EPTIn general, not caring as much about league, BUT it will be nice to play against higher level players after trouncing in gold.
Ladder Deflation and MMR Decay - Page 15
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wUndertUnge
United States1125 Posts
In general, not caring as much about league, BUT it will be nice to play against higher level players after trouncing in gold. | ||
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CycoDude
United States326 Posts
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tili
United States1332 Posts
On November 16 2013 01:56 Ben... wrote: They're all too busy playing me now. I played 8 games yesterday, 6 were 3+ time Master players (one 9 time Master). I guess it might have to do with where you are MMR-wise though. I am playing mostly people currently ranked Diamond now but were previously Master. Yea, if you are diamond that would make sense! If you are in plat... you should be getting promoted soon  | ||
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Neemi
Netherlands656 Posts
Having a system implanted for MMR decay is fine, obviously I don't maintain my skill if I'm away for a month, but right now it's just too harsh. Decay of 1-2% every week after 2 weeks seems a lot more fair. | ||
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Meepman
Canada610 Posts
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TheUnderking
Canada202 Posts
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NovemberstOrm
Canada16217 Posts
On November 23 2013 16:25 TheUnderking wrote: Although I should be out of gold soon, I played against a former two time GM today. I'm usually middle-diamond. could be a woL ranking where nobody played anymore so it was super easy to get(before it was removed) or was his skill actually that good? :O | ||
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Richard Nixon
11 Posts
I do my ladder placements, lose all of them but one, get placed into bronze (which is perfect, I'm likely low-mid bronze with Zerg). However, I was continuously matched up with mid-silver or higher players, and it took 14 straight losses in a row to be matched up with someone who was actually low bronze (like I am). After quitting 1v1's that day, I had about a 20% winrate. No wonder this game can't get new players. I don't know if MMR decay is the reason for this, but when you're brand new to the game (or brand new to the race mechanics, as I was), it's not fun. You have no idea if you're actually getting matched up against people who are at your skill level (when you lose every game and have no ladder points, you can't even tell the MMR difference between you and your opponent), or people who were just deflated by this system. And from my experience, it seems to be almost entirely the latter. If this system is to blame, it needs a fix ASAP. When you're in the middle of the ladder and get matched up against these kinds of players, you will just drop in MMR to get lower skilled players, and you can still pull out some wins. Worst case scenario, you go down in rank and MMR for a bit until it can readjust you to a proper spot again. But when you're at the bottom of the ladder, there is nowhere to go. It's just loss after loss after loss after loss. It's not fun, and makes me want to swear off this game for good. No one should be subjected to that. Ever. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it. | ||
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TheUnderking
Canada202 Posts
On November 23 2013 16:28 NovemberstOrm wrote: could be a woL ranking where nobody played anymore so it was super easy to get(before it was removed) or was his skill actually that good? :O His mech terran was significantly better than mine, but my T sucks. So I can't be completely certain. | ||
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B-rye88
Canada168 Posts
On November 24 2013 05:29 Thieving Magpie wrote: Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement. If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it. There are two distinct issues. 1) The MMR decay is too heavy and does not recover quickly enough, causing a gap between the games calculation of your skill and your actual skill and resulting in mismatched games. 2) If you want to encourage a healthy game economy (player base), then giving people a yard stick to measure themselves against and then moving the measure up is probably not a great idea. People are not fully rational, and do have emotional attachments to these accomplishments; not everyone will realize that their demotion is a function of the system changing and not them sucking. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On November 24 2013 06:52 B-rye88 wrote: There are two distinct issues. 1) The MMR decay is too heavy and does not recover quickly enough, causing a gap between the games calculation of your skill and your actual skill and resulting in mismatched games. 2) If you want to encourage a healthy game economy (player base), then giving people a yard stick to measure themselves against and then moving the measure up is probably not a great idea. People are not fully rational, and do have emotional attachments to these accomplishments; not everyone will realize that their demotion is a function of the system changing and not them sucking. It depends on who you want to reward. Players who play often or players who only play the 1-3 games each season to hold on to their meaningless title. I don't mind rewarding people who play the game, it takes time for any change in the system to stabilize. | ||
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CycoDude
United States326 Posts
On November 24 2013 05:29 Thieving Magpie wrote: Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement. If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it. it seems you don't comprehend what we have here. the system was changed (with the hots release), with good intentions, but has resulted in the current ladder mess we have now. it's not a matter of "players who can't cut it in the new system"; it's a matter of the system improperly matching players with other players. in the system we have now, if you are inactive, you are dropped well below your skill level. this has two problems: one, if you were active, you are now facing much stronger, formerly inactive players who were dropped into your mmr range. if you were inactive, you are now facing much weaker players with the same mmr range. if you've noticed the league distributions, the bottom end (bronze, silver and gold) accounts for nearly 85% of all players. it's been inflated by players from platinum, diamond and masters trickling down. this is especially harsh on legitimate beginner players, as much stronger players from silver, gold, platinum etc are now dumped into the lower leagues. this does not account for smurfs or trolls who intentionally lose games to sink their mmr and get placed into bronze just to bash newbs. so the end result is you're matched up by a much wider range of players, skill-wise, than ever before, and is frustrating to many. also, as pointed out by richard nixon, beginners are getting absolutely CRUSHED right now. as any online game should strive to increase their user base, most of whom are casual players (beginners!), this system, as it is, is detrimental to the game as a whole. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On November 24 2013 09:58 CycoDude wrote: it seems you don't comprehend what we have here. the system was changed (with the hots release), with good intentions, but has resulted in the current ladder mess we have now. it's not a matter of "players who can't cut it in the new system"; it's a matter of the system improperly matching players with other players. in the system we have now, if you are inactive, you are dropped well below your skill level. this has two problems: one, if you were active, you are now facing much stronger, formerly inactive players who were dropped into your mmr range. if you were inactive, you are now facing much weaker players with the same mmr range. if you've noticed the league distributions, the bottom end (bronze, silver and gold) accounts for nearly 85% of all players. it's been inflated by players from platinum, diamond and masters trickling down. this is especially harsh on legitimate beginner players, as much stronger players from silver, gold, platinum etc are now dumped into the lower leagues. this does not account for smurfs or trolls who intentionally lose games to sink their mmr and get placed into bronze just to bash newbs. so the end result is you're matched up by a much wider range of players, skill-wise, than ever before, and is frustrating to many. also, as pointed out by richard nixon, beginners are getting absolutely CRUSHED right now. as any online game should strive to increase their user base, most of whom are casual players (beginners!), this system, as it is, is detrimental to the game as a whole. It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond. | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
On November 24 2013 09:19 Thieving Magpie wrote: You are missing the point and not understanding the issue. It's not the people who play their 1-3 games we are talking about, it is the people who cannot play daily to keep up with MMR decay (like me. I can only play maybe once per week now because of how busy I am with school). What happens is since we can only play every once in a while, our MMR constantly decays so we are never playing at our level and instead have to grind through games against people lower level than us. On the other end, people who do play consistently but are lower level are now constantly facing people they should not be because if the MMR system actually worked they would be far lower MMR than the people they are matching against.It depends on who you want to reward. Players who play often or players who only play the 1-3 games each season to hold on to their meaningless title. I don't mind rewarding people who play the game, it takes time for any change in the system to stabilize. The issue is that the decay system they set up for MMR is far too aggressive and as such makes it very difficult to keep up with outside of playing frequently. It basically treats it as though you lose a certain amount of skill when that obviously isn't the case. I'm not going to lose that much of my ability if I don't play for 2 weeks, I might be rusty for a few games but not so much that I need to grind through 10 lower level opponents just to get back to my level. That is what the current system seems to do and as a result it has broken Ranked for quite a few people, myself included. I've played people who were high Master for multiple seasons in a row but are now sitting in high Platinum or low Diamond with rating not even close to 50% (the worst I saw was a 12 time Master who was 57-9 in Platinum. I checked his history and of course he had a few gaps in when he played and after that he would have 15 game win streaks). It's not about the icon. I don't care about that. I just want to have my position on the ladder indicated properly to be matched properly so I can actually work on improving and know I am rather than either getting steamrolled by a way better player or stomping someone who I should very obviously not be playing against. The system is in far too much flux right now for it to be useful for practicing outside of those at the highest levels who play daily. For everyone else the system is completely broken. And for your argument relating to ICCUP and how everyone was in D except for the best, why even bother having a system like this if there is no way to tell where you are relative to others? They might as well remove ranked in that case. | ||
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tili
United States1332 Posts
On November 24 2013 11:24 Thieving Magpie wrote: It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond. Why? Why make the learning curve so steep that no one feels like they are progressing? Plat doesn't need to be legendary; that's what masters and GM are for. That's not a sustainable game model. You're redefining what it means to be silver. Blizzard's algorithm is supposed to roughly create the following partitions (see below). If it's not doing that, then that is a problem. 8% - Bronze 20% - Silver 32% - Gold 20% - Platinum 18% - Diamond 2% - Masters 200 - GM Also, the matchmaking system should give you a 40%-60% chance to win. Not a 20%-80%. If MMR decay is significantly hampering the quality of match ups (as measured by the chance of each to win the game), then that sucks. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46206 Posts
On November 25 2013 21:56 tili wrote: Why? Why make the learning curve so steep that no one feels like they are progressing? Plat doesn't need to be legendary; that's what masters and GM are for. That's not a sustainable game model. You're redefining what it means to be silver. Blizzard's algorithm is supposed to roughly create the following partitions (see below). If it's not doing that, then that is a problem. 8% - Bronze 20% - Silver 32% - Gold 20% - Platinum 18% - Diamond 2% - Masters 200 - GM Also, the matchmaking system should give you a 40%-60% chance to win. Not a 20%-80%. If MMR decay is significantly hampering the quality of match ups (as measured by the chance of each to win the game), then that sucks. I agree with you that the league format and partitions for SC2 are not intended to match that of BW... but I thought the bronze percentage was much higher than 8% o.O | ||
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tili
United States1332 Posts
On November 25 2013 22:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I agree with you that the league format and partitions for SC2 are not intended to match that of BW... but I thought the bronze percentage was much higher than 8% o.O Yea - they changed in for HoTS and put the 12% into gold (i.e. 32%). I think this was to do the opposites of what Theiving Magpie is suggesting, and make league progress into silver easier. Honestly, I think the bell-curve is a better approach for getting people hooked on the game  edit: link to changes- http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/10059616/ | ||
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Moonsalt
267 Posts
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BurningRanger
Germany303 Posts
Blizzard just overdid it a bit. They should have started it slowly... like only, when you are inactive for at least 4 weeks, and max decay like half a league or so. Overall the decay will clean the ladder from those 1 game per season Dias, be it that they turn active again or stop playing altogether. Both is better than having them occupy those higher spots with minimal effort. | ||
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