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On April 11 2011 20:41 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
i strongly disagree on some points
1. ladder outside of masters isnt competive .
a LADDERs whole point is competive play. this is always the case at all levels. if its not for competive play then get rid of points/rank/leagues as well and just make it a huge matchmaking pool. but that isnt a ladder then cause its not competive right?
also i know gold players that fight for evry point/rank and constantly compare themselves to others. and your "bob" does too since apparently he cares about getting to the top of his division. A Top-8 placement in a bronze devision is something everyone can aim for. Of course, only 12.5% of the players can reach that goal, but if you continue play in Bronze, you pass all the inactive guys and finally get to your Top-8 placement. You get the impression that you achieved something.
You feel that you could get promoted to Silver. This gives you the next goal: Get promoted for Silver. This is probably the hardest step in the gaming career: When you originally are a true bronze player to leave that league and play in Silver. Once you get in there, you "only" need more practice to get higher.
I like that Blizzard gives you possible goals you actually could reach. In this way, the ladder is competitive. But it is not the same sort of competition you get in a tournament.
A Gold player will not get better if he knows exactly where he stands in the gold league. His goal is probably the next league promotion. Knowing the win ratio will not help to get a faster promotion.
On April 11 2011 20:41 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
2. winrate is the end all what people care about (as in the "guy scared to play cause of his 51% winrate" example). And wrongly so. Because this irrational care about a statistics which is designed to be close to 50% regardless, some people are scared away to play. Other people are unwilling to experiment with new strategies or races because they fear the other players will laugh about them if they drop below 50%.
On April 11 2011 20:41 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
if people are positively affected by that change they already had the wrong mindset. if someone is scared of ladder cause of demotion, losing points/rank etc it doesnt change ANYTHING. Many folks voiced their experience in this thread, that the loss removal encourages them to play more often.
On April 11 2011 20:41 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
i dont get how you can talk about "bob" caring about getting top8 in his division but at the same time completly ignore all the ladderfear connected to losing ranks/points. it makes no sense.
what do you think will piss "bob" more off? going from 51% to 50.89% winratio or losing 17 points that make him lose 2 ranks and puts him further away from his top8 goal? As long as the bonus pool is filled, a single win makes up for two losses. To fully use up the bonus pool, you need to play about 2 games per day (14 per week.) Bob plays may be 10 1v1 ladder games per week. The rest of the time he plays 4v4 RT or Nexus Wars.
On April 11 2011 20:41 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
3. ladder is/should be a playground
it shouldnt and only is as a result of the poor custom game system. its almost impossible to find a custom game where the players are evenly matched for obvious reason.
if we could name our games ("1v1 master 3k+ join!" ) / have a nonladder matchmaking/sort them by skill of the player in the lobby etc there would be no need to wash down the competive aspects of the ladder since evrybody could play all day fine without even touching the ladder. Right. You need to start a ladder game. Blizzard does want you to ladder, to make the match making work. It only can match you against similar skill if a similar skilled player is waiting to get a ladder match, too.
If you want to have that service of automatically getting an opponent of similar skill, you must agree that this match counts. Otherwise, many guys would practice in unranked matches to get more wins in the ladder than losses. The ladder would dry out.
On April 11 2011 20:41 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
overall i plain disagree with taking away the most basic statistical info from 99% of the playerbase (yeah im masters but only diamond in most team brackets) just because some people focus on the wrong things. As this match making currently works, the win ratio is not the "most basical", but the "most irritating and pointless" info for every player below Master.
Every player who tries to get better needs losses to have something to learn from. It is the wrong mindset to avoid losses in the ladder. This is the tournament mindset where you try to avoid losses to stay in the tournament.
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On April 10 2011 04:58 vol_ wrote:
i have a post-it note stuck to my monitor with my losses tallied on it. Are you just counting your losses or do you review the games to learn from the losses?
On April 09 2011 04:54 Lysenko wrote:
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. You must be mid gold to have 50% with random game matching. But even then you probably would get less than 50% because most lower players would abandon the game when they get bashed most of the time. So with fewer players of lesser skill, the population would consist of more players with higher skill, resulting in a ratio <50% for you.
But this underlines the reason behind the 50% design. If you have (close to) 50% winning chance, you consider it a fair game. Providing a fair match for every skill level is obviously a good task.
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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.
Its called business. put yourself in their shoes, you want 100 elitist pros that know everything about the game in and out?
or do you want 40,000 nubs that throw cash at you. Same thing happened to WoW during the first expansion. they started to get rid of everything that was hard about the game and made everything easy and accessable for the casual.
WoW, now SC2, and based on most of the blue posts, D3 is heading this way too.
Im not siding with Blizzard, or scolding them.... They are an entertainment company whos primary focus is revenue.
My advice for you, Just roll with it. Whining and crying on a forum isn't going to change anything.
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On April 13 2011 01:33 Mantikor wrote:Show nested quote + 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. Its called business. put yourself in their shoes, you want 100 elitist pros that know everything about the game in and out? or do you want 40,000 nubs that throw cash at you. Same thing happened to WoW during the first expansion. they started to get rid of everything that was hard about the game and made everything easy and accessable for the casual. WoW, now SC2, and based on most of the blue posts, D3 is heading this way too. Im not siding with Blizzard, or scolding them.... They are an entertainment company whos primary focus is revenue. My advice for you, Just roll with it. Whining and crying on a forum isn't going to change anything.
And people still think that Blizzard cares about e-sports and designed SC2 with e-sports in mind? It's obvious they don't understand it and are only paying lip service to it.
Professional leagues exist because it's fun to watch pros to play the game, whether its baseball, soccer, American football or basketball. They don't exist because noobs find the game fun to play themselves.
Getting people to play the game and getting people to want to watch pros play the game will usually be opposite of each other. It's obvious which side Blizzard is leaning to and which market they will be ignoring when push comes to shove.
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Personally I don't really care. The more games you play the closer you'll get to a 50% win rate, in theory. If you lose, you end up losing ladder points which drops your position in your division, so having 3000 wins or 20 wins but being #70 in your division ought to tell anyone with basic math skills that you are where you belong.
And.. If you want to find out who's better than who, play a Bo3.
On the other hand if this makes newbs play more because they aren't worried about the # of losses they have, that's wonderful for them.
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[B]
Professional leagues exist because it's fun to watch pros to play the game, whether its baseball, soccer, American football or basketball. They don't exist because noobs find the game fun to play themselves.
Getting people to play the game and getting people to want to watch pros play the game will usually be opposite of each other. It's obvious which side Blizzard is leaning to and which market they will be ignoring when push comes to shove.
No, just no. Pro league sport exist because they have a player base, same thing as starcraft. I enjoy watching basketball because I used to play b-ball, I enjoy watching baseball because I used to play baseball.
Your analogy of designing a game catering to the pro is akin to designing a soccer match that either has the field the size of manhattan to penalize those without the running ability (akin to SC1, unnecessarily mechanically diffcult) or design a soccer match that has rules on scoring base on the angle of the goal made and other obscure mathmatical facts (overly complicated strategic game diffcult to pick up).
Neither of those type of soccer game "designed for pros" I mentioned above will be able to garner a viewer ship.
It does not pay to design a game that exhibit most amount of competitive depth but new players cannot pick up.
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meh, hand-holding doesn't really promote competitiveness. Sure they might have fun playing the game, but they'll never be good until they get owned and get shit talked. That's how it is before and that's how you can tell who gives up and who seeks to improve their play and one day become gosu.
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On April 13 2011 02:20 jstar wrote:
meh, hand-holding doesn't really promote competitiveness. Sure they might have fun playing the game, but they'll never be good until they get owned and get shit talked. That's how it is before and that's how you can tell who gives up and who seeks to improve their play and one day become gosu.
Not everyone play this game to become "gosu". For some of us, especially those who have other obligations, duties and aspirations in life, a game is just a game, to relax.
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On April 13 2011 02:24 Protoss_Carrier wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2011 02:20 jstar wrote:
meh, hand-holding doesn't really promote competitiveness. Sure they might have fun playing the game, but they'll never be good until they get owned and get shit talked. That's how it is before and that's how you can tell who gives up and who seeks to improve their play and one day become gosu. Not everyone play this game to become "gosu". For some of us, especially those who have other obligations, duties and aspirations in life, a game is just a game, to relax.
Of course, but I'm referring to the OP's main argument, which is that a more casual system brings in more pro-gamers. I disagree on that regard.
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On April 13 2011 02:30 jstar wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2011 02:24 Protoss_Carrier wrote:On April 13 2011 02:20 jstar wrote:
meh, hand-holding doesn't really promote competitiveness. Sure they might have fun playing the game, but they'll never be good until they get owned and get shit talked. That's how it is before and that's how you can tell who gives up and who seeks to improve their play and one day become gosu. Not everyone play this game to become "gosu". For some of us, especially those who have other obligations, duties and aspirations in life, a game is just a game, to relax. Of course, but I'm referring to the OP's main argument, which is that a more casual system brings in more pro-gamers. I disagree on that regard.
Let's say Bob is a very intelligent young adult (they are the demographics who progamers are likely to emerge from), who likes perfection and hate to lose. How much more likely would he play continuously if he got a horrendous record and people on forum blast him about it everyday?
Imagine, that our young bob has an innovative idea about a build, he post it on TL, and people blast him with personal comments like "Your WL sucks LOLOLOL"
To give you an analogy, this would be the equivlent of playing soccer with a jersey that has how many times you scored your own team's goal, starting from the age that you first started playing. Sure, you may become a brilliant player, but your n00b days stay with you.
I wonder how many aspiring young players would continue to play that game.
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Good read. You really have some solid points
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On April 13 2011 01:33 Mantikor wrote:Show nested quote + 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. Its called business. put yourself in their shoes, you want 100 elitist pros that know everything about the game in and out? or do you want 40,000 nubs that throw cash at you. That is the wrong question. It's not about "or". It's about "and". To attract casual players for a long time, you need a hardcore player base. Making a game more accessible does not mean to make it worse.
You cannot have a constant interest in casual game with no core player base. Blizzards game design philosophy is "easy to learn, hard to master". SC2 is still hard to master. But easy to learn at the same time.
On April 13 2011 01:33 Mantikor wrote:
Im not siding with Blizzard, or scolding them.... They are an entertainment company whos primary focus is revenue. Of course. But they consider long-term revenue. They could have rushed SC2 to market. But they took the time until it was ready. They campaign is widely praised (with some critique of course, you cannot please everyone at the same time.) The multiplayer is praised, too. The success of SC2 proves that Blizzard managed what other companies did not: Making a PC-only game which gets wide attention. Establishing an e-sports title which actually helps e-sport to get recognized in the western hemisphere. All these things will of course generate long-term revenue. And rightly so! I am sick of 3D-shooters with an 8-hour-campaign and multiplayer which I use one or two times a month.
On April 13 2011 01:33 Mantikor wrote:
My advice for you, Just roll with it. Whining and crying on a forum isn't going to change anything. I don't whine. I like it.
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On April 13 2011 02:20 jstar wrote:
meh, hand-holding doesn't really promote competitiveness. Sure they might have fun playing the game, but they'll never be good until they get owned and get shit talked. That's how it is before and that's how you can tell who gives up and who seeks to improve their play and one day become gosu. What happens when you try out a game and you notice, that everone who played this game longer than you and therefore is better, looks down to you? Do you want to be part of that group which likes to look down and shittalk to noobs?
Isn't it up to them to decide to try to get actually somewhat good? Who defines what "good" is anyway?
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On April 13 2011 02:30 jstar wrote:
Of course, but I'm referring to the OP's main argument, which is that a more casual system brings in more pro-gamers. I disagree on that regard. Why that? What happens when you scare everyone away who did not start the game with real competition in mind? Everyone here once was a noob. A noob who would like to play with "no attack the first 10 minutes" or similar rules. A noob who sticks his loss to 'obvious' imbalance / unfairness / bug abusing of the opponent. A noob who said "Ahh, if I only would have more time to practice mechanics, I would be as good as the kid who just owned my. My rank does not reflect my true skill". A noob who could not stand that he was outplayed, and makes up excuses for the loss.
If we assume that 5% of the players (number totally made up) actually wants to improve and accepts that he must do practice, that some casual play will not make him better (at least not as the other players improve in the same time) then we just should get as many players as possible into this game. If we further assume, that 5% of those 5% (again I made this number up, of course) are considering to turn pro, we still should get as many players as possible into Starcraft.
The master ladder is already somewhat competitive. The ladder does honor your efforts – if you are good enough to be ranked above Diamond.
It also works the other way: Lets say, none of the new casual players would be pro material. (Which is hard to believe, but lets consider it.) But they play a bit and watch a bit. The money for streams or the pure presence, which attracts sponsors, allows others good gamer to get a salary. The more pro gamers can get some money, the more good players have the option to be a pro. No matter how do you look at it: A large playerbase enables the existence a healthy professional base.
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On April 13 2011 02:24 Protoss_Carrier wrote:
Not everyone play this game to become "gosu". For some of us, especially those who have other obligations, duties and aspirations in life, a game is just a game, to relax. Indeed. While I am already have some thoughts to elaborate on this further, I did have a slightly different focus in this thread. The Blizzard does encourage to improve. However it does not tell you that you should aim to become a pro when you just got promoted to Silver.
Some diamond players think quite high of themselves just because their diamond status means that they are better than 80% of the active players. But the skill in Diamond differs widely. According to Excalibur's analysis, Diamond covers as many skill level tiers as Bronze. This is understandable if one imagines the Gaussian distribution of skill. This means, even though a Diamondie outplays 80% of the rest, there are probably many players who still could beat him mouse-only.
Good gold players are only slightly better than bad gold players. Good Diamond players are way better than bad Diamond players. The focus at this point should be on further skill improvement.
The divisions in Diamond ensure that the player in there still can get a top placement if your are active. When he manages that, the skill hopefully improved through practice and one day you finally reach the Master league.
Bronzies of course cannot just commit to practice to get a recognized name anytime soon. The SC2 ladder still has some awards, medals and milestones in store to keep them interested in logging in and roast some zerg.
There is a Nuubcast youtube channel for low level players who like to see low-level games casted. Bronze and Silver level games can be entertaining. SC2 delivers at any skill level.
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On April 13 2011 01:10 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2011 04:54 Lysenko wrote:
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. You must be mid gold to have 50% with random game matching.
The MMRs of top-5 silver (in an active division) and mid-gold are similar because of overlap between the two leagues. Most of my opponents are mid-gold, but I would have to do slightly better than that for a promotion. Still, it's a reasonable guess that my MMR is about 50th %-ile based on whom I'm playing.
(Also, according to sc2ranks.com, 55% of people who have played in the last 7 days are in bronze and silver, so high silver is pretty darn close to 50th percentile.)
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On April 13 2011 02:20 jstar wrote:
meh, hand-holding doesn't really promote competitiveness. Sure they might have fun playing the game, but they'll never be good until they get owned and get shit talked. That's how it is before and that's how you can tell who gives up and who seeks to improve their play and one day become gosu.
It's not like removing the loss statistic actually makes the games easier. If it did, that would be "hand-holding."
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On April 08 2011 01:21 theSAiNT wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2011 22:06 sleepingdog wrote:
This assumes that everyone plays against people that are exactly as skilled as they are. Which just isn't the case anymore if you IMPROVE while your opponents DON'T.
This is exactly what the poster has pointed out and where he is completely correct. If you spend a lot of time studying replays, working on your play and stuff, then a rising win-% can tell you that you in fact ARE better than your current MMR indicates. Which means you will start playing against better players and ultimately get promoted.
Without that you have to keep track of W/L basicly "on paper" to see if you indee win more than you lose...otherwise you have no way of telling if you are, in fact, "improving" relative to your opponents. Actually, by construction, Battlenet matches you with people that are as skilled as you are. If you are improving, you will get matched with stronger and stronger opponents. As I said before, it's very hard to say anything about a rising W/L because it is probably just noise.
As someone who's studied probabilistic modeling (which is what this is, because it's predicting the probability you win based on comparing your MMR with that of your opponent) this is a good step toward the correct interpretation, but is missing one point. It takes some time for the system to actually hone in on your "real" skill level, and if you go on a winning or losing streak, it will get off. So you can only really say that battle.net matches you against people it thinks are as skilled as you are.
If you are actually getting better consistantly, it's assessment of you will lag behind a little, because it's designed not to get *too* far off when you go on a winning streak. Therefore, you can work up a high win/loss ratio by constantly improving. This means that yes, there is relevant information you can get from W/L. However since most people interpret the statistic wrong, I'm in favor of it being removed because it's doing more harm than good.
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This descision by blizzard makes me rage SO hard, its hard to believe.
This thing is pretty simple over all:
If you dont get over losing some games, its your problem no one elses. And its not only your problem it even is your fault.
I can not believe that im missing information, because some people cant stand seeing their loses. Thats ridiculous. That is a shame. What do 100 wins mean if i dont know how much i lost to win this 100 games ? Its worth NOTHING. Blizzard actually could randomly generate a number that shows you how awesome you are. What should i tell friends of me to compare ? I have 100 wins ? I can better say nothing at all its the very same thing.
The argument everyone who wants to play competitve is master anyway is disgusting. I cant even describe how unbelievably dumb this is. If you dont see this, you have serious problems.
Seriously, by any means how can this be considered a good thing by any human beeing with at least a bit of a mind ?
Now im really honest: If the person who decided this would be seriously harmed, i wouldnt mind at all..would be a step in the right direction for mankind.
This descision reflects what this world has come to i a very distinct way. And this isnt even something to discuss about. Its absolutley obvious whats right and whats wrong. That i live in a world in which this isnt only a stupid idea but reality and even considered a good thing by some people makes my brain explode. Almost. Really.
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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)
This is where I disagree. I don't believe your win/loss ratio is ANY sort of proof or indication of how much you have improved. I think too many people hold themselves back because they are trying to improve their win/loss ratio, as to them, that is what signifies that they are a good player or that they are improving. At first I didn't like this change, but now I think it is fine. I don't need to see my ratio. You should be able to point out the weaknesses of your play, and if you aren't willing to try new things, or NOT CARE about your ratio, it can hurt your progress in improving. All your ratio really represents, is how far away you are currently deviating from your hidden MMR. The fact is, you are going to end up near a 50/50 win/loss ratio and thinking that since you have won a string of games and now have a 55% winning percentage, doesn't necessarily mean you are improving or have increased in skill. Players need to judge that for themselves by analyzing their own play and analyzing why they won or loss the games they have played.
You don't need to know your w/l ratio to judge how much you are improving. You should focus on analyzing your play and knowing your weak points. Boasting about your 60% w/l ratio is meaningless or thinking you are good because of it, is purely detrimental IMHO.
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EPT
