|
I agree with the OP. Also, even Diamond players are close to 50/50, so there is no big reason to show losses until Masters.
The key point here is e-Sports. One can easily watch a game of soccer or tennis, have never played these before, and still enjoy the match. But Starcraft is a bit hard to understand for someone that never played. Even if you play other RTS, you may not really get to understand what kind of skills are on the table here. That said, the more people they can get to play, the more potential spectators we have.
About Bob, if he is stuck on Bronze and decides to play for points to get to 1st on his division, there is a *tendency* here for him to improve and end up being promoted to Silver. Repetition can get you better.
And one more thing: If you work on a match for several minutes, try hard to win, and lose, it feels like you are "producing evidence against yourself", because the final product of your work is a negative thing (+1 loss displayed on your profile). This could get people to feel desencouraged to keep playing, specially when they feel they were placed a bit above their skill level on the ladder (i.e. just been promoted because of a lucky win). If you hide losses, it feels like "ok, I lost, but let's pretend it never happened". That's the kind of spirit that keeps millions playing WoW, because you can never lose nothing important like XP or items there.
|
I think they should have made it so you are able to set your profile as "private" or "public", and choose whether you want others to see it or not. And also that you can choose whether you want your stats to be saved or deleted after every game, so YOU can not see them aswell. Also this option would be denied for masters league (and diamond league in my opinion), leaving their profile always public. Also, when you install the game, your profile is by default set to "private" and saves your stats, and then from there u can choose what u want.
|
Sorry if I destroy anyone's day, but win/loss ratio is worthless, because you don't know your own MMR and the MMR you're being matched again. The only thing you know if you have a winrate of 50% is that the ladder system is doing a good job. If you suddenly start to win more, the ladder system will give you harder opponents to compensate, until you're back at 50%.
There is no possible way to measure skill on the ladder. Yes, if you played 2000 games and you're still in bronze, you probably belong there or you are keeping yourself there to stomp newbs. Yes, masters is probably better then gold. But there is no way of knowing for sure. That master league player may be facing gold players all the time because a demote is coming. That bronze player may have a promotion upcoming, facing better opponents all the time, but his MMR didn't stabilize yet. There is absolutely no way to see how good you are doing. And I think it is a good thing, because now if you want to know if you're improving, you gotta study your own games. Witch is already one step into improving.
TLRL: You can't measure your progress by w/l anyway. So it doesn't matter. Now stop crying please.
|
I'm casual and am on TL every day for at least an hour.
Last night I played my first 2 placement matches ever for sc2. Turtled, got fun upgrades like neosteel and turret range, didn't expand (sc2 is too choppy to macro well on a 3 y/o macbook), didn't even really attack except for running my raven around the perimeter of the map and harassing his third with autoturrets, just kind of explored the tech tree before 80 banelings killed me.
I want to know my losses. It's retarded that I can't.
It doesn't matter if it's worthless, I still want to know it.
|
i do agree with a few of the op's points but they should at least show the losses for diamond players, no? those players are clearly putting an effort in becoming better and are probably near master level anyways.
|
Nice write-up bob [wink, wink]
|
On April 07 2011 00:41 Mr_Kyo wrote:
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.
Exactly. I think it should be gold or below that can't see losses. Maybe even Platinum and below. I placed into Gold to start and then quickly jumped to plat then diamond all in less than 100 games. Now I THOUGHT I was a fairly competitive player. I don't play against masters consistently but I do occasionally. Even still, I think I could be considered a competitive player. I like to see my win ratio because it IS a good number to have/know for higher leagues.
I can definitely see why it's not necessary for bronze silver gold and maybe not platinum but diamond too? Come on. Maby make it so platinum and diamond have an option thats hidden where they can see it.
|
On April 07 2011 02:42 da_head wrote:
i do agree with a few of the op's points but they should at least show the losses for diamond players, no? those players are clearly putting an effort in becoming better and are probably near master level anyways.
If a diamond player who is working to improve doesn't know that sc2gears exists, then they have had their head in the sand for the last 6 months.
SC2gears saves every replay for you (assuming you have it loaded) and can pull all of your auto-saved replays in for anaysis. Including winrate as a whole or against a certain race.
If you are serious about getting better at this game you will likely have SC2gears to help you look at what openings you have used produce the highest winrate, which race you have the worst winrate against, how long on average your matches last etc.
Blizz may have removed the losses from your profile but thats a long way from making it so you can't calculate your winrate, you just have to put some effort in and download 1 program.....
|
I agree with OP wholeheartedly, his point is quite logical. The less people "scared" to play, the better.
However, I think there should be an on/off button to see YOUR OWN losses, for those who really care about it. They should also add a button to see your own MMR, huh?
|
On April 07 2011 02:51 Tracedragon wrote:
I agree with OP wholeheartedly, his point is quite logical. The less people "scared" to play, the better.
However, I think there should be an on/off button to see YOUR OWN losses, for those who really care about it. They should also add a button to see your own MMR, huh? Blizzard hides the MMR probably to avoid fiddling with it. You could share MMR values and try to somehow influence yours. There will be a tournament I think with the Top-8 ladder players. MMR must be kept hidden.
Also Blizzard does not always sets you against exact equal skills to avoid to get always exhausting games because the opponent is of exact equal skill. Showing MMR would lead to complains "my MMR is 1500 but I was paired against someone with 1600, Blizzard is evil and their AMM does not work, no wonder why I lose many games and don't get promoted."
Sirlin's Blog entry (http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/7/24/analyzing-starcraft-2s-ranking-system.html) is not up-to-date and contains some wrong information, but it gives you an insight about the goal of the ladder system.
|
Very nice post, i agree on all points exp one, " Anyway, he now thinks that he has improved while in fact he has not, he just gets opponents of equal skill" That is not true, and i think everyone can agree, bc just playing the game you are improving, say you do ONLY 1 build. M-m-m, every time you do you try to max units or hit a perfect timing, getting a drop in the min-ling while attacking the front etc etc. Just saying its good to go Vs bad players so u get the chance to "fuck up" and learn.
Anyway gr8 post ow.
|
No, No, No. I cannot be the only on that feels this way. As far as im concerned, "Bob" can go F*** himself. changing the game because of the fragility bronze players egos is simply a bad business decision. Do it for the bronze leaguers only, but saying attracting more noobies to the game will produce more pro players i think is false. "Bob" is the kind of player that will play the campaign, maybe a few multiplayer matches, and give up because he sucks and he knows it. Not knowing his ratio wont keep him invested in the game the way the players who already know and care about the game are. The players who blizzard SHOULD be catering to with sc2. If people really are going to get into sc2, they will do it because of the complexity and beauty of the game. Blizzard does not need to dumb the game down to attract the "masses" because they are not the heart of the sc2 community. They will play the game until the next new game comes out, and move on. Blizzard needs to do more to embrace the people who will give their game longevity, and those are the players who enjoy the competitive and difficult aspects of the game. Once again, I understand the thought process behind this decision, but applying it all the way up to diamond is f**ing asinine. People who are "scared" to play need to nut up and improve, not run away because they get beat.
|
iNfeRnaL
Germany1908 Posts
Nice writeup.
Wouldn't expect anything different from a Fragster, tho. 
|
It has proven to be a pretty genius move from Blizzard to remove the W/L ratio. They need people to keep playing their game until they release the last expansion pack. If people become frustrated and quit or just plain lose interest, they aren't as likely to spend 50 bucks to buy an expansion for a game they don't really care about anymore. There was a thread recently with a poll that showed more people who voted watch the game than play it. Someone who never plays is more likely to buy a NASL or GSL ticket than the expansion pack, and that's not great for Blizzard.
I have yet to see anyone say they're going to play less because they removed the W/L count, but I have seen several people say they will play more. Someone so invested in the game that they actually care about their diamond league W/L ratio to whine about the change will probably play the game regardless of what Blizzard does. It's like people who make "I quit" threads on the WoW forums; they never quit for long because they're so emotionally invested in the game that they felt the need to make a long post. Blizzard cares less about those people and more about the casual player who gets bored quickly and tempted to play other games easily. In WoW, they might add in a new dungeon every couple of months to keep people's interest up. In SC2, where unlike a static dungeon every game is different, they just made a little tweak to the UI to nudge people to play more.
All in all, I agree with the OP. More people playing the game is generally a good thing.
|
I absolutely agree with the topic.
I´m a bronze player and I just play some games a week. And I am absolutely happy with my ranking, I have a lot of fun with the game on low level, exactly like Bob. Besides I follow the game and the community relatively active. As much as my job allows... ;-)
And I really like it, that there are no more losses. I often play no games for 1-2 weeks and honestly it is easier to play again, if you´re not afraid of bad stats. I know that there is no reason for that. Absolutely nobody cares for my stats in bronze. But thats the way people think...
I think Blizzard should just show the stats in Diamond again. Diamond+ are good players, they want to play competitive and therefor no reason not to show it. Perhaps even Platin.
But for Bronze-Gold it is a great idea to not show the losses. Before I only played when I was not tired etc. Now I just play more often and don´t care about some losses.
|
Blizzard is just pleasing the noobs to sell more copies.
and
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.
kinda contradicting?
|
even if i kinda think its dumb, in the grand scheme of things it should be the right decision. we just gotta look @ the big picture
good post
|
exactly the way i feel 
kinda contradicting?
.... did you read the whole thing? The first one was a statement from the community, and he said that to mock them, not quote them.
|
Apparently what you really want is to play unranked matchmaking games with your current MMR. There's no reason to ruin the competitive experience for everyone with a ladder that is meaningless from a competitor's perspective just so you can have your carebear rainbow land where losses magically don't matter.
despite having lots of words, an awful post
|
On April 07 2011 03:11 Gheed wrote:
I have yet to see anyone say they're going to play less because they removed the W/L count, but I have seen several people say they will play more.
That´s it. Bronze-boys like me will play more games, you all play the same. And more games are good. If Blizzard earns a ton of money, they will create more great games. :-)
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
