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On February 06 2014 04:33 Ctone23 wrote:
I'm sure I have my fair share of complaining when it came to the league offsets and what-not. I got promoted last night, and I have to say, that is what it's all about.
Fucking love this game.
Problem is that they likely did not address the mixed MMR issue and the changes were cosmetical (league badges changed as the borders changed). If the MMR decay was unaltered, the higher skilled players still continue to drop down to play against lower skilled players. And as the drop is considerable different skilled players will share similar MMRs --> matchmaking results are often not satisfactory (matchmaker is technically functioning ok, but if the MMR does not represent actual skill, then the matchmaking results are often not ok).
On February 06 2014 04:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2014 03:30 korona wrote:On February 06 2014 02:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I guess Blizzard's modifications to the decay are actually working... I just went from Bronze 1 to Silver 1 to Gold 1 lol... Blizzard made changes to league offsets / thresholds on Friday 2014-01-24. It is still not known if there were changes to the decay (they have not mentioned any changes). For that observing people who have played after the offset changes and then went inactive for 4 weeks or more is needed. Hopefully there will be at least few such MMR tool users in the end of the month that have good MMR calculations before and after the inactivity period. At first the offset/threshold changes will move people upwards regarding their leagues. But after this if there were no changes to the decay, the population will start moving towards lower leagues again as their MMR degrades (demotions would be expected for many at start of each new season). Yeah, I haven't played since mid-January 
Please note that the MMR decay was unaltered before v.2.1. To observe if there were changes you need to observe those who have played after 2014-01-24 (after the offset changes & got reliable MMR calculation results) and then went inactive.
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On February 06 2014 18:45 blonk wrote:
What is the date of that event? When was "MMR decay" introduced?
It was introduced when HotS was published (alternative possibility is patch 2.0.4 that was published one month earlier for WoL, but have not looked at data from that period, but from the first season there are cases (season 12)).
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Is the MMR Population graph meant to be correct, or is it known to be off? I'm saying this, because according to these stats (IF they are correct, that is) http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league ..just bronze + silver should make around 2/3 of the entire population, while on your gaussian curve, it seems something around 40%.
This brings me doubts to the ranks's thresholds.. is there some sure knowledge (more or less), or not?
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United States12238 Posts
Third party sites like SC2Ranks and Nios.kr don't factor in Blizzard's internal activity metric, which is used to filter out players who have stopped playing the game and are therefore unnecessary to account for when redrawing the league boundaries for the next season. What those sites show instead is a list of total accounts, so that's why there's a difference between what we outsiders see and what Blizzard sees. When Blizzard says the boundaries are for 2/18/20/32/20/8 of the population, they're specifically excluding players who, for example, only played a single placement match that season and then quit.
Also, I believe something has been wrong with SC2Ranks' account tracking for the better part of 4 months now. You're better off using Nios.kr, since even though it tracks fewer accounts, its updates are faster and more reliable.
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Yeah, SC2Ranks in fact failed to track my account for many weeks, and just recently decided to work again. Another thing I felt strange is that it's considering me in the top 100-200 of Silver players (and that should still be true even if it considers inactive silver players).. while the MMR tools say I'm still short of 100-150 MMR points to get into gold (which seems quite a lot).
Does one need to so completely crash his league competitors to advance? It didnt seem so in the past... I almost never see other silver divisions where there's someone with more points than me, and still I very rarely confront gold players on ladder (and win around 9-10 points against other silvers). I know well that points and MMR are different things, but on the long run, they should converge in some way..
EDIT: talking about promotions.. nios.kr places me #91 out of 52.000 players on EU Silver (and I even have pool points left atm). Are there so few players left in SC2 that you really need to massive outplay your current league to ladder up?
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What happens if I don't play for 4 weeks then play a game and then don't play for 4 weeks etc. Will I eventually drop to rock bottom?
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On March 27 2014 23:01 Greenei wrote:
What happens if I don't play for 4 weeks then play a game and then don't play for 4 weeks etc. Will I eventually drop to rock bottom?
from my experience, yes! i was in gold starting this season, and eventually fell to bronze. i tested by just leaving the league i was in and playing my placement match. so this is still a problem, despite what blizzard says. looking at the league distribution further confirms this: less active players are falling into the lower leagues, most of which likely don't belong there.
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On March 27 2014 23:19 CycoDude wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2014 23:01 Greenei wrote:
What happens if I don't play for 4 weeks then play a game and then don't play for 4 weeks etc. Will I eventually drop to rock bottom? from my experience, yes! i was in gold starting this season, and eventually fell to bronze. i tested by just leaving the league i was in and playing my placement match. so this is still a problem, despite what blizzard says. looking at the league distribution further confirms this: less active players are falling into the lower leagues, most of which likely don't belong there.
Can confirm. You'll drop to scum league in no time at all.
I was diamond around a year ago and at the time had put in a lot of effort so the promotion felt well earned. Then for various reasons I didnt play for about two months apart from one or two games. I ended up in Silver. After the recent boundary change I got Gold but I doubt I'll ever get back to diamond now.
Blizzards attitude to leagues and ranking is beyond stupidity IMO. The way they do it you may as well not bother. The only thing it had going for it was the excellent matchmaking and then BAM, mmr deflation. now they might as well rename bronze through gold the "league of hell" and have everyone in there in one big pot with no ranks.
Their reasoning for having bonus and points and deflation and all of it is illogical, contrary to what the customers ask for, makes a mockery of the "rank" and has caused nothing but problems since the launch of WoL. As it stands the whole system is basically intentionally misleading players.
They should link rank directly to mmr but right now I'd settle for just getting rid of deflation. Frankly I think they must know what a supreme disaster that idea is, but they are just too proud (aka stupid) to admit to it and reverse the change.
Unbelievable.
edit
I mean do they think mmr tool, sc2ranks and ggtracker exist because people are bored? Or could it be the case that Blizzs stulbborn refusal to do anything remotely smart leaves the community no option but to attempt to implement features themselves that should have been in since the very first patch??
Its like buying a car and then having to build your own speedo, nav system and a couple of doors. Even worse because the car actually has a speedo, only it changes its readout depending on how it thinks you feel rather than actually telling how fast you are really going. However the manual makes no mention of that and implies its a real speedo working in the usual manner.
Ok /rant 
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On March 27 2014 23:36 Spirit09 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2014 23:19 CycoDude wrote:On March 27 2014 23:01 Greenei wrote:
What happens if I don't play for 4 weeks then play a game and then don't play for 4 weeks etc. Will I eventually drop to rock bottom? from my experience, yes! i was in gold starting this season, and eventually fell to bronze. i tested by just leaving the league i was in and playing my placement match. so this is still a problem, despite what blizzard says. looking at the league distribution further confirms this: less active players are falling into the lower leagues, most of which likely don't belong there. Can confirm. You'll drop to scum league in no time at all. I was diamond around a year ago and at the time had put in a lot of effort so the promotion felt well earned. Then for various reasons I didnt play for about two months apart from one or two games. I ended up in Silver. After the recent boundary change I got Gold but I doubt I'll ever get back to diamond now. Blizzards attitude to leagues and ranking is beyond stupidity IMO. The way they do it you may as well not bother. The only thing it had going for it was the excellent matchmaking and then BAM, mmr deflation. now they might as well rename bronze through gold the "league of hell" and have everyone in there in one big pot with no ranks. Their reasoning for having bonus and points and deflation and all of it is illogical, contrary to what the customers ask for, makes a mockery of the "rank" and has caused nothing but problems since the launch of WoL. As it stands the whole system is basically intentionally misleading players. They should link rank directly to mmr but right now I'd settle for just getting rid of deflation. Frankly I think they must know what a supreme disaster that idea is, but they are just too proud (aka stupid) to admit to it and reverse the change. Unbelievable. edit I mean do they think mmr tool, sc2ranks and ggtracker exist because people are bored? Or could it be the case that Blizzs stulbborn refusal to do anything remotely smart leaves the community no option but to attempt to implement features themselves that should have been in since the very first patch?? Its like buying a car and then having to build your own speedo, nav system and a couple of doors. Even worse because the car actually has a speedo, only it changes its readout depending on how it thinks you feel rather than actually telling how fast you are really going. However the manual makes no mention of that and implies its a real speedo working in the usual manner. Ok /rant
People whined when there was no ladder deflation, people whine now that there is ladder deflation, people whine that the mixes are this and that blah de blah de blah.
There is nothing Blizzard will do that will make the sub-masters players happy because what they want is a system that shows them as not being crappy despite the fact that they are.
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On March 28 2014 00:20 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2014 23:36 Spirit09 wrote:On March 27 2014 23:19 CycoDude wrote:On March 27 2014 23:01 Greenei wrote:
What happens if I don't play for 4 weeks then play a game and then don't play for 4 weeks etc. Will I eventually drop to rock bottom? from my experience, yes! i was in gold starting this season, and eventually fell to bronze. i tested by just leaving the league i was in and playing my placement match. so this is still a problem, despite what blizzard says. looking at the league distribution further confirms this: less active players are falling into the lower leagues, most of which likely don't belong there. Can confirm. You'll drop to scum league in no time at all. I was diamond around a year ago and at the time had put in a lot of effort so the promotion felt well earned. Then for various reasons I didnt play for about two months apart from one or two games. I ended up in Silver. After the recent boundary change I got Gold but I doubt I'll ever get back to diamond now. Blizzards attitude to leagues and ranking is beyond stupidity IMO. The way they do it you may as well not bother. The only thing it had going for it was the excellent matchmaking and then BAM, mmr deflation. now they might as well rename bronze through gold the "league of hell" and have everyone in there in one big pot with no ranks. Their reasoning for having bonus and points and deflation and all of it is illogical, contrary to what the customers ask for, makes a mockery of the "rank" and has caused nothing but problems since the launch of WoL. As it stands the whole system is basically intentionally misleading players. They should link rank directly to mmr but right now I'd settle for just getting rid of deflation. Frankly I think they must know what a supreme disaster that idea is, but they are just too proud (aka stupid) to admit to it and reverse the change. Unbelievable. edit I mean do they think mmr tool, sc2ranks and ggtracker exist because people are bored? Or could it be the case that Blizzs stulbborn refusal to do anything remotely smart leaves the community no option but to attempt to implement features themselves that should have been in since the very first patch?? Its like buying a car and then having to build your own speedo, nav system and a couple of doors. Even worse because the car actually has a speedo, only it changes its readout depending on how it thinks you feel rather than actually telling how fast you are really going. However the manual makes no mention of that and implies its a real speedo working in the usual manner. Ok /rant People whined when there was no ladder deflation, people whine now that there is ladder deflation, people whine that the mixes are this and that blah de blah de blah. There is nothing Blizzard will do that will make the sub-masters players happy because what they want is a system that shows them as not being crappy despite the fact that they are.
That is a very arrogant sentiment. A Gold player is better than average. A Diamond player can be better than 97 percent of active players. That's very good. Importantly, many of those "lower league" players play relatively casually (a few hours a week) compared to fancy high masters or GMs who could be described as unhealthy addicts who spend too much time playing video games. I'm not talking about professional players. It's their job to play. I mean your garden variety Master league ladder hero.
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ah I hate mmr decay, I played next to no games for 12-18 months or so. Just enough games to maintain placement and such. Now my mmr is so low that I'm on a 20~ game winstreak. I'm motivated by losing blizzard  I don't even know any modern builds and I'm winning off of pure mechanics and those are rusty too. I actually hate winning like this, it means that I'm not getting enough of a challenge out of the game. I get why the feature exists but it's just too aggressive. mid-Masters to Platinum is night and day even with over a year of inactivity. Makes me wish there was a separate world ladder like PGTour or iCCup but losing the matchmaking function would drive people away and blizzard isn't about to let that happen.
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On March 28 2014 00:34 Salient wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 00:20 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 27 2014 23:36 Spirit09 wrote:On March 27 2014 23:19 CycoDude wrote:On March 27 2014 23:01 Greenei wrote:
What happens if I don't play for 4 weeks then play a game and then don't play for 4 weeks etc. Will I eventually drop to rock bottom? from my experience, yes! i was in gold starting this season, and eventually fell to bronze. i tested by just leaving the league i was in and playing my placement match. so this is still a problem, despite what blizzard says. looking at the league distribution further confirms this: less active players are falling into the lower leagues, most of which likely don't belong there. Can confirm. You'll drop to scum league in no time at all. I was diamond around a year ago and at the time had put in a lot of effort so the promotion felt well earned. Then for various reasons I didnt play for about two months apart from one or two games. I ended up in Silver. After the recent boundary change I got Gold but I doubt I'll ever get back to diamond now. Blizzards attitude to leagues and ranking is beyond stupidity IMO. The way they do it you may as well not bother. The only thing it had going for it was the excellent matchmaking and then BAM, mmr deflation. now they might as well rename bronze through gold the "league of hell" and have everyone in there in one big pot with no ranks. Their reasoning for having bonus and points and deflation and all of it is illogical, contrary to what the customers ask for, makes a mockery of the "rank" and has caused nothing but problems since the launch of WoL. As it stands the whole system is basically intentionally misleading players. They should link rank directly to mmr but right now I'd settle for just getting rid of deflation. Frankly I think they must know what a supreme disaster that idea is, but they are just too proud (aka stupid) to admit to it and reverse the change. Unbelievable. edit I mean do they think mmr tool, sc2ranks and ggtracker exist because people are bored? Or could it be the case that Blizzs stulbborn refusal to do anything remotely smart leaves the community no option but to attempt to implement features themselves that should have been in since the very first patch?? Its like buying a car and then having to build your own speedo, nav system and a couple of doors. Even worse because the car actually has a speedo, only it changes its readout depending on how it thinks you feel rather than actually telling how fast you are really going. However the manual makes no mention of that and implies its a real speedo working in the usual manner. Ok /rant People whined when there was no ladder deflation, people whine now that there is ladder deflation, people whine that the mixes are this and that blah de blah de blah. There is nothing Blizzard will do that will make the sub-masters players happy because what they want is a system that shows them as not being crappy despite the fact that they are. That is a very arrogant sentiment. A Gold player is better than average. A Diamond player can be better than 97 percent of active players. That's very good. Importantly, many of those "lower league" players play relatively casually (a few hours a week) compared to fancy high masters or GMs who could be described as unhealthy addicts who spend too much time playing video games. I'm not talking about professional players. It's their job to play. I mean your garden variety mid or high master ladder hero.
I disagree with this, I practiced with a group of high masters/gm players and another group of low masters/high diamond players in WoL when I was still in high school and an active player. The difference between the two wasn't playtime it was how they approached the game. There were actually more people playing more than ~4hours/day in the low masters/high diamond group than the high masters/gm group. The high masters/gm group just did a more focused and consistent practice style where they worked on their weaknesses instead of blindly playing games and their skill level naturally increased as a result of their focused training.
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On March 28 2014 00:48 unit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 00:34 Salient wrote:On March 28 2014 00:20 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 27 2014 23:36 Spirit09 wrote:On March 27 2014 23:19 CycoDude wrote:On March 27 2014 23:01 Greenei wrote:
What happens if I don't play for 4 weeks then play a game and then don't play for 4 weeks etc. Will I eventually drop to rock bottom? from my experience, yes! i was in gold starting this season, and eventually fell to bronze. i tested by just leaving the league i was in and playing my placement match. so this is still a problem, despite what blizzard says. looking at the league distribution further confirms this: less active players are falling into the lower leagues, most of which likely don't belong there. Can confirm. You'll drop to scum league in no time at all. I was diamond around a year ago and at the time had put in a lot of effort so the promotion felt well earned. Then for various reasons I didnt play for about two months apart from one or two games. I ended up in Silver. After the recent boundary change I got Gold but I doubt I'll ever get back to diamond now. Blizzards attitude to leagues and ranking is beyond stupidity IMO. The way they do it you may as well not bother. The only thing it had going for it was the excellent matchmaking and then BAM, mmr deflation. now they might as well rename bronze through gold the "league of hell" and have everyone in there in one big pot with no ranks. Their reasoning for having bonus and points and deflation and all of it is illogical, contrary to what the customers ask for, makes a mockery of the "rank" and has caused nothing but problems since the launch of WoL. As it stands the whole system is basically intentionally misleading players. They should link rank directly to mmr but right now I'd settle for just getting rid of deflation. Frankly I think they must know what a supreme disaster that idea is, but they are just too proud (aka stupid) to admit to it and reverse the change. Unbelievable. edit I mean do they think mmr tool, sc2ranks and ggtracker exist because people are bored? Or could it be the case that Blizzs stulbborn refusal to do anything remotely smart leaves the community no option but to attempt to implement features themselves that should have been in since the very first patch?? Its like buying a car and then having to build your own speedo, nav system and a couple of doors. Even worse because the car actually has a speedo, only it changes its readout depending on how it thinks you feel rather than actually telling how fast you are really going. However the manual makes no mention of that and implies its a real speedo working in the usual manner. Ok /rant People whined when there was no ladder deflation, people whine now that there is ladder deflation, people whine that the mixes are this and that blah de blah de blah. There is nothing Blizzard will do that will make the sub-masters players happy because what they want is a system that shows them as not being crappy despite the fact that they are. That is a very arrogant sentiment. A Gold player is better than average. A Diamond player can be better than 97 percent of active players. That's very good. Importantly, many of those "lower league" players play relatively casually (a few hours a week) compared to fancy high masters or GMs who could be described as unhealthy addicts who spend too much time playing video games. I'm not talking about professional players. It's their job to play. I mean your garden variety mid or high master ladder hero. I disagree with this, I practiced with a group of high masters/gm players and another group of low masters/high diamond players in WoL when I was still in high school and an active player. The difference between the two wasn't playtime it was how they approached the game. There were actually more people playing more than ~4hours/day in the low masters/high diamond group than the high masters/gm group. The high masters/gm group just did a more focused and consistent practice style where they worked on their weaknesses instead of blindly playing games and their skill level naturally increased as a result of their focused training.
Gaming for 4 hour a day is probably unhealthy unless you are school kids on Summer vacation. I can maintain Plat and sometimes Diamond with less than 4 hours a week.
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Irrespective of why players have different skill levels the "whining" is IMO due to the illogical and misleading manner in which blizzard set the system up abd have changed it over time. Any semi serious review of the ladder would conclude it isnt even a ladder at all. People dont think they are better than they are (unless the ladder tells them so which isnt their fault) but they do get confused and frustrated, and I think its clear that is blizzards fault.
I cant speak for others but I wasnt whining, I was criticising. There is a difference and im.surprised you didnt notice that. And even if you feel it was whine my points about the community bolt ons being evidence of blizzard failing to deliver still stand.
I for one made many points on the blizz forums about the need for more stats and analysis. They choose not to listen and now we have ggtracker. But yeah im.sure their time was better spent developing deflation and thoroughly testing it before implementing it. 
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On March 28 2014 01:01 Spirit09 wrote:
Irrespective of why players have different skill levels the "whining" is IMO due to the illogical and misleading manner in which blizzard set the system up abd have changed it over time. Any semi serious review of the ladder would conclude it isnt even a ladder at all. People dont think they are better than they are (unless the ladder tells them so which isnt their fault) but they do get confused and frustrated, and I think its clear that is blizzards fault.
I cant speak for others but I wasnt whining, I was criticising. There is a difference and im.surprised you didnt notice that. And even if you feel it was whine my points about the community bolt ons being evidence of blizzard failing to deliver still stand.
Blizzard should look to competitive chess for inspiration. Chess has various ranks (such as GM, IM, etc.) based on a player's Elo rating. The Elo rating is determined by a mathematical formula. Both the formula and the Elo ratings are public.
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On March 28 2014 01:12 Salient wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 01:01 Spirit09 wrote:
Irrespective of why players have different skill levels the "whining" is IMO due to the illogical and misleading manner in which blizzard set the system up abd have changed it over time. Any semi serious review of the ladder would conclude it isnt even a ladder at all. People dont think they are better than they are (unless the ladder tells them so which isnt their fault) but they do get confused and frustrated, and I think its clear that is blizzards fault.
I cant speak for others but I wasnt whining, I was criticising. There is a difference and im.surprised you didnt notice that. And even if you feel it was whine my points about the community bolt ons being evidence of blizzard failing to deliver still stand. Blizzard should look to competitive chess for inspiration. Chess has various ranks (such as GM, IM, etc.) based on a player's Elo rating. The Elo rating is determined by a mathematical formula. Both the formula and the Elo ratings are public.
Blizzard's MMR is actually better than Elo. They just need to show it...
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EPT
