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United States12175 Posts
Based on mounting evidence and independent research, MMR does appear to decay over periods of inactivity. Korona from MMR-Stats first noticed this when it appeared the league offsets from the previous season did not change, but the reported point changes (and therefore inferred MMR values) indicated a dramatic drop in opponent quality for users who had long stretches of inactivity. You can see an album of three examples posted by Korona to illustrate this:
http://imgur.com/a/vaLDF#0
Why Does MMR Decay Exist?
As some might recall, many players actually requested that some sort of decay mechanism be implemented because they didn't feel they could compete at their normal level after returning from a long break. For example:
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2868804407 http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7179568535
Blizzard apparently agreed, and now MMR will decay if users have not played games for a certain period of time.
How Much Does MMR Decay Due to Inactivity?
Korona is still looking through MMR-Stats records, but there seems to be an upper limit of about 310 or so rating which is a little larger than the span of most leagues. If you're very inactive, you could drop one league (or, if you're already near the bottom of one league, up to two leagues) upon returning. Note that if you are inactive in a season and return in the same season, you will remain in the same league because you can no longer be demoted mid-season, but you will face lower-league opponents because MMR transcends league boundaries. This means that if you have experienced MMR decay mid-season, your league icon no longer reflects your current skill level.
Note that so far, we have not discovered any examples of players dropping more than the 310-ish value. However, we do not believe that this value applies evenly to inactive players, meaning the amount of decay is probably gradual beginning at some point and increasing up to this limit.
Also note that the existing MMR lookup rule applies: if you are inactive for an entire season (that is, you stop playing in Season n, you play no games--ranked or unranked--during Season n+1, you come back for Season n+2), your MMR is wiped clean.
What Impact Does MMR Decay Have on the Overall Ladder?
On an individual basis, decay is a fine concept. You come back from a break, you're a little rusty, so it's fair to match you against people who are a little weaker. On a macro scale, it depends on the overall activity level of the ladder.
I hope to update this post soon with inactivity filters included, if I can get a handle on them.
How Frequently Must I Keep Playing to Prevent Decay?
Decay begins to take effect between 2 weeks and 4 weeks of uninterrupted inactivity. We believe the effect to be linear, from a decay of 0 at 2 weeks to about 310 at 4 weeks. The below image illustrates.
The red line is the decay rate. x is time in days and y is decay amount. The decay hard caps at the blue and green lines.
Does MMR Decay Result in Ladder Deflation?
Based on the current activity levels of the ladder as a whole, it appears that MMR decay does have a deflationary effect. As noted, if over half the Platinum players go inactive and get decayed down to Gold, as long as their skills deteriorated at similar rates, they would be evenly matched against each other which means their ratings would not increase. However, against legitimately weaker true-Gold players, they would still win, which would effectively push the Gold players further down. As long as the inactive members constitute a majority of the player base, system-wide deflation is inevitable.
Is MMR Decay Overtuned?
It is arguable that the current upper limit of MMR decay is too aggressive. It's jarring for players to suddenly find that they are starting a new season in a lower league despite feeling that they were competing effectively in their higher league, only because they didn't play enough games. On average, players earn 16 MMR for a win against an opponent of equal strength. A decay-driven rating drop of 300 means that it would take nearly 20 wins over losses to return to a player's previous strength. Assuming you never lost, it would take you 20 games to overcome. However, according to my research, only 5,928, or 17.02%, of Bronze players played more than 20 games in Season 4, compared to 37.83% of Silver, 58.20% of Gold, 69.20% of Platinum, 77.59% of Diamond, and 85.70% of Master players. Overall, 52.12% of players will not play enough games to offset the maximum amount of MMR decay over the course of a season.
Notes
Decay triggers only after an uninterrupted inactivity period . Korona should have better visibility on this as time passes, but it shouldn't affect the integrity of the majority of information presented here.
+ Show Spoiler +Incorrect/Legacy Information The data captured reflects the Americas server. For Bronze league, 3,261 of 34,812 players (9.3%) had bonus pools below 1 week's worth by the end of last season. 3,691 (10.6%) had bonus pools below 2 weeks' worth. 4,165 (11.9%) had bonus pools below 3 weeks' worth. 4,718 (13.5%) had bonus pools below 4 weeks' worth. 5,598 (16%) had bonus pools below 5 weeks' worth. 7,775 (22.3%) had bonus pools below 6 weeks' worth. For Silver it breaks down like this: <1 week's worth of bonus pool by season end: 11.91% <2 weeks: 14.9% <3 weeks: 18.4% <4 weeks: 22.8% <5 weeks: 29.1% <6 weeks: 40% of the Silver population Here's the full breakdown if you're curious: Now, 6 weeks is pretty generous when you're talking about someone being an active player, so it's a pretty safe bet that the actual activity metric is below this. The fact that only 22% of Bronze players meet this criteria means that if you're playing at a Bronze level, 22% of the time your random opponent may be actual Bronze-level, while 60% or more of the time it may be an inactive Silver. It's more common for higher-level players to keep up in activity. On average, around half of the Master and Diamond populations kept their bonus pools low. However, that's still a 50-50 shot that you're playing someone who experienced MMR decay versus someone proven to be at that level.
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I believe this has always been the case right? Thank you for the research BTW.
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Awesome. So if I ever dare to play again after 2+ years I won't get my ass kicked by masters. I probably belong in silver now
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Brilliant post, and explains my own experience as a very infrequent player and the reported experience of many others. Unless you play a lot more than a casual player can, you end up being pushed down aggressively by MMR decay. But you're not the only one, resulting in playing much better players in lower leagues.
A further consequence, that you did not bring out, is that MMR decay randomizes your opponents. They could be much lower or much higher in actual skill, depending on their level of activity.
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On September 21 2013 07:05 Excalibur_Z wrote:However, according to my research, only 244, or 0.7%, of Bronze players played more than 20 games last season, compared to 1.5% of Silver, 2.2% of Gold, 2.7% of Platinum, 2.7% of Diamond, and 2.9% of Master players. Overall, 98% of players will not play enough games to offset the maximum amount of MMR decay over the course of a season.
Wow, and here I thought I play too few ladder games to call myself an active ladder player (<30 wins last season). :o I guess that also explains why the gold players seem to have become better than compared to one or two seasons ago.
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On September 21 2013 07:23 FallDownMarigold wrote: Awesome. So if I ever dare to play again after 2+ years I won't get my ass kicked by masters. I probably belong in silver now
MMR was already completely deleted in WoL if you skipped a whole season, had your lovely 5 placement matches against other beginners.
Had always some longer breaks from ladder and felt like I fought way weaker opponents when I played ladder again. Might have been some MMR shifts due to changing player numbers if there really was no decay before. Oh well will get an even more insane winrate if there is a real decay now ... and will have to play more ladder games to get good opponents again.
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4713 Posts
The most shocking part of this was the part with only around 3% of Master players play more then 20 games per season. That is seriously quite low, I get more in just one day easily and I still feel casual.
Overall I think the MMR decay is a good feature, maybe not as extreme as the current model but some sort of decay is good.
And yes, this could explain some of the weirder games I've had this season, like hitting a plat player one game and then the very next game hitting a masters.
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still need a reset mmr button.
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Assuming these metrics are true (98% of players don't play 20 1v1 games a season), then I'm happy the decay is that aggressive. Anyone playing that casually should move down the ladder, over time (a couple seasons) it will mean overall more accurate representation of your "skill" vs your displayed league. It will be hard to stay in diamond let alone masters, unless you know, you play frequently as I'm sure many of us do.
Then again, I don't think that number is too surprising, SC2 sold very very well, millions of copies, but the vast majority of those people aren't following esports and aren't about competitive 1v1 games, they enjoy all the other features of sc2 since it's a complete retail game title and not some sort of trimmed down f2p 1v1 game..
Kind of weird to think about though. Reaching masters makes you feel like the 2%, but actually, you're already in the top 2% as long as you're active on ladder (which is what, 5 games a week?)
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Last season, I was placed into masters. Played one ranked game and lost so I was 0-1 last season. Played a match this season, still got placed into masters. I was surprised. I started playing unranked games this season and 90% of the games were anywhere from silver-diamond. I play ranked games and I get placed against high dia/ low masters.
This because unranked is dying and has a terrible player pool?
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Wow, I figured the amount of people truly active on the ladder would be small but the under 20 games stats is almost jaw dropping. Thanks for the research.
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So this explains why a lot of former masters including myself are now diamond, and why everyone was saying Blizzard reduced the cutoff for Master? Does this deflation now mean that master league constitutes a lower percentage of the player base than it did before?
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Canada8157 Posts
On September 21 2013 08:09 Doodsmack wrote: So this explains why a lot of former masters including myself are now diamond, and why everyone was saying Blizzard reduced the cutoff for Master? Does this deflation now mean that master league constitutes a lower percentage of the player base than it did before?
Yes
And no to the second question, they just decreased the size of master league
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Well I guess that helps justify the fact that two seasons ago I was in diamond playing master league players, then I stopped playing and I was placed in platinum last season, and then I still didn't play and was placed into gold this season. And now I'm stomping people who are in my current "league". That just makes me want to play even less though, because I don't have time to play a ton anymore to get back up to the league I used to be at before I was arbitrarily demoted at the beginning of every season -.-'
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Canada8157 Posts
Yeah i was only getting about 30 games in per season, went from master to diamond this season
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Well this is annoying since I dont really like playing 1:1 but 1:1 dictates placements in teamgames and if I dont keep on playing 20 or so 1:1 games (alot for me since I dont really enjoy it) I'll get worse placements in in teamgames dragging my AT team down. While I guess we'll awalys play our way up to our "real" level pretty fast it's not that fun. This also explains why I faced so "bad" opponents when I did my 2:2 RT placements, apparently my MMR is pretty decayed.
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Very interesting read, thank you both for researching those mechanics behind it
On September 21 2013 07:05 Excalibur_Z wrote: However, according to my research, only 244, or 0.7%, of Bronze players played more than 20 games last season, compared to 1.5% of Silver, 2.2% of Gold, 2.7% of Platinum, 2.7% of Diamond, and 2.9% of Master players. Overall, 98% of players will not play enough games to offset the maximum amount of MMR decay over the course of a season.
Wow, didn't really expected that. I recently check sc2ranks.com to see, how many people are still playing SCII 1v1 ladder. On the EU server there are around 100.000 accounts placed in a 1v1 league, but it didn't tell you, how many of those accounts only play the placement match and never return to the start of next season. So I guess we'll look at around 2500 active player base with a lots of people who play very, very casually.
That looks quite grim, but i'm still not jumping on the "SCII is dead" train. RTS games are not very popular in these days (nothing new) and I don't see that changing in the near future. As long as I can play my 1v1 / watch tournaments, SCII is aLive for me
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Well i got decayed from platinum to silver lol. It took quite a while to get back to platinum and i had 3 to 1 win loss ratio at one moment. In gold most of my opponents were truly gold players.Ex platinum-diamond players came only when i was on top of my gold division and in platinum. This MMR decay made things more interesting if you ask me.Maybe even got some inactive players to get back and defend their previous league honor :D
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Only 2.9% of masters doing >20 games ? Any idea how many masters it represents ?
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Ah! I was wondering what had happened! I have been on a break for a bit of time and was expecting to get my ass handed to me but then the reverse actually happened!
I think currently the decay might actually be slightly too much. Since I started playing again my games have not been close at all. I'm stealing all the nerds' ladder points that they probably worked really hard for and I'm giving none back!
But I guess it's making it a lot easier for me to get started playing consistantly =p
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I wish they hadn't messed with it.
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That explains why I was placed into diamond this season even tho I have always been master. I only played 1 game last season. Well after 9 games I am back in master^^
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On September 21 2013 08:58 Faust852 wrote: Only 2.9% of masters doing >20 games ? Any idea how many masters it represents ?
I don't know if I'm missing something or this doesn't make sense. According to nios.kr here are ~4000 masters players in EU. 3% would make that only 120 players played more than 20 games per season. But just looking at the Masters players you can scroll past pages and pages of 100 Masters players each with a lot of games played (>20), so I don't know D:
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too much Math to handle for me..great research nonetheless
My former Master Rank in SEA was in active for like 2 seasons. Not absolute inactive but like 10 games only in those 2 seasons ( with like 60% ) win rate. When I did placement last season it went to plat ;_;
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United States12175 Posts
On September 21 2013 09:33 Aynophae wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2013 08:58 Faust852 wrote: Only 2.9% of masters doing >20 games ? Any idea how many masters it represents ? I don't know if I'm missing something or this doesn't make sense. According to nios.kr here are ~4000 masters players in EU. 3% would make that only 120 players played more than 20 games per season. But just looking at the Masters players you can scroll past pages and pages of 100 Masters players each with a lot of games played (>20), so I don't know D:
Nope, you're right. Someone on the Bnet forums pointed this out too, thanks for vetting =)
I went back to my CSV and saw that my Games Played column only tabulated about 10,000 of the over 500,000 rows. This has been changed and verified, and the original post corrected. These are the new--accurate--values for players who have played at least 20 games last season, filtered to the Americas region:
Bronze: 5,928 (17.02861082%) Silver: 18,636 (37.83498457%) Gold: 27,006 (58.20133187%) Plat: 15,348 (69.20059516%) Diamond: 10,683 (77.5929692%) Master: 4,723 (85.70132462%) Overall: 82,324 (47.88311318%)
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Oh shit so that's why... (( I don't play enough 1v1 not to be affected by decay, so I'm doomed to win all my games and never be promoted I guess? Sounds like fun :/ Raped a master some hours ago, he told me "gold really? lamer"...
Edit: I wish it hadn't been changed too. I have 1 question though: does playing in team games affect decay in 1v1? (like, does it makes you an "active" player?)
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Thanks for compiling all that, Excalibur! I know a lot of effort and exchanges went into understanding it.
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While I don't think MMR decay is a problem (actually it is a good feature to have), I think the lack of rank decay is a problem, especially since tournament organizers like WCS are using the ladder rank as a requirement for participation.
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On September 21 2013 21:37 JustPassingBy wrote: While I don't think MMR decay is a problem (actually it is a good feature to have), I think the lack of rank decay is a problem, especially since tournament organizers like WCS are using the ladder rank as a requirement for participation.
Bonus pool exists to serve as a decay for ladder rank.
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On September 21 2013 07:15 SChlafmann wrote: I believe this has always been the case right? Thank you for the research BTW.
This has not always been the case. It's a new development. While I've been hit by this, which has been a little annoying, it's probably a good thing.
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So that's why I've been facing more platinum and diamond players in silver league...
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Well, I was kinda shocked to see that after two months break I got dumped from high Plat all the way to Silver.
However, initial shock to the side, I think it's a terrific feature. Getting to play 10-15 matches against Silvers and Golds is a great way to get yourself back into shape without suffering the frustration of playing against players on the level you used to be two months before.
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On September 23 2013 19:15 baba44713 wrote: Well, I was kinda shocked to see that after two months break I got dumped from high Plat all the way to Silver.
However, initial shock to the side, I think it's a terrific feature. Getting to play 10-15 matches against Silvers and Golds is a great way to get yourself back into shape without suffering the frustration of playing against players on the level you used to be two months before. Balanced by the corresponding silvers and golds extensively depressed by facing players whose skill is still very much beyond them. It's fine to have some decay, but the cascading effects are already apparent. Returning plats playing other plats in gold league is fine for plats, but depressing for golds.
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I didn't play WOL at all once HOTS came out. I played 1 2v2rt game last game to see if ppl still played. I was rank 1 master last I played (Think I ended the season 2nd-5th due to not playing after lock), got placed in Silver =D.
On SEA I was Diamond (Ladder locked while I was dia) with GM mmr (Played lots in plat too O.o) Img . When I did my placement 2-3 seasons later it put me in silver. I think this shows you can be demoted by more then 1 league :p
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If you dont play a whole season you get a brand new MMR with 5 placement matches, so its no demotion.
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On September 23 2013 19:15 baba44713 wrote: Well, I was kinda shocked to see that after two months break I got dumped from high Plat all the way to Silver.
However, initial shock to the side, I think it's a terrific feature. Getting to play 10-15 matches against Silvers and Golds is a great way to get yourself back into shape without suffering the frustration of playing against players on the level you used to be two months before.
Wtf, a bit more respect for the Silver and Gold pls.
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This is kinda ridiculous tbh. I have a 100% winrate in 1v1 in HotS (yes, 100%...), over 20 games. So interesting... They need to tone down the decay imo. Rank decay I'm fine with, but MMR decay is awfully hard to tune. Let people who took a break lose a few games like before...
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On September 23 2013 20:09 Yrr wrote: If you dont play a whole season you get a brand new MMR with 5 placement matches, so its no demotion. Brand new mmr but it takes forever to build it. Currently 34-0 on NA and still hitting diamonds (half brag half frustration at how slowly mmr increases). Sucks for me and sucks for those who are playing people well above their level because the mmr doesn't put them against masters faster. Same as the guy above ^^
Perhaps it was done as there are no mid-season demotions anymore. I guess it might free up more spots for people trying to rank up? It honestly feels bugged atm
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Brand new MMR means you're likely not higher than gold anyway, it's not the solution
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From my personal experience playing after HotS launch...
High masters after 2 months, did not play for perhaps 4 months, ended up being matched against gold league on first game back (plat on second game).
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This post makes me feel so normal
But it also makes me more willing to ladder again.
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MMR should strive to have players a 50% chance of winning, not feeding the egos of players coming back from a break. Just offrace to drop your unranked MMR and you have the same experience, but at least with boosting some lower MMRs on the way there.
Expecting to win half of your games is already not that much, and facing an opponent you can have no hopes of beating at the same MMR is just wrong imo. Time to tune the system, Blizzard!
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Regardless of whether inactivity-based decay is "good" or "bad," it would be nice if inactivity was determined based on all four of a player's characters on the four regions. I switch between the servers frequently for variety, but neglected my NA account for a few weeks - I was placed in a lower league in the new season despite playing continuously on other accounts.
If the presumption is that taking a break results in a noticeable drop in skill, it would make sense to fully check that the player has in fact taken a break across all regions; doing otherwise is strictly "bad" and leads to frustration at best, or a demeaning of the ranking system at worst.
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This decay is AWESOME. I decayed so far I was playing vs Bronze and silver players. I've won like 40 games in a row, lol (still only playing plats, haha) .
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I can only imagine this being extremely demotivating to lower league players wanting to climb the ladder. We are supposed to be drawing people in not scaring them away and MMR decay this drastic isn't helping.
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i know that if you dont play for 2 seasons you need to play 5 placment matches again. don't apply to team rank games.
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I haven't 1v1 for nearly 4months, Copper league, I'm on my way
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I find it pretty annoying.. MMR drops fast enough if your skill level has really dropped after inactivity, while grinding back points when you're say close to master is long if you're near 50% winrate and you don't play often.. I played a bit of 2V2 in the early days of HOTS to get to masters. I got to masters, and then only played placement each season.. Now I'm gold wtf. I mean I don't care, but it's not nice for the poor gold buddies that I've to play against if I want to play a bit of 2V2 again. On the other hand, my NA account dropped from high diamond to plat, and as there are a lot of offracing masters/high masters at the hours I play (I'm from EU so when I play on NA there are often only EU and SEA players), it's hard to get it back up. Without MMR decay you wouldn't have offracing accounts placed in plat and below. It has to be annoying to lower level players as well, playing smurfs all the time and getting destroyed without knowing if they could have helped it or not.
I really don't see the need for it. If people want to play when they come back from a pause they might lose anyway, and get to appropriate opponents fast enough. When I started playing the game on a friend's plat account back in the day, I dropped to bronze in no time. On the other hand having to play lots of games to get your smurfs/offrace accounts back to where they were is pretty terrible.
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On September 23 2013 23:19 Nimix wrote: I find it pretty annoying.. MMR drops fast enough if your skill level has really dropped after inactivity, while grinding back points when you're say close to master is long if you're near 50% winrate and you don't play often.. I played a bit of 2V2 in the early days of HOTS to get to masters. I got to masters, and then only played placement each season.. Now I'm gold wtf. I mean I don't care, but it's not nice for the poor gold buddies that I've to play against if I want to play a bit of 2V2 again. On the other hand, my NA account dropped from high diamond to plat, and as there are a lot of offracing masters/high masters at the hours I play (I'm from EU so when I play on NA there are often only EU and SEA players), it's hard to get it back up. Without MMR decay you wouldn't have offracing accounts placed in plat and below. It has to be annoying to lower level players as well, playing smurfs all the time and getting destroyed without knowing if they could have helped it or not.
I really don't see the need for it. If people want to play when they come back from a pause they might lose anyway, and get to appropriate opponents fast enough. When I started playing the game on a friend's plat account back in the day, I dropped to bronze in no time. On the other hand having to play lots of games to get your smurfs/offrace accounts back to where they were is pretty terrible.
I think the point is that people are more likely to come back if they don't have to face huge losing streaks.
AlTthere will always be people playing at levels lower than their real skill so the MMR decay doesn't really change that (especially now with unranked play).
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I used to be in platinum. I didn't play at all over the summer for the duration of about one season. When I did my placement match again, I got put into silver, where I've been performing mediocre against other silvers and golds.
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People in the lower leagues (silver/gold/plat) already complaining in the blizzard forums about playing vs prior dimaonds/masters. I don't think this decay is a good thing.
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On September 24 2013 00:00 FLORIDACOMPACT wrote: People in the lower leagues (silver/gold/plat) already complaining in the blizzard forums about playing vs prior dimaonds/masters. I don't think this decay is a good thing.
I recently lost 12 straight ladder games, most of them against former plat/diamond players in silver league.
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This is terrible. Casual Gold and Plat players will lose motivation and quit after getting demolished by demoted inactive Diamond and Master players. It is similar to mass smurfing. This not good considering that we already have a problem retaining casuals!
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On September 24 2013 00:11 Salient wrote: This is terrible. Casual Gold and Plat players will lose motivation and quit after getting demolished by demoted inactive Diamond and Master players. It is similar to mass smurfing. This not good considering that we already have a problem retaining casuals! I doubt it will be that bad. We are reviving some anecdotal evidence of people being slammed by diamond players who's MMR has decayed, but its nothing more than that. MMR corrects pretty quickly, so they shouldn't be matched against someone that low for too long. The same thing happened when all of our MMRs were reset during HotS and I was getting my ass kicked by high masters players.
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On September 24 2013 00:11 Salient wrote: This is terrible. Casual Gold and Plat players will lose motivation and quit after getting demolished by demoted inactive Diamond and Master players. It is similar to mass smurfing. This not good considering that we already have a problem retaining casuals!
^ This.
User was warned for this post
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To share my experience on the subject...
I'm former master player that don't want to play ranked as often as i was. The main reason behind this is that i like macro game so I enjoy more unranked where I can leave games with boring cheese (often done by ranked diamond) .
The result of this is that my ranked account is slowly falling. Now i just farm my ranked to just maintain a diamond level basically farming people 1/2 or 1 league under me.
I feel that unranked is one of the reason the system is so messed up. But it's very enjoyable to play without pressure and enjoy good macro games without worrying about boring cheese.
Another consequence of Unranked is the splitting of your games between 2 MMR making those 2 MMR very unaccurate compared to the unique one before. Basically the algorithm that calculate MMR is much more performant if you play tons of games. Since your games are splitted in two MMR those are less accurate.
Add that the leaving if I'm bored phenomenon of unranked + the matchmaking of unranked vs ranked and you obtain a completely messed up MMR in both ranked and unranked.
And to add more to it : the ladder population decreasing so much a lot of people are demoted anyway.
So many reasons to not trust this system anymore.
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On September 24 2013 00:11 Salient wrote: This is terrible. Casual Gold and Plat players will lose motivation and quit after getting demolished by demoted inactive Diamond and Master players. It is similar to mass smurfing. This not good considering that we already have a problem retaining casuals! I agree. After taking ~8 week break, I went from mid-Diamond to Gold. No game was even close. I don't mean to speak for my opponents but I doubt it was any fun for them, and I get no enjoyment out of it either (actually I just feel bad). Hopefully this is just a beta implementation of the decay system and after Blizz collects enough data to make a determination on how far to drop someone given a certain period of inactivity, they will tweak it.
I doubt it will be that bad. We are reviving some anecdotal evidence of people being slammed by diamond players who's MMR has decayed, but its nothing more than that. MMR corrects pretty quickly, so they shouldn't be matched against someone that low for too long. The same thing happened when all of our MMRs were reset during HotS and I was getting my ass kicked by high masters players. I dunno, I went 27-3 to get back to diamond, and the losses came from people in the same boat (former Diamond/Masters coming back). I think my first 3-5 games were against Gold, probably 15-20 against Plat, and the rest Diamond. It doesn't seem to recover quickly enough where I'm playing more than even two games in Gold and 10 in Plat. I mean no disrespect to those players! I just didn't think it was fun for either me or my opponent.
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On September 24 2013 00:16 FLORIDACOMPACT wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:11 Salient wrote: This is terrible. Casual Gold and Plat players will lose motivation and quit after getting demolished by demoted inactive Diamond and Master players. It is similar to mass smurfing. This not good considering that we already have a problem retaining casuals! ^ This. User was warned for this post
Not really. In reality if you skip like 2 months you'll go from low master to mid-high diamond mmr (speaking from experience), so it's pretty ok, not that many players have 3-4 months without playing sc so that they would drop to plat
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On September 24 2013 00:24 bLah. wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:16 FLORIDACOMPACT wrote:On September 24 2013 00:11 Salient wrote: This is terrible. Casual Gold and Plat players will lose motivation and quit after getting demolished by demoted inactive Diamond and Master players. It is similar to mass smurfing. This not good considering that we already have a problem retaining casuals! ^ This. User was warned for this post Not really. In reality if you skip like 2 months you'll go from low master to mid-high diamond mmr (speaking from experience), so it's pretty ok, not that many players have 3-4 months without playing sc so that they would drop to plat If you take three months off from most things, you will be worse off. its not really that big of a deal, since you will be able work back up. Unless you are one of those people who simply can't deal with your ladder rank dropping and at that point you might be playing SC2 for weird reasons.
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I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange..
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You don't lose 3 leagues in skill when you stop playing 4 months, wtf.
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On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. Did you have to play new placement matches? I know that the ladder removes you if you take more than one season off, so it might have just put you as high as it can and you will have to slog your way back up.
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I think the goal of this system is good for achieving the desired 50% win rate after breaks.
I think the amount and speed of decay is wrong and needs reduced. Sometimes I take a week break and the first like 2-5 games will be a lose no matter the enemy. I would rather have no decay at that point so that after my hands regain their memory I am facing the right MMR. When it deflates to quickly then I lose a few as I get my chops back it just means I have to ladder like 20+ games to get back to a 50% win rate.
I hate feeling like I have to fight my MMR back into place every couple weeks.
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I love reading anything you write Professor Z. I have one question I'm hoping you or someone else could expand on.
I don't understand why you came to your conclusion in the "Does MMR Decay Result in Ladder Deflation?" Section.
Just because half of platinum is potentially inactive by some chosen metric that doesn't deflate the ladder from my ignorant perspective. To me you take the state of the ladder and it is what it is. So if half of a league is inactive that's just how it is. I don't see how gold is "pushed down" because in theory half of them are also inactive anyway. And the ones that aren't are more consistent (in theory) when matched against an inactive platinum the match will be even since there definitely is an true skill decay after not playing, whether that be consistency or not knowing meta, forgetting some basic tech switch/scout whatever, or of course the infamous misclick.
My guess is that blizz is working to find the correct fit for this decay so that matches remain as even as possible. If this hasn't been here all along then I suppose I follow your deflation idea (though couldn't you argue for inflation the other way since you're essentially manufacturing MMR #'s based on something that's not win/loss anymore. I guess I'm just thinking through it but I guess I don't agree that an inactive plat will beat an active gold more than 50% of the time. I think silver to plat is closer than people think. Diamond to Masters is a very large gap of course. Bronze to Gold also big gap.
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On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange..
Strange indeed. There was no master league in beta, not even diamond... diamond started when game launched, and master in 2011.
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On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. I don't think that existed until the second major patch following release...
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On September 24 2013 00:42 tenklavir wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. I don't think that existed until the second major patch following release...
There wasn't even a diamond league in beta, if I recall correctly.
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On September 24 2013 00:45 InfCereal wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:42 tenklavir wrote:On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. I don't think that existed until the second major patch following release... There wasn't even a diamond league in beta, if I recall correctly.
I seem to remember it came in a patch towards the end of beta.
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On September 24 2013 00:46 MstrJinbo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:45 InfCereal wrote:On September 24 2013 00:42 tenklavir wrote:On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. I don't think that existed until the second major patch following release... There wasn't even a diamond league in beta, if I recall correctly. I seem to remember it came in a patch towards the end of beta. Correct, beta patch 13. Removed Copper, added Diamond. Still doesn't make a lot of sense...
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United States12175 Posts
On September 24 2013 00:41 thurst0n wrote: I love reading anything you write Professor Z. I have one question I'm hoping you or someone else could expand on.
I don't understand why you came to your conclusion in the "Does MMR Decay Result in Ladder Deflation?" Section.
Just because half of platinum is potentially inactive by some chosen metric that doesn't deflate the ladder from my ignorant perspective. To me you take the state of the ladder and it is what it is. So if half of a league is inactive that's just how it is. I don't see how gold is "pushed down" because in theory half of them are also inactive anyway. And the ones that aren't are more consistent (in theory) when matched against an inactive platinum the match will be even since there definitely is an true skill decay after not playing, whether that be consistency or not knowing meta, forgetting some basic tech switch/scout whatever, or of course the infamous misclick.
My guess is that blizz is working to find the correct fit for this decay so that matches remain as even as possible. If this hasn't been here all along then I suppose I follow your deflation idea (though couldn't you argue for inflation the other way since you're essentially manufacturing MMR #'s based on something that's not win/loss anymore. I guess I'm just thinking through it but I guess I don't agree that an inactive plat will beat an active gold more than 50% of the time. I think silver to plat is closer than people think. Diamond to Masters is a very large gap of course. Bronze to Gold also big gap.
You may be right, and that section could be considered sensationalist I suppose. The decay system has been in since around the HotS launch as best we can determine. The percentage of activity in terms of bonus pool per league also doesn't necessarily prove deflation because, after all, we're fundamentally talking about inactive players here meaning they don't play often. The active players are the ones whose placement is actually relevant. If you play against an inactive guy who was previously a league or two higher, and he beats you, then as an isolated incident that's a problem. However, what if that guy only goes on to play three more games over the entire season? I think there are enough of these incidents that it creates a mental problem for a lot of players, because they can't reliably determine how good their current or future opponents are going to be.
As for the MMR ranges per league, I believe the MMR-Stats guys are much less confident in the Bronze through Gold leagues because there simply aren't enough data points from users who play in those leagues. According to the tool, though, each league is estimated to cover almost the same numerical range. There's a bit of guessing involved because that's how the tool works (it takes guesses based on each game you play) so it may not be perfect, but it's probably okay for purposes like these.
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Ah this makes a lot of sense. I took a 2 month break (I just needed one as I had been playing too much and wasn't having fun. My shoulder was injured and playing irritated it) and when I came back and did placements for this season I was put into Platinum even though I was top Diamond playing low Master before I quit. I went on a 10 game winning streak when I came back. I figured there was no way my skills could have improved if I was not playing so something had to be up. This makes the whole thing make a lot more sense.
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On September 24 2013 00:36 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. Did you have to play new placement matches? I know that the ladder removes you if you take more than one season off, so it might have just put you as high as it can and you will have to slog your way back up.
I have heard that many times, but is it actually true? I have had many long periods of only playing occasional team games with friends, but never had to play more than one 1v1 placement match. My MMR massively dropped, though.
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On September 24 2013 00:56 Excalibur_Z wrote: If you play against an inactive guy who was previously a league or two higher, and he beats you, then as an isolated incident that's a problem. However, what if that guy only goes on to play three more games over the entire season? I think there are enough of these incidents that it creates a mental problem for a lot of players, because they can't reliably determine how good their current or future opponents are going to be.
I think this is the major issue, if any. The whole demotion of league is less of an issue since leagues are just a facade anyway. What matters is the matchmaking and matching of players of like skill (regardless of league).
While decay of MMR during idle periods makes sense I think it needs to scale and I'm wondering if it does. For example, the higher your MMR the more the metagame has influence. Taking time off means missing out on game shifts and thus the decay makes more sense when you're up at GM or Master level. At a lower level, metagame shifts do not matter and it is simply mechanics that influence result, thus decay here makes less sense since a Gold player will almost always have better mechanics than a Bronze player even after a long period of inactivity for the Gold player. You don't tend to forget how to ride a bike.
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Does make sense since I dropped from winning my masters season placement game into gold after only playing few games all summer.
Ended previous season with about 1800 unused bonus pool.
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Thanks for the info. no wonder i ended up in diamond after not playing for months.
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that explains a lot of the current ladder and why it still hasnt leveled out. I'm still seeing quite a few 10x and above masters in plat/dia. nice writeup
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United States12175 Posts
On September 24 2013 02:20 vesicular wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:56 Excalibur_Z wrote: If you play against an inactive guy who was previously a league or two higher, and he beats you, then as an isolated incident that's a problem. However, what if that guy only goes on to play three more games over the entire season? I think there are enough of these incidents that it creates a mental problem for a lot of players, because they can't reliably determine how good their current or future opponents are going to be.
I think this is the major issue, if any. The whole demotion of league is less of an issue since leagues are just a facade anyway. What matters is the matchmaking and matching of players of like skill (regardless of league). While decay of MMR during idle periods makes sense I think it needs to scale and I'm wondering if it does. For example, the higher your MMR the more the metagame has influence. Taking time off means missing out on game shifts and thus the decay makes more sense when you're up at GM or Master level. At a lower level, metagame shifts do not matter and it is simply mechanics that influence result, thus decay here makes less sense since a Gold player will almost always have better mechanics than a Bronze player even after a long period of inactivity for the Gold player. You don't tend to forget how to ride a bike.
It "scales" in the sense that you lose more rating over time up to the max, but it's always the same amount whether you start at 2000 or 1000 (I believe, anyway). The idea behind it is that you come back rusty and the first person you face is someone you would have been favored to win before you went idle. Because in an Elo system the difference in rating between two players is what matters, then it makes sense that the decay rate is uniform for everyone. Let's say that a 100 rating gap represents a 10% win rate probability change, so 2000 vs 1900 is a 60%/40% pairing, but 1000 vs 900 is also a 60%/40% pairing. It wouldn't be fair for MMR to decay faster for higher-rated players so that they have a 70/30 pairing after a month off whereas a lower-ranked player would have a 60/40 pairing after the same time.
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now its really easy to get master if u play simply two day in row cause not much players play so u get master for activity not for skills sadly most of time i trying two times with different acc and i dont have to play single master to get to master league....
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i wish they would only use this for unranked. kinda sucks for people who play on different regions/accounts for a large period of time.
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Jaedong was up one night really late, and wanted to play on NA since no one on KR was online, he got placed into silver.
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LOL, I was high master 3v3 random teams (I realize not a huge accomplishment, but still...), took a break, placed into gold, didn't play much, placed again this season into bronze. BRONZE.
Now I get Zerg allies that stay on 1 base until the 15 minute mark, and Terran allies that have 4ccs with no orbital commands.
It really makes me want to play more team games...
#$%^ you, Blizzard.
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On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. I had 7 diamond season finishes and now I'm in platinum and 85% of my games are against former masters. It's kind of depressing.
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I think the increased mmr decay coupled with a fresh account on every server and much slower promotions (due to no mid-season demotions) has greatly increased the number of smurfs/mismatches on ladder. Hope they fix it for next season and get players back to their actual skill level faster.
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I was a solid mid Masters player, heck, I've even beaten some high Masters players recently. But now I'm losing to Diamonds and even Platinums. One of the Platinums I've lost to told me he was really Top 8 Masters. This is getting fucking absurd. My MMR is going to utter shit because I'm losing to players who are FAR above the indicated Diamond and Platinum level. I know I haven't gotten worse because I've been practicing harder than ever, still do fine in custom games with my teammates and my mechanics are better than ever. Getting really frustrated with this, but at least through this whole ordeal I've learned to completely and utterly disregard ladder.
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It's more common for higher-level players to keep up in activity. On average, around half of the Master and Diamond populations kept their bonus pools low. However, that's still a 50-50 shot that you're playing someone who experienced MMR decay versus someone proven to be at that level.
(That's from the op)
So... With the ladder going for a 50% win rate this means that a 25% win rate is more likely. That assumes you are an active player and that you will lose vs a decayed player.
A better statement might be that you will normally, when active, face a player whom you are actually better than 25% of the time.
If that's the case blizzard as ruined the best part of the ladder for non pro players.
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This relieved a LOT of my ladder anxiety actually thanks so much OP! Played a few matches today and I don't feel like I'll be outmatched despite my lack of play time.
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I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet...but I have seen this MMR decay affect 2v2 ladder a bit, both for me and opponents I have had. I was placed from Masters to Gold after my (1) placement coming back after about a 2 month break. Needless to say, I think my silver/gold/play/diamond opponents felt it quite unfair to have to get demolished by me and I found it rather annoying having partners that hurt me more being in the game than if they just left. I have seen similar things happen to my opponents. Solid (masters lvl) 2v2 AT (arranged teams) that haven't played together for a month are playing against gold/plat level opponents, which such balls for them because they just get demolished. Yeah yeah I know, no one cares about 2v2 or any team games....well w/e, doesn't change the fact that it is a problem.
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On September 24 2013 10:36 U_G_L_Y wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. I had 7 diamond season finishes and now I'm in platinum and 85% of my games are against former masters. It's kind of depressing. Yup, same for me, except I was Master. And it isn't like I am playing lots of Diamonds either, basically only Platinums, some of which were 9-10 season Master players. It seems quite odd. I switched to unranked as a result.
On September 24 2013 05:14 Minkus wrote: i wish they would only use this for unranked. kinda sucks for people who play on different regions/accounts for a large period of time. Yes, true. Before I took 2 months off I was going for EU Master and as a result my bonus pool in NA started stacking up, which probably made it even worse after I came back from my break.
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On September 25 2013 08:07 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 10:36 U_G_L_Y wrote:On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. I had 7 diamond season finishes and now I'm in platinum and 85% of my games are against former masters. It's kind of depressing. Yup, same for me, except I was Master. And it isn't like I am playing lots of Diamonds either, basically only Platinums, some of which were 9-10 season Master players. It seems quite odd. I switched to unranked as a result. Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 05:14 Minkus wrote: i wish they would only use this for unranked. kinda sucks for people who play on different regions/accounts for a large period of time. Yes, true. Before I took 2 months off I was going for EU Master and as a result my bonus pool in NA started stacking up, which probably made it even worse after I came back from my break. Everyone was complaining that master league was getting too full / watered down. Now that half the people have been kicked out it's a bit more exclusive (and maybe means something). Obviously it sucks to be one of the ones bumped (I know) but I think it adds a lot more prestige. Diamond is the new (old) master league. Plat is the new Diamond etc.
I know there's a lot of complaints about MMR not reflecting player skill resulting in lopsided matches but that'll happen with people losing on purpose (especially with unranked games and accounts on each server). It doesn't take that many games for MMR to readjust (and if players aren't playing many games, it doesn't happen much anyway).
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I can only confirm this. I was mid masters at the end of wol/start of hots. Then I decided to switch to zerg from protoss, as I preferred hit your forcefields or die over the mamaship core, and used a new account for that to get my rank up. Recently I played on the old protoss account again and I got gold from being mid masters last time I played on it.
To people wondering about ranks: It used to be: Bronze 20% Silver 20% Gold 20% Plat 20% Diamond 18% Masters 2%
Then they changed it early hots to: Bronze 12% Silver 20% Gold 28% Plat 20% Diamond 18% Masters 2%
And now they changed it to (without announcing lol): Bronze 25ish% Silver 25ish% Gold 25ish% (these lower three leagues currently make up about 80%) Plat 10% Diamond 8% Masters 2%
Put that together with mmr decay and a lot of people doing decently well in diamond last season may find themselves in palt this season. Personally it put me into plat after being high diamond and mainly playing vs masters, but after a bunch of games I managed to get into diamond again so I don't see much of an issue.
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On September 25 2013 22:17 Lorch wrote:I can only confirm this. I was mid masters at the end of wol/start of hots. Then I decided to switch to zerg from protoss, as I preferred hit your forcefields or die over the mamaship core, and used a new account for that to get my rank up. Recently I played on the old protoss account again and I got gold from being mid masters last time I played on it. To people wondering about ranks: It used to be: + Show Spoiler +Bronze 20% Silver 20% Gold 20% Plat 20% Diamond 18% Masters 2% Then they changed it early hots to: + Show Spoiler +Bronze 12% Silver 20% Gold 28% Plat 20% Diamond 18% Masters 2% And now they changed it to (without announcing lol): + Show Spoiler +Bronze 25ish% Silver 25ish% Gold 25ish% (these lower three leagues currently make up about 80%) Plat 10% Diamond 8% Masters 2% Put that together with mmr decay and a lot of people doing decently well in diamond last season may find themselves in palt this season. Personally it put me into plat after being high diamond and mainly playing vs masters, but after a bunch of games I managed to get into diamond again so I don't see much of an issue. Except there was no offset or league threshold changes between last season & this season (just rechecked this). Thus the league distribution changes are caused by other things. Logically the MMR decay (as max decay seems to have so high value) would be the likely main cause for the distribution changes, but there are other lesser reasons too.
The lesser reasons could be 1) unranked mode using the same matchmaking queue, 2) global play (people playing on multiple servers are also more likely to have inactivity periods --> MMR decay), 3) new accounts & accounts that had full MMR reset (MMR changes much more rapidly if it starts from blank MMR), 4) MMR abusers, 5) shrinking player base. But these would logically have only minor effects (potential exception: unranked mode) as these accounts represent minority of the player base on each server. But then again during the 'silent hours' it may be more likely to face such accounts more frequently (like Europeans on NA server during morning & midday (evening time on EU)).
If there are no changes to the MMR decay feature (such as max decay set to lower value) & no changes to the offsets / thresholds in beginning of the next season, one could expect that the trend regarding league distribution changes continues --> top leagues shrink even more and lower leagues grow.
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Is your unranked MMR affecting your ladder MMR? Can you keep the ladder MMR "active" by playing unranked?
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On September 26 2013 15:24 dala wrote: Is your unranked MMR affecting your ladder MMR? Can you keep the ladder MMR "active" by playing unranked? There are lots of accounts that had quite long inactivity period seemingly unaffected of the decay in MMR tool data. Thus it is likely that games in other modes would prevent the decay. But more research regarding this is needed.
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Has blizzard commented on this at all?
Its getting to be a bad ladder suddenly. Punishing players for activity by increasing their chance to hit a player of higher real skill is just...
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On September 26 2013 17:20 vaderseven wrote: Has blizzard commented on this at all?
Its getting to be a bad ladder suddenly. Punishing players for activity by increasing their chance to hit a player of higher real skill is just... There has been no public reaction from Blizzard. It would potentially be helpful to keep Excalibur_Z's US Bnet forum thread (same content as this thread) alive and in first page as it is the best description of the situation amongst multiple other threads filled with misinformation. If someone has something constructive to add to that thread, it may be beneficial to post there (do not just bump it, you need to have something constructive to say). Also worth to note that some posters in that thread are misinformed, do not start feuds with them.
Original Bnet thread can be found from: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/10025152690
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On September 24 2013 10:34 U_G_L_Y wrote: LOL, I was high master 3v3 random teams (I realize not a huge accomplishment, but still...), took a break, placed into gold, didn't play much, placed again this season into bronze. BRONZE.
Now I get Zerg allies that stay on 1 base until the 15 minute mark, and Terran allies that have 4ccs with no orbital commands.
It really makes me want to play more team games...
#$%^ you, Blizzard. I'm high master 3:3 RT on my main account. On my random fuck around account I was 15-8 (I cant play protoss) in diamond last season. I played and won my placement and got Silver. This is not fun for me and should be really frustrating for the people i roflstomp. I'll probably manage to play the account up to plat but then I'll end up in bronze next season like you.
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On September 27 2013 09:06 Eatme wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 10:34 U_G_L_Y wrote: LOL, I was high master 3v3 random teams (I realize not a huge accomplishment, but still...), took a break, placed into gold, didn't play much, placed again this season into bronze. BRONZE.
Now I get Zerg allies that stay on 1 base until the 15 minute mark, and Terran allies that have 4ccs with no orbital commands.
It really makes me want to play more team games...
#$%^ you, Blizzard. I'm high master 3:3 RT on my main account. On my random fuck around account I was 15-8 (I cant play protoss) in diamond last season. I played and won my placement and got Silver. This is not fun for me and should be really frustrating for the people i roflstomp. I'll probably manage to play the account up to plat but then I'll end up in bronze next season like you. Yeah, Protoss is terrible in team games unless you are at a low enough level where massing Skillrays is a thing, I couldn't get above diamond with random.
I think it is more frustrating for me than the people I ROFL stomp, though. They are just frustrated as they are dying. I'm frustrated the whole game long that my allies have 10 workers and 5 cannons in their 1 base at the 10 minute mark
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This is awesome. Not only hte work, but the finding. When I take breaks, I want my MMR to be lower when I get back so I don't get my ass kicked, immediately get deflated, and then not play some more.
Woot for blizzard. Kudos to whoever thought this up.
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On September 27 2013 09:51 U_G_L_Y wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2013 09:06 Eatme wrote:On September 24 2013 10:34 U_G_L_Y wrote: LOL, I was high master 3v3 random teams (I realize not a huge accomplishment, but still...), took a break, placed into gold, didn't play much, placed again this season into bronze. BRONZE.
Now I get Zerg allies that stay on 1 base until the 15 minute mark, and Terran allies that have 4ccs with no orbital commands.
It really makes me want to play more team games...
#$%^ you, Blizzard. I'm high master 3:3 RT on my main account. On my random fuck around account I was 15-8 (I cant play protoss) in diamond last season. I played and won my placement and got Silver. This is not fun for me and should be really frustrating for the people i roflstomp. I'll probably manage to play the account up to plat but then I'll end up in bronze next season like you. Yeah, Protoss is terrible in team games unless you are at a low enough level where massing Skillrays is a thing, I couldn't get above diamond with random. I think it is more frustrating for me than the people I ROFL stomp, though. They are just frustrated as they are dying. I'm frustrated the whole game long that my allies have 10 workers and 5 cannons in their 1 base at the 10 minute mark They are quite nice in AT with two agressive allies so the toss can get oracle or dt up, there is also the possibility to proxy or cannon if you can trust your allies. The trouble is really in RT where even at quite high levels people might play 1:1 meta or just be plain bad/clueless.
Speaking of AT. I have almost never had a AT team play more than 30games. So most of my teams will get placed and play a few games--->Drop below initial level and play a few games--->drop even lower than last season until superbronze. On the other hand this should be true for most teams so maybe it'll even out.
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On September 24 2013 00:42 Mali__Slon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2013 00:31 guN-viCe wrote: I've been master since WOL beta, up until about 2 seasons ago when I stopped playing. Now I'm in platinum, stomping noobs. It's strange.. Strange indeed. There was no master league in beta, not even diamond... diamond started when game launched, and master in 2011.
I stand corrected, my point was that I was always in the highest league since beta(aside from GM). I've been master since it was introduced.
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I wonder if Blizzard will balance this decay. Seems a bit overdone.
Right now my friends & me are even wondering to just not play for 2 seasons to get a clean start.
Being ranked & barely active feels like a handicap. Random team games are horrible since the allies are even gold or lower level.
In the past after long breaks my level of play was back to diamond in 1-2 days of returning. It's not like you improve much by playing against terrible opponents.
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The idea of a decay on mmr is fine but in a game where you are already struggling to keep people playing regularly this isn't best way blizzard could have gone with this.
This decay should exist for accounts in masters + forcing them to play keeping the top of the ladder a bit more competitive, for someone in gold who gets demoted into silver just sucks especially if they worked hard enough for it. Unranked ladder exists, if people are worried they are rusty they can grind a few games on that. Either that or just lower the rate of decay by a fixed amount.
This also completely ruins 2s/3s/4s on ladder
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I understand that a reasonable and fair MMR system is extremely hard to implement yet...the present system is seriously damaging SC2's ability to attract new players...
Case in point: Noob signs on (with previous RTS knowledge + having seen some SC2 games at DH for example), plays a ranking match, loses, gets placed in silver.
Plays again, verses screen shows he is playing another silver, gets beat down hard, checks highest rank of his opponent, sees master, plays again, verses screen shows he is playing a gold player, gets seriously beat down. Watches replay and the skill/apm difference makes learning anything absurd, checks highest rank of his opponent sees diamond. Finally after losing X matches pitifully he plays a bronze player who builds an army of 10 reapers by the 12 minute mark, noob wins with a supply of 100, 2 bases and an army consisting of 3 colo and a swath of blink stalkers.
I mean wtf is this? Certainly not fun - or even interesting for our new players
On top you have fucks in GM, master or diamond purposefully being dicks and having accounts in silver/gold just to troll...
My wife quit playing sc2 cos of this MMR system.
Meh....
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WC3 had a decay system when you were over level 10. I think it makes sense.
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Yep, only played maybe 20 games last season and when I played my placement a couple weeks ago for this season it put me in platinum. Still only played 2 games so far, 2-0, was rather surprised o.o
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As a n00b (top 8 in my division in Silver league) I can't say enough about how frustrating this is. My goal for this season has been to get promoted to Gold league. Also, let me say straight away that I don't mind losing, especially if it is a close game or the competition is at or slightly above my level.
After every game I play, of course, I go in and check the league of my opponent to see if I'm playing Gold players yet. I'm still only playing Silver players, so I doubt I'm close to promotion. Anyway, the frustration comes in when I lose. After a loss, I'll check the 'Highest league' of my opponent. Without fail, each of my losses has come at the hands of someone who is in Silver, but has been in Platinum, Diamond, or even Masters in the past. It is terribly discouraging to get smoked by these guys who are dumped into Silver league with new players like myself.
I'll keep playing because I really love the game and I love the feeling that I'm improving with each loss. I do see why people would quit though.
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i noticed this also , but didnt knew it for sure. now its kinda official and i think this kind of system is a slap in the face for all the none pro gamers/working people. Im doing a job 5 days a week i gotta work 9 hours everyday, and after that period of time i cant play every evening. so they invented the bonus point system for players like me that can´t be that active. so now with this change the whole bonus point system seems useless... thx blizzard for ruining my expirience as a casual starcraft 2 player... either u can play ladder everyday and u stay up ur league or ur not that active and have to climb up leages after each season wich ist just frustrating.... if it stays like that i say ladder goodbye...
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On October 18 2013 21:55 iPhoneAppz wrote: As a n00b (top 8 in my division in Silver league) I can't say enough about how frustrating this is. My goal for this season has been to get promoted to Gold league. Also, let me say straight away that I don't mind losing, especially if it is a close game or the competition is at or slightly above my level.
After every game I play, of course, I go in and check the league of my opponent to see if I'm playing Gold players yet. I'm still only playing Silver players, so I doubt I'm close to promotion. Anyway, the frustration comes in when I lose. After a loss, I'll check the 'Highest league' of my opponent. Without fail, each of my losses has come at the hands of someone who is in Silver, but has been in Platinum, Diamond, or even Masters in the past. It is terribly discouraging to get smoked by these guys who are dumped into Silver league with new players like myself.
I'll keep playing because I really love the game and I love the feeling that I'm improving with each loss. I do see why people would quit though.
I agree with this, there should be a hard cap on how low a player from the top divisions can drop.
The reason is that people who are new to the game and trying to enter the ladder get absolutely bitch slapped by these players, and a lot of the times they actually "toy" with them for kicks. It so demoralising for them that they they never return to the ladder.
Gold should be the lowest level imho, as at least Gold level players have the ability to recognise what's happening in a severe defeat
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Maybe they need to bring back in season demotion. All I can say is that the guy at the top of my division is 94 and 61 and is a former Diamond. Now, he's in Silver league with me. (I'm at 36-32). Something is broken.
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Its fun how people are. Now the common trend (here, Reddit, Bnet forums) is "I'm only silver because I'm playing ex-masters. Fucking Blizzard11!!11"
Please.
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Dunno i like this new decay. Now when i come back to the game im not rofl-stomped 30 games in a row util i get my groove back on. This lose-30-games to be able to play against people who you can fight against on even side is what caused me to lose interest few times :/
Being in lower league sucks but hey if you wanna be in (lets say) masters again you gotta work on it. Btw its not like im playing master players. Most of people i match against are diamonds and we're diamonds most of the time.
I have no issue with this.
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On October 18 2013 22:37 Tiaraju9 wrote: Its fun how people are. Now the common trend (here, Reddit, Bnet forums) is "I'm only silver because I'm playing ex-masters. Fucking Blizzard11!!11"
Please.
I'm not saying, "I'm only silver because I'm playing ex-masters. Fucking Blizzard11!!11".
I'm saying that I thought that the ladder matchmaking system was supposed to match me up against players of a similar skill level, not players that are way better than me because they were in Plat, Diamond, and Masters but the system placed them in Silver.
If I am 50% win vs. people in Silver that's ok. Silver is where I belong. If I'm losing to people that should be in higher leagues, that's a problem with the system.
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On October 18 2013 22:23 iPhoneAppz wrote: Maybe they need to bring back in season demotion. All I can say is that the guy at the top of my division is 94 and 61 and is a former Diamond. Now, he's in Silver league with me. (I'm at 36-32). Something is broken. In season demotion is not the problem. It's just the steep drop in mmr when inactive that is. If you like me started blizzard rts in wc2 I really doubt a month of inactivity is going to drop me two leagues. Especially when the inatctivity actually is from playing on other accounts.
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On October 18 2013 22:37 Tiaraju9 wrote: Its fun how people are. Now the common trend (here, Reddit, Bnet forums) is "I'm only silver because I'm playing ex-masters. Fucking Blizzard11!!11"
Please. It is not about "beeing silver". It is about having to play ~30-40 pointless games against people way weaker than you. No one profits from that.
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On October 18 2013 23:32 Eatme wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2013 22:23 iPhoneAppz wrote: Maybe they need to bring back in season demotion. All I can say is that the guy at the top of my division is 94 and 61 and is a former Diamond. Now, he's in Silver league with me. (I'm at 36-32). Something is broken. In season demotion is not the problem. It's just the steep drop in mmr when inactive that is. If you like me started blizzard rts in wc2 I really doubt a month of inactivity is going to drop me two leagues. Especially when the inatctivity actually is from playing on other accounts.
Great point! I know that Blizz doesn't want to move players up until the MMR confidence is high enough to justify promotion. However, maybe they should factor in previous league placements into the confidence calculation. Someone who was Diamond that gets placed into Silver should require a much lower confidence for promotion into Gold than someone who's highest finish has been Bronze or Silver.
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United States12175 Posts
On October 18 2013 22:01 KOtical wrote: i noticed this also , but didnt knew it for sure. now its kinda official and i think this kind of system is a slap in the face for all the none pro gamers/working people. Im doing a job 5 days a week i gotta work 9 hours everyday, and after that period of time i cant play every evening. so they invented the bonus point system for players like me that can´t be that active. so now with this change the whole bonus point system seems useless... thx blizzard for ruining my expirience as a casual starcraft 2 player... either u can play ladder everyday and u stay up ur league or ur not that active and have to climb up leages after each season wich ist just frustrating.... if it stays like that i say ladder goodbye...
To be fair, you don't have to play every day. The decay system isn't nearly that severe.
On October 18 2013 22:10 Topdoller wrote: I agree with this, there should be a hard cap on how low a player from the top divisions can drop.
There is, for each instance of decay. It's roughly one league. Unless you meant "Once-Master players should never drop below Diamond ever for any reason" which is more of an opinion.
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So that is why i face "ex-master" or "ex-diamond" player in silver league ?
Because that is kind of annoying while learning a new race.
I feel that each time i play i face two kind of people.
- Bronze player that have 1barracks and 1base at the 10minute mark - Plat/gold ex master/diamond/plat player that just rolls me over. You know that there is something wrong when you face a gold/plat player with 200+apm
So it goes => "roflstomp the guy so hard that i could do it with mouse only". Or => "being roflstomp so hard that the guy could do it with mouse only".
It's really rare to have an even match. But maybe i just have bad luck ?
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You aren't ever going to face gold/plat players ever with 200+ apm. They don't exist in any significant numbers. You are just imagining it. You are silver. Even matches don't feel like they happen.Small differences are blown up to large differences because Silver.
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Could this deflation effect also be attributed to tightening up of masters league? Because I have noticed a downward shift as well. I had thought it was because blizz tightened up masters league, meaning a bunch of players got pushed down to diamond, causing a bunch of diamonds to be pushed down to plat, and prolly a few plat getting pushed down to gold. End result: less masters slots have resulted in a segment of players joining the opponent pool in lower leagues, making those leagues more competitive than they were in the past.
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If you win a match sometime in your first month in iccup you should definitely show talent for BW.
But I guess that's why BW was only big in Korea and Warcraft 3 took over the rest of the world of RTS.
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Wow, just had a huge freak of nature. Somehow Bnet thinks it's a good idea to pit me, a high gold player, against a mid master player. Not sure how it happened, but I sure felt like on the receiving end in one of those trollgames...
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I have always been in Gold meague, but I just started getting some nice help from some master/gm terrans, and won some games vs. current plats with past diamond finishes! Maybe there is hope?
The only good thing with this is that any promotion is deserved for sure!
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About MMR. Does anyone know how long it takes (or how many seasons) for it to reset completely? My last solo game was somewhere in last season, havn't played solo in this one. I'm wondering 'caus I recently found some joy again in SC2 and I want to start fresh with a new race, but i imagine starting a new race with my "old" master mmr is going to be a huge pain. So i was/am hoping there is some sort of timer of inactivity (in solo) after which your mmr resets and you get 5 placements all over again (and the possibility to be placed in silver/gold)
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On October 21 2013 16:17 Juice! wrote: About MMR. Does anyone know how long it takes (or how many seasons) for it to reset completely? My last solo game was somewhere in last season, havn't played solo in this one. I'm wondering 'caus I recently found some joy again in SC2 and I want to start fresh with a new race, but i imagine starting a new race with my "old" master mmr is going to be a huge pain. So i was/am hoping there is some sort of timer of inactivity (in solo) after which your mmr resets and you get 5 placements all over again (and the possibility to be placed in silver/gold) in OP:
On September 21 2013 07:05 Excalibur_Z wrote: Also note that the existing MMR lookup rule applies: if you are inactive for an entire season (that is, you stop playing in Season n, you play no games--ranked or unranked--during Season n+1, you come back for Season n+2), your MMR is wiped clean.
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On October 21 2013 09:09 JustPassingBy wrote:Wow, just had a huge freak of nature. Somehow Bnet thinks it's a good idea to pit me, a high gold player, against a mid master player. Not sure how it happened, but I sure felt like on the receiving end in one of those trollgames...
If I'm on the other side of that, and I'm playing unranked, I'll basically always leave unless they BM me.
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On October 21 2013 16:21 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2013 16:17 Juice! wrote: About MMR. Does anyone know how long it takes (or how many seasons) for it to reset completely? My last solo game was somewhere in last season, havn't played solo in this one. I'm wondering 'caus I recently found some joy again in SC2 and I want to start fresh with a new race, but i imagine starting a new race with my "old" master mmr is going to be a huge pain. So i was/am hoping there is some sort of timer of inactivity (in solo) after which your mmr resets and you get 5 placements all over again (and the possibility to be placed in silver/gold) in OP: Show nested quote +On September 21 2013 07:05 Excalibur_Z wrote: Also note that the existing MMR lookup rule applies: if you are inactive for an entire season (that is, you stop playing in Season n, you play no games--ranked or unranked--during Season n+1, you come back for Season n+2), your MMR is wiped clean.
Yeah i read that, but it got me wondering, does this apply to 'not play ANY SOLO' or 'not play ANY GAME at all'
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United States12175 Posts
On October 21 2013 16:34 Juice! wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2013 16:21 Cascade wrote:On October 21 2013 16:17 Juice! wrote: About MMR. Does anyone know how long it takes (or how many seasons) for it to reset completely? My last solo game was somewhere in last season, havn't played solo in this one. I'm wondering 'caus I recently found some joy again in SC2 and I want to start fresh with a new race, but i imagine starting a new race with my "old" master mmr is going to be a huge pain. So i was/am hoping there is some sort of timer of inactivity (in solo) after which your mmr resets and you get 5 placements all over again (and the possibility to be placed in silver/gold) in OP: On September 21 2013 07:05 Excalibur_Z wrote: Also note that the existing MMR lookup rule applies: if you are inactive for an entire season (that is, you stop playing in Season n, you play no games--ranked or unranked--during Season n+1, you come back for Season n+2), your MMR is wiped clean.
Yeah i read that, but it got me wondering, does this apply to 'not play ANY SOLO' or 'not play ANY GAME at all'
There are two MMR brackets: Arranged Team (but it's separate per team) and 1v1+Random Team. If you want your MMR to reset for a particular bracket then you have to go for a full season without playing any games in that bracket. That means if you want your 1v1 MMR to reset, don't play any 1v1 or Random Team games next season.
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Seriously, as a Gold player I hit three masters players over the course of the last two days I played, none of the game was remotely close and it ended up with them stomping all over me... What on earth is going on, it really is no fun like this. I know I am a bad player, but can't Bnet seed me against other bad players?
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On October 23 2013 06:10 JustPassingBy wrote:Seriously, as a Gold player I hit three masters players over the course of the last two days I played, none of the game was remotely close and it ended up with them stomping all over me... What on earth is going on, it really is no fun like this. I know I am a bad player, but can't Bnet seed me against other bad players? The matchmaker still works fine, but ... if e.g. a master skill level player has a gold MMR, then the matchmaker thinks he is gold level player. And that player is then matched with other players with similar MMR. MMR is a skill rating, but as the decay mechanism is tampering players' MMR directly & considerably, it often does not present skill anymore. Nowadays it seems to be a 'Wild West' whom you are matched against due MMR decay. And you do not anymore know the typical skill level of your typical opponents in the beginning of the match. For example one week ago I faced a multiple times grandmaster with mid-platinum MMR on EU server (he was playing ranked). His MMR had been decayed. Needless to say I was crushed.
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I think it may be easy to blame deflation, but in some cases (mine for example), my inconsistent use of unranked means that I will be guaranteed to play significantly worse players. In addition, many of my acquaintances used unranked to offrace, or even left games voluntarily leading to huge disparity in skills between the players.
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I skipped a couple of seasons so I assume my MMR got wiped as it placed me back in gold for 2v2R (was Master previously). It takes a retarded amount of time to build it back up though :/ 45-11 and I'm still in plat facing gold/plat players (just played first diamond opponent). I got promoted to plat after around 25 games but no further promotions as yet - despite going 24-4 in last 28 games... I think 30 games should be enough to get MMR back to where it should be, not 60+ as in my case (yeah I lost a few games but random allies with 20apm so what can you do..) /end rant
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On October 26 2013 21:20 ThunderGod wrote: I skipped a couple of seasons so I assume my MMR got wiped as it placed me back in gold for 2v2R (was Master previously). It takes a retarded amount of time to build it back up though :/ 45-11 and I'm still in plat facing gold/plat players (just played first diamond opponent). I got promoted to plat after around 25 games but no further promotions as yet - despite going 24-4 in last 28 games... I think 30 games should be enough to get MMR back to where it should be, not 60+ as in my case (yeah I lost a few games but random allies with 20apm so what can you do..) /end rant
Sounding like a true LoL player
Do you tell your allies to stop feeding?
+ Show Spoiler +j/k of course, MMR decay results in some silly things lol
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On October 19 2013 00:38 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2013 22:01 KOtical wrote: i noticed this also , but didnt knew it for sure. now its kinda official and i think this kind of system is a slap in the face for all the none pro gamers/working people. Im doing a job 5 days a week i gotta work 9 hours everyday, and after that period of time i cant play every evening. so they invented the bonus point system for players like me that can´t be that active. so now with this change the whole bonus point system seems useless... thx blizzard for ruining my expirience as a casual starcraft 2 player... either u can play ladder everyday and u stay up ur league or ur not that active and have to climb up leages after each season wich ist just frustrating.... if it stays like that i say ladder goodbye... To be fair, you don't have to play every day. The decay system isn't nearly that severe. Show nested quote +On October 18 2013 22:10 Topdoller wrote: I agree with this, there should be a hard cap on how low a player from the top divisions can drop. There is, for each instance of decay. It's roughly one league. Unless you meant "Once-Master players should never drop below Diamond ever for any reason" which is more of an opinion. While my example is from teamgames I dont really agree that from diamond with good stats to silver is "roughly one league".
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Show nested quote +On October 27 2013 00:55 Eatme wrote:On October 18 2013 22:10 Topdoller wrote: I agree with this, there should be a hard cap on how low a player from the top divisions can drop. There is, for each instance of decay. It's roughly one league. Unless you meant "Once-Master players should never drop below Diamond ever for any reason" which is more of an opinion. While my example is from teamgames I dont really agree that from diamond with good stats to silver is "roughly one league".
Indeed and then you get paired with people who have 8 games on their account ever and building their first pylon 2 minutes into the game to go for the 12 minute 3 voidray "rush". Thanks Blizzard.
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I haven't played for 2 months and used to be diamond. After the first match they placed me in bronze......after countless wins and 0 losses now I'm stuck in gold with players that are "lower level" than me and I'm still winning every single game IT IS REALLY ANNOYING
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I play mainly team games (AT) and with a bit different teams every time. So that means that each specific team combination plays very rarely. Lately we have been matched against very weak opponents (even weaker than us!), and go like 10-1 or so every session. I guess it is because our MMR for that team has decayed. Anyway, pretty annoying to play team on a lower level all the time, and I'm sure they are not enjoying it either. :/
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WOW. this explains why the league system has been such a disaster recently. I made some lengthy posts about the league system back in the summer, which were predicated on the fact that there supposedly wasn't MMR decay, which led me to alternative explanations for why the system had been performing so poorly.
I can't make a concrete case that this newly-discovered (in the past couple months, since I checked last) MMR decay is the cause of ALL of the problems, since there are still other problems, but it seems clear that it is devastating for a player like me, because I like to play lots of team games brackets only a little bit - almost always less than 30 games per season. When combined with the fact that the system was still tracking my total matches played (which was fairly high) from previous seasons, this explains why it took hundreds of games in 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 last season at a very high win rate (85%+) to get back to where I belonged in Wings of Liberty.
I had been confused by this explanation at first, until I read above that crucially your 1v1+random team MMR is linked together and isn't reset unless you don't play ANY 1v1+random team games for an entire season. Well, hehehe, that has never ever happened for me since Sc2 came out in 2010, I've always ranked in at least one of them. That means that I've been dragging along this massive anchor of games played for the past 3 years. Combine this with the midseason demotion freeze putting everyone a league lower initially. Assuming it is also true that your MMR decays at the same rate regardless of the total number of games that comprise your MMR, then it makes complete sense that I would have trouble getting promoted in WOL, since I was unfairly downgraded to silver/bronze while still being saddled with hundreds of games comprising my MMR, making the system *falsely* confident that I was where I belonged. No wonder promotion took hundreds of games last season.
In short, the ranking system has turned into a World of Warcraft-style Grinding system, requiring constant player activity in order to maintain their leagues rather than simply being a reflection of player skill. This would be mostly okay if a player's entire match history was forgotten , but it usually isn't which leads to people like me being stuck in a low league they don't belong in, requiring them to grind each season for a promotion. In the meantime, I get matched against people who have no chance against me, which is a frustrating thing for them and a bit boring for me. Simply put, this is terrible design, and almost certainly contributes to the many complaints threads on battle.net of people getting unfair matches.
I don't think erasing the whole match history (from blizzard's database that does rankings) is a good idea unless the player hasn't played for at least 1 full season. There is so much more to say about this but I'll stop here for now.
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On October 27 2013 01:52 Moonsalt wrote:I haven't played for 2 months and used to be diamond. After the first match they placed me in bronze......after countless wins and 0 losses now I'm stuck in gold with players that are "lower level" than me and I'm still winning every single game IT IS REALLY ANNOYING
Imagine how annoying it is for the people that you're crushing that really belong in those leagues. Blizzard needs to consider former league achievements in determining you're MMR confidence.
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"Why does blizzard demote me when I don't practice often"
That is what this thread is starting to sound like.
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On October 28 2013 00:22 Thieving Magpie wrote: "Why does blizzard demote me when I don't practice often"
That is what this thread is starting to sound like.
So you are saying people should settle for getting no challenge in sc2 just because they don't have the time to put in those 80 games to work their way back up?
Someone that's been diamond/master for 2 years doesn't suddenly loose 75% of his skill by not playing for 2 months. So they shouldn't drop down 2 leagues as a punishment for having a huge unused bonus pool.
I think the thread just explains what's going on with the matching making mess on ladder and some people feel the decay is to agressive (or the promotion to slow).
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On October 28 2013 07:15 anessie wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 00:22 Thieving Magpie wrote: "Why does blizzard demote me when I don't practice often"
That is what this thread is starting to sound like. So you are saying people should settle for getting no challenge in sc2 just because they don't have the time to put in those 80 games to work their way back up? Someone that's been diamond/master for 2 years doesn't suddenly loose 75% of his skill by not playing for 2 months. So they shouldn't drop down 2 leagues as a punishment for having a huge unused bonus pool. I think the thread just explains what's going on with the matching making mess on ladder and some people feel the decay is to agressive (or the promotion to slow).
People complain:s "I don't play because I took some time off and my opponents are too good now"... "I took time off and now my opponents are too easy" ...
Maybe the decay could be adjusted a little better but at least this way it's easier to get back to where you should be (leaving games is not condoned and if you leave too many you then have the other problem anyway).
Also, I think rank should require maintenance (you can't just hit GM and quit for the season, why should the other leagues be that much different?).
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On October 28 2013 08:43 DusTerr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 07:15 anessie wrote:On October 28 2013 00:22 Thieving Magpie wrote: "Why does blizzard demote me when I don't practice often"
That is what this thread is starting to sound like. So you are saying people should settle for getting no challenge in sc2 just because they don't have the time to put in those 80 games to work their way back up? Someone that's been diamond/master for 2 years doesn't suddenly loose 75% of his skill by not playing for 2 months. So they shouldn't drop down 2 leagues as a punishment for having a huge unused bonus pool. I think the thread just explains what's going on with the matching making mess on ladder and some people feel the decay is to agressive (or the promotion to slow). People complain:s "I don't play because I took some time off and my opponents are too good now"... "I took time off and now my opponents are too easy" ... Maybe the decay could be adjusted a little better but at least this way it's easier to get back to where you should be (leaving games is not condoned and if you leave too many you then have the other problem anyway). Also, I think rank should require maintenance (you can't just hit GM and quit for the season, why should the other leagues be that much different?). For me, it's not like I took a long break and came back rusty. I just play rarely (and very rarely if you count per 3on3 team I play on), maintaining a roughly constant (low) skill level. I would hope that bnet would pick up on our skill level after a while and it did that very well up until this change. Now, we almost always play against people of a significantly lower skill level. So in effect, what happens is that if you play seldom, you get to do little else than stomp newbs. It may sound fun to some, but for me it gets boring pretty quickly. Essentially it is ruining my sc2 experience a lot, not to mention the people we play against. :/
So it's more than just people taking breaks being affected. And yes, tweaks are needed. Any ideas?
Less decay at low levels? Set decay rate depending on how often they play, so that teams/people that play rarely decay slow?
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On October 28 2013 17:30 Cascade wrote:
So it's more than just people taking breaks being affected. And yes, tweaks are needed. Any ideas?
Less decay at low levels? Set decay rate depending on how often they play, so that teams/people that play rarely decay slow?
I think that the solution is to change the promotion system to consider the top league that you've ever attained in determining your MMR confidence. So, if you are placed in a league lower than that due to skill degradation, MMR deflation, or whatever other reason, you are more likely to get promoted faster than someone else. This way, you can move up faster and play fewer games against lesser opponents.
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Based on http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/11473451/ladder-season-5-now-locked-11-4-2013 "Hidden skill ratings used for matchmaking and league placement will carry over from the previous season, though, so players who have completed placement matches in a previous season will only need to play one new placement match after Season 6 starts."
So at least we know they are not going to do full reset for everyone to fix the situation. So players' MMR will remain where they are / have decayed in the end of the season.
They did not provide any other information such as changes to decay mechanism or offset changes. I guess we will have to wait and see if there are any changes.
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On October 28 2013 17:30 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 08:43 DusTerr wrote:On October 28 2013 07:15 anessie wrote:On October 28 2013 00:22 Thieving Magpie wrote: "Why does blizzard demote me when I don't practice often"
That is what this thread is starting to sound like. So you are saying people should settle for getting no challenge in sc2 just because they don't have the time to put in those 80 games to work their way back up? Someone that's been diamond/master for 2 years doesn't suddenly loose 75% of his skill by not playing for 2 months. So they shouldn't drop down 2 leagues as a punishment for having a huge unused bonus pool. I think the thread just explains what's going on with the matching making mess on ladder and some people feel the decay is to agressive (or the promotion to slow). People complain:s "I don't play because I took some time off and my opponents are too good now"... "I took time off and now my opponents are too easy" ... Maybe the decay could be adjusted a little better but at least this way it's easier to get back to where you should be (leaving games is not condoned and if you leave too many you then have the other problem anyway). Also, I think rank should require maintenance (you can't just hit GM and quit for the season, why should the other leagues be that much different?). For me, it's not like I took a long break and came back rusty. I just play rarely (and very rarely if you count per 3on3 team I play on), maintaining a roughly constant (low) skill level. I would hope that bnet would pick up on our skill level after a while and it did that very well up until this change. Now, we almost always play against people of a significantly lower skill level. So in effect, what happens is that if you play seldom, you get to do little else than stomp newbs. It may sound fun to some, but for me it gets boring pretty quickly. Essentially it is ruining my sc2 experience a lot, not to mention the people we play against. :/ So it's more than just people taking breaks being affected. And yes, tweaks are needed. Any ideas? Less decay at low levels? Set decay rate depending on how often they play, so that teams/people that play rarely decay slow?
As a small tweak, I would like to see that playing 2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4 should slow down the decay in 1vs1, as you are still playing sc2 even though you are not participating in the 1vs1 ladder. The same holds true for the other combinations of course (playing 1vs1, 3vs3, 4vs4 should slow down the decay in 2vs2). I doubt that it will affect the ladder much, but I think the tweak makes sense and I see no reason not to include it.
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On November 04 2013 19:12 JustPassingBy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 17:30 Cascade wrote:On October 28 2013 08:43 DusTerr wrote:On October 28 2013 07:15 anessie wrote:On October 28 2013 00:22 Thieving Magpie wrote: "Why does blizzard demote me when I don't practice often"
That is what this thread is starting to sound like. So you are saying people should settle for getting no challenge in sc2 just because they don't have the time to put in those 80 games to work their way back up? Someone that's been diamond/master for 2 years doesn't suddenly loose 75% of his skill by not playing for 2 months. So they shouldn't drop down 2 leagues as a punishment for having a huge unused bonus pool. I think the thread just explains what's going on with the matching making mess on ladder and some people feel the decay is to agressive (or the promotion to slow). People complain:s "I don't play because I took some time off and my opponents are too good now"... "I took time off and now my opponents are too easy" ... Maybe the decay could be adjusted a little better but at least this way it's easier to get back to where you should be (leaving games is not condoned and if you leave too many you then have the other problem anyway). Also, I think rank should require maintenance (you can't just hit GM and quit for the season, why should the other leagues be that much different?). For me, it's not like I took a long break and came back rusty. I just play rarely (and very rarely if you count per 3on3 team I play on), maintaining a roughly constant (low) skill level. I would hope that bnet would pick up on our skill level after a while and it did that very well up until this change. Now, we almost always play against people of a significantly lower skill level. So in effect, what happens is that if you play seldom, you get to do little else than stomp newbs. It may sound fun to some, but for me it gets boring pretty quickly. Essentially it is ruining my sc2 experience a lot, not to mention the people we play against. :/ So it's more than just people taking breaks being affected. And yes, tweaks are needed. Any ideas? Less decay at low levels? Set decay rate depending on how often they play, so that teams/people that play rarely decay slow? As a small tweak, I would like to see that playing 2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4 should slow down the decay in 1vs1, as you are still playing sc2 even though you are not participating in the 1vs1 ladder. The same holds true for the other combinations of course (playing 1vs1, 3vs3, 4vs4 should slow down the decay in 2vs2). I doubt that it will affect the ladder much, but I think the tweak makes sense and I see no reason not to include it.
Yeah, this definitely. I imagine that across all the divisions I'm ranked in I have a good number of games this season. But you know, I have several 2v2 teams depending on who's online, several 3v3 teams depending on who's online, several 4v4 teams, some games played in peepmode, some games played in unranked, some games played against the computer where I just focus on larva injects and creep spread.
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On November 04 2013 19:12 JustPassingBy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 17:30 Cascade wrote:On October 28 2013 08:43 DusTerr wrote:On October 28 2013 07:15 anessie wrote:On October 28 2013 00:22 Thieving Magpie wrote: "Why does blizzard demote me when I don't practice often"
That is what this thread is starting to sound like. So you are saying people should settle for getting no challenge in sc2 just because they don't have the time to put in those 80 games to work their way back up? Someone that's been diamond/master for 2 years doesn't suddenly loose 75% of his skill by not playing for 2 months. So they shouldn't drop down 2 leagues as a punishment for having a huge unused bonus pool. I think the thread just explains what's going on with the matching making mess on ladder and some people feel the decay is to agressive (or the promotion to slow). People complain:s "I don't play because I took some time off and my opponents are too good now"... "I took time off and now my opponents are too easy" ... Maybe the decay could be adjusted a little better but at least this way it's easier to get back to where you should be (leaving games is not condoned and if you leave too many you then have the other problem anyway). Also, I think rank should require maintenance (you can't just hit GM and quit for the season, why should the other leagues be that much different?). For me, it's not like I took a long break and came back rusty. I just play rarely (and very rarely if you count per 3on3 team I play on), maintaining a roughly constant (low) skill level. I would hope that bnet would pick up on our skill level after a while and it did that very well up until this change. Now, we almost always play against people of a significantly lower skill level. So in effect, what happens is that if you play seldom, you get to do little else than stomp newbs. It may sound fun to some, but for me it gets boring pretty quickly. Essentially it is ruining my sc2 experience a lot, not to mention the people we play against. :/ So it's more than just people taking breaks being affected. And yes, tweaks are needed. Any ideas? Less decay at low levels? Set decay rate depending on how often they play, so that teams/people that play rarely decay slow? As a small tweak, I would like to see that playing 2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4 should slow down the decay in 1vs1, as you are still playing sc2 even though you are not participating in the 1vs1 ladder. The same holds true for the other combinations of course (playing 1vs1, 3vs3, 4vs4 should slow down the decay in 2vs2). I doubt that it will affect the ladder much, but I think the tweak makes sense and I see no reason not to include it. Sounds good to me. Would probably solve my problems at least.
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Ive just stopped taking note of what league my opponent is in. It doesnt say anything. I was top diamond in WoL as zerg and started playing sc2 again 2 weeks ago. now as terran. Got placed in gold and now im in plat, soon diamond. Im facing master players every once in a while and beating them most of the time but losing to some gold players and sometimes get crushed by some platinum dude with 200 apm. You just never know what level your opponent is at anymore. I can understand that alot of ppl are annoyed by this.
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On November 04 2013 21:43 Fjodorov wrote: Ive just stopped taking note of what league my opponent is in. It doesnt say anything. I was top diamond in WoL as zerg and started playing sc2 again 2 weeks ago. now as terran. Got placed in gold and now im in plat, soon diamond. Im facing master players every once in a while and beating them most of the time but losing to some gold players and sometimes get crushed by some platinum dude with 200 apm. You just never know what level your opponent is at anymore. I can understand that alot of ppl are annoyed by this.
This, same story for me, started laddering for first time in hots, placed in silver (as ex-master that blows my mind O_o). Of the 10 matches i played after that about half of them were vs ex-diamond/masters that were placed in silver/gold/plat, this system is just too funny. I feel bad for all legitimate silver/gold players that get stomped by superior opponents all the time. This scares off new players even more than the old system.
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The silliest thing with this is that the bonus pool is an inactivity buff. But now they for some reason added ladder decay as well. And in prefect time to the ladder lock my sc2 computer broke down so I'll most likely drop down from every league until next season.
EDIT: I know that the ladder lock dont affect my mmr drop.
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I really hope they tune down MMR decay.. I was diamond in WoL and have been getting demoted at the start of each season in HoTs.
Granted, my skill is probably more on par with a platinum player now, but I can't help but feel a little shafted. I work full time now, and generally play SC2 on the weekends and sometimes during the week, although with the fatigue from work I usually don't because I don't want to tank my MMR, but it appears as though I tank it no matter what if I don't play the game a lot.
The strange thing about it, is that I continue to play diamond league opponents, yet I have been demoted 3 straight seasons, this season getting demoted from top 8 platinum to gold..
Tough to find the motivation to ladder, not sure if anyone else feels that way..
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On November 05 2013 02:05 Eatme wrote: The silliest thing with this is that the bonus pool is an inactivity buff. But now they for some reason added ladder decay as well. And in prefect time to the ladder lock my sc2 computer broke down so I'll most likely drop down from every league until next season.
EDIT: I know that the ladder lock dont affect my mmr drop.
Its not an inactivity Bump, its a gauge. If you have a 60% winrate by the end of a season and 0 bonus pool, you'll be promoted.
If you simply play three games and win 2 of them (66% winrate) you will not be promoted. You need to play enough games to eat up your bonus pool and end up with a 60% overall winrate.
If you don't play enough to eat your bonus pool--it doesn't count. If you play often enough to eat your bonus pool and you win above 60%, you'll be promoted before the season is over.
So no, it's not an inactivity buff.
It's still stupid, but its not a buff in the strictest sense of the word.
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The MMR decay is way too steep. I came back to ladder and was placed to platinum from being master. Was just a long roflstomp until I got master again that took like two weeks since I play maybe 2 games a day. No point in those 2 weeks of games at all to be honest.
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Seems like the same standard post they make every season lock.
On November 05 2013 02:18 Ctone23 wrote: Tough to find the motivation to ladder, not sure if anyone else feels that way..
Exactly, unless you keep down the bonus pool number you'll get a penalty for it and probably end up demoted (aka placed conservatively) in the next season.
Higher league = faster bonus pool points = required to play more games to keep up.
After you get demoted you have to play like 50 games for a promotion again, even with a 75% win rate. Because you come across people in the same situation as yourself it's not evident to get higher win rates. Master/diamond level match-ups in gold league
At some point it's just normal to wonder why you bother with it.
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On November 05 2013 03:25 anessie wrote: Exactly, unless you keep down the bonus pool number you'll get a penalty for it and probably end up demoted (aka placed conservatively) in the next season. As far as I know bonus pool doesn't have anything to with ladder placement, except for grandmaster league. What's your source?
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On November 05 2013 03:59 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 03:25 anessie wrote: Exactly, unless you keep down the bonus pool number you'll get a penalty for it and probably end up demoted (aka placed conservatively) in the next season. As far as I know bonus pool doesn't have anything to with ladder placement, except for grandmaster league. What's your source?
David Kim gave out a "number" for how many points it takes to get promoted by the end of a season. He said it early 2010.
It was a dishonest number because to get that many points plus having zero bonus pool you needed to have about a 60% winrate otherwise you'd be promoted from winning too many games in a row. But since you're being forced into a 50% winrate by the ladder, that is when we get people "constantly matched with high level players" that roflstomp them. This is because the ladder doesn't really see "leagues" but instead see who is winning and who is not. People in hot streaks will play against others in hot streaks that are of similar MMR.
If you're not at least playing often enough to whittle down your bonus pool then simply having a high winrate is not good enough and hence why you hear things such as "I dropped from masters and it took me a month/week to get back" or "I'm at 75% winrate and I still haven't been promoted."
Now, a high enough winrate after a decent number of games will circumvent the bonus pool. Also, playing while you have 0 bonus pool will also skew the numbers. But he was making a comment mostly to those players who don't play often and telling them that so long as they use up their bonus pool and have a higher than 50% winrate, then they should get promoted each season. That way, people don't *need* to play 100 games a day, they just need to use up more bonus pool per X time than the bonus pool they earn at X time. (I think it was winning just a few games a day, but I'm not certain)
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On November 05 2013 03:59 Mendelfist wrote: As far as I know bonus pool doesn't have anything to with ladder placement, except for grandmaster league. What's your source?
Just deducting that from this topic and http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=423477
Being inactive = growing bonus pool = mmr decay?
Plus personally getting demoted two leagues by having a 1750+ bonus pool at the end of previous season?
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On November 05 2013 03:25 anessie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 02:18 Ctone23 wrote: Tough to find the motivation to ladder, not sure if anyone else feels that way.. Higher league = faster bonus pool points = required to play more games to keep up. After you get demoted you have to play like 50 games for a promotion again, even with a 75% win rate. Because you come across people in the same situation as yourself it's not evident to get higher win rates. Master/diamond level match-ups in gold league At some point it's just normal to wonder why you bother with it.
Well I love the game but it's definitely a bit frustrating. For me it's just too many games you have to play to get any sort of reward, but I can understand why Blizzard would want you to play more games, just something I cannot do as I work/travel during the week.
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On November 05 2013 04:13 anessie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 03:59 Mendelfist wrote: As far as I know bonus pool doesn't have anything to with ladder placement, except for grandmaster league. What's your source? Just deducting that from this topic and http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=423477Being inactive = growing bonus pool = mmr decay? Plus personally getting demoted two leagues by having a 1750+ bonus pool at the end of previous season? Bonus pool as far as we know does not affect decay, but the length of the inactivity period does. Please note that you cannot measure time with bonus pool increase as during ladder lock period the bonus pool does not increase.
The minimum time period after the decay kicks in is not known at the moment. It is known that accounts that have been inactive for 3 weeks or more are often affected by the decay. Funny thing regarding this system is that if you don't have time to play for several weeks, it is likely better to lose 1 game e.g. by leaving instantly per week to avoid possible decay after the inactivity period (of course insta-leaving games could be considered 'MMR abuse', but in this case it is the 'lesser evil' and they will not ban for 1 game). Couple of losses drop your MMR less than e.g. 3 weeks worth of decay.
I still haven't had time to look at S14 data more carefully (and check accounts that had less than 3 weeks of inactivity). But some of the tools I developed to speed up the analysis were added to the public release of the MMR tool yesterday.
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On November 05 2013 04:49 korona wrote: The minimum time period after the decay kicks in is not known at the moment.
Good point, did not think about it like that.
Since I only did my placement match after the season reset and never played for 9 weeks till a few games during ladder lock I probably had a lot of decay.
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On November 05 2013 04:54 anessie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 04:49 korona wrote: The minimum time period after the decay kicks in is not known at the moment.
Good point, did not think about it like that. Since I only did my placement match after the season reset and never played for 9 weeks till a few games during ladder lock I probably had a lot of decay. If you played your placement match when this season began and have not played after that, your account will likely face maximum decay, which is little over MMR range of one league (around 300 points in MMR tool scale) as far as we know at the moment.
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On November 05 2013 04:13 anessie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 03:59 Mendelfist wrote: As far as I know bonus pool doesn't have anything to with ladder placement, except for grandmaster league. What's your source? Just deducting that from this topic and http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=423477Being inactive = growing bonus pool = mmr decay? Plus personally getting demoted two leagues by having a 1750+ bonus pool at the end of previous season?
The MMR league thresholds are set manually by Blizzard so that each league contains a certain percentage of "active" players. That does NOT mean that the activity metric has any influence on ladder placement. It's just a goal, and they don't necessarily always achieve it.
We don't know exactly how MMR decay works, and I haven't heard of any indications about a connection to bonus pool.
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On November 05 2013 04:10 Thieving Magpie wrote: David Kim gave out a "number" for how many points it takes to get promoted by the end of a season. He said it early 2010. You misunderstood him. That was just a rule of thumb, and it could only be used if bonus pool was spent. That doesn't mean that spending bonus pool is a requirement or even affects your chances of promotion. It doesn't. We have a pretty good knowledge about how the ladder works now thanks to the guys developing the MMR Tool plugin.
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United States12175 Posts
The connection between decay and bonus pool is speculative because they have shown in the past to measure inactivity through the bonus pool. Korona's stat breakdown, which hopefully will happen eventually (!) should show us whether there is conclusive evidence to support it.
Now that the leagues are locked I will request another data dump from Shadowed for this season and run through the league apportionment numbers.
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On November 05 2013 05:27 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 04:10 Thieving Magpie wrote: David Kim gave out a "number" for how many points it takes to get promoted by the end of a season. He said it early 2010. You misunderstood him. That was just a rule of thumb, and it could only be used if bonus pool was spent. That doesn't mean that spending bonus pool is a requirement or even affects your chances of promotion. It doesn't. We have a pretty good knowledge about how the ladder works now thanks to the guys developing the MMR Tool plugin.
You misunderstand me.
Being that I said that if you have a high enough winrate over time you can ignore the bonus pool, the statement he made was directed and non-grinders to give them an estimate of how much better they need to be.
Enough games above 60% winrate will promote you, or a shit tonne of games with an average of about 60% (usually eating up your bonus pool)
Hence why I called it a gauge, not a determining factor.
If you play so few games that you can't eat up the bonus pool, you need a high winrate. If you play so few games that you simply stay on par with the bonus pool, you need about 60% winrate If you play so many games that you always have zero bonus pool, then you can't use the bonus pool as a measurement of anything.
Win 1-2 games a day and you'll stay on par with your bonus pool.
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On November 05 2013 07:02 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you play so few games that you can't eat up the bonus pool, you need a high winrate. If you play so few games that you simply stay on par with the bonus pool, you need about 60% winrate. I'm sorry, but you are just making numbers up. There is no support for anything of that.
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On November 05 2013 15:23 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 07:02 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you play so few games that you can't eat up the bonus pool, you need a high winrate. If you play so few games that you simply stay on par with the bonus pool, you need about 60% winrate. I'm sorry, but you are just making numbers up. There is no support for anything of that.
If you win one game, you have a 100% winrate starting at that game. However, that doesn't mean you will be promoted. If you win 3 games and lose 1, you win 75% of your games. However, that doesn't mean you will be promoted.
How many games do you need to win? Depends on your MMR. How many games can you afford to lose? Depends on your MMR.
If you play often enough that you're able to outpace your bonus pool and end up with about a 60ish% winrate, you will gain the points necessary by the end of a season to be promoted (according to David Kim)
Like I said, its a gauge. Play a bunch of games after you zero out your bonus pool, then the math doesn't work. Have too high a winrate over a large number of games, then you don't have to care about how much bonus pool you have left since you'll be promoted anyway.
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On November 05 2013 15:32 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you play often enough that you're able to outpace your bonus pool and end up with about a 60ish% winrate, you will gain the points necessary by the end of a season to be promoted (according to David Kim). When did David ever say anything about 60% win rate? That's a new one to me. If you are just speculating, just say so. What you are saying is not established fact, and this: "It was a dishonest number because to get that many points plus having zero bonus pool you needed to have about a 60% winrate otherwise you'd be promoted from winning too many games in a row." Is completely false, especially back then when MMR decay didn't exist. Having enough points just meant you had high MMR, and a high win rate is not a prerequisite for having a high MMR.
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On November 05 2013 16:50 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 15:32 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you play often enough that you're able to outpace your bonus pool and end up with about a 60ish% winrate, you will gain the points necessary by the end of a season to be promoted (according to David Kim). When did David ever say anything about 60% win rate? That's a new one to me. If you are just speculating, just say so. What you are saying is not established fact, and this: "It was a dishonest number because to get that many points plus having zero bonus pool you needed to have about a 60% winrate otherwise you'd be promoted from winning too many games in a row." Is completely false, especially back then when MMR decay didn't exist. Having enough points just meant you had high MMR, and a high win rate is not a prerequisite for having a high MMR.
Win rates affects MMR
If you are at 50% you won't move. If you win 70%-100% of your games you'll be promoted so long as it involves a decent number of games or enough games over a longer period of time.
David Kim gave specific numbers for each league in WoL, but when I did the math of how often you needed to win to get those points, it landed somewhere between 55%-65% depending on league.
My math assumed that you stopped playing that day once you hit zero points and only played when you had a bonus pool available to use. When you did, it wouldatch up with David Kims numbers.
Which is why I call it a gauge. The bonus pool does not causate with promotions, but it is possible to use it as a gauge if you only play a few times a day. If you play multiple games past zero points to earn extra points or go in a massive losing/winning streak then the math gets off completely. The gist is that if you win about 2 out of 3 games per day you will matc up with David Kim's numbers with an above 50% win rate and a non-100% win rate preventing you from automatic promotion.
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trying to get my NA account back into diamond, which has proven harder than I first thought, cause of all the high level players hanging out in gold and plat lol.
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On November 05 2013 23:21 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you are at 50% you won't move.
Yes you will. Your opponents MMRs are randomly distributed around your MMR, and the sum of a random series with the mean of 0 is not 0. It will diverge. The average will converge, but the sum will not. Your MMR is a sum. But I guess that's beside the point. The point is that here is no specific win ratio that will get you promoted. 50.1% will get you promoted eventually. It will take longer than 50.5%, but you will get there.
On November 05 2013 23:21 Thieving Magpie wrote: My math assumed that you stopped playing that day once you hit zero points and only played when you had a bonus pool available to use.
Isn't that a little bit contrived? In any case, Davids rule of thumb, or the win ratio to be able to use it, is useless and pointless. It applied only to a specific season with a specific length and specific league offsets. You can no longer use the same numbers. Back then we also had division offsets, which made it even more useless.
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Players like me, high plat, seem to only play ex-diamonds and ex-masters. Dunno why, but honestly, the games seem fair and not one sided.
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On November 06 2013 01:00 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 23:21 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you are at 50% you won't move.
Yes you will. Your opponents MMRs are randomly distributed around your MMR, and the sum of a random series with the mean of 0 is not 0. It will diverge. The average will converge, but the sum will not. Your MMR is a sum. But I guess that's beside the point. The point is that here is no specific win ratio that will get you promoted. 50.1% will get you promoted eventually. It will take longer than 50.5%, but you will get there. Show nested quote +On November 05 2013 23:21 Thieving Magpie wrote: My math assumed that you stopped playing that day once you hit zero points and only played when you had a bonus pool available to use.
Isn't that a little bit contrived? In any case, Davids rule of thumb, or the win ratio to be able to use it, is useless and pointless. It applied only to a specific season with a specific length and specific league offsets. You can no longer use the same numbers. Back then we also had division offsets, which made it even more useless.
My math only applies to season locks because that was what his commentary was responding to at the time.
And yes, over infinite time, 50.1% winrate will get you promoted for the same reason having a 100% win ratio over a short period of time will not get you promoted.
David Kim's comment only matched season lock timeframes wherein he said that if you get X points over 1 season with 0 bonus pool--that it will promote you.
if you don't use up your bonus pool--his numbers don't match. If you do use up your bonus pool--but then play a significant number of games afterwards, the numbers don't match. If your winrate goes to about 70% or higher, you will start getting promoted before the season is over--and hence the numbers don't match. If you win equal to or less than 50%--then the ladder will not move you.
60ish% was the winrate I saw needed to be above the 50% mark and at the same time, have enough games to finish the bonus pool before a season ends. The correlation does not causate--as I have said. It is best used as a gauge and is only relevant to people who don't play very often but are able to play consistently.
The only thing MMR decay adds is that people can no longer play intermittently without drawbacks. Consistency is now more important than streaks.
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Well this ruins my plan for coming back after inactivity and ista-GMing it... sigh
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On November 05 2013 23:23 JacobShock wrote: trying to get my NA account back into diamond, which has proven harder than I first thought, cause of all the high level players hanging out in gold and plat lol.
Yea same here...
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i just started playing again a couple days ago after ~ 2 years of only dota. i was high platinum last time i played regularly, now im bronze xD. truth is i suck really hard but im still winning quite a lot just cause 70% of my opponents fail their cheese. i agree with the mmr decay, it makes sense.
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United States12175 Posts
On November 06 2013 01:13 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2013 01:00 Mendelfist wrote:On November 05 2013 23:21 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you are at 50% you won't move.
Yes you will. Your opponents MMRs are randomly distributed around your MMR, and the sum of a random series with the mean of 0 is not 0. It will diverge. The average will converge, but the sum will not. Your MMR is a sum. But I guess that's beside the point. The point is that here is no specific win ratio that will get you promoted. 50.1% will get you promoted eventually. It will take longer than 50.5%, but you will get there. On November 05 2013 23:21 Thieving Magpie wrote: My math assumed that you stopped playing that day once you hit zero points and only played when you had a bonus pool available to use.
Isn't that a little bit contrived? In any case, Davids rule of thumb, or the win ratio to be able to use it, is useless and pointless. It applied only to a specific season with a specific length and specific league offsets. You can no longer use the same numbers. Back then we also had division offsets, which made it even more useless. My math only applies to season locks because that was what his commentary was responding to at the time. And yes, over infinite time, 50.1% winrate will get you promoted for the same reason having a 100% win ratio over a short period of time will not get you promoted. David Kim's comment only matched season lock timeframes wherein he said that if you get X points over 1 season with 0 bonus pool--that it will promote you. if you don't use up your bonus pool--his numbers don't match. If you do use up your bonus pool--but then play a significant number of games afterwards, the numbers don't match. If your winrate goes to about 70% or higher, you will start getting promoted before the season is over--and hence the numbers don't match. If you win equal to or less than 50%--then the ladder will not move you. 60ish% was the winrate I saw needed to be above the 50% mark and at the same time, have enough games to finish the bonus pool before a season ends. The correlation does not causate--as I have said. It is best used as a gauge and is only relevant to people who don't play very often but are able to play consistently. The only thing MMR decay adds is that people can no longer play intermittently without drawbacks. Consistency is now more important than streaks.
Do you have a link to these Dayvie posts? As I recall he's only ever gone over the ladder system very briefly, with most of the posts being written by the (now former) systems designer. Not to suggest he's out of touch with how the ladder operates, but he wouldn't be the main point of contact for the explanations behind it because his position is balance designer.
Win rate only affects MMR in that when you win, your MMR increases, and when you lose, it decreases. There's no forced 50% win rate, there's no win rate requirement for promotion, there's no mystique behind it. MMR is just a number and it goes up and down based on the gap between your number and your opponent's number. You have an equal chance at facing someone 1% higher than you as 1% lower than you, an equal chance at 5% higher versus 5% lower, and an equal chance at 8.235% higher vs 8.235% lower. Let's say that by luck (maybe it's late at night on the server and not many people are queued), you faced the same guy three times in a row and his MMR is lower than yours with the gap predicting that you have a 75% chance to win, and the outcome was 2-1 in your favor. Your MMR would be net negative because you might earn +8 +8 -24 MMR, leaving you at -8 from where you started even though your win rate in that series was 66%.
The promotion boundaries are also just numbers which Blizzard changes themselves based on their internal activity metric, which we know is based on remaining bonus pool. If they say "let's change the league values based on everyone who has less than 4 weeks' worth of bonus pool" then they would run their algorithm to find out what number fits where 2% of the population from last season lands, and where 20% lands, and where 40% lands, and 72%, and 92%. There is no specific targeting of players who don't meet the activity requirement, although we would commonly see posts from players saying "well the leagues are based on active players and I wasn't active so that's why I didn't get promoted." The MMR decay function operates independently though, so while that could be a contributing factor in HotS toward a missed promotion opportunity, it's not why that happened in the past.
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It would be nice if there were an official Blizzard post about this. As it is, there is a lot of speculation.
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On November 05 2013 05:27 Excalibur_Z wrote:The connection between decay and bonus pool is speculative because they have shown in the past to measure inactivity through the bonus pool. Korona's stat breakdown, which hopefully will happen eventually ( !) should show us whether there is conclusive evidence to support it. Now that the leagues are locked I will request another data dump from Shadowed for this season and run through the league apportionment numbers. I spent hour or two going through S14 accounts yesterday. I set minimum inactivity period to 7 days and got little over 4k occurrences. Going through the data is still quite slow even if the new graph markers made it much faster. During that 1 or 2 hours checked 170 inactivity periods (it would have taken several hours more without the markers to verify the data. For example lots of users have missing games and spotting them manually from match lines takes time. Now with markers such problems are immediately visible).
Earlier I looked only accounts that had inactivity periods of 3 weeks or more. And there were tens of occurrences where there seemed to have been decay after 3 weeks of inactivity. Based on yesterday's research there seemed to be no MMR decay if the inactivity period was less than 2 weeks (of course it is also possible that decay would be so small that it might look natural / tool would adjust the graphs within error ranges). But there was 2 accounts that had inactivity period of 16 days and potentially had faced MMR decay.
So the minimum inactivity period length potentially might be 2 weeks (or 16 days) before the decay mechanism activates. This still needs more research and those 2 accounts need to be rechecked more carefully later. I probably should also filter out accounts that had less than 2 weeks of inactivity to have less accounts to go through.
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On November 06 2013 08:49 Salient wrote: It would be nice if there were an official Blizzard post about this. As it is, there is a lot of speculation. Indeed it would. It would likely save lots of time too as research takes time. I wonder if they consider it to be too big negative PR hit to admit that such mechanism exists and is likely the main reason why ladders seem to be 'Wild West' regarding opponent skill levels nowadays (For example if GM level player has platinum range MMR the matchmaker thinks he is equally skilled as actual platinum player with similar MMR. Btw. I faced one such ex-GM few weeks ago). Note that they are not denying it either. Then again new season (S16) begins in few days. They might silently adjust the decay mechanism.
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thankfully i grinded games at the last minute and kept my masters league. Yeah its ridiculous how many games you need to play just to make sure you keep the league.
Last season I was demoted to diamond after being inactive for a while (I have been masters for 12-13 seasons now). It took me about 100 games to get back into the league. That's just ridiculous, especially since my games are always long macro games. We are talking about 40 hours of long macro games just to get the "star". I'll stick to unranked until blizzard changes something.
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The new MMR decay is really hostile to non-hardcore players. My job is pretty intense so I can't play every day. That is a problem under the new MMR decay system. You will have 300 bonus pool if you only play 100 ladder games in a season. That apparently leads to massive MMR decay. You can be demoted at the start of the new season despite the fact that you had a better than 50 percent win rate against players at the top of your old league. Then you are compelled to grind out almost unfair games against your temporary new league mates to get promoted again. Respectfully, WTF? 100 games per season should be sufficient to avoid MMR decay.
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On November 11 2013 23:33 Salient wrote: The new MMR decay is really hostile to non-hardcore players. My job is pretty intense so I can't play every day. That is a problem under the new MMR decay system. You will have 300 bonus pool if you only play 100 ladder games in a season. That apparently leads to massive MMR decay. You can be demoted at the start of the new season despite the fact that you had a better than 50 percent win rate against players at the top of your old league. Then you are compelled to grind out almost unfair games against your temporary new league mates to get promoted again. Respectfully, WTF? 100 games per season should be sufficient to avoid MMR decay. I have zero bonus pool and I'm still demoted. I am doing pretty well too, although not enough to be promoted imo. Still woulda thought I could at least maintain my league. I don't think it's about the bonus pool.
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On November 11 2013 23:33 Salient wrote: The new MMR decay is really hostile to non-hardcore players. My job is pretty intense so I can't play every day. That is a problem under the new MMR decay system. You will have 300 bonus pool if you only play 100 ladder games in a season. That apparently leads to massive MMR decay. You can be demoted at the start of the new season despite the fact that you had a better than 50 percent win rate against players at the top of your old league. Then you are compelled to grind out almost unfair games against your temporary new league mates to get promoted again. Respectfully, WTF? 100 games per season should be sufficient to avoid MMR decay.
Well, the MMR decay is dependent on the league. Master league players for example gain more bonus pool in the same amount of time than Gold league players, since they are expected to play more. I am currently sitting in Gold and I have no effort to keep my bonus pool low even though I barely play 1-2 games a day.
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I played 170 games last season,finished top 8 gold.I just played the placement match and now i'm silver wtf?
I was very active last month so this doesn't make any sense to me.
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Same here, played about 100 games during the last 1,5 months, 54% winrate overall, thought that would keep me in Gold but got placed in Silver...
I know this shouldn't affect me, but I just lost all motivation to play...
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I just played against a "Silver" who was Plat last season and Masters two season ago.
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so stupid, top masters zerg and then I play placement match and lose , get put in diamond...
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It took me about 100 games to get back into the league. What confuses me most is that if Blizzard's argument for having MMR decay is "a player's skill is highly volatile," wouldn't that also mean that the player's MMR uncertainty should also be changed after the decay? I feel that an MMR decay with a corresponding uncertainty increase would be a nice compromise. Inactive players who have kept their skill would be able to quickly get back to their previous MMR, and inactive players who have lost their skill would quickly settle into their correct MMR.
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On November 12 2013 02:56 Mintograde wrote:What confuses me most is that if Blizzard's argument for having MMR decay is "a player's skill is highly volatile," wouldn't that also mean that the player's MMR uncertainty should also be changed after the decay? I feel that an MMR decay with a corresponding uncertainty increase would be a nice compromise. Inactive players who have kept their skill would be able to quickly get back to their previous MMR, and inactive players who have lost their skill would quickly settle into their correct MMR.
I feel that if the system demotes people so easily then it should also promote them as easily. Grinding 100 games to get one promotion when I've been in masters since 2010 is just frustrating. It's silly because it's not like I faced mid-low diamonds either. I was being matched with top masters and former GMs, when I was still in diamond lol. All the time I was thinking: "for gods sake give me the promotion already." And when it finally hit, I just didnt care anymore and I'm just playing on unranked lol.
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I wasn't sure what happened with my account. I haven't played in many seasons, so I figured I'd have to play five placement matches to get re-placed. I was silver last time I played. Last night I logged in (at the tail end of the season 5 lock), and correctly saw that I had to play 5 games. This morning, when season 6 had begun, I only had to play one game.
I started the game against a random "silver" (who was plat and masters before), and he quit out after about ten seconds. Then I got placed into silver league.
Now this is the correct league given my distant past, but what happened to the five games I supposedly had to play?
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Platinum 3rd in my league last season with 0 bouns pool and got placed gold. Nice job blizz,now im ''more'' motivated to get to diamond.
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On November 12 2013 02:56 Mintograde wrote:What confuses me most is that if Blizzard's argument for having MMR decay is "a player's skill is highly volatile," wouldn't that also mean that the player's MMR uncertainty should also be changed after the decay? I feel that an MMR decay with a corresponding uncertainty increase would be a nice compromise. Inactive players who have kept their skill would be able to quickly get back to their previous MMR, and inactive players who have lost their skill would quickly settle into their correct MMR. Blizzard has not publicly commented MMR decay at all. Neither they have denied it. Or do you have a public source?
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new system is killing me, can't keep all 1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4 and a 2nd server 1v1 up on masters
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On November 12 2013 01:41 DifuntO wrote: I played 170 games last season,finished top 8 gold.I just played the placement match and now i'm silver wtf?
I was very active last month so this doesn't make any sense to me. Decay could have happened already during the early part of last season. As there are no demotions during the season it is not obvious. Also as lots of others have been decayed too, players do not necessarily notice too much difference regarding the opponents.
Did you have an inactivity period that was longer than 2 weeks sometime during last season? If you had, then you have likely faced decay. If you did not have, then your MMR has likely dropped naturally during the season.
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When I actually played the game several seasons ago, I was at a steady high diamond/ low master ranking, for every season. Then I played much less and got placed into platinum two seasons ago (despite not having a losing record). Then last season I got placed into gold (despite not having a losing record). So this past season, I actually played a ton of games, no bonus pool left, rank 1 "gold", and ~70-80% win record.
Just played my one placement match for the new season. Won it. Placed in gold.
This is seriously stupid. It's gotten to the point where I don't even feel rewarded for playing a lot and winning a lot. For all the silly things Blizzard is doing to make casual players feel good about themselves, you'd think they'd care most about accurate placement and representation of skill and progress.
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On November 12 2013 00:49 JustPassingBy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2013 23:33 Salient wrote: The new MMR decay is really hostile to non-hardcore players. My job is pretty intense so I can't play every day. That is a problem under the new MMR decay system. You will have 300 bonus pool if you only play 100 ladder games in a season. That apparently leads to massive MMR decay. You can be demoted at the start of the new season despite the fact that you had a better than 50 percent win rate against players at the top of your old league. Then you are compelled to grind out almost unfair games against your temporary new league mates to get promoted again. Respectfully, WTF? 100 games per season should be sufficient to avoid MMR decay. Well, the MMR decay is dependent on the league. Master league players for example gain more bonus pool in the same amount of time than Gold league players, since they are expected to play more. I am currently sitting in Gold and I have no effort to keep my bonus pool low even though I barely play 1-2 games a day. Decay seems not to depend on leagues, but on inactivity period length. Decay seems to kick in when player has been inactive for 16 days (could be 2 weeks, but I have not yet found such examples) or more. After that the amount of decay likely increases linearly until it reaches ~300 or little more on MMR tool scale, which is little more than MMR ranges of most leagues (diam 250, plat 250, gold 280, silver 300, bronze 280). The linear increase is still not confirmed, but rough plots that I did month ago seemed to support this hypothesis. Going through the data (MMR tool data for over 10k accounts during S14. Haven't looked at S15 data at all yet) is pretty slow , but when I have enough data I will plot it and release some graphs. But it may still take awhile.
Also it is still unknown if Blizzard has made changes regarding the decay (or offsets) for this season (S16).
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I didn't realize just how serious of an issue this was until now.
While I was lucky to keep my primary account in diamond (masters before Hots, but whatever, there was inflation then anyway) I recently created a second account to off-race as Zerg. I won my placements and got put in Silver, then played a good amount of games there and won almost every game quite easily.
Then, I played my placement today and got put into gold, and almost every game now I'm playing ex masters players, players who are probably way better than I'll ever be. Kind of ridiculous, these leagues/divisions mean nothing now.
Has anyone come up with a practical explanation as to why Blizzard decided to put this in? I don't buy the whole "It makes players feel motivated to play because they're in lower leagues than they used to be" nonsense. Now that we know this exists, it would be much more interesting to understand why.
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was mid master. I'm now dia and playing some game versus some plats that were masters for 13 seasons...
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Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong.
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On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. a) Because not everyone plays regularly and you start over and over again against weaker people. b) MMR balance is completly ruined - at least in lower leagues.
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On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. Some people don't also realize that with the restructure they no longer belong in the league they think they do..
(also because the combination of mmr decay, restructured league boundaries AND the change in when/how demotions/promotions occur has created a flux that hasn't ironed itself out yet)
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On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong.
Not true.
Old system a player could play hard core for a week then not play for three weeks repeating forever. As long as he was of the right skill he would remain at his MMR and league with no issues.
New system that same player will lose a league or so every month or two. During each week that he gets to play he will regain maybe 50-110% of his MMR from the previous session. That means he will on average be losing MMR and all of his games will be devoted to regaining the lost MMR to decay and only sometimes will he start facing players better than he is.
This compounds when you realize that players that you are facing will be having this happen to them at times so you might face someone with a deflated MMR, lose to them, and lose MMR in a much harsher way than your skill vs his would suggest is ideal.
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On November 12 2013 06:39 grs wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. a) Because not everyone plays regularly and you start over and over again against weaker people. b) MMR balance is completly ruined - at least in lower leagues. This!
I wouldn't mind being in silver if I weren't crushed by other people who apparently are also silver guys, yet play on a whole different level.
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Northern Ireland461 Posts
X5 Diamond, I take a month or so break from playing seriously due to real life commitments and I end up getting placed at the bottom of Gold, what a joke
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On November 12 2013 06:41 DusTerr wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. Some people don't also realize that with the restructure they no longer belong in the league they think they do.. (also because the combination of mmr decay, restructured league boundaries AND the change in when/how demotions/promotions occur has created a flux that hasn't ironed itself out yet) It will never iron out. It will occur again and again and again, unless you play without pauses. Your snide remark just shows you did not get the problem.
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On November 12 2013 07:00 SPoF wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 06:39 grs wrote:On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong. a) Because not everyone plays regularly and you start over and over again against weaker people. b) MMR balance is completly ruined - at least in lower leagues. This! I wouldn't mind being in silver if I weren't crushed by other people who apparently are also silver guys, yet play on a whole different level.
Yeah I've been hitting plats and diamonds for a while and it's just unfair. I feel bad seeing someone who's just trying to have fun and improve and has to hit someone way way better than they are. Really silly system, needs to change sooner rather than later or you'll see a lot of very disheartened lower league players.
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On November 12 2013 06:37 Aquila- wrote: Why so many complaints? Even if you are demoted, you will eventually get into the league you belong.
You are correct, however it will likely take a stupid amount of games to fix. The extra handicap being there is a ton of other players out of place making the whole thing a very random time consuming demotivating experience. But yes 250 games should probably set things straight, happy grinding.
A bonus would be if everyone else is ready to do 250 games in the next weeks to fix the leagues, otherwise it's not going to balance out anytime soon.
This also just counts for 1v1 since all the random team games are screwed till the next expansion .
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United States12175 Posts
On November 12 2013 05:51 CakeSauc3 wrote: I didn't realize just how serious of an issue this was until now.
While I was lucky to keep my primary account in diamond (masters before Hots, but whatever, there was inflation then anyway) I recently created a second account to off-race as Zerg. I won my placements and got put in Silver, then played a good amount of games there and won almost every game quite easily.
Then, I played my placement today and got put into gold, and almost every game now I'm playing ex masters players, players who are probably way better than I'll ever be. Kind of ridiculous, these leagues/divisions mean nothing now.
Has anyone come up with a practical explanation as to why Blizzard decided to put this in? I don't buy the whole "It makes players feel motivated to play because they're in lower leagues than they used to be" nonsense. Now that we know this exists, it would be much more interesting to understand why.
The why is very simple. It sucks to come back after a long break and get worked by players you used to be able to go 50-50 with. That doesn't happen for everybody, and in those cases, those players will be able to get back to where they used to be without too much trouble. The outcry of "I came back and I'm rusty, and now I lose all my games" was actually pretty common, so this decay is designed to gradually scale you downward so that you don't feel that sharp jolt of losing game after game when you return. In that sense, I don't think a lot of players have a problem that decay exists, but rather the degree of impact that it has.
If you look at what MMR is and means, it's just a number. On its own, it's meaningless. However, the gap between two players' MMR values is defined as a predictor of the outcome of a game. Depending on how the system is tuned, dropping that ~300 rating for a month of inactivity and creating an artificial 300-rating penalty could result in your new opponents being players that you used to beat 60%, 70%, 75% of the time. If you think about it in that sense, it feels more reasonable. "I took a month off, so try me out against people I used to beat 3 out of 4 times instead of 1 out of 2 times." The major thing people don't like about it is that it takes so long through only getting ~16 rating per win to counteract the decay, so they're playing these easier opponents for a lot longer than they think they should be.
I'm actually having some difficulty getting another seasonal breakdown from SC2Ranks (Shadowed just sold it to a new owner, good for him!) so I need to find a new contact there who will provide me with data. In any event, we're reasonably sure now that the decay happens in terms of real time inactivity as opposed to bonus pool accumulation, meaning the metric for internal league apportionment and the metric for decay are different. The decay happens over uninterrupted inactivity periods, starting at 2 weeks and capping out at 4. I'm going to update the OP with this info soon.
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On November 12 2013 07:45 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 05:51 CakeSauc3 wrote: I didn't realize just how serious of an issue this was until now.
While I was lucky to keep my primary account in diamond (masters before Hots, but whatever, there was inflation then anyway) I recently created a second account to off-race as Zerg. I won my placements and got put in Silver, then played a good amount of games there and won almost every game quite easily.
Then, I played my placement today and got put into gold, and almost every game now I'm playing ex masters players, players who are probably way better than I'll ever be. Kind of ridiculous, these leagues/divisions mean nothing now.
Has anyone come up with a practical explanation as to why Blizzard decided to put this in? I don't buy the whole "It makes players feel motivated to play because they're in lower leagues than they used to be" nonsense. Now that we know this exists, it would be much more interesting to understand why.
The why is very simple. It sucks to come back after a long break and get worked by players you used to be able to go 50-50 with. That doesn't happen for everybody, and in those cases, those players will be able to get back to where they used to be without too much trouble. The outcry of "I came back and I'm rusty, and now I lose all my games" was actually pretty common, so this decay is designed to gradually scale you downward so that you don't feel that sharp jolt of losing game after game when you return. In that sense, I don't think a lot of players have a problem that decay exists, but rather the degree of impact that it has. If you look at what MMR is and means, it's just a number. On its own, it's meaningless. However, the gap between two players' MMR values is defined as a predictor of the outcome of a game. Depending on how the system is tuned, dropping that ~300 rating for a month of inactivity and creating an artificial 300-rating penalty could result in your new opponents being players that you used to beat 60%, 70%, 75% of the time. If you think about it in that sense, it feels more reasonable. "I took a month off, so try me out against people I used to beat 3 out of 4 times instead of 1 out of 2 times." The major thing people don't like about it is that it takes so long through only getting ~16 rating per win to counteract the decay, so they're playing these easier opponents for a lot longer than they think they should be. I'm actually having some difficulty getting another seasonal breakdown from SC2Ranks (Shadowed just sold it to a new owner, good for him!) so I need to find a new contact there who will provide me with data. In any event, we're reasonably sure now that the decay happens in terms of real time inactivity as opposed to bonus pool accumulation, meaning the metric for internal league apportionment and the metric for decay are different. The decay happens over uninterrupted inactivity periods, starting at 2 weeks and capping out at 4. I'm going to update the OP with this info soon.
Yeah, you're right. I guess what I was saying was, why is the decay so DRASTIC? I mean, I could see a little bit.... play low diamond-league players instead of high diamond-league players, but why do you go from high master-league to gold or silver? That's just ridiculous.
I would bet that any diamond or master-league player would have to stop playing SC2 for a couple of years before their mechanics sank to the level that a gold or silver league player could take a game off them in a macro game. In this case, it would definitely be better to not have it at all than to have it bring you all the way down.
But hey, I guess they are just experimenting so that in LotV the leagues are more perfect, right? One can always hope.
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Double post, please delete
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Why are people saying masters are playing as gold/silver? All the masters here, the lowest they seem to get is diamond/plat after a new season. Seems like a gross exaggeration to me.
Those gold/silver who are playing masters should take a look to see if the masters are actually playing offrace in unranked rather than blaming mmr decay, because the experiences of master players described here are totally different.
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On November 12 2013 08:05 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Why are people saying masters are playing as gold/silver? All the masters here, the lowest they seem to get is diamond/plat after a new season. Seems like a gross exaggeration to me.
Those gold/silver who are playing masters should take a look to see if the masters are actually playing offrace in unranked rather than blaming mmr decay, because the experiences of master players described here are totally different.
My placement match was against a former masters player (achieved 12 times) and I landed in gold. I was rank 1 diamond two seasons ago. He also placed in gold.
I think a lot of this has less to do with MMR decay and more with the loss of a lot of the player base. There are fewer players, and on average, they are much, much, much better at the game than the average player was several months ago. So we have two pools of players, and gold league is where a lot of the clash between "new player on the rise" and "experienced player with some rust" happens. I was diamond, and that's what you're going to see when you click on my profile, but I doubt I actually belong in diamond anymore.
A decent number of my games show both players hitting so-called "GM spending skill" on GGTracker (I basically always do), so things have definitely changed a bit in terms of player composition that can't be explained by decay alone.
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On November 12 2013 07:45 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 05:51 CakeSauc3 wrote: I didn't realize just how serious of an issue this was until now.
While I was lucky to keep my primary account in diamond (masters before Hots, but whatever, there was inflation then anyway) I recently created a second account to off-race as Zerg. I won my placements and got put in Silver, then played a good amount of games there and won almost every game quite easily.
Then, I played my placement today and got put into gold, and almost every game now I'm playing ex masters players, players who are probably way better than I'll ever be. Kind of ridiculous, these leagues/divisions mean nothing now.
Has anyone come up with a practical explanation as to why Blizzard decided to put this in? I don't buy the whole "It makes players feel motivated to play because they're in lower leagues than they used to be" nonsense. Now that we know this exists, it would be much more interesting to understand why.
The why is very simple. It sucks to come back after a long break and get worked by players you used to be able to go 50-50 with. That doesn't happen for everybody, and in those cases, those players will be able to get back to where they used to be without too much trouble. The outcry of "I came back and I'm rusty, and now I lose all my games" was actually pretty common, so this decay is designed to gradually scale you downward so that you don't feel that sharp jolt of losing game after game when you return. In that sense, I don't think a lot of players have a problem that decay exists, but rather the degree of impact that it has. The decay is basic design fault. It only adds to the ladder confusion. Longer reasonig is here. The lower leagues were a total mess last season and they are now too.
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Wow, I just experienced what everyone is talking about. I've never been all that active, and I just stuck around in gold league for a long time. But I hardly played for a few months, so I got knocked back to bronze this season. And the first few people I've been matched with were *very* bronze.
This isn't so bad for me, just a minor annoyance--I get the cheap validation of beating up on noobs for a while before I have to actually challenge myself. But it sucks for people like the guy I just played, who told me he was playing his second ladder game ever. I'm not exactly Innovation myself, but I still felt bad for the guy when I marched in with a 10 minute marine-medivac push and he just had a handful of marines and was starting to build his natural.
Maybe this is a rare occurrence, but if Blizzard manages to succeed in both bringing back inactive players, and also drawing in newbies, the MMR decay mechanism could have some unfortunate unintended consequences in situations like this.
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On November 12 2013 08:31 iggym wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 08:05 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Why are people saying masters are playing as gold/silver? All the masters here, the lowest they seem to get is diamond/plat after a new season. Seems like a gross exaggeration to me.
Those gold/silver who are playing masters should take a look to see if the masters are actually playing offrace in unranked rather than blaming mmr decay, because the experiences of master players described here are totally different. My placement match was against a former masters player (achieved 12 times) and I landed in gold. I was rank 1 diamond two seasons ago. He also placed in gold. I think a lot of this has less to do with MMR decay and more with the loss of a lot of the player base. There are fewer players, and on average, they are much, much, much better at the game than the average player was several months ago. So we have two pools of players, and gold league is where a lot of the clash between "new player on the rise" and "experienced player with some rust" happens. I was diamond, and that's what you're going to see when you click on my profile, but I doubt I actually belong in diamond anymore. A decent number of my games show both players hitting so-called "GM spending skill" on GGTracker (I basically always do), so things have definitely changed a bit in terms of player composition that can't be explained by decay alone. Sounds like MMR doing it's job here.
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I could see a little bit.... play low diamond-league players instead of high diamond-league players, but why do you go from high master-league to gold or silver? That's just ridiculous.
I am very skeptic of the descriptions of "high masters playing gold" because of mmr decay. I've never seen it happen. A few of my friends didn't play any games after the beggining of last season, and dropped from playing masters to playing diamonds.It happened to me in my account in a different server. It's also against of all the information we have so far about the caps on the decay.
I would guess those descriptions are just off-racing players in unranked games.
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Canada13372 Posts
I dont know if this means anything, but my EU ladder account got placed into gold when i played it before the ladder update. I got placed gold again today and I am currently 33-3 still playing gold players. I think the highest i made it on EU was Diamond or maybe masters? I never played much on it but saw the gold placement as an opportunity to test the skill and mmr stuff. I am winning very very very easily and my few losses are due to stupid stupid mistakes including starting a game 1:30 late vs a rush PvP.
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On November 12 2013 08:05 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Why are people saying masters are playing as gold/silver? All the masters here, the lowest they seem to get is diamond/plat after a new season. Seems like a gross exaggeration to me. I'm a former Master player. I got placed in gold this season. I had midterms the last 3 weeks so I couldn't play at all. I did get promoted after 3 obscenely one-sided games but still, it is possible.
It is getting quite hard to be motivated to play. Now that I can play again, I know I will have like 10-15 games of playing worse players just to remotely get back to my level. It seems crazy that I have to give up a whole evening just to have a fair game. It isn't fun for the person that is outclassed or the person who is way better. It's just a waste of time. What was wrong with the old way? I could take a couple weeks off if need be, maybe struggle for a couple games while shaking off the rust but then be back to normal again quickly.
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On November 12 2013 09:36 bertu wrote:Show nested quote + I could see a little bit.... play low diamond-league players instead of high diamond-league players, but why do you go from high master-league to gold or silver? That's just ridiculous.
I am very skeptic of the descriptions of "high masters playing gold" because of mmr decay. I've never seen it happen. A few of my friends didn't play any games after the beggining of last season, and dropped from playing masters to playing diamonds.It happened to me in my account in a different server. It's also against of all the information we have so far about the caps on the decay. I would guess those descriptions are just off-racing players in unranked games. No it actually happens. You just need several inactivity periods in a row. One maximum decay drops your MMR little over one league range when you come back. If after playing couple of games you go inactive again and come back after maximum decay has been reached for second time, you will be little over 2 league ranges lower than you were before your first inactivity period.
Of course master league has huge MMR range compared to the other leagues. For example on EU it would take 2.56 x maximum decays to drop a borderline GM to diamond (on NA only 1.6 max decays would be needed). Some weeks ago I saw a former GM playing ranked on EU with mid-platinum MMR.
As it takes about 20 wins more than losses to overcome the max decay (e.g. 20 win - 0 loss), many do not reach their former MMR level before going back to hiatus. And thus over several seasons they drop several league ranges in MMR (their actual skill remains about the same even if they become little rusty). S16 is the fifth HotS season. Every season the ladder becomes more messed up, unless Blizzard makes some corrective changes. For example in this situation it might be a good idea to adjust the decay mechanic to have smaller impact (or remove it entirely) and then reset everyone's MMR. The MMR changes much more rapidly if it starts from a blank state.
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Blizzard really needs to fix this sooner rather than later. It has almost no utility and causes tremendous annoyance.
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ok so this is simple, and im speaking for most of my clan and also ALOT of other people. I see where you guys were going with this MMR change and all that, but it has literally screwed everyone up. Only reason im making a post is because Im speaking up for a lot of people including myself. Last season and this season I have been a top diamond player and playing master players, trying to get masters and have been trying for many years, and the moment im so damn close to getting masters, I get demoted to plat.....and now im going through dealing with 13 time master players in plat, all im trying to do is get back into diamond so I can go on my run for masters again and finally accomplish my goals. But now im stuck facing long term master players who also got demoted due to whatever. Ive been playing this game for near 10 years now, and you guys are seriously ruining the game with this MMR bull now. There are so many unhappy people and the point of the game is to be attracting people and if this is the case I know ALOT of good players that have quit the game because of this. Something needs to be done about this, the fact is there is golds playing long term masters players and things are very messed up now. I understand the fact im not masters yet because it locked up and got a lot tighter, but the fact that all these masters are now scattered playing golds and plats and leagues like that are not fair to your lower league players. The game was not designed just for all the expert players and very good players, its a fan based game where everyone likes to come and have a good time and just give up there time for this amazing game. But im sure you guys have heard a lot about this MMR issue and you guys have done nothing to fix the issue. But it is now a major issue and after today, im just addressing it because it needs to be dealt with. Please do something about this and quick please, because your losing a lot of players due to this and im literally in love with this game, its like my second job. I love everything you guys have done with this game except this 1 thing. My dream is to hit masters and try my best to go pro, im sure its a lot of peoples dreams, but you gotta work super super hard at it. But we need to be given that chance to at least show we are working up and working towards our goals. thanks for your guys time and for reading this I really hope to see some improvements soon <3
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Canada13372 Posts
On November 12 2013 10:00 TeamURViTaL wrote: ok so this is simple, and im speaking for most of my clan and also ALOT of other people. I see where you guys were going with this MMR change and all that, but it has literally screwed everyone up. Only reason im making a post is because Im speaking up for a lot of people including myself. Last season and this season I have been a top diamond player and playing master players, trying to get masters and have been trying for many years, and the moment im so damn close to getting masters, I get demoted to plat.....and now im going through dealing with 13 time master players in plat, all im trying to do is get back into diamond so I can go on my run for masters again and finally accomplish my goals. But now im stuck facing long term master players who also got demoted due to whatever. Ive been playing this game for near 10 years now, and you guys are seriously ruining the game with this MMR bull now. There are so many unhappy people and the point of the game is to be attracting people and if this is the case I know ALOT of good players that have quit the game because of this. Something needs to be done about this, the fact is there is golds playing long term masters players and things are very messed up now. I understand the fact im not masters yet because it locked up and got a lot tighter, but the fact that all these masters are now scattered playing golds and plats and leagues like that are not fair to your lower league players. The game was not designed just for all the expert players and very good players, its a fan based game where everyone likes to come and have a good time and just give up there time for this amazing game. But im sure you guys have heard a lot about this MMR issue and you guys have done nothing to fix the issue. But it is now a major issue and after today, im just addressing it because it needs to be dealt with. Please do something about this and quick please, because your losing a lot of players due to this and im literally in love with this game, its like my second job. I love everything you guys have done with this game except this 1 thing. My dream is to hit masters and try my best to go pro, im sure its a lot of peoples dreams, but you gotta work super super hard at it. But we need to be given that chance to at least show we are working up and working towards our goals. thanks for your guys time and for reading this I really hope to see some improvements soon <3
Ok buddy please use paragraphs but sure. Its annoying I agree.
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This is a very tough issue with many different angles you can take to argue it.
However, I try to think of it in it's simplest terms. Blizzard wants you to keep playing this game, because if you are, you aren't playing someone else's game.
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Blizzard needs to figure their stuff out, or they're gonna chase away those few of us who are still wanting to jump on occasionally and play sc2.
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On November 12 2013 10:10 OGHalcyon wrote: This is a very tough issue with many different angles you can take to argue it.
However, I try to think of it in it's simplest terms. Blizzard wants you to keep playing this game, because if you are, you aren't playing someone else's game.
Or maybe you have a professional job or serious studies so you sometimes can't play for days or weeks . . . why should you be demoted if your skill level remains at a similar level? We shouldn't have to be poop-socking basement dwellers to enjoy the ladder. This MMR decay is very hostile to the sort of casual player that Blizzard hopes to gain/retain.
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Do we have player usage statistics for the last several seasons? Are there far fewer players laddering lately?
OR WAIT- what if this is just a natural consequence of a very large proportion of players switching to playing unranked? I think that personally at least half my opponents lately have also been unranked. Maybe its the same player pool, but half of them left ranked play for unranked???? If half the ladder population, probably mostly the lower-ranked half, stopped playing games to find a place in ranked, then all of this might be completely natural and reasonable.
We'd need player statistics for both ranked and unranked play.
Consider this for a sec- if half the population is playing unranked now, and masters is now 3% of the population, then masters would actually represent the top 1.5% of players- or would it?
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Gotta agree. I wanted to start playing a bit more again after being inactive and got placed in gold leage. I am former Master and am playing a lot of Masters in gold leauge, pretty bad.
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I don't understand how you guys have any of these problems. I barely played at all last season and very inconsistently and yet I was placed masters again. If you were actually masters with masters mmr and played regularly.... you should just be masters. I don't know anyone in my clan or friends list that went from masters to plat as long he played regularly and wasn't a bottom dwelling master.
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On November 12 2013 10:28 Salient wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 10:10 OGHalcyon wrote: This is a very tough issue with many different angles you can take to argue it.
However, I try to think of it in it's simplest terms. Blizzard wants you to keep playing this game, because if you are, you aren't playing someone else's game. Or maybe you have a professional job or serious studies so you sometimes can't play for days or weeks . . . why should you be demoted if your skill level remains at a similar level? We shouldn't have to be poop-socking basement dwellers to enjoy the ladder. This MMR decay is very hostile to the sort of casual player that Blizzard hopes to gain/retain.
Like I said, they want you to play their game and do nothing else. I never said it was fair, nor do I agree with it, but it seems to be the case. I can't think of any other logical reason for MMR decay?
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MMR decay makes sense.... if you can get demoted during season. Otherwise it's dumb.
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On November 12 2013 10:40 Musicus wrote: Gotta agree. I wanted to start playing a bit more again after being inactive and got placed in gold leage. I am former Master and am playing a lot of Masters in gold leauge, pretty bad.
This is why the system is broken. This is my third season playing on the ladder and I made it to the top of my division in Silver last season. By the end, I was facing players, still in Silver league, that were former gold, plat, and up to diamond. My goal for this season was going to be to make it into gold. But, it's starting to seem impossible if gold league consists of mostly former masters. It stinks playing against players that are WAAAY better than you.
Anyway, tonight I've seen it from the other side too and that stinks as well. I played my placement match, lost, and got dropped into bronze. Then, I went on to stomp on like 5 bronze players in a row. Look, I'm only at high silver skill, but it's still no fun rolling into my opponents base with 50 roaches and just seeing 3 zealots, 4 sentries and a stalker. It's not helping me improve nor is it helping my opponent improve. It's not fun for anyone playing non-competitive games.
I think that the solution is to dump MMR decay and bring back in-season demotion. If you come back after a hiatus and get beat down a few times, so be it. You'll get demoted and end up where you belong according to your skill level. Once you shake off the rust, you'll be right back up in the league you were in before you left.
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Ok, starting to see how this is real. Left the game as a Diamond in Season 4. Got demoted to Plat for season 5 and didn't play much. NOw a gold. Hrm....
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I personally never had any problems with the ladder MMR and always felt like I am where I should be, which is in diamond. I was master the first two seasons of hots but it was just because they reset mmr and I got there before the worthy masters got it. I don't know why everyone is bitching.. you're probably plat level if you're in plat, just get over it.
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On November 12 2013 12:57 sM.Zik wrote: I personally never had any problems with the ladder MMR and always felt like I am where I should be, which is in diamond. I was master the first two seasons of hots but it was just because they reset mmr and I got there before the worthy masters got it. I don't know why everyone is bitching.. you're probably plat level if you're in plat, just get over it.
Because people who played only maybe 100+ games last season (which is a lot of games) got demoted due to MMR decay. And they have to grind out games against objectively weaker players to get back to their proper level. It sucks for the person who has to grind, and it sucks to the people who get grounded up in the process. People will stop bitching in a week or two once the grinding is done. But it's annoying that Blizzard makes the grinding process necessary every season now just because some people have lives and can't play ladder constantly.
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This explains a lot. Kept playing at the start of the season, wining my placement game, and finding myself a couple of leagues down on the previous season.
Overall it's good I think, but I think it should have a MUCH longer timeline. Something like three months.
EDIT: Though I will say I did find the grind back to Diamond was harder with every season. I just figured it was due to my decline in skill along with everyone else getting better. But if the overall ladder is being deflated, this would explain that also.
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I think the biggest issue is no mid-season demotions so the grind back up feels much longer as there are limited spots in masters.
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finished rank 5 diamond this season, with a 55-60 percent win rate. Won my placement and was placed in platinum. Which sucks a bit, but I think a lot of peoiple this season was placed in platinum, I have a played a shit ton former master league players.
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On November 12 2013 07:45 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 05:51 CakeSauc3 wrote: I didn't realize just how serious of an issue this was until now.
While I was lucky to keep my primary account in diamond (masters before Hots, but whatever, there was inflation then anyway) I recently created a second account to off-race as Zerg. I won my placements and got put in Silver, then played a good amount of games there and won almost every game quite easily.
Then, I played my placement today and got put into gold, and almost every game now I'm playing ex masters players, players who are probably way better than I'll ever be. Kind of ridiculous, these leagues/divisions mean nothing now.
Has anyone come up with a practical explanation as to why Blizzard decided to put this in? I don't buy the whole "It makes players feel motivated to play because they're in lower leagues than they used to be" nonsense. Now that we know this exists, it would be much more interesting to understand why.
The why is very simple. It sucks to come back after a long break and get worked by players you used to be able to go 50-50 with. That doesn't happen for everybody, and in those cases, those players will be able to get back to where they used to be without too much trouble. The outcry of "I came back and I'm rusty, and now I lose all my games" was actually pretty common, so this decay is designed to gradually scale you downward so that you don't feel that sharp jolt of losing game after game when you return. In that sense, I don't think a lot of players have a problem that decay exists, but rather the degree of impact that it has. If you look at what MMR is and means, it's just a number. On its own, it's meaningless. However, the gap between two players' MMR values is defined as a predictor of the outcome of a game. Depending on how the system is tuned, dropping that ~300 rating for a month of inactivity and creating an artificial 300-rating penalty could result in your new opponents being players that you used to beat 60%, 70%, 75% of the time. If you think about it in that sense, it feels more reasonable. "I took a month off, so try me out against people I used to beat 3 out of 4 times instead of 1 out of 2 times." The major thing people don't like about it is that it takes so long through only getting ~16 rating per win to counteract the decay, so they're playing these easier opponents for a lot longer than they think they should be. I'm actually having some difficulty getting another seasonal breakdown from SC2Ranks (Shadowed just sold it to a new owner, good for him!) so I need to find a new contact there who will provide me with data. In any event, we're reasonably sure now that the decay happens in terms of real time inactivity as opposed to bonus pool accumulation, meaning the metric for internal league apportionment and the metric for decay are different. The decay happens over uninterrupted inactivity periods, starting at 2 weeks and capping out at 4. I'm going to update the OP with this info soon. If I don't play for 4 weeks and my MMR drop X points, then play 1 game, then don't play for another 4 weeks, do I lose another X points for a total of 2X?
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On November 12 2013 13:32 Scarecrow wrote: I think the biggest issue is no mid-season demotions so the grind back up feels much longer as there are limited spots in masters. No. There are no limitations. Blizzard uses static league thresholds that they adjust very rarely. For example the known adjustments during HotS era are in the beginning of first HotS season (S 12) and in the beginning of season 14 (early June).
Regarding this season it is still too early to tell. But in few days at least if there has been larger changes is known from MMR tool data --> If there is large changes the tool gives erratic results. But if the changes were very small, it takes few weeks to verify. But they usually do not make small changes... (except that WoL bronze-silver offset was changed in beginning S12 and I did not notice it before early last season as they kept all other offsets the same. But WoL has very low amount of MMR tool users. If there were as many as there are HotS users, I would have noticed it much faster).
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On November 12 2013 09:48 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 09:36 bertu wrote: I could see a little bit.... play low diamond-league players instead of high diamond-league players, but why do you go from high master-league to gold or silver? That's just ridiculous.
I am very skeptic of the descriptions of "high masters playing gold" because of mmr decay. I've never seen it happen. A few of my friends didn't play any games after the beggining of last season, and dropped from playing masters to playing diamonds.It happened to me in my account in a different server. It's also against of all the information we have so far about the caps on the decay. I would guess those descriptions are just off-racing players in unranked games. No it actually happens. You just need several inactivity periods in a row. One maximum decay drops your MMR little over one league range when you come back. If after playing couple of games you go inactive again and come back after maximum decay has been reached for second time, you will be little over 2 league ranges lower than you were before your first inactivity period. Of course master league has huge MMR range compared to the other leagues. For example on EU it would take 2.56 x maximum decays to drop a borderline GM to diamond (on NA only 1.6 max decays would be needed). Some weeks ago I saw a former GM playing ranked on EU with mid-platinum MMR. As it takes about 20 wins more than losses to overcome the max decay (e.g. 20 win - 0 loss), many do not reach their former MMR level before going back to hiatus. And thus over several seasons they drop several league ranges in MMR (their actual skill remains about the same even if they become little rusty). S16 is the fifth HotS season. Every season the ladder becomes more messed up, unless Blizzard makes some corrective changes. For example in this situation it might be a good idea to adjust the decay mechanic to have smaller impact (or remove it entirely) and then reset everyone's MMR. The MMR changes much more rapidly if it starts from a blank state.
Interesting. Does this means decays can stack?
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I don't play ranked anymore because of this absurd system. Unranked is fun and you meet people of your level that play ranked anyway. You got matched vs people of your MMR level so what's the point going ranked anyway unless you want that cocky icon in front of your name.
From unranked perspective, what I can tell from my matches is that I encountered almost only masters last season and now the people of same MMR than mine all fallen to diamond. The only consequence to this is people are cheesing their way to go back easy to the league they belong. It's the same since last season at each season reset the amount of cheeses is ridiculously high.
Hope blizzard will fix this shit once for all because this impact a lot the in game strategies we see in the games. My last session was a 15-2 win ratio only facing cheeses proxy reapers proxy thors, ling bling allin , roach ling bling allin , and all the protoss fest of allins. No game lasted more than 12 minutes. I want to work my macro game but I really can't atm. SO to enjoy macro games do we have now to wait the mid season?
It's the worst ranking system for any game I played so far.
Fix it or at least allow me to face only unranked players....
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You could always play customs with friends if you want nr 15.
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On November 12 2013 19:37 klup wrote: I don't play ranked anymore because of this absurd system. Unranked is fun and you meet people of your level that play ranked anyway. You got matched vs people of your MMR level so what's the point going ranked anyway unless you want that cocky icon in front of your name.
From unranked perspective, what I can tell from my matches is that I encountered almost only masters last season and now the people of same MMR than mine all fallen to diamond. The only consequence to this is people are cheesing their way to go back easy to the league they belong. It's the same since last season at each season reset the amount of cheeses is ridiculously high.
Hope blizzard will fix this shit once for all because this impact a lot the in game strategies we see in the games. My last session was a 15-2 win ratio only facing cheeses proxy reapers proxy thors, ling bling allin , roach ling bling allin , and all the protoss fest of allins. No game lasted more than 12 minutes. I want to work my macro game but I really can't atm. SO to enjoy macro games do we have now to wait the mid season?
It's the worst ranking system for any game I played so far.
Fix it or at least allow me to face only unranked players.... I usually do my placement and maybe three or for matches then don't play for the first few days or so of a season to avoid this. It's been like this forever. People getting mad about being demoted so they cheese every game to try and get back. The funny thing is that this will likely reinforce their demotion because people will hold their stupid cheese/gimmick builds and cause them to lose where if they had played how they normally do they would have had a better chance.
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Kinda funny how the timing in games played affect the decay. I just played my placement in 3:3 and got Master. A friend also played and got Plat. He played twice as much as I did last season and had better win % but he dropped down and I didnt. I assume that I managed to time in my games so that I didnt drop so much in mmr while he had a longer break. Another factor could be that I had a higher mmr to start out with.
Do the mmr drop in 1:1 if you play teamgames ect? It seems like it but I'm not sure. My AT teams usually gets super demoted.
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On November 12 2013 05:32 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 02:56 Mintograde wrote:It took me about 100 games to get back into the league. What confuses me most is that if Blizzard's argument for having MMR decay is "a player's skill is highly volatile," wouldn't that also mean that the player's MMR uncertainty should also be changed after the decay? I feel that an MMR decay with a corresponding uncertainty increase would be a nice compromise. Inactive players who have kept their skill would be able to quickly get back to their previous MMR, and inactive players who have lost their skill would quickly settle into their correct MMR. Blizzard has not publicly commented MMR decay at all. Neither they have denied it. Or do you have a public source? I was just speculating on Blizzard's possible reasoning for implementing MMR decay, and giving a possible additional change to reduce the negative impact of MMR decay.
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On November 12 2013 23:35 Eatme wrote: Kinda funny how the timing in games played affect the decay. I just played my placement in 3:3 and got Master. A friend also played and got Plat. He played twice as much as I did last season and had better win % but he dropped down and I didnt. I assume that I managed to time in my games so that I didnt drop so much in mmr while he had a longer break. Another factor could be that I had a higher mmr to start out with.
Indeed. Nowadays if you don't have time to play, it is more beneficial for you just leave one game during one period of less than 2 weeks. One loss drops your MMR less than the decay.
On November 12 2013 23:35 Eatme wrote: Do the mmr drop in 1:1 if you play teamgames ect? It seems like it but I'm not sure. My AT teams usually gets super demoted. Something prevents it for sure (exact rules what prevents it are unknown). There were multiple character accounts that had not faced decay during S14, even if they had had inactivity period of more than 3 weeks. Actually one of my own accounts is such. During that time frame it was inactive, I from time to time watched replays and tested things in custom games (no opponent or AI opponent). I think I played one unranked match (left immediately) during that 49 days time frame as I tested if Blizzard had unranked/ranked identifiers in their web API (they don't have).
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From my personal experience it seems that each AT has its own MMR and will decay despite you playing on other ATs: I play ATs every weekend, but in general with different teams (as different people happen to be online), and very often we have to grind through a series of maybe 10 very easy wins before we hit any resistance at all, while if we happen to be the same team as last weekend, we don't run into that problem as much.
I am ofc only one person though, so I am not reliable statistics on my own.
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personally i think the decay is too extreme. how is it i go from platinum to bronze or silver? it's like it automatically drops you a league every new season.
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Thank god for the decay... I haven't played in months and I'm playing in silver (after previously being in Platinum) and I belong there. These silver/gold players can macro now. They actually have units! wtf!
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On November 13 2013 08:58 VillageBC wrote: Thank god for the decay... I haven't played in months and I'm playing in silver (after previously being in Platinum) and I belong there. These silver/gold players can macro now. They actually have units! wtf!
I think it's rather real bronze/silvers quitting and gold/plats dropping down that makes you feel like you belong there.
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If you want to know what standard wol league you actually play in, just look at your opponent profile. It's not rare to have some platinium or diamond that were actually 9 time masters.
Basically Gold seems the hard league atm because it's a concentration of very different skilled people. The top gold is definitively old diamonds and the bottom gold are actual gold.
Maybe Blizzard should introduce system like lol with gold 1 gold 2 etc... But fixing ladder feels really urgent. Most of my lower league friends are giving up because this system is too hard on them.They were on the verge to rise to platinium at the end of wol and now they are fighting in gold/silver.
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This is so frustrating. Last season I was in Diamond.. admittedly I was having a hard time and this season (I was very active last season) I was demoted to platinum. However…It’s very discouraging to be playing former perennial masters game after game. Looking at each of the profiles EVERYone I play has been masters multiple times. But they’re in platinum and they’re wrecking my face. These games are not close.
The decay should be in relation to the actual skill drop in respects to the time off. Meaning.. if you take a month or two off it doesn’t mean you’re fundamentals have dropped you 2 or 3 whole leagues. Perhaps a half a league? The decay seems to be way too dramatic.
I just get the impression they can’t make up their minds. First they adjusted the range of players you can be matched against.. having legit masters playing platinums just for variety.. yeaaa.. Then Two seasons it was super easy to get promoted. I made it to masters and I should not be in masters.. I’m barely diamond. Then they adjust it so you can’t get demoted in mid season.. what prompted that? Now this decay is completely falsifying the ranking at the start of the each season.
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Decay probably shouldn't exist. Or it should be less aggressive -- maybe dropping you by a maximum of half a league every season unless you play at least some minimal number of games (like 50 games for the season). That way causal players aren't pushed away from the game just because they have lives.
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Yeah, I'm in gold and wrecking face because I'm actually a diamond/low masters player who didn't play for the last 2 seasons.
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Can anyone tell me if this decay is working indipendently for each bracket (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4) or not? I mean: do I still have to play some games now and then in team brackets to prevent them from decaying, while still playing 1v1 at a reasonable pace (or the other way around)? Does it change for random and arrange teams?
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On November 14 2013 00:20 Ignorant prodigy wrote: I just get the impression they can’t make up their minds. First they adjusted the range of players you can be matched against.. having legit masters playing platinums just for variety.. yeaaa.. Then Two seasons it was super easy to get promoted. I made it to masters and I should not be in masters.. I’m barely diamond. Then they adjust it so you can’t get demoted in mid season.. what prompted that? Now this decay is completely falsifying the ranking at the start of the each season.
If you think a moment you realize that most of these things are connected.
First they made MMR ranges of each league considerably smaller in beginning of HotS (S12). They also seemed to abandon moving average regarding promotions (you seem to be promoted immediately when you cross league thresholds). E.g. if you were low to mid gold league player and had a win streak of 10, you would likely have been promoted to platinum. Similar loss streak would have dropped your MMR to low to mid silver. 15 to 20 losses would have dropped you to high bronze MMR range. As leagues were small, demotions would have been much more frequent. They adjusted the league sizes in beginning of third HotS season (S14). The MMR ranges are now larger, but still small compared to MMR ranges of WoL era leagues: + Show Spoiler +End of WoL offsets in MMR tool scale (bronze-silver, s-g, g-p, p-d, d-m, master-gm. Note that the dynamic GM entry barrier is much higher than the offset would suggest): 585, 345, 345, 255, 380, 590 HotS S12-S13: 200, 185, 180, 185, 200, 290 HotS S14 -: 280, 300, 280, 250, 250, 400
I have not checked if the max decay was smaller during S12 to S13. If it was & as leagues were smaller, it would have been faster to overcome it (less games). I wonder did they increase the max decay in comparable size to the league size increase.
Second they introduced MMR decay in beginning of HotS (it is possible that already in 2.0.x patch that was applied ~month before HotS). If there were mid season demotions, then the decay would be immediately evident when you come back from a hiatus - You would likely have been demoted immediately. It seems that Blizzard wanted that players would not know about the decay mechanism - They are still avoiding to acknowledge it, even if even the most casual end of players who don't read community forums have likely noticed that something is wrong.
Third they adjusted the matchmaker. It now picks primarily opponents from your own league who have similar MMR as you (secondarily from other leagues). Thus if you are in gold, but your MMR is e.g. in low silver, you are still most of the time matched against gold players (golds that have low silver MMR). This mechanism was likely added to hide possible MMR decay (+ decrease amount of complaints such as 'I am in silver, why I am matched against a gold player'). E.g. if a mid gold MMR player faces max decay his MMR drops to low to mid silver. If this mechanism was not implemented then most of his opponents would be silver players. But now as the opponents are mostly from gold, the decayed player won't necessarily even realize that he is not anymore a gold player based on MMR. He is still able to get very high rank in his gold division, especially as now he plays against players with much lower MMR than before (his adjusted points are much higher than typical non-decayed player with so low MMR would have).
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An official announcement would be awesome so we would know how many games we must play to avoid this (and when we must play those games). Due Process FTW.
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On November 14 2013 22:20 Salient wrote: An official announcement would be awesome so we would know how many games we must play to avoid this (and when we must play those games). Due Process FTW. Based on current knowledge based on research you need to play 1 game in a time frame less than 2 weeks to avoid the decay. But if you are inactive for more than 2 weeks, then decay ramps up very quickly. If you face maximum decay, then you need some 20 wins more than loses to overcome it (e.g. 20W - 0L).
And yes. It would be great if they would publicly acknowledge the problem & do something.
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On November 14 2013 22:33 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 22:20 Salient wrote: An official announcement would be awesome so we would know how many games we must play to avoid this (and when we must play those games). Due Process FTW. Based on current knowledge based on research you need to play 1 game in a time frame less than 2 weeks to avoid the decay. But if you are inactive for more than 2 weeks, then decay ramps up very quickly. If you face maximum decay, then you need some 20 wins more than loses to overcome it (e.g. 20W - 0L). And yes. It would be great if they would publicly acknowledge the problem & do something.
I went from Diamond to gold in 2 season of semi-inactivity. Still I find ladder decay to be a good thing, people should not be able to stay in the higher leagues if they don't play anymore.
Nothing frustrated me more than people showing off their 1-game-a-season master league they got off of 4 gating in 2010.
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I don't understand why Blizz doesn't just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR. It's like a chess rating right? That's not private, you always know the rating of your opponent. Why is it such a big secret in SC2?
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On November 14 2013 22:42 Douillos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 22:33 korona wrote:On November 14 2013 22:20 Salient wrote: An official announcement would be awesome so we would know how many games we must play to avoid this (and when we must play those games). Due Process FTW. Based on current knowledge based on research you need to play 1 game in a time frame less than 2 weeks to avoid the decay. But if you are inactive for more than 2 weeks, then decay ramps up very quickly. If you face maximum decay, then you need some 20 wins more than loses to overcome it (e.g. 20W - 0L). And yes. It would be great if they would publicly acknowledge the problem & do something. I went from Diamond to gold in 2 season of semi-inactivity. Still I find ladder decay to be a good thing, people should not be able to stay in the higher leagues if they don't play anymore. Nothing frustrated me more than people showing off their 1-game-a-season master league they got off of 4 gating in 2010.
Agreed, but a less aggressive decay or reset would accomplish that without the side effects.
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On November 14 2013 22:55 iPhoneAppz wrote: I don't understand why Blizz doesn't just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR. It's like a chess rating right? That's not private, you always know the rating of your opponent. Why is it such a big secret in SC2?
The assumption is that most of the long time players have reached a plateau, and their actual MMR stays more or less the same over time. Blizzard thinks that such a thing, if made plain, would deprive the players of any sense of accomplishment, hence all the fake ladder points, which you naturally increase along the season (even if you are playing bad). For Blizzard, ladder (especially below master) isn't about showing who's best or where you are exactly standing among other players, but rather a way to keep people playing giving false senses of accomplishments (even when you are not accomplishing anything).
Note that's not actually a total bad thing, since it is meant to keep more people in the game.. but I agree that for those interestend in a decent ladder system, that's really really bad.
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On November 14 2013 21:21 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 00:20 Ignorant prodigy wrote: I just get the impression they can’t make up their minds. First they adjusted the range of players you can be matched against.. having legit masters playing platinums just for variety.. yeaaa.. Then Two seasons it was super easy to get promoted. I made it to masters and I should not be in masters.. I’m barely diamond. Then they adjust it so you can’t get demoted in mid season.. what prompted that? Now this decay is completely falsifying the ranking at the start of the each season.
If you think a moment you realize that most of these things are connected. First they made MMR ranges of each league considerably smaller in beginning of HotS (S12). They also seemed to abandon moving average regarding promotions (you seem to be promoted immediately when you cross league thresholds). E.g. if you were low to mid gold league player and had a win streak of 10, you would likely have been promoted to platinum. Similar loss streak would have dropped your MMR to low to mid silver. 15 to 20 losses would have dropped you to high bronze MMR range. As leagues were small, demotions would have been much more frequent. They adjusted the league sizes in beginning of third HotS season (S14). The MMR ranges are now larger, but still small compared to MMR ranges of WoL era leagues: + Show Spoiler +End of WoL offsets in MMR tool scale (bronze-silver, s-g, g-p, p-d, d-m, master-gm. Note that the dynamic GM entry barrier is much higher than the offset would suggest): 585, 345, 345, 255, 380, 590 HotS S12-S13: 200, 185, 180, 185, 200, 290 HotS S14 -: 280, 300, 280, 250, 250, 400
I have not checked if the max decay was smaller during S12 to S13. If it was & as leagues were smaller, it would have been faster to overcome it (less games). I wonder did they increase the max decay in comparable size to the league size increase.
Second they introduced MMR decay in beginning of HotS (it is possible that already in 2.0.x patch that was applied ~month before HotS). If there were mid season demotions, then the decay would be immediately evident when you come back from a hiatus - You would likely have been demoted immediately. It seems that Blizzard wanted that players would not know about the decay mechanism - They are still avoiding to acknowledge it, even if even the most casual end of players who don't read community forums have likely noticed that something is wrong. Third they adjusted the matchmaker. It now picks primarily opponents from your own league who have similar MMR as you (secondarily from other leagues). Thus if you are in gold, but your MMR is e.g. in low silver, you are still most of the time matched against gold players (golds that have low silver MMR). This mechanism was likely added to hide possible MMR decay (+ decrease amount of complaints such as 'I am in silver, why I am matched against a gold player'). E.g. if a mid gold MMR player faces max decay his MMR drops to low to mid silver. If this mechanism was not implemented then most of his opponents would be silver players. But now as the opponents are mostly from gold, the decayed player won't necessarily even realize that he is not anymore a gold player based on MMR. He is still able to get very high rank in his gold division, especially as now he plays against players with much lower MMR than before (his adjusted points are much higher than typical non-decayed player with so low MMR would have).
"corrected" is relative.. there would be no reason to change things if they didn't keep mucking with it. the point is its frustrating. That's an opinion shared amongst many here.. so that's indisputable.
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On November 15 2013 00:29 Malhavoc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 22:55 iPhoneAppz wrote: I don't understand why Blizz doesn't just display your MMR and your opponent's MMR. It's like a chess rating right? That's not private, you always know the rating of your opponent. Why is it such a big secret in SC2? The assumption is that most of the long time players have reached a plateau, and their actual MMR stays more or less the same over time. Blizzard thinks that such a thing, if made plain, would deprive the players of any sense of accomplishment, hence all the fake ladder points, which you naturally increase along the season (even if you are playing bad). For Blizzard, ladder (especially below master) isn't about showing who's best or where you are exactly standing among other players, but rather a way to keep people playing giving false senses of accomplishments (even when you are not accomplishing anything). Note that's not actually a total bad thing, since it is meant to keep more people in the game.. but I agree that for those interestend in a decent ladder system, that's really really bad.
I think that these are really good insights and great points. I find it a little odd because SC is so competitive and an eSport and all. I guess I should think of the ladder more as a business model for Blizzard and less of a formalized competitive structure like chess.
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Match making seems honestly messed up thanks to this right now. I would like Blizzard to at least address the concerns with some explanations.
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On November 14 2013 22:42 Douillos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 22:33 korona wrote:On November 14 2013 22:20 Salient wrote: An official announcement would be awesome so we would know how many games we must play to avoid this (and when we must play those games). Due Process FTW. Based on current knowledge based on research you need to play 1 game in a time frame less than 2 weeks to avoid the decay. But if you are inactive for more than 2 weeks, then decay ramps up very quickly. If you face maximum decay, then you need some 20 wins more than loses to overcome it (e.g. 20W - 0L). And yes. It would be great if they would publicly acknowledge the problem & do something. I went from Diamond to gold in 2 season of semi-inactivity. Still I find ladder decay to be a good thing, people should not be able to stay in the higher leagues if they don't play anymore. Nothing frustrated me more than people showing off their 1-game-a-season master league they got off of 4 gating in 2010.
Yeah, I fully agree with inactivity demotions! I just don't think the current decay is... balanced.
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Yeah, dump the league if needed. But if you dump the MMR as well, then at the very least the it be possible to get the MMR back up to about previous level in, say 5 games or so, rather than 20. I'm fine with it taking 20 games to get the league back, I don't care about my league, but I don't want to be bashing noobs in the meanwhile
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On November 15 2013 08:24 Ignorant prodigy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 21:21 korona wrote:On November 14 2013 00:20 Ignorant prodigy wrote: I just get the impression they can’t make up their minds. First they adjusted the range of players you can be matched against.. having legit masters playing platinums just for variety.. yeaaa.. Then Two seasons it was super easy to get promoted. I made it to masters and I should not be in masters.. I’m barely diamond. Then they adjust it so you can’t get demoted in mid season.. what prompted that? Now this decay is completely falsifying the ranking at the start of the each season.
If you think a moment you realize that most of these things are connected. First they made MMR ranges of each league considerably smaller in beginning of HotS (S12). They also seemed to abandon moving average regarding promotions (you seem to be promoted immediately when you cross league thresholds). E.g. if you were low to mid gold league player and had a win streak of 10, you would likely have been promoted to platinum. Similar loss streak would have dropped your MMR to low to mid silver. 15 to 20 losses would have dropped you to high bronze MMR range. As leagues were small, demotions would have been much more frequent. They adjusted the league sizes in beginning of third HotS season (S14). The MMR ranges are now larger, but still small compared to MMR ranges of WoL era leagues: + Show Spoiler +End of WoL offsets in MMR tool scale (bronze-silver, s-g, g-p, p-d, d-m, master-gm. Note that the dynamic GM entry barrier is much higher than the offset would suggest): 585, 345, 345, 255, 380, 590 HotS S12-S13: 200, 185, 180, 185, 200, 290 HotS S14 -: 280, 300, 280, 250, 250, 400
I have not checked if the max decay was smaller during S12 to S13. If it was & as leagues were smaller, it would have been faster to overcome it (less games). I wonder did they increase the max decay in comparable size to the league size increase.
Second they introduced MMR decay in beginning of HotS (it is possible that already in 2.0.x patch that was applied ~month before HotS). If there were mid season demotions, then the decay would be immediately evident when you come back from a hiatus - You would likely have been demoted immediately. It seems that Blizzard wanted that players would not know about the decay mechanism - They are still avoiding to acknowledge it, even if even the most casual end of players who don't read community forums have likely noticed that something is wrong. Third they adjusted the matchmaker. It now picks primarily opponents from your own league who have similar MMR as you (secondarily from other leagues). Thus if you are in gold, but your MMR is e.g. in low silver, you are still most of the time matched against gold players (golds that have low silver MMR). This mechanism was likely added to hide possible MMR decay (+ decrease amount of complaints such as 'I am in silver, why I am matched against a gold player'). E.g. if a mid gold MMR player faces max decay his MMR drops to low to mid silver. If this mechanism was not implemented then most of his opponents would be silver players. But now as the opponents are mostly from gold, the decayed player won't necessarily even realize that he is not anymore a gold player based on MMR. He is still able to get very high rank in his gold division, especially as now he plays against players with much lower MMR than before (his adjusted points are much higher than typical non-decayed player with so low MMR would have). "corrected" is relative.. there would be no reason to change things if they didn't keep mucking with it. the point is its frustrating. That's an opinion shared amongst many here.. so that's indisputable. 'Connected'... Not 'corrected'. Yes it is annoying as many mechanisms seem to be there mainly for hiding information. Before decay mechanism, the MMR in general gave nice info regarding players' skill level. But now as Blizzard tampers it directly & considerably, it often does not represent skill anymore, but is only a rating that is used for matchmaking.
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On November 15 2013 15:57 Cascade wrote: Yeah, dump the league if needed. But if you dump the MMR as well, then at the very least the it be possible to get the MMR back up to about previous level in, say 5 games or so, rather than 20. I'm fine with it taking 20 games to get the league back, I don't care about my league, but I don't want to be bashing noobs in the meanwhile Note that most players require much larger amount of matches to overcome the max decay, especially as they are also playing against other decayed players. If you win 100% then the minimum generalized case is 20 W - 0 L. But if you e.g. win 66.7% it becomes 40W - 20L, if you win 55.6% then you need 100W - 80L. Some don't reach their old MMR level anymore even with much more games & positive win ratio.
Regarding the ladder system: I think the current system would be fine, if they adjust decay mechanism (or remove it + communicate how it functions), separate ranked & unranked queues and add visible MMR. The current system gives people goals & something to play for. And the visible MMR would communicate where they actually are compared to other people.
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But doesn't this system also make preventing multiple teams from decaying too much of a commitment? I still haven't understood (if anybody knows for sure) if the 2 week before decaying starts is separated for each ladder (1v1, all Random teams, and all arranged teams), or just between 1v1+Random Teams and every single arranged team.
To sum it up:
1) Do I have to play each random team ladder to prevent them from decaying, even if I play 1v1 constantly? Same question the other way around. 2) If the question to the above is "no", is it different if the teams are instead arranged teams?
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On November 15 2013 19:41 Malhavoc wrote: But doesn't this system also make preventing multiple teams from decaying too much of a commitment? I still haven't understood (if anybody knows for sure) if the 2 week before decaying starts is separated for each ladder (1v1, all Random teams, and all arranged teams), or just between 1v1+Random Teams and every single arranged team.
To sum it up:
1) Do I have to play each random team ladder to prevent them from decaying, even if I play 1v1 constantly? Same question the other way around. 2) If the question to the above is "no", is it different if the teams are instead arranged teams? Unknown. Regarding MMR tool we can only calculate 1v1 ratings. And some ranked 1v1 accounts are unaffected even if having had long inactivity period --> some other activities prevent the decay.
For example regarding season transitions the 1v1 MMR is linked to random team MMR. Your 1v1 MMR is only reseted if you have neither 1v1 or random team MMR from the previous season. Similarly these MMRs _could_ be linked also regarding the MMR decay.
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i probably misunderstood the text cuz to me there is no "decay" 13 weeks not played (16 if u take out the single game that took place 13 weeks ago) and first game i played today cuz i wanted to start playing again is vs #156 in gm. thats fun (no its not)
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On November 15 2013 19:10 korona wrote: Regarding the ladder system: I think the current system would be fine, if they adjust decay mechanism (or remove it + communicate how it functions), separate ranked & unranked queues and add visible MMR. The current system gives people goals & something to play for. And the visible MMR would communicate where they actually are compared to other people.
Yes. All of your suggestions, yes. Having ranked and unranked queue together is dumb. But, I understand that Blizz probably has to do it because there are probably a lot more players queued in unranked than in ranked.
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On November 15 2013 19:41 Malhavoc wrote: But doesn't this system also make preventing multiple teams from decaying too much of a commitment? I still haven't understood (if anybody knows for sure) if the 2 week before decaying starts is separated for each ladder (1v1, all Random teams, and all arranged teams), or just between 1v1+Random Teams and every single arranged team.
To sum it up:
1) Do I have to play each random team ladder to prevent them from decaying, even if I play 1v1 constantly? Same question the other way around. 2) If the question to the above is "no", is it different if the teams are instead arranged teams? In my experience, the separate arranged teams seem to decay independently. This is ofc only anecdotal evidence, so I don't claim proof or even discovery for this, but I play every weekend with some friends, but in general different friends. Every time I play with a configuration of friends that I haven't payed with for a while we get a long win streak (like 10-0, 15-1 or so...) and only towards the end are the games even remotely close. The numbers seem to roughly agree with having to go 20-0 to return to previous MMR. These teams can be 2on2, 3on3 and 4on4.
This makes it extra annoying for us, because we are not taking breaks. We play maybe 20 games per weekend, but we still suffer a lot from this decay, to the extent that a large prtion of the games I am playing these days are pure noob-bashes. Not even close... We can go whatever silly builds, get caught by proxy whatever, mis-micro horribly, but still win. It gets kindof boring, and I'm sure the people we play against feel the same (almost all of them seem to have bad allies as well, or so they claim... ).
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United States12175 Posts
On November 15 2013 22:34 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2013 19:41 Malhavoc wrote: But doesn't this system also make preventing multiple teams from decaying too much of a commitment? I still haven't understood (if anybody knows for sure) if the 2 week before decaying starts is separated for each ladder (1v1, all Random teams, and all arranged teams), or just between 1v1+Random Teams and every single arranged team.
To sum it up:
1) Do I have to play each random team ladder to prevent them from decaying, even if I play 1v1 constantly? Same question the other way around. 2) If the question to the above is "no", is it different if the teams are instead arranged teams? In my experience, the separate arranged teams seem to decay independently. This is ofc only anecdotal evidence, so I don't claim proof or even discovery for this, but I play every weekend with some friends, but in general different friends. Every time I play with a configuration of friends that I haven't payed with for a while we get a long win streak (like 10-0, 15-1 or so...) and only towards the end are the games even remotely close. The numbers seem to roughly agree with having to go 20-0 to return to previous MMR. These teams can be 2on2, 3on3 and 4on4. This makes it extra annoying for us, because we are not taking breaks. We play maybe 20 games per weekend, but we still suffer a lot from this decay, to the extent that a large prtion of the games I am playing these days are pure noob-bashes. Not even close... We can go whatever silly builds, get caught by proxy whatever, mis-micro horribly, but still win. It gets kindof boring, and I'm sure the people we play against feel the same (almost all of them seem to have bad allies as well, or so they claim... ).
Yeah, it would have been my guess too that each team decays independently. I also have to wonder if unranked play instead of ranked causes decay, because that's an interesting question. Because unranked and ranked aren't connected except to provide seed values, it's very possible that you would still decay.
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Note: for me this is slowly starting to level out. I'm 6x plat, now in gold, and I'm no longer playing many ex-masters guys, mostly ex-diamond or ex-plat
I'm inly worried that the beginning of each season will be similar Half of my initial 20 games were against ex-masters guys, which was terrible.
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On November 16 2013 01:11 tili wrote:Note: for me this is slowly starting to level out. I'm 6x plat, now in gold, and I'm no longer playing many ex-masters guys, mostly ex-diamond or ex-plat I'm inly worried that the beginning of each season will be similar Half of my initial 20 games were against ex-masters guys, which was terrible. They're all too busy playing me now. I played 8 games yesterday, 6 were 3+ time Master players (one 9 time Master). I guess it might have to do with where you are MMR-wise though. I am playing mostly people currently ranked Diamond now but were previously Master.
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So after being demoted to Gold from Diamond after two seasons of non- to low activity, I finally made my way back into platinum today. That's after going 12-5.
In general, not caring as much about league, BUT it will be nice to play against higher level players after trouncing in gold.
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i really hope blizzard addresses this very serious issue. it's ridiculous that former masters / diamond / platinum are so aggressively demoted to gold / silver / bronze. not only am i playing in a league well below my skill level, but many others are as well. occasionally i play against former diamond / platinum players in the bronze and silvers leagues! and these aren't players who intentionally tank their mmrs to play in the lower leagues either.
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On November 16 2013 01:56 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On November 16 2013 01:11 tili wrote:Note: for me this is slowly starting to level out. I'm 6x plat, now in gold, and I'm no longer playing many ex-masters guys, mostly ex-diamond or ex-plat I'm inly worried that the beginning of each season will be similar Half of my initial 20 games were against ex-masters guys, which was terrible. They're all too busy playing me now. I played 8 games yesterday, 6 were 3+ time Master players (one 9 time Master). I guess it might have to do with where you are MMR-wise though. I am playing mostly people currently ranked Diamond now but were previously Master.
Yea, if you are diamond that would make sense!
If you are in plat... you should be getting promoted soon
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This makes a lot of sense, I just couldn't figure out why I got demoted to Bronze when I was high Gold after winning my Placement match, but I was inactive for more than two weeks while studying for my exams. Guess I have to play SC2 sometimes to maintain MMR. I guess the player that completely flattened me in Silver is one of the higher ranked guys/girls who got demoted as well.
Having a system implanted for MMR decay is fine, obviously I don't maintain my skill if I'm away for a month, but right now it's just too harsh. Decay of 1-2% every week after 2 weeks seems a lot more fair.
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If I was playing ex-masters players sporadically, I would be kind of glad and take it as an opportunity to improve and learn, but almost every second game in gold league is getting a bit ridiculous -_-
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Although I should be out of gold soon, I played against a former two time GM today. I'm usually middle-diamond.
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Canada16217 Posts
On November 23 2013 16:25 TheUnderking wrote: Although I should be out of gold soon, I played against a former two time GM today. I'm usually middle-diamond. could be a woL ranking where nobody played anymore so it was super easy to get(before it was removed) or was his skill actually that good? :O
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I used to be a high gold/low plat Terran player back in WoL. Decided to try learning Zerg so I didn't have to dread getting it when I chose random in team matches.
I do my ladder placements, lose all of them but one, get placed into bronze (which is perfect, I'm likely low-mid bronze with Zerg). However, I was continuously matched up with mid-silver or higher players, and it took 14 straight losses in a row to be matched up with someone who was actually low bronze (like I am). After quitting 1v1's that day, I had about a 20% winrate.
No wonder this game can't get new players. I don't know if MMR decay is the reason for this, but when you're brand new to the game (or brand new to the race mechanics, as I was), it's not fun. You have no idea if you're actually getting matched up against people who are at your skill level (when you lose every game and have no ladder points, you can't even tell the MMR difference between you and your opponent), or people who were just deflated by this system. And from my experience, it seems to be almost entirely the latter.
If this system is to blame, it needs a fix ASAP. When you're in the middle of the ladder and get matched up against these kinds of players, you will just drop in MMR to get lower skilled players, and you can still pull out some wins. Worst case scenario, you go down in rank and MMR for a bit until it can readjust you to a proper spot again. But when you're at the bottom of the ladder, there is nowhere to go. It's just loss after loss after loss after loss. It's not fun, and makes me want to swear off this game for good. No one should be subjected to that. Ever.
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Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement.
If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it.
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On November 23 2013 16:28 NovemberstOrm wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2013 16:25 TheUnderking wrote: Although I should be out of gold soon, I played against a former two time GM today. I'm usually middle-diamond. could be a woL ranking where nobody played anymore so it was super easy to get(before it was removed) or was his skill actually that good? :O
His mech terran was significantly better than mine, but my T sucks. So I can't be completely certain.
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On November 24 2013 05:29 Thieving Magpie wrote: Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement.
If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it.
There are two distinct issues.
1) The MMR decay is too heavy and does not recover quickly enough, causing a gap between the games calculation of your skill and your actual skill and resulting in mismatched games.
2) If you want to encourage a healthy game economy (player base), then giving people a yard stick to measure themselves against and then moving the measure up is probably not a great idea. People are not fully rational, and do have emotional attachments to these accomplishments; not everyone will realize that their demotion is a function of the system changing and not them sucking.
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On November 24 2013 06:52 B-rye88 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2013 05:29 Thieving Magpie wrote: Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement.
If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it. There are two distinct issues. 1) The MMR decay is too heavy and does not recover quickly enough, causing a gap between the games calculation of your skill and your actual skill and resulting in mismatched games. 2) If you want to encourage a healthy game economy (player base), then giving people a yard stick to measure themselves against and then moving the measure up is probably not a great idea. People are not fully rational, and do have emotional attachments to these accomplishments; not everyone will realize that their demotion is a function of the system changing and not them sucking.
It depends on who you want to reward. Players who play often or players who only play the 1-3 games each season to hold on to their meaningless title.
I don't mind rewarding people who play the game, it takes time for any change in the system to stabilize.
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On November 24 2013 05:29 Thieving Magpie wrote: Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement.
If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it. it seems you don't comprehend what we have here. the system was changed (with the hots release), with good intentions, but has resulted in the current ladder mess we have now. it's not a matter of "players who can't cut it in the new system"; it's a matter of the system improperly matching players with other players. in the system we have now, if you are inactive, you are dropped well below your skill level. this has two problems: one, if you were active, you are now facing much stronger, formerly inactive players who were dropped into your mmr range. if you were inactive, you are now facing much weaker players with the same mmr range.
if you've noticed the league distributions, the bottom end (bronze, silver and gold) accounts for nearly 85% of all players. it's been inflated by players from platinum, diamond and masters trickling down. this is especially harsh on legitimate beginner players, as much stronger players from silver, gold, platinum etc are now dumped into the lower leagues. this does not account for smurfs or trolls who intentionally lose games to sink their mmr and get placed into bronze just to bash newbs.
so the end result is you're matched up by a much wider range of players, skill-wise, than ever before, and is frustrating to many. also, as pointed out by richard nixon, beginners are getting absolutely CRUSHED right now. as any online game should strive to increase their user base, most of whom are casual players (beginners!), this system, as it is, is detrimental to the game as a whole.
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On November 24 2013 09:58 CycoDude wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2013 05:29 Thieving Magpie wrote: Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement.
If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it. it seems you don't comprehend what we have here. the system was changed (with the hots release), with good intentions, but has resulted in the current ladder mess we have now. it's not a matter of "players who can't cut it in the new system"; it's a matter of the system improperly matching players with other players. in the system we have now, if you are inactive, you are dropped well below your skill level. this has two problems: one, if you were active, you are now facing much stronger, formerly inactive players who were dropped into your mmr range. if you were inactive, you are now facing much weaker players with the same mmr range. if you've noticed the league distributions, the bottom end (bronze, silver and gold) accounts for nearly 85% of all players. it's been inflated by players from platinum, diamond and masters trickling down. this is especially harsh on legitimate beginner players, as much stronger players from silver, gold, platinum etc are now dumped into the lower leagues. this does not account for smurfs or trolls who intentionally lose games to sink their mmr and get placed into bronze just to bash newbs. so the end result is you're matched up by a much wider range of players, skill-wise, than ever before, and is frustrating to many. also, as pointed out by richard nixon, beginners are getting absolutely CRUSHED right now. as any online game should strive to increase their user base, most of whom are casual players (beginners!), this system, as it is, is detrimental to the game as a whole. It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond.
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On November 24 2013 09:19 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2013 06:52 B-rye88 wrote:On November 24 2013 05:29 Thieving Magpie wrote: Being that a ladder system of any algorithm is a relativistic diagram of your placement within an overall population--why does it matter if higher league players drop down to a "lower league" when all that would do is eventually stabilize to a point where previously seen "lower league" placements become the new demarcation point of higher league placement.
If the new systems says your plat now, because your one of the masters level players that can't cut it in the new system, then that simply means that plats who can't keep up gets dropped down and so on and so forth. Over time this new system will drag down people who don't play often so that the ladder is truly representative of the players who actually still play he game and not just visit it. There are two distinct issues. 1) The MMR decay is too heavy and does not recover quickly enough, causing a gap between the games calculation of your skill and your actual skill and resulting in mismatched games. 2) If you want to encourage a healthy game economy (player base), then giving people a yard stick to measure themselves against and then moving the measure up is probably not a great idea. People are not fully rational, and do have emotional attachments to these accomplishments; not everyone will realize that their demotion is a function of the system changing and not them sucking. It depends on who you want to reward. Players who play often or players who only play the 1-3 games each season to hold on to their meaningless title. I don't mind rewarding people who play the game, it takes time for any change in the system to stabilize. You are missing the point and not understanding the issue. It's not the people who play their 1-3 games we are talking about, it is the people who cannot play daily to keep up with MMR decay (like me. I can only play maybe once per week now because of how busy I am with school). What happens is since we can only play every once in a while, our MMR constantly decays so we are never playing at our level and instead have to grind through games against people lower level than us. On the other end, people who do play consistently but are lower level are now constantly facing people they should not be because if the MMR system actually worked they would be far lower MMR than the people they are matching against.
The issue is that the decay system they set up for MMR is far too aggressive and as such makes it very difficult to keep up with outside of playing frequently. It basically treats it as though you lose a certain amount of skill when that obviously isn't the case. I'm not going to lose that much of my ability if I don't play for 2 weeks, I might be rusty for a few games but not so much that I need to grind through 10 lower level opponents just to get back to my level. That is what the current system seems to do and as a result it has broken Ranked for quite a few people, myself included. I've played people who were high Master for multiple seasons in a row but are now sitting in high Platinum or low Diamond with rating not even close to 50% (the worst I saw was a 12 time Master who was 57-9 in Platinum. I checked his history and of course he had a few gaps in when he played and after that he would have 15 game win streaks).
It's not about the icon. I don't care about that. I just want to have my position on the ladder indicated properly to be matched properly so I can actually work on improving and know I am rather than either getting steamrolled by a way better player or stomping someone who I should very obviously not be playing against. The system is in far too much flux right now for it to be useful for practicing outside of those at the highest levels who play daily. For everyone else the system is completely broken.
And for your argument relating to ICCUP and how everyone was in D except for the best, why even bother having a system like this if there is no way to tell where you are relative to others? They might as well remove ranked in that case.
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On November 24 2013 11:24 Thieving Magpie wrote: It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond.
Why? Why make the learning curve so steep that no one feels like they are progressing? Plat doesn't need to be legendary; that's what masters and GM are for. That's not a sustainable game model.
You're redefining what it means to be silver. Blizzard's algorithm is supposed to roughly create the following partitions (see below). If it's not doing that, then that is a problem. 8% - Bronze 20% - Silver 32% - Gold 20% - Platinum 18% - Diamond 2% - Masters 200 - GM
Also, the matchmaking system should give you a 40%-60% chance to win. Not a 20%-80%. If MMR decay is significantly hampering the quality of match ups (as measured by the chance of each to win the game), then that sucks.
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On November 25 2013 21:56 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2013 11:24 Thieving Magpie wrote: It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond. Why? Why make the learning curve so steep that no one feels like they are progressing? Plat doesn't need to be legendary; that's what masters and GM are for. That's not a sustainable game model. You're redefining what it means to be silver. Blizzard's algorithm is supposed to roughly create the following partitions (see below). If it's not doing that, then that is a problem. 8% - Bronze 20% - Silver 32% - Gold 20% - Platinum 18% - Diamond 2% - Masters 200 - GM Also, the matchmaking system should give you a 40%-60% chance to win. Not a 20%-80%. If MMR decay is significantly hampering the quality of match ups (as measured by the chance of each to win the game), then that sucks.
I agree with you that the league format and partitions for SC2 are not intended to match that of BW... but I thought the bronze percentage was much higher than 8% o.O
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On November 25 2013 22:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2013 21:56 tili wrote:On November 24 2013 11:24 Thieving Magpie wrote: It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond. Why? Why make the learning curve so steep that no one feels like they are progressing? Plat doesn't need to be legendary; that's what masters and GM are for. That's not a sustainable game model. You're redefining what it means to be silver. Blizzard's algorithm is supposed to roughly create the following partitions (see below). If it's not doing that, then that is a problem. 8% - Bronze 20% - Silver 32% - Gold 20% - Platinum 18% - Diamond 2% - Masters 200 - GM Also, the matchmaking system should give you a 40%-60% chance to win. Not a 20%-80%. If MMR decay is significantly hampering the quality of match ups (as measured by the chance of each to win the game), then that sucks. I agree with you that the league format and partitions for SC2 are not intended to match that of BW... but I thought the bronze percentage was much higher than 8% o.O
Yea - they changed in for HoTS and put the 12% into gold (i.e. 32%). I think this was to do the opposites of what Theiving Magpie is suggesting, and make league progress into silver easier. Honestly, I think the bell-curve is a better approach for getting people hooked on the game
edit: link to changes- http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/10059616/
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I understand that this is the people's request but I think the MMR Decay is too exaggerated.
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Well, I was certainly quite disappointed, when I dropped from Gold to Silver, because I met a bunch of ex-Plats and -Dias, but tbh I like the idea of MMR decay. Blizzard just overdid it a bit. They should have started it slowly... like only, when you are inactive for at least 4 weeks, and max decay like half a league or so. Overall the decay will clean the ladder from those 1 game per season Dias, be it that they turn active again or stop playing altogether. Both is better than having them occupy those higher spots with minimal effort.
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On November 25 2013 21:56 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2013 11:24 Thieving Magpie wrote: It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond. Why? Why make the learning curve so steep that no one feels like they are progressing? Plat doesn't need to be legendary; that's what masters and GM are for. That's not a sustainable game model. You're redefining what it means to be silver. Blizzard's algorithm is supposed to roughly create the following partitions (see below). If it's not doing that, then that is a problem. 8% - Bronze 20% - Silver 32% - Gold 20% - Platinum 18% - Diamond 2% - Masters 200 - GM Also, the matchmaking system should give you a 40%-60% chance to win. Not a 20%-80%. If MMR decay is significantly hampering the quality of match ups (as measured by the chance of each to win the game), then that sucks.
Then where we differ is that, to me, the numbers are arbitrary. If gold/plat is nothing but "masters players" then that will eventually be the new definition of being gold/plat. If "masters is so easy anyone can do it" then that is the definition of masters.
It's more important to accept a ladder system than to worry about what color it gives you.the best way to learn is to play versus players who are better than you.
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The MMR decay is incredibly aggressive. I was Plat by the end of WoL before the HotS release and then spent most of my time at the start of HotS screwing about against Silver/Gold players and off-racing a bit.
I started playing again the other week finding myself matched up against Bronzes; so I played a couple games pulling off random, incredibly sloppy all-ins and winning regardless. Just complete stomps.
I feel bad about it, and the poor guys have all been incredibly polite (surprisingly), but I can't do much about it. I'm matched where I'm matched until the system corrects itself. I like the idea of preventing people from holding onto high leagues by just playing 1 game per season for years on end; but by the same token its brutal for those matched up against people far stronger.
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That is pretty interesting. I suspected these things you mentioned in the OP. I decayed from Rank 1 Diamond to Silver lol. It is kind of a blessing because now I can do random things and win, like reactor reapers.
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On November 25 2013 23:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2013 21:56 tili wrote:On November 24 2013 11:24 Thieving Magpie wrote: It took months for the "bronze league/D level" players on iccup to win their first games let alone to start stabilizing their rankings. It sounds like a matter of perception, players whining wants to believe that silver through diamond should be relatively easy when in truth it should be incredibly difficult to get into silver that way being "plat" or "masters" becomes almost legendary in status. Everyone will eventually be pushed into bronze/silver and only top level players should be able to get to gold and only exceptional players can make it to diamond. Why? Why make the learning curve so steep that no one feels like they are progressing? Plat doesn't need to be legendary; that's what masters and GM are for. That's not a sustainable game model. You're redefining what it means to be silver. Blizzard's algorithm is supposed to roughly create the following partitions (see below). If it's not doing that, then that is a problem. 8% - Bronze 20% - Silver 32% - Gold 20% - Platinum 18% - Diamond 2% - Masters 200 - GM Also, the matchmaking system should give you a 40%-60% chance to win. Not a 20%-80%. If MMR decay is significantly hampering the quality of match ups (as measured by the chance of each to win the game), then that sucks. Then where we differ is that, to me, the numbers are arbitrary. If gold/plat is nothing but "masters players" then that will eventually be the new definition of being gold/plat. If "masters is so easy anyone can do it" then that is the definition of masters. It's more important to accept a ladder system than to worry about what color it gives you.the best way to learn is to play versus players who are better than you. It would not necessarily be a bad thing if this would only be a distribution change and matchmaker would give consistently similar level of opponents. The problem is that these distribution changes are caused by MMR decay and not by changed league offsets. This means that masses of players have had their MMR value tampered (lowered). Thus in different MMR ranges there are now wildly different skilled people sharing the similar MMR. As result you cannot deduct the skill level of your opponent in the beginning of match and thus cannot adjust your strategies based on that. You can read an example I wrote to the 'Is the ladder getting harder?' thread earlier.
Also this link takes you to a table that shows how league distributions have changed from start of last season to this season. From it you can easily deduct that major percentage of 1v1 ladder population goes inactive for 2 weeks or more during each season and are thus affected by the MMR decay. As a result player population shifts towards the lower leagues. And yes, Blizzard measures the league distribution by 'active players' (those sc2ranks figures include all players who have played their 1v1 placements). But that measurement does not tell how messed up the ladder actually is (wildly different skill level people sharing similar MMR in different MMR ranges).
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Not fun at all. I used to be top Master in WOL, I stopped playing before HOTS until now. I was expecting to play my 5 games and be Plat or something like that and then stabilize at Diamond. But I ended up being Gold, and after 61 games I am 32/29.
I know my skill is not the same and people got better at the game, but seriously I feel no progress at all and I'm clueless who am I really playing (some times other masters in the same situation, other times truly gold players who will be demoted the next season because of players like me).
There is no point to have leagues if everybody is in the same league.
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Seems like getting promoted to plat, diamond and master is pretty hard now! You all have my respect! 140k+ players in EU ladder is nice, no chance of the game dying any time soon.
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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
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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.
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On November 26 2013 02:28 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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United States12175 Posts
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.
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On November 26 2013 03:38 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On November 26 2013 03:25 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On November 26 2013 03:43 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +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.
I think the ladder is working the way that Blizzard had originally intended, but if you have that many less players, I would assume that a lot of players would get shafted to higher percentage leagues, just to make the system happy. Of course this doesn't affect the 2%'s of our world, but it's definitely discouraging to the lower player, as the numbers would clearly indicate, if correct of course.
I would personally love to see some new features put into the ladder system. Just so many hidden variables, etc, it's seemingly impossible for a new player to grasp. For simplicity, I would love to see a "Promotion" game, where in, you would play a set of 5 matches vs opponents in a higher league, if you win over 50% of them (3) you get promoted.
Of course, this probably isn't all that realistic, I'm just throwing an example of how they can be more up-front about the promotion system, and at least give players something to look forward to.
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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
You have any link for that?
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On November 26 2013 03:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +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 technically 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, due to the current situation (not to mention that the situation gets worse as time passes), players might start quitting in accelerating pace.
Edit: Changed "Even if the matchmaker is working fine ... " to "Even if the matchmaker is working technically fine ... " Edit 2: added missing 'due to the' to 'current situation'
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United States12175 Posts
On November 26 2013 03:43 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Well let's see. I looked up the numbers based on snapshots from archive.org so they're not perfect.
Season 14 (Aug 19 2013 [ends Aug 26 2013], SC2Ranks 2.0 overhaul): 471,590 Season 15 (Nov 7 2013 [ends Nov 11 2013]): 354,694 Season 16 (Nov 2013, today): 182,591
Now, under the old SC2Ranks 1.0, it kept a running tally of all players that it had within its system, including new team compositions. Under SC2Ranks 2.0 it separates by game mode, so that 471,590 and 182,591 are the number of global 1v1 players. Archive.org doesn't really let you freely browse around because it doesn't capture every page, so what I can get is limited
The other thing is that the SC2Ranks 2.0 numbers are seasonal. When the new season starts, the numbers get reset to 0, and they'll increase over time until the next season roll. So, a week before 2013 Season 4/Season 14 ended, there were 471,590 1v1 players. Half a week before 2013 Season 5/Season 15 ended, there were 354,694 1v1 players. Today, about 2 weeks into the new season, there are 182,591 1v1 players so that doesn't really say too much yet.
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On November 26 2013 04:38 anessie wrote:Show nested quote +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 You have any link for that?
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/10636803688
On November 26 2013 04:48 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +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. Well let's see. I looked up the numbers based on snapshots from archive.org so they're not perfect. Season 14 (Aug 19 2013 [ends Aug 26 2013], SC2Ranks 2.0 overhaul): 471,590 Season 15 (Nov 7 2013 [ends Nov 11 2013]): 354,694 Season 16 (Nov 2013, today): 182,591 Now, under the old SC2Ranks 1.0, it kept a running tally of all players that it had within its system, including new team compositions. Under SC2Ranks 2.0 it separates by game mode, so that 471,590 and 182,591 are the number of global 1v1 players. Archive.org doesn't really let you freely browse around because it doesn't capture every page, so what I can get is limited The other thing is that the SC2Ranks 2.0 numbers are seasonal. When the new season starts, the numbers get reset to 0, and they'll increase over time until the next season roll. So, a week before 2013 Season 4/Season 14 ended, there were 471,590 1v1 players. Half a week before 2013 Season 5/Season 15 ended, there were 354,694 1v1 players. Today, about 2 weeks into the new season, there are 182,591 1v1 players so that doesn't really say too much yet.
I see... I guess there definitely is a noticible player decrease from s14 to s15. On korona's point above, this is what I'm getting at... I know the system is "working as written" or however you want to call it, but there's no way these were the intended results when they did write them. The match-making does seem pretty poor right now, from reports and from personal experience. And as with any other system, when the intended result isn't achieve, generally tweaks need to be made (whether they be fixes or changes) to achieve that result. That's all I hope blizzard has recognized at this point.
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On November 26 2013 04:46 korona wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On November 26 2013 04:30 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +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=20273329
Of 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.
-- Edit: End of S14 numbers might be available in Excalibur_Z:s post (if sc2ranks numbers are only from that season. sc2ranks 1.0 calculated also people from previous seasons who had not played their placements yet): http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734¤tpage=16#316
S14 & S15 were equal length seasons. Of course S14 happened during holiday season.
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On November 26 2013 04:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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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 States12175 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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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 States12175 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 States12175 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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IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-.
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On December 05 2013 04:40 Qwyn wrote: IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-.
You're thinking exactly the opposite of what's happening. Everyone in lower leagues is now a much higher skill level then they used to be, so it's even more "cut-throat" then before
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On December 05 2013 04:40 Qwyn wrote: IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-.
It's a good thing that something like an unranked mode doesn't invalidate your entire post.
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On December 05 2013 04:19 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2013 07:17 Excalibur_Z wrote: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. You should be running the standard MMR Plugin and post the results. Such as you describe it, nothing can be gleaned. I'm guessing you mean us to say that after 16 weeks of activity, it only gave you one placement match and simultaneously the previous match you played 16 weeks ago was known to be a diamond MMR?
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On December 05 2013 04:42 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2013 04:40 Qwyn wrote: IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-. You're thinking exactly the opposite of what's happening. Everyone in lower leagues is now a much higher skill level then they used to be, so it's even more "cut-throat" then before
You're both right, I think. Previously inactives players (with heavily decayed mmr) can enjoy the testing ground Qwyn is referring to. Active players (with undecayed MMR) are now in a very cutthroat environment where they are often matched against people well above their skill level, potentially pushing them down in the MMR rankings.
edit: And this,
It's a good thing that something like an unranked mode doesn't invalidate your entire post.
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Well I played a bunch tonight (I'd had roughly a 2-month hiatus up to a week ago). Absolutely stomped most of my games. Lost two, one to a 6 or 7 pool that I miscontrolled against (I think he was a former higher player that dropped down too actually) and one to a marine all-in that I wouldn't have lost to if I'd not screwed my build up or actually bothered to scout at all (yeah, I know, got lazy).
Its just not even fair on the people I'm playing honestly. One PvP I went for a weird proxy oracle in parallel with a 4-gate + Void ray thing. My opponent had two sentries, one stalker and a couple of zealots as well as 2 gates built and two just finishing when I rolled in with about a dozen gateway units, a void ray and an oracle to tear up his mineral line. I felt really bad for the guy. :-\
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Been trying to get from silver into gold for the past couple of weeks. Been doing well enough to find myself hanging around top 8 silver, but every time a promotion seems close, I get "low Gold" players that were frequently platinum or even diamond just 1-2 seasons ago. Very demoralizing, except for those that have been giving me tips on how to improve as fast as possible so I can reach gold by the season lock.
On one hand, I like the idea that I am getting better because I am constantly pushing myself to the limit against people that are quite frankly way better than me, but having 4 crippling losses in a row and knowing there was nothing I could have done about it is frustrating.
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On December 05 2013 04:40 Qwyn wrote: IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-. Zoom back in no time? You have to stomp/win like 100games just to get from silver to diamond. If you only play for fun it takes quite a while. Especially if you want to play with friends once in a while.
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Ladder is for grinding games, if you aren't playing a few hundred games a season you shouldn't expect to be in the top leagues.
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On December 05 2013 16:00 Soldier92 wrote: Ladder is for grinding games, if you aren't playing a few hundred games a season you shouldn't expect to be in the top leagues. If you're good enough, yes, you should. Starcraft is not an MMORPG :D
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A few hundred games is more than enough to keep your MMR up, and is not a lot to ask over the long ladder seasons. Remember, who you're playing and beating is more important than your actual ladder rank and league.
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On December 05 2013 16:05 Soldier92 wrote: A few hundred games is more than enough to keep your MMR up, and is not a lot to ask over the long ladder seasons. Remember, who you're playing and beating is more important than your actual ladder rank and league. I was talking about how many games you'd have to win in order to get back/climb four leagues. The guys said "..you should zoom back up in no time!" and 100games (with pretty much no losses) is not "no time".
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On December 05 2013 15:21 Eatme wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2013 04:40 Qwyn wrote: IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-. Zoom back in no time? You have to stomp/win like 100games just to get from silver to diamond. If you only play for fun it takes quite a while. Especially if you want to play with friends once in a while.
Yes, this is exactly right. Plus, think about the people (like me) that you're stomping. It's no fun for them and they are not learning or getting better while being stomped by players that should be 4 leagues higher.
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On December 05 2013 15:04 starcraftidiot wrote: Been trying to get from silver into gold for the past couple of weeks. Been doing well enough to find myself hanging around top 8 silver, but every time a promotion seems close, I get "low Gold" players that were frequently platinum or even diamond just 1-2 seasons ago. Very demoralizing, except for those that have been giving me tips on how to improve as fast as possible so I can reach gold by the season lock.
On one hand, I like the idea that I am getting better because I am constantly pushing myself to the limit against people that are quite frankly way better than me, but having 4 crippling losses in a row and knowing there was nothing I could have done about it is frustrating.
This is exactly my situation too. I love this game. I love to feel like I'm improving. I love getting matches where I win 50% and lose 50% because the wins make me feel good, like I'm improving and the losses point me to things that I can improve to get better. The problem is when I face a player that should be leagues above me and I lose embarrassingly and don't learn anything because I was totally outclassed. The reason why the SC matchmaking system has historically been so great is because you could always find a game against a relatively evenly matched opponent. When Blizzard put the MMR decay in, they broke that. Now, I don't know if I'm going to get an even match, or matched up against someone wildly better than I am with just a 'decayed' MMR.
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On December 05 2013 21:57 iPhoneAppz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2013 15:21 Eatme wrote:On December 05 2013 04:40 Qwyn wrote: IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-. Zoom back in no time? You have to stomp/win like 100games just to get from silver to diamond. If you only play for fun it takes quite a while. Especially if you want to play with friends once in a while. Yes, this is exactly right. Plus, think about the people (like me) that you're stomping. It's no fun for them and they are not learning or getting better while being stomped by players that should be 4 leagues higher. And I for one get tired of stomping others well before I am back on my correct MMR.
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Just to add another point... It's also depressing that, if you're stomped by someone that is way more skilled, you usually shouldn't drop too far down in MMR, because you're expected to lose. Yet you are dropped as far as if you'd lost aginst someone on your skill level. And on the other side, if you'd happen to win (for whatever strange coincidence), you should climb up a lot more, because you were expected to lose. Yet you just climb a bit like when you'd won against someone on your skill level.
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I barely played for the past 6 months, got placed in diamond and played 10ish games and was back in masters. For me the mmr decay was just a good thing, and no tedious grind ;o
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On December 06 2013 19:45 BurningRanger wrote: Just to add another point... It's also depressing that, if you're stomped by someone that is way more skilled, you usually shouldn't drop too far down in MMR, because you're expected to lose. Yet you are dropped as far as if you'd lost aginst someone on your skill level. And on the other side, if you'd happen to win (for whatever strange coincidence), you should climb up a lot more, because you were expected to lose. Yet you just climb a bit like when you'd won against someone on your skill level.
Yes. It's essentially the same thing as mass smurfing.
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On December 05 2013 04:42 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2013 04:40 Qwyn wrote: IMO this decay is great and I wish it would happen more. Muddles with everything, sure, and there are a lot of fucked up ranks, sure, but what is good is that you can experiment and formulate solid builds while moving back up again - sort of like Day9's podcast on playing weaker players ^^.
Enjoy it, because this is the one chance you have to truly start testing and experimenting on the ladder in a less cutthroat environment. And if you're really as good as you say (masters to silver, lol - it was an inactive period of 9 MONTHS -_-) then you should zoom back up in no time!
I think the way everything is all fucked up and players of all different leagues are everywhich place is a valid complaint though. Comes with not being able to RESET your league -_-. You're thinking exactly the opposite of what's happening. Everyone in lower leagues is now a much higher skill level then they used to be, so it's even more "cut-throat" then before Remember how everyone complained how shitty the SC2 ladder distribution was compared to iccup?
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Does a team game count as being active overall to stop decaying of 1v1 and vice versa?
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You have to play with each team you're in to prevent its MMR Decay. Depending on how many teams you have, that can be little bit annoying - to put it mildly.
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On December 07 2013 19:06 Firkraag8 wrote: Does a team game count as being active overall to stop decaying of 1v1 and vice versa? It was said somewhere (in this thread?) that playing random teams by yourself will stop 1v1 inactivity, but I haven't personally tried this.
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On December 08 2013 11:59 Mintograde wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2013 19:06 Firkraag8 wrote: Does a team game count as being active overall to stop decaying of 1v1 and vice versa? It was said somewhere (in this thread?) that playing random teams by yourself will stop 1v1 inactivity, but I haven't personally tried this.
That would be nice, because I do play some RT 2v2 for some periods.
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For those who haven't seen it yet, Blizzard posted a situation report with some official clarifications on the decay mechanic. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013
Also, there is a blue post in the comments confirming that playing unranked 1v1 will prevent ranked 1v1 MMR decay:
Does this mean that if I play an unranked 1v1 game every two weeks, my ranked 1v1 MMR won't decay? I know they have a separate MMR, but are they treated as the same "queue" for decay purposes?
@EverAfteR: Yes and yes.
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It seems they are confirming everything we have acknowledged, except two things:
- they say that the mmr decays, at maximum (after 4 weeks), is the equivalent of "justa few game losses".. but it seems many have lost even a couple of leagues instead. Still, it may be related with the mess concerning the amount of players in each league (something else they say they are working on)
- they say this is affecting only very few players (6%).. but we have a LOT of people talking about this and talking about huge amounts of ex masters playing against them in gold and such..
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United States12175 Posts
On December 20 2013 02:21 Malhavoc wrote: It seems they are confirming everything we have acknowledged, except two things:
- they say that the mmr decays, at maximum (after 4 weeks), is the equivalent of "justa few game losses".. but it seems many have lost even a couple of leagues instead. Still, it may be related with the mess concerning the amount of players in each league (something else they say they are working on)
- they say this is affecting only very few players (6%).. but we have a LOT of people talking about this and talking about huge amounts of ex masters playing against them in gold and such..
We know that MMR changes 16 for a same-skill match, so at maximum decay (315 rating) that's about 20 same-skill games behind. That's more than a few, I would say.
They said that this affects 6% of games, not players. That's a big difference because it means we're talking about different things. If you want to see how many players are affected as of today, I just wrote up a new article about it here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=438802
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On December 20 2013 08:13 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2013 02:21 Malhavoc wrote: It seems they are confirming everything we have acknowledged, except two things:
- they say that the mmr decays, at maximum (after 4 weeks), is the equivalent of "justa few game losses".. but it seems many have lost even a couple of leagues instead. Still, it may be related with the mess concerning the amount of players in each league (something else they say they are working on)
- they say this is affecting only very few players (6%).. but we have a LOT of people talking about this and talking about huge amounts of ex masters playing against them in gold and such.. We know that MMR changes 16 for a same-skill match, so at maximum decay (315 rating) that's about 20 same-skill games behind. That's more than a few, I would say. They said that this affects 6% of games, not players. That's a big difference because it means we're talking about different things. If you want to see how many players are affected as of today, I just wrote up a new article about it here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=438802
Do we know how many players 6% of games might represent?
It's an odd statistic.... tbh
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Well those that let their MMR decay isn't the type to play very many games overall so the 6% does not surprise me. Amount of players should be much higher.
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So hopefully this isn't too far off topic. I am one of those players who took a 3-month hiatus from SC2 due to burnout. Of course, I came back and was placed into gold, where I absolutely stomped. When I left, I was in diamond.
Now, with all of this talk regarding MMR and leagues and how the matchmaking can be fixed, what if there was a way that Blizz could overhaul the system completely. That's where this Gamasutra blog post comes in called Creating a Better Context for Competitive Play and Mastery
Intro:
Starcraft 2 and League of Legends. Both games have tried very hard to innovate in the world of Ranking Players. They've created entirely new and interesting systems that provide players with short and long term goals beyond the normal Elo number. However, I think these attempts to innovate are ultimately a failure, marred by obfuscation, confusion and negative contextualization. That said, I do believe in what Blizzard and Riot are trying to do and they deserve tons of credit for trying to solve an insanely hard design problem and trying to innovate in a field that almost no one tries to innovate in. So let's talk about what's right, what's wrong and where to keep moving forward.
Here's a tidbit:
Both games also put you in small groups of players, where you can see up to 100 players who have the same medal and division as you. You're supposed to be interested in how these players are performing, but the game never actually gives you any real incentive to care.
Here's another tidbit:
Although the short-term and long-term goals both companies create are really innovative and probably compel players to play more often than they otherwise would, they also create a larger and more subtle negative context for competitive play. This negative context is summed up in one phrase that players use all the time: "Climbing the ladder".
Anyways, just some food for thought that I didn't think warranted a full thread...
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On December 28 2013 07:38 wUndertUnge wrote:So hopefully this isn't too far off topic. I am one of those players who took a 3-month hiatus from SC2 due to burnout. Of course, I came back and was placed into gold, where I absolutely stomped. When I left, I was in diamond. Now, with all of this talk regarding MMR and leagues and how the matchmaking can be fixed, what if there was a way that Blizz could overhaul the system completely. That's where this Gamasutra blog post comes in called Creating a Better Context for Competitive Play and MasteryIntro: Show nested quote +Starcraft 2 and League of Legends. Both games have tried very hard to innovate in the world of Ranking Players. They've created entirely new and interesting systems that provide players with short and long term goals beyond the normal Elo number. However, I think these attempts to innovate are ultimately a failure, marred by obfuscation, confusion and negative contextualization. That said, I do believe in what Blizzard and Riot are trying to do and they deserve tons of credit for trying to solve an insanely hard design problem and trying to innovate in a field that almost no one tries to innovate in. So let's talk about what's right, what's wrong and where to keep moving forward. Here's a tidbit: Show nested quote +Both games also put you in small groups of players, where you can see up to 100 players who have the same medal and division as you. You're supposed to be interested in how these players are performing, but the game never actually gives you any real incentive to care. Here's another tidbit: Show nested quote +Although the short-term and long-term goals both companies create are really innovative and probably compel players to play more often than they otherwise would, they also create a larger and more subtle negative context for competitive play. This negative context is summed up in one phrase that players use all the time: "Climbing the ladder". Anyways, just some food for thought that I didn't think warranted a full thread... I've been saying those sorts of things for years. For the article to say that Blizzard is trying and being innovative is a huge euphemism for failing dismally to make a credible ladder system and frustrating their players. It's not rocket science, just look at Dota 2's ladder.
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hope they add mid season demotions again (dont know if its in the patchnotes) but its really hard to get back into masters im currently diamond with a 87% winrate with over 60games and well im not getting promoted even tho i play like 1500+ master league all the time... also in gm how can it be that someone with 1-67 is in grandmaster ?
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On December 28 2013 12:40 Mantaza wrote: also in gm how can it be that someone with 1-67 is in grandmaster ? Start the season with GM MMR, lose a couple games to get your bonus pool under 90, then win a game to get promoted to GM.
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I'm not sure if someone asked/answered this. but. If someone only plays unranked, will that decay MMR? also, what if someone plays only teamgames? will that decay the MMR of the 1v1??
Thanks
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United States12175 Posts
On December 29 2013 09:46 Fakie wrote: I'm not sure if someone asked/answered this. but. If someone only plays unranked, will that decay MMR? also, what if someone plays only teamgames? will that decay the MMR of the 1v1??
Thanks
They treat each "queue" separately, so playing any 1v1 will refresh the decay timer for both ranked and unranked 1v1.
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the mmr decay does not seem to be that huge, I only played one game last season to be placed (in masters), played my placement for this season just now and got masters again, after all I've been hearing I thought I would get plat or something.
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On December 30 2013 01:33 ImperialFist wrote: the mmr decay does not seem to be that huge, I only played one game last season to be placed (in masters), played my placement for this season just now and got masters again, after all I've been hearing I thought I would get plat or something.
The placement game probably doesn't count is all.
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The MMR decay is way too extreme and places you in a position that makes it take so long to get out of.
I was in diamond and I have gone 15-0 in bronze and am still in Bronze. There is another in my league that is 26-0 and he can't get out either...
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On December 30 2013 06:17 lachy89 wrote: The MMR decay is way too extreme and places you in a position that makes it take so long to get out of.
I was in diamond and I have gone 15-0 in bronze and am still in Bronze. There is another in my league that is 26-0 and he can't get out either...
That seems insane O.o At that point it stops being fun for everybody involved...
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Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay?
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Isn't there a season lock right now?
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On December 30 2013 06:47 TurboMaN wrote: Isn't there a season lock right now?
If so, that would explain a lot.
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On December 30 2013 06:35 linuxguru1 wrote: Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay?
Leaving your league doesn't reset your MMR and there's only 1 placement match. You'd have to not play for an entire season to reset it and play 5 placement matches.
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On December 30 2013 08:57 grumpyone wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2013 06:35 linuxguru1 wrote: Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay? Leaving your league doesn't reset your MMR and there's only 1 placement match. You'd have to not play for an entire season to reset it and play 5 placement matches.
Nvm.
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On December 30 2013 08:57 grumpyone wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2013 06:35 linuxguru1 wrote: Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay? Leaving your league doesn't reset your MMR and there's only 1 placement match. You'd have to not play for an entire season to reset it and play 5 placement matches.
What if you leave before the season ends and don't play the placement match before the new one begins? I'm assuming you get 5 placement matches if and only if you still had not placed at the end of the previous season.
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On December 31 2013 00:25 linuxguru1 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2013 08:57 grumpyone wrote:On December 30 2013 06:35 linuxguru1 wrote: Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay? Leaving your league doesn't reset your MMR and there's only 1 placement match. You'd have to not play for an entire season to reset it and play 5 placement matches. What if you leave before the season ends and don't play the placement match before the new one begins? I'm assuming you get 5 placement matches if and only if you still had not placed at the end of the previous season.
Maybe, but I doubt it. Resetting MMR easily is terrible for the ladder system because youhave to play ~20 games stomping lower leagues to get back up.
Honestly, I don't get the point of 'leave league' - what is its purpose?
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On December 31 2013 00:25 linuxguru1 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2013 08:57 grumpyone wrote:On December 30 2013 06:35 linuxguru1 wrote: Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay? Leaving your league doesn't reset your MMR and there's only 1 placement match. You'd have to not play for an entire season to reset it and play 5 placement matches. What if you leave before the season ends and don't play the placement match before the new one begins? I'm assuming you get 5 placement matches if and only if you still had not placed at the end of the previous season.
Nope thats not how it works. When the new season starts you play 1 placement game and will be placed in a division.
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I went 18-3 last season in gold after being demoted from plat, and didn't get promoted in the end, then I left for 3 weeks and I m back to the bottom of gold...it's depressing
EDIT: I meant being demoted due to inactivity, I actually won my placement against a diamond player
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On December 29 2013 10:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2013 09:46 Fakie wrote: I'm not sure if someone asked/answered this. but. If someone only plays unranked, will that decay MMR? also, what if someone plays only teamgames? will that decay the MMR of the 1v1??
Thanks They treat each "queue" separately, so playing any 1v1 will refresh the decay timer for both ranked and unranked 1v1.
seems to me these are on two different ratings. I play on my ranked and play plats/dias one or two masters, play on the unranked and its bronze and silver?You not seeing this?
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United States12175 Posts
On December 31 2013 01:41 StatixEx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2013 10:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:On December 29 2013 09:46 Fakie wrote: I'm not sure if someone asked/answered this. but. If someone only plays unranked, will that decay MMR? also, what if someone plays only teamgames? will that decay the MMR of the 1v1??
Thanks They treat each "queue" separately, so playing any 1v1 will refresh the decay timer for both ranked and unranked 1v1. seems to me these are on two different ratings. I play on my ranked and play plats/dias one or two masters, play on the unranked and its bronze and silver?You not seeing this?
Yo'ure talking about something different. Yes, the ratings are separate, but the decay timers are linked according to the December Situation Report.
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On December 31 2013 01:41 StatixEx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2013 10:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:On December 29 2013 09:46 Fakie wrote: I'm not sure if someone asked/answered this. but. If someone only plays unranked, will that decay MMR? also, what if someone plays only teamgames? will that decay the MMR of the 1v1??
Thanks They treat each "queue" separately, so playing any 1v1 will refresh the decay timer for both ranked and unranked 1v1. seems to me these are on two different ratings. I play on my ranked and play plats/dias one or two masters, play on the unranked and its bronze and silver?You not seeing this?
He's not talking about the mmr for ranked and unranked but the timer to decay the mmr. What he's saying is if you play any 1v1 queued match be it ranked or unranked, it will reset the timer preventing mmr decay from occurring. So playing unranked for a long period of time will not cause mmr decay on your ranked matchmaking.
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On December 30 2013 06:17 lachy89 wrote: The MMR decay is way too extreme and places you in a position that makes it take so long to get out of.
I was in diamond and I have gone 15-0 in bronze and am still in Bronze. There is another in my league that is 26-0 and he can't get out either...
You arent playing Bronze players any more though, right?
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On December 31 2013 01:43 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2013 01:41 StatixEx wrote:On December 29 2013 10:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:On December 29 2013 09:46 Fakie wrote: I'm not sure if someone asked/answered this. but. If someone only plays unranked, will that decay MMR? also, what if someone plays only teamgames? will that decay the MMR of the 1v1??
Thanks They treat each "queue" separately, so playing any 1v1 will refresh the decay timer for both ranked and unranked 1v1. seems to me these are on two different ratings. I play on my ranked and play plats/dias one or two masters, play on the unranked and its bronze and silver?You not seeing this? Yo'ure talking about something different. Yes, the ratings are separate, but the decay timers are linked according to the December Situation Report.
oh . . hmm then im confused, it seems like cos i NEVER play unranked i thought that had reset as it clearly puts me in bz-gold while my ranked is #2 dia atm (but ill be number 1 if i win 3 more games . .that bastard above me plays as much as i do) places me against plats dias and masters all the time, even after my month of inactivity on that account . . . hmmm tbh i dont care about this anymore cos ive lost a few few number of games over the last week to gold iconned players!
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On December 31 2013 02:39 StatixEx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2013 01:43 Excalibur_Z wrote:On December 31 2013 01:41 StatixEx wrote:On December 29 2013 10:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:On December 29 2013 09:46 Fakie wrote: I'm not sure if someone asked/answered this. but. If someone only plays unranked, will that decay MMR? also, what if someone plays only teamgames? will that decay the MMR of the 1v1??
Thanks They treat each "queue" separately, so playing any 1v1 will refresh the decay timer for both ranked and unranked 1v1. seems to me these are on two different ratings. I play on my ranked and play plats/dias one or two masters, play on the unranked and its bronze and silver?You not seeing this? Yo'ure talking about something different. Yes, the ratings are separate, but the decay timers are linked according to the December Situation Report. oh . . hmm then im confused, it seems like cos i NEVER play unranked i thought that had reset as it clearly puts me in bz-gold while my ranked is #2 dia atm (but ill be number 1 if i win 3 more games . .that bastard above me plays as much as i do) places me against plats dias and masters all the time, even after my month of inactivity on that account . . . hmmm tbh i dont care about this anymore cos ive lost a few few number of games over the last week to gold iconned players!
You need to be inactive in the queue for an entire season (2-3 months) in order to get reset MMR.
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I have no idea how this new ladder system works. My main account (diamond), formerly master, my skill level has not decreased, I am like 25-10 and the difficulty of my opponents has not increased AT ALL. They are below my skill level, they are in gold and plat, some are former masters though.
On the other hand my random account, where I suck with toss and zerg, I am playing against masters. That account has about double the amount of games played though. Still it seemed like in the past, the difficulty of your opponents increased much faster if you kept winning.
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On December 30 2013 08:57 grumpyone wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2013 06:35 linuxguru1 wrote: Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay? Leaving your league doesn't reset your MMR and there's only 1 placement match. You'd have to not play for an entire season to reset it and play 5 placement matches.
I didn't play for an entire season, mmr did not reset, only 1 placement match next season.
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On January 01 2014 06:44 OminouS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2013 08:57 grumpyone wrote:On December 30 2013 06:35 linuxguru1 wrote: Not sure if already mentioned, but can't you just leave your league and play 5 new placement matches in case of serious MMR decay? Leaving your league doesn't reset your MMR and there's only 1 placement match. You'd have to not play for an entire season to reset it and play 5 placement matches. I didn't play for an entire season, mmr did not reset, only 1 placement match next season. Yes. Many seem to have experienced similar (no MMR reset even if skipped full season in every mode). Also some of these cases seem to have experienced 'chain decay' when they came back.
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Any change to the ladder is always going to be liked by some and not by others. However, this change strikes me as not very smart for a number of reasons.
1. It further damages the ladder. We know that a portion of the community wants to see the ladder as a real measure of skill, but this further takes away from that. If Blizz's objective is to make people feel good/play more they should just put everyone in master as it makes as much sense as all the endless tweaks they do each of which only further separates the league and rank system from the true skill of players.
2. Deflation is not zero sum. I've no idea if the ladder was zero sum before but it just seems ... not clever ... to have a mechanism that allows a bunch of players to drop rating with no other effect. Everyone's rating is based on the rating of people they play, and they will play deflated players... so won't everyone deflate? If this is continuous as long as we have inactive players won't the "global" average MMR forever drop? Will we all end up in Bronze eventually?
3. Personally I've ended up in Silver... and for a number of reasons that's annoying. Firstly, I'm not silver in skill, far from it. Secondly, like it or not many people look at your league badge when deciding how to treat you. Thirdly, I worked hard to improve and was pleased, and motivated, by my entry to Diamond... only to have all this "progress" taken away for no good reason. I had a few months where I could only play one or two games, and without knowing it I've triggered 2 or 3 periods of maximum delfation. Yeah yeah "who cares about leagues?" but if this is part of Blizz's attempt to help motivate people it has had the opposite (massively opposite) effect on me.
I really can't think of anything positive to say about deflation. At best Blizz are right when they say that they have fixed the issue of people losing lots after being inactive for a while. But as always we have only their word on this. Furthermore it seems they've caused many greater issues in the process. They've introduced an easy method for people to "game" the system for more wins, they've misjudged the impact it would have on players losing rank they deserved or being beaten by players who shouldn't be matched with them. They've failed to account for players deflating in one bracket while their skill hasn't dropped because of playing on other modes or accounts. They've apparently screwed up league distributions? etcetera and so on and so forth...
Where is the up side to all this? Why don't they listen to the community and give us a real ladder where MMR is visible and league/rank is based only on MMR? They think this will upset players? But their attempts to avoid upsetting players by jumping through these increasingly complex hoops has done that anyway!
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On January 01 2014 06:56 korona wrote: Yes. Many seem to have experienced similar (no MMR reset even if skipped full season in every mode). Also some of these cases seem to have experienced 'chain decay' when they came back.
I'm one. I've had at least one season (several I think) where I've not played and then when I've come back in the following season its only been 1 placement match contrary to the stated MMR reset.
Not sure what chain decay is, but before this issue was public I had a period where I could only play 2-3 games in a month, which lasted for about 3 months. Now we know about decay it seems this is the absolute worst thing I could have done as I must of triggered several periods of maximum deflation. From my match history I can identify 2 periods of 4 weeks of complete inactivity. This seems to have taken me from Diamond (and MMR going up, according to MMR tool) in one season to Silver in the next.
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On January 01 2014 11:01 Spirit09 wrote: This seems to have taken me from Diamond (and MMR going up, according to MMR tool) in one season to Silver in the next.
Note that the league distributions have changed as well, so it's not all inactivity delay that took you from Diamond to Silver. Currently, Silver and Bronze make up about the bottom 60% of active players.
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On January 02 2014 02:45 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2014 11:01 Spirit09 wrote:On January 01 2014 06:56 korona wrote: Yes. Many seem to have experienced similar (no MMR reset even if skipped full season in every mode). Also some of these cases seem to have experienced 'chain decay' when they came back. I'm one. I've had at least one season (several I think) where I've not played and then when I've come back in the following season its only been 1 placement match contrary to the stated MMR reset. Not sure what chain decay is, but before this issue was public I had a period where I could only play 2-3 games in a month, which lasted for about 3 months. Now we know about decay it seems this is the absolute worst thing I could have done as I must of triggered several periods of maximum deflation. From my match history I can identify 2 periods of 4 weeks of complete inactivity. This seems to have taken me from Diamond (and MMR going up, according to MMR tool) in one season to Silver in the next. Note that the league distributions have changed as well, so it's not all inactivity delay that took you from Diamond to Silver. Currently, Silver and Bronze make up about the bottom 60% of active players. League offsets and thresholds were changed last time nearly half years ago in start of June.
What he describes sounds valid. He has two longer than 4 weeks inactivity periods. If his MMR originally was in low diamond range, the first max decay would drop his MMR around high gold / low platinum range. The second decay would drop his MMR to ~ mid to high silver MMR range. Of course this presumes he did not play much when he came back before the last inactivity period (his MMR did not increase much from the high gold/low plat range).
Edit: Based on the Blizzard's recent article one could expect that the offsets & thresholds will changed in couple of days when the new season begins. Interesting to see if they are the only changes.
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On January 02 2014 04:08 korona wrote: League offsets and thresholds were changed last time nearly half years ago in start of June.
That may be, but their article strongly implied that today's odd distribution was not primarily due to their inactivity decay change.
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On January 02 2014 09:57 Lysenko wrote: That may be, but their article strongly implied that today's odd distribution was not primarily due to their inactivity decay change. Well, what else do you expect than them playing it down? They can't admit that all this crap is their fault alone, right? The odd distribution is not due to decay directly, that's true. But indirectly it affected thousands of players that got matched against decayed players.
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On January 02 2014 10:05 BurningRanger wrote: Well, what else do you expect than them playing it down? They can't admit that all this crap is their fault alone, right?
Wow, hold up there. I don't see them blaming gremlins or cosmic rays for it. Obviously it's the result of something they changed.
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I just started playing again after a long hiatus and this is frustrating. I was diamond way back in the day, and pretty middle-of-the-road as far as diamond players go. Now I'm in bronze and while my skill has probably legitimately decreased, this is just dumb. I've been 4gating every match (is this still a thing anymore?), winning about 60%, losing my last two against a former masters player. It's so stupid that I can't get out of bronze because whenever I go on a winning streak I play against some former masters player who actually knows their shit and blows me out of the water. ARG
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On January 02 2014 09:57 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2014 04:08 korona wrote: League offsets and thresholds were changed last time nearly half years ago in start of June. That may be, but their article strongly implied that today's odd distribution was not primarily due to their inactivity decay change. They have long history of watering down 'negative sounding things' in their articles. Thus their articles should never be taken word for word. E.g. in the same article they claim that the effect of maximum decay would be ~10 times smaller than it actually is: "At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games." (there was community speculation did they mean max decay for each day during the 2 to 4 weeks time frame, so their claim would be 'true' if looked at from certain viewpoint)
The actual maximum decay is worth about 20 losses (unless they have changed it silently this season just before the article. I was going to check this via MMR tool data, but its server has been down since Dec 18th and I had not downloaded the most recent data. My old data that was taken 4.5 to 5 weeks after the launch of this season did not contain suitable decayed accounts). This (~20 losses) has been verified via both MMR tool data and even by looking at plain character profiles. For example there are lots of characters out there that have played until they have been promoted (MMR has risen over the threshold). Then they have gone inactive for more than 4 weeks and after the inactivity have played their placements for new season. Their league placement has been 1 to 2 leagues lower just like you would expect (the max decay is little more than MMR range of 1 typical league). Some of these accounts have immediately gone inactive again and once again have dropped 1 to 2 leagues in start of the following season (depending on which league range their MMR has dropped. Size of the MMR range of different leagues differs). If the max decay was only worth of 'few matches', then these character accounts would not have dropped multiple leagues (and such drastic league threshold changes are out of the question). To pass one league MMR range it usually requires ~ 20 wins more than losses (you can find plenty of empirical examples regarding this). That is not 'few matches'.
There is a chance that there could have been very small adjustments regarding the offsets since beginning of June. But they would have been so small that it has not been worth e.g. to adjust MMR tool offsets (larger offset changes are usually almost immediately visible from MMR tool data and user graphs would go erratic). It is likely that there has been no changes since start of June. Of course there are multiple other logically minor things that affect the ladders too, such as player base slowly decreasing, unranked mode, global play (as these accounts are played less, they also more likely face decay), new players, players who faced full MMR reset (did not play for full season), MMR abusers, etc.
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On December 30 2013 01:33 ImperialFist wrote: the mmr decay does not seem to be that huge, I only played one game last season to be placed (in masters), played my placement for this season just now and got masters again, after all I've been hearing I thought I would get plat or something. maybe you really had a huge mmr before ? I was top 25 masters then the next season i played only 1 game and still was masters after that season i did it again only played 1 game and wup plat ! :D
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On January 02 2014 21:45 Mantaza wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2013 01:33 ImperialFist wrote: the mmr decay does not seem to be that huge, I only played one game last season to be placed (in masters), played my placement for this season just now and got masters again, after all I've been hearing I thought I would get plat or something. maybe you really had a huge mmr before ? Master league is indeed huge regarding size of its MMR range compared to other leagues. E.g. MMR range from low border of master to low border of GM fits roughly 2.3 times max decay on EU server and 1.4 times max decay on NA server.
On January 02 2014 21:45 Mantaza wrote: I was top 25 masters then the next season i played only 1 game and still was masters after that season i did it again only played 1 game and wup plat ! :D
Yes. If your MMR was near the low border of master range then max decay would drop it to high platinum range.
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On January 02 2014 11:41 korona wrote: They have long history of watering down 'negative sounding things' in their articles. Thus their articles should never be taken word for word.
I'm not talking about trying to read tea leaves in their tone.
Right before we launched Heart of the Swarm, we announced that we were changing our targets for player distribution across leagues. For various reasons since that announcement, the distribution of players across leagues slowly shifted to no longer match those desired targets. Currently the lower leagues like bronze and silver have a larger percentage of players than desired. Meanwhile the upper leagues like platinum and diamond are under-represented. One of the reasons this occurred is due to the way that we maintain those target percentages.
"The way [we] maintain those target percentages" is almost certainly not a reference to MMR decay, and it's not an oblique language question like whether "a few" means "twenty" either.
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Response to sarcastic remark by Lysenko: + Show Spoiler +On January 02 2014 23:41 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2014 11:41 korona wrote: They have long history of watering down 'negative sounding things' in their articles. Thus their articles should never be taken word for word. I'm not talking about trying to read tea leaves in their tone. To 'water down' has nothing to do with tea leaves. Merriam-Webster definition of WATER DOWN: 'to reduce or temper the force or effectiveness of' thefreedictionary.com definition of watered down: 'Diminished in force or effect' I am not a native English speaker. Maybe it means in your slang 'making tea'?
And response more related to the topic:
On January 02 2014 23:41 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote + Right before we launched Heart of the Swarm, we announced that we were changing our targets for player distribution across leagues. For various reasons since that announcement, the distribution of players across leagues slowly shifted to no longer match those desired targets. Currently the lower leagues like bronze and silver have a larger percentage of players than desired. Meanwhile the upper leagues like platinum and diamond are under-represented. One of the reasons this occurred is due to the way that we maintain those target percentages.
"The way [we] maintain those target percentages" is almost certainly not a reference to MMR decay, and it's not an oblique language question like whether "a few" means "twenty" either. Then what do you propose was the reason for distribution changes? The static offsets / thresholds that are used to maintain the league ranges have not changed since June.
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Re-introduce demotions, remove MMR-decay. Problem solved.
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Im starting to wonder if Blizzard gives a flying fuck about this game... I mean really,how long does it take to solve one problem? And its not the firs time they took so long to fix things that are unrelated to balance. Maybe they will start to do their jobs when we start to pay money for each month to play SC2,oh wait,there are free games to play. Wake the fuck up Blizzard!
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On January 03 2014 01:20 Firkraag8 wrote: Re-introduce demotions, remove MMR-decay. Problem solved. Ideally they will do that, but knowing how they have handled things in the past, they will do 4-5 spectacularly dumb changes before finally admitting defeat and simply going back to the old system or listening to the community. It's the Blizzard way.
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On January 07 2014 22:12 Liman wrote: Im starting to wonder if Blizzard gives a flying fuck about this game... I mean really,how long does it take to solve one problem? And its not the firs time they took so long to fix things that are unrelated to balance. Maybe they will start to do their jobs when we start to pay money for each month to play SC2,oh wait,there are free games to play. Wake the fuck up Blizzard!
Blizzard is slow with every patch, change, and response. This shouldn't be news to you.
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On January 03 2014 01:20 Firkraag8 wrote: Re-introduce demotions, remove MMR-decay. Problem solved.
Demotions still exist.. I tested this theory a few days ago to see how MMR was being calculated. I was in Gold league (been diamond/platinum since season 1). I intentionally lost games until I was demoted to Bronze.. from that point, I reset my record and started playing. I am 25-1 right now and only starting to play gold level players again but have already been promoted to silver. So demotions/promotions exist..
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Now, 6 weeks is pretty generous when you're talking about someone being an active player, so it's a pretty safe bet that the actual activity metric is below this. The fact that only 22% of Bronze players meet this criteria means that if you're playing at a Bronze level, 22% of the time your random opponent may be actual Bronze-level, while 60% or more of the time it may be an inactive Silver. Bronze league has the biggest margin between the top and the bottom, probably as big as 1000 MMR. Assuming the distribution is proportional, 70% of those in Bronze have a really low chance to play a decayed Silver (only if he was low Silver and will be favoured, and only for those top of the 70%). So 60% chance to meet Silver is a huge overkill. The logic applies only to high-Bronze. Because of a range of factors (no demotion, MMR decay, more populated Silver than Bronze, big difference in MMR between Bronze, more active Silver players) high-Bronze players will be very likely to play Silvers, probably even more likely than 60% of the time.
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United States12175 Posts
On January 08 2014 03:34 bri9and wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2014 01:20 Firkraag8 wrote: Re-introduce demotions, remove MMR-decay. Problem solved. Demotions still exist.. I tested this theory a few days ago to see how MMR was being calculated. I was in Gold league (been diamond/platinum since season 1). I intentionally lost games until I was demoted to Bronze.. from that point, I reset my record and started playing. I am 25-1 right now and only starting to play gold level players again but have already been promoted to silver. So demotions/promotions exist..
The season just rolled over so that's why you were demoted to Bronze. When people say "demotions don't exist" they mean mid-season demotions, like actual demotions as in "after this game you moved from your current league to this lower league", not re-placing into a lower league.
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It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
Edit: I have seen Painuser get demoted mid season from Diamond to Plat on one of his marathon streams with no sleep, so yea, they exist still.
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On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
In order to stay at the same level in rankings you need to be constantly improving to compensate for: 1) other players improving, 2) lower level players giving up on the game faster than hardcore gamers, so better ranked players take their spots in lower leagues, while their spots are taken by others and so on. This is how competition works, take it or leave it.
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On January 08 2014 07:10 Cheerio wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
In order to stay at the same level in rankings you need to be constantly improving to compensate for: 1) other players improving, 2) lower level players giving up on the game faster than hardcore gamers, so better ranked players take their spots in lower leagues, while their spots are taken by others and so on. This is how competition works, take it or leave it.
You have no idea if he was improving - and this is an incredibly widespread issue which has been acknowledged by Blizzard.
Jesus, that was condescending.
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On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: Edit: I have seen Painuser get demoted mid season from Diamond to Plat on one of his marathon streams with no sleep, so yea, they exist still. 'Demotions' can only happen via placement matches. You cannot be demoted mid-season unless you use 'leave league' feature and then play a new placement match.
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On January 08 2014 07:18 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: Edit: I have seen Painuser get demoted mid season from Diamond to Plat on one of his marathon streams with no sleep, so yea, they exist still. 'Demotions' can only happen via placement matches. You cannot be demoted mid-season unless you use 'leave league' feature and then play a new placement match.
I saw what I saw.
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On January 08 2014 07:10 Cheerio wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
In order to stay at the same level in rankings you need to be constantly improving to compensate for: 1) other players improving, 2) lower level players giving up on the game faster than hardcore gamers, so better ranked players take their spots in lower leagues, while their spots are taken by others and so on. This is how competition works, take it or leave it.
Take it or leave it? Seems to me a lot of former players have chosen the second option.
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On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
Edit: I have seen Painuser get demoted mid season from Diamond to Plat on one of his marathon streams with no sleep, so yea, they exist still. Painuser leaves league every couple of days,that is not demotion as it once was.
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In 4s I just got double demoted during my placement match despite being on a massive win streak including my placement match.
To be fair I was playing with really good teammates during much of that streak, but I have still won several without them.
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On January 08 2014 07:33 Liman wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
Edit: I have seen Painuser get demoted mid season from Diamond to Plat on one of his marathon streams with no sleep, so yea, they exist still. Painuser leaves league every couple of days,that is not demotion as it once was.
He was in diamond league, lost a bunch in a row, and got demoted. I'm not making this up and i'm not a liar. Maybe he was playing WoL who knows.
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There are a lot of gold players with 160+ apm lately. It kills the desire to earn rank, doesn't it? How can gaining a league feel good if the leagues mean nothing anymore?
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On January 08 2014 07:47 CutTheEnemy wrote: There are a lot of gold players with 160+ apm lately. It kills the desire to earn rank, doesn't it? How can gaining a league feel good if the leagues mean nothing anymore?
Well said.. +1
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On January 08 2014 07:35 meadbert wrote: In 4s I just got double demoted during my placement match despite being on a massive win streak including my placement match.
To be fair I was playing with really good teammates during much of that streak, but I have still won several without them.
Each arranged team and Non-Arranged MMR are seperate.
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On January 08 2014 07:14 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 07:10 Cheerio wrote:On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
In order to stay at the same level in rankings you need to be constantly improving to compensate for: 1) other players improving, 2) lower level players giving up on the game faster than hardcore gamers, so better ranked players take their spots in lower leagues, while their spots are taken by others and so on. This is how competition works, take it or leave it. You have no idea if he was improving - and this is an incredibly widespread issue which has been acknowledged by Blizzard. Jesus, that was condescending. what issue, that people don't want to be demoted?
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On January 08 2014 08:43 Cheerio wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 07:14 tili wrote:On January 08 2014 07:10 Cheerio wrote:On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
In order to stay at the same level in rankings you need to be constantly improving to compensate for: 1) other players improving, 2) lower level players giving up on the game faster than hardcore gamers, so better ranked players take their spots in lower leagues, while their spots are taken by others and so on. This is how competition works, take it or leave it. You have no idea if he was improving - and this is an incredibly widespread issue which has been acknowledged by Blizzard. Jesus, that was condescending. what issue, that people don't want to be demoted?
No, that the league system's distribution has led to an over representation of bronze and silver and platinum+ leagues being under populated.
Since the leagues are supposed to represent percentiles, this is a system flaw.
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On January 08 2014 08:22 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 07:35 meadbert wrote: In 4s I just got double demoted during my placement match despite being on a massive win streak including my placement match.
To be fair I was playing with really good teammates during much of that streak, but I have still won several without them. Each arranged team and Non-Arranged MMR are seperate. This was not a fully arranged team. There were 2-3 of us in a party playing 4s.
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On January 08 2014 07:47 CutTheEnemy wrote: There are a lot of gold players with 160+ apm lately. It kills the desire to earn rank, doesn't it? How can gaining a league feel good if the leagues mean nothing anymore?
Why would you ever play any game solely for ranks? I read some people on the battle.net forums talking about how they no longer play 1v1 ranked due to the current issue. I mean do you seriously play this game to see some rank improve that only tells you how good you are compared to everyone else on your server? Personally I play this game first and foremost because I enjoy playing it and then secondly because I enjoy the constant improvement you experience while playing a decent RTS game.
I mean I understand that I may be frustrating for the game to give you are worse rank then you are used to, or for you to get matched up with people that are far from your skill (though if he is worse you get an easy win, if he is better you have more to learn), but I can never understand how such a thing could be so important to you that you just stop playing the game. Though I also have a hard time comprehending while one would play solely to win on ladder too, so I guess maybe I'm just out of touch with the average player.
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On January 08 2014 07:47 CutTheEnemy wrote: There are a lot of gold players with 160+ apm lately. It kills the desire to earn rank, doesn't it? How can gaining a league feel good if the leagues mean nothing anymore?
Why would you ever play any game solely for ranks? I read some people on the battle.net forums talking about how they no longer play 1v1 ranked due to the current issue. I mean do you seriously play this game to see some rank improve that only tells you how good you are compared to everyone else on your server? Personally I play this game first and foremost because I enjoy playing it and then secondly because I enjoy the constant improvement you experience while playing a decent RTS game.
I mean I understand that I may be frustrating for the game to give you are worse rank then you are used to, or for you to get matched up with people that are far from your skill (though if he is worse you get an easy win, if he is better you have more to learn), but I can never understand how such a thing could be so important to you that you just stop playing the game. Though I also have a hard time comprehending why one would play solely to win on ladder too, so I guess maybe I'm just out of touch with the average player.
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On January 08 2014 07:39 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 07:33 Liman wrote:On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
Edit: I have seen Painuser get demoted mid season from Diamond to Plat on one of his marathon streams with no sleep, so yea, they exist still. Painuser leaves league every couple of days,that is not demotion as it once was. He was in diamond league, lost a bunch in a row, and got demoted. I'm not making this up and i'm not a liar. Maybe he was playing WoL who knows.
You sure you didn't look away for a second while he left his league and entered a new game? Mid-season demotions is not happening anymore because they removed it. If he did indeed get demoted then it was most likely due to a glitch in the matrix or w/e.
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Tried out the decay theory, just played 1 game every 8-13 days for random 2/3/4's, kept all my leagues (plat/diamond).
~9 games on a season, no decay.
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lol it's not a theory. you also don't get demoted mid-season
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On January 08 2014 07:14 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 07:10 Cheerio wrote:On January 08 2014 04:22 Ctone23 wrote: It's really quite simple, in my opinion it's demoralizing. The explanations, graphs, all the justification, seem way inadequate.
The goal for me, and other players I have talked to who also got demoted, is to someday break masters league (or diamond, whatever) and it's SO demoralizing to get demoted at the beginning of a season. I and other players have been active the whole time, so decay explains nothing. Why demote players down a league? Makes no sense and it sucks because I really want more people to play the game.
In order to stay at the same level in rankings you need to be constantly improving to compensate for: 1) other players improving, 2) lower level players giving up on the game faster than hardcore gamers, so better ranked players take their spots in lower leagues, while their spots are taken by others and so on. This is how competition works, take it or leave it. You have no idea if he was improving - and this is an incredibly widespread issue which has been acknowledged by Blizzard. Jesus, that was condescending.
How is it condescending to say what he said?
The ladder is ranked scale relative to skill levels within the population.
If you don't improve in skill at a faster rate than the population, you will get demoted. If you maintain the rate of improvement at the same rate as the population, but the lower ranked players leave the game, then more people who are "higher skilled" gets dropped down to the lower leagues because they are now the bottom of the bell curve.
It has nothing to do with players being good or bad, bronze simply means the bottom X percent of Y population. If you are unable to improve yourself faster than the local population of your league, you will get demoted. If you are only able to maintain the same rate of improvement as your local population, then once people below you stop playing then you will be demoted.
That is math, not condescension.
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On January 11 2014 03:17 Ignorant prodigy wrote: lol it's not a theory. you also don't get demoted mid-season
I don't think you know what the word "Theory" means....
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On January 11 2014 03:18 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you maintain the rate of improvement at the same rate as the population, but the lower ranked players leave the game, then more people who are "higher skilled" gets dropped down to the lower leagues because they are now the bottom of the bell curve. Not automatically. Only if Blizzard decides to change the league thresholds. The matchmaking system estimates the relative skill differences between all players. This is directly reflected in MMR differences. There is no room to shuffle people around between leagues just because there are too few in some place. The system does not try to preserve a bell curve.
Variants of this issue comes up again and again. People think that there are "spots" in the leagues, and if people leave a league the system will move people from other leagues to fill up these spots. It will not.
bronze simply means the bottom X percent of Y population. No. It most certainly does not.
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On January 11 2014 06:25 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 03:18 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you maintain the rate of improvement at the same rate as the population, but the lower ranked players leave the game, then more people who are "higher skilled" gets dropped down to the lower leagues because they are now the bottom of the bell curve. Not automatically. Only if Blizzard decides to change the league thresholds. The matchmaking system estimates the relative skill differences between all players. This is directly reflected in MMR differences. There is no room to shuffle people around between leagues just because there are too few in some place. The system does not try to preserve a bell curve. Variants of this issue comes up again and again. People think that there are "spots" in the leagues, and if people leave a league the system will move people from other leagues to fill up these spots. It will not. No. It most certainly does not.
Your right that there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for creating percentiles in league distribution but he's right that Blizzard is TRYING to create specific percentile groupings by league, which is why they are changing the mmr offsets
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On January 11 2014 08:54 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 06:25 Mendelfist wrote:On January 11 2014 03:18 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you maintain the rate of improvement at the same rate as the population, but the lower ranked players leave the game, then more people who are "higher skilled" gets dropped down to the lower leagues because they are now the bottom of the bell curve. Not automatically. Only if Blizzard decides to change the league thresholds. The matchmaking system estimates the relative skill differences between all players. This is directly reflected in MMR differences. There is no room to shuffle people around between leagues just because there are too few in some place. The system does not try to preserve a bell curve. Variants of this issue comes up again and again. People think that there are "spots" in the leagues, and if people leave a league the system will move people from other leagues to fill up these spots. It will not. bronze simply means the bottom X percent of Y population. No. It most certainly does not. Your right that there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for creating percentiles in league distribution but he's right that Blizzard is TRYING to create specific percentile groupings by league, which is why they are changing the mmr offsets Blizzard has not changed static league offsets / thresholds since start of June. And if they only change offsets / thresholds when V.2.1 is published, it does not fix the main problem that due to decay & its indirect effects (+ other lesser causes), wildly different skilled players are sharing similar MMR, which leads to 'bad' matchmaking results even if the matchmaker itself is technically functioning ok.
I visually checked MMR tool user profiles for this season regarding possible offset changes (not enough data for offset calculations for many leagues yet) and there seemed to be no changes. I also checked last season's data regarding possibility that Blizzard would have changed the max decay to be worth of "few losses". They had not. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20565355
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On January 11 2014 06:25 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 03:18 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you maintain the rate of improvement at the same rate as the population, but the lower ranked players leave the game, then more people who are "higher skilled" gets dropped down to the lower leagues because they are now the bottom of the bell curve. Not automatically. Only if Blizzard decides to change the league thresholds. The matchmaking system estimates the relative skill differences between all players. This is directly reflected in MMR differences. There is no room to shuffle people around between leagues just because there are too few in some place. The system does not try to preserve a bell curve. Variants of this issue comes up again and again. People think that there are "spots" in the leagues, and if people leave a league the system will move people from other leagues to fill up these spots. It will not. No. It most certainly does not.
What are you talking about? The leagues are just percent of player base, Blizzard even has several posts about this when they were about to change it. Even if the ladder were only filled with extremely skilled progamer-level players, some % would still be bronze.
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United States12175 Posts
On January 11 2014 12:04 Zheryn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 06:25 Mendelfist wrote:On January 11 2014 03:18 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you maintain the rate of improvement at the same rate as the population, but the lower ranked players leave the game, then more people who are "higher skilled" gets dropped down to the lower leagues because they are now the bottom of the bell curve. Not automatically. Only if Blizzard decides to change the league thresholds. The matchmaking system estimates the relative skill differences between all players. This is directly reflected in MMR differences. There is no room to shuffle people around between leagues just because there are too few in some place. The system does not try to preserve a bell curve. Variants of this issue comes up again and again. People think that there are "spots" in the leagues, and if people leave a league the system will move people from other leagues to fill up these spots. It will not. bronze simply means the bottom X percent of Y population. No. It most certainly does not. What are you talking about? The leagues are just percent of player base, Blizzard even has several posts about this when they were about to change it. Even if the ladder were only filled with extremely skilled progamer-level players, some % would still be bronze.
They're not. What they do is look at the distribution every season in terms of who has less than X bonus pool remaining. After that filter is applied, they record which MMR values represent the target percentiles. If the top 2% of players are above 2035.645 rating, that's what the breakpoint will be next season. It will stay at 2035.645 for the whole season unless they notice a dramatic shift where they need to intervene. As you can probably imagine, the players above 2035.645 probably won't remain the top 2%, that may shift to 1% or 3% or 5% and that's okay.
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On January 11 2014 12:04 Zheryn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2014 06:25 Mendelfist wrote:On January 11 2014 03:18 Thieving Magpie wrote: If you maintain the rate of improvement at the same rate as the population, but the lower ranked players leave the game, then more people who are "higher skilled" gets dropped down to the lower leagues because they are now the bottom of the bell curve. Not automatically. Only if Blizzard decides to change the league thresholds. The matchmaking system estimates the relative skill differences between all players. This is directly reflected in MMR differences. There is no room to shuffle people around between leagues just because there are too few in some place. The system does not try to preserve a bell curve. Variants of this issue comes up again and again. People think that there are "spots" in the leagues, and if people leave a league the system will move people from other leagues to fill up these spots. It will not. bronze simply means the bottom X percent of Y population. No. It most certainly does not. What are you talking about? The leagues are just percent of player base, Blizzard even has several posts about this when they were about to change it. Even if the ladder were only filled with extremely skilled progamer-level players, some % would still be bronze. Nope. The distribution percents are only target values that Blizzard tries to reach via changing static league offsets / thresholds (which they have not changed since start of June). Consider situation where A) all bronze MMR range players would be removed from the ladder, B) MMR decay would be removed, C) no new players would enter the ladder / no MMR resets, D) ranked players would play only against ranked opponents and E) there would be no league offset/threshold changes. In that situation there would be no players in bronze range at first. Of course as time goes by some of the silver range players would drop to bronze range by normally losing games.
Edit: And while proof reading Excalibur_Z had already answered
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That being said, there has to be some mechanism to keep the MMR scale from floating around. It's especially obvious now when MMR is clearly not zero sum due to decay. With no anchor anywhere this would lead to indefinite deflation. My theory, which I don't have much support for, is that the anchor is at the top of the ladder, perhaps implemented as the MMR cap which we know exists. That would mean that if the top players suddenly quit, those spots would indeed fill up again, and pull the rest of the ladder with it. This is just speculation though.
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On January 11 2014 16:41 Mendelfist wrote: That being said, there has to be some mechanism to keep the MMR scale from floating around. It's especially obvious now when MMR is clearly not zero sum due to decay. With no anchor anywhere this would lead to indefinite deflation. My theory, which I don't have much support for, is that the anchor is at the top of the ladder, perhaps implemented as the MMR cap which we know exists. That would mean that if the top players suddenly quit, those spots would indeed fill up again, and pull the rest of the ladder with it. This is just speculation though. I would expect that there are some limitations regarding MMR decay in bronze range that it would not push players to 'negative' range directly (I have not seen (nor specifically searched for) accounts recorded by MMR tool facing decay in bronze range. Of course it may be because there are not that many bronze range tool users & they usually don't play that much & if you drop to very bottom of bronze your opponents are capped -> thus no 'good games', which means no reliably calculated MMR for that player before he rises higher).
Also I still have not reached any top caps regarding individual players, but then again I don't have records for the very top for couple of seasons. E.g. For last season (S16) highest value that some MMR tool user had recorded for his opponent on EU was around 2550. This opponent had finished around top 20 GM regarding ladder points. During S14 there were recorded MMR peaks at around 3000 on EU server (a notorious maphacker had used the tool for short period during August and had risen to the very top of EU ladder. He had also boosted his account by playing against his own other account during silent hours. His highest opponent value was around 2750 which is still used by the MMR tool as top value for EU). Regarding matchmaking Josh Menke (Blizzard's previous matchmaking specialist) mentioned few years back that extreme ratings are clipped from matchmaking (capped value used for matchmaking instead) (here is the mentioned video and recap from it, but since that video there has been changes to the system).
There is also this matchmaking bug that has been there for ages (probably existed already before HotS. I don't remember when I heard about it first time). It causes that very top MMR range of GMs sometimes (rare) face very bottom MMR range bronzes. For example when EU GM was opened this season I was monitoring when the first MMR tool users would be promoted. While waiting I also looked at the Blizzard's GM list on Battle.net web pages as it started filling and noticed that Stardust had played one match just after he had been promoted from which he got 1 point. Such low points usually indicate that the MMR difference is extreme, especially as Stardust had just been promoted. Thus I checked who his opponent was via SC2 client and indeed it was a bronze player like I had suspected. I wonder what causes this bug as they seem not to fix it. Could be e.g. some overflow bug in some matchmaking algorithm.
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United States12175 Posts
Regarding that overflow issue, I wonder if it's tied to long queue times. If there's really nobody within your normal search range and it has to expand further and further and there's nowhere higher for it to go maybe it loops back around to the bottom of Bronze and finds someone?
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As a person who just got back into playing a couple of games a day, what is going on with the ladder system? I'm currently in Gold, used to be a upper-mid Diamond player. As it currently stands, I'm mainly facing an opponent who I beat very easily(usually a multi-season gold/plat finisher), this occurs around 50% of the time when I ladder. Or I'm facing someone who completely annihilates me(usually multi-season Master finisher), this occurs 20% of the time. And the last 30% of my games are against what I would consider an equal opponent. All of these people are in Gold by the way. My question is, why am I facing, in Gold league, ex-multi-season Master players who are also ranked in Gold and why am I constantly playing people who are below my skill level?
For example, this morning I played a couple of ladder games. One was against a former 10 times Master league finisher Protoss who completely annihilated me and another was against a Terran who had no clue what was going on. Why am I getting such variance in the skill level of my opponents? Ladder is no fun when I'm not facing opponents who are at similar skill level of my own.
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On January 11 2014 12:39 korona wrote: Of course as time goes by some of the silver range players would drop to bronze range by normally losing games.
Edit: I just realized that Mendelfist just posted saying essentially exactly what I did, that the scale would float around to fill up parts of the MMR scale where players get lost. Never mind.
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On January 11 2014 16:41 Mendelfist wrote: With no anchor anywhere this would lead to indefinite deflation.
Is there reason to believe this isn't happening? Or reason to believe it is for that matter?
My experience being limited is anecdotal but it would be consistent with indefinite deflation. Both my 1v1 and 4v4 leagues have dropped certainly due to deflation periods. Having then become aware of the deflation due to the marvellous efforts of you chaps I've been making sure to play at least one game in each bracket each week. Despite reasonably winning streaks my 1v1 hasn't lead to a promotion. My 4v4 has a small positive win ratio but start of 2014 I received yet another demotion.
This experience would seem to be consistent with the average player base dropping over time, enough to demote my 4v4 and prevent any significant rise in 1v1. Presumably different brackets may deflate at different rates, AT teams for example may play much less frequently, but still regularly, contributing to higher deflation for team brackets.
I know its possible my performance isn't as good as the win-loss suggests, since it also matters who I win and lose against, and also my proximity to promotion boundaries is not known so even a reasonable improvement may not lead to promotion, or alternately a small lowering might lead to demotion. Hence my question, are you guys aware of any evidence for or against indefinite deflation?
Furthermore, if it were the case that since HotS the ladder has been experiencing indefinite deflation of some sort that would seem to be an extremely damaging fact. Along with the wide range of skill with same MMR, it would suggest to me that the ladder is FAR from fit for purpose and I struggle to understand why Blizzard would not take strong corrective action as soon as they realised what was happening (aka 6 months ago). As things are now nothing sort of a removal of MMR deflation and a complete forced reset of every players MMR would seem to be an adequate solution.
Since Blizz don't seem to be concerned, or apparently feel any sense of urgency on this matter, and that they have chosen to play down the problems, there would not seem to be any reason to believe they will remove MMR deflation any time soon. What worries me is this could well be the decline of SC we are seeing. Players will become frustrated and quit and LotV sales will suffer. If it doesn't sell very well and if tournament views do not rise I'm not sure Blizz will see the point of working on a SC3. A year or two after LotV release we could be looking at only a fraction of the players remaining and a matchmaking system that may as well be random.
I'd love to be optimistic and say "hey, they are working on it and will fix it and all will be great again" but their handling of things makes this a hard to believe, not to mention the fact that we're only in this position at all because of a decision they took, and you really have to wonder about the risk analysis/testing they did (or apparently failed to do) as a part of that.
For a start we could really use some actual response about how 2.1 will address the issue specifically and what the eta is on it. Announcements about adding features like IMBA league (while welcome) are unhelpful given the presence of an issue of vastly greater priority. Who even manages Blizz's PR? They have to be the most incompetent employee ever! When your customers are clamouring about an issue, real or perceived, to ignore it, then give obviously misleading statements playing down the problem, then say nothing for ages, then release many statements about unrelated and low priority improvements... well, its near enough the exact opposite of how they should have played this. What the hell is wrong with them? Being straight with the community is a million times better for them than either fobbing them off and doing nothing, or going on radio silence for months on end. I see only two possibilities: a) they are really really dumb, or b) they don't care.
I've written enough...
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The ladder is so weird right now. I'm at about an 80% win-rate in Silver right now, with roughly 70% games being crushing victories against genuine silver players. The other 30% are very close games (usually losses) against former Master league players. That's a huge proportion of matches, and I feel bad for lower-league players who get shoved down the ladder because every third game they have a horribly imbalanced and unfair game. It's incredibly demotivating.
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I just won my placement match, and got into bronze, rank 100.
I have no problem with this. Since I am old, being a father, there is much more on earth for me to accomplish than getting >gold, like writing my own book, being nice to my wife more often and more patient with my kids, or brewing beer on my own etc. etc.
Yet since I am curious plus a crackpot scientist, here is my question.
If I lost this, would I have
a) + Show Spoiler +been banned by Blizzard for lifetime for being too bad for everything, even Hearthstone?
or
b) + Show Spoiler +caused a badness hole that ripped into the Reality structure of the universe, erasing the anomaly that is known as Artosis curse?
or
c) + Show Spoiler +being demoted into a new league, called "Shithole league, just for retard assholes like papalion, yes you, papalion"?
Awaiting answers. I am bent like a toy bow, as we Germans say if we want to express highest suspense.
Important: If I am getting banned/warned for this not really serious post: Let me know before! Maybe I can open a (you read the next word with apollo's voice in mind) massive apology thread, salted with slightest criticism, because I want to change my name to quixotic, which is in use by a guy who posted only once years ago, Hitler vs. Jaedong. He found it "pretty hilarious". As a person whose ancestors suffered under this tyrant (Hitler, not Jaedong), I do not see the fun in it. This last clause is meant seriously.
So, maybe I can redirect the honorary mod's ban intent to that quixotic guy, and take his name? Whatever, my fate is at your hands.
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double post, because I am so agog with expectation, sry. Agog would be a cool name either, wouldn't it?
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On January 15 2014 10:39 papalion wrote:I just won my placement match, and got into bronze, rank 100. I have no problem with this. Since I am old, being a father, there is much more on earth for me to accomplish than getting >gold, like writing my own book, being nice to my wife more often and more patient with my kids, or brewing beer on my own etc. etc. Yet since I am curious plus a crackpot scientist, here is my question. If I lost this, would I have a) + Show Spoiler +been banned by Blizzard for lifetime for being too bad for everything, even Hearthstone? or b) + Show Spoiler +caused a badness hole that ripped into the Reality structure of the universe, erasing the anomaly that is known as Artosis curse? or c) + Show Spoiler +being demoted into a new league, called "Shithole league, just for retard assholes like papalion, yes you, papalion"? Awaiting answers. I am bent like a toy bow, as we Germans say if we want to express highest suspense. Important: If I am getting banned/warned for this not really serious post: Let me know before! Maybe I can open a (you read the next word with apollo's voice in mind) massive apology thread, salted with slightest criticism, because I want to change my name to quixotic, which is in use by a guy who posted only once years ago, Hitler vs. Jaedong. He found it "pretty hilarious". As a person whose ancestors suffered under this tyrant (Hitler, not Jaedong), I do not see the fun in it. This last clause is meant seriously. So, maybe I can redirect the honorary mod's ban intent to that quixotic guy, and take his name? Whatever, my fate is at your hands.
Bronze 100? D) Flash himself would descend from the heavens (proleague) and bestow upon you the skill to ignore your family and progress to Silver league, to save us from the intensity of your badness.
Just kidding, who the fuck cares how good or bad you are, just have fun playing
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How many people exactly have become completely frusturated with ladder and/or have stopped playing this game because of the messed up ladder system?
I am in the top 5% of ladder, and that appearently is the one part that isn't affected as much as everything lower than us top masters so I am just curious how bad it has gotten
Poll: Have you gotten frusturated of blizzard mmr system?Yes, and I play the game less than before the mmr changes (13) 41% yes, but I still play the game as much as I did before (10) 31% yes, and I switched to a different game because of it (7) 22% no (2) 6% 32 total votes Your vote: Have you gotten frusturated of blizzard mmr system? (Vote): yes, but I still play the game as much as I did before (Vote): yes, and I switched to a different game because of it (Vote): no (Vote): Yes, and I play the game less than before the mmr changes
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I was diamond at the start of school. By winter break I was silver. I feel even if I was going to lose my first few games back, I would prefer to play good players, because I would be able to gain my skills back quicker.
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used to be plat in wol, won 4 out of 5 placements, got placed in silver.
Don't really understand this.
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I'm usually active for part of a season then miss some weeks, 5 weeks between this season and last season. It seems with this kind of break i end up going about 20-2 until i start getting evenly matched again.
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On January 15 2014 23:34 insectoceanx wrote: I'm usually active for part of a season then miss some weeks, 5 weeks between this season and last season. It seems with this kind of break i end up going about 20-2 until i start getting evenly matched again. Yup. That happened to me. Looking at my division, it also happened to some other people. One dude is currently 24-3, and I checked his match history and he had 3 weeks where he didn't play followed by about 20 wins in a row. I would call that MMR drop more than the equivalent of "a few" games.
I am now in gold league. Was diamond for the majority of WoL. Was Master for the last season of WoL and for HOTS until I had to take a break because I injured my shoulder. Came back, was placed in Diamond, got busy with school, was then placed in gold where I got promoted after two games, got busy with finals, placed for this season and went from high platinum only being matched against diamonds to gold only being matched against a ridiculous range of skill levels. I lost to a person in silver who was obviously better than me, and then proceeded to beat two diamond players in a row, both of whom were much worse than me. The entire league system seems completely arbitrary at this point...
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I think this kind of sums up people being ranked lower than they should. + Show Spoiler +
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Looking at the guy from my above screenshot who went 124-4 (was since promoted) got me thinking to a similar experience I had over the summer that initially alerted me that something was wrong with the league system. I wonder if part of the problem is that blizzard has actually narrowed the range of possible matches too much. It seems possible to me that reacting to criticism of unfair games, blizzard narrowed the MMR range for potential matches, thinking that would solve the problem... Subjectively to me, search times have seemed a bit longer recently.
The obvious problem with narrowing the MMR search range is that people who have decayed a lot won't get matched against challenging opponents until they grind out a lot of games, thus preventing them from simply *proving* their skill early on. They can go on a long winstreak and only marginally improve their opponents. This was certainly my experience.
Subjectively once again, it seemed to me like the system was more aggressive about matching me with harder opponents when I went on long win streaks back in WoL days. These days you can win dozens of games in a row and have your opponents barely change. Maybe this change is partly because your MMR is less malleable once you've played a lot of games but I don't feel like that would explain all of it.
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Totally different question but, is it 100% confirmed that losing a game stops decay? Or is it still possible that only winning a game stops decay?
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I read somewhere, I can't find where now... checked that MMR has to stabilize before you get promoted? That is to say, while you are constantly increasing it isn't until you start losing games that your MMR plateaus that you recieved promotions?
I'm having trouble finding the reference though. But that could explain Mr 124:4
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On January 20 2014 01:30 Eregos wrote: Looking at the guy from my above screenshot who went 124-4 (was since promoted) got me thinking to a similar experience I had over the summer that initially alerted me that something was wrong with the league system. I wonder if part of the problem is that blizzard has actually narrowed the range of possible matches too much. It seems possible to me that reacting to criticism of unfair games, blizzard narrowed the MMR range for potential matches, thinking that would solve the problem... Subjectively to me, search times have seemed a bit longer recently.
The obvious problem with narrowing the MMR search range is that people who have decayed a lot won't get matched against challenging opponents until they grind out a lot of games, thus preventing them from simply *proving* their skill early on. They can go on a long winstreak and only marginally improve their opponents. This was certainly my experience.
Subjectively once again, it seemed to me like the system was more aggressive about matching me with harder opponents when I went on long win streaks back in WoL days. These days you can win dozens of games in a row and have your opponents barely change. Maybe this change is partly because your MMR is less malleable once you've played a lot of games but I don't feel like that would explain all of it.
They definitely did not narrow the MMR range for placement. I am currently plat and played two masters yesterday (one of which was top 8).
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United States12175 Posts
You need to take a closer look at that Nerdrrage guy before just posting a screenshot and saying "see?" Take a look at this: http://www.sc2ranks.com/team/am/11003248398/nerdrrage/last-two
It's pretty obvious he's been messing with Leave League or decaying or intentionally losing or all of the above. He started out last season and this season in Bronze and he's been rocketing up the ladder, as you would expect from a Master player. That screenshot you posted was just one stop along his cross-league trip to "pwn noobs". He didn't go 124-4 in Gold league alone. We have similar data from an experiment we ran with HnR)Insane years ago, which led to the discovery of the league offsets.
As far as the search parameters go for matchmaking, Korona believes (he has the match data to back it up) that it prefers opponents who are within the same league as you. So if you are a Gold player and you have two potential opponents in your search range who are an equal distance apart from you, one in Gold and one in Platinum, it will prefer the Gold opponent.
And the outcome of your game doesn't matter for stopping the decay timer. You can win or lose.
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Interesting points. The other thing I found interesting about that screencap (not something definitive and therefore I don't expect you to necessarily agree) is that the winrates even apart from the top player were rather high and most of the players probably wouldn't be there if it weren't for decay.
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Ugh I wish there was more decay. I'm coming back from like half a year break and I'm 2-15 so far, and still being matched against high diamond players : ( so depressing to try to get decent again.
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On January 20 2014 09:47 Mercy13 wrote: Ugh I wish there was more decay. I'm coming back from like half a year break and I'm 2-15 so far, and still being matched against high diamond players : ( so depressing to try to get decent again. no you dont...
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On January 20 2014 09:51 Kevin_Sorbo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2014 09:47 Mercy13 wrote: Ugh I wish there was more decay. I'm coming back from like half a year break and I'm 2-15 so far, and still being matched against high diamond players : ( so depressing to try to get decent again. no you dont...
If you took a year+ break, you'd start with 0 MMR, so there is something you're leaving out.
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I said about half a year. 20 weeks, to be specific. I think it would be easier to get back into it if I wasn't playing people a ton better than me, but I guess you guys disagree?
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On January 20 2014 10:00 Mercy13 wrote: I said about half a year. 20 weeks, to be specific. I think it would be easier to get back into it if I wasn't playing people a ton better than me, but I guess you guys disagree? Your MMR resets after not placing for a full season so the highest you could have been placed is (from what I remember) Platinum league, and with things how they are, that would probably be a stretch since most former Diamond players are now in Gold or even Silver. A half a year is more than a full season (It's roughly 2-3 seasons). Hence why people are doubting you. The ladder system may be busted, but not THAT busted. It would be more believable if you were in Gold or Silver, where the ladder actually is busted right now and people are experiencing what you described. The higher leagues are the only place where it isn't busted, but instead they are crazy competitive because they are tiny (like a fraction of the number of players in Diamond and Master now. Even Platinum is small. Platinum is now the equivalent of old Diamond/low Master).
And no you don't want more decay. MMR decay is the worst. Have midterms or something that will keep you from playing games for a couple weeks? Well guess what, you get to play 20 meaningless games when you come back because you were too busy being responsible with school to play Starcraft. It's screwed up the entire ladder system pretty badly. I don't think I would stick with the game if I was starting playing it right now and being faced against people completely out of my league (both figuratively and literally in this case).
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On January 20 2014 10:11 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2014 10:00 Mercy13 wrote: I said about half a year. 20 weeks, to be specific. I think it would be easier to get back into it if I wasn't playing people a ton better than me, but I guess you guys disagree? Your MMR resets after not placing for a full season so the highest you could have been placed is (from what I remember) Platinum league, and with things how they are, that would probably be a stretch since most former Diamond players are now in Gold or even Silver. A half a year is more than a full season (It's roughly 2-3 seasons). Hence why people are doubting you. The ladder system may be busted, but not THAT busted. It would be more believable if you were in Gold or Silver, where the ladder actually is busted right now and people are experiencing what you described. The higher leagues are the only place where it isn't busted, but instead they are crazy competitive because they are tiny (like a fraction of the number of players in Diamond and Master now. Even Platinum is small. Platinum is now the equivalent of old Diamond/low Master). And no you don't want more decay. MMR decay is the worst. Have midterms or something that will keep you from playing games for a couple weeks? Well guess what, you get to play 20 meaningless games when you come back because you were too busy being responsible with school to play Starcraft. It's screwed up the entire ladder system pretty badly. I don't think I would stick with the game if I was starting playing it right now and being faced against people completely out of my league (both figuratively and literally in this case).
Hm that's very weird then because I didn't play any games last season, and this season I was placed in diamond after my first game which was a loss. Here's a link to my profile: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/656184/1/Mercy/
It has no information on my ladders for last season, which I assume confirms that I haven't played for a long time.
So is this maybe a bug or something?
I see what you mean about MMR decay being a pain under those circumstances. I am just having the opposite problem and it's really frustrating.
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Hm I guess i'm not the only one getting these win streaks then, came back from a break and played unranked for a bit and went 15-1, my last match was against someones first ever real game of starcraft (level 6, some ai and novice games then me).
Something does seem pretty busted.
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United States12175 Posts
On January 20 2014 12:53 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2014 10:11 Ben... wrote:On January 20 2014 10:00 Mercy13 wrote: I said about half a year. 20 weeks, to be specific. I think it would be easier to get back into it if I wasn't playing people a ton better than me, but I guess you guys disagree? Your MMR resets after not placing for a full season so the highest you could have been placed is (from what I remember) Platinum league, and with things how they are, that would probably be a stretch since most former Diamond players are now in Gold or even Silver. A half a year is more than a full season (It's roughly 2-3 seasons). Hence why people are doubting you. The ladder system may be busted, but not THAT busted. It would be more believable if you were in Gold or Silver, where the ladder actually is busted right now and people are experiencing what you described. The higher leagues are the only place where it isn't busted, but instead they are crazy competitive because they are tiny (like a fraction of the number of players in Diamond and Master now. Even Platinum is small. Platinum is now the equivalent of old Diamond/low Master). And no you don't want more decay. MMR decay is the worst. Have midterms or something that will keep you from playing games for a couple weeks? Well guess what, you get to play 20 meaningless games when you come back because you were too busy being responsible with school to play Starcraft. It's screwed up the entire ladder system pretty badly. I don't think I would stick with the game if I was starting playing it right now and being faced against people completely out of my league (both figuratively and literally in this case). Hm that's very weird then because I didn't play any games last season, and this season I was placed in diamond after my first game which was a loss. Here's a link to my profile: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/656184/1/Mercy/It has no information on my ladders for last season, which I assume confirms that I haven't played for a long time. So is this maybe a bug or something? I see what you mean about MMR decay being a pain under those circumstances. I am just having the opposite problem and it's really frustrating.
I think there's probably a bug in storing the status of some player profiles during a season roll. The way it's supposed to work is that if you played in the previous season, you just play one placement match and your previous season's MMR carries over, but if you didn't play in the previous season, you play five placement matches and start fresh. I've seen almost every variation happen to different people:
1. The player's profile correctly carries over his MMR from last season (most common). 2. The player's MMR is correctly reset due to not playing last season (second most common). 3. The player's MMR incorrectly carries over his MMR from the last recorded value, despite never playing in the previous season (uncommon, I think this may have happened to you). 4. The player's MMR incorrectly carries over from the last recorded value AND the decay timer resets with each season missed (rare, and this has caused high-MMR players to come back after a nine-month hiatus and find themselves in Bronze).
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For the love of god, people, stop spreading misleading crap just to make yourselves feel better about your losses. MMR Decay is legit and whatever "experiences" you've had are completely unrelated to its existence.
I used to be GM back in 2011 and when I play a full season I tend to be rank1 in Masters. I was inactive for a long period of time after season 1 of HotS, but I played a game here and there to get placed each season. As a result I suffered full duration MMR decays four or five times in a row. After so many decays it dropped me to _Diamond_ where I play the range between top diamond and low master and my games are pretty competitive (as in, I lose some games here and there). I'm an experienced RTS player (started with BW in 1999, A on ICCup, played SCII since day one), so inactivity affects me only a little bit, as playing the game comes to me naturally and automatically, minus up-to-date builds and timings. Considering the league distribution is messed up right now, it seems to me that the decay doesn't have much of an impact.
I'm really sorry guys, but I suppose you'll just have to learn to deal with your losses. If you meet "a master league player" in gold or plat, then if this guy spent the past 8 months playing one game a season, he is at most a very rusty mid-diamond player who was masters one time when HotS released and all forever diamond players got to taste an undeserved promotion for a season. You're not playing past GMs, you're playing people of your skill level, more or less.
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Czech Republic12115 Posts
On January 20 2014 15:52 tombigbimbom wrote: For the love of god, people, stop spreading misleading crap just to make yourselves feel better about your losses. MMR Decay is legit and whatever "experiences" you've had are completely unrelated to its existence.
I used to be GM back in 2011 and when I play a full season I tend to be rank1 in Masters. I was inactive for a long period of time after season 1 of HotS, but I played a game here and there to get placed each season. As a result I suffered full duration MMR decays four or five times in a row. After so many decays it dropped me to _Diamond_ where I play the range between top diamond and low master and my games are pretty competitive (as in, I lose some games here and there). I'm an experienced RTS player (started with BW in 1999, A on ICCup, played SCII since day one), so inactivity affects me only a little bit, as playing the game comes to me naturally and automatically, minus up-to-date builds and timings. Considering the league distribution is messed up right now, it seems to me that the decay doesn't have much of an impact.
I'm really sorry guys, but I suppose you'll just have to learn to deal with your losses. If you meet "a master league player" in gold or plat, then if this guy spent the past 8 months playing one game a season, he is at most a very rusty mid-diamond player who was masters one time when HotS released and all forever diamond players got to taste an undeserved promotion for a season. You're not playing past GMs, you're playing people of your skill level, more or less.
"It works for me fine, therefore it works for everyone fine. Case closed."
Well guess what, there are players, who experience terrible days on ladder and because Blizzard is doing literally nothing, those players are slowly stopping to play. Yaaaay. In my team there are 3 people who were placed in gold/platinum last season(also who are former masters being long inactive, like 3-4 games a season for a long time). All of them had over 70 % win ratio. They are describing their ladder play "roflt stomp around 50 % of my games, maybe more". I don't know how is their play now since I don't play, because when I am on the end of the roflstom it's not nice experience. I know, I'm not good, but why the hell I have to have score 3-27(or something like this)? I play over 200 games every season, the system should know what opponents I should get though I'm getting players level or two above my skill. I know I can't win all the time, but why am I losing all the time? Tell me, pretty please.
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On January 20 2014 19:07 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2014 15:52 tombigbimbom wrote: For the love of god, people, stop spreading misleading crap just to make yourselves feel better about your losses. MMR Decay is legit and whatever "experiences" you've had are completely unrelated to its existence.
I used to be GM back in 2011 and when I play a full season I tend to be rank1 in Masters. I was inactive for a long period of time after season 1 of HotS, but I played a game here and there to get placed each season. As a result I suffered full duration MMR decays four or five times in a row. After so many decays it dropped me to _Diamond_ where I play the range between top diamond and low master and my games are pretty competitive (as in, I lose some games here and there). I'm an experienced RTS player (started with BW in 1999, A on ICCup, played SCII since day one), so inactivity affects me only a little bit, as playing the game comes to me naturally and automatically, minus up-to-date builds and timings. Considering the league distribution is messed up right now, it seems to me that the decay doesn't have much of an impact.
I'm really sorry guys, but I suppose you'll just have to learn to deal with your losses. If you meet "a master league player" in gold or plat, then if this guy spent the past 8 months playing one game a season, he is at most a very rusty mid-diamond player who was masters one time when HotS released and all forever diamond players got to taste an undeserved promotion for a season. You're not playing past GMs, you're playing people of your skill level, more or less. "It works for me fine, therefore it works for everyone fine. Case closed." Well guess what, there are players, who experience terrible days on ladder and because Blizzard is doing literally nothing, those players are slowly stopping to play. Yaaaay. In my team there are 3 people who were placed in gold/platinum last season(also who are former masters being long inactive, like 3-4 games a season for a long time). All of them had over 70 % win ratio. They are describing their ladder play "roflt stomp around 50 % of my games, maybe more". I don't know how is their play now since I don't play, because when I am on the end of the roflstom it's not nice experience. I know, I'm not good, but why the hell I have to have score 3-27(or something like this)? I play over 200 games every season, the system should know what opponents I should get though I'm getting players level or two above my skill. I know I can't win all the time, but why am I losing all the time? Tell me, pretty please.
I'm sorry, but you're _literally_ wrong about the first part, so I suggest you http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065get yourself better informed first instead of jumping to wrong conclusions.
What you say doesn't prove anything to me, cause the ladder has always been so tight that as, e.g. a ~1500 master, I can stomp people at ~1400. And if you think that the release of HotS and the seasons that came after it didn't have an effect on the system, then you're also missing out on seeing the correct/full picture.
As for the rest, I guess we'll just have to assume that I'm in a different ladder system than you are or the rules are different for me... or you're exaggerating like most people here, which is why I'm not even going to comment on your numbers and statistics.
Based on your post I also think you're just in a habit of making excuses and you're quite likely blowing this thing out of proportion as part of that. I just very clearly told you how many full decays it took to drop from top masters to mid diamond, but you refuse to listen to facts and would rather believe that the decay is somehow working against you to the point where you can't win. Again, it's four/five full decays (over 4 seasons) and I wonder how many people have actually done that considering Masters used to be 2-4% of the population. We'd be talking about what, 0.25% of players, if even that many? For such a tiny fraction, they've really caused a lot of distress to make ladder so "terrible", that most people between Bronze and Platinum are "playing mostly Masters". You're barking up the wrong tree and convinced yourself that the sole reason for your losses is the ladder system treating you unfairly. Even here, a lot of people believe in some kind of a conspiracy or make up "evidence" to prove that this is somehow true.
Maybe it's just your playstyle that's gotten affected? Maybe you've changed your play because of this belief or you're so behind in meta that you can't figure our how to beat your opponents? Problem is, RTS games are really niche and not for everyone and there are reasons for that. To play a competitive game like SC2 you actually need to be objective, be critical of yourself and like to take on new challenges to improve your play. If all you're going to do is come up with excuses and jumping on the flavor of the week bandwagon of "this is why I can't win" like many others, then maybe it's not for you. Playing competitive RTS is hard and it's been fading away as a genre for a few years now for a reason.
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The 42%ish of bronze people make me really scared. How blizzard broke their ranking to that point ! platinium + diamond is inferior to 10 % of population. it is clearly wrong
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On January 20 2014 15:19 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2014 12:53 Mercy13 wrote:On January 20 2014 10:11 Ben... wrote:On January 20 2014 10:00 Mercy13 wrote: I said about half a year. 20 weeks, to be specific. I think it would be easier to get back into it if I wasn't playing people a ton better than me, but I guess you guys disagree? Your MMR resets after not placing for a full season so the highest you could have been placed is (from what I remember) Platinum league, and with things how they are, that would probably be a stretch since most former Diamond players are now in Gold or even Silver. A half a year is more than a full season (It's roughly 2-3 seasons). Hence why people are doubting you. The ladder system may be busted, but not THAT busted. It would be more believable if you were in Gold or Silver, where the ladder actually is busted right now and people are experiencing what you described. The higher leagues are the only place where it isn't busted, but instead they are crazy competitive because they are tiny (like a fraction of the number of players in Diamond and Master now. Even Platinum is small. Platinum is now the equivalent of old Diamond/low Master). And no you don't want more decay. MMR decay is the worst. Have midterms or something that will keep you from playing games for a couple weeks? Well guess what, you get to play 20 meaningless games when you come back because you were too busy being responsible with school to play Starcraft. It's screwed up the entire ladder system pretty badly. I don't think I would stick with the game if I was starting playing it right now and being faced against people completely out of my league (both figuratively and literally in this case). Hm that's very weird then because I didn't play any games last season, and this season I was placed in diamond after my first game which was a loss. Here's a link to my profile: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/656184/1/Mercy/It has no information on my ladders for last season, which I assume confirms that I haven't played for a long time. So is this maybe a bug or something? I see what you mean about MMR decay being a pain under those circumstances. I am just having the opposite problem and it's really frustrating. I think there's probably a bug in storing the status of some player profiles during a season roll. The way it's supposed to work is that if you played in the previous season, you just play one placement match and your previous season's MMR carries over, but if you didn't play in the previous season, you play five placement matches and start fresh. I've seen almost every variation happen to different people: 1. The player's profile correctly carries over his MMR from last season (most common). 2. The player's MMR is correctly reset due to not playing last season (second most common). 3. The player's MMR incorrectly carries over his MMR from the last recorded value, despite never playing in the previous season (uncommon, I think this may have happened to you). 4. The player's MMR incorrectly carries over from the last recorded value AND the decay timer resets with each season missed (rare, and this has caused high-MMR players to come back after a nine-month hiatus and find themselves in Bronze).
Thanks for the response. Hopefully 2.1 will fix some of these issues.
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Czech Republic12115 Posts
On January 20 2014 19:55 tombigbimbom wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2014 19:07 deacon.frost wrote:On January 20 2014 15:52 tombigbimbom wrote: For the love of god, people, stop spreading misleading crap just to make yourselves feel better about your losses. MMR Decay is legit and whatever "experiences" you've had are completely unrelated to its existence.
I used to be GM back in 2011 and when I play a full season I tend to be rank1 in Masters. I was inactive for a long period of time after season 1 of HotS, but I played a game here and there to get placed each season. As a result I suffered full duration MMR decays four or five times in a row. After so many decays it dropped me to _Diamond_ where I play the range between top diamond and low master and my games are pretty competitive (as in, I lose some games here and there). I'm an experienced RTS player (started with BW in 1999, A on ICCup, played SCII since day one), so inactivity affects me only a little bit, as playing the game comes to me naturally and automatically, minus up-to-date builds and timings. Considering the league distribution is messed up right now, it seems to me that the decay doesn't have much of an impact.
I'm really sorry guys, but I suppose you'll just have to learn to deal with your losses. If you meet "a master league player" in gold or plat, then if this guy spent the past 8 months playing one game a season, he is at most a very rusty mid-diamond player who was masters one time when HotS released and all forever diamond players got to taste an undeserved promotion for a season. You're not playing past GMs, you're playing people of your skill level, more or less. "It works for me fine, therefore it works for everyone fine. Case closed." Well guess what, there are players, who experience terrible days on ladder and because Blizzard is doing literally nothing, those players are slowly stopping to play. Yaaaay. In my team there are 3 people who were placed in gold/platinum last season(also who are former masters being long inactive, like 3-4 games a season for a long time). All of them had over 70 % win ratio. They are describing their ladder play "roflt stomp around 50 % of my games, maybe more". I don't know how is their play now since I don't play, because when I am on the end of the roflstom it's not nice experience. I know, I'm not good, but why the hell I have to have score 3-27(or something like this)? I play over 200 games every season, the system should know what opponents I should get though I'm getting players level or two above my skill. I know I can't win all the time, but why am I losing all the time? Tell me, pretty please. I'm sorry, but you're _literally_ wrong about the first part, so I suggest you http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065get yourself better informed first instead of jumping to wrong conclusions. What you say doesn't prove anything to me, cause the ladder has always been so tight that as, e.g. a ~1500 master, I can stomp people at ~1400. And if you think that the release of HotS and the seasons that came after it didn't have an effect on the system, then you're also missing out on seeing the correct/full picture. As for the rest, I guess we'll just have to assume that I'm in a different ladder system than you are or the rules are different for me... or you're exaggerating like most people here, which is why I'm not even going to comment on your numbers and statistics. Based on your post I also think you're just in a habit of making excuses and you're quite likely blowing this thing out of proportion as part of that. I just very clearly told you how many full decays it took to drop from top masters to mid diamond, but you refuse to listen to facts and would rather believe that the decay is somehow working against you to the point where you can't win. Again, it's four/five full decays (over 4 seasons) and I wonder how many people have actually done that considering Masters used to be 2-4% of the population. We'd be talking about what, 0.25% of players, if even that many? For such a tiny fraction, they've really caused a lot of distress to make ladder so "terrible", that most people between Bronze and Platinum are "playing mostly Masters". You're barking up the wrong tree and convinced yourself that the sole reason for your losses is the ladder system treating you unfairly. Even here, a lot of people believe in some kind of a conspiracy or make up "evidence" to prove that this is somehow true. Maybe it's just your playstyle that's gotten affected? Maybe you've changed your play because of this belief or you're so behind in meta that you can't figure our how to beat your opponents? Problem is, RTS games are really niche and not for everyone and there are reasons for that. To play a competitive game like SC2 you actually need to be objective, be critical of yourself and like to take on new challenges to improve your play. If all you're going to do is come up with excuses and jumping on the flavor of the week bandwagon of "this is why I can't win" like many others, then maybe it's not for you. Playing competitive RTS is hard and it's been fading away as a genre for a few years now for a reason.
For the love of me stop with these BS. I'm critical to myself. I KNOW I WILL LOSE. Surprisingly I know I will lose 50 % of my games and it's OK to me. But I want to have a chance to win those games! When I am in diamond and I have losing streak and I receive a former grand master for the next game??? WTF?(for the record, I've never been to master league) How am I supposed to win against a player, who has been master for his whole sc2 life and the last season he/she got even into GM? I've never been to master league but yeah, after a losing streak here, have another master player so you can get better(which can't happen - the same way Malta football teams won't get better if you pair them with elite ChL teams). These players could beat me with pure ling macro game(and some of them did). You know the great feeling after you lose to ling only, because opponents is so much better? Yaaay. I think it's the same feeling as the T players get when they meet P. All I want is to enjoy my games = I have a chance to win every game a play. And that's not happening. I don't care why - if it's decay, change to MM/MMR or just because Blizzard hates me and I received "roflstomp this kid" tag.
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Been playing 20ish games on NA in gold, maybe 2 of those were legit gold the rest ex 5x+ masters and some ex diamonds. Seems legit Davie, working as intended :> Good thing I'm not legit gold myself; I would have stopped playing. Or maybe they wanted to mock the "masters NA = gold EU" trolls? :D
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Happy to say I've uninstalled sc2. Memories will always be there though, when shit was good.
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On January 21 2014 00:35 lessQQmorePEWPEW wrote: Happy to say I've uninstalled sc2. Memories will always be there though, when shit was good. Should be fixed tomorrow, but okay.
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So is the patch thats going live this week going to fix whatever is wrong with the ladder? What exactly is wrong with it?
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On January 20 2014 19:55 tombigbimbom wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2014 19:07 deacon.frost wrote:On January 20 2014 15:52 tombigbimbom wrote: For the love of god, people, stop spreading misleading crap just to make yourselves feel better about your losses. MMR Decay is legit and whatever "experiences" you've had are completely unrelated to its existence.
I used to be GM back in 2011 and when I play a full season I tend to be rank1 in Masters. I was inactive for a long period of time after season 1 of HotS, but I played a game here and there to get placed each season. As a result I suffered full duration MMR decays four or five times in a row. After so many decays it dropped me to _Diamond_ where I play the range between top diamond and low master and my games are pretty competitive (as in, I lose some games here and there). I'm an experienced RTS player (started with BW in 1999, A on ICCup, played SCII since day one), so inactivity affects me only a little bit, as playing the game comes to me naturally and automatically, minus up-to-date builds and timings. Considering the league distribution is messed up right now, it seems to me that the decay doesn't have much of an impact.
I'm really sorry guys, but I suppose you'll just have to learn to deal with your losses. If you meet "a master league player" in gold or plat, then if this guy spent the past 8 months playing one game a season, he is at most a very rusty mid-diamond player who was masters one time when HotS released and all forever diamond players got to taste an undeserved promotion for a season. You're not playing past GMs, you're playing people of your skill level, more or less. "It works for me fine, therefore it works for everyone fine. Case closed." Well guess what, there are players, who experience terrible days on ladder and because Blizzard is doing literally nothing, those players are slowly stopping to play. Yaaaay. In my team there are 3 people who were placed in gold/platinum last season(also who are former masters being long inactive, like 3-4 games a season for a long time). All of them had over 70 % win ratio. They are describing their ladder play "roflt stomp around 50 % of my games, maybe more". I don't know how is their play now since I don't play, because when I am on the end of the roflstom it's not nice experience. I know, I'm not good, but why the hell I have to have score 3-27(or something like this)? I play over 200 games every season, the system should know what opponents I should get though I'm getting players level or two above my skill. I know I can't win all the time, but why am I losing all the time? Tell me, pretty please. I'm sorry, but you're _literally_ wrong about the first part, so I suggest you http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065get yourself better informed first instead of jumping to wrong conclusions. What you say doesn't prove anything to me, cause the ladder has always been so tight that as, e.g. a ~1500 master, I can stomp people at ~1400. And if you think that the release of HotS and the seasons that came after it didn't have an effect on the system, then you're also missing out on seeing the correct/full picture. As for the rest, I guess we'll just have to assume that I'm in a different ladder system than you are or the rules are different for me... or you're exaggerating like most people here, which is why I'm not even going to comment on your numbers and statistics. Based on your post I also think you're just in a habit of making excuses and you're quite likely blowing this thing out of proportion as part of that. I just very clearly told you how many full decays it took to drop from top masters to mid diamond, but you refuse to listen to facts and would rather believe that the decay is somehow working against you to the point where you can't win. Again, it's four/five full decays (over 4 seasons) and I wonder how many people have actually done that considering Masters used to be 2-4% of the population. We'd be talking about what, 0.25% of players, if even that many? For such a tiny fraction, they've really caused a lot of distress to make ladder so "terrible", that most people between Bronze and Platinum are "playing mostly Masters". You're barking up the wrong tree and convinced yourself that the sole reason for your losses is the ladder system treating you unfairly. Even here, a lot of people believe in some kind of a conspiracy or make up "evidence" to prove that this is somehow true. Maybe it's just your playstyle that's gotten affected? Maybe you've changed your play because of this belief or you're so behind in meta that you can't figure our how to beat your opponents? Problem is, RTS games are really niche and not for everyone and there are reasons for that. To play a competitive game like SC2 you actually need to be objective, be critical of yourself and like to take on new challenges to improve your play. If all you're going to do is come up with excuses and jumping on the flavor of the week bandwagon of "this is why I can't win" like many others, then maybe it's not for you. Playing competitive RTS is hard and it's been fading away as a genre for a few years now for a reason. Sorry to tell you Tom, but you are wrong regarding many things. MMR decay is a real thing with considerable effects. It affects players both directly and indirectly - if you are inactive for more than 2 weeks, you will be directly affected. You will also be affected by your opponents indirectly as some of them have been decayed + pretty much all have faced decayed players. The league distribution is logically mainly messed up due to the decay (league offsets and thresholds have not been changed since June. Blizzard is expected to change them in patch 2.1).
There is more than plenty of data regarding MMR decay from several seasons that supports what is said in the original post. Plenty of research has been put into this by me and by others. And some have access to more data than the others. For example I have access to all MMR tool data (several hundreds of thousands matches).
The max decay is worth roughly of 20 loss and not 'few loss' like Blizzard says in their situation report. Blizzard has used so called 'marketing / PR language' in their articles for years. They often downplay 'negative sounding things' by finding viewpoints from which the negative things sound more positive. For example decay per day could indeed be described as 'worth few loss'. Of course this misleads most people who blindly believe what Blizzard has written & think it applies to the general case.
Many GMs / high master MMR range players (including yourself) do not understand MMR decay based on their own experiences. They have had so high MMR that it takes several max decays for them to be demoted diamond. Master league (+ gm included) is many times larger than other leagues regarding its MMR range. For example on EU it takes ~2.3 times max decay for a player to drop from bottom border of GM to bottom border of master. From very top of GM to low border of master it would potentially take more than 5 times max decay. Also the situation in high master / gm range is much different than in lower leagues. The player population there is very scarce and active. Population in lower leagues is many times larger + considerable amount of the players go inactive & get decayed each season. There has been considerable skill differences between different MMR ranges - Like you said typical GM beats typical high master with ease, typical high master beats typical mid master with ease, typical mid master beats low master, typical low master beats diamond, typical diamond beats... Over a period of several seasons lower leagues have become melting pots where wildly different skilled people share similar MMRs.
Also remember that people can 'chain decay' several max decays per season. This happens when you play games then go inactive for more than 4 weeks and then come back & play at least one game or more (and do not reach your old MMR level). Then go inactive for more than 4 weeks again. And when you come back, you have experienced second max decay.
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I think MMR decay is a good way to adjust for your skill decreasing but what if you start playing again and get back fast to your initial skilllevel?
Does the 'promotion' come faster if you were severely affected by MMR decay? Or is it always the same speed?
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On January 23 2014 04:19 zerotol wrote: I think MMR decay is a good way to adjust for your skill decreasing but what if you start playing again and get back fast to your initial skilllevel?
Does the 'promotion' come faster if you were severely affected by MMR decay? Or is it always the same speed? MMR changes in rapid pace only if you have just started from blank MMR (5 placement matches). Around the 25th match (or little more) the change speed normalizes. Most people who face decay have already played more games. Thus their MMR changes in 'normal' speed after the decay. Maximum decay is roughly comparable to 20 losses. Thus you need to win roughly 20 games more than you lose to overcome it.
Of course this was the case before patch 2.1. Based on Blizzard's articles they only adjusted league offsets/thresholds. But time will tell if there were other changes.
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On January 23 2014 04:38 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2014 04:19 zerotol wrote: I think MMR decay is a good way to adjust for your skill decreasing but what if you start playing again and get back fast to your initial skilllevel?
Does the 'promotion' come faster if you were severely affected by MMR decay? Or is it always the same speed? MMR changes in rapid pace only if you have just started from blank MMR (5 placement matches). Around the 25th match (or little more) the change speed normalizes. Most people who face decay have already played more games. Thus their MMR changes in 'normal' speed after the decay. Maximum decay is roughly comparable to 20 losses. Thus you need to win roughly 20 games more than you lose to overcome it. Of course this was the case before patch 2.1. Based on Blizzard's articles they only adjusted league offsets/thresholds. But time will tell if there were other changes.
Isn't that the real issue with the decay? It should in some way hold account with your old MMR so you get promoted to the right league again much faster?
That would take away a lot of the annoyment people have with playing 'below their normal league', and why it takes ages to get it fixed again.
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the point is the massive amount of people who got "decay'd"
platinum is littered with perennial masters who are facing each other at 50% win ratios ---in platinum.. preventing promotions....
it's not as simple as promoting people faster based on win percentages.. because then you're still running in place because each person is still roughly 50%.
You would have to curve the points awarded or taken based on previous ladder finishes of each player... good luck with that.
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Anyone who's gotten promoted after their first games today as was advertised? None of the players in my clan including me got promoted after 5+ games. We're all old diamond players being in gold/platinum this season. Something tells me that there's something wrong with their adjustment.
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Bliz is going to have to do an mmr wipe to get this fixed. They are trying to work with corrupted data. It isnt going to work...
They've completely wrecked their data. I have no idea how they can expect to keep data that is now basically useless, alter some means by which it is collected and expect it to fix itself...
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It seems like over a couple of seasons most players have been moved down a league (including myself) which sucks because I use the ladder as one means of measuring my progress and what it tells me is that I have regressed and not progressed in my play, which is demotivating if you perceive it that way, even though I know the world is not that black and white. But I guess me and every one else needs to suck it up, because I am not sure its an issue that can/will/or maybe should be fixed. We will see. I feel you people.
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edit:made same post twice by accident
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On January 23 2014 08:02 Firkraag8 wrote: Anyone who's gotten promoted after their first games today as was advertised? None of the players in my clan including me got promoted after 5+ games. We're all old diamond players being in gold/platinum this season. Something tells me that there's something wrong with their adjustment. I'm an old masters player having the same problem it's acting like I'm completely new to the game regardless of my outrageous winstreak. This whole system has discouraged me from playing because I am either facing diamond/masters players or players way below my skill level.
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After going through pre- and post-patch profiles for lots of accounts, reading different forums, checking how upper leagues filled from nios.kr (during first day on NA: 37 new masters, 48 new diamonds, 140 new plats. 2457 played their placement matches, which means that considerable amount of higher league entrants were likely from placement matches) and checking MMR tool's initial post-patch data, I have had a feeling that the league offset / threshold changes were either small or non-existent. Kaivax just posted something on US forums that hints it potentially was the latter (even if text is formulated so that there could have been something in the patch itself, but nothing after):
Kaivax ( http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/11354455348?page=16#303 ):
Just wanted to check in here and confirm for you: we've been closely monitoring the ladders today, and will continue to tomorrow.
At this time, we haven't made any ladder adjustments post-patch in any region. Our primary focus, of course, has been deploying the patch smoothly.
Still, we've got Southeast Asia / Australia / New Zealand tomorrow, and I assure you any ladder concerns you've given us feedback on have been received, and considered, and figure into the analysis we're doing.
Please keep that constructive feedback coming.
<3 Nevertheless I will likely go through the MMR tool data during the weekend if it gives more info about the situation & potential changes (hopefully amount of collected data has multiplied several times by then)...
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Thanks for your posts on this, Korona. You and Excalibur. You've both been informative and really helpful.
As for me, I continue to ladder. Sometimes I get smashed but I've also had a couple of good games against former Diamond players. When it gets too much, I just go unranked. It does suck, though, I agree. But, I work in an area where systems issues can run deep and take a while to fix. So, if the problem is a fundamental one, and perhaps even more likely they are still not sure where the source of the fault lies, then it is going to be a while before we get an understandable ladder system back.
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Doesn't this strike anyone else as a clear case of "treating the symptoms rather than the cause"?
Everyone being in the wrong league is only a symptom. The far worse symptom is poor matchmaking, and the cause is deflation. They haven't actually done anything about these last two. Treating symptoms may give a temporary relief, but ultimately it makes the situation worse (unless of course you are giving only palliative care, and I really hope Blizzard doesn't see SC2 as something that just needs to be made comfortable on its death bed!).
----------x----------
Anyway, it seems to me that as things stand, in say Gold league and below, when you are paired with an opponent that opponent can have a *real* skill level anything from Masters to Bronze. This is probably the primary factor determining the outcome of games, not the actions you take in the match! If it were not the primary outcome then that would mean that a player in a lower league could play a player in a higher league and actually expect to beat them a significant percent of the time. I think its generally accepted that when matchmaking is working correctly a player that is one league higher should be winning virtually every game (obviously when matchmaking is working correctly they wouldn't face each other, but you see my point).
I feel a back of the envelope calculation coming on:
Korona has shown you need 20 wins to counter one period of deflation. Lets say you suffer just one deflation period so you need 20 wins to get back to your *true* skill. In lower leagues (Bronze-Gold "zone of hell") there are many people who have deflated and everyone who hasn't is playing against them and therefore also has their MMR affected. Ergo virtually everyone has incorrect MMR. Lets say 90% of the time you face someone with incorrect MMR, 10% you do not. Now, you are 20 wins away from your *true* skill, so in those 10% of games you have a 100% win rate. In the other 90% the outcome is effectively determined before you as your opponents have incorrect MMR, so you have a 50% win rate. This gives a total win rate of 55%. I think it is quite common to see people with this kind of win rate.
That 5% of games is where you get your 20 wins in order to get out of the "zone of hell" and return your MMR to your *true* skill. That would mean you need 400 games in total to counteract the deflation period you experienced. This value of 400 is presumably what Blizzard refers to as "a few games".
To me that seems insane, or have I made some glaring error?
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United States12175 Posts
Well, I think you're probably overestimating the number of real games necessary to counteract the max decay. I don't think you'll hit a decayed player in 90% of your games, since the decayed population is probably closer to 20 to 30%. In addition, the reason those players have decayed in the first place is that they're not queuing for games, so the likelihood you'll encounter one is automatically lower than a regular, active player. That is, even if 30% of Bronze players have experienced decay, your chances of actually queuing against a decayed player are less than 30% because they're not playing regularly. Still, your point is well taken.
What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range.
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On January 23 2014 09:11 almart wrote: This whole system has discouraged me from playing because I am either facing diamond/masters players or players way below my skill level.
Pretty much the same for me honestly. Although I wasn't as high as you were. And I probably dropped way further.
My most recent "batch" of playing was around 20 games over a couple of days and I hit a 90% win ratio. Two losses, one against an unscouted all-in from a player who used to be on my level but had also decayed and one when I thought I'd be silly and I cannon rushed a Terran who turned out to be from a higher league than I used to be and actually knew how to respond (whilst yelling BM all the time but whatever).
I can't imagine it was much fun for those I was smashing.
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On January 23 2014 23:21 Excalibur_Z wrote:What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range.
That would make it kind of hard for a decayed player to advance back into his real league wouldn't it? If he only plays other decayed people that is. The best option would be to just remove MMR decay, we were fine without it.
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United States12175 Posts
On January 23 2014 23:57 Firkraag8 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2014 23:21 Excalibur_Z wrote:What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range. That would make it kind of hard for a decayed player to advance back into his real league wouldn't it? If he only plays other decayed people that is. The best option would be to just remove MMR decay, we were fine without it.
That's true, I imagine the whole point is that they don't play against other decayed players for exactly that reason. It's far too early for me to be doing any critical thinking, it seems.
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On January 24 2014 00:01 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2014 23:57 Firkraag8 wrote:On January 23 2014 23:21 Excalibur_Z wrote:What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range. That would make it kind of hard for a decayed player to advance back into his real league wouldn't it? If he only plays other decayed people that is. The best option would be to just remove MMR decay, we were fine without it. That's true, I imagine the whole point is that they don't play against other decayed players for exactly that reason. It's far too early for me to be doing any critical thinking, it seems.
They have to look at things logically rather than reactively, and I'm not convinced they are doing that. It seems like they see the primary problem as being people are upset because they are in a lower league, and they don't like to have a whiny player base. That may be a secondary problem but its not the main one! The issue is 99% to do with people with very different skill levels being matched together because they have somehow got the same MMR. Its exacerbated now because we have months of decay pushing the ladder further away from a skill rating. It is surely fundamental to a skill rating being effective that the only input it takes is based on match results.
They have to fix this problem by removing decay, and probably they now have to reset everyone's (or Gold and lower) MMR and have us all start from 5 placements again. Given that they won't even admit there is an issue I can't see them ever doing this, or if they do they will have to fabricate some other reason for why they are doing it to save face. Only after they have got us all back to our proper MMR can any reset of league boundaries be effective.
Alternately they really do see no issue with decay, which would be in-line with their statements about how they now see returning players hitting 50%. When they post about this it seems like they are patting themselves on the back for making a good call on introducing decay and perfectly solving the issue right off the bat. Hence they are diametrically opposed to reversing it because they are so proud of doing it in the first place.
Should decay exist? Or rather, should some consideration to returning players exist?
Well, is there a problem? Lets see the data for how bad of a losing streak these players really end up with? Next, you could presumably have MMR decay, but only if it were a much much smaller effect than it currently is. Perhaps requiring longer before it starts happening (so fewer players get it), being slower to take effect and giving a bonus to MMR changes for the next few games so it can be counteracted faster. However, it seems to me this is catering for something unnecessary. We don't cater for people on losing streaks because they are having an off day, so why this? Better not to interfere with the system at all.
Six years on from Blizzard refusing requests to make MMR unhidden and we're still lurching from crisis to crisis as a result of that "decision".
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On January 24 2014 01:52 Spirit09 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2014 00:01 Excalibur_Z wrote:On January 23 2014 23:57 Firkraag8 wrote:On January 23 2014 23:21 Excalibur_Z wrote:What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range. That would make it kind of hard for a decayed player to advance back into his real league wouldn't it? If he only plays other decayed people that is. The best option would be to just remove MMR decay, we were fine without it. That's true, I imagine the whole point is that they don't play against other decayed players for exactly that reason. It's far too early for me to be doing any critical thinking, it seems. They have to look at things logically rather than reactively, and I'm not convinced they are doing that. It seems like they see the primary problem as being people are upset because they are in a lower league, and they don't like to have a whiny player base. That may be a secondary problem but its not the main one! The issue is 99% to do with people with very different skill levels being matched together because they have somehow got the same MMR. Its exacerbated now because we have months of decay pushing the ladder further away from a skill rating. It is surely fundamental to a skill rating being effective that the only input it takes is based on match results. They have to fix this problem by removing decay, and probably they now have to reset everyone's (or Gold and lower) MMR and have us all start from 5 placements again. Given that they won't even admit there is an issue I can't see them ever doing this, or if they do they will have to fabricate some other reason for why they are doing it to save face. Only after they have got us all back to our proper MMR can any reset of league boundaries be effective. Alternately they really do see no issue with decay, which would be in-line with their statements about how they now see returning players hitting 50%. When they post about this it seems like they are patting themselves on the back for making a good call on introducing decay and perfectly solving the issue right off the bat. Hence they are diametrically opposed to reversing it because they are so proud of doing it in the first place. Should decay exist? Or rather, should some consideration to returning players exist? Well, is there a problem? Lets see the data for how bad of a losing streak these players really end up with? Next, you could presumably have MMR decay, but only if it were a much much smaller effect than it currently is. Perhaps requiring longer before it starts happening (so fewer players get it), being slower to take effect and giving a bonus to MMR changes for the next few games so it can be counteracted faster. However, it seems to me this is catering for something unnecessary. We don't cater for people on losing streaks because they are having an off day, so why this? Better not to interfere with the system at all. Six years on from Blizzard refusing requests to make MMR unhidden and we're still lurching from crisis to crisis as a result of that "decision".
I mentioned this a couple days ago, but for some reason decay didn't affect my account during a 6 or 7 month break. As a result, when I started playing again I was placed right back in diamond, and have been facing people much better than me. Currently I've won 4 out of 33 games, many of them absolute curb stompings. I'm having to force myself to play, and it's not very fun. Maybe my experience is unusual though and most players coming off a break aren't as awful as I am : )
Anyway, some amount of decay may have prevented this, though it sounds like the system blizzard implemented isn't very good.
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MMR decay seems like a rotten idea. You expect people's skill to decay after a time when you have no idea if they played on another account, played another format (2v2), had their hand broken and are returning from the injury or just come back after exams. All of those should have wildly different treatment.
Frankly, decay should not exist, and I would fix it by just asking people returning from an extended break (more than one month, say) to tell the system using a simple radio-button choices form what went on and how they should be treated : one league lower? Half a league lower ? Re-evaluated completely (throw away past MMR, redo placement)? Unchanged?
Sometime trusting people is the best idea.
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On January 23 2014 23:21 Excalibur_Z wrote: What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range. Actually it might happen in practice quite often. I am not meaning that the matchmaker searches for decayed opponents, but still matches decayed players against each others for other reasons, if decay happened mid season and the decayed player became active before end of the season. As mentioned earlier the matchmaker seems to prefer opponents from your own league (it is still matching based on MMR, but there seems to be some kind of league prioritization).
Let's take one of my personal character accounts as an example (so I don't have to spent time to find some other good example). Last time it faced max decay was in the end of season 14 in August. I had played plenty of matches in June and then did not play for 56 days with that account. That account was in diamond league and its MMR was hovering just above the bottom border of diamond. I started playing with it again when ladder lock period started in August to spent its bonus pool. Thus that account faced max decay and its MMR was dropped to high gold (near platinum border). At the time I did not know about the decay or how it worked and thought for some time that the account still had diamond range MMR.
I played 27 matches after the inactivity period before the end of the season. 15 of the opponents were diamonds, 8 were unranked players, 2 were plats, 1 was gold, 1 was unknown. From the gold player it was possible to calculate my MMR (indicated high gold MMR). So 15 of my opponents were diamonds whose MMRs were somewhere close to high gold range. It is likely that many of those diamond opponents had been decayed (to drop a league range in MMR would normally require roughly 20 losses more than wins. Only one of those diamonds had ~20 loss more than wins, few had ~10 loss more, but most had about the same amount of wins as losses). I even played roughly with 50 % win-rate so the opponent quality did not seem that off, even if some opponents seemed like 'free wins' (I had been active with other accounts during my 'inactivity period' so I was not that rusty). In the start of following season I was placed in platinum (had risen with those 27 matches to plat MMR range before the end of the season) and most my opponents became other platinums (mix of normal plats & decayed players).
Nowadays it is not as clear cut regarding the opponents. I checked quite a lot of decayed accounts from last season's data, and their opponents were more mixed regarding their leagues (still it seemed to prefer people from their own league). This potentially could either be due a) there are less active players and to provide fast matchmaking the matchmaker needs to pick close MMR opponents from other leagues more often, b) potential fine-tuning of the 'league prioritization' of the matchmaker.
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What would be the benefit for prioritising selection of an opponent on league? Do you think this has some advantage or perhaps they just do it to reduce the number of people upset because they lost to someone in a higher league without understanding that they had the same MMR as them?
It would seem like there are easier solutions. Not hiding MMR and not having things like bonus pool. But even easier is just to introduce lots of tool tips that appear when hovering on items in game that explain things. I suggested early on that Blizz should have more in depth information on things like rank, league, bonus pool, inactivity (obviously), placement games, promotion etc etc that was available in game and it might reduce the number of people upset and venting on forums. They asked for constructive feedback, but never seemed to respond when it was offered.
I honestly get the sense that Blizzard really don't like to have a "community" and don't have the first clue of how to work with one...
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On January 24 2014 04:07 Spirit09 wrote: What would be the benefit for prioritising selection of an opponent on league? Do you think this has some advantage or perhaps they just do it to reduce the number of people upset because they lost to someone in a higher league without understanding that they had the same MMR as them? Personal view: To further obfuscate the skill ratings. Blizzard seems to want to hide the actual skill ratings (make comparisons between players hard) and aim that players focus on their visible ladder leagues, ranks & points.
Before HotS players could often deduct when their MMR was closing a league border (opponents became mixed from different leagues). Now you usually cannot deduct this based on leagues of your opponents.
In the past people who did not understand how the matchmaking system worked often complained when they were matched against players from different leagues. They did not realize that their opponents usually had comparable MMRs as them as they only saw the league badges. Now as the MMR decay was added into the mix, people would immediately notice a change in their opponents after the decay. This would lead to even more complaints than before. Obviously they also wanted that the players would not know about the MMR decay (They did not mention it when they originally published info regarding the changes to the HotS ladder system. It also took them nearly 4 months to admit it even existed after the community had deducted it by themselves).
-- Edit: Also based on MMR tool records it seems that nowadays (after HotS) people are immediately promoted when they pass league thresholds. Before HotS promotions happened after the player had stabilized in the new league range (based on MMR moving average). Now the speculative part (have not put effort to actually verifying this): If opponent leagues are prioritized, then when the player approaches the upper border of his current league, he starts on average gaining less MMR from wins & lose more from losses. This would happen if he is mostly matched against opponents from his league. Such opponents would on average have equal MMR or lower MMR than the player. If the opponent had higher MMR, he would potentially have already passed the upper league threshold and been promoted. This would sort of replace the 'stabilization' requirement of the past (you need to be 'better' than top of your league to advance aka having higher win-rate against them).
To 'graphically' present this speculation ('U' = upper league low border, 'P' = players MMR, '.' = search range regarding MMR with respect of same league players, 'L' = lower league high border):
U...P.............. L And the full search range without prioritization would be:
..........U...P.............. L
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well i have been demoralised by this system now.
I used to play some in WOL got platinum max, but didnt play that much
now i start in HOTS and am even worse then before, i had to play 5 games won 4 lost 1 (played over some weeks don't know if that had influence) so my MMR should have reset
i get placed in silver but i start to play and get a diamond - high plat - diamond.
They just smash me. Why am i getting these opponents ? I was never around this MMR.?? This isn't fun at all
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On January 24 2014 06:08 zerotol wrote:well i have been demoralised by this system now. I used to play some in WOL got platinum max, but didnt play that much now i start in HOTS and am even worse then before, i had to play 5 games won 4 lost 1 (played over some weeks don't know if that had influence) so my MMR should have reset i get placed in silver but i start to play and get a diamond - high plat - diamond. They just smash me. Why am i getting these opponents ? I was never around this MMR.?? This isn't fun at all
If it means anything, just keep playing. It sucks, but in the end you should stabilize to opponents of comparable skill level.
It may take a while, though. At least this was my experience.
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Hi, I've created a petition on Blizzard forums asking to make MMR visible (EDIT: but they deleted it! So forget it.)
Thanks.
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On January 24 2014 15:01 aZealot wrote: If it means anything, just keep playing. It sucks, but in the end you should stabilize to opponents of comparable skill level.
It may take a while, though. At least this was my experience.
I agree this is the only way you can approach this... but that said I'm not convinced you can stabilise (as you could in WoL) unless you get into some high league like current Platinum or something.
In Gold or below it seems to me that there is such a massive range of skill of players that the outcomes of my matches are highly random. I watch the replays and when I win its usually because my opponent made fatal unforced errors. When I lose its usually because my opponent played at a much higher standard than me. I personally believe few games outcomes are as a result of my skill or lack of... Excal says I've overestimated, he's probably right, and clearly I have no data, just feelings, but its hard to shake this view when I look at the replays to analyse what happened.
And even if you do stabilise what does that even mean? Leagues have lost all meaning and rank never had any to begin with. Blizzard seem as determined as ever to deny any real view of comparative skill despite their protestations to the contrary, now they've added poor matchmaking to the mix too. I just can't understand their point of view. I don't think they are stupid. I don't know what to think. They must obviously believe this is the right approach, yet it is so plainly the exact opposite of the right approach... Best guess is they made some honest bad decisions early on and they have the most stubborn streak of any company in history, their sticking to the ship no matter how badly its taking on water and be damned if they're going to change course. Even this I find hard to believe though. In any case, even giving them the benefit of the doubt you have to wonder about their risk assessment... or lack of.
Apologies. I'll be sure to make this my very last rant post!
On January 24 2014 21:51 KerriganSon wrote: Hi, I've created a petition on Blizzard forums asking to make MMR visible (EDIT: but they deleted it! So forget it.)
What are they so desperate to hide.
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Ok, me and 3 clanmates all got promoted at the same time a few games ago to where we should be. I think they did something on EU. It's funny because we were all just grinding some ladder and now we're in the same Diamond division since we all got at basically the same time.
We are the [CORE] players in this division if it helps anyone with data: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/260647/1/Firkraag/ladder/152089
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Yes I can confirm what the above poster said. I too got promoted (around midnight this night). When I checked my division, about 60 out of a 100 players (including me) were at the exact same points total: 415. Even though I had around 500 points in my previous division one league lower. It seems like some predetermined points total. Also in the general chat at that time there were quite a few others that got promoted, most of them had quite good win/loss ratios (like I do too). A friend of mine in the same league did not get promoted. He has a winrate closer to 50/50.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Blizzard implemented some new adjustments and it resulted in some 'mass' promotions for those who were doing relatively well in their leagues.
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On January 25 2014 09:31 Firkraag8 wrote:Ok, me and 3 clanmates all got promoted at the same time a few games ago to where we should be. I think they did something on EU. It's funny because we were all just grinding some ladder and now we're in the same Diamond division since we all got at basically the same time. We are the [CORE] players in this division if it helps anyone with data: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/260647/1/Firkraag/ladder/152089
I got promoted to diamond again as well, with around a 60 percent winrate. Had a good ladder run, but I guess it could be blizzard's patch.
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Right after the ladder change players in gm are getting a ton of points per win (20-26 without bonus pool even in cases where it should be <10 for ex. see sage/kangho/minigun, esp minigun cuz he's beating low mmr players while being rank 1 by a good margin and getting pts as if the opponent was favored) and no points for loss (0 to 2)
So basically giving a fake bonus pool or something? Not sure if intentional
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United States12175 Posts
On January 25 2014 12:07 GunLove wrote: Yes I can confirm what the above poster said. I too got promoted (around midnight this night). When I checked my division, about 60 out of a 100 players (including me) were at the exact same points total: 415. Even though I had around 500 points in my previous division one league lower. It seems like some predetermined points total. Also in the general chat at that time there were quite a few others that got promoted, most of them had quite good win/loss ratios (like I do too). A friend of mine in the same league did not get promoted. He has a winrate closer to 50/50.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Blizzard implemented some new adjustments and it resulted in some 'mass' promotions for those who were doing relatively well in their leagues.
Anytime you change leagues your points are reset to 73 + spent bonus pool. If a lot of you had the same amount of points, my guess is you had no bonus pool left and the bonus pool total was 343 for your league =)
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On January 25 2014 12:07 GunLove wrote: Yes I can confirm what the above poster said. I too got promoted (around midnight this night). When I checked my division, about 60 out of a 100 players (including me) were at the exact same points total: 415. Even though I had around 500 points in my previous division one league lower. It seems like some predetermined points total. Also in the general chat at that time there were quite a few others that got promoted, most of them had quite good win/loss ratios (like I do too). A friend of mine in the same league did not get promoted. He has a winrate closer to 50/50.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Blizzard implemented some new adjustments and it resulted in some 'mass' promotions for those who were doing relatively well in their leagues.
Yep, got promoted here too! I know it does not mean much, but it does mean a little. Going up always feels good (even if it is not the main reason I play). I seem to be playing against opponents of comparable skill too (i.e. it's not a curb stomp either way). From what I hear Blizzard has not fixed ladder yet, but the ladder related patch adjustments must be having some effect. I doubt you need to be doing well in your league, either (I was 10 - 15 before a win and promotion).
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On January 25 2014 12:34 coL.hendralisk wrote: Right after the ladder change players in gm are getting a ton of points per win (20-26 without bonus pool even in cases where it should be <10 for ex. see sage/kangho/minigun, esp minigun cuz he's beating low mmr players while being rank 1 by a good margin and getting pts as if the opponent was favored) and no points for loss (0 to 2)
So basically giving a fake bonus pool or something? Not sure if intentional That sounds very unintentional. Those #1s that play many games should trend towards the lower reaches of points gained.
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Random thought - has anyone been promoted in such a way that two leagues at once were skipped (e.g. bronze to gold)? That would say quite a lot about new offets, if offsets were the only thing that was changed.
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Most of my friends have had 1 promotion per game back to where they belong. None of which got 2 at once.
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What do you mean "1 promotion per game"? Did they get multiple promotion after back to back wins?
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On January 26 2014 03:40 corydoras wrote: Random thought - has anyone been promoted in such a way that two leagues at once were skipped (e.g. bronze to gold)? That would say quite a lot about new offets, if offsets were the only thing that was changed. It's possible, it happened when I was playing an old account of mine which got demoted to gold and after playing only diamonds and winning I got promoted to plat and to dia all at once.
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On January 26 2014 03:47 corydoras wrote: What do you mean "1 promotion per game"? Did they get multiple promotion after back to back wins? Yes one of my clan mates who was gold got platinum then diamond in two back to back wins.
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Whoa. I'm not any kind of MMR geek but that would indicate massive changes in the offsets or some artificial adjustments in MMR values of particular players. If the former is true, I might get promoted if I eventually manage to win something in 1v1
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I propose the following solutions
1. Reduce the global rate of MMR decay by 75% for everything and everyone.
2. Keep the current rate of MMR decay, but only for players with Master and Grandmaster MMR, and this rate of decay stops in the middle of diamond league.
I've reached the conclusion that MMR decay is a gangrenous disease slowly eating away at the effectiveness and meaningfulness of the ranking system, and these changes could stop it while still keeping the top leagues as something to *earn* and simultaneously fixing diamond league underpopulation. (although I realize diamond league active player distribution is close to correct, this would fix the top line number people complain about). Decayed players would have to prove themselves for promotion but would get decent matches from the start and it wouldn't take as long. The longer the current decay system stays in place, the more it undermines SC2. Its gets worse the longer blizzard thinks they can cure the disease by treating the symptoms.
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Can someone explain me why I have played vs masters in gold/plat? I have won these matches and am just now promoted to Diamond, why is the ladder so skewed ?
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Just adding to the consensus of the posts recently - have been promoted twice to get back up to diamond from gold in the space of about 30 games
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On January 26 2014 04:03 corydoras wrote:Whoa. I'm not any kind of MMR geek but that would indicate massive changes in the offsets or some artificial adjustments in MMR values of particular players. If the former is true, I might get promoted if I eventually manage to win something in 1v1 Based on the MMR tool graphs it is known that there has been league offset / threshold changes (by assuming the math is still the same). Based nios.kr it is known that there has been considerable increase of promotions to other leagues except to master. There is pretty much no increase regarding master promotions. Based on various forums it is known that some have been double promoted in back to back games, but some have not been promoted at all. Also it is worth to remember is that promotions happen only after won matches.
If it is only based offset / threshold changes, then they would likely have increased the diamond MMR range & decreased all lower league ranges & relative sum of the changes has been 0 (as no master league promotion increase). But then again lower league MMR ranges were already quite small. To lead to double promotions it would mean that some ranges would have decreased quite considerably. And there are also reports that some have not been promoted. (e.g. there are reports of some golds to be promoted to diamond with 2 back to back wins (thought it is unknown if they had recently started from 'blank MMR' and had not played 25 matches yet), but some golds have not been promoted at all (of course their MMR might have been lower league range). Artificial MMR boost based on historical data might be possible, but it would have been capped to diamond range.
Time will tell. It takes lots of time (2 to 3 weeks) to collect enough data to be able to calculate new lower league offsets for MMR tool. But there should be calculation results regarding diamond-master offset in few days (if I have time). Based on those values it might be possible to roughly estimate lower league offset based on user graphs (but these would be manual tryouts that would take potentially much effort).
-- Here are some numbers from nios.kr how population has shifted in past 24 hours (2014-01-25 around midnight CET -> 2014-01-26 around midnight CET):
Accounts placed in leagues ('situation ~24 h ago --> now'):
US: master 1300 -> 1368, diamond 2885 -> 4122, platinum 4669 -> 5289, gold 13159 -> 14246, silver 22913 -> 23381, bronze 33939 -> 32385, total players placed 79065 -> 80989
EU: master 2246 -> 2276, diamond 3291 -> 4797, platinum 4951 -> 5749, gold 13047 -> 14641, silver 22733 -> 23647, bronze 38354 -> 35467, total players placed 84821 -> 86777
Increase in numbers:
US: master +68, diamond +1237, platinum +620, gold +1087, silver +468, bronze -1554, total players placed +1924
EU: master +30, diamond +1506, platinum +798, gold +1594, silver +914, bronze -2887, total players placed +1956
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Automatic updates regarding that data are nice. It shows when things started happening, thought based on MMR tool data the changes likely happened little earlier (few hours max) before than the numbers started changing in your chart. Shame that you don't have the raw numbers. Percentages themselves are often uninteresting.
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On January 26 2014 08:33 korona wrote:Shame that you don't have the raw numbers. Percentages themselves are often uninteresting. Very true, I threw the script together really fast the night of the patch to get it running ASAP, so I didn't capture as much data as I could have. It's grabbing the total players per region, though, so approximate per-league player counts can still be calculated.
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So, I've been mostly platinum for a long time now. Was diamond for the second season of HotS, when like half of the ladder was in diamond for some reason, but definitely didn't deserve to be there. For the last couple seasons, and this one, I've been in gold. I'm not that good, platinum feels about right to me but the ladder was harder the last couple seasons.
Haven't played ranked in a couple weeks but decided to today, win my first game vs a gold, get promoted to platinum. Sweet!
My very first game in platinum, I'm...playing a diamond?? Weird. I lose.
Next game, vs a platinum, I win. And I'm promoted to diamond.
wtf?????????
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To me this looks like gold was influenced the most. A lot of bronze players should still go to silver and silvers to gold.
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Holy shit being promoted feels SO good :D Im glad they implemented such major changes
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I also went from Gold to Diamond after winning two games (promotion after each win).
I've pretty much always been in Diamond and everybody I played in Gold was Diamond/Masters before, so it seems like we all sank and rose back up together.
I stopped playing after I won the second game, but I doubt it's going to jump me to Masters.
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Ran some offset calculations on match data collected by MMR tool after Blizzard made league offset changes ~40 hours ago. You can read results from: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20676153
On January 25 2014 12:34 coL.hendralisk wrote: Right after the ladder change players in gm are getting a ton of points per win (20-26 without bonus pool even in cases where it should be <10 for ex. see sage/kangho/minigun, esp minigun cuz he's beating low mmr players while being rank 1 by a good margin and getting pts as if the opponent was favored) and no points for loss (0 to 2)
So basically giving a fake bonus pool or something? Not sure if intentional I did look at their profiles short time after you posted this. There seemed to be no 'fake bonus points', but they were getting very high points from matches (19 to 24 and losing very little). I could not check their in-game match histories as NA server was having problems back then.
But now as I have some offset calculations I have a likely reason. The new master-grandmaster offset is likely close to 73 (old was 400 to 420). The system was likely pushing those players to get ~350 more adjusted points.
As a side note it would not hurt to get more grandmaster users for the MMR tool, even if you yourself would not care about the results. For example there are only few low grandmaster users for NA. It would not hurt to get data from higher grandmasters (would help to understand how wide the gm MMR range is, get confirmation that values are compatible also with higher accounts, get basic match data (no need to guess how many points & bonus points were gained) + other things. Results for individual players or account names will not be published. Also please note that if you start using the tool before new offsets have been published, the calculation results will be incorrect, but will be fixed when new offsets are ready).
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This league distribution change doesn't seem like it will make much difference. People affected by MMR decay typically talk about dropping one or more leagues, often two leagues, but the change they made seems to mean only a tiny fraction at the top of, say Gold, will end up promoted to Platinum.
Also, Bronze and Silver combined account for around 70% of the player base (both before and after 2.1)??? That can't be working as intended. If you are a player in the 70th percentile you damn sure expect to be in Platinum at least! I mean, you can have a 1st from Cambridge with 70%, wtf Blizzard?
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Guys give it some time.. you DO need to play a decent number of ladder games but it will fix itself.
I was in Diamond most of the time and Masters 1 season or so. Back in Diamond shortly after 2.1 was released. All the other guys in my clan who are playing regularly are getting promoted too.
So I think it won't happen immediately but if you play a few games every day you'll be back to your old league quickly.
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Also where did you get these stats? SC2 ranks still shows me as platinum despite having been promoted back to diamond so they could be wrong.
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Anecdotally, the games I've been playing are much more even, and I did not lose or win a ton of games to change my mmr.
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2 games got me back from gold (which i stayed in a long time playing mostly ex diamond/masters) back to diamond on my offrace account. So yeah seems like it's back to what it was before decay, at last.
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On January 29 2014 23:54 tili wrote: Anecdotally, the games I've been playing are much more even, and I did not lose or win a ton of games to change my mmr. The first win will promote you if you are going to be promoted due to the changes Blizzard made last Friday,
On January 29 2014 23:43 DinoMight wrote: Also where did you get these stats? SC2 ranks still shows me as platinum despite having been promoted back to diamond so they could be wrong. Sc2ranks has not been updated for few weeks. Use nios.kr instead.
But remember the numbers show all the players who have played their placement matches during this season. Only a fraction of those players play each week. It will take a long time until major percentage of the placed players have played that one win that will potentially change their league. Also remember that some players may be double promoted (requires two wins).
Also note that the changes Blizzard made last Friday likely did not address the problem that different skilled players are sharing similar MMRs. Time will tell did they make changes to MMR decay (also note that after the changes the size of MMR ranges of different leagues potentially differ from each others considerably. Before the changes size of MMR ranges of different leagues were quite close. After the changes one likely cannot generalize that max decay would be "little over one league range in MMR").
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On January 26 2014 07:04 drop271 wrote: Just adding to the consensus of the posts recently - have been promoted twice to get back up to diamond from gold in the space of about 30 games
Last season, I played around 20 games and was 18-2 on my NA account (whcih I hadn't played on for a while) and was still placed into gold and then as has happened with others, in the past two days, I played about 10 games (against people who I would say were not diamond caliber (given today's ladder standards)) and had two promotions and now am high diamond.
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United States12175 Posts
What do you want to bet that they changed the activity metric to filter out not only players above X bonus pool, but also players who experienced decay? That could potentially cause most of the lower leagues to contract. It does seem like the most elegant solution to me though.
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On January 30 2014 01:07 The_Darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2014 07:04 drop271 wrote: Just adding to the consensus of the posts recently - have been promoted twice to get back up to diamond from gold in the space of about 30 games Last season, I played around 20 games and was 18-2 on my NA account (whcih I hadn't played on for a while) and was still placed into gold and then as has happened with others, in the past two days, I played about 10 games (against people who I would say were not diamond caliber (given today's ladder standards)) and had two promotions and now am high diamond. Yup, I'm in the middle of doing this. The people I have been getting promoted off of are not nearly as good as the people I was playing before 2.1. I've won almost every game, only losing to Random players cheesing (3 in a row. Yay!). I'm guessing things will shift a lot in the coming days.
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On January 30 2014 02:02 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2014 01:07 The_Darkness wrote:On January 26 2014 07:04 drop271 wrote: Just adding to the consensus of the posts recently - have been promoted twice to get back up to diamond from gold in the space of about 30 games Last season, I played around 20 games and was 18-2 on my NA account (whcih I hadn't played on for a while) and was still placed into gold and then as has happened with others, in the past two days, I played about 10 games (against people who I would say were not diamond caliber (given today's ladder standards)) and had two promotions and now am high diamond. Yup, I'm in the middle of doing this. The people I have been getting promoted off of are not nearly as good as the people I was playing before 2.1. I've won almost every game, only losing to Random players cheesing (3 in a row. Yay!). I'm guessing things will shift a lot in the coming days.
Agreed. It seems the current diamond is only a little above what it was in WoL, but no longer always multiple masters histories.
Honestly , it feels correct again.
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Looks like things are "leveling" out a little.. Been playing people around my level and its been a lot more fun. Before it was either get straight stomped or just roll over someone.. couldn't tell you the last time i had a fun ladder experience with 1v1. went 10-6
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On January 30 2014 16:17 Whitley wrote:Looks like things are "leveling" out a little.. Been playing people around my level and its been a lot more fun. Before it was either get straight stomped or just roll over someone.. couldn't tell you the last time i had a fun ladder experience with 1v1. went 10-6 Yes, that sounds like my experiences. Every game was actually close for once, not either me walking over my opponent or getting completely destroyed like how it was before 2.1. I've had a lot more fun.
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On January 30 2014 01:15 Excalibur_Z wrote: What do you want to bet that they changed the activity metric to filter out not only players above X bonus pool, but also players who experienced decay? That could potentially cause most of the lower leagues to contract. It does seem like the most elegant solution to me though.
So you're saying that the distribution of decayed players skews towards the higher leagues? My understanding of the logic goes like this: Decayed players, who tend to be in the upper leagues, are now filtered out of the activity metric. As a result, the upper leagues appear to the league system to be underpopulated. In order to maintain the target distribution, the system promotes more people from the lower leagues to the upper leagues.
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On January 30 2014 01:15 Excalibur_Z wrote: What do you want to bet that they changed the activity metric to filter out not only players above X bonus pool, but also players who experienced decay? That could potentially cause most of the lower leagues to contract. It does seem like the most elegant solution to me though.
I would think this would cause lower leagues to expand. Let's assume the activity metric changed the way you suggest. Before, players who decayed would diffuse into lower leagues as they remained inactive, and a too-loose activity metric would keep them in the pool. This would mean more players at lower MMRs, so they'd move the league boundaries down to achieve target percentages. You'd have experienced fewer, not more, players in low leagues before the change, and filtering out those decayed players would make lower leagues get larger.
I'd throw out the idea that they WERE filtering out decayed players before with their activity metric. This would mean they thought they'd have, say, 20% of "active" players in Bronze, but tons of decayed players would wind up there who'd been filtered out. The fix would be to loosen up the activity metric so it captures a chunk of the returning, decayed players that approximates however many "returning" players are playing at any given time.
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I guess Blizzard's modifications to the decay are actually working... I just went from Bronze 1 to Silver 1 to Gold 1 lol...
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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).
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On February 06 2014 03:30 korona wrote:Show nested quote +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
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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.
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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 States12175 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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United States12175 Posts
On March 27 2014 22:42 Malhavoc wrote: 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?
It's possible that you're closer to a promotion than the MMR-Stats tool reports. Rather than knowing the actual offsets used, the MMR-Stats tool collects data from the players that use it in order to produce relative markers (like if 100 players were between 942-950 and after their win they were between 951-958 but in a new league, then the boundary must be at 951). This allows the tool to get pretty accurate estimates based on the number of players using it. The trouble is that relatively few Bronze-Gold players use the tool, so the estimates are a little spottier.
You said that you are #91 out of 52,000 EU Silver players in terms of points, but you still have bonus pool left. If you were to lose your next dozen games, your bonus pool would be consumed, your #91/52,000 rank would still be about the same, but your MMR would be lower.
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On March 28 2014 01:41 Greenei wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 01:12 Salient wrote: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...
whether or not mmr is visible what they should do is deliver ranks that are linked to it, not obscured by bonus and offsets etc. But that is a discussion of ladder and there is no hope they'll ever implement a proper ladder I think. What I do hope for is a restoration of the matchmaking and that requires the removal of deflation, not the odd change of boundaries when things get super bad.
If my opponents mmr may be deflated or based on matches with deflated players then how can I expect to be matched with similar players let alone get meaningful information from their current league? If there are players with skill in excess of gold but mmr in gold how can I get out of gold even if im better than gold? Instead of bad ladder and good matchmaking we now have awful ladder and bad matchmaking. I fail to see the improvement blizzard apparently believes is there.
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On March 28 2014 02:05 Spirit09 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 01:41 Greenei wrote:On March 28 2014 01:12 Salient wrote: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... whether or not mmr is visible what they should do is deliver ranks that are linked to it, not obscured by bonus and offsets etc. But that is a discussion of ladder and there is no hope they'll ever implement a proper ladder I think. What I do hope for is a restoration of the matchmaking and that requires the removal of deflation, not the odd change of boundaries when things get super bad. If my opponents mmr may be deflated or based on matches with deflated players then how can I expect to be matched with similar players let alone get meaningful information from their current league? If there are players with skill in excess of gold but mmr in gold how can I get out of gold even if im better than gold? Instead of bad ladder and good matchmaking we now have awful ladder and bad matchmaking. I fail to see the improvement blizzard apparently believes is there.
No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR.
Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in.
There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless.
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On March 28 2014 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 02:05 Spirit09 wrote:On March 28 2014 01:41 Greenei wrote:On March 28 2014 01:12 Salient wrote: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... whether or not mmr is visible what they should do is deliver ranks that are linked to it, not obscured by bonus and offsets etc. But that is a discussion of ladder and there is no hope they'll ever implement a proper ladder I think. What I do hope for is a restoration of the matchmaking and that requires the removal of deflation, not the odd change of boundaries when things get super bad. If my opponents mmr may be deflated or based on matches with deflated players then how can I expect to be matched with similar players let alone get meaningful information from their current league? If there are players with skill in excess of gold but mmr in gold how can I get out of gold even if im better than gold? Instead of bad ladder and good matchmaking we now have awful ladder and bad matchmaking. I fail to see the improvement blizzard apparently believes is there. No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR. Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in. There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless.
Im not interested in a system that makes everyone happy. Im interested in a system that works.
Anyway your two options offered are not the only ones. For example why not have a system that deflates your displayed rank for inactivity but doesnt deflate your mmr? That keeps inactive players out of masters but doesnt hit matchmaking. Im not advocating this as a solution but its not a case of pick the imperfect system you least duslike but they are all valid like you make out. Rather there are right ways of doing things and Blizz interferes so much that the system they have is hugely away from a good way of operating in multipe parts of its implementation.
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On March 28 2014 02:27 Spirit09 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2014 02:05 Spirit09 wrote:On March 28 2014 01:41 Greenei wrote:On March 28 2014 01:12 Salient wrote: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... whether or not mmr is visible what they should do is deliver ranks that are linked to it, not obscured by bonus and offsets etc. But that is a discussion of ladder and there is no hope they'll ever implement a proper ladder I think. What I do hope for is a restoration of the matchmaking and that requires the removal of deflation, not the odd change of boundaries when things get super bad. If my opponents mmr may be deflated or based on matches with deflated players then how can I expect to be matched with similar players let alone get meaningful information from their current league? If there are players with skill in excess of gold but mmr in gold how can I get out of gold even if im better than gold? Instead of bad ladder and good matchmaking we now have awful ladder and bad matchmaking. I fail to see the improvement blizzard apparently believes is there. No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR. Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in. There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless. Im not interested in a system that makes everyone happy. Im interested in a system that works. Anyway your two options offered are not the only ones. For example why not have a system that deflates your displayed rank for inactivity but doesnt deflate your mmr? That keeps inactive players out of masters but doesnt hit matchmaking. Im not advocating this as a solution but its not a case of pick the imperfect system you least duslike but they are all valid like you make out. Rather there are right ways of doing things and Blizz interferes so much that the system they have is hugely away from a good way of operating in multipe parts of its implementation.
I'm sorry, but your suggestion of a system that changes what your rank looks like but doesn't drop your actual ranks sounds like a fake system. Could you imagine the GM playing vs a Bronze player and thinking "??????" because that's just stupid.
If what you want is a system that doesn't decay but decays what the window dressing looks like, that's sounds arbitrary. The other options is a system that decays your MMR but doesn't change the window dressing--that is also arbitrarily stupid sounding.
These are the options. -Decay -No Decay -Decay, ranking doesn't change -No Decay, ranking changes
Pick your poison.
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On March 28 2014 02:33 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 02:27 Spirit09 wrote:On March 28 2014 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2014 02:05 Spirit09 wrote:On March 28 2014 01:41 Greenei wrote:On March 28 2014 01:12 Salient wrote: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... whether or not mmr is visible what they should do is deliver ranks that are linked to it, not obscured by bonus and offsets etc. But that is a discussion of ladder and there is no hope they'll ever implement a proper ladder I think. What I do hope for is a restoration of the matchmaking and that requires the removal of deflation, not the odd change of boundaries when things get super bad. If my opponents mmr may be deflated or based on matches with deflated players then how can I expect to be matched with similar players let alone get meaningful information from their current league? If there are players with skill in excess of gold but mmr in gold how can I get out of gold even if im better than gold? Instead of bad ladder and good matchmaking we now have awful ladder and bad matchmaking. I fail to see the improvement blizzard apparently believes is there. No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR. Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in. There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless. Im not interested in a system that makes everyone happy. Im interested in a system that works. Anyway your two options offered are not the only ones. For example why not have a system that deflates your displayed rank for inactivity but doesnt deflate your mmr? That keeps inactive players out of masters but doesnt hit matchmaking. Im not advocating this as a solution but its not a case of pick the imperfect system you least duslike but they are all valid like you make out. Rather there are right ways of doing things and Blizz interferes so much that the system they have is hugely away from a good way of operating in multipe parts of its implementation. I'm sorry, but your suggestion of a system that changes what your rank looks like but doesn't drop your actual ranks sounds like a fake system. Could you imagine the GM playing vs a Bronze player and thinking "??????" because that's just stupid. If what you want is a system that doesn't decay but decays what the window dressing looks like, that's sounds arbitrary. The other options is a system that decays your MMR but doesn't change the window dressing--that is also arbitrarily stupid sounding. These are the options. -Decay -No Decay -Decay, ranking doesn't change -No Decay, ranking changes Pick your poison.
You really dont like criticism of blizzard but you dont address that criticism directly.
I dont think you read what I posted, or you read it but heard only what you wanted to hear. I specifically said im not suggesting that as I already suspected youd jump on it but you ignored my point and jumped on it anyway and now we're back to your "here are two choices pick one" attiude. There are plenty of other options you seem fixated on this simply as it allows you to claim the current system is no better or worse than any other option except in personal preference. That is clearly not true in the extreme.
Perhaps you personally prefer it when low leagues have little to no meaning wrt relative skill and matchmaking is impacted by decay, especially team matchmaking, but all the evidence would suggest that very few people would agree with you. Maybe you are in master league and it doesnt really affect you, well lucky for you I guess. Denying the facts is not an argument however, and the facts are blizz complicated the system for vague self interest reasons and with good intentions or bad have made it more complicated and less skill related with subsequent changes and the criticisms raised here are legitimate.
Im not even sure what your point is. Do you like the system as it is? If so why dont the concerns raised bother you? Do they just not affect you? Because they do affect others.
Edit You also keep demanding I pick an option but I already stated several time I'd settle for a return to the pre deflation situation where at least matchmaking works even if ranks do not. Since ranks dont work with deflation either there is no down side. A better solution is a rank that is directly related to mmr no bonus no division offsets no nothing. Just mmr and no. games played nothing more. Since thats not a realistic prospect however I see no point advocating it.
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On March 28 2014 03:25 Spirit09 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 02:33 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2014 02:27 Spirit09 wrote:On March 28 2014 02:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2014 02:05 Spirit09 wrote:On March 28 2014 01:41 Greenei wrote:On March 28 2014 01:12 Salient wrote: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... whether or not mmr is visible what they should do is deliver ranks that are linked to it, not obscured by bonus and offsets etc. But that is a discussion of ladder and there is no hope they'll ever implement a proper ladder I think. What I do hope for is a restoration of the matchmaking and that requires the removal of deflation, not the odd change of boundaries when things get super bad. If my opponents mmr may be deflated or based on matches with deflated players then how can I expect to be matched with similar players let alone get meaningful information from their current league? If there are players with skill in excess of gold but mmr in gold how can I get out of gold even if im better than gold? Instead of bad ladder and good matchmaking we now have awful ladder and bad matchmaking. I fail to see the improvement blizzard apparently believes is there. No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR. Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in. There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless. Im not interested in a system that makes everyone happy. Im interested in a system that works. Anyway your two options offered are not the only ones. For example why not have a system that deflates your displayed rank for inactivity but doesnt deflate your mmr? That keeps inactive players out of masters but doesnt hit matchmaking. Im not advocating this as a solution but its not a case of pick the imperfect system you least duslike but they are all valid like you make out. Rather there are right ways of doing things and Blizz interferes so much that the system they have is hugely away from a good way of operating in multipe parts of its implementation. I'm sorry, but your suggestion of a system that changes what your rank looks like but doesn't drop your actual ranks sounds like a fake system. Could you imagine the GM playing vs a Bronze player and thinking "??????" because that's just stupid. If what you want is a system that doesn't decay but decays what the window dressing looks like, that's sounds arbitrary. The other options is a system that decays your MMR but doesn't change the window dressing--that is also arbitrarily stupid sounding. These are the options. -Decay -No Decay -Decay, ranking doesn't change -No Decay, ranking changes Pick your poison. You really dont like criticism of blizzard but you dont address that criticism directly. I dont think you read what I posted, or you read it but heard only what you wanted to hear. I specifically said im not suggesting that as I already suspected youd jump on it but you ignored my point and jumped on it anyway and now we're back to your "here are two choices pick one" attiude. There are plenty of other options you seem fixated on this simply as it allows you to claim the current system is no better or worse than any other option except in personal preference. That is clearly not true in the extreme. Perhaps you personally prefer it when low leagues have little to no meaning wrt relative skill and matchmaking is impacted by decay, especially team matchmaking, but all the evidence would suggest that very few people would agree with you. Maybe you are in master league and it doesnt really affect you, well lucky for you I guess. Denying the facts is not an argument however, and the facts are blizz complicated the system for vague self interest reasons and with good intentions or bad have made it more complicated and less skill related with subsequent changes and the criticisms raised here are legitimate. Im not even sure what your point is. Do you like the system as it is? If so why dont the concerns raised bother you? Do they just not affect you? Because they do affect others. Edit You also keep demanding I pick an option but I already stated several time I'd settle for a return to the pre deflation situation where at least matchmaking works even if ranks do not. Since ranks dont work with deflation either there is no down side. A better solution is a rank that is directly related to mmr no bonus no division offsets no nothing. Just mmr and no. games played nothing more. Since thats not a realistic prospect however I see no point advocating it.
I do not care what the system is. I'm simply saying that it doesn't matter which one is implemented. No one will be happy with it.
If we went back to the old system, as many people will whine that people never drop in rank. If we stay in this system, people will whine that players drop in rank. Your current disposition is nothing of note, people will be unhappy either or.
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On March 28 2014 03:42 Thieving Magpie wrote: I do not care what the system is. I'm simply saying that it doesn't matter which one is implemented. No one will be happy with it.
I assume you mean "not everyone" rather than "no one". I'm not disputing that (but I'm VERY much disputing that it doesn't matter which is implemented). I'm not even talking about it because like you I know you can't please everyone so what is the point of trying to? We are in agreement, but this is not what the discussion is about.
On March 28 2014 03:42 Thieving Magpie wrote: Your current disposition is nothing of note, people will be unhappy either or.
The discussion is (given that you can't please everyone) what is an efective ladder and matchmaking system? My argument that decay as Bizzard introduced is bad is a valid argument irrespective of whether someone might be happy or unhappy with decay, so of course what I'm saying is of note.
Saying it is not of note is like saying that there is nothing of note in a discussion over which kind of cars are more or less good for the environment because some people will be unhappy whatever you do. You are saying there is no point in advocating electric cars because someone will be upset so there is nothing of note in the argument, as long as someone would be upset then there is no way to decide one option is better than any other option. If you apply the logic you are applying you would actually conclude that no argument is ever valid ... because all arguments will make someone somewhere unhappy. Thats clearly not the case.
So.... if we can agree that its ok to discuss whether decay is a good or bad idea without reference to whether or not everyone will be happy with or without decay then I will state that I am opposed to decay because:
1. It means mmr is inaccurate for players experiencing decay 2. It means mmr is inaccurate for all other players because they play against players experiencing decay 3. Its particularly bad for low leagues and team games 4. It is yet anther way that displayed rank is taken further from what it is implied to players that it is, which is a rank based on skill (and we already have far too many ways that displayed rank =/= skill we don't need yet another one)
I will acknowledge that some high ranked players might see benefits to decay and not really be bothered by all the downsides. Seems a huge price to pay just to give slight benefits to what I believe is a very small number of players however.
I will also acknowledge that neither decay nor bonus pool nor any of the other idiotic inventions of blizzard completely turn the ladder or matchmaking upside down... even with these things the ladder and matchmaking still kinda work. What I claim is that they work much much less well than they would otherwise do. EDIT: Also working well or not, blizz system is not what the community wants as proven by the lengths the community then goes to with creating things like sc2ranks, MMR tool and ggtracker which attempt to view real skill unedited by Blizzard, real ranking, and proper assessment and analysis of skills and performance in games.
That is my case.
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United States12175 Posts
It's true that you can't make a system to please everyone. What Blizzard attempted to do with SC2 was learn from their mistakes in WoW Arena, War3, and BW.
Arena v1 was straight Elo but there were exploits regarding swapping in new members to your team and feeding them free high-rating rewards each week.
Arena v2 added personal rating requirements so you had to build yourself up to where the rest of your team was before you got anything.
Arena v3 adjusted the reward curve and made it less desirable for bad players to just create a new team at the default rating each week (since their rating after playing games each week would naturally fall below the starting value). Therefore they started all teams off at 0 but left their MMR at the default, so they had to build up to it before they started seeing returns.
War3 had a fun RPG themed leveling system but people started gaming the ELL. ELL is similar to MMR in that it becomes a skill estimate to lead your experience point gains. If your level is 5 but your ELL is 30 then you will play against level 30s and earn experience accordingly, which is much more than you would earn against other true level 5s. Because there were no account limits, players would keep creating new accounts until they had one with the highest win ratio they could muster, which made their ELL high and sent then higher up the ladder faster. Blizzard added a decay requirement of x games per week or your experience points would start falling but it accomplished little.
BW had a similar problem by allowing infinite accounts because of wintrading. BW was straight Elo and was actually the most transparent.
Blizzard needed to balance the demands of players (where do I stand) with the demands of a healthy ladder (keep everyone playing). That's why SC2 has stuff like points and bonus pool. You can see over the years how they've continued to tweak it, like by removing demotions and adding decay and adding race XP, anything to incentivize playing and keep the game from stagnating. That's no easy task.
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Thanks for the background, thats really helpful in understanding their logic (which I struggle to do! )
On March 28 2014 04:11 Excalibur_Z wrote: That's no easy task.
Granted.
However, given that you say the problem with BW was infinite accounts and SC2 doesn't have that unless you have infinite money it doesn't seem to be clear cut that bonus pool or division offsets were necessary. I feel that they needed to make displayed ranks/leagues much more closely tied to real skill and the main problem faced right from the launch and still going on now of players displeased because they thought they were good (ladder said so) and then they got demoted or didn't get a promotion is due to that. (EDIT: I guess your main point is that these things are about incentivising activity rather than preventing abuse... well ok but where is the evidence that the game would have stagnated if they didn't have this sort of stuff? Without evidence I'm not sure how Blizz could defend against accusations that they got the balance wrong here. They probably shouldn't be adding just 5 new XP levels when people had been maxed at 30 for near a year either... if they truly beleived this is critical to keeping the player base interested that is.)
But we're specifically talking about decay here and I fail to see how it benefits anyone apart from master level players who spend all their bonus pool who get a small benefit in that they don't have to feel like some of their fellow master players are "fakes". Ok, so its supposed to make returning to playing easier, but you could argue thats a non problem really.
What decay does do is cause significant other effects. The crux of the problem is that the benefits (if there really are any) aren't even remotely comparable to the negative impacts it has had, and it was relatively obvious it would have had if some proper assessment had been done before implementing it.
In short, I'm not sure Blizzard's experience can excuse implementing decay and certainly cannot excuse that it still hasn't been addressed by them this long since the problems started to arise.
And its not just that its bad but that they handle this kind of thing badly as well e.g. by introducing it by stealth, by denying it is a big deal, by not addressing concerns, by then making posts about other low priority things while people wanted decay to be the #1 priority, by introducing a fix that only gives the appearance of a solution...
Its a lot to answer for really.
EDIT2: There is another way of looking at this. Decay is another method of promoting activity and was only sold to players as giving other benefits since Blizz couldn't really say "we want you to play more so we'll take your rank away if you don't". This is a kind of cynical view I guess but it fits with what Excal is saying about how they have constantly made these kind of changes, and it explains their attitude to the complaints, i.e. they might even agree with the complaints but whether they do or not this is a decision they've taken as part of their ongoing management of activity so its here to stay. It could even explain why they didn't assess the impact on the ladder. Basically they did assess it, but what they assessed was impact on activity not impact on distribution or matchmaking. Seeing things this way means what happened makes a lot more sense to me on a number of levels actually!
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Why don't they just have every1 play 5 placement matches each season? Not to calculate their MMR from scratch each time, just to make them play more (than just 1 game per season). Then get rid of the decay. Also people that actually got worse from not playing regularly will usually lose most of those 5 games, dropping their MMR further than from just 1 (with just 1 placement match) loss.
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As a quick update:
I did check in the beginning of this month that the MMR decay mechanism is still there. It is not yet confirmed if the max decay values are the same as before thought. Also note that the size of MMR ranges for different leagues now differ more than before from each others. Thus the old generalization "max decay is little more than one league range" cannot be applied to generic leagues any more. For example the size of the diamond league range now is almost 1.5 times the old max decay (old max decay ~310, current estimates of sizes of new league ranges: b 280, s 260, g 290, p 235, d 450).
As the NA and EU web profiles have been having problems for a month (data is often updated out-of-sync, which leads to lots of bad match data + before the MMR tool was updated it also sometimes lead to false positive 'unranked detection' results that caused that some of the matches were ignored completely), I have not tried to determine if there were changes to the max values.
Edit: fixed old max decay from 320 to 310. Was a typo.
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Thieving Magpie wrote: No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR.
Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in.
There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless. the current system does not work. also, why are the extremes the only solutions? there is *absolutely* no reason for a masters level player to be in bronze, you can't disagree with that. decay can be fine, the current iteration is just way too aggressive and has no floor apparently. you should only decay a certain amount and then stop, forever, until your mmr increases to where it was before the decay.
Excalibur_Z wrote: ...
You can see over the years how they've continued to tweak it, like by removing demotions and adding decay and adding race XP, anything to incentivize playing and keep the game from stagnating. That's no easy task. it's kind of funny then that the current system implemented with hots turns a lot of casual players off. getting dropped into the scrub leagues just because you aren't active enough is tiresome. i'm sure you're well aware of the mmr mis-match (ie, masters players falling into the lower leagues and being matched with real newbs) that results that surely has been mentioned time and time again in this thread and many others.
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On March 28 2014 18:22 CycoDude wrote:Show nested quote +Thieving Magpie wrote: No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR.
Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in.
There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless. the current system does not work. also, why are the extremes the only solutions? there is *absolutely* no reason for a masters level player to be in bronze, you can't disagree with that. decay can be fine, the current iteration is just way too aggressive and has no floor apparently. you should only decay a certain amount and then stop, forever, until your mmr increases to where it was before the decay. Show nested quote +Excalibur_Z wrote: ...
You can see over the years how they've continued to tweak it, like by removing demotions and adding decay and adding race XP, anything to incentivize playing and keep the game from stagnating. That's no easy task. it's kind of funny then that the current system implemented with hots turns a lot of casual players off. getting dropped into the scrub leagues just because you aren't active enough is tiresome. i'm sure you're well aware of the mmr mis-match (ie, masters players falling into the lower leagues and being matched with real newbs) that results that surely has been mentioned time and time again in this thread and many others.
Because the complaint would be the same if the masters players only dropped to diamond. Its not necessarily that people drop to Bronze from GM, but that people drop at all giving lower level players the feeling that they can blame MMR decay on why they lost any given match.
A scaled down decay will change the vitriol from "masters players dropping to bronze" to "silver player going to bronze" and the complaints will be the same regardless.
If they don't make the decay harsh enough to drop a player's league then people will talk non-stop about how the people in masters leagues are "taking up space" and that is what is preventing them from ranking up.
The truth is that no matter the system the player base will always complain and use it to blame their low ranks.
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Ok, I managed getting into gold after reaching #4 in silver EU. The MMR Rating Tool thresholds seems fine, I actually HAD to get there. Also the silver threshold was absolutely perfect: got into silver as soon as I passed it.
In the end, I was gold before MMR decay, was put into deep bronze (almost 0 MMR I think..) and it took the entire season, 120 wins and 100 losses to get back to where I was.. definitely too much decay for having being inactive a couple of months with just an handful of games in between (what's even more unresonable is that I had NOT played that few games, I wouldn't have decayed so much...)
BTW, is then true that to avoid any further decay, we can also do unranked games? So, especially for team games, we just have to enter an unranked game of that league every 2 weeks at most, and just immediately leave to avoid decay?
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On March 28 2014 04:11 Excalibur_Z wrote: It's true that you can't make a system to please everyone. What Blizzard attempted to do with SC2 was learn from their mistakes in WoW Arena, War3, and BW.
Arena v1 was straight Elo but there were exploits regarding swapping in new members to your team and feeding them free high-rating rewards each week.
Arena v2 added personal rating requirements so you had to build yourself up to where the rest of your team was before you got anything.
Arena v3 adjusted the reward curve and made it less desirable for bad players to just create a new team at the default rating each week (since their rating after playing games each week would naturally fall below the starting value). Therefore they started all teams off at 0 but left their MMR at the default, so they had to build up to it before they started seeing returns.
War3 had a fun RPG themed leveling system but people started gaming the ELL. ELL is similar to MMR in that it becomes a skill estimate to lead your experience point gains. If your level is 5 but your ELL is 30 then you will play against level 30s and earn experience accordingly, which is much more than you would earn against other true level 5s. Because there were no account limits, players would keep creating new accounts until they had one with the highest win ratio they could muster, which made their ELL high and sent then higher up the ladder faster. Blizzard added a decay requirement of x games per week or your experience points would start falling but it accomplished little.
BW had a similar problem by allowing infinite accounts because of wintrading. BW was straight Elo and was actually the most transparent.
Blizzard needed to balance the demands of players (where do I stand) with the demands of a healthy ladder (keep everyone playing). That's why SC2 has stuff like points and bonus pool. You can see over the years how they've continued to tweak it, like by removing demotions and adding decay and adding race XP, anything to incentivize playing and keep the game from stagnating. That's no easy task.
there was no blizzard ladder in BW, what are you saying? iccup, WGT and PGT were all community made, and it was a transparent system. At first everyone starts at the bottom, then you climb as you win. Over time it stabilizes and the ranks mean something, not at the time of any given game, but as a "my max rank is/was X". But this is only for competition, it s really bad for the casual base. (I therefore agree with yoru post on most points)
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On March 29 2014 01:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 18:22 CycoDude wrote:Thieving Magpie wrote: No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR.
Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in.
There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless. the current system does not work. also, why are the extremes the only solutions? there is *absolutely* no reason for a masters level player to be in bronze, you can't disagree with that. decay can be fine, the current iteration is just way too aggressive and has no floor apparently. you should only decay a certain amount and then stop, forever, until your mmr increases to where it was before the decay. Excalibur_Z wrote: ...
You can see over the years how they've continued to tweak it, like by removing demotions and adding decay and adding race XP, anything to incentivize playing and keep the game from stagnating. That's no easy task. it's kind of funny then that the current system implemented with hots turns a lot of casual players off. getting dropped into the scrub leagues just because you aren't active enough is tiresome. i'm sure you're well aware of the mmr mis-match (ie, masters players falling into the lower leagues and being matched with real newbs) that results that surely has been mentioned time and time again in this thread and many others. Because the complaint would be the same if the masters players only dropped to diamond. Its not necessarily that people drop to Bronze from GM, but that people drop at all giving lower level players the feeling that they can blame MMR decay on why they lost any given match. A scaled down decay will change the vitriol from "masters players dropping to bronze" to "silver player going to bronze" and the complaints will be the same regardless. If they don't make the decay harsh enough to drop a player's league then people will talk non-stop about how the people in masters leagues are "taking up space" and that is what is preventing them from ranking up. The truth is that no matter the system the player base will always complain and use it to blame their low ranks.
This has nothing to do with feelings or complaints. You have to understand that decay has the effect of introducing a random number generator into mmr that wasnt there before. Worse its random but always in one direction, so it skews the population as well.
Its got nothing to do with what you are talking about which is a psychological issue about how players rationalise their performance and is completely seperate to how mmr is implemented.
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I would suggest straight up ELO number like broodwar. Broodwar had unlimited accounts, whereas SC2 you have to dish a bit of money to get another account, and hence much harder to farm points.
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On March 31 2014 19:23 Spirit09 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2014 01:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 28 2014 18:22 CycoDude wrote:Thieving Magpie wrote: No matter how they dress up an MMR with bonus pool or league divisions, it still remains the same MMR.
Either it never decays and people stay in masters playing only 1 game every 1-2 months, or it decays and masters players drop to bronze for only playing 1-2 games a month. Pick which one you're philosophically okay with and accept it while ignoring the dressing it is draped in.
There will always be a group upset that there is decay and there will always be a group that get upset that there's no decay. And within each of those two groups will be subgroups upset that either the decay is too harsh or not harsh enough. There is no balance that will make people happy. Pretending there is a balance that can be reached is silly and pointless. the current system does not work. also, why are the extremes the only solutions? there is *absolutely* no reason for a masters level player to be in bronze, you can't disagree with that. decay can be fine, the current iteration is just way too aggressive and has no floor apparently. you should only decay a certain amount and then stop, forever, until your mmr increases to where it was before the decay. Excalibur_Z wrote: ...
You can see over the years how they've continued to tweak it, like by removing demotions and adding decay and adding race XP, anything to incentivize playing and keep the game from stagnating. That's no easy task. it's kind of funny then that the current system implemented with hots turns a lot of casual players off. getting dropped into the scrub leagues just because you aren't active enough is tiresome. i'm sure you're well aware of the mmr mis-match (ie, masters players falling into the lower leagues and being matched with real newbs) that results that surely has been mentioned time and time again in this thread and many others. Because the complaint would be the same if the masters players only dropped to diamond. Its not necessarily that people drop to Bronze from GM, but that people drop at all giving lower level players the feeling that they can blame MMR decay on why they lost any given match. A scaled down decay will change the vitriol from "masters players dropping to bronze" to "silver player going to bronze" and the complaints will be the same regardless. If they don't make the decay harsh enough to drop a player's league then people will talk non-stop about how the people in masters leagues are "taking up space" and that is what is preventing them from ranking up. The truth is that no matter the system the player base will always complain and use it to blame their low ranks. This has nothing to do with feelings or complaints. You have to understand that decay has the effect of introducing a random number generator into mmr that wasnt there before. Worse its random but always in one direction, so it skews the population as well. Its got nothing to do with what you are talking about which is a psychological issue about how players rationalise their performance and is completely seperate to how mmr is implemented.
Yes, and I'm certain that players never dropping in rank will produce more "objective" complaints #lol
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United States12175 Posts
On March 31 2014 18:40 WGT-Baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 04:11 Excalibur_Z wrote: It's true that you can't make a system to please everyone. What Blizzard attempted to do with SC2 was learn from their mistakes in WoW Arena, War3, and BW.
Arena v1 was straight Elo but there were exploits regarding swapping in new members to your team and feeding them free high-rating rewards each week.
Arena v2 added personal rating requirements so you had to build yourself up to where the rest of your team was before you got anything.
Arena v3 adjusted the reward curve and made it less desirable for bad players to just create a new team at the default rating each week (since their rating after playing games each week would naturally fall below the starting value). Therefore they started all teams off at 0 but left their MMR at the default, so they had to build up to it before they started seeing returns.
War3 had a fun RPG themed leveling system but people started gaming the ELL. ELL is similar to MMR in that it becomes a skill estimate to lead your experience point gains. If your level is 5 but your ELL is 30 then you will play against level 30s and earn experience accordingly, which is much more than you would earn against other true level 5s. Because there were no account limits, players would keep creating new accounts until they had one with the highest win ratio they could muster, which made their ELL high and sent then higher up the ladder faster. Blizzard added a decay requirement of x games per week or your experience points would start falling but it accomplished little.
BW had a similar problem by allowing infinite accounts because of wintrading. BW was straight Elo and was actually the most transparent.
Blizzard needed to balance the demands of players (where do I stand) with the demands of a healthy ladder (keep everyone playing). That's why SC2 has stuff like points and bonus pool. You can see over the years how they've continued to tweak it, like by removing demotions and adding decay and adding race XP, anything to incentivize playing and keep the game from stagnating. That's no easy task.
there was no blizzard ladder in BW, what are you saying? iccup, WGT and PGT were all community made, and it was a transparent system. At first everyone starts at the bottom, then you climb as you win. Over time it stabilizes and the ranks mean something, not at the time of any given game, but as a "my max rank is/was X". But this is only for competition, it s really bad for the casual base. (I therefore agree with yoru post on most points)
You don't remember the Blizzard ladder in BW? You had to create a game with game type Ladder using a name like "1v1 1050++++++++ no map", you'd see the rating of whoever joined and their record, then decide whether to kick them or start the game. The ladder had only a small handful of maps (what did you think the \Starcraft\maps\ladder\" folder was?) and those were the only ones that could be used for the Ladder game type. There were no matchmaking bots, no maps of the week, none of that. Your ladder rating was displayed next to your name in chat channels (mine was 1337 which I held until my account became inactive) and your chat icon background flair became more elaborate and impressive the higher up you got.
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On March 31 2014 19:44 SEA KarMa wrote: I would suggest straight up ELO number like broodwar. Broodwar had unlimited accounts, whereas SC2 you have to dish a bit of money to get another account, and hence much harder to farm points.
iirc it took people almost a month or two to get their first win in the BW system unless they hunted for lowbies specifically. Not sure if that's the best strategy for gaining a bigger casual audience.
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United States12175 Posts
On April 01 2014 01:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 19:44 SEA KarMa wrote: I would suggest straight up ELO number like broodwar. Broodwar had unlimited accounts, whereas SC2 you have to dish a bit of money to get another account, and hence much harder to farm points. iirc it took people almost a month or two to get their first win in the BW system unless they hunted for lowbies specifically. Not sure if that's the best strategy for gaining a bigger casual audience.
There were a couple of problems that I sort of glossed over because they're inherent to an Elo system. The first is stagnation. I mentioned before that my ladder rating was 1337, and I kept it that way for obvious reasons, but my rating stayed at 1337 as long as I chose not to play any more ladder games. One common problem (in addition to wintrading and map/disc-hacking) was that people would get to a high rating and then sit on it, and the percentage of players who played ladder was pretty low anyway. The second problem, somewhat related, was dodging. Because you could see the rating of your opponent, you could decide whether it would be worth your time to play against them. Is it worth it for me as a 1300 player to play against a 900 player when I only stand to gain maybe 0 or 1 point or lose 25? Or, should I wait for a 1400 player to come along? Maybe the 1400 will dodge because he has more to lose than to gain.
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On April 01 2014 02:01 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 01:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 31 2014 19:44 SEA KarMa wrote: I would suggest straight up ELO number like broodwar. Broodwar had unlimited accounts, whereas SC2 you have to dish a bit of money to get another account, and hence much harder to farm points. iirc it took people almost a month or two to get their first win in the BW system unless they hunted for lowbies specifically. Not sure if that's the best strategy for gaining a bigger casual audience. There were a couple of problems that I sort of glossed over because they're inherent to an Elo system. The first is stagnation. I mentioned before that my ladder rating was 1337, and I kept it that way for obvious reasons, but my rating stayed at 1337 as long as I chose not to play any more ladder games. One common problem (in addition to wintrading and map/disc-hacking) was that people would get to a high rating and then sit on it, and the percentage of players who played ladder was pretty low anyway. The second problem, somewhat related, was dodging. Because you could see the rating of your opponent, you could decide whether it would be worth your time to play against them. Is it worth it for me as a 1300 player to play against a 900 player when I only stand to gain maybe 0 or 1 point or lose 25? Or, should I wait for a 1400 player to come along? Maybe the 1400 will dodge because he has more to lose than to gain.
No disagreement from me. I guess I'm kind of cold to almost any ranking system--which is problematic when a group is trying to decide which is the closest to being objectively accurate. I just feel that no matter what system is used, low level players will point out some flaw in it and create a shit storm blaming that that one tiny aspect of the system is the only reason that they are unfairly ranked. In the end it doesn't matter as much as self reflection.
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I just dont understand why your argument that "there will always be complaints", which I dont think anyone is disputing, leads to your opinion that all matchmaking systems are equal. Thats a non sequitur. Why not match people based on their achivement points in that case? Or do you draw the line at that? In which case what is wrong with drawing the line at no decay when a very logical argument exists for doing so...
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On April 01 2014 11:34 Spirit09 wrote: I just dont understand why your argument that "there will always be complaints", which I dont think anyone is disputing, leads to your opinion that all matchmaking systems are equal. Thats a non sequitur. Why not match people based on their achivement points in that case? Or do you draw the line at that? In which case what is wrong with drawing the line at no decay when a very logical argument exists for doing so...
Because it's only logical to those who prefer no decay.
I'm not arguing all versions are the same *because people complain* I am arguing that a ladder system is in end always arbitrary. And because it's arbitrary, each of them will have their fans and haters who all give "logical" arguments why one is better than the other. No ladder system will be better than self reflection and personal experience.
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Well I guess I disagree that its always arbitary... a matchmaking ststem that involves a random number generator is clearly less effective than one that does not.
Decay is an awful awful idea for all the reasons given before. No one seems to come up with any argument for it more convincing than "well I like it". And they are far in the minority anyway. Ask korona what he thinks seeing as he has to deal with it mucking up attempts to see real skill tracking. Or see if chess players would like to see thir Elo drop by random amounts periodically?where is this equally logical argument in favour of it?
Unless you are high ranked player who is never inactive it is universally bad for your matchmaking.
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On April 01 2014 11:34 Spirit09 wrote: I just dont understand why your argument that "there will always be complaints", which I dont think anyone is disputing, leads to your opinion that all matchmaking systems are equal. Thats a non sequitur. Why not match people based on their achivement points in that case? Or do you draw the line at that? In which case what is wrong with drawing the line at no decay when a very logical argument exists for doing so... I always wondered. In what course or lectures do you native english speakers learn fancy latin logic and rhetorics terminology? (That's an honest question btw, I'm not trying to troll anyone here. I always found that some people on the TL forums always know some precise term for any given logical fallacy. It's a bit weird, yet impressive).
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On April 02 2014 03:08 Spirit09 wrote: Well I guess I disagree that its always arbitary... a matchmaking ststem that involves a random number generator is clearly less effective than one that does not.
Decay is an awful awful idea for all the reasons given before. No one seems to come up with any argument for it more convincing than "well I like it". And they are far in the minority anyway. Ask korona what he thinks seeing as he has to deal with it mucking up attempts to see real skill tracking. Or see if chess players would like to see thir Elo drop by random amounts periodically?where is this equally logical argument in favour of it?
Unless you are high ranked player who is never inactive it is universally bad for your matchmaking.
Decay, by its nature, is a system that favors consistent player skill over time instead of bursts of player skill. By adding a decay, you only are able to keep on top by not only playing well, but by also either predicting or dictating the metagame. As opposes to a non-decay system where players can cheese to a high rank, then stop playing until a new cheese shows up.
It favors the learning of a consistent playstyle that does not fade with random fluctuations of meta shifts. In doing so, only players who actually care about the game gets to be rewarded by the game. That is what point decay is for.
No decay also has its pluses while both point decay and point stagnation also have their minuses. You disliking point decay is literally no different than people disliking point stagnation. You guys sound the same, and you guys both act as vitriolic.
In the end it doesn't matter which system is used. Change it, don't change it, doesn't matter. Nothing gets revolutionized in either case.
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On April 02 2014 03:13 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 11:34 Spirit09 wrote: I just dont understand why your argument that "there will always be complaints", which I dont think anyone is disputing, leads to your opinion that all matchmaking systems are equal. Thats a non sequitur. Why not match people based on their achivement points in that case? Or do you draw the line at that? In which case what is wrong with drawing the line at no decay when a very logical argument exists for doing so... I always wondered. In what course or lectures do you native english speakers learn fancy latin logic and rhetorics terminology? (That's an honest question btw, I'm not trying to troll anyone here. I always found that some people on the TL forums always know some precise term for any given logical fallacy. It's a bit weird, yet impressive).
Wikipedia.
I bet that majority of forum posters had no idea about fallacies until wikipedia taught them.
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On April 02 2014 04:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 03:13 ZenithM wrote:On April 01 2014 11:34 Spirit09 wrote: I just dont understand why your argument that "there will always be complaints", which I dont think anyone is disputing, leads to your opinion that all matchmaking systems are equal. Thats a non sequitur. Why not match people based on their achivement points in that case? Or do you draw the line at that? In which case what is wrong with drawing the line at no decay when a very logical argument exists for doing so... I always wondered. In what course or lectures do you native english speakers learn fancy latin logic and rhetorics terminology? (That's an honest question btw, I'm not trying to troll anyone here. I always found that some people on the TL forums always know some precise term for any given logical fallacy. It's a bit weird, yet impressive). Wikipedia. I bet that majority of forum posters had no idea about fallacies until wikipedia taught them. Well I know I personally look up the jargon in Wikipedia every time someone comes up with a fancy cool term ;D In my logic and advanced logic classes, we just tried to prove or refute shit, not invent cool names for flawed reasoning processes ;D I guess that you learn this shit in logic classes for philosophy or something. Goddammit Wikipedia even has a list of those haha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies.
On topic though, I think the matchmaking is a bit better these days, but I wish they could make the decay global and not queue-bounded.
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On April 02 2014 04:26 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:On April 02 2014 03:13 ZenithM wrote:On April 01 2014 11:34 Spirit09 wrote: I just dont understand why your argument that "there will always be complaints", which I dont think anyone is disputing, leads to your opinion that all matchmaking systems are equal. Thats a non sequitur. Why not match people based on their achivement points in that case? Or do you draw the line at that? In which case what is wrong with drawing the line at no decay when a very logical argument exists for doing so... I always wondered. In what course or lectures do you native english speakers learn fancy latin logic and rhetorics terminology? (That's an honest question btw, I'm not trying to troll anyone here. I always found that some people on the TL forums always know some precise term for any given logical fallacy. It's a bit weird, yet impressive). Wikipedia. I bet that majority of forum posters had no idea about fallacies until wikipedia taught them. Well I know I personally look up the jargon in Wikipedia every time someone comes up with a fancy cool term ;D In my logic and advanced logic classes, we just tried to prove or refute shit, not invent cool names for flawed reasoning processes ;D I guess that you learn this shit in logic classes for philosophy or something. Goddammit Wikipedia even has a list of those haha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies. On topic though, I think the matchmaking is a bit better these days, but I wish they could make the decay global and not queue-bounded.
In the US you're also supposed to learn the fallacies in English and History classes. More specifically, you should learn the difference between proper and improper argumentation when taking any Humanities class as well as be taught the nature of evidence based articulation. But as far as I know, that doesn't happen here in the US.
On the topic of the ladder--I actually love that in the new ladder system lowbies get to face off against subpar highbies so that we no longer get the whole "I'm actually diamond but the league is too full" bullcrap we used to get. Now even bronze and silver players *have* to up their game because at any point they might face a gold/plat player. Lazy play is no longer acceptable in this new format. Soon Bronze, Silver, and gold will no longer be the league for bad players, but will become the league for the true casual players filled with the good and bad players who don't have the time to donate to SC2.
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On April 02 2014 04:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: Decay, by its nature, is a system that favors consistent player skill over time instead of bursts of player skill. By adding a decay, you only are able to keep on top by not only playing well, but by also either predicting or dictating the metagame. As opposes to a non-decay system where players can cheese to a high rank, then stop playing until a new cheese shows up.
Neither system favours any play style. And if you really want players to have to face players of higher and lower skill than themselves (not a good idea!) then that can easily be accomplished by widening the range of mmr that you can be matched with. We don't need to justify decay by saying some side effect is (highly questionably) beneficial. The whole point of matchmaking is to have even games. A non even game is one where one player has little to no chance to win (probably promoting cheese!) and the other gains little to no benefit when they win. Its clearly a bad idea and the match making has never been designed with the intention it should ever happen.
On April 02 2014 04:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: It favors the learning of a consistent playstyle that does not fade with random fluctuations of meta shifts. In doing so, only players who actually care about the game gets to be rewarded by the game. That is what point decay is for.
No its not what it is for. The stated aim is to make it easier to return to the game... so the exact opposite of what you are saying because that is a benefit only to less frequent players! The actual aim is to encourage activity, which could be cheese or otherwise. And another point, who are you to say players SHOULD play in a particular way?
On April 02 2014 04:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: No decay also has its pluses while both point decay and point stagnation also have their minuses. You disliking point decay is literally no different than people disliking point stagnation. You guys sound the same, and you guys both act as vitriolic.
Wrong. As I've said time and time again but you don't seem to acknowledge, having a decay system causes fundamental flaws in matchmaking. Specifically that mmr is inaccurate so players get less even matches, and also that there is a continual decay in the entire ladder population. Let me make it really clear, with decay you get less good matches and everyone drops over time until there are mass demotions. No one cares about points, the issue is the impact on finding even matches.
On April 02 2014 04:45 Thieving Magpie wrote: On the topic of the ladder--I actually love that in the new ladder system lowbies get to face off against subpar highbies so that we no longer get the whole "I'm actually diamond but the league is too full" bullcrap we used to get.
What? Dude that makes no sense at all. This is like saying sports teams should play against teams from several leagues above them. The whole point of having leagues is specifically to avoid this! You want people to face opponents as close to their own skill level as possible. If anyone really wants to play a higher league player there are custom games for that, the ladder is specifically there to give you an even match.
On April 02 2014 04:45 Thieving Magpie wrote: Now even bronze and silver players *have* to up their game because at any point they might face a gold/plat player. Lazy play is no longer acceptable in this new format.
Again dictating to others how they SHOULD play. What is wrong with players wanting to play casually and still get even games? In any case you make this statement with no evidence to back it up. Its completely wrong because if a player always gets even matches they must up their game to win more than 50% and get a promotion, so there is already the incentive to improve, you don't need some random threat of "you're opponent might at any minute be much much better than you... so you'll have to play much much better than your average all the time just in case". See the problem with that statement? You can't play above average all the time.
On April 02 2014 04:45 Thieving Magpie wrote: Soon Bronze, Silver, and gold will no longer be the league for bad players, but will become the league for the true casual players filled with the good and bad players who don't have the time to donate to SC2.
Wow. This more than anything else demonstrates that you just don't get what the match making, or ladder, is. The system is intended to give ANY player, casual or hardcore, an opponent of even skill so that everyone gets to play games that are fun for them. The entire purpose of the ladder is to find you even games. Leagues are NOT supposed to be an indication of how "committed" you are to playing the game. If it worked like you want here then eventually players in these leagues full of "good and bad players" would find that the "good" players always won and the "bad" players always lost. This is exactly the thing the match making was implemented to avoid.
In all the above you still haven't made any argument in favour of decay because you either advocate the ladder performs in a way opposite to what it is intended to achieve, or you describe alleged benefits from decay that can be achieved via methods other than decay and therefore do not come with the fundamental flaws associated with decay.
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On April 02 2014 12:24 Spirit09 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: Decay, by its nature, is a system that favors consistent player skill over time instead of bursts of player skill. By adding a decay, you only are able to keep on top by not only playing well, but by also either predicting or dictating the metagame. As opposes to a non-decay system where players can cheese to a high rank, then stop playing until a new cheese shows up.
Neither system favours any play style. And if you really want players to have to face players of higher and lower skill than themselves (not a good idea!) then that can easily be accomplished by widening the range of mmr that you can be matched with. We don't need to justify decay by saying some side effect is (highly questionably) beneficial. The whole point of matchmaking is to have even games. A non even game is one where one player has little to no chance to win (probably promoting cheese!) and the other gains little to no benefit when they win. Its clearly a bad idea and the match making has never been designed with the intention it should ever happen. Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: It favors the learning of a consistent playstyle that does not fade with random fluctuations of meta shifts. In doing so, only players who actually care about the game gets to be rewarded by the game. That is what point decay is for.
No its not what it is for. The stated aim is to make it easier to return to the game... so the exact opposite of what you are saying because that is a benefit only to less frequent players! The actual aim is to encourage activity, which could be cheese or otherwise. And another point, who are you to say players SHOULD play in a particular way? Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: No decay also has its pluses while both point decay and point stagnation also have their minuses. You disliking point decay is literally no different than people disliking point stagnation. You guys sound the same, and you guys both act as vitriolic.
Wrong. As I've said time and time again but you don't seem to acknowledge, having a decay system causes fundamental flaws in matchmaking. Specifically that mmr is inaccurate so players get less even matches, and also that there is a continual decay in the entire ladder population. Let me make it really clear, with decay you get less good matches and everyone drops over time until there are mass demotions. No one cares about points, the issue is the impact on finding even matches. Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:45 Thieving Magpie wrote: On the topic of the ladder--I actually love that in the new ladder system lowbies get to face off against subpar highbies so that we no longer get the whole "I'm actually diamond but the league is too full" bullcrap we used to get.
What? Dude that makes no sense at all. This is like saying sports teams should play against teams from several leagues above them. The whole point of having leagues is specifically to avoid this! You want people to face opponents as close to their own skill level as possible. If anyone really wants to play a higher league player there are custom games for that, the ladder is specifically there to give you an even match. Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:45 Thieving Magpie wrote: Now even bronze and silver players *have* to up their game because at any point they might face a gold/plat player. Lazy play is no longer acceptable in this new format.
Again dictating to others how they SHOULD play. What is wrong with players wanting to play casually and still get even games? In any case you make this statement with no evidence to back it up. Its completely wrong because if a player always gets even matches they must up their game to win more than 50% and get a promotion, so there is already the incentive to improve, you don't need some random threat of "you're opponent might at any minute be much much better than you... so you'll have to play much much better than your average all the time just in case". See the problem with that statement? You can't play above average all the time. Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:45 Thieving Magpie wrote: Soon Bronze, Silver, and gold will no longer be the league for bad players, but will become the league for the true casual players filled with the good and bad players who don't have the time to donate to SC2.
Wow. This more than anything else demonstrates that you just don't get what the match making, or ladder, is. The system is intended to give ANY player, casual or hardcore, an opponent of even skill so that everyone gets to play games that are fun for them. The entire purpose of the ladder is to find you even games. Leagues are NOT supposed to be an indication of how "committed" you are to playing the game. If it worked like you want here then eventually players in these leagues full of "good and bad players" would find that the "good" players always won and the "bad" players always lost. This is exactly the thing the match making was implemented to avoid. In all the above you still haven't made any argument in favour of decay because you either advocate the ladder performs in a way opposite to what it is intended to achieve, or you describe alleged benefits from decay that can be achieved via methods other than decay and therefore do not come with the fundamental flaws associated with decay.
I don't know what you are arguing since I have said time and time again that I don't care which of the two is implemented. The whining sounds the same regardless and the results will be the same regardless.
Heck, just listen to yourself. Your only argument *for* no decay is you want ladder to be this very specific experience that you prefer and then disregarding the preferences of others because you're assuming your preferences are superior to the preferences of others.
For example, I don't have a preference. They could change the ladder tomorrow to be about 100% fairness and you only play against a 100% random opponent. No league, no points, you sometimes face a first timer or you sometimes face MKP; and I wouldn't mind. Or they could change it tomorrow so that each continent is just a massive game of swiss where it resets you after every x-0 wins. Once again, I wouldn't mind. Because it really never matters who your opponent is if you're honestly trying to get better at the game. Your builds don't change, your plans don't change, nothing actually changes whether your opponent is bronze or GM other than you lose/win more often.
Which means that if you play a lot--then the ladder doesn't matter since you can always learn from your play no matter how good/bad the opponent is. And if you rarely play then the ladder system doesn't matter because why the fuck would you care what the ladder system is if you already don't play much?
Which means the only people that make and argue in threads like these are people who care about something that in the end doesn't matter much at all.
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On April 02 2014 15:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: For example, I don't have a preference. They could change the ladder tomorrow to be about 100% fairness and you only play against a 100% random opponent. No league, no points, you sometimes face a first timer or you sometimes face MKP; and I wouldn't mind. Or they could change it tomorrow so that each continent is just a massive game of swiss where it resets you after every x-0 wins. Once again, I wouldn't mind. Because it really never matters who your opponent is if you're honestly trying to get better at the game. Your builds don't change, your plans don't change, nothing actually changes whether your opponent is bronze or GM other than you lose/win more often.
Maybe a platinumscrub doesn't care, because he will face about 50~50 better and worse players but such a system would be horrible for anyone at the top or the bottom. Imagine getting rolled in 95% of your games or rolling the opponent 95% of the time. Most people don't like such a system, you are the minority.
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United States12175 Posts
The fact is that besides wanting to know where they stand, players also want to be given a reason to keep playing the game. "Play to improve" only satisfies a very small niche of players who are capable of dissecting and analyzing their own play. Therefore, extra layers are needed. Sometimes you'll see forum threads pop up that say "how do I get better", but those are dwarfed by the avalanche of "why is the matchmaking broken" and "when will I get promoted" threads.
The leagues have weight partially because Blizzard defines what they mean, but the community would develop a definition for them anyway if Blizzard never did. And even within the same league, players like to create artificial subdivisions of what constitutes "high/mid/low". Players like to think they're getting better, and they like to see feedback that reinforces that belief, so getting from Bronze to Silver or from low Master to high Master is an accomplishment for them. The problem is that in reality, either you really are improving, but you're improving at the same rate as everyone else thereby stagnating your relative improvement, or you're not improving at all. Some players realize that and just stop playing because they've plateaued and they know it, but others can stick with the game long enough to show legitimate improvement simply by creating arbitrary goals for themselves.
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On April 02 2014 16:02 Excalibur_Z wrote: The fact is that besides wanting to know where they stand, players also want to be given a reason to keep playing the game. "Play to improve" only satisfies a very small niche of players who are capable of dissecting and analyzing their own play. Therefore, extra layers are needed. Sometimes you'll see forum threads pop up that say "how do I get better", but those are dwarfed by the avalanche of "why is the matchmaking broken" and "when will I get promoted" threads.
The leagues have weight partially because Blizzard defines what they mean, but the community would develop a definition for them anyway if Blizzard never did. And even within the same league, players like to create artificial subdivisions of what constitutes "high/mid/low". Players like to think they're getting better, and they like to see feedback that reinforces that belief, so getting from Bronze to Silver or from low Master to high Master is an accomplishment for them. The problem is that in reality, either you really are improving, but you're improving at the same rate as everyone else thereby stagnating your relative improvement, or you're not improving at all. Some players realize that and just stop playing because they've plateaued and they know it, but others can stick with the game long enough to show legitimate improvement simply by creating arbitrary goals for themselves.
I find it much more motivating to improve meaningful measurements of my skill. And the fact that people are so interested in matchmaking and ladder is a sign that they also want to know how strong they are playing imo. Besides, MMRdecay isn't really about showing the player that he is better than he is. It is about improving matchmaking by assuming that people that don't play for a long time get worse.
In my opinion though it's not really well calibrated. Either it is cummulative or simply too strong. This season I started playing after 2 months and I had to win like 20-30 games more than I lose just to get to the position where I was before. That's just a demotivating chore, because my opponents were so bloody bad that it wasn't even a challange. Simply a waste of time like when Hearthstone resets its ladder and you start facing super scrubby decks again. This kind of crap is demotivating for me.
Btw.: Who cares about people that just let their ELO/MMR stagnate after they are high? A couple of guys with too high MMR in Goldleague don't really hurt much.
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I find ladder decay quite good. It might be little too strong, but it's way better than not having it. Before I knew that after few weeks of pause I would get owned at least first 10 games. That obviously meant I wouldn't be too keen on laddering again. Now you know you get some free wins during those you remember again builds and hotkeys. Getting back to ladder is much more friendly now.
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Czech Republic12115 Posts
On April 02 2014 20:34 Tuczniak wrote: I find ladder decay quite good. It might be little too strong, but it's way better than not having it. Before I knew that after few weeks of pause I would get owned at least first 10 games. That obviously meant I wouldn't be too keen on laddering again. Now you know you get some free wins during those you remember again builds and hotkeys. Getting back to ladder is much more friendly now. You do realize that your "free wins" can mean "horrible loss" for your opponent? It's funny how you like the winning part of the decay but let me show you that there are people who see it from the other side. I personally met 10 ex-masters with decay in a row at the start of this season(I'm dia) and that was NOT a pleasant day at all(after all I had the score 3-24 or something, I cannot remember exactly). Yaaaay, they had a free win and I had a feeling that I cannot win no matter how much I try that week. (and because I play around 200 games a season you cannot tell me that the system doesn't know how bad I am, also last 3 seasons ended for me with win ratio below 50 %!! Though I was getting harder and harder opponents(and frankly, I think I improved a lot, my builds were more crisp etc. - but this doesn't give me my wins, I play because I want to have fun, I do not want to improve, I have a job where I have to improve...))
After this I just switched to unranked. First of all I can play Daedalus Point again because I just leave any PvZ, why bother, and if I feel my opponent was way better than me after the game, who cares, I did not lose any points, enjoy your free win... Though the bitter taste from that game still remains, it's not pleasant at all to lose like this...
Also, if someone asks me whether I play ranked or unranked and then wants me to leave for free win, I can be evil and do the evil laugh(and say no, obv.) :D Mwahahahaha!!!
Ranked for me is killed with the decay too bad experience. And the moral? Now I tell to everyone interested "do not play SC2" instead of "The game is awesome" Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
Edit> Sorry for wall of text but I hate this "friendly return to ladder" so much because it ruined ladder experience for me so I cannot help myself from time to time ><
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Which is what makes it arbitrary. Some people like the decay experience because it allows them to be able to both face better opponents (if they play consistently) or allows them a ramp up period if they are forced to stop playing for a while.
It hurts players who don't want to play often and don't want to face challenging opponents.
It's not a clear cut thing, which is why it's arbitrary.
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On April 02 2014 16:00 Greenei wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 15:12 Thieving Magpie wrote: For example, I don't have a preference. They could change the ladder tomorrow to be about 100% fairness and you only play against a 100% random opponent. No league, no points, you sometimes face a first timer or you sometimes face MKP; and I wouldn't mind. Or they could change it tomorrow so that each continent is just a massive game of swiss where it resets you after every x-0 wins. Once again, I wouldn't mind. Because it really never matters who your opponent is if you're honestly trying to get better at the game. Your builds don't change, your plans don't change, nothing actually changes whether your opponent is bronze or GM other than you lose/win more often.
Maybe a platinumscrub doesn't care, because he will face about 50~50 better and worse players but such a system would be horrible for anyone at the top or the bottom. Imagine getting rolled in 95% of your games or rolling the opponent 95% of the time. Most people don't like such a system, you are the minority.
First off, that's pretty much how the ELO system in BW worked since people would see their opponents rank and leave the game before it started if it wasn't a rank they liked. Which meant a lot of players did have a 90% winstreak since they only played lowbies, or you had a 90% losing streak since you were a D player that couldn't get your first win until after playing for a month. Some players only played people of equal skill while others had no choice since if they were too picky then they were no longer playing the game. Why? Since it was a truly random system because it was not automated for you with a click of a button.
Second off, a swiss system would be an even harsher ladder system because you would not be considered advancing unless you're undefeated and not just by having a "high winrate."
I picked those extremes to show that I really don't care which direction the ladder goes. I just find it silly for people to think that there is a "right" system. Some people like one system, some people like other systems. If you don't care about improving, then it doesn't matter who you face since you'll be doing the same build regardless. If you do care about improving, then you don't care who you face because self reflection and learning from your mistakes is what you would do regardless. If all you care about is whether or not you lose points at the end of each round, then there is unranked where you can ignore points altogether.
See, that is the problem--those who care/don't care about their play are not affected by the ladder system since they either focus on themselves or they (by definition) don't care.
Those that do care about points and pretty badges will always complain because people like that always want to blame their losses on the system--otherwise they'd only care about self reflection and self improvement.
Here's the truth.
If you only play Bronze players, you will only learn how to beat bronze players. You will then lose in silver until you are thrown back to bronze/"low silver" and then complain why your anti-bronze strats don't beat non-bronze. You then have to "forget" everything you learned and start from scratch if you want to beat silver and so on. Pitting Bronzies and Silvers with Plat/Diamond/Masters will, in the long run, teach them how to play the game MUCH better and MUCH faster and with MUCH less long term frustration than feeling stuck fighting Silvers/Gold/Bronze players. Because then they will have to learn *how* to beat players than are better than them instead of learning how to beat players who don't know what they're doing.
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I just got back from playing for 83 weeks and the system is still matching me against high level plats/diamonds. After losing 17 out of the last 20 games, it still mostly has me playing plats, but no diamonds anymore thank god.
Decay may suck for some, but I wish it worked for me!
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On April 14 2015 08:28 zna wrote: I just got back from playing for 83 weeks and the system is still matching me against high level plats/diamonds. After losing 17 out of the last 20 games, it still mostly has me playing plats, but no diamonds anymore thank god.
Decay may suck for some, but I wish it worked for me! You likely faced maximum decay that roughly equals 20 losses in a row. It is also worth to remember that during the last 83 weeks they have also lowered MMR thresholds for many leagues quite considerably (There were considerable offset/threshold changes 2014-01-24 and 2014-05-01. E.g. with the end of 2013 gold MMR one is now a diamond).
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It seems that the entire ladder system certain players' MMR has been reset, with an increased likelihood of promotion if they show high win rates...The masses are raging on reddit/Battle.net forums. See here: Psione's post
The solution that Blizzard has presented here is to restart as a new ladder. Makes sense to me. Now that everyone is much more closely related, the skill differential should rapidly sort the new players with the new parameters (i.e. no decay).
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United States12175 Posts
On April 15 2015 09:47 HaloLegend98 wrote: It seems that the entire ladder system has been reset...The masses are raging on reddit/Battle.net forums.
The solution that Blizzard has presented here is to restart as a new ladder. Makes sense to me. Now that everyone is much more closely related, the skill differential should rapidly sort the new players with the new parameters (i.e. no decay).
I'm reading that, but did it really apply to every player or just players who had experienced decay?
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On April 15 2015 10:15 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2015 09:47 HaloLegend98 wrote: It seems that the entire ladder system has been reset...The masses are raging on reddit/Battle.net forums.
The solution that Blizzard has presented here is to restart as a new ladder. Makes sense to me. Now that everyone is much more closely related, the skill differential should rapidly sort the new players with the new parameters (i.e. no decay). I'm reading that, but did it really apply to every player or just players who had experienced decay?
applied to everyone apparently lol.
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Yep, totally reset. I think it's a good idea considering how much they have been messing with parameters \ decay. Pleasantly surprised, although I need some games to get back into my dia-scrub-club.
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and you got top gm in diamond. working perfectly :D
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It tells me I have one placement match left, so I am not sure its reset.
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