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On March 05 2013 06:28 crms wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2013 06:22 Integra wrote:On March 05 2013 06:17 crms wrote:On March 05 2013 06:12 Integra wrote:
Allot of people seems to misunderstand what ranked and unranked is, and their difference between them. Ranked and unranked are the same as if you would have two accounts with their own ladder rank with the only difference that one of the accounts wouldn't show your actual ranking or the amount of points you would gain or lose for each played game. And that's basically it, Blizzard has given you a "mini" account inside your main account. You're forgetting the most important part. While your 'mini' account inside your main account won't show your rank or effect your displayed points etc., you WILL be effecting someone elses 'real' account. So while you try new builds, maybe play less serious or off race on your 'mini' account you will be giving free points or taking points from peoples 'main' accounts while risking nothing yourself. You're playing stressfree when you queue unranked, while your ranked opponent is more likely to be trying their very hardest to win, they have something at stake. That's the entire debate. I think we all understand how the modes work. We are arguing the merits of having unranked and ranked players being able to match each other on ladder. You are risking your own MMR just like any other on ranked, if you play bad and do stupid stuff you get punished by getting your unranked MMR lowered and you will face worse opponents. MMR still decides what opponents you meet. And regardless if its hidden for you or not you will notice if you are mostly being matched against Masters or just gold players. That isn't a real risk. When someone is risking their position on the ladder (likely their only real competitive outlet) and you're risking a match making rating that is never displayed and entirely hidden, you're effective risking nothing. There is an impact if you lose 60 points (50 mmr for argument sake) and 15 ladder ranks in your division. There is no impact in losing 50 mmr on your unranked account other than you might get a few easy games until you reach your appropriate mmr again. I'm not sure why you don't get this.
I'd argue there isn't a real risk either way. For me personally, I don't like losing. I play pretty much the same whether I'm playing ranked or unranked, although I try out new builds on unranked. But either way, the only "real risk" I feel is the risk of losing a game of SC2, which I don't like doing. It happens 50% of the time so I have to deal with it, but I always try my best to win.
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On March 05 2013 06:30 JDub wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2013 06:24 korona wrote:On March 05 2013 06:11 Mendelfist wrote:On March 05 2013 06:01 crms wrote:On March 05 2013 05:55 Mendelfist wrote:On March 05 2013 05:15 crms wrote:
Now, since you're still matched with ranked players, doesn't this hurt the integrity of the ranked league? Perhaps, but it also improves the integrity of the unranked league for those wanting serious practice and competition without the burden of ladder points. I would ask if that's worth it? Is it good to sacrifice integrity of your only built in ranking mechanism so that your 'practice' more 'casual' game mode can be more challenging? It's very strange to have one person queuing up while putting it all on the line (dramatic sorry) and another queuing up with nothing to lose. I don't think this will effect the highest tiers, but all the middle ground maybe from gold to mid master seems like a disaster. Unranked players just joining games doing stupid builds with nothing to lose. If it's worth it depends on the number of unranked players and how many of them that just want to fool around. It may be better to dilute the unranked players into the larger ladder pool than to keep them separate and turn unranked play into a useless monkey house. That would turn inexperienced players away (and those with the now somewhat worn expression "ladder anxiety"). The latter is a big reason for the implementation of unranked play I think. But in the viewpoint of ranked player the shared matchmaking pool is awful (of course user base of WoL will crash after release of HotS so it may be ok for WoL, but future HotS user base should be large enough so queues would not become too long). Since patch I have played 57 ranked games on EU server & 44 on NA server and even with such a small sample many of the abuse scenarios I anticipated are happening commonly ( my earlier post, note that it is written before I knew about unranked MMR): Some unranked players seem to use their ranked main race but with considerably lower unranked MMR than their ranked MMR to get easy wins. Some unranked players are leaving games for various reasons: they want to play certain match-up --> leave immediately, mess their build order --> leave when happens, something outside the game happens where you would normally pause --> leave, get behind but not yet decisive --> leave. Also amongst unranked people there seems to be more BM:s. I feel sorry for people in lower leagues, as the change is likely more visible there (high ranked players dropping their unranked MMR to low leagues to smurf without affecting their ranked MMR & visible stats). But people do the same stuff in ranked ladder in WoL. There's nothing stopping people from trolling lower ranked players, from doing coinflippy builds, from leaving games randomly, etc. in ranked ladder. I think the goal here is to just provide the same ladder experience but without the ladder anxiety. Trolls will be trolls regardless of how it is set up.
Not in same magnitude as many care about their visible stats. With unranked mode everyone can do it without compromising their visible stats. And yes. Even with so small sample of games I have after the patch, the laddering experience has changed to worse due to the unranked players here and there (seeing uncommon strategies is refreshing but in my sample there were more abusers than people using uncommon strats).
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On March 05 2013 06:33 JDub wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2013 06:28 crms wrote:On March 05 2013 06:22 Integra wrote:On March 05 2013 06:17 crms wrote:On March 05 2013 06:12 Integra wrote:
Allot of people seems to misunderstand what ranked and unranked is, and their difference between them. Ranked and unranked are the same as if you would have two accounts with their own ladder rank with the only difference that one of the accounts wouldn't show your actual ranking or the amount of points you would gain or lose for each played game. And that's basically it, Blizzard has given you a "mini" account inside your main account. You're forgetting the most important part. While your 'mini' account inside your main account won't show your rank or effect your displayed points etc., you WILL be effecting someone elses 'real' account. So while you try new builds, maybe play less serious or off race on your 'mini' account you will be giving free points or taking points from peoples 'main' accounts while risking nothing yourself. You're playing stressfree when you queue unranked, while your ranked opponent is more likely to be trying their very hardest to win, they have something at stake. That's the entire debate. I think we all understand how the modes work. We are arguing the merits of having unranked and ranked players being able to match each other on ladder. You are risking your own MMR just like any other on ranked, if you play bad and do stupid stuff you get punished by getting your unranked MMR lowered and you will face worse opponents. MMR still decides what opponents you meet. And regardless if its hidden for you or not you will notice if you are mostly being matched against Masters or just gold players. That isn't a real risk. When someone is risking their position on the ladder (likely their only real competitive outlet) and you're risking a match making rating that is never displayed and entirely hidden, you're effective risking nothing. There is an impact if you lose 60 points (50 mmr for argument sake) and 15 ladder ranks in your division. There is no impact in losing 50 mmr on your unranked account other than you might get a few easy games until you reach your appropriate mmr again. I'm not sure why you don't get this. I'd argue there isn't a real risk either way. For me personally, I don't like losing. I play pretty much the same whether I'm playing ranked or unranked, although I try out new builds on unranked. But either way, the only "real risk" I feel is the risk of losing a game of SC2, which I don't like doing. It happens 50% of the time so I have to deal with it, but I always try my best to win.
You're right, in my first post on the topic I even preface that I'm taking the ladder too seriously for the purpose of this discussion. In the end though, assuming the playerbase can sustain both ranked and unranked I see no reason to make the two cross each other. Whether you and I see value in ladder points or division ranks doesn't really matter, because that is the method in which Blizzard has built the competitive aspect of the game for the masses. The ladder is the highest competitive aspect of SC2 for MOST players. I think it should be a closed competitive system where you have to risk something (as insignificant as ladder points and rank might be) to compete.
Every moba (yuk) I've played: dota1, HoN, some LoL and now Dota 2 has ranked, unranked and even more unique independant ladder modes. These are games that involve 6 to 10 players and they can maintain independence and small queue times. How a 1v1 game seamingly can't is confusing. This leads me to believe the reason they went this route is they don't believe they have the playerbase to sustain both options. Which to me, is sad. :/
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On March 05 2013 06:24 korona wrote:
But in the viewpoint of ranked player the shared matchmaking pool is awful.
If shared pool is awful separating the pools would make unranked play even more awful as I said, and in that case unranked play as an idea has failed. I'm pretty sure a big reason was to reduce pressure and get people back to the game, and if these people can't play serious games it's useless.
I've played the beta for months (at lower levels) and I haven't seen any of the things you are concerned about. Everyone played seriously and tried to win. I would argue that global play is a bigger risk, because you get not one but several extra accounts for free. Not many are complaining about that, but I can assure you that there are many smurfs from other regions fooling around.
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On March 05 2013 06:59 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2013 06:24 korona wrote:
But in the viewpoint of ranked player the shared matchmaking pool is awful. If shared pool is awful separating the pools would make unranked play even more awful as I said, and in that case unranked play as an idea has failed. I'm pretty sure a big reason was to reduce pressure and get people back to the game, and if these people can't play serious games it's useless. I've played the beta for months (at lower levels) and I haven't seen any of the things you are concerned about. Everyone played seriously and tried to win. I would argue that global play is a bigger risk, because you get not one but several extra accounts for free. Not many are complaining about that, but I can assure you that there are many smurfs from other regions fooling around.
The end result might be that this feature has little impact, hopefully that's the case. I just don't understand the point of it at all. Can you think of any other competitive system where essentially 'practice' games can increase your rank within the competitive league? Can you imagine a sports game where 1 team is risking it's W/L and ranking in the league while the other team is only scrimmaging? Or a tennis player playing an unoffical match vs a fellow player and having the results increase or decrease his world rank? I know these examples are far fetched, but it's exactly what Blizzard is doing by merging the two systems.
I also don't think if the unranked system was completely seperate the unranked ladder would be an unplayable trollfest. I think it would be mostly people who are scared of ladder but want to improve. Or those that want to practice new strategies against similarily skilled opponents, that aren't ready to risk playing these strategies on their main accounts, where as we've discussed, they have somethign to lose (rank, points, etc.) Then of course, you would have trolls, just as you do on ranked ladder, but at least they aren't trolling in actual rated games.
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On March 05 2013 06:59 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2013 06:24 korona wrote:
But in the viewpoint of ranked player the shared matchmaking pool is awful. If shared pool is awful separating the pools would make unranked play even more awful as I said, and in that case unranked play as an idea has failed. I'm pretty sure a big reason was to reduce pressure and get people back to the game, and if these people can't play serious games it's useless. I've played the beta for months (at lower levels) and I haven't seen any of the things you are concerned about. Everyone played seriously and tried to win. I would argue that global play is a bigger risk, because you get not one but several extra accounts for free. Not many are complaining about that, but I can assure you that there are many smurfs from other regions fooling around.
It is good to remember that MMR:s in HotS were not established but were often all over the board. Even in lower levels there were higher level players 'naturally'. Also the player base of the beta was generally much more competitive and much more smaller than player base of WoL.
I would argue that the shared pool even increases the ladder anxiety of ranked players due to the luck factor on what kind of unranked players they face. And if they are lucky & get free wins, the wins themselves are not that satisfying (the system itself still aims for 50% win ratio --> less satisfying wins and about same amount of losses). And if the pools are separated the unranked mode would not be failure. It would give matchmaking based practice area / low-pressure games even if the matchmaking would not be so precise + it would not affect the ranked laddering negatively.
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Dont know if the question was already ask or not:
Since today the ladder is locked so neither a promotion nor a demotion is achievable. But what i dont know is the following.
If my mmr hits the promotion requirement and i leave my league to get another placement match, is it possible to get promoted even if the season is locked? 
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On March 05 2013 14:15 aidosae wrote:Dont know if the question was already ask or not: Since today the ladder is locked so neither a promotion nor a demotion is achievable. But what i dont know is the following. If my mmr hits the promotion requirement and i leave my league to get another placement match, is it possible to get promoted even if the season is locked?
Yes. You can be placed into a different league following your placement match.
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On March 03 2013 02:06 y0su wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2013 13:52 ffadicted wrote:On March 02 2013 04:45 Excalibur_Z wrote:On March 02 2013 04:24 ffadicted wrote:
I just came back from months and months of not playing WoL and my MMR was fully reset (as expected) and I played 5 placement matches and am now in a league.... I havn't played any Unranked matches, so if you want me to Leave League and test out your theory about it using Unranked MMR if it can (causing 1 placement match) and resetting if it can't (causing 5 placement matches), let me know. I would expect to play 5 more in this case. By all means, if you don't mind doing that =) Hmm interesting... I left the league, and the message that popped up clearly said it would not affect my MMR... yet when I go to matchmaking, it now tells me I have 5 placement matches remaining (as expected).... not sure what to make of that, I wonder if it will start my placement matches at my regular MMR maybe? I did some playing around with this today too.. (on a "new" global play account). After joining and leaving a league I had to play 5 placement matches. (Did this twice.) However, they started out vs higher league opponents (i.e. the opponent level that I probably would have faced if I had not left my league). I had played one unranked match before my my initial league placement. If I get time I'll try later on yet another new account.
Update: I continued to do this several times on my "new" EU account. Each time I had to play 5 placement matches.
I decided to try with my original account on AM and only had to play one (1) placement match to get into a new league. Not sure if this is due to having a more stable MMR or, more likely, due to the fact that I "originally" had to play only one placement match to get into my league (I had MMR carry-over from the previous season).
Might try this with other accounts if anyone wants to further info (I have a "long term" EU and "new" AM available to me).
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Sorry for bumping the thread, but I just wanted to point out that inheriting your rating from ranked mode to unranked play is probably not true. I'm masters normally but constantly get matched against bronze/silver/gold players in unranked play. This sucks because I want to use unranked play to get better with other races.
edit: Oh, it just hit me. Maybe Blizzard uses different MMRs for different races in unranked mode?
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United States12248 Posts
On March 20 2013 02:28 heishe wrote:
Sorry for bumping the thread, but I just wanted to point out that inheriting your rating from ranked mode to unranked play is probably not true. I'm masters normally but constantly get matched against bronze/silver/gold players in unranked play. This sucks because I want to use unranked play to get better with other races.
edit: Oh, it just hit me. Maybe Blizzard uses different MMRs for different races in unranked mode?
Are you playing WoL or HotS? Are you playing Unranked before having an established Ranked MMR?
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On March 20 2013 02:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 02:28 heishe wrote:
Sorry for bumping the thread, but I just wanted to point out that inheriting your rating from ranked mode to unranked play is probably not true. I'm masters normally but constantly get matched against bronze/silver/gold players in unranked play. This sucks because I want to use unranked play to get better with other races.
edit: Oh, it just hit me. Maybe Blizzard uses different MMRs for different races in unranked mode? Are you playing WoL or HotS? Are you playing Unranked before having an established Ranked MMR?
When I played 4 unranked WoL test games on NA while testing the MMR tool when v 2.0.4 was released, I had a hypothesis that Blizzard uses the established ranked MMR as starting point, but you play hidden 'placement matches' where the system tests you against different level opponents and your unranked MMR changes rapidly and after those matches it takes a while before the unranked MMR is stabilized (just like if you started a fresh ranked character in HotS now. Except the starting MMR before first match would be your established MMR from the other mode):
1) first opponent was 2 leagues lower in ranked. I left the game, 2) second opponent was 3 leagues lower in ranked. He left the game, 3) third opponent was same league in ranked. He left the game. 4) fourth opponent was 1 league lower in ranked. I left the game. In ranked mode I never got opponents from such wide MMR range (except first 5 placements). I have not played unranked since, but many have written descriptions that could support my earlier hypothesis.
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United States12248 Posts
On March 20 2013 04:15 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 02:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:On March 20 2013 02:28 heishe wrote:
Sorry for bumping the thread, but I just wanted to point out that inheriting your rating from ranked mode to unranked play is probably not true. I'm masters normally but constantly get matched against bronze/silver/gold players in unranked play. This sucks because I want to use unranked play to get better with other races.
edit: Oh, it just hit me. Maybe Blizzard uses different MMRs for different races in unranked mode? Are you playing WoL or HotS? Are you playing Unranked before having an established Ranked MMR? When I played 4 unranked WoL test games on NA while testing the MMR tool when v 2.0.4 was released, I had a hypothesis that Blizzard uses the established ranked MMR as starting point, but you play hidden 'placement matches' where the system tests you against different level opponents and your unranked MMR changes rapidly and after those matches it takes a while before the unranked MMR is stabilized (just like if you started a fresh ranked character in HotS now. Except the starting MMR before first match would be your established MMR from the other mode): 1) first opponent was 2 leagues lower in ranked. I left the game, 2) second opponent was 3 leagues lower in ranked. He left the game, 3) third opponent was same league in ranked. He left the game. 4) fourth opponent was 1 league lower in ranked. I left the game. In ranked mode I never got opponents from such wide MMR range (except first 5 placements). I have not played unranked since, but many have written descriptions that could support my earlier hypothesis.
That could very well be, but wouldn't it also allow you to leapfrog your Ranked MMR by doing 5 Ranked placements (win all) -> 5 Unranked games (win all) -> Leave League -> 1 Ranked Placement? If the change per game is dramatically different in your first few Unranked games just as it is for Ranked, then this might be possible. Were you sure that the games you played were against Ranked/Unranked/Placement competition (that is, are you confident their league icons represented their MMR)?
I know people have been asking for different Unranked MMRs per race/per matchup for a long time, I don't think they've done this but it's even more hidden than Ranked so anything is possible.
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On March 20 2013 04:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 04:15 korona wrote:On March 20 2013 02:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:On March 20 2013 02:28 heishe wrote:
Sorry for bumping the thread, but I just wanted to point out that inheriting your rating from ranked mode to unranked play is probably not true. I'm masters normally but constantly get matched against bronze/silver/gold players in unranked play. This sucks because I want to use unranked play to get better with other races.
edit: Oh, it just hit me. Maybe Blizzard uses different MMRs for different races in unranked mode? Are you playing WoL or HotS? Are you playing Unranked before having an established Ranked MMR? When I played 4 unranked WoL test games on NA while testing the MMR tool when v 2.0.4 was released, I had a hypothesis that Blizzard uses the established ranked MMR as starting point, but you play hidden 'placement matches' where the system tests you against different level opponents and your unranked MMR changes rapidly and after those matches it takes a while before the unranked MMR is stabilized (just like if you started a fresh ranked character in HotS now. Except the starting MMR before first match would be your established MMR from the other mode): 1) first opponent was 2 leagues lower in ranked. I left the game, 2) second opponent was 3 leagues lower in ranked. He left the game, 3) third opponent was same league in ranked. He left the game. 4) fourth opponent was 1 league lower in ranked. I left the game. In ranked mode I never got opponents from such wide MMR range (except first 5 placements). I have not played unranked since, but many have written descriptions that could support my earlier hypothesis. That could very well be, but wouldn't it also allow you to leapfrog your Ranked MMR by doing 5 Ranked placements (win all) -> 5 Unranked games (win all) -> Leave League -> 1 Ranked Placement? If the change per game is dramatically different in your first few Unranked games just as it is for Ranked, then this might be possible. Were you sure that the games you played were against Ranked/Unranked/Placement competition (that is, are you confident their league icons represented their MMR)? I know people have been asking for different Unranked MMRs per race/per matchup for a long time, I don't think they've done this but it's even more hidden than Ranked so anything is possible.
I have a feeling that I checked at least the lowest league player and he seemed legit player for that league (had lots of ranked games under his belt). And that was well before the league lock period.
I just checked his last season profile. He had ended with w56-l38 so his MMR had likely risen... But the MMR difference from the lower border of his league at that time was ~1030 MMR points & high border ~680 MMR points (MMR tool scale). That meant roughly from 65 to 43 straight wins against equal MMR level opponents to close that gap. Even if he had ~20 wins more than loses at that point, the MMR gap in ranked mode was likely large.
He had skipped couple of seasons before last season, so his MMR might have been reset. But he had been even lower league before that (affects the case if his mmr had not been reset). But at that point he had played 50 to 100 94 ranked matches, so his MMR was not moving rapidly anymore if there had been MMR reset. Also according to his match history when he played ranked matches, he mostly played against players from his league.
But I would have needed to play much more unranked games to be able to speculate how unranked MMR behaves. And my main motivation at that time was just to test if the unranked detection for the tool worked.
Edit: Perhaps if a field containing info of ranked/unranked mode is found in the future from replay file (current web profile based detection is not 100%) & when current league offsets have been accurately enough solved, I could add unranked profiles to the tool (or a special version without mode detection whose user would be responsible that he only plays unranked with it)--> It would show how unranked MMR behaves... But this will not likely happen in near future...
Edit2: that match was his last match of last season & likely in ranked mode.
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On March 01 2013 17:58 Excalibur_Z wrote:
For example, if I'm Gold in Ranked and I play my first Unranked match, I'll be starting Unranked from Gold.
I don't think this is true.. I'm towards the top of master league and played my first three unranked games yesterday and got matched against silver league players.
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On March 20 2013 02:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 02:28 heishe wrote:
Sorry for bumping the thread, but I just wanted to point out that inheriting your rating from ranked mode to unranked play is probably not true. I'm masters normally but constantly get matched against bronze/silver/gold players in unranked play. This sucks because I want to use unranked play to get better with other races.
edit: Oh, it just hit me. Maybe Blizzard uses different MMRs for different races in unranked mode? Are you playing WoL or HotS? Are you playing Unranked before having an established Ranked MMR?
HotS, and I was already placed in ladder although I only had about 30 games total.
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dont understand unranked at all, the mmr u get there is so bogus, 162 freewins now given and still playing vs masterleague players, i wanna play random and ve no clue about protoss or zerg but mmr is not changing one bit -_-
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I play ranked at a plat level and in unranked i get paired against Diamond and Masters Players even after losing numerous games to them.
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On March 22 2013 22:53 Skidmeyer wrote:
I play ranked at a plat level and in unranked i get paired against Diamond and Masters Players even after losing numerous games to them.
Those diamond/masters ranked players may have been playing unranked. The border displayed on the loading screen is their ranked 1v1 league. The only way to tell if they are playing unranked is to go into their match history after the fact and check to see if they received a point delta for the game.
And as an aside, it looks like match history only reports point deltas for won games, so if they lost a game, you can't tell if it was a loss via a ranked or unranked game.
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United States12248 Posts
On March 22 2013 23:40 Kambing wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2013 22:53 Skidmeyer wrote:
I play ranked at a plat level and in unranked i get paired against Diamond and Masters Players even after losing numerous games to them. Those diamond/masters ranked players may have been playing unranked. The border displayed on the loading screen is their ranked 1v1 league. The only way to tell if they are playing unranked is to go into their match history after the fact and check to see if they received a point delta for the game. And as an aside, it looks like match history only reports point deltas for won games, so if they lost a game, you can't tell if it was a loss via a ranked or unranked game.
As long as they have bonus pool remaining that is (so someone with bonus pool 12 who was going to lose 12 points would have that game listed as "Loss", whereas someone with no bonus pool who was going to lose 12 points would have it listed as "Loss (-12)"). The rest is completely accurate.
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United States7166 Posts
how many bonus pool points must be acquired to drop out of GM now? is it the same as before, meaning half the time it takes to get booted, or was it raised proportionally?
also reading that unranked and ranked can match together kind of blew my mind
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EPT
