EPTLadder Tier Removal
Currently not all divisions within a League are created equal. Individual divisions are actually assigned to different “tiers”, and players are assigned to tiers based on skill. This system hasn't been very transparent, making it difficult to determine your next promotion. For example, if you’re in a lower tiered Diamond division, just getting to Rank 1 doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see a promotion soon.
With the goal of increasing transparency for ladder players, we’re removing tiers from the ladder with the commencement of 2012 Season 4. The removal of tiers from all leagues will allow players to better gauge exactly where they’re at on the ladder and how far away they are from the next league.
After this change, climbing to (for example) Rank 2 Diamond will mean that you are in the top 2% of all Diamond players, and you are very close to moving into the Master League. Similarly, Rank 50 Platinum is in the top 50% in the Platinum league, and so forth.
Currently not all divisions within a League are created equal. Individual divisions are actually assigned to different “tiers”, and players are assigned to tiers based on skill. This system hasn't been very transparent, making it difficult to determine your next promotion. For example, if you’re in a lower tiered Diamond division, just getting to Rank 1 doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see a promotion soon.
With the goal of increasing transparency for ladder players, we’re removing tiers from the ladder with the commencement of 2012 Season 4. The removal of tiers from all leagues will allow players to better gauge exactly where they’re at on the ladder and how far away they are from the next league.
After this change, climbing to (for example) Rank 2 Diamond will mean that you are in the top 2% of all Diamond players, and you are very close to moving into the Master League. Similarly, Rank 50 Platinum is in the top 50% in the Platinum league, and so forth.
personally I think the ladder tier removal is a great step forward, now if they could only give us our Wins/Loss ratio back, because not seeing that isn't very transparent either.
Also taldarim has it's rocks removed at the 3rd!
edit: it literally means, rank 100 - 1 is the top %100 to %1 of your rank, bronze all the way to GM. If you are 100 bronze you are literally the worst player in the entire game, along with the other 100's that will exist. We will still have divisions and compete within our division, but it will make going up a rank, from 53 to 52, actually mean something, but it will probably take more work now. So those achievements you got for getting top 8 in your division? well that's going to be very hard to get now.
Excal_Z edit: This ladder change is going to mean that all of the leagues will now become just like Master league (except for showing losses). There will still be divisions of 100 players each, but they'll all be equal and therefore no longer apply hidden offsets. Therefore, in an ideal environment with the skill of all players evenly distributed across divisions (meaning you don't have Division 1 with all GSL Code S players and Division 2 with all GSL Code B players) and as long as everyone is spending all their bonus pool, what Blizzard says is accurate: rank 1 would roughly equate to the top 1% of the league.
Incidentally, this is going to make sites like SC2Ranks far more accurate as a means to gauge how you rank among the rest of your league.
Note that promotions will still be determined by MMR, the removal of division tiers only affects the points that are displayed in divisional rankings.
), but no new 1v1 maps? Really?
