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United States12248 Posts
On July 02 2011 17:01 aksfjh wrote:
Huzzah! Ladder reset imminent! Say Excalibur, are you going update the OP with information about ladder resets?
I think resets happen infrequently enough and are explained well enough by Blizzard that they probably don't need to be covered by this guide. The goal of the guide is to teach about some of the less tangible parts of the ladder that are important to understand, and I don't know if resets fit into that. I suppose I could consider adding a section, but I want to make sure it's not going to cause bloat.
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Excalibur,
with the new reset incoming. When it happens does this mean that if the inactive players with high MMR are playing placement matches again that they'll become active and thus take some of the 2% active spots in Master league? Thus making it possible for the recently promoted Master players to not get promoted untill there are available spots since their MMR isn't in the top 2% active of Master league?
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On July 02 2011 20:33 shannn wrote:
Excalibur,
with the new reset incoming. When it happens does this mean that if the inactive players with high MMR are playing placement matches again that they'll become active and thus take some of the 2% active spots in Master league? Thus making it possible for the recently promoted Master players to not get promoted untill there are available spots since their MMR isn't in the top 2% active of Master league?
As far as we understand it, the thresholds for promotion don't actually move to create the 20-20-20-20-18-2 distribution. They set the thresholds at statistically significant points so that the distribution looks similar to the ideal situation, but isn't shaped by it. This basically means that an influx of new players won't shift your MMR without being consistently active, and thus your league shouldn't change.
Further, since the system waits for players to diligently prove themselves for promotion, newly added masters players are in a relatively safe position from being demoted. You aren't promoted into the very bottom of masters, but most likely somewhere in the 30-40th percentile (educated guess).
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On July 02 2011 20:33 shannn wrote:
Excalibur,
with the new reset incoming. When it happens does this mean that if the inactive players with high MMR are playing placement matches again that they'll become active and thus take some of the 2% active spots in Master league? Thus making it possible for the recently promoted Master players to not get promoted untill there are available spots since their MMR isn't in the top 2% active of Master league?
No.
If you are at master league right now and you are not declining to diamond league, you will be placed at master league regardless of whether you win/lose and also regardless of when you make your placement and regardless if the system already have 2-4-10% if the active players as masters, that's because your MMR will barelly change after your placement match and the placement only takes into account your MMR, that won't change based in inactivity nor anything. Think about it this way, everyone with 2250 MMR or more (random number, we don't know the number) will be placed at master league. If 6% of the active players have this MMR, than we will have 6% of the active players in master league.
The 2% of "active players" isn't a reality "de facto", it is a goal of the designers of the system, but it is not enforced into it. That's also why they hotfix it from time to time, so that the 2%/18%/20%/etc that is the goal turns into reality, so it is possibly to have 4% of the active players into the master league even now.
So no, it won't be harder nor you have to "hurry" nor anything,
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On July 02 2011 20:56 SDream wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2011 20:33 shannn wrote:
Excalibur,
with the new reset incoming. When it happens does this mean that if the inactive players with high MMR are playing placement matches again that they'll become active and thus take some of the 2% active spots in Master league? Thus making it possible for the recently promoted Master players to not get promoted untill there are available spots since their MMR isn't in the top 2% active of Master league?
No. If you are at master league right now and you are not declining to diamond league, you will be placed at master league regardless of whether you win/lose and also regardless of when you make your placement and regardless if the system already have 2-4-10% if the active players as masters, that's because your MMR will barelly change after your placement match and the placement only takes into account your MMR, that won't change based in inactivity nor anything. Think about it this way, everyone with 2250 MMR or more (random number, we don't know the number) will be placed at master league. If 6% of the active players have this MMR, than we will have 6% of the active players in master league. The 2% of "active players" isn't a reality "de facto", it is a goal of the designers of the system, but it is not enforced into it. That's also why they hotfix it from time to time, so that the 2%/18%/20%/etc that is the goal turns into reality, so it is possibly to have 4% of the active players into the master league even now. So no, it won't be harder nor you have to "hurry" nor anything,
Thanks :p I wasn't really speaking for me but I was just wondering in general :D
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Very very helpful, I've been wondering how it worked exactly for months now.
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Wow, a ghost concept turned solid and comprehensible. Thanks!
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Does your MMR drop if you get autodemoted from GM league because of inactivity?
EGidrA was fully or at least slightly favored against virtually everybody he was matched against and got minimal amounts of points for wins but lost comparably huge amounts for losses. Since he was autodemoted and put into Masters his match history shows the complete opposite. He gets huge amounts of points for wins and almost zero for losses and his opponents are almost always favored over him.
How can this be explained? I thought the favor/point system is based on mmr?
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On July 06 2011 08:27 Simonius wrote:
Does your MMR drop if you get autodemoted from GM league because of inactivity?
EGidrA was fully or at least slightly favored against virtually everybody he was matched against and got minimal amounts of points for wins but lost comparably huge amounts for losses. Since he was autodemoted and put into Masters his match history shows the complete opposite. He gets huge amounts of points for wins and almost zero for losses and his opponents are almost always favored over him.
How can this be explained? I thought the favor/point system is based on mmr?
I think when you change leagues your points are set to X + Spent Bonus (X is like 73 or something if I recall correctly). Since that means EGidrA's points are no longer converged onto his MMR that he will gain a lot more quickly until his points approach his MMR.
You can check the section about MMR vs Points in the opening post for more info.
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Thats very enlightning, thank you! 
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Wow that was detailed, good stuff I can tell it took a lot of time to write, it took a lot of time to read lol.
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United States12248 Posts
Added this image to the Division Tiers section which should hopefully explain more clearly why the tiering exists in the first place:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tjSg7.jpg)
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On July 06 2011 14:53 Excalibur_Z wrote:Added this image to the Division Tiers section which should hopefully explain more clearly why the tiering exists in the first place:
I never really understood why they would create different tiers based on skill, and not just randomly. I mean, the point is to obfuscate the rankings so that nobody knows where they REALLY are on a server before masters. To do it based on skill at league placement just seems really backwards...
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United States12248 Posts
I think I get it though. You only get promoted when you fit within a tier (and if you overshoot a league you just move temporarily to the highest tier of that league). So, that means it should have some degree of confidence that you belong in that tier because if it was less conservative in its estimate, you'd just move to a different league anyway. The point offsets work to define what is considered "high points" across all leagues and divisions, so usually you're not going to find someone who has like 1000 adjusted points in Gold and dwarfs all these other Gold players, it's going to be around a certain range. For "larger" divisions like Diamond and Bronze which cover a wider skill range but have the same percentage of the active population, you just add more tiers. Like right now the bonus pool is 1275 and the top points across almost all the leagues is around 1600-1700 so it seems to work out (Bronze has a lot of 2000ish-point people and so does Master).
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On July 07 2011 01:57 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I think I get it though. You only get promoted when you fit within a tier (and if you overshoot a league you just move temporarily to the highest tier of that league). So, that means it should have some degree of confidence that you belong in that tier because if it was less conservative in its estimate, you'd just move to a different league anyway. The point offsets work to define what is considered "high points" across all leagues and divisions, so usually you're not going to find someone who has like 1000 adjusted points in Gold and dwarfs all these other Gold players, it's going to be around a certain range. For "larger" divisions like Diamond and Bronze which cover a wider skill range but have the same percentage of the active population, you just add more tiers. Like right now the bonus pool is 1275 and the top points across almost all the leagues is around 1600-1700 so it seems to work out (Bronze has a lot of 2000ish-point people and so does Master).
Yea, but those 1600-1700 players are most likely in the lowest tiered league since the promotion system doesn't make future predictions. The tier system seems to try to predict a player's "success" in a given league, but that prediction will almost always be wrong.
For example, I could inch my way to diamond, get placed in the lowest tier, then inch my way to masters. By the time I'm almost masters, I'm rocking the highest points in the league due to that tiered offset. Meanwhile, somebody in a higher tier could come back from a break and do very poorly, almost dropping down to plat. These players make up the extremes of each league, and league tiers is not likely to change that. In the end, tiers don't even matter to the overall point totals, since people who are placed in the lowest tiers can easily rise to the top of the league anyways, and vice versa for high tiered players.
In the end, they do the primary job of obfuscation, but fail at that secondary task of properly predicting end results of players. Why waste the resources in this futile prediction?
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Wow, great post. Very helpful and clarifying! Glad to find out that being inactive doesn't affect your future promotions and MMR.
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tried searching for this but didn't find anything so here we go.
Open Bugs
There are some bugs in the system.
Pre-game and Post-game Favoritism Discrepancy
The pre-game loading screen does not always agree with the post-game score screen, and may not always be accurate. The accurate information can always be found on the score screen. Blizzard is aware of this bug, but it cannot be consistently reproduced.
IMO i dont think this is a bug. i think that when 2 players are matched it is favored one way or another. after the game is played and points are distributed the favoring may change because that favoring threshold has been crossed.
say player 1 has an MMR of 1500 and 1100 points. Player 2 has an MMR of 1200 and 1300 points. say the diffrence between favored and slightly favored is 100 points.
as always both players see each other as favored.
player 1 wins the match and wins 30 points and 20 MMR points. so player 1 would see them selves as slightly favored because he crossed that 100 point threshold.
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United States12248 Posts
On July 07 2011 13:09 OneofOne wrote:tried searching for this but didn't find anything so here we go. Show nested quote +Open Bugs
There are some bugs in the system.
Pre-game and Post-game Favoritism Discrepancy
The pre-game loading screen does not always agree with the post-game score screen, and may not always be accurate. The accurate information can always be found on the score screen. Blizzard is aware of this bug, but it cannot be consistently reproduced. IMO i dont think this is a bug. i think that when 2 players are matched it is favored one way or another. after the game is played and points are distributed the favoring may change because that favoring threshold has been crossed. say player 1 has an MMR of 1500 and 1100 points. Player 2 has an MMR of 1200 and 1300 points. say the diffrence between favored and slightly favored is 100 points. as always both players see each other as favored. player 1 wins the match and wins 30 points and 20 MMR points. so player 1 would see them selves as slightly favored because he crossed that 100 point threshold.
It is a bug, and Blizzard is aware of it. They acknowledge it. I say so right in the quote! They say that the code that is in the loading screen is the same as the code in the score screen for determining favored status, but there's pretty clearly some discrepancy somewhere. They just don't know where and the bug is elusive enough that they can't pin down where exactly. The calculations are done after the score screen report (supposedly). Also that doesn't explain the sometimes radical swings like you being favored in the loading screen then the opponent being favored in the score screen.
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Also that doesn't explain the sometimes radical swings like you being favored in the loading screen then the opponent being favored in the score screen.
never seen that, just small changes
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On July 07 2011 03:01 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2011 01:57 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I think I get it though. You only get promoted when you fit within a tier (and if you overshoot a league you just move temporarily to the highest tier of that league). So, that means it should have some degree of confidence that you belong in that tier because if it was less conservative in its estimate, you'd just move to a different league anyway. The point offsets work to define what is considered "high points" across all leagues and divisions, so usually you're not going to find someone who has like 1000 adjusted points in Gold and dwarfs all these other Gold players, it's going to be around a certain range. For "larger" divisions like Diamond and Bronze which cover a wider skill range but have the same percentage of the active population, you just add more tiers. Like right now the bonus pool is 1275 and the top points across almost all the leagues is around 1600-1700 so it seems to work out (Bronze has a lot of 2000ish-point people and so does Master). Yea, but those 1600-1700 players are most likely in the lowest tiered league since the promotion system doesn't make future predictions. The tier system seems to try to predict a player's "success" in a given league, but that prediction will almost always be wrong. For example, I could inch my way to diamond, get placed in the lowest tier, then inch my way to masters. By the time I'm almost masters, I'm rocking the highest points in the league due to that tiered offset. Meanwhile, somebody in a higher tier could come back from a break and do very poorly, almost dropping down to plat. These players make up the extremes of each league, and league tiers is not likely to change that. In the end, tiers don't even matter to the overall point totals, since people who are placed in the lowest tiers can easily rise to the top of the league anyways, and vice versa for high tiered players. In the end, they do the primary job of obfuscation, but fail at that secondary task of properly predicting end results of players. Why waste the resources in this futile prediction?
You are right that obfuscation is the primary reason for the tier system. Predicting end results of players is very far behind in the goals list. If each division has 1-2 players whose skill has shifted enough since they were put in their tier so that their points are going to be significantly ahead of the competition, then that just means all the people who belong in the tier are going to be pretty much fighting for 2nd - 3rd spots and below. It still maintains the illusion that they are at the 'top' of their league or 'top 8' or whatever they think of themselves, and that's the intent of the ladder system.
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EPT
