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On March 15 2013 01:21 ALPINA wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 01:01 Plansix wrote:On March 15 2013 00:56 Inori wrote:On March 15 2013 00:51 Plansix wrote:On March 15 2013 00:30 Inori wrote:On March 15 2013 00:24 andrewlt wrote:On March 14 2013 23:39 Swift118 wrote:On March 14 2013 23:13 Plansix wrote:On March 14 2013 22:30 ALPINA wrote:On March 14 2013 21:30 Inori wrote:
When you achieve B+/A- you know you're getting close to mastering the game.
In SC2 when you reach MASTERs league you quickly realize you don't know shit.
I'd rather know that I'm only 1/3 way there than that I'm in top2% of the playerbase.
First gives me a realistic point of view, second gives an illusion of success.
But to each his own I guess, if you feel proud about getting into gold - hey, don't let a random guy on the internets stop you! Well Master players are not good by any means, that's not even the highest league  Now talking about GM, it does not show real skill whatsoever. all it shows that player is quite decent at this game. Some player like MKP can be on Top40 while another relatively unknown player will be in top 20 or something. But that's the problem not with ranking system, but more with game itself. There are so much cheesy/allinish/abusable builds and strategies that mediocre player can defeat much better one. This is sort of a messed up sentiment and it implies that no one is good at SC2, except maybe GSL level players. No one is talking about the professional level of SC2 and saying that GM players are not good at SC2 is just silly(weird cases like the guy who six pooled to GM might be the exception). I have friends who are really good at golf, but no one follows that statement up with “Are they as good at Tiger Wood?”. We need to reign in our standards here on TL. Being “good” at something does not mean you need to be able to compete with professional players. When I say that I am “pretty good” at SC2, it is in relation to my peers, not the entire world as a whole. No one ever uses the phrase “I am good at BLANK” when comparing themselves to the entire world. It's hard to rationalise with people in gaming communities becuase there is a significant percentage of young players and immature players. If one compares everyone to the pros then of course the vast majority of the playerbase are bad, without a dought. But if one is paying on ladder at a reasonable level and living a productive life outside of gaming I would find it hard to say they are bad. Have to agree with these statements. These young players often protest that videogames nowadays aren't just for kids anymore. But they seem to want to lump everyone with a real, professional job into the same league, out of sight and out of mind. Yes, because everyone with a competitive mindset is obviously a kid with too much free time. That is no what he is saying and you know it. He is talking about members of the community who call masters players passable and anyone below that “bad”. It has nothing to do with being competitive in any way. It has to do with context . An amateur player who can only find enough time to get to platinum league is not “bad” at SC2 when compared to other people with same level of practice and time. If you compare him/her to a professional who players 8 hours a day against the best players in the world, everyone is “bad”. And he is saying do that is stupid, beause it is. When someone in GM starts talking down to players in gold and platinum, it is like a division one college basket ball player talking down to a bunch of guys playing a pick up game. It is silly and inmature. It is all about context. If you have time to play 3-5 games per day, you have time to be in masters. I do not have time to play 3-5 good games a day, as I detailed previously. Some people are that busy and have other parts of their life going on. Some players have kids, believe it or not. Acting like anyone can just “get to masters” and belittling people for not being “competitive” enough only make you look like a jerk. What you being busy have to do with anything here? If you have kids/job/uni/whatever, then it's okay to be bad at this game. Just because you are better than my grandmother does not mean that you are good. Being in platinum means you are really bad, and if you don't agree than we just use different measurement scales. After being in SC scene for quite a long time it does not sound good for me to compare all players to silver ;p
That is the point though. People in platinum league know they are “bad”, just like a weekend golfer knows he is “bad” in the larger scale of the world. But when the golfer goes to hang out with his buddies at the golf club, people don’t point that out. Its no like he takes a shot and someone says “You know that was terrible compared to people on the PGA tour”. The players know they are bad at their hobby. That’s why it’s a hobby.
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as someone who has been stuck in bronze since launch (then again, I frequently take several month long breaks from the game... have had the game since launch, have only played 450 career games), this is a great change. And to those who say that it's just "for the sake of making players feel better", you're wrong. As a bronze player, I can tell you that is it massively frustrating to play against a player one game who doesn't even expand, and then next game to play against someone who executes an excellent 1rax FE, and stomps your face. What do those two very different players have in common? They are both in bronze, and they shouldn't be.
I'm far from great at Starcraft 2. In fact, I'm pretty bad at it. But I expand around the 6-9 minute mark (depending on scouting), I get upgrades, and I am pretty good and pumping SCVs for a majority of the game. I get supply blocked, I float too many minerals, and I usually forget to get gas at my expos, but I still beat a number of silver and gold players when I face off against them.
The problem is that the MMR system is... well... flawed. I made a post in the Simple QA where I asked about the MMR matchmaking right now. As a rank 50 bronze, I got matched against someone who, in this season, is currently in Masters. Facing off against silver and the occasional gold I can handle. Matching off against Plat, Diamond, and Masters is absurd, and I can tell you that it is very, very discouraging.
One last thing: this notion about being "good" at Starcraft. I know that Starcraft is a pretty serious eSport, and I watch plenty of pro replays. But for a lot of people (like me), when I play, it's just a game. No different than Dishonored, Far Cry 3, or Call of Duty. I don't look down on people who treat the game more seriously than I do! But at the same time, I don't feel bad that I'm not a platinum player, just like I don't feel bad for not playing Skyrim on that new insanely hard difficulty they just patched in. Games should be what you make of them. If you want to be a GM player, I applaud your ambition, and wish you luck. If you are like me, and want nothing more than to reach Gold, that's great too. But players need to stop ripping on each other for what rank they hold. In one of my unranked games against a Silver player, I saw that his highest career rank was Silver, and he had played 1800 career games. I don't think less of him for not being a higher rank. I think he probably has as much fun as he wants in the game, without worrying about being "pro" at it.
Then again, I am a bronze player, so chances are a lot of people will refuse to take this post seriously
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the amount of elitism in this thread lol, if your anything but top 2% your terrible LOL.. only on teamliquid.
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On March 15 2013 01:10 Inori wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 01:01 Plansix wrote:On March 15 2013 00:56 Inori wrote:On March 15 2013 00:51 Plansix wrote:On March 15 2013 00:30 Inori wrote:On March 15 2013 00:24 andrewlt wrote:On March 14 2013 23:39 Swift118 wrote:On March 14 2013 23:13 Plansix wrote:On March 14 2013 22:30 ALPINA wrote:On March 14 2013 21:30 Inori wrote:
When you achieve B+/A- you know you're getting close to mastering the game.
In SC2 when you reach MASTERs league you quickly realize you don't know shit.
I'd rather know that I'm only 1/3 way there than that I'm in top2% of the playerbase.
First gives me a realistic point of view, second gives an illusion of success.
But to each his own I guess, if you feel proud about getting into gold - hey, don't let a random guy on the internets stop you! Well Master players are not good by any means, that's not even the highest league Now talking about GM, it does not show real skill whatsoever. all it shows that player is quite decent at this game. Some player like MKP can be on Top40 while another relatively unknown player will be in top 20 or something. But that's the problem not with ranking system, but more with game itself. There are so much cheesy/allinish/abusable builds and strategies that mediocre player can defeat much better one. This is sort of a messed up sentiment and it implies that no one is good at SC2, except maybe GSL level players. No one is talking about the professional level of SC2 and saying that GM players are not good at SC2 is just silly(weird cases like the guy who six pooled to GM might be the exception). I have friends who are really good at golf, but no one follows that statement up with “Are they as good at Tiger Wood?”. We need to reign in our standards here on TL. Being “good” at something does not mean you need to be able to compete with professional players. When I say that I am “pretty good” at SC2, it is in relation to my peers, not the entire world as a whole. No one ever uses the phrase “I am good at BLANK” when comparing themselves to the entire world. It's hard to rationalise with people in gaming communities becuase there is a significant percentage of young players and immature players. If one compares everyone to the pros then of course the vast majority of the playerbase are bad, without a dought. But if one is paying on ladder at a reasonable level and living a productive life outside of gaming I would find it hard to say they are bad. Have to agree with these statements. These young players often protest that videogames nowadays aren't just for kids anymore. But they seem to want to lump everyone with a real, professional job into the same league, out of sight and out of mind. Yes, because everyone with a competitive mindset is obviously a kid with too much free time. That is no what he is saying and you know it. He is talking about members of the community who call masters players passable and anyone below that “bad”. It has nothing to do with being competitive in any way. It has to do with context . An amateur player who can only find enough time to get to platinum league is not “bad” at SC2 when compared to other people with same level of practice and time. If you compare him/her to a professional who players 8 hours a day against the best players in the world, everyone is “bad”. And he is saying do that is stupid, beause it is. When someone in GM starts talking down to players in gold and platinum, it is like a division one college basket ball player talking down to a bunch of guys playing a pick up game. It is silly and inmature. It is all about context. If you have time to play 3-5 games per day, you have time to be in masters. I do not have time to play 3-5 good games a day, as I detailed previously. Some people are that busy and have other parts of their life going on. Some players have kids, believe it or not. Acting like anyone can just “get to masters” and belittling people for not being “competitive” enough only make you look like a jerk. I don't believe you. I had time for 3-5 games (that's less than 1 hour btw), while working 2 (two) jobs, spending time with family, self-studying on coursera, working out 2-3 times a week, reading books and blah blah blah. Believe it or not you're not the only one with a busy life. Crying that you're not skilled enough because you don't have time for something just makes you seem like whiny tool who can't manage his time.
You can play 5 games of SC2 in under an hour, you must be magic. Or your lying to make your point. And as the guy posted previously, you just look like a jerk for posting this stuff and telling people they are whiny bitches for not committing to SC2.
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On March 15 2013 02:54 monkybone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 01:19 Evangelist wrote:
Someone might have a near perfect theoretical understanding of the game, but not necessarily be very good at playing it. This is one of the biggest myths out there. Funny how it's still prevalent.
indeed, if you had near perfect understanding of everything you can get to masters with less then 100apm and minimal hotkey usage.
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I think this will help people to get more motivated to play, since it is easier to get out of Bronze league, however it will also give some people left in Bronze a really bad feeling, because now it is less people that are in Bronze..
However, I think this change is more positive than negative 
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On March 15 2013 01:20 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 00:11 AmericanUmlaut wrote:On March 14 2013 23:42 HeeroFX wrote:I really think the majority of people who play this game will fall into silver and gold, because lets face it if you were stuck in bronze you would quit playing too because bronze is not how the game is meant to be played. This line of reason always makes me laugh. If everyone who's stuck in bronze quit, then there would be a massive shift downward in ladder rankings every season due to the vacuum at the bottom. That hasn't happened, so it's obviously not the case that bronze-leaguers are leaving the game en masse. And even if that process went on indefinitely, you still wouldn't have the majority of players in silver and gold, because the ladder is set up to have a fixed percentage of players in each league. Eventually you'd just have six people, one in each league, then the worst of them would get fed up with being "stuck in bronze", quit the game, and the ladder would break. I don't think this is true. First of all, there are no fixed percentages. The league boundaries are set manually. There is no automatic adjustment. Then there is the question about what happens if everyone in bronze quits. The answer is: nothing. Bronze would be empty. MMR measures relative skill. A specific winning percentage between two players translates to a specific MMR difference. There will be no "stretching" of the MMR scale to fill out the empty space.
I think there will be:
Let everyone on Battle.net stand in a long line (please shower before participating in this Gedankenexperiment), starting with the worker rushers and with Curious, RorO and Life in front. Your MMR roughly reflects your position in the line. It stabilizes when you're at a postion where, getting matched against people within some range, you have a 50/50 win rate.
Now fill a high-speed t-shirt cannon with frozen capybaras and mow down the worst 20% of players. The lucky fellow who managed to be just good enough to be the first survivor goes online and searches for a game. Before, about half his opponents would have been worse than him, half better, but now the matchmaking algorithm can't find anyone worse than him, so he's going to start losing more than half his games. His MMR falls and falls. The guy in front of him has the same problem, except sometimes he gets matched up against the only surviving person on Earth who is worse than him. He wins more than 50% of those games, but since the poor bastard's MMR is falling, he won't get enough of a boost from those wins to balance out his losing average against the rest of the playing population.
And so on and so on until a new generation of players are in the crosshairs.
I do know that Blizzard sets the MMR boundaries manually, but regardless of that, I'm also pretty sure you'd get MMR drift if you removed everyone in Bronze from the playing population. Also, Blizzard has demonstrated that they will update the MMR boundaries as necessary to keep the league populations approximately consistent with the percentages they've defined for them.
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The elitism in some of the comments here is hilarious.
A Gold player is by definition an average player. A Platinum player is better than 2/3 of his peers. He isn't rocking the world, but he's decent at the game. A Diamond player is better than 80 percent of all players. He is good. Just like a girl who is better looking than 80 percent of all girls is definitely good looking even if she will never be America's next top model.
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On March 15 2013 05:33 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
Before, about half his opponents would have been worse than him, half better, but now the matchmaking algorithm can't find anyone worse than him, so he's going to start losing more than half his games. His MMR falls and falls
No, the system is smarter than that. If you only have two players on the ladder, and one player wins 90% of the games, both players will stabilise, and the MMR difference will be directly related to that 90% winning chance.
I'm also pretty sure you'd get MMR drift if you removed everyone in Bronze from the playing population.
I think not. This question has come up before, and Excalibur_Z actually asked some dev about it. In that example I think it was "every gold player quits" or something, and the answer is that gold will stay empty, because MMR difference translates directly to winning chance, and that prevents any stretching or contracting of the MMR scale. There is of course the question of where the complete MMR scale is "anchored". My theory is that it's anchored at the top, and in that case removing all bronze players will have no effect.
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On March 15 2013 05:39 monkybone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 04:54 EleanorRIgby wrote:On March 15 2013 02:54 monkybone wrote:On March 15 2013 01:19 Evangelist wrote:
Someone might have a near perfect theoretical understanding of the game, but not necessarily be very good at playing it. This is one of the biggest myths out there. Funny how it's still prevalent. indeed, if you had near perfect understanding of everything you can get to masters with less then 100apm and minimal hotkey usage. it's just that people overestimates their own understanding of the game.
I do think it's possible to have a better theoretical understanding than an ability to play. Theory is about having the time and objectivity to watch things play out. It's like chess in a sense. But having the ability to play it out requires a much more diverse and active skill set. Your understanding is far from perfect though. Plus, in a theory understanding, especially when spectating, you have a better view of the field, which makes it easier to know what each player should be doing. So in a sense, you can be better in theory than in practice, but you're right, if your theory was perfect, you may not be in grandmaster, but you'd be in at least Diamond.
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On March 15 2013 06:27 Salient wrote:
A Gold player is by definition an average player. A Platinum player is better than 2/3 of his peers. He isn't rocking the world, but he's decent at the game.
"Average" is by definition a comparison, but good, bad or decent aren't. For example, when Starcraft 1 came out, nobody was immediately good at it. Even the guy who was better than 6 billion people on earth wasn't "good". You can easily define Starcraft still by non-relative measures, and if you do that, you can call people bad even when they're among the best 20% of players or whatever. All just a question of what scale you use.
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page five of this thread: wow, great change! so it works like a bell curve now?
page nine of this thread: IF YOUR NOT GRANDMASTER. YOUR BAD AND SHOULD FEEL BAD.
seriously guys?
on topic though, i think its a great change by blizzard.
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United States12240 Posts
On March 15 2013 05:33 AmericanUmlaut wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 01:20 Mendelfist wrote:On March 15 2013 00:11 AmericanUmlaut wrote:On March 14 2013 23:42 HeeroFX wrote:I really think the majority of people who play this game will fall into silver and gold, because lets face it if you were stuck in bronze you would quit playing too because bronze is not how the game is meant to be played. This line of reason always makes me laugh. If everyone who's stuck in bronze quit, then there would be a massive shift downward in ladder rankings every season due to the vacuum at the bottom. That hasn't happened, so it's obviously not the case that bronze-leaguers are leaving the game en masse. And even if that process went on indefinitely, you still wouldn't have the majority of players in silver and gold, because the ladder is set up to have a fixed percentage of players in each league. Eventually you'd just have six people, one in each league, then the worst of them would get fed up with being "stuck in bronze", quit the game, and the ladder would break. I don't think this is true. First of all, there are no fixed percentages. The league boundaries are set manually. There is no automatic adjustment. Then there is the question about what happens if everyone in bronze quits. The answer is: nothing. Bronze would be empty. MMR measures relative skill. A specific winning percentage between two players translates to a specific MMR difference. There will be no "stretching" of the MMR scale to fill out the empty space. I think there will be: Let everyone on Battle.net stand in a long line (please shower before participating in this Gedankenexperiment), starting with the worker rushers and with Curious, RorO and Life in front. Your MMR roughly reflects your position in the line. It stabilizes when you're at a postion where, getting matched against people within some range, you have a 50/50 win rate. Now fill a high-speed t-shirt cannon with frozen capybaras and mow down the worst 20% of players. The lucky fellow who managed to be just good enough to be the first survivor goes online and searches for a game. Before, about half his opponents would have been worse than him, half better, but now the matchmaking algorithm can't find anyone worse than him, so he's going to start losing more than half his games. His MMR falls and falls. The guy in front of him has the same problem, except sometimes he gets matched up against the only surviving person on Earth who is worse than him. He wins more than 50% of those games, but since the poor bastard's MMR is falling, he won't get enough of a boost from those wins to balance out his losing average against the rest of the playing population. And so on and so on until a new generation of players are in the crosshairs. I do know that Blizzard sets the MMR boundaries manually, but regardless of that, I'm also pretty sure you'd get MMR drift if you removed everyone in Bronze from the playing population. Also, Blizzard has demonstrated that they will update the MMR boundaries as necessary to keep the league populations approximately consistent with the percentages they've defined for them.
It's a little difficult to tell but let's delve into the theory. Mendelfist is right (and Josh the former ladder designer pointed this out as well) that if you were to lop off the bottom 20%, the relative positions between players won't change, and this is what the Elo format measures. Blizzard would necessarily step in and redefine the boundaries if this happened, of course. However, what makes a Silver player Silver? It's because most of the time, he beats Bronzes and loses to Golds.
Let's say everyone starts at the same Elo rating of 1500. If you had two players who always go 60-40/40-60 against each other and they were the only people on the ladder, the gap between them would be fixed and they wouldn't keep drifting apart. The ratings would fluctuate a little bit after each game but the gap would gravitate toward a fixed number that defines their skill differential, let's say 100 points. Therefore, as long as Player B is beating Player A 60% of the time, he'll be 100 rating ahead such that B would be 1550 and A would be 1450 or something like that. If you were to add a third player who is better than both of the others, and he's beating Player B 60% of the time, then Player C will be 100 rating ahead of Player B. This would cost Player B some rating because when C started, he would be 1500, but by extension it would also cost Player A some rating as well because the gap between A and B will be maintained as long as they keep playing each other. The ladder would then look like C 1600, B 1500, A 1400, right? Then if A dropped out, B and C would maintain that 100-rating separation.
In the actual ladder, many more players are playing which would perhaps have multiple side effects. If players on the low end of the spectrum tend to play only a few games and then quit, then they would only serve to feed higher players and inflate ratings. We know that higher level players are more active on average than low level players. As a player's rating decreases, the matchmaker finds matches lower and lower in the spectrum. A player who starts at 1500 and is actually 500 but quits at 1000 feeds the 500 rating he lost to those 1000-1500-rated players without propping up the 500-1000-rated players.
Running out of time to discuss this but I hope this sparks some further discussion =)
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On March 15 2013 04:54 EleanorRIgby wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2013 02:54 monkybone wrote:On March 15 2013 01:19 Evangelist wrote:
Someone might have a near perfect theoretical understanding of the game, but not necessarily be very good at playing it. This is one of the biggest myths out there. Funny how it's still prevalent. indeed, if you had near perfect understanding of everything you can get to masters with less then 100apm and minimal hotkey usage.
Are you saying that there can't be a person with excellent understanding of the game and awful reaction time?
Edit: I suppose someone could argue that it's impossible to gain such an understanding of the game without actually playing at that level. I think this is a hard argument to make, because watching a game presents a person with all the same (in fact often more!) information than the players see. Of course, such a person would have to be a great talent who's held back in some fundamental mechanical way.
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EPT
