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Personally, I really enjoy the way bonus pool works. Whether or not it's the *best* system, as mid level Platinum player, I find it very encouraging to try and keep my bonus pool at zero.
This might be an inaccurate comparison, but I've always felt that this is very similar to WoW's "Rested XP" system. It becomes obvious that the most "efficient" way to level your character, is to only play when you have rested XP - but, it's also important that you play frequently enough that you don't cap out your rested.
An interesting thought -- I wonder how leveling in WoW would feel if all Mob difficulty's were dynamically adjusted so that you would win as close to 50% of your engagements as possible, and dying caused you to lose the same XP you would have gained.... ( no wonder my other gamer friends won't play SC2)
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On June 05 2012 22:14 paralleluniverse wrote:
If they did that and said that the 50 extra points are to help player's catch-up it would be the exact same lie. That 50 extra points caused the divergence in the first place. It does not help you catch-up. No catch-up would even be necessary if there was no bonus pool and no 50 extra points.
You're arguing from a false premise, which is that the best ladder system would rank players based on static ELO points. This is not the design intent at all. Blizzard has never claimed that ladder points are intended to mirror ELO ranking.
Like you said, there are other ways to reward activity, such as rating decay. Rating decay WOULD put an inactive player behind without any method to catch up, and rating decay is a punishment that prevents you from not playing rather than a reward that entices you to play.
The SC2 ladder is designed to give every single player a constant avenue of ranking up. For two people of equal skill who play concurrently, their ladder rank will be indistinguishable. If Player A stops playing for a week, then Player B will rank up. The difference in ranking will increase as long as Player A is not playing and Player B is playing. When Player B comes back, he will catch up to Player A pretty quickly.
Please present an alternate method where two skill-plateaud players can be rewarded for activity both during active play and returning after a break.
If you don't want to receive "imaginary" rewards for non-improvement, then strive to get promoted. The vast majority of players are not going to make Grandmaster, and the ladder caters to those players.
There is no free lunch.
The lunch is not free. The lunch is earned by playing. Your ladder points would be at a static point if there was no bonus pool. You play until you hit 700, your skill plateaus, and you will forever hover around 700 points. Keep playing and the bonus pool increases your points score until the end of the season. Stop playing and your rank falls. Start playing again and collect all your bonus pool.
And I didn't call the ladder a psychological gimmick, I called the bonus pool a psychological gimmick, which it is. It's meant to be the "feel good" version of XP decay. But as I've shown, there's a punishment that mirrors the reward.
It is not meant to be the feel good version of XP decay because XP decay does nothing to affect your points score while you're actively playing. If I play for 3 months straight at the same MMR, XP decay doesn't kick in at all. If I play for 3 months straight at the same MMR, the bonus pool will increase my score. This is not a gimmick, this is a REWARD FOR ACTIVITY. Whereas XP decay is a PENALTY FOR NOT PLAYING.
Like I said earlier, they could have rewarded activity in another way. But since the bonus pool awards the same amount of points to everyone, it emphatically rewards every player the same, whether they take mid-season breaks or not. Same number of wins required to earn the same number of bonus points.
The only way to miss out on your bonus pool is to not return to play before the end of the season.
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On June 05 2012 23:25 Shmu wrote:
Personally, I really enjoy the way bonus pool works. Whether or not it's the *best* system, as mid level Platinum player, I find it very encouraging to try and keep my bonus pool at zero.
This might be an inaccurate comparison, but I've always felt that this is very similar to WoW's "Rested XP" system. It becomes obvious that the most "efficient" way to level your character, is to only play when you have rested XP - but, it's also important that you play frequently enough that you don't cap out your rested.
An interesting thought -- I wonder how leveling in WoW would feel if all Mob difficulty's were dynamically adjusted so that you would win as close to 50% of your engagements as possible, and dying caused you to lose the same XP you would have gained.... ( no wonder my other gamer friends won't play SC2)
Yes, it is like the WoW rested XP system. It's almost surely based off the same philosophy: instead of punishing you by reducing XP by 50% if you played too long, they doubled all XP and made rested XP a 100% bonus. This was back in WoW's beta.
But there are also major differences. WoW is a competitive game, but levelling up in WoW is not. So the punishment of seeing your rank fall every day you log in because of bonus pool is not felt in WoW. This is something that they failed to see. This punishment cancels out the reward of increased points. When you log in, you must play games to catch up to where you were before.
In WoW, eventually you graduate out of leveling. In SC2, ladder is the game. So this punishment is persistent. It's like running an endless race and whenever you catch-up to the pack, you're destined to fall behind again, and then you need to start the work of catching up all over again, ad infinitum.
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On June 05 2012 23:57 paralleluniverse wrote:
In WoW, eventually you graduate out of leveling. In SC2, ladder is the game. So this punishment is persistent. It's like running an endless race and whenever you catch-up to the pack, you're destined to fall behind again, and then you need to start the work of catching up all over again, ad infinitum.
But it's not a punishment at all!
Player A and B both play for a week, and get to 500 ladder points.
Player A keeps playing for another week, while player B takes a break.
Player A now has 584 ladder points, and he had to win 5 games to earn the 84 bonus pool points.
Player B still has 500 ladder points.
Week three, Player A keeps playing, and Player B returns to active play.
By the end of the third week week, Player A has 584+84, i.e. 668 ladder points. He had to win 5 games to earn another 84 bonus points.
Player B also has 668 ladder points. He had to win 10 games to earn his 168 bonus points.
The number of games they needed to win is exactly the same.
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On June 05 2012 23:55 yeint wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2012 22:14 paralleluniverse wrote:
If they did that and said that the 50 extra points are to help player's catch-up it would be the exact same lie. That 50 extra points caused the divergence in the first place. It does not help you catch-up. No catch-up would even be necessary if there was no bonus pool and no 50 extra points. You're arguing from a false premise, which is that the best ladder system would rank players based on static ELO points. This is not the design intent at all. Blizzard has never claimed that ladder points are intended to mirror ELO ranking. Like you said, there are other ways to reward activity, such as rating decay. Rating decay WOULD put an inactive player behind without any method to catch up, and rating decay is a punishment that prevents you from not playing rather than a reward that entices you to play. The SC2 ladder is designed to give every single player a constant avenue of ranking up. For two people of equal skill who play concurrently, their ladder rank will be indistinguishable. If Player A stops playing for a week, then Player B will rank up. The difference in ranking will increase as long as Player A is not playing and Player B is playing. When Player B comes back, he will catch up to Player A pretty quickly. Please present an alternate method where two skill-plateaud players can be rewarded for activity both during active play and returning after a break. If you don't want to receive "imaginary" rewards for non-improvement, then strive to get promoted. The vast majority of players are not going to make Grandmaster, and the ladder caters to those players.
Yes, rating decay would put an inactive player behind, but rating decay only kicks in after a certain amount of inactivity (usually a week). So everyone that is active is essentially ranked correctly. And you're shifted down a bit if you're inactive. With the bonus pool system, as your own example points out, and as I've already said, no one is ranked correctly unless everyone has used up their bonus pool, which is impossible. Unspent bonus pool distorts correct ranks.
Being active is the catch-up mechanism for a rating decay system. Since displayed rating (or some simple function of it) always converges to MMR, it's not possible to permanently "stuff-up" your rating due to inactivity.
However, I do know that a bonus pool system where a chunk of bonus pool is rewarded each week for activity is equivalent to a rating decay system where a chunk of rating is lost for not playing.
The best system is the one I've described in a previous post (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=341648¤tpage=20#397) where inactive players are kicked out of the ladder ranks (although not on their profile page). The reward for skill plateaued players is not being kicked out.
Also please stop repeating the debunked argument that bonus pool is a psychological "feel good" reward. Any "reward" in terms of extra points for activity is self-defeating -- it cancels itself out. It doesn't take into account the punishment of your rank falling, and having to play catch up. The problem is that you don't understand that giving a reward for activity is NOT a reward. It's psychologically neutral, the reward is symmetric to the punishment. But it stuffs up the rankings which is why it's a bad idea.
Lastly, I don't mind if they always give you another type of point for playing (win or lose) which can only be spent on buying cosmetic items for units and UI art. I even suggested this in a previous post (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=341648¤tpage=18#342).
This way there really is a "feel good" boost to playing games, regardless of whether you won or lost.
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On June 06 2012 00:09 yeint wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2012 23:57 paralleluniverse wrote:
In WoW, eventually you graduate out of leveling. In SC2, ladder is the game. So this punishment is persistent. It's like running an endless race and whenever you catch-up to the pack, you're destined to fall behind again, and then you need to start the work of catching up all over again, ad infinitum. But it's not a punishment at all! Player A and B both play for a week, and get to 500 ladder points. Player A keeps playing for another week, while player B takes a break. Player A now has 584 ladder points, and he had to win 5 games to earn the 84 bonus pool points. Player B still has 500 ladder points. Week three, Player A keeps playing, and Player B returns to active play. By the end of the third week week, Player A has 584+84, i.e. 668 ladder points. He had to win 5 games to earn another 84 bonus points. Player B also has 668 ladder points. He had to win 10 games to earn his 168 bonus points. The number of games they needed to win is exactly the same.
I know that.
Bonus pool has no effect on the ratings when it's all used up. In fact, I even said it myself here and gave an almost identical example: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=341648¤tpage=20#397
The problem is that it's never all used up for everyone. So the ladder is never correct. In your example, player A is erroneously ranked higher than player B for a week, even though both have equal skill.
You're mixing up 2 separate issues:
1) Being ranked correctly and how this is affected by bonus pool (above).
2) Reward and punishment, which is all psychological and it's about how good you feel (below).
In terms of reward and punishment. That's got nothing to do with the number of games or being ranked correctly. That's about the psychological reward of seeing your points increase vs the psychological punishment of seeing your rank fall. And how these 2 feelings cancel each other out.
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United States12235 Posts
The bonus pool is essentially a decay mechanism, that is true. However, there is a distinct psychological difference between losing your points for not playing and having free points available for you to collect just by playing games. The former can be seen as discouraging for less active players because it makes playing the game a necessity -- a chore. The bonus pool model is more flexible because every point that you "decay" can eventually be earned back, whereas in a traditional decay model, once you lose those points, they're gone.
The rankings may not be 100% accurate at any given time because not everyone is playing at the same time, but that's mostly okay as long as the amount of unspent bonus pool is low. The lower the unspent bonus pool for a player, the more accurate that player's ranking. There is therefore a direct correlation between the relevance of a player's rating and the amount of unspent bonus pool he has. If I have 500 points and 500 bonus pool, it's not a foregone conclusion that I will eventually have 1,000 points if I spent it all. I could have 1500 if I never lost a game, or I could lose it all if I'm over-rated.
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On June 06 2012 01:35 Excalibur_Z wrote:
The bonus pool is essentially a decay mechanism, that is true. However, there is a distinct psychological difference between losing your points for not playing and having free points available for you to collect just by playing games. The former can be seen as discouraging for less active players because it makes playing the game a necessity -- a chore. The bonus pool model is more flexible because every point that you "decay" can eventually be earned back, whereas in a traditional decay model, once you lose those points, they're gone.
The rankings may not be 100% accurate at any given time because not everyone is playing at the same time, but that's mostly okay as long as the amount of unspent bonus pool is low. The lower the unspent bonus pool for a player, the more accurate that player's ranking. There is therefore a direct correlation between the relevance of a player's rating and the amount of unspent bonus pool he has. If I have 500 points and 500 bonus pool, it's not a foregone conclusion that I will eventually have 1,000 points if I spent it all. I could have 1500 if I never lost a game, or I could lose it all if I'm over-rated.
Sometimes, I wonder if you even read what I write.
For your first paragraph, let me repost:
Also please stop repeating the debunked argument that bonus pool is a psychological "feel good" reward. Any "reward" in terms of extra points for activity is self-defeating -- it cancels itself out. It doesn't take into account the punishment of your rank falling, and having to play catch up. The problem is that you don't understand that giving a reward for activity is NOT a reward. It's psychologically neutral, the reward is symmetric to the punishment. But it stuffs up the rankings which is why it's a bad idea.
Being active is the catch-up mechanism for a rating decay system. Since displayed rating (or some simple function of it) always converges to MMR, it's not possible to permanently "stuff-up" your rating due to inactivity.
For your second paragraph:
That's essentially saying that the ladder should account for activity so that the information that the system has about the skill of the players, reflected in the rank, is the most up to date.
I see it slightly differently. If we were psychic and simply knew what the skill of each player if he were to play a game at that moment without needing him to play a game, then we would just use this knowledge for ranking, i.e. in an ideal world ranking will be 100% skill based. But because we don't know someone's skill at a given moment unless they play, we must factor activity into the ladder, and I agree that activity should be a factor. But this is the only reason for activity to be factored into ranks: because we don't completely know current skill. To the extent that we have good knowledge of a player's current skill, activity should not matter for the purposes of ranking.
This means that ideally, we want to minimize the weight given to activity as a factor, subject to the constraint that the player is active enough to give a reasonably good estimate of his current skill. To this end, decay systems that penalize you after a week (or equivalently a bonus pool system that gives out bonus pool once weekly) or even better, a system that removes you from being ranked if you don't play any games for a week, are all superior to the current bonus pool system. This is because they reduce the weight given to activity, since activity doesn't matter as long as you play a bit each week. It also does not produce the distortions associated with the bonus pool system that we've discussed. The bonus pool system, however, requires that you be active always, everyday, so does not satisfy the above-mentioned criteria.
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On June 05 2012 23:55 yeint wrote:
Like you said, there are other ways to reward activity, such as rating decay. Rating decay WOULD put an inactive player behind without any method to catch up, and rating decay is a punishment that prevents you from not playing rather than a reward that entices you to play.
The SC2 ladder is designed to give every single player a constant avenue of ranking up. For two people of equal skill who play concurrently, their ladder rank will be indistinguishable. If Player A stops playing for a week, then Player B will rank up. The difference in ranking will increase as long as Player A is not playing and Player B is playing. When Player B comes back, he will catch up to Player A pretty quickly.
Please present an alternate method where two skill-plateaud players can be rewarded for activity both during active play and returning after a break.
Personally I've always wanted a system of decay removing a percentage of player's points per day|hour, with all decay going to a bonus pool so that they can regain any lost rating easily.
This way lower level players won't need to work as hard to keep their rating as the higher rated ones, who are in a much more competitive you-snooze-you-lose environment.
Inflation would not be as big of a problem with this sort of system since points aren't being generated without playing games.
I guess the biggest problem with removing free points is that late starters (new players) would have a harder time getting where they need to be since they can't gain bonus points. I personally don't consider it a huge issue though.
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When where the full release be, so I don't have to download the alpha..
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I tried the beta, the new interface makes my eyes bleed.
Its so messy and all over the place.
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Can't be worse than the current UI ^^
Also your quote is bad and you should feel bad!
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Terran it up.
The new interface feels chunky.
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On June 06 2012 08:04 Zombo Joe wrote:
I tried the beta, the new interface makes my eyes bleed.
Its so messy and all over the place.
... Have you not used the current interface? New one is a huge leap forward in improvement.
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On June 05 2012 09:18 SDream wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2012 07:34 FieryBalrog wrote:On June 05 2012 07:03 skeldark wrote:On June 05 2012 06:29 Excalibur_Z wrote:On June 05 2012 05:50 skeldark wrote:On June 05 2012 02:08 Excalibur_Z wrote:On June 05 2012 01:04 paralleluniverse wrote:On June 05 2012 00:57 Omegalisk wrote: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. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/5589544562 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. What on earth are you talking about? The system is SUPPOSED to encourage players to be active, not climb to a particular position and sit on it. Every good ranking system will penalize your rank for inactivity.Also, your English is very hard to read even if it isn't your first language, so I have no idea what you're arguing other than "the system takes play amount and skill into account therefore it is badly designed." And that's flat out false. If you can only speak one language then your brain gets too used to the same "correct" stuff and gets lazy. I can understand him just fine. I'd say the problem is mainly the English speakers thinking they don't need to learn any other language, ignoring the benefits for their cognition system. You can't have everyone speaking/writing perfect English, it's way easier for the natives in English to expand their cognition just a little bit in order to understand all the variations that non-natives create. Also, it would be interesting for team liquid to open a new forum: "English Class". We do have enough non-native English speakers here to make it a very interesting forum and we would all have this bounding with gaming/SC2, so I think it could lead to an interesting environment for learning English =D Anyway, there is no point in telling someone that his English isn't good enough. Instead you should bring whatever is problematic for you and ask for clarification. I am 100% sure I must have made mistakes or abnormal/weird English in this text I just wrote, but I really have no idea where are these mistakes, so there's no point telling me they exist, bring me to them, then I can start learning ok. Native English speakers should be more pro-active while interacting with non-natives, you already have it easier. ---------------------- BTW, I don't mind the bonus pool, I do mind not knowing my division tier and offset. I should be able to do the math to reach to my MMR if I wanted to, in a similar way that I can use sc2gears to have my win/loss ratio and the people that don't care enough to use sc2gears or other method don't get the numbers, that's fine! It's stupid for Blizzard to say that only the top 4% best players are harcore enough to take the "reality". I am hardcore in my own way and I want to have information, otherwise I might just give up completely this game, it's not fun to just be a random platinum for 2 years, then if I play enough I get a star <3 (top8...)
I speak 3 languages and English isn't the language of my parents. Please, there's no good that can come from a sentence like:
Because you can not know how much each a player dropes over idle time and this guess would be terrible random.
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On June 06 2012 15:47 FieryBalrog wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2012 09:18 SDream wrote:On June 05 2012 07:34 FieryBalrog wrote:On June 05 2012 07:03 skeldark wrote:On June 05 2012 06:29 Excalibur_Z wrote:On June 05 2012 05:50 skeldark wrote:On June 05 2012 02:08 Excalibur_Z wrote:On June 05 2012 01:04 paralleluniverse wrote:On June 05 2012 00:57 Omegalisk wrote: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:
[quote] 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. What on earth are you talking about? The system is SUPPOSED to encourage players to be active, not climb to a particular position and sit on it. Every good ranking system will penalize your rank for inactivity.Also, your English is very hard to read even if it isn't your first language, so I have no idea what you're arguing other than "the system takes play amount and skill into account therefore it is badly designed." And that's flat out false. If you can only speak one language then your brain gets too used to the same "correct" stuff and gets lazy. I can understand him just fine. I'd say the problem is mainly the English speakers thinking they don't need to learn any other language, ignoring the benefits for their cognition system. You can't have everyone speaking/writing perfect English, it's way easier for the natives in English to expand their cognition just a little bit in order to understand all the variations that non-natives create. Also, it would be interesting for team liquid to open a new forum: "English Class". We do have enough non-native English speakers here to make it a very interesting forum and we would all have this bounding with gaming/SC2, so I think it could lead to an interesting environment for learning English =D Anyway, there is no point in telling someone that his English isn't good enough. Instead you should bring whatever is problematic for you and ask for clarification. I am 100% sure I must have made mistakes or abnormal/weird English in this text I just wrote, but I really have no idea where are these mistakes, so there's no point telling me they exist, bring me to them, then I can start learning ok. Native English speakers should be more pro-active while interacting with non-natives, you already have it easier. ---------------------- BTW, I don't mind the bonus pool, I do mind not knowing my division tier and offset. I should be able to do the math to reach to my MMR if I wanted to, in a similar way that I can use sc2gears to have my win/loss ratio and the people that don't care enough to use sc2gears or other method don't get the numbers, that's fine! It's stupid for Blizzard to say that only the top 4% best players are harcore enough to take the "reality". I am hardcore in my own way and I want to have information, otherwise I might just give up completely this game, it's not fun to just be a random platinum for 2 years, then if I play enough I get a star <3 (top8...) I speak 3 languages and English isn't the language of my parents. Please, there's no good that can come from a sentence like: Show nested quote +Because you can not know how much each a player dropes over idle time and this guess would be terrible random.
But you seem to live in the states so at least you have some exposure to the language. Not everyone is good in learning languages but as long as people try they have my full support. There are so many native English speakers who don't speak any other language that you can only respect the effort in my opinion. In the end they are making communication with English persons easier by adapting to them and not the other way around, even though it is not flawless.
And tbh, I understand perfectly what this guy is saying even though it is not in perfect English. It is all about communication not who is the best speaker of us all. If MC speaks English everybody loves the effort but as soon as it is a forum poster he or she gets burned for his or her mistakes, while both are in the very least trying to speak English and need all the practice they can get.
Just curious: what 3 languages do you speak? I am also an avid language learner myself 
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the balance on the this 1.5 version just shows how long they been working on this (since 1.0) lol
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More defined Fog of War
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TinyS.jpg)
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Takes AGES to get a 1v1 custom match going even the ones at the top of the list(been waiting 10 mins for xel naga cavens)
And your units walk in the fog of war like they are carrying a lantern(bright round light on them), like above.
Not impressed at all.. not worth the big download that's for sure.I keep going back to regular sc2.
Maybe its just the lack of players that haven't d/l it yet.
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EPT
