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UPDATE - http://us.battle.net//sc2/en/blog/12055065
Blizzard is aware of the issue and is going to fix it.
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Hello all,
About last year I was promoted to Diamond. I had been practicing my ass off and watching pros play a lot and I improved a lot over the course of a month or so. I was in Diamond until HotS came out. HotS really caters to my play style more and I was destroying people. So I eventually made it into Masters.
I stopped playing for a few weeks. Then got demoted twice. Then worked my way back up to Diamond. Then stopped playing for a few weeks and now I'm in Platinum again. Except it seems like the ladder has gotten WAY WAY WAY harder.
I'm watching the most pro StarCraft I've ever watched. My APM is the highest it's ever been (I averaged 160 in a 20+ min game the other day vs Z). Yet I'm struggling to get barely a 50% win ratio.
I just finished a PvP against a guy who seemed way better than Platinum. Indeed after I talked to him, I found out he used to be in Masters. Finished 5 Seasons in Masters too. Now he's Plat.
Have a few other friends who were Masters now Diamond, some Diamond now Plat, and some Plats who are now Gold.
Has anyone else noticed the ladder getting way harder recently or am I just hallucinating something?
EDIT - I should clarify I am playing on NA.
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well it is % based and all the newbs who couldn't handle the pressure and were only playing cause it was a new game/expansion quit. soooo yeah
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Theres no difference in master league.
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If you are playing on NA, there is a great deal of Korean and EU smurfs there. Not so much on EU server as the lag between Europe and Korea is too much.
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The more bronze players that quit, the more people drop down into bronze ect.
Seeing how worse people are more likely to quit than better people, the diminishing player pool means it's harder for everyone except those already at the highest of ranks.
There also is no more influx of noobs to help bolster your ranks.
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Could it also be the "MMR decay" being a bit too aggressive? Someone takes a couple of weeks off and they come back 1-2 league lower, but still at like 90% of their former skill? So they just destroy everyone?
My buddy who used to be consistently high diamond is now getting ROFLstomped in Plat by guys who are all like 10x Masters in previous seasons.
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On November 20 2013 16:59 DinoMight wrote:
Could it also be the "MMR decay" being a bit too aggressive? Someone takes a couple of weeks off and they come back 1-2 league lower, but still at like 90% of their former skill? So they just destroy everyone?
My buddy who used to be consistently high diamond is now getting ROFLstomped in Plat by guys who are all like 10x Masters in previous seasons.
this quite a bit yeah, being masters since forever I can still stomp over masters, but it takes a lot of games to get into masters after decay has kicked me out every season again.
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On November 20 2013 16:57 Figgy wrote:
The more bronze players that quit, the more people drop down into bronze ect.
Seeing how worse people are more likely to quit than better people, the diminishing player pool means it's harder for everyone except those already at the highest of ranks.
There also is no more influx of noobs to help bolster your ranks.
It's this. I have a plat NA account I offrace on and 9/10 people I play are ex multi-time diamond or masters players now currently in plat and the other 1/10 is a plat account with 20 career games that destroys me so hard I can only assume it's a korea gm trolling me.
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i played a bunch of games right before season reset and a bunch after, and all i noticed was that all-in strategies were a lot more popular directly after the season reset. sample size was about 100 games.
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Don't be like me and not realise you're playing on U.S for an entire season.
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The worse players are quitting the game, that's why the lower leagues are being flooded by players who have been in diamond or masters. (the mmr decay also helps with that.)
it's just a natural thing. the longer the game is out, the harder the ladder gets. there are basically no complete noobs left. (except in the depths of bronze league or in some team games)
just think of broodwar in its later years.
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Nope, it's easier. Getting into GM on any server these days is easier than ever before. It's just you've gotten worse.
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On November 20 2013 16:52 Psychobabas wrote:
If you are playing on NA, there is a great deal of Korean and EU smurfs there. Not so much on EU server as the lag between Europe and Korea is too much.
You aren't going to play vs Korean pro smurfs in Platinum lol.
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Sure it's getting harder. Who else is playing this dead game nowadays, besides the try hards?
User was warned for this post
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Why would the ladder get easier?
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On November 20 2013 19:56 TigerKarl wrote:
Sure it's getting harder. Who else is playing this dead game nowadays, besides the try hards?
Bye
Btw I have played a lot of bw and after a while I took a break and came back after some months eventhou the game wasn't as lively anymore ( in the foreign scene atleast) , same with sc2 but sc2 still have a1000 times bigger foreign community than bw, u don't play a game based on popularity u play cauz it's fun
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The ladder is always getting harder, especially in the lower parts. Players who quit will more likely be bad and good; and those who continue playing will get better (with some exceptions.) The only times when it gets easier are when there's a huge influx of new players, such as the start of an expansion.
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On November 20 2013 19:44 ZAiNs wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 16:52 Psychobabas wrote:
If you are playing on NA, there is a great deal of Korean and EU smurfs there. Not so much on EU server as the lag between Europe and Korea is too much. You aren't going to play vs Korean pro smurfs in Platinum lol.
The people who would have the ranks those koreans hold will get lower ranks though, which means that those people will also get lower ranks etc. pp. and eventually a gold leaguer will play someone who should be plat.
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They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now...
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I dont think its getting harder, just you didnt played very active and you need a couple of months of consistant playing to get back into the shape. I was demoted to diamond also because of inactivity and it requires some games to get back.
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On November 20 2013 20:36 graNite wrote:
They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now...
It was always 2.5% +- a few points. Definitely I've found ladder getting harder. Since the new season rolled around, I'm now mid diamond from being rank 1 last season. Some higher guys I know are also dropping in rank so I think it's a combination of lower players quitting and masters being inactive.
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Yup insanely harder, i hover between bronze \ gold and it isnt easy. There is hell of a a lot of ex masters\ plats in the lower divisions now
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I am pretty sure a lot of it is related to mmr decay, I used to be around top 8 diamond, but took about a month off and now I run into a ton of former masters in platinum. But then again, the lower level players are getting more skilled as well, plus the player base is not as big as it used to be.
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If ladder is getting harder that is a good thing because people are getting better.....it's the natural evolution of RTS games.
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One thing ive noticed that is quite annoying is that I have no idea what to expect anymore. Sometimes I run in to masters players who arent very good at all and sometimes I get diamond/plat players who play way better than expected. Overall I feel that the skill of players I face is very mixed and its hard to play because every game is so different. On the other hand I guess its good to play against different people and different styles but can get frustrating when you try to read and adapt builds. Dont know if im 100% right about this but I feel that protoss players are the ones I find being the hardest to read because of so very mixed levels of play. Some sit at 160 apm and have very clean builds and mechanics while others are at 60 apm and dont seem to have a clue what their doing.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On November 20 2013 21:06 Tchado wrote:
If ladder is getting harder that is a good thing because people are getting better.....it's the natural evolution of RTS games.
I disagree. In fact it's a bad thing because the starting point for a newbie is getting harder and harder. So more people will eventually go away than come aboard(? don't know whether I can use this, not a native English speaker] so the population will get smaller and with smaller population the matchmaking will get worse and worse. Right from the start of this season I played aprox. 30 games and won 3(three) games resulting in score 3:26 or something like this. Maybe the system was trying to recognize if I deserve a promotion to master or what, but it was pretty frustrating to lose again and again and again when standing against opponents I shouldn't get(way above my skill). And this is not how matchmaking should work. All of those players I stand against were above my level(since I ended with 66 points in division after this awesome streak I§m guessing all of them were "favored" speaking in "old" terms :-)) and I was thinking about stop playing, because the only thing I liked is totally broken now(long even games).
I'm not an expert on Blizzard matchmaking but I can tell(and a lot of friends of mine as well) that the ladder isn't getting harder, the matchmaking is getting more insane. I'm getting opponents who roflstomp me or I stomp them. Where are the even games I remember?  The last season was bad but the start of thsi season is the worst state of SC2 I remember. And again - I do not mind to lose a game when enemy is better. But I like an even game, not a game where my opponent is just trolling me because she/he knows how better (s)he is :-(
hmmm... at least I'm feeling better now ^_^
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Now people aren't "low master/high diamond", "or low plat/high gold" anymore. They are "plat that faces ex-masters" or "gold that faces ex-diamonds".
Pretty funny, if you ask me.
But yeah, ladder is a bit messed up lately.
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The problem I noticed is that I get roflstomped in a lot of games and I roflstomp my opponent in a lot of games (meaning I play players which I am not supposed to play on ladder). That definitely wasn't the case a year ago.
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It gets harder because there are two forces pushing the overall skill level up.
1. After the initial rush of new players with the release of HotS people stop playing over time. Leading to a decline in numbers, typically at the lower end of the ladder. To compensate for the population change people get shifted down due to the way leagues are applied (percentage of the population).
2. The people who stay and play will get better over time. Leading to an overall increase in game ability over time at every level.
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I just finished a PvP against a guy who seemed way better than Platinum. Indeed after I talked to him, I found out he used to be in Masters. Finished 5 Seasons in Masters too. Now he's Plat.
Have a few other friends who were Masters now Diamond, some Diamond now Plat, and some Plats who are now Gold.
I agree that the ladder may be getting harder- especially for those who haven't been keeping up with the current metagame- but also it's because Blizzard's MMR Decay has actual master and diamond league players arbitrarily lowered to platinum and gold ranks just because they haven't been grinding out enough games every season (even if they have a high winning percentage and are essentially playing at the same level).
So when you see yourself playing against a gold player who was master league two seasons ago, it may very well be that he's still at the same level (i.e. harder than your average gold) but was demoted due to inactivity.
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Agreed with this, seeming a lot harder to hit my usual NA rank. Shrinking casual pop + EU/KR higher level smurfs have made masters really tough. Went 37-0 to start off this season after being inactive and that barely got me into diamond. Seems like mmr goes up slower than before.
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Is it just me or is MMR also rising slower? Is the match making system less progressive? Year ago, after 10 straight wins you would be placed against one or two leagues higher and now it seems when you get placed to lower leagues it takes forever to rise no matter what win%.
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yeah Blizz seem to be making the leagues much smaller and seemingly destroying your MMR if you dare to have a life. I've been 4 times diamond, two times of which I had to fight my way out of platinum, but also have a life and so can't play games everyday and even some weeks... this has meant that now I'm in gold league and like you struggling to get 50% w/l ratio when last season when I was stuck in plat I had a near 80% w/l ratio and playing mostly dias/masters...
I'm not sure what the reason behind it is, but gold league is a total mess... the guy who's rank 1 in my division has over 40wins and only a few losses and was masters last season, then the person behind him was dia last season and then at the bottom there are people who were gold or plat last season struggling (like me).
It's a bit of a mess really and it makes playing ladder super demoralizing as you never feel like your improving, even if you are...
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Definitely noticing this on the Chinese server as well. I was Top 25 Masters 2 seasons ago, and this season... I lost my placement match, lost 2 more, and finally won 1 placing me at Rank 96 X_X
Dat ladder fear kicking in again.
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Laddering is pretty ugly these days. I myself can't complain as i am in my glourious gold league since forver. It`s hard to imagine the decay alone is the root of the ladder mess. I`m pretty sure that a shrinking player base needs to be considered, too.
Guys, i played games where i faced early pressure (zealot, stalker, msc) to deny my bunker/natural!!!
I was like "woooow, i know that from watching pro streams D: "
Usually if you face some kind of micro intensive pressure, you can be sure your opponent lacks on some thinks on his side too... but nope.
Those wizzards pull off some pro stuff, and more important, as fast as them.
Next game i face scrubs with zero to nothing online experience... and i am the magician.
/exaggerated
Blizzard; justify yourself! It's about time!
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is the sun getting warmer?
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I regret I didnt try harder to get my promotion when it was actually doable... but at least I havent gotten demoted yet!
My clanmates grind 100 games each season start to get back up. Maybe its time to just assume all my opponents are good, and play for funzies. At least you dont get desillutioned that your game is solid if its not!
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Imho Everything started when they denied the possibilty of demotion, and if i recall correctly it was more or less when hots was released, so when we had a lot of new players,
now a lot of them don't play anymore and mmr decay is messing up Everything.
Moreover i dont get how this can work in a percentage system, since there is no demotion, higher leagues should be unacessible through promotion without a large flux of new players that keep the percentages eventually balanced.
For example a friend of mine ranked for the first time now, placed in silver, he keeps playing vs plat and high gold, read mostly former diamond... Result is no fun for him
I think we have to forget the pre hots ranking system, now its totally different
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And yes specially gold league is a mess
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United States1072 Posts
it took me from going Plat to Masters 80-12 Winning most of my games consecutively LOL I was in Diamond for about like 30-40 of those games
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Northern Ireland25085 Posts
SC2 is a game where knowledge of builds and responses is of critical importance. Unlike say, FPS you can't coast on latent mechanical skill.
I definitely feel it's harder to come back from inactivity for this reason especially. I don't see players who are better mechanically since I came back to playing, but it's super hard to deal with a ton of the allins that require really specific responses if you're at all rusty.
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a lot of people like me quit with masters mechanics and got decayed down to gold/plat/dia
i dodge every game with a protoss in it so that might be why too
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My post from the comprehensive ladder guide:
Ya I don't think it's as bad as they're making it out to be, but it definitely does seem weird. I was Masters essentially all of WoL since the league was created, then masters for the first few season of HotS before I took an extended break. I do remember the day you could create an account and within 15-25 games you'd be in diamond well into playing masters only... Now I can't seem to get out of platinum hahaha All the plat players now are actually really good (granted, I'm bad compared to before, but no where near what level of bad plat used to be). You definitely see every single player with 150+apm and hitting crisp timings, I am almost amazed to say that sometimes when I watch my replays I'm actually IMPRESSED by things my opponents do... I'm impressed by plats lol
Also they're all ex-masters haha Like every single person I face in plat was ex-masters, and if they weren't, I just roll with no effort lol Was everyone and their mom masters at some point in time? 
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From my experience (very low level, started playing part way through last season) last season I got to gold (high gold) and then this season placed into silver, no big deal I never really lost to many silver's. Or so I thought, the definition of a silver now is apparently like 70% plat or higher players and 30% real silvers. So naturally I am not doing very well in silver sitting around 50-55 or something. Some of you are saying things like, 'players are getting better' which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, why would all of a sudden a new season starts and then boom everyone learned to macro micro and multitask a hell of a lot better. If you were talking about the difference from 2-3 years ago compared to now, then I would agree with you. But you're not.
If you look at the stats on sc2ranks you will see that 83% of people are in bronze-gold. You can't tell me that it has always been like that.. (I dont know for sure because I myself am very new). So therefore people who don't deserve to be in bronze-gold are therefore making these leagues harder? So in reply to the original question it looks like they are harder..
So what I am wondering is, why exactly is this happening? I understand MMR decay and whatnot but isn't a week enough for players to earn their way back up? Well not for me at least.. Is it always like this at the start of a new season, or am I missing something?
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United States1072 Posts
Also they're all ex-masters haha Like every single person I face in plat was ex-masters, and if they weren't, I just roll with no effort lol Was everyone and their mom masters at some point in time?
Yea when back in the day all it took was have good macro and as stated before it was 20% not 2.5%.
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I am certainly finding it much harder. It is somewhat frustrating but at the same time making me have to play better to stay a float. I would say 80% of my opponents this season (after getting demoted to Gold from top 5 plat/low diamond) are former Masters and high Diamond players who are now in gold.
I do think this will level out after a full season or two but it is much harder than its ever been IMO. Maybe this is the challenge I need to break through to consistent Diamond form :D
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it's ok, you definitely get less bad players though now in high masters
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On November 20 2013 19:44 ZAiNs wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 16:52 Psychobabas wrote:
If you are playing on NA, there is a great deal of Korean and EU smurfs there. Not so much on EU server as the lag between Europe and Korea is too much. You aren't going to play vs Korean pro smurfs in Platinum lol.
never said pro. just lots of smurfs in every league.
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On November 20 2013 22:14 TheSayo182 wrote:
Imho Everything started when they denied the possibilty of demotion, and if i recall correctly it was more or less when hots was released, so when we had a lot of new players,
That's a good point too. Maybe all those thinks combined, just gotten out of hand.
The currently annouenced "free to play starter edtion' may could be a reaction regarding 'active players'.
All in all i don't have a good feeling about this all. (Nope, i do not want to jump a certain, negative hype writing this)
I wonder what conclusion Excalibur_Z would have on this. Unfourtunatly, his ladder and league guide somehow overflow me. And allways will.
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As long as it's matching me against players who are roughly equal to me, I don't care what my league is. I have no illusions that I'm a pro, so does it really matter if the border on my portrait is platinum or diamond?
It seems that with the introduction of unranked a lot of people stopped playing ranked, but the remaining players are spread out across the same leagues as ever - which means some people (like myself!) will be a league lower than they used to be.
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Could be. After not laddering the last couple seasons I'm in diamond now, previous masters for every season I've laddered consistently, and while I have a very good record so far, many of the games were actually pretty close to my surprise. I don't think I should have too much trouble getting promoted but compared to the beginning of the year I don't remember diamond giving me this much grief.
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On November 20 2013 22:48 Psychobabas wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 19:44 ZAiNs wrote:On November 20 2013 16:52 Psychobabas wrote:
If you are playing on NA, there is a great deal of Korean and EU smurfs there. Not so much on EU server as the lag between Europe and Korea is too much. You aren't going to play vs Korean pro smurfs in Platinum lol. never said pro. just lots of smurfs in every league.
I've matched dragon in plat. He was 38-2 or something equally ridiculous and I won. ;d
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Agreed, ladder is pretty tough now. I got into gold just after HotS came out, now I'm down to silver again, though my play is better than ever. Casual players falling out makes sense as a reason why. I've got a goal to make it back into gold this season, and I think it will be tough.
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On November 20 2013 22:54 SnuggleZhenya wrote:
As long as it's matching me against players who are roughly equal to me, I don't care what my league is. I have no illusions that I'm a pro, so does it really matter if the border on my portrait is platinum or diamond?
To play ladder is like beeing a hobbit. One wants to go after his usual business, among themselves.
You don't want that gandalf guy that throws you out into a world of mystery and dangerous.
It's: get roflstomped, or steamroll yourself.
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Yes. Ladder is getting harder for lower leagues mainly due MMR decay. Players typically belonging to higher leagues have had their MMR dropped after they have been inactive for 2 weeks or more. The decay happens fast and is considerable. And it takes lots of games to overcome the maximum decay. Many do not overcome the decay before going back to hiatus. And when they come back, they are dropped even lower.
More information regarding MMR decay and its effects is available from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
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On November 20 2013 23:22 korona wrote:Yes. Ladder is getting harder for lower leagues mainly due MMR decay. Players typically belonging to higher leagues have had their MMR dropped after they have been inactive for 2 weeks or more. The decay happens fast and is considerable. And it takes lots of games to overcome the maximum decay. Many do not overcome the decay before going back to hiatus. And when they come back, they are dropped even lower. More information regarding MMR decay and its effects is available from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
ye i just make like 10 games or less per season (im more of a arcade maps player) got into plat stop playing then next season got placed into silver so ye it can be that
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better players are in lower leagues now (due to mmr decay and shifting player base). Plat is the new diamond. Most of masters is now diamond.
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People are constantly improving, so yeah, I think that it is harder. I was first 2 HoTS seasons master, then dia and only now got back to masters with crazy practice. But you are getting better, so it should compensate.
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On November 20 2013 23:25 GizmoPT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 23:22 korona wrote:Yes. Ladder is getting harder for lower leagues mainly due MMR decay. Players typically belonging to higher leagues have had their MMR dropped after they have been inactive for 2 weeks or more. The decay happens fast and is considerable. And it takes lots of games to overcome the maximum decay. Many do not overcome the decay before going back to hiatus. And when they come back, they are dropped even lower. More information regarding MMR decay and its effects is available from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734 ye i just make like 10 games or less per season (im more of a arcade maps player) got into plat stop playing then next season got placed into silver so ye it can be that
It is possible to avoid the current MMR decay mechanism as it only activates after 2 weeks of inactivity. If you don't have time to play during longer period, then make sure you have 1 game played during each less than 2 weeks period. Then MMR decay does not activate in that game mode for you.
Of course this helps only regarding your account. Lots of your opponents still have faced the decay.
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On November 20 2013 23:22 korona wrote:Yes. Ladder is getting harder for lower leagues mainly due MMR decay. Players typically belonging to higher leagues have had their MMR dropped after they have been inactive for 2 weeks or more. The decay happens fast and is considerable. And it takes lots of games to overcome the maximum decay. Many do not overcome the decay before going back to hiatus. And when they come back, they are dropped even lower. More information regarding MMR decay and its effects is available from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
Very interesting. In early/mid WoL I was a "high diamond" player. Nowadays I play a couple games a season, sometimes taking a break for a season or more. This season I was placed into bronze.  Of course, a large part of that is that I don't know any build... and people in general have gotten better mechanically and otherwise.
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Ok so I'm not hallucinating, it really is getting harder.
The problem with MMR decay is if a bunch of people all stop playing for a while and get demoted, they can never get re-promoted again! I'm in plat playing against former Masters.. and none of us will get promoted unless our win % goes up significantly.... which it won't because we're playing people of our skill level.
-______-
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On November 20 2013 22:54 SnuggleZhenya wrote:
As long as it's matching me against players who are roughly equal to me, I don't care what my league is. I have no illusions that I'm a pro, so does it really matter if the border on my portrait is platinum or diamond?
Well tbh I agree, but we also have to make sure blizzard is upholding a good ladder system. If sc2 ranks is to be believe, the league %'s are all off (for example, NA ladder diamond+masters is closer to 9% rather than the 20% they intend... that's a massive discrepancy. That just creates a bad ladder system, much the same was MMR depreciation and allowing unranked vs. ranked is.
I get that most ppl don't care what league they are in as long as they're having fun, but we should also expect blizzard to uphold a strong ladder system.
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On November 20 2013 23:38 DinoMight wrote:
Ok so I'm not hallucinating, it really is getting harder.
The problem with MMR decay is if a bunch of people all stop playing for a while and get demoted, they can never get re-promoted again! I'm in plat playing against former Masters.. and none of us will get promoted unless our win % goes up significantly.... which it won't because we're playing people of our skill level.
-______-
Yeah there is hardly any reward in the current ladder system. Makes absolutely no sense to me. The game is only balanced to top tier Korean pros (has to be this way of course) so why is there no love for the lower leagues?
The 2% Masters out there need to get off their high horse. I was in Diamond for several seasons then get demoted every season since hots came out for no reason at all. No reward makes me not want to play.
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On November 20 2013 23:42 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 22:54 SnuggleZhenya wrote:
As long as it's matching me against players who are roughly equal to me, I don't care what my league is. I have no illusions that I'm a pro, so does it really matter if the border on my portrait is platinum or diamond?
Well tbh I agree, but we also have to make sure blizzard is upholding a good ladder system. If sc2 ranks is to be believe, the league %'s are all off (for example, NA ladder diamond+masters is closer to 9% rather than the 20% they intend... that's a massive discrepancy. That just creates a bad ladder system, much the same was MMR depreciation and allowing unranked vs. ranked is. I get that most ppl don't care what league they are in as long as they're having fun, but we should also expect blizzard to uphold a strong ladder system.
I agree. I think what you mean to say is that being in a specific league should equate to a certain skill level. Right now I wouldn't be surprised if Plat was like 40% of the player base with people ranging in skill everywhere from Masters to actual Plat.
It's just meaningless to be plat right now. Some people I play are awful and some are insanely good.
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They just made so it drops you a league below to make you play more and spend more time on their game... does that make sense? No wonder why I'm rank 1 in gold with 9 wins 0 losses and I was diamond..I'm also fighting people that are diamond/masters on gold/plat ladder...
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To the people claiming it’s just less people playing on the ladder… where’s your numbers to substantiate your claim? I’ve played pretty consistently since the game’s come out and have been diamond/masters for probably the last 10/12 seasons going back to middle of WOL. My guess would be the inactivity of players would be gradual.. not such a severe drop off in a single season. I'd even be willing to bet it's actually more people since the WCS finals has seemed to encourage players to come back.
Having said that… this season is an anomaly. The skill level has been pretty consistent in the ranks in seasons past. You usually know what you’re getting when faced against a gold/plat/dia etc…
IMO (backed by my own observations) this is 100% due to ladder decay. I am in Plat and NO ONE I play was in plat last season. Most have been in Masters 8+ times.
You don’t go from a perennial masters player to a platinum due to ladder shrinkage. You go because Blizzard thinks if you stop playing you suddenly became trash at the game and should get demoted.
The fear of getting demoted due to inactivity is not keeping people playing.. the fact you get demoted and it's hard to get back is the ultimate deterrent.
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alot harder imo, i been Dia before and i got inactive for around 1,5 months. after coming back i was demoted from Dia to Gold. and now i stuck in gold coz i just play ex masters players...
gold league is such a mess right now either im getting a really easy "goldish" opponent or im getting ex master players and they just destroy me...
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On November 21 2013 00:03 KOtical wrote:
alot harder imo, i been Dia before and i got inactive for around 1,5 months. after coming back i was demoted from Dia to Gold. and now i stuck in gold coz i just play ex masters players...
gold league is such a mess right now either im getting a really easy "goldish" opponent or im getting ex master players and they just destroy me...
Same situation here. One could argue it doesn't matter what league you are in as long as you are having fun. For me though, it isn't fun after working really hard to get diamond only to get demoted season after season to gold, then face former masters players all the time.
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On November 21 2013 00:03 KOtical wrote:
alot harder imo, i been Dia before and i got inactive for around 1,5 months. after coming back i was demoted from Dia to Gold. and now i stuck in gold coz i just play ex masters players...
gold league is such a mess right now either im getting a really easy "goldish" opponent or im getting ex master players and they just destroy me...
Exactly the same situation as me :<
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this system was made for people playing lot of games since most people now play few and theres mmr decay there are lot of ex-high leagues playing in lower ones from time to time and since they dont play a lot they dont leave those lower leagues
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The ladder is definitely harder, and the skill variance in gold is pretty wild.
That said... the talk about MMR decay is seriously overblown. It is nothing more than the hot new scapegoat for players trying to come to terms with dropping a league or three. "No way, I'm not REALLY gold. I'm ex-masters! And I'd be back there, but this stupid MMR decay means I have to play 500 games a season just to get there! Nothing to do with my play!" If you're wrecking your competition and coming in at a 75%+ winrate, then you have a beef with MMR decay... if you dropped to gold and have a 50% winrate, then you're where you belong. People complain about hitting "ex-masters" players regularly, but I suggest you check their profile beyond looking at their ladder finishes. My division has a ton of former diamonds who are right around 50% (myself included), it's just where the distribution is now.
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On November 21 2013 00:19 iggym wrote:
The ladder is definitely harder, and the skill variance in gold is pretty wild.
That said... the talk about MMR decay is seriously overblown. It is nothing more than the hot new scapegoat for players trying to come to terms with dropping a league or three. "No way, I'm not REALLY gold. I'm ex-masters! And I'd be back there, but this stupid MMR decay means I have to play 500 games a season just to get there! Nothing to do with my play!" If you're wrecking your competition and coming in at a 75%+ winrate, then you have a beef with MMR decay... if you dropped to gold and have a 50% winrate, then you're where you belong. People complain about hitting "ex-masters" players regularly, but I suggest you check their profile beyond looking at their ladder finishes. My division has a ton of former diamonds who are right around 50% (myself included), it's just where the distribution is now.
ye if they play a lot of games they sure are in their deserved league MMR decay is just a thing for guys that dont play much at all
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I've been out of the loop for sc2 for a while now, but I thought I heard Blizzard directly say they were making the ladder harder?? Wasn't Masters changed from ~20% of the player base to ~3% or something? Also I'm assuming that with less people playing it's naturally harder to climb up the ladder.
I got back into starcraft this week after not having played for 2 years, and I'm in gold league playing people who used to be in master league, and they're definitely way better than what gold leaguers used to be when I stopped playing (I was around rank 20 masters before I quit).
On November 20 2013 23:45 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 23:38 DinoMight wrote:
Ok so I'm not hallucinating, it really is getting harder.
The problem with MMR decay is if a bunch of people all stop playing for a while and get demoted, they can never get re-promoted again! I'm in plat playing against former Masters.. and none of us will get promoted unless our win % goes up significantly.... which it won't because we're playing people of our skill level.
-______- Yeah there is hardly any reward in the current ladder system. Makes absolutely no sense to me. The game is only balanced to top tier Korean pros (has to be this way of course) so why is there no love for the lower leagues? The 2% Masters out there need to get off their high horse. I was in Diamond for several seasons then get demoted every season since hots came out for no reason at all. No reward makes me not want to play.
How is there no reward? If anything, a harder ladder means there is much more of a reward to improving now. Getting into diamond was incredibly easy, and hence meant almost nothing. Increasing the skill required to enter each league can now make it feel meaningful to hit plat / diamond / masters. Better than masters / high diamond being everybody who knows how to play, and every league below diamond consisting of casual players who have no idea what they're doing
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On November 21 2013 00:19 iggym wrote:
The ladder is definitely harder, and the skill variance in gold is pretty wild.
That said... the talk about MMR decay is seriously overblown. It is nothing more than the hot new scapegoat for players trying to come to terms with dropping a league or three. "No way, I'm not REALLY gold. I'm ex-masters! And I'd be back there, but this stupid MMR decay means I have to play 500 games a season just to get there! Nothing to do with my play!" If you're wrecking your competition and coming in at a 75%+ winrate, then you have a beef with MMR decay... if you dropped to gold and have a 50% winrate, then you're where you belong. People complain about hitting "ex-masters" players regularly, but I suggest you check their profile beyond looking at their ladder finishes. My division has a ton of former diamonds who are right around 50% (myself included), it's just where the distribution is now.
Except when you're ex-Masters and playing other ex-Masters, your win rate isn't going to be significantly >50%.
Because of ladder decay/innactivity these people all got demoted from Masters to Diamond/Plat, from Diamond to Plat/Gold. I had a buddy who skipped 1 season (played only his placement, and won). He dropped 2 leagues by winning 1 game!
So now we're all in Plat, fighting other people of our skill level in Plat. We're not going to have significantly >50% win rate but we're all much more talented than what has traditionally come to be expected from Platinum players.
And no, getting into Diamond was never, "extremely easy." This game requires so much dedication to it... you can't be in Diamond without laddering a lot and also watching a ton of pro games, Day9 TV, or whatever. Compared to other games the skill cap is way way higher and builds/strategy/meta are always changing which requires constant attention to the game.
I haven't played Counter-Strike in a while.. but my skill there is capped at how fast I can click on someone's head. Not the same with SC2.
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On November 21 2013 00:25 TheSubtleArt wrote:
How is there no reward? If anything, a harder ladder means there is much more of a reward to improving now. Getting into diamond was incredibly easy, and hence meant almost nothing. Increasing the skill required to enter each league can now make it feel meaningful to hit plat / diamond / masters. Better than masters / high diamond being everybody who knows how to play, and every league below diamond consisting of casual players who have no idea what they're doing
Diamond was NOT easy to get into during WoL. I'm just saying there isn't a lot of reward when you get demoted several times for no apparent reason, only to play really skilled opponents in GOLD league, haha, yea no reward there.
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On November 21 2013 00:08 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:03 KOtical wrote:
alot harder imo, i been Dia before and i got inactive for around 1,5 months. after coming back i was demoted from Dia to Gold. and now i stuck in gold coz i just play ex masters players...
gold league is such a mess right now either im getting a really easy "goldish" opponent or im getting ex master players and they just destroy me... Same situation here. One could argue it doesn't matter what league you are in as long as you are having fun. For me though, it isn't fun after working really hard to get diamond only to get demoted season after season to gold, then face former masters players all the time.
I was back after 12 games in platin this season after demotion to gold. But i only faced former dia/sometimes masters to get the promotion done. i stuck in platin since 2 season's but i really think i m far better at the game at the moment, just could not get up to diamand ^^ but as we see in this thread, there are a real problem with the ladder system as it is right now ...
i red on battlenet (i think it was Leanytas on Eu) which wrote that blizzard noticed it and maybe will change something in the near future ... hope the will fix it , its no more motivation, the new system turns into frustration of the majority of ppl, i m fine with Platin recently, last season it takes about 80 games to get back , so i see just a little bit of improvement
gghf
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the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game.
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I will repeat myself on these topic but if you people are searching for a way to be matched with players of your level and are not chasing a shiny border icon you should definitively play unranked. There is no season shit and so on. I have no problem facing people of my level of play in unranked.
The only time it's different it's at start of season where there is a comeback of the "protoss barcode effect" where you see a lot of cheeser trying to climb the ladder at any price. Btw if you are facing a protoss barcode just blind counter by playing hyper safe and enjoy freewin because he will cheese 100% of the time.
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Havent played a game since the beginning of last season but this makes me want to return and play a bit offrace in a lower league just 4 fun.
I was too lazy to lose a lot of games on purpose to get in the appropriate level for my offrace skill and when i just played 4 gate with my off race protoss i was still winning against master. So it wasnt that easy to just drop 2 leagues.
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On November 20 2013 21:54 EngrishTeacher wrote:
Definitely noticing this on the Chinese server as well. I was Top 25 Masters 2 seasons ago, and this season... I lost my placement match, lost 2 more, and finally won 1 placing me at Rank 96 X_X
Dat ladder fear kicking in again.
Rank 96 Masters after you won your placement match? You are Rank 96 b/c you have no points..
That's how its always worked...
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On November 21 2013 00:25 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:19 iggym wrote:
The ladder is definitely harder, and the skill variance in gold is pretty wild.
That said... the talk about MMR decay is seriously overblown. It is nothing more than the hot new scapegoat for players trying to come to terms with dropping a league or three. "No way, I'm not REALLY gold. I'm ex-masters! And I'd be back there, but this stupid MMR decay means I have to play 500 games a season just to get there! Nothing to do with my play!" If you're wrecking your competition and coming in at a 75%+ winrate, then you have a beef with MMR decay... if you dropped to gold and have a 50% winrate, then you're where you belong. People complain about hitting "ex-masters" players regularly, but I suggest you check their profile beyond looking at their ladder finishes. My division has a ton of former diamonds who are right around 50% (myself included), it's just where the distribution is now. Except when you're ex-Masters and playing other ex-Masters, your win rate isn't going to be significantly >50%. Because of ladder decay/innactivity these people all got demoted from Masters to Diamond/Plat, from Diamond to Plat/Gold. I had a buddy who skipped 1 season (played only his placement, and won). He dropped 2 leagues by winning 1 game! So now we're all in Plat, fighting other people of our skill level in Plat. We're not going to have significantly >50% win rate but we're all much more talented than what has traditionally come to be expected from Platinum players.
This is exactly what's happening from my personal experience haha
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On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game.
No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off.
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I think the people are playing to this day are better. I remember when it first came out I was crushing people with stupid things like widow mines and hell bat drops.......then they nerfed things, people got intelligent. So I would say overall the quality of players is much better than it was the noobs/people who don't wanna put effort in went to play other things. You will see similiar thing when LOTV comes out.
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On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off.
Do you have numbers to support this though?
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wow. Looks like I am not alone haha. Definitely feel that the ladder is a bit wacky atm.
Thank god. I guess I should just focus more on my play than the stupid league system :p
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On November 21 2013 00:48 ffadicted wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off. Do you have numbers to support this though?
For which part? The player base is smaller, and it makes sense that a higher proportion of people who have stopped playing were lower skilled. The decay info is straight out of Excalibur's post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
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On November 21 2013 00:55 iggym wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:48 ffadicted wrote:On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off. Do you have numbers to support this though? For which part? The player base is smaller, and it makes sense that a higher proportion of people who have stopped playing were lower skilled. The decay info is straight out of Excalibur's post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
I meant for the smaller player base. The numbers I'm taking are from sc2 ranks (not sure if there are more reliable ones out there), and they're showing a massive league % discrepancy with much higher number of players in lower leagues than there should be (reverse for high leagues). This phenomenon could be explained by what most ppl here are saying, where higher players have been pushed down to lower leagues due to decay and can't get back up because they're 50% with other players from higher leagues that also got pushed down.
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I'm an ex masters in Gold.
Lucky I don't give a fuck :D
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On November 21 2013 01:02 Douillos wrote:
I'm an ex masters in Gold.
Lucky I don't give a fuck :D
Why would you? Probably wrecking kids in Gold. Good for you xD
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On November 21 2013 01:05 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 01:02 Douillos wrote:
I'm an ex masters in Gold.
Lucky I don't give a fuck :D Why would you? Probably wrecking kids in Gold. Good for you xD
As a goldie who keeps getting whipped by ex-masters, it gets me in the feelz everytime. But it does feel less bad to lose to someone who was at one point, very good.
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If only we could travel back in time, so many potential GSL champions in Gold now hehe. FruitDealer wouldn't stand a chance
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On November 21 2013 01:05 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 01:02 Douillos wrote:
I'm an ex masters in Gold.
Lucky I don't give a fuck :D Why would you? Probably wrecking kids in Gold. Good for you xD
It's a nice way to get back into the game :p
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On November 20 2013 22:48 Psychobabas wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 19:44 ZAiNs wrote:On November 20 2013 16:52 Psychobabas wrote:
If you are playing on NA, there is a great deal of Korean and EU smurfs there. Not so much on EU server as the lag between Europe and Korea is too much. You aren't going to play vs Korean pro smurfs in Platinum lol. never said pro. just lots of smurfs in every league.
Hey at HSC they said that jjakji was silver on his EU account or something like that :p
Also yeah i'm in bronze right now with Diamond to GM spending skill and overing at 160-180apm playing zerg.
- I did my placement match and ended up in Bronze. I played till i was rank1.
- Get to sleep. Played 4days later. Got back 1 (i was like 50).
- Didn't touch the game for a week. Played one night and got rank1 bronze again.
etc...
I have like 40games or so played and 1 defeat. Still a bronzie :p
(I was plat before played a lot of diamond and low masters so i was maybe close to diamond). Some guys from a clan i know are in gold and was master the season before. They are slowing coming back to their league but it seems to take time because they lose a lot of games against silver/gold that are ex masters.
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It seems most people that have posted in here are saying the same thing. I also have been a mid-high diamond every season and have started out in plat right now. I've played every season and use all my bonus pool, so it can't be due to mmr decay. Since so many people are describing the same exact thing, I wonder if the ladder could be bugged, and I'm pretty sure that there has been an issue with the ladder in the past. There shouldn't be a sudden change like this for so many people all at the same time unless there is something wrong.
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Hasn't this been happening since the MMR decay? I use to play Diamond end of WoL but went inactive in hots laddering only doing 1-5 matches at most per season which resulted in slowly dropping into silver last season. It put me off playing so I just don't ladder any more.
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The problem is for people that wants to get into a team that requires only Masters or High diamond. (This is kind of stupid tbh) but some requires it. It comes to a point when you don't know how you can recruit someone (well.. you could watch him play) but if the guy is gold and is REALLY gold... Well you wasted your time.
Well it's bad... But not as bad as iCcup :p if you play there after a period of time you are going to have a lot more defeat than wins :p THAT is a hard ladder :p
But really yeah. The Decay or whatever this is is making the ladder look like shit right now. Maybe it will stabilize.
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Inb4 everyone's masters in LOTV.
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On November 21 2013 01:33 Cortza wrote:
Inb4 everyone's masters in LOTV.
Well... The points that it's quite the contrary. Masters are Gold, Diamond are Silver and Plat are bronze. It's the other way around.
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It's probably because SC2 barely has any playerbase any more D:
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On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off.
There are no predetermined quotas for different leagues. You get promoted when your MMR goes over league threshold. For example if all players who are currently in bronze MMR range would quit, it would have no immediate effect on other player's MMR. There would just be no bronze range players for a while. Bronze range would start filling slowly via MMR decay, players' MMR dropping to bronze range naturally by losing games and new players entering the ladder.
Player base is slowly decreasing, but the numbers are still healthy. For example for EU last season 64.2 k players had played their 1v1 placements after 1 week. This season 51.6 k players had played the placements after 1 week. For NA the numbers were 54.6k for last season & 44.2 k for this season. The player amount will increase during the season. When ladder lock started 1 week before end of last season 144.9 k players had played their 1v1 placement in EU (133.2 k in NA). After the first week, typically about 10k to 15 k people entered 1v1 ladder each week both in EU & NA last season. These numbers are based on data from sc2ranks (I have taken snapshots of the distribution regularly since start of last season).
MMR decay is the logical main reason why ladders are currently messed up. There are multiple other minor reasons 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 November 21 2013 01:23 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 22:48 Psychobabas wrote:On November 20 2013 19:44 ZAiNs wrote:On November 20 2013 16:52 Psychobabas wrote:
If you are playing on NA, there is a great deal of Korean and EU smurfs there. Not so much on EU server as the lag between Europe and Korea is too much. You aren't going to play vs Korean pro smurfs in Platinum lol. never said pro. just lots of smurfs in every league. Hey at HSC they said that jjakji was silver on his EU account or something like that :p Also yeah i'm in bronze right now with Diamond to GM spending skill and overing at 160-180apm playing zerg. - I did my placement match and ended up in Bronze. I played till i was rank1. - Get to sleep. Played 4days later. Got back 1 (i was like 50). - Didn't touch the game for a week. Played one night and got rank1 bronze again. etc... I have like 40games or so played and 1 defeat. Still a bronzie :p (I was plat before played a lot of diamond and low masters so i was maybe close to diamond). Some guys from a clan i know are in gold and was master the season before. They are slowing coming back to their league but it seems to take time because they lose a lot of games against silver/gold that are ex masters.
That is definitely another factor that is worth mentioning, promotion is too rarely given, which I think is a consequence of that demotion cannot happen anymore.
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Yep same here. I finally got promoted to Diamond on Season 3 (I think) of this year as Zerg. Then I offraced in the SEA server as Terran for one season and came back last season as gold as Terran. Towards the end of the season I finally got to Platinum but this season I'm back in gold. I figured maybe it's because I switched races but when I switched back to Z I've been winning more as T.
Good to know everyone else is dropping to lower leagues. haha
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On November 21 2013 00:55 iggym wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:48 ffadicted wrote:On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off. Do you have numbers to support this though? For which part? The player base is smaller, and it makes sense that a higher proportion of people who have stopped playing were lower skilled. The decay info is straight out of Excalibur's post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
I just ran the numbers. 5/6th of all players are in gold and below. just 16.9% of the people are in platinum or higher.
source: http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/5o6aq.png)
35% (bronze) +28.31% (silver) +19.79% (gold) = 83.1%
0.53%(GM) + 3.02% (mas) + 5.29% (dia) + 8.06% (plat) = 16.9%
100/16.9 = 5.9 times = 1/6th.
then for verification: 1/6 = 0.167
0.167 * 5 = 83.33333333%
well, damn.
So no, it's not "ermahgerd there's no players!". The ladder is just fucked up, lol.
edit: for reference, here are the intended ratio's:
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Battle.net_Leagues
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/5o7x0.png)
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I was in master's three times in WoL and haven't gotten back since, but my play time is down. Still, it feels like there are a lot of KR/EU smurfs/whatever making it harder to get master's. I've profiled diamond and platinum players several times to see they were once in master's too.
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I am in diamond league on EU (always been there^^) and started smurfing on NA servers.
I'm still in gold in NA with a 76% winratio after 50 games, facing other gold players that clearly have a diamond league level.
i have absolutely no idea how and when I will be promoted to platinium O_o
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On November 21 2013 00:27 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:25 TheSubtleArt wrote:
How is there no reward? If anything, a harder ladder means there is much more of a reward to improving now. Getting into diamond was incredibly easy, and hence meant almost nothing. Increasing the skill required to enter each league can now make it feel meaningful to hit plat / diamond / masters. Better than masters / high diamond being everybody who knows how to play, and every league below diamond consisting of casual players who have no idea what they're doing Diamond was NOT easy to get into during WoL. I'm just saying there isn't a lot of reward when you get demoted several times for no apparent reason, only to play really skilled opponents in GOLD league, haha, yea no reward there.
Why not? Leagues are completely arbitrary anyway. If I'm playing skilled people in Gold, then it'll actually feel meaningful to jump to platinum, then diamond, then masters. If the skill required to get to the upper leagues is so low, how are they at all rewarding? Hitting diamond means a lot more now.
The upper ends of a ladder should be really, really hard to reach anyway. Are you saying the Brood War ICCup ladder wasn't rewarding at all? Any former D+ player on ICCup (including myself) could breeze into masters in Sc2.
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On November 21 2013 02:07 cptjibberjabber wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:55 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:48 ffadicted wrote:On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off. Do you have numbers to support this though? For which part? The player base is smaller, and it makes sense that a higher proportion of people who have stopped playing were lower skilled. The decay info is straight out of Excalibur's post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734 I just ran the numbers. 5/6th of all players are in gold and below. just 16.9% of the people are in platinum or higher. source: http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league35% (bronze) +28.31% (silver) +19.79% (gold) = 83.1% 0.53%(GM) + 3.02% (mas) + 5.29% (dia) + 8.06% (plat) = 16.9% 100/16.9 = 5.9 times = 1/6th. then for verification: 1/6 = 0.167 0.167 * 5 = 83.33333333% well, damn. So no, it's not "ermahgerd there's no players!". The ladder is just fucked up, lol.
So if masters was the top 20% before, then former masters players would realistically be found from gold - masters now?
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Decay definitely plays a strong part. A while after I got into masters about 6 months ago and had to quit because of wrist problems, the next game I played some 2-3 months later placed me into gold after winning my placement. From here I just tore bitches apart and often made them angry . Still couldn't keep playing cause of my wrist anyway.
I agree with having the decay (a 3 month inactive masters is likely not the same calibur of an active masters) , but I do think it decays too quickly and too far.
On November 21 2013 02:15 TheSubtleArt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 02:07 cptjibberjabber wrote:On November 21 2013 00:55 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:48 ffadicted wrote:On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off. Do you have numbers to support this though? For which part? The player base is smaller, and it makes sense that a higher proportion of people who have stopped playing were lower skilled. The decay info is straight out of Excalibur's post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734 I just ran the numbers. 5/6th of all players are in gold and below. just 16.9% of the people are in platinum or higher. source: http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league35% (bronze) +28.31% (silver) +19.79% (gold) = 83.1% 0.53%(GM) + 3.02% (mas) + 5.29% (dia) + 8.06% (plat) = 16.9% 100/16.9 = 5.9 times = 1/6th. then for verification: 1/6 = 0.167 0.167 * 5 = 83.33333333% well, damn. So no, it's not "ermahgerd there's no players!". The ladder is just fucked up, lol. So if masters was the top 20% before, then former masters players would realistically be found from gold - masters now?
Top 20%? I don't think that's right, hasn't it always been the top 2%?
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Oh! That's probably why I have been demoted from plat to gold and I started losing much more than before. I was consistently beating diamond players, now I find 120 apm silver players on the ladder, and they are kinda tough.
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United States906 Posts
On the flip side of things i think the highest end of ladder is easier than it used to be. Got in gm this season while barely being in the top 100 masters players last season and currently having a very easy time beating gms that are ~rank 80 and above
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On November 20 2013 20:36 graNite wrote:
They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now...
Pretty sure master league was never top 20%
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Northern Ireland25085 Posts
Striking me as teething problems, it does seem wacky ATM. Still better than the demotion-free system we had a whole back.
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On November 20 2013 19:56 TigerKarl wrote:
Sure it's getting harder. Who else is playing this dead game nowadays, besides the try hards?
User was warned for this post
I am sorry guys, but he is right. In Fact i recognized that A LOT players are tryhards and copy everything progamers do. I have been myself a tryhard till i asked myself: do i enjoy this game anymore? the answer was no, so i quit sc2 with the new season.
Blizzard has also speed up the entire process by messing up the league system. The result is that only "very good" players enjoy playing ladder anymore and everybody else is quitting this game.
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4713 Posts
Well, a lot of people in this thread, myself including, seem to have been demoted after long periods of inactivity. I think if you play enough games to polish off the rust then you should be able to get back to your former league, though it probably depends on the league and the length of the break.
I do believe ladder is getting a bit harder as time passes, because people do naturally get better over time if they play consistently.
The thing on my mind though, is that, players bellow Masters, may not be playing consistently enough for their skill level to improve and thus they get stuck in a sort of limbo, so in that sense I don't think the ladder is getting harder.
Atm the most likely explanation is the really aggressive MMR decay, which means that if a large number of good people go inactive for long, they could drop 1 or 2 leagues and artificially inflate the skill level of the league. Of course these players, if they are good enough and play with some measure of dedication, should be able to reach their former highest leagues eventually, which could normalize the lower leagues again.
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@Destruction
the system will never normalize, because PLAYERS QUIT. The reason is that league % decides if you are master or not. the more "new or bad" players leave this game the harder it becomes to get into the top X% of players.
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I'm surprised this didn't come up, but what you're likely experiencing is for the majority of WoL, there was a larger percentage of players overall in masters and diamond.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120604210116/http://sc2ranks.com/stats
In June of 2012, there were 4% of players in masters compared to 3%, and 11.6% of players in diamond (assuming we're talking about NA) compared to the current 5.12%. So if you were low masters you were dropped to diamond, and if you were in the lower half of diamond you were dropped to platinum. And this doesn't even include the newly formed MMR decay.
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Northern Ireland25085 Posts
On November 21 2013 03:00 foreign2 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 19:56 TigerKarl wrote:
Sure it's getting harder. Who else is playing this dead game nowadays, besides the try hards?
User was warned for this post I am sorry guys, but he is right. In Fact i recognized that A LOT players are tryhards and copy everything progamers do. I have been myself a tryhard till i asked myself: do i enjoy this game anymore? the answer was no, so i quit sc2 with the new season. Blizzard has also speed up the entire process by messing up the league system. The result is that only "very good" players enjoy playing ladder anymore and everybody else is quitting this game.
No he isn't right, numbers aren't terrible for a start. Secondly it just strikes me as somebody who is butthurt because he's bad at the game. 'I'm losing due to these tryhards who copy pro builds and have no life, nothing to do with me'.
By all means, it's your right to not enjoy the game, but stop making up all these reasons.
Blizzard IMO messed up the league system by implementing leagues in the first place. People became fixated with their icons, over having good enjoyable games vs those of equivalent ability.
At the other end, players deranked so they could stomp bronze players to get icons and portraits. Yeah Blizzard maybe should have anticipated the downside of bringing in little things like icons, but let's not pretend its anything other than the playerbase damaging the experience for others.
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There's a lot less people playing the game that there was originally, so the depth is a lot weaker, but it would perhaps be harder to get promoted since the numbers are a lot less.
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On November 21 2013 03:10 HeavenResign wrote:I'm surprised this didn't come up, but what you're likely experiencing is for the majority of WoL, there was a larger percentage of players overall in masters and diamond. https://web.archive.org/web/20120604210116/http://sc2ranks.com/statsIn June of 2012, there were 4% of players in masters compared to 3%, and 11.6% of players in diamond (assuming we're talking about NA) compared to the current 5.12%. So if you were low masters you were dropped to diamond, and if you were in the lower half of diamond you were dropped to platinum. And this doesn't even include the newly formed MMR decay.
It probably didn't come up because those percentages from WoL are much closer to the intended percentages than we have now, so it's not much of a justification, just states what we already know: there has been a mass drop of league levels by a lot of players
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On November 21 2013 02:13 VieuxSinge wrote:
I am in diamond league on EU (always been there^^) and started smurfing on NA servers.
I'm still in gold in NA with a 76% winratio after 50 games, facing other gold players that clearly have a diamond league level.
i have absolutely no idea how and when I will be promoted to platinium O_o
I found the US ladder harder as well. Plat had many players with master's macro and execution.
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Canada16217 Posts
On November 21 2013 03:00 foreign2 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 19:56 TigerKarl wrote:
Sure it's getting harder. Who else is playing this dead game nowadays, besides the try hards?
User was warned for this post I am sorry guys, but he is right. In Fact i recognized that A LOT players are tryhards and copy everything progamers do. I have been myself a tryhard till i asked myself: do i enjoy this game anymore? the answer was no, so i quit sc2 with the new season. Blizzard has also speed up the entire process by messing up the league system. The result is that only "very good" players enjoy playing ladder anymore and everybody else is quitting this game.
tryhard has to be the stupidest term I've ever seen
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Ahhh I feel so much better after seeing this thread. I was high diamond for a spell and at the start of the new season I was placed into gold league >_<; ...It makes sense, though. I do recall a similar thing being the case with every game I've gotten into. When I first started playing Half Life 2 Deathmatch, being #1 in every room was a breeze, but after a while things got harder and harder. The players that stick with the game after it's not new anymore all become competent and the scrubs find a new game. Whelp... time to get more serious again I suppose XD
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On November 21 2013 02:14 TheSubtleArt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:27 Ctone23 wrote:On November 21 2013 00:25 TheSubtleArt wrote:
How is there no reward? If anything, a harder ladder means there is much more of a reward to improving now. Getting into diamond was incredibly easy, and hence meant almost nothing. Increasing the skill required to enter each league can now make it feel meaningful to hit plat / diamond / masters. Better than masters / high diamond being everybody who knows how to play, and every league below diamond consisting of casual players who have no idea what they're doing Diamond was NOT easy to get into during WoL. I'm just saying there isn't a lot of reward when you get demoted several times for no apparent reason, only to play really skilled opponents in GOLD league, haha, yea no reward there. Why not? Leagues are completely arbitrary anyway. If I'm playing skilled people in Gold, then it'll actually feel meaningful to jump to platinum, then diamond, then masters. If the skill required to get to the upper leagues is so low, how are they at all rewarding? Hitting diamond means a lot more now. The upper ends of a ladder should be really, really hard to reach anyway. Are you saying the Brood War ICCup ladder wasn't rewarding at all? Any former D+ player on ICCup (including myself) could breeze into masters in Sc2.
This has nothing to do with Brood War. First of all, Brood War ICCup ladder was completely different.
You can make an argument that any game is "arbitrary", so I don't understand what you mean by that. I'm just trying to give examples of how the current system can deflate the appetite to play the game itself. Look at all the people on this thread who give examples of how they got demoted, I just think it's an overall bad idea from Blizzard. We all understand the game is balanced out for the Professionals only, so why do they have to knock all of the fans out there who continue to play ladder? Just doesn't compute..
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On November 21 2013 02:07 cptjibberjabber wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 00:55 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:48 ffadicted wrote:On November 21 2013 00:43 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 00:29 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
the distribution is that way BECAUSE of mmr decay.. not because the countless number or people complaining have suddenly got bad at the game. No, it is because the bottom has dropped out of the ladder. My argument isn't that players have gotten worse — because that is absurd — but that they've gotten better on average. There is no doubt that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, but people spin it way, way, way too hard. It doesn't kick in until two weeks of inactivity, you drop about a league after four weeks of inactivity, and there has always been decay/reset if you take entire seasons off. Do you have numbers to support this though? For which part? The player base is smaller, and it makes sense that a higher proportion of people who have stopped playing were lower skilled. The decay info is straight out of Excalibur's post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734 I just ran the numbers. 5/6th of all players are in gold and below. just 16.9% of the people are in platinum or higher. source: http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league35% (bronze) +28.31% (silver) +19.79% (gold) = 83.1% 0.53%(GM) + 3.02% (mas) + 5.29% (dia) + 8.06% (plat) = 16.9% 100/16.9 = 5.9 times = 1/6th. then for verification: 1/6 = 0.167 0.167 * 5 = 83.33333333% well, !@#$%^&*. So no, it's not "ermahgerd there's no players!". The ladder is just fucked up, lol. edit: for reference, here are the intended ratio's: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Battle.net_Leagues
Sc2ranks has a different criteria for measuing players than Bnet does, which means that Sc2ranks counts fewer active players than Bnet does.
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Welcome to the world of MMR decay, where you can play anything from your league to GM in the lower leagues. My NA account went from low masters to gold as I didn't play it for a while, and I still play people of my skill level in gold, but also poor actual gold players that didn't ask for that at all. It's stupid and I hope blizzard will remove it, but heh, that's how it is right know. Have fun losing 30% or more of your games against higher league players with low activity.
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there's no argument over "why" the ladder is the way it is..
if you'd just read what korona has been posting you'd realize he has actual data to back up MRR decay is the primary reason for the ladder issues.
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It's definitely harder than at the beginning of HOTS or at the end of WOL. I used to be platinum, close to diamond. Now I'm barely winning 50% of my games in Gold league, and I never play against someone with macro or micro that is significantly flawed, except people who admit they're trying a new race or build or something.
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Blizzard really messed things up with Ladder... Don't even know what kind of skill level I'm at anymore.
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I thought I was just playing poorly because I have been having a hard time keeping 50% winrate in Masters. But then again I have been playing poorly and need to step it up. ^^ Haha.
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On November 20 2013 20:36 graNite wrote:
They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now...
This. Masters was very easy to get to before the change.
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I won 14 of my last 45 games, but somehow the strength of my opponents has stayed the same, b.net keeps sending players slightly better than me. It's hard to cope with haha.
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I feel that i might face equal opponents 1/10 of my laddergames. Im high plat, dia last season. Now im facing all from goldplayers that are trolls and some that arent, and players like Taeja on theyre smurfaccounts on ladder (i knew i didnt face a real platplayer that one game and asked).
The players i play i feel vary to much, one day i might feel that im around high dia/low master level based on the plays i have (or rather the opponents i win over), and some days the loadingscreen tells me its vs a gold, and i get roflestomped. Dont know what to make off it all. I know im not good, but i would rather stop facing former X league players (higher than my current league) all the time. Ofc, it feels really awesome winning over former masterplayers, but still something dont feels right.
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On November 21 2013 03:54 Doc Brawler wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 20:36 graNite wrote:
They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now... This. Masters was very easy to get to before the change.
Master league was never 20%. Originally, when Diamond was highest, all five leagues were 20%. Then they introduced Master league and it became the top ~2%. Much later they changed the sizes of Bronze and Silver.
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It really looks like Blizzard are shooting themselves in the foot. The majority of the remaining sc2 players are extremely competitive (why else play a game where anything else but 1v1 is almost unheard of). Now they got this ranking system based on this hidden mmr number which was all fine and dandy at the start. BUT now they've fucked around with it so much that nobody has any idea where they stand in terms of rank. Literally every reply in this thread confirms that. So basically, the majority of players who play for rank have no idea to tell whether they're improving...
The solution. Remove mmr. Put everyone on the same ladder and make people within 200 pts match eachother (ex 700 pt matches down to 500 and up to 900pts). This way everyone will easily know their rank and everything is transparent.
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On November 21 2013 04:15 Icapica wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 03:54 Doc Brawler wrote:On November 20 2013 20:36 graNite wrote:
They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now... This. Masters was very easy to get to before the change.
Masters was introduced at 2-3% of ladder population, it was never 20%.
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On November 21 2013 04:18 TRaFFiC wrote:
It really looks like Blizzard are shooting themselves in the foot. The majority of the remaining sc2 players are extremely competitive (why else play a game where anything else but 1v1 is almost unheard of). Now they got this ranking system based on this hidden mmr number which was all fine and dandy at the start. BUT now they've fucked around with it so much that nobody has any idea where they stand in terms of rank. Literally every reply in this thread confirms that. So basically, the majority of players who play for rank have no idea to tell whether they're improving...
The solution. Remove mmr. Put everyone on the same ladder and make people within 200 pts match eachother (ex 700 pt matches down to 500 and up to 900pts). This way everyone will easily know their rank and everything is transparent.
More like the opposite lol Remove points, display immediate and rolling MMR, that's true ranking.
And lower this ridiculous decay lol People don't get that much worse at the game that quickly lol
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I think it's because more people quit so we have less "baddies" in the lower leagues. If you check the ranks of the people that beat you, chances are they were 1-2 rank higher before. People did get better, but not to that extent, it's just the ranking arent as inflated.
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I have been Diamond/Platinum level random player for a long time, and have gone like 5 - 30 over the past couple of days. More upsetting than the record is most games seem to be completely one sided, and it seemed to come out of nowhere that I was just significantly worse than all the people I am playing.
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On November 21 2013 04:38 las91 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 04:15 Icapica wrote:On November 21 2013 03:54 Doc Brawler wrote:On November 20 2013 20:36 graNite wrote:
They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now... This. Masters was very easy to get to before the change. Masters was introduced at 2-3% of ladder population, it was never 20%.
It was ORIGINALLY introduced at that size and it gradually inflated to around 9% and Diamond was the next 10% of the player pool. David Kim commented on it, if you don't believe us. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/8728114254#13
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On November 20 2013 17:01 19Meavis93 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 16:59 DinoMight wrote:
Could it also be the "MMR decay" being a bit too aggressive? Someone takes a couple of weeks off and they come back 1-2 league lower, but still at like 90% of their former skill? So they just destroy everyone?
My buddy who used to be consistently high diamond is now getting ROFLstomped in Plat by guys who are all like 10x Masters in previous seasons. this quite a bit yeah, being masters since forever I can still stomp over masters, but it takes a lot of games to get into masters after decay has kicked me out every season again.
last 2 seasons i hardly played and it ook 7 wins to get me back to masters
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So I just met a silver player who averaged 320 apm in a 25min game, that was quite nice since he played on my team on monobattle :D
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On November 21 2013 05:11 EleanorRIgby wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 17:01 19Meavis93 wrote:On November 20 2013 16:59 DinoMight wrote:
Could it also be the "MMR decay" being a bit too aggressive? Someone takes a couple of weeks off and they come back 1-2 league lower, but still at like 90% of their former skill? So they just destroy everyone?
My buddy who used to be consistently high diamond is now getting ROFLstomped in Plat by guys who are all like 10x Masters in previous seasons. this quite a bit yeah, being masters since forever I can still stomp over masters, but it takes a lot of games to get into masters after decay has kicked me out every season again. last 2 seasons i hardly played and it ook 7 wins to get me back to masters
Remember that master MMR range is huge compared to other leagues. MMR range from bottom of master to bottom of GM fits ~1.7 times max decay on NA and ~2.7 times max decay on EU.
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As a multiseason Gold player who has played pretty consistently through the last few seasons, there is a massive change with this season and the last month or two. Whereas the majority of golds I used to play were former gold with some silver/plat, now it seems the huge majority are former plat to diamond with former masters very common where it used to be rare.
I feel that my play has definitely not gotten worse over time, just slightly better as my APM, macro and scouting and response times have improved gradually.
Now it's rare for any gold opponents I play to have sub-100 APM when the majority of them used to. I go through long stretches where every Protoss I play hits a really efficient immortal or blink stalker timing. And it's virtually a given that every Terran in Gold is a stutter-step micro master now.
And the season opened with a LOT of players going for (well executed) cheesy all ins, cannon rush, 2rax bunker, 7pool spine rush etc.
If korona's numbers are right and there are a lot lower proportion of plat and above than intended, then MMR decay policies may certainly play a big role, but I don't know why it's so hard to believe (without having numbers of how many actual games are being played and players are active) that a big effect is casual players quitting. If bronze and silver are always going to be the bottom 20% or so of players, then if all the former players at the "old" bronze-gold leagues quit, the new bronze-gold are going to be those at a skill level that USED to be associated with plat and above, SOMEONE has to be at the bottom. It just seems intuitive to me that the player base shrinking a lot has to be a huge part of the effect, and I don't know that there is any cure.
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On November 21 2013 05:10 TheCzarOfAll wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 04:38 las91 wrote:On November 21 2013 04:15 Icapica wrote:On November 21 2013 03:54 Doc Brawler wrote:On November 20 2013 20:36 graNite wrote:
They also made the master league so much smaller, from 20% when it was introduced to 2,5% now... This. Masters was very easy to get to before the change. Masters was introduced at 2-3% of ladder population, it was never 20%. It was ORIGINALLY introduced at that size and it gradually inflated to around 9% and Diamond was the next 10% of the player pool. David Kim commented on it, if you don't believe us. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/8728114254#13
Target value was still 2% in start of HotS. But as league MMR ranges were so small during the first two HotS seasons (S12 & S13) it was easier to get to master league. And as there was no mid-season demotions, it got big in the end of the season. In start of S14 they changed the league offsets (MMR ranges for each league was increased, but the ranges are still small compared to old WoL ranges). They did not make changes during last season (S15) and it seems there was no changes for this season (S16) either (if there has been offset changes,they are very small. I will check this via calculations in a week or two from the MMR tool data).
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EDIT: Gonna add the conversation with korona in here, since it's particularly relevant about how and why these graphs are the way they are. Also keep note that the first bar is actually 2013 Season 3, not 2013 Season 4 as stated in the image, so the differences are inflated a bit as the new league offsets were introduced for 2013 Season 4. I made a clerical error, but even comparing data from August 6th 2013 (Season 4) shows the same concept of disparity, just less extreme.
Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year.
Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR overall skill didn't actually drop significantly. Instead, it seems like we're looking at a combination of a reduced player base and built-in MMR decay:
On November 21 2013 06:44 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 06:22 iamcaustic wrote:
p.s. I also offered data from August 6th after your correction that June 1st was still 2013 Season 3, not 2013 Season 4 (I misremembered by just over a week). We can still see the disparity with the new data, but that's generally moot since the whole MMR decay thing has been explained. Do we know when MMR decay was introduced? MMR decay was introduced either when HotS launched or patch 2.0.x that was applied to WoL one month earlier. I saw its effects on some users' data already during the first two HotS seasons, but could not deduct the reason & did not spent more time to investigate. In start of the last season it got evident that there is a decay mechanism (lots of occurrences in S14 data). My first thought was that it has to be a bug in the ladder system as drops seemed too steep. But after more investigation it is clearly an intended feature (It would be interesting to know how they chose the current max decay value). Also Blizzard has not commented the issue publicly nor denied it. Start dates for HotS seasons: --- Initial offsets --- S12: 2013-03-12 S13: 2013-05-01 --- Offsets changed --- S14: 2013-06-10 S15: 2013-08-26 S16: 2013-11-11
For those interested, they can read more about MMR decay here.
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On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. + Show Spoiler +Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly.
No. In start of 'S4/2013' (S14) the league offsets were changed. Last season (S15) there was no changes and it seems there was no changes this season (S16) either (if there was they are small).
This means the static league MMR thresholds have remained the same the whole period shown in your graph (I will check this season's offsets more carefully in a week or two). The distribution changes are caused by players' MMR changing. Not the MMR thresholds changing.
CORRECTION: You said that first graph was from June 1st? That is then from the end of 'S3/2013' (S13). S14 started on 2013-06-10. As the league offsets were different during S13, the distributions are not directly comparable.
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Objectively, I`m happy that it`s all getting harder so that league promotions will mean more, but when I`m playing down in the gold league... well.... it`s pretty rough down there.
This massive shift was all really sudden too, as far as I remember.
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On November 21 2013 05:44 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. + Show Spoiler +Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. No. In start of 'S4/2013' (S14) the league offsets were changed. Last season (S15) there was no changes and it seems there was no changes this season (S16) either (if there was they are small). This means the static league MMR thresholds have remained the same the whole period shown in your graph (I will check this season's offsets more carefully in a week or two). The distribution changes are caused by players' MMR changing. Not the MMR thresholds changing.
Blizzard didn't announce any changes, but the effects are pretty apparent. You could very well argue that there's a glitch and the current distributions are unintended, but they are what they are. JaKaTaK also did a YouTube video outlining the very same thing. Nothing you said explains why 1 in 3 1v1 ladder players are currently sitting in Bronze when, officially, the Ladder is supposed to be aiming for 8% of players in Bronze. Are you saying nearly every player in the world saw their MMR drop down for no explainable reason?
EDIT: korona updated their post. D: Gimme a min.
EDIT 2: Okay, data from August 6th (no fancy graphs for now since I'm at work). It's not as intense as June 1 (thought for sure it was S4... maybe not now that I think about it -- this is why I gave dates as well), but a clear difference from the current season with the same concept: the lower leagues are currently inflated compared to previous seasons.
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I suspect it is because of the MMR decay. For me it is pretty extreme in team games:
I have three friends I play regularly with. That makes three 2v2 teams, one 3v3 team and one 4v4 team. I think we don't play enough to compensate for the decay. The teams were all in Gold two or three seasons ago. But then, at the start of the last season they all got into bronze. What then happened is we won like 20-30 games in a row and got into Gold again. Most of the time we won decisively, it wasn't really fun to play. Then we got stomped pretty hard from ex-Diamond and Masters players. Let say we roll over some peope for 20 games and after that we get rolled over. I have the feeling we play (maybe?) 5-10 matches against equal opponents.
Same thing again at the beginning of this season. I guess MMR decay affects each team independently (it certainly feels that way). But (all teams combined) we actually get enough practice to keep our skill level. My very subjective opinion is, that 50% of the time we spoil other people's fun and the other 50% our fun gets spoiled. I don't think it used to be this bad.
To cut a long story short: I blame the fish-people ... erm I mean MMR decay
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Check out the mmr decay thread. I think the leagues don't mean as much anymore, which sucks because I'm just starting to want to play ranked again and try masters placement...
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On November 21 2013 06:01 iamcaustic wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 05:44 korona wrote:On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. + Show Spoiler +Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. No. In start of 'S4/2013' (S14) the league offsets were changed. Last season (S15) there was no changes and it seems there was no changes this season (S16) either (if there was they are small). This means the static league MMR thresholds have remained the same the whole period shown in your graph (I will check this season's offsets more carefully in a week or two). The distribution changes are caused by players' MMR changing. Not the MMR thresholds changing. Blizzard didn't announce any changes, but the effects are pretty apparent. You could very well argue that there's a glitch and the current distributions are unintended, but they are what they are. JaKaTaK also did a YouTube video outlining the very same thing. Nothing you said explains why 1 in 3 1v1 ladder players are currently sitting in Bronze when, officially, the Ladder is supposed to be aiming for 8% of players in Bronze. Are you saying nearly every player in the world saw their MMR drop down for no explainable reason?
No. There has been two major offset changes. Start of S12 and start of S14. I have full MMR tool data records from all its users from the whole period. If there were changes I would have quickly noticed. For this season not enough data has yet been collected to calculate the offsets (for some leagues there are, but for lower leagues not yet. At the moment 9283 recorded HotS matches for this season). But in few weeks there should be enough data for lower leagues as well. But if there were larger changes, the user graphs would be erratic. The user graphs seem normal and promotions happen where they are expected to happen.
The JaKaTaK's video contained lots of misinformation. Yes he presented nicely how players' league distributions have changed, but he thought it was because Blizzard had changed the offsets multiple times, which is not true.
Also note that in your picture the first distribution was not from start of S14 like you claimed. It was from the end of S13.
And the main reason for MMR drops is MMR decay. Find out more from: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
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On November 20 2013 22:16 TheSayo182 wrote:
And yes specially gold league is a mess
Such a shame. I haven't played for some months now, but i used to be top Diamond, and i was under the impression that Gold and low Platinum was the best place to be if you wanted to have fun, because people didn't want to cheese their way through the ladder, as they did in basicly every other league.
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On November 21 2013 06:13 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 06:01 iamcaustic wrote:On November 21 2013 05:44 korona wrote:On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. + Show Spoiler +Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. No. In start of 'S4/2013' (S14) the league offsets were changed. Last season (S15) there was no changes and it seems there was no changes this season (S16) either (if there was they are small). This means the static league MMR thresholds have remained the same the whole period shown in your graph (I will check this season's offsets more carefully in a week or two). The distribution changes are caused by players' MMR changing. Not the MMR thresholds changing. Blizzard didn't announce any changes, but the effects are pretty apparent. You could very well argue that there's a glitch and the current distributions are unintended, but they are what they are. JaKaTaK also did a YouTube video outlining the very same thing. Nothing you said explains why 1 in 3 1v1 ladder players are currently sitting in Bronze when, officially, the Ladder is supposed to be aiming for 8% of players in Bronze. Are you saying nearly every player in the world saw their MMR drop down for no explainable reason? No. There has been two offset changes. Start of S12 and start of S14. I have full MMR tool data records from all its users from the whole period. If there were changes I would have quickly noticed. For this season not enough data has yet been collected to calculate the offsets (for some leagues there are, but for lower leagues not yet. At the moment 9283 recorded HotS matches for this season). But in few weeks there should be enough data for lower leagues as well. But if there were larger changes, the user graphs would be erratic. The user graphs seem normal and promotions happen where they are expected to happen. The JaKaTaK's video was full of misinformation. Yes he presented nicely how players' league distributions have changed, but he thought it was because Blizzard had changed the offsets multiple times, which is not true. Also note that in your picture the first distribution was not from start of S14 like you claimed. It was from the end of S13. And the main reason for MMR drops is MMR decay. Find out more from: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
I was just reading that MMR decay thread thanks to the two posts above yours. It seems to basically provide a resounding "yes" to my question: "Are you saying nearly every player in the world saw their MMR drop down for no explainable reason?" Well, I guess it'd be an explainable reason in this case, but what I'd really like to see explained is why Blizzard thought such a steep decay was a good idea.
p.s. I also offered data from August 6th after your correction that June 1st was still 2013 Season 3, not 2013 Season 4 (I misremembered by just over a week). We can still see the disparity with the new data, but that's generally moot since the whole MMR decay thing has been explained. Do we know when MMR decay was introduced?
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Hmm yeah i was wondering about this.. I took a couple weeks off around the start of the new season, was high gold, and it placed me in bronze
Currently i am 11-1 and hoping to be promoted out again soon. And I have been checking my opponents profiles and most of them have been 1v1 gold in recent seasons as well
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On November 21 2013 06:22 iamcaustic wrote:
p.s. I also offered data from August 6th after your correction that June 1st was still 2013 Season 3, not 2013 Season 4 (I misremembered by just over a week). We can still see the disparity with the new data, but that's generally moot since the whole MMR decay thing has been explained. Do we know when MMR decay was introduced?
MMR decay was introduced either when HotS launched or patch 2.0.x that was applied to WoL one month earlier.
I saw its effects on some users' data already during the first two HotS seasons, but could not deduct the reason & did not spent more time to investigate. In start of the last season it got evident that there is a decay mechanism (lots of occurrences in S14 data). My first thought was that it has to be a bug in the ladder system as drops seemed too steep. But after more investigation it is clearly an intended feature (It would be interesting to know how they chose the current max decay value). Also Blizzard has not commented the issue publicly nor denied it.
Start dates for HotS seasons:
--- Initial offsets ---
S12: 2013-03-12
S13: 2013-05-01
--- Offsets changed ---
S14: 2013-06-10
S15: 2013-08-26
S16: 2013-11-11
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I'm 2 ranks lower than I used to be 3 seasons ago, and I've been playing consistently.
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On November 20 2013 21:41 JustPassingBy wrote:
The problem I noticed is that I get roflstomped in a lot of games and I roflstomp my opponent in a lot of games (meaning I play players which I am not supposed to play on ladder). That definitely wasn't the case a year ago.
the way I see it:
1) the MMR deflation coupled with the reduction of the player base means that all players will be closer together in terms of MMR.
2) since the players' numbers are dwindling automatchmaking will pair up players of larger MMR difference more often.
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Jaedong lost 1 game, it may as well be...
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On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly.
oh wow. Can you get the same info on SEA? It could be that they have more GMs than masters lately.
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On November 21 2013 03:01 Destructicon wrote:
Well, a lot of people in this thread, myself including, seem to have been demoted after long periods of inactivity. I think if you play enough games to polish off the rust then you should be able to get back to your former league, though it probably depends on the league and the length of the break.
I do believe ladder is getting a bit harder as time passes, because people do naturally get better over time if they play consistently.
The thing on my mind though, is that, players bellow Masters, may not be playing consistently enough for their skill level to improve and thus they get stuck in a sort of limbo, so in that sense I don't think the ladder is getting harder.
Atm the most likely explanation is the really aggressive MMR decay, which means that if a large number of good people go inactive for long, they could drop 1 or 2 leagues and artificially inflate the skill level of the league. Of course these players, if they are good enough and play with some measure of dedication, should be able to reach their former highest leagues eventually, which could normalize the lower leagues again.
And that means roflstomping through the league and fighting only 'bad' players that are in THAT league for a reason? They fucked up the MMR system, ofc the ladder is getting harder because people get demoted and when they come back they destroy you 'cause they're much better at the game than you ( they're in a higher league) but stuck in the same league as you....
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MMR decay explains a lot of this.
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On November 21 2013 07:09 Moonsalt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 03:01 Destructicon wrote:
Well, a lot of people in this thread, myself including, seem to have been demoted after long periods of inactivity. I think if you play enough games to polish off the rust then you should be able to get back to your former league, though it probably depends on the league and the length of the break.
I do believe ladder is getting a bit harder as time passes, because people do naturally get better over time if they play consistently.
The thing on my mind though, is that, players bellow Masters, may not be playing consistently enough for their skill level to improve and thus they get stuck in a sort of limbo, so in that sense I don't think the ladder is getting harder.
Atm the most likely explanation is the really aggressive MMR decay, which means that if a large number of good people go inactive for long, they could drop 1 or 2 leagues and artificially inflate the skill level of the league. Of course these players, if they are good enough and play with some measure of dedication, should be able to reach their former highest leagues eventually, which could normalize the lower leagues again. And that means roflstomping through the league and fighting only 'bad' players that are in THAT league for a reason? They fucked up the MMR system, ofc the ladder is getting harder because people get demoted and when they come back they destroy you 'cause they're much better at the game than you ( they're in a higher league) but stuck in the same league as you....
The problem is that on your way roflstomping yourself back into leagues way than the one you are currently in, you are also roflstomping other players who do not belong in this league, which means that they get stuck in the league longer roflstomping people who actually belong in that league. The ladder isn't actually an actual ladder, where you can just climb up and down freely without consequences. It's like a huge chaotic pile of people and you can only get up by pushing and pulling other people down.
So let's say you're a master player and you got placed in gold, well you obviously claw yourself back to the top after several games. This might take a bit longer than usual because blizzard is more conservative with promotions after they banned demotions entirely. Anyways, while you climb yourself up to masters, you might stomp people who rightfully belong in plat / diamond but who were also placed in gold because of mmr decay. However for the system it looks like one gold player beating another so it'll just say "well, that player just got beaten by a gold player, guess he belongs here after all". And so on and so on...
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On November 21 2013 07:21 JustPassingBy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 07:09 Moonsalt wrote:On November 21 2013 03:01 Destructicon wrote:
Well, a lot of people in this thread, myself including, seem to have been demoted after long periods of inactivity. I think if you play enough games to polish off the rust then you should be able to get back to your former league, though it probably depends on the league and the length of the break.
I do believe ladder is getting a bit harder as time passes, because people do naturally get better over time if they play consistently.
The thing on my mind though, is that, players bellow Masters, may not be playing consistently enough for their skill level to improve and thus they get stuck in a sort of limbo, so in that sense I don't think the ladder is getting harder.
Atm the most likely explanation is the really aggressive MMR decay, which means that if a large number of good people go inactive for long, they could drop 1 or 2 leagues and artificially inflate the skill level of the league. Of course these players, if they are good enough and play with some measure of dedication, should be able to reach their former highest leagues eventually, which could normalize the lower leagues again. And that means roflstomping through the league and fighting only 'bad' players that are in THAT league for a reason? They fucked up the MMR system, ofc the ladder is getting harder because people get demoted and when they come back they destroy you 'cause they're much better at the game than you ( they're in a higher league) but stuck in the same league as you.... The problem is that on your way roflstomping yourself back into leagues way than the one you are currently in, you are also roflstomping other players who do not belong in this league, which means that they get stuck in the league longer roflstomping people who actually belong in that league. The ladder isn't actually an actual ladder, where you can just climb up and down freely without consequences. It's like a huge chaotic pile of people and you can only get up by pushing and pulling other people down. So let's say you're a master player and you got placed in gold, well you obviously claw yourself back to the top after several games. This might take a bit longer than usual because blizzard is more conservative with promotions after they banned demotions entirely. Anyways, while you climb yourself up to masters, you might stomp people who rightfully belong in plat / diamond but who were also placed in gold because of mmr decay. However for the system it looks like one gold player beating another so it'll just say "well, that player just got beaten by a gold player, guess he belongs here after all". And so on and so on...
Actually promotions seem to happen immediately when you go over next league's MMR threshold. Conservative placement only happens if you start from blank MMR (5 placement matches). For example when starting from blank MMR the 25th match is the first time you can be promoted to master league, even if your MMR got to master range a lot earlier. For most people MMR carries over the seasons and they are placed according their MMR at that moment.
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On November 21 2013 07:36 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 07:21 JustPassingBy wrote:On November 21 2013 07:09 Moonsalt wrote:On November 21 2013 03:01 Destructicon wrote:
Well, a lot of people in this thread, myself including, seem to have been demoted after long periods of inactivity. I think if you play enough games to polish off the rust then you should be able to get back to your former league, though it probably depends on the league and the length of the break.
I do believe ladder is getting a bit harder as time passes, because people do naturally get better over time if they play consistently.
The thing on my mind though, is that, players bellow Masters, may not be playing consistently enough for their skill level to improve and thus they get stuck in a sort of limbo, so in that sense I don't think the ladder is getting harder.
Atm the most likely explanation is the really aggressive MMR decay, which means that if a large number of good people go inactive for long, they could drop 1 or 2 leagues and artificially inflate the skill level of the league. Of course these players, if they are good enough and play with some measure of dedication, should be able to reach their former highest leagues eventually, which could normalize the lower leagues again. And that means roflstomping through the league and fighting only 'bad' players that are in THAT league for a reason? They fucked up the MMR system, ofc the ladder is getting harder because people get demoted and when they come back they destroy you 'cause they're much better at the game than you ( they're in a higher league) but stuck in the same league as you.... The problem is that on your way roflstomping yourself back into leagues way than the one you are currently in, you are also roflstomping other players who do not belong in this league, which means that they get stuck in the league longer roflstomping people who actually belong in that league. The ladder isn't actually an actual ladder, where you can just climb up and down freely without consequences. It's like a huge chaotic pile of people and you can only get up by pushing and pulling other people down. So let's say you're a master player and you got placed in gold, well you obviously claw yourself back to the top after several games. This might take a bit longer than usual because blizzard is more conservative with promotions after they banned demotions entirely. Anyways, while you climb yourself up to masters, you might stomp people who rightfully belong in plat / diamond but who were also placed in gold because of mmr decay. However for the system it looks like one gold player beating another so it'll just say "well, that player just got beaten by a gold player, guess he belongs here after all". And so on and so on... Actually promotions seem to happen immediately when you go over next league's MMR threshold. Conservative placement only happens if you start from blank MMR (5 placement matches). For example when starting from blank MMR the 25th match is the first time you can be promoted to master league, even if your MMR got to master range a lot earlier. For most people MMR carries over the seasons and they are placed according their MMR at that moment.
Statements like this make me dislike MMR even more. I mean, it's nothing personal against you or anything. I just get so frustrated with the fact that hardly anyone knows how it truly works. Hidden MMR values, blank MMR, MMR decay, the list goes on and on.
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Yes, it is frustrating. Here's something I don't understand: On the one hand they implement a MMR Decay, which in a way "punishes" you for not playing (i'm not saying the general idea is bad). But on the other hand they have this bonus pool, which in a way seems to "reward" you for not playing. Granted, this is a very simplified view, but still.
To me it makes no sense at all. I feel the whole system was way too complex already and they tried to improve it by adding even more complexity.
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Just get rid of one (or two) league(s)
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On November 21 2013 08:15 dr.fahrenheit wrote:
Just get rid of one (or two) league(s)
The problem with this, I feel, is that at every level, there is a huge disparity between players. A mid Silver would annihilate a low Bronze. A high Masters typically beats a low Masters pretty one-sidedly...
The fewer leagues you have, the bigger the range of skill you have in each league, which is counter effective. The system is ideally trying to pit you against people of your level.
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On November 21 2013 07:21 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
MMR decay explains a lot of this.
I think so as well. Match making seems very random. Some times I'm playing gold players who do random builds, other times I'm playing barcodes with 270 APM (what's more, Blizzard APMs).
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Yeah I have been demoted from diamond 4 times now, and now I'm switching to zerg and I'm playing against gold players who used to be masters, it's a whole screwup, and not good for anyone's ego.
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I took a break at the end of the summer (was diamond) and I'm now in gold and struggling to stay in the top 8. When I check my opponent's rankings they are also previously diamond who are now gold with a few thousand games played. Either the MMR system in SC2 is insanely good at matching players or leagues are getting more bottom heavy like in WoL.
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I think you can't go more than plat on your first placement match (meaning with a new account). That's probably why.
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All I want is an ELO like rating system which just shows a number.
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Depends on how you look at it. For me, I'm still getting evenly matched opponents averaging 50/50 win ratio. I don't play a lot, don't have time to train up builds or keep up on the latest meta but as long as the matchmaking works it's just as hard now for me as it was 2 years ago. Then there is the player base, going by the league distribution and anecdotal placement of my friends, it's shrinking.
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The ladder is definitely harder than it used to be in Wings of Liberty. Back then, plat used to mean someone who had a build order and could macro decently (no micro required). In plat now, I almost always match against former diamonds and former masters. I mean it's cool to have so many skilled opponents but it's kind of unsettling how the average toss can feedback my drops right as they are coming in, hold my timings with ease, and crush my army with perfect storms while dt dropping my main.
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if blizzard just stopped pussying out and showed us the real MMR instead of those bogus leagues, then we wouldnt be in this mess. I understand the need to motivate players, but doing so by deceiving them isnt the best way of doing that.
Besides, most casuals stopped playing sc2 a long time ago, i would imagine that those remaining want to know where they stand ELO wise.
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On November 20 2013 16:59 DinoMight wrote:
Could it also be the "MMR decay" being a bit too aggressive? Someone takes a couple of weeks off and they come back 1-2 league lower, but still at like 90% of their former skill? So they just destroy everyone?
this is exactly what's going on here. blizzard screwed the ladder up ever since hots with the aggressive mmr decay, and this is what we get. people playing below their league because they weren't active enough and got demoted.
blizzard seems to think if you don't play for a season, you're automatically a newb and demotes you one or two leagues. i hope blizzard realizes this is nonsense, and adjusts the decay accordingly.
On November 21 2013 19:14 Maxhster wrote:
if blizzard just stopped pussying out and showed us the real MMR instead of those bogus leagues, then we wouldnt be in this mess. I understand the need to motivate players, but doing so by deceiving them isnt the best way of doing that.
Besides, most casuals stopped playing sc2 a long time ago, i would imagine that those remaining want to know where they stand ELO wise.
no, the problem is the aggressive decay which lowers inactive players mmr way to fast, and way too far. the game thinks you are a much worse player than you actually are, unless you're very active.
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4713 Posts
On November 21 2013 20:33 CycoDude wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 16:59 DinoMight wrote:
Could it also be the "MMR decay" being a bit too aggressive? Someone takes a couple of weeks off and they come back 1-2 league lower, but still at like 90% of their former skill? So they just destroy everyone? this is exactly what's going on here. blizzard screwed the ladder up ever since hots with the aggressive mmr decay, and this is what we get. people playing below their league because they weren't active enough and got demoted. blizzard seems to think if you don't play for a season, you're automatically a newb and demotes you one or two leagues. i hope blizzard realizes this is nonsense, and adjusts the decay accordingly. Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 19:14 Maxhster wrote:
if blizzard just stopped pussying out and showed us the real MMR instead of those bogus leagues, then we wouldnt be in this mess. I understand the need to motivate players, but doing so by deceiving them isnt the best way of doing that.
Besides, most casuals stopped playing sc2 a long time ago, i would imagine that those remaining want to know where they stand ELO wise. no, the problem is the aggressive decay which lowers inactive players mmr way to fast, and way too far. the game thinks you are a much worse player than you actually are, unless you're very active.
Do we know exactly how the MMR decay works? Say, is it possible to play 5 games per day and maintain or grow your current MMR? Do you need to play more then 5 games per day and if so, how may more?
Do you need to have a set number of games played by the end of a season?
I'm asking because its quite relevant to know how much activity do you really need per day or per week to stop the decay and start seeing results again.
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On November 21 2013 20:54 Destructicon wrote:Do we know exactly how the MMR decay works? Say, is it possible to play 5 games per day and maintain or grow your current MMR? Do you need to play more then 5 games per day and if so, how may more?
Do you need to have a set number of games played by the end of a season?
I'm asking because its quite relevant to know how much activity do you really need per day or per week to stop the decay and start seeing results again.
check this thread out. decay seems to start at about two to three weeks of inactivity.
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4713 Posts
On November 21 2013 21:06 CycoDude wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 20:54 Destructicon wrote:Do we know exactly how the MMR decay works? Say, is it possible to play 5 games per day and maintain or grow your current MMR? Do you need to play more then 5 games per day and if so, how may more?
Do you need to have a set number of games played by the end of a season?
I'm asking because its quite relevant to know how much activity do you really need per day or per week to stop the decay and start seeing results again. check this thread out. decay seems to start at about two to three weeks of inactivity.
Ok, if it starts 2-3 weeks after inactivity, then if you play even 1 game per day you shouldn't get demoted. Unless they also changed the definition of inactivity.
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On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly.
That post should be in the OP. Best explanation.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On November 21 2013 21:11 FaCE_1 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. That post should be in the OP. Best explanation.
I don't get this explanation. How does this explain me being matched against opponents who are two or three levels above my skill? Back in Wings I wouldn't get those matches unless I won 10+ games in a row and even then I wouldn't get so hard opponents. Now I have the score 19:31 and getting roflstomped left and right... IMO this explains nothing about matchmaking being broken.
I can see some of my games being lost to my bad mechanics, but when I see in the replay how good my enemy was... damn.
This graph only explains why some friends of mine started their season in platinum instead of diamond :-)
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So in Season 4, getting into Plat mean't you were top 33.9% and in Season 6 you are the top 16.3%.
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Maybe not true for EU or KR, but the ladder is getting easier and easier on NA.
Most of the talented players that were looking to play at an amateur online cup level have decreased significantly.
The prize pools weren't getting higher (if not lower), Koreans would automatically take the top prizes 90% of the time.
Things are getting more cast and attention because things became more established, but the talent of the "masses" have decreased from many many many talented NA players leaving for console/moba.
Are people getting better steadily? yes, but are people getting better at the amateur level? No
Amateur- online tournament participants, minimum mid-masters.
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On November 21 2013 08:19 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 08:15 dr.fahrenheit wrote:
Just get rid of one (or two) league(s) The problem with this, I feel, is that at every level, there is a huge disparity between players. A mid Silver would annihilate a low Bronze. A high Masters typically beats a low Masters pretty one-sidedly... The fewer leagues you have, the bigger the range of skill you have in each league, which is counter effective. The system is ideally trying to pit you against people of your level.
the game uses your MMR, not your league, to find you an opponent
your league is just a badge to vaguely reflect your MMR
lowering the number of leagues would make it harder for newbies to feel accomplishment though
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On November 21 2013 22:30 TaishiCi wrote:
Maybe not true for EU or KR, but the ladder is getting easier and easier on NA.
Most of the talented players that were looking to play at an amateur online cup level have decreased significantly.
The prize pools weren't getting higher (if not lower), Koreans would automatically take the top prizes 90% of the time.
Things are getting more cast and attention because things became more established, but the talent of the "masses" have decreased from many many many talented NA players leaving for console/moba.
Are people getting better steadily? yes, but are people getting better at the amateur level? No
Amateur- online tournament participants, minimum mid-masters.
How so? Any proof for such a claim? Most people in the thread are saying they are getting demoted for no apparent reason, myself included. We are trying to identify why the ladder behaves the way it does, not say one server is better than another.
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I'm still waiting for someone to explain how a system which begins to reduce your MMR after two weeks of inactivity, and can only drop you a full league after nearly four weeks of inactivity, is chiefly responsible for the majority of ladder players dropping a league. Moreover, I'm interested in hearing how this system is expected to have a larger effect than a drop in the player base of >50% from 2013 Season 4 to 2013 Season 6.
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Obviously, fewer players play and with the MMR-decay masters/dimaonds get demoted to gold/platinum and when they decide to play again they play the real gold/plat players...
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Was in Diamond beginning of HOTS and end of WOL. I then got demoted to Platinum and was struggling to even win 50% of my matches.
Now they have put me in Gold and I am currently winning a little more than 50%. I was mad to being put so low but now I get it.
I now understand why with the charts! Tnx for the input guys!
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I think this kind of behavior is pretty typical with competitive games. Saw the same thing happen in WC3 about a year after TFT was out.
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On November 21 2013 23:49 c0ldfusion wrote:
I think this kind of behavior is pretty typical with competitive games. Saw the same thing happen in WC3 about a year after TFT was out.
Yeah. Like i said earlier... look at bw ladder today. It's incredibly hard after people played the game for 10years. There are litterly NO newb (except me :p)
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On November 21 2013 23:46 CrankOut wrote:
Obviously, fewer players play and with the MMR-decay masters/dimaonds get demoted to gold/platinum and when they decide to play again they play the real gold/plat players...
That is not my point; I understand the mechanism, and I do not dispute that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, as well as increased variance in skill at the same MMR. I'm asking people to think about and defend the scale that they are proposing. Given no change in the average skill across the ladder, how many games do people have to lose to decayed players for a two league shift to occur? What percentage of players are going inactive for 2+ weeks, and then playing regularly enough following that break to affect the behavior of the entire ladder?
According to the graph above (and replacing the Season 6 numbers with the current ones from the same site), ~85,000 players have dropped from ranked since Season 4. This is more than half the players, and this is larger than Season 4 bronze and silver combined. If these players were evenly distributed across leagues, then this would have no effect. If these players were disproportionately low MMR players, the ladder would rebalance around it, and players would be demoted. This has a large and obvious effect, while a global effect of MMR requires a substantial population of players with month-long inactivity cycles.
People are going to be sorely disappointed when Blizzard eliminates MMR decay and they don't get promoted.
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On November 21 2013 23:31 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 22:30 TaishiCi wrote:
Maybe not true for EU or KR, but the ladder is getting easier and easier on NA.
Most of the talented players that were looking to play at an amateur online cup level have decreased significantly.
The prize pools weren't getting higher (if not lower), Koreans would automatically take the top prizes 90% of the time.
Things are getting more cast and attention because things became more established, but the talent of the "masses" have decreased from many many many talented NA players leaving for console/moba.
Are people getting better steadily? yes, but are people getting better at the amateur level? No
Amateur- online tournament participants, minimum mid-masters. How so? Any proof for such a claim? Most people in the thread are saying they are getting demoted for no apparent reason, myself included. We are trying to identify why the ladder behaves the way it does, not say one server is better than another.
He likely means the very top end of the MMR range, which is likely true. If lots of top end players quit then it affects the competition level at the top of the ladder. For example this is how season start GM MMR entry thresholds have shifted in last 3 seasons (likely no offset changes during these seasons, so the numbers are comparable):
NA:
S14: 1900 (or slightly lower), S15: 1830, S16: ~1800
EU:
S14: 1950, S15: 2130, S16: ~2070
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On November 22 2013 00:09 iggym wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 23:46 CrankOut wrote:
Obviously, fewer players play and with the MMR-decay masters/dimaonds get demoted to gold/platinum and when they decide to play again they play the real gold/plat players... That is not my point; I understand the mechanism, and I do not dispute that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, as well as increased variance in skill at the same MMR. I'm asking people to think about and defend the scale that they are proposing. Given no change in the average skill across the ladder, how many games do people have to lose to decayed players for a two league shift to occur? What percentage of players are going inactive for 2+ weeks, and then playing regularly enough following that break to affect the behavior of the entire ladder? According to the graph above (and replacing the Season 6 numbers with the current ones from the same site), ~85,000 players have dropped from ranked since Season 4. This is more than half the players, and this is larger than Season 4 bronze and silver combined. If these players were evenly distributed across leagues, then this would have no effect. If these players were disproportionately low MMR players, the ladder would rebalance around it, and players would be demoted. This has a large and obvious effect, while a global effect of MMR requires a substantial population of players with month-long inactivity cycles. People are going to be sorely disappointed when Blizzard eliminates MMR decay and they don't get promoted.
First the graph you are referring to is incorrect. The first numbers are not from start of S14, but from the end of S13. In the beginning of S14 Blizzard changed the offsets and tried to fix the distribution. After that Blizzard has not changed the offsets (or if they have, the change has been very small. In a week or two I can check this season's offsets more carefully).
Also in the end of the season naturally more people have played their 1v1 placements. Thus the player numbers are not comparable if you compare numbers from start of the season to numbers from end of the season.
But if you look at table I showed earlier:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20264300
It compares numbers from last season (S15) and this season (S16). First it compares numbers from 1 week from the season start. You can notice major shift towards the lower leagues. Then you can check the numbers from the end of last season. Between 8 k to 15 k people entered both EU and NA 1v1 ladders each week after the first week. You can easily deduce that major percentage of the ladder population goes inactive for 2 weeks or more during one season. MMR decay is logically the main reason for the population shift, like I answered to you already earlier: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=436056¤tpage=5#100
And yes. If the decay mechanism would now be removed, nothing visible would happen for a while. Ladder is so messed up, that it takes lots of time for people to fight back to the MMR levels they were typically before. The distribution would start healing up, but it would take time. In this case it might be beneficial to do a full MMR reset to all players. The MMR changes much more rapidly when starting from blank MMR. People can get to master range with less than 10 games when starting from blank MMR (but master promotion at earliest at 25th game). But after the MMR change rate has stabilized, it takes easily 20 straight wins or more to go over one league MMR range.
On November 22 2013 00:09 iggym wrote:
Given no change in the average skill across the ladder, how many games do people have to lose to decayed players for a two league shift to occur?
For each player ~ 16 to 20 games per league. Thus if you lose 40 games in a row, then your MMR is little over 2 leagues lower than before (if no decay happens in between).
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One thing that seems to be forgotten is the difference in Ranked and unranked play that factors in quite a bit.
In Ranked im giving it my best and hitting high masters consistantly.
In unranked my MMR makes me face Gold - Diamond -- rarely masters players - because i actually start to lose a lot of games offracing or playing weird stuff.
This is why you are facing masters players, though you arent getting an increase in your own points according to winning a masters guy. Worst case you gain points for beating the gold level player he is in unranked even if you are diamond and his portrait is masters.
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So basically silver and bronze are about 60% of the ladder right now, which is way off from Blizzard's intended distribution.
Does anyone think Blizzard will try to remedy this at all? Anyone with insight please let us know!
I think the biggest problem that this creates isn't "OMG I'm Plat now I used to be Masters" but rather that being in a specific league is no longer really an indication of one's skill, so it's hard to tell how good someone is without knowing their MMR (which is hidden).
Anyone trying to run a team league or cup or any other sort of amateur tournament for fun will run into issues :/
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On November 22 2013 00:57 korona wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2013 00:09 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 23:46 CrankOut wrote:
Obviously, fewer players play and with the MMR-decay masters/dimaonds get demoted to gold/platinum and when they decide to play again they play the real gold/plat players... That is not my point; I understand the mechanism, and I do not dispute that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, as well as increased variance in skill at the same MMR. I'm asking people to think about and defend the scale that they are proposing. Given no change in the average skill across the ladder, how many games do people have to lose to decayed players for a two league shift to occur? What percentage of players are going inactive for 2+ weeks, and then playing regularly enough following that break to affect the behavior of the entire ladder? According to the graph above (and replacing the Season 6 numbers with the current ones from the same site), ~85,000 players have dropped from ranked since Season 4. This is more than half the players, and this is larger than Season 4 bronze and silver combined. If these players were evenly distributed across leagues, then this would have no effect. If these players were disproportionately low MMR players, the ladder would rebalance around it, and players would be demoted. This has a large and obvious effect, while a global effect of MMR requires a substantial population of players with month-long inactivity cycles. People are going to be sorely disappointed when Blizzard eliminates MMR decay and they don't get promoted. First the graph you are referring to is incorrect. The first numbers are not from start of S14, but from the end of S13. In the beginning of S14 Blizzard changed the offsets and tried to fix the distribution. After that Blizzard has not changed the offsets (or if they have, the change has been very small. In a week or two I can check this season's offsets more carefully). Also in the end of the season naturally more people have played their 1v1 placements. Thus the player numbers are not comparable if you compare numbers from start of the season to numbers from end of the season. But if you look at table I showed earlier: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20264300It compares numbers from last season (S15) and this season (S16). First it compares numbers from 1 week from the season start. You can notice major shift towards the lower leagues. Then you can check the numbers from the end of last season. Between 8 k to 15 k people entered both EU and NA 1v1 ladders each week after the first week. You can easily deduce that major percentage of the ladder population goes inactive for 2 weeks or more during one season. MMR decay is logically the main reason for the population shift, like I answered to you already earlier: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=436056¤tpage=5#100And yes. If the decay mechanism would now be removed, nothing visible would happen for a while. Ladder is so messed up, that it takes lots of time for people to fight back to the MMR levels they were typically before. The distribution would start healing up, but it would take time. In this case it might be beneficial to do a full MMR reset to all players. The MMR changes much more rapidly when starting from blank MMR. People can get to master range with less than 10 games when starting from blank MMR (but master promotion at earliest at 25th game). But after the MMR change rate has stabilized, it takes easily 20 straight wins or more to go over one league MMR range. Show nested quote +On November 22 2013 00:09 iggym wrote:
Given no change in the average skill across the ladder, how many games do people have to lose to decayed players for a two league shift to occur?
For each player ~ 16 to 20 games per league. Thus if you lose 40 games in a row, then your MMR is little over 2 leagues lower than before (if no decay happens in between).
Thank you for such a good response!
I missed those numbers you posted before, sorry about that. I was not aware that the ladder grew by that rate (~10K/week) each season. That is far, far, far more than I intuited, and you're right, that means a substantial portion of the player base goes inactive then comes back. It not only means that I was wrong about the number of half-season inactive players, but that I was also wrong about the number of players who have dropped out entirely... so MMR decay has a bigger effect than I realized and the base drop-off has a smaller effect than I realized.
Whoops. Sorry folks.
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On November 21 2013 22:10 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 21:11 FaCE_1 wrote:On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. That post should be in the OP. Best explanation. I don't get this explanation. How does this explain me being matched against opponents who are two or three levels above my skill? Back in Wings I wouldn't get those matches unless I won 10+ games in a row and even then I wouldn't get so hard opponents. Now I have the score 19:31 and getting roflstomped left and right... IMO this explains nothing about matchmaking being broken. I can see some of my games being lost to my bad mechanics, but when I see in the replay how good my enemy was... damn. This graph only explains why some friends of mine started their season in platinum instead of diamond :-)
There are two reasons for why matchmaking is frustrating to many people right now.
1.) The post you're commenting on - the mmr cutoffs for each division have somehow changed, causing a pyramid effect where most players are in bronze and silver (at the bottom), gold is big, platinum is small, and diamond is tiny with masters/gm being pinpoints on the top. My brother, for example, was in diamond before, but if you notice in the graph, what was once low diamond is now top gold; he feels pissed off at Blizzard because he feels like he worked so hard for diamond previously, but now his effort was all pointless, as he is now in a lower tier than he ever was in the past.
2.) As most people in this thread are complaining about, the ladder feels more difficult in general, because of MMR decay. This makes it so that if a GM/Masters/Diamond player doesn't touch the game for a while, they may come back, play their placement, and get put into silver/gold/platinum instead of their former (and proper) league. The longer they stay away from playing the game, the lower their MMR will sink. Therefore, you never know anymore how good your opponent actually will be based on their league. You expect to play against players of equal skill to yourself, but then get crushed because the other guy was ex GM (drastic example, but possible on today's ladder).
Hopefully the way I explained it makes some sense.
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On November 22 2013 01:39 iggym wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2013 00:57 korona wrote:On November 22 2013 00:09 iggym wrote:On November 21 2013 23:46 CrankOut wrote:
Obviously, fewer players play and with the MMR-decay masters/dimaonds get demoted to gold/platinum and when they decide to play again they play the real gold/plat players... That is not my point; I understand the mechanism, and I do not dispute that MMR decay will cause some ladder deflation, as well as increased variance in skill at the same MMR. I'm asking people to think about and defend the scale that they are proposing. Given no change in the average skill across the ladder, how many games do people have to lose to decayed players for a two league shift to occur? What percentage of players are going inactive for 2+ weeks, and then playing regularly enough following that break to affect the behavior of the entire ladder? According to the graph above (and replacing the Season 6 numbers with the current ones from the same site), ~85,000 players have dropped from ranked since Season 4. This is more than half the players, and this is larger than Season 4 bronze and silver combined. If these players were evenly distributed across leagues, then this would have no effect. If these players were disproportionately low MMR players, the ladder would rebalance around it, and players would be demoted. This has a large and obvious effect, while a global effect of MMR requires a substantial population of players with month-long inactivity cycles. People are going to be sorely disappointed when Blizzard eliminates MMR decay and they don't get promoted. First the graph you are referring to is incorrect. The first numbers are not from start of S14, but from the end of S13. In the beginning of S14 Blizzard changed the offsets and tried to fix the distribution. After that Blizzard has not changed the offsets (or if they have, the change has been very small. In a week or two I can check this season's offsets more carefully). Also in the end of the season naturally more people have played their 1v1 placements. Thus the player numbers are not comparable if you compare numbers from start of the season to numbers from end of the season. But if you look at table I showed earlier: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20264300It compares numbers from last season (S15) and this season (S16). First it compares numbers from 1 week from the season start. You can notice major shift towards the lower leagues. Then you can check the numbers from the end of last season. Between 8 k to 15 k people entered both EU and NA 1v1 ladders each week after the first week. You can easily deduce that major percentage of the ladder population goes inactive for 2 weeks or more during one season. MMR decay is logically the main reason for the population shift, like I answered to you already earlier: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=436056¤tpage=5#100And yes. If the decay mechanism would now be removed, nothing visible would happen for a while. Ladder is so messed up, that it takes lots of time for people to fight back to the MMR levels they were typically before. The distribution would start healing up, but it would take time. In this case it might be beneficial to do a full MMR reset to all players. The MMR changes much more rapidly when starting from blank MMR. People can get to master range with less than 10 games when starting from blank MMR (but master promotion at earliest at 25th game). But after the MMR change rate has stabilized, it takes easily 20 straight wins or more to go over one league MMR range. On November 22 2013 00:09 iggym wrote:
Given no change in the average skill across the ladder, how many games do people have to lose to decayed players for a two league shift to occur?
For each player ~ 16 to 20 games per league. Thus if you lose 40 games in a row, then your MMR is little over 2 leagues lower than before (if no decay happens in between). Thank you for such a good response! I missed those numbers you posted before, sorry about that. I was not aware that the ladder grew by that rate (~10K/week) each season. That is far, far, far more than I intuited, and you're right, that means a substantial portion of the player base goes inactive then comes back. It not only means that I was wrong about the number of half-season inactive players, but that I was also wrong about the number of players who have dropped out entirely... so MMR decay has a bigger effect than I realized and the base drop-off has a smaller effect than I realized. Whoops. Sorry folks.
But it is true that the population is also getting smaller even if the numbers are healthy. But it still has much smaller effect than the decay. For example during the last month of last season, when I played on NA server during EU evening (early morning to mid-day on NA), the matchmaker sometimes gave opponents with higher MMR difference than before. Largest difference was more than 300 points on MMR tool scale (more than a typical league). I don't remember personally facing an opponent with that big MMR difference ever before.
--> During the 'silent hours' matchmaker may need to match players with larger MMR difference than normally. If you want to maximize your chances to face opponents that belong to certain MMR range, you play only during the prime time, when there are most players online.
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its true there are less players now and only the more dedicated play this game anymore. so you could say the skill level is expanding due to people dropping out and no new blood to fill it in ><
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On November 21 2013 21:11 FaCE_1 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. That post should be in the OP. Best explanation.
This is a good explanation, but brings up the question of why we lost ~50% of all sc2 players in two seasons?
That's a HUGE drop, and not one that make sense....
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Well as long as you don't improve there will be others who improve their game and get up in MMR and play vs you. This may seem that it's getting harder which might also be a reason.
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On November 22 2013 01:40 CakeSauc3 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 22:10 deacon.frost wrote:On November 21 2013 21:11 FaCE_1 wrote:On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. That post should be in the OP. Best explanation. I don't get this explanation. How does this explain me being matched against opponents who are two or three levels above my skill? Back in Wings I wouldn't get those matches unless I won 10+ games in a row and even then I wouldn't get so hard opponents. Now I have the score 19:31 and getting roflstomped left and right... IMO this explains nothing about matchmaking being broken. I can see some of my games being lost to my bad mechanics, but when I see in the replay how good my enemy was... damn. This graph only explains why some friends of mine started their season in platinum instead of diamond :-) There are two reasons for why matchmaking is frustrating to many people right now. 1.) The post you're commenting on - the mmr cutoffs for each division have somehow changed, causing a pyramid effect where most players are in bronze and silver (at the bottom), gold is big, platinum is small, and diamond is tiny with masters/gm being pinpoints on the top. My brother, for example, was in diamond before, but if you notice in the graph, what was once low diamond is now top gold; he feels pissed off at Blizzard because he feels like he worked so hard for diamond previously, but now his effort was all pointless, as he is now in a lower tier than he ever was in the past. 2.) As most people in this thread are complaining about, the ladder feels more difficult in general, because of MMR decay. This makes it so that if a GM/Masters/Diamond player doesn't touch the game for a while, they may come back, play their placement, and get put into silver/gold/platinum instead of their former (and proper) league. The longer they stay away from playing the game, the lower their MMR will sink. Therefore, you never know anymore how good your opponent actually will be based on their league. You expect to play against players of equal skill to yourself, but then get crushed because the other guy was ex GM (drastic example, but possible on today's ladder). Hopefully the way I explained it makes some sense.
For me your point in 2) is the issue -- you never know how good your opponent is anymore. I absolutely cannot stand that. If I know I'm playing someone who was a lot better than I was I can at least make sense of the end result -- likely a humiliating loss of some sort. Now, after being high Diamond last season I'm (at times) matched against people who are nominally in Gold league but yet seem to have a far better grasp of the game (and mechanics) than I do. It's incredibly frustrating. It always leads me to think -- am I getting worse, or just plain bad, or is this guy high masters in SEA, NA, etc. (which is sometimes the case)? Blizzard needs to figure out a way to give you a more accurate picture of the strength of your opponent. The easiest way to do this would be to give MMR figures -- MMR in a specific race, MMR in a specific matchup, MMR on other servers, and MMR in past seasons. These numbers could be safely tucked away for the few hardcore players who could handle seeing them. (Obviously Blizzard believes that MMR and Elo are scary concepts for casuals; otherwise blizzard would have released them.)
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Charts explain why plats can withstand my macro. I was surprised.
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I was Platinum at the end of 2013 S5, but placed into Gold at the start of 2013 S6. I was not playing Gold players when S5 ended. Within 4 days and 50 games of beating Gold players rather handily I was promoted back into Platinum. MMRStats thinks I'm in Gold as well but Blizzard doesn't think so.
The league distribution seems whack. Based on Blizzard's expected distribution, I should be in Diamond (which I was at the end of WoL and the start of HotS). I figured I fell out of Diamond due to the HotS changes (which I still believe).
Regardless of my league, I'm playing people of similar skill most of the time.
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Ladder isn't getting harder blizzard is trolling the fuck out of us since the beginning of new season. i.e. i finished rank 2 1200 point plat and got put in gold. never been gold since like early wol, and i was former diamond. most golds i face are easily "high" plat skill, if not diamond, or multiple time former diamond. since when does fast 3 base macro off 55 workers with adequate production not kill a gold leaeguer? kind of a joke, caused me to play a lot less
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On November 22 2013 10:27 justnny wrote:
I was Platinum at the end of 2013 S5, but placed into Gold at the start of 2013 S6. I was not playing Gold players when S5 ended. Within 4 days and 50 games of beating Gold players rather handily I was promoted back into Platinum. MMRStats thinks I'm in Gold as well but Blizzard doesn't think so.
The league distribution seems whack. Based on Blizzard's expected distribution, I should be in Diamond (which I was at the end of WoL and the start of HotS). I figured I fell out of Diamond due to the HotS changes (which I still believe).
Regardless of my league, I'm playing people of similar skill most of the time.
You were playing gold players, you just didn't knew it because there is no demotion anymore mid season. Go check all these "platinum" you were playing at the time, i'm sure most will be gold now. Also, you were diamond at the start of hots because the ladder was fed at the time. Almost everyone were a league above where they should've been (I got master after playing 2 weeks of hots, now im back to diamond where I should be). The Sc2 ladder is perfectly fine. The only slight problem might be mmr decay, but even then... I have 52% win rate over 1500 games, as most have. Name me another matchmaking who will match you so evenly, there arent much, I stomp noobs every time in every other games I play online.
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On November 22 2013 01:59 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 21:11 FaCE_1 wrote:On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. That post should be in the OP. Best explanation. This is a good explanation, but brings up the question of why we lost ~50% of all sc2 players in two seasons? That's a HUGE drop, and not one that make sense....
wow, that explains a lot! Should really be part of the OP.
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On November 22 2013 11:09 sM.Zik wrote:
The Sc2 ladder is perfectly fine.
I don't think anyone is saying it is very broken in the matchmaking sense. Just that for whatever reason things got rearranged such that people are often in a lower league than they are used to, even if the quality of play is the same. Frankly, it doesn't matter what league you're in if you're getting matched against even people. But people so closely associate skill with league most of the time that it a lot of people are feeling a bit taken aback by working so hard to get into League X and then being "demoted" to League Y.
So in a sense the ladder is "harder" in that players who were formerly ranked higher are now ranked lower, BUT, in the end it really doesn't matter because those people are still in roughly the same overall place. In other words, if the SC2 ladder just used an overall rank/place (i.e, I'm ranked 20325 in the world) rather than leagues (i.e I'm "low platinum"), people would not have noticed a big change in their rank.
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On November 22 2013 11:38 JacobShock wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2013 01:59 tili wrote:On November 21 2013 21:11 FaCE_1 wrote:On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR didn't actually drop significantly. That post should be in the OP. Best explanation. This is a good explanation, but brings up the question of why we lost ~50% of all sc2 players in two seasons? That's a HUGE drop, and not one that make sense.... wow, that explains a lot! Should really be part of the OP.
Except those figures are incorrect. The first numbers are not from the start of S14, but from 9 days before the end of S13. Now lets look at those numbers.
Total players 2013-06-01 S13, 9 days before season end (from nios.kr via web.archive.org)
Global ~367 k (371 726 if counted by races or 366 280 if counted by leagues)
EU ~150 k (151 664 if counted by races or 149 482 if counted by leagues)
NA ~ 145 k (146 393 if counted by races or 144 445 if counted by leagues)
Total players 2013-11-04 S15, 7 days before season end (from sc2ranks)
Global ~ 349 k
EU ~ 144 k
NA ~ 133 k
Difference:
Global ~ - 18 k
EU ~ - 6 k
NA ~ - 12 k
Of course these numbers are not directly comparable as S13 was a lot shorter than S15. Also the sources were different, but most of the time both services have ended up having similar looking values. More exact S15 values can be found from one of my previous posts: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=436056¤tpage=6#119
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The ladders also bugged right now as confirmed by Blizz MVP's
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On November 20 2013 16:47 DinoMight wrote:
Hello all,
About last year I was promoted to Diamond. I had been practicing my ass off and watching pros play a lot and I improved a lot over the course of a month or so. I was in Diamond until HotS came out. HotS really caters to my play style more and I was destroying people. So I eventually made it into Masters.
I stopped playing for a few weeks. Then got demoted twice. Then worked my way back up to Diamond. Then stopped playing for a few weeks and now I'm in Platinum again. Except it seems like the ladder has gotten WAY WAY WAY harder.
I'm watching the most pro StarCraft I've ever watched. My APM is the highest it's ever been (I averaged 160 in a 20+ min game the other day vs Z). Yet I'm struggling to get barely a 50% win ratio.
I just finished a PvP against a guy who seemed way better than Platinum. Indeed after I talked to him, I found out he used to be in Masters. Finished 5 Seasons in Masters too. Now he's Plat.
Have a few other friends who were Masters now Diamond, some Diamond now Plat, and some Plats who are now Gold.
Has anyone else noticed the ladder getting way harder recently or am I just hallucinating something?
EDIT - I should clarify I am playing on NA.
It's this MMR decay. I was playing tons of former masters one late night and I was only in gold. It was ridiculous. They were just pounding me into the dirt. Not even close.
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it's not the decay it's the population. look at the people you faces history.. you will see TONS of players that were master s1/2 of hots just to steadily get demoted.. the same goes for other leagues aswell. I've noticed this alot when playing 3v3s for fun with 2 friends... one is bronze so it's essentially 2v3 and that gets us mostly opponents around gold/plat 1v1.. almost everyone we face that are now gold/plat was diamond/master in the first 2 seasons of HoTS.
I remember this myself aswell.. played some masterleague players in the first 2 seasons that I doubt would have been even platinum at the end of WoL.
wether this is a change in the system aswell as the population decliningI do not know but it's only logicalto asume that a ton of new people starting the game will make the leagues way easier to achieve then before and steadly as they stop playing it will become harder again.
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hmm i noticed this too. Havent been playing actively for couple of months now. I just play sometimes at random from 4-6 games. I was in top Diamond in NA and KR last season and my W/L is near 50%. But this season i was placed at Plat/Gold respectively, i just shrugged it off and tell myself " meh im just gonna play some games and promote it back at diamond" but now lol.. KR gold is really something this season. T_T
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On November 22 2013 13:59 Esoterikk wrote:
The ladders also bugged right now as confirmed by Blizz MVP's
Link to the post?
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On November 22 2013 14:08 doffe wrote:
it's not the decay it's the population. look at the people you faces history.. you will see TONS of players that were master s1/2 of hots just to steadily get demoted.. the same goes for other leagues aswell. I've noticed this alot when playing 3v3s for fun with 2 friends... one is bronze so it's essentially 2v3 and that gets us mostly opponents around gold/plat 1v1.. almost everyone we face that are now gold/plat was diamond/master in the first 2 seasons of HoTS.
I remember this myself aswell.. played some masterleague players in the first 2 seasons that I doubt would have been even platinum at the end of WoL.
wether this is a change in the system aswell as the population decliningI do not know but it's only logicalto asume that a ton of new people starting the game will make the leagues way easier to achieve then before and steadly as they stop playing it will become harder again.
No the main reason is logically the MMR decay, not population changes. MMR decay affects fast & considerably especially as large portion of the ladder population goes inactive for more than 2 weeks during each season. Population changes would would not have so drastic & fast effects.
Learn more about the MMR decay from:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=429734
Also see my some of my previous posts in this thread:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20269735
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20273329
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The ladder was almost perfect during WoL, all I wished for was real MMR values shown.
-MMR Decay
-Unranked and ranked
-Can no longer get demoted during season
I feel like a scrub saying this but i've always been Diamond, I got into Masters a few times so I was mid-high Diamond for the most part, now i'm Platinum. Fair enough it's only a badge but imagine how the low Diamond players feel in Gold!
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On November 22 2013 18:09 Shottaz wrote:
The ladder was almost perfect during WoL, all I wished for was real MMR values shown.
-MMR Decay
-Unranked and ranked
-Can no longer get demoted during season
I feel like a scrub saying this but i've always been Diamond, I got into Masters a few times so I was mid-high Diamond for the most part, now i'm Platinum. Fair enough it's only a badge but imagine how the low Diamond players feel in Gold!
I get it... I'm in the same situation. I think it's just a reality that the leagues are more difficult to get into. But I don't think things were perfect in WoL. Too many people were in Master. Too many people just played one placement a season and never lost that badge.
MMR decay means people need to actually play to earn their league. I like it. (Although maybe it could be dialed down.)
Unranked vs ranked is fine (it means more people are playing - even if some aren't as 'serious' as others).
No in season demotions... Okay, I don't like this one. Even without the MMR decay it requires the system to promote less (combined with MMR decay and it's a bit of a mess).
I still think that there's potential to iron itself out on it's own (in a few seasons). However, I hope there's some adjustment sooner than later.
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Can you add that to the OP ?
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Feel frustrating having always been masters and now being firmly in diamond hitting other ex-masters. The skill level hasn't changed, just the rank
edit: glad Blizzard seems to be working on it
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Just give us Elo ratings instead of these retarded points and leagues. Elo rating decay is alright (as it gives an incentive to play), but let the decay be different for everyone (as the skill decrease due to inactivity does differ per person) and learned by a simple machine learning algorithm.
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On November 22 2013 18:09 Shottaz wrote:
The ladder was almost perfect during WoL, all I wished for was real MMR values shown.
-MMR Decay
-Unranked and ranked
-Can no longer get demoted during season
I feel like a scrub saying this but i've always been Diamond, I got into Masters a few times so I was mid-high Diamond for the most part, now i'm Platinum. Fair enough it's only a badge but imagine how the low Diamond players feel in Gold!
I fought my way up to platinum and I was so happy. Then I started fighting my way up, seeing diamonds every now and again.... and now i'm gold rank 80. Sad panda .
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Why do people care so much about league placement? It's just an artificial metric to make you believe you're making progress. As long as most of your matches are against opponents of similar MMR, it doesn't matter if you're in Gold or Diamond. And compared to the total number of players, your relative position on the ladder is the same as it has always been. If you've been in Diamond and now demoted to Gold, that also happened to most of other Diamond players. So you're basically playing same opponents as before, only your 'badge' is now different. Big deal.
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Somehow the mass demotions might motivate some people to play to get back up! Getting to a certain league and never andvancing from there might scare away people too. At least now, people do t care too much about previous results, but you eed to prove yourself every season
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On November 22 2013 19:52 ReMinD_ wrote:
Why do people care so much about league placement? It's just an artificial metric to make you believe you're making progress. As long as most of your matches are against opponents of similar MMR, it doesn't matter if you're in Gold or Diamond. And compared to the total number of players, your relative position on the ladder is the same as it has always been. If you've been in Diamond and now demoted to Gold, that also happened to most of other Diamond players. So you're basically playing same opponents as before, only your 'badge' is now different. Big deal.
I guess some people are shallow.
But yeah, the actual issue is that more games are one sided now (at least the ones I play), which implies that I am playing against more players I am not supposed to play.
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I think they should release a few more ladder ranks. With fresh ranks people will be less concerned with the difference between their old rank and new rank (or those ranks would stay the same but the ceiling would be higher - add 1 or 2 ranks between M and GM).
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On November 22 2013 19:52 ReMinD_ wrote:
Why do people care so much about league placement? It's just an artificial metric to make you believe you're making progress. As long as most of your matches are against opponents of similar MMR, it doesn't matter if you're in Gold or Diamond. And compared to the total number of players, your relative position on the ladder is the same as it has always been. If you've been in Diamond and now demoted to Gold, that also happened to most of other Diamond players. So you're basically playing same opponents as before, only your 'badge' is now different. Big deal.
It is not only the leagues. But when vastly different skill level of players share similar MMR the matches become one-sided & you can never tell in the beginning of match what skill level of player you are facing.
For example, if you typically have diamond range MMR and you have been dropped to gold via MMR decay. When you are matched against typical gold level player, you most of the time win him with ease. But if your opponent has decayed even from higher than you (master), it is likely that he crushes you. Thus in some matches it seems like you can do whatever you want & still win. And in some other matches it seems you had no chance to begin with. And as you do not know in the start of the game who you are facing against, you cannot even adjust your strategies / playstyle / mentally prepare. In the past the matchmaker most of the time matched you against similar level players. It is not the case anymore as Blizzard tampers the MMR directly when players have been inactive for 2 weeks or more.
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Well the more you play the better you become. So if you are in GM and you play, you will become better. But so is everyone else around you, so I would say yes the skill lvl is always going up, but with dimenishing returns ofc, just like a lnx curve where y is skill level
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On November 22 2013 20:42 spirates wrote:
Well the more you play the better you become. So if you are in GM and you play, you will become better. But so is everyone else around you, so I would say yes the skill lvl is always going up, but with dimenishing returns ofc, just like a lnx curve where y is skill level
But your development also slows down if you play against opponents of vast skill range. For example if you are practicing certain new build and play against considerably weaker opponent, you will likely win even if you do multiple mistakes. You don't necessarily even realize what the mistakes were. Then you use the same build against much stronger opponent. You may do less mistakes, but you are still crushed as the opponent was e.g. much stronger mechanically. It may seem like the build you are practicing is not viable at all, even if the true reason might just be that you were so much mechanically weaker than your opponent, that the build did not matter. But if you are matched against similar level opponents you can gradually improve & adjust your strategies as you can rely on the feedback you get from the match.
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Hm after reading iamcaustic's post and the thread I checked sc2ranks again.
These are the stats right now (whow knows how precise they are, but you get the picture):
http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league
So the 20% per league is just something we have to get out of our minds and then I kinda like the new(?) system. Bronze is the biggest, silver second biggest etc. and Master the smallest. So what this does is, a promotion actually is something to be proud of again and if you are gold or plat you aren't a scrub, but a pretty solid player (at least top top25%). So I like the new sizes of the leagues, let's just hope they adjust the MMR deacay a bit.
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On November 22 2013 19:52 ReMinD_ wrote:
Why do people care so much about league placement? It's just an artificial metric to make you believe you're making progress. As long as most of your matches are against opponents of similar MMR, it doesn't matter if you're in Gold or Diamond. And compared to the total number of players, your relative position on the ladder is the same as it has always been. If you've been in Diamond and now demoted to Gold, that also happened to most of other Diamond players. So you're basically playing same opponents as before, only your 'badge' is now different. Big deal.
What is your logic here? You can say that about any game, period. Does any game really matter with respect to what league you are in, I don't think so.. How about a little reward for the little guy? We know we aren't Grandmaster players but at least give some incentive rather than just demote everyone without any real explanation. You can argue ladder decay, etc, but with so many hidden variables it's quite frustrating.
Some people are saying "well you got that rank at the beginning of Hots so now it's normal again" I call bullshit on that, I was diamond in WoL and have played multiple season Master leagues players in Gold league now. It's a crap shoot, and a vicious cycle. If I play a legit Gold leaguer and smash him, that person will get mad and could theoretically stop playing because after the game he will see I'm a former Diamond player, so they might think, "well what the fuck is the point in laddering?" Conversely I played a 6 time former master in Gold league yesterday, got smashed and quit laddering for the day.
You're right, it's really not a big deal, but if you think about it good and hard I'm sure you can see why this current system would influence some people to quit altogether.
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On November 23 2013 00:31 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2013 19:52 ReMinD_ wrote:
Why do people care so much about league placement? It's just an artificial metric to make you believe you're making progress. As long as most of your matches are against opponents of similar MMR, it doesn't matter if you're in Gold or Diamond. And compared to the total number of players, your relative position on the ladder is the same as it has always been. If you've been in Diamond and now demoted to Gold, that also happened to most of other Diamond players. So you're basically playing same opponents as before, only your 'badge' is now different. Big deal. What is your logic here? You can say that about any game, period. Does any game really matter with respect to what league you are in, I don't think so.. How about a little reward for the little guy? We know we aren't Grandmaster players but at least give some incentive rather than just demote everyone without any real explanation. You can argue ladder decay, etc, but with so many hidden variables it's quite frustrating. Some people are saying "well you got that rank at the beginning of Hots so now it's normal again" I call bullshit on that, I was diamond in WoL and have played multiple season Master leagues players in Gold league now. It's a crap shoot, and a vicious cycle. If I play a legit Gold leaguer and smash him, that person will get mad and could theoretically stop playing because after the game he will see I'm a former Diamond player, so they might think, "well what the fuck is the point in laddering?" Conversely I played a 6 time former master in Gold league yesterday, got smashed and quit laddering for the day. You're right, it's really not a big deal, but if you think about it good and hard I'm sure you can see why this current system would influence some people to quit altogether.
Part of the problem is people with multiple accounts and that is not likely to change. People like laddering eu, kr, na. A free account for everyone is great, but the result is lower league players getting smashed. Today in plat I matched a guy who was 20-1 twice and he crushed me both times. On the bright side, you do get to play some great players.
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Guys,
I just read on Battle.net that a Bliz Technical support guy has confirmed that Blizzard is aware of the issue and working to fix it.
So we're not all crazy. There's definitely something going on with the ladder.
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I really don't understand why, if they want to introduce mmr decay due to extended absences (which makes logical sense), they don't use a second variable that deducts from effective MMR and recovers to 0 more quickly than MMR would. Also, have the 'decay of MMR' variable be disregarded in the calculation of points +/- awarded.
Or is this what they do?
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Yeah, the ladder has felt much different lately for reasons I don´t know.
Finally reaching plat again felt good (and that´s weird for me personally), however, the first time I got to plat was about a year and a half ago and even the thought of how much I have improved from the days that I used to play gold in the WoL and the fact that I was just climbing the ladder up again as a gold player feels just silly when I think how immensely I have improved in that time.
I call it the casual syndrome. =/
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On November 22 2013 18:09 Shottaz wrote:
The ladder was almost perfect during WoL, all I wished for was real MMR values shown.
-MMR Decay
-Unranked and ranked
-Can no longer get demoted during season
I feel like a scrub saying this but i've always been Diamond, I got into Masters a few times so I was mid-high Diamond for the most part, now i'm Platinum. Fair enough it's only a badge but imagine how the low Diamond players feel in Gold!
Never mind the Gold league players who are now in Bronze.
On November 23 2013 02:29 DinoMight wrote:
I just read on Battle.net that a Bliz Technical support guy has confirmed that Blizzard is aware of the issue and working to fix it.
Any chance on a source?
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On November 23 2013 03:13 wrekkless wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2013 02:29 DinoMight wrote:
I just read on Battle.net that a Bliz Technical support guy has confirmed that Blizzard is aware of the issue and working to fix it. Any chance on a source?
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/10636803688
Although battle.net is blocked at my job so I can't really look too much into it. But i saw on my phone that a Blizzard Tech support guy noted that Blizzard is 100% aware of the issue.
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Wow, I feel better now, knowing that the ladder is actually skewed at the moment.
Demotion aside, I do faced a lot of better players in the sense that they are not necessarily better mechanically, but I do get punished hard for my silly mistakes, e.g. bad scouting, less than ideal wall off, not evacuating drones, not setting up queens ramp off, going 8 lings instead of 8 drones, not stopping a cannon from getting up due to not manually microing drones, not splitting armies when dropped, losing my queen to 12 run-by lings, dying to all-ins before muta switch, losing 20 banelings to 3 widow mines shots, not watching the minimap when 20 speed lings ran by etc.
Any one of these dumb mistakes will variably costed me the game TT. I feel like I really need to push harder before I can get back my former league.
Yea, the ladder really got harder nowadays.
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On November 21 2013 05:34 iamcaustic wrote:EDIT: Gonna add the conversation with korona in here, since it's particularly relevant about how and why these graphs are the way they are. Also keep note that the first bar is actually 2013 Season 3, not 2013 Season 4 as stated in the image, so the differences are inflated a bit as the new league offsets were introduced for 2013 Season 4. I made a clerical error, but even comparing data from August 6th 2013 (Season 4) shows the same concept of disparity, just less extreme.
Here's my fancy attempt at graphs, based on AM region 1v1 data from nios.kr (June 1st, 2013 vs. November 18th, 2013). Basically demonstrates the changes in percentile thresholds at this point in time compared to the middle of this year. Basically, if you got demoted this season, don't feel too bad about it. Chances are your MMR overall skill didn't actually drop significantly. Instead, it seems like we're looking at a combination of a reduced player base and built-in MMR decay: Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 06:44 korona wrote:On November 21 2013 06:22 iamcaustic wrote:
p.s. I also offered data from August 6th after your correction that June 1st was still 2013 Season 3, not 2013 Season 4 (I misremembered by just over a week). We can still see the disparity with the new data, but that's generally moot since the whole MMR decay thing has been explained. Do we know when MMR decay was introduced? MMR decay was introduced either when HotS launched or patch 2.0.x that was applied to WoL one month earlier. I saw its effects on some users' data already during the first two HotS seasons, but could not deduct the reason & did not spent more time to investigate. In start of the last season it got evident that there is a decay mechanism (lots of occurrences in S14 data). My first thought was that it has to be a bug in the ladder system as drops seemed too steep. But after more investigation it is clearly an intended feature (It would be interesting to know how they chose the current max decay value). Also Blizzard has not commented the issue publicly nor denied it. Start dates for HotS seasons: --- Initial offsets --- S12: 2013-03-12 S13: 2013-05-01 --- Offsets changed --- S14: 2013-06-10 S15: 2013-08-26 S16: 2013-11-11 For those interested, they can read more about MMR decay here.
Heya guys, just a reminder that if you liked my graphs, the post has been updated with some important information from korona. While the data doesn't lie, some of the original conclusions weren't wholly accurate so be sure to read the updated stuff.
Just a friendly PSA since I see korona posting like a broken record in this thread.
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On November 22 2013 18:09 Shottaz wrote:
The ladder was almost perfect during WoL, all I wished for was real MMR values shown.
-MMR Decay
-Unranked and ranked
-Can no longer get demoted during season
I feel like a scrub saying this but i've always been Diamond, I got into Masters a few times so I was mid-high Diamond for the most part, now i'm Platinum. Fair enough it's only a badge but imagine how the low Diamond players feel in Gold!
I'm finding it pretty funny how I keep running into 300apm zerg monsters in Gold league of all places.
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yeah i feel with you ... i m in platin right now. i could hold my rank compared to last season, so i m lucky i guess, but now i m facing very strong opponents, have 70-91 Winratio. Sometimes i just get overrolled by former masters which not could promote to dia/master again however ... i think the graph above is very nice and shows exactly how harder it is to reach higher leagues right now ...
so i know league shouldn't matter, but it is a big motivationfactor imo. I really hope blizzard will change something soon, but maybe the want exaclty what happens right now ... they want a more competitive ladder in the higher stages ... i don't know ... we ll see
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I didnt play single match last season. This season I started playing again. First it put me into gold. Then after some games I got to plat. Currently I have 29 wins and 3 losses in 1v1 ladder. And I used to be in master league since wol. (In hots always in master) After games end some angry nerds start insulting me and saying im smurf or I dropped myself to lowerleagues to crush noobs. What I can to blizzard ladder system
About ladder getting harder. I have to agree. Even tho im not so good anymore in wol you could do mass hellion everygame and won all games until plat. You could 4 gate to diamond.
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On November 26 2013 22:25 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:I didnt play single match last season. This season I started playing again. First it put me into gold. Then after some games I got to plat. Currently I have 29 wins and 3 losses in 1v1 ladder. And I used to be in master league since wol. (In hots always in master) After games end some angry nerds start insulting me and saying im smurf or I dropped myself to lowerleagues to crush noobs. What I can to blizzard ladder system About ladder getting harder. I have to agree. Even tho im not so good anymore in wol you could do mass hellion everygame and won all games until plat. You could 4 gate to diamond.
You could 4 gate to GM*
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LOL now this makes so much fucking sense, I was easily a gold player before this season, now i'm struggling like hell to beat bronze/silver players. I could just make more stuff and a move my way into gold but then all of a sudden people got better or something, then I realised like half of the silver players are ex-plat and i'm so confused.
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On November 26 2013 23:19 iAmBiGbiRd wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 22:25 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:I didnt play single match last season. This season I started playing again. First it put me into gold. Then after some games I got to plat. Currently I have 29 wins and 3 losses in 1v1 ladder. And I used to be in master league since wol. (In hots always in master) After games end some angry nerds start insulting me and saying im smurf or I dropped myself to lowerleagues to crush noobs. What I can to blizzard ladder system About ladder getting harder. I have to agree. Even tho im not so good anymore in wol you could do mass hellion everygame and won all games until plat. You could 4 gate to diamond. You could 4 gate to GM*
Well, I have never heard of guy who only did 4gate and got into gm. But the point was that I could do all kind of stupid things and still won. My opponents apm was 60-70 in plat but now I mostly see 120-170
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I'm feeling the same, lot's of ex-master/diamond players. I'm playing in EU, just started again, silver league. About 50% of my lost games were against people with 200+ APM, which is more than double mine. I think the ladder system needs a lot of work to make the competition fairer for the lesser skilled and new players. It really isn't fun to get crushed by that sort of players, especially if you've just started and try to work yourself up the leagues. I think ex-master/diamond players should get matched with diamond/master players earlier (when they're still silver/gold league) and only in cases of low win % drop that hard.
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Damn! I just started playing again too. Was Plat for the longest time in WoL. Maybe played around 10 Ladder Matches in HotS Overall. Last one was in Feburary.
Wanted to give the game another shot (as written in my YALB)... this thread is not very motivational.
Luckily i don't give a fuck and will try anyways
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United States12235 Posts
On November 23 2013 03:16 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2013 03:13 wrekkless wrote:On November 23 2013 02:29 DinoMight wrote:
I just read on Battle.net that a Bliz Technical support guy has confirmed that Blizzard is aware of the issue and working to fix it. Any chance on a source? http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/10636803688Although battle.net is blocked at my job so I can't really look too much into it. But i saw on my phone that a Blizzard Tech support guy noted that Blizzard is 100% aware of the issue.
Battle.net MVPs (I'm one also) are not official sources and should not be taken as such. If it's not a blue post, it didn't come from Blizzard.
Anyway, I was in the same group communication where we discussed the ladder state with some of the CMs, and they never said they were going to make a statement about it. The other MVPs who assumed so were in error.
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I was diamond on NA but didn't play HotS, but I got placed into silver in HotS. I've quickly become plat. Hopefully I can get diamond back. Certainly, I'm very surprised to have a much harder time against gold/plat players. Some are really terrible, but others aren't. Either Sc2 has lost tons of ladder players or the bnet is screwed as always.
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doesn't this help raise the overall skill of the region though? I've always felt that top ranked players skill also improves with the average skill of the region. Maybe it will make people more motivated to train harder in order to reach the next league, it's certainly had that effect on me.
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On November 27 2013 02:37 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2013 03:16 DinoMight wrote:On November 23 2013 03:13 wrekkless wrote:On November 23 2013 02:29 DinoMight wrote:
I just read on Battle.net that a Bliz Technical support guy has confirmed that Blizzard is aware of the issue and working to fix it. Any chance on a source? http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/10636803688Although battle.net is blocked at my job so I can't really look too much into it. But i saw on my phone that a Blizzard Tech support guy noted that Blizzard is 100% aware of the issue. Battle.net MVPs (I'm one also) are not official sources and should not be taken as such. If it's not a blue post, it didn't come from Blizzard. Anyway, I was in the same group communication where we discussed the ladder state with some of the CMs, and they never said they were going to make a statement about it. The other MVPs who assumed so were in error.
I take it the statement made that they see it as a "major issue" is true though?
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Today I was watching Kas' stream and after his placement matches he was placed in Gold...enough said
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United States12235 Posts
On November 27 2013 03:46 Ignorant prodigy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 02:37 Excalibur_Z wrote:On November 23 2013 03:16 DinoMight wrote:On November 23 2013 03:13 wrekkless wrote:On November 23 2013 02:29 DinoMight wrote:
I just read on Battle.net that a Bliz Technical support guy has confirmed that Blizzard is aware of the issue and working to fix it. Any chance on a source? http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/10636803688Although battle.net is blocked at my job so I can't really look too much into it. But i saw on my phone that a Blizzard Tech support guy noted that Blizzard is 100% aware of the issue. Battle.net MVPs (I'm one also) are not official sources and should not be taken as such. If it's not a blue post, it didn't come from Blizzard. Anyway, I was in the same group communication where we discussed the ladder state with some of the CMs, and they never said they were going to make a statement about it. The other MVPs who assumed so were in error. I take it the statement made that they see it as a "major issue" is true though?
I don't believe that is accurate, but we can't assume anything without an official Blizzard statement on the matter.
As I pointed out in the MMR Decay thread, there is a balance between the system mechanics, which are working properly, and the community perception, which is now pretty frustrated. I don't know if it's serious enough to warrant a change, let alone an acknowledgement, and there is no reason to assume that any greater community outrage will spark either of those.
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just played a guy in gold league who is 95-4 win loss ration. Needless to say I got crushed. Not sure why they wouldn't have been promoted earlier. He seemed to Average out his record with Unranked matches so at first glance it looked like 50% win ratio.
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so there is a bug with the ladder as of right now?
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Russian Federation269 Posts
After being a 9x consistent top master 1100+ points player and then taking 6 months off I have come back and have been playing for about 2 weeks now am sitting in plat... my record is something like 30-4 but i feel it is taking a much longer time to progress through the leagues. I dont find it any harder just more games need to be played. I mean I guess its harder for my opponents, so my previous comment was somewhat dumb....
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Awesome! I know it doesn't mean that much in the grand scheme, but it is definitely going to encourage me to play more ladder!
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/d62A2hA.png)
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BZaXMeoCMAEd2k3.png)
