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On October 05 2011 06:28 BoilOlo wrote:
i feel this hurts the players like me, who can only play a few times each week because of work or school or w/e. trying to use up all my bonus pool points seems like a challenge in itself.
How does this make any difference?
Your bonus pool goes up the longer the season is, so shorter seasons mean there will be less total bonus pool for you to use over a season, so actually being less active should be better after this. I guess you could mean that you need long seasons so that the season overlaps with some holiday time to mass game.
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On October 05 2011 05:27 StryderP wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 05:01 c0ldfusion wrote:
On a related note, I saw a few posts on that thread in the Blizz forum by guys claiming that if you skip a season entirely your MMR is reset, i.e. they claim that they did not play a single game in season 2 and when they resumed play during season 3, they had to redo all 5 placement matches.
Can anyone confirm or deny this? This is correct. I played during season one but I did not play at all season 2. When I started to play again during season 3 I had to do all 5 placement matches.
Does anyone know if this this applies to your entire account, or individual "teams"? I.e. If I play only 2v2s and 3v3s for a full season, would my 1v1 MMR reset? Or if I didn't play on a 2v2 team of mine for a full season, would we have to redo all the placement matches the following season?
I'm guessing this only applies if don't play at all for a full season and all your teams are then reset, but it'd be nice to get clarification.
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On October 05 2011 04:44 Big J wrote:
Don't care. MMR doesn't change in between seasons, so it doesn't make the slightest difference.
I'm gonna play that one placement match and regardless of how it ends, I will be Masters afterwards (or whatever league I'm in then)
As there is no league identity anyways ("hey look, I'm in league 'weird name'. I'm always playing against guys of this league and try to become #1")
The reset of seasons is ridiculous as you said, because your MMR stays exactly the same. I maybe the only guy saying this but your MMR should completely reset every season. Therefore everyone ... Grand Masters to Bronze need to redo their placements and work from there. Blizzards ranking is garbage at this point, just like their APM which is not longer truly APM.
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Since I really only have a noticeable amount of time for video games during breaks (like after a term ends), my bonus pool would grow quite large, so it would help to catch up in points while playing against people at my MMR level.
Despite saying that, I'm not against this change. It's not really a huge deal imo, and if Blizzard sees that it is problematic, they can easily make the following seasons longer.
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United States12238 Posts
On October 05 2011 07:08 c0ldfusion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 06:16 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 06:09 Ignorant prodigy wrote:I think it may be a good thing to have shorter seasons.. this is how I envision it working.. Since we sort of agree MRR is a moving target, I think the qty of people actively playing the game effects which ranking certain MMR ranges fall into. This would mean the shorter season weeds out the newer players quicker.. making the variance in skill between the rankings a bit less diluted. For instance if Blizzard is trying to maintain certain percentages of its overall populace into different leagues then shorter seasons reduce the qty of inactive players accounting for those percentages. Meaning your ranking will be more accurate to your skill level amongst active players. I created a quick chart to sort of show what I’m saying. Let’s say right now there’s 50,000 people who’ve played their placement matches in S3. Lets also guesstimate Blizzard wishes to maintain 23% of that 50,000 be dedicated to Bronze (12,750 Players in bronze) If S4 comes along and only 30,000 players have played their placement matches, that 23% shows a lower number of people (7,650 in bronze) Meaning the MMR would slide accordingly. My example shows that in S3 a player with 1780 MMR is Platinum, whereas in S4 that MMR has this player in Diamond. Obviously if S4 grows to 50,000 people and the player in the example below never played a game, then he would drop back down in Platinum. ![[image loading]](http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/7968/mmre.jpg) Of course.. this is all guessing on my part.. I just sort of envision it working this way. Nah the MMR boundaries for the leagues are fixed. It's the population that varies, not the league boundaries. MMR isn't a moving target. It's more like this: ![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/5w92j.jpg) Whoa, wait a minute, how would Blizzard maintain the 20/20/20/20/18/2 ratio if MMR boundaries are fixed?
The populations aren't enforced. They fluctuate, and sometimes not insignificantly. However, skill always spreads out to cover gaps. I've used this example before, but say there are three players A B C and D, at 1000 1200 1400 and 1600 MMR, respectively. A is 1000 because he loses to the rest. B is at 1200 because he loses to C and D but he still beats A. C is at 1400 because he beats both A and B but loses to D. D is at 1600 because he beats all of them. If C stopped playing:
- B would rise because he isn't losing to C anymore.
- A would rise slightly because the gap between A and B will widen. A is still beating people below him.
- D would fall slightly because as he loses to people above him, he can't sustain his current level because the gap between B and D is wider than the old gap between C and D.
The new distribution might be something closer to 1020 for A, 1350 for B, 1580 for D.
If C came back, he would come back at 1400, his old MMR. Gradually, as all players play more games, skill will spread out again and go back to the old distribution.
Now if you imagine this on a larger scale and with league boundaries, that's going to come with some league fluctuations.
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United States12238 Posts
On October 05 2011 07:12 o29 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 05:27 StryderP wrote:On October 05 2011 05:01 c0ldfusion wrote:
On a related note, I saw a few posts on that thread in the Blizz forum by guys claiming that if you skip a season entirely your MMR is reset, i.e. they claim that they did not play a single game in season 2 and when they resumed play during season 3, they had to redo all 5 placement matches.
Can anyone confirm or deny this? This is correct. I played during season one but I did not play at all season 2. When I started to play again during season 3 I had to do all 5 placement matches. Does anyone know if this this applies to your entire account, or individual "teams"? I.e. If I play only 2v2s and 3v3s for a full season, would my 1v1 MMR reset? Or if I didn't play on a 2v2 team of mine for a full season, would we have to redo all the placement matches the following season? I'm guessing this only applies if don't play at all for a full season and all your teams are then reset, but it'd be nice to get clarification.
It's per "team" so in both your examples, your 1v1 MMR would reset and your 2v2 team with that friend would reset.
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On October 05 2011 07:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 07:08 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 06:16 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 06:09 Ignorant prodigy wrote:I think it may be a good thing to have shorter seasons.. this is how I envision it working.. Since we sort of agree MRR is a moving target, I think the qty of people actively playing the game effects which ranking certain MMR ranges fall into. This would mean the shorter season weeds out the newer players quicker.. making the variance in skill between the rankings a bit less diluted. For instance if Blizzard is trying to maintain certain percentages of its overall populace into different leagues then shorter seasons reduce the qty of inactive players accounting for those percentages. Meaning your ranking will be more accurate to your skill level amongst active players. I created a quick chart to sort of show what I’m saying. Let’s say right now there’s 50,000 people who’ve played their placement matches in S3. Lets also guesstimate Blizzard wishes to maintain 23% of that 50,000 be dedicated to Bronze (12,750 Players in bronze) If S4 comes along and only 30,000 players have played their placement matches, that 23% shows a lower number of people (7,650 in bronze) Meaning the MMR would slide accordingly. My example shows that in S3 a player with 1780 MMR is Platinum, whereas in S4 that MMR has this player in Diamond. Obviously if S4 grows to 50,000 people and the player in the example below never played a game, then he would drop back down in Platinum. Of course.. this is all guessing on my part.. I just sort of envision it working this way. Nah the MMR boundaries for the leagues are fixed. It's the population that varies, not the league boundaries. MMR isn't a moving target. It's more like this: Whoa, wait a minute, how would Blizzard maintain the 20/20/20/20/18/2 ratio if MMR boundaries are fixed? The populations aren't enforced. They fluctuate, and sometimes not insignificantly. However, skill always spreads out to cover gaps. I've used this example before, but say there are three players A B C and D, at 1000 1200 1400 and 1600 MMR, respectively. A is 1000 because he loses to the rest. B is at 1200 because he loses to C and D but he still beats A. C is at 1400 because he beats both A and B but loses to D. D is at 1600 because he beats all of them. If C stopped playing: - B would rise because he isn't losing to C anymore. - A would rise slightly because the gap between A and B will widen. A is still beating people below him. - D would fall slightly because as he loses to people above him, he can't sustain his current level because the gap between B and D is wider than the old gap between C and D. The new distribution might be something closer to 1020 for A, 1350 for B, 1580 for D. If C came back, he would come back at 1400, his old MMR. Gradually, as all players play more games, skill will spread out again and go back to the old distribution. Now if you imagine this on a larger scale and with league boundaries, that's going to come with some league fluctuations.
Ok gotcha, so the percentages are already "baked in" the MMR.
If that's the case though, then aren't they making an assumption about the distribution? Your graph looks like a normal distribution... is that accurate? Intuitively, I would think something like skill in starcraft 2 would fit better in a distribution with a fat tail.
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I thought Blizzard said they were shortening seasons to 3 months not 2? I think that 2 months is too short and doesn't allow for enough time to rise from the bottom of your ladder to top 8.
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On October 05 2011 07:45 envisioN . wrote:
I thought Blizzard said they were shortening seasons to 3 months not 2? I think that 2 months is too short and doesn't allow for enough time to rise from the bottom of your ladder to top 8.
Heh, they are changing it again.
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United States12238 Posts
On October 05 2011 07:37 c0ldfusion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 07:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:08 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 06:16 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 06:09 Ignorant prodigy wrote:I think it may be a good thing to have shorter seasons.. this is how I envision it working.. Since we sort of agree MRR is a moving target, I think the qty of people actively playing the game effects which ranking certain MMR ranges fall into. This would mean the shorter season weeds out the newer players quicker.. making the variance in skill between the rankings a bit less diluted. For instance if Blizzard is trying to maintain certain percentages of its overall populace into different leagues then shorter seasons reduce the qty of inactive players accounting for those percentages. Meaning your ranking will be more accurate to your skill level amongst active players. I created a quick chart to sort of show what I’m saying. Let’s say right now there’s 50,000 people who’ve played their placement matches in S3. Lets also guesstimate Blizzard wishes to maintain 23% of that 50,000 be dedicated to Bronze (12,750 Players in bronze) If S4 comes along and only 30,000 players have played their placement matches, that 23% shows a lower number of people (7,650 in bronze) Meaning the MMR would slide accordingly. My example shows that in S3 a player with 1780 MMR is Platinum, whereas in S4 that MMR has this player in Diamond. Obviously if S4 grows to 50,000 people and the player in the example below never played a game, then he would drop back down in Platinum. Of course.. this is all guessing on my part.. I just sort of envision it working this way. Nah the MMR boundaries for the leagues are fixed. It's the population that varies, not the league boundaries. MMR isn't a moving target. It's more like this: Whoa, wait a minute, how would Blizzard maintain the 20/20/20/20/18/2 ratio if MMR boundaries are fixed? The populations aren't enforced. They fluctuate, and sometimes not insignificantly. However, skill always spreads out to cover gaps. I've used this example before, but say there are three players A B C and D, at 1000 1200 1400 and 1600 MMR, respectively. A is 1000 because he loses to the rest. B is at 1200 because he loses to C and D but he still beats A. C is at 1400 because he beats both A and B but loses to D. D is at 1600 because he beats all of them. If C stopped playing: - B would rise because he isn't losing to C anymore. - A would rise slightly because the gap between A and B will widen. A is still beating people below him. - D would fall slightly because as he loses to people above him, he can't sustain his current level because the gap between B and D is wider than the old gap between C and D. The new distribution might be something closer to 1020 for A, 1350 for B, 1580 for D. If C came back, he would come back at 1400, his old MMR. Gradually, as all players play more games, skill will spread out again and go back to the old distribution. Now if you imagine this on a larger scale and with league boundaries, that's going to come with some league fluctuations. Ok gotcha, so the percentages are already "baked in" the MMR. If that's the case though, then aren't they making an assumption about the distribution? Your graph looks like a normal distribution... is that accurate? Intuitively, I would think something like skill in starcraft 2 would fit better in a distribution with a fat tail.
I'm a little sketchy on what it is in reality (obviously since the best resource we have is SC2Ranks which is limited because it includes all accounts) but from what I've heard, there is a bump in Diamond because of the skill difference between "hardcore" and "casual" players. However, I don't know if that was only for Season 1 and if prior distributions were used for later seasons.
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I keep seeing people say "The season reset will give you a chance to place in a different league". Is the only time you can change leagues at the beginning of a new season? ie during your placement match?
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Does anyone know if the "placement" game you do at the start of the season has more weight than a normal ladder game with respect to being promoted and demoted?
As in, normal promotion and demotion happens after the system is confident your MMR is between boundaries of a certain league. However I noticed from polls posted by people at the beginning of 2nd and 3rd season that a large number of people got either promoted or demoted in their single placement game. How can we explain that (I only have anecdotal evidence though).
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On October 05 2011 07:32 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 07:12 o29 wrote:On October 05 2011 05:27 StryderP wrote:On October 05 2011 05:01 c0ldfusion wrote:
On a related note, I saw a few posts on that thread in the Blizz forum by guys claiming that if you skip a season entirely your MMR is reset, i.e. they claim that they did not play a single game in season 2 and when they resumed play during season 3, they had to redo all 5 placement matches.
Can anyone confirm or deny this? This is correct. I played during season one but I did not play at all season 2. When I started to play again during season 3 I had to do all 5 placement matches. Does anyone know if this this applies to your entire account, or individual "teams"? I.e. If I play only 2v2s and 3v3s for a full season, would my 1v1 MMR reset? Or if I didn't play on a 2v2 team of mine for a full season, would we have to redo all the placement matches the following season? I'm guessing this only applies if don't play at all for a full season and all your teams are then reset, but it'd be nice to get clarification. It's per "team" so in both your examples, your 1v1 MMR would reset and your 2v2 team with that friend would reset.
The all-knowing Excalibur_Z comes through again. Thanks! 
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Basically I've played a quarter of games since season 2 and about an eighth since season 1... where did all the time go? 
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Hmph. I've played maybe 50 games this season, opposed to the 600~ total. I don't know if I entirely like the shorter seasons. 3 months seems fine. 2 months seems like who gives a shit if you were in Masters once when there are 6 seasons a year.
Edit: I actually oppose seasons longer than three months however! With half year seasons there will be people in divisions with nearly insurmountable points. What motivation do I have to be first in my division if it takes every moment of my life to get there!
[i]Especially when divisions produce widely different results, some with 5000~ 1st or 2nd place and some with 3000 point 1st or 2nd place.
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On October 05 2011 08:03 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 07:37 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 07:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:08 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 06:16 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 06:09 Ignorant prodigy wrote:I think it may be a good thing to have shorter seasons.. this is how I envision it working.. Since we sort of agree MRR is a moving target, I think the qty of people actively playing the game effects which ranking certain MMR ranges fall into. This would mean the shorter season weeds out the newer players quicker.. making the variance in skill between the rankings a bit less diluted. For instance if Blizzard is trying to maintain certain percentages of its overall populace into different leagues then shorter seasons reduce the qty of inactive players accounting for those percentages. Meaning your ranking will be more accurate to your skill level amongst active players. I created a quick chart to sort of show what I’m saying. Let’s say right now there’s 50,000 people who’ve played their placement matches in S3. Lets also guesstimate Blizzard wishes to maintain 23% of that 50,000 be dedicated to Bronze (12,750 Players in bronze) If S4 comes along and only 30,000 players have played their placement matches, that 23% shows a lower number of people (7,650 in bronze) Meaning the MMR would slide accordingly. My example shows that in S3 a player with 1780 MMR is Platinum, whereas in S4 that MMR has this player in Diamond. Obviously if S4 grows to 50,000 people and the player in the example below never played a game, then he would drop back down in Platinum. Of course.. this is all guessing on my part.. I just sort of envision it working this way. Nah the MMR boundaries for the leagues are fixed. It's the population that varies, not the league boundaries. MMR isn't a moving target. It's more like this: Whoa, wait a minute, how would Blizzard maintain the 20/20/20/20/18/2 ratio if MMR boundaries are fixed? The populations aren't enforced. They fluctuate, and sometimes not insignificantly. However, skill always spreads out to cover gaps. I've used this example before, but say there are three players A B C and D, at 1000 1200 1400 and 1600 MMR, respectively. A is 1000 because he loses to the rest. B is at 1200 because he loses to C and D but he still beats A. C is at 1400 because he beats both A and B but loses to D. D is at 1600 because he beats all of them. If C stopped playing: - B would rise because he isn't losing to C anymore. - A would rise slightly because the gap between A and B will widen. A is still beating people below him. - D would fall slightly because as he loses to people above him, he can't sustain his current level because the gap between B and D is wider than the old gap between C and D. The new distribution might be something closer to 1020 for A, 1350 for B, 1580 for D. If C came back, he would come back at 1400, his old MMR. Gradually, as all players play more games, skill will spread out again and go back to the old distribution. Now if you imagine this on a larger scale and with league boundaries, that's going to come with some league fluctuations. Ok gotcha, so the percentages are already "baked in" the MMR. If that's the case though, then aren't they making an assumption about the distribution? Your graph looks like a normal distribution... is that accurate? Intuitively, I would think something like skill in starcraft 2 would fit better in a distribution with a fat tail. I'm a little sketchy on what it is in reality (obviously since the best resource we have is SC2Ranks which is limited because it includes all accounts) but from what I've heard, there is a bump in Diamond because of the skill difference between "hardcore" and "casual" players. However, I don't know if that was only for Season 1 and if prior distributions were used for later seasons.
Can you elaborate on this 'bump'? Are you saying there is something artificially placed in Diamond that you must 'get over' regardless or active MMR to differentiate 'hardcore' and 'casual'. Is getting Diamond->Master the hardest promotion? Aside from GM I suppose.
Reading what I typed sounds retarded, ugh. Can you just explain what this diamond 'bump' means?
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On October 05 2011 08:14 FecalFrown wrote:
I keep seeing people say "The season reset will give you a chance to place in a different league". Is the only time you can change leagues at the beginning of a new season? ie during your placement match?
No you can get promoted normally.
The reason why people say that is because they believe that they are in the confidence zone (from the comprehensive ladder thread).
I was always under the impression that placement fares on the conservative side anyway. Although my guess is that people in the boundary zones between seasons are not strictly going down to the lower league. There are reports of players being promoted and demoted on their one placement match.
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On October 05 2011 08:51 crms wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 08:03 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:37 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 07:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:08 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 06:16 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 06:09 Ignorant prodigy wrote:I think it may be a good thing to have shorter seasons.. this is how I envision it working.. Since we sort of agree MRR is a moving target, I think the qty of people actively playing the game effects which ranking certain MMR ranges fall into. This would mean the shorter season weeds out the newer players quicker.. making the variance in skill between the rankings a bit less diluted. For instance if Blizzard is trying to maintain certain percentages of its overall populace into different leagues then shorter seasons reduce the qty of inactive players accounting for those percentages. Meaning your ranking will be more accurate to your skill level amongst active players. I created a quick chart to sort of show what I’m saying. Let’s say right now there’s 50,000 people who’ve played their placement matches in S3. Lets also guesstimate Blizzard wishes to maintain 23% of that 50,000 be dedicated to Bronze (12,750 Players in bronze) If S4 comes along and only 30,000 players have played their placement matches, that 23% shows a lower number of people (7,650 in bronze) Meaning the MMR would slide accordingly. My example shows that in S3 a player with 1780 MMR is Platinum, whereas in S4 that MMR has this player in Diamond. Obviously if S4 grows to 50,000 people and the player in the example below never played a game, then he would drop back down in Platinum. Of course.. this is all guessing on my part.. I just sort of envision it working this way. Nah the MMR boundaries for the leagues are fixed. It's the population that varies, not the league boundaries. MMR isn't a moving target. It's more like this: Whoa, wait a minute, how would Blizzard maintain the 20/20/20/20/18/2 ratio if MMR boundaries are fixed? The populations aren't enforced. They fluctuate, and sometimes not insignificantly. However, skill always spreads out to cover gaps. I've used this example before, but say there are three players A B C and D, at 1000 1200 1400 and 1600 MMR, respectively. A is 1000 because he loses to the rest. B is at 1200 because he loses to C and D but he still beats A. C is at 1400 because he beats both A and B but loses to D. D is at 1600 because he beats all of them. If C stopped playing: - B would rise because he isn't losing to C anymore. - A would rise slightly because the gap between A and B will widen. A is still beating people below him. - D would fall slightly because as he loses to people above him, he can't sustain his current level because the gap between B and D is wider than the old gap between C and D. The new distribution might be something closer to 1020 for A, 1350 for B, 1580 for D. If C came back, he would come back at 1400, his old MMR. Gradually, as all players play more games, skill will spread out again and go back to the old distribution. Now if you imagine this on a larger scale and with league boundaries, that's going to come with some league fluctuations. Ok gotcha, so the percentages are already "baked in" the MMR. If that's the case though, then aren't they making an assumption about the distribution? Your graph looks like a normal distribution... is that accurate? Intuitively, I would think something like skill in starcraft 2 would fit better in a distribution with a fat tail. I'm a little sketchy on what it is in reality (obviously since the best resource we have is SC2Ranks which is limited because it includes all accounts) but from what I've heard, there is a bump in Diamond because of the skill difference between "hardcore" and "casual" players. However, I don't know if that was only for Season 1 and if prior distributions were used for later seasons. Can you elaborate on this 'bump'? Are you saying there is something artificially placed in Diamond that you must 'get over' regardless or active MMR to differentiate 'hardcore' and 'casual'. Is getting Diamond->Master the hardest promotion? Aside from GM I suppose. Reading what I typed sounds retarded, ugh. Can you just explain what this diamond 'bump' means?
I think he meant between diamond and platinum - this would explain be explained them trying to fit a non-symmetric distribution onto a symmetric one.
Though keep in mind that Blizzard can make changes to MMR related calculations (points lost and won from matches, boundaries, etc) whenever they want. They don't need a patch for something like that. Chances are they probably have taken some measures to correct for this phenomenon considering they always stood by the 20/20/20/20/18/2 breakdown.
Edit: Correction, I don't mean the boundary between plat and diamond. I mean more than the allocated 20% of active population in diamond.
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United States12238 Posts
On October 05 2011 08:51 crms wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 08:03 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:37 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 07:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:08 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 06:16 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 06:09 Ignorant prodigy wrote:I think it may be a good thing to have shorter seasons.. this is how I envision it working.. Since we sort of agree MRR is a moving target, I think the qty of people actively playing the game effects which ranking certain MMR ranges fall into. This would mean the shorter season weeds out the newer players quicker.. making the variance in skill between the rankings a bit less diluted. For instance if Blizzard is trying to maintain certain percentages of its overall populace into different leagues then shorter seasons reduce the qty of inactive players accounting for those percentages. Meaning your ranking will be more accurate to your skill level amongst active players. I created a quick chart to sort of show what I’m saying. Let’s say right now there’s 50,000 people who’ve played their placement matches in S3. Lets also guesstimate Blizzard wishes to maintain 23% of that 50,000 be dedicated to Bronze (12,750 Players in bronze) If S4 comes along and only 30,000 players have played their placement matches, that 23% shows a lower number of people (7,650 in bronze) Meaning the MMR would slide accordingly. My example shows that in S3 a player with 1780 MMR is Platinum, whereas in S4 that MMR has this player in Diamond. Obviously if S4 grows to 50,000 people and the player in the example below never played a game, then he would drop back down in Platinum. Of course.. this is all guessing on my part.. I just sort of envision it working this way. Nah the MMR boundaries for the leagues are fixed. It's the population that varies, not the league boundaries. MMR isn't a moving target. It's more like this: Whoa, wait a minute, how would Blizzard maintain the 20/20/20/20/18/2 ratio if MMR boundaries are fixed? The populations aren't enforced. They fluctuate, and sometimes not insignificantly. However, skill always spreads out to cover gaps. I've used this example before, but say there are three players A B C and D, at 1000 1200 1400 and 1600 MMR, respectively. A is 1000 because he loses to the rest. B is at 1200 because he loses to C and D but he still beats A. C is at 1400 because he beats both A and B but loses to D. D is at 1600 because he beats all of them. If C stopped playing: - B would rise because he isn't losing to C anymore. - A would rise slightly because the gap between A and B will widen. A is still beating people below him. - D would fall slightly because as he loses to people above him, he can't sustain his current level because the gap between B and D is wider than the old gap between C and D. The new distribution might be something closer to 1020 for A, 1350 for B, 1580 for D. If C came back, he would come back at 1400, his old MMR. Gradually, as all players play more games, skill will spread out again and go back to the old distribution. Now if you imagine this on a larger scale and with league boundaries, that's going to come with some league fluctuations. Ok gotcha, so the percentages are already "baked in" the MMR. If that's the case though, then aren't they making an assumption about the distribution? Your graph looks like a normal distribution... is that accurate? Intuitively, I would think something like skill in starcraft 2 would fit better in a distribution with a fat tail. I'm a little sketchy on what it is in reality (obviously since the best resource we have is SC2Ranks which is limited because it includes all accounts) but from what I've heard, there is a bump in Diamond because of the skill difference between "hardcore" and "casual" players. However, I don't know if that was only for Season 1 and if prior distributions were used for later seasons. Can you elaborate on this 'bump'? Are you saying there is something artificially placed in Diamond that you must 'get over' regardless or active MMR to differentiate 'hardcore' and 'casual'. Is getting Diamond->Master the hardest promotion? Aside from GM I suppose. Reading what I typed sounds retarded, ugh. Can you just explain what this diamond 'bump' means?
It's not artificial, it's a representation of what separates "serious" players (the ones that visit TL, who watch pro streams, who practice a lot) from the "casual" ones (ones that don't keep up with the metagame, who learn on their own, who don't play as often). Again though I don't know if Season 2 leveled that out by using a prior distribution and that info might just apply to Season 1.
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United States12238 Posts
On October 05 2011 09:01 c0ldfusion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 08:51 crms wrote:On October 05 2011 08:03 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:37 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 07:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 07:08 c0ldfusion wrote:On October 05 2011 06:16 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 05 2011 06:09 Ignorant prodigy wrote:I think it may be a good thing to have shorter seasons.. this is how I envision it working.. Since we sort of agree MRR is a moving target, I think the qty of people actively playing the game effects which ranking certain MMR ranges fall into. This would mean the shorter season weeds out the newer players quicker.. making the variance in skill between the rankings a bit less diluted. For instance if Blizzard is trying to maintain certain percentages of its overall populace into different leagues then shorter seasons reduce the qty of inactive players accounting for those percentages. Meaning your ranking will be more accurate to your skill level amongst active players. I created a quick chart to sort of show what I’m saying. Let’s say right now there’s 50,000 people who’ve played their placement matches in S3. Lets also guesstimate Blizzard wishes to maintain 23% of that 50,000 be dedicated to Bronze (12,750 Players in bronze) If S4 comes along and only 30,000 players have played their placement matches, that 23% shows a lower number of people (7,650 in bronze) Meaning the MMR would slide accordingly. My example shows that in S3 a player with 1780 MMR is Platinum, whereas in S4 that MMR has this player in Diamond. Obviously if S4 grows to 50,000 people and the player in the example below never played a game, then he would drop back down in Platinum. Of course.. this is all guessing on my part.. I just sort of envision it working this way. Nah the MMR boundaries for the leagues are fixed. It's the population that varies, not the league boundaries. MMR isn't a moving target. It's more like this: Whoa, wait a minute, how would Blizzard maintain the 20/20/20/20/18/2 ratio if MMR boundaries are fixed? The populations aren't enforced. They fluctuate, and sometimes not insignificantly. However, skill always spreads out to cover gaps. I've used this example before, but say there are three players A B C and D, at 1000 1200 1400 and 1600 MMR, respectively. A is 1000 because he loses to the rest. B is at 1200 because he loses to C and D but he still beats A. C is at 1400 because he beats both A and B but loses to D. D is at 1600 because he beats all of them. If C stopped playing: - B would rise because he isn't losing to C anymore. - A would rise slightly because the gap between A and B will widen. A is still beating people below him. - D would fall slightly because as he loses to people above him, he can't sustain his current level because the gap between B and D is wider than the old gap between C and D. The new distribution might be something closer to 1020 for A, 1350 for B, 1580 for D. If C came back, he would come back at 1400, his old MMR. Gradually, as all players play more games, skill will spread out again and go back to the old distribution. Now if you imagine this on a larger scale and with league boundaries, that's going to come with some league fluctuations. Ok gotcha, so the percentages are already "baked in" the MMR. If that's the case though, then aren't they making an assumption about the distribution? Your graph looks like a normal distribution... is that accurate? Intuitively, I would think something like skill in starcraft 2 would fit better in a distribution with a fat tail. I'm a little sketchy on what it is in reality (obviously since the best resource we have is SC2Ranks which is limited because it includes all accounts) but from what I've heard, there is a bump in Diamond because of the skill difference between "hardcore" and "casual" players. However, I don't know if that was only for Season 1 and if prior distributions were used for later seasons. Can you elaborate on this 'bump'? Are you saying there is something artificially placed in Diamond that you must 'get over' regardless or active MMR to differentiate 'hardcore' and 'casual'. Is getting Diamond->Master the hardest promotion? Aside from GM I suppose. Reading what I typed sounds retarded, ugh. Can you just explain what this diamond 'bump' means? I think he meant between diamond and platinum - this would explain be explained them trying to fit a non-symmetric distribution onto a symmetric one. Though keep in mind that Blizzard can make changes to MMR related calculations (points lost and won from matches, boundaries, etc) whenever they want. They don't need a patch for something like that. Chances are they probably have taken some measures to correct for this phenomenon considering they always stood by the 20/20/20/20/18/2 breakdown. Edit: Correction, I don't mean the boundary between plat and diamond. I mean more than the allocated 20% of active population in diamond.
Yes, that's right. Blizzard has modified where the boundaries are in the past. Famously there was a "promotion day" that many players noticed in their 2v2/3v3/4v4 arranged teams and in 1v1 Bronze/Silver in the middle of Season 2. This was a result of the boundaries being changed to suit the current active population and return the league distribution closer to the ideal.
For example, say that when Master was first introduced, the MMR boundary was set at like 2600 (another imaginary value). For 1v1 that would mean 2% of the population would be expected to get above 2600. For 4v4, the reality was that there was only 1 arranged team that got into Master league at first, and their record was something amazing like 92-0. That meant that given the skill spread in 4v4 arranged, reaching 2600 was exceedingly difficult and didn't properly represent the desired 2% of the population. So, they changed the boundary, maybe to something like 2100 for 4v4 arranged so that closer to 2% of the population could get in.
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