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On November 26 2013 17:58 FirstGear wrote:
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.
The speed of the decay is irrelevant.
Lets say the speed is so fast it drops you a league after a day. This "unfair winstreak" happens in 1 day.
A slow decay will make it so the same problem happens in a month, instead of a day.
An even slower one will make it so the same problem happens in a year, instead of a day.
During that time before people drop, it will be as it was before without decay. With decay, everyone who doesn't play will drop eventually and we will have the problem we have now.
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On November 26 2013 18:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 17:58 FirstGear wrote:
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. The speed of the decay is irrelevant. Lets say the speed is so fast it drops you a league after a day. This "unfair winstreak" happens in 1 day. A slow decay will make it so the same problem happens in a month, instead of a day. An even slower one will make it so the same problem happens in a year, instead of a day. During that time before people drop, it will be as it was before without decay. With decay, everyone who doesn't play will drop eventually and we will have the problem we have now.
If they don't play their MMR gets totally reset. However, if they're able to play a little (sessions twice a month, whatever) then the decay won't occur or it will only occur a little (by half or whatever). Last, if they really don't play... well they probably won't play (can't get a winstreak without playing).
One of the main problems now is that semi-regular players are having their MMR drop too far and too quickly. If the drop was slower (both with the time it takes to start losing MMR and how rapidly you lose points once it starts) we wouldn't see this as much.
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On November 26 2013 12:34 ffadicted wrote:
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
You are seeing one of the mechanics that Blizzard added to HotS to make it harder to deduct your own MMR. The matchmaker primarily pairs you with players from your own league who have similar MMR and only secondarily to people from other leagues. And due to the decay mechanism, there often is plenty of people from each league with one league lower MMR too.
Otherwise it would be easier for you to detect e.g. after MMR decay that your MMR has changed. It is also much harder to deduct if you are approaching the league threshold too, as you usually don't see change in your opponent's leagues before you are actually promoted. And if you approach the low border of your league you typically don't notice it at all as there are no mid-season demotions.
If you would use the MMR tool, you would notice. (Of course one has to be afraid if the day comes, when Blizzard makes such changes to the system, that it is not possible to determine your relative MMR even with third party tools).
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.
Yes 1 game during each 2 week period (less than 2 weeks between the games) in a certain play mode should be enough to avoid the decay in that mode. But as Blizzard has not communicated how the decay mechanism works (nor that it even exists), most of the players do not know this. (Note to self - Play SC2 tonight or face the decay. I have played only placements with one of my accounts this season and it was 13 days ago...The decay ramps up so quickly. If I wait and play with that account only after 2 weeks from now, I will likely not have time to overcome it any time soon. --> It is my interest to avoid the decay and play today).
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On November 26 2013 18:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 17:58 FirstGear wrote:
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. The speed of the decay is irrelevant. Lets say the speed is so fast it drops you a league after a day. This "unfair winstreak" happens in 1 day. A slow decay will make it so the same problem happens in a month, instead of a day. An even slower one will make it so the same problem happens in a year, instead of a day. During that time before people drop, it will be as it was before without decay. With decay, everyone who doesn't play will drop eventually and we will have the problem we have now.
Firstly, you're forgetting that some people don't have the time to gather 16 wins per day just to overcome decay. In your example - and I know it's over the top on purpose, but still - even if you could gather 15 wins over losses per day you'd still end up in bronze. Let's do it on a monthly basis. If you for some reason can only play once per month, but then have a whole day time to play. On that one day you need to gather 16 wins over losses to overcome decay. Even if you have a 15-0 streak, you'll eventually decay down to Bronze. How is that fair?
Secondly, what you say is that it doesn't matter, if the decay is slowed down, and that the same problem would arise just a month or 2 later. I'd say that's wrong. Just imagine a low Master that upto now just played 1 game per season to keep the spot. With the actual system he'd decay to high Plat during 1 season. He does his placement match, sees that he's in Plat and starts crushing Plats to get back up. If he was only demoted to Dia, he'd start playing to get back to Masters, but the battles would be more even, because he'd face opponents that are closer to his original AND actual skilllevel/MMR.
Looking at it from a different angle: Blizzard says atm, that your skill drops a whole league, if you don't play for 2 months. While it may be right that the skill drops when you don't play, it doesn't drop that fast. The actual problem of decayed players stomping active low level players into the ground is a clear proof for this.
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On November 26 2013 18:18 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 12:34 ffadicted wrote:
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 You are seeing one of the mechanics that Blizzard added to HotS to make it harder to deduct your own MMR. The matchmaker primarily pairs you with players from your own league who have similar MMR and only secondarily to people from other leagues. And due to the decay mechanism, there often is plenty of people from each league with one league lower MMR too. Otherwise it would be easier for you to detect e.g. after MMR decay that your MMR has changed. It is also much harder to deduct if you are approaching the league threshold too, as you usually don't see change in your opponent's leagues before you are actually promoted. And if you approach the low border of your league you typically don't notice it at all as there are no mid-season demotions. If you would use the MMR tool, you would notice. (Of course one has to be afraid if the day comes, when Blizzard makes such changes to the system, that it is not possible to determine your relative MMR even with third party tools).
Jesus korona, you are like a sea of knowledge. I guess I'm completely out of touch with the ladder system in hots, damn.
Edit: this whole "not noticing" thing annoys me though, I used to like judging improvement, especially back in the days when you'd get the "favored" display too (when it worked lol)
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I think MMR decay is a big problem about the current system, but not the only one. I think the bigger problem is, that no one knows what actually happens. It's pretty frustrating when playing ladder and you have no idea if you're actually getting promoted soon, or against whom you're matched up.. all that stuff.
I personally played LoL before SC2 Ladder and i think something similar to the LoL-League system would be pretty nice. Getting like a best of 3 or best of 5 to get promoted would actually tell players a little bit if they're about to be promoted and also would tell them why they're not. In my recent experience i was rank 1 silver over ~6-7 games, winning every one of them, after that i began losing a little more. (Win% currenty 58%). At the top of this win streak i had a win% of 67% and waiting for a promotion. But without having any idea if it will come or not.. it's pretty frustrating.
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Blizzard should just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR on the loading screen like it's a chess rating. Then, you'd know exactly what you are up against. They should also set, and make public, MMR levels for promotion to each league so you always know where you stand.
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On November 27 2013 05:02 iPhoneAppz wrote:
Blizzard should just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR on the loading screen like it's a chess rating. Then, you'd know exactly what you are up against. They should also set, and make public, MMR levels for promotion to each league so you always know where you stand.
Except that with the current decay rates, you would still ave no idea what you are up against, as MMR is not a good measure of skill for a lot of people. 
I do agree with you though. Only that step one has to make MMR represent skill in a decent way. Which it did (better) before the decay patch.
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On November 27 2013 20:10 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 05:02 iPhoneAppz wrote:
Blizzard should just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR on the loading screen like it's a chess rating. Then, you'd know exactly what you are up against. They should also set, and make public, MMR levels for promotion to each league so you always know where you stand. Except that with the current decay rates, you would still ave no idea what you are up against, as MMR is not a good measure of skill for a lot of people. I do agree with you though. Only that step one has to make MMR represent skill in a decent way. Which it did (better) before the decay patch.
I totally agree. As far as MMR decay goes, as others have mentioned, I think that it's OK but it should decay at a much slower rate.
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with each passing season there are fewer and fewer players.
this makes it harder and harder for any MMR Ladder scoring system to match you up with a truly equal opponent.
in watching replays of my games i'd say 10% of the guys who beat me are only half trying
Blizzard attempted to mitigate this effect by having a non-ladder automatch choice.
Overall, I'm happy with the automatch process although it occasionally produces 1-sided games.
If there were another RTS game out there like say CoH2 or Red Alert 3 that could produce more evenly matched games I'd probably switch to either game. However, this is not the case. SC2 automatch is still king by a wide wide margin.
Relative to all other RTS automatch systems SC2 is #1 by a big margin. I do not pretend to understand enough about "math theory" end of this subject to offer Blizzard any constructive criticism. I highly suspect no one in this thread does.
teh "play again" feature lets me get another game or 2 against a well matched opponent.
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United States12235 Posts
FYI, Aldrexus popped into Doncroft's ladder thread on the Bnet forums to say:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/10490649577?page=9#171
I wanted to stop in and let you know that we're currently looking into league distribution concerns as well as the slight MMR adjustments that occur after a player has been inactive for a period of time. While we do not have any specifics to provide at this time, know that the StarCraft II development team has been, and continues to actively review your feedback on this subject. We’re working to update you on the status of these systems as soon as we’ve completed a full review of the information available to us.
We appreciate each and every one of you taking the time to share your feedback on this subject, and we encourage you to continue sharing your constructive thoughts.
Note that this constitutes an official acknowledgment of MMR decay, but it does not necessarily acknowledge problems in the ladder nor make any promises of future changes.
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I was rank 1 master 2v2 random ally in Wings of Liberty when I stopped playing. Did placement game 3 season later and got placed in silver on EU. . On SEA last game I won was vs top 50 GM, did placement and got plat. Not sure how consistent this decay is.
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On November 27 2013 22:26 iPhoneAppz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 20:10 Cascade wrote:On November 27 2013 05:02 iPhoneAppz wrote:
Blizzard should just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR on the loading screen like it's a chess rating. Then, you'd know exactly what you are up against. They should also set, and make public, MMR levels for promotion to each league so you always know where you stand. Except that with the current decay rates, you would still ave no idea what you are up against, as MMR is not a good measure of skill for a lot of people. I do agree with you though. Only that step one has to make MMR represent skill in a decent way. Which it did (better) before the decay patch. I totally agree. As far as MMR decay goes, as others have mentioned, I think that it's OK but it should decay at a much slower rate.
slower and also have a limit. a former masters player not playing for a year ends up in bronze. sure they're probably not still masters level but cmon the poor bronze players that have to face them...
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United States12235 Posts
On November 28 2013 07:03 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 22:26 iPhoneAppz wrote:On November 27 2013 20:10 Cascade wrote:On November 27 2013 05:02 iPhoneAppz wrote:
Blizzard should just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR on the loading screen like it's a chess rating. Then, you'd know exactly what you are up against. They should also set, and make public, MMR levels for promotion to each league so you always know where you stand. Except that with the current decay rates, you would still ave no idea what you are up against, as MMR is not a good measure of skill for a lot of people. I do agree with you though. Only that step one has to make MMR represent skill in a decent way. Which it did (better) before the decay patch. I totally agree. As far as MMR decay goes, as others have mentioned, I think that it's OK but it should decay at a much slower rate. slower and also have a limit. a former masters player not playing for a year ends up in bronze. sure they're probably not still masters level but cmon the poor bronze players that have to face them...
There is a limit. Whether you're inactive 4 weeks or 14 weeks you still drop the same amount. The scenario where you don't play for a year would result in playing 5 placement matches meaning no prior MMR history and a clean slate.
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On November 28 2013 07:17 Excalibur_Z wrote:There is a limit. Whether you're inactive 4 weeks or 14 weeks you still drop the same amount. The scenario where you don't play for a year would result in playing 5 placement matches meaning no prior MMR history and a clean slate.
in that case, the limit goes way way too far. regardless of time spent inactive, it shouldn't be dropping you leagues.
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On November 26 2013 07:59 oxxo 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. 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.
So true, I am really tired of playing ex-diamonds and ex-masters in silver in 2v2 and 3v3. Frustrating for us and boring for them (I suppose). We have stopped playing ladder until Blizzard fixes the whole thing.
Non-playing periods affect more certaing players than others. I think a better idea than MMR decay is to force people that do not play enough to play more placement matches. For example, if you have only played 10 games last season, the game tests your skill by making you play 3 placement matches. The less you play, the more placement matches you need to play, so that the ranking system has a clear idea of what your skill actually is, and puts you in the correct league.
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Okay, I just played my 1v1 placement on my main account that was high diamond in the first season. After that I did only play teamgames. I was never inactive and did not drop in my team game leagues. Anyways, I faced a plat and beat him and got silver. So the connection 1v1 and team is most likely non existant. Also after that long time of being inactive in 1v1 they should just throw me 5placements to sort my level out. Atleast I'd get plat or something. If I actively play teamgames at high masters level I should not drop to silver in 1v1, since I assume my 1:1 skill is not that damaged from playing team.
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On November 26 2013 12:34 ffadicted wrote:
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
The plats you were playing prior likely had diamond mmr. It was mentioned earlier that the system prioritizes matching you with people in your current league, with similar mmr, before matching you outside your league. Even if you AND your opponent's true MMR are high enough to be diamond.
Once you're in diamond, you matchmaking prioritizes other diamond players for you to play.
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A Blizzard employee recently posted (on B.net) that this was bring looked into. So I hope players will wait instead of quitting in frustration. We need more players, not less.
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On November 28 2013 07:17 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2013 07:03 synapse wrote:On November 27 2013 22:26 iPhoneAppz wrote:On November 27 2013 20:10 Cascade wrote:On November 27 2013 05:02 iPhoneAppz wrote:
Blizzard should just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR on the loading screen like it's a chess rating. Then, you'd know exactly what you are up against. They should also set, and make public, MMR levels for promotion to each league so you always know where you stand. Except that with the current decay rates, you would still ave no idea what you are up against, as MMR is not a good measure of skill for a lot of people. I do agree with you though. Only that step one has to make MMR represent skill in a decent way. Which it did (better) before the decay patch. I totally agree. As far as MMR decay goes, as others have mentioned, I think that it's OK but it should decay at a much slower rate. slower and also have a limit. a former masters player not playing for a year ends up in bronze. sure they're probably not still masters level but cmon the poor bronze players that have to face them... There is a limit. Whether you're inactive 4 weeks or 14 weeks you still drop the same amount. The scenario where you don't play for a year would result in playing 5 placement matches meaning no prior MMR history and a clean slate.
i went from diamond -> bronze after about 4 or 5 months of inactivity, never got a reset.
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EPT
