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[G] Comprehensive SC2 League and Ladder Guide - Page 76

Forum Index > SC2 General
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Lysenko
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Iceland2128 Posts
June 11 2013 01:01 GMT
#1501
On June 11 2013 09:58 LordOfDabu wrote:
From what I understand: It's not actually percentage based. There are certain mmr thresholds that are recalculated for each season (which are presumably calculated to get those percentages) which are then fixed for the rest of the season. Once the system is "confident" that you're above the threshold you'll get promoted regardless of how many players are actually in the league.


Right. Promotions are made based on MMR thresholds, which only loosely correlate to percentiles (which is why the percentiles haven't always been as intended.) The threshold placement depends on assumptions about the distribution of MMR among the population, which can change as the game (and strategies players apply) changes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Toyomaha
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
United States144 Posts
June 22 2013 16:50 GMT
#1502
I thought the purpose of the ladder system was to match you with evenly skilled players such that your w/l ratio would be around 50%? For the past 2 ladder seasons my w/l ratio has been less than 40% (in fact it's been near 30%-35% this season. What could be causing this? I win all matches vs gold yet I lose nearly 60% to platinums? Then just last night I was matched vs a diamond player and beat him right after being matched to a silver player that beat me (however I did play this silver player later and he'd been promoted to gold). Something is messed up, right? And don't say it's me Is my play that inconsistent that at times I play like a silver player and other times I play like a diamond?
www.starcraftutah.blogspot.com
Lysenko
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Iceland2128 Posts
June 22 2013 17:29 GMT
#1503
League isn't completely predictive of how any particular game will go, of course. Since HOTS, the matchmaking system has leaned toward matching you with people in the same league, so you may not have a 50% win/loss if you're near a boundary. Nevertheless, your league placement should reflect where you are, roughly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Mahtasooma
Profile Joined November 2010
Germany475 Posts
June 26 2013 23:24 GMT
#1504
Is there anybody else seeing a logical issue with the following:

1. You can't get demoted during a season anymore.
2. You can get promoted during a season.
3. A set 2% of the player base is masters at any given time.

..? If I get promoted to masters during a season, and 2% of the player base IS already masters, someone else would have to get demoted, which isn't possible...

Now consider this is applicable to all players and leagues of course... A lot of players get promoted, but none gets demoted.
Now you could say some else would have to get promoted from plat to diamond, but this doesn't work, because I make up for a lot more share of masters league, which is 2%, then a single player makes up for diamond, which is 18%.
http://twitch.tv/mahtasooma
Facultyadjutant
Profile Blog Joined January 2012
Sweden1876 Posts
June 26 2013 23:44 GMT
#1505
On June 27 2013 08:24 Mahtasooma wrote:
Is there anybody else seeing a logical issue with the following:

1. You can't get demoted during a season anymore.
2. You can get promoted during a season.
3. A set 2% of the player base is masters at any given time.

..? If I get promoted to masters during a season, and 2% of the player base IS already masters, someone else would have to get demoted, which isn't possible...

Now consider this is applicable to all players and leagues of course... A lot of players get promoted, but none gets demoted.
Now you could say some else would have to get promoted from plat to diamond, but this doesn't work, because I make up for a lot more share of masters league, which is 2%, then a single player makes up for diamond, which is 18%.


But isn't it possible due to it working on a bell curve?
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Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12240 Posts
June 26 2013 23:45 GMT
#1506
On June 27 2013 08:24 Mahtasooma wrote:
Is there anybody else seeing a logical issue with the following:

1. You can't get demoted during a season anymore.
2. You can get promoted during a season.
3. A set 2% of the player base is masters at any given time.

..? If I get promoted to masters during a season, and 2% of the player base IS already masters, someone else would have to get demoted, which isn't possible...

Now consider this is applicable to all players and leagues of course... A lot of players get promoted, but none gets demoted.
Now you could say some else would have to get promoted from plat to diamond, but this doesn't work, because I make up for a lot more share of masters league, which is 2%, then a single player makes up for diamond, which is 18%.


It's really quite simple. What has to happen is that the higher leagues will become inflated over the course of a season. Again, the population percentages for leagues are not enforced. If it takes 2000 MMR to get into Master league and you hover around 1950 but on a lucky streak you get to 2001, you're promoted whether Master is currently 2% or 4% or 10% of the population. Your MMR may go back down to 1950 but you won't get demoted until the following season. This phenomenon can happen in any of the other leagues (except for Bronze) as well.

At the season roll, they just tweak the boundary values until their statistical projection fits the percentages they want. Maybe that 2% mark will be at 1990 or 2010. In any event, for the lucky players like yourself who got into Master on a hot streak but then settled back at their old average, you'll just get demoted until you can demonstrate that luck again.

You may remember the start of this season, how many Master players were demoted to Diamond. I believe there were actually two factors at work here. The first was explained by Blizzard, that inter-season placement estimates are more conservative than before. This could be interpreted to mean that your MMR is artificially lowered for inter-season placement so they can't overestimate your skill level (and with demotions disabled, this prevents the case of locking players into a league for which they don't feel prepared). The second is that they probably used the first HotS season data to see just how many players were capable of crossing that Master League threshold and raised that boundary based on that statistic. That is, if 10% of players were able to get above that 2000 MMR mark at least temporarily (meaning a promotion), they had to change that marker to one that only about 2% of players proved they could reach, and maybe that's 2100 or so.
Moderator
Mahtasooma
Profile Joined November 2010
Germany475 Posts
June 27 2013 08:31 GMT
#1507
Ah I see... so the 2% is only set at the start of the season, then it shifts around until the next season, where it's set to 2% again. That would make sense.

I also noticed not only a few, but a TON of masters got demoted. I played around 120 games this season, and about 95% are against Diamonds that were Masters once (I'm not yet masters but close to, #1 dia).

So you say it's even more conservative regarding promotions now? Do you have a reference for this? Thank you!
http://twitch.tv/mahtasooma
Lysenko
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Iceland2128 Posts
June 27 2013 12:05 GMT
#1508
On June 27 2013 17:31 Mahtasooma wrote:
Ah I see... so the 2% is only set at the start of the season, then it shifts around until the next season, where it's set to 2% again. That would make sense.


The boundaries aren't necessarily set at the start of the season. Basically, they fiddle with them whenever they feel it necessary. They have, in the past, gone long periods without altering them, but since HOTS changed a number of things that make a difference, they probably made some pretty significant changes at the end of season 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Mahtasooma
Profile Joined November 2010
Germany475 Posts
June 27 2013 14:55 GMT
#1509
Obviously... I'm still playing 100% Diamonds that were Masters "once" and Masters... so a TON of people got demoted down to diamond. A TON.
http://twitch.tv/mahtasooma
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12240 Posts
June 27 2013 15:07 GMT
#1510
On June 27 2013 17:31 Mahtasooma wrote:
So you say it's even more conservative regarding promotions now? Do you have a reference for this? Thank you!


Not promotions, placement.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/9280238112
Moderator
imareaver3
Profile Joined June 2010
United States906 Posts
July 13 2013 01:43 GMT
#1511
Okay, I'm in a really weird situation. I was promoted to masters about a week ago, and got ~300 bonus pool. Since then, the system has been treating me like I have really high MMR. I'm getting 5-10 (+5-10) points for every win (against masters players), and losing 15+ points of bonus pool with every loss. But I think that I should have low masters MMR, because I just got promoted and I've had a bad W/L record since. Does anyone know what's going on?

Profile link: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/463388/1/Retep/matches#filter=solo
las91
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
United States5080 Posts
July 13 2013 01:54 GMT
#1512
After about 55-60 games I was promoted back from Diamond to Masters. I'm not sure if this is due to my actual MMR being high enough within that top certain % or if the ladder is again inflating at the top, but it was a huge relief to see that star pop up (and 400 bonus pool :D)
In Inca we trust
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12240 Posts
July 13 2013 06:38 GMT
#1513
On July 13 2013 10:43 imareaver3 wrote:
Okay, I'm in a really weird situation. I was promoted to masters about a week ago, and got ~300 bonus pool. Since then, the system has been treating me like I have really high MMR. I'm getting 5-10 (+5-10) points for every win (against masters players), and losing 15+ points of bonus pool with every loss. But I think that I should have low masters MMR, because I just got promoted and I've had a bad W/L record since. Does anyone know what's going on?

Profile link: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/463388/1/Retep/matches#filter=solo


That's not "treating you like you have really high MMR", that's treating you like your points are higher than your MMR represents. Your points trend downward (becomes harder to earn points) when your points are higher than your MMR. So, you're probably right that your MMR in Master league is low.
Moderator
Zeon0
Profile Joined September 2010
Austria2995 Posts
July 17 2013 09:06 GMT
#1514
WoL leagues are really off somehow: I keep geting demoted, despite winning most of my games:


[image loading]
(WoL only)


[image loading]
(again, WoL only)

I mean I really dont give a fuck, because I only cheese in WoL and cheesing works best vs bad opponents, but I wonder why this happens? I won 68% of my games in 2013, but I went down to Gold from Master (I was never really in danger of getting demoted from Master before HotS)


Does MMR depreciate over time now?
Hater of MKP since GSL Open Season 2 | Fanboy of: NesTea Stephano IdrA DIMAGA MorroW ret DongRaeGu Snute SaSe Mvp ThorZaIN DeMusliM
Lysenko
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Iceland2128 Posts
July 18 2013 07:07 GMT
#1515
On July 17 2013 18:06 Zeon0 wrote:
Does MMR depreciate over time now?


No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Dunmer
Profile Joined April 2012
United Kingdom568 Posts
July 18 2013 13:41 GMT
#1516
Because you hadn't played for near 2 months I see there bar 2 games the system deliberately places you in a lower league. This is because without demotions you could be stuck in diamond but playing gold players. Whereas now you will just get promoted until your league represents your MMR.
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ollehar
Profile Joined July 2013
Sweden1 Post
July 19 2013 12:59 GMT
#1517
The TrueSkill system has a method that's increasing uncertainty (sigma) over time, adjusted when you play, perhaps in analogy to the Starcraft bonus points (except bonus points actually don't affect matching). Has anybody heard of this?

Before starting to determine the new skill beliefs of all participating players for a new game outcome, the TrueSkill ranking system assumes that the skill of each player may have changed slightly between the current and the last game played by each player. The mathematical consequence of making such an assumption is that the skill uncertainty σ will be slightly increased, the amount of which is, in principle, a configurable parameter of the TrueSkill ranking system. It is this parameter that both allows the TrueSkill system to track skill improvements of gamers over time and ensures that the skill uncertainty σ never decreases to zero ("maintaining momentum").


Quote from http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/details.aspx

Regards
Olle
Eregos
Profile Joined July 2013
United States34 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-07-26 16:32:21
July 26 2013 16:30 GMT
#1518
Zeon0 is right, WOL leagues are really off. The leagues are also off in HOTS – this has been the experience of virtually everyone I’ve talked to. This is turning into something of a large post, so I’m hoping for some real community consideration of the problem. The first part of my post is purely anecdotal, the second is more empirical, draws more on others and suggests alternative possibilities and also solutions. I should also mention I recently read Excalibur_Z’s league guide, sc2 ladder misconceptions FAQ, and SC2 ladder analysis parts 1 & 2 in their entirety. Note that I don’t appear to be suffering the win/loss bug because afaik all my wins/losses appear correct in my match history

TL;DR at bottom of the second post (Part 2).

Note that I started writing this post a week ago, and have been promoted since then (after considerable grinding)
[image loading]
(WOL R2v2). For almost every WOL season, I was Diamond in R2v2 with a high win-loss record (60%+) and substantial number of games played (usually 25+). Couple of seasons ago, I placed Gold for no apparent reason. I withdrew from the league (which we now know doesn’t actually affect MMR, though with a caveat I’ll mention later), skipped WOL R2v2 entirely during HOTS season 1, returned to it this season, won and placed bronze.
I subsequently went on a very long win streak with only 1 loss, eventually being promoted to silver as seen below.
[image loading]
(WOL R2v2) This was just before my final game in Silver before being promoted to Gold. Since being promoted to Gold I went 23-5 (82% wins) with no promotion, far beyond what is considered healthy for expecting promotion (66% wins). I’m aware that win rate isn’t everything and that opponent difficulty is the driving factor in promotion, but still with this win rate it seems I should expect to be promoted faster than I have been, especially considering my rank in previous seasons. I suspect that my MMR is being ‘anchored’ by the fact that I’ve played so many games in the past. This concept is important to understand: if you’ve played 5 placements, placed gold and subsequently go on a long win streak, you can expect to be promoted in fewer games than if you’ve played hundreds of games. If you’ve played hundreds of games, more games are in your average, (the number of most recent game the system looks at maxes out but this variable X is not known) requiring you to win a lot more to be promoted. I believe this is what happened to my WOL R2v2 ranking – somehow, the average I used to have (Diamond) became bronze, anchoring me with a low ranking for far longer than it reasonably should because my total number games played is high.

[image loading]
(WOL 4v4, mostly R4v4) I have the same problem as Zeon0, except in 4v4 instead of 1v1. The situation is identical for my WOL R3v3. Once again, it seems my MMR is magically anchored in Silver now, despite being master in previous seasons. I realize MMR requirements change between seasons, but from master all the way down to Silver? That seems a bit drastic. As further evidence of this anchoring problem, I placed Gold in R2v2 in HOTS this season, but got back to Diamond (was Masters in S1) relatively easily. One possibility is that because I had played fewer games total, I was thus anchored less, requiring fewer games for promotion. The same was also true in R4v4 in HOTS (in which I recently got my masters back.) Perhaps not coincidentally, HOTS R4v4 also has the best league distribution across regions (an observation I’ll get to later). I’m willing to do some grinding in R2v2, R3v3 and R4v4 WOL this season to get promoted, but if this becomes a recurring problem where I place far lower than I should and have to grind each and every season because of anchoring, I’ll just stop playing WOL entirely. Crushing newb players is fun for a while but like most people, I want the option of a challenging and rewarding gameplay experience. I’ve been playing zerg meaningfully in WOL first the first time which has been fun, but still this can’t go on every season. Even worse, this problem is also leading to more complaints about smurfing. I clearly am not smurfing – I’m doing everything I can to be promoted, but the league system is simply doing so far too slowly

This also worsens the gameplay for these lowranked players who get matched against me and have almost no chance of winning. It think this is leading to some of the complaints in the threads I’ve compiled here
Furthermore, this problem left unaddressed would seem likely to propagate to HOTS as seasons roll on and total number of games played increases, although it should at least stop getting worse once that unknown variable [X number of games] maxes out. I’m aware this explanation is conjecture at this point but it strongly makes sense to me.
Eregos
Profile Joined July 2013
United States34 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-07-26 16:46:40
July 26 2013 16:31 GMT
#1519
PART 2
Now for some data from SC2 ranks, which I acknowledge may not 100% accurate, but the disparities here are so large as to overwhelm even several percentage points of inaccuracy.
Note that there are Seven Sc2 brackets: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, R2v2, R3v3, and R4v4. A 2v2 team consists of 2 ranked players, a 3v3 of 3 and so on. R2v2-R4v4 refer to a players ranking playing those brackets either alone or without a full party.
For reference, league distribution should be as follows:
Master league: 2%
Diamond league: 18%
Platinum league: 20%
Gold league: 32%
Silver league: 20%
Bronze league: 8%
While a few percentage points of deviation are to be expected, given small sample sizes for some brackets and other factors, the deviations this season go far beyond previous seasons and are generally much worse from an empirical standpoint. The overall distribution in HOTS is poor, but awful in WOL.

[image loading]
The league distribution here is undeniably terrible. All of the higher leagues are extremely severely underpopulated. Grandmaster no longer exists in WOL, and Master league is now even more exclusive than Grandmaster used to be (only 1 division). In fact, in the Americas region I have nearly 100% confirmed (independently of SC2 ranks) that there is Only 1 Master division in 1v1, R2v2, R3v3, and R4v4. Its name is always the same: Scimitar Echo. Note that most players in the Americas are silver league, more than Two and a half times as many as should be.
+ Show Spoiler +

[image loading]
The situation here looks very similar in WOL R3v3 and R4v4 as well. Lower leagues are overpopulated, Diamond and Platinum are underpopulated.
[image loading] Note the complete absence of masters everywhere except China. The China region has always seemed to be handled a bit differently. Part of the problem with this bracket is how difficult it is to actually get 4 players to play together regularly, making accurate rankings difficult. Still, the current situation is especially terrible. The situation improves slightly as you move to 3v3 and then 2v2, but is still very poor.


[image loading]
One of the most damning results, because HOTS 1v1 is the most popular bracket. In the Americas, Diamond is badly underpopulated (10% short, slightly less when considering master is overpopulated). Platinum is several points underwater as well. Gold is about 5% below where it should be. Silver is 7.82% overpopulated, and bronze is more than 10% overpopulated. Diamond is simply missing half its players. It’s no wonder people are complaining about being underranked.
+ Show Spoiler +

[image loading]
Similarly, HOTS R2v2 is overpopulated in the lower leagues and underpopulated in Diamond and Platinum. Unlike WOL R2v2, Master is actually overpopulated.

+ Show Spoiler +

[image loading]
The distribution here is better than in WOL 4v4, but still very poor. However, it improves in HOTS 3v3, and is only moderately poor in HOTS 2v2. It’s worth noting that I’d consider the Arranged team brackets (2v2, 3v3, 4v4) less important to my argument than the solo brackets (1v1, R2v2, R3v3, R4v4) because they are played less and therefor have always had worse distributions. However, as with all the brackets, that distribution is even worse this season than before.

[image loading]
Of all 7 brackets in both WOL and HOTS, this one looks the closest to correct. Unlike the others, Gold league is the largest (as it is supposed to be), Silver is only slightly overpopulated, and bronze is actually under twice its intended size. Platinum is within a couple points of normal. Diamond is still about half its intended size, and master is actually significantly overpopulated. Given that demotions are disabled and we are only partway through the season, I expect the distribution will normalize even more later on. If every bracket in WOL and HOTS looked like this, I’d say the system was functioning reasonably well.

There are clearly severe problems with current league distributions, across all regions, in both WOL and HOTS. It is safe to say these problems will be noticeably improved but nowhere close to solved by the end of the season (due to a lack of demotions). While the problem is much more severe in WOL, There is a temptation to say this will all ‘sort itself out’ naturally as blizzard adjusts the MMR league boundaries after each season. However, I suspect that this will only improve the situation marginally unless something fundamental changes (such as allowing demotions once again, allowing placement matches to reflect current MMR accurately). Even then though, this would only solve the distribution problem but not the grinding problem.

+ Show Spoiler +
[image loading]

Also consider that the bottom of every masters division looks something like this, since poor performing players cannot be demoted. While at a statistical level, masters population looks overpopulated in many HOTS brackets, if you dig deeper and look at actual divisions (I’ve looked at many now) you see that the bottom 3rd or so don’t belong there, while the top 3rd (at a minimum) of diamond players should clearly be master. This pattern is repeated with the bottom 3rd of diamond players, the top 3rd of platinum players and so on.
Meanwhile, the top of WOL diamond divisions look like this:
+ Show Spoiler +
[image loading]

I’ve been considering making a longer, empirical post about this on the Battle.net forums (not all that dissimilar to Excalibur_Z’s comprehensive guide in the first place) with the aim to get blizzard to fix this, but first I need to do more research and eliminate other possibilities. I realize that my post is mostly anecdotal, but I see strong indications that my experience is widespread. I posted here hoping for input from Excalibur_Z since he is very knowledgeable regarding the league system and also has mod status on the b.net forums, giving his voice more power. I considered just PMing him, but decided community engagement would be more constructive.
To this effect, I have some questions: (I’ll add the answers below by editing the post later on.)
1. How does Leave League exactly work? It says here that it leads to one placement match, meaning MMR is preserved (thus making it useless for my purposes). However, someone here states that it sometimes seems to lead to 5 placement matches (meaning that MMR is not preserved.) ExcaliburZ also posted that a player appeared to play 5 placements matches after leaving league, but I cannot find that thread despite searching extensively. It may have been deleted. Others also claim it sometimes leads to 5 placements.
2. I trust Excalibur_Z, but I haven’t yet found a separate source confirming demotions no longer being possible and that placements are more conservative. As Mahtasooma requested above, another source would help. I’m sure I could find it myself but haven’t yet.
3. It also seems possible that there is simply MMR decay now. Is there? I hadn’t played WOL for longer than I hadn’t played HOTS, so that my rankings would drop more in WOL is consistent with this.
4. This isn’t really a question, but it seems possible the addition of ranked vs unranked play might be a contributing factor. But since I don’t know what influence it has, I’m merely noting it and setting it aside for now.
5. Does sigma gradually increase over time now? When combined with conservative placement matches (something Excalibur_Z has been careful to point out) this could lead to improperly low rankings.

Finally: The main problem, as I see it. The problem seems to be that because inter-season placements are more conservative, a consequence of mid-season demotions no longer being possible, (as Mahtasooma mentioned above) and a player’s MMR tends to be solidified (anchored) as a result of having played many games in the past, getting promoted is now much more difficult than it should be. This is not just a problem for Masters (which you would expect, because it counteracts masters inflation ) but rather percolates into every league. At best, this leads to players being underranked. At worst, (as in the case of my WOL R2v2) leads to a failure of the system to deliver challenging matches in addition to being underranked, also leading to unfair matches for genuinely low-ranked players. Ultimately, the league system is supposed to represent your current skill, and is not meant to be an RPG-style grinding system in which you have to grind for a higher rank every single season. Right now it appears you need to grind more the more total games you’ve played. (With the possible sole exception of Grandmaster at the start of each season) The greatest irony of the current situation is that it manages both to devalue the ranking system and worsen the quality of matchmaking.
My reasoning could of course be wrong, so for the sake of completeness I’ll briefly state (but not explain fully) some other possible diagnoses: My moving average is lagging behind, I should intentionally lose some games to get promoted, My sigma value is too low (leading to even matches all the time), my sigma value is too high (preventing promotion)
In the past I have always appreciated that Blizzard has allowed me to be relatively highly-ranked and get good matches without requiring me to play hundreds of games. Unfortunately this season that isn’t always the case. Of the two, getting competitive games is more important, but there’s no reason the ranking system shouldn’t also accurately reflect that from the start of each season as well.
I have 2 preliminary solutions to the problem:
1. Return the league system to the way it used to be. Midseason demotions would again be possible, and placements would again reflect current MMR as they properly should.
2. Create a ‘Reset MMR’ button (or ‘Reset hidden skill rating’ button as blizzard would call it) that could only be used once per season to prevent spamming. It seems quite certain the ‘Leave league’ button does not reset MMR although this has yet to be 100% established. This would de-anchor your MMR, preventing the MMR anchoring/grinding problem mentioned above.
I’ve created a google document here showing a list of battle.net threads of people complaining about the league ranking and distribution problem, showing that dissatisfaction is widespread. For the most part these people see some problems with the system, but haven’t put all the pieces together the way I’ve tried to.
To be clear, I’m not saying the league system is terrible; to the contrary, I think blizzard designed one of the best ranked online multiplayer systems in gaming history. This season though, it seems to have taken a turn for the worse, but the problem is entirely fixable.
Yes yes, I know this is technically my first TL post, welcome to TL and all that, but I’ve been reading the forum for years, been an SA member since 2007 so I know my way around. It’s the first time I’ve had enough of a problem with something starcraft-related to actually bother registering to post about it.
TL;DR: This season the league system isn’t working as well as it should mostly because inter-season placement matches put people below where they should be to compensate for a lack of demotions. This tends to require people to grind to get back to their proper rank, which is suboptimal or at worst provides a poor experience, especially for players who actually belong in lower leagues and are thus matched against nearly impossible opponents too frequently. Many others have noticed this problem, but few put all the pieces together. After getting a few questions answered and if Excalibur_Z helps, it seems plausible we can get blizzard to fix this problem before the next season.
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12240 Posts
July 26 2013 18:14 GMT
#1520
I'm always happy to help and these were some good posts. I'll go over each of your points:

First, the "demotion freeze". This was first mentioned in a forum post by David Kim where he says "locking demotions" but it wasn't clear what he meant. Did he mean demotions were just not possible mid-season? Apparently he did, because that was confirmed in a Ladder FAQ later.

To keep play at each skill level on the ladder competitive, we no longer demote players in the middle of a season. (Exception: Demotions down from Grand Master league are applied in cases of high bonus pool (inactivity).) Unless you're an inactive Grand Master, you can only be placed into a lower league when you play your initial placement match(es) in a new season, or by leaving the league.


Next, the league population distribution. The only populations that we know for sure in Heart of the Swarm are Master (2%), Gold (32%), Silver (20%), and Bronze (8%). Blizzard hasn't expressly announced what the new values for Diamond and Platinum, but it's possible they remain unchanged. Wings of Liberty should still be 2/18/20/20/20/20. However, these values apply to the "active player" population. An "active player" is a player who has bonus pool less than X and who has played more than Y games in a season. We are still attempting to determine the metric Blizzard is using to apportion leagues. If you look at an SC2Ranks league population snapshot, you may find that it is 4/9/14/28/28/18, but if you were to look at it through a filter of "players with less than 180 bonus pool and more than 20 games played" it may be a lot closer to the posted distribution. It wouldn't be perfect because there is still some slush involved as players change leagues, and we don't know the impact of the mid-season demotion freeze, but it would be closer certainly. Wings of Liberty doesn't have nearly the population that Heart of the Swarm does, which invites anomalies. We saw similar bizarre distributions on the old low-population servers (RU, LA, TW) which had to be merged with neighboring larger servers in order to fix it.

Your placement question is a little off the mark. When you start fresh (5 placements), your placement matches give you a provisional MMR which becomes your actual MMR after you finish. This provisional MMR changes more dramatically in order to narrow down where you belong. In addition, and you can find this in the same Ladder FAQ from May linked earlier, your initial placement is very conservative. The reason they handled it this way is obvious: if you were accidentally placed too high due to playing during a skill peak or just getting lucky, because of the way ladder points are awarded, you could potentially get stuck at or near 0 (or wherever the mean is, 88 or whatever). Beyond your placement matches, your MMR doesn't move quite as quickly, but it never gets cemented anywhere. It's not like the TrueSkill system where once it's reasonably sure you're TS38 that it's going to be very difficult for you to move to TS37 or TS39. If your MMR is even with the MMR of your opponent, then you're gaining about 16 MMR for a victory or losing 16 for a loss. When the offsets between the middle leagues are around 200-300, that can take quite a few games. It's also important to note just how long it was taking you to find matches in WOL, because the longer you're waiting, the wider your search range will be.

Leave League doesn't reset MMR but it does have some superficial impact, probably a "re-placement" with another conservative estimate.

If you have any further questions feel free to ask.
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