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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. I think that matching people ONLY with players of equal skill can be detrimental in many ways. Players get rewarded for doing silly things, look at the portrait farmers who worker rush every game, or the constant cheesers, etc. These players play the game, and bought it for the lulz. While lulz are awesome in every community, we don't want to necessarily give them free quarter.
iCCup had the D- pool, where most players would stay for eternity. This could be seen as Bronze league, but frankly D- encompassed everything from Mid-Diamond (basically people not waiting for Masters promotion) and lower. If you are in Masters then you are most likely from D to C+ in iCCup terms.
I think that what many people want is to see their actual MMR as opposed to some inflated non-sense number that Blizzard makes up. Players want to know this because this number, as opposed to meaningless standing in ladder division, as a standard of their skill. In chess players get games with each other based on their ELO, if I have 1800 ELO and you have 1500 you may not want to play me, because you know I'm 300 points ahead. However saying something similar in SC2 would not exact the same result. If you wanted to play me I could say, "I'm 87 points diamond rank 28 in my division" but what the fuck does that mean to you? Nothing most likely, and you could play me, even though I could be 300 points above/below you in actual MMR.
I think that with some revision the Blizzard ladder will be awesome in both regards, they just need to get rid of their silly ladder point system.
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Offtopic but why did blizzard remove the total games played chart for players below masters? I liked the way it was before...
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I agree with your statement till platinum level. Once Platinum you play for the marbles. I am luckily in Masters, otherwise it would have been a slap in my face to remove my losses. I am not 12 years old, I can take my losses.
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On April 07 2011 00:48 [F_]aths wrote:
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.
if this system is so perfect whats wrong with showing someone a 50/50 win ratio. thats not discouraging..
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A player who loses a lot will still see that everyone around him has more points than him from less played games, so he knows how bad he is. This makes the removal of W/L pointless. Imagine a player with 15 played games and having 0 points (there is one in my division) when he compares himself to others in his division. Does this encourage him to play more?
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I saw the title, and was like "okay here's another noob fag promoting casual gaming" but I read on.
Very well written man. We too often forget that most any league under sometimes even diamond is full of casual gamers who are in fact fueling the community, regardless of their desire to play the game at a competitive level.
Esports is growing in america, that means the rise in semi-active spectators as well. It's never talked about, but I bet S.Korea has some of the biggest noob fanboys failing miserably at sair reaver or doing a 15 minute 3CM drop. But those are the valuable numbers that factor into sponsorship payoffs. Embrance the noobz <3
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On April 07 2011 00:39 zooalt wrote:
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."
I'm glad Joe can't do that anymore because he was incorrect. Better win to loss ratio doesn't translate into more skill except at the highest level.
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On April 07 2011 00:47 Ichobicho wrote:Show nested quote +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.
We are discussing the inherent Blizzard SC2 system here, so for all intents and purposes, third party tools like programs or websites should have no say in this. If you think otherwise then please establish precicely why that is so. Unless Blizzard somehow advertises sc2gears or any such tool to all their players I don't see how it can be brought into this argument.
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To get more people intrested in SC2, you're absolutely right, blizzard is doing everything right. I personally disagree the sentiment that we should dumb down the game to appeal to a larger audience, but that doesn't make the idea that we should try to grow at all costs wrong.
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I agree with all of your points as well, there is really some time into thinking before writing anything.
On April 07 2011 00:30 dunc wrote:
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.
Actually nydus worm notification would be good for the minority but it will completely remove double-nydus out of the game as you will get 2 notifications instead of 1. I remember nydus'ing someone in the main and nydusing island expo simultaneously with enemy getting only 1 notification. That will remove this from the game but whatever.
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On April 07 2011 00:56 Djagulingu wrote:I agree with all of your points as well, there is really some time into thinking before writing anything. Show nested quote +On April 07 2011 00:30 dunc wrote:
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. Actually nydus worm notification would be good for the minority but it will completely remove double-nydus out of the game as you will get 2 notifications instead of 1. I remember nydus'ing someone in the main and nydusing island expo simultaneously with enemy getting only 1 notification. That will remove this from the game but whatever.
Couldn't they just change it to not work that way? It wouldn't be hard, I'd imagine.
Does it do this already for nukes? It should work the same way, regardless if it does notify twice or doesn't notify twice.
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United States12235 Posts
On April 07 2011 00:48 PokePill wrote:Show nested quote +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.
This, this, a thousand times this. This post is exactly right, and this was Blizzard's explanation too. They didn't do it solely out of psychology (but I'm sure that either had something to do with it or turned out to be a convenient side effect) or to placate new players, they did it because nobody really knows how good they are and relying upon a WL ratio is extremely misleading given that the system seeks to match you against players where you'll end up going 50-50 anyway. The only place that ends up not being true is at the very top end, where some players really are that much better than everyone else and their win % becomes a little more relevant.
Old-school BW aficionados will remember the old skill curve argument, where at the low end, you might be twice as good as some other guy, but then there's someone who's twice as good as you, and there's someone who's ten times as good as that guy, and there's someone who's a hundred times better than that other guy. That's basically what we're seeing with the Master and Grandmaster leagues. These players at the top aren't just a little better, they're exponentially better than people in the next tier.
Anyway I don't want to let this thread get derailed into another WL argument. Suffice it to say the OP is pretty correct. Skill does stagnate or plateau for just about everyone, and players who are destined to never get promoted need some kind of encouragement to keep playing, and the point system does this well enough. I think ironically one of the big problems with the ladder is the league system because that's all anyone ever focuses on, and it affects even people who are familiar with the system. In fact, just yesterday Vanick was grumbling about how he hates losing because it's preventing him from moving up into Diamond, but that focus on getting promoted is like the only thing that matters to people, which is a flaw in my opinion.
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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"
You can use Sc2gears to analyze the replays and get your win ratio. Sure it's not possible for other to look at your win/losses but you can find it out on your own.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
Kinda missing the point, Excalibur. I don't want W/L because I'm desperate to gauge my progress by it, I want it because there's no reason for me not to have it and I enjoy knowing what my W/L is.
Like others suggested, have it as an option and default it as off if you must. Or make it so only you can see your own W/L. Whatever, I don't really care, it should just be there.
Btw, "edit: Several posters suggest to have the losses optional. This could incite flaming "Hey nub, afraid to show your losses?"" is a terrible argument against anything. Morons will be morons will be morons, decisions shouldn't be made on this basis.
Removing functionality and information just seems so goddamn backwards.
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I Agree with the OP. As much as this whole "carebear-ifying" of the ladder is drawing a lot of ridicule, there are undoubtedly plenty of people that enjoy laddering pressure free.
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It seems that most people whining about ratios don't really understand how the matching system works. As Excalibur has explained numerous times, everybody should be hovering around a 50% win loss ratio eventually because you are matched with harder or easier opponents to meet that target.
All the arguments regarding 'keeping track of progress via win/loss' are completely wrong.
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Indeed i agree with the pointless-ness of showing W/L ratio. In fact, showing W/L ratio is an approach who caters to the "casuals" as they are irrelevant statistic unless you are Naniwa status.
It is pointless to show w/l ratio because for 99 percent of the people the w/l ratio is 50 percent. If you are upset that you cant see someone's losses. Just look at his win column. That is approximately how much losses he has.
For those elite 1 percent in the super high masters, w/l ratio does not matter because they gauge themselves by tournament wins. I bet Naniwa takes more satisfaction from his MLG win rather than the fact that he was top of the ladder with 70%+ win rate
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Maybe blizzard needs 2 ladders, similar to a lot of mmorpg games, 1 for PvP (competitive) and 1 for PvE (casual). The current ladder we have would be like the PvP ladder, where the most skilled players are placed on top. A PvE type of ladder would put the ones with the most wins on top. Most stats for this ladder are hidden, the only advantage you can see a diamond have over a bronze is that the diamond had played more games and has more wins. This encourages people to play because the more games you play, the more wins, the more wins, the higher your ranking goes. The ladders are separate, where win counts in one ladder wont count in the other.
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Agree with OP.
Agree that W/L ratio is not skill indicator.
People will whine about anything.
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I agree with OP but masters is too high. Only top 3.3% is in masters league.WTF.
A huge issue is: I will enjoy the game but only temporarily since theres nothing to go for in this game. There's no win/lose high lows that you get. It just becomes bland. I won? Meh I lost? Meh Let's play some Deadspace.
Let's face it, people in Diamond is pretty competitive. So give it to diamond and plat.
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EPT
