions and 5 leagues is soooo useless.
but i think it is progressive? i don't know :>
e: isn't it stupid that everyone who wants can be no. 1 diamond with a bit of effort? 
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I'm rank #3 on mine and there is no way that I am a top 3% player. Also Diamond gets easier and easier depending on how long it takes you to reach it since new divisions are made, just look how stacked some diamond divisions are compared to others.
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On July 13 2010 06:35 psion wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 05:57 Issorlol wrote:The point of the system is to be easy to decipher at a glance, without doing math. What math? You mean percentile of total players? Blizzard could very easily display such. I'd argue that the point of the system is a psychological one. Blizzard is known for employing psychological tricks such as this. When WoW was in beta they changed the experience system from reducing bonus experience points when not rested, to gaining experience points when rested (with no net change, just a psychological one). They're not using this ladder system because it's easier to decipher, or to hide information, or to spite hardcore gamers. They're using this ladder system because it makes everyone feel like a winner when they're only #12th in their division instead of #738572 in the world. There's no way to know if all divisions will be even remotely equal, thus people will have to go to third-party sites to find their actual standing. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few people that already have a site planned to make some money off of this stupidity.
Exactly. This would be the true way to find out percentile rank, or how one can compare to everyone in their league (or, hell, on all of StarCraft 2). This would be fantastic, quite honestly. Didn't they do this in Diablo 2 ladder, with experience? Just have everyone compare themselves to EVERYONE?
Either you care about the ladder and so you'll really work at climbing a single, super-long and condensed one (and so you won't be content at being one of the hundreds of #5 spots that exist), or you won't care and you'll just play for fun. The current ladder rank doesn't truly represent skill level, so it really doesn't make anyone happy (unless you like being a high rank and don't mind not being an expert...which is good if you can trick your friends, I guess).
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On July 13 2010 06:17 SichuanPanda wrote:
Very simple here. There will be a pro-league that does not use division a month or two after launch as Blizzard has stated before. Pros/high-level players need not worry soon enough you will be able to see what you want and that is an accurate ranking amongst all your peers
so you have to have another ranking system (proleague) because the division system fails hard at this aspect?
in wc3 they had a ladder AND tournaments AND all kinds of leagues
because someone is ranked high in some league doesn't make the ladder pointless
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Rating is the exact measurement of how you hold up to everyone in the system (all divisions) since you play people from all the other divisions as you ladder.
So a #1 diamond player from division A with 2000 rating is better then another #1 diamond player from division B with 1800 rating.
Stacking a single division with the best players does not effect the system. If the 28th placed diamond player from division A has 1900 rating, then he is still better then the #1 diamond player from division B with 1800 rating. But if stacking does occur, then the ideal situation of being #1 means your in the top 1% is false. Hypothetically if the top 50 players in division A all have a rating of 1800 or better, then they are all in the top 1% compared to the #1 player from division B.
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Nice wall of text, was fun to read it.
I actually don't know if I like this system or not. I'm just thinking, is blizzard even considering making one division ladder for display online? That would be great, people who actually care about their exact rank could go there and see. I don't a problem there really.
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On July 13 2010 07:14 ArYeS wrote:
Nice wall of text, was fun to read it.
I actually don't know if I like this system or not. I'm just thinking, is blizzard even considering making one division ladder for display online? That would be great, people who actually care about their exact rank could go there and see. I don't a problem there really.
Thanks for reading
I'm hoping that this is what ends up happening. Unfortunately I doubt any of us work at Blizzard so we'll just have to wait and see.
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On July 13 2010 06:22 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:21 FabledIntegral wrote:
100 is not gigantic whatsoever statistically speaking... almost no survey will use a sample as small as 100 ppl if you're trying to compare to the rest of the population. You are incorrect.
.... almost any survey ever will use thousands of responses to try to give any relatively accurate results. If you only have 100 people you can not hope to say you are coming close... I'm definitely rusty on statistics but after doing a bit of googling the first ~2 pages I came up with all suggested sample sizes much larger than 100.
Just found another... (keep in mind I'm just doing some googling) and I found this, look at the second page
http://www.stocktongov.com/auditor/documents/ExplanationofSurveySampleSize.pdf
"A sample size of 400 is one commonly chosen by local governments for resident policy surveys
because a margin of error of ±5% is felt to be acceptable to government officials and the
public at large."
Although I'm confused because I remember the "±5%" number not being on a static number like 400... but depending on a multitude of other factors... including standard deviations... which is going into something completely different (man and I just took econ stats like a year ago :S).
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I tried to read through most of this and I understand most of it (I hope!). I'm just not sure about how promootions work. I'm stuck in a gold league with NEXGenius at the top. He's has an amazing record and is consistently matched against (and beating) diamond leaguers (from the crazy league with Idra and Whitera and all the others). He was about 700 pts, 200 more then 2nd place, which is about 200 more then the next place. How come he hasn't been promoted. In 2v2 I've been promoted twice already, despite never reaching the top of my bronze or silver league (now gold).
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On July 13 2010 07:25 teamamerica wrote:
I tried to read through most of this and I understand most of it (I hope!). I'm just not sure about how promootions work. I'm stuck in a gold league with NEXGenius at the top. He's has an amazing record and is consistently matched against (and beating) diamond leaguers (from the crazy league with Idra and Whitera and all the others). He was about 700 pts, 200 more then 2nd place, which is about 200 more then the next place. How come he hasn't been promoted. In 2v2 I've been promoted twice already, despite never reaching the top of my bronze or silver league (now gold).
Some ppl just aren't getting promoted for some reason, we aren't sure why... I believe.
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In theory this would probably make sense... but in practice the problem is that the players are not NOT randomly distributed. Most of the best players will probably get placed into one of the earlier divisions, while the skill level will gradually decrease as the date of creation of a new division is later.
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My personal opinion on the subject (as if anyone cares = 0) is that the division system is actually pretty cool. It does what blizzard wanted it to for me a casual player. I do however think there should be some kind of overall comparison for those people that actually are near the top.
Something as simple as a top 100 players list separate from the current divisions.
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That may sound a bit harsh, but you even say:
I think blizzard may implement some way to weed out inactive accounts from the calculations for rank in the future.
So: How can you claim to have math on your side if one of your premises is wrong?
If inactive accounts are not removed from leagues your whole analysis is not valid, because of the many "dead" accounts in the different divisions.
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On July 13 2010 07:45 Zocat wrote:That may sound a bit harsh, but you even say: Show nested quote +I think blizzard may implement some way to weed out inactive accounts from the calculations for rank in the future. So: How can you claim to have math on your side if one of your premises is wrong? If inactive accounts are not removed from leagues your whole analysis is not valid, because of the many "dead" accounts in the different divisions.
It doesn't have all that big an effect to be honest. You'd probably be pretty hard-pressed to find a division with enough inactive players that are inactive long enough to actually skew the data. Frankly I don't even know for sure that Blizzard doesn't have a system to remove these players from divisions already.
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I can be rank #1 in my division for months, or even years, because the other 99 people stopped playing. That doesn't make me god's gift to Starcraft.
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On July 13 2010 07:49 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 07:45 Zocat wrote:That may sound a bit harsh, but you even say: I think blizzard may implement some way to weed out inactive accounts from the calculations for rank in the future. So: How can you claim to have math on your side if one of your premises is wrong? If inactive accounts are not removed from leagues your whole analysis is not valid, because of the many "dead" accounts in the different divisions. It doesn't have all that big an effect to be honest. You'd probably be pretty hard-pressed to find a division with enough inactive players that are inactive long enough to actually skew the data. Frankly I don't even know for sure that Blizzard doesn't have a system to remove these players from divisions already.
Unless they are stupid they must have thought of this. I'd guess that have something in mind for inactive players, though what is anyone's guess.
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On July 13 2010 07:19 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 06:22 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:21 FabledIntegral wrote:
100 is not gigantic whatsoever statistically speaking... almost no survey will use a sample as small as 100 ppl if you're trying to compare to the rest of the population. You are incorrect. .... almost any survey ever will use thousands of responses to try to give any relatively accurate results. If you only have 100 people you can not hope to say you are coming close... I'm definitely rusty on statistics but after doing a bit of googling the first ~2 pages I came up with all suggested sample sizes much larger than 100. Just found another... (keep in mind I'm just doing some googling) and I found this, look at the second page http://www.stocktongov.com/auditor/documents/ExplanationofSurveySampleSize.pdf"A sample size of 400 is one commonly chosen by local governments for resident policy surveys because a margin of error of ±5% is felt to be acceptable to government officials and the public at large." Although I'm confused because I remember the "±5%" number not being on a static number like 400... but depending on a multitude of other factors... including standard deviations... which is going into something completely different (man and I just took econ stats like a year ago :S).
The margin of error for 100 is going to be like 10%ish and with fluidity of the ranking system, that's really quite ok. 100 is a large sample, if you're really worried about it and want to have a really small margin of error, you go to ~1100. I don't think for this that's necessary for this though. 500 or 1000 people league would be really convincing samples (IF they take care of a lot of the other flaws, random shuffling of the people within each league would take care of a lot of it).
I think at diamond having one big bracket (or at the very least, larger like 1000 person brackets) would be really nice and for the lower divisions keep it as is, so the more casual player can have the feel of achievement/be able to see themselves move up the rank at a more percentile level (imagine you're an average silver or gold player and each win/loss moves you up or down literally thousands because you're right in the middle) while at diamond the much more competitive players can see how they rank more exactly.
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On July 13 2010 07:49 Issorlol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 07:45 Zocat wrote:That may sound a bit harsh, but you even say: I think blizzard may implement some way to weed out inactive accounts from the calculations for rank in the future. So: How can you claim to have math on your side if one of your premises is wrong? If inactive accounts are not removed from leagues your whole analysis is not valid, because of the many "dead" accounts in the different divisions. It doesn't have all that big an effect to be honest. You'd probably be pretty hard-pressed to find a division with enough inactive players that are inactive long enough to actually skew the data. Frankly I don't even know for sure that Blizzard doesn't have a system to remove these players from divisions already.
I think it would be better to assume that there is some probability that your current rank represents your percentile overall at non-top-level-Diamond play. Because unless each division has the same distribution of skill as another division (which I doubt 5 games will do accurately, unless there is some math we don't see in the background that moves people around TO make the divisions do this) then your rank is not representative of your percentile. The top 1 in a division can be just as shitty as the 60th in another, how can you tell? I am not considering top-Diamond players here.
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Doesn't this whole argument assume that all divisions in a league are roughly the same skill?
~LoA
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I still think a single ladder system would be better than divisions. The system is designed to make children feel better about themselves much like how schools award half a mark for a completely wrong answer ("they tried"). It is just ridiculous.
I want an accurate representation of how well I am doing so I can clearly see improvement and clearly see how I compare to other people on the ladder. The division system does not deliver.
Show true ranks or don't bother.
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I understand exactly what the OP means and theoretically he is correct. However, as some people have mentioned, this is not going to be accurate for top diamond players. For example, Diamond Division "Blah Blah" may have 3 players all better than the #1 player in another diamond division. So you cannot say that player A, B, and C in Blah Blah are in the top 1%, 2% and 3% respectively and then that the other number 1 player in the other league is in the top 1%. That would be unfair to players B and C in division Blah Blah. To say after time, the diamond divisions will all even out is just plain ignorant.
So my point is that overall this divisional system will do well for the most part, but players should not be robbed of a global ranking, or at least regional ranking (US, EU, Asian). I think that there are plenty of players out there that what to know where they stand as a rank and not a theoretical percentage.
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I read through the op, and i understand what is being suggested... But it is simply wrong... There is nothing to say that entire divisions can't be within the top 1 or 2 percentiles, or the 98 or 99 conversely. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that a player who is rank 1 in a poorly skilled division will be better than a rank 80 in a highly skilled division...
The op is assuming that the each division will always contain a wide gamut of skill levels. If this was the case I would definitely agree... But a sample of 100 players out of what could potentially be well over 100,000 playera in each league, is far from wide enough to give u a true percentile based ranking...
I would actually really like to see a statisticians point of view on the op's theory.
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I don't see why they can't just have the divisions and a global rank at the same time. You could know that you are 5th in your division and feel a sort of satisfaction for that I guess but then you could just go and get a simple number of how you stand against everyone.
With a global rank you could still go and see what % you are of your overall league, just find out how many total people are ranked in diamond globally, then do some simple math to figure out what percentage of the diamond level you are.
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On July 13 2010 08:22 Forlorn wrote:
I don't see why they can't just have the divisions and a global rank at the same time. You could know that you are 5th in your division and feel a sort of satisfaction for that I guess but then you could just go and get a simple number of how you stand against everyone.
With a global rank you could still go and see what % you are of your overall league, just find out how many total people are ranked in diamond globally, then do some simple math to figure out what percentage of the diamond level you are.
This is exactly what they need to do :/
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On July 13 2010 08:00 Andtwo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 07:19 FabledIntegral wrote:On July 13 2010 06:22 Issorlol wrote:On July 13 2010 06:21 FabledIntegral wrote:
100 is not gigantic whatsoever statistically speaking... almost no survey will use a sample as small as 100 ppl if you're trying to compare to the rest of the population. You are incorrect. .... almost any survey ever will use thousands of responses to try to give any relatively accurate results. If you only have 100 people you can not hope to say you are coming close... I'm definitely rusty on statistics but after doing a bit of googling the first ~2 pages I came up with all suggested sample sizes much larger than 100. Just found another... (keep in mind I'm just doing some googling) and I found this, look at the second page http://www.stocktongov.com/auditor/documents/ExplanationofSurveySampleSize.pdf"A sample size of 400 is one commonly chosen by local governments for resident policy surveys because a margin of error of ±5% is felt to be acceptable to government officials and the public at large." Although I'm confused because I remember the "±5%" number not being on a static number like 400... but depending on a multitude of other factors... including standard deviations... which is going into something completely different (man and I just took econ stats like a year ago :S). The margin of error for 100 is going to be like 10%ish and with fluidity of the ranking system, that's really quite ok. 100 is a large sample, if you're really worried about it and want to have a really small margin of error, you go to ~1100. I don't think for this that's necessary for this though. 500 or 1000 people league would be really convincing samples (IF they take care of a lot of the other flaws, random shuffling of the people within each league would take care of a lot of it). I think at diamond having one big bracket (or at the very least, larger like 1000 person brackets) would be really nice and for the lower divisions keep it as is, so the more casual player can have the feel of achievement/be able to see themselves move up the rank at a more percentile level (imagine you're an average silver or gold player and each win/loss moves you up or down literally thousands because you're right in the middle) while at diamond the much more competitive players can see how they rank more exactly.
How is 10% "really quite ok," especially when it's ±10%... when you're dealing with a population in the hundreds of thousands, being 10,000 off is kinda a big thing to me personally. Maybe it's ok with you but I see zero benefit in using this system.
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On July 13 2010 08:20 skipgamer wrote:
I read through the op, and i understand what is being suggested... But it is simply wrong... There is nothing to say that entire divisions can't be within the top 1 or 2 percentiles, or the 98 or 99 conversely. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that a player who is rank 1 in a poorly skilled division will be better than a rank 80 in a highly skilled division...
The op is assuming that the each division will always contain a wide gamut of skill levels. If this was the case I would definitely agree... But a sample of 100 players out of what could potentially be well over 100,000 playera in each league, is far from wide enough to give u a true percentile based ranking...
I would actually really like to see a statisticians point of view on the op's theory.
Those of us with degrees in mathematics have already explained that he's absolutely wrong, and why he's wrong. And other people apparently didn't need the background to see it as well. If you read through the thread, you'll see it
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On July 13 2010 04:42 Issorlol wrote:
Your division is a sample of the entire population of the league in which you place. This means that your rank in your division is, over a long period of time with many games played by the community as a whole, indicative of your rank as a whole compared to everyone in your league by percentile
That means if you play 300 games and you're rank 89 in your division... You're as good as 89% of the other people in your league.
So if I'm rank 89 I'm then "as good" as someone at rank 1? Huh?
Or, do you mean I'm "as good" as everyone in the bottom 89%? (I'm "as good" as someone at rank 12 if I'm at rank 89.)
I'm sorry, but if you can't communicate what you're thinking with clarity and accuracy then that makes it hard for me to believe you know what you're talking about. Perhaps you do, but I'm not going to bother deciphering your confusing statements.
As it is right now, I don't think any of us truly know what ranking criteria Blizzard is using. I also don't think any of us yet know what meaning the different ranks within leagues might have for true competition (if there is any meaning in them at all). For instance, saying that all rank 89 players in platinum league are of equivalent skill seems like a gigantic logical leap to me. (Heck, even saying all Platinum players are better than Silver players might not be exactly accurate.) That could be the way it works, but has Blizzard revealed any of the mechanics behind the system yet? If you could inform of us of the precise data that firmly tells you everything you're claiming to know, that would also be helpful to alleviate my skepticism. Thanks.
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I see the point you're trying to make, but there are a few things I have problems with.
If you're placed in a diamond division, with no room to go up, and everyone in your devision is really good, then your rank would not be indicative of your percentile rank. For example, if everyone in your division is winning with a 80% win rate, and you're rank 80 with a 75% win rate, it's clear that you're better than 80% of diamond players (assuming the matchmaking system is doing its job and not matching you vs silvers etc). If there was some way implemented to shuffle players through different divisions so that each division has an equal sum of skill level, then I would agree more readily with your post. (What works in theory doesn't always work in practice)
My second point is if the leagues still existed, but divisions were removed, then how is that less accurate of a skill ranking? If you can see that you are rank 4000 out of the 25000 people in your division, then doesn't it just take some simple math to realize that you are in the top 16%? That seems a lot more accurate in theory than the division system, because theres no chance of being put into a "division of death".
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On July 13 2010 08:51 Tiptup wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 04:42 Issorlol wrote:
Your division is a sample of the entire population of the league in which you place. This means that your rank in your division is, over a long period of time with many games played by the community as a whole, indicative of your rank as a whole compared to everyone in your league by percentile
That means if you play 300 games and you're rank 89 in your division... You're as good as 89% of the other people in your league. So if I'm rank 89 I'm then "as good" as someone at rank 1? Huh? Or, do you mean I'm "as good" as everyone in the bottom 89%? (I'm "as good" as someone at rank 12 if I'm at rank 89.) I'm sorry, but if you can't communicate what you're thinking with clarity and accuracy then that makes it hard for me to believe you know what you're talking about. Perhaps you do, but I'm not going to bother deciphering your confusing statements. As it is right now, I don't think any of us truly know what ranking criteria Blizzard is using. I also don't think any of us yet know what meaning the different ranks within leagues might have for true competition (if there is any meaning in them at all). For instance, saying that all rank 89 players in platinum league are of equivalent skill seems like a gigantic logical leap to me. (Heck, even saying all Platinum players are better than Silver players might not be exactly accurate.) That could be the way it works, but has Blizzard revealed any of the mechanics behind the system yet? If you could inform of us of the precise data that firmly tells you everything you're claiming to know, that would also be helpful to alleviate my skepticism. Thanks.
Think of "as good or better than." Aka if you're 89%, 11% are better than you.
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i think no one really knows how well this system is going to be untill we have 1-3 months of a lot of activity and we can see how well it fares. Before we had so many resets, bugs, etc that it wasnt quite right.
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On July 13 2010 08:51 Tiptup wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 04:42 Issorlol wrote:
Your division is a sample of the entire population of the league in which you place. This means that your rank in your division is, over a long period of time with many games played by the community as a whole, indicative of your rank as a whole compared to everyone in your league by percentile
That means if you play 300 games and you're rank 89 in your division... You're as good as 89% of the other people in your league. So if I'm rank 89 I'm then "as good" as someone at rank 1? Huh? Or, do you mean I'm "as good" as everyone in the bottom 89%? (I'm "as good" as someone at rank 12 if I'm at rank 89.) I'm sorry, but if you can't communicate what you're thinking with clarity and accuracy then that makes it hard for me to believe you know what you're talking about. Perhaps you do, but I'm not going to bother deciphering your confusing statements.
He's explicitly stated that division rank = percentile rank. While that's an incorrect statement (and most obviously incorrect in the diamond league), he's made it quite clear in the OP and throughout this thread that he thought that your rank (like being ranked #1 in your division) is the same as your percentile rank (like being in the top 1% of all the people in your league).
It's interesting how many people understood his platform quite easily >.> There wasn't much to decipher.
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On July 13 2010 08:52 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 08:51 Tiptup wrote:
So if I'm rank 89 I'm then "as good" as someone at rank 1? Huh?
Or, do you mean I'm "as good" as everyone in the bottom 89%? (I'm "as good" as someone at rank 12 if I'm at rank 89.) Think of "as good or better than." Aka if you're 89%, 11% are better than you.
That seems backwards. If 11% of the people in my league are "as good or better" than me at rank 89 then what percentage of people of are "as good or better than me" at rank 12? 88%?
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On July 13 2010 08:56 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
He's explicitly stated that division rank = percentile rank. While that's an incorrect statement (and most obviously incorrect in the diamond league), he's made it quite clear in the OP and throughout this thread that he thought that your rank (like being ranked #1 in your division) is the same as your percentile rank (like being in the top 1% of all the people in your league).
It's interesting how many people understood his platform quite easily >.> There wasn't much to decipher.
Then that clearly contradicts the meaning of the phraseology he used in the section I quoted.
If it's a strict percentage system then that would mean that rank 89 places you in the top 89% of your league (you're as good or better than the bottom 11%).
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89th percentile = ranked 11th.
99th percentile means in the top 1%.
40th percentile means ranked 60 out of 100, or coming in 60th place out of 100.
Hope that helps. You guys are getting confused, since percentile rank doesn't actually apply to StarCraft 2 leagues. Think of standardized test scores.
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On July 13 2010 09:03 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
89th percentile = ranked 11th.
99th percentile means in the top 1%.
40th percentile means ranked 60 out of 100, or coming in 60th place out of 100.
Hope that helps. You guys are getting confused, since percentile rank doesn't actually apply to StarCraft 2 leagues. Think of standardized test scores.
Yes, that makes more sense. Thank you.
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Divisions are a good system for 99% of us, but for those who are at the absolute top of the game it's almost useless, there needs to be a pro league or something where the top 100 people in the world can be ranked against each other.
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On July 13 2010 08:59 Tiptup wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 08:52 FabledIntegral wrote:On July 13 2010 08:51 Tiptup wrote:
So if I'm rank 89 I'm then "as good" as someone at rank 1? Huh?
Or, do you mean I'm "as good" as everyone in the bottom 89%? (I'm "as good" as someone at rank 12 if I'm at rank 89.) Think of "as good or better than." Aka if you're 89%, 11% are better than you. That seems backwards. If 11% of the people in my league are "as good or better" than me at rank 89 then what percentage of people of are "as good or better than me" at rank 12? 88%?
Explanation fail on my part, I meant to say that if you're rank 89, 11% are worse than you and 89% are as good or better. But yeah it's just percentiles.
On July 13 2010 09:08 Wargizmo wrote:
Divisions are a good system for 99% of us, but for those who are at the absolute top of the game it's almost useless, there needs to be a pro league or something where the top 100 people in the world can be ranked against each other.
More like top 1,000 or even top 10,000^^.
Think of how many ppl in Korea are B+ and still wouldn't make the list in SC1 and would have no idea where there relative rank is. I feel like I would want to know where I stand, and I'm only C level in SC1.
EDIT: Although I guess it'd be top 100 per realm and we'd filter out all the Koreans this time...
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This is missing the most important point though. Blizzard will be reseting rankings often. In wow they do it like every 6-9 months. Rankings have no bearing on your actual rating. For example, is a player with 1500 points with a 50% record better than someone with 200 points but a 100% win record? The answer is, I have no freaking idea. The point system is designed intentionally to do 2 things.
1. Always be increasing. Since matchmaking will always try to help you play against similarly ranked players, then you will win about 50% of your games. Since there are bonus points, you average rating will increase every day. Don't be surprised if in diamond there are players will a 6000 rating. (Does that mean they are good? I have no freaking idea)
2. Encourage more playing and hide your actual rating. Good players like knowing what their ranking is. Bad players don't. Guess what? 95% of sc2 players will be bad at the game. The system is designed to obfuscate their strength and make it appear like they are progessing. This will keep players interested for longer since you can always increase ranking. This is also why they will be doing resets. To encourage players to keep playing.
This system is fine for the 95% of players that just want to play the game and have fun. for the 5% (or nearly 100% of TL, including myself) it feels condescending. But from a business perspective, its better not to scare the people that pay for the game.
Eventually, I see blizzard releasing actual rankings, but I don't see them doing that for 3-4 years when the casuals have basically stopped playing the game.
Anyway, achievements suck too.
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On July 13 2010 09:13 darmousseh wrote:
This is missing the most important point though. Blizzard will be reseting rankings often. In wow they do it like every 6-9 months. Rankings have no bearing on your actual rating. For example, is a player with 1500 points with a 50% record better than someone with 200 points but a 100% win record? The answer is, I have no freaking idea. The point system is designed intentionally to do 2 things.
1. Always be increasing. Since matchmaking will always try to help you play against similarly ranked players, then you will win about 50% of your games. Since there are bonus points, you average rating will increase every day. Don't be surprised if in diamond there are players will a 6000 rating. (Does that mean they are good? I have no freaking idea)
2. Encourage more playing and hide your actual rating. Good players like knowing what their ranking is. Bad players don't. Guess what? 95% of sc2 players will be bad at the game. The system is designed to obfuscate their strength and make it appear like they are progessing. This will keep players interested for longer since you can always increase ranking. This is also why they will be doing resets. To encourage players to keep playing.
This system is fine for the 95% of players that just want to play the game and have fun. for the 5% (or nearly 100% of TL, including myself) it feels condescending. But from a business perspective, its better not to scare the people that pay for the game.
Eventually, I see blizzard releasing actual rankings, but I don't see them doing that for 3-4 years when the casuals have basically stopped playing the game.
Anyway, achievements suck too.
Not true really, or everyone would be around ~B rank minimum in Starcraft. Instead it means you'll plateau at a certain rank when you're going less than 50%. It doesn't mean you'll keep winning 50% of your games.
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On July 13 2010 06:23 Issorlol wrote:I don't even know the number of times I've said that this doesn't apply to top diamond
read again carefully, I mentioned top players, but the problem applies to the entire diamond league
as long as the players will move up and down, such system would work (given its objectives - although that's another subject), but as soon as a large number of players hit the top class (or league in this case) we get a serious problem of bias and the system completely fails to sort out the stronger players for the end season tournament (yes, I am attacking the proposition that rank would be a good indicator of skill over a long period of time)
after reading your OP a little more, I came around this :
Right now, due to relatively small populations and inactivity, ranking is not really the most reliable way of rating yourself. However, in the release, there will be more players, and so the chance of a top 1% player being in any given league is a lot higher (given, perhaps, higher population caps for leagues, but this would make interpreting rank much harder to do for a player).
as you pointed out, it would require a higher population cap, but that's not gonna happen, there's a huge flaw right there
also, the inactivity will be DRASTICALLY higher after the release than during the beta, a few reasons for that : continuity (you don't get your stats erased every few weeks), privilege (being able to play the game before a lot of people - any serious player wants to use this advantage - or at least avoid to fall behind) and regular updates (# of games played is always higher at the beginning of a patch rather than the end, beta had about 8-10 major patches while we'll be lucky if we get more than 1 patch during the same period of time after release)
but my main point is: every current RTS player that is serious about reaching a minimum proficiency level in SC2 is already playing the beta and there's no reason to believe they will not be hitting the ladder within the first couple days, this will stay the same for every single ladder reset in the next decade - the lesser good players (casual players and players that fought their way up) will inevitably end up in much smoother divisions and will rank higher than they would in other division
there is no way the rank will be representative of the percentile a player belongs to at the diamond level, even if you move up 100 players into a pro league
(as for the others, well, as I said: if they can move up and don't, that means they belong where they are - so the system is fine for the non-competitive players, hurray!!)
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On July 13 2010 09:08 Wargizmo wrote:
Divisions are a good system for 99% of us, but for those who are at the absolute top of the game it's almost useless, there needs to be a pro league or something where the top 100 people in the world can be ranked against each other.
Pretty much that. If the divisions break the playerbase up into 20% chunks and the top 20% play against each other...well there's always a huge, huge, huge difference between the top 20% to the top 10% to the top 5%, 2%, 1%, 0.5% etc.
Let alone the problems with distinctions between divisions. #1 of a division made 6 months after release, with a rating of 1000, isn't anywhere near as impressive as being #1 of a division made on release day, with a rating of 10,000.
Put one against the other and who would you place money on?
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I understand what hes saying. Basically the division is a sample of the population league. On average over a large amount of samples number 1 will be better than 99% of the league. That is not to say that in a particular division the number 1 guy is better, its just on average over all the divisions. Though, this is really just common sense and saying im top 1% of my league is pretty much useless since 1% of lets say 100k is still 1 thousand people and when your striving to be competitive you still wanna know how well you match up against the best.
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OP's point is valid but only in the long run. It seems to me that Blizzard's ranking system will only really work and reflect proper rankings once the ladder has been in existence for quite a while. This is greatly reflected in the nature of the point inflation.
The reason why people gain many more points than they lose is because the system wants to inflate the point pool, such that it becomes easier to distinguish between different players. For example, if the highest point value someone attains is 2000 and another random player's value is 1240, that's a lot easier and more accurate indicator of skill discrepancy than if the difference were say 600 being the highest and 400 being the random player. I have confidence that the ladder will eventually stabilize.
However, this does not mean everything's fine and dandy. The absolute lack of clear cut distinctions in terms of overall rank is still quite annoying. Divisions that are created earlier will obviously have people with higher point values than those created later. This is fine, except Blizzard has made it so that you can't tell which divisions are created in which order. The muddy-ing of the entire system is a pointless, and frustrating one that we could do without.
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On July 13 2010 09:13 darmousseh wrote:
This is missing the most important point though. Blizzard will be reseting rankings often. In wow they do it like every 6-9 months.
That's retarded. The whole point of ELO is that you don't need to reset, ever.
I'd only advocate a global reset after each expansion is launched. Players should be free to self-reset as they see fit.
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Congratulations, you just won the longest post award
>>Overall, I feel the division system is (or perhaps has the potential to be) a MUCH better way of indicating player skill level than other systems.
The division system is pure marketing and has nothing to do with real skills. Look at the 1st diamond division in US for phase 2. People like Idra, Tester, WhiteRa started playing right away after the server came up. And of course were placed in the 1st formed diamond division with quite a few other top players. 20th place in that division takes way more skills than 1st place in my diamond division, which I'm currently holding with 90 APM and 3 build orders.
The real skills are indicated by the hidden index, used for match making.
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OP is only valid assuming all divisions have 100 active players. It takes about 100 games just for your rating to settle in to where it should be.
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I'm not sure if they changed the system since the new Beta phase, but my experience so far has been pretty bizarre. When I found out the beta was back up, I was unfortunately totally drunk, but decided to play my placement matches anyway, all -3 of them. Of course, I did pretty horribly and placed into Bronze, which was annoying since I was a high Plat player in phase 1 (don't judge I'm new to SC and never played BW :-( )
So after a few blowouts (when sober) I notice that all of a sudden, all my opponents are "favored," and I'm only winning about 60% of my matches. This gets me pretty depressed because I think I'm playing against fellow Bronzers and that I must really, really suck. So this goes on for the past two days then all of a sudden, bam I'm promoted straight from Bronze back to mid-Platinum. Of course, I'm very relieved that I'm not actually terrible, but it was still pretty weird.
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On July 13 2010 10:37 0mar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 09:13 darmousseh wrote:
This is missing the most important point though. Blizzard will be reseting rankings often. In wow they do it like every 6-9 months. That's retarded. The whole point of ELO is that you don't need to reset, ever. I'd only advocate a global reset after each expansion is launched. Players should be free to self-reset as they see fit.
Not cool when people are able to dominate early and sit at the top and never play though. Also the ladder becomes stale when this happens.
Think about Iccup and how it reset every 3 months - then imagine the seasons resetting only half as much or even a third.
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On July 13 2010 10:37 0mar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 09:13 darmousseh wrote:
This is missing the most important point though. Blizzard will be reseting rankings often. In wow they do it like every 6-9 months. That's retarded. The whole point of ELO is that you don't need to reset, ever. I'd only advocate a global reset after each expansion is launched. Players should be free to self-reset as they see fit.
It's gonna reset if you like it or not periodically. If it's anything like WoW is you'll probably keep your MMR if you start a fresh climb within a season e.g. you climb to 1795 in 2v2 and your partner quits so you start a fresh team.
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WEll thats strange, I like the ladder system now, that chan ged my whole vies of the divisions. I guess if you are #25 no matter how many divisions there are u are in top 25, like the first comment said. Thx for something to read I'm really bored and this just made my day.
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Well the worst part isnt divisions, its that our hidden matchmaking ranking isnt shown, and instead some fake idiot number is used to rank us in divisions. WHo can take something so arbitrary and care about it?
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The thread title should be renamed:
Why the division system is better (or worse) for my e-penis.
For all intent and purposes, no1 here has defined what 'better' means, and looks as if most people are arguing for the e-penis stakes.
For me, as long as I get matched up with other people of similar skill or better, I'm happy as! Who cares if the other guy's ranked 20th 300 pt diamond or 3rd 500 pt platnium, or what I'm ranked within my division which I don't play against much anyway. My opponents pool is the whole server, my visible rating or ranking is irrelevant. So far the internal matching seems to be working as my win/loss ratio is taking a hit lately. Excellent.
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Ill admit I didn't fully read the OP but only skimmed it.
The OP makes an assumption that each division will be populated with a random sample of the total population of the league. Unless I misunderstand the way in which SC2 divisions work, this isn't true. Divisions are created and filled only when needed, which means newer players will be placed in new divisions with only newer players. Obviously these newer divisions will be much easier to climb in ranking than the older ones.
Since divisions are not evenly distributed, you can't estimate your percentage ranking. Rank #5 of a newer division will not even be close to rank #5 of the oldest division.
Also any sort of ELO rating is only an estimation of skill. Your rating never evens out, but rather constantly hovers around a certain point going up and down (assuming many games played). So even if these divisions were evenly distributed estimating your ranking only gets fuzzier as you are now taking an estimation of an estimation.
Even without these factors another major problem is top players won't know how they compare to each other. The top 1% of the diamond league will include a lot of people with varying skill levels.
There really is just no need for this division system, it's completely pointless.
I don't understand why people think that casual or bad SC2 players will also be stupid. I'm sure they can figure out that being ranked #27 in some random division of silver league means absolutely nothing. In fact it can be detrimental to newer players as it helps hide any sort of progress you may make. If I'm a casual player how much did I really improve going from rank #2 bronze of an old division to rank #45 silver of a new division?
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The problem is simply that the division system tops out too low for competitive people here at TL. Players want to be able to distinguish themselves further than the top few % of the top 10-15%. Hopefully the end of season tournament/playoff mode or whatever will address that issue.
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A really interesting point that should be pointed out once more is that this system is based on a lot of data. The more data it gets, the more accurate it will be.
Here are some examples:
A player is placed into gold with placement matches being 4-1. From his skill and experience, he's playing a plat/diamond level - tough he prefers custom games. With more games the system can validate more data and make a more reliable decision what your league should be. I think many people are complaining being placed too low with like 20 games while other players offer the system data of around 80 games or more.
The top example in another position - someone is a mass gamer and offers the data to the system. The system notices that his rating is increasing drastically so the matchmaking chooses platinum players (he's still in gold). The rating keeps climbing so he gets 5 diamond players and went 3-2. The system notices that the rating is no longer climbing and promotes the player isntantly into diamond.
If someone disconnects a lot the game will count as a loss, so if his placement matches direct him to silver, it is just logical that the system needs a few games before promoting you correctly. This might be more than 30 games if you are actually a platinum player since you have to go through 2 leagues of comparison for the system.
I agree the system has still its flaws which is directed to the beta status the game is in. It doesnt mean necessarily that the system is still under construction but the players are testing. Many people test units in custom games or try the different game modes. Some people are rather inactive but due to the comparable low player count there are just not enough people to replace the divisions properly.
About the rating - Issorlol makes an interesting point about that "top 1% of gold league" thing. I totally agree on that (and to be frank I never thought of it like that). Having a global ranking would just be beneficial for the top 100 or even top1000 players. It might be awesome for those to say I'm in the top 20 of 12390123901290 instead of I'm someone placed #1 in the diamond league. But for those who are the average player lurking around gold level it is not very interesting to know that you are ranked 79851235th. For me it is much more useful to know that my last 100 games have prooven that I am for instance in the top 20 of my platinum league and that I still need to improve to qualify into diamond leagues rather than if I'm improving I'll be in the top 7000 instead of 7500.
However I'd love to see the servers Top 100 with qualifikation tournaments of the top X of each diamodn divison like it looked in the early days of beta. But i think that'll be a content for way later patches (after LAN and chat channels)
EDIT:
And just one sidenote: Its just numbers people, what your skill is right now matters and what you are willing to do to improve - nothing else.
However the matchmaking offers a VERY comfortable way to just jump in and play some games with players roughly about your level. For me not having much time to play on working days, this is truly a gift if I'm on my own.
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The answer is of course that no amount of time or skil will adjust the ratings to be correct. The matchmaking will always make you win 50% of the time once the system discovers your real score which only takes about 10 games using glick2. Notice that points you gain are not based on the opponents points, but on the real hidden ranking. So in a single day, you will average 0 points. Now add in the fact that sometimes when you win you get double points. On every day, you will gain an average of exactly how many bonus points you can earn in a day. Since matchmaking is 50% for the best in each division and for th worst. On average, all players in the same rank will have almost identical points even if one is far superior. The only exception is the top 1% and bottom 1% who will have difficulty finding even matches. This is why you are grouped based on when you got promoted and why they will have to reset often.
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basically the op is correct in an ideal situation with infinite time for the game to settle, meaning that it is totally freaking awful in the context of a beta for us to understand anything.
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Still not a fan of the whole division system. Wish they would rework it.
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I agree with you that the division system is a lot better than people may think. But I highly disagree with being 1 is equal to being in the top 1%. Im going to try to explain why
When SC2 launch. Say everyone ends up in gold. But the "extreme players", the 1% will rise and get promoted to diamond. What happens now? They all end up in same leagues.
Just because they are better than the average diamond player they will probably get promoted first. Also if you are playing on that level you will probably play like mad the first days. So the odds of not getting promoted are very slim.
If you look at the other thread where HuK Idra WhiteRa GerrardPrime and Strelock all are in same division. This just confirms what I just said.
Myself I couldnt play when EU got up.. So I had to wait until the day after. As a result, when I got a promotion I got into a new league. When I logged of yesterday I was at about 450 rating and second place was at 420. When I look over to those "elite leagues" my 450 rating is barley into top 10... While I now have a solid #1..
So.. to make it short. Unless they shuffle players in the divisions your argument is flawed 
Edit: Typo
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On July 13 2010 17:24 xzidez wrote:I agree with you that the division system is a lot better than people may think. But I highly disagree with being 1 is equal to being in the top 1%. Im going to try to explain why When SC2 launch. Say everyone ends up in gold. But the "extreme players" say the 1% will highly rise and get promoted to diamond. What happens now? They all end up in same leagues. Just because they are better than the average diamond player they will probably get promoted first. Also if you are playing on that level you will probably play like mad the first days. So the odds of not getting promoted are very slim. If you look at the other thread where HuK Idra WhiteRa GerrardPrime and strelock all is in same division. This just confirms what I just said. Myself I couldnt play when EU got up.. So I had to wait until the day after. As a result, when I got a promotion I got into a craptastic league. When I logged of yesterday I was at about 450 rating and second place was at 420. When I look over to those "elite leagues" my 450 rating is barley into top 10... While I now have a solid #1.. So.. To make it short. Unless they shuffle players in the divisions your argument is flawed
I feel like if you read the thread you'd see he's already said a ton of times it doesn't apply to the extreme players... and everyone else has already said it too :-/
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On July 13 2010 05:33 VanGarde wrote:
It is all relative, if you are ranked anywhere between rank 100 in Bronze and rank 3 in diamond the division system is perfect and for any competitive player it should be all the comparative data you need to judge your relative skill.
But if you are rank 1-5 in diamond then the system is useless. Because then you are among the top 1% of the people playing the game. I say 1-5 instead of just rank 1 because the top five in division A might all be better than the first player in division B so there is some grayzone but even if it is precise.
No matter what though as soon as you are ranked 1 in your division then you can't actually climb any further. If there are 500 divisions then you will have to settle with being one of the top five hundred players on your region. But that number is just retarded for anyone who plays competitive games. For example, in League of Legends the top 300 players are listed on the forums each month. The lowest positions is higher than what you can assume being ranked 1 in a diamond division.
But since the division system will be great for 99.9% of people playing then all that is needed is some slight additions to give the top 500 players a chance to see if they are in fact the fifth best player or the five hundredth.
Easiest possible solution to implement would just be that once you reach fifth or higher in diamond, your global rank will appear next to your name as well, based on comparing elo between all top 5 players in all regions. If you are ranked lower than fifth then you have little reason to see your global rank because you are not even topping your own local division.
Good post
With this addition I'd be fully content with the current system, just slap it on anyone top 1000 in a region and possibly to top 5-10 diamond in a division as well. Having this global/regional rank in a separate list along with the number in your profile would be more than enough e-peen for anyone.
I like how a pretty well thought out OP like this one could help the nay-sayers get some perspective instead of just focusing on "omfg what is my global rank?".
This system is much easier to grasp ("confusing" promotions/demotions aside, but if they'd just make sure they gave promotions/demotions after a win/loss everyone would be blizzfully unaware)
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For people who care about stats, the current division system clearly sucks. For people who care about the skill matchmaking in games, the system works great. Right now I am in rank 5 diamond, and I can somehow feel the skill gap if I compare it to the first few games in Diamond. This is exactly what I want and it really improves my game.
The current division system is just Blizz's way of bringing the carrot a little closer to you. However, a global ranking would not hurt. Plus - I believe once the tournaments come into play, it'll make sense.
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On July 13 2010 17:28 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 17:24 xzidez wrote:I agree with you that the division system is a lot better than people may think. But I highly disagree with being 1 is equal to being in the top 1%. Im going to try to explain why When SC2 launch. Say everyone ends up in gold. But the "extreme players" say the 1% will highly rise and get promoted to diamond. What happens now? They all end up in same leagues. Just because they are better than the average diamond player they will probably get promoted first. Also if you are playing on that level you will probably play like mad the first days. So the odds of not getting promoted are very slim. If you look at the other thread where HuK Idra WhiteRa GerrardPrime and strelock all is in same division. This just confirms what I just said. Myself I couldnt play when EU got up.. So I had to wait until the day after. As a result, when I got a promotion I got into a craptastic league. When I logged of yesterday I was at about 450 rating and second place was at 420. When I look over to those "elite leagues" my 450 rating is barley into top 10... While I now have a solid #1.. So.. To make it short. Unless they shuffle players in the divisions your argument is flawed I feel like if you read the thread you'd see he's already said a ton of times it doesn't apply to the extreme players... and everyone else has already said it too :-/
Yes but the thing is here. The extreme players are in Diamond league. So this doesnt apply at all to diamond league if you are in the top... And in the other leagues I dont think people care that much about where they are..
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OP can you post some data on how you came to this conclusion? Did you do any statistical tests on whether or not, with some % of confidence that, for example, a #2 division player will be within a band of ranking in the overall absolute rankings?
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You have not convinced me that it is better than the war3 roc ladder. In that ladder, level = skill, and you knew exactly where you were 100%. No bullshit necessary.
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On July 13 2010 13:40 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 10:37 0mar wrote:On July 13 2010 09:13 darmousseh wrote:
This is missing the most important point though. Blizzard will be reseting rankings often. In wow they do it like every 6-9 months. That's retarded. The whole point of ELO is that you don't need to reset, ever. I'd only advocate a global reset after each expansion is launched. Players should be free to self-reset as they see fit. Not cool when people are able to dominate early and sit at the top and never play though. Also the ladder becomes stale when this happens. Think about Iccup and how it reset every 3 months - then imagine the seasons resetting only half as much or even a third.
We had this format in Warcraft 3 for the longest time without that problem (Xp decay and losses = lots of xp deduction at high level) and they only had to change up the Matchmaking system because of constant smurfign which is impossible in SC2.
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So basicly you are just saying on * pages that the system is good because of percentile? And not a single word about hidden rating which is the main factor why people play much better or worse players and why they get huge points for wins and few for losses?
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I thought blizzard said that the leagues get reset after certain periods and you have to replace for the next "season" so to speak.
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Needing to write an essay on why ranking is better than rating only helps the case for moving to an elo system.
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It seems to me that there are two good solutions.
1) Bronze -> Plat small divisions, Diamond single big division
2) Keep small divisions across the board but also add a global ranking
I like the idea of small divisions so I don't want to see them disappear but it would be nice to see where exactly I stand in the grand scheme of things.
Oh and as for the OP, it only works if all divisions are iid (independent and identically distributed). As has been pointed out before this will not be the case unless the divisions are periodically "stirred" around (and I don't mean via resets I mean at random intervals players are transferred randomly between divisions). I don't like this random transfer idea, if I'm in a division I want that to be my division.
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I also still think the system sucks. Understanding how it works currently isnt difficult and if i have to read top x% one more time i'm going to break something. It doesnt take two posts, this one just being a compilation of the old one, to explain that rank 5 in silver means you are a top 5% silver player. Saying 8000000 times that you hope we understand what you are saying is patronizing.
The problem isnt understanding the system, it is the system itself. Who cares if i make it to top 3% diamond. Say there are 1,000 diamond divisions, which means there are 100,000 diamond players, being in the top 3% puts me in a pool of 3,000 top players... BUT WHERE AM I IN RELATION TO THEM? I dont want to be one of 3,000, i want to be #1... or #97.... or have some way to know what i am.
They simply need to have a bunch of servers again, maybe 16 since the game will be popular, and then some end of season official tournament with the top 2 or 4 from each server.
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On July 13 2010 23:14 DC Elite wrote:
I also still think the system sucks. Understanding how it works currently isnt difficult and if i have to read top x% one more time i'm going to break something. It doesnt take two posts, this one just being a compilation of the old one, to explain that rank 5 in silver means you are a top 5% silver player. Saying 8000000 times that you hope we understand what you are saying is patronizing.
The problem isnt understanding the system, it is the system itself. Who cares if i make it to top 3% diamond. Say there are 1,000 diamond divisions, which means there are 100,000 diamond players, being in the top 3% puts me in a pool of 3,000 top players... BUT WHERE AM I IN RELATION TO THEM? I dont want to be one of 3,000, i want to be #1... or #97.... or have some way to know what i am.
They simply need to have a bunch of servers again, maybe 16 since the game will be popular, and then some end of season official tournament with the top 2 or 4 from each server.
Why could they not do this with the current league system? Every Division Leader would get to participate in the tournament, it would be a massive tournament, one fully backed by Blizzard and I could see nothing bad coming from this.
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On July 13 2010 23:33 ltsmash wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2010 23:14 DC Elite wrote:
I also still think the system sucks. Understanding how it works currently isnt difficult and if i have to read top x% one more time i'm going to break something. It doesnt take two posts, this one just being a compilation of the old one, to explain that rank 5 in silver means you are a top 5% silver player. Saying 8000000 times that you hope we understand what you are saying is patronizing.
The problem isnt understanding the system, it is the system itself. Who cares if i make it to top 3% diamond. Say there are 1,000 diamond divisions, which means there are 100,000 diamond players, being in the top 3% puts me in a pool of 3,000 top players... BUT WHERE AM I IN RELATION TO THEM? I dont want to be one of 3,000, i want to be #1... or #97.... or have some way to know what i am.
They simply need to have a bunch of servers again, maybe 16 since the game will be popular, and then some end of season official tournament with the top 2 or 4 from each server. Why could they not do this with the current league system? Every Division Leader would get to participate in the tournament, it would be a massive tournament, one fully backed by Blizzard and I could see nothing bad coming from this.
I guess i think it would be clunky because divisions are opening all the time. When the game goes public there will be a ton of diamond divisions making the end of season tournament too large. What would be great would be if they upped each division from 100 to 1,000... or 10,000. One hundred is too small, all of us at some point has gotten to the top of our divisions, its too easy. If you had more in each division there would be less room for wondering how good you are doing.
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Divisions are nonsense if you care about ranking and no amount of overly-verbose posting and point-dodging can change that.
If Blizzard needs to manipulate the divisions to make sure the top players are not all in the same one, then the system is flawed.
The system would only show an aproximation of the percentile, but even if that wasn't the case, knowing I am in the top 15 percent is LESS accurate than knowing I am number 1254 of 7589.
Look, I can make a point in less than 1500 words without pretenting it's mathematical and I didn't even need a degree in statistics to do it!
Sorry - I get a little carried away when stupidity is defended with such vigor.
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dont understand why a ranking (whatever) is so important for you guys....or even get disencouraged by the current system (lol).
Just dont give a crap bout where you r placed etc etc as long as u get games vs people of your skill - if this works fine it is all cool i think cuz the real deal is tournaments anyhow and this ladder is just a simple way to get practice games if u dont ve a partner for cgs.
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That was a good read. I never thought about the rank in the division as a percentile. It makes sense. I still hope they have an online ladder similar to wc3
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Totally agree that the system is perfect for everyone average.
I just hope pro league will be a stepping stone for something similar to that of top 100 on the entire server rather than just a smaller set of divisions.
Because that is ultimately what having a ladder is about. I would rather have the top be a giant penis measure contest than to have the entire thing be no contest at all.
That’s the whole reason why people want a ladder. SO YOU CAN SEE WHO THE FUCK IS ON TOP, how many games he has played, his win percentage against all matchups, or is it?
While the current system is good for the majority it is not good for the fans or the pros themselves. Because if this is the ultimate ladder, and you have a set of practice buddies, what is the incentive to play on ladder outside of maintaining a position in this top league?
Its like making champions league for the top % of all football teams but ultimately not let anyone but the teams themselves have a look at how the team is doing in relation to a few set of other teams who just happened to be placed in the same division.
From the spectator point of view this sort of system is UTTERLY CRAP.
now how is that for an argument?
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EPT
