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On April 07 2011 00:28 Xism wrote:
... 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 ...
This is silly. It's in the SC2's best interest to have as a big playerbase as possible playing the game, so if removing the losses for diamond and down, sweet.
This of it like this:
For every 10.000 player, one of them has the skill and/or determination as the likes of MVP/MC/etc, limiting the playerbase is then counterproductive. I for one love watching good players play the game.
It's really simple, the more people you stack, the higher the ones on top will reach.
So with that point made, my question back is then: Does removing the win/loss ratio for diamond and below REDUCE or INCREASE the likelihood of a flash (or insert favorite player) spawning?
I for one promote the loss aversion for diamond and down, but more importantly; stop using degrading terms for players working their way up (read: noobs). Don't get my wrong, there are noobs (definition is another discussion), but every player below top 1-3 places in masters isn't a noob. We want people to play ladder!
Ladder is a great place to farm good players, don't piss on people playing it. It's counter productive...
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On April 07 2011 02:39 Blasts wrote:
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.
Following this, recorded wins are worthless as well, because you don't know your own MMR and the MMR you're being matched against. The only thing you know if you have a number of wins is that the ladder system is doing a good job. If you suddenly start to win more, it just means that you have played more, because the ladder system will keep you at 50% win rate.
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On April 07 2011 03:29 nutnut wrote:
This is silly. It's in the SC2's best interest to have as a big playerbase as possible playing the game, so if removing the losses for diamond and down, sweet.
I don't understand how it's in the best interest of the playerbase to make the multiplayer experience as shallow as the single player.
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The closest analogy that comes to my mind are people that set their clocks minutes ahead to wake up earlier. Which leads to that these people start to calculate every morning how much time is left if they didn't change their clock. Not only about the losses, but also about division tiers, hidden MMR, bonus pool and what not.
Whenever I look at a profile page of a Diamond player I feel that I only know half the story. It is unlogical to have wins listed but not losses (the more I think about it, the more does Incontrols mockery of this in SotG make sense).
I think many people here try to think as a casual player. If you read this post right now here on TL, it is very likely that you are not a casual player. The mindset is "Yeah, casual players are like us only inferior and can't deal with losses. In reality, they don't want to play the game but just want achievements". But no such people exist (everyone must deal with losses in other games and real life). A very small minority is serious about the game, but everyone expects from a game that you can either win or lose.
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I think Platinum and above should be able to see their losses if they want to.
If you're above Gold, you're probably trying to actively get better at the game, and seeing your win/loss record is a good way to see if you're improving. Hell, hide it to the world - but let them see it if they go looking.
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This is really well written/thought out. It makes sense, universal ladder with something for players of all calibers.
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The removal of losses is the trigger that has made me actually start to ladder. I was in gold league before the patch with a 26/19 W/L but ive always been afraid to ladder as between me and my friends w/l has always been a big deal. The minute i heard losses had been removed i went straight to the ladder and played game. I have went 10wins 5losses since the patch and actually managed to get promoted to platinum as well as now being matched against a mixture of plats and diamond players.
I agree that it should be an opt in/out where i can choose whether to show or see my stats but this change has allowed me and a few of my friends to chance to enjoy laddering which is surely what blizzard intended.
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Could not agree more!
I have been thinking about this alot since 1.3 and your well spoken words is spot on.
GREAT post, much appriciated =)
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On April 07 2011 01:08 marvellosity wrote:
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.
Other users have already rebuked this. Here's Excalibur's post about ladder analysis for additional evidence which is still valid. WL would be relevant if BNet 2.0 was a "round robin" based system -- it isn't. I won't dive into this unless someone provokes me.
Also, to rage, all of you users who replied to the OP w/o also reading the discussion are potentially wasting your and everyone else's time.
Please read Zatic's experimental strategy forum purge and you'll find nice rules like this:
4 Reply without reading the OP or the following discussion.
Plenty of redundant posts because someone else said what you said first. Why not quote someone and say "This" like Excalibur and Kiichol did. Threads wouldn't be a pain in the ass to swim through if people just followed that. Make a note of posts you wanna rage on -- perhaps someone responds to it later and you can either rally behind them or piss on that parade as well.
On April 07 2011 03:29 nutnut wrote:
I for one promote the loss aversion for diamond and down, but more importantly; stop using degrading terms for players working their way up (read: noobs). Don't get my wrong, there are noobs (definition is another discussion), but every player below top 1-3 places in masters isn't a noob. We want people to play ladder!
Agreed. I'm going to be bold and say "noob" is like the word "retard," which is degrading to those it is applicable to. Like me, I suck as CecilSunkure would say.
And yes, I am an asshole. If it makes you feel better, I'm currently Gold after the reset and having switched to Z; I'm probably much worse than you or only a little better, whichever applies.
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On April 07 2011 02:28 stephls wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2011 00:38 Achaia wrote:
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. Instead of making yourself aware that you suck, I think its more so to keep your "suckiness" hidden from other people, so that someone isn't embarrassed to play if they lost many games. That way, a person will be more inclined to play, even if they lose often, cause no one has to know about it. Blizzard is a business and will of course do anything that will help them sell more copies of the game. Many starting off players aren't going to be instantly good, so this is a way to keep the new players to keep on playing. I agree with what other said about the option to display losses and/or only hiding loss records for bronze to gold players, since higher level players below masters can tend to be proud of their matches and would prefer to have the losses shown.
Yeah I totally understand where you're coming from. The whole thing I mentioned about people being flamed for their WLR is kinda what I was talking about with the whole being embarassed to play because of your losses point that you had made. I also understand that Blizzard is a company trying to make money and like I said I'm not really against it. My main point was that I just don't understand it and I'm really curious to see what the gold level and below players have to say about it. I get the feeling that platinum and above would like to still have it there, or at least have an option to show/hide it but for those that this is really targeted towards I would like to see exactly what impact this has had on them.
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This has probably already been addressed in the thread (and I claim no novelty), but some players are greatly overvaluing the usefulness of a win/loss ratio statistic. If you understand anything about the matchmaking system, you will know that it intentionally tries to bring you close to a 50% winrate, so unless you are either end of skill distribution (that is, a place where a 50% winrate is not necessarily possible), your current winrate does not indicate skill.
If you want to accurately judge how well you are doing in Starcraft you are much better off using some sort of a ranking or point system (such as a Bnet point system). Looking at chess as an example, I have never once heard a Chess player talk about his general winrate. It is such a meaningless statistic as it only describes how often you win, but not what class of players you win against. Chess players always talk about their Elo rating, as it captures far more information and does a much better job of describing the skill of the player.
I am quite happy they removed winrate stats, because even though I know it is meaningless, I was still bothered by seeing that number on my profile (due to having uncontrollable irrational tendencies like most humans).
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How the hell can some oh you argue that seeing your win/loss ratio will actually help make you better? I don't care how good/bad you are at Starcraft but 95% of us will never see win/lose ratios outside of 45-55% range. Is it really going to change your personal meta-game when you see your record is 50-45 instead of 50-55?
Blizzard ladder is much improved from BW and who gives a shit about wins and loses.
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GG. God post. I have been going around in these thoughts for a while, but you did write it down perfectly.
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On April 07 2011 04:18 Ghost-z wrote:
How the hell can some oh you argue that seeing your win/loss ratio will actually help make you better? I don't care how good/bad you are at Starcraft but 95% of us will never see win/lose ratios outside of 45-55% range. Is it really going to change your personal meta-game when you see your record is 50-45 instead of 50-55?
Blizzard ladder is much improved from BW and who gives a shit about wins and loses.
I don't think that anyone here is arguing that seeing the WLR helps to make you better but some people do like to see that so they can know what their win percent is. Everyone values their position in the community differently.
Some value their position based on what profile pics they have unlocked, some based on what league they are in and some their WLR. Everyone likes to gauge themselves differently and taking the losses away eliminates one of the ways that people like to look at their profile stats. That's not to say that there's people out there who do in fact like that to be hidden.
The discussion here seems to be more around whether or not we like the change and how it affects us as a player personally. I don't really care either way myself.
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I still don't get the problem. To calculate my win ratio I use two very simple tools: a pen and a piece of paper. I really don't care if it's displayed in bnet, because I can keep track of my progress without the software. of course it would be better to include the option "display lost games" into the game.
@OP: well written, I pretty much agree with you. noobs are the beginning of everything - even mondragon was a noob once. 
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United States12235 Posts
On April 07 2011 03:33 enzym wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2011 02:39 Blasts wrote:
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. Following this, recorded wins are worthless as well, because you don't know your own MMR and the MMR you're being matched against. The only thing you know if you have a number of wins is that the ladder system is doing a good job. If you suddenly start to win more, it just means that you have played more, because the ladder system will keep you at 50% win rate.
While that is true, your wins at least have a direct impact upon your progress toward unlocking portraits, decals, and achievements.
Also, to the rest of the thread who are still posting about "WL was removed for noobs", I want this earlier point acknowledged:
Another thing to consider: think about why they made losses visible only for Master players and above. If it was to protect fragile newbie egos, losses would only be hidden for Bronze, or maybe Silver. Blizzard knows how skill is distributed, that's why there are different tiers of divisions, that's why some leagues are larger than others. Statistically, there will always be plenty of competition around your level unless you're around that top 2%ish part of the ladder. In that sense, a win ratio is not relevant.
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I agree wholeheartedly with OP. My only complaint with the system is the inability to off race conveniently, I really wish you could have a separate MMR for each race...
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At the end of the day unless your in masters your win ratio is going to be around 50%. You can still get an indication of your skill from whichever league you are in. If you move up in your division that is an indication of improving.
On the other hand i do think that losses should be shown in diamond. I just feel like when i was in diamond i spent a lot amount of time watching trying to improve, and learn strategies. By the time i was in diamond it was all about improving, i don't really think the losses effected me a ton.
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I agree with you, it's not really a bad thing. And really good move by them to keep the masters losses showing, as it pleases the guys at the top.
Still, you could still guesstimate a person's win:loss ratio based on their win:point ratio 
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This is the sorta thinking that made WoW terrible in the first place.
Why would you want to have a feeling of achievement when you haven't worked for it? Doesn't make sense.
Yeah it's nice that people are playing casually and stuff, but 5 years ago they didn't need to dumb down anything in games to get people to play them.
Besides, if players require this kind of incentive to play, then they won't go far because they lack the passion to excel at the game for their own benefit.
It might be a good business decision, but are we going to bow down to every business decision, at the expense of what we feel should be right?
Yeah it may not affect anything with regards to indicating skill, but the fact that Blizzard decided on this for us and at such an early stage of the game is scary.
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EPT
