Changes in League Distribution [Graphs and Data]

On December 04 2013 17:40 ander wrote:
Man, diamond and masters now is the same size as masters was then. Being masters is really the equivalent of high masters in previous seasons. Crazy.

On December 04 2013 21:17 Ragnarork wrote:


It's not even to "blame". It's just a different distribution which requires a different interpretation of what we consider being of this or this level (if league ever represented that correctly).

On December 05 2013 04:30 Kyrao wrote:
Anyone else find it interesting to see that the player base went from 367,439 to 211,965 in 6 months? That's over a 40% decline...

On December 07 2013 12:45 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Second, it's unclear why players are quitting the game. Maybe there are other games that have captured their interest, maybe it really is ladder frustration, maybe it's burnout, we can only speculate.

On December 07 2013 16:03 RJ231 wrote:


I thought I would give my opinion on this as I am one of the players who basically dropped the game after investing quite a lot of time/energy into it and I know a number of other high level players who did the same for similar reasons. The biggest issue is mainly that the game just isn't properly balanced, this along with the fact that blizzard takes far too long to admit their balance/design mistakes makes for some very frustrating and exhausting games. The thing I always hear people say is "well x just won this tournament so clearly x race isn't under powered" and they fail to realize that for the majority of the player base that unbalanced situation usually plays out much more clearly in the lower levels. If widow mines are tearing the very best zergs on the planet apart and costing them games how do you think I feel when I'm playing in master league and instantly lose the game to a unit that automatically fired a missile from underground and just wiped out a huge chunk of my army. When you see top players playing they are completely aware of the imbalances of the game and will do whatever they can to abuse/mitigate their effectiveness. For the average SC2 enthusiast they aren't quite as adept at recognizing these things and dealing with them so they end up losing to these forces in catastrophic ways that feels very bad to be quite honest, it doesn't help that it tends to happen again and again.

I think that if Blizzard did a better job of acknowledging the imbalance in their games and were more proactive it would feel better as a player, it's exciting to me when I hear they've nerfed that or buffed this because it means now the game is likely more fair and there's this feeling that it's sort of "new" again since the match ups won't revolve around certain imbalances quite as much. I think another big issue is the game just isn't friendly to newer players, how do you actually play a race like zerg casually? For the race to even function you need to be on 80+ drones, have 4 hatcheries and then spend hours mastering weird keyboard sequences so your macro isn't complete crap. When I watch a game like league of legends on stream I can get excited and can go enter into a game and have a pretty decent time, maybe I'm not great but I don't necessarily feel like I'm being punished actively by the game for being new to it. There's this sort of progression to other games that I don't feel like SC2 has; either you're decent at it or you're complete garbage at it - and when you spend time trying to become decent at it you'll be constantly reminded of how slow it takes blizzard to actually fix things and how badly it feels to push yourself to your limit and then die to a giant attack-move protoss death ball.

On December 05 2013 04:15 tar wrote:
So what, if I end in Gold/Silver/Bronze one day yet my oppoentns still play decently, I have no objections.

On December 07 2013 16:03 RJ231 wrote:


I thought I would give my opinion on this as I am one of the players who basically dropped the game after investing quite a lot of time/energy into it and I know a number of other high level players who did the same for similar reasons. The biggest issue is mainly that the game just isn't properly balanced, this along with the fact that blizzard takes far too long to admit their balance/design mistakes makes for some very frustrating and exhausting games. The thing I always hear people say is "well x just won this tournament so clearly x race isn't under powered" and they fail to realize that for the majority of the player base that unbalanced situation usually plays out much more clearly in the lower levels. If widow mines are tearing the very best zergs on the planet apart and costing them games how do you think I feel when I'm playing in master league and instantly lose the game to a unit that automatically fired a missile from underground and just wiped out a huge chunk of my army. When you see top players playing they are completely aware of the imbalances of the game and will do whatever they can to abuse/mitigate their effectiveness. For the average SC2 enthusiast they aren't quite as adept at recognizing these things and dealing with them so they end up losing to these forces in catastrophic ways that feels very bad to be quite honest, it doesn't help that it tends to happen again and again.

I think that if Blizzard did a better job of acknowledging the imbalance in their games and were more proactive it would feel better as a player, it's exciting to me when I hear they've nerfed that or buffed this because it means now the game is likely more fair and there's this feeling that it's sort of "new" again since the match ups won't revolve around certain imbalances quite as much. I think another big issue is the game just isn't friendly to newer players, how do you actually play a race like zerg casually? For the race to even function you need to be on 80+ drones, have 4 hatcheries and then spend hours mastering weird keyboard sequences so your macro isn't complete crap. When I watch a game like league of legends on stream I can get excited and can go enter into a game and have a pretty decent time, maybe I'm not great but I don't necessarily feel like I'm being punished actively by the game for being new to it. There's this sort of progression to other games that I don't feel like SC2 has; either you're decent at it or you're complete garbage at it - and when you spend time trying to become decent at it you'll be constantly reminded of how slow it takes blizzard to actually fix things and how badly it feels to push yourself to your limit and then die to a giant attack-move protoss death ball.

On December 08 2013 01:23 asron wrote:
that means more than that
that means that the game is dying and will die fast

usually, the more you play the more you win and blizzard did it all way wrong by rewarding noobs with fake diamond and master leagues long time ago... only a few people will still play a game that unrewards them

dont forget that the common opinion here comes from a minority of people... in real life everybody thinks he's good and deserve more than he have and blizzard just can't figure out why their tricks did not work when bw was working without it

as i already said here, it's only a question of kiddoing us and bigbrothering us

the ladder is an issue because we can't really play without it, in bw the ladder was never played at all...

On December 05 2013 04:30 Kyrao wrote:
Anyone else find it interesting to see that the player base went from 367,439 to 211,965 in 6 months? That's over a 40% decline...

On December 08 2013 22:28 weikor wrote:
does anyone know if there is a source of fresh mmr?
lets say i have 1000 mmr and i win against someone with 1000, he might be at 990 and i would have 1010 - not changing mmr right?

so before the decay system mmr would be equal (only inflated by new players donating and quitting) or am i wrong in how this works

On December 08 2013 21:28 tar wrote:


"The more you play the more you win" is a concept that cannot work in a competition for there are a number of limiting factors that one cannot influence (ie your personal skill cap or everthing your competitors do).
Also, what do you mean by rewarding with fake diamond and master leagues? The leagues are just an indicator where one is standing within the total player range.

The bw argument is really weird in the context of your post since the bw community basically lived through iCCup which was far more competetive hardcore league then the system we have atm.

On December 09 2013 04:09 asron wrote:


That's exactly what i'm saying : you have to deal with the fact that sc2 is a game for 90% of the buyers and not a competition

i know it's hard to understand but you have to forget urban legends like "i don't care losing" or "to lose makes me play better"
it may be true for a hungry newcomer or for some retards that only remember their wins but its total crap i assure you even for 90% of the people that are saying such nonsense

that being said, you have to understand that we all want to be REWARDED even you even your mum even your dog...
you want to win you want to progress you want to beat your brother - i dont care : you need to feel rewarded
or you will just stop for something more rewarding (or your dumb and i can demonstrate that to dumber)

and blizzard knows that - that's why they allowed to be master after 5 ranking games, that's why they added the stupid level, that's why true ranking will never be shown and that's why they mixed RT/AT/R/UR

let's speak of those 5 ranking games and channels with kiddo asking for diamond+ allies all day long :
yes, it was true, back in the days a noob could go diamond or master with a correct ally
and the noob is pretty sure that he is actually a real diamond/master
now he's way better but silver no matter what he's doing and he will left the game

that's the problem : after such false rewards the step back is blowing the game

Lets speak now of iccup
this is pretty clear : if iccup would have been the only way to play bw, bw would be dead after 2 years

what make the success of bw was the "other ways" to play the game and gets a reward

10% of the buyers on hardcore ladder if they wanted to
all the others were in open games, banning all players with good stats, and making the game fair (meaning a freewin)
in bw you suck you're beated by an asshole ? well, you change your nick and noone will remember you
you want better stats? 10 seconds, the time to create a new account
you want to have fun? you fake to be a girl and join a noob team
you want to relax : you haunt the channel saying shit all day long on a smurf

blizzard used some pathetics tricks to keep people playing but there's only one way for such a nerve breaking game : you have to let people have their fun on their own and let them play who they want when they want in the way they want

and i can predict that : the game will die and when it will be dead and IF blizz stops bigbrothering it, then the players will come back

well, ok, the game is definitively dead, thanks to blizz

On December 07 2013 19:52 Mahavishnu wrote:

Why isn't this the only reaction ever?

On December 09 2013 06:52 ffadicted wrote:
IMO, just like gaming in general, the crowd is moving towards ezpz reward me for everything attitude. Old school gaming was the sh*t, it was hard, it punished you, it didn't give a f*ck if you were stuck or if the bosses required 50 tries to beat or if you had to spend hours and hours leveling up in an RPG... beating games back then was a motherfucking accomplishment. I still remember how happy I was when I first beat ninja gaiden.

On December 09 2013 06:52 ffadicted wrote:Nowadays, games are bullshit. Everything is easy, there's literally reward points for everything, validating players all the way through the game, and bosses you could beat with your eyes closed. IDK why this generation is so obsessed with having to be rewarded with everything, but it's just a matter of fact at this point.