• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 07:15
CEST 13:15
KST 20:15
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Siren's Call8[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Summer's End9Serral wins HomeStory Cup 2915Serral wins Maestros of the Game 244ByuL, and the Limitations of Standard Play3
Community News
Stellar Fest TWO the Moon (Dec 16-20)8Weekly Cups (August 24-30): Patches' balance mod takes over2New 3v3 BGH Ladder (and more) on ShieldBattery!40Weekly Cups (August 17-23): Zerg dominate the week6Weekly Cups (August 10-16): SHIN doubles3
StarCraft 2
General
Nexon wins bid to develop StarCraft IP content, distribute Overwatch mobile game SC4ALL II: SC2 Player Announcement 6/8 - Maru Weekly Cups (August 10-16): SHIN doubles Weekly Cups (August 24-30): Patches' balance mod takes over How would you feel about frequent/monthly balance patches for SC2?
Tourneys
2026 GSTL Announcement Stellar Fest TWO the Moon (Dec 16-20) PIG STY FESTIVAL 8.0! (13 - 23 August) Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament IntoTheTV X SOOP SC2 League : Weekly & Monthly
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Nexus Wars 2021 GUIDE [M] (2) Industrial Park
External Content
Mutation # 541 Binary Choice The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 540 Dodge This Mutation # 539 Thunder Dome
Brood War
General
ASL22 General Discussion New 3v3 BGH Ladder (and more) on ShieldBattery! Which box art did your first copy of StarCraft 1 have? [Personal Project Share] Terran Defense v0.60 BW General Discussion
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues BSL LAN Party - Kraków 29-30 August - OPEN SIGNUPS [ASL22] Ro24 Group F Small VOD Thread 2.0
Strategy
Replay Review Process - What do you do? Game Theory for Starcraft Odyssey Mineral Stack Saturation Fighting Spirit mining rates
Other Games
General Games
General RTS Discussion Thread Stratus: Battle for the sky now on steam Early acc Nintendo Switch Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Anyone here play Quakeworld back in the day?
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
[TL LoL EUW IHs] Teemo shall perish TSM pausing esports and CLG Dead
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Power Rank TL Mafia Community Thread NeO.D_StephenKing vs This Guy From 1 Million Dance
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Canadian Politics Mega-thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread
Fan Clubs
MarineLorD Fan Club The Creator Fan Club The ShoWTimE Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread
Sports
Football (Soccer) Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 MLB/Baseball 2023 NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Northern Ireland Global Starcraft
Blogs
Regacy Esports: The Bh…
regacyesports
Violent Games and Crime Rate…
TrAiDoS
LOCKPICKING NOOB
LUCKY_NOOB
Cathedral Of CS And NY pizza a…
FuDDx
Please support my new stand…
Peanutsc
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 3542 users

Ladder Analysis: Activity Metric - Page 2

Forum Index > SC2 General
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 3 Next All
deama
Profile Joined June 2013
Germany4 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-11-20 01:34:09
November 20 2013 01:33 GMT
#21
because reality makes people feel even more insignificant

thanks for the data though!
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. Tyler Durden
Slydie
Profile Joined August 2013
2002 Posts
December 07 2013 00:21 GMT
#22
Leagues motivate me, being no. 65376 rather than 83244 on the EU ladder do not.

The competition within the league is a little stupid, but ppl only care about promotions anyway.
Buff the siegetank
Kakaru2
Profile Joined March 2011
198 Posts
January 07 2014 20:03 GMT
#23
Now, after their situation report, I think we can safely say that their active threshold is 2 weeks time.

Do you have any new data from sc2ranks with the situation of players with bonus pool <= 2 weeks time from the last season lock?
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
January 07 2014 20:22 GMT
#24
Unfortunately I can't get any more SC2Ranks data parses which contain bonus pool information, and Nios can't give me any either.
Moderator
Koshi
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
Belgium38799 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-01-07 21:40:49
January 07 2014 21:40 GMT
#25
damn wrong thread and I have nothing interesting to say.
I had a good night of sleep.
frajen86
Profile Joined February 2014
168 Posts
April 07 2014 22:25 GMT
#26
Thank you for this post!!! Have you thought about linking it to the more popular one: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/195273-comprehensive-sc2-league-and-ladder-guide

I haven't seen anything else online that actually shows a league distribution sorted by bonus pool remaining, and it is very helpful in showing that the ladder distribution is not as incorrect as it would seem on SC2Ranks or nios.

Also, I wonder about this - would there be anyway to somehow calculate the "league distribution" of non-laddering players who are active in playing unranked?
frajen86
Profile Joined February 2014
168 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-15 08:29:29
June 15 2014 08:16 GMT
#27
I grabbed all the remaining bonus pool values for 102,158 players (using the NA player list from nios.kr - http://nios.kr/sc2/us/1v1/hots/).

The program to do this was written in .NET, source code here: http://19hz.info/Starcraft/SC2RanksParser/SC2RanksParser/SC2RanksParser.vb

Using the method of bonus pool weeks remaining, these are the results:

[image loading]

[image loading]


The smaller the "Weeks Remaining," the more "active" a player can be considered.

There are about 10,000 "super-active" players - people that are probably playing 7+ games a week. (estimating this based on your bonus pool changing by about 20 every time you win or lose).

There might be about 25,000 "semi-active" players - people that play 3-4 games a week.

A huge part of the "playerbase" (say, half) have probably played less than 15 games total.

Overall, one could argue that for "active" players, Bronze and Silver leagues are actually undersized, and that Gold to Diamond leagues are oversized. Diamond league especially seems inflated.

Raw data is here: http://19hz.info/Starcraft/US Battle Net Bonus Pool.xlsm

Thanks Excalibur_Z for the background info. Please let me know if you see any issues with the data/analysis.
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
June 15 2014 16:55 GMT
#28
This is great stuff, thanks a lot for doing the scraping. You've crossposted to Reddit as well I trust?

I think they might have changed the activity metric. No parses had been made since they started to adjust the boundaries based on decayed players around the beginning of 2014. If you compare your chart to mine from last year -- and both use the same method -- the lines now seem to be kind of all over the place.

The last piece of the puzzle would appear to be the amount of real time elapsed in between games played. There are many ways to spend, say, 100 bonus pool: 1) play 8 games in a day, 2) play 1 game per day everyday for 8 days, 3) play 4 games today and 4 games a month from today, and so on. And the same is true for letting 100 bonus pool accumulate, where you take some time off but it doesn't have to be all at once. What if decayed players are flagged in some way? I don't really see how we would get this information for every single game, but we could at least get it from the most recent game, though that might not tell us everything.

Here's how I'm thinking they might categorize decayed players now and factor them in:
1) If you played 0 games in any 2-week period within a season, you are flagged as "decayed" and removed from the raw counts for the rest of the season.
2) If you are currently "decayed" or were previously "decayed" but you play a game, is your "decayed" flag removed for that season?

The reason I say we may not be able to get this data is it would require full histories of every player for a season. It's easy enough to see "last game played: a month ago". It's entirely different to find "the gap between the 5th and 6th game played this season: 3 weeks".

It's also possible that I'm wrong and they didn't change the metric, but instead they're making manual changes. In any event this is a fascinating and much-needed update to the topic.
Moderator
Kakaru2
Profile Joined March 2011
198 Posts
June 15 2014 17:16 GMT
#29
Wow, impressive work.
I don't think Blizzard is analyzing inside the period, doesn't seem to be worth the effort for 10,000 players. It's much more credible that they do manual adjustments in order to compensate the decay.
frajen86
Profile Joined February 2014
168 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-16 11:23:40
June 16 2014 11:22 GMT
#30
On June 16 2014 01:55 Excalibur_Z wrote:
This is great stuff, thanks a lot for doing the scraping. You've crossposted to Reddit as well I trust?

I think they might have changed the activity metric. No parses had been made since they started to adjust the boundaries based on decayed players around the beginning of 2014. If you compare your chart to mine from last year -- and both use the same method -- the lines now seem to be kind of all over the place.

The last piece of the puzzle would appear to be the amount of real time elapsed in between games played. There are many ways to spend, say, 100 bonus pool: 1) play 8 games in a day, 2) play 1 game per day everyday for 8 days, 3) play 4 games today and 4 games a month from today, and so on. And the same is true for letting 100 bonus pool accumulate, where you take some time off but it doesn't have to be all at once. What if decayed players are flagged in some way? I don't really see how we would get this information for every single game, but we could at least get it from the most recent game, though that might not tell us everything.

Here's how I'm thinking they might categorize decayed players now and factor them in:
1) If you played 0 games in any 2-week period within a season, you are flagged as "decayed" and removed from the raw counts for the rest of the season.
2) If you are currently "decayed" or were previously "decayed" but you play a game, is your "decayed" flag removed for that season?

The reason I say we may not be able to get this data is it would require full histories of every player for a season. It's easy enough to see "last game played: a month ago". It's entirely different to find "the gap between the 5th and 6th game played this season: 3 weeks".

It's also possible that I'm wrong and they didn't change the metric, but instead they're making manual changes. In any event this is a fascinating and much-needed update to the topic.


Yes I did post it on reddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/286ugt/na_battlenet_player_activity_analysis_based_on/

I've also thought about tracking "last game(s) played" as well but to do so in the script would at least double the time required to run the program, which already takes 8-9 hours for 100,000 players, and I would have run this program constantly (every single day) to make sure I grab every single player's match history. I suppose we could run this for a smaller set of players but that's getting into statistics I'm not too familiar with anymore

That being said I'm doing a similar run for the European servers, and I'll be doing Korea next.

Thanks for your guidance!
Faust852
Profile Joined February 2012
Luxembourg4004 Posts
June 16 2014 11:51 GMT
#31
It's only for NA right ? So there is at least 30k active players only on NA, that's a good number I think ! Especially since it counts only 1v1 games. Doesn't count customs, multi and arcades, which represent the major part of sc2 players.
#sc2nowaydead
Textual
Profile Joined June 2014
Saudi Arabia57 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-16 12:23:28
June 16 2014 12:17 GMT
#32
Not sure I understand all the fine details, but a very interesting read nonetheless! And I certainly get the drift of it. Thanks for all the hard work! Talk of the ladder is usually uninteresting (for the same reason talk about balance is uninteresting), but a technical analysis with actual information sheds a lot of light.
I always wondered how Blizzard handled the problem of league distribution, since distribution of players varies a lot depending on definition of "players". Drilling into the meaning of "activity" helps reveal how Blizzard solves this puzzle.
Thanks!
frajen86
Profile Joined February 2014
168 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-17 12:47:26
June 17 2014 12:47 GMT
#33
On June 16 2014 20:51 Faust852 wrote:
It's only for NA right ? So there is at least 30k active players only on NA, that's a good number I think ! Especially since it counts only 1v1 games. Doesn't count customs, multi and arcades, which represent the major part of sc2 players.
#sc2nowaydead

Yes, this is just for NA 1v1 ladder.

I'm running the same analysis for EU right now - but this time it's taking over 24 hours. Eventually the data will be there though. It's running off my desktop so I can leave it on indefinitely.

I plan on doing the same thing with the KR server as well.

Someone on Reddit suggested I do this every week to keep up with activity statistics, so I might end up doing that too
Faust852
Profile Joined February 2012
Luxembourg4004 Posts
June 17 2014 12:53 GMT
#34
On June 17 2014 21:47 frajen86 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On June 16 2014 20:51 Faust852 wrote:
It's only for NA right ? So there is at least 30k active players only on NA, that's a good number I think ! Especially since it counts only 1v1 games. Doesn't count customs, multi and arcades, which represent the major part of sc2 players.
#sc2nowaydead

Yes, this is just for NA 1v1 ladder.

I'm running the same analysis for EU right now - but this time it's taking over 24 hours. Eventually the data will be there though. It's running off my desktop so I can leave it on indefinitely.

I plan on doing the same thing with the KR server as well.

Someone on Reddit suggested I do this every week to keep up with activity statistics, so I might end up doing that too

Would be awesome if you could do that !
frajen86
Profile Joined February 2014
168 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-17 14:08:50
June 17 2014 14:07 GMT
#35
One thing about team ladder I've noticed is that I can't always tell how much bonus pool someone has in a team setting because some people are on two teams that end up in the same division, and I think Battle.net only shows bonus pool for the lower ranked team in that case.

So I think I'm just going to give up on the detailed team ladder stats for now

The best I could do is go through the team list and get summary stats on when the last game the team played was, and how many total wins/losses they have.
frajen86
Profile Joined February 2014
168 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-18 02:12:57
June 18 2014 02:08 GMT
#36
EU analysis done. Raw data is here: http://19hz.info/Starcraft/EU Battle Net Bonus Pool.xlsm

Analysis:

[image loading]

[image loading]

There are about 12,000 "super-active" players - people that are probably playing 7+ games a week. (estimating this based on your bonus pool changing by about 20 every time you win or lose).

There might be about 30,000 "semi-active" players - people that play 3+ games a week.

About half the total player count has played less than 15 games total.

For "active" players, Bronze and Silver leagues are actually undersized, Gold and Platinum leagues are relatively close to their target sizes, and Diamond and Master leagues are inflated.

KR server analysis should be done tomorrow.

Reddit crosspost: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/28faj7/eu_battlenet_player_activity_analysis_1v1_ladder/
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12252 Posts
June 18 2014 03:19 GMT
#37
haha. I remember you told one of the guys you would change your topic name to "ladder activity" rather than player activity, but I guess you forgot to do that. Oh well!

EU appears to be basically the same, which is good, because it means the data collection and analysis aren't flawed.
Moderator
frajen86
Profile Joined February 2014
168 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-18 03:24:28
June 18 2014 03:24 GMT
#38
On June 18 2014 12:19 Excalibur_Z wrote:
haha. I remember you told one of the guys you would change your topic name to "ladder activity" rather than player activity, but I guess you forgot to do that. Oh well!

EU appears to be basically the same, which is good, because it means the data collection and analysis aren't flawed.

It's in there, it says 1v1 Ladder now!

And yes it looks the same. Diamond league seems big.
Archiatrus
Profile Joined June 2014
Germany64 Posts
June 18 2014 06:39 GMT
#39
Is it possible to extract the race distribution per league as well? I always wondered if there is a difference between the "super-active" and the "I-play-one-game-per-season" player in terms of races actively played (and secretly hoped it is nearer the 1/3-1/3-1/3 distribution).
korona
Profile Joined October 2009
1098 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-06-18 09:26:58
June 18 2014 09:14 GMT
#40
On June 15 2014 17:16 frajen86 wrote:
I grabbed all the remaining bonus pool values for 102,158 players (using the NA player list from nios.kr - http://nios.kr/sc2/us/1v1/hots/).
On June 15 2014 17:16 frajen86 wrote:
Raw data is here: http://19hz.info/Starcraft/US Battle Net Bonus Pool.xlsm
On June 18 2014 11:08 frajen86 wrote:
EU analysis done. Raw data is here: http://19hz.info/Starcraft/EU Battle Net Bonus Pool.xlsm

Interesting data. It also highlights the problem with the current 'harsh' MMR decay. As so considerable portion of players are inactive most of the time, the decay causes general MMR level to go down.

If you are going to run the data collection (semi-) regularly, I would suggest to collect some more individual data, so it would be possible follow up the number of players who have longer than 2 weeks breaks during the 1v1 season (or who have several such breaks) (decay starts after 2 weeks and reaches its max value after 4 weeks). This would give better estimate how many players face direct MMR decay during the season (Of course those numbers would be only pointers as the unranked 1v1 games reset the decay counter too and they cannot be followed).

But what extra data would be needed: 1) Timestamp for each player data (fetch time) e.g. to be able to calculate max bonus pool (and potentially calculated max pool value based on it), 2) recording player-id:s (IDs cannot change like nick, for example id for http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/123456/1/example/ would be 1-123456 or long ID would be 2-S2-1-123456, where first number is the server 1 US, 2 EU, 3 KR, 5 CN, 6 SEA, 'S2' is static for all. Of course the URL itself contains that info too), 3) league, 4) division name (or id, but division name is ok as names are unique), win and loss counts and ladder points. By comparing the earlier data one can see if the player has played ranked 1v1 games during the period.


Bonus pool accumulation starting times for this season S18:
+ Show Spoiler +
## US, EU, KR, SEA, CN
Sun 13 Apr 2014 07:00:08 GMT
Sat 12 Apr 2014 23:00:08 GMT
Sat 12 Apr 2014 15:00:08 GMT
Sat 12 Apr 2014 16:00:08 GMT
Sat 12 Apr 2014 16:00:08 GMT

or as long in milliseconds (Unix epoch time):
1397372408000
1397343608000
1397314808000
1397318408000
1397318408000



Edit 1: You have some problem regarding EU master players who have 9 weeks worth of bonus pool (should be 230 instead of 11).
Prev 1 2 3 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Kung Fu Cup
11:00
2026 Week 21
IntoTheiNu 480
Rex38
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
ProTech132
Lowko121
Rex 38
EnDerr 28
StarCraft: Brood War
Bisu 1358
Shuttle 1153
Hyuk 993
Horang2 751
Jaedong 497
Stork 172
Zeus 157
Rush 140
EffOrt 134
ZerO 125
[ Show more ]
Shinee 105
Pusan 103
Noble 81
Dewaltoss 74
Sexy 59
Yoon 51
Snow 49
ToSsGirL 36
910 35
soO 26
Light 26
sSak 21
NaDa 17
sorry 14
SilentControl 13
ajuk12(nOOB) 12
Sacsri 10
firebathero 1
Barracks 0
Dota 2
Dendi161
League of Legends
JimRising 399
Counter-Strike
olofmeister807
zeus561
Other Games
singsing1318
DeMusliM217
B2W.Neo169
Pyrionflax149
Livibee140
KnowMe29
Liquid`LucifroN17
[ Show 14 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Berry_CruncH370
• StrangeGG 54
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• iopq 17
• Light_VIP 5
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Jankos1668
Other Games
• WagamamaTV102
Upcoming Events
RotterdaM Event
5h
Replay Cast
12h 45m
The PondCast
22h 45m
IntoTheTV X SOOP
1d 23h
CranKy Ducklings
2 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
3 days
OSC
4 days
Shopify Rebellion Sundays
4 days
Mixu vs TBD
Spirit vs TBD
Clem vs TBD
Afreeca Starleague
4 days
Soma vs Shuttle
BeSt vs Rush
WardiTV Weekly
4 days
[ Show More ]
Afreeca Starleague
5 days
Leta vs ggaemo
Jaedong vs Queen
GSL
5 days
PiGosaur Cup
6 days
Kung Fu Cup
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

KCM Special KOR vs CHN
PiG Sty Festival 8.0
Light Tournament 2026

Ongoing

KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3
K-JUNGMAN
ASL Season 22
Super Anchor Qualifying S3
CSL 2026 AUTUMN (S22)
RSL Revival: Season 6
Calamity Invitational
Big Dog Cup 2026 Div 1
BLAST Open Fall 2026
Esports World Cup 2026
Esports World Cup 2026: LCQ
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026

Upcoming

Acropolis #5
Acropolis #5 - TRS
Escore Tournament S3: King of Kings
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
Acropolis #5 - GSA
Acropolis #5 - GSB
Acropolis #5 - GSC
HSC XXX
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Offline Finals
BLAST Rivals Fall 2026
IEM Beijing 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 5
PGL Masters Bucharest 2026
1win Private Club #2
Thunderpick World Champ. '26
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
1win Private Club #1
Logitech G Play Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
FISSURE Playground #3
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.