EPTLadder Deflation and MMR Decay - Page 11
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Skyblueone
Belgium155 Posts
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Aquila-
516 Posts
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grs
Germany2339 Posts
On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. a) Because not everyone plays regularly and you start over and over again against weaker people. b) MMR balance is completly ruined - at least in lower leagues. | ||
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DusTerr
2520 Posts
On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. Some people don't also realize that with the restructure they no longer belong in the league they think they do.. (also because the combination of mmr decay, restructured league boundaries AND the change in when/how demotions/promotions occur has created a flux that hasn't ironed itself out yet) | ||
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vaderseven
United States2556 Posts
On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. Not true. Old system a player could play hard core for a week then not play for three weeks repeating forever. As long as he was of the right skill he would remain at his MMR and league with no issues. New system that same player will lose a league or so every month or two. During each week that he gets to play he will regain maybe 50-110% of his MMR from the previous session. That means he will on average be losing MMR and all of his games will be devoted to regaining the lost MMR to decay and only sometimes will he start facing players better than he is. This compounds when you realize that players that you are facing will be having this happen to them at times so you might face someone with a deflated MMR, lose to them, and lose MMR in a much harsher way than your skill vs his would suggest is ideal. | ||
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SPoF
Luxembourg19 Posts
On November 12 2013 06:39 grs wrote: a) Because not everyone plays regularly and you start over and over again against weaker people. b) MMR balance is completly ruined - at least in lower leagues. This! I wouldn't mind being in silver if I weren't crushed by other people who apparently are also silver guys, yet play on a whole different level. | ||
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mau5mat
Northern Ireland461 Posts
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grs
Germany2339 Posts
On November 12 2013 06:41 DusTerr wrote: Some people don't also realize that with the restructure they no longer belong in the league they think they do.. (also because the combination of mmr decay, restructured league boundaries AND the change in when/how demotions/promotions occur has created a flux that hasn't ironed itself out yet) It will never iron out. It will occur again and again and again, unless you play without pauses. Your snide remark just shows you did not get the problem. | ||
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Venomsflame
United States613 Posts
On November 12 2013 07:00 SPoF wrote: This! I wouldn't mind being in silver if I weren't crushed by other people who apparently are also silver guys, yet play on a whole different level. Yeah I've been hitting plats and diamonds for a while and it's just unfair. I feel bad seeing someone who's just trying to have fun and improve and has to hit someone way way better than they are. Really silly system, needs to change sooner rather than later or you'll see a lot of very disheartened lower league players. | ||
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anessie
180 Posts
On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. You are correct, however it will likely take a stupid amount of games to fix. The extra handicap being there is a ton of other players out of place making the whole thing a very random time consuming demotivating experience. But yes 250 games should probably set things straight, happy grinding. A bonus would be if everyone else is ready to do 250 games in the next weeks to fix the leagues, otherwise it's not going to balance out anytime soon.  This also just counts for 1v1 since all the random team games are screwed till the next expansion  . | ||
Excalibur_Z
United States12238 Posts
On November 12 2013 05:51 CakeSauc3 wrote: I didn't realize just how serious of an issue this was until now. While I was lucky to keep my primary account in diamond (masters before Hots, but whatever, there was inflation then anyway) I recently created a second account to off-race as Zerg. I won my placements and got put in Silver, then played a good amount of games there and won almost every game quite easily. Then, I played my placement today and got put into gold, and almost every game now I'm playing ex masters players, players who are probably way better than I'll ever be. Kind of ridiculous, these leagues/divisions mean nothing now. Has anyone come up with a practical explanation as to why Blizzard decided to put this in? I don't buy the whole "It makes players feel motivated to play because they're in lower leagues than they used to be" nonsense. Now that we know this exists, it would be much more interesting to understand why. The why is very simple. It sucks to come back after a long break and get worked by players you used to be able to go 50-50 with. That doesn't happen for everybody, and in those cases, those players will be able to get back to where they used to be without too much trouble. The outcry of "I came back and I'm rusty, and now I lose all my games" was actually pretty common, so this decay is designed to gradually scale you downward so that you don't feel that sharp jolt of losing game after game when you return. In that sense, I don't think a lot of players have a problem that decay exists, but rather the degree of impact that it has. If you look at what MMR is and means, it's just a number. On its own, it's meaningless. However, the gap between two players' MMR values is defined as a predictor of the outcome of a game. Depending on how the system is tuned, dropping that ~300 rating for a month of inactivity and creating an artificial 300-rating penalty could result in your new opponents being players that you used to beat 60%, 70%, 75% of the time. If you think about it in that sense, it feels more reasonable. "I took a month off, so try me out against people I used to beat 3 out of 4 times instead of 1 out of 2 times." The major thing people don't like about it is that it takes so long through only getting ~16 rating per win to counteract the decay, so they're playing these easier opponents for a lot longer than they think they should be. I'm actually having some difficulty getting another seasonal breakdown from SC2Ranks (Shadowed just sold it to a new owner, good for him!) so I need to find a new contact there who will provide me with data. In any event, we're reasonably sure now that the decay happens in terms of real time inactivity as opposed to bonus pool accumulation, meaning the metric for internal league apportionment and the metric for decay are different. The decay happens over uninterrupted inactivity periods, starting at 2 weeks and capping out at 4. I'm going to update the OP with this info soon. | ||
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CakeSauc3
United States1437 Posts
On November 12 2013 07:45 Excalibur_Z wrote: The why is very simple. It sucks to come back after a long break and get worked by players you used to be able to go 50-50 with. That doesn't happen for everybody, and in those cases, those players will be able to get back to where they used to be without too much trouble. The outcry of "I came back and I'm rusty, and now I lose all my games" was actually pretty common, so this decay is designed to gradually scale you downward so that you don't feel that sharp jolt of losing game after game when you return. In that sense, I don't think a lot of players have a problem that decay exists, but rather the degree of impact that it has. If you look at what MMR is and means, it's just a number. On its own, it's meaningless. However, the gap between two players' MMR values is defined as a predictor of the outcome of a game. Depending on how the system is tuned, dropping that ~300 rating for a month of inactivity and creating an artificial 300-rating penalty could result in your new opponents being players that you used to beat 60%, 70%, 75% of the time. If you think about it in that sense, it feels more reasonable. "I took a month off, so try me out against people I used to beat 3 out of 4 times instead of 1 out of 2 times." The major thing people don't like about it is that it takes so long through only getting ~16 rating per win to counteract the decay, so they're playing these easier opponents for a lot longer than they think they should be. I'm actually having some difficulty getting another seasonal breakdown from SC2Ranks (Shadowed just sold it to a new owner, good for him!) so I need to find a new contact there who will provide me with data. In any event, we're reasonably sure now that the decay happens in terms of real time inactivity as opposed to bonus pool accumulation, meaning the metric for internal league apportionment and the metric for decay are different. The decay happens over uninterrupted inactivity periods, starting at 2 weeks and capping out at 4. I'm going to update the OP with this info soon. Yeah, you're right. I guess what I was saying was, why is the decay so DRASTIC? I mean, I could see a little bit.... play low diamond-league players instead of high diamond-league players, but why do you go from high master-league to gold or silver? That's just ridiculous. I would bet that any diamond or master-league player would have to stop playing SC2 for a couple of years before their mechanics sank to the level that a gold or silver league player could take a game off them in a macro game. In this case, it would definitely be better to not have it at all than to have it bring you all the way down. But hey, I guess they are just experimenting so that in LotV the leagues are more perfect, right? One can always hope. | ||
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CakeSauc3
United States1437 Posts
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
Those gold/silver who are playing masters should take a look to see if the masters are actually playing offrace in unranked rather than blaming mmr decay, because the experiences of master players described here are totally different. | ||
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iggym
United States49 Posts
On November 12 2013 08:05 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Why are people saying masters are playing as gold/silver? All the masters here, the lowest they seem to get is diamond/plat after a new season. Seems like a gross exaggeration to me. Those gold/silver who are playing masters should take a look to see if the masters are actually playing offrace in unranked rather than blaming mmr decay, because the experiences of master players described here are totally different. My placement match was against a former masters player (achieved 12 times) and I landed in gold. I was rank 1 diamond two seasons ago. He also placed in gold. I think a lot of this has less to do with MMR decay and more with the loss of a lot of the player base. There are fewer players, and on average, they are much, much, much better at the game than the average player was several months ago. So we have two pools of players, and gold league is where a lot of the clash between "new player on the rise" and "experienced player with some rust" happens. I was diamond, and that's what you're going to see when you click on my profile, but I doubt I actually belong in diamond anymore. A decent number of my games show both players hitting so-called "GM spending skill" on GGTracker (I basically always do), so things have definitely changed a bit in terms of player composition that can't be explained by decay alone. | ||
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grs
Germany2339 Posts
On November 12 2013 07:45 Excalibur_Z wrote: The decay is basic design fault. It only adds to the ladder confusion. Longer reasonig is here. The lower leagues were a total mess last season and they are now too.The why is very simple. It sucks to come back after a long break and get worked by players you used to be able to go 50-50 with. That doesn't happen for everybody, and in those cases, those players will be able to get back to where they used to be without too much trouble. The outcry of "I came back and I'm rusty, and now I lose all my games" was actually pretty common, so this decay is designed to gradually scale you downward so that you don't feel that sharp jolt of losing game after game when you return. In that sense, I don't think a lot of players have a problem that decay exists, but rather the degree of impact that it has. | ||
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chiasmus
United States134 Posts
This isn't so bad for me, just a minor annoyance--I get the cheap validation of beating up on noobs for a while before I have to actually challenge myself. But it sucks for people like the guy I just played, who told me he was playing his second ladder game ever. I'm not exactly Innovation myself, but I still felt bad for the guy when I marched in with a 10 minute marine-medivac push and he just had a handful of marines and was starting to build his natural. Maybe this is a rare occurrence, but if Blizzard manages to succeed in both bringing back inactive players, and also drawing in newbies, the MMR decay mechanism could have some unfortunate unintended consequences in situations like this. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On November 12 2013 08:31 iggym wrote: My placement match was against a former masters player (achieved 12 times) and I landed in gold. I was rank 1 diamond two seasons ago. He also placed in gold. I think a lot of this has less to do with MMR decay and more with the loss of a lot of the player base. There are fewer players, and on average, they are much, much, much better at the game than the average player was several months ago. So we have two pools of players, and gold league is where a lot of the clash between "new player on the rise" and "experienced player with some rust" happens. I was diamond, and that's what you're going to see when you click on my profile, but I doubt I actually belong in diamond anymore. A decent number of my games show both players hitting so-called "GM spending skill" on GGTracker (I basically always do), so things have definitely changed a bit in terms of player composition that can't be explained by decay alone. Sounds like MMR doing it's job here. | ||
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bertu
Brazil871 Posts
I could see a little bit.... play low diamond-league players instead of high diamond-league players, but why do you go from high master-league to gold or silver? That's just ridiculous. I am very skeptic of the descriptions of "high masters playing gold" because of mmr decay. I've never seen it happen. A few of my friends didn't play any games after the beggining of last season, and dropped from playing masters to playing diamonds.It happened to me in my account in a different server. It's also against of all the information we have so far about the caps on the decay. I would guess those descriptions are just off-racing players in unranked games. | ||
ZeromuS
Canada13389 Posts
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