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On November 26 2013 04:59 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 04:30 Ctone23 wrote:On November 26 2013 03:43 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 03:38 Excalibur_Z wrote:On November 26 2013 01:20 ffadicted wrote:
Blizzard has seemed to acknowledge (through bnet MVP posters) that there is indeed a problem with the ladder right now and they're looking into it. I guess that can put to rest the argument of "ladder is fine players just got better" some were trying to make I don't want there to be any confusion here, but this is not a matter of the community informing Blizzard about some new development and Blizzard doing something about it. They already have all the data that korona and I have been presenting, and much more. They know the player burnout rate, they know the activity levels of players, and they know the community perceives that there is an issue with the matchmaker and the league distribution. These complaints by the community aren't new, they're only more commonplace because of threads like this one. As best I can tell, the matchmaker is still functioning properly in that it's pairing one player's number with another player's similar number. But, as korona said above, the definitions of those numbers can vary greatly due to the rate of decay. Some players think they're decaying but aren't ("I only get to play once a week" means you're not decaying). Nevertheless, all of these reports contribute to a collective perception that something is wrong, which can be just as problematic to the developers as something that's actually wrong for various reasons. The league distributions, because of the activity metric, also are probably functioning properly as I point out in that other thread. That thread was created after decay had been active for 4 seasons. Now: is the decay causing deflation? That's hard to say and will require a new snapshot. What I do know is that after 4 seasons it still looked pretty close to the target distribution for active players even though the distribution across all players was quite different. Another two seasons probably wouldn't change it that much, if at all. What's really suffering here is the size of the playerbase. If players play the game to go up in leagues, but they don't play very often, they're never going to get promoted and may even get demoted, which is discouraging, and possibly reason to quit altogether. Is that what's happening? Not sure, all I can present are the numbers and not the psychology. It's the same for the developers, really. They have to make a judgment based on what might be a psychological problem even if no mechanical problem exists. Do you really think that many players have quit in the past 2-3 seasons though? Honest questions. Would seem hard to believe. There was another thread about the ladder getting harder and someone compiled a graph from nios, over 2-3 seasons it "appeared" (again, not really sure of the source) that about half as many people play ladder now. Interpretation of that graph was invalid. The first figures were not from the start of S14 (S4/2013), but from the end of S13 (S3/2013). The second numbers were from the beginning of this season S16 (S6/2013). You cannot directly compare numbers from the end of one season to numbers from start of another season. But if we compare the numbers from the end of S13 (S3/2013) to numbers from end of last season S15 (S5/2013) we notice that the player base has declined only little: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20273329Of course S13 was much shorter season. Thus if it would have been as long as S15, more players would have played their 1v1 placements. Thus the actual decline is likely larger than the numbers suggest, but not as big as the graph you mentioned suggested. Also the numbers don't tell how active the players were / are. In general each player might have played more games per certain time frame during earlier seasons than now.
Makes sense. Yea, I didn't really trust the graph, it did paint a dim picture. Thanks for clearing that up.
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On November 26 2013 05:00 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 04:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 04:46 korona wrote:On November 26 2013 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 03:25 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 02:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 01:20 ffadicted wrote:
Blizzard has seemed to acknowledge (through bnet MVP posters) that there is indeed a problem with the ladder right now and they're looking into it. I guess that can put to rest the argument of "ladder is fine players just got better" some were trying to make Players have gotten better, but players getting better is not the cause of MMR decay. MMR decay simply shifts the focus of placement to that of regular players as opposed to rarely logs in players. It's not a balance problem, or a design problem, it's a philosophy problem. A harsh MMR decay means that you need to be good AND play regularly to be at the top. That means good players who don't play regularly eventually crowd the middle shoving former plat/gold/silver players down to Bronze. A weak MMR decay means that you will have players who maintain masters/Grandmaster positions only playing a few times a week. No MMR decay means that players stay on masters playing 1-3 games a season. Which philosophical view do you prefer in a ladder system? I don't care, number rankings are arbitrary. But the problem with the current ladder is not that it is broken. It's pretty clearly broken? The percentages are all off and blizzard has acknowledged there's an issue, so how could it not be broken? Their methods are not leading to their intended result, is that not the very definition of it being broken? You can explain and justify the system and decay as it is now all you want, but the fact of the matter is the current method is leading to wrong results, so by the very definition of the word, the system is broken and needs fixing. In this case, the fixing is likely the method, which will have to be re-looked at. Getting unwanted results =/= broken system. Getting unwanted results is simply getting unwanted results which means desiring a different system. The disdain for the specific set of results is a philosophical issue. Blizzard first gave us a system allowing players who don't play everyday to maintain their ranks. People complained, so Blizz added decay. People now complain since decay means they actually have to keep up with other ladder players. Blizzard will change the system again and people will come back to complain about it. There is no "correct" system since the problem is not with the numbers but with the philosophy behind the numbers. Add a decay and people who don't play often whine. Remove decay as people who play often whine. Get a middle ground and both sides will whine that the game is too easy. And so on and so forth. This is a player base problem, not a blizzard one. No it is Blizzard's problem. With the changes they made (added too steep maximum decay to a game, where a large portion of the player base goes inactive from time to time), they caused a cascading effect. MMR often does not represent skill anymore. Regarding matchmaking SC2 was arguably one of the best in the world. It is not anymore. Even if the matchmaker is working fine, the matchmaking results are often not fine (the matchmaker thinks that players A and B who have similar MMR are equally skilled, even if player A might belong typically to that level (e.g. gold) and the more skilled player B has just decayed there (e.g. from master). Even if the player base at the moment is healthy, the current situation (not to mention that the situation gets worse as time passes), players might start quitting in accelerating pace. Higher level players unable to keep up with a new logarithmic paradigm is not a flaw of the system. Lower level players upset that higher level players are no longer able to keep up with said paradigm is also not a flaw in the system since the system rewards regular play and punishes sparse play. People getting butt hurt by this new system is not a flaw or mistake of the system, it is a disdain of the market reacting to an unwanted revelation presented by the product. Ladder decay will always pull down masters level players to lower leagues and it will always "force" supposedly "lower level" players to face people who are more difficult that previously faced. This will eventually push down lower level players even lower as the upper echelons of the system become harder to reach--this is the result that will always be created by MMR decay. People disliking this result is personal problem, not a Blizzard mistake because the system as is works just as an MMR decay system should. Right now, playing once a week is considered often enough to not suffer decay. If you only play 2-3 times a month is when the ladder decay hits you. Currently only those types of players are dropping down. People realizing that MMR decay actually sucks for you even more than if MMR decay was not present is a negative reaction of the public to a successful implementation of a product. Whether that product is something Blizzard wishes to stand by or not is a different issue entirely. I think you're arguing different points here entirely. Nobody is saying there was like an error in the MMR calculation code the blizzard made or a bug in the system that caused all of this. All we're saying is that the system isn't producing the correct outcomes. You want people to accept the new outcomes, which isn't really fair to ask when the old outcome produced even matches almost every time and distributed leagues accordingly, and the new one is pretty awful at producing even matches and seems to have thrown the league distributions into whack.
I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results.
All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season.
I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month.
Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken.
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On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 05:00 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 04:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 04:46 korona wrote:On November 26 2013 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 03:25 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 02:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 01:20 ffadicted wrote:
Blizzard has seemed to acknowledge (through bnet MVP posters) that there is indeed a problem with the ladder right now and they're looking into it. I guess that can put to rest the argument of "ladder is fine players just got better" some were trying to make Players have gotten better, but players getting better is not the cause of MMR decay. MMR decay simply shifts the focus of placement to that of regular players as opposed to rarely logs in players. It's not a balance problem, or a design problem, it's a philosophy problem. A harsh MMR decay means that you need to be good AND play regularly to be at the top. That means good players who don't play regularly eventually crowd the middle shoving former plat/gold/silver players down to Bronze. A weak MMR decay means that you will have players who maintain masters/Grandmaster positions only playing a few times a week. No MMR decay means that players stay on masters playing 1-3 games a season. Which philosophical view do you prefer in a ladder system? I don't care, number rankings are arbitrary. But the problem with the current ladder is not that it is broken. It's pretty clearly broken? The percentages are all off and blizzard has acknowledged there's an issue, so how could it not be broken? Their methods are not leading to their intended result, is that not the very definition of it being broken? You can explain and justify the system and decay as it is now all you want, but the fact of the matter is the current method is leading to wrong results, so by the very definition of the word, the system is broken and needs fixing. In this case, the fixing is likely the method, which will have to be re-looked at. Getting unwanted results =/= broken system. Getting unwanted results is simply getting unwanted results which means desiring a different system. The disdain for the specific set of results is a philosophical issue. Blizzard first gave us a system allowing players who don't play everyday to maintain their ranks. People complained, so Blizz added decay. People now complain since decay means they actually have to keep up with other ladder players. Blizzard will change the system again and people will come back to complain about it. There is no "correct" system since the problem is not with the numbers but with the philosophy behind the numbers. Add a decay and people who don't play often whine. Remove decay as people who play often whine. Get a middle ground and both sides will whine that the game is too easy. And so on and so forth. This is a player base problem, not a blizzard one. No it is Blizzard's problem. With the changes they made (added too steep maximum decay to a game, where a large portion of the player base goes inactive from time to time), they caused a cascading effect. MMR often does not represent skill anymore. Regarding matchmaking SC2 was arguably one of the best in the world. It is not anymore. Even if the matchmaker is working fine, the matchmaking results are often not fine (the matchmaker thinks that players A and B who have similar MMR are equally skilled, even if player A might belong typically to that level (e.g. gold) and the more skilled player B has just decayed there (e.g. from master). Even if the player base at the moment is healthy, the current situation (not to mention that the situation gets worse as time passes), players might start quitting in accelerating pace. Higher level players unable to keep up with a new logarithmic paradigm is not a flaw of the system. Lower level players upset that higher level players are no longer able to keep up with said paradigm is also not a flaw in the system since the system rewards regular play and punishes sparse play. People getting butt hurt by this new system is not a flaw or mistake of the system, it is a disdain of the market reacting to an unwanted revelation presented by the product. Ladder decay will always pull down masters level players to lower leagues and it will always "force" supposedly "lower level" players to face people who are more difficult that previously faced. This will eventually push down lower level players even lower as the upper echelons of the system become harder to reach--this is the result that will always be created by MMR decay. People disliking this result is personal problem, not a Blizzard mistake because the system as is works just as an MMR decay system should. Right now, playing once a week is considered often enough to not suffer decay. If you only play 2-3 times a month is when the ladder decay hits you. Currently only those types of players are dropping down. People realizing that MMR decay actually sucks for you even more than if MMR decay was not present is a negative reaction of the public to a successful implementation of a product. Whether that product is something Blizzard wishes to stand by or not is a different issue entirely. I think you're arguing different points here entirely. Nobody is saying there was like an error in the MMR calculation code the blizzard made or a bug in the system that caused all of this. All we're saying is that the system isn't producing the correct outcomes. You want people to accept the new outcomes, which isn't really fair to ask when the old outcome produced even matches almost every time and distributed leagues accordingly, and the new one is pretty awful at producing even matches and seems to have thrown the league distributions into whack. I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results. All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season. I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken.
Fair, I see what you're saying... so you're asking me to pick the lesser of two evils.
I pick what we used to have haha Or at least let's meet in the middle somewhere. What we ended up with now is definitely not where I would like the system to stay.
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On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 05:00 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 04:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 04:46 korona wrote:On November 26 2013 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 03:25 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 02:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 01:20 ffadicted wrote:
Blizzard has seemed to acknowledge (through bnet MVP posters) that there is indeed a problem with the ladder right now and they're looking into it. I guess that can put to rest the argument of "ladder is fine players just got better" some were trying to make Players have gotten better, but players getting better is not the cause of MMR decay. MMR decay simply shifts the focus of placement to that of regular players as opposed to rarely logs in players. It's not a balance problem, or a design problem, it's a philosophy problem. A harsh MMR decay means that you need to be good AND play regularly to be at the top. That means good players who don't play regularly eventually crowd the middle shoving former plat/gold/silver players down to Bronze. A weak MMR decay means that you will have players who maintain masters/Grandmaster positions only playing a few times a week. No MMR decay means that players stay on masters playing 1-3 games a season. Which philosophical view do you prefer in a ladder system? I don't care, number rankings are arbitrary. But the problem with the current ladder is not that it is broken. It's pretty clearly broken? The percentages are all off and blizzard has acknowledged there's an issue, so how could it not be broken? Their methods are not leading to their intended result, is that not the very definition of it being broken? You can explain and justify the system and decay as it is now all you want, but the fact of the matter is the current method is leading to wrong results, so by the very definition of the word, the system is broken and needs fixing. In this case, the fixing is likely the method, which will have to be re-looked at. Getting unwanted results =/= broken system. Getting unwanted results is simply getting unwanted results which means desiring a different system. The disdain for the specific set of results is a philosophical issue. Blizzard first gave us a system allowing players who don't play everyday to maintain their ranks. People complained, so Blizz added decay. People now complain since decay means they actually have to keep up with other ladder players. Blizzard will change the system again and people will come back to complain about it. There is no "correct" system since the problem is not with the numbers but with the philosophy behind the numbers. Add a decay and people who don't play often whine. Remove decay as people who play often whine. Get a middle ground and both sides will whine that the game is too easy. And so on and so forth. This is a player base problem, not a blizzard one. No it is Blizzard's problem. With the changes they made (added too steep maximum decay to a game, where a large portion of the player base goes inactive from time to time), they caused a cascading effect. MMR often does not represent skill anymore. Regarding matchmaking SC2 was arguably one of the best in the world. It is not anymore. Even if the matchmaker is working fine, the matchmaking results are often not fine (the matchmaker thinks that players A and B who have similar MMR are equally skilled, even if player A might belong typically to that level (e.g. gold) and the more skilled player B has just decayed there (e.g. from master). Even if the player base at the moment is healthy, the current situation (not to mention that the situation gets worse as time passes), players might start quitting in accelerating pace. Higher level players unable to keep up with a new logarithmic paradigm is not a flaw of the system. Lower level players upset that higher level players are no longer able to keep up with said paradigm is also not a flaw in the system since the system rewards regular play and punishes sparse play. People getting butt hurt by this new system is not a flaw or mistake of the system, it is a disdain of the market reacting to an unwanted revelation presented by the product. Ladder decay will always pull down masters level players to lower leagues and it will always "force" supposedly "lower level" players to face people who are more difficult that previously faced. This will eventually push down lower level players even lower as the upper echelons of the system become harder to reach--this is the result that will always be created by MMR decay. People disliking this result is personal problem, not a Blizzard mistake because the system as is works just as an MMR decay system should. Right now, playing once a week is considered often enough to not suffer decay. If you only play 2-3 times a month is when the ladder decay hits you. Currently only those types of players are dropping down. People realizing that MMR decay actually sucks for you even more than if MMR decay was not present is a negative reaction of the public to a successful implementation of a product. Whether that product is something Blizzard wishes to stand by or not is a different issue entirely. I think you're arguing different points here entirely. Nobody is saying there was like an error in the MMR calculation code the blizzard made or a bug in the system that caused all of this. All we're saying is that the system isn't producing the correct outcomes. You want people to accept the new outcomes, which isn't really fair to ask when the old outcome produced even matches almost every time and distributed leagues accordingly, and the new one is pretty awful at producing even matches and seems to have thrown the league distributions into whack. I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results. All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season. I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken.
Theiving, you're dogmatically saying that the system can't be wrong because the system defines itself, and that no mmr decay leads to stagnation of MMR, which could conceivably stay for months and months. However, NO ONE is saying we should, necessarily, completely remove MMR decay.
Instead, we're saying it is too steep, and does not match the intention of MMR, which is to create evenly contested matches.
Also, I agree that we shouldn't be apocalyptic about this. But, that doesn't mean 'nothing is the matter'. Panic hurts sc2, but so does negligence of a logically designed and successful matchmaking system.
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On November 26 2013 06:38 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 05:00 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 04:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 04:46 korona wrote:On November 26 2013 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 03:25 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 02:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 01:20 ffadicted wrote:
Blizzard has seemed to acknowledge (through bnet MVP posters) that there is indeed a problem with the ladder right now and they're looking into it. I guess that can put to rest the argument of "ladder is fine players just got better" some were trying to make Players have gotten better, but players getting better is not the cause of MMR decay. MMR decay simply shifts the focus of placement to that of regular players as opposed to rarely logs in players. It's not a balance problem, or a design problem, it's a philosophy problem. A harsh MMR decay means that you need to be good AND play regularly to be at the top. That means good players who don't play regularly eventually crowd the middle shoving former plat/gold/silver players down to Bronze. A weak MMR decay means that you will have players who maintain masters/Grandmaster positions only playing a few times a week. No MMR decay means that players stay on masters playing 1-3 games a season. Which philosophical view do you prefer in a ladder system? I don't care, number rankings are arbitrary. But the problem with the current ladder is not that it is broken. It's pretty clearly broken? The percentages are all off and blizzard has acknowledged there's an issue, so how could it not be broken? Their methods are not leading to their intended result, is that not the very definition of it being broken? You can explain and justify the system and decay as it is now all you want, but the fact of the matter is the current method is leading to wrong results, so by the very definition of the word, the system is broken and needs fixing. In this case, the fixing is likely the method, which will have to be re-looked at. Getting unwanted results =/= broken system. Getting unwanted results is simply getting unwanted results which means desiring a different system. The disdain for the specific set of results is a philosophical issue. Blizzard first gave us a system allowing players who don't play everyday to maintain their ranks. People complained, so Blizz added decay. People now complain since decay means they actually have to keep up with other ladder players. Blizzard will change the system again and people will come back to complain about it. There is no "correct" system since the problem is not with the numbers but with the philosophy behind the numbers. Add a decay and people who don't play often whine. Remove decay as people who play often whine. Get a middle ground and both sides will whine that the game is too easy. And so on and so forth. This is a player base problem, not a blizzard one. No it is Blizzard's problem. With the changes they made (added too steep maximum decay to a game, where a large portion of the player base goes inactive from time to time), they caused a cascading effect. MMR often does not represent skill anymore. Regarding matchmaking SC2 was arguably one of the best in the world. It is not anymore. Even if the matchmaker is working fine, the matchmaking results are often not fine (the matchmaker thinks that players A and B who have similar MMR are equally skilled, even if player A might belong typically to that level (e.g. gold) and the more skilled player B has just decayed there (e.g. from master). Even if the player base at the moment is healthy, the current situation (not to mention that the situation gets worse as time passes), players might start quitting in accelerating pace. Higher level players unable to keep up with a new logarithmic paradigm is not a flaw of the system. Lower level players upset that higher level players are no longer able to keep up with said paradigm is also not a flaw in the system since the system rewards regular play and punishes sparse play. People getting butt hurt by this new system is not a flaw or mistake of the system, it is a disdain of the market reacting to an unwanted revelation presented by the product. Ladder decay will always pull down masters level players to lower leagues and it will always "force" supposedly "lower level" players to face people who are more difficult that previously faced. This will eventually push down lower level players even lower as the upper echelons of the system become harder to reach--this is the result that will always be created by MMR decay. People disliking this result is personal problem, not a Blizzard mistake because the system as is works just as an MMR decay system should. Right now, playing once a week is considered often enough to not suffer decay. If you only play 2-3 times a month is when the ladder decay hits you. Currently only those types of players are dropping down. People realizing that MMR decay actually sucks for you even more than if MMR decay was not present is a negative reaction of the public to a successful implementation of a product. Whether that product is something Blizzard wishes to stand by or not is a different issue entirely. I think you're arguing different points here entirely. Nobody is saying there was like an error in the MMR calculation code the blizzard made or a bug in the system that caused all of this. All we're saying is that the system isn't producing the correct outcomes. You want people to accept the new outcomes, which isn't really fair to ask when the old outcome produced even matches almost every time and distributed leagues accordingly, and the new one is pretty awful at producing even matches and seems to have thrown the league distributions into whack. I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results. All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season. I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken. Theiving, you're dogmatically saying that the system can't be wrong because the system defines itself, and that no mmr decay leads to stagnation of MMR, which could conceivably stay for months and months. However, NO ONE is saying we should, necessarily, completely remove MMR decay. Instead, we're saying it is too steep, and does not match the intention of MMR, which is to create evenly contested matches.
And what I'm saying is that there is no "just steep enough" decay.
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On November 26 2013 06:40 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 06:38 tili wrote:On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 05:00 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 04:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 04:46 korona wrote:On November 26 2013 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 03:25 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 02:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 01:20 ffadicted wrote:
Blizzard has seemed to acknowledge (through bnet MVP posters) that there is indeed a problem with the ladder right now and they're looking into it. I guess that can put to rest the argument of "ladder is fine players just got better" some were trying to make Players have gotten better, but players getting better is not the cause of MMR decay. MMR decay simply shifts the focus of placement to that of regular players as opposed to rarely logs in players. It's not a balance problem, or a design problem, it's a philosophy problem. A harsh MMR decay means that you need to be good AND play regularly to be at the top. That means good players who don't play regularly eventually crowd the middle shoving former plat/gold/silver players down to Bronze. A weak MMR decay means that you will have players who maintain masters/Grandmaster positions only playing a few times a week. No MMR decay means that players stay on masters playing 1-3 games a season. Which philosophical view do you prefer in a ladder system? I don't care, number rankings are arbitrary. But the problem with the current ladder is not that it is broken. It's pretty clearly broken? The percentages are all off and blizzard has acknowledged there's an issue, so how could it not be broken? Their methods are not leading to their intended result, is that not the very definition of it being broken? You can explain and justify the system and decay as it is now all you want, but the fact of the matter is the current method is leading to wrong results, so by the very definition of the word, the system is broken and needs fixing. In this case, the fixing is likely the method, which will have to be re-looked at. Getting unwanted results =/= broken system. Getting unwanted results is simply getting unwanted results which means desiring a different system. The disdain for the specific set of results is a philosophical issue. Blizzard first gave us a system allowing players who don't play everyday to maintain their ranks. People complained, so Blizz added decay. People now complain since decay means they actually have to keep up with other ladder players. Blizzard will change the system again and people will come back to complain about it. There is no "correct" system since the problem is not with the numbers but with the philosophy behind the numbers. Add a decay and people who don't play often whine. Remove decay as people who play often whine. Get a middle ground and both sides will whine that the game is too easy. And so on and so forth. This is a player base problem, not a blizzard one. No it is Blizzard's problem. With the changes they made (added too steep maximum decay to a game, where a large portion of the player base goes inactive from time to time), they caused a cascading effect. MMR often does not represent skill anymore. Regarding matchmaking SC2 was arguably one of the best in the world. It is not anymore. Even if the matchmaker is working fine, the matchmaking results are often not fine (the matchmaker thinks that players A and B who have similar MMR are equally skilled, even if player A might belong typically to that level (e.g. gold) and the more skilled player B has just decayed there (e.g. from master). Even if the player base at the moment is healthy, the current situation (not to mention that the situation gets worse as time passes), players might start quitting in accelerating pace. Higher level players unable to keep up with a new logarithmic paradigm is not a flaw of the system. Lower level players upset that higher level players are no longer able to keep up with said paradigm is also not a flaw in the system since the system rewards regular play and punishes sparse play. People getting butt hurt by this new system is not a flaw or mistake of the system, it is a disdain of the market reacting to an unwanted revelation presented by the product. Ladder decay will always pull down masters level players to lower leagues and it will always "force" supposedly "lower level" players to face people who are more difficult that previously faced. This will eventually push down lower level players even lower as the upper echelons of the system become harder to reach--this is the result that will always be created by MMR decay. People disliking this result is personal problem, not a Blizzard mistake because the system as is works just as an MMR decay system should. Right now, playing once a week is considered often enough to not suffer decay. If you only play 2-3 times a month is when the ladder decay hits you. Currently only those types of players are dropping down. People realizing that MMR decay actually sucks for you even more than if MMR decay was not present is a negative reaction of the public to a successful implementation of a product. Whether that product is something Blizzard wishes to stand by or not is a different issue entirely. I think you're arguing different points here entirely. Nobody is saying there was like an error in the MMR calculation code the blizzard made or a bug in the system that caused all of this. All we're saying is that the system isn't producing the correct outcomes. You want people to accept the new outcomes, which isn't really fair to ask when the old outcome produced even matches almost every time and distributed leagues accordingly, and the new one is pretty awful at producing even matches and seems to have thrown the league distributions into whack. I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results. All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season. I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken. Theiving, you're dogmatically saying that the system can't be wrong because the system defines itself, and that no mmr decay leads to stagnation of MMR, which could conceivably stay for months and months. However, NO ONE is saying we should, necessarily, completely remove MMR decay. Instead, we're saying it is too steep, and does not match the intention of MMR, which is to create evenly contested matches. And what I'm saying is that there is no "just steep enough" decay.
Why?
Why not at least 10 games a season? Losing skill, i.e. 10 matches, would tank your MMR over two seasons, max, but would not lead to our current circumstance. And playing less games would *slightly* reduce your APM, one league max.
P.S. I edited my last post with another response.
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I think there is a happy medium though. People that Decay are put into a "Limbo" Where they lose their spot in their current rank if they don't play out the pool but are forced to play from the previous spot of MMR and just have to play More games to place and MMR drops according to their skill and have to re rank up as of now MMR is decaying with their spot I say rank decays and NOT mmr would fix the problem..... If you start winning games in that mmr and level it say 3-5 times within a 6-10 game period then you would jump to that rank.....
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I'd like the decay rate to be lower and have a cap (like you can only lose 10% or 1 full rank).
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On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 05:00 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 04:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 04:46 korona wrote:On November 26 2013 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 03:25 ffadicted wrote:On November 26 2013 02:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 01:20 ffadicted wrote:
Blizzard has seemed to acknowledge (through bnet MVP posters) that there is indeed a problem with the ladder right now and they're looking into it. I guess that can put to rest the argument of "ladder is fine players just got better" some were trying to make Players have gotten better, but players getting better is not the cause of MMR decay. MMR decay simply shifts the focus of placement to that of regular players as opposed to rarely logs in players. It's not a balance problem, or a design problem, it's a philosophy problem. A harsh MMR decay means that you need to be good AND play regularly to be at the top. That means good players who don't play regularly eventually crowd the middle shoving former plat/gold/silver players down to Bronze. A weak MMR decay means that you will have players who maintain masters/Grandmaster positions only playing a few times a week. No MMR decay means that players stay on masters playing 1-3 games a season. Which philosophical view do you prefer in a ladder system? I don't care, number rankings are arbitrary. But the problem with the current ladder is not that it is broken. It's pretty clearly broken? The percentages are all off and blizzard has acknowledged there's an issue, so how could it not be broken? Their methods are not leading to their intended result, is that not the very definition of it being broken? You can explain and justify the system and decay as it is now all you want, but the fact of the matter is the current method is leading to wrong results, so by the very definition of the word, the system is broken and needs fixing. In this case, the fixing is likely the method, which will have to be re-looked at. Getting unwanted results =/= broken system. Getting unwanted results is simply getting unwanted results which means desiring a different system. The disdain for the specific set of results is a philosophical issue. Blizzard first gave us a system allowing players who don't play everyday to maintain their ranks. People complained, so Blizz added decay. People now complain since decay means they actually have to keep up with other ladder players. Blizzard will change the system again and people will come back to complain about it. There is no "correct" system since the problem is not with the numbers but with the philosophy behind the numbers. Add a decay and people who don't play often whine. Remove decay as people who play often whine. Get a middle ground and both sides will whine that the game is too easy. And so on and so forth. This is a player base problem, not a blizzard one. No it is Blizzard's problem. With the changes they made (added too steep maximum decay to a game, where a large portion of the player base goes inactive from time to time), they caused a cascading effect. MMR often does not represent skill anymore. Regarding matchmaking SC2 was arguably one of the best in the world. It is not anymore. Even if the matchmaker is working fine, the matchmaking results are often not fine (the matchmaker thinks that players A and B who have similar MMR are equally skilled, even if player A might belong typically to that level (e.g. gold) and the more skilled player B has just decayed there (e.g. from master). Even if the player base at the moment is healthy, the current situation (not to mention that the situation gets worse as time passes), players might start quitting in accelerating pace. Higher level players unable to keep up with a new logarithmic paradigm is not a flaw of the system. Lower level players upset that higher level players are no longer able to keep up with said paradigm is also not a flaw in the system since the system rewards regular play and punishes sparse play. People getting butt hurt by this new system is not a flaw or mistake of the system, it is a disdain of the market reacting to an unwanted revelation presented by the product. Ladder decay will always pull down masters level players to lower leagues and it will always "force" supposedly "lower level" players to face people who are more difficult that previously faced. This will eventually push down lower level players even lower as the upper echelons of the system become harder to reach--this is the result that will always be created by MMR decay. People disliking this result is personal problem, not a Blizzard mistake because the system as is works just as an MMR decay system should. Right now, playing once a week is considered often enough to not suffer decay. If you only play 2-3 times a month is when the ladder decay hits you. Currently only those types of players are dropping down. People realizing that MMR decay actually sucks for you even more than if MMR decay was not present is a negative reaction of the public to a successful implementation of a product. Whether that product is something Blizzard wishes to stand by or not is a different issue entirely. I think you're arguing different points here entirely. Nobody is saying there was like an error in the MMR calculation code the blizzard made or a bug in the system that caused all of this. All we're saying is that the system isn't producing the correct outcomes. You want people to accept the new outcomes, which isn't really fair to ask when the old outcome produced even matches almost every time and distributed leagues accordingly, and the new one is pretty awful at producing even matches and seems to have thrown the league distributions into whack. I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results. All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season. I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken.
No, having Masters in gold is FAR worse than the old way. Having Masters stuck in Gold stomping half their games completely ruins the game for both the ex-Masters and the lower skilled players. There is seriously no comparison between the two options, and thankfully it sounds like Blizzard knows how serious the problem is right now.
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On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
...I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month.
I'm not convinced that this is the case actually. It should be feasible to tweak the bonus points system to aggressively demote inactive players without touching their MMR.
This would mean that an inactive player would would be demoted from Masters to say, Diamond or Platinum, but they would still be matched against opponents of a similar skill level. In other words, they would still be "Masters" level, but with a Platinum badge.
Perhaps they could retain some of the MMR decay, but toned down a bit.
Blizzard has some smart guys working for them, and I'm sure they can find a solution to this.
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On November 26 2013 08:33 The WingNut wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
...I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. I'm not convinced that this is the case actually. It should be feasible to tweak the bonus points system to aggressively demote inactive players without touching their MMR. This would mean that an inactive player would would be demoted from Masters to say, Diamond or Platinum, but they would still be matched against opponents of a similar skill level. In other words, they would still be "Masters" level, but with a Platinum badge. Perhaps they could retain some of the MMR decay, but toned down a bit. Blizzard has some smart guys working for them, and I'm sure they can find a solution to this.
Yes, moving players up and down leagues despite their MMR rating will go over great. I can see it now.
If we simply stick to the MMR model, its impossible to stop the players who reduce the amount of games they play to get "dropped" to a lower league. Players already randomly GG 100 games in a row to be "demoted" to a lower league just for trolling--now those players can do so just by not playing a month or so. Players also get busy. finals, projects, work, wedding, etc... Suddenly masters/diamond players drop down a league and we will have the same problem.
It can be solved if we simply ignored MMR every now and then and designed an arbitrary system to shift players around that we deem unwanted.
But that sounds weird to me as well since threads will then be filled with "I'm a good player, but Blizzard keeps moving me around for no reason just because I ______ for however long."
Blizzard's old system work due to commitment. When people whined saying "I would be _____, but there's no more room in ____ league due to people only winning one game a month to keep their league." or when they would say "I've faced X number ____ league players--shouldn't I be promoted already?" Blizzard didn't respond and said that the ladder was working well and by sticking to their guns eventually a paradigm became set. People of Y skill usually ended up in Z league. It took time to stabilize, but it eventually did.
Having a new system will also take time. But between them adding decay, changing population distributions, mixing up servers, etc... There's been no real chance to stabilize the ladder system.
Say we keep the current system. Eventually all the rarely plays Masters players will drop a ____ leagues. Same with rarely plays Plat, rarely plays gold, etc...
Those players eventually become the benchmark for that league, forcing players in that league to adapt or drop a league. That keeps happening until stability is reached. Diamond and Plat will have the same skillsets as high diamond/low masters. Gold/Plat will be where a lot of diamond level play currently is. Gold/Silver will be where Plat players drop to, and Bronze is suddenly filled with players who can at least do build orders.
Given enough time, that system becomes seen as normal and accepted. Its frustrating now because we have this familiarity with the current system, but over time it doesn't matter what system is used. It will stabilize and we will get new paradigms to measure ourselves against.
Or we could revert back to the old system and things will be familiar and comfortable. In the end it doesn't really matter which one it is.
I didn't have any problem with the previous system. If I woke up tomorrow and everything was back to WoL style ladder I wouldn't be bothered in the least bit. And if I woke up tomorrow and they're using a completely different system I wouldn't be bothered either. I will only be bothered if I start to feel like they won't commit to one of them. Constant changes will have constant growing pains as the dust settles.
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On November 26 2013 10:35 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 08:33 The WingNut wrote:On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
...I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. I'm not convinced that this is the case actually. It should be feasible to tweak the bonus points system to aggressively demote inactive players without touching their MMR. This would mean that an inactive player would would be demoted from Masters to say, Diamond or Platinum, but they would still be matched against opponents of a similar skill level. In other words, they would still be "Masters" level, but with a Platinum badge. Perhaps they could retain some of the MMR decay, but toned down a bit. Blizzard has some smart guys working for them, and I'm sure they can find a solution to this. Yes, moving players up and down leagues despite their MMR rating will go over great. I can see it now. If we simply stick to the MMR model, its impossible to stop the players who reduce the amount of games they play to get "dropped" to a lower league. Players already randomly GG 100 games in a row to be "demoted" to a lower league just for trolling--now those players can do so just by not playing a month or so. Players also get busy. finals, projects, work, wedding, etc... Suddenly masters/diamond players drop down a league and we will have the same problem. It can be solved if we simply ignored MMR every now and then and designed an arbitrary system to shift players around that we deem unwanted. But that sounds weird to me as well since threads will then be filled with "I'm a good player, but Blizzard keeps moving me around for no reason just because I ______ for however long." Blizzard's old system work due to commitment. When people whined saying "I would be _____, but there's no more room in ____ league due to people only winning one game a month to keep their league." or when they would say "I've faced X number ____ league players--shouldn't I be promoted already?" Blizzard didn't respond and said that the ladder was working well and by sticking to their guns eventually a paradigm became set. People of Y skill usually ended up in Z league. It took time to stabilize, but it eventually did. Having a new system will also take time. But between them adding decay, changing population distributions, mixing up servers, etc... There's been no real chance to stabilize the ladder system. Say we keep the current system. Eventually all the rarely plays Masters players will drop a ____ leagues. Same with rarely plays Plat, rarely plays gold, etc... Those players eventually become the benchmark for that league, forcing players in that league to adapt or drop a league. That keeps happening until stability is reached. Diamond and Plat will have the same skillsets as high diamond/low masters. Gold/Plat will be where a lot of diamond level play currently is. Gold/Silver will be where Plat players drop to, and Bronze is suddenly filled with players who can at least do build orders. Given enough time, that system becomes seen as normal and accepted. Its frustrating now because we have this familiarity with the current system, but over time it doesn't matter what system is used. It will stabilize and we will get new paradigms to measure ourselves against. Or we could revert back to the old system and things will be familiar and comfortable. In the end it doesn't really matter which one it is. I didn't have any problem with the previous system. If I woke up tomorrow and everything was back to WoL style ladder I wouldn't be bothered in the least bit. And if I woke up tomorrow and they're using a completely different system I wouldn't be bothered either. I will only be bothered if I start to feel like they won't commit to one of them. Constant changes will have constant growing pains as the dust settles.
No that's not what I'm saying. You are confusing league with MMR perhaps? League/rank is MMR + bonus points, otherwise known as "adjusted MMR". In other words, you can have one player ranked higher because they have played through their bonus pool, but their MMR is actually lower than someone in a lower league.
This basic system has been in place since the beginning of the WOL I believe...
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United States12240 Posts
On November 26 2013 11:36 The WingNut wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 10:35 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 08:33 The WingNut wrote:On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
...I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month. I'm not convinced that this is the case actually. It should be feasible to tweak the bonus points system to aggressively demote inactive players without touching their MMR. This would mean that an inactive player would would be demoted from Masters to say, Diamond or Platinum, but they would still be matched against opponents of a similar skill level. In other words, they would still be "Masters" level, but with a Platinum badge. Perhaps they could retain some of the MMR decay, but toned down a bit. Blizzard has some smart guys working for them, and I'm sure they can find a solution to this. Yes, moving players up and down leagues despite their MMR rating will go over great. I can see it now. If we simply stick to the MMR model, its impossible to stop the players who reduce the amount of games they play to get "dropped" to a lower league. Players already randomly GG 100 games in a row to be "demoted" to a lower league just for trolling--now those players can do so just by not playing a month or so. Players also get busy. finals, projects, work, wedding, etc... Suddenly masters/diamond players drop down a league and we will have the same problem. It can be solved if we simply ignored MMR every now and then and designed an arbitrary system to shift players around that we deem unwanted. But that sounds weird to me as well since threads will then be filled with "I'm a good player, but Blizzard keeps moving me around for no reason just because I ______ for however long." Blizzard's old system work due to commitment. When people whined saying "I would be _____, but there's no more room in ____ league due to people only winning one game a month to keep their league." or when they would say "I've faced X number ____ league players--shouldn't I be promoted already?" Blizzard didn't respond and said that the ladder was working well and by sticking to their guns eventually a paradigm became set. People of Y skill usually ended up in Z league. It took time to stabilize, but it eventually did. Having a new system will also take time. But between them adding decay, changing population distributions, mixing up servers, etc... There's been no real chance to stabilize the ladder system. Say we keep the current system. Eventually all the rarely plays Masters players will drop a ____ leagues. Same with rarely plays Plat, rarely plays gold, etc... Those players eventually become the benchmark for that league, forcing players in that league to adapt or drop a league. That keeps happening until stability is reached. Diamond and Plat will have the same skillsets as high diamond/low masters. Gold/Plat will be where a lot of diamond level play currently is. Gold/Silver will be where Plat players drop to, and Bronze is suddenly filled with players who can at least do build orders. Given enough time, that system becomes seen as normal and accepted. Its frustrating now because we have this familiarity with the current system, but over time it doesn't matter what system is used. It will stabilize and we will get new paradigms to measure ourselves against. Or we could revert back to the old system and things will be familiar and comfortable. In the end it doesn't really matter which one it is. I didn't have any problem with the previous system. If I woke up tomorrow and everything was back to WoL style ladder I wouldn't be bothered in the least bit. And if I woke up tomorrow and they're using a completely different system I wouldn't be bothered either. I will only be bothered if I start to feel like they won't commit to one of them. Constant changes will have constant growing pains as the dust settles. No that's not what I'm saying. You are confusing league with MMR perhaps? League/rank is MMR + bonus points, otherwise known as "adjusted MMR". In other words, you can have one player ranked higher because they have played through their bonus pool, but their MMR is actually lower than someone in a lower league. This basic system has been in place since the beginning of the WOL I believe...
I think you're confusing terms here. "Adjusted points" is what you're thinking of, and that's your points minus your spent bonus pool. MMR is your hidden rating which matches you against opponents, and the gap between your adjusted points and your opponent's MMR is what determines how many points you will earn from that match.
The leagues are simply MMR slices of the ladder. Any adjustment made to a player's MMR will in turn influence his league.
Ladder points have nothing to do with anything, really, and they're simply the end product of all the governing systems. I believe what you may be advocating is a ladder point penalty to inactive players, which would lower their position within their division while leaving their MMR alone. The thing is, that's what the bonus pool already does, but in reverse. Rather than penalize players for not playing, the bonus pool offers potential free points that inactive players will never get because they're not playing the game (and therefore never spending their bonus pool).
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On November 26 2013 11:55 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I believe what you may be advocating is a ladder point penalty to inactive players, which would lower their position within their division while leaving their MMR alone. The thing is, that's what the bonus pool already does, but in reverse. Rather than penalize players for not playing, the bonus pool offers potential free points that inactive players will never get because they're not playing the game (and therefore never spending their bonus pool).
Precisely. Perhaps a faster accrual of bonus points, but a low cap on max bonus points you can have at a time. So "use it or lose it" points or something. I'm not sure how well something like that would work, and Blizzard would have to test it, but my main point was that I am confident that the basic system that Blizzard already has in place can be made to work. Even if that still includes some kind of MMR decay.
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So... did anyone else get promoted today? I was playing strictly plats for the past like 2 weeks, almost no diamonds at all, all of a sudden got promoted after 1 game today and everyone I'm playing is also diamond now... did something happen or just a coincidental occurance on my end? lol
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On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results.
All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season.
I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month.
Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken.
I think you see it too much in a black and white kind of way. It doesn't have to be either Dias wiping the floor with Golds or Dias keeping their spots forever. It can be something inbetween. It just has to make those Dias play more and, not to forget, win then to keep their spot. The decay overall is a nice idea. They just implemented it being too harsh. Dia players dropping to Gold, where they just crush real Gold players, is stupid. Dias dropping to high Plat first will have them matched closer to their original skilllevel/MMR. If they lose then, they will still drop through normal MMR loss and rightly so.
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On November 26 2013 17:38 BurningRanger wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results.
All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season.
I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month.
Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken. I think you see it too much in a black and white kind of way. It doesn't have to be either Dias wiping the floor with Golds or Dias keeping their spots forever. It can be something inbetween. It just has to make those Dias play more and, not to forget, win then to keep their spot. The decay overall is a nice idea. They just implemented it being too harsh. Dia players dropping to Gold, where they just crush real Gold players, is stupid. Dias dropping to high Plat first will have them matched closer to their original skilllevel/MMR. If they lose then, they will still drop through normal MMR loss and rightly so.
Supposedly the MMR decay doesn't happen if you play at least 1 game a week or about 4 games a month.
If 4 games a month is too harsh a decay, just what kind of decay are you asking for?
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On November 26 2013 17:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 17:38 BurningRanger wrote:On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results.
All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season.
I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month.
Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken. I think you see it too much in a black and white kind of way. It doesn't have to be either Dias wiping the floor with Golds or Dias keeping their spots forever. It can be something inbetween. It just has to make those Dias play more and, not to forget, win then to keep their spot. The decay overall is a nice idea. They just implemented it being too harsh. Dia players dropping to Gold, where they just crush real Gold players, is stupid. Dias dropping to high Plat first will have them matched closer to their original skilllevel/MMR. If they lose then, they will still drop through normal MMR loss and rightly so. Supposedly the MMR decay doesn't happen if you play at least 1 game a week or about 4 games a month. If 4 games a month is too harsh a decay, just what kind of decay are you asking for?
It's not the number of games needed that's the problem. It's the MMR value dropped. I'd be ok with playing at least 1 game in 2 weeks. I'd just make it so that you can't drop more than half a league per season MMR-wise.
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On November 26 2013 17:52 BurningRanger wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 17:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 26 2013 17:38 BurningRanger wrote:On November 26 2013 05:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:
I must have misunderstood when people kept saying that ladder is broken and that Blizzard needs to fix the system when the system is working fine--people just don't like the results.
All MMR decay will produce games of lackluster Master players wooping Platinum players since at some point a masters player will always slow down how much he plays. The only way to prevent it is to remove MMR decay. Removing MMR decay will result in those same masters players who would be dropped down to Plat being forever Masters/GM playing just a few games a season.
I'm not asking people to just "accept" the current system, I'm trying to show them that they actually only have the choice of Masters players wooping lower level players OR masters players who never drop in rank despite playing only 1-2 times a month.
Because its those same masters players who either get dropped to a lower league or play so infrequently as to be forever masters despite never really playing the game. When you get rid of one, you produce the other. The reason I am saying nothing is broken is because no matter which coarse Blizzard takes a thread like this will *always* pop up to whine about ladder decay/infrequent players. Its a no win situation for Blizzard and does nothing but hurt the game with bad press no matter which option is taken. I think you see it too much in a black and white kind of way. It doesn't have to be either Dias wiping the floor with Golds or Dias keeping their spots forever. It can be something inbetween. It just has to make those Dias play more and, not to forget, win then to keep their spot. The decay overall is a nice idea. They just implemented it being too harsh. Dia players dropping to Gold, where they just crush real Gold players, is stupid. Dias dropping to high Plat first will have them matched closer to their original skilllevel/MMR. If they lose then, they will still drop through normal MMR loss and rightly so. Supposedly the MMR decay doesn't happen if you play at least 1 game a week or about 4 games a month. If 4 games a month is too harsh a decay, just what kind of decay are you asking for? It's not the number of games needed that's the problem. It's the MMR value dropped. I'd be ok with playing at least 1 game in 2 weeks. I'd just make it so that you can't drop more than half a league per season MMR-wise.
But you'd have the same problems as now only a month or so slower. After a season or two passes, the masters players who don't play often all drop a league and you'll have what you have now only over 2 seasons instead of 1 season. The problem doesn't change, it simply is delayed.
Changing it from happening in 1 season to happening within 2 seasons won't actually change the problem.
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Personally my MMR decayed much faster than it needed to. I went on a 16 game winstreak having not played for a few weeks (maybe 4). I'm not particularly highly ranked either.
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EPT
