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SC2 Ladder Analysis: Part 2 - Page 11

Forum Index > SC2 General
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darmousseh
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States3437 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-03 17:40:02
September 03 2010 17:23 GMT
#201
They are probably using glicko-2. I don't see why they would make up their own system when the algorithm has already been written. It also could be checking every 5 games to see if you have improved enough, I do like the idea of promoting people based on their mean - 2 * sigma though. To prevent players who haven't played in a while from being automatically demoted though, the glicko-2 system sigma decreases really fast and maybe there is a threshold like "after 5 recent games and with a sigma < x or 10 recent games and sigma < 2*x", check promotion status. What I really hate though is the fact that you can't see your real ranking. Maybe though there is a hard cap on the total number of rested points (probably 750).

Maybe the points you gain is based on checking the difference between your real rating and your points.

So say if you have 0 points, but a real rating of 1300, and you win gaining 15 real rating, then your points will increase by 15 + sqrt((1300 - 0)/2) = 15 + 25 = 40 points (20 + 20 rested). This way once rested points are gone and your points and real rating are close.

1300 points, 1350 real.
Win 15 points to actual rating.
15 + sqrt((1350 - 1300)/2) = 15 + 5 = 20 points (0 rested).

This way it would take about 100 games or so for your real rating and points to be nearly identical.
Developer for http://mtgfiddle.com
Lavitage
Profile Joined September 2010
United States71 Posts
September 03 2010 18:07 GMT
#202
Just played 6 more matches, now I'm ranked #1 in my division. This is bullshit.

For the record, I'm 51-47 right now.

My last 10 matches:
Win, Silver, 125-120, +14
Win, Bronze, 6-6*, +12
Win, Bronze, 11-10*, +14
Loss, Bronze, 47-44, -12
Loss, Bronze, 49-42, -12
Loss, Silver, 20-22, -13 (connection dropped just as I was pushing for the kill, arrrrrgh)
Win, Silver, 10-8, +14
Win, Placer, 1-1*, +22
Win, Gold, 77-81, +28
Win, Placer, 3-1*, +20

I only listed their 1v1 stats. All the people with *s are experienced team players who are gold in some team league. The rest have like 5 team games at most.
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
September 03 2010 19:38 GMT
#203
On September 04 2010 02:23 darmousseh wrote:
They are probably using glicko-2. I don't see why they would make up their own system when the algorithm has already been written. It also could be checking every 5 games to see if you have improved enough, I do like the idea of promoting people based on their mean - 2 * sigma though. To prevent players who haven't played in a while from being automatically demoted though, the glicko-2 system sigma decreases really fast and maybe there is a threshold like "after 5 recent games and with a sigma < x or 10 recent games and sigma < 2*x", check promotion status. What I really hate though is the fact that you can't see your real ranking. Maybe though there is a hard cap on the total number of rested points (probably 750).

Maybe the points you gain is based on checking the difference between your real rating and your points.

So say if you have 0 points, but a real rating of 1300, and you win gaining 15 real rating, then your points will increase by 15 + sqrt((1300 - 0)/2) = 15 + 25 = 40 points (20 + 20 rested). This way once rested points are gone and your points and real rating are close.

1300 points, 1350 real.
Win 15 points to actual rating.
15 + sqrt((1350 - 1300)/2) = 15 + 5 = 20 points (0 rested).

This way it would take about 100 games or so for your real rating and points to be nearly identical.


Very possible. Glicko and TrueSkill have a lot in common, we just used TrueSkill because its documentation was readily available and it's used commonly in video games. Of course, it would be excellent if we could work out any kind of proper formula, but I think that's outside the scope of threads like this one. Also, they probably changed a bit to suit SC2's unique ladder structure.
Moderator
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
September 03 2010 19:41 GMT
#204
On September 04 2010 03:07 Lavitage wrote:
Just played 6 more matches, now I'm ranked #1 in my division. This is bullshit.

For the record, I'm 51-47 right now.

My last 10 matches:
Win, Silver, 125-120, +14
Win, Bronze, 6-6*, +12
Win, Bronze, 11-10*, +14
Loss, Bronze, 47-44, -12
Loss, Bronze, 49-42, -12
Loss, Silver, 20-22, -13 (connection dropped just as I was pushing for the kill, arrrrrgh)
Win, Silver, 10-8, +14
Win, Placer, 1-1*, +22
Win, Gold, 77-81, +28
Win, Placer, 3-1*, +20

I only listed their 1v1 stats. All the people with *s are experienced team players who are gold in some team league. The rest have like 5 team games at most.


Yeah, just from a quick glance, it looks like you'll be fighting for a promotion for some time. Sounds like a lot of your losses are coming from disconnects, so maybe you'll want to identify what the problem is there before continuing to grind up the ladder, because each of those disconnects is going to set you back to Bronze at the rate it's causing you losses.
Moderator
pezyuan
Profile Joined August 2009
United States23 Posts
September 03 2010 20:41 GMT
#205
On September 04 2010 02:13 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Unfortunately, without the opponent rating information, opponent win-loss record, promotion markers, and the amount of points gained and lost per match, there's not too much we can do with this information. The ranks are determined by rating, so it's the rating that we really would need to see. The amount of points gained/lost helps determine how close you are to your MMR. The opponent win-loss record helps identify whether they may be close to their MMR (and therefore validates their rating). For example:

L Diamond 200 20-6 (-4)

That alone doesn't tell us very much, but we can get some info from it. With a 20-6 record, the chances that this guy actually belongs at 200 rating is very low. He was probably recently promoted. The -4 from the loss tells us that he was Favored, which reinforces that his MMR is high (and at the very least, higher than our current rating). Now if we added another game:

W Diamond 600 70-56 (+15)

This, combined with the previous game, tells us that the guy's 600 rating is a little more accurate than the other guy's 200 rating because he has more games played. It also tells us that his MMR is a little closer to our displayed rating because he was only slightly favored. That likely means that our MMR is closer to that area, but we don't know for sure until we see more games.

Now, if we take a look at your last 9 games, we can still get a fair amount of info from them. We don't know how concrete these players' ratings are because we can't see their records, but we can at least assume that if they're in the 900 range that they must be pretty good (inflation is about 570 or so at this point in time). The outliers here are the guy with 349 and the guy with 538, so if you're being matched against them it probably means their MMRs are around that of the 900-level players but they just haven't played enough games to get up that high.

I'd say that a promotion to Diamond is inevitable, but it may depend on the variance in opponents shrinking first. If you're holding your own against 900 Diamond players, you'll just have to even out a bit more to decrease your uncertainty value which will allow promotion.


Would there be a reason why I haven't played an even game in a super long time? Every game I play is against a favored opponent and I was favored on their screen as well.
Lavitage
Profile Joined September 2010
United States71 Posts
September 03 2010 20:46 GMT
#206
On September 04 2010 04:41 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 03:07 Lavitage wrote:
Just played 6 more matches, now I'm ranked #1 in my division. This is bullshit.

For the record, I'm 51-47 right now.

My last 10 matches:
Win, Silver, 125-120, +14
Win, Bronze, 6-6*, +12
Win, Bronze, 11-10*, +14
Loss, Bronze, 47-44, -12
Loss, Bronze, 49-42, -12
Loss, Silver, 20-22, -13 (connection dropped just as I was pushing for the kill, arrrrrgh)
Win, Silver, 10-8, +14
Win, Placer, 1-1*, +22
Win, Gold, 77-81, +28
Win, Placer, 3-1*, +20

I only listed their 1v1 stats. All the people with *s are experienced team players who are gold in some team league. The rest have like 5 team games at most.


Yeah, just from a quick glance, it looks like you'll be fighting for a promotion for some time. Sounds like a lot of your losses are coming from disconnects, so maybe you'll want to identify what the problem is there before continuing to grind up the ladder, because each of those disconnects is going to set you back to Bronze at the rate it's causing you losses.


I know the cause. It's because the people I live with start using the internet (they're all wired to the router, I'm not.) I'll start playing when I have the internet all to myself, have a good rhythm going, then suddenly someone jumps on to do something and bam, gg.

There's nothing I can do about it except make enough money to find a new place to live. I can't even run a wire under the house, since the crawlspace is filled with sharp rusty gutters and black widows and god knows what else.

I have about 10 losses and 5 draws due to being dropped (a draw happens when you disconnect after you've found a player, but before the match can actually start.)
Crushgroove
Profile Joined July 2010
United States793 Posts
September 03 2010 20:50 GMT
#207
First explanation I've seen that seems even remotely probable. Good work.
[In Korea on Vaca] "Why would I go to the park and climb a mountain? There are video games on f*cking TV!" - Kazuke
Peekaboo
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada219 Posts
September 03 2010 21:12 GMT
#208
Awesome analysis, with some points I never considered before. The whole sigma thing and its interactions is interesting.

Especially the interaction of sigma with promotion, and the possible problem/bug is also fun to think about. Running a simulation might uncover this behaviour (it'd be easy to write). I'm sure Blizzard will come up with a fix, anyway. A simple secondary override formula would do it.

And to simplify things for you witches and wizards out there-- Blizzard uses a sorting hat.

You loved me as a loser but now you're worried that I just might win. -L. Cohen
taffy
Profile Joined June 2010
United States28 Posts
September 03 2010 21:30 GMT
#209
If you're good, it takes a while to "grind" your ladder rating up to your MMR. Same for your opponents. When you see "favored" just think to yourself "oh good i'm moving up" don't read it as the ladder trying to screw you over or something like that.

Basically, you shouldn't want to see "even match" because that means you're plateauing

On September 04 2010 05:41 pezyuan wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 02:13 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Unfortunately, without the opponent rating information, opponent win-loss record, promotion markers, and the amount of points gained and lost per match, there's not too much we can do with this information. The ranks are determined by rating, so it's the rating that we really would need to see. The amount of points gained/lost helps determine how close you are to your MMR. The opponent win-loss record helps identify whether they may be close to their MMR (and therefore validates their rating). For example:

L Diamond 200 20-6 (-4)

That alone doesn't tell us very much, but we can get some info from it. With a 20-6 record, the chances that this guy actually belongs at 200 rating is very low. He was probably recently promoted. The -4 from the loss tells us that he was Favored, which reinforces that his MMR is high (and at the very least, higher than our current rating). Now if we added another game:

W Diamond 600 70-56 (+15)

This, combined with the previous game, tells us that the guy's 600 rating is a little more accurate than the other guy's 200 rating because he has more games played. It also tells us that his MMR is a little closer to our displayed rating because he was only slightly favored. That likely means that our MMR is closer to that area, but we don't know for sure until we see more games.

Now, if we take a look at your last 9 games, we can still get a fair amount of info from them. We don't know how concrete these players' ratings are because we can't see their records, but we can at least assume that if they're in the 900 range that they must be pretty good (inflation is about 570 or so at this point in time). The outliers here are the guy with 349 and the guy with 538, so if you're being matched against them it probably means their MMRs are around that of the 900-level players but they just haven't played enough games to get up that high.

I'd say that a promotion to Diamond is inevitable, but it may depend on the variance in opponents shrinking first. If you're holding your own against 900 Diamond players, you'll just have to even out a bit more to decrease your uncertainty value which will allow promotion.


Would there be a reason why I haven't played an even game in a super long time? Every game I play is against a favored opponent and I was favored on their screen as well.

Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
September 03 2010 21:55 GMT
#210
On September 04 2010 05:41 pezyuan wrote:
Would there be a reason why I haven't played an even game in a super long time? Every game I play is against a favored opponent and I was favored on their screen as well.


"Teams Even" will show up in two situations:

- Early on, when you have a large sigma and few games played, there is a small chance that you will be matched against players whose MMR is close to your displayed rating.

- Once your displayed rating has come close to your MMR, the size of your sigma will determine the chances of encountering even matches. The smaller the sigma (and typically how long you remain at a certain level over more games played), the more likely you'll see an even match.
Moderator
taffy
Profile Joined June 2010
United States28 Posts
September 03 2010 21:59 GMT
#211
I want to add a point about bonus pool and "rating inflation".

MMR is completely disconnected from ladder rating, and therefore unaffected by bonus pool. Bonus pool therefore has no cumulative inflationary impact on ladder ratings.

On the flip side, ladder rating is attached to MMR, and will by design converge on your MMR in a damped/stable way. The bonus pool will affect the system by making your ladder rating trend above your MMR (after you manage to reach it). This is not the reason the top players ratings continue to climb.

Think of it this way... if you only play when you have bonus pool, you can expect your ladder rating to float above your MMR by some constant average. As your ladder rating gets too high above your MMR, you will start losing more points for losses than you gain for wins, and no amount of bonus pool will result in you continuing to move up in rating. Likewise, your inflated rating will have no impact on anyone elses point gains, because those are based on your (lower) MMR.

I'm not sure how much (average) inflation you would expect from this. Maybe 150 points, maybe 50... but it does not keep going up over time.

The "inflation" in the ladder is the natural process of (and whole point of) the system. As information is added, the rating distribution becomes smoother, and players that are several standard deviations out in skill will spread out more smoothly in rating (so that in the end Huk and White_ra will get further out in front of Trump, even if he continues to out pace them dramatically in games played)
Bibdy
Profile Joined March 2010
United States3481 Posts
September 03 2010 22:35 GMT
#212
I don't get this system at all. I was 702 rating in Diamond this morning and I've started doing 1v1 again and this was the result

<Result> vs <rating of opponent> = score change

1) Win vs 1050 = +10 (+10 bonus)
2) Loss vs 1082 = -7
3) Win vs 1022 = +9 (+9 bonus)
4) Loss vs 922 = -16
5) Win vs 1017 = +16 (+16 bonus)
6) Win vs 910 = +12 (+12 bonus)
7) Loss vs 1143 = -16
8) Loss vs 869 = -14
9) Loss vs 1141 = -10
10) Win vs 980 = +10 (+10 bonus)
11) Loss vs 904 = -11
12) Win vs 949 = +11 (+11 bonus)

Some of those just don't make sense at all. Why did I lose 16 rating against an 1143 guy in game 6, and 14 against an 869 guy in game 8? Why so little gain beating the guy in games 1 and 3?
taffy
Profile Joined June 2010
United States28 Posts
September 03 2010 22:43 GMT
#213
On September 04 2010 07:35 Bibdy wrote:
Some of those just don't make sense at all. Why did I lose 16 rating against an 1143 guy in game 6, and 14 against an 869 guy in game 8? Why so little gain beating the guy in games 1 and 3?


Did you read the OP and not understand it, or just read your match history and assume that it is in conflict with the logic and you should post about it?
Bibdy
Profile Joined March 2010
United States3481 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-03 22:56:42
September 03 2010 22:55 GMT
#214
On September 04 2010 07:43 taffy wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 07:35 Bibdy wrote:
Some of those just don't make sense at all. Why did I lose 16 rating against an 1143 guy in game 6, and 14 against an 869 guy in game 8? Why so little gain beating the guy in games 1 and 3?


Did you read the OP and not understand it, or just read your match history and assume that it is in conflict with the logic and you should post about it?


I have and the displayed rating makes no sense either. All of my opponents have been well beyond 100 to even 400 games played, so you'd think they would be close to their own MMR by now, but apparently it likes to give me enormous boosts when I beat people with low-rating and doesn't know what to do when I beat someone with a high rating.

Either that, or there's a hell of a lot of people sitting at a high displayed rating, even though their MMR is really low...so why is their MMR so low? You'd think it would be the other way around.
taffy
Profile Joined June 2010
United States28 Posts
September 03 2010 23:04 GMT
#215
On September 04 2010 07:55 Bibdy wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 07:43 taffy wrote:
On September 04 2010 07:35 Bibdy wrote:
Some of those just don't make sense at all. Why did I lose 16 rating against an 1143 guy in game 6, and 14 against an 869 guy in game 8? Why so little gain beating the guy in games 1 and 3?


Did you read the OP and not understand it, or just read your match history and assume that it is in conflict with the logic and you should post about it?


I have and the displayed rating makes no sense either. All of my opponents have been well beyond 100 to even 400 games played, so you'd think they would be close to their own MMR by now, but apparently it likes to give me enormous boosts when I beat people with low-rating and doesn't know what to do when I beat someone with a high rating.

Either that, or there's a hell of a lot of people sitting at a high displayed rating, even though their MMR is really low...so why is their MMR so low? You'd think it would be the other way around.


Display rating is designed to be relatively stable. MMR is not. If MMR was a stable reflection of skill, what would be the point of the display rating?

You need not "expect" anything about your opponent's MMR, except that you be matched with whoever else is queuing and has one that is close-ish to yours.
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
September 03 2010 23:47 GMT
#216
On September 04 2010 06:59 taffy wrote:
I want to add a point about bonus pool and "rating inflation".

MMR is completely disconnected from ladder rating, and therefore unaffected by bonus pool. Bonus pool therefore has no cumulative inflationary impact on ladder ratings.

On the flip side, ladder rating is attached to MMR, and will by design converge on your MMR in a damped/stable way. The bonus pool will affect the system by making your ladder rating trend above your MMR (after you manage to reach it). This is not the reason the top players ratings continue to climb.

Think of it this way... if you only play when you have bonus pool, you can expect your ladder rating to float above your MMR by some constant average. As your ladder rating gets too high above your MMR, you will start losing more points for losses than you gain for wins, and no amount of bonus pool will result in you continuing to move up in rating. Likewise, your inflated rating will have no impact on anyone elses point gains, because those are based on your (lower) MMR.

I'm not sure how much (average) inflation you would expect from this. Maybe 150 points, maybe 50... but it does not keep going up over time.

The "inflation" in the ladder is the natural process of (and whole point of) the system. As information is added, the rating distribution becomes smoother, and players that are several standard deviations out in skill will spread out more smoothly in rating (so that in the end Huk and White_ra will get further out in front of Trump, even if he continues to out pace them dramatically in games played)


That's possible, but I don't know that I believe in that. In the system you describe, you'd gain bonus points but then inevitably gravitate back toward your MMR. However, say I have 500 unspent bonus pool whereas you've spent all yours and you're 500 points higher than me in the ladder. If we played each other, you would lose more points than me which means your spent bonus pool becomes a liability and effectively works against you. This means that it would be better strategically to just stock up bonus pool as high as possible then mass spend it toward the end of the season.

It seems to contradict the intention of the bonus pool, which is to promote a minimum level of activity. If it does operate in the way you described, then that would be poor design because the incentive to play is lowered the more bonus points you spend. Even worse, once you get to zero bonus pool, the incentive is to not play.

The system as we described it completely ignores bonus pool (both spent and unspent) in all calculations, which conveniently sidesteps that potential pitfall. Not to say that we're absolutely sure that's how it works, but it does prevent gaming the system if it is set up that way.
Moderator
taffy
Profile Joined June 2010
United States28 Posts
September 04 2010 01:13 GMT
#217
On September 04 2010 08:47 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 06:59 taffy wrote:
I want to add a point about bonus pool and "rating inflation".

MMR is completely disconnected from ladder rating, and therefore unaffected by bonus pool. Bonus pool therefore has no cumulative inflationary impact on ladder ratings.

On the flip side, ladder rating is attached to MMR, and will by design converge on your MMR in a damped/stable way. The bonus pool will affect the system by making your ladder rating trend above your MMR (after you manage to reach it). This is not the reason the top players ratings continue to climb.

Think of it this way... if you only play when you have bonus pool, you can expect your ladder rating to float above your MMR by some constant average. As your ladder rating gets too high above your MMR, you will start losing more points for losses than you gain for wins, and no amount of bonus pool will result in you continuing to move up in rating. Likewise, your inflated rating will have no impact on anyone elses point gains, because those are based on your (lower) MMR.

I'm not sure how much (average) inflation you would expect from this. Maybe 150 points, maybe 50... but it does not keep going up over time.

The "inflation" in the ladder is the natural process of (and whole point of) the system. As information is added, the rating distribution becomes smoother, and players that are several standard deviations out in skill will spread out more smoothly in rating (so that in the end Huk and White_ra will get further out in front of Trump, even if he continues to out pace them dramatically in games played)


That's possible, but I don't know that I believe in that. In the system you describe, you'd gain bonus points but then inevitably gravitate back toward your MMR. However, say I have 500 unspent bonus pool whereas you've spent all yours and you're 500 points higher than me in the ladder. If we played each other, you would lose more points than me which means your spent bonus pool becomes a liability and effectively works against you.


First, happy birthday

My bonus pool isn't really working against me, I just happen to have an inflated rating. As I play games without bonus pool, my rating will trend back towards my MMR. This is in line with the intended purpose of the ladder rating.

On September 04 2010 08:47 Excalibur_Z wrote:
This means that it would be better strategically to just stock up bonus pool as high as possible then mass spend it toward the end of the season.


Assuming a WoW style gladiator race, absolutely. Though probably not so much "as high as possible". I suppose you would want to peak your rating, then sit on it and accumulate bonus pool, then at the end, play until you reach your peak rating + the bonus inflation constant (whatever it is) or until you ran out.

On September 04 2010 08:47 Excalibur_Z wrote:
It seems to contradict the intention of the bonus pool, which is to promote a minimum level of activity. If it does operate in the way you described, then that would be poor design because the incentive to play is lowered the more bonus points you spend. Even worse, once you get to zero bonus pool, the incentive is to not play.

The system as we described it completely ignores bonus pool (both spent and unspent) in all calculations, which conveniently sidesteps that potential pitfall. Not to say that we're absolutely sure that's how it works, but it does prevent gaming the system if it is set up that way.


You may be falling into the trap of trying to rationalize what you see in numbers with what you think the intentions are. I'm not sure what makes you think bonus pool exists to promote a minimum level of play. I'm also not sure what makes you think that it would work perfectly towards its intended purpose

I wasn't really using any assumptions in my post, so there's not really anything there to "believe" in. Barring a straight up logical flaw, I'm just describing what the bonus pool does to ladder rating (given the MMR system theory is true, which has pretty overwhelming evidence for it). You might be intuiting that there is another hidden bonus pool that also gives you an MMR bonus, but I don't see any evidence for that, and imo it would be a pretty horrible feature in the algo.

I personally assumed the reason for the bonus pool was to de-emphasize the "grind" aspect of laddering. As ratings spread out, players who play a ton of games will tend to stay on the cutting edge of the current spread, and therefore have a huge rank advantage on similarly skilled players who play less games. The bonus pool effectively cuts into this advantage.

I was hoping that they would stop distributing bonus pool to players once they reached a certain rating, like 1000, so that it would not distort the ratings near the top of the ladder and be a temptation for "abuse" to ladder-whore types. (seems this was not realized)
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
September 04 2010 01:59 GMT
#218
I wasn't saying that MMR inflates or is granted a bonus in any way, just that bonus pool is ignored when matching players and determining Favored status on the loading screen. Like I said, you could be right, it would just be a different design philosophy. As far as the intent of the bonus pool, it's fruitless to debate that because it is what it is, but my view was simply that it fills a similar role to War3's XP decay.
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vanick
Profile Joined August 2010
United States53 Posts
September 04 2010 02:16 GMT
#219
By the method in your post if you happen to go on a streak and use up all of your bonus pool you have an incentive to not play until you have a substantial bonus pool built back up and/or you have been overtaken in rank by a certain number of people. Anything that creates an incentive to not play is bad design.

Further, in our theory, if two people are of equal skill and one plays more than the other the player who plays less only needs to play enough to consume his bonus pool to stay on par with his equally skilled counterpart, provided their points are in sync with their MMRs. Going by how Arena works this means 50-100 games played total. Not a whole lot for a top-end player.

Having bonus points included in the calculations against the MMR makes it so losses become more and more expensive. Therefore if a player plays regularly it would simply cancel out the bonus points. The argument that it helps even out the top end of the ladder does not really hold water because Blizzard is publishing a top200 list that does not match up with the points rankings. If this is the case then bonus points are a totally useless feature since they do not actually help out with the top 200 player rankings.

Finally, we never suggested that MMR has a hidden bonus pool that affects it. If we did then please point it out, since that's wrong. I agree that would be poor design.
taffy
Profile Joined June 2010
United States28 Posts
September 04 2010 04:48 GMT
#220
On September 04 2010 11:16 vanick wrote:
By the method in your post if you happen to go on a streak and use up all of your bonus pool you have an incentive to not play until you have a substantial bonus pool built back up and/or you have been overtaken in rank by a certain number of people. Anything that creates an incentive to not play is bad design.


Again... you're both reading into the intentions of the player and assuming the system is efficient in accounting for them. I agree that Huk has a lot of incentive to use his bonus pool, retake rank 1, then stop laddering. And I doubt this is far from reality (speculation).

For me on the other hand... playing 20 more games might very plausibly result in a skill bump worth 100 rating, so there are other incentives besides preserving my bonus-inflated rating. Not to mention I might still be 100 or 200 points below my skill level even after using up my bonus pool, due to the rapidly expanding rating range.


Further, in our theory, if two people are of equal skill and one plays more than the other the player who plays less only needs to play enough to consume his bonus pool to stay on par with his equally skilled counterpart, provided their points are in sync with their MMRs. Going by how Arena works this means 50-100 games played total. Not a whole lot for a top-end player.


I'm not sure what this is in reference to. I may have missed an update to the OP about bonus pool?


Having bonus points included in the calculations against the MMR makes it so losses become more and more expensive. Therefore if a player plays regularly it would simply cancel out the bonus points. The argument that it helps even out the top end of the ladder does not really hold water because Blizzard is publishing a top200 list that does not match up with the points rankings. If this is the case then bonus points are a totally useless feature since they do not actually help out with the top 200 player rankings.


Well this sort of sums up the whole reason for my post. I am saying exactly what you assume cannot be true (and hoping to point out that it is fairly obvious)... that yes, if you just keep playing, the bonus points basically will just fade away. To counter any argument that bonus rating is somehow discounted from rating adjustments I'm tempted to simply reference occam's razor...

I didn't really say this: "it helps even out the top end of the ladder" but similar. It helps players who play less retain their "rightful" ranks while the ratings are expanding.

As for Blizzard publishing their "top 200" list... this is another thing altogether. In my opinion, publishing these is misleading and pretty ill-advised.

Not only is it completely inaccurate by design (they're almost surely using MMR to make the list) but it very reasonably calls into question the validity of the actual ladder to anyone who doesn't know better (ie most people) which is a pretty dumb thing for blizz to do from a communication standpoint. I can see why they published it at first... it was sort of a sneak peak of what the ladder might look like after it collects a lot more information and becomes more efficient, but it was a bad idea the first time and it's an even worse idea going forward.

The whole point of the ladder rating is to be a stable measure of skill. The whole point of the matchmaking rating is to quickly move people who are mis-rated, and to avoid punishing players who have the misfortune of playing against mis-rated opponents. MMR just so happens to be better as a skill measurement when there is very low data in the system.


Finally, we never suggested that MMR has a hidden bonus pool that affects it. If we did then please point it out, since that's wrong. I agree that would be poor design.


I was just trying to infer some possible idea in which my description didn't paint the whole picture. It was pretty arbitrary and I wasn't trying to put words in anyone's mouth. In the end I still don't understand what part of my post you take issue with.
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