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Blizzard's top 200 show ladders are a charade. - Page 8

Forum Index > SC2 General
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roymarthyup
Profile Joined April 2010
1442 Posts
August 12 2010 02:06 GMT
#141
On August 12 2010 10:33 Dionyseus wrote:
InStink is ranked 200th in the US by Blizzard, his rec is 7-1, here's his matchlist record:

1st game: win against Mewtwo 496 point Diamond
2nd game: win against Toosneaky 590 point Diamond
3rd game: win against Drone 580 point Diamond
4th game: win against Mercurio 663 point Diamond
5th game: win against Tozar 791 point Diamond
6th game: win against Hezzerboy 481 point Diamond
7th game: loss against Idra 1009 point Diamond
8th game: win against Foo 720 point Diamond


what i wanna know is why this guy played against 5 diamonds in his placements
OminouS
Profile Joined February 2010
Sweden1343 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-12 02:08:43
August 12 2010 02:07 GMT
#142
In the end of the rankings, it says:

'The top 200 players are determined across divisions by comparing their relative rankings and skill, while meeting certain requirements, such as ensuring that they’re active.'

I don't know how advanced the rankings are, but not based upon only ratings at least.
On the 6th day JF made Reavers and on the 7th day JF put his opponent to rest
mrdx
Profile Blog Joined October 2004
Vietnam1555 Posts
August 12 2010 02:07 GMT
#143
On August 12 2010 10:47 virgozero wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 12 2010 09:29 mrdx wrote:
Honestly it doesn't take a genius to show that Blizzard's Top 200 is inaccurate. No matter how someone may defend it - putting players who have played less than 20 games on top of 10,000s of players who have played much more is just stupid.

Someone said in this thread that the inaccuracy was due to the fact that the game has only been out for 2 weeks. I think of the opposite - thanks to that fact that we have extreme cases of ranked players with less than 20 games which are most obvious evidence that the ranking is broken. We won't have this chance again because when everyone has hundred of games in their history, it will be harder to validate the ranking.

Blizzard really needs to do something now.


right and you know the formula of how these results were derived?

uh huh so shut it.

You are missing the point. No one knows how the ranking was calculated. As many have pointed out, there were some questionable cases which made me doubt the reliability of the entire ranking.
#183 Nadagast (US) is not even in diamond.
#200 iMHerBz (SEA) has played only 15 games
BoxerForever.com - the one and only international Boxer fansite since 2006 :)
Dionyseus
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
United States2068 Posts
August 12 2010 02:10 GMT
#144
On August 12 2010 11:06 roymarthyup wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 12 2010 10:33 Dionyseus wrote:
InStink is ranked 200th in the US by Blizzard, his rec is 7-1, here's his matchlist record:

1st game: win against Mewtwo 496 point Diamond
2nd game: win against Toosneaky 590 point Diamond
3rd game: win against Drone 580 point Diamond
4th game: win against Mercurio 663 point Diamond
5th game: win against Tozar 791 point Diamond
6th game: win against Hezzerboy 481 point Diamond
7th game: loss against Idra 1009 point Diamond
8th game: win against Foo 720 point Diamond


what i wanna know is why this guy played against 5 diamonds in his placements


He skipped the practice league so I think the system randomly chooses a gold, platinum, or diamond player as first opponent.
9/5/10 P acct: NA D 10,683 651pts 69w56L http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/290365/LetoAtreides T acct: NA D 16,137 553pts 70w67L http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/1560008/Khrone Z: NA G 16,058 465pts 28w26L http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/1997354/Omnius
jiabung
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
United States720 Posts
August 12 2010 02:13 GMT
#145
Many people skip the practice league... It's definitely not normal to be playing the top 1% of players on your first game and then Idra on your 7th game.
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12248 Posts
August 12 2010 02:34 GMT
#146
On August 12 2010 04:17 Chriamon wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 12 2010 02:40 Excalibur_Z wrote:
On August 12 2010 02:31 Shadowed wrote:
On August 12 2010 01:59 Excalibur_Z wrote:
On August 11 2010 21:17 paralleluniverse wrote:
The top 200 players are determined across divisions by comparing their relative rankings and skill, while meeting certain requirements, such as ensuring that they’re active.

We can all see that the top 200 is NOT sorted by points, and different from the rankings shown at www.sc2ranks.com.

For example Dayvie is ranked 49 in the official top 200, but has always been in the top 10 in terms of points.

This shows that the ladder ranks that the game uses based on points is nonsense. Either whatever method was used to calculate this top 200 is correct, or ranking based on points is. They can't both be right.

If points are not the optimal way to rank players, why is Blizzard using it to rank in the game? Why not use this new method to rank? Or make points converge to the results given by this new method?

Basically, Blizzard is admitting their points system for ranking is wrong, making the ladder rankings in the game a charade.


Yeah you're right. Their ranking has to be based on MMR (because it's clearly not points), but may be influenced by ladder activity as well (they mentioned that has an impact, but to what degree we're not sure). Points need to be the sole ranking factor, or at least something else that's equally transparent. Lists like this one only serve to create confusion. My guess would be that this linear ranking is one that uses MMR - sigma*3, but then that wouldn't explain the 7-1 guy at the bottom whose sigma would probably be enormous (unless sigma rapidly changes after each match, far more than we estimated).

Points are also absolutely comparable across divisions because the players all share competition, for those who are saying they aren't.


Well I'm glad someone pointed that out. But I doubt that InSTinK is on the list cause of his platinum team, they said it's listing people across brackets so in all likely hood it's the 2v2 diamond team he's on: http://sc2ranks.com/team/131796

The mistake people keep making is they are looking at divisions as anything except a wrapper around your rank. It's the equivalent to taking say, diamonds of varying qualities and putting them into separate boxes based on quality. You haven't made any of the diamonds more or less valuable, you just isolated them from the rest.

The only part that could make points an inaccurate measure is the bonus pool not being totaled up consistently across leagues/players.


While that would do well to explain it, it doesn't make sense. Bashiok said yesterday that the rankings are based off 1v1. It doesn't follow that team games would have any impact when historically in War3 and WoW 2v2 and 3v3 have always had completely separate MMRs and ratings. It wouldn't be fair if I went 99-1 in 2v2 to start matching me against 3000 MMR players in 1v1 from the start because 2v2 says nothing about my solo performance.


I think he might be correct, heres some evidence that 2v2 might affect your 1v1 MMR,

I played this guy a while back (I'm diamond with, at the time, about 60 games played)
[image loading]


That's pretty interesting. Maybe your MMR for placement matches really does adjust based on your other brackets. Surprising.

Based on that image as well as the game history of the 7-1 guy, though, that's some pretty strong evidence.
Moderator
Buddhist
Profile Joined April 2010
United States658 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-12 02:59:48
August 12 2010 02:57 GMT
#147
Based on the language used in their "Top 200" post, I believe they may have taken the rating of the player and then added a multiplier based on the total rating of his division, so that players in divisions with less points total (the sum of all players in the division) have a higher relative ranking.

If I'm rated 500 in a division with 25000 points total, and you're 1000 in one with 50000, maybe we'd be ranked the same.

Or it's just based on MMR. Maybe there are other factors as well, considering some of the other posts in this thread.

Either way, I think they should make the whole system more transparent.
virgozero
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada412 Posts
August 12 2010 03:00 GMT
#148
On August 12 2010 11:02 kzn wrote:
Its obvious to anyone (I hope) that the bonus pool alone makes displayed rating an inaccurate skill metric.

I could have told you that in beta, without waiting for Blizzard to show anything.

except people are dumb and tend to think they can decipher the mechanics and become a genius on the TL forums.
Backpack
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States1776 Posts
August 12 2010 03:03 GMT
#149
On August 12 2010 11:02 kzn wrote:
Its obvious to anyone (I hope) that the bonus pool alone makes displayed rating an inaccurate skill metric.

I could have told you that in beta, without waiting for Blizzard to show anything.


The entire ladder is inaccurate, but it's the best we've got so that's why we use it.

"You people need to just generally care a lot less about everything." -Zatic
stroggos
Profile Joined February 2009
New Zealand1543 Posts
August 12 2010 03:11 GMT
#150
There are SEA players in that list. I wonder how they calculate where to put them on that list...

one thing is for sure. This list is a lot more legit than the actual ratings.
hi
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12248 Posts
August 12 2010 03:24 GMT
#151
On August 12 2010 11:07 mrdx wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 12 2010 10:47 virgozero wrote:
On August 12 2010 09:29 mrdx wrote:
Honestly it doesn't take a genius to show that Blizzard's Top 200 is inaccurate. No matter how someone may defend it - putting players who have played less than 20 games on top of 10,000s of players who have played much more is just stupid.

Someone said in this thread that the inaccuracy was due to the fact that the game has only been out for 2 weeks. I think of the opposite - thanks to that fact that we have extreme cases of ranked players with less than 20 games which are most obvious evidence that the ranking is broken. We won't have this chance again because when everyone has hundred of games in their history, it will be harder to validate the ranking.

Blizzard really needs to do something now.


right and you know the formula of how these results were derived?

uh huh so shut it.

You are missing the point. No one knows how the ranking was calculated. As many have pointed out, there were some questionable cases which made me doubt the reliability of the entire ranking.
Show nested quote +
#183 Nadagast (US) is not even in diamond.
#200 iMHerBz (SEA) has played only 15 games


The rankings start to make sense when you start thinking in terms of MMR and confidence values.
Moderator
kzn
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
United States1218 Posts
August 12 2010 04:17 GMT
#152
On August 12 2010 12:03 Backpack wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 12 2010 11:02 kzn wrote:
Its obvious to anyone (I hope) that the bonus pool alone makes displayed rating an inaccurate skill metric.

I could have told you that in beta, without waiting for Blizzard to show anything.


The entire ladder is inaccurate, but it's the best we've got so that's why we use it.



The point of this thread is bitching about the discrepancies between what we have and what Blizzard has, and it somehow turned into an argument about which is more accurate, which is retarded.

Blizzard's is more accurate until conclusively proven otherwise.
Like a G6
tlwilim
Profile Joined July 2009
Hong Kong24 Posts
August 12 2010 04:47 GMT
#153
I think Blizzard never says rating is the factor to determine top rankings.
So the site such as sc2ranking is not accurate.
paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-12 05:12:57
August 12 2010 05:09 GMT
#154
Everyone is missing the point.

It does NOT MATTER HOW THEY CALCULATED THE TOP 200.

What matters is that how they calculated the top 200 on the website is DIFFERENT from how rankings are calculated IN THE GAME.

Therefore, the RANKINGS IN THE GAME ARE WRONG.

This should be fixed.




There are 2 different methods for the same task.

There is no reason to choose the correct method for the website, and the wrong method for the game.

They should always choose the correct method, everywhere.






If whatever they used to form some new rating is a better way to rank, then they should stop using points because it's suboptimal, and use this rating instead, because it's more correct.
kzn
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
United States1218 Posts
August 12 2010 05:16 GMT
#155
On August 12 2010 14:09 paralleluniverse wrote:
Therefore, the RANKINGS IN THE GAME ARE WRONG.

This should be fixed.


This only holds because we're competitive players, concerned with ranking ourselves against everyone else.

For casuals, it most definitely shouldn't be fixed.
Like a G6
virgozero
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada412 Posts
August 12 2010 05:17 GMT
#156
On August 12 2010 14:09 paralleluniverse wrote:
Everyone is missing the point.

It does NOT MATTER HOW THEY CALCULATED THE TOP 200.

What matters is that how they calculated the top 200 on the website is DIFFERENT from how rankings are calculated IN THE GAME.

Therefore, the RANKINGS IN THE GAME ARE WRONG.

This should be fixed.



AND YOU DONT SEEM TO (lol caps) understand that the RANKINGS ARE NOT WRONG.
The rankings are based on points, whoever has more points = HIGHER RANK.

Your just being an ignorant fool thinking that the ranks will tell you who is the best gamer.


There are 2 different methods for the same task.

There is no reason to choose the correct method for the website, and the wrong method for the game.

They should always choose the correct method, everywhere.

There is no right or wrong method.

If they want to list the top 200 players of NA server they will do so with a formula derived specifically for that.

If they want to list the top players in accordance with their points earned they will do so with a formula for exclusively.





paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-12 05:38:45
August 12 2010 05:38 GMT
#157
On August 12 2010 14:17 virgozero wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 12 2010 14:09 paralleluniverse wrote:
Everyone is missing the point.

It does NOT MATTER HOW THEY CALCULATED THE TOP 200.

What matters is that how they calculated the top 200 on the website is DIFFERENT from how rankings are calculated IN THE GAME.

Therefore, the RANKINGS IN THE GAME ARE WRONG.

This should be fixed.



AND YOU DONT SEEM TO (lol caps) understand that the RANKINGS ARE NOT WRONG.
The rankings are based on points, whoever has more points = HIGHER RANK.

Your just being an ignorant fool thinking that the ranks will tell you who is the best gamer.

The ranks are not based on points,

Only the in-game ranks are based on points. But the in game ranks are not right, the online ranks are right.

Show nested quote +

There are 2 different methods for the same task.

There is no reason to choose the correct method for the website, and the wrong method for the game.

They should always choose the correct method, everywhere.

There is no right or wrong method.

If they want to list the top 200 players of NA server they will do so with a formula derived specifically for that.

If they want to list the top players in accordance with their points earned they will do so with a formula for exclusively.

And which method is more correct? Is Dayvie rank 3 or rank 49?
Techno
Profile Joined June 2010
1900 Posts
August 12 2010 05:38 GMT
#158
The OP is borderline ridiculous.
Here are the facts:
Blizzard uses the in game point system to rank players within a division
Blizzard [evidently] uses a different [unknown] system to rank players across divisions
.

There is no further conclusions to make without knowing how the cross-division ranking system works.
Hell, its awesome to LOSE to nukes!
paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-12 05:41:22
August 12 2010 05:40 GMT
#159
On August 12 2010 14:16 kzn wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 12 2010 14:09 paralleluniverse wrote:
Therefore, the RANKINGS IN THE GAME ARE WRONG.

This should be fixed.


This only holds because we're competitive players, concerned with ranking ourselves against everyone else.

For casuals, it most definitely shouldn't be fixed.

Then points should converge to whatever rating is used to derive the top 200.

So that ranks based on points are correct, after enough games are played.

And so that there's 1 correct, official ladder, not 2 ladders, of which 1 is right, and the other is wrong.
paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
August 12 2010 05:51 GMT
#160
On August 12 2010 14:38 Techno wrote:
The OP is borderline ridiculous.
Here are the facts:
Blizzard uses the in game point system to rank players within a division
Blizzard [evidently] uses a different [unknown] system to rank players across divisions
.

There is no further conclusions to make without knowing how the cross-division ranking system works.

EU top 200:

In division Tal’darim Theta:
LiquidTLO is ranked higher than LiquidJinro

In top 200:
LiquidJinro is WAY higher ranked then LiquidTLO

So you're not right.

Further, there is no reason why points are not directly comparable across divisions because divisions do not affect how you are match, nor how you get points.
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