This makes me look forward to HOTS. The UI improvements really make it look like a more complete game and indirectly shows off the power of the map editor.
Purple and other dark colors are still unreadable on minimap.
Also red-HP bars fully counter Changelings.
Couldn't a changeling just have a green HP bar?!
Impossible.
EDIT: It's a joke, btw. I don't really see the problem with just letting the changeling have a green HP bar...can't be that complicated to do. I mean it's already a unit that changes form, so making it have a different HP bar shouldn't be a challenge either.
On June 04 2012 23:35 Existor wrote: HP bars sizes are still ugly. SC2 is a still game of health bars and counters, not real units. Units just are skins only, that are hidden by HP bar
So? Just remove the health bars if you don't like them.You'll obviously have to give up on the competitive aspect of the game, which should not be a big loss for you, you don't seem to like SC2 very much.
he is obviously bitter about sc2 and wishes we were all still playing BW on a DSL connection.
56k is what real men play with ! I actually started playing Starcraft on battle.net in 1999 with a 56k modem... jesus how the time flies...
On June 04 2012 22:27 paralleluniverse wrote: The custom game system and UI is a vast improvement over what is currently in game. I still have some minor problems with it, but I think we should focus on getting ladder improved now. Specifically, win/loss ratios, statistics, and a global ladder (or at the least a ladder where it is possible to compare any 2 players).
The new B.net interface is a vast improvement over the current version, and now that the custom game system is good, it's time to fix the ladder system and make this a competitive game again.
The problem is the following: The whole division and ladder system does everything possible to hide your true rank and to make it impossible to compare the ranks of players in different divisions.
There are no win loss ratios, no global ladder rank, no way to compare the skill of any 2 players, no statistics, and now with patch 1.5 you can't even view the division ladder of other players.
Look at how empty the profile page is. There's just the number of games played, and a meaningless division rank that cannot be compared to anything. It literally has no meaning. If I tell you that you're 9th, what does that mean? 9th out of what? 9th compared to who? No one will ever know.
To fix this Blizzard needs to: Bring back statistics.
Bring back a global ladder or at the very least reveal division tiers so that player ranks are meaningful and comparable. Currently there's no way to tell how good you are, the 5 lowest leagues are meant to contain 20% of the players, but this band is too large and it's not true that it contains 20% of players. An alternative is a percentile, even if it's in multiples of 5.
Make ladder competitive and promote competition. Put it on the home page or link to it in the home page. It's the core Starcraft game.
Stop removing everything because of "ladder anxiety" and hurt feelings: The removal of win/loss ratios necessarily implies that useful statistics can never be revealed. Reverse this. Blizzard's resolve to appease players with ladder anxiety, to not hurt their feelings, is turning SC2 into a non-competitive game. This is the opposite of what an RTS game should be.
The unranked matchmaking that's in HotS will fix ladder anxiety. It's time to stop killing the competitive nature of this game and removing all the systems needed to support competition because of ladder anxiety and hurt feelings.
To appeal to casuals, they can even make a system where you always gain another type of point for playing, which can be spent to unlock cosmetic rewards to customize units and even the B.net UI, such as extra backgrounds.
I agree that those sort of features need to be implemented to make SC2 a more competitive game, but I also think that ladder anxiety is a real problem. I believe those features that you mentioned would be best implemented after the unranked ladder is, so you can have a truly competitive ladder and a "for fun" ladder (it still would have MMR, but still). I would wait until HotS for those type of features to be implemented (and, judging on these changes, Blizz is listening to the community, so they might just do that).
On June 04 2012 22:27 paralleluniverse wrote: The custom game system and UI is a vast improvement over what is currently in game. I still have some minor problems with it, but I think we should focus on getting ladder improved now. Specifically, win/loss ratios, statistics, and a global ladder (or at the least a ladder where it is possible to compare any 2 players).
Here's a post I wrote on the B.net forums:
The new B.net interface is a vast improvement over the current version, and now that the custom game system is good, it's time to fix the ladder system and make this a competitive game again.
The problem is the following: The whole division and ladder system does everything possible to hide your true rank and to make it impossible to compare the ranks of players in different divisions.
There are no win loss ratios, no global ladder rank, no way to compare the skill of any 2 players, no statistics, and now with patch 1.5 you can't even view the division ladder of other players.
Look at how empty the profile page is. There's just the number of games played, and a meaningless division rank that cannot be compared to anything. It literally has no meaning. If I tell you that you're 9th, what does that mean? 9th out of what? 9th compared to who? No one will ever know.
To fix this Blizzard needs to: Bring back statistics.
Bring back a global ladder or at the very least reveal division tiers so that player ranks are meaningful and comparable. Currently there's no way to tell how good you are, the 5 lowest leagues are meant to contain 20% of the players, but this band is too large and it's not true that it contains 20% of players. An alternative is a percentile, even if it's in multiples of 5.
Make ladder competitive and promote competition. Put it on the home page or link to it in the home page. It's the core Starcraft game.
Stop removing everything because of "ladder anxiety" and hurt feelings: The removal of win/loss ratios necessarily implies that useful statistics can never be revealed. Reverse this. Blizzard's resolve to appease players with ladder anxiety, to not hurt their feelings, is turning SC2 into a non-competitive game. This is the opposite of what an RTS game should be.
The unranked matchmaking that's in HotS will fix ladder anxiety. It's time to stop killing the competitive nature of this game and removing all the systems needed to support competition because of ladder anxiety and hurt feelings.
To appeal to casuals, they can even make a system where you always gain another type of point for playing, which can be spent to unlock cosmetic rewards to customize units and even the B.net UI, such as extra backgrounds.
I agree that those sort of features need to be implemented to make SC2 a more competitive game, but I also think that ladder anxiety is a real problem. I believe those features that you mentioned would be best implemented after the unranked ladder is, so you can have a truly competitive ladder and a "for fun" ladder (it still would have MMR, but still). I would wait until HotS for those type of features to be implemented (and, judging on these changes, Blizz is listening to the community, so they might just do that).
Don't be so sure. They've never signaled that they will ever change the ladder except by taking away more details. For example, in the beta you can't view the division ladder of other players anymore.
This should be a competitive game, to destroy systems that support this competition, just for some dubious and unproven relief to ladder anxiety, is contrary to the point of the game.
Blizzard seriously thinks their division system is the greatest thing ever. They've been talking about how fun it is to climb the ranks in your little group of 100 arbitrary and insignificant players since before the game was released, and the facelessness of being rank 14,933. They've missed the point about ranking, they've missed the point that the removal of win/loss means there can never be statistics, and they've missed the point of competition on the ladder. They've said they won't reveal MMR. Absolutely everything they do, every single design decision related to the ladder, is about hiding true ranks.
On June 04 2012 20:26 trips wrote: So is it better for playing custom games now or should i just wait for the finished patch.??
You can have two installed sc2 . One with 1.4 patch , one with 1.5 beta . You dont even need to download it all , you can start playing after i think 500mb of download.
On June 04 2012 22:27 paralleluniverse wrote: The custom game system and UI is a vast improvement over what is currently in game. I still have some minor problems with it, but I think we should focus on getting ladder improved now. Specifically, win/loss ratios, statistics, and a global ladder (or at the least a ladder where it is possible to compare any 2 players).
Here's a post I wrote on the B.net forums:
The new B.net interface is a vast improvement over the current version, and now that the custom game system is good, it's time to fix the ladder system and make this a competitive game again.
The problem is the following: The whole division and ladder system does everything possible to hide your true rank and to make it impossible to compare the ranks of players in different divisions.
There are no win loss ratios, no global ladder rank, no way to compare the skill of any 2 players, no statistics, and now with patch 1.5 you can't even view the division ladder of other players.
Look at how empty the profile page is. There's just the number of games played, and a meaningless division rank that cannot be compared to anything. It literally has no meaning. If I tell you that you're 9th, what does that mean? 9th out of what? 9th compared to who? No one will ever know.
To fix this Blizzard needs to: Bring back statistics.
Bring back a global ladder or at the very least reveal division tiers so that player ranks are meaningful and comparable. Currently there's no way to tell how good you are, the 5 lowest leagues are meant to contain 20% of the players, but this band is too large and it's not true that it contains 20% of players. An alternative is a percentile, even if it's in multiples of 5.
Make ladder competitive and promote competition. Put it on the home page or link to it in the home page. It's the core Starcraft game.
Stop removing everything because of "ladder anxiety" and hurt feelings: The removal of win/loss ratios necessarily implies that useful statistics can never be revealed. Reverse this. Blizzard's resolve to appease players with ladder anxiety, to not hurt their feelings, is turning SC2 into a non-competitive game. This is the opposite of what an RTS game should be.
The unranked matchmaking that's in HotS will fix ladder anxiety. It's time to stop killing the competitive nature of this game and removing all the systems needed to support competition because of ladder anxiety and hurt feelings.
To appeal to casuals, they can even make a system where you always gain another type of point for playing, which can be spent to unlock cosmetic rewards to customize units and even the B.net UI, such as extra backgrounds.
I agree that those sort of features need to be implemented to make SC2 a more competitive game, but I also think that ladder anxiety is a real problem. I believe those features that you mentioned would be best implemented after the unranked ladder is, so you can have a truly competitive ladder and a "for fun" ladder (it still would have MMR, but still). I would wait until HotS for those type of features to be implemented (and, judging on these changes, Blizz is listening to the community, so they might just do that).
Don't be so sure. They've never signaled that they will ever change the ladder except by taking away more details. For example, in the beta you can't view the division ladder of other players anymore.
This should be a competitive game, to destroy systems that support this competition, just for some dubious and unproven relief to ladder anxiety, is contrary to the point of the game.
Blizzard seriously thinks their division system is the greatest thing ever. They've been talking about how fun it is to climb the ranks in your little group of 100 arbitrary and insignificant players since before the game was released, and the facelessness of being rank 14,933. They've missed the point about ranking, they've missed the point that the removal of win/loss means there can never be statistics, and they've missed the point of competition on the ladder. They've said they won't reveal MMR. Absolutely everything they do, every single design decision related to the ladder, is about hiding true ranks.
I think the idea is that there are so many casual ladder players out there who are fine with just earning points and climbing ranks in their division. It can't be overstated how important it is that lower-skilled players remain in the active player pool to keep the relative definitions of higher-skilled players accurate, because the more players the ladder has, the healthier the ladder is. Master and Grandmaster is where all of the obfuscating factors are removed: losses, division tiers, minimum MMR, everything. It's Master and Grandmaster that appeal to the more hardcore players who are truly looking to gauge their skill. Master and Grandmaster level players are far more active and more interested in improving than players of lower leagues, and that's where the skill gap becomes very pronounced.
On June 04 2012 23:35 Existor wrote: HP bars sizes are still ugly. SC2 is a still game of health bars and counters, not real units. Units just are skins only, that are hidden by HP bar
So? Just remove the health bars if you don't like them.You'll obviously have to give up on the competitive aspect of the game, which should not be a big loss for you, you don't seem to like SC2 very much.
he is obviously bitter about sc2 and wishes we were all still playing BW on a DSL connection.
56k is what real men play with ! I actually started playing Starcraft on battle.net in 1999 with a 56k modem... jesus how the time flies...
I played sc2 on 56k in my parent's place for three months, lol. I must be super mega man
On June 05 2012 04:57 Snowbear wrote: Can anyone explain what "sc2 is now a streaming game" means? Does this mean that every time I play, I am downloading / uploading stuff?
The launcher has a built-in downloader which transfers game data (and uploads it if you have peer-to-peer enabled). The data is tiered so that you first receive the framework for the game, and the game can't be launched until this phase is finished. The second tier is the critical data, such as most of the graphics and sounds, and the game can be launched while this is downloading but may be missing some pieces. The third tier is the noncritical data such as movies and other bells and whistles, and you can launch the game during this phase too. The game will continue downloading in the background if you choose to launch before it's completely finished, essentially "streaming" the game content to your PC.
On June 04 2012 23:35 Existor wrote: HP bars sizes are still ugly. SC2 is a still game of health bars and counters, not real units. Units just are skins only, that are hidden by HP bar
So? Just remove the health bars if you don't like them.You'll obviously have to give up on the competitive aspect of the game, which should not be a big loss for you, you don't seem to like SC2 very much.
he is obviously bitter about sc2 and wishes we were all still playing BW on a DSL connection.
I think he is (obviously) noticing the the health bars are too large, obscure the action in large battles, and could use an improvement ... such that they could still remain on, and NOT obscure the action in large battles.
At least, that's what I got from it. Maybe I'm reading too deep into it ...
I'll throw one in that's been bugging the custom community for a long time:
How have they adapted the b.net netcode to handle third-person and first-person lookaround latency? There's a lot of games that have been scrapped because of a small amount of forced latency from b.net. TSP and FPS customs suffer drastically as a result. Do they have plans to address this?
Additionally, are they planning on upping the map publishing limit? I was hoping to re-create a lot of BW customs, but the 10 map limit really sours things. Why can't they make it 50?
From here. I've never even realized this was an issue o_O. Hopefully it can be looked into.
Patch 1.5 would be the time to make any of the changes needed for the custom scene. If this is a dealbreaker for mapmakers, then we need Blizz to know ASAP. Any other mapmakers/knowledgable people confirm what was said in the post?
On June 05 2012 04:57 Snowbear wrote: Can anyone explain what "sc2 is now a streaming game" means? Does this mean that every time I play, I am downloading / uploading stuff?
The launcher has a built-in downloader which transfers game data (and uploads it if you have peer-to-peer enabled). The data is tiered so that you first receive the framework for the game, and the game can't be launched until this phase is finished. The second tier is the critical data, such as most of the graphics and sounds, and the game can be launched while this is downloading but may be missing some pieces. The third tier is the noncritical data such as movies and other bells and whistles, and you can launch the game during this phase too. The game will continue downloading in the background if you choose to launch before it's completely finished, essentially "streaming" the game content to your PC.
Isn't this THE nightmare for every player with a download limit (like me)?
On June 04 2012 22:27 paralleluniverse wrote: The custom game system and UI is a vast improvement over what is currently in game. I still have some minor problems with it, but I think we should focus on getting ladder improved now. Specifically, win/loss ratios, statistics, and a global ladder (or at the least a ladder where it is possible to compare any 2 players).
Here's a post I wrote on the B.net forums:
The new B.net interface is a vast improvement over the current version, and now that the custom game system is good, it's time to fix the ladder system and make this a competitive game again.
The problem is the following: The whole division and ladder system does everything possible to hide your true rank and to make it impossible to compare the ranks of players in different divisions.
There are no win loss ratios, no global ladder rank, no way to compare the skill of any 2 players, no statistics, and now with patch 1.5 you can't even view the division ladder of other players.
Look at how empty the profile page is. There's just the number of games played, and a meaningless division rank that cannot be compared to anything. It literally has no meaning. If I tell you that you're 9th, what does that mean? 9th out of what? 9th compared to who? No one will ever know.
To fix this Blizzard needs to: Bring back statistics.
Bring back a global ladder or at the very least reveal division tiers so that player ranks are meaningful and comparable. Currently there's no way to tell how good you are, the 5 lowest leagues are meant to contain 20% of the players, but this band is too large and it's not true that it contains 20% of players. An alternative is a percentile, even if it's in multiples of 5.
Make ladder competitive and promote competition. Put it on the home page or link to it in the home page. It's the core Starcraft game.
Stop removing everything because of "ladder anxiety" and hurt feelings: The removal of win/loss ratios necessarily implies that useful statistics can never be revealed. Reverse this. Blizzard's resolve to appease players with ladder anxiety, to not hurt their feelings, is turning SC2 into a non-competitive game. This is the opposite of what an RTS game should be.
The unranked matchmaking that's in HotS will fix ladder anxiety. It's time to stop killing the competitive nature of this game and removing all the systems needed to support competition because of ladder anxiety and hurt feelings.
To appeal to casuals, they can even make a system where you always gain another type of point for playing, which can be spent to unlock cosmetic rewards to customize units and even the B.net UI, such as extra backgrounds.
I agree that those sort of features need to be implemented to make SC2 a more competitive game, but I also think that ladder anxiety is a real problem. I believe those features that you mentioned would be best implemented after the unranked ladder is, so you can have a truly competitive ladder and a "for fun" ladder (it still would have MMR, but still). I would wait until HotS for those type of features to be implemented (and, judging on these changes, Blizz is listening to the community, so they might just do that).
Don't be so sure. They've never signaled that they will ever change the ladder except by taking away more details. For example, in the beta you can't view the division ladder of other players anymore.
This should be a competitive game, to destroy systems that support this competition, just for some dubious and unproven relief to ladder anxiety, is contrary to the point of the game.
Blizzard seriously thinks their division system is the greatest thing ever. They've been talking about how fun it is to climb the ranks in your little group of 100 arbitrary and insignificant players since before the game was released, and the facelessness of being rank 14,933. They've missed the point about ranking, they've missed the point that the removal of win/loss means there can never be statistics, and they've missed the point of competition on the ladder. They've said they won't reveal MMR. Absolutely everything they do, every single design decision related to the ladder, is about hiding true ranks.
I think the idea is that there are so many casual ladder players out there who are fine with just earning points and climbing ranks in their division. It can't be overstated how important it is that lower-skilled players remain in the active player pool to keep the relative definitions of higher-skilled players accurate, because the more players the ladder has, the healthier the ladder is. Master and Grandmaster is where all of the obfuscating factors are removed: losses, division tiers, minimum MMR, everything. It's Master and Grandmaster that appeal to the more hardcore players who are truly looking to gauge their skill. Master and Grandmaster level players are far more active and more interested in improving than players of lower leagues, and that's where the skill gap becomes very pronounced.
Thats the reason why master dont have bonus pool and divisions and they show the mmr and not points for master and also publish the server ranking of all master/gm players on their webserver. Oh wait...
Blizzard thinks, showing the real skill will let the normal player stop playing. I think its the over way round. Lie to them and act like they are HIGH whatever and are close to get promoted all the time pressure them. Just play more and you raise, lets you think you are really good because everytime you try , you improve. However this clash with the reality where you dont improve at all. And this diffrence between reality and thought makes the ladder fear.
If you see your mmr and realise that if you loose many games its easy to get back to your old mmr, you are way more relaxed. It works on any sport ever invented. Why is sc2 so different, that you have to hide the information?
On June 04 2012 22:27 paralleluniverse wrote: The custom game system and UI is a vast improvement over what is currently in game. I still have some minor problems with it, but I think we should focus on getting ladder improved now. Specifically, win/loss ratios, statistics, and a global ladder (or at the least a ladder where it is possible to compare any 2 players).
Here's a post I wrote on the B.net forums:
The new B.net interface is a vast improvement over the current version, and now that the custom game system is good, it's time to fix the ladder system and make this a competitive game again.
The problem is the following: The whole division and ladder system does everything possible to hide your true rank and to make it impossible to compare the ranks of players in different divisions.
There are no win loss ratios, no global ladder rank, no way to compare the skill of any 2 players, no statistics, and now with patch 1.5 you can't even view the division ladder of other players.
Look at how empty the profile page is. There's just the number of games played, and a meaningless division rank that cannot be compared to anything. It literally has no meaning. If I tell you that you're 9th, what does that mean? 9th out of what? 9th compared to who? No one will ever know.
To fix this Blizzard needs to: Bring back statistics.
Bring back a global ladder or at the very least reveal division tiers so that player ranks are meaningful and comparable. Currently there's no way to tell how good you are, the 5 lowest leagues are meant to contain 20% of the players, but this band is too large and it's not true that it contains 20% of players. An alternative is a percentile, even if it's in multiples of 5.
Make ladder competitive and promote competition. Put it on the home page or link to it in the home page. It's the core Starcraft game.
Stop removing everything because of "ladder anxiety" and hurt feelings: The removal of win/loss ratios necessarily implies that useful statistics can never be revealed. Reverse this. Blizzard's resolve to appease players with ladder anxiety, to not hurt their feelings, is turning SC2 into a non-competitive game. This is the opposite of what an RTS game should be.
The unranked matchmaking that's in HotS will fix ladder anxiety. It's time to stop killing the competitive nature of this game and removing all the systems needed to support competition because of ladder anxiety and hurt feelings.
To appeal to casuals, they can even make a system where you always gain another type of point for playing, which can be spent to unlock cosmetic rewards to customize units and even the B.net UI, such as extra backgrounds.
I agree that those sort of features need to be implemented to make SC2 a more competitive game, but I also think that ladder anxiety is a real problem. I believe those features that you mentioned would be best implemented after the unranked ladder is, so you can have a truly competitive ladder and a "for fun" ladder (it still would have MMR, but still). I would wait until HotS for those type of features to be implemented (and, judging on these changes, Blizz is listening to the community, so they might just do that).
Don't be so sure. They've never signaled that they will ever change the ladder except by taking away more details. For example, in the beta you can't view the division ladder of other players anymore.
This should be a competitive game, to destroy systems that support this competition, just for some dubious and unproven relief to ladder anxiety, is contrary to the point of the game.
Blizzard seriously thinks their division system is the greatest thing ever. They've been talking about how fun it is to climb the ranks in your little group of 100 arbitrary and insignificant players since before the game was released, and the facelessness of being rank 14,933. They've missed the point about ranking, they've missed the point that the removal of win/loss means there can never be statistics, and they've missed the point of competition on the ladder. They've said they won't reveal MMR. Absolutely everything they do, every single design decision related to the ladder, is about hiding true ranks.
I think the idea is that there are so many casual ladder players out there who are fine with just earning points and climbing ranks in their division. It can't be overstated how important it is that lower-skilled players remain in the active player pool to keep the relative definitions of higher-skilled players accurate, because the more players the ladder has, the healthier the ladder is. Master and Grandmaster is where all of the obfuscating factors are removed: losses, division tiers, minimum MMR, everything. It's Master and Grandmaster that appeal to the more hardcore players who are truly looking to gauge their skill. Master and Grandmaster level players are far more active and more interested in improving than players of lower leagues, and that's where the skill gap becomes very pronounced.
Thats the reason why master dont have bonus pool and divisions and they show the mmr and not points for master and also publish the server ranking of all master/gm players on their webserver. Oh wait...
Blizzard thinks, showing the real skill will let the normal player stop playing. I think its the over way round. Lie to them and act like they are HIGH whatever and are close to get promoted all the time pressure them. Just play more and you raise, lets you think you are really good because everytime you try , you improve. However this clash with the reality where you dont improve at all. And this diffrence between reality and thought makes the ladder fear.
If you see your mmr and realise that if you loose many games its easy to get back to your old mmr, you are way more relaxed. It works on any sport ever invented. Why is sc2 so different, that you have to hide the information?
That's fairly disingenuous. The bonus pool is not an obfuscator. It's very relevant because it keeps rankings current. The bonus pool ensures that people can't rest at #1 without consequences. It could be that there's no harm in showing MMR to Master+ players, but that's neither here nor there as we're actively working to establish player MMRs anyway, especially for those skill levels.
As for player psychology, I think that's something we're not experienced enough in the subject to properly comment on.
On June 05 2012 04:57 Snowbear wrote: Can anyone explain what "sc2 is now a streaming game" means? Does this mean that every time I play, I am downloading / uploading stuff?
The launcher has a built-in downloader which transfers game data (and uploads it if you have peer-to-peer enabled). The data is tiered so that you first receive the framework for the game, and the game can't be launched until this phase is finished. The second tier is the critical data, such as most of the graphics and sounds, and the game can be launched while this is downloading but may be missing some pieces. The third tier is the noncritical data such as movies and other bells and whistles, and you can launch the game during this phase too. The game will continue downloading in the background if you choose to launch before it's completely finished, essentially "streaming" the game content to your PC.
Isn't this THE nightmare for every player with a download limit (like me)?
Well it's not like game is always downloading data. It's only downloading what the client needs to run properly. If you have a 10GB/month limit and the game is 6GB, that 6GB is a one-time download (plus whatever patches happen to come along which are typically 200MB on the high end). It's not like you're downloading that 6GB every time you run the launcher. It's just a way for players to get started playing earlier, like when they're initially downloading the game via Battle.net onto a new computer.
On June 04 2012 22:27 paralleluniverse wrote: The custom game system and UI is a vast improvement over what is currently in game. I still have some minor problems with it, but I think we should focus on getting ladder improved now. Specifically, win/loss ratios, statistics, and a global ladder (or at the least a ladder where it is possible to compare any 2 players).
Here's a post I wrote on the B.net forums:
The new B.net interface is a vast improvement over the current version, and now that the custom game system is good, it's time to fix the ladder system and make this a competitive game again.
The problem is the following: The whole division and ladder system does everything possible to hide your true rank and to make it impossible to compare the ranks of players in different divisions.
There are no win loss ratios, no global ladder rank, no way to compare the skill of any 2 players, no statistics, and now with patch 1.5 you can't even view the division ladder of other players.
Look at how empty the profile page is. There's just the number of games played, and a meaningless division rank that cannot be compared to anything. It literally has no meaning. If I tell you that you're 9th, what does that mean? 9th out of what? 9th compared to who? No one will ever know.
To fix this Blizzard needs to: Bring back statistics.
Bring back a global ladder or at the very least reveal division tiers so that player ranks are meaningful and comparable. Currently there's no way to tell how good you are, the 5 lowest leagues are meant to contain 20% of the players, but this band is too large and it's not true that it contains 20% of players. An alternative is a percentile, even if it's in multiples of 5.
Make ladder competitive and promote competition. Put it on the home page or link to it in the home page. It's the core Starcraft game.
Stop removing everything because of "ladder anxiety" and hurt feelings: The removal of win/loss ratios necessarily implies that useful statistics can never be revealed. Reverse this. Blizzard's resolve to appease players with ladder anxiety, to not hurt their feelings, is turning SC2 into a non-competitive game. This is the opposite of what an RTS game should be.
The unranked matchmaking that's in HotS will fix ladder anxiety. It's time to stop killing the competitive nature of this game and removing all the systems needed to support competition because of ladder anxiety and hurt feelings.
To appeal to casuals, they can even make a system where you always gain another type of point for playing, which can be spent to unlock cosmetic rewards to customize units and even the B.net UI, such as extra backgrounds.
I agree that those sort of features need to be implemented to make SC2 a more competitive game, but I also think that ladder anxiety is a real problem. I believe those features that you mentioned would be best implemented after the unranked ladder is, so you can have a truly competitive ladder and a "for fun" ladder (it still would have MMR, but still). I would wait until HotS for those type of features to be implemented (and, judging on these changes, Blizz is listening to the community, so they might just do that).
Don't be so sure. They've never signaled that they will ever change the ladder except by taking away more details. For example, in the beta you can't view the division ladder of other players anymore.
This should be a competitive game, to destroy systems that support this competition, just for some dubious and unproven relief to ladder anxiety, is contrary to the point of the game.
Blizzard seriously thinks their division system is the greatest thing ever. They've been talking about how fun it is to climb the ranks in your little group of 100 arbitrary and insignificant players since before the game was released, and the facelessness of being rank 14,933. They've missed the point about ranking, they've missed the point that the removal of win/loss means there can never be statistics, and they've missed the point of competition on the ladder. They've said they won't reveal MMR. Absolutely everything they do, every single design decision related to the ladder, is about hiding true ranks.
I think the idea is that there are so many casual ladder players out there who are fine with just earning points and climbing ranks in their division. It can't be overstated how important it is that lower-skilled players remain in the active player pool to keep the relative definitions of higher-skilled players accurate, because the more players the ladder has, the healthier the ladder is. Master and Grandmaster is where all of the obfuscating factors are removed: losses, division tiers, minimum MMR, everything. It's Master and Grandmaster that appeal to the more hardcore players who are truly looking to gauge their skill. Master and Grandmaster level players are far more active and more interested in improving than players of lower leagues, and that's where the skill gap becomes very pronounced.
Thats the reason why master dont have bonus pool and divisions and they show the mmr and not points for master and also publish the server ranking of all master/gm players on their webserver. Oh wait...
Blizzard thinks, showing the real skill will let the normal player stop playing. I think its the over way round. Lie to them and act like they are HIGH whatever and are close to get promoted all the time pressure them. Just play more and you raise, lets you think you are really good because everytime you try , you improve. However this clash with the reality where you dont improve at all. And this diffrence between reality and thought makes the ladder fear.
If you see your mmr and realise that if you loose many games its easy to get back to your old mmr, you are way more relaxed. It works on any sport ever invented. Why is sc2 so different, that you have to hide the information?
That's fairly disingenuous. The bonus pool is not an obfuscator. It's very relevant because it keeps rankings current. The bonus pool ensures that people can't rest at #1 without consequences. It could be that there's no harm in showing MMR to Master+ players, but that's neither here nor there as we're actively working to establish player MMRs anyway, especially for those skill levels.
As for player psychology, I think that's something we're not experienced enough in the subject to properly comment on.
1) Yes. You get points for playing more if you are better or not. Its just a different system, that dont rate the skill its rate the play amount. I prefer a skill system not a indicator how much you play, I can see this in the gamecount. Every other game and sport dont mix this too. Why does sc2 have to? If you think, it takes the playamount and skil in ratio into account than its just a bad designed system. Because you can not know how much each a player dropes over idle time and this guess would be terrible random.
When this is such a good solution and normal players dont like to see overall statistic, why is sc2 the only game that does this? Even games for causal players show this kind of information. Its plain arrogant by blizzard, that they think they know better than us what we want.
As for player psychology, I think that's something we're not experienced enough in the subject to properly comment on.
So you think you have not enough experience to talk about this topic. Thats fine, but please dont act like you can speak for me too. I know enough to have an opinion. I dont know everything about it but i take incomplete information and form an opinion out of it. Thats what people do when you discuss. Thats what people do when they have opinions. I think you are well aware of this and the fact that your sentence was just a "kill "argument.
EPT
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