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Intro
Throughout the Beta and release many players have been lobbying for a single competitive ladder. Blizzard hasn't met that demand and as such, the community has taken it upon itself to make a bunch of division tracking websites that rank players according to their points. As such it's only natural for players to use that as their qualifying statement "I'm XXX points in diamond!" One problem though, points aren't directly comparable among divisions. You already heard/know that of course, but players still seem to that it's quite accurate.
I will argue that points AND division rank are FAR LESS comparable among divisions than the community thinks.
A Misguided Importance Given to the Bonus Pool
In my opinion the reason many players believe that points are comparable among divisions is because they think the Bonus Pool is the primary difference. To those that believe that, the formula for your points would be something like (Match Making Rating + Bonus Pool) * (league modifier). If that was the case, it would make a LOT of sense to compare points across divisions. It's certainly possible that the Bonus Pool is A difference among divisions (maybe older divisions have received more). However it is VERY unlikely given blizzards stance on the issue plus some data that I will show you from some of my own games that the Bonus Pool is NOT the deciding factor when it comes to separating division points.
Blizzards Stance on the Issue
by Benzenn
18 Mar 2010, 19:43
Sorry I misunderstood what the OP was referring to. I didn't mean to imply that one division is ranked better than the other, but simply explaining the basics of divisions. As far as comparison across divisions it's certainly something we've considered but there are issues, such that the rankings in one division don't directly translate to the other divisions. So you couldn't compare division 10 to division 48 and compare one player's points to another.
Blizzard's top 200 seems to have been a conformation of this. I don't have the old ladder points from the day of their top 200 but I remember hearing that were some significant changes such as with Dayvie (who dropped from near 1st to 49th IIRC). There is almost NO WAY that it unused bonus points bringing Dayvie up on the point comparison when almost all of the players above him were active enough to use all of their bonus points. What I would imagine blizzard used when they were ranking players was their hidden Match Making Rating.
Results from some of my games
d means diamond
p means platinum
the plus after their points is their current bonus pool
Last eight games
Result | Opponent Points/Rank | (Opponent Gain/Loss)
Loss (-12) vs 737d(+2) (112-90, 8th in Duke Xi) (+24)
Loss (-13) vs 479d(+8) (31-23, 43rd in Talematros Eta) (+14)
Loss (-6) vs 648d(+0) (110-87 66th in Medic Mu) (+14)
Loss (-10) vs 664d(+0) (113-94 29th in Drone Whiskey) (+12)
Win (+20) vs 378p(+202) (15-11 29th in Reaper Eta) (-2)
Loss (-11) vs 742d(+9) (56-35 1st in Hauler Sierra) (+26)
Win (+28) vs 483d(+31) (23-14 37th in Turaxis Yankee) (-4) - He was plat then
Win (+26) vs 946d(+0) (266-238 1st in Artanis Upsilon) (-13)
Some other significant games
Loss (-11) vs 452d(+43) (21-13 64th in Tassadar Charlie) (+24) -My Division
Loss (-12) vs 566d(+15) (59-45 47th in Drone Whiskey) (+28) -Another Drone Whiskey
Win (+26) vs 567d(+0) (105-98 24th in Talematros Eta) (-12) -Another Talematros Eta
Important Notes on the games
-I'm 345d(+96) (28-22, 95th in Tassadar Charlie)
-All of my games were in diamond
-My opponents stats are 2 days late compared to when I played them but are similar expect for the one guy that was bumped up from platinum.
-ALL of my wins were doubled from bonus points
-I don't know how many bonus points my opponents used. It seems certain that 5 of their wins were doubled.
Thoughts on the Data
-I received more points for beating a platinum player who now has 483 diamond points than a #1 diamond player with 946d. This seems to be a very strong indication that points received depends on the hidden MMR of an opponent rather than their position/points within their division. Furthermore if that is the case the platinum player would have a higher MMR than the #1 diamond player.
-If point loss/gain is based on MMR then almost all of my opponents are fairly even with me (because I consider +/- 12 to be even) other than the guy in Medic Mu
-The point loss from the guy in Medic Mu was really strange. It brings up the issue if a player in 66th in a power division like Medic Mu can have much stronger MMR than a #1 player in another division over hundreds of games.
-The loss from the guy in Medic Mu also lead me to wonder if the strength of your division factors in to the amount of points you gain or lose. Relative to some of the guys in his division (TTone/Drewbie/Idra/Louder/Antimage) it would further place me as a very weak opponent to his entire division. That could account for one of the reasons why Dayvie seems to have a higher point total than his record would indicate. He's in a much weaker division than many other top players so if I played him he might receive more points for beating me than a similar MMR player in Medivac Alamo or Medic Mu.
-Division MMR could be a reason why you recieve WAY more points when your in lower leagues than you should be. Rather than there being some sort of league modifier maybe the division system just calculates the strength of your opponent relative to your division and it bumps up your points received.
-Point loss/gain among players in the same division seems consistent. I lost less points to the a higher rated player in Drone Whiskey, The lower rated player in Talematros Eta got a more favorable point gain than the higher player would have gotten although and I had a higher MMR when I played the higher player.
Conclusion
I think Blizzard wants point values/ranks to NOT be comparable among divisions. A huge part of the whole system seems to be obscuring where you stand in relation to everyone. If it was as simple as saying I have xxx points in x league that would kind defeat the point. The results from my games certainly provide strong evidence that there's a lot more to the system than just MMR + Bonus Pool. There is just NO WAY I would get more points from a platinum player without remarkable stats than a #1 diamond player if division rating was fairly consistent.
Anyways it's kind of a long winded post, Thoughts/Opinions? I know I probably need some more data as well to really validate any of my thoughts.
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skimmed through it, but your sentiments regarding pts and MMR are correct in a sense, as his sigma is going to be a factor in the calculation.
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TLDR version: OP got more points beating a platinum player than he did from beating high diamond players.
This alone refutes our understanding of ranking and shows that the entire system is full of bullshit numbers.
I really don't see why they make it this hard to find your world-wide ranking.
The bonus point/division rank system is plenty to stave off noobs. They really don't want to know how bad they are. But people at the top really do want to know how they compare.
Going off ratings should be enough, but I guess they wanted it to be harder than that.
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Which order where these games played? Top to bottom?
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On August 21 2010 13:57 Lunacy wrote:
Which order where these games played? Top to bottom?
Bottom to Top, there's also some missing games between the top 8 and bottom 3 games that I had.
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You ever take into account win/lose streaks. if somebody in diamond is 90-60 with a 10 lose streak and somebody is 100-90 in platinum with a 8 win streak, i would expect to get more points from a platinum player. Then again i only expect 5-10 points a win and 20 a lose, so i'm currently fucked
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The idea is that MMR and league standing converge over time. Given enough games, a player will be placed most accurately based on their skill.
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On August 21 2010 14:04 RivalryRedux wrote:
Bottom to Top, there's also some missing games between the top 8 and bottom 3 games that I had.
Well that blows up my theory then.
The only reasonable thing I can come up with, behind points awarded based on division, is that the lower level diamond player you beat had far fewer games played than the #1 player. As previously mentioned, his sigma would almost certainly be higher. Also, considering he was recently promoted to diamond, we have to assume he has been playing very well. Maybe those things together caused this..
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On August 21 2010 14:08 blacktoss wrote:
The idea is that MMR and league standing converge over time. Given enough games, a player will be placed most accurately based on their skill.
If your saying that people will be accurately rated within their own division over time I agree. On the other hand Points across divisions do not seem to translate as closely as people currently think IMO. I would expect that #1 guy that I beat to have fewer points if he were in the division Medic Mu. From looking through his games he seems to be receiving favorable points for playing clearly lesser opponents than someone of comparable rating in Medic Mu would.
As a good example he received +13 for beating the person right above me (352d(+47) 27-25). Both him and the guy from Medic Mu that beat me for +7(+7) have played so many games that it doesn't really make sense for such a difference in the points they're getting for beating comparable players.
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Good post dude, thanks for making some more sense out of it. 
I really think Blizzard should consider letting us know our MMR, so we actually could compare cross divisions.
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Thanks, been looking for that quote. Now I can shove it people's faces when they talk about their points. 
But I don't really agree with the rest of your post. All it really confirms is you get points based on MMR and not why the points in each divisions aren't comparable. So what if you beat a platinum player and got a lot of points? It just means he had a very high MMR and is stuck (promo system is notoriously slow at times).
But I do think it likely calculates points based on the rest of your division. Probably does factors in the competitiveness of the division. Just like you said.
Just a hunch. Let's say there is a hidden ranking in your division sorted by MMR. So if you joined a really noob division and the #1 guy there, JoeShmoe, had 1000 points but 300 MMR, you'd likely start earning huge amounts of points to take you above JoeShmoe because your MMR became 400 at some point after joining so the system compensates by awarding you tons of points so you go above 1000 points and place you as #1. Then if you were in a highly competitive division the #1 guy there might have 1000 points and 900 MMR and you'd be placed around ~50-60th or something. So not even division rankings translate over to other divisions. But I think that's an extreme case.
I still think the rankings, typically, are an indicator of actual MMR and that those rank #2 in a division all have similar MMR to other #2s. Generally, when I look up people I played with on ladder their ranking is usually around +-10 rankings. For example I'm ranked 97th in diamond and tend to play against people who are 80-100 in diamond and 1-20 in platinum. Of course there are those few people who are #1 in their division but are far and above any other #1s. And this seems more like an anomaly of diamond league, because these players have no where else to be promoted to.
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It's unbelievable...
THE esports game of the decade, and we're stuck with divisions whose numbers can't be used for ANYTHING. I mean who cares if you are no. 1 in diamond, at this point i'm not even sure if it means I'm better than the bottom diamond players in the SAME division, that's how confusing the divisions are.
Effectively we don't have a ladder for StarCraft II, the only time we have one is when Blizzard decides to do their "math" and let us now who is in top 200, if you didn't make the cut, then you have no way of knowing how well you are doing.
GG Blizzard.
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interesting. this pattern has happened to me latetly. I play against an 11-1 stats platinum player and get +14 (or +13?) points for even match, then I beat a 800 diamond Terran and get +10 because I'm slightly favoured (I'm 500 diamond). This is really weird.
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Isn't this what has been noted previously. Rating converges toward hidden elo?
What is the difference compared to that theory?
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I still don't see anything that would disprove the simplest and most logical formula: that point gain/loss is decided by the difference between your displayed rating and the opponent's hidden rating (MMR).
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Does the lenght of the game affect the points gained/lost? It would make sense to give more reward for 40 minute game than a 15 minute one.
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I don't believe the intention was to make all the divisions comparable in the first place since there are so many factors determining rank, points gain/loss etc on the list for each one.
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I tend to agree with the view that all this proves is that the points you win from a game aren't based on your division/point score in the division but rather your hidden MMR - WOW arena points were not that different really. However, the points you win from a game are what is recorded against your total score in a division so I don't see how this can be used to argue that they aren't comparable across divisions. Obviously when Blizzard does their rankings they take a lot of other factors into account and it would be nice to have more visibility of that
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Btw how come there are different divisions? I mean why not make a single diamond league?
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On August 21 2010 21:52 Teddyman wrote:
I still don't see anything that would disprove the simplest and most logical formula: that point gain/loss is decided by the difference between your displayed rating and the opponent's hidden rating (MMR).
If you're saying that it applies across all divisions exactly the same (ex. two people at 500 in different divisions would get the exact same amount from me if my MMR held constant), then what you're saying needs more explaining if you look at the numbers I posted.
Loss (-6) vs 648d(+0) (110-87 66th in Medic Mu) (+14) +7 without bonus
Loss (-12) vs 737d(+2) (112-90, 8th in Duke Xi) (+24) +12 without bonus
You would basically be saying that my MMR jumped hundreds and hundreds of points after losing games.
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On August 22 2010 00:05 Alexstrasas wrote:
Btw how come there are different divisions? I mean why not make a single diamond league?
If's sort of a silly thing to help the noobies. When you're judged by with smaller group of people, it isn't as demoralizing.
Think of it like this, is it feels worse to be judged as #30 out of 50 people? Or #300 out of 500?
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On August 22 2010 02:37 RivalryRedux wrote:
If you're saying that it applies across all divisions exactly the same (ex. two people at 500 in different divisions would get the exact same amount from me if my MMR held constant), then what you're saying needs more explaining if you look at the numbers I posted.
Loss (-6) vs 648d(+0) (110-87 66th in Medic Mu) (+14) +7 without bonus
Loss (-12) vs 737d(+2) (112-90, 8th in Duke Xi) (+24) +12 without bonus
You would basically be saying that my MMR jumped hundreds and hundreds of points after losing games.
As I understand it the -12 loss has lower MMR but higher score than the -6 loss. What is strange?
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I dont think this problem has anything to do with divisions. The rating system simply is not a good indication of skill level at least at this point in time. That may fix itself when the ladder stabilizes. I have a bunch of friends in diamond and I've faced all of them, all of us are in pretty different skill levels and if we hold 1 on 1s, the winner is obvious from start and its pretty 1 sided. If we try to rank ourselves from our ratings from ladder, it does not correlate at all with what we actually know is the ranking in skill amongst us. In fact, one of those friends has over 1000 points while everybody else has under 600 yet he is still not the best amongst us.
The MMR is the only thing that matters but that score is not revealed to us. One example is this friend I have that is way below me in actual skill. When I crush him in 1v1 like always, he says he does not even face opponents of my skill level. However if you look at ladder, we have similar rating.
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On August 22 2010 02:37 RivalryRedux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2010 21:52 Teddyman wrote:
I still don't see anything that would disprove the simplest and most logical formula: that point gain/loss is decided by the difference between your displayed rating and the opponent's hidden rating (MMR). If you're saying that it applies across all divisions exactly the same (ex. two people at 500 in different divisions would get the exact same amount from me if my MMR held constant), then what you're saying needs more explaining if you look at the numbers I posted. Loss (-6) vs 648d(+0) (110-87 66th in Medic Mu) (+14) +7 without bonus Loss (-12) vs 737d(+2) (112-90, 8th in Duke Xi) (+24) +12 without bonus You would basically be saying that my MMR jumped hundreds and hundreds of points after losing games.
Isn't it more likely that the player in Medic Mu did not receive bonus points?
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Isn't it more likely that the player in Medic Mu did not receive bonus points?
I really doubt because of the -6 and from looking through some other games of his plus other Medic Mu players and even if he didn't get bonus it would still be inconsistent with the lower point player in the next game only receiving +14.
As I understand it the -12 loss has lower MMR but higher score than the -6 loss. What is strange?
If the game is trying to converge your rating with divisions being irrelevant what happened is totally backwards. Giving more points to the guy that has higher points relative to his MMR is COMPLETE THE OPPOSITE of what should be happening in that scenario.
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Nice post OP, however I am having trouble really getting a definitive result from your conclusions.
Would it be fair to say that there is no logical way to compare players across divisions without the hidden ranking data? or is that going too far?
If that is the case would it be fair to say that the current points system we have on a website like SC2rankings for example would be relatively accurate or totally innaccurate?
Would it be fair to say that a player in a 'better' division e.g. Medic Mu with less points would likely be more skilled than a player in a division where the average points per player was much lower?
Interested to hear what your response is to this.
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Would it be fair to say that there is no logical way to compare players across divisions without the hidden ranking data? or is that going too far?
Using points to compare players across divisions is a much rougher estimate than I think the community has given it credit for. With that being said, It's certainly more likely though that good players will get higher points, it's just not nearly as precise as saying I'm xxxx ELO rating or I'm x ICCUP rank.
You could probably could compare players more accurately without the hidden MMR by data mining a lot of games and further looking in to how it affects point gains in different divisions and then factoring that in.
Would it be fair to say that [i]a player in a 'better' division e.g. Medic Mu with less points would likely be more skilled than a player in a division where the average points per player was much lower?
Yea I would say point for point a player from a better division probably has a better ladder results
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The division you are in really has no direct connection to your skill as a player though .. it is a matter of which group of players got put into that division at the same time. The fact is that some of thee arliy divisions probably have strong players because they were the first ones created and it was the best players who were advancing early (with the exception of few that got stuck and couldn't get promoted). The points you get from a game are simply a factor of your hidden MMR and the bonus pool. Eventually MMR rankings should converge to points ranking but it takes a reasonable amount of time - the MMR is supposed to ease the process of getting to your true ranking (or at least that was the idea of it in WoW arena)
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I wouldn't have a problem with divisions if instead of these seemingly arbitrary points/bonus pool we just saw our "hidden" match-making rating instead. This whole hiding of your actual rating is bullshit if you ask me.
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The new top 200 provides more evidence that division strength (Based on MMR probably) influences the amount of points you accumulate.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/600592
Gauging division strength is a bit tricky though since it's MMR based and we don't know the exact details of their MMR system other than it's some sort of true skill system.
Just looking at division win rate Dayvie is in the absolute lowest of all diamond divisions (Scout Kilo) among NA at 53.65% and he drops from 1st in points to 41st in Blizzards Ranking. This is very consistent with the #2 in Scout Kilo (Minigun (1240 pts)) who drops from 15th in points to 172 on Blizzards Ranking. That's lower in Blizzards Ranking than the 31'st player in Medic Mu who has 912 points but is at 167th on Blizzards ladder.
If you look at the 2 divisions with the highest win % (Turaxis Yankee and Tassadar Charlie) both of their #1 players are WAY higher on the list than their points would indicate. Filthy from Turaxis Yankee has under 1k points and yet sits at 105 on Blizzards ladder. From my division (Tassardar Charlie) there is Gale at 1062 who ends up right behind Ruff at 55th on the list.
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My question now is, WHY? Why does points acquisition between divisions vary?
I was under the impression that match making did not depend on what division you were in. In which case, your points acquisition should also be independent.
I'm not challenging the OPs conclusions. I'm just curious about possible mechanisms.
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YOUR PUBLIC RATING VS OPPONENT HIDDEN RATING = YOUR POINT GAIN/LOSE. What division u're in don't matter at all you can certainly compare between divisions at least just as well/bad you can compare within a division. At least this explanation is what makes the most sense to me currently. their top 200 list is simply based on the hidden rating, possibly removing some inactive players and players with very few games.
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On August 24 2010 05:27 nttea wrote:
YOUR PUBLIC RATING VS OPPONENT HIDDEN RATING = YOUR POINT GAIN/LOSE.
What division u're in don't matter at all you can certainly compare between divisions at least just as well/bad you can compare within a division. At least this explanation is what makes the most sense to me currently.
I've already posted why that doesn't work out. Just saying it again without showing where I messed up doesn't add anything.
their top 200 list is simply based on the hidden rating, possibly removing some inactive players and players with very few games.
I never disagreed with this. What I'm saying is that a player in Medic Mu with 900 points after 200 games will almost certainly have a higher MMR than a player Scout Kilo with the same points/games (assuming they had equal bonus points). The reasoning for this is that it's harder to gain points in Medic Mu and thus it would require better results to get to 900 points than it would in Scout Kilo. Think of it like the difference you've experienced in gaining points in platinum versus diamond only on a smaller scale.
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i don't understand why it's harder to gain points in medic mu. could you explain?
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On August 21 2010 13:05 Jermstuddog wrote:
TLDR version: OP got more points beating a platinum player than he did from beating high diamond players.
This alone refutes our understanding of ranking and shows that the entire system is full of bullshit numbers.
I really don't see why they make it this hard to find your world-wide ranking.
The bonus point/division rank system is plenty to stave off noobs. They really don't want to know how bad they are. But people at the top really do want to know how they compare.
Going off ratings should be enough, but I guess they wanted it to be harder than that.
It's just like WC3 Blizzard has a hidden system that we will never ever see and it makes little to no sense. They then explain the system to us in terms that aren't entirely accurate.
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I think its obvious that rank (1-100) between divisions is mostly irrelevant, but I don't see how any of this proves that points aren't directly comparable between divisions. How would the division you are in have any effect on how many points you gain/lose in a game?
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On August 22 2010 02:37 RivalryRedux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2010 21:52 Teddyman wrote:
I still don't see anything that would disprove the simplest and most logical formula: that point gain/loss is decided by the difference between your displayed rating and the opponent's hidden rating (MMR). If you're saying that it applies across all divisions exactly the same (ex. two people at 500 in different divisions would get the exact same amount from me if my MMR held constant), then what you're saying needs more explaining if you look at the numbers I posted. Loss (-6) vs 648d(+0) (110-87 66th in Medic Mu) (+14) +7 without bonus Loss (-12) vs 737d(+2) (112-90, 8th in Duke Xi) (+24) +12 without bonus You would basically be saying that my MMR jumped hundreds and hundreds of points after losing games.
The first guy didn't actually have bonus points and it was +14 for him and +12 for the other then?
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On August 24 2010 06:07 rauk wrote:
i don't understand why it's harder to gain points in medic mu. could you explain?
It seems like the game not only looks at your opponents MMR compared to your points but also factors in how strong your opponent is relative to your entire division (MMR wise) before giving/taking away points. So the stronger your division, the harder you would to work for your points and vise versa. It applies to all divisions and not just Medic Mu, I just bring that one up a lot because it's fairly certain that it's a much stronger than average division. Blizzards Rankings have backed this up by being much more favorable towards players in that division compared to how their point totals stack up on a site like SC2ranks.
It's also an alternative way of thinking about why many players here get a ton of points while they're in platinum. It's because they're diamond bound and they're playing people who CRUSH the MMR of the other players in whatever platinum division they're in.
The first guy didn't actually have bonus points and it was +14 for him and +12 for the other then?
Like I said in another post even if he didn't get bonus points (which seems really unlikely) it would still be inconsistent with other results.
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The only thing you can really compare is opponent point loss/gain vs you within a short period of consecutive games. Then you can assume your MMR is somewhat constant. Looking at those 8 games you listed, only the one in Talematros Eta seems to be strange. Your 2 wins against the platinum guys give them -4 and -2 and the 946d guy gets -13. All your losses are vs 600-750 rated players and get them from +12 to +14 points. I don't really see what could explain why a 479 point guy would only get +7, maybe he was higher in points when you played him (you said data was a couple of days newer than the games.)
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The divisions system was a horrible idea. They should resort to an actual ladder like in WC3.
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MMR eh? you think it's WoW? they have a similar rating ( i guess you could call it MMR ) that works more like ELO and ranks you with people of similar ELO, then converts the win/loss into points won/lost... eventually moving you into a new division (although it doesnt really matter as you'll still be playing against people with similar ELO)
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On August 24 2010 06:42 RivalryRedux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2010 06:07 rauk wrote:
i don't understand why it's harder to gain points in medic mu. could you explain? It seems like the game not only looks at your opponents MMR compared to your points but also factors in how strong your opponent is relative to your entire division (MMR wise) before giving/taking away points. So the stronger your division, the harder you would to work for your points and vise versa. It applies to all divisions and not just Medic Mu, I just bring that one up a lot because it's fairly certain that it's a much stronger than average division. Blizzards Rankings have backed this up by being much more favorable towards players in that division compared to how their point totals stack up on a site like SC2ranks. It's also an alternative way of thinking about why many players here get a ton of points while they're in platinum. It's because they're diamond bound and they're playing people who CRUSH the MMR of the other players in whatever platinum division they're in.
This WOULD make sense if distributions of points were similar across divisions. However, they don't look like they are. For example, my division has a points range of 1000 to 200 while a friend's has a top end of 800. There are divisions where the top end is much higher and I'm sure some where the top end is lower.
Also, most matches are played with players OUTSIDE of your division anyway. So why should it be easier or harder to earn points based on your division?
I'm not convinced.
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A little tale for you all that hints at a couple of interesting ladder mechanics: When the game first came out, I decided to Nuke rush all of my placement matches, and I won 4 out of 5 and ended up in mid Gold (I am- and was- a Diamond level player). I went on a gigantic winning streak because of my low placement and ended up with an insane MMR, I actually got paired up against people who were around 450 ELO Diamond (even if their MMR was lower than their ELO, it still meant that they had an absurd MMR compared to mine, and remember, 450 ELO was a lot higher when the game first came out because of point inflation). However, it didn't promote me until I lost a game, after which it immediately promoted me to something insane up in Platinum (around 900, IIRC, which was ridiculously high when the game first came out). This demonstrated a couple of theories I've heard, which are 1- that you won't promote until your W/L ratio over any stretch of time is 50/50 (I've also heard this as your MMR stabilizes, but I've never heard any details on what counts as 'stable' ) and 2- that you can't promote multiple divisions at a time.
It's very possible that the Plat guy was actually a very good player, but was on a large winning streak and didn't promote because of it (as predicted by theory 1 above), so his MMR was far higher than his ELO would indicate.
I'm now considering getting together a bunch of information, then asking people on the xkcd math forums if they can help figure out exactly how this ladder works. Hm..
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On August 24 2010 08:52 theSAiNT wrote:
This WOULD make sense if distributions of points were similar across divisions. However, they don't look like they are. For example, my division has a points range of 1000 to 200 while a friend's has a top end of 800. There are divisions where the top end is much higher and I'm sure some where the top end is lower.
Distributions don't have to be similar because it's all relative to your own division. A high top end is just an indication that the top player/players in that division are far apart from the low player/players in their own division. If you put 99 bronze players in a diamond division with me I would expect to have the highest top end of points in the world similarly to if you put me in bronze division with the 99 bronze players.
Also, most matches are played with players OUTSIDE of your division anyway. So why should it be easier or harder to earn points based on your division?
I'm not convinced.
The system is designed for local competition and making points translate directly across all divisions would contradict that. Ideally you could say that Blizz should have you playing people from your own division more often but playing only people from your division would lead to more one sided matches than otherwise.
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On August 24 2010 06:31 nickwtf wrote:
I think its obvious that rank (1-100) between divisions is mostly irrelevant, but I don't see how any of this proves that points aren't directly comparable between divisions. How would the division you are in have any effect on how many points you gain/lose in a game?
Reread the quote in the OP from Blizzard. They specifically state you cant compare points across divisions. Your points are only relative to the people in your division, not your league.
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Given enough time, the divisions would theoretically all even out, more or less, give or take. Give the system some time to work it's magic. There are people out there who are still just now buying the game and doing placement matches still.
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On August 24 2010 09:56 Vokasak wrote:
Given enough time, the divisions would theoretically all even out, more or less, give or take. Give the system some time to work it's magic. There are people out there who are still just now buying the game and doing placement matches still.
That's false. The logic behind it is that, as people go up and down in leagues, good players will end up evenly distributed throughout divisions. However, many players will probably never change leagues, and therefore their divisions won't equalize. Do you really think that most of the players in the top of Medivac Alamo or Medic Mu will ever go down to Platinum and then back to Diamond? It's unlikely.
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The only example in the OP that doesn't seem to fit the standard MMR model is the guy in Talematros Eta, there is no way that he only gained 7 points from you when the others all gained 12-14. However if he did not have any bonus points when he met you then all the numbers fit quite well.
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On August 24 2010 10:36 OTIX wrote:
The only example in the OP that doesn't seem to fit the standard MMR model is the guy in Talematros Eta, there is no way that he only gained 7 points from you when the others all gained 12-14. However if he did not have any bonus points when he met you then all the numbers fit quite well.
Both you and Teddyman have brought up the dude from Talematros getting +7 and I'm not really sure where you're getting that from (if I said that somewhere it was a mistake). I only remember posting that the guy from Medic Mu received only +7 for beating me which was the most inconsistent with other players.
If you ignore the points gained by my opponents and just look at the points I'm losing it's not consistent with the idea that MMR will converge to points equally across all divisions unless there has been some crazy change in a players play.
Loss (-6) vs 648d(+0) (110-87 66th in Medic Mu)
Loss (-12) vs 737d(+2) (112-90, 8th in Duke Xi)
After 200 games you would think that they would have converged to MMR pretty accurately and yet I'm losing HALF the points to the guy that's -100 of the other. I looked at other numbers from players that I would consider to be in a weaker division and it seemed consistent that they would gain more points for similar wins than someone in Medic Mu of the same point rating would gain. Later I might go through and try to find some more examples if the numbers I'm showing aren't convincing enough.
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This data is consistent with a post I read from someone who was informally aproached about helping to design Blizz's ladder system initially. Too lazy to look it up, but tldr version is:
1) Your points/ELO(MMR) ranking are separate. Points will inflate if you play more (use more bonus points), ELO reflects only win/loss vs strength of opposition & ELO is invisible.
2) ELO roughly determines your league (maybe even division?) but moving up/down in leagues is limited by your Sigma (variance)
3) Therefore it si possible that a recently placed or rapidly improving plat player would have a higher ELO score than a high points diamond player, but because of his correspondingly high sigma he hasn't moved up in leagues yet (thus you see him now in Diamond, he played enough games that the system became more "sure" he was proper to place in diamond)
Takeaways:
A 400 diamond player is not necessarily better than a 200 diamond player, though both are better than all plat players that have lower Sigma scores (a few outlier plats haven't been moved up yet and might be better than our diamond player). The only way to see how you are doing (in ELO/MMR sense) is to be matched directly against the player
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i can see that very easy because i am in the Latin America server and there are only a few divisions in diamond:
Im in the most stacked division by far in the LA server, and a lot of times i play vs people of another divisions with a lot more points AND win-rate but still im favored (so i win only 3-5 points when i win). But when i play vs people of my divisions (really often) the favoured thing seems to work good: when i have less points and worse record he is favored, when we have similar records its an even match, etc.
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On August 24 2010 12:03 l90 Proof wrote:
This data is consistent with a post I read from someone who was informally aproached about helping to design Blizz's ladder system initially. Too lazy to look it up, but tldr version is:
1) Your points/ELO(MMR) ranking are separate. Points will inflate if you play more (use more bonus points), ELO reflects only win/loss vs strength of opposition & ELO is invisible.
2) ELO roughly determines your league (maybe even division?) but moving up/down in leagues is limited by your Sigma (variance)
3) Therefore it si possible that a recently placed or rapidly improving plat player would have a higher ELO score than a high points diamond player, but because of his correspondingly high sigma he hasn't moved up in leagues yet (thus you see him now in Diamond, he played enough games that the system became more "sure" he was proper to place in diamond)
Takeaways:
A 400 diamond player is not necessarily better than a 200 diamond player, though both are better than all plat players that have lower Sigma scores (a few outlier plats haven't been moved up yet and might be better than our diamond player). The only way to see how you are doing (in ELO/MMR sense) is to be matched directly against the player
I'm aware of how the system works and I'm aware that the platinum player could have had a higher MMR than the diamond player. I inferred that I got more points from the platinum player than the high diamond player BECAUSE he had a higher MMR.
What I'm arguing is that point totals don't seem to converge to MMR equally across all divisions. Because of that, points aren't going to be directly comparable as a precise measure of MMR, even after large amounts of games have been played.
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On August 24 2010 11:16 RivalryRedux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2010 10:36 OTIX wrote:
The only example in the OP that doesn't seem to fit the standard MMR model is the guy in Talematros Eta, there is no way that he only gained 7 points from you when the others all gained 12-14. However if he did not have any bonus points when he met you then all the numbers fit quite well. Both you and Teddyman have brought up the dude from Talematros getting +7 and I'm not really sure where you're getting that from (if I said that somewhere it was a mistake). I only remember posting that the guy from Medic Mu received only +7 for beating me which was the most inconsistent with other players. If you ignore the points gained by my opponents and just look at the points I'm losing it's not consistent with the idea that MMR will converge to points equally across all divisions unless there has been some crazy change in a players play. Loss (-6) vs 648d(+0) (110-87 66th in Medic Mu) Loss (-12) vs 737d(+2) (112-90, 8th in Duke Xi) After 200 games you would think that they would have converged to MMR pretty accurately and yet I'm losing HALF the points to the guy that's -100 of the other. I looked at other numbers from players that I would consider to be in a weaker division and it seemed consistent that they would gain more points for similar wins than someone in Medic Mu of the same point rating would gain. Later I might go through and try to find some more examples if the numbers I'm showing aren't convincing enough.
No, we have no way of knowing what your opponents MMR is. You assume that it's close to their rating but that's just an assumption, there's no reason to believe that 200 games is enough to stabilize everything. The points you gain or loose is thus irrelevant for the discussion, the only points that we can use are the points that your opponents gained or lost since we can assume that your own MMR didn't change massively between games. If you look at the players that beat you they all had around 500-700 points and gained 12-14 points which is perfectly reasonable. Any small discrepancies are easily explained by the 2 day delay and small changes in your own MMR. The points lost by your opponents also seem reasonable. I'd say everything looks as expected.
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On August 24 2010 09:33 RivalryRedux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2010 08:52 theSAiNT wrote:
This WOULD make sense if distributions of points were similar across divisions. However, they don't look like they are. For example, my division has a points range of 1000 to 200 while a friend's has a top end of 800. There are divisions where the top end is much higher and I'm sure some where the top end is lower. Distributions don't have to be similar because it's all relative to your own division. A high top end is just an indication that the top player/players in that division are far apart from the low player/players in their own division. If you put 99 bronze players in a diamond division with me I would expect to have the highest top end of points in the world similarly to if you put me in bronze division with the 99 bronze players.
You're agreeing with what I'm saying. Your explanation says that in ABSOLUTE terms, a larger gap in skill leads to a larger gap in points. Therefore, the points should be comparable between divisions.
The points are NOT comparable between divisions if the same gap in skill does not always lead to the same gap in points. Which is what the OP is talking about. The OP is saying that in some divisions, having 1000 points is worth more than in other divisions.
Show nested quote +Also, most matches are played with players OUTSIDE of your division anyway. So why should it be easier or harder to earn points based on your division?
I'm not convinced. The system is designed for local competition and making points translate directly across all divisions would contradict that. Ideally you could say that Blizz should have you playing people from your own division more often but playing only people from your division would lead to more one sided matches than otherwise.
No it's not. The system was not designed for local competition. Matchmaking is completely independent of your division. It doesn't matter what division you're in when you click 'find match'. Nobody has presented any announcement from Blizzard or evidence otherwise.
Again, this contradicts the OP's conclusions.
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This entire system Blizzard concocted is a ridiculous way for people to feel better about their real standing in the world. I find this whole concept absolutely ridiculous.
Stop trying to make baddies feel better plox!
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On August 24 2010 06:14 SichuanPanda wrote:
It's just like WC3 Blizzard has a hidden system that we will never ever see and it makes little to no sense. They then explain the system to us in terms that aren't entirely accurate.
On August 24 2010 07:37 FearMe.UK wrote:
The divisions system was a horrible idea. They should resort to an actual ladder like in WC3.
WC3's old (pre-patch 1.15) ladder was the best designed ladder system I've seen in an online game. Win five games against even leveled players, go up a level. Beating someone 6 levels higher (the max search range was +/-6 levels) gave you twice as much rating as beating someone equal level, and the inverse was also true. Prior to level 10, you lose less rating for a loss than you gain for a win.
This meant that average players who won 50% of the time ended up around level 10, and player skill level was strongly correlated to their level. Level 20s were ladder stars, ranking in the top 500 on each US server, amateurs that could hold their own in online tournaments made it to level ~30, and pros were 40+.
Of course smurfing was a problem, and search times for level 30+ accounts were horrid, but the replacement ladder was the precursor to the one used in WOW arena and Battle.net 2.0. So they basically traded those problems for the problem of level (and in SC2's case, rating) being meaningless. If there's no way to know how you're being compared to other players, some of the sense of competition is lost, because your displayed ranking doesn't mean anything and your actual ranking is hidden, so you don't get to see the actual effects of a win or a loss, or even whether or not your opponent was actually good or not.
I honestly don't see the point of the current rating system except as a cookie to toss to people who can't stand to see that 25,000+ other people are better than they are. If the points aren't comparable across divisions, why not do away with them entirely?
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Really, to be honest. I don't see the problem.
You got more points from beating a platinum player than beating a diamond?
Well the general conscious is of course that you should get more points for beating a diamond player.
But you can think this way too: If you're in diamond, and beat a platinum player and gets many points for it (more than a highly ranked diamond player). That proves that you're better than platinum players and should "be pushed away from them" in terms of ladder/skill.
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On August 24 2010 09:17 Kpyolysis32 wrote:
A little tale for you all that hints at a couple of interesting ladder mechanics: When the game first came out, I decided to Nuke rush all of my placement matches, and I won 4 out of 5 and ended up in mid Gold (I am- and was- a Diamond level player). I went on a gigantic winning streak because of my low placement and ended up with an insane MMR, I actually got paired up against people who were around 450 ELO Diamond (even if their MMR was lower than their ELO, it still meant that they had an absurd MMR compared to mine, and remember, 450 ELO was a lot higher when the game first came out because of point inflation). However, it didn't promote me until I lost a game, after which it immediately promoted me to something insane up in Platinum (around 900, IIRC, which was ridiculously high when the game first came out). This demonstrated a couple of theories I've heard, which are 1- that you won't promote until your W/L ratio over any stretch of time is 50/50 (I've also heard this as your MMR stabilizes, but I've never heard any details on what counts as 'stable' ) and 2- that you can't promote multiple divisions at a time.
It's very possible that the Plat guy was actually a very good player, but was on a large winning streak and didn't promote because of it (as predicted by theory 1 above), so his MMR was far higher than his ELO would indicate.
I'm now considering getting together a bunch of information, then asking people on the xkcd math forums if they can help figure out exactly how this ladder works. Hm..
I don't know about that. I was promoted directly to Diamond from Gold.
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On August 21 2010 12:32 RivalryRedux wrote:
Blizzard's top 200 seems to have been a conformation of this. I don't have the old ladder points from the day of their top 200 but I remember hearing that were some significant changes such as with Dayvie (who dropped from near 1st to 49th IIRC). There is almost NO WAY that it unused bonus points bringing Dayvie up on the point comparison when almost all of the players above him were active enough to use all of their bonus points. What I would imagine blizzard used when they were ranking players was their hidden Match Making Rating.
Agree, I think Blizzard match making system does not use Points but a rather a separate (hidden) rating. This would help explain why the number of points gained or lost is inconsistent when comparing players based on points. It may partly explain why dayvie has accumulated more points then others with what looks like a similar record.
Also, see 3 theories why dayvie has accumulated more points then others with what looks like a similar record.
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I see a lot of suggestion that motivating bad players to keep playing instead of getting discouraged and quitting is a bad goal that Blizzard shouldn't bother with, and absolutely no attempts to justify this position. The arguments for eliminating divisons at the top are persuasive, but why not keep them for Bronze thru Platinum?
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On August 24 2010 20:22 theSAiNT wrote:
You're agreeing with what I'm saying. Your explanation says that in ABSOLUTE terms, a larger gap in skill leads to a larger gap in points. Therefore, the points should be comparable between divisions.
You don't compare silver points to diamond points because they can have the same or larger skill gaps but their divisions are obviously going to be so much weaker that they're point values aren't directly comparable.
The points are NOT comparable between divisions if the same gap in skill does not always lead to the same gap in points. Which is what the OP is talking about. The OP is saying that in some divisions, having 1000 points is worth more than in other divisions.
That's wrong because a gold player could have the same separation from 99 bronze players that Dayvie has from the rest of his division. You wouldn't consider the gold players 1400 points to be equivalent to dayvie's though..
No it's not. The system was not designed for local competition. Matchmaking is completely independent of your division. It doesn't matter what division you're in when you click 'find match'. Nobody has presented any announcement from Blizzard or evidence otherwise.
Again, this contradicts the OP's conclusions.
I'm pretty sure Rob Pardo used the words "local competition" in his Blizzcon presentation when discussing the division/league system. When I googled it an article said the same thing.
In short, matchmaking will be more friendly to newcomers and pro-gamers alike, featuring leagues that players will automatically be assigned to after playing a few games. Blizzard wants to encourage “local competition” by putting you in your “skill neighborhood” in order to facilitate fun and competitive games
http://www.sc2blog.com/2010/02/09/battle-net-2-0-preview-welcome-to-the-starcraft-2-beta/
No, we have no way of knowing what your opponents MMR is. You assume that it's close to their rating but that's just an assumption, there's no reason to believe that 200 games is enough to stabilize everything. The points you gain or loose is thus irrelevant for the discussion, the only points that we can use are the points that your opponents gained or lost since we can assume that your own MMR didn't change massively between games. If you look at the players that beat you they all had around 500-700 points and gained 12-14 points which is perfectly reasonable. Any small discrepancies are easily explained by the 2 day delay and small changes in your own MMR. The points lost by your opponents also seem reasonable. I'd say everything looks as expected.
You need to tell me how you think points are awarded if I'm going to put anything your saying in to context. I would guess that you think that it's (Your Points vs their MMR) that determines your point gain or loss but I don't know so I'll wait before addressing that.
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My question is: Looking at diamond divisions with good representation on the Top 200 list, within a division are there cases where the ordering by points is wildly out of whack with the ordering of those same people on the Top 200 list?
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On August 22 2010 02:43 Animostas wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 00:05 Alexstrasas wrote:
Btw how come there are different divisions? I mean why not make a single diamond league? If's sort of a silly thing to help the noobies. When you're judged by with smaller group of people, it isn't as demoralizing. Think of it like this, is it feels worse to be judged as #30 out of 50 people? Or #300 out of 500?
I don't know if this is true. Having different divisions is probably just a statistical tool that Blizzard is using to get a measure of balance in the game. Probably...
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The more I think about it the more I think that Blizzard may not be revealing anything about the way it ranks players because doing so would not benefit them. It may make us mad and give us proof that the game is unbalanced.
Perhaps the game has race tiers like in Age of Empires 3.
Quoted From Cyclohexane's Quick Reference Guide
Civilization Tiers – The Power Rating system also rates the civilizations in tiers. When playing a multiplayer game, the civilization used is also rated in that game. All Spanish players, for example, will affect the ranking of the Spanish civilization by winning or losing games. The civilization ranking looks something like this (only two civilizations are used to keep the example simple):
Spanish Tier 3 (level 25+)
Spanish Tier 2 (level 10-24)
British Tier 3
British Tier 2
Spanish Tier 1 (level 0-9)
British Tier 1
This ranking is dynamic and is updating constantly throughout a day, adjusting to game results.
In the example above, Spanish tier 3 (levels 25+) is rated the highest while British tier 1 (levels 0-9) is rated the lowest. A player using a higher ranked civilization who defeats a player using a lower ranked civilization will gain slightly fewer points, and vice versa. The idea being that players that use the civilization that wins the most will be more likely to win the game, and so will earn fewer points.
Head to the sheet on Power Ranking if you want to learn more about how other ladders have worked.
http://allthingsmiscellaneous.110mb.com/index_files/Downloads/Files/HTML copies/AOE3 TWC TAD Quick Reference.htm
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On August 25 2010 04:55 Hidden_MotiveS wrote:
The more I think about it the more I think that Blizzard may not be revealing anything about the way it ranks players because doing so would not benefit them. It may make us mad and give us proof that the game is unbalanced
I think it's more because they view their matchmaking system as a matter of particular competitive advantage vs. other multiplayer RTS games, either in its current state or in terms of where they're hoping to go with it.
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Big long first post with a complete lack of understanding about the bonus pool.
The bonus pool is used to try and compensate for lack of games played. It has no bearing on the league, division, or rating.
Someone who plays more will have a smaller pool then one that doesn't play as often.
The points you win or lose will be based on how many points you have in your pool then factoring in the favored.
You need to collect data from people who have 0 pts in their bonus pool to accurate gauge how the points system works.
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EPT
