Disclaimer: This is not about un-ranked ladders. Thank you.
The recent active player-base has been dwindling for 1v1 and this has been a major concern for me. Recently, I looked at my own situation to see if there could be some solutions.
I played a fair bit of 1v1s in the past but stopped due to the amount of stress they caused me. At the start of each new season, I would play 1 game to be placed and would then stop there. I wanted my 1v1 rank to be my 'serious' ranking. I considered my team ranks to be my fun ones where I would try builds and play the random race.
Lately I started a small dedicated team rank (3v3) that we have taken seriously (playing 1 race only, after warm-ups and learning from mistakes). We have had some success and fun doing this and I realized that this could become my new "serious" ranking. I then decided, after much deliberation, that I would stop caring about my 1v1 rank and play the random race on it for fun only. This has been a great success and I have started playing a lot more 1v1s lately.
I then thought: could something like this be the solution to increase (or at least maintain) the active player base on the 1v1 SC2 ladder? I know a lot of people want to keep their 1v1 ranking as their 'serious' ranking so I decided it would be a great idea to allow an account to have multiple 1v1 rankings. I have created a poll below to see whether people would like this idea and see how many 1v1 rankings would be preferable. I understand that having unlimited (or just too many) 1v1 rankings would lead to a lot of smurfing and abuse so I have limited the options to 1 through 4 (explained in the poll).
Poll: How many 1v1 ranks should an account have?
4 (1 for each race) (1458)
56%
2 (1 main and 1 fun) (474)
18%
1 (stay as is) (393)
15%
3 (1 for each race - no random) (297)
11%
2622 total votes
Your vote: How many 1v1 ranks should an account have?
(Vote): 1 (stay as is) (Vote): 2 (1 main and 1 fun) (Vote): 3 (1 for each race - no random) (Vote): 4 (1 for each race)
Personally, I would like to see 2 1v1 rankings (in my case: 1 main, 1 fun).
Happy polling! Please post if you have further ideas or comments!
(Clarification: You can think of these seperate 1v1 rankings as "teams" as posted by a very helpful liquidee)
(More Clarification: It's not just about the points, achievements or the rank you are in but more importantly about what MMR you have which affects how well you get matched up with an opponent)
Also, before you start saying I'm a noob or post something moronic like that, I used to be in 1v1 Diamond, now in Platinum. I have ranges of Diamond and Master in team league. Cheers.
-- UPDATE - October 18th, 2011 ---
56% of players (1438) wanted 4 rankings (1 for each race). 18% of players (468) wanted 2 rankings (1 main and 1 fun/off-race). 15% of players (387) wanted it to stay at 1 ranking. 11% of players (294) wanted 3 rankings (1 for each race - no random).
Here are the summarized results and some interesting points from the conclusion of the first poll (October 18th, 2011) and discussion:
- A seperate ranking for each race option on the 1v1 ladder stream would make the most sense if multiple rankings would be implemented. This would simplify ladder rankings in that each player could potentially have a zerg, protoss, terran and random ranking and MMR. Perhaps the Grandmaster league would let in the top race ranking per player only.
- A practice ladder was proposed and some details of how people would like it to work were ironed out: the ladder would not affect your ranking or MMR but would use your MMR to match opponents. I am not keen on having a practice ladder as this would surely curtail the use of the real ladder.
- Very few players seemed adamant about keeping only 1 ranking per player for 1v1. The reasons were usually concerns over smurfing. I must state, however, that I do not think this is valid as the match-making system should match people up correctly shortlfy after starting a new ranking (as it currently does).
- Adding multiple rankings should keep the flux of active players on the ladder the same or increase the amount of active players (fear of off-racing ruining your ladder rank would be gone thus encouraging people to play more 1v1 ladder).
i like that idea. it would allow me to offrace better
On October 13 2011 07:24 Hoodlum wrote: I think it should be unlimited like it was in brood war, I don't see the point in limiting it other then putting money in the pockets of blizzard
what if you were just trying to get back into the game after some time off, and realized you'd only be playing masters+ players who just wanted some easy wins?
I often wish I could offrace on the ladder, but I'd get absolutely destroyed if I played in the bracket I play in on my main race, so I'd prefer 3 or 4 ranks.
i would love an unranked ladder like in LoL where there are no downsides, being able to play some games and warm up/decide if u want to play a stressful game in the normal ladder would be good, doubt they will impliment this tho
It would be nice to have an unranked 1v1 option that works with your current MMR. It would be much better warm-up/practice than resorting to random custom games where the skill variance is waaaaay too varied.
On October 13 2011 07:24 Hoodlum wrote: I think it should be unlimited like it was in brood war, I don't see the point in limiting it other then putting money in the pockets of blizzard
what if you were just trying to get back into the game after some time off, and realized you'd only be playing masters+ players who just wanted some easy wins?
So, like BW? The system worked fine, really. Then you'll get smashed a few games? BW was brutal, but had a better system. With iccup, at least.
Especially as someone who isn't very good to start with, when I have a few beers in the evening I never let myself play 1v1 because I know it'll just hurt my ranking, even though sometimes I really want to.
And nothing is worse than being drunk and having to do random team games sometimes with allies who are still worse than you when you're playing at like 50%.
On October 13 2011 07:29 Zurachi wrote: It would be nice to have an unranked 1v1 option that works with your current MMR. It would be much better warm-up/practice than resorting to random custom games where the skill variance is waaaaay too varied.
Single ladder games matter absolutely zero, along with your ladder points. There is no need for a unranked ladder as if you don't care about rank then simply ignore it. Unranked ladder would split the community and provide less people to play against which is not a good thing and why I hope it'll never happen
Having a ladder for each race has its values and that would be what I'd support most although I have no problems with the current system at all. Having a ranking for each race would encourage more play and off-racing.
Honestly, I think the reason the player base is dwindling cuz the game makes you feel so shitty when you lose. BW it was hard as hell to get from D to C and a loss didnt mean as much. In sc2-Blizzard's horrible ladder- one loss can make or break your league standing.
Another factor could also be the mass marketing of sc2, many people bought it cuz there was a whole bunch of commercials and hype etc, and they turned out to not be fit for an RTS kinda game.
This whole multiple acc thing would just screw people up honestly
One for "fun"-as in what? stupid builds? or is "fun" just a word for "excuse to play badly"
Everyone knows the ladder will turn into-OH HELL NO EVEN THOUGH I LOST I HAVE A GM ACC-It'll just make BM even worse....and Blizzard doesn't care about BM...lol
If there is a ladder which doesnt count points. I will play in it . Also it doesnt matter for me whether there is 1 account for each race, since i am just gold and looking to have fun. I just fear the ladder dunno y!
I don't think a separate ladder is needed but if Blizzard would set up a matchmaking system for unranked games, call it "Practice League" or something, it keeps game statistics but no ranking and the games don't effect your ladder W-L or points but have MMR overlap, I'd support that.
And if you're at the point where you're just trying out new builds and strategies and expect a moderate number of "bad" games working the kinks out, still use practice partners and customs for that, and when they're refined a little take them to the Practice League, and then use them on ladder when you think you're ready.
When Blizzard starts to pay attention to the so-called ladder fear will be a blessing for most 1v1ers out there. Maybe they will start adressing this as a real issue.
As a random player, I like it as it is. If they set it so that it is 1 per race, then I'd have to individually rank up terran,zerg, and protoss if I ever want to play them on ladder. I will be stuck with playing random even if I want to pick a race.
On the other hand, a player who is only playing Terran wouldn't lose anything by picking zerg or protoss because their zerg/protoss play is obviously not on the equal level as their main terran. They'd have no issue with playing in a lower league with their off-race.
If I have to get into masters with each race even though I am a masters level player playing random, then it'd be such a chore. I'd like to sometimes just pick a race and ladder even though my main is random to test out a build or get better with one race.
Taking out random for 1v1 ladder is ludicrus. Being a top random player is kind of a pride in itself. (don't worry, I ain't no cheesy newb).
I don't think the dwindling 1v1 situation isn't a fault of the ladder system. It's just that the game is just getting stale and people are just getting tired of it. I've played over 500 games in short duration of 2 months or so during the summer and reached the highest ladder rank that I could get and then the game just got so stale.
Also, I think having too much starcraft content is definitely not helping. If you want starcraft, you can just watch streams and tournaments and you don't even need to play the game.
There's been research on effects of cyber sex on people and it showed that people having cyber sex had reduced or no need for actual physical sex because cyber sex was capable of completely replacing real sex (watched a documentary on it, you can prob google stuff about it if you're curious). Though it might not be the same thing, just watching SC can replace playing it, too imo.
On October 13 2011 07:27 MonkSEA wrote: An unranked ladder and a ranked ladder is all that is needed.
Same thing as playing customs
No its not because you can only play Xel Naga or Shattered on customs because no one joins any other games...
Go into channels and ask for games. And people claim to off-race for fun. Custom games tend to have less crazy cheeses that no one likes to play against.
or blizzard can scrap the whole idea of ladder if people keep getting scared of playing 1v1, as long as people in this thread concern. The solution of getting 2 1v1 doesn't seem to make any sense
On October 13 2011 07:27 MonkSEA wrote: An unranked ladder and a ranked ladder is all that is needed.
Same thing as playing customs
What about matchmaking? In custom games you normally get someone nowhere near your rank. What if the unranked ladder matched you by your current mmr but didnt move it? I personally would prefer the ladder to be like it was in BW but unranked ladder does have a lot of potential
i liked the warcraft 3 style of each individual race having statistics, with all games contributing to only one ladder (except for arranged team games of course), would be nice to incorporate
I would LOVE this idea, i have always wanted to ladder zerg because i really really enjoy playing that race ( just not as much as toss) but i cant play high diamond/low master zerg, if i could get a second ladder where i could off race id use it all the time.
I know i could buy another account but i dont want to spend 60 bucks to play zerg sometimes
On October 13 2011 07:27 MonkSEA wrote: An unranked ladder and a ranked ladder is all that is needed.
Same thing as playing customs
What about matchmaking? In custom games you normally get someone nowhere near your rank. What if the unranked ladder matched you by your current mmr but didnt move it? I personally would prefer the ladder to be like it was in BW but unranked ladder does have a lot of potential
Find someone in your league. A lot of people on ladder play with people who are much better/worse.
On October 13 2011 07:24 ChroMaTe_ wrote: There should just be an unranked 1v1 "ladder" period.
Its called customs
Its not the same because in customes you cant pick who you play against they are usualy no where near your skill level (either above or below) Its been a very rare day when i hit someone around my mmr on cust games
I wish people would stop suggesting "unranked ladder" because it's a terrible idea. The ladder thrives and frankly survives through an active playerbase. The minute an "unranked ladder" appears, the actual ladder loses a lot of players who would rather choose a less stressful gametype than contribute to the overall health of the system. Blizzard will never do it for exactly that reason, because it hurts everyone in the long run.
On October 13 2011 07:27 MonkSEA wrote: An unranked ladder and a ranked ladder is all that is needed.
Same thing as playing customs
No its not because you can only play Xel Naga or Shattered on customs because no one joins any other games...
Go into channels and ask for games. And people claim to off-race for fun. Custom games tend to have less crazy cheeses that no one likes to play against.
You're forgetting that takes time and effort. We're lazy fucktards that want everything given to use via a baby spoon. I don't see why everyone is saying "Custom games is your unranked ladder". The fact is that the custom games are often empty and you'd be waiting for a while if you wanted to play a map apart from Shattered or Xel. And if you went to a channel and ask you are taking up even more time. And people don't want to spend time looking to play a game when they can just do 3v3/4v4's faster.
Now imagine a little button after FFA called Unranked. You choose what XvX you want unranked. You hit find me a game. You play with someone on a random map in the map pool.
It takes out about 5-10 minutes of waiting and fuck assing around looking for an opponent. Now imagine if they had this: How much more 1v1's would be populated, people gaining confidence and skill via Unranked games, without the ladder fear and potentially making those with ladder fear slowly cure themselves. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved. You don't like it? Don't use it. You love it? You're using it.
On October 13 2011 07:24 ChroMaTe_ wrote: There should just be an unranked 1v1 "ladder" period.
Its called customs
Its not the same because in customes you cant pick who you play against they are usualy no where near your skill level (either above or below) Its been a very rare day when i hit someone around my mmr on cust games
On October 13 2011 07:27 MonkSEA wrote: An unranked ladder and a ranked ladder is all that is needed.
Same thing as playing customs
No its not because you can only play Xel Naga or Shattered on customs because no one joins any other games...
Go into channels and ask for games. And people claim to off-race for fun. Custom games tend to have less crazy cheeses that no one likes to play against.
You're forgetting that takes time and effort. We're lazy fucktards that want everything given to use via a baby spoon. I don't see why everyone is saying "Custom games is your unranked ladder". The fact is that the custom games are often empty and you'd be waiting for a while if you wanted to play a map apart from Shattered or Xel. And if you went to a channel and ask you are taking up even more time. And people don't want to spend time looking to play a game when they can just do 3v3/4v4's faster.
Now imagine a little button after FFA called Unranked. You choose what XvX you want unranked. You hit find me a game. You play with someone on a random map in the map pool.
It takes out about 5-10 minutes of waiting and fuck assing around looking for an opponent. Now imagine if they had this: How much more 1v1's would be populated, people gaining confidence and skill via Unranked games, without the ladder fear and potentially making those with ladder fear slowly cure themselves. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved. You don't like it? Don't use it. You love it? You're using it.
Is this sarcasm? Because I always find practice games in team channels.
On October 13 2011 07:58 Excalibur_Z wrote: I wish people would stop suggesting "unranked ladder" because it's a terrible idea. The ladder thrives and frankly survives through an active playerbase. The minute an "unranked ladder" appears, the actual ladder loses a lot of players who would rather choose a less stressful gametype than contribute to the overall health of the system. Blizzard will never do it for exactly that reason, because it hurts everyone in the long run.
I will have to agree with this. Everything should be ranked. There could even be a 1v1 ladder rating for each race (strictly enforced) per account. So when you are looking at Idra, for example, you would look at this 1v1-Zerg as his main rank.
Unranked would be a headache to implement from a player standpoint as well. They play someone, they lose, they have no idea what the other player's standing is besides looking at their 1v1 rank (which could very well be a different race).
After playing League of Legends, it just seems like ridiculous tone-deafness on the part of Blizzard to not have a unranked ladder that still matches you against people near your level. It's not that hard to do, or of it is, a company the size of Blizzard should be able to match what tiny companies like Riot are doing with no sweat.
I would absolutely play more SC2 if there was such a feature.
Edit: For those that say that it would poach players form ladder: No, it wouldn't. I very rarely ladder except when I feel like I'm on the tip-top of my game and have a solid handle on 2 builds for each match-up. Blizzard would win back players that have abandoned playing ladder by doing this.
For those who are completely oblivious of chat channels outside of teamliquid, Protoss Strategy 1, General Chat, etc., it is VERY easy to find games in other channels.
Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well is matching you against people of your own skill level.
seems like most people dont understand the point the OP is triying to bring up.... he isnt saying he wants different ladders... he says he wants different "teams" for 1v1 just as in 2v2 when you get a partner and 2v2 it creates a new team and ranks you... he wants that but in 1v1... and obviously locked to only 4 teams to people dont go crazy.
On October 13 2011 07:27 MonkSEA wrote: An unranked ladder and a ranked ladder is all that is needed.
Same thing as playing customs
No its not because you can only play Xel Naga or Shattered on customs because no one joins any other games...
Go into channels and ask for games. And people claim to off-race for fun. Custom games tend to have less crazy cheeses that no one likes to play against.
You're forgetting that takes time and effort. We're lazy fucktards that want everything given to use via a baby spoon. I don't see why everyone is saying "Custom games is your unranked ladder". The fact is that the custom games are often empty and you'd be waiting for a while if you wanted to play a map apart from Shattered or Xel. And if you went to a channel and ask you are taking up even more time. And people don't want to spend time looking to play a game when they can just do 3v3/4v4's faster.
Now imagine a little button after FFA called Unranked. You choose what XvX you want unranked. You hit find me a game. You play with someone on a random map in the map pool.
It takes out about 5-10 minutes of waiting and fuck assing around looking for an opponent. Now imagine if they had this: How much more 1v1's would be populated, people gaining confidence and skill via Unranked games, without the ladder fear and potentially making those with ladder fear slowly cure themselves. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved. You don't like it? Don't use it. You love it? You're using it.
I think the concept of choosing a matchup is a great idea. If I want to work on a certain matchup (ex. PvZ), I dislike doing so on ladder because you usually don't get the matchup you want. Custom games are also just as random and while you can just instaquit if you don't get the matchup you want, I still feel like it is a waste of time. In addition, there is a broad skill variance in customs, which makes it difficult to work on a matchup at your level. (ex. if you play against someone terrible, you are likely to cut corners that will hurt you in an actual game).
It would be great to get some matchup work without having to do a lot of searching or waiting for a practice partner.
The only problem I would have with this (which wouldn't even be my problem at all really) is that what if, for example, pros want to mess around and off race. They would then have to level their other race ranks all the way back up to masters/GMish, because that's usually the level of their other races too. Then you could have scenarios with GM players players that are way less skilled than them, which is kinda unfair.
Tbh, I'm not quite sure why Blizzard only allows one account per CD key (besides the obvious financial considerations). Isn't it fairly standard to allow like 3 uses of a CD key for a game (at least)? If they just did that, we'd be fine.
On October 13 2011 08:10 templar rage wrote: Tbh, I'm not quite sure why Blizzard only allows one account per CD key (besides the obvious financial considerations). Isn't it fairly standard to allow like 3 uses of a CD key for a game? If they just did that, we'd be fine.
On October 13 2011 08:07 xOff wrote: Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well matching you against people of your own skill level.
Why I Want Unranked Ladder:
- So I can try new builds or strategies against people of my own level without being punished with demotion in the early stages of trying to get a grasp on play.
- A way to train when I'm a bit rusty that's less random than Custom (A silver Zerg or a Masters Protoss? Don't know til you queue one up!). I want an unranked ladder so that I can play against people of my skill level. Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins. If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
- You may not like it, but look at the declining activity among vast numbers of players who still like the game or play team games, but stay far away from 1v1. It would revitalize ladder as people could see where they stand on the unranked ladder and then start playing ranked ladder again.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak.
- Analogy: There are very good people in League of Legends. They play new champions (similar to offracing) in unranked games, often, and then when they feel comfortable go back into Ranked games with those chars.
- REBUTTAL: It would not destroy MMR. People would keep playing on ladder just like always, it's just that there would be a shadow ladder alongside it.
One of the things that annoys me about the 1v1 Ladder is that the incentive system in built is not working. I'm refering to the achievements for 1v1 victories (we know that many people are motivated by these achievements and portraits). That system has been completely undermined by portrait farmers and the fact that blizzard has let people 'throw games' in that regard.
I think a properly working achievement system for 1v1 (no suggestions sorry) would be a better way to incentivise ladder participation
On October 13 2011 08:10 templar rage wrote: Tbh, I'm not quite sure why Blizzard only allows one account per CD key (besides the obvious financial considerations). Isn't it fairly standard to allow like 3 uses of a CD key for a game? If they just did that, we'd be fine.
That would ruin the ranking system.
How? All the accounts would be completely separate. Similar to how a lot of programs let you install the software on multiple computers. Instead of multiple computers, it's multiple accounts, all of which are completely separate from each other (besides being linked by the same CD key, but that's irrelevent).
I would probably say 9 or 16. It should consider every combination of you and your opponent.
I went through a really annoying period where I was winning every PvT, but losing in PvZ unless they cheesed or something. It would have been nice to play some higher level Terrans and some lower level Zerg during that time.
On October 13 2011 08:14 pt wrote: Ladder : You play against people close to your rating. You don't get to choose the match up or opponent.
Custom : You choose who to play against.
How is that so hard to understand?
You don't choose who to play against, you are randomly placed with any player at any level who also queues up a Custom game. It is almost worthless because it's pure luck if you ever play someone anywhere near your skill level.
I was High Diamond P at the beginning of Season 3. I haven't played in 2 months. I have little incentive to pick the game up again because I'll just crater my MMR trying to ladder with my weakened mechanics and necessary catch-up-time for learning the new metagame.
If there was an unranked ladder? I'd be much more willing to slowly but surely work my way up. So, I switched to playing LoL when I have free time and just watch MLG/GSL every once in awhile.
Considering the graveyard of player accounts (ever try to in-game PM any of the older posters on those 'Practice Partner' threads? And those are TL members!), I don't think I'm alone in this attitude.
On October 13 2011 08:10 templar rage wrote: Tbh, I'm not quite sure why Blizzard only allows one account per CD key (besides the obvious financial considerations). Isn't it fairly standard to allow like 3 uses of a CD key for a game? If they just did that, we'd be fine.
That would ruin the ranking system.
How? All the accounts would be completely separate. Similar to how a lot of programs let you install the software on multiple computers. Instead of multiple computers, it's multiple accounts, all of which are completely separate from each other (besides being linked by the same CD key, but that's irrelevent).
Because over half of the ladder would be inactive. It would be pointless to even have rankings.
On October 13 2011 08:14 pt wrote: Ladder : You play against people close to your rating. You don't get to choose the match up or opponent.
Custom : You choose who to play against.
How is that so hard to understand?
You don't choose who to play against, you are randomly placed with any player at any level who also queues up a Custom game. It is almost worthless because it's pure luck if you ever play someone anywhere near your skill level.
I was High Diamond P at the beginning of Season 3. I haven't played in 2 months. I have little incentive to pick the game up again because I'll just crater my MMR trying to ladder with my weakened mechanics and necessary catch-up-time for learning the new metagame.
If there was an unranked ladder? I'd be much more willing to slowly but surely work my way up. So, I switched to playing LoL when I have free time and just watch MLG/GSL every once in awhile.
Considering the graveyard of player accounts (ever try to PM any of the older posts on those 'Practice Partner' threads? And those are TL members!), I don't think I'm alone in this attitude.
Do you even know how to make a custom game?
Okay, let me explain to you how to find a custom game.
1. Join a channel. I do not recommend public channels or teamliquid since it is mostly discussion. 2. Ask for a game. State your division and race ONLY. Saying HIGH diamond or LOW diamond can cause people from higher or lower leagues to ask you for a game. Points do not necessarily translate to skill anyway. 3. Create a game. 4. Invite the person you wish to play with. 5. Start the game. Wish them good luck and tell them to have fun (Optional).
Why custom games aren't that bad: You get to off race and it doesn't affect your ladder rank. You can play whoever you want. You can play on any map you want. You can play any match up you want. You are less likely to play against players who pull all SCVs and all-in you after you harass their mineral line for 2 seconds.
On October 13 2011 08:14 pt wrote: Ladder : You play against people close to your rating. You don't get to choose the match up or opponent.
Custom : You choose who to play against.
How is that so hard to understand?
You don't choose who to play against, you are randomly placed with any player at any level who also queues up a Custom game. It is almost worthless because it's pure luck if you ever play someone anywhere near your skill level.
I was High Diamond P at the beginning of Season 3. I haven't played in 2 months. I have little incentive to pick the game up again because I'll just crater my MMR trying to ladder with my weakened mechanics and necessary catch-up-time for learning the new metagame.
If there was an unranked ladder? I'd be much more willing to slowly but surely work my way up. So, I switched to playing LoL when I have free time and just watch MLG/GSL every once in awhile.
Considering the graveyard of player accounts (ever try to PM any of the older posts on those 'Practice Partner' threads? And those are TL members!), I don't think I'm alone in this attitude.
idk about ranked ladder, but i think you should have 1 ranked ladder, and a separate ladder for practice, like if you need tvt help you would only get tvt matches, and only kids who wanted to practice, no cheese, straight up play would use that ladder. I think it would help people better prepare for tournaments and improve thier game all around
I understand there are custom games, but it would allow you to play against people you dnt normally play against so you dnt know there style right away. I think this system should have a sort of mmr format so you can play against people the same skill range as you, but with no rank or points that is known by anyone other then the match making system.
On October 13 2011 08:07 Panzamelano wrote: seems like most people dont understand the point the OP is triying to bring up.... he isnt saying he wants different ladders... he says he wants different "teams" for 1v1 just as in 2v2 when you get a partner and 2v2 it creates a new team and ranks you... he wants that but in 1v1... and obviously locked to only 4 teams to people dont go crazy.
I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
On October 13 2011 08:18 Snaphoo wrote: I was High Diamond P at the beginning of Season 3. I haven't played in 2 months. I have little incentive to pick the game up again because I'll just crater my MMR trying to ladder with my weakened mechanics and necessary catch-up-time for learning the new metagame.
It's not Blizzards job to fix your ego. Of course your MMR will decrease, it's reflecting your relative skill level, and that's decreasing when you stop playing for a longer period of time. If will decrease to the point where you're matched against people you have a 50% winning chance against. That's the whole point of a match making system.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
You say, on one hand, that we should not care about our ladder ranking. Then you say, on the other hand, that people will be much less 'serious' if this change occurs and this is a problem. Could you elaborate this inconsistency?
I'd appreciate having 1 account for each race honestly, that way If I switch races, I can actually do it without going back to my original race every time I decide to switch.
i do not like the unranked idea. it would divide the playerbase, and when im offracing or maining, i like that my progress is measured by the ladder. unranked seems counter to the idea of having separate 1v1 ranks, because if i switch to terran for a bit, i want to see a ranking for it. that's a huge part of why i play the ladder at all.
i agree with the separate ranks for 1v1. i don't rly care the # of separate ranks we get. i switched races a couple times at low masters, and it was pretty rough (didn't learn much for a while, either). customing from the list is a nonoption for me, finding people, i admit, can be too inconvenient, and i'd rather learn from the ladder as a ladder player. it's too greedy of blizzard to expect us to buy new accounts + expansions for something like offracing.
I haven't played much protoss or zerg 1v1 because if I play on ladder, I'll get stomped easily since I'm off-racing, but if I play in customs, I have no way of controlling the level of skill I play against and it'll USUALLY either be way too easy, or way too hard, both of which are pretty pointless.
On October 13 2011 08:14 pt wrote: Ladder : You play against people close to your rating. You don't get to choose the match up or opponent.
Custom : You choose who to play against.
How is that so hard to understand?
You don't choose who to play against, you are randomly placed with any player at any level who also queues up a Custom game. It is almost worthless because it's pure luck if you ever play someone anywhere near your skill level.
I was High Diamond P at the beginning of Season 3. I haven't played in 2 months. I have little incentive to pick the game up again because I'll just crater my MMR trying to ladder with my weakened mechanics and necessary catch-up-time for learning the new metagame.
If there was an unranked ladder? I'd be much more willing to slowly but surely work my way up. So, I switched to playing LoL when I have free time and just watch MLG/GSL every once in awhile.
Considering the graveyard of player accounts (ever try to PM any of the older posts on those 'Practice Partner' threads? And those are TL members!), I don't think I'm alone in this attitude.
Do you even know how to make a custom game?
Okay, let me explain to you how to find a custom game.
1. Join a channel. I do not recommend public channels or teamliquid since it is mostly discussion. 2. Ask for a game. State your division and race ONLY. Saying HIGH diamond or LOW diamond can get people from higher or lower leagues to ask you for a game. Points do not necessarily translate to skill anyway. 3. Create a game. 4. Invite the person you wish to play with.
This is incredibly time-consuming, extremely hit-or-miss, and doesn't let you simulate the rapid-fire pace of mass laddering, as you'll just be playing one person over and over. Unless you stop. And ask. And wait. And hope someone responds at your level. And try again. Then exit. And try again.
If you consider that a viable alternative to laddering, I think you're pretty out of touch with online gaming. It's not 1998 anymore.
Maybe they should have a unranked Quick Match option, that just has a separate hidden MMR from your main account but still finds you games on the normal ranked ladder. It just wouldn't tell the player what league they would be in/assign them a rank. It could be more flexible(further from your MMR) in the range of skilled players it pits you against to further create the illusion of a random match up. The main ladder gets to keep the players and the ladder avoiders can still have fun. Everyone wins?
For the record I do not have this ladder fear. Oh and I support a rank for each race.
Well there has definately been a substantial reduction in the amount of 1v1 ladder games compared to previous seasons. I dont know what Blizzard is playing at, to be honest. Why on earth doesnt battle.net allow for race-rankings?
Having 2-month seasons makes things even worse. I'll just play my placement game and will just mass customs as usual.
Also, the custom game system needs a HUGE improvement. I don't think I need to write down why. Everyone knows how shitty it is.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
You say, on one hand, that we should not care about our ladder ranking. Then you say, on the other hand, that people will be much less 'serious' if this change occurs and this is a problem. Could you elaborate this inconsistency?
No, because it's not an inconsistency. They should not care about they're ranking, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't play to win. A high Ladder ranking does not mean you're good, it does not mean you have a high winning percentage, it just means you have played a lot of games compared to other people in your division.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
Yes, that's exactly right. There's already incentive in the form of bonus pool and portraits and decals. Those are supposed to encourage you to play. If you lose with an offrace, eventually you'll get to a point where you'll start winning with that offrace. You don't need an unranked ladder or race-specific MMR to do that.
War3 never used different ratings for your race and neither did BW. There's no real reason to introduce that into SC2. Players are players and it's unnecessary to add a short-term solution like different MMRs for different races when fundamental strategies and mechanics are what dictate actual skill.
On October 13 2011 08:14 pt wrote: Ladder : You play against people close to your rating. You don't get to choose the match up or opponent.
Custom : You choose who to play against.
How is that so hard to understand?
You don't choose who to play against, you are randomly placed with any player at any level who also queues up a Custom game. It is almost worthless because it's pure luck if you ever play someone anywhere near your skill level.
I was High Diamond P at the beginning of Season 3. I haven't played in 2 months. I have little incentive to pick the game up again because I'll just crater my MMR trying to ladder with my weakened mechanics and necessary catch-up-time for learning the new metagame.
If there was an unranked ladder? I'd be much more willing to slowly but surely work my way up. So, I switched to playing LoL when I have free time and just watch MLG/GSL every once in awhile.
Considering the graveyard of player accounts (ever try to PM any of the older posts on those 'Practice Partner' threads? And those are TL members!), I don't think I'm alone in this attitude.
Do you even know how to make a custom game?
Okay, let me explain to you how to find a custom game.
1. Join a channel. I do not recommend public channels or teamliquid since it is mostly discussion. 2. Ask for a game. State your division and race ONLY. Saying HIGH diamond or LOW diamond can get people from higher or lower leagues to ask you for a game. Points do not necessarily translate to skill anyway. 3. Create a game. 4. Invite the person you wish to play with.
This is incredibly time-consuming, extremely hit-or-miss, and doesn't let you simulate the rapid-fire pace of mass laddering, as you'll just be playing one person over and over. Unless you stop. And ask. And wait. And hope someone responds at your level. And try again. Then exit. And try again.
If you consider that a viable alternative to laddering, I think you're pretty out of touch with online gaming. It's not 1998 anymore.
Ladder is hit or miss. What if you get a terrible player who cheesed every single game and got to your MMR? What if you get matched up with a pro smurfing? How often do you get good macro games on ladder?
Btw, I have no problem finding practice games with players better than me.
And I don't understand what you're trying to say when you say It's not 1998 anymore. Are you saying that we should sacrifice competitiveness? Look at how we went from Quake and Unreal Tournament to Call of Duty.
I like the idea of having separate rankings for each race. The unranked ladder just seems like a ridiculous idea to me. If you want to try out a new strategy or whatever then go do it on the ladder. If your ranking goes down, oh well. It'll go back up when you either find a way for your strategy to work or go back to playing normal.
Plus, if the unranked ladder's matchmaking works by MMR yet doesn't affect MMR then you'll just keep getting matched up against people you can't beat if you're losing.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
Yes, that's exactly right. There's already incentive in the form of bonus pool and portraits and decals. Those are supposed to encourage you to play. If you lose with an offrace, eventually you'll get to a point where you'll start winning with that offrace. You don't need an unranked ladder or race-specific MMR to do that.
War3 never used different ratings for your race and neither did BW. There's no real reason to introduce that into SC2. Players are players and it's unnecessary to add a short-term solution like different MMRs for different races when fundamental strategies and mechanics are what dictate actual skill.
Can you tell me any one way that having ranks assigned to individual races rather than your 1v1 as a whole hurts the game in any way? Just because "it didn't use to have that" isn't a very good reason, we could say that the ladder system is unnecessary and we should just go back to using the BW system of finding games.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
Yes, that's exactly right. There's already incentive in the form of bonus pool and portraits and decals. Those are supposed to encourage you to play. If you lose with an offrace, eventually you'll get to a point where you'll start winning with that offrace. You don't need an unranked ladder or race-specific MMR to do that.
War3 never used different ratings for your race and neither did BW. There's no real reason to introduce that into SC2. Players are players and it's unnecessary to add a short-term solution like different MMRs for different races when fundamental strategies and mechanics are what dictate actual skill.
Okay for people who keep bringing up BW to this... remember that on bw (since iccup times because bnet was mostly customs not real ladder) you could make all the accounts you wanted for free... so you didnt need an extra rank for your offrace... no you simply made a new account and used it for the offrace... or even more since bw ladder was made MANUALLY you just choose a new race and asked for lower lvl and played... BW did have multiple ratings.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
Yes, that's exactly right. There's already incentive in the form of bonus pool and portraits and decals. Those are supposed to encourage you to play. If you lose with an offrace, eventually you'll get to a point where you'll start winning with that offrace. You don't need an unranked ladder or race-specific MMR to do that.
War3 never used different ratings for your race and neither did BW. There's no real reason to introduce that into SC2. Players are players and it's unnecessary to add a short-term solution like different MMRs for different races when fundamental strategies and mechanics are what dictate actual skill.
I can't speak to WC3, but a lot of people on BW make separate accounts for offracing.
I would love to have a second "team" in 1v1s so that I can off-race/have fun laddering and not worry about what my rank is. The problem I see with this is that it would create a much larger disparity between what the MMR of the second "team" is and what their actual skill level is.
On October 13 2011 08:36 Harbinger631 wrote: I think it's sad how some people care about something like an MMR like it's a part of their identity. It's just a number.
On October 13 2011 08:07 xOff wrote: Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well matching you against people of your own skill level.
Why I Want Unranked Ladder:
- So I can try new builds or strategies against people of my own level without being punished with demotion in the early stages of trying to get a grasp on play.
- A way to train when I'm a bit rusty that's less random than Custom (A silver Zerg or a Masters Protoss? Don't know til you queue one up!). I want an unranked ladder so that I can play against people of my skill level. Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins. If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
- You may not like it, but look at the declining activity among vast numbers of players who still like the game or play team games, but stay far away from 1v1. It would revitalize ladder as people could see where they stand on the unranked ladder and then start playing ranked ladder again.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak.
- Analogy: There are very good people in League of Legends. They play new champions (similar to offracing) in unranked games, often, and then when they feel comfortable go back into Ranked games with those chars.
- REBUTTAL: It would not destroy MMR. People would keep playing on ladder just like always, it's just that there would be a shadow ladder alongside it.
And that shows perfectly why it would destroy the MMR system...
If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
If you're winning alot of games then you've raised your MMR and if you would then go back to the ranked games you would be of a higher skill level than your opponent. Say for example you're in gold league you then train for a couple weeks in unranked games and get to the approximate skill of a platinum player. You then go back to ranked and demolish the golds cause you're of the skill of a platinum player. That's unfair and stupid to the gold players who want to just play players of their own skill level in ranked games.
Edit: However I do agree about separate races having seperate MMR's and ranks.
This is not the reason for 1v1 ladder you play 1v1 as a form of offical competition and if you dont like that play 1v1 custom thats what its there for do that untill you improve or just play 2v2 3v3 4v4 if you want to have fun and offrace
I would love to have a second account. I have only played 1/3 of the game I bought because it would be so insanely painful to play my bronze level p or t on my high diamond account. It would be like, four hours of losing horribly with no recourse, followed by another four hours of winning in order to get things back to normal.
This is something everyone foresaw except for blizzard. If they had released actual details of what the ladder would be instead of just doing it and hoping for the best, maybe we'd be in a better position.
On October 13 2011 08:07 xOff wrote: Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well matching you against people of your own skill level.
Why I Want Unranked Ladder:
- So I can try new builds or strategies against people of my own level without being punished with demotion in the early stages of trying to get a grasp on play.
- A way to train when I'm a bit rusty that's less random than Custom (A silver Zerg or a Masters Protoss? Don't know til you queue one up!). I want an unranked ladder so that I can play against people of my skill level. Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins. If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
- You may not like it, but look at the declining activity among vast numbers of players who still like the game or play team games, but stay far away from 1v1. It would revitalize ladder as people could see where they stand on the unranked ladder and then start playing ranked ladder again.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak.
- Analogy: There are very good people in League of Legends. They play new champions (similar to offracing) in unranked games, often, and then when they feel comfortable go back into Ranked games with those chars.
- REBUTTAL: It would not destroy MMR. People would keep playing on ladder just like always, it's just that there would be a shadow ladder alongside it.
And that shows perfectly why it would destroy the MMR system...
If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
If you're winning alot of games then you've raised your MMR and if you would then go back to the ranked games you would be of a higher skill level than your opponent. Say for example you're in gold league you then train for a couple weeks in unranked games and get to the approximate skill of a platinum player. You then go back to ranked and demolish the golds cause you're of the skill of a platinum player. That's unfair and stupid to the gold players who want to just play players of their own skill level in ranked games.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
Difference being that the ladder would constantly update your ranking and MMR. Practicing on an unranked ladder for a while could result in you suddenly being 1 "league" better than you used to be when you last player ranked ladder. The matchmaking is a bit slow in making this adjustment, so you'd be left stomping now-inferior players for a while.
If you'd have just practiced on ranked ladder instead, your MMR would already have adjusted to your new skill level gradually, and this problem wouldn't present itself.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
Yes, that's exactly right. There's already incentive in the form of bonus pool and portraits and decals. Those are supposed to encourage you to play. If you lose with an offrace, eventually you'll get to a point where you'll start winning with that offrace. You don't need an unranked ladder or race-specific MMR to do that.
War3 never used different ratings for your race and neither did BW. There's no real reason to introduce that into SC2. Players are players and it's unnecessary to add a short-term solution like different MMRs for different races when fundamental strategies and mechanics are what dictate actual skill.
I can't speak to WC3, but a lot of people on BW make separate accounts for offracing.
people did the same (made new, free accts) in wc3 to offrace. in addition, each account profile gave you a win/loss % for each race, including random.
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.
On October 13 2011 08:39 Lolzre wrote: This is not the reason for 1v1 ladder you play 1v1 as a form of offical competition and if you dont like that play 1v1 custom thats what its there for do that untill you improve or just play 2v2 3v3 4v4 if you want to have fun and offrace
Why can't you officially compete with different races separately? You don't see the down points of having to tank your officially competitive rating just to play a different race? You just said that you can do this in 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. These are the same "officially competitive" venues except you can have multiples due to teams.
On October 13 2011 07:39 BushidoSnipr wrote: Honestly, I think the reason the player base is dwindling cuz the game makes you feel so shitty when you lose. BW it was hard as hell to get from D to C and a loss didnt mean as much. In sc2-Blizzard's horrible ladder- one loss can make or break your league standing.
Another factor could also be the mass marketing of sc2, many people bought it cuz there was a whole bunch of commercials and hype etc, and they turned out to not be fit for an RTS kinda game.
This whole multiple acc thing would just screw people up honestly
One for "fun"-as in what? stupid builds? or is "fun" just a word for "excuse to play badly"
Everyone knows the ladder will turn into-OH HELL NO EVEN THOUGH I LOST I HAVE A GM ACC-It'll just make BM even worse....and Blizzard doesn't care about BM...lol
I feel the exact opposite. Blizzard seems to be doing everything they can to avoid people even realizing their own skill level so that they don't get down when they lose too often. Of course it was hard as hell to get from a D to a C, and it felt great when you did, but lose a game or 2 in a row (worse yet go on a 5-10 game losing streak) and you're right back in D where you started. People aren't demoted or promoted in sc2 nearly as fast as they were in bw and it's so they don't quit from the difficulty.
On October 13 2011 08:07 xOff wrote: Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well matching you against people of your own skill level.
Why I Want Unranked Ladder:
- So I can try new builds or strategies against people of my own level without being punished with demotion in the early stages of trying to get a grasp on play.
- A way to train when I'm a bit rusty that's less random than Custom (A silver Zerg or a Masters Protoss? Don't know til you queue one up!). I want an unranked ladder so that I can play against people of my skill level. Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins. If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
- You may not like it, but look at the declining activity among vast numbers of players who still like the game or play team games, but stay far away from 1v1. It would revitalize ladder as people could see where they stand on the unranked ladder and then start playing ranked ladder again.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak.
- Analogy: There are very good people in League of Legends. They play new champions (similar to offracing) in unranked games, often, and then when they feel comfortable go back into Ranked games with those chars.
- REBUTTAL: It would not destroy MMR. People would keep playing on ladder just like always, it's just that there would be a shadow ladder alongside it.
And that shows perfectly why it would destroy the MMR system...
If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
If you're winning alot of games then you've raised your MMR and if you would then go back to the ranked games you would be of a higher skill level than your opponent. Say for example you're in gold league you then train for a couple weeks in unranked games and get to the approximate skill of a platinum player. You then go back to ranked and demolish the golds cause you're of the skill of a platinum player. That's unfair and stupid to the gold players who want to just play players of their own skill level in ranked games.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
No it ruins MMR when people improve in a seperate ladder and then go back to the ladder.
Example: I'm in diamond, I go to the korean server and train with MVP for a month and come back. I now am masters/grandmasters level. I'm still diamond on my original account and it says my MMR is the same. So the players i would be getting matched up with are diamond while i'm now a much better player.
Edit: DarQraven summed my thoughts up nicely aswell
I'd kill for a different ladder rank for each race. Not because my ladder rank is of particular importance to me; but if I play zerg for 40 games and get demoted when I go back to Terran I play a whole bunch of games way below my level.
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.
not really what actually scares people is that to offrace they have to go trough hours and hours of losing just to get to their offrace level and then they have to work for hours and hours whit their main race to get back to where they were... thats why people dont want to offrace.
I think 3 accounts makes sense, one for each race. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll get 3 accounts until LOTV is released. My prediction is that we will get another account with every expansion, to further entice players to purchase them. HOTS will give us a second account to play on, and LOTV will make it 3.
On October 13 2011 08:07 xOff wrote: Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well matching you against people of your own skill level.
Why I Want Unranked Ladder:
- So I can try new builds or strategies against people of my own level without being punished with demotion in the early stages of trying to get a grasp on play.
- A way to train when I'm a bit rusty that's less random than Custom (A silver Zerg or a Masters Protoss? Don't know til you queue one up!). I want an unranked ladder so that I can play against people of my skill level. Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins. If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
- You may not like it, but look at the declining activity among vast numbers of players who still like the game or play team games, but stay far away from 1v1. It would revitalize ladder as people could see where they stand on the unranked ladder and then start playing ranked ladder again.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak.
- Analogy: There are very good people in League of Legends. They play new champions (similar to offracing) in unranked games, often, and then when they feel comfortable go back into Ranked games with those chars.
- REBUTTAL: It would not destroy MMR. People would keep playing on ladder just like always, it's just that there would be a shadow ladder alongside it.
And that shows perfectly why it would destroy the MMR system...
If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
If you're winning alot of games then you've raised your MMR and if you would then go back to the ranked games you would be of a higher skill level than your opponent. Say for example you're in gold league you then train for a couple weeks in unranked games and get to the approximate skill of a platinum player. You then go back to ranked and demolish the golds cause you're of the skill of a platinum player. That's unfair and stupid to the gold players who want to just play players of their own skill level in ranked games.
Edit: However I do agree about separate races having seperate MMR's and ranks.
Don't be silly, you already can go practice in custom games to accomplish that- so you make no real case for there being a problem with implementing an unranked system. An unranked system would allow for more efficient practice, and would avoid this god-awful system in which, if you're opponent is drastically worse or better than you in the lobby, you're only alternative is to log off to get out of the game. Right now in custom games, you're completely trapped playing against whatever opponent joins your game. I'm in masters, so it's a complete waste of my time to play someone in bronze. In fact, it may very well make me worse at the game if anything. This applies in the inverse as well (someone getting completely obliterated learns very little).
If an unranked system isn't implemented, then at the very least we need a COMPLETE revision of the custom games format. Right now it is possibly the worst I've ever seen in any game. Fortunately I love the gameplay of sc2 enough to bear through it. We need to be able to make specifications as to what custom games we want to play. I should be able to check "ladder maps only" and "skill level: masters" and play unranked custom games. Currently, the only maps that are played are the most popular maps- and it becomes a vicious cycle of it being the only game played, so no one even bothers with the other maps (I'm talking about shattered temple and xel'naga). I just had a long week at school and haven't been able to play much sc2 at all. As such, I don't feel like hopping right back into ladder to play worthwhile opponents. I need to be able to warm up- but I don't want to warm up with bronze and gold league players. Inversely, I'm sure they don't want to play with me either. The fact that this game needs a complete change to its custom games interface is beyond obvious to the point of it being almost unnecessary to talk about, yet there is still nothing being done.
There is absolutely no one who genuinely and objectively thinks the system is fine as it is. There is so much more that it should and shouldn't have that it's astonishing that blizzard could do such an inadequate job at allowing for sc2 gaming outside of the ladder. Talk about making more money? The ability to play the game for lengthy amounts of time without getting bored or stressed could be augmented tremendously by the option to play COMPETITIVELY in an unranked format. Keep the challenge, drop the stress = bring the players, make the money.
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.
not really what actually scares people is that to offrace they have to go trough hours and hours of losing just to get to their offrace level and then they have to work for hours and hours whit their main race to get back to where they were... thats why people dont want to offrace.
yea i was about to type something like this. it really isn't a benefit that offracing is so hard except blizzard can get more account purchases. if i switch to terran, my ranking and MMR drop. if i switch back to toss, i'll probably be at a position on the ladder that favors me against lower level opponents.
i want to add that the unranked discussion seems at least a bit off-topic. like i said earlier, the idea is counter to the idea of having multiple ranks for 1v1, and it isn't even in the OP. i think it's a better argument for wanting to be able to play casually (eg, normal games in league of legends) at an even skill level than wanting to offrace
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.
not really what actually scares people is that to offrace they have to go trough hours and hours of losing just to get to their offrace level and then they have to work for hours and hours whit their main race to get back to where they were... thats why people dont want to offrace.
This. I don't think many people care all that much about the league icon or division rank. However, complete steamroller games simply aren't fun for both parties involved, and you'll have to go through quite a few of them to get your MMR to the right level.
Problem is that you might beat bronze players really badly - yet you're still not getting any more MMR for that win than if you just barely beat them. Even with 100%/0% winrate, promotions/demotions can be quite slow.
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.
not really what actually scares people is that to offrace they have to go trough hours and hours of losing just to get to their offrace level and then they have to work for hours and hours whit their main race to get back to where they were... thats why people dont want to offrace.
This. I don't think many people care all that much about the league icon or division rank. However, complete steamroller games simply aren't fun for both parties involved, and you'll have to go through quite a few of them to get your MMR to the right level.
Problem is that you might beat bronze players really badly - yet you're still not getting any more MMR for that win than if you just barely beat them. Even with 100%/0% winrate, promotions/demotions can be quite slow.
Pretty sure people do care about winning. If it was about having fun, why do people do the same all-in builds over and over and over again?
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.
not really what actually scares people is that to offrace they have to go trough hours and hours of losing just to get to their offrace level and then they have to work for hours and hours whit their main race to get back to where they were... thats why people dont want to offrace.
This. I don't think many people care all that much about the league icon or division rank. However, complete steamroller games simply aren't fun for both parties involved, and you'll have to go through quite a few of them to get your MMR to the right level.
Problem is that you might beat bronze players really badly - yet you're still not getting any more MMR for that win than if you just barely beat them. Even with 100%/0% winrate, promotions/demotions can be quite slow.
Pretty sure people do care about winning. If it was about having fun, why do people do the same all-in builds over and over and over again?
Sure they care about winning, but winning != having a high division rank. If you truly are a rank 1 masters player, you will get back to that spot eventually, you won't magically become a worse player by dropping your MMR. The problem right now is that this "eventually" simply takes too long to make practicing other races on the ladder a viable option. You'll have to instaquit god knows how many games to drop your MMR, then play all the way back up once you want to play your main race again. None of those matches are going to be remotely interesting, and in some/many cases this can mean an entire day's worth of games "wasted". Especially for higher ranked players the difference between their main race and an offrace can span multiple leagues.
No point in 4 different 1v1 ladders it would be too complicated for the GM league(s) and if there were 4 GM leagues its absolutly useless at that point. Just 1v1 with what ever race you enjoy to 1v1 with and if you want to switch, just switch. Blizzard will not make 4 different 1v1 ladders b/c of ppl being to scared to tank the MMR.
Also, not all people care about their shiny badge that says which league they are in. Smart people do care about MMR, however. If I want to practice a new race for 20 games, and then go back to my original, it's really terrible for the ladder. The ladder tries to accomplish matching you up with equally skilled opponents, but becomes completely nonsensical when you want to off-race.
An unranked ladder would definitely hurt the overall player base. Even looking at a totally unrelated game, Gears 3 shows that the active players in quick match compared to ranked are WAY higher because most people are going to think ranked ladder is too serious.
I do however think some system of separate rankings for each race would be cool.
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
Difference being that the ladder would constantly update your ranking and MMR. Practicing on an unranked ladder for a while could result in you suddenly being 1 "league" better than you used to be when you last player ranked ladder. The matchmaking is a bit slow in making this adjustment, so you'd be left stomping now-inferior players for a while.
If you'd have just practiced on ranked ladder instead, your MMR would already have adjusted to your new skill level gradually, and this problem wouldn't present itself.
It's impossible to be enforced. Anyone can make a smurf/play on a friends account, or just be straight up malicious in many other ways that wouldn't involve using an alt race ladder option. A masters could be smurfing on a gold zerg account that is platinum with terran for all you know. I can't speak to how rampant smurfing actually is, but it's a useless point unless blizzard enforces even more restrictions.
tl;dr I'd take it if it let you see alt accounts or not.
Also this league stomping phenomenon happens all the time in league placement matches and when people go back and practice outside of ladder. They might as well should be smurfs too; You'll simply never know either way unless you ask him yourself afterwards.
On October 13 2011 09:01 FluXen wrote: No point in 4 different 1v1 ladders it would be too complicated for the GM league(s) and if there were 4 GM leagues its absolutly useless at that point. Just 1v1 with what ever race you enjoy to 1v1 with and if you want to switch, just switch. Blizzard will not make 4 different 1v1 ladders b/c of ppl being to scared to tank the MMR.
People aren't scared of tanking their MMR. They don't want to pay $50+expansions for each and every smurf they off-race on; The alternative being to tank your MMR. What a wonderful choice Blizzard has granted us. Your solution is "Just 1v1 with your main and deal with it."
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
Difference being that the ladder would constantly update your ranking and MMR. Practicing on an unranked ladder for a while could result in you suddenly being 1 "league" better than you used to be when you last player ranked ladder. The matchmaking is a bit slow in making this adjustment, so you'd be left stomping now-inferior players for a while.
If you'd have just practiced on ranked ladder instead, your MMR would already have adjusted to your new skill level gradually, and this problem wouldn't present itself.
It's impossible to be enforced. Anyone can make a smurf/play on a friends account, or just be straight up malicious in many other ways that wouldn't involve using an alt race ladder option. A masters could be smurfing on a gold zerg account that is platinum with terran for all you know. I can't speak to how rampant smurfing actually is, but it's a useless point unless blizzard enforces even more restrictions.
tl;dr I'd take it if it let you see alt accounts or not.
Also this league stomping phenomenon happens all the time in league placement matches and when people go back and practice outside of ladder. They might as well should be smurfs too.
Yes, because there are people that might abuse a system that's already in place, we should just not make any improvements to it anymore, right? By that logic, we might as well get rid of passports altogether, since there are some people that have fake ones.
Smurfers gonna smurf, that much is obvious, but at least separate ladder rankings per race would account for those that play a main race and practice an alt race. If someone wants to be an ass to lower-league players and finds it worth it to spend 50 euros to do that, by all means let them. That's what they do now, nothing will change. I have a feeling that 'malicious' smurfers aren't the majority, though.
On October 13 2011 08:21 blackone wrote: I think it's unnecessary, and it would be hurting the game. If you want to change your main race, you can just do that. You'll lose the first games, but your MMR will be adjusted pretty soon. If you like to play all three races, you can just do that. Your MMR will reflect it. The only reason people want something like his, is that they want to have a "less stressful" environment for playing (offrace or not) but still have a one button solution that matches them with an appropriate partner. The problem is, the moment you introduce that kind of option, be it different 1v1 "teams" or an unranked option, people will start playing that a lot and will play much less "serious" ladder games. It would definitely hurt the overall ladder skill level. Just play your games, however you like. And stop giving so much shit about achievements or your ladder ranking. They don't mean anything.
Yes, that's exactly right. There's already incentive in the form of bonus pool and portraits and decals. Those are supposed to encourage you to play. If you lose with an offrace, eventually you'll get to a point where you'll start winning with that offrace. You don't need an unranked ladder or race-specific MMR to do that.
War3 never used different ratings for your race and neither did BW. There's no real reason to introduce that into SC2. Players are players and it's unnecessary to add a short-term solution like different MMRs for different races when fundamental strategies and mechanics are what dictate actual skill.
I can't speak to WC3, but a lot of people on BW make separate accounts for offracing.
Okay, that's a valid point. Both those games did allow for smurfing and unlimited account creation. I don't really have a response to that :> However, it is true that your actual skill level should be roughly the same even after a short period of time with a new race. Even if you're like Diamond Protoss and you start playing Zerg, you're not going to start off your Zerg on a Bronze level, you're probably going to be more like Gold, and with some refinement eventually Plat or maybe even Diamond there as well. Familiarizing yourself with a race and the new matchups doesn't take very long, it's really your skill as a player that makes you Diamond.
i don't mind if people want more 1v1 accounts and rant about. If they had, the other side would rant about all the evil new 0 loss accounts made to poke noobs. Anyway if you need a reward so badly, buy the game twice, have your fun while you outplay all the lesser players with strats that wouldn't work against players as strong as you and ruin their game if they want to get better in a competitive enviroment. There is no system that makes everyone happy, otherwise we would all be communists (hey in theory everyone should be happy there). But i think a competitive ladder and custom games do really hit most people. (custom games are bad yata yata ... its just the common hate making it bad). But i guess the save and load perfectionists are a bit left out.
But you could try to convince Blizzard that the 1v1 ladder won't lose people playing it, if they made a ffa 1v1 option having its own mmr but no ladder points (so people will find equally strong people after a while). Still time until Hots. But i guess there are to many people buying accounts to off race and get their nice 80/20 stats and then retire haha. it would be a lose lose situation for Blizzard (less in 1v1 less people buying the game) And i guess that won't make those people happy. They basically want a reset mmr button, that keeps their old mmr in mind, so they can always switch back.
PS: agree with the person above on the skill level as i change my race like my shoes and i have alot (probably thats why i find that need for more accounts strange) And also thanks to the OP for not putting a hurts esport into the topic, it would fit if you wanted it to fit sigh
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
Difference being that the ladder would constantly update your ranking and MMR. Practicing on an unranked ladder for a while could result in you suddenly being 1 "league" better than you used to be when you last player ranked ladder. The matchmaking is a bit slow in making this adjustment, so you'd be left stomping now-inferior players for a while.
If you'd have just practiced on ranked ladder instead, your MMR would already have adjusted to your new skill level gradually, and this problem wouldn't present itself.
It's impossible to be enforced. Anyone can make a smurf/play on a friends account, or just be straight up malicious in many other ways that wouldn't involve using an alt race ladder option. A masters could be smurfing on a gold zerg account that is platinum with terran for all you know. I can't speak to how rampant smurfing actually is, but it's a useless point unless blizzard enforces even more restrictions.
tl;dr I'd take it if it let you see alt accounts or not.
Also this league stomping phenomenon happens all the time in league placement matches and when people go back and practice outside of ladder. They might as well should be smurfs too.
Yes, because there are people that might abuse a system that's already in place, we should just not make any improvements to it anymore, right? By that logic, we might as well get rid of passports altogether, since there are some people that have fake ones.
Smurfers gonna smurf, that much is obvious, but at least separate ladder rankings per race would account for those that play a main race and practice an alt race. I have a feeling that 'malicious' smurfers aren't the majority.
We're in agreement. I don't know why you're arguing with me.
Seems pretty silly. Being competitive is one thing, not sure anything under GM is worth writing home about though, but that might be the diamond player in me talking, haha.
On my account I've got about 2k games played, I'd say 1500 of them are 1v1s. It's a 1v1 game, team games are not truly competitive, I think most people have stopped playing 1v1 because:
A - the game is getting old, 90% of the people who bought it have moved on to other games. It's still got a very healthy competitive scene but in terms of numbers - obviously these were going to drop as time wore on. We'll see a resurgence when the expansion hits.
B - This community is full of shitheads. BM is a regular occurrence on the ladder. If I wasn't a hardcore RTS player, I would never in a million years subjugate myself to the types of people/behavior witnessed on the ladder as a form of fun in my spare time. I actually take regular breaks from the game mainly because of the people that I encounter.
I've actually started simply leaving games if I get a sense that the person I'm playing against is a piece of trash because honestly it's not worth the ladder points for me to suffer their personalities.
But what do you expect when the bulk of the SC2 viewing community endorses the biggest "my mamma never loved me" types (idra, deezer, etc)
But as far as the suggestion to have multiple 1v1 ranks - sure why not. The problem (And I've brought this up before on the official blizzard forums) is that this game does not have a constant source of revenue and over time the amount of players that will buy multiple accounts for exactly this reason is too big for them to ignore. I mean, even now I am constantly playing against new accounts. There's a pretty big market out there for people willing to buy smurf accounts - and at 60 bucks a pop... that's some big $$$
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
Difference being that the ladder would constantly update your ranking and MMR. Practicing on an unranked ladder for a while could result in you suddenly being 1 "league" better than you used to be when you last player ranked ladder. The matchmaking is a bit slow in making this adjustment, so you'd be left stomping now-inferior players for a while.
If you'd have just practiced on ranked ladder instead, your MMR would already have adjusted to your new skill level gradually, and this problem wouldn't present itself.
It's impossible to be enforced. Anyone can make a smurf/play on a friends account, or just be straight up malicious in many other ways that wouldn't involve using an alt race ladder option. A masters could be smurfing on a gold zerg account that is platinum with terran for all you know. I can't speak to how rampant smurfing actually is, but it's a useless point unless blizzard enforces even more restrictions.
tl;dr I'd take it if it let you see alt accounts or not.
Also this league stomping phenomenon happens all the time in league placement matches and when people go back and practice outside of ladder. They might as well should be smurfs too.
Yes, because there are people that might abuse a system that's already in place, we should just not make any improvements to it anymore, right? By that logic, we might as well get rid of passports altogether, since there are some people that have fake ones.
Smurfers gonna smurf, that much is obvious, but at least separate ladder rankings per race would account for those that play a main race and practice an alt race. I have a feeling that 'malicious' smurfers aren't the majority.
We're in agreement. I don't know why you're arguing with me.
I gathered from your reply that you didn't think the "see alternate accounts" feature on a player's profile was needed. I do, as I explained. It would leave only the malicious smurfs out there as annoying cases - which I agree cannot be prevented -, while you could tell for offracing players that you were just beaten by a higher league player.
Losing horribly is only half as bad when you know you *should* have lost, as opposed to wondering why all those other bronzies are so damn good while you aren't.
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
So basically you're saying an unranked ladder would ruin the MMR because people might improve? People improve by laddering too you know.
Difference being that the ladder would constantly update your ranking and MMR. Practicing on an unranked ladder for a while could result in you suddenly being 1 "league" better than you used to be when you last player ranked ladder. The matchmaking is a bit slow in making this adjustment, so you'd be left stomping now-inferior players for a while.
If you'd have just practiced on ranked ladder instead, your MMR would already have adjusted to your new skill level gradually, and this problem wouldn't present itself.
It's impossible to be enforced. Anyone can make a smurf/play on a friends account, or just be straight up malicious in many other ways that wouldn't involve using an alt race ladder option. A masters could be smurfing on a gold zerg account that is platinum with terran for all you know. I can't speak to how rampant smurfing actually is, but it's a useless point unless blizzard enforces even more restrictions.
tl;dr I'd take it if it let you see alt accounts or not.
Also this league stomping phenomenon happens all the time in league placement matches and when people go back and practice outside of ladder. They might as well should be smurfs too.
Yes, because there are people that might abuse a system that's already in place, we should just not make any improvements to it anymore, right? By that logic, we might as well get rid of passports altogether, since there are some people that have fake ones.
Smurfers gonna smurf, that much is obvious, but at least separate ladder rankings per race would account for those that play a main race and practice an alt race. I have a feeling that 'malicious' smurfers aren't the majority.
We're in agreement. I don't know why you're arguing with me.
I gathered from your reply that you didn't think the "see alternate accounts" feature on a player's profile was needed. I do, as I explained. It would leave only the malicious smurfs out there as annoying cases - which I agree cannot be prevented -, while you could tell for offracing players that you were just beaten by a higher league player.
Losing horribly is only half as bad when you know you *should* have lost, as opposed to wondering why all those other bronzies are so damn good while you aren't.
People will smurf either way. I'll take an alternative ladder option with or without the account transparency. It's not a bad thing to implement, it's just not needed and wouldn't solve smurfing at all. Also I don't quite know the extent people smurf in lower leagues. If I've fought one I've never noticed.
On October 13 2011 09:13 TortoiseCa wrote: On my account I've got about 2k games played, I'd say 1500 of them are 1v1s. It's a 1v1 game, team games are not truly competitive, I think most people have stopped playing 1v1 because:
A - the game is getting old, 90% of the people who bought it have moved on to other games. It's still got a very healthy competitive scene but in terms of numbers - obviously these were going to drop as time wore on. We'll see a resurgence when the expansion hits.
B - This community is full of shitheads. BM is a regular occurrence on the ladder. If I wasn't a hardcore RTS player, I would never in a million years subjugate myself to the types of people/behavior witnessed on the ladder as a form of fun in my spare time. I actually take regular breaks from the game mainly because of the people that I encounter.
I've actually started simply leaving games if I get a sense that the person I'm playing against is a piece of trash because honestly it's not worth the ladder points for me to suffer their personalities.
But what do you expect when the bulk of the SC2 viewing community endorses the biggest "my mamma never loved me" types (idra, deezer, etc)
But as far as the suggestion to have multiple 1v1 ranks - sure why not. The problem (And I've brought this up before on the official blizzard forums) is that this game does not have a constant source of revenue and over time the amount of players that will buy multiple accounts for exactly this reason is too big for them to ignore. I mean, even now I am constantly playing against new accounts. There's a pretty big market out there for people willing to buy smurf accounts - and at 60 bucks a pop... that's some big $$$
Actually there is a second source of income from the game. Tournaments... remember that all the big tournaments must pay some cash to blizzard (wich i dont know how much it is and im not gonna go crazy whit the 50% ad revenue rumours out there) and also 2 more expansions to go so the cash isnt that much of a trouble.
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.
not really what actually scares people is that to offrace they have to go trough hours and hours of losing just to get to their offrace level and then they have to work for hours and hours whit their main race to get back to where they were... thats why people dont want to offrace.
This. I don't think many people care all that much about the league icon or division rank. However, complete steamroller games simply aren't fun for both parties involved, and you'll have to go through quite a few of them to get your MMR to the right level.
Problem is that you might beat bronze players really badly - yet you're still not getting any more MMR for that win than if you just barely beat them. Even with 100%/0% winrate, promotions/demotions can be quite slow.
Pretty sure people do care about winning. If it was about having fun, why do people do the same all-in builds over and over and over again?
Sure they care about winning, but winning != having a high division rank. If you truly are a rank 1 masters player, you will get back to that spot eventually, you won't magically become a worse player by dropping your MMR. The problem right now is that this "eventually" simply takes too long to make practicing other races on the ladder a viable option. You'll have to instaquit god knows how many games to drop your MMR, then play all the way back up once you want to play your main race again. None of those matches are going to be remotely interesting, and in some/many cases this can mean an entire day's worth of games "wasted". Especially for higher ranked players the difference between their main race and an offrace can span multiple leagues.
I meant anything that makes you look good. Rank, points, ratio, etc. I just gave an example of why people care.
team games can be just as competitive (albeit at a lower 'rate' because of the different cheeses) as 1v1 for someone, if they take it as seriously. i personally work on most of my basic mechanics in 2v2 matches when there can be so much stress to constantly know what's going on at all times. strategies are more clear-cut, but that does not mean you have to play in a simple style or dumb yourself down to use joke strats.
honestly, i rarely ever experience BM in 2v2 & where i can't just crush the guy and feel better about it by the end of the game. i'm only saying that it's as fun as you make it to be. if you're unable to have fun over the ladder because of the attitudes that people take with you, the long and short is that you just can't handle it (and it's understandable).
i like the idea of seperate rankings for 1v1, but it's quite a lot to keep track of. it also seems like something that would happen in the future, but it's still a little unecessary. having a dedicated casual ladder will have more people taking the game less seriously wouldn't it? in LoL, there are players who play 1-10 ranked matches per 1000 of their games---that's just how they are, whether they're scared of the competition, or they would rather pub stomp. it may help bring people back into laddering for fun, but there are already other options for good practice.... such as asking friends for customs.
On October 13 2011 09:20 jinorazi wrote: i just want listed lobbies with multiple names under one account.
listed lobbies so that i can make a game called "1v1 TvZ High Master" and practice my tvz in a particular map.
and multiple names, as OP suggested, one for fun, one for non-fun, anonymous so i wont be bothered.
I think the reason from blizzard's perspective that this doesn't really work is because you'll end up with fewer players using the ladder system and the ladder's accuracy in determining matches is directly related to the amount of usage (data) that they can collect. And let's be honest here, when you hosted those public games on BW - you either got a complete newbie, a hacker or a gosu korean 90% of the time. - I think the ladder matchmaking system is the ideal solution if you can get past the fact that nobody cares what your record is.
I love that I can log on, press play - and get a competitively matched game. Just ignore the points - record - etc and enjoy this feature because it only works so great because it forces people to use it.
I mean, it's not hard to find practice partners (and be able to survey their skill - by using the ladder system - before you play so you know that it'll be an even match)
So I actually find a lot of these suggestions counter-intuitive. The game's based around the ladder right now. Even discussions by Dustin Bowder saying that the ladder is not for pro gamers is inaccurate. There's actually very few pro gamers out there that are dominating the ladder - There is a lot of competition at the highest tier of the ladder system and only the upper echelon of pro gamers are dominating it (because they're so few that they're given downgraded opponents so they don't have to wait a week to find an opponent)
I was just watching inControl's stream and every time I looked (had it running in the background while reading the forums) he was losing a game to somebody I had never heard of. I know he's not a top pro gamer atm but he is considered among pro gamers at the least.
One for each race would mean too much smurfing -- A player 2 or 3 leagues ahead of someone else offracing is going to be better than the weaker player's main race.
On October 13 2011 07:36 IamBoIt wrote: Custom games?
Doesn't that cover what you are talking about?
There are a couple problems with using customs to 1v1.
1) You often get matched up with people outside your skill level
2) It is only feasible to play a couple of 1v1 maps because most are too unpopular and it takes a long time to get matched up with someone else. Basically, when I do customs I can only get in XNC or Lost Temple for 1v1 maps.
These problems are slightly resolved if you have friends that are your skill level and able to be on at the same time as you. But when you're playing friends you learn most of their builds and their style pretty fast and you lose the unpredictability of playing a random opponent.
I agree with having 2 for 1v1, with one being a backup that's not as serious, at the very least it could give players more confidence, I know some people have trouble getting started up on ladder. I don't think you need one for each race, seems kind of irrational. Rather I think they should make a more in depth statistics page with all that info.
1 per race seems fine, seen this idea before on the forums but I would love it if they fixed so you could offrace and have a seperate ranking with it. If I would play anything but Zerg I would get stomped with my mmr ^_^
The only problem with multiple accounts is that they would break the league system in place. GM wouldn't be top 200 it could be top 196 with the last 4 being some gosu. There would need to be a rule set where you can't have multiple accounts in the same division and can't have multiple accounts in GM.
There should be a ranked ladder, which is what exists now and an unranked ladder, where you play against people of your own skill level but nothing is on the line.
I dont get how people who are Diamond and below can have ladder fear, Blizz completely took away your loss amount when ppl check your profile. Theres no way to tell if you have something embarassing like a 150-170 record. Master level sucks sometimes cuz going 20-30 for the world to see sucks and you always end getting raged at a million times because if you beat anybody you instantly get a message "HAHAH FUCKING NEWB 20-30 I KNEW YOU WERE TRASH!.
Allowing people to create new accounts would be a trainwreck........ If you think you have ladder fear now wait till all you golds get matched all day long with Master players who are smurfing there new accounts.
I think the solution is simple. fix the custom game system...... literaaly just go back to wc3 and BW format, how fucking hard is that blizz?/
I want all of you ladder fearer's to think of this scenario
You come from work, your tired/exhausted you really want to play SC2 but hell you dont wnat to ladder and lose ranked games BECAUSE you have a life. You go to chat channels and try find a game but that takes forever and can be very ineffective.
Now imagine
You go to custom games and Blizz adds in a new category called "User Title or something of that manner and in the list you see....
1v1 Xel Naga Caverns Master Only
1v1 Metaloplis Gold Only
etc
you join the game and GUESS WHAT???? THE GAME does not fucking AUTOSTART the host actually STARTS THE GAME.
ALSO guess what theres no popularity on this feature either! so everyones map goes in order of creation and you can easily skim through everyboys lobby.
What if a gold joins a master only game? host checks profile and kicks you.
No need for smurf accounts
No need for an unranked ladder that will ruin regular ladder
A system that has worked 10 FUCKING years for BW and wc3.
On October 13 2011 09:56 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: The only problem with multiple accounts is that they would break the league system in place. GM wouldn't be top 200 it could be top 196 with the last 4 being some gosu. There would need to be a rule set where you can't have multiple accounts in the same division and can't have multiple accounts in GM.
sadly.... this already happens... you can see people(not mega gosus but just stream cheaters and stuff) like deezer whit multiple GM accounts so its not like its a new thing.
On October 13 2011 09:54 ReignFayth wrote: an unranked ladder that takes ur MMR into account where you can actually pick the Match up you want to practice would be great
Thats a pretty cool idea. I imagine something along the lines playing customs games but having the option to specify playing players that match your mmr.
On October 13 2011 09:58 XXXSmOke wrote: I dont get how people who are Diamond and below can have ladder fear, Blizz completely took away your loss amount when ppl check your profile. Theres no way to tell if you have something embarassing like a 150-170 record. Master level sucks sometimes cuz going 20-30 for the world to see sucks and you always end getting raged at a million times because if you beat anybody you instantly get a message "HAHAH FUCKING NEWB 20-30 I KNEW YOU WERE TRASH!.
Allowing people to create new accounts would be a trainwreck........ If you think you have ladder fear now wait till all you golds get matched all day long with Master players who are smurfing there new accounts.
I think the solution is simple. fix the custom game system...... literaaly just go back to wc3 and BW format, how fucking hard is that blizz?/
I want all of you ladder fearer's to think of this scenario
You come from work, your tired/exhausted you really want to play SC2 but hell you dont wnat to ladder and lose ranked games BECAUSE you have a life. You go to chat channels and try find a game but that takes forever and can be very ineffective.
Now imagine
You go to custom games and Blizz adds in a new category called "User Title or something of that manner and in the list you see....
1v1 Xel Naga Caverns Master Only
1v1 Metaloplis Gold Only
etc
you join the game and GUESS WHAT???? THE GAME does not fucking AUTOSTART the host actually STARTS THE GAME.
ALSO guess what theres no popularity on this feature either! so everyones map goes in order of creation and you can easily skim through everyboys lobby.
What if a gold joins a master only game? host checks profile and kicks you.
No need for smurf accounts
No need for an unranked ladder that will ruin regular ladder
A system that has worked 10 FUCKING years for BW and wc3.
Simple? I think so.
i think you should read tortoise's post back a page...
you might not like or understand why some people act the way they do + ladder very modestly, but that doesn't make it completely right for you to look down on them... and it doesn't mean that they don't care entirely for how they're doing, how they're improving, or what their actual record is like.
the very same people who have ladder fear may very well come to crush you one day
blizzard will never ever ever ever do this tho, the fact that they've already made a killing in sales off of sc2 they'll never allow for multiple solo accounts on one account when they know most people will cave and just buy another copy eventually that actually care about their ranking
On October 13 2011 09:58 XXXSmOke wrote: I dont get how people who are Diamond and below can have ladder fear, Blizz completely took away your loss amount when ppl check your profile. Theres no way to tell if you have something embarassing like a 150-170 record. Master level sucks sometimes cuz going 20-30 for the world to see sucks and you always end getting raged at a million times because if you beat anybody you instantly get a message "HAHAH FUCKING NEWB 20-30 I KNEW YOU WERE TRASH!.
Allowing people to create new accounts would be a trainwreck........ If you think you have ladder fear now wait till all you golds get matched all day long with Master players who are smurfing there new accounts.
I think the solution is simple. fix the custom game system...... literaaly just go back to wc3 and BW format, how fucking hard is that blizz?/
I want all of you ladder fearer's to think of this scenario
You come from work, your tired/exhausted you really want to play SC2 but hell you dont wnat to ladder and lose ranked games BECAUSE you have a life. You go to chat channels and try find a game but that takes forever and can be very ineffective.
Now imagine
You go to custom games and Blizz adds in a new category called "User Title or something of that manner and in the list you see....
1v1 Xel Naga Caverns Master Only
1v1 Metaloplis Gold Only
etc
you join the game and GUESS WHAT???? THE GAME does not fucking AUTOSTART the host actually STARTS THE GAME.
ALSO guess what theres no popularity on this feature either! so everyones map goes in order of creation and you can easily skim through everyboys lobby.
What if a gold joins a master only game? host checks profile and kicks you.
No need for smurf accounts
No need for an unranked ladder that will ruin regular ladder
A system that has worked 10 FUCKING years for BW and wc3.
Simple? I think so.
i think you should read tortoise's post back a page...
you might not like or understand why some people act the way they do + ladder very modestly, but that doesn't make it completely right for you to look down on them... and it doesn't mean that they don't care entirely for how they're doing, how they're improving, or what their actual record is like.
Regardless of that, (I guess i might of come off a bit hard) The main point is that a HUGE step in the right direction is so easy to do by Blizzard thats what pisses me off. A more effcient custom game system would help so many of these people afraid to ladder.
On October 13 2011 09:54 ReignFayth wrote: an unranked ladder that takes ur MMR into account where you can actually pick the Match up you want to practice would be great
Thats a pretty cool idea. I imagine something along the lines playing customs games but having the option to specify playing players that match your mmr.
An MMR-based matchup search ladder would the best thing ever for practicing. There's so many times you want to practice a build for a specific matchup but can't because you don't have friends online that are both the correct race and your skill level.
No point in laddering if everyone can be represented 4 times, the top positions will be hogged by people who off-race the best while those who don't off-race will only see 1 spot in the ladder, lame.
"Serious rank"? I dont really find anything serious about 3v3s As long as I can spam find game button and opponents which are of equal skill or better pop up I'm happy with the ladder , maybe MMR per race would be cool but Im not sure of I like the idea of choosing your matchup.
I love how the ladder provides you with direct results pleasant or not, tho imo if you are going to take take your ladder results seriously you have to play quite a few games to make stupid loses of games you could have won less meaningful within the stats (same with wins I suppose).
The only way I'd ever vote for "1 main and 1 for fun" is that if if you're on your "fun laddering mode" you're only matched up with other people who are also in "fun laddering mode."
I would totally love to learn how to play as Terran or Zerg, but I don't feel like throwing away my ladder progress as Protoss, and I'm not going to buy a new account.
On October 13 2011 08:07 xOff wrote: Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well matching you against people of your own skill level.
Why I Want Unranked Ladder:
- So I can try new builds or strategies against people of my own level without being punished with demotion in the early stages of trying to get a grasp on play.
- A way to train when I'm a bit rusty that's less random than Custom (A silver Zerg or a Masters Protoss? Don't know til you queue one up!). I want an unranked ladder so that I can play against people of my skill level. Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins. If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
- You may not like it, but look at the declining activity among vast numbers of players who still like the game or play team games, but stay far away from 1v1. It would revitalize ladder as people could see where they stand on the unranked ladder and then start playing ranked ladder again.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak.
- Analogy: There are very good people in League of Legends. They play new champions (similar to offracing) in unranked games, often, and then when they feel comfortable go back into Ranked games with those chars.
- REBUTTAL: It would not destroy MMR. People would keep playing on ladder just like always, it's just that there would be a shadow ladder alongside it.
And that shows perfectly why it would destroy the MMR system...
If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
If you're winning alot of games then you've raised your MMR and if you would then go back to the ranked games you would be of a higher skill level than your opponent. Say for example you're in gold league you then train for a couple weeks in unranked games and get to the approximate skill of a platinum player. You then go back to ranked and demolish the golds cause you're of the skill of a platinum player. That's unfair and stupid to the gold players who want to just play players of their own skill level in ranked games.
Edit: However I do agree about separate races having seperate MMR's and ranks.
"Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins." Unranked games would not affect MMR, just like they don't affect your ELO in LoL.
On October 13 2011 09:56 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: The only problem with multiple accounts is that they would break the league system in place. GM wouldn't be top 200 it could be top 196 with the last 4 being some gosu. There would need to be a rule set where you can't have multiple accounts in the same division and can't have multiple accounts in GM.
There could be a system that only ranks your best race on the ladder (or if you select random) while still displaying a general rank for your offraces.
On October 13 2011 09:56 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: The only problem with multiple accounts is that they would break the league system in place. GM wouldn't be top 200 it could be top 196 with the last 4 being some gosu. There would need to be a rule set where you can't have multiple accounts in the same division and can't have multiple accounts in GM.
There could be a system that only ranks your best race on the ladder (or if you select random) while still displaying a general rank for your offraces.
Agreed. Or hell, they could make GM the top 300 or 500 or not make any changes at all (if your off-race is better than everyone else's main race, you might just deserve another top spot imo).
Personally, I don't play much 1v1 ladder anymore not because I'm afraid of it, but because once you are able to find a group of friends to play custom 1v1s with, it's a lot more fun. 50% of your games won't be cheese, and you don't have to play on the crappy ladder maps. I urge everyone to abandon the 1v1 ladder, and seek out some friends to do customs with. You'll be pleasantly surprised if you've only ever played ladder in SC2. If anything, blizzard should spend their time introducing more features to advocate this kind of play, like clan support, better voice chat, anything to help connect people better.
On October 13 2011 07:24 Hoodlum wrote: I think it should be unlimited like it was in brood war, I don't see the point in limiting it other then putting money in the pockets of blizzard
I wouldn't give unlimited because then there would be soooo many more trolls. I'd much rather that lets say you buy the client for 60$ then you get like 2 seperate accounts/names for it.
3 to for accounts I think is to much. 2 seems reasonable compromise.
As it stands I really hate customs. Nobody plays any map that isn't Shattered or Xelnaga -_-.
And people saying a ladder that doesn't count points. Then how are you sopossed to play people of your own caliber? For that reason you play customs. The extra account is so that you can offrace and play against people of the same caliber.
1 rank, as many smurfs as you like. But if you notice people who hate blizzard games seem to be making them now (every good wc3 feature from bnet got removed and most still not added lan,smurfing, bnet tournys for casual players, etc.)
look at diablo 3 they even are removing the open drop system or however it is termed and removed stat points (every point went into vit anyway for most builds but still...)
I don't have a problem with the way ladder is now, but I would definetly play a lot more if there were more options. I continually take breaks from 1v1s(like month long breaks) and then I never want to start up again because I always feel like i've fallen behind the curve and I'll just get demoted.
The only problem with this is if you put an unranked ladder on their, literally everyone would play that, and the ranked ladder would be a barren wasteland of hackers and GM players.
The Problem with the ladder is: Its just fucking boring. I can't play more than ~5 1on1 Games per Week, because its so boring. I have only 1 solid build for every matchup and the games look all the same and thats so boring.
In the last time, I tried some Teamgames, because you can mess around there alot - but random is so horrible. Diamond 4v4 is like Silver 1on1, the people are sooooo bad there :/
I'd actually prefer the 4 seperate 1v1 ranks per account, locked to each race + random. I've personally wanted to try out Zerg for example, even though my Zerg is way below T or P. I just feel like I can learn more when I play in a competitive environment against people I don't know, because the AI simply doesn't cut it once you have the basic mechanics down for the game itself, outside of race playstyle. In addition, the skill gap between my friends and I is far too great when I play Zerg.
I simply feel like I'm locked into my main race because I don't want to tank my current 1v1. After all, I did ladder that 1v1 with a goal in mind, and I'm far from achieving that, but its hard to chose whether to learn something new or keep improving at how I play right now.
You do know that if a master player offraces, he'll still probly roflstomp everyone in gold right? Do you seriously want gm/master smurfers owning you everyday? Either man up or buy a new account to ladder.
On October 13 2011 12:01 ambrosiaa wrote: You do know that if a master player offraces, he'll still probly roflstomp everyone in gold right? Do you seriously want gm/master smurfers owning you everyday? Either man up or buy a new account to ladder.
Though, the idea is that his offrace may only be a mid/high master skill in that race, therefor he wont have to play vs grandmasters offracing but still play within a skill bracket.
Then again, what stops a korean from smashing gold leagues when they get a NA account? Nothing
On October 13 2011 11:18 Tsuki.eu wrote: practice 1v1 ladder plx (using 1v1 ranked mmr)
i think an unranked ladder would be worthless. That's what custom games are for. Or practice partners. If you want to play against someone near your skill level, find someone your level and play against them. Or talk to someone you meet in 1v1 ladder (i've met a number of people that way) and play with them.
It's getting a little old to keep on reading about people who supposedly love sc2 / competition, but are too terrified to compete.
IMO, if everyone keeps getting stressed out about ladder, then sc2 might not be the game for you. Either find a way to play and make it fun (either enjoy 1v1, or goof off in team games w/ friends, or play custom games like the mage game, or dota clones or something).
Unranked ladder completely defeats the purpose of ladder. The purpose of ladder is to rank you vs other people. Unranked ladder doesn't rank you, doesn't do anything except give you an opponent near your MMR (which you could theoretically find anyway) at the expense of stealing people from normal ladder
see but since the ladder numbers are dwindling if you made another ladder it would split the player pool in half which is bad
i do think multiple ranks is kinda possible- but that would def increase the amount of lopsided games as higher level players level up their other races for fun. I really think everyone just needs to realize ladder rank anit no thing and then it'll be better.
I've always wondered why it isn't in the game. I'd love to have a 2nd 1v1 ranking on my account. No way I'm paying for another account, blizzard has enough of my coin.
On October 13 2011 12:01 ambrosiaa wrote: You do know that if a master player offraces, he'll still probly roflstomp everyone in gold right? Do you seriously want gm/master smurfers owning you everyday? Either man up or buy a new account to ladder.
Though, the idea is that his offrace may only be a mid/high master skill in that race, therefor he wont have to play vs grandmasters offracing but still play within a skill bracket.
Then again, what stops a korean from smashing gold leagues when they get a NA account? Nothing
The idea is that is gives the player too many options to SMURF. Imagine the number of people who will just use that extra ladder ID to purposely stay in gold league (by throwing games away as well) and own scrubs when they're bored in their gm league.
On October 13 2011 11:18 Tsuki.eu wrote: practice 1v1 ladder plx (using 1v1 ranked mmr)
i think an unranked ladder would be worthless. That's what custom games are for. Or practice partners. If you want to play against someone near your skill level, find someone your level and play against them. Or talk to someone you meet in 1v1 ladder (i've met a number of people that way) and play with them.
Unranked ladder completely defeats the purpose of ladder. The purpose of ladder is to rank you vs other people. Unranked ladder doesn't rank you, doesn't do anything except give you an opponent near your MMR (which you could theoretically find anyway) at the expense of stealing people from normal ladder
Please read the disclaimer... this isn't about unranked ladder.
I would really like a deticated ladder rank for each race, because I really like playing random but my Protoss and Terran match ups are far better than my zerg matchups because the two races (P&T) are so similar.
to be sure, no separate ladders, just different rankings on the same ladder for each race.
On October 13 2011 12:01 ambrosiaa wrote: You do know that if a master player offraces, he'll still probly roflstomp everyone in gold right? Do you seriously want gm/master smurfers owning you everyday? Either man up or buy a new account to ladder.
Though, the idea is that his offrace may only be a mid/high master skill in that race, therefor he wont have to play vs grandmasters offracing but still play within a skill bracket.
Then again, what stops a korean from smashing gold leagues when they get a NA account? Nothing
The idea is that is gives the player too many options to SMURF. Imagine the number of people who will just use that extra ladder ID to purposely stay in gold league (by throwing games away as well) and own scrubs when they're bored in their gm league.
It would show, wouldnt it?
Then again, nothing stops a player from owning a second or side account to smurf on (see friends who only bought the game to play customs/not care about ladder)
On October 13 2011 12:37 kazie wrote: yeah this game needs a seperate unranked 1v1 with a seperate mmr. learn from lol's success
Lol Ladder system, look at it like this Ranked 5 Teams Ranked Solo Memebers (unranked) Pool play (its still ranked)
The only difference is that Unranked in lol factors in wins no matter what premade group you go in. This makes an insane elo with players with little to no losses, high end players playing against random arranged players. I kinda of see it like how we have ranked 4's Random and ranked 4's Teams In starcraft.
[QUOTE]On October 13 2011 12:44 Snackysnacks wrote: [QUOTE]On October 13 2011 12:34 ambrosiaa wrote: [QUOTE]On October 13 2011 12:08 Snackysnacks wrote: [QUOTE]On October 13 2011 12:01 ambrosiaa wrote: You do know that if a master player offraces, he'll still probly roflstomp everyone in gold right? Do you seriously want gm/master smurfers owning you everyday? Either man up or buy a new account to ladder.[/QUOTE] Though, the idea is that his offrace may only be a mid/high master skill in that race, therefor he wont have to play vs grandmasters offracing but still play within a skill bracket.
Then again, what stops a korean from smashing gold leagues when they get a NA account? Nothing
[/QUOTE] The idea is that is gives the player too many options to SMURF. Imagine the number of people who will just use that extra ladder ID to purposely stay in gold league (by throwing games away as well) and own scrubs when they're bored in their gm league.[/QUOTE] It would show, wouldnt it?
Then again, nothing stops a player from owning a second or side account to smurf on (see friends who only bought the game to play customs/not care about ladder) [QUOTE]On October 13 2011 12:37 kazie wrote: Meanin the gold players? The lowest league is bronze, and then what? All this does is make impossible for new, genuine players to practice on the ladder with the amount of smurfers around.
On October 13 2011 12:53 FlamingTurd wrote: There should definitely be more than 1 ranked option for sure. That's all it comes down to. Only reason not to is purely profit.
I feel these two comments below help to express the issues a lot of people are having with the 1v1 ladder.
Regardless of how you individually feel, I believe these comments express the concerns of a lot of the people who have stopped 1v1s or only do very few games:
On October 13 2011 08:07 xOff wrote: Why the hell do you want an unranked ladder? If your goal it to be getting better you should be playing against people of your skill level. If the ranking next to your name scares you that much put a sticky note over it so you don't have to see it or go play custom games.
If there was as unranked ladder it would demolish the whole mmr based system that we all play currently. One thing blizzards system does really well matching you against people of your own skill level.
Why I Want Unranked Ladder:
- So I can try new builds or strategies against people of my own level without being punished with demotion in the early stages of trying to get a grasp on play.
- A way to train when I'm a bit rusty that's less random than Custom (A silver Zerg or a Masters Protoss? Don't know til you queue one up!). I want an unranked ladder so that I can play against people of my skill level. Basically I would play against people with my MMR, but it wouldn't go up or down with losses or wins. If I'm winning lots of unranked games, I'll go back to ranked ladder because I know I'm ready.
- You may not like it, but look at the declining activity among vast numbers of players who still like the game or play team games, but stay far away from 1v1. It would revitalize ladder as people could see where they stand on the unranked ladder and then start playing ranked ladder again.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak. [Joytoyou's bolding]
- Analogy: There are very good people in League of Legends. They play new champions (similar to offracing) in unranked games, often, and then when they feel comfortable go back into Ranked games with those chars.
- REBUTTAL: It would not destroy MMR. People would keep playing on ladder just like always, it's just that there would be a shadow ladder alongside it.
~~~
Note the bold text, I can hear the voices of many of the vanished 1v1-er's in this statement.
I will analyze this more after combining it with the quote below
On October 13 2011 08:43 DarQraven wrote: I'd be in favor of 3 separate ladders (why would random need one, btw? It's not like you'll be playing any races that the other three ladders wouldn't cover...) IF and only if you could see a person's other characters from his profile.
I have no problem with high ranked players making an alternative character for offracing or messing around, but I'd at least like to know about it. The premise of SC2's matchmaking matching you with players of your own skill level and the experience of being beaten by a smurf don't go well together. If said masters player played on an alt account and absolutely picked me apart with superior micro - as long as I can see that this wasn't an ordinary platinum player I would be fine with it.
---
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them. [Joytoyou's bolding]
~~~
My Analysis
These two parts of the two quotes above seem to summarize a lot of people's emotions and reasons for not laddering 1v1.
- It would make the game more accessible to noobs/people embarrassed of losing or afraid of being demoted if they haven't played for awhile or are on a cold streak. [Joytoyou's bolding]
Pretty sure what you can see in peoples' profiles is the thing that is scaring them.[/QUOTE] [Joytoyou's bolding]
I would like to pose these questions
1. Is there a way to not feel embarrassed at losing or afraid of being demoted? Then the ladder system 1v1 would not be so stressful.
2. What if people had the option of HIDING THEIR PROFILE INFORMATION.
Would this cause more people to want to ladder, feeling more secure that whether they lose or win, no one will know the details?
Isn't it embarrassing when people KNOW you are on a losing streak?
Anyone have any thoughts on my two questions enumerated above?
On October 13 2011 12:51 ambrosiaa wrote: [Meanin the gold players? The lowest league is bronze, and then what? All this does is make impossible for new, genuine players to practice on the ladder with the amount of smurfers around.
Look, I have two friends who dont play anymore, there's nothing that stops me from throwing games on those accounts to smurf on it. The only difference between having multiple rankings on a account than this is blizzard having extra profit, and the slight convience of smurfing.
Then again, if you were serious on protecting the ranking of your main race, wouldnt people be trying to get a good rank on thier offrace? Riddle me that.
There should be unranked ladder. But it should also either use MMR to match you up or make it so you can only face you own league or leagues above you. So when you enter the queue, it will give you the option of choosing your current league, as well as higher leagues players to be matched up against.
By your own league and league above you, I mean, for example, if you are gold you can choose to face other gold unrank ladders as well as any league above you.
With that said, they should just have 1 ladder rank for all regions, or per region and have a top 1000 with combined regions. Something like that is what I would like to see. I would ladder my ass off all day long. On both ladders. One to practice and refine, the other to execute and move up the rankings.
Edit: this could be seen as a bad idea, but for the unranked, it should also show your win/loses as well as allow you to renew it. But only allow renews once a month or something along those lines. I know a lot of people like to have "high ratios" even in something that is unranked. But when people see your profile, you feel like you're impressing someone... maybe. This also boosts ladder usage. The only real problem i see with this idea is that, it could replace the ranked ladder completely, but they can prevent that by making 1 ranking for the world or per region as i stated above.
Even in the most casual games like console shooters, everyone want high K:D as well as to see their ranking among the world. This can be said about Starcraft 2 as well. No idea why blizzard thought the way they did it was more casual friendly. The whole point of ladder is to measure yourself against the best, not randoms in random divisions that means nothing. Oh and it should use MMR ratings in the ladder ranking, not ladder points.
I despise how much hand-holding people feel that games these days should employ. Even more surprised to see people wanting this in relation to ladder ranking which isn't really all that meaningful of a statistic.
Splitting the player pool into an unranked ladder (how can it be a ladder if it's unranked even?) makes even less sense to me.
If ladder rank affects you that much, just buy a second account, tough shit. It is not worth screwing up the main ladder (for the reasons Excalibur_Z stated on the second page) to accommodate this kind of fear.
I have two accounts, I play my second account after a long break from 1v1 (caused by my University schedule being busy/not busy depending on the months). I play enough on the second account to get my skill level back to where it was before I took the break, then switch to my main. Works well because I don't lower my main's MMR by playing poorly on it for that initial period on my return.
haha i can relate to the people who want an unranked ladder as i always rage quit when im on a losing streak and stop playing for a few days, only to come back and go on a losing streak again. Vicious cycle.
But the whole point of the ladder is to have competition. With competition comes stress and "embarassment". Blizzard wanted SC2 to be an esport and they wont change the ladder system because it breeds competition. Blizz is changing each season to a duration of 2 months. This should help as your shitty record only lasts for 2 months now. =D
Even though im all for a system that allows offracing without compromising my main ladder rank, it is at best a futile dream. The ladder system is here to stay, the most blizz can do is help reduce the stress you feel when u lose, which they have alrdy been doing.
On October 13 2011 12:51 ambrosiaa wrote: [Meanin the gold players? The lowest league is bronze, and then what? All this does is make impossible for new, genuine players to practice on the ladder with the amount of smurfers around.
Look, I have two friends who dont play anymore, there's nothing that stops me from throwing games on those accounts to smurf on it. The only difference between having multiple rankings on a account than this is blizzard having extra profit, and the slight convience of smurfing.
Then again, if you were serious on protecting the ranking of your main race, wouldnt people be trying to get a good rank on thier offrace? Riddle me that.
How is it in anyway slight when everyone has access to it? Seriously I don't really know what you're talking about. What the hell does the rank of your offrace have to do with the rank of your main race? As I said, many people will be using their extra account to do stupid shit on gold league like mass marines or mass queens on and humiliate their opponent when theyre bored on their mains.
On October 13 2011 09:58 XXXSmOke wrote: I dont get how people who are Diamond and below can have ladder fear, Blizz completely took away your loss amount when ppl check your profile. Theres no way to tell if you have something embarassing like a 150-170 record. Master level sucks sometimes cuz going 20-30 for the world to see sucks and you always end getting raged at a million times because if you beat anybody you instantly get a message "HAHAH FUCKING NEWB 20-30 I KNEW YOU WERE TRASH!.
Allowing people to create new accounts would be a trainwreck........ If you think you have ladder fear now wait till all you golds get matched all day long with Master players who are smurfing there new accounts.
I think the solution is simple. fix the custom game system...... literaaly just go back to wc3 and BW format, how fucking hard is that blizz?/
I want all of you ladder fearer's to think of this scenario
You come from work, your tired/exhausted you really want to play SC2 but hell you dont wnat to ladder and lose ranked games BECAUSE you have a life. You go to chat channels and try find a game but that takes forever and can be very ineffective.
Now imagine
You go to custom games and Blizz adds in a new category called "User Title or something of that manner and in the list you see....
1v1 Xel Naga Caverns Master Only
1v1 Metaloplis Gold Only
etc
you join the game and GUESS WHAT???? THE GAME does not fucking AUTOSTART the host actually STARTS THE GAME.
ALSO guess what theres no popularity on this feature either! so everyones map goes in order of creation and you can easily skim through everyboys lobby.
What if a gold joins a master only game? host checks profile and kicks you.
No need for smurf accounts
No need for an unranked ladder that will ruin regular ladder
A system that has worked 10 FUCKING years for BW and wc3.
I have even paid cash just to achieve basically this. I am by NO means wealthy at all and I have like 5 copies of this game because of either desire to different serves or desire for a new ranked tracking in the ladder.
i like the idea of having a ranked and unranked 1v1 ladder, one for casuals and one for competitors, i heard it works well for HoN or LoL or whatever dota game thingy uses it lol.
but i also like the idea of having a ranked ladder for each race option too, so that your main race's ladder is your so called "serious" one, and you can muck around and improve yourself with your other races and matchups without affecting your MMR on the ladder with your main race.
On October 13 2011 09:58 XXXSmOke wrote: I dont get how people who are Diamond and below can have ladder fear, Blizz completely took away your loss amount when ppl check your profile. Theres no way to tell if you have something embarassing like a 150-170 record. Master level sucks sometimes cuz going 20-30 for the world to see sucks and you always end getting raged at a million times because if you beat anybody you instantly get a message "HAHAH FUCKING NEWB 20-30 I KNEW YOU WERE TRASH!.
Allowing people to create new accounts would be a trainwreck........ If you think you have ladder fear now wait till all you golds get matched all day long with Master players who are smurfing there new accounts.
I think the solution is simple. fix the custom game system...... literaaly just go back to wc3 and BW format, how fucking hard is that blizz?/
I want all of you ladder fearer's to think of this scenario
You come from work, your tired/exhausted you really want to play SC2 but hell you dont wnat to ladder and lose ranked games BECAUSE you have a life. You go to chat channels and try find a game but that takes forever and can be very ineffective.
Now imagine
You go to custom games and Blizz adds in a new category called "User Title or something of that manner and in the list you see....
1v1 Xel Naga Caverns Master Only
1v1 Metaloplis Gold Only
etc
you join the game and GUESS WHAT???? THE GAME does not fucking AUTOSTART the host actually STARTS THE GAME.
ALSO guess what theres no popularity on this feature either! so everyones map goes in order of creation and you can easily skim through everyboys lobby.
What if a gold joins a master only game? host checks profile and kicks you.
No need for smurf accounts
No need for an unranked ladder that will ruin regular ladder
A system that has worked 10 FUCKING years for BW and wc3.
Simple? I think so.
at first i thought the guy you quoted was trying to make you feel silly for not laddering. because really, there's no difference between playing in 'masters only' custom games and laddering (if you're masters)
your rank win/loss only matters if -you- want it to matter. for me losing sucks regardless if it's done in customs or ladder. In fact, I hate losing in customs even MORE because there's usually people watching.
but i do kind of miss the old custom game browser.
I would love this feature. I want to try and play each race but i don't want to start out playing against masters and diamonds as i would just get owned and learn nothing. I want to earn my way up through the ranks.
Thankfully i'm from SEA so i have an account on both SEA and US servers. So at the moment i use my SEA account as a practice account. However i would prefer if i didn't have to do this.
I find that I've played more 1v1s this season than the others combined. I think it's a mindset. Stop treating yourself like you're supposed to win all the time, and don't let the small things in life stress you out. Just do your best and the ladder will reflect your standing in the nerd pantheon.
Honestly, I hate playing a game, winning, and finding out the person I just played against does NOTHING but 1v1. I almost feel sorry for them... almost. If you don't enjoy the "stress" you feel when playing 1v1 and you play the game for fun, then just don't 1v1.
Having a rank for every day of the week won't matter if your heart feels like it's going to explode after 1 game.
i think every race should be different ranking. If you want to get higher in rank you won't really try out other races and not everyone has money to buy 3 copies of SC2
On October 13 2011 07:24 ChroMaTe_ wrote: There should just be an unranked 1v1 "ladder" period.
This! Its ridiculous that there isn't and you can never no with customs your opponents MMR, because they often fool around (even opponents in higher leagues).
On October 13 2011 07:27 Volrod wrote: i would love an unranked ladder like in LoL where there are no downsides, being able to play some games and warm up/decide if u want to play a stressful game in the normal ladder would be good, doubt they will impliment this tho
Every serious game is stressful, otherwise you're just wasting your time.
I'm pretty sure each race already does have its own mmr, though they are combined together somehow for a single number.
For me, my P >> Z >> T. When I played random for an extensive time I could tell what race I was going to get by the favored system; it would say my opponent was slightly favored whenever I got Toss and that I was slightly favored whenever I got Terran.
I think an account should have 3 separate MMR ratings associated with it, one for each race. This will ensure that a player is given an opponent of equal skill, regardless of the race that the player chooses. This means that given a player who only plays Protoss and is in Grandmasters, if they decide to switch races to play Zerg, they will play their 5 placement matches as Zerg and be faced with opponents accordingly.
I don't think that a separate MMR rating for a random player is necessary. Instead, whatever race you are randomly assigned, you will play with the MMR rating that you have established with that race. For example, with the previously mentioned Grandmaster Protoss, if he decides to play random, he will face very challenging players if he lands Protoss, and much easier players if he lands Zerg. This system ensures that a random player won't demolish his opponent if he lands his strong race (which the opposite is happening right now, where he gets demolished if he lands his weak race. Neither is ideal). Overall, the system ensures fair matches for both players.
Finally, although an account may have 3 MMR ratings, I don't believe that an account should be in 3 different leagues because otherwise, I think it would start to get too complicated. Instead, an account's league should only be associated with that account's highest MMR rating. Furthermore, a player would not be able to gain or lose points unless they are playing their highest MMR race. In our Grandmaster Protoss example, when he plays Zerg, he's still seen as being in Grandmaster league. However, his diamond league opponent needn't worry since matches are determined by MMR. If our GM Protoss wins, he doesn't gain any points, but his opponent still loses points (if he's playing his highest MMR race that is). Conversely, if the GM Protoss loses, he doesn't lose any points, but his opponent still gains points. Both players' MMR ratings for their races played will change, however.
If I were to revamp the current system to incorporate multiple ranks for races, this is how I would do it. It seems relatively simple (just 2 more numbers to track per account), works behind the scenes so players wouldn't notice it, and all players are guaranteed to face opponents of equal skill regardless of the race chosen. There may be problems with this idea that I haven't thought of, but I believe it is a solid concept that could improve the matchmaking of Starcraft 2.
On October 13 2011 15:13 LordOfDabu wrote: I'm pretty sure each race already does have its own mmr, though they are combined together somehow for a single number.
For me, my P >> Z >> T. When I played random for an extensive time I could tell what race I was going to get by the favored system; it would say my opponent was slightly favored whenever I got Toss and that I was slightly favored whenever I got Terran.
I don't think the ladder system works that way. It doesn't take the mmr of the race you are going to get and place and opponent against you. Random is counted as a race by itself.
If you're not at high Master level then rank doesn't mean a whole lot. I do Terran or Zerg or Random or play drunk or whatever I feel like on my account and have fun doing whatever I want (plat level).
1 is enough. If you have more then lot of leagues will have idle players because they are on their other accounts playing.
1v1 population isn't growing as time goes by if you guys have noticed and there is no need in dividing the players into more accounts so that the ladder may have a lot more idle accounts just because people take this game sometimes a bit too serious.
Just practice on your off races and get back to the ladder.
If you really want to play ladder without the fear of losing all the time, then buy another account.
Buying another account isn't that expensive (at least not according to me) and it completly removes any ladder fear etc. You can name it something stupid, not add friends on it, and just fool around.
Well that's what I did and it worked out great.
If you do not have the money for it for some reason. I am sure that doing some work instead of complaining here would solve that to
active player base has decreased since sc2 was released mid summer and since mid-august to late September people have been starting school and don't have time for games. The scary ladder theory isn't as big as you think - -"
I wish Blizzard would put in place those online tournaments per region and per leagues, that way maybe people would want to play in those and see ladder as what it really is ;practice.
Blizzard did an awesome job with the match making, this might be the first ladder that I never, fucking ever have problems with. Always good opponents, and I feel that I am ranked where I should be.
People are just silly: OMG I CANT PLAY FOR FUN, I NEED MORE ACCOUNTS!!111 Zomg zomg
3 imo, one for each race. If you play random, it should randomly choose which one of your three possible ladder ranks to be used depending on which race was randomed.
I think its ridiculous that we only have one unless we BUY another account, id love to try leanring Zerg and Terran but havent the time to start on my main account lose constantly for like 30-50 games then start. I basically know wot to do in msot matchuops just need to learn the mechanics of each race, but I also want to be abel to play as Protoss agaisnt GOOD players ant not bad players when I drop down the leagues...
I think we should be able to 1v1 with 3-4 different leagues for other races but no more. THis would also benefit people who have Protoss very high but want tot ry different strategeis out on another account. I know people will say about smurfing etc but you can only smurf for so long? And as long as they dont let you have unlimited accounts like wc3 and sc1 it shouldnt be a problem.
Its definitely an interesting idea, and I'd love to see what levels all 3 of my races are (I play random). My only concern would be that it would be quite hard to track multiple MMRs per accounts, plus it may cause an unnatural inflation of player numbers and leagues, as people will be spread pretty thin
Also, finding ranked matches for randoms may be weird. I know I'm speaking for the minority here, but say my Terran is Diamond, but my Toss is Gold. If i sign up as random, how do you find an opponent for me?
I love the idea, but there are problems with it in practice
they won't allow multiple ranked 1v1 accounts on a single copy of the game because it will also easily bring sharing of the unused accounts, so that people, instead of buying the game, will have game lended by a friend and play on his. for example i would never use the terran only account, cause i suck with terran and i have no interest in getting stomped by bronze players. i'm playing zerg on custom games cause i want to learn mechanics and everything, when i'll feel comfortable i'll go for the ladder (atm i'm diamond with protoss).
sure i would like more accounts, but i just don't see that possible and i can understand why.
I'm actually so upset by this one 1v1 ladder pr. acc. thing. If i want to play freely as in any other normal game, in sc2 i would have to buy 1 acc for each continent x 4, for each race. I'm currently aware that there's a NA, EU, SEA, KOR, Chinese; battlegroup.
If i would want to play any race or everywhere i wanted, i would then have to buy 20 accounts. That sucks..
On October 13 2011 07:24 ChroMaTe_ wrote: There should just be an unranked 1v1 "ladder" period.
This would dry out the ranked ladder as most guys would used the unranked match making to practice and only go to ranked ladder when they feel ready.
The OP is right if he discusses multiple 1v1 ladders where all are ranked.
On October 13 2011 07:20 willoc wrote: Personally, I would like to see 2 1v1 rankings (in my case: 1 main, 1 fun).
I don't like this idea because you obviously need to decide before you start the match. If you get a win you may be wanted to have this count to your serious ladder points. In the end, the real ladder would be used less, making them less relevant, too, due to the smaller sample size.
However I would like to get more statistics: Race win ratios compared to overall win ratio, map win ratios and so on. On the other hand, many guys would misuse the data because they overrate the value of statistics based on a very small sample size.
Hmm hmmm... Related thing is: You know how annoying it is to take your MMR from platinium to master? It's legit games for days or 6pool alot. Now you may say that just play and learn, but there is huge difference in playing someone who you may have 50% winratio and someone who you just outmacro and mass hydras against tanks.
This is a bit ofcourse my fault because I've practiced a ton outside of ladder but it feels a lot work just to get MMR somewhere so it would be fun to play ladder. Sure it's maybe 20 6pool for me to go into masters but compared to log in/out 20 times to find ZvT diamond player and asking from TL channel...
Yeah I will do it someday but this should be possible to avoid with custom games and seperate ladder for each race, so when I play offrace I don't get my MMR too low for no reason and when I switch to main race I roflstomp next 2 days.
e: Ever had friends account for whatever reason and permission to play on it? Don't you think that feeling was awesome to have 2 account with seperate MMR?
This fear of losing points / getting demoted seems exaggerated since you are not gaining anything ( unless you're a pro or a good streamer) from maintaining your place in let's say, masters. You can play your new race at the appropriate level and when you decide to go back you will naturally advance.
You know how annoying it is to take your MMR from platinium to master? It's legit games for days or 6pool alot.
Why do you need to be in master at all points in time ? If you are below your true MMR then you should be winning a lot and having a blast on your way back.
So people basicly are saying they want a ladder with MMR but without displaying any data? No Wins no Losses no League just Games against equal MMR-People?
They could just add an MMR matching option to custom games.
Edit: While I wouldn't see a problem with the MMR matched custom games, I really think this whole thing is a non-issue. Either play custom games or play ladder to be ranked. The ladder fearers are ridiculous. Ladder doesn't even matter unless you are in GM or something. If you get good enough you should care about entering tournaments. All the platinums and diamonds that are afraid to ladder because they will lose their rank are kind of ridiculous. I think in the near future there will be a lot of these type of people that stop playing all together.
On October 13 2011 19:08 ejozl wrote: I'm actually so upset by this one 1v1 ladder pr. acc. thing. If i want to play freely as in any other normal game, in sc2 i would have to buy 1 acc for each continent x 4, for each race. I'm currently aware that there's a NA, EU, SEA, KOR, Chinese; battlegroup.
If i would want to play any race or everywhere i wanted, i would then have to buy 20 accounts. That sucks..
You can play any race you want! You are free to play custom games until you are satisfied with your skill with a particular race, although i recommend ladder only because custom games are usually played for 'fun' by most people. I personally switched from terran to zerg after a 4 month break and tanked 14 games in a row and got demoted from diamond to plat. This season i got back into diamond as zerg which is my only race.
Point is; people should stop crying about separate ladders and just play on one account! Smurfing was a problem in starcraft and i'm glad blizzard has stopped this by having a 1 account per person policy. I'm not saying that blizzard's decision wasn't financially motivated, but the side effect of this change is that smurfing is prevented unless you buy extra accounts.
I don't understand why people are worried about their e-peen ladder rating. In 20 years time when most of us are married, people will think...
"why the hell was i such a noob worrying about playing ladder and getting crippling ladder fear when i was a kid"
"why didn't i just press the quick match button and play as many games i wanted when sc2 was in it's prime so i could see what my actual skill level was instead of daydreaming of theorycrafting what my potential was"
On October 13 2011 19:14 julius33 wrote: Unranked ladder isnt a ladder at all since your not going anywhere. Stop being a wussy and ladder, the stress will go away with a couple games. FFS
completely misses the point - if you want to try something new, you WILL lose for a while...that's pretty much a fact; now if you could do that without losing your rank it would be way easier to experiment
the current system discourages innovative play and encourages copying all-in-builds you've seen in replays; simple as that
Dont wanna get ban or anything, but i need to say this: Be a man, its not so hard, come on.
First of all, if you wanna practice a litle bit a new race, play custom games or against AI, there you ll learn basics mechanics of each race and basic builds ... stop being such a pussy ... or stop playing and we ll all thank for it we wont need to read such a strange topic ...
So, if you drop leagues at our ladder rank, what ll happen? nothing you ar not a professional, you wont get any less money for that, you mom wont die. SO STOP COMPLAINING OR BEIN A AFRAID OF THE LADDER THIS IS A GAME, ITS MAKE TO BE FUN AND COMPETITIVE, IF YOU CANT HANDLE WITH THAT, GO PLAY DOLL! i mean, with dolls xD
One for each race would be the best of course! 4 would be optimal.
Having only 1 is a joke. I had to buy a new game to have a 1v1 random account, because i still wanted to be able to play with people my own level as terran on my regular account. Switching around would be silly =/.
But then again I'm dumbfounded that their is no clan support and the likes. I fcking hate new B.net seriously, still play WC3 with friends just because the ''new'' create/join custom game features are so shitty.
On October 13 2011 07:24 Hoodlum wrote: I think it should be unlimited like it was in brood war, I don't see the point in limiting it other then putting money in the pockets of blizzard
cause then everyone smurfs ladder means a shit you hit best gosus on low levels who want "100-0" stats etc its rly rly bad trust me ... and it was HORRIBLE in broodwar at the first month every season (iccup as example)
A game cannot succeed unless it constantly can bring new players in it. Because no matter how hardcore the top 5% is, they are a small number and will also lose interest in the game at a slower rate but still leave the game. Thus you need to get more people in it to keep the community alive
This is exactly why Blizzard only wants you to have 1 rank for each matchup. If you had 3 other spots (random, race 1, race 2) that would increase a different type of smurfing and make it impossible for new players to even have fun.
Its not just Blizzard, look what Epic did with Gears of War 3, if you never played a GoW game you are put in special servers where its all new people, then you "graduate" and play with the rest of the GoW3 population.
Multiplayer is very important because it means people wont trade their games in (this dosent apply to most PC games however), they also buy the DLC. But in order to get people to play and even importantly KEEP playing their multiplayer they need to have a system where the newbs are protected and not thrown to the sharks.
Blizzard figures (and i happen to agree) that its much better for the hardcore 5-10% of the population who actually care about their rank to simply "suck it up" than to have a massive portion of potentially customers to get rolled in multiplayer by Plat, Diamond and Masters players. Its simply not worth it for Blizzard to change it when it will have massive consequences.
On October 13 2011 07:58 Excalibur_Z wrote: I wish people would stop suggesting "unranked ladder" because it's a terrible idea. The ladder thrives and frankly survives through an active playerbase. The minute an "unranked ladder" appears, the actual ladder loses a lot of players who would rather choose a less stressful gametype than contribute to the overall health of the system. Blizzard will never do it for exactly that reason, because it hurts everyone in the long run.
I'd agree with this. People just need to realise that having your 1v1 gold/plat/diamond badge with 1 match played is pretty meaningless. I'm kinda sympathetic to those who want to off-race. The way I'd suggest doing it is to let players split off another ladder ranking whenever they offrace. They'd start with the same MMR as their original, as this would be a more realistic approach. A masters Zerg who switches to Terran or Toss will still perform a lot better than someone who starts SC2 as those races.
I don't play SC2 anymore but I certainly would if I could play on the ladder with other races. I don't want to ruin my current account masters zerg because I feel it is an accomplishment for myself to get to that level, coming from nothing. Games dead until HOTS for me..
I thought that a smurf account would solve my anxiety, so i bought one. I have played very little on my smurf, and i started playing some random games, then i stuck to terran on it (i main zerg) but the same anxiety happened there, and it felt like a waste of time because i could be practising my main race.
Now i just force myself to play atleast 3 games a day, and i often play more! Works for me. got the concept from dayJ
On topic, i would still love to have multiple ranks, but i honestly don't want to play protoss, and i can afford to support blizzard in buying the terran account!
No unranked ladders. No extra ladders for each race. You play the game and you take the wins and losses like a man what you are. If you try a new tactic and lose with it you lose. There's no excuses about it.
If there were more ladders it would make searching times longer and in the end no one would play seriously in the unranked ladder.
When you start to fear your rank dropping and when you quit laddering because of the fear of losing you're worse player than any bronze scrub who plays the game enjoying it.
if you want to play another race or do new strategies... then take the losses and be a man about it
If i would be sure i wanted to stay on the other race for a while, sure, but if i would just want to try out another race it would end up in 20 pointless losses where i would only learn that others can beat me by bashing their head on the keyboard, then me switching back and getting 20 boring faceroll wins.
I have 3 accounts, 1 for each race. My Z is mid Diamond My T is high Platinum My P is low Platinum
I think 1 ranking for each Race would be the best choice with random not as own race (so 3 in total), i don't care much though as another account is not too expensive and you can still lend it to friends on LAN parties or to make them try the game in the first place.
The biggest problems with the ladder is that your MMR is fixed to your race. My Terran is pretty decent (high diamond) but once i switched to Zerg for a week i tanked at least 20 games straight before i had won a single one (note for some reason i can't explain as Terran i get to play pretty much only TvP and TvT, as Zerg i had a series of 10 ZvZs straight, but that is another discussion).
So what can i do? i can either stick to one race exclusively, or buy a new account for Zerg. Frankly i'd prefer if Blizzard allowed us two ladder IDs for 1v1 so we can offrace without buying smurfs, but it isn't profitable for them, so i think it won't happen.
One account is fine, but there should be seperate rankings for each race you play. I believe this is how it was done in WC3FT. I know I win a lot with z, but lose a lot with p and t.. but I also have over 5000 games on this account.. problem is I win with z, get high in my division, then play t and p to have fun.. and lose. If I had a rank for each race it would probably be diamond/masters for z, platinum for t, and gold for p... as it stands now, I am in low diamond, high platinum because my terran and protoss hold me back.. will i stop playing them? never.. would i prefer seperate rankings? Absolutely.. and so would the ppl I play as zerg after a stint of losing with the other two races
I would like to have a ladder ranking for each race, I've always played Protoss and I'd like to start practicing a new race but i'd get owned in a second if I were to use the ladder to do it.
On October 13 2011 21:44 StiX wrote: Where's the source of the active player base in 1v1 dwindling? I'd like some back up or source for this since my perception is different.
I get annoyed being forced to play my main race all the time, I am low masters, I can't offrace ever because the risk of getting demoted is too big for me, and getting back into masters is not as easy as other leagues.
An unranked ladder sounds like a dumb idea, but I don't see what the harm is in allowing other people to offrace and truely find what race fits best for them.
4 ranks would be the best i feel. So when you pick your race the points MMR etc are only effected for that race.
The only way i can see blizzard implementing this (perhaps in HoTS) is for the MMR of every race to be set as whatever your current MMR is. So effectivly you are in same possition as you are now but once they implement it your race MMR changes for each of the races depending on your performance
i.e. My MMR = 1000 now
After race MMR is brought in Z = 1000 P = 1000 T = 1000 R = 1000
After 1 week Z = 1200 (I main as Z and win most of my games, MMR goes up) P = 900 (I off race as P, MMR goes down a bit) T = 500 (My T sucks and i lose a load of games, MMR drops) R = 1000 (I don't play random, MMR stays the same)
It would be nice with multiple profiles in that you can just make one and mess around. But I think this would actually hurt the ladder and sc2 long term. More cheese, unserious play. Why not do this in custom games? In the end of the day this is just another ladder fear tread. And imo ladder fear will allways be a part of sc2. Its a competative game, where you put yourself up against another player. Man to man. Some guys cant handle this, but it is this way in life as well. Im not saying that bm would completely disappare, cause thats not the case I think, but alot of the guys bm'ing game after game on ladder is the ones that will eventually quit, either out of fear or they find out this game is not for them. Or they turn to hacking. These are the guys ruining the ladder experience anyway. I have no fear that sc2 will lose so many players that eventually noone will ladder. The game is just too good for that, and new players with the guts, winner instinct and will to play is still discovering this game. While alot of players is playing team games and custom games casually, and there is a constantly increasing number of people watching streams of big events, even though the number of peoole on the 1v1 ladder has decreased this past year. I think its nothing to worry about.
Unranked and ranked at the most. The moment you give people two ranked ladders they'll piss about cheesing on one and ruin the gme for those who want to play seriously. One of the main achievements of SC2 over BW is the availability of bronze leaguers to come in and ladder against people of their OWN SKILL rather than people smurfing.
Yep totally agree. I want to offrace 1v1 but have no place to do it. In custom games I grossly outmatch my opponent or its the other way around..its too bad. I could not take my 1v1 seriously, but then when I play my main race I would never improve because it'd be ridiculously easy to win.
On October 13 2011 21:54 FlaminGinjaNinja wrote: The only way i can see blizzard implementing this (perhaps in HoTS) is for the MMR of every race to be set as whatever your current MMR is. So effectivly you are in same possition as you are now but once they implement it your race MMR changes for each of the races depending on your performance
My MMR = 1000 now
After race MMR is brought in Z = 1000 P = 1000 T = 1000 R = 1000
After 1 week Z = 1200 (I main as Z and win most of my games, MMR goes up) P = 900 (I off race as P, MMR goes down a bit) T = 500 (My T sucks and i lose a load of games, MMR drops) R = 1000 (I don't play random, MMR stays the same)
I like this! I think that for obvious reasons though, only the race with highest MMR should give you points. Otherwise there would be some serious abuse.
In my opinion, there should be 3-5 accounts available for laddering.
It`s not just about playing a different race - you can play a different style, try out different approaches, check out a different mental attitude, experiment with some particular builds or generaly explore statistics in regard to some variables of your selection.
If players are not able to do the above - it diminishes the amount of possibilities, which diminishes the scope of exploration which in turn diminishes the experience of the game for many people - especially creative and talented people who are most responsible for its evolution.
Example: you reach masters with your race, let`s say Zerg - but for some reason you start slumping and you cannot figure out why. Now a great way to go about it is to play with worse players for a while - because it allows you to refresh your game sense and remove certain mental/emotional blockades which often are the cause behind slumping.
You could also simply have a desire do some research on other race because it can bring you information that cannot be obtained in other way. And you don`t want to waste massive amounts of time on wasting your masters rank Zerg account.
You could say "but hey, multiple ladder accounts would diminish the value of ladder ranks". Value of a ladder rank is defined by how hard it is to get it, not by how many accounts you use to get it. Maybe it would mean that bronze players would play with masters from time to time - but that`s not a bad thing and ml players wouldn`t flood lower leagues in any high ratio.
You could say "but I wanna see Thorzain and others on their real acc in GM league". Well what about Thorzain and others, maybe they wouldn`t always want that - and there are good reasons for that.
Imo this system could be a lot better if it contained free ability to have multiple accounts. Also, many innovative ways to go about it could be developed - for example, the portrait system could be modified so that you could get new account for portraits or for specific ladder achievements. I don`t like limitations of this kind - they are superfluous.
On October 13 2011 21:04 Tyree wrote: A game cannot succeed unless it constantly can bring new players in it. Because no matter how hardcore the top 5% is, they are a small number and will also lose interest in the game at a slower rate but still leave the game. Thus you need to get more people in it to keep the community alive
This is exactly why Blizzard only wants you to have 1 rank for each matchup. If you had 3 other spots (random, race 1, race 2) that would increase a different type of smurfing and make it impossible for new players to even have fun.
Its not just Blizzard, look what Epic did with Gears of War 3, if you never played a GoW game you are put in special servers where its all new people, then you "graduate" and play with the rest of the GoW3 population.
Multiplayer is very important because it means people wont trade their games in (this dosent apply to most PC games however), they also buy the DLC. But in order to get people to play and even importantly KEEP playing their multiplayer they need to have a system where the newbs are protected and not thrown to the sharks.
Blizzard figures (and i happen to agree) that its much better for the hardcore 5-10% of the population who actually care about their rank to simply "suck it up" than to have a massive portion of potentially customers to get rolled in multiplayer by Plat, Diamond and Masters players. Its simply not worth it for Blizzard to change it when it will have massive consequences.
Of course it will increase smurfing by a bit, but not nearly enough to effect newer players. I don't even get how you came to that conclusion. Once you play your MMR will depend on your off-race placement matches and you will be placed in a league accordingly. If you're a diamond T and you get placed in bronze with Z, it doesn't mean that you have an advantage over other bronzies. If you meant people who deliberately lose matches to stay bronze to farm achievements; they are on Blizzard's watch list anyway.
I want to say two more things; 1. Will people PLEASE stop suggesting unranked ladder? I understand the reasoning behind it, but it is a bad idea. Having an unranked ladder will only divert attention away from ranked ladder matches. It is the exact opposite of what this thread is trying to achieve. Increasing activity on ladder.
2. If you compare battle.net accounts from SC2 to battle.net accounts from WC3 or Brood War there is a huge difference. In SC2, you can only have one account per CD-key. In BW or WC3 you could have multiple accounts on one CD-key. If they are to limit the number of battle.net accounts a player can have, I feel it is only fair to have more than one ladder-account. It feels as if Blizzard is actually limiting the game content to 33% (maybe a little more) of what this game has to offer by only allowing a player to have one ladder-account. I've only ever experienced PvT, PvZ and PvP on ladder. Never have I experienced the adrenaline rush of a micro oriented baneling vs baneling ZvZ or the tactical tank warfare of TvT on ladder. But I simply will not sacrifice my league / status to try that at my own level.
Now to briefly touch ladder fear: I've heard people say "No one cares about your rank except for you" and I really believe that isn't true. I feel as if friends care about rank. It's some weird social status thing which I can't really explain. When I get demoted, I don't only feel like I let myself down, but the friends who I play with aswell. Edit: I just read one of the posts above. It said "Man the fuck up". Re-reading my ladder fear bit, I couldn't agree more. Booting SC2 for some ladder.
If you feel fear laddering, don't waste your time. We people have been having fun for thousands of years and for sure we don't need SC2 for that. There are plenty of stuff people can do much more fun than SC2 that don't cause anxiety or fear. Moreover, it's the best way to make Blizzard open their eyes to this issue. Nothing speaks louder than plenty of lost customers.
I think one main and one fun is a pretty cool concept. It would make playing a different race a little less stressful. However there are customs, but I think a "fun" component to the ladder where you are placed with other who are just messing around, it could even be unranked really. I did read a few people saying this could lead to BM and what not. I am not sure if i totally agree with this, BM is what it is, your better of playing your game and letting that person be a tool.
I have been hoping for this change for a while. I think it would be nice if we could get an accurate representation of our skill with a different race without purchasing a new account.
There should only be one 1v1 ladder rank. I don't want to be matched up against some MMX butthole who's trolling on a lower MMR because he doesn't want to practice for a tournament he's going to get kicked out of.
unranked "ladder" wouldnt be a ladder, just a random match making system.... and don't custom games function as this?
I don't see why people get caught up with their rank being so pristine i guess.... If you wanna switch races I don't see why your rank should be of concern as the point of it is to face you against someone of a similar skill level so if you play say diamond toss but swap to terran and your around a plat terran level, its ok if your rank drops to platinum cause that means you will face people that are appropriate for your level. If you want to swap back to toss (yes you will be rusty hence why it instantly doesn't throw you back against diamonds) you will work back into diamond (and if you improve higher).
I hear a lot from people criticize the rank up system saying its inaccurate, well if its in accurate why care about what rank it labels you?
I thought about the 1 rank per race choice idea, but it is too complicated and it makes 1v1 rank not matter.
I really think having a no points ranked match option would be a better option if it matched people based on skill, and would lead to more practice and participation in 1v1
On October 13 2011 23:30 DoubleReed wrote: Can someone explain how unranked ladder differs from custom games? I don't get it.
You can get an opponent of any skill level in a cusom game - even within the same league the skill gap can be quite large. What people want, as far as I can tell, is a way to be able to use the standard matchmaker to find an appropriate opponent for themselves in 1v1, but their ladder rating and MMR is not affected by the outcome of the game. Essentially, a platform for them to practice 1v1 without 'worrying' about losses.
I think this would be a mistake. It would reduce the number of people playing on the actual ladder, and there's no need for this functionality! People need to get it into their heads that ladder is the ideal platform for practicing 1v1s. I used to get mega stressed by laddering; now, barely at all. You just have to realise you WILL lose approx 50% of your games regardless of how good you are, so don't fret when you lose! Losses are actually easier to learn from, and so every loss helps you become a better player!
-However-
I would like to see a ladder for each race. I haven't played a single 1v1 ladder game as anything but Zerg, despite the desire to play some terran and protoss, because it ruins the MMR for all races for a significant amount of time/games (time I simply don't have, unfortunately, as my gaming time is very limited). I want to play the occasional 1v1 game against an ideal opponent using an offrace, then go back to Zerg and play ideal opponents again on my main race, without the basically pointless intermediate games required by the current system to 'migrate' MMR. I wouldn't mind losing 30 games in a row and being demoted etc if I wanted to actually change my main race, but I don't WANT to change my main race - I simply want to be able to offrace some 1v1 against appropriate opponents.
A 1v1 'team' per race would not only solve this issue, but I believe it would encourage people to play more 1v1 ladder!
People should just grow a pair and play around with the one ladder account they have. It's not precious and you can easily get your MMR back up if you want to. Smurfing is FAR more annoying and with 4 or 5 1v1 ladders per account it would suck as good players will use them to warm up on lowbies.
one ladder account is fine, but a better custom game system would be great. It should be possible to set up a custom game with certain parameters - race of the opponent - league of the opponent (maximum range: own league +- 1 to avoid noob bashing)
When I'm trying to learn a new build in a specific matchup and my usual training partners don't have time, I just have to be lucky now. It really sucks to play "random" customs atm, yesterday I first met a master league zerg (got owned), and ran into a bronzie after that (I won by using banelings only). That's not really funny.
On October 13 2011 08:10 templar rage wrote: Tbh, I'm not quite sure why Blizzard only allows one account per CD key (besides the obvious financial considerations). Isn't it fairly standard to allow like 3 uses of a CD key for a game? If they just did that, we'd be fine.
That would ruin the ranking system.
How? All the accounts would be completely separate. Similar to how a lot of programs let you install the software on multiple computers. Instead of multiple computers, it's multiple accounts, all of which are completely separate from each other (besides being linked by the same CD key, but that's irrelevent).
Because over half of the ladder would be inactive. It would be pointless to even have rankings.
In basically all my leagues the bottom 50 people have 0 points. I wish a league really was a league not just 100 random people. On the chess server I wasted my life on before starcraft. You could see exactly where you stood among all the players on the entire server. Hence moving up meant something. In starcraft it often just means you've played more games than the others and emptied your bonus pool. Whenever I get promoted I'm almost instantly top 8. The ladder is specifically designed to delude players into thinking they're better than they are.
I don't get the resistance against this idea. If i play T and i happen to want to learn Z, and blizzard had implemented a different MMR for every race that would just mean i could meet people around my skill level as Z. Nothing more and nothing less.
What are you saying really? How the fuck would it ruin ladder? So lets say some kid who play T wants to play P and only 4 gate for fun. That's just either a easy win for his opponent, or his opponent loses and needs to defend a 4-gate better.
I read what you've said but i don't agree with it even a little.
And what's this ''Man up''. What!? What does that have to do with anything?! We just want to have a game with more freedom. Implementing was OP says can only bring good.
To clarify. I would like that every race has a different MMR in 1v1. (Different ranking for each race)
i think it should stay as it is, multi ranks on ladder would just encourage smurfing. And there is no reason to have an unserious ladder like you say, what is the point of ranking people playing unserious ? But having 1 for each race and 1 for random maybe, could be nice. Instead of being stuck with platnum when i wanna play for example zerg which i have never really played.
Blizzard just need to either make Custom game matchmaking much better or give a seperate 1v1 section for unranked.
When I want to play a 1v1 I don't want to go into Custom game and get matched against a Grandmasters, nor do I want to find a Bronze. There's no decent form of matchmaking outside ladder, unless you purposely go out of your way to do so.
On October 13 2011 23:36 FuzzyJAM wrote: Some people just need to man the fuck up. It's a rank. It goes up and down. Deal with it.
How the hell is this even relevant?
If there was a ladder ranking for each race, then each 1v1 ladder would go up and down as you played on each of your Protoss, Zerg, Terran, and Random 1v1 ladders.
What the current set-up is doing is forcing us to stick with our current race, because we've already invested a lot of time and effort into getting to our current league as one race, and it would be silly to fall all the way back down on the same ladder just to re-learn a new race.
If I'm master league Protoss and have never played a 1v1 game as Terran or Zerg, how do I start? How do I learn? Do I throw a hundred straight games to get knocked down to silver? And then what happens if I want to play as Protoss again?
Saying "man the fuck up" isn't an argument. It's just you sounding like you didn't even read the OP.
I think it's worth pointing out that establishing an MMR from scratch isn't the long arduous process people are making it out to be. After your first 5 placement matches you will be rather close to where you should be (although there are weird corner cases / coincidences based on who you play for those first 5 matches). Nevertheless, after about 20-30 matches your MMR should be very close to where it should be.
i dunno man thats a difficult question really i thin it would be cool to have a ladder rank for every race but i think if you take the game seriously you will only need 1
also if some pro wants to bash some noobs he can then just pick another race not even needing to switch accounts
On October 13 2011 07:24 blagoonga123 wrote: i like that idea. it would allow me to offrace better
On October 13 2011 07:24 Hoodlum wrote: I think it should be unlimited like it was in brood war, I don't see the point in limiting it other then putting money in the pockets of blizzard
what if you were just trying to get back into the game after some time off, and realized you'd only be playing masters+ players who just wanted some easy wins?
So, like BW? The system worked fine, really. Then you'll get smashed a few games? BW was brutal, but had a better system. With iccup, at least.
I agree that the BW system was brutal, and I think the blizzard ladder works way better. Especially for everyone below master league. Also you usually get matched with someone of similar skill, it really wouldn't be a good system if you had many accounts and could just smash on people lower than you, that'd be a good way to reduce the number of players really quickly.
this thing is just... silly. i understand your point but by starting to implement different ladders etc you will mess things up. a smarter solution would be to allow accounts to have 1 sub-account.
On October 13 2011 07:24 ChroMaTe_ wrote: There should just be an unranked 1v1 "ladder" period.
This, one which basically uses your "unranked" mmr to match you up. But records nothing but mmr changes so it takes no stress, and you can off-race how much you want.
As it is now, when I come home tired from studying etc, I just play team games if I have none to practice against online, because I don't want to play 1v1 ladder when I'm really tired.
On October 13 2011 07:24 ChroMaTe_ wrote: There should just be an unranked 1v1 "ladder" period.
This, one which basically uses your "unranked" mmr to match you up. But records nothing but mmr changes so it takes no stress, and you can off-race how much you want.
As it is now, when I come home tired from studying etc, I just play team games if I have none to practice against online, because I don't want to play 1v1 ladder when I'm really tired.
Why would you want to be matched up for your' off-race with your' main race's MMR?
On another note, I think all the input so far has been rather incredible. The idea of the unranked play using current MMR is a good one (but not perfect). People also seem to be liking the ranking per race as well (this one would be relatively easy to implement for Blizzard as well since they keep track of your dominant race).
I think I will let the polling go on for a while and then update the original post with summaries of what people thought and liked the most.
Cheers everyone (even the masochist "take the pain, off-racing is stupid" trolls ;P).
On October 13 2011 23:42 jonesthemad wrote: i prefer the way it is. otherwise the 1on1 ranking would be as fucked up as the 2on2 3on3 and 4on4 because of a bazillion of corpses not playing.
As Fuzzyjam stated above me.
>8-| DEAL WITH IT
You can't be serious. The ladder can already be clogged up with 'corpses not playing.' Pay a small fee of $60 and you can now ladder with multiple rankings; They're called smurfs.The difference between the way it is, and the proposition of the OP is whether or not you pay $60.
On October 14 2011 01:23 Denzil wrote: Blizzard just need to either make Custom game matchmaking much better or give a seperate 1v1 section for unranked.
When I want to play a 1v1 I don't want to go into Custom game and get matched against a Grandmasters, nor do I want to find a Bronze. There's no decent form of matchmaking outside ladder, unless you purposely go out of your way to do so.
What they need is a matchmaking "unrakned" system that uses your MMR on your "ranked" games to set you against similar people. Or, just have a separate MMR for the "unranked" ladder that works exactly the same as the ranked one, but just doesnt show you what league and rank your in. This way you play the people at your skill level, but you could give a fuck if you lose or not. BOOM problem solved.
I would love it if they introduced some sort of practice 1v1 type thing where I could chose to play 1v1 PvT (always PvT) against someone with comparable MMR to me
After getting my terran down pact, i could then do a ton of PvZ
I think adding a ladder so that it's ranked by race would be really great, but, I think a practice ladder/unranked ladder would really help promote many individuals to practice 1v1s - especially those individuals who get the famed 'ladder anxiety'. Unfortunately, I'd be really surprised if blizzard had this high on its 'to-do list' (if at all)... T_T
this is why i play on my friends bronze account offrace. If they did have seperate 1v1 i would probs become random when my skill levels on each race is good enough
Actually, I would like to have something somewhat oposite than most of the people in this thread: I would like to have separate MMR for each race, but I doun't care about rankings, so I have no proublem with all the points going to one account (which would be in some "average" league or whatever).
People should just understand, that the real value of the ladder is not in leagues and points, but MMR. Any "practice league" which would keep the main account's MMR would be absolutely pointless, there is no difference from playing ladder, apart of the points that are totally meaningless. But I would love so much to offrace, but I am infinitely better as P than as anything else, so I would have to dump like 30 games to get some even matcht (and then win 30 back to get even as P). If the MMR was separate per race, that would be just amazing!
I think an unranked ladder that uses your 1v1 MMR is the best solution. That way you can practice whatever you want with people of your skill level. And honestly if you're like a diamond or masters level terran or whatever than with enough practice (unranked ladder) you could probably get the other races at least somewhat close to your main.
I would also love it because I personally can only play sparingly and dont have many friends who play SC2. It just seems like it would be a great non stressful way to practice. A MMR for every race seems like a bit too much going on though.
I accidentally clicked "1 Keep it the same" but meant to click 4, 1 for each race. I would like to be able to play other races without getting dominated all day.
On October 14 2011 03:00 Roxy wrote: I would love it if they introduced some sort of practice 1v1 type thing where I could chose to play 1v1 PvT (always PvT) against someone with comparable MMR to me
After getting my terran down pact, i could then do a ton of PvZ
I agree completely with this! A league that tracks MMR but nothing else, and lets you choose what matchup you play. Also don't include the wins in achievements and such (to prevent people from just playing tonnes of games on it) it would then let you practice that matchup you're having problems with, or play when drunk/high/tired without risking tanking your normal 1v1 rating.
possibly track each matchup differently in MMR for this league, so you're always playing somebody else exactly your skill level in each matchup, which is the best environment to improve in.
I would like a ranked ladder for each race. That way I could actually practice my Protoss and Terran versus correctly matched opponents. You can of course just play custom games but the variation in skill is GIANT! I rarely get matched up versus opponents with a similar skill level to me.
But if you want purely "fun" games, then I think custom games are the way to go as opposed to an unranked ladder.
On October 13 2011 23:36 FuzzyJAM wrote: Some people just need to man the fuck up. It's a rank. It goes up and down. Deal with it.
How the hell is this even relevant?
If there was a ladder ranking for each race, then each 1v1 ladder would go up and down as you played on each of your Protoss, Zerg, Terran, and Random 1v1 ladders.
What the current set-up is doing is forcing us to stick with our current race, because we've already invested a lot of time and effort into getting to our current league as one race, and it would be silly to fall all the way back down on the same ladder just to re-learn a new race.
If I'm master league Protoss and have never played a 1v1 game as Terran or Zerg, how do I start? How do I learn? Do I throw a hundred straight games to get knocked down to silver? And then what happens if I want to play as Protoss again?
Saying "man the fuck up" isn't an argument. It's just you sounding like you didn't even read the OP.
I read the OP. It talked about stress being the reason for needing a "just for fun" ladder account. Nothing to do with different races. If you need to have a "just for fun" account so you're not stressed because of "ladder anxiety" then you need to get over yourself.
Wanting different rankings for different races is obviously very different and, I think, entirely reasonable. I guess I should have been clearer that I wasn't directing my post at people who want that, though I thought it was obvious given the content.
On October 14 2011 03:00 Roxy wrote: I would love it if they introduced some sort of practice 1v1 type thing where I could chose to play 1v1 PvT (always PvT) against someone with comparable MMR to me
After getting my terran down pact, i could then do a ton of PvZ
I agree completely with this! A league that tracks MMR but nothing else, and lets you choose what matchup you play. Also don't include the wins in achievements and such (to prevent people from just playing tonnes of games on it) it would then let you practice that matchup you're having problems with, or play when drunk/high/tired without risking tanking your normal 1v1 rating.
possibly track each matchup differently in MMR for this league, so you're always playing somebody else exactly your skill level in each matchup, which is the best environment to improve in.
The problem i see with this is that then people will play the ladder less. It's in blizzards best interest to keep the ladder alive and competitive. If you allow people to play vs other similar MMR opponents then the ladder becomes less competitive.
I really dislike the feeling that I'm totally pigeonholed into playing one race all the time. My Terran and Protoss are awful compared to my Zerg and I basically have no way to reasonably practice the other races. Sure I can play T or P at like a diamond level but what, am I just supposed to lose a bunch of games and get demoted so I can figure out the basics of the other races? Great, now what? Now if I want to play as Zerg I just get stupid easy wins because I'm playing in a league too low? Well fantastic, now what happens is I can't actually practice playing Zerg at a reasonable level.
Honestly I think it's a joke how absolutely restrictive Bnet 2.0 is, can't ladder with different MMRs, can't change names, can't reasonably host new custom games, can't watch replays with other people. Hurray for Blizzard.
Questions: 1. Does blizzard have the server room for it? 2. Is it worth the trouble of implementing something of this nature? 3. Would you want to extend this into 2s/3s/4s? 4. Would be able to get Grand Master with multiple races? 5. Would be able to get into the same division with multiple races?
Now some interesting points: 1. It would 100% surely promote more off-racing and laddering. 2. You could claim yourself as a Master of all races. 3. It would be a better determination of one's skill (Oh, he's Master's with Zerg but only Bronze with protoss? no wonder we lost that 3v3).
Interesting idea, but there's many open ends (hence why it hasn't been done yet)
On October 14 2011 04:10 Zabedisi wrote: Blizzard would lose revenue from people who buy smurf accounts. /thread
I really wonder if the percentage of people who buy smurf-accounts exceeds 1% or is so large that Blizz would feel something if people would stop buying multiple accounts.
If UserName.Zerg was a different ladder entry than UserName.Protoss, it would just be if the current ladder had 4 times the population.
Same system, more ladder entries. How hard is that?
Assuming half the ladder population from Season 1 is already gone, there's plenty of room. There's no need for extension or server room or whatever bullshit you're making up.
On October 14 2011 05:22 Keitzer wrote: Questions: 1. Does blizzard have the server room for it? 2. Is it worth the trouble of implementing something of this nature? 3. Would you want to extend this into 2s/3s/4s? 4. Would be able to get Grand Master with multiple races? 5. Would be able to get into the same division with multiple races?
Now some interesting points: 1. It would 100% surely promote more off-racing and laddering. 2. You could claim yourself as a Master of all races. 3. It would be a better determination of one's skill (Oh, he's Master's with Zerg but only Bronze with protoss? no wonder we lost that 3v3).
Interesting idea, but there's many open ends (hence why it hasn't been done yet)
1. Definitely. 2. If enough people want it. 3. It already is, in a way. Because you can have multiple teams. I wouldn't extend it beyond that. 4. Of course. If anyone manages to do so and actually manages to stay in GM with the bonus pool requirements, etc, it is an achievement in itself. 5. Probably yes, but what are the chances of that happening? There isn't really a downside to this.
Part of me wants ranking per race, but something like "unranked" automatchmaking would probably be the best way. Behind the scenes it could still actually be ranked (utilizing and even changing your "Ranked" MMR), but people wouldn't stress out about their ladder points so much... maybe.
I actually agree with what some people are saying. Every matchup should have it's own MMR. If my PvP is 10% better than my PvZ, then why shouldn't i meet better Protoss players, than Zerg players.
And same for if i played other races ofcourse. If this was the case, i wouldn't really care about league&ranking.
After having bought maybe plenty of EA games over the years I can honestly say that I don't have a single problem with Blizzard. I can understand some people having well founded issues with some of the things Blizzard does, but wth.. you can't please everyone.
And why on earth would I like several rankings? Deal with it. Play customs/2v2+ if you don't want the stress. You want a cozy RTS? Play Age of Empires.
The thing I like the most about SC2 is that the chances of making it to the top are slim to none for most of us and it requires a shitload of work. As it should be for a competitive game. There are plenty of casual games out there if you don't like it.
On October 14 2011 05:53 F4ble wrote: After having bought maybe plenty of EA games over the years I can honestly say that I don't have a single problem with Blizzard. I can understand some people having well founded issues with some of the things Blizzard does, but wth.. you can't please everyone.
And why on earth would I like several rankings? Deal with it. Play customs/2v2+ if you don't want the stress. You want a cozy RTS? Play Age of Empires.
The thing I like the most about SC2 is that the chances of making it to the top are slim to none for most of us and it requires a shitload of work. As it should be for a competitive game. There are plenty of casual games out there if you don't like it.
What did anything you said have to do with...well...anything?
On October 14 2011 05:53 F4ble wrote: After having bought maybe plenty of EA games over the years I can honestly say that I don't have a single problem with Blizzard. I can understand some people having well founded issues with some of the things Blizzard does, but wth.. you can't please everyone.
And why on earth would I like several rankings? Deal with it. Play customs/2v2+ if you don't want the stress. You want a cozy RTS? Play Age of Empires.
The thing I like the most about SC2 is that the chances of making it to the top are slim to none for most of us and it requires a shitload of work. As it should be for a competitive game. There are plenty of casual games out there if you don't like it.
What did anything you said have to do with...well...anything?
It sounded like an abstract of an essay written to persuade people to not have fun while playing Starcraft 2.
4 different ladders, but only your highest ranked of the 4 is actually published and given a real ranking + division. The other 3 still maintain their separate MMR, but don't generate rankings.
i disagree with multiple accounts, just have something like unranked matchmaking using your MMR to find opponents is sufficient enough for offracing/practicing/warming up for me. Having anymore than 1 account is only prone to one thing, Abuse!!! .. , which is smurfing /backstabbing and just ruining any integrity of the ladder system . How would a bronze league player feel when every 2 games he is facing a smurfing troll that is taking pride on beating up newbs "for fun" cause we all thats what "for fun" means...............
On October 14 2011 06:09 jinixxx123 wrote: i disagree with multiple accounts, just have something like unranked matchmaking using your MMR to find opponents is sufficient enough for offracing/practicing/warming up for me. Having anymore than 1 account is only prone to one thing, Abuse!!! .. , which is smurfing /backstabbing and just ruining any integrity of the ladder system . How would a bronze league player feel when every 2 games he is facing a smurfing troll that is taking pride on beating up newbs "for fun" cause we all thats what "for fun" means...............
The very existence of SC2 is prone to be abused. You speak of a <0.01% population that ruins the game and ultimately costs everyone more money when blizzard designs around these people. Who wins? They do.
On October 14 2011 06:09 jinixxx123 wrote: i disagree with multiple accounts, just have something like unranked matchmaking using your MMR to find opponents is sufficient enough for offracing/practicing/warming up for me. Having anymore than 1 account is only prone to one thing, Abuse!!! .. , which is smurfing /backstabbing and just ruining any integrity of the ladder system . How would a bronze league player feel when every 2 games he is facing a smurfing troll that is taking pride on beating up newbs "for fun" cause we all thats what "for fun" means...............
The very existence of SC2 is prone to be abused. You speak of a <0.01% population that ruins the game and ultimately costs everyone more money when blizzard designs around these people. Who wins? They do.
The very start of this argument is flawed as well. How does this stuff encourage smurfing more than the current system? I hope people understand that your 'off-race' ranking would find your' true MMR unless you intentionally lose games on it which is EXACTLY what you can do now.
If you want more proof: do you see smurfing everywhere in team leagues?
On October 14 2011 06:09 jinixxx123 wrote: i disagree with multiple accounts, just have something like unranked matchmaking using your MMR to find opponents is sufficient enough for offracing/practicing/warming up for me. Having anymore than 1 account is only prone to one thing, Abuse!!! .. , which is smurfing /backstabbing and just ruining any integrity of the ladder system . How would a bronze league player feel when every 2 games he is facing a smurfing troll that is taking pride on beating up newbs "for fun" cause we all thats what "for fun" means...............
The very existence of SC2 is prone to be abused. You speak of a <0.01% population that ruins the game and ultimately costs everyone more money when blizzard designs around these people. Who wins? They do.
The very start of this argument is flawed as well. How does this stuff encourage smurfing more than the current system? I hope people understand that your 'off-race' ranking would find your' true MMR unless you intentionally lose games on it which is EXACTLY what you can do now.
If you want more proof: do you see smurfing everywhere in team leagues?
I never said it encouraged it. I don't even know what you're arguing for.
On October 14 2011 06:30 kahaleo wrote: So what if someone in GM had a really good off-race? Two spots with the same name in GM?
Easy solution would be to just rank the highest one in GM only. They could display that his offrace is of GM level and what place it WOULD be placed in without taking an actual slot.
On October 14 2011 06:03 Grobyc wrote: 4 different ladders, but only your highest ranked of the 4 is actually published and given a real ranking + division. The other 3 still maintain their separate MMR, but don't generate rankings.
So basically you can practice with your 'offrace' against opponents with similar skill-level, maintaining the MMR, but not an actual ladder-version. Works for me. Great idea.
I don't understand how unranked ladder helps, if it still uses your MMR.
So, let's say your MMR is at 100. You are in gold league. You play on a "unranked" ladder, presumably because your wins/losses won't affect your "ranked" points, but it will affect your MMR, right?
Because if it doesn't affect your MMR, you are still playing vs. MMR 100 opponents. And if it does affect your MMR, even if you have 1000 gold ladder points, you'll end up playing vs. bronzies because your MMR has dropped from the "unranked" ladder?
Does this just mean that you should have separate MMR/ladders for each race? Does that make the most sense? I don't understand why people are advocating an "unranked" ladder - how do you make sure that you match up against people of equal skill without keeping separate race MMRs? (Maybe you don't need a random MMR - it can just be an aggregate of your 3 race MMRs).
EDIT: I just wanted to add that I have a NA and a TW account. So, I play random on my TW account, which means when I end up with my main NA race, I win pretty easily, but otherwise, I get "even" matches with my other two races. I wish it wasn't so, but such as it is.
Also, I just realized that they've had built-in region swapping as of patch 1.1 for the SEA client. Why wouldn't they just give me this functionality for everyone???
On October 14 2011 06:55 Trusty wrote: Blizzard makes money from not allowing this.
People do buy off-race accounts.
Exactly, while it's a nice idea Blizzard got to make a profit out of everything. I don't know when but they were even talking about premium maps that you can buy or so I've heard. So while it's nice it's not really expected to happen(without a price).
On October 14 2011 06:09 jinixxx123 wrote: i disagree with multiple accounts, just have something like unranked matchmaking using your MMR to find opponents is sufficient enough for offracing/practicing/warming up for me. Having anymore than 1 account is only prone to one thing, Abuse!!! .. , which is smurfing /backstabbing and just ruining any integrity of the ladder system . How would a bronze league player feel when every 2 games he is facing a smurfing troll that is taking pride on beating up newbs "for fun" cause we all thats what "for fun" means...............
The very existence of SC2 is prone to be abused. You speak of a <0.01% population that ruins the game and ultimately costs everyone more money when blizzard designs around these people. Who wins? They do.
The very start of this argument is flawed as well. How does this stuff encourage smurfing more than the current system? I hope people understand that your 'off-race' ranking would find your' true MMR unless you intentionally lose games on it which is EXACTLY what you can do now.
If you want more proof: do you see smurfing everywhere in team leagues?
I never said it encouraged it. I don't even know what you're arguing for.
Not arguing with you. I made additional points to your argument. I was stating that the whole "this will encourage more smurfing" was a flawed argument in the first place.
On October 14 2011 06:30 kahaleo wrote: So what if someone in GM had a really good off-race? Two spots with the same name in GM?
Easy solution would be to just rank the highest one in GM only. They could display that his offrace is of GM level and what place it WOULD be placed in without taking an actual slot.
Right now your name and your race are shown in the GM league. Don't see the problem with the same name with multiple races showing up. They would still all be distinguished from one another by race.
Am I the only one lucky enough to have friends who bought SC2, but don't play much anymore? I realize it isn't a very good solution, but if you haven't tried yet, ask around. See if a friend will let you ladder on his or her account.
On October 14 2011 06:30 kahaleo wrote: So what if someone in GM had a really good off-race? Two spots with the same name in GM?
thats fine
each spot would be for a different race ... kudos to them ... its a whole new measure of epeen.
anyway i suspect that a lot fo gm players are goign to be high diamond / masters with other races if they wanted to be just because their game knowledge of each race is that high in the first place
look at destiny - who i really enjoy watching, and im sure is a top player but not top of the top - he was kicking ass with protoss.
I have race switched ... thankfully i am top of gold so not that good. But when i switch i am defo bronze for a bit
People who think it will ruin ladder havent though tit through. 60% of each ladder is inactive ... there would just be more divisions.
On October 14 2011 07:14 sensenmann wrote: Am I the only one lucky enough to have friends who bought SC2, but don't play much anymore? I realize it isn't a very good solution, but if you haven't tried yet, ask around. See if a friend will let you ladder on his or her account.
Yep, pretty much the best way to smurf. Semi-depressing too, though. Majority of my friends quit/don't play often at all.
Rating(s): ACB: M BBFC: 15[6] ESRB: T GRB: 12+ (censored) 18+ (uncensored)[7] PEGI: 16+ USK: 12
You would guess that 16+ years old would be more mature than "being stressed for playing a game". When you´ve played BW on WGTour and iCCup for 8+ years, talk about stress.
I bet blizzard has already thought of this and is saving it for a content patch that is too skimpy (marketing strategy). seems to be no reason you couldnt have your divisions sperated into races for atleast 1v1. i want to switch to terran but also want to maintain a high protoss rank but currently i cant have both.
It seems to be a situation where blizzard would let us have our cake and eat it too.
I'd love an account for each race just so I could actually offrace and not just get slaughtered for 30 games in a row as Terran and basically be unable to play Zerg again until my effective skill for both Terran and Zerg were on teh same page.
As for multiple accounts as a way to supress ladder fear; I'm never a proponent of protecting people from themselves, and I firmly believe that in all cases where you do such a thing, the person you're hoping to protect ends up more hurt than they would be otherwise. Fear alone should never be a legitimate reason to not do something.
Take, for example, someone who has discovered they like swimming, but is afraid of water. Do you start looking for pools without water that they can pretend to swim in, or do you help them / tell them to get over their fear of water so they can do what they enjoy?
On October 14 2011 08:27 TheRhox wrote: there are too few players laddering as is, I don't want longer queue times and recurring opponents because of multiple 1v1 options.
The changes would affect neither of your concerns. If anything, they would SHORTEN queue times and have LESS recurring opponents due to more people playing.
I mean it just seems like an extremely niche amount of people who would use.
Like in order for it to matter you probably should be above gold so 60% of the population wouldn't care too much (they would just offrace and take the losses). Of the remaining 40%, they would have to actually give a shit about offracing AND wouldn't be willing to pony up the dough for another account. Plus, that doesn't include the people that are perfectly willing to simply practice with team/custom games until they get used the mechanics.
I mean, from blizzard's perspective, is it worth it?
4, or even unlimited, there's no reason that we should only have 1 rank. I remember day9 talking about how in brood war he would ladder until he hit a wall then he would make a new account and try some new stuff vs lower leagues.
This is only a problem for those who think 1v1 ranking is "serious" when in fact rank should mean absolutely nothing at all to you. Who's looking at your rank and judging you, really? Nobody.
So who cares what rank you are. If you switch races and suck for a little while you'll start playing opponents who match your level with that race and then as you get better with the mechanics you already have you'll rank back up to where you were. Stop caring so much what other people think and enjoy the game and meeting new challenges, please.
I like this idea. I tend to also play team games for fun, and 1v1 competitively. However, once I attained better ranks in team games, they also became less fun and more competitive! My approach to getting around that has been to switch races in team games. Now I play Zerg in 1v1 and 2v2, my next best race, Terran, in 3v3, and my worst race, Protoss, in 4v4. It's turning out to be a lot of fun, and means I can experiment more. I think if the same could be done across the board (i.e., different ranks for different races in 1v1), it would be a great solution to the fear vs. fun issue.
i think people would play till all their accounts reach peak elo and then they will go inactive again anyway. i'm all for getting something for nothing out of blizz though!
The way I see it you don't even need "multiple ranks" on the actual league boards. Just keep stats independently for each race individually with separate MMR ratings and calculate points separately (with an independent bonus pool per race). On a person's profile showcase their highest league rank and have the others as annotations somewhere.
So if you're Platinum 400 points Zerg, Masters 1200 Terran and Silver 900 Protoss then you'll be classified as a Masters 1200 Terran on your profile, with an annotation on there somewhere as to your other race levels. Or even allow selection of the one you want to be placed in the actual league tables with.
On October 14 2011 10:44 QuasiMachina wrote: If people were allowed to have multiple smurf accounts, we'd just end up with something looking like this.
The only thing stopping them is money. Besides; It'd only be allowed to happen because the NA ladder isn't competitive enough. And because deezer/lone should have been banned ages ago.
You just need MMR's dependent on race. so when you select zerg, it considers how good you are independent of other results. You dont need multiple accounts or shit, just MMR based on race.
On October 14 2011 21:13 Lightspeaker wrote: The way I see it you don't even need "multiple ranks" on the actual league boards. Just keep stats independently for each race individually with separate MMR ratings and calculate points separately (with an independent bonus pool per race). On a person's profile showcase their highest league rank and have the others as annotations somewhere.
So if you're Platinum 400 points Zerg, Masters 1200 Terran and Silver 900 Protoss then you'll be classified as a Masters 1200 Terran on your profile, with an annotation on there somewhere as to your other race levels. Or even allow selection of the one you want to be placed in the actual league tables with.
This would never happen. If you have the mechanics to be master with any race, you´ll be master with all the others. You can be a 800 Master Protoss, a 1000 Master Terran and a 1200 Master Zerg.
Super great idea! I would LOVE to have one ladder for each race! I've been playing Protoss in my team games because i want to try them out, but I'm never confident enough to use it on ladder because i know i would get destroyed!. I really hope bliz looks at this seriously and hopefully it can be implemented in the future :D
On October 14 2011 21:13 Lightspeaker wrote: The way I see it you don't even need "multiple ranks" on the actual league boards. Just keep stats independently for each race individually with separate MMR ratings and calculate points separately (with an independent bonus pool per race). On a person's profile showcase their highest league rank and have the others as annotations somewhere.
So if you're Platinum 400 points Zerg, Masters 1200 Terran and Silver 900 Protoss then you'll be classified as a Masters 1200 Terran on your profile, with an annotation on there somewhere as to your other race levels. Or even allow selection of the one you want to be placed in the actual league tables with.
What if I change my mind on the race I want in the tables (do you mean divisions?), how does the ladder change?
I am one of those people who stopped playing SC2, just naturally. I think a lot of people stop playing, like me is because we like to play a lot of games, and new games etc. And SC2 for me isn't fun enough to play every day.
On October 14 2011 21:13 Lightspeaker wrote: The way I see it you don't even need "multiple ranks" on the actual league boards. Just keep stats independently for each race individually with separate MMR ratings and calculate points separately (with an independent bonus pool per race). On a person's profile showcase their highest league rank and have the others as annotations somewhere.
So if you're Platinum 400 points Zerg, Masters 1200 Terran and Silver 900 Protoss then you'll be classified as a Masters 1200 Terran on your profile, with an annotation on there somewhere as to your other race levels. Or even allow selection of the one you want to be placed in the actual league tables with.
This would never happen. If you have the mechanics to be master with any race, you´ll be master with all the others. You can be a 800 Master Protoss, a 1000 Master Terran and a 1200 Master Zerg.
From one extreme to the other eh?
I agree that being Masters with one race and Silver in another would be impossible. However, it is quite possible to be Masters with one race and Diamond/Platinum with another. This game is not only about mechanics. There are many race-specific intricacies involved and the mechanics for each race are different as well although there are many similarities as well.
I bought a second copy of the game so that I could use it to "just have fun". Also, it was an excuse to track down the Collector's Edition that I should have bought for myself in the first place.
That being said though, it'd be nice to have a placement for each race, since I'm Platinum with Terran and Silver, at best, with Protoss and Zerg.
It would also be nice if every time a player plays in a tournament(or practice) on another server from home he had a choice other than to completely disregard the user agreement for use of the game.
If you take starcraft 2 seriously - you dont play too much team games (especially 3v3 where there is not even tournaments 4 that at all which makes this even more silly to take as something SERIOUS) and youre not afraid to play 1v1 because thats just silly, when you wanna go for tournaments. THAT is really taking it SERIOUS. These types of threads just make me laugh and sad at the same time. My opinion
I do like the idea of one ladder for each race. Not sure how likely something like this would be in reality for Blizzard to implement, but it sounds nice in theory. However, I'm sure all the people in this thread complaining about ladder anxiety would still find a way not to ladder given the introduction of a new ladder format. If you don't expose yourself to losing regularly (it will happen, no matter how good you are) then any amount of ladder changes will not change the way you mentally process a loss.
I think it could easily be solved by a ranked and unranked ladder. Even a "practice" ladder. The big thing would be having that lack of pressure and ability to maintain your rank, despite losses, but at the trade of not gaining anything for your wins. Some players might play only the unranked ladder, and I would be perfectly fine with that. Perhaps it could have its own MMR?
The big thing people are looking for, is the ability to play in the ladder setting of random opponents, random maps, without the risk of rank changes, neh? Simply break it apart into two ladders, and races available on both. If you choose to deviate on your ranked ladder, go for it. Your risk, your loss. If you choose to main race on the practice ladder, no worries, but your wins won't count on that big, shiny rank.
I really dont understand why they dont implement 4 1v1 leagues for each race choice. If you play teams with your friends they already make different ranks/leagues for each combination. It doesnt seem like itd be difficult at all for them to do the same with 1v1 leagues.
Honestly it sounds like another money grubbing decision by them to get people to buy multiple accounts for off racing
I would definately like to see blizz add more than one ladder for each players race, the only problem I see with that (and probably the reason it ownt happen) is because blizzard wouldnt be able to sell as many accounts.
On October 15 2011 10:37 Supamang wrote: I really dont understand why they dont implement 4 1v1 leagues for each race choice. If you play teams with your friends they already make different ranks/leagues for each combination. It doesnt seem like itd be difficult at all for them to do the same with 1v1 leagues.
Honestly it sounds like another money grubbing decision by them to get people to buy multiple accounts for off racing
EXACTLY. That's all. Blizzard just want to maximize their earnings.
EPT
. Also it doesnt matter for me whether there is 1 account for each race, since i am just gold and looking to have fun. I just fear the ladder 
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