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On April 09 2011 04:51 branflakes14 wrote:
I'd have to disagree that it's not fair to let smurfs crush new players. Hell, you'd have a lot more to learn from a replay of you getting your face mashed in by Jaedong than by someone just as bad as you. Being smashed to pieces in a game isn't a bad thing, you can see what better players are doing.
The problem with this is that it drives new players away from the multiplayer game, which isn't in the interest of Blizzard or the community.
You may wonder why Blizzard cares about retaining player interest when they're not charging for a subscription? One word: sequels.
Edit: Based on the sc2ranks stats, as a high silver player who wins some matches vs. gold players, I'd probably have 50/50 wins to losses if matchmaking were completely random. However, many, many more of those games would be one side completely dominating the other, and that's not really that fun on either side.
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in a ladder system like this, W/L doesn't matter until you're towards the top, which is why blizzard kept loss visibility in masters. the entire experience is supposed to challenge the player to play to the point where he'll break even against other players. someone in the top 10 having a 66% win ratio is great, because he has overcome the vast majority of players in his region and has yet to plateau (still isn't entirely indicative of his future in the top 10).
if you're sitting in lower leagues, even diamond, with a 70-35 W/L record, then you either don't have enough time to be active to push yourself further, or you're sitting on those stats to look good compared to others in your league or division. the latter isn't very conducive to actually getting better at sc2, so i don't see why it's even argued as a point.
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On April 07 2011 02:11 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2011 00:50 Chronald wrote:
I like your points OP, I think that you really put some time into this post, and that is much appreciated.
I think that Blizzard has done exactly as you said, made a ladder that encourages people to play. However the main gripe that many community members have with the ladder is that it doesn't encourage you to get better. Even casual players want to be better than they were yesterday, that is the nature of any game. They claim they want to get better, but they don't do the right things to improve. Tell a casual newbie he should focus on mechanics and macro. He will think you just burden him with tiresome practice work while in fact a better strategy (or a better cheese) would just do fine. I think we should not try to convert those guys. It is up to them if they do the right steps to actually improve. There don't have to. I do want to give all types of players free quarter unless they are unfriendly and do shittalk to others. The Elo system would not work well for Starcraft. Elo uses just one single number, but the MMR system uses two, if not three numbers ("skill" and "confidence in that skill" are indirectly confirmed through Blizzcon Q&A.) If you like real competition, you can sign up to an open tournament. The SC2 ladder is a playing environent, no tournament or real league. Also the bonus pool is great. I did not mention it in the OP because it would be too long then. But the bonus pool with the point inflation rewards activity. Having mediocre players active is better than having good players inactive. Real competitive players don't give a damn to the ladder anyways, they seek their success in tournament where they could earn some money.
This!
What people don't seem to understand îs that the "ladder" of sc2 îs not a real ladder in the true se sense of the word.. icCup was a true ladder. The blizz "ladder" îs just a playing ground that facilitates finding games faster. Just like the war3 ladder..
On iccup, to get from D to C you Had to be able to beat C level players, in sc2 to get from silver to gold you just have to play more games.. Last season, i got promoted to Diamond by just pummeling plat players; I actually lost 80% of the va Diamond games that i played..
Ladder ranking and all this bullshit does not matter at all! The ladder îs good only at finding games for you to play, withouth the hassel (sp?) of asking someone to play via chat..
And for people that say that it's not the "Bob" players that become the next GSL winners, you are wrong! The more people that play the game, good or bad, the more geniuses will rise.. Plus, the more mainstream attention the game recives, the more sponsors it will attract, for those players that will actually excell.. I doubt Samsung îs interested in only Masters players to see and buy their products..
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On April 09 2011 06:32 Dagon wrote:
in sc2 to get from silver to gold you just have to play more
This is not accurate. Bonus pool or activity do not influence promotion. You have to improve faster than your peers (and thus move up in the population in terms of whom you're beating) to get promoted.
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Bob won't win the GSL if he sees his win/loss ratio.
How bout we let Bob decide whether or not he wants to practice and get better instead of adjusting shit around so homeboys can feel better about themselves. I don't want to sugar coat this but you guys are sugar coating this. Ladder ranking doesn't matter to you if your playing tournaments but for those of us who aren't as good we kind of like it, and we like to see our stats and see how we're doing.
Heres my point, if you really want this make it an option. i say this about everything in games just make a little checkbox and people who want to see how many games they've played against how many they've won let them. It serves everyone's purpose and who could have a problem with that?
i don't think the question is whether or not its a good idea and should be whether or not anyone really cares. If you think w/l doesn't actually matter and that the ladder isn't real competition and that if you want "real competition" you should play in a tournament, then theres no reason not to show losses or games played. The people that want to be good will practice and those who don't won't.
Ladder for me is personal competition i like to know and im sure there are more people who feel the same. If your competitive you won't care about ratio, and if you're not competitive you won't care about getting better. Let natural selection take its course and do it for esports
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Good write up mate. Completely agree with your post. I just love being able to jump on and get a match of about equal skill going without too much hassle like in BW days 
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Pree good stuff here. I have to agree. Even myself i feel more motivation to ladder because of how it hides my losses and there's less fear of "trashing your record"
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On April 09 2011 07:25 Sixears wrote:
i don't think the question is whether or not its a good idea and should be whether or not anyone really cares.
Blizzard would probably not have made this change without specific evidence (probably from focus groups) that the losses column was causing people not to play. They have an interest in continued play because they want to sell licenses for expansions, and multiplayer is the way to keep people playing for long enough to get there.
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The reason I DON'T like to ladder is because they hold my hand. If I lose to a better player, I want to play another player of the same level so I can learn and adjust my builds, not play someone worse. Sure, maybe for people with 0 competitive nature who just want to feel good about themselves the system works. For people who actually care about improving / learning / getting a chance to play people who are actually big names in Starcraft, the ladder system sucks. It deters growth.
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United States12238 Posts
On April 09 2011 07:47 Xyik wrote:
The reason I DON'T like to ladder is because they hold my hand. If I lose to a better player, I want to play another player of the same level so I can learn and adjust my builds, not play someone worse. Sure, maybe for people with 0 competitive nature who just want to feel good about themselves the system works. For people who actually care about improving / learning / getting a chance to play people who are actually big names in Starcraft, the ladder system sucks. It deters growth.
If you've been playing games for a while, there's no wild swings like you might think. Your MMR doesn't radically change after a single game if you've previously shown that you belong at a particular level. Many of the people who wanted to drop from Master to Bronze were still playing Master players even after going 0-10 because they had played so many games in Master that the system was almost sure that was where they belonged.
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If you need to see your W/L ratio to see if you're improving, you're lying to yourself. You really just want it to feel better about yourself in the FPS mindset. You should KNOW if you're improving by what games you are winning and losing. I'm one of those Diamond noobs (season 1) that isn't in bronze but I'm not the worst. I, for one, welcome our new NoLossViewing Overlords.
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good post, put lots of work into it, but I much prefer the BW style, if you never played BW I could understand the attraction to SC2 style, andd it does give a more even playing field, but having all the choices in your hands was what made BW so great
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On April 09 2011 07:39 Lysenko wrote:
Blizzard would probably not have made this change without specific evidence (probably from focus groups) that the losses column was causing people not to play.
I have no doubt thats blizzards motivation, i won't deny that. What i mean by that is that blizzard might have some reasons why its good for them, but people are gonna play or not play as much as they want. My problem is the attempts to control how you feel about your losses. I think its a creepy way to improve replayability, this abstract idea that is there to pat you on the back when your losing, and with bonus points to lift you higher when your winning. its strangely manipulative no? i mean we're talking about bronze player motivation like they aren't here.
People know they are losing, they just don't get hard numbers:
Player - "hey sc2ladder can i see my how many losses i have?"
The Invisible Hand of the Ladder - "nah, we think its better if you don't know"
Player - "well im just kind of curious how i've been doing"
The Invisible Hand of the Ladder - "trust me, if you knew what we know it would DESTROY you!"
I'm half facetious but i do think its a bit disconcerting. That all said, personally its just making me work harder to get into diamond or masters :D
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I just want to see my ratio >.< I don't do anything with that number (unless it's significant); I just want to know what it is for curiosity's sake.
Require a registry edit, for all I care. Just let me see it.There is no point in not having it available in some way that doesn't require saving all of your replays and/or manually tracking it after every game. That's like removing a public K/D from a FPS and saying it's because you don't want people to get a false sense that they're getting better, without any way (no matter how obscure) to find out at all unless you're at the top.
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United States12238 Posts
On April 09 2011 08:16 Zeke50100 wrote:
I just want to see my ratio >.< I don't do anything with that number (unless it's significant); I just want to know what it is for curiosity's sake.
Require a registry edit, for all I care. Just let me see it.There is no point in not having it available in some way that doesn't require saving all of your replays and/or manually tracking it after every game. That's like removing a public K/D from a FPS and saying it's because you don't want people to get a false sense that they're getting better, without any way (no matter how obscure) to find out at all unless you're at the top.
That analogy is so far off the mark and is a perfect example of why W/L isn't shown. Read the rest of the thread because this has been covered a bunch.
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While I agree with the reasoning of the op, I believe Blizzard can probably satisfied more people if they make showing the win/loss ratio an option. I think the best solution is to make the default show no loses while those that want to see their lost can turn it on manually themselves.
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I have kind of warmed up to the new hidden losses, but I think Diamond should be the cutoff for who gets to see their complete statistics, not Masters. It's a little odd that only the top 2% of active ladder players (below 0.5% of the total player pool I believe) are deemed worthy of this. I can see the utility in preventing super casual Bronze/Silver players from seeing how bad they are, but before the reset, basically every Diamond player had a positive record and was likely someone who was fairly into the game already (or played BW), not a casual player that has to be wooed by Blizzard in order to stay with the franchise.
Also, give us matchup win rates. I don't think sc2 gears can separate ladder from non-ladder in its matchup stats yet (can it?).
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On April 07 2011 00:39 Icx wrote:
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)
just look at your match history
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Just thought I'd share my personal experience laddering and how this affects me...
I thought the removal of losses would encourage me to ladder more, and while I admit I was happy with Blizzard's decision to remove them, I realized I was afraid to play again for some reason. I realized that its just the very prospect of laddering which is scary...I don't know why. Even playing FFA is scary. This isn't true in any other game, unless that game has a system in place where you're playing with a team and you don't respawn immediately - i.e. other players watch you play, so there's pressure on you (such as counter-strike source).
In addition I'm tense about losing my place in platinum league (relatively speaking, its kind of important to me), which adds to it all.
So I do appreciate Blizzard's decision to do this, as in it does help a little bit, but even if they did want to address the fear factor, I wonder if there isn't a deeper problem with how the game was designed at a fundamental level that instills fear in people. Maybe its just the complexity of the game relative to others - the fact that you always have to be doing something, you need to know what your opponent is building, etc. etc., that just having that foreknowledge of what you're up against gives you a sense of uneasy paranoia. As a zerg player I'm always freaking out about making the wrong move...what if he comes in with banshees...what if he rushes me with marines...what if he does a tank drop.
Anyways, I think as many people have posted before (particularly Excalibur), the primary reason for removing W/L is because it is misleading information. The fact that it is misleading, and can never be used as an absolute indicator of skill, is a good enough reason to remove it.
And if you want to make this an argument of "its still nice to see an irrelevant number"; consider the broader issue; that a lot of players are making invalid judgements based on W/L which can only be detrimental.
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I totally agree that the win to loss ratio means very little. I don't agree that it's right to take away my right to see it, as it's still something to consciously track. It's fun and encouraging to defend a win to loss ratio. It can spur you on to be more than you are.
I'm only silver, but i do track my wins to losses. I'm playing golds and platinums and I think I'm going to get promoted and i'm on 25-30 at the moment, i've lost to platinums and gone from 20-15 to what I'm at now, but i know that it's giving me harder games to place me, so it doesn't matter.
What i find is that people don't get the MMR system. They don't realise that being 1st in your ladder is nothing more than a worthless title. If people understood it more perhaps the w/l ratio would become less relevant.
It should at least be viewable from your own stats. If it was hidden you could hide your shame. Besides, people still make remarks like 'Oh you should be higher in the ladder than you are with your wins'. They don't get i'm playing people of a much higher skill level than me.
Doh.
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