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With Patch 1.3 and the removal of the total games played for leagues below Master, it is not possible to calculate the win ratio. Many users see this as the final proof that the ladder is good for nothing since it no longer has any meaning. Blizzard is just pleasing the noobs to sell more copies. Competitive play is not really promoted since anyone can get milestones or achievements while he still has no more than 12 drones at any given time in the match.
But let us look on a casual gamer with little RTS experience. Let’s him call Bob. Bob purchased Starcraft 2 because he likes military science fiction or because he was told that the game is good. Or he stumbled upon a Husky cast as a friend forwarded him the Baneling video and now Bob dreams of beeing a terran general to commandeer some battle cruisers.
Bob did play through the campaign on the easiest level and still had trouble with “All In”. He started the online mode and got crushed. He started another game and got crushed again. After practice league and placement matches he finds himself 0-5ed in Bronze. Five or ten games later his MMR adjusted and he fights other guys like him and he eventually gets close to a 50% win ratio, even though he cannot see it unless he digs up his match history. Anyway, he now thinks that he has improved while in fact he has not, he just gets opponents of equal skill. But the important thing here is that he has fun and that he plays. Bob will perhaps never get promoted, but he gets into Top-8 of his division and he tells a friend that this Starcraft thing is very fun and he should buy it, too. Now they can play custom 1v1 with no attack until 8:00 minutes or do a 2v2 with double sixpool.
Eventually, some players who got into the game will be interested to get actually better. This is my main point. Sir Taste-A-Lot and Striderdoom once were nubs, too. They nubbed probably for months, if not years, in an environment with no real competetive pressure. Everyone should have the chance to play online against players of equal skill without having to worry to get a poor ladder statistic. In SC1, everyone could create a new account at any time to hide the inglorious past. But this promoted smurfing, and it is not fair to let mid-skilled players bash noobs.
To have more players at pro level in the long term, Starcraft should attract the masses. It is not good to sort out the players who cannot stand the pressure before they had a chance to develop love for the game. Imagine a balance discussion between Bob and Jack, both bronzies. May be their views are horriblys wrong, but it is important that they talk about Starcraft. May be a friend overhears a conversation how imbalanced the Dark Templar is and purchases the game just for having a chance to feel great to crush someone with a DT rush.
It is also important that they watch some pro leagues because leagues need an audience to get sponsors. An elitist attitude regarding Starcraft will only drive away the masses, not letting the scene develop into mainstream.
We need people who play, or we will run out of fresh blood. Blizzard is doing the right thing to ensure new blood for any league. Blizzard is right awarding activity with a good placement in the division. If you want to see your win ratio, you can earn this honor by getting in Master. If you want to see your real skill with no bonus pool adjustment, you can sign up for a tournament and see who you can beat.
The Blizzard ladder is constructed to get people play the game and it does its job well. It rewards just playing the game, it keeps people playing because it removes the fear of getting below 50%. More players overall today = more pro-gamers overall tomorrow.
edit Technical note: With exception for the lowest and the highest league, if you keep playing, your ratio will be close to 50% regardless. If you have much more (or less) than 50%, you did not just play enough for the MMR do adapt. Having >50% in Diamond is no sign of skill. It's just a sign that you did not yet play enough games for the MMR do adapt.
Now let's say you had a bad day, you are a bit tired and afraid of playing 1v1 since you could lose a lot of games today. You could decide to rather not play to keep your 51% win statistic. Okay, a week or two weeks later you feel great but you are afraid that the strategies developed further and you would get crushed. Having not to worry about stats will make it easy to play regardless of your condition. The more players are hitting the search-game-button, the better the system works because it can match you to someone with similar skill very fast. This keeps the interest in actually playing instead of worrying about statistics.
Addendum: The ladder from Bronze up to Diamond is tailored to provide a challenge. It is not made for real competition. If someone wants to measure his skill, he can play an online tournament, there are plenty. If you like to be considered competitive in the ladder, you need to earn this privilege through getting to Master at least.
The display of losses makes you want to avoid losses. This is the tournament mindset, where you show off what you are capable of. The ladder is a playground. You should not try to avoid losses, but to learn from your losses.
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Very well written, looks like you gave this some thinking. I have to say I agree with you, even though it's still kind of pathetic that losses had to be removed so that noobs wouldn't feel bad... But I get it, it's good business, and it will attract more people to the game, which might ultimately end up in more pro gamers.
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Totally agree.
When you hate everything new (hipster gamer), you end up looking like an idiot when something new comes out that is good. But they'll continue to hate.
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On April 07 2011 00:28 Rakanishu2 wrote:
Totally agree.
When you hate everything new (hipster gamer), you end up looking like an idiot when something new comes out that is good. But they'll continue to hate.
Yeah, the thread about the Nydus worm notification with like 20 pages is a good indication of this as well. People don't think before they hate.
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Wait, did Tasteless really call himself Sir Taste-A-Lot? Thats hilarious!
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Then they should just give people the option of turning losses on as well, just have losses off by default so all the new people you talk about wouldn't see their losses.
I couldn't care less about that, but I just think it's really retarded to not let people see their own win/loss ratio even if they want to. (Without resorting to counting match history or using a out of game program like scgears.)
At the very least show it privately on the profile somewhere if not public for everyone to see.
It's just one step forward and two steps backwards just like everything else on battle.net, except the matchmaking itself.
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While I don't really care that they've hidden the losses for players below masters I do think it's kind of silly. For instance, yesterday I was off my game and got crushed all day. I ended the day 4 - 9 overall I think. From what I understand Blizzard wants to hide the fact that I suck so I keep playing lol. The funny thing is that I'm painfully aware of how bad I was yesterday (not that this will keep me from playing). Does hiding losses from players really make them think they're better than they are?
The other reason that I think Blizzard may have hidden losses that isn't really discussed much from what I've seen is to help reduce flaming because of records. If someone has more losses than wins it seems that they are more likely to get flamed after a game when someone is able to see their record. It still seems to me though that this is unnecessary for Diamond and maybe even Platinum.
Again, I'm not really against it because I'm generally aware of how bad/good I'm playing because I don't forget losses easily but maybe that's just me. Has hiding the losses really had a positive effect on lower level players though? I would be interested to hear from some Bronze/Silver/Gold players on the change.
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Okay what about the other person, let's call him Icx.
Icx is far from a talented rts player, and he will never be in the top of something, but he still wants to get good at the game as possible.
Icx is also very competitive, and likes the competitive aspect of starcraft2
Icx is in diamond, not the best out there, but not a bronze league newbie anymore.
Icx wants to know how much he has improved, how far he is progressing, and w/l ratio is part of that, why does he have to have the same rules enforced on to him by bob the bronze leaguer?
My point is, yes everything in your post is correct, but imo blizzard went to far with enforcing it onto a to large group of players.
I can understand it for bronze/Silver/gold, but everyone I know in plat/diamond is actually playing to get better, and isn't seeing this is just a pure "I wanna be a battlecruiser commander".
Why not have a system where they are disabled by default and you can actually turn them on if you so wish?
Or enforce them only on the casual players, for example bronze/silver (and if you look at sc2 ranks, like 40% of the community is in bronze, and my guess is that is actually that large more casual crowd that doesn't want to see their w/l ratio or care about it)
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So what about Joe? The Bronzie guy who really likes bashing Bob, but he doesnt have as much time as Bob does, so he plays less. Joe always liked to say: "here look, I'm better than Bob, because I won 20 games and only lost 5, while he played 100 games and won 50. Bob has more points than I do, but surely you agree, I am better."
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I totally disagree there because its plain bullshit. If your point would be true, they could have just removed the loss statistics for bronze or bronze -> gold. In fact they just undermine the will of half of the community to please the other half who are obviously newbs (nothing bad about it) who play once a week. And saying everyone who likes statistics should play 3 hours a day and get into Masters to be able to doesnt make sense at all. This is a competetive game, not only at the highest lvl, and therefore statistics matters. And btw, if you lose 5 games in a row a non existing statistic about it wont make you feel any better.
Oh well, they should also remove all archievement and portraits - not that anyone feels jealous about someone else..... /doh
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they should make it optional (only player can see it not others), but have the default show no losses. That way if your troubled enough to want the losses you will find it, but you can also remain blissfully ignorant
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Blizzard has their reasons, as described by you. But the fact remains: there is a large population of players that care about improving and gauging improvement. These players will play SC2 for a long time. However, inability to see win/loss and the lack of a system that truly displays your rank makes gauging your improvement difficult. I can be #1 in a masters league and not even be in the top 50% of masters players. As a result, a player may decide to stop playing SC2 because games become meaningless if he has no idea if he's better or weaker a month ago.
The best of both worlds would just make the current system apply to bronze/silver/gold players and have a real ladder for those in higher leagues.
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Edit: Someone already stated the same, I was too slow to reply.
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I think your thoughts about new players are pretty spot on. I have seen the same progression that "Bob" has in your example, with my friends and my brother. I think the matchmaking system and leagues are terrific, and works very well to help players of every skill have fun and be challenged.
However I am not a fan of Blizzard's choice to remove the losses from everyone's profile except for master's league. While I understand how it is beneficial for some people, especially very casual players. I think it would be great if it were an option you could turn off, or was re-instated for Diamond and perhaps Platinum players. I do not know anyone who is a "casual" player who is in diamond, and are scared to play because of their record. It is a valuable tool to judge your progress, and is mostly just annoying to not be able to see your losses.
I also think it is important to not judge casual players or their discussions, and have a positive attitude to new players in general.
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On April 07 2011 00:39 Icx wrote:
Icx wants to know how much he has improved, how far he is progressing, and w/l ratio is part of that, why does he have to have the same rules enforced on to him by bob the bronze leaguer?
Or enforce them only on the casual players, for example bronze/silver (and if you look at sc2 ranks, like 40% of the community is in bronze, and my guess is that is actually that large more casual crowd that doesn't want to see their w/l ratio or care about it)
If this is important to Icx he can find out. I think overall the new system is good, cause there are still ways to keep track of your W/L ratio for people who find this important.
Saving replays with W/L .
or saving all replays with SCgears or something similar, which again can analyze it and give you matchup records etc.
If you could turn it on/off, people will still turn it on and off to check it or pressure other to find out theirs. And then they would feel bad cause there W/L is bad). Or others would laugh at them for their poor W/L making them feel bad about their skill.
Overall I agree with OP and think this is a good change, as I think more players will enjoy laddering and play more games and becoming even better as they are playing more.That amounts of win is growing, without them having to watch the amount of losses also grow to.
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the "casuals" that just play for some fun are probably never going to get platinum or even diamond. so why not block the losses only for those below gold or soemthing?
and tbh, im not sure how many pro gamers evolve from this system. a progamer will become a pro gamer because he loves playing the game. and if he's not having fun because his win/loss ratio isnt good at the start, chances are he'll never amount to anything anyway.
also even though there are more players im not sure how many progamers are actually new. most progamers are existing progamers that transfered from broodwar or warcraft 3. It seems the amount of noob casual players compared to the amount of actual new progamers is relativley low.
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Icx wants to know how much he has improved, how far he is progressing, and w/l ratio is part of that, why does he have to have the same rules enforced on to him by bob the bronze leaguer?
WL ratio means nothing. Mine is below 50% and it's because I was high masters before the reset and I have to face pros / semi-pros every game. When I get over 50% does it mean I improved? No it means I started playing weaker players after a loss streak. If I did improve to where I could compete with semi pros I would still be pushed towards a 50% winrate as I got stronger and my opponents get stronger. You cannot use WL ratio as a gauge of skill unless you are one of the best.
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Your logic is flawed. You made a case for some players to not see their losses. You made no case at all for why this should encompass everyone from bronze to diamond. You also made the assumption that people will have found their love for the game only once they reached diamond, as that is the upper limit for the removal of the display of these statistics. That assumption is completely baseless and closer to bogus than truth too.
You haven't thought this through at all.
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Icx, a diamond player who neither gots promoted nor demoted will have a win ratio close to 50% anyways. To show the losses (or the number of games played) is pointless. The AMM is engineered to match you against equal skill so you have to come out near 50% win ratio. Only very, very good or very, very bad players can be far from 50%.
If you want to put your skill to a test, you could play a Go4SC2, Zotac or any other open cup.
edit: Several posters suggest to have the losses optional. This could incite flaming "Hey nub, afraid to show your losses?"
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I like the blizzard ladder because it was difficult to find players in sc1 of equal skill. Most of the time it was either someone who is vastly skilled or unskilled and the game wasn't as fun/challenging.
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EPT
