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SC2 Ladder Misconceptions FAQ - Page 2

Forum Index > SC2 General
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Danze
Profile Joined September 2010
Australia219 Posts
September 05 2010 06:49 GMT
#21
Q: I'm only in Silver, so why am I being matched against Platinum players?
A: Two possible answers: either your MMR is too high for your current league, or your opponents' MMRs are too low for their current league. Look at your match history. Are you commonly being matched against players from higher leagues? If so, you have an opportunity for promotion. Look at your opponents' match histories. Are they commonly being matched against players from lower leagues? If so, they are at risk of demotion.


Ah, this explains alot, thanks. I had played my placement matches yesterday, and was wondering why I got plat players all the time. Promoted to platinum now, +46 pt wins ftw .
Accidentally pissing on toilet rolls since 1991.
ZapRoffo
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States5544 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-05 06:59:06
September 05 2010 06:57 GMT
#22
On September 05 2010 15:33 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 05 2010 15:08 ZapRoffo wrote:
On September 05 2010 15:06 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
Hmm thats interesting because I thought that was a mechanic to keep players who simply don't play as many games still in the picture ranking wise. Interesting that it accumulates like that for everyone now. I guess this means eventually they will have to do ladder wipes and resets splitting into seasons etc or else new users will have thousands of bonus points and the ladder point inflation would get a little out of control.


I still think it will end up stabilizing because the higher points rise (assuming MMRs are not inflating), the less you win from your games and the more you lose.


We believe that it's precisely because the bonus pool total is the same for everyone that it becomes an easily-ignored universal variable. This would mean constant inflation (of course, MMRs would not inflate) up until either some very large cap, or straight through to the end of the season. I should probably add that to the FAQ, as well as the fact that there will be seasons.


So does this mean that points or points + division threshold will not tend to converge to MMR (disregarding bonus pool) at all? That's what you are implying. Otherwise there would be a growing downward pressure on points as the points rise and rise in relation to MMR.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, your opinion man
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12244 Posts
September 05 2010 07:18 GMT
#23
On September 05 2010 15:57 ZapRoffo wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 05 2010 15:33 Excalibur_Z wrote:
On September 05 2010 15:08 ZapRoffo wrote:
On September 05 2010 15:06 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
Hmm thats interesting because I thought that was a mechanic to keep players who simply don't play as many games still in the picture ranking wise. Interesting that it accumulates like that for everyone now. I guess this means eventually they will have to do ladder wipes and resets splitting into seasons etc or else new users will have thousands of bonus points and the ladder point inflation would get a little out of control.


I still think it will end up stabilizing because the higher points rise (assuming MMRs are not inflating), the less you win from your games and the more you lose.


We believe that it's precisely because the bonus pool total is the same for everyone that it becomes an easily-ignored universal variable. This would mean constant inflation (of course, MMRs would not inflate) up until either some very large cap, or straight through to the end of the season. I should probably add that to the FAQ, as well as the fact that there will be seasons.


So does this mean that points or points + division threshold will not tend to converge to MMR (disregarding bonus pool) at all? That's what you are implying. Otherwise there would be a growing downward pressure on points as the points rise and rise in relation to MMR.


They still would, you would just ignore whatever number of bonus points have been consumed. Say you have a 1500 MMR and your points + league threshold is 1500 not factoring in bonus pool. Bonus pool would inflate your displayed rating by an amount, but that additional amount would not be considered in calculating point gain/loss or determining favored status on the loading screen.
Moderator
Daigomi
Profile Blog Joined May 2006
South Africa4316 Posts
September 05 2010 11:08 GMT
#24
On September 05 2010 15:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 05 2010 15:18 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
I think one of the key points I've noticed just by observation and would be curious to see if this tests to hold up true is that the system will intentionally set you in unbalanced matchups early on in the matchmaking to try and find your range faster. IE when you first finish placements it seems like every game is vs a player who is strongly favored to win, whenever I go on a winning streak this continues until I start to lose a few games then suddenly I get matched vs a lot of slightly favored opponents in a row.

This represents the matchmaking system becoming more certain of itself so the concept that the ladder actually tries to find you the best possible match (ie evenly matched) seems to be a little bit false as it seems like it likes to throw you into unbalanced matchups to more quickly determine which bracket you truly belong in.


It's important here to distinguish between what favored means in terms of actual matchmaking versus what it means on the loading screen.

The system will always try to find you even matchups based on how large your sigma is. If it's large, the range of potential opponents increases. If it's small, you'll get closer matches.

As far as what it says on the loading screen, that compares your opponent's MMR to your displayed rating, and your displayed rating may not be close to your MMR (or your opponent's, by extension). Because your MMR starts at some nonzero level while your displayed rating does not, it's common for you to see Favored on most or all of your starting matches. If you went on a win streak then lost some, your MMR would naturally be closer to your displayed rating than it was previously, and your sigma would also likely be smaller, which means you'll see more Even/Slightly Favored games than Favored.

Do you have any idea which rating system the MMR is based on? The way you're describing it makes it sound like it might be on some accelerated Elo system completely unrelated to the rating system being displayed in game.
Moderator
Catyoul *
Profile Joined April 2004
France2377 Posts
September 05 2010 13:53 GMT
#25
On September 05 2010 14:43 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Q: If I've never played 1v1, but I'm 2v2 Diamond, who will I face in 1v1 Placements?
A: Your performance in other brackets is considered when initially seeding your placement matches. In this case, you'd likely be paired with a Diamond player to start.

I strongly suspected this, thanks for the confirmation !

On September 05 2010 20:08 Daigomi wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 05 2010 15:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:
On September 05 2010 15:18 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
I think one of the key points I've noticed just by observation and would be curious to see if this tests to hold up true is that the system will intentionally set you in unbalanced matchups early on in the matchmaking to try and find your range faster. IE when you first finish placements it seems like every game is vs a player who is strongly favored to win, whenever I go on a winning streak this continues until I start to lose a few games then suddenly I get matched vs a lot of slightly favored opponents in a row.

This represents the matchmaking system becoming more certain of itself so the concept that the ladder actually tries to find you the best possible match (ie evenly matched) seems to be a little bit false as it seems like it likes to throw you into unbalanced matchups to more quickly determine which bracket you truly belong in.


It's important here to distinguish between what favored means in terms of actual matchmaking versus what it means on the loading screen.

The system will always try to find you even matchups based on how large your sigma is. If it's large, the range of potential opponents increases. If it's small, you'll get closer matches.

As far as what it says on the loading screen, that compares your opponent's MMR to your displayed rating, and your displayed rating may not be close to your MMR (or your opponent's, by extension). Because your MMR starts at some nonzero level while your displayed rating does not, it's common for you to see Favored on most or all of your starting matches. If you went on a win streak then lost some, your MMR would naturally be closer to your displayed rating than it was previously, and your sigma would also likely be smaller, which means you'll see more Even/Slightly Favored games than Favored.

Do you have any idea which rating system the MMR is based on? The way you're describing it makes it sound like it might be on some accelerated Elo system completely unrelated to the rating system being displayed in game.

If we assume it is the same system as WoW, it is some variation of Bayesian inference. I'm thinking of writing a comparison of different rating systems. Elo is not the state of the art anymore and hasn't been for quite some years.
RafikiSC
Profile Joined August 2010
United States90 Posts
September 05 2010 14:18 GMT
#26
People who buy the game in the future will more than likely have their bonus pool synchronized to the last season reset. This way, people who buy it in a year won't accumulate thousands of points. I'd imagine once the ladder season is reset the bonus pool will be as well, this means anyone that joins during the next season will have a bonus pool that is equivalent to anyone who had an account on day 1 of that season.
"Ah, yes, that is Hulk Hogan's signature look; blond Chinese hair and the skin of a hot dog."-Dennis Reynolds
NeVeR
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
1352 Posts
September 05 2010 14:38 GMT
#27
What does MMR stand for? Match-Making Ranking? ..And is it possible to know what our MMR is?
NuKedUFirst
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
Canada3139 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-05 14:53:59
September 05 2010 14:53 GMT
#28
On September 05 2010 23:38 NeVeR wrote:
What does MMR stand for? Match-Making Ranking? ..And is it possible to know what our MMR is?


Yes, you are correct and that;s the thing. You don't exactly know. It is like a hiding rating;]
FrostedMiniWeet wrote: I like winning because it validates all the bloody time I waste playing SC2.
Kinky
Profile Blog Joined September 2008
United States4126 Posts
September 05 2010 22:56 GMT
#29
This actually does clear up a lot of my misconceptions Thanks a lot for the hard work!
cHaNg-sTa
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
United States1058 Posts
September 05 2010 23:15 GMT
#30
With the current system, does it mean that it's impossible to find a stable and accurate measurement of skill based off the points system? Like 1000 points was considered pro level a couple of weeks ago, now the high is around 1800. I don't quite like that system since it's hard to pin point how good someone based off points unless you're up to date on the ladder scores.
Jaedong <3 HOOK'EM HORNS!
AcrossFiveJulys
Profile Blog Joined September 2005
United States3612 Posts
September 05 2010 23:19 GMT
#31
Yeah, this is my theory on how it works too. It's the only explanation I was able to come up with for why two people can see each other as favored.
Subversion
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
South Africa3627 Posts
September 05 2010 23:53 GMT
#32
On September 05 2010 14:57 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
Bonus pool starts accumulating when you create your account, you should clarify that even if you dont play any multiplayer it will still be accumulating.

edit: @ above most of this data has been figured out and tested in multiple sources you can find most of this on liquipedia plus unofficial confirmations from other sources etc etc he's just consolidating the information


ok cool

sorry i sounded a lot more trollish/ungrateful than i intended to =/

i do appreciate this insight into the system and the hard work that went into it!
gondolin
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
France332 Posts
September 06 2010 01:07 GMT
#33
On September 06 2010 08:15 cHaNg-sTa wrote:
With the current system, does it mean that it's impossible to find a stable and accurate measurement of skill based off the points system? Like 1000 points was considered pro level a couple of weeks ago, now the high is around 1800. I don't quite like that system since it's hard to pin point how good someone based off points unless you're up to date on the ladder scores.


Yes, the inflation is about 350 points/week, so 1800 point right now is equivalent to around 1100 points two weeks ago. There need to be some sort of incentive for the player to keep playing, in war3 this was with XP decay, for sc2 they have implemented inflation. But I agree with you that more accurate ratings would be ratings - total bonus pool. Maybe sc2ranks can implement this.

I am also wondering: can we guess what the average MMR is? Leagues complicate things, but we could try to look at the average of each leagues and substract the bonus pool to see what we get.
Dionyseus
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
United States2068 Posts
September 06 2010 01:51 GMT
#34
On September 05 2010 15:08 ZapRoffo wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 05 2010 15:06 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
Hmm thats interesting because I thought that was a mechanic to keep players who simply don't play as many games still in the picture ranking wise. Interesting that it accumulates like that for everyone now. I guess this means eventually they will have to do ladder wipes and resets splitting into seasons etc or else new users will have thousands of bonus points and the ladder point inflation would get a little out of control.


I still think it will end up stabilizing because the higher points rise (assuming MMRs are not inflating), the less you win from your games and the more you lose.



I agree. in chess there's evidence of rating inflation but even so Kasparov still holds the highest ever rating of 2851 even though that record was set way back in 1999.

I don't know what rating the top ladder players will stabilize at, but it'll probably be something like 3000, and that's when I think it'll be easier to seperate the talented players from the lesser talented ones just by looking at the ladder ranking. If 3000 is the ceiling, I imagine B players would get around 2500, semipros will be 2600-2800, and the pros will be 2900-3000.
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
St. Fu
Profile Joined August 2010
United States75 Posts
September 06 2010 02:52 GMT
#35
Thanks for the post bro. People NEED to read this.
Xma
Profile Joined October 2009
United States147 Posts
September 06 2010 03:18 GMT
#36
confusion, i asked a question a while ago about having high # of games and having a 50-50 win/loss ratio ect...so are u saying (mainly from article 2 of ladder info) that more games with 50-50 it will b harder to promote vs less games and 5050 even with the checkpoint evaluations?
bonedriven
Profile Joined August 2010
258 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-06 04:29:52
September 06 2010 04:26 GMT
#37
I don't understand why the SC2 ladder system's reaction is so slow compared to war3 ladder system. I mean,if I'm beaten by a few platinum players (I myself in Gold league),why the hell am I matched with a diamond player? Only after I've got a terrible lose streak,can the system realize that it should match me some low MMR players. But by that time,I am beaten so hard that I can't even remember how to play normally. So you say it's my own problem?

However in War3 ladder match making system,I will be immediately matched with a player whose level is below mine if I have just lost a match. I think that one makes sense.

Hence,"Like a Virgin."
Hsanrb
Profile Joined May 2010
United States46 Posts
September 06 2010 04:36 GMT
#38
On September 06 2010 13:26 bonedriven wrote:
I don't understand why the SC2 ladder system's reaction is so slow compared to war3 ladder system. I mean,if I'm beaten by a few platinum players (I myself in Gold league),why the hell am I matched with a diamond player? Only after I've got a terrible lose streak,can the system realize that it should match me some low MMR players. But by that time,I am beaten so hard that I can't even remember how to play normally. So you say it's my own problem?

However in War3 ladder match making system,I will be immediately matched with a player whose level is below mine if I have just lost a match. I think that one makes sense.



Sounds to me like you (on a promotion chance) played a diamond player (who is in a demotion chance.) Being matched against platinum the game thinks your ready to move up, you lose a few games so then it starts looking to put you against those who are on their way down to platinum to attempt to catch them from double demotion (diamond -> gold)

PS: Or maybe your in the "extending search crowd" playing someone because the system has no one to match you normally. The matchmaking system is getting worse for me this weekend where I'd win 5 straight, lose 5 straight...
Raelcun
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
United States3747 Posts
September 06 2010 04:42 GMT
#39
So I got promoted to Diamond with a really low total rating and am sitting at #100 in my division because I haven't played at all since. I've been really busy and I'm contemplating testing out your theory on demotion by just sitting at #100 and seeing if I get demoted for being last rank for too long or if it really is just based on the combination of MMR and the sigma. If it really is just MMR and sigma I theoretically will never get demoted if I don't play right?
Apollys
Profile Joined July 2010
United States278 Posts
September 06 2010 04:46 GMT
#40
Two things:

1) Doesn't the exclamation point mean the player joined the division "this week"?

2) You say people have been promoted without having 7 losses. But you didn't specify what league you were talking about. I think the only time the 7 losses number is brought up is when people talk about being promoted to diamond. Have you seen people be promoted to diamond with less than 7 losses?

One more thing, nice info about the favored. I wondered how that worked, now it makes sense. And it's actually fairly logical. It's trying to force your point rating to follow your hidden rating.
When you're feeling down, I'll be there to feel you up!
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