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juicyjames
United States3815 Posts
http://us.battle.net//sc2/en/blog/12055065
http://eu.battle.net//sc2/en/blog/12055065
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wlrq8wq.jpg)
Since we introduced a new ladder with the launch of Heart of the Swarm, we’ve been continuously reviewing your feedback about league placement and the matchmaker in StarCraft II. In particular, recently we’ve seen some discussion in the community about the current state of the ladder. We wanted to take this opportunity to address those discussions, clarify some misconceptions, and mention some changes we plan to make.
Right before we launched Heart of the Swarm, we announced that we were changing our targets for player distribution across leagues. For various reasons since that announcement, the distribution of players across leagues slowly shifted to no longer match those desired targets. Currently the lower leagues like bronze and silver have a larger percentage of players than desired. Meanwhile the upper leagues like platinum and diamond are under-represented. One of the reasons this occurred is due to the way that we maintain those target percentages.
Accordingly, around the time we release the 2.1 patch, we are changing how league boundaries are determined so that we can more closely match the desired percentage of players in each league. Thereafter, we expect to see a shift in the distribution of players across the leagues to their correct placement within the ladder. Because of the current bottom heavy distribution, many players may see a league promotion as a result of this change.
Recently there has also been some community discussion over what some players are calling “MMR decay”. This is the slight adjustment to a player’s hidden rating that occurs after that player has been inactive for a period of time. We implemented this automatic adjustment with Heart of the Swarm, after we found that players who returned to the ladder after a period of inactivity were frequently suffering a string of consecutive losses. That experience can be demotivating and discouraging.
Since there is some confusion in the community, we want to make sure that the way this adjustment works is fully understood. Specifically:- Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating.
- The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
- Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.
- At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
- If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward.
Prior to implementing this feature, data gathered from games played on Battle.net showed that even an absence of only 7 to 14 days results in a drop of a player’s win percentage. The drop becomes more pronounced as the length of time away increases. After we introduced this change, the data showed that we see a win percentage for returning players that’s right around 50%. This is especially important for the first few games played after a player returns. Additionally, to address the misconception that the majority of players are being adjusted in this way, the data shows that less than 6% of all StarCraft II games played on Battle.net are affected by this adjustment.
While we have evidence that the adjustment is helping players, we’ve also been reading your feedback and analyzing the way the system is working. As a result we are currently looking at the following areas:- We’re looking into possible changes to the way adjustments are made in team games.
- We’re considering altering the time period before the adjustment kicks in.
- We’re also considering altering the amount of the adjustment.
We continue to investigate ways to improve the experience of climbing the ladder. We want players to know when they’re moving up, and for those who want more granular details, better indications of how they’re doing competitively. We’re exploring ways to let you know when you are getting close to a promotion.
Finally, our balance team continues to monitor play results at all levels as they make their fine-tuning decisions. We've received a lot of good feedback from the community on that subject, and look forward to evaluating that aspect of the game separately after the release of patch 2.1.
We greatly appreciate your feedback and encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments below.
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I think the leagues are pretty retarded to be honest, I keep facing low gold players whom i beat really easily or diamond/masters players who beat me really easily and im still gold. Sort this shit out Blizzard , either give me plat or players my own skill level
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I'm interested in how the 2.1 changes will effect player motivation. I know I was heavily demotivated upon being demoted to diamond, and I've been playing for years. I imagine a lower league player would be even more so demotivated when being demoted from diamond to plat, or something likewise. Seems logical for people to be motivated if a lot of promotions start happening again.
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Australia528 Posts
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league.
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Good to see Blizzard is noticing that the MMR decay and league distribution is a problem right now.
I hope that the distribution change won't make it like in WoL, where being Masters meant nothing.
I'd also love to see a less aggressive hidden rating decay.
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Hmm it took hem a while...
Hopefully they will really fix it.
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I got dropped in league hard after a long absence and started playing again only recently, just a couple of games every few days. Absolutely crushing most people whilst barely even trying, not even using proper builds. I still think they made the decay too hardcore, you don't drop THAT much even after a couple months away. :-\
I mean hell I think I've got about a 85-90%+ overall winrate at the moment, and the ones I lost were because I was playing drunk. I have literally double or triple the APM of anyone I'm playing; its almost sad to just destroy them.
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At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
Tell that to all the players who dropped down 2 or 3 leagues below in a couple of month. Going from master to gold in 2 seasons because you did not play isnt the "equivalent of losing a few games" for fuck's sake. Really not convinced by those explanations, the ladder system needs a more drastic revamping, imho.
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On December 19 2013 01:18 fastr wrote:Show nested quote +At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. Tell that to all the players who dropped down 2 or 3 leagues below in a couple of month. Going from master to gold in 2 seasons because you did not play isnt the "equivalent of losing a few games" for fuck's sake. Really not convinced by those explanations, the ladder system needs a more drastic revamping, imho.
What people aren't dropping 2 to 3 ranks. I didn't play for 3 months and I placed masters still on my first game back.
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On December 19 2013 01:26 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 01:18 fastr wrote:At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. Tell that to all the players who dropped down 2 or 3 leagues below in a couple of month. Going from master to gold in 2 seasons because you did not play isnt the "equivalent of losing a few games" for fuck's sake. Really not convinced by those explanations, the ladder system needs a more drastic revamping, imho. What people aren't dropping 2 to 3 ranks. I didn't play for 3 months and I placed masters still on my first game back.
Some have reported drops of Diamond or Masters to Silver level so...yeah.
Broken AND inconsistent it seems. >_>
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United States248 Posts
On December 19 2013 01:26 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 01:18 fastr wrote:At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. Tell that to all the players who dropped down 2 or 3 leagues below in a couple of month. Going from master to gold in 2 seasons because you did not play isnt the "equivalent of losing a few games" for fuck's sake. Really not convinced by those explanations, the ladder system needs a more drastic revamping, imho. What people aren't dropping 2 to 3 ranks. I didn't play for 3 months and I placed masters still on my first game back.
This change isn't affecting people in high masters +, its just low masters/diamond and below.
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On December 19 2013 01:26 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 01:18 fastr wrote:At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. Tell that to all the players who dropped down 2 or 3 leagues below in a couple of month. Going from master to gold in 2 seasons because you did not play isnt the "equivalent of losing a few games" for fuck's sake. Really not convinced by those explanations, the ladder system needs a more drastic revamping, imho. What people aren't dropping 2 to 3 ranks. I didn't play for 3 months and I placed masters still on my first game back.
I dropped from platinum to bronze, and stomped my way back into platinum.
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when is 2.1 supposed to hit?
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On December 19 2013 01:48 MrMatt wrote:
when is 2.1 supposed to hit?
Question for the ages 
the PTR has been out for a while, so it should be too much longer.
P.S. I am sooooo happy about this!!
The number of ex masters in gold is incredible.
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On December 19 2013 00:20 Hadronsbecrazy wrote:
I think the leagues are pretty retarded to be honest, I keep facing low gold players whom i beat really easily or diamond/masters players who beat me really easily and im still gold. Sort this shit out Blizzard , either give me plat or players my own skill level
It doesn't matter which league you are in, you will face that either way so it doesn't really. Platinum has that just as much inconsistency when matching as gold does.
It is quite frustrating. The decay is too steep. Once you hit that two weeks you are guaranteed quite a few games against much worse people before you can play your level again.
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United States12235 Posts
My notes:
- Decay must have really messed up their activity metric because it's separately tracking a player's real time gaps between games as well as their unspent bonus pool. If they're using apples to redistribute the leagues from season to season, and the apples are still pretty firmly where they should be each time, then you can't have oranges artificially pushing people down and thinking the skill definitions will remain intact. They can't.
- I'll put it another way. Let's say that in Season 6, 28% of the ladder population with bonus pools below 208 have less than 800 MMR. Perfect. Then for Season 7, we'll make 800 MMR the Silver/Gold league boundary. Uh oh, it turns out 80% of players under 1100 MMR have more than a one-month gap between games. Now in terms of Activity A we're fine, 28%, cool, but in terms of Activity B, now 800 MMR contains 60% of the players. They measure completely different things, and that's a problem.
- They mentioned how they're going to change the distribution. Inevitably that's going to have to factor in decayed players. How exactly they're going to do that I don't know. Maybe they could do a breakdown of what percentage of players per league experience decay and introduce that as a coefficient to their existing apportionment metric. It wouldn't be perfect because again, apples and oranges, but the boundaries and internal league percentages are hidden anyway, and there's always some slush involved besides.
- As I guessed, each bracket tracks MMR decay separately. That's actually a big problem because it's much harder to get the same arranged 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 players together than it is to play 1v1 or Random Team. I know a bunch of players who have like 50 4v4 teams, many of them only went through 5 placement matches and that's it. When the same 4 players play again next season, they've decayed to a lower league. They haven't forgotten how to play because they're playing with 49 other team combinations, just not this specific group. They're not rusty, but they're penalized as though they're rusty. Team games probably shouldn't have decay at all: there are fewer team listings than solo players and it's too easy to mess up the distribution.
- Our data shows that the maximum impact of decay is over 310 rating. Though it does cap around this value, that's still the equivalent of losing 20 straight same-skill games. That's more than "a few" in my glossary.
- They said that decay starts at 14 days where it starts at 0 adjustment. That's something I've said as well and it's important for players to understand that. If you take a 15 day break, you're only a game and a half behind (in sports terms). Same with "if you play one game every two weeks, you won't decay" -- very important for players to remember that because people were getting paranoid.
- Their "to address the misconception that the majority of players are being adjusted in this way, the data shows that less than 6% of all StarCraft II games played on Battle.net are affected by this adjustment" is really misleading I think. It's another apples-to-oranges comparison. What we're asking about is how many players are affected, but what they reported is how many games are affected. In terms of activity, high level players play much more often than low level ones. I don't have the data here, but it wouldn't surprise me if only 10% of players played 94% of all the games on the ladder. That would still mean 6% of games were affected, but it would also mean that 90% of players decayed to some degree. Now, I know they have to have the "# of players affected" data, but maybe that number really does constitute a majority of players after all.
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Is there a reason they can't just use an open ranking ELO system? Or would that be too imitating seeing your ELO jump up and down
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On December 19 2013 02:54 BakedButters wrote:
Is there a reason they can't just use an open ranking ELO system? Or would that be too imitating seeing your ELO jump up and down
Yes and it is also a shitty way to track your on progress, since it will likely just level out. Match making numbers do not help people see improvement or provide them with useful information, it is mostly just to pair players.
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At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
High diamond to low gold = losing a few games. Okay blizzard.
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this post has so many words in it yet it says absolutely nothing. It's full of "we will look intos" and "we will consider"
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I was master on NA 2 seasons ago, without much games on it, played 1 game last season, put me in gold.
I needed over 80 games this season (with 78-7 score) to get back into master.
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On December 19 2013 02:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:
- Our data shows that the maximum impact of decay is over 310 rating. Though it does cap around this value, that's still the equivalent of losing 20 straight same-skill games. That's more than "a few" in my glossary.
- They said that decay starts at 14 days where it starts at 0 adjustment. That's something I've said as well and it's important for players to understand that. If you take a 15 day break, you're only a game and a half behind (in sports terms). Same with "if you play one game every two weeks, you won't decay" -- very important for players to remember that because people were getting paranoid.
Interesting data. I don't really know much about MMR but a 310 rating drop roughly corresponds to one league's MMR span, if that makes sense? Like gold would be 500-799, platinum 800-1100 right? If it is, that's certainly not "a few games" indeed.
Based on that, if this statement is correct "Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks It means you could lose 310 rating in a month, right? How about someone who doesn't play for a month, play one game, and doesnt play for another month. Does the decay reset? Does he lose 620 rating?
Man, this all thing is messed up.
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On December 19 2013 Battlenet wrote:- The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
- Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.
- At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
Thatswhy I might be bronze next season in 1v1s. A max in decay is worthless if you play from time to time because the decay between every session adds up.
They should add teamgames somewhere into the check for inactivity.
Or ask the individual player if he wants the decay when he comes back.
My concerns are not about the leaguesymbols but about the skilllevel of my opponents. I play maybe 5-20 1v1 per season and win almost all of them. But I dont want to play like 50 to 100 games until I get decent opponents, thats not fun.
Before they introduced this I was diamond with my 5-20 games per season. But since then I got demoted 1 league per season.
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On December 19 2013 03:20 Nimix wrote:Show nested quote +
At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
High diamond to low gold = losing a few games. Okay blizzard.
This. Winning a placement match and still getting demoted after finishing previous season rank 2 Plat. Okay.
Really glad they are going to fix it though. Frustrating to play a match in Gold league only to find out the opponent who just beat you is a 12X Master league player, stuck in Gold for some reason.
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I was a Masters player consistently before, I got placed in diamond at the beginning of this season after maybe 10 games the previous season, it seems to be a BIT more than just a few games but I don't think it's as drastic as maybe some of the anecdotes have been saying.
Then again I'm just coming forward with more anecdotal evidence 
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United States12235 Posts
On December 19 2013 03:42 fastr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 02:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:
- Our data shows that the maximum impact of decay is over 310 rating. Though it does cap around this value, that's still the equivalent of losing 20 straight same-skill games. That's more than "a few" in my glossary.
- They said that decay starts at 14 days where it starts at 0 adjustment. That's something I've said as well and it's important for players to understand that. If you take a 15 day break, you're only a game and a half behind (in sports terms). Same with "if you play one game every two weeks, you won't decay" -- very important for players to remember that because people were getting paranoid.
Interesting data. I don't really know much about MMR but a 310 rating drop roughly corresponds to one league's MMR span, if that makes sense? Like gold would be 500-799, platinum 800-1100 right? If it is, that's certainly not "a few games" indeed. Based on that, if this statement is correct Show nested quote +"Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks It means you could lose 310 rating in a month, right? How about someone who doesn't play for a month, play one game, and doesnt play for another month. Does the decay reset? Does he lose 620 rating? Man, this all thing is messed up.
That's exactly what it means. If a season is 3 months long and you play on day 1, day 29, and day 57, then by the end of the season you will have decayed around three leagues' worth of rating.
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On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league.
They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season.
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Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." when stats clearly shows there are over 10% more Toss players in GM and Masters than it suppose to be. Beside, on all leagues except Bronze Terrans are least performing race ?
GM league Toss players -
America 94/199
Europe 92/200
Korea 81/198
Taiwan 88/198
SE Asia 7/13
China 82/198
Global 444/ 1006
44% Protoss global GM
Masters League -
US
P - 37%
T - 24%
Z - 36%
KR
P - 36%
T - 28%
Z -32%
EU
P - 37%
T - 27%
Z - 34%
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ?
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Being a 15 times masters finisher I was placed into diamond this season and it took 15 games to get back. I don't see what the big deal is the ladder should be hard.
also this:
"We continue to investigate ways to improve the experience of climbing the ladder. We want players to know when they’re moving up, and for those who want more granular details, better indications of how they’re doing competitively. We’re exploring ways to let you know when you are getting close to a promotion."
Just make the MMR the actual ladder rank then, what purpose does it serve to have a near meaningless rank and a hidden rank that actually matters?
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I either face diamond players which I hit in the face pretty hard - or I face master players from who I get kicked in the face pretty hard. I'm currently rank 50 or so in diamond, with 29-9 win/loss... casual guy.
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Why don't they do it like this. Everytime you do not play for let's say 6 weeks, you have to re-play your placement matches.
Placement matches lead to the following:
0/5 wins - Bronze
1/5 wins - Bronze
2/5 wins - Silver
3/5 wins - Gold
4/5 wins - Platinum
5/5 wins - Diamond
Then, you can use the MMR to determine how fast a player will be promoted/demoted to adjust his ladder placement.
I do know I'm kind of oversimplifying it, but I don't think that the approach is too bad, or is it?
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Yea I was high diamond in WOL. Haven't played very actively at all in the past year with college starting and all that.
Recently decided to get back into HOTS, got placed directly into bronze. Basically beat everyone back into high gold, which is apparently a good ceiling for me right now. It only took my about 15 games to get back to a comfortable level of challenge. Dunno why it's fucking so many other people over
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On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ?
# of players of a race does not correlate to balance. Certain races have always dominated certain brackets due to being easier/harder/more popular (not better).
Therefore, Blizzard could have the historical race %s in front of them for all time, and they could see that there was no noticeable rise in protoss players from X to Y period of time, which means that this current influx of Protoss players is not primarily due to balance issues.
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On December 19 2013 03:51 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 03:42 fastr wrote:On December 19 2013 02:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:
- Our data shows that the maximum impact of decay is over 310 rating. Though it does cap around this value, that's still the equivalent of losing 20 straight same-skill games. That's more than "a few" in my glossary.
- They said that decay starts at 14 days where it starts at 0 adjustment. That's something I've said as well and it's important for players to understand that. If you take a 15 day break, you're only a game and a half behind (in sports terms). Same with "if you play one game every two weeks, you won't decay" -- very important for players to remember that because people were getting paranoid.
Interesting data. I don't really know much about MMR but a 310 rating drop roughly corresponds to one league's MMR span, if that makes sense? Like gold would be 500-799, platinum 800-1100 right? If it is, that's certainly not "a few games" indeed. Based on that, if this statement is correct "Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks It means you could lose 310 rating in a month, right? How about someone who doesn't play for a month, play one game, and doesnt play for another month. Does the decay reset? Does he lose 620 rating? Man, this all thing is messed up. That's exactly what it means. If a season is 3 months long and you play on day 1, day 29, and day 57, then by the end of the season you will have decayed around three leagues' worth of rating.
wwwwoooooowwwww
poorly designed... to say the least. I'm a business analyst by trade and it's my job to look at the "what if's".. and I don't think they looked hard enough... especially at the team decay.. that's nuts
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On December 19 2013 04:09 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ? # of players of a race does not correlate to balance. Certain races have always dominated certain brackets due to being easier/harder/more popular (not better). Therefore, Blizzard could have the historical race %s in front of them for all time, and they could see that there was no noticeable rise in protoss players from X to Y period of time, which means that this current influx of Protoss players is not primarily due to balance issues.
So if there are more protoss in GM it's not because it's shinny and stuff ? :o
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On December 19 2013 04:09 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ? # of players of a race does not correlate to balance. Certain races have always dominated certain brackets due to being easier/harder/more popular (not better). Therefore, Blizzard could have the historical race %s in front of them for all time, and they could see that there was no noticeable rise in protoss players from X to Y period of time, which means that this current influx of Protoss players is not primarily due to balance issues.
First of all, there is pretty much equal number of race distribution. Second, in balanced game there shouldn't be easier/harder race, all races should require equal skill to play. "Popular" makes sense, but in this case there isn't popular race, ± 2% all races are equally distributed on the ladder as a whole. Third, Terrans are dropping out of GM and Masters not because Toss became "popular" race.
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On December 19 2013 04:18 Faust852 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:09 dcemuser wrote:On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ? # of players of a race does not correlate to balance. Certain races have always dominated certain brackets due to being easier/harder/more popular (not better). Therefore, Blizzard could have the historical race %s in front of them for all time, and they could see that there was no noticeable rise in protoss players from X to Y period of time, which means that this current influx of Protoss players is not primarily due to balance issues. So if there are more protoss in GM it's not because it's shinny and stuff ? :o
Remember, that's the argument people used to explain why 80% of Code S was terran back in the day.
Although, "easiness" and balance are essentially the same thing. It is "easier" to 1 base your way to plat with protoss. It's "easier" to win GSL with zerg.
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By this pace, I feel patch 2.1 will be released only next year.
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On December 19 2013 03:25 atrox_ wrote:
this post has so many words in it yet it says absolutely nothing. It's full of "we will look intos" and "we will consider"
those guys should run for political office.
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What a lot of you people need to understand about MMR decay is that you have an incomplete idea pertaining to MMR to begin with. Dropping down by 3 leagues upon re-placement does not mean that your MMR has dropped to that league, and I have a really hard time believing that someone in at least mid-masters actually dropped down to silver when they played their placement match, and like I said, their MMR is clearly not going to be silver league level. This is, unless they actually had silver MMR on the account from losing 30+ in a row since demotion is impossible without leaving league. Back to my main point, however, if you are dropped down by a couple leagues upon your re-placement match, you should have a rather easy time of getting back to your actual league. This is obviously silly (that you should be demoted at all) but it isn't actually as much of a product of your MMR as you may have initially thought.
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On December 19 2013 03:57 Incubus1993 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league. They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season.
Hey, I don't want a bunch of plat-diamond-master slackers in silver, it is enough to be stomped by all the smurfs... us dirt leaguers are getting pretty demotivated when always getting far too good opponents, and this is happening already now. SC2 doesn't gain anything if the bottom 20% of the people get fed up and quit because of this. We want to play people that are on our level. It should be very difficult to fall below gold if you at some point reached plat or higher imo. 
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On December 19 2013 04:25 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:18 Faust852 wrote:On December 19 2013 04:09 dcemuser wrote:On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ? # of players of a race does not correlate to balance. Certain races have always dominated certain brackets due to being easier/harder/more popular (not better). Therefore, Blizzard could have the historical race %s in front of them for all time, and they could see that there was no noticeable rise in protoss players from X to Y period of time, which means that this current influx of Protoss players is not primarily due to balance issues. So if there are more protoss in GM it's not because it's shinny and stuff ? :o Remember, that's the argument people used to explain why 80% of Code S was terran back in the day. Although, "easiness" and balance are essentially the same thing. It is "easier" to 1 base your way to plat with protoss. It's "easier" to win GSL with zerg.
I think they also have a concern about the progames now they invested so much money into WCS. They really failed the last balanced patches of WoL from a spectator point of view.
I don't follow HotS nearly as much as I followed WoL but the few games I watch don't look like copy pasted games.
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The Game does not seem balanced at all in team games... Well, the zerg expansion seemed to change the viability of that race the most to the point that a majority of zerg players retired and many team noob players like me quit. The funnest race of the game was very popular... but the changes made it so that the game is not longer fun for many players at all.
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Well first of all I had a 97% win rate over 30+ games a while ago all due to MMR decay (I didn't even take that much time off like 6 weeks).
Also I have no idea why they want win rates to be 50% after taking time off. Your skill will decline when taking time off and win rate will go down, yes. But MMR is a system which is set up to AUTOMATICALLY adjust that. Artificially enforcing MMR decay introduces large errors into the system, basically it breaks the whole point of MMR. MMR is a self regulating thing. No one cares that they lose a little after some time off until their MMR drops compared to silver playings getting donked on game after game by former masters players. 50% win rate after some time off is all well and good but when half are stomps and half are spankings due to the chaos of the system then who cares? Bring back the old system and stop trying to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist Blizzard.
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On December 19 2013 04:01 captainwaffles wrote:
Being a 15 times masters finisher I was placed into diamond this season and it took 15 games to get back. I don't see what the big deal is the ladder should be hard.
"In my specific case it hardly affected me much at all so I don't see the big deal".
Amazing lack of perspective. Well done.
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On December 19 2013 03:25 atrox_ wrote:
this post has so many words in it yet it says absolutely nothing. It's full of "we will look intos" and "we will consider"
They are letting the players know that they are aware of the issue and are currently looking into it. Its better than the silent treatment. I am sure they will figure something out eventually.
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On December 19 2013 04:43 Virium wrote:
What a lot of you people need to understand about MMR decay is that you have an incomplete idea pertaining to MMR to begin with. Dropping down by 3 leagues upon re-placement does not mean that your MMR has dropped to that league, and I have a really hard time believing that someone in at least mid-masters actually dropped down to silver when they played their placement match, and like I said, their MMR is clearly not going to be silver league level. (clipped rest)
No. When you do your 1 placement match, your league placement represents your MMR at that moment. E.g. if you are placed to silver league, you know that your MMR in the end of the placement match was inside silver league MMR range.
Exception to this is when you start from blank MMR (5 placement matches are needed). Then initial placements are conservative. When you play your 25th match (includes the 5 placement matches), you are promoted to the league that represents your MMR at that moment (If your MMR already is inside your current league range or lower league range nothing will happen. Please also note that league promotions happen only after you win a match (you don't get promoted after loses). So it may require more than 25 matches).
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Played a bunch of 4v4 games last night, the people I was placed with and up against were all over the place, I mean you had level 90s up against no-portrait newbies, it was just nuts. One game I played against a Terran player with almost 200apm avg and my teammates were around 40. It was totally fine back in WoL so I'm not sure what they were trying to fix.
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8748 Posts
On December 19 2013 05:04 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
Also I have no idea why they want win rates to be 50% after taking time off.
It's about not discouraging players from playing SC2. If someone hasn't played for three weeks, would they rather lose a bunch of SC2 games in a row or play some other game that might be more rewarding and less stressful? The more they procrastinate their return to SC2, the harsher it's going to be and so the less likely they'll return. Unless their MMR decays.
Of course, not every player has the same psychological approach to the game, so this doesn't apply to everyone. The more competitively-minded players will accept their rustiness and work hard to get back in shape and win again. On the other hand, the same is true of Silver players being matched up against MMR-decayed Diamond players: the more competitively-minded players won't mind (and might even enjoy) the opportunity.
On December 19 2013 05:05 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
"In my specific case it hardly affected me much at all so I don't see the big deal".
Amazing lack of perspective. Well done.
Wtf... you just advocated getting rid of MMR decay entirely without even knowing a single reason it was implemented.
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high diamond/low masters skill here. just qued up an unranked and got matched against desrow playing Z. thought it was fake at first till i saw his profile was GM. im currently rank 1 plat btw. i beat him but wtf still really wierd. this isnt the first time i got matched against a former GM either.
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On December 19 2013 05:16 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 05:04 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
Also I have no idea why they want win rates to be 50% after taking time off. It's about not discouraging players from playing SC2. If someone hasn't played for three weeks, would they rather lose a bunch of SC2 games in a row or play some other game that might be more rewarding and less stressful? The more they procrastinate their return to SC2, the harsher it's going to be and so the less likely they'll return. Unless their MMR decays. Of course, not every player has the same psychological approach to the game, so this doesn't apply to everyone. The more competitively-minded players will accept their rustiness and work hard to get back in shape and win again. On the other hand, the same is true of Silver players being matched up against MMR-decayed Diamond players: the more competitively-minded players won't mind (and might even enjoy) the opportunity. Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 05:05 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
"In my specific case it hardly affected me much at all so I don't see the big deal".
Amazing lack of perspective. Well done. Wtf... you just advocated getting rid of MMR decay entirely without even knowing a single reason it was implemented.
If you come back worse after a break, your MMR will drop and your win rate will return to 50% quickly. This is the whole point of MMR. Trying to somehow massage things to "guess" what a players MMR might be after a break is a huge problem to the fundamental point of the system.
I know exactly why it was implemented and just put a whole post about why that reason makes no sense and why it in fact damages the whole matchmaking system by artificially introducing a system which undermines MMR's self righting mechanism (as we have clearly seen). The MMR decay has arguably discouraged people from laddering even more than before it was implemented (certainly did for me and others I know). Their goal is not just not being met, it is doing the opposite of what they intend.
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inb4 a new league is put between plat and dia
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On December 19 2013 05:25 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
Trying to somehow massage things to "guess" what a players MMR might be after a break is a huge problem to the fundamental point of the system.
This is wrong. The point of the MMR system is to make the games even and enjoyable. The MMR difference between two players is a direct estimate of winning probability. The whole system is built on the assumption that the MMRs are more or less correct. If a player doesn't play for a while and loses skill that's no longer true. If MMR doesn't decay players leaving and coming back WILL have a global effect on the system. It will cause a general inflation of everyones MMR in the same way as too high decay will cause deflation, which is what has happened now.
Guessing player MMRs after a break doesn't hurt the system, if the guesses on average are correct. It will help it. A guess that skill doesn't decrease after a break is obviously wrong. MMR decay is a good thing, but the decay has to match actual skill decay. Repeated decays if you play once every three weeks for example, is outright silly.
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2 seasons ago,I was placed in gold league,as a top 8 finisher, needed a promotion to get up to plat,but it was to late,got rank 1 just before the reset. Next season,I placed directly in gold but due school stayed there,dropped to 60+ place,and had a large bonus pool to spend,the matches we're normal,gold players if I made a streak 3-4 wins got a plat etc,in last 5 days of casual play I got up from 60 to 5th place. Then the reset for this season occured...
Played a placement matche vs a gold player,won,got placed in silver,ok happy times,but then 10 losses with this sort of followup:
-3 times master
-2 times diamond
-diamond
-diamond
-master
-5 times platinum
-master
-3 times diamond
-diamond
-platinum
Now every time I loose i have that habbit of looking who was what,and where they are placed,and i was shocked,they all we're placed in silverleagues...
So i left the leage,played the placement again,got silver again,and geting still crazy diamond,high plat players.
The thing is that i play starcraft casually,and I don't mind loosing to higher skilled players,if I know i play vs one,I get some motivation ofc,makes me pump preform better,but darn i'm freekin scared on ladder right now,don't have a clue who can play vs me,a diamond,or a silver :S
Currently after I joined a league again,i'm ono 66% winrate,but my morale to play is 0%,and to simplify this to higher ranked non soul for newbs players,how would you feel,if someone like jaedong would camp your diamond/master league?!
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On December 19 2013 04:58 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 03:57 Incubus1993 wrote:On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league. They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season. Hey, I don't want a bunch of plat-diamond-master slackers in silver, it is enough to be stomped by all the smurfs... us dirt leaguers are getting pretty demotivated when always getting far too good opponents, and this is happening already now. SC2 doesn't gain anything if the bottom 20% of the people get fed up and quit because of this. We want to play people that are on our level. It should be very difficult to fall below gold if you at some point reached plat or higher imo.
Great point, probably gets lost with people concerned with not being placed properly who want to go higher, but when a bunch of people are going 50-3 those victims of those 50 wins must feel pretty shitty and discouraged. Playing in silver and finding out after the game that your opponent was masters on a regular basis is ridiculous.
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I feel like the lack of demotion during mid-season was a bad idea. I feel that this is also one big issue with the current system. If no one gets demoted, how does one get promoted as Blizzard also wants leagues distributed in certain way?
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I also don't get how you can hit players with much lower and much higher mmr, I just got back to sc2 after a long break and I match up with masters and plats. You end up losing horrible or win extremely easy, both of whom are not so fun tbh.
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Good, they finally made a statement. 
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On December 19 2013 06:08 Striker.superfreunde wrote:Good, they finally made a statement.
Which doesn't make much sense
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On December 19 2013 05:04 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
Also I have no idea why they want win rates to be 50% after taking time off. Your skill will decline when taking time off and win rate will go down, yes. But MMR is a system which is set up to AUTOMATICALLY adjust that. Artificially enforcing MMR decay introduces large errors into the system, basically it breaks the whole point of MMR. MMR is a self regulating thing. No one cares that they lose a little after some time off until their MMR drops compared to silver playings getting donked on game after game by former masters players. 50% win rate after some time off is all well and good but when half are stomps and half are spankings due to the chaos of the system then who cares? Bring back the old system and stop trying to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist Blizzard.
+1
I had no issues with the old system. When I came back from a month or two break I expected to lose a couple games while I shook off the rust. Now it's crazy. I've dropped two leagues and I'm playing people all over the place from 40 APM bronze leaguers to 200 APM former diamond. I guess it's a fun challenge playing the really good players, but it's really difficult to measure improvement.
I thought the old system was just fine.
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On December 19 2013 04:58 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 03:57 Incubus1993 wrote:On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league. They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season. Hey, I don't want a bunch of plat-diamond-master slackers in silver, it is enough to be stomped by all the smurfs... us dirt leaguers are getting pretty demotivated when always getting far too good opponents, and this is happening already now. SC2 doesn't gain anything if the bottom 20% of the people get fed up and quit because of this. We want to play people that are on our level. It should be very difficult to fall below gold if you at some point reached plat or higher imo.
Great statement. I mean, that embodies the issue completely. Makes no sense to decay someones MMR down for sake of "well we don't want players to lose games in a row so we will tank it for them".
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I am glad that I stopped playing early on in hots. I would often not play for over a month, then play lots of games in a weekend, then stop again. That would mean losing a whole rank every month, and then coming back to beat people over and over again.
It also partially explains how the one time I did come back in the summer I was in gold league (down from masters).
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Gold league is just a moshpit of master and diamond players right now, this is a good way to scare noobs away from the 1v1 ladder forever. When you have mostly diamonds and masters playing against each other, it's basically like diamond league II. They're not going to advance because they're already playing against people of their skill level. I'm not sure how you can break the cycle or if it's just the new reality of the ladder because there aren't many noobs anymore.
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On December 19 2013 06:58 BaronVonOwn wrote:
Gold league is just a moshpit of master and diamond players right now, this is a good way to scare noobs away from the 1v1 ladder forever. When you have mostly diamonds and masters playing against each other, it's basically like diamond league II. They're not going to advance because they're already playing against people of their skill level. I'm not sure how you can break the cycle or if it's just the new reality of the ladder because there aren't many noobs anymore.
That or the korean kindergarten is trolling with the rest of the world :D
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I'm curious couldn't they use the current bonus pool as a kind of mmr decay. So if you have 400 bonus pool, you play 400 (or some multiplier of 400) mmr below the current mmr?
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On December 19 2013 06:11 anessie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 06:08 Striker.superfreunde wrote:Good, they finally made a statement. Which doesn't make much sense
Well, they are working on it.
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Is masters league hard to get into now? For example is it just high master league players from the past that get into masters?
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if you don't play for a full season, your MMR resets. that has nothing to do with decay, and that is not a recent change. I think a lot of people are confusing that with decay.
that's what causes ex-master players to place in silver or gold (since they changed how placements work when they disabled demotions). you should just win games and get sped quickly back to diamond/masters. but it feels like something in the matchmaking selection may be slowing this down.
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On December 19 2013 07:14 Oboeman wrote:
if you don't play for a full season, your MMR resets. that has nothing to do with decay, and that is not a recent change. I think a lot of people are confusing that with decay.
that's what causes ex-master players to place in silver or gold (since they changed how placements work when they disabled demotions). you should just win games and get sped quickly back to diamond/masters. but it feels like something in the matchmaking selection may be slowing this down.
Not if you still play team games. I have missed whole seasons of 1v1 and not had my rating reset, because I still messed about with friends during that season.
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On December 19 2013 06:58 BaronVonOwn wrote:
Gold league is just a moshpit of master and diamond players right now, this is a good way to scare noobs away from the 1v1 ladder forever. When you have mostly diamonds and masters playing against each other, it's basically like diamond league II. They're not going to advance because they're already playing against people of their skill level. I'm not sure how you can break the cycle or if it's just the new reality of the ladder because there aren't many noobs anymore.
Platinum is the same just harder. I don't know, it feels like somehow diamond league was made smaller as well as master league.
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My MMR did not reset despite not playing for half a year. My win ratio was something like 3 wins 28 losses.
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"We've received a lot of good feedback from the community on that subject"
What about giving proofs and stop talking ? Ladder is just unplayable those days, between the protoss who blinks all ins, the ones who proxy stargate, the ones who proxy robos, the ones who dts, the ones who take double gaz before expands ...
Seriously, TvP is just so hard these days, and everyone tells it (except the protoss ofc), the fact that Desrow 5-4ed Bomber in ladder, the fact that almost 50% of GM slots for US and EU are protoss, I mean its just so dumb to just say "lol everything is fine guys no worries !". SCII is getting worst and worst and I really understand why people like Marineking are switching to LoL.
I apologize about my english by the way.
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Seriously, this is quite the understatement from Blizz
I don't play a lot of games, between 20 to 50 each season.
I was gold at the end of each season in 1v1 since HOTS release and got demoted to silver at each new season beginning and had to climb my way up. Oftentime I would begin the new season with a win ratio way over 50% like winning 4 or 5 straight and going quite rapidly back to gold.
Last season, I got placed in bronze (from gold !!!) and was something like 18w 3d before moving up to silver. (won 9 games before losing one, I play random and my TvT is pretty abysmal ;-) )
This is not close to a 50/50 ratio at all.
Regarding team leagues, I used to play a lot of 4v4 and was ranked 1 diamond at the end of HOTS first season.
Back then I was regularly placed with good player (at least way better than me up to master in 1v1).
Then I got demoted 1 league each season as I didn't play much. I was placed in silver this season and I am matched with noobs that make retard builds all the time.
To give you an example, I had a terran partner going engineering bay first the other day or a Z 6 pool all by himself in a shared base map...
It ends up pissing me off big time when I barely lose what looks like a 1v4 to me...
So I don't play 4v4 at all anymore.
My 2 cents...
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I don't play because whilst playing 1-2 games every couple of days I would get matches either extremely bad opponents or extremely good ones in gold, I rarely got a balanced game and it was boring.
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On December 19 2013 07:28 Esoterikk wrote:
I don't play because whilst playing 1-2 games every couple of days I would get matches either extremely bad opponents or extremely good ones in gold, I rarely got a balanced game and it was boring.
Yeah, I feel like every 4th game or so I'll finally be matched up against someone that provides an even, back and forth match. Everything else is a roflstomp or a "holy shit I'm being completely and utterly outplayed in every possible way" and it's kind of annoying. Gold league skill level is crazy variable.
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On December 19 2013 07:20 hzflank wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 07:14 Oboeman wrote:
if you don't play for a full season, your MMR resets. that has nothing to do with decay, and that is not a recent change. I think a lot of people are confusing that with decay.
that's what causes ex-master players to place in silver or gold (since they changed how placements work when they disabled demotions). you should just win games and get sped quickly back to diamond/masters. but it feels like something in the matchmaking selection may be slowing this down. Not if you still play team games. I have missed whole seasons of 1v1 and not had my rating reset, because I still messed about with friends during that season.
i'm pretty sure mine reset even though i had some team games.
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The problem is that you have players who play 10 games a season throwing to the wind misinformation on Reddit and TL.
Blizzard response was unsatisfactory and superficial, but people are bitching too much on this topic. If you pay attention, will be able to see how inconsistent the players feedback are.
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Was top of diamond a few months ago. Now I am stuck in Gold, playing ~10 games a day
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Was Masters at the beginning of HotS, chilling in Platinum right now.
At least they recognize that the ladder is messed up and they're going to try and fix it. Blizzard is always vague with press releases but they usually follow through.
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i was plat back in wol and facing mostly dias and a couple masters i was near the promotion line i could feel it! I took a break when hots came out to let it all calm down and got placed in gold which i thought was ok and got to dia. Ive started laddering again quite a lot over the last few weeks. i placed my league on an account i havent played on since day 1 hots(bronze??!!??) played 68 games so far lost 15 it looks (9 of them being cheese i just left without trying) . . and im still in silver still being placed against silver. My only consoling fact that it looks like im getting better is that most of the Highest league achieved is masters/dia. I think the fact that blizz are going to incorporate some kind of league up indicator is good as this will stop my whine completely . . it is clear that silvers and golds are too easy for me atm and ive beat most of the plats and 2 dias which ive been placed against so far on this trip!
For me, could an application process not be implemented? What i eman is you place a ticket in the client to say, i want just plat players please, if you lose your ticket games(say 5 a day/week . .whatever) you have to suck it up, otherwise the game shifts you or fast tracks you nearer the promotion line for the league. No? can, cant work? I mean a lot of the masters streams i watch are all bz to masterin it up anyways so for me, someone who wants to get past all the goof now which i thought id got rid of back in wol im having to mess around with again. You know, the over long games as the players in the lower leagues cant just accept their allin didnt work and its taking me a while to safely win the game.
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On December 19 2013 07:26 Twine wrote:
"We've received a lot of good feedback from the community on that subject"
What about giving proofs and stop talking ? Ladder is just unplayable those days, between the protoss who blinks all ins, the ones who proxy stargate, the ones who proxy robos, the ones who dts, the ones who take double gaz before expands ...
Seriously, TvP is just so hard these days, and everyone tells it (except the protoss ofc), the fact that Desrow 5-4ed Bomber in ladder, the fact that almost 50% of GM slots for US and EU are protoss, I mean its just so dumb to just say "lol everything is fine guys no worries !". SCII is getting worst and worst and I really understand why people like Marineking are switching to LoL.
I apologize about my english by the way.
You should apologize for the lack of logical reasoning too.
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On December 19 2013 07:23 Thor.Rush wrote:
My MMR did not reset despite not playing for half a year. My win ratio was something like 3 wins 28 losses.
Yes there has been accounts that have not received MMR reset even if have been totally unused for more than a full season. And few that I have seen show symptoms of chain-MMR-decay (several max decays).
Edit: Did I answer correct question? MMR reset means 5 placement matches. If MMR is carried over you get 1 placement match and MMR is potentially decayed depending on the inactivity period length.
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Yea I was in master league before, skipped 2 seasons, and got placed in silver league. I climbed back up but it was pain in the neck and almost everyone I played in diamond was ex-master, I don't buy the explanation that inactivity decay is capped at an equivalent of losing a few games, seemed way more than that.
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The system currently is not a good indication of skill. It takes far to many games to advance. It should really look at your current winning % and determine after a few more games that you will be promoted. Let's say you have a 65-75% win ratio then you should be promoted or be really close after the game evaluates a couple of more games with a requirement of at least 40 games played in the season to have a good measure of where you stand. Right now its keeping people with really high win % in lower leagues for no reason and until Blizzard decides to correct this issue then these really good players will be stuck in lower leagues.
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I used to be a high gold/low plat level player but after taking a break and coming back, I can't get out of silver. It feels like 90 percent of my games are against former plat, dia and master players currently at the silver level. Quite frustrating so it's good to see they are trying to even out the distribution again.
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That's a great explanation. It's not perfect - and there's tweaks-a-coming, how can anyone walk away from this and be disheartened? (edit: seriously what more could you want?).
If blizz were to make knee-jerk reactions as one races new-build or unit combination is spread and starts to dominate, things would be a total mess.
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well at least they've started debugging it
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On December 19 2013 04:58 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 03:57 Incubus1993 wrote:On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league. They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season. Hey, I don't want a bunch of plat-diamond-master slackers in silver, it is enough to be stomped by all the smurfs... us dirt leaguers are getting pretty demotivated when always getting far too good opponents, and this is happening already now. SC2 doesn't gain anything if the bottom 20% of the people get fed up and quit because of this. We want to play people that are on our level. It should be very difficult to fall below gold if you at some point reached plat or higher imo.
I totally agree with this, I was thinking the same thing. Why don't the just make it extremely hard for players that have reached diamond/masters to fall below gold/platinum? It's kinda common sense that if you have ever played an RTS game at "masters" level, even if you took a year off you wouldn't just forget how to play that game completely, and it wouldn't take many games to get back in the groove of things and get up close to the normal skill level before the break. That way you wouldn't have previous master players in bronze/silver murdering all the low league players and making them feel like quitting because of the shitty matchmaking.
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On December 19 2013 09:30 ArTiFaKs wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:58 BaneRiders wrote:On December 19 2013 03:57 Incubus1993 wrote:On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league. They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season. Hey, I don't want a bunch of plat-diamond-master slackers in silver, it is enough to be stomped by all the smurfs... us dirt leaguers are getting pretty demotivated when always getting far too good opponents, and this is happening already now. SC2 doesn't gain anything if the bottom 20% of the people get fed up and quit because of this. We want to play people that are on our level. It should be very difficult to fall below gold if you at some point reached plat or higher imo. I totally agree with this, I was thinking the same thing. Why don't the just make it extremely hard for players that have reached diamond/masters to fall below gold/platinum? It's kinda common sense that if you have ever played an RTS game at "masters" level, even if you took a year off you wouldn't just forget how to play that game completely, and it wouldn't take many games to get back in the groove of things and get up close to the normal skill level before the break. That way you wouldn't have previous master players in bronze/silver murdering all the low league players and making them feel like quitting because of the shitty matchmaking.
I feel the best answer is to leave it as it is now - but once playing again get promoted out of the lower leagues faster. And lets face it if blizz have the stats to show a lowering of skill after only 7 to 14 days, AND considering all you have to do is play one game a fortnight to never drop a rank - what the hell is everyone moaning about? Seems totally fair as is to me - tweak it further as blizz (the peeps with all the stats!!) Sees fit.
Good job Blizzard frankly. (edit: for typo)
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For the team games ladders, the changes they made are really bad. I was master last time I played. Couple months later, I decided to play couple games and I get place to gold.. I wouldn't mind having to get my way up to master again except I get mixed with people that don't know the game that are in gold league (how are they not in bronze) and I am facing ex masters. Needless to say playing team games is sometimes frustrating if you queue alone but if you have to play with people way below your level, what is the point of even trying when I will just gamble whether if I get proper level team mates.
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If there's one mistake perhaps Blizzard could learn from all this just to tell the community what they are doing change wise and when. Generally I feel they do - although this one slipped in, and forums flare with people moaning about what hasn't been explained to them, just because they don't understand. (edit: I mean generally, not commenting on anyones post )
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I don't care what they do with their MMR shenanigans but right now league has almost no correlation to actual skill and experience. From what I've seen from checking people's stats, less than a third of people are represented by their current league.
I don't even mind the division system, just make the leagues mean something again. Otherwise, what's the point??
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On December 19 2013 00:20 Hadronsbecrazy wrote:
I think the leagues are pretty retarded to be honest, I keep facing low gold players whom i beat really easily or diamond/masters players who beat me really easily and im still gold. Sort this shit out Blizzard , either give me plat or players my own skill level
Just want to echo this sentiment. Its seriously frustrating that I feel like I'm never gonna get back to diamond. The idea of implementing a way to see when you're approaching a rank promotion is a good one and makes me wonder why the hell they don't just do it already.
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But with the MMR decay you get people to rage at you for being someone that tanks their MMR intentionally. If they tweak it I won't get my entertainment  .
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I think sc2 and bnet/ladder is great as it is right now. They shouldnt change a thing.
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On December 19 2013 10:24 Suichoy wrote:
I don't care what they do with their MMR shenanigans but right now league has almost no correlation to actual skill and experience. From what I've seen from checking people's stats, less than a third of people are represented by their current league.
I don't even mind the division system, just make the leagues mean something again. Otherwise, what's the point??
This happens to a game wich has almost no active players left. Where every masterplayer has 5 smurfs, bronze-gold players play 1-2 games each ladder season and those who want to improve only meet smurfs.
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It's really weird. I didn't play for over 6 months due to being abroad and working in a foreign country. When I finally came back and got my hands on HotS I played hardcore every day and finally(!) made it into master's league, a nerd-life long dream of mine. Unfortunately, all of my friends had lost their passion for the game (if only they had been forced to stop playing for 6 months like I had...) and after I had achieved my goal I quickly started losing interest.
After a while (dunno how many seasons) I decided to play off-race, just to have more fun again. I had to do the placement matches again and I think I was placed gold, which was fine but I thought it was a bit weird because I was master's before. I didn't care though because I was off-racing and needed opponents that were on my level of play. I managed to make it to high platinum but because I never made it into diamond level (my original goal) i stopped playing again.
Which brings us to the present day. I decided to play my main race again, did one placement match, won it and got placed silver! Mind you that I was platinum before and master's before that. I thought that was really weird and I had a rediculous win-rate of 25:2 or something. I didn't mind because I was (and still am) really rusty and bashing a few nerds is always fun but now it seems like I am stuck in gold league.
Long story short: I don't really mind what ladder I'm in anymore because I'm just playing for fun these days so if that is in bronze, gold or master's league - I don't care and besides myself nobody ever cared anyways. What I would like to see though is a more open approach to the ladder that makes it understandable why the system does to you what it does. I think a feature that shows you how close you are to a promotion is a very good and important step in that direction and I'm really looking forward to it.
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So my question is - if I play one game every two months, will that restart decay every time I play? So like, say I play one game January 1st and my decay goes for four weeks, then I play one game March 1st and don't play anymore, will I decay another four weeks? Could I theoretically eventually hit bronze even if I won every game just by playing only one game every 1-2 months? This is actually somewhat close to my playing habits nowadays.
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TFW I was top masters, stopped playing and got placed into plat next season
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United States12235 Posts
On December 19 2013 10:52 Pokebunny wrote:
So my question is - if I play one game every two months, will that restart decay every time I play? So like, say I play one game January 1st and my decay goes for four weeks, then I play one game March 1st and don't play anymore, will I decay another four weeks? Could I theoretically eventually hit bronze even if I won every game just by playing only one game every 1-2 months? This is actually somewhat close to my playing habits nowadays.
Yes, that would happen.
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This is worst ladder system ever.... Iccup is best, clean, simple and fair. What else to say?
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On December 19 2013 11:57 Mura19 wrote:
This is worst ladder system ever.... Iccup is best, clean, simple and fair. What else to say?
I completely agree with you however this is Failcraft not Starcraft. Just be ready for people to troll and talk shit because you said this by the way. Way too many fanboys of a game that was pathetic compared to its predecessor.
User was warned for this post
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I'm pretty disappointed by this response, all my friends and me dropped 2 leagues despite not being inactive at all by Blizzard's terms (although we all played a totally different amount of games from maybe 5 games to 50 per week), so all three of us dropping this much in skill is pretty unlikely, also playing a rather large amount of team games in addition surely doesn't hurt the individual player's mechanics (not even going into detail about the totally broken team-matchmaking).
Reading through several forums during the last weeks/months draws a totally different picture of the current situation on (lower) ladder distribution than Blizzard's explanation on this topic does, therefore I'm quite interested in what they are going to adjust with the new patch, their current stance on this matter is really disatisfying, as people will get more frustrated and eventually stop playing on a regular basis, which will result in a further diminishing player base, rendering their goal of desired ladder distribution percentages even harder without again punishing established players by demoting them(I decided to pause 1v1 until this gets fixed properly,because I see no reason to lose to ex-masters players in at least 50% of my matches while stomping real gold players and not having exciting games at all).
At the end of the day my portrait frame still matters to me, regardless of it being rendered irrelevant by lots of people when trying to determine skill. If it's not meant to, why bother playing a competitive game like this at all? Winning is fun, being promoted is fun, as it rewards your efforts with some kind of "appreciation".
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I was a high master player (1400+ points at one point in mid July) and I haven't played for many months, but I started playing a week ago and it stuck me in Silver..
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Honestly, some former master league players feel like they're silver leaguer's if they dont execute a build order or scout properly. Diamond does feel tougher these days though, probably due to smaller player distribution and only active dedicated players playing.
I think they mentioned something about something that'll indicate how far you are from promoting to the next league, which I think is long overdue but I definetely look forward to that. If they fix the lower league distribution they might have less depressed bronzies and more promotions giving people more motivation to play.
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"Knowing how far you are away from promotion" would be the most motivating thing..just one more game...GOGOGOGO
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On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." when stats clearly shows there are over 10% more Toss players in GM and Masters than it suppose to be. Beside, on all leagues except Bronze Terrans are least performing race ?
GM league Toss players -
America 94/199
Europe 92/200
Korea 81/198
Taiwan 88/198
SE Asia 7/13
China 82/198
Global 444/ 1006
44% Protoss global GM
Masters League -
US
P - 37%
T - 24%
Z - 36%
KR
P - 36%
T - 28%
Z -32%
EU
P - 37%
T - 27%
Z - 34%
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ?
holy shit this reaffirms all of my negative feelings towards the game right now.
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Australia528 Posts
On December 19 2013 03:57 Incubus1993 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league. They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season.
This inactivity used to inflate masters league but since league placement only takes into account active players, no one would have been robbed of their spot in a higher league. The inflation was kinda annoying and I get the reasoning behind MMR decay but at the moment, it must be horrible to play on the ladder as a lower ranked player.
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maybe this explains why it seems a lot of silver/gold players are playing much better than I remembered. I dropped 3 ranks from diamond over a few seasons of inconsistent playtime, but I still felt I had the same relative amount of skill as a high platinum player. When I was playing this season I got put in silver and most players I matched up against seemed wayyyyy too good to be silver/gold. (but then again, maybe I actually have just lost my touch for the game)
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This is just a simple lie:
"At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games"
i was high masters on NA (and still am on EU).
I am not even close to masters after playing a lot (55 wins and 7 losses).
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/3509897/1/StarGalaxy/
btw. great system for people that play a few games every 3 weeks. Each time they play they will get demoted 1 league. Good job blizzard!
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On December 19 2013 16:10 StarGalaxy wrote:This is just a simple lie: "At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games" i was high masters on NA (and still am on EU). I am not even close to masters after playing a lot (55 wins and 7 losses). http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/3509897/1/StarGalaxy/btw. great system for people that play a few games every 3 weeks. Each time they play they will get demoted 1 league. Good job blizzard!
how are you "not even close to masters"? Your have about 700 ladder points and are sitting at rank 2?
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It's kind of hard now to judge when to attack. When playing people of similar level, I can estimate how much army they're going to have when I attack them. If I hold off their attack and have decent army supply, against a similarly skilled person I can generally go counter attack for an advantage or edge out a win. Now when I go to attack, I'll find people that can't keep up with their macro at all and I'll just destroy them, and other times I'll find people that macro significantly better than me and will have twice the army I do by the time I get there.
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On December 19 2013 16:20 Gen.Rolly wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 16:10 StarGalaxy wrote:This is just a simple lie: "At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games" i was high masters on NA (and still am on EU). I am not even close to masters after playing a lot (55 wins and 7 losses). http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/3509897/1/StarGalaxy/btw. great system for people that play a few games every 3 weeks. Each time they play they will get demoted 1 league. Good job blizzard! how are you "not even close to masters"? Your have about 700 ladder points and are sitting at rank 2?
i wanted to say iam not even close to where i was (high masters)
I use the mmr tool in sc2 gears and my mmr is mid diamond atm.
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I really view this as a reaction against the research TLers have done into MMR decay. They downplay its widespread effects and pound it in time after time. It's MMR decay and the inability to be demoted out of leagues (the adjusted promotion metric). Let's look forward to their changes to fix:
For various reasons since that announcement, the distribution of players across leagues slowly shifted to no longer match those desired targets. Currently the lower leagues like bronze and silver have a larger percentage of players than desired. Meanwhile the upper leagues like platinum and diamond are under-represented. One of the reasons this occurred is due to the way that we maintain those target percentages.
Altogether too many paragraphs spent on
Please don't think matchmaking screwed up for inactive players or that we're to blame for tougher lower leagues Blizzard can do better, even in blog posts.
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Maybe they should have just said there is 40% less players on ladders these days compared to hots launch and in order to spread out the players we need to demote the other 50% that's not playing daily.
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Blizz gives us a detailed explanation of why the ladder issues, and there are issues, are NOT mainly due to MMR decay: AT maximum it is equivalent to only loosing a few games! Yet people are still complaining about mmr decay. Only 6 % of all games even were effected by the decay! According to this post the skewed league percentages are primarily due to other changes blizz made. Obviously they need to "fix the ladder" but at least drop the mmr decay obsession.
In my experience the only change I've noticed is that slightly more often than before I will play a player who is in a league lower than me. I mean the bonus pool alone should more than make up for mmr decay.
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We continue to investigate ways to improve the experience of climbing the ladder. We want players to know when they’re moving up, and for those who want more granular details, better indications of how they’re doing competitively. We’re exploring ways to let you know when you are getting close to a promotion.
It's not rocket science: http://blog.dota2.com/2013/12/matchmaking/
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A few other observations:
1. There is nothing wrong with MMR decay. If you're inactive, your skill falls. Therefore, your MMR should fall too.
2. Unlike Valve, Blizzard almost never releases information about their ladder system. In fact, this is the very first time they've EVER revealed non-obvious information about how a part of their ladder system works.
3. It seems that the best way to get Blizzard to release information about their ladder system is to spread rumors and misinformation and to get people to use those rumors and misinformation as a scapegoat for their grievances.
We should exploit this, ruthlessly.
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On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." when stats clearly shows there are over 10% more Toss players in GM and Masters than it suppose to be. Beside, on all leagues except Bronze Terrans are least performing race ?
GM league Toss players -
America 94/199
Europe 92/200
Korea 81/198
Taiwan 88/198
SE Asia 7/13
China 82/198
Global 444/ 1006
44% Protoss global GM
Masters League -
US
P - 37%
T - 24%
Z - 36%
KR
P - 36%
T - 28%
Z -32%
EU
P - 37%
T - 27%
Z - 34%
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ?
At this point, I have no idea if Blizzard's team is blinded by ignorance, a lack of resources, or simply stupidity.
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On December 19 2013 00:20 Hadronsbecrazy wrote:
I think the leagues are pretty retarded to be honest, I keep facing low gold players whom i beat really easily or diamond/masters players who beat me really easily and im still gold. Sort this shit out Blizzard , either give me plat or players my own skill level
this. it became so frustrating i stopped playing all together T.T
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On December 19 2013 18:04 paralleluniverse wrote:
A few other observations:
1. There is nothing wrong with MMR decay. If you're inactive, your skill falls. Therefore, your MMR should fall too.
2. Unlike Valve, Blizzard almost never releases information about their ladder system. In fact, this is the very first time they've EVER revealed non-obvious information about how a part of their ladder system works.
3. It seems that the best way to get Blizzard to release information about their ladder system is to spread rumors and misinformation and to get people to use those rumors and misinformation as a scapegoat for their grievances.
We should exploit this, ruthlessly.
I agree that the MMR decay is nothing bad by default, but we are lacking data to judge it. I don´t think that the ladder is as linear as we think it will be more like a wave with downs like release of big other games like gta5 or end of seasons. Or on the other end of the scale after patches or big tournaments i can imagine more people actual laddering.
That can create problems like some people mentioned. Devoted in weird leagues, floods of former master players in platin. To me it looks like the MMR decay is a good thing for individual players or small numbers but gets worse if the number of influenced players is getting too big.
A possible solution could be to adapt the custom games to an iccup´ish system. You can choose a map, a matchup and the process of the player search is as transparent as possible to explain better why you are playing whom.
What Blizzard really missed is on the PR side of the ladder. The threads on the topic are full of "i was master and now i am gold and i hate Starcraft". The league. Doesn´t. Matter. It has nothing to do with the hidden MMR but thats not the point it is a psychological / motivation thing that people don´t like to be "in a lower league".
So what they had to do to avoid all the whining is to rename all the leagues completely. So instead of Diamond or Master we would have id don´t know A call and S class or something else. Just renaming it would have helped immensely.
And on the "Valve does it better", Blizzard just looks like a "old" company right now. They hide as many informations as possible how things work, almost no communication with the community and slow reaction on trends in esports and on making/selling games. The Titan desaster and the complete miss of the F2P trend in the recent years are a pretty big proof of that.
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On December 19 2013 04:01 captainwaffles wrote:
Being a 15 times masters finisher I was placed into diamond this season and it took 15 games to get back. I don't see what the big deal is the ladder should be hard.
On December 19 2013 04:08 darthfoley wrote:
Yea I was high diamond in WOL. Haven't played very actively at all in the past year with college starting and all that.
Recently decided to get back into HOTS, got placed directly into bronze. Basically beat everyone back into high gold, which is apparently a good ceiling for me right now. It only took my about 15 games to get back to a comfortable level of challenge. Dunno why it's fucking so many other people over
you guys only see your perspective. for a player that is inactive and gets demoted it is not that much of a problem to get back to his old level/ league. but the problem most ppl complain about is the following.
consider an active playing guy who is currently in gold (which is a good representation of his skill). at the moment he will face quite a lot of players that are much better than him, although he plays active. so you see, it's not his activity that creates the problem, its the inactivity of the other players. there will always be a master lvl player that took a break and has to work his way back up where he belongs. to the master lvl player the 90% win rate is not the problem. but to the players he hits in the lower leagues, the players that actually belong into those lower leagues, its a problem.
did that make sense?
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On December 19 2013 03:51 Excalibur_Z wrote:
That's exactly what it means. If a season is 3 months long and you play on day 1, day 29, and day 57, then by the end of the season you will have decayed around three leagues' worth of rating.
How can someone implement a system where playing a few games every months decays more than playing no games at all is beyond me (I was in low master/high dia mmr and I played a few unranked games every month and now I am facing bronze players...)
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On December 19 2013 18:11 ander wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." when stats clearly shows there are over 10% more Toss players in GM and Masters than it suppose to be. Beside, on all leagues except Bronze Terrans are least performing race ?
GM league Toss players -
America 94/199
Europe 92/200
Korea 81/198
Taiwan 88/198
SE Asia 7/13
China 82/198
Global 444/ 1006
44% Protoss global GM
Masters League -
US
P - 37%
T - 24%
Z - 36%
KR
P - 36%
T - 28%
Z -32%
EU
P - 37%
T - 27%
Z - 34%
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ? At this point, I have no idea if Blizzard's team is blinded by ignorance, a lack of resources, or simply stupidity.
Or maybe, it's the "I'm-smarter-than-Blizzard" misinterpreting things AGAIN.
He was responding to someone who claimed that 90% of active ladder players are Protoss which implies that the guy is facing only Protoss players when he plays and thus doesn't get to play any other match up.
And that's just not true. There is an even number of active Protoss players as any other race.
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On December 19 2013 18:50 gondolin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 03:51 Excalibur_Z wrote:
That's exactly what it means. If a season is 3 months long and you play on day 1, day 29, and day 57, then by the end of the season you will have decayed around three leagues' worth of rating. How can someone implement a system where playing a few games every months decays more than playing no games at all is beyond me (I was in low master/high dia mmr and I played a few unranked games every month and now I am facing bronze players...)
As a software developer 'm not at all surprised. What's really needed is a new variable stored in every player profile that keeps track of accumulated decay. This however would require a change in data structures, databases and communication protocols. It would take time and would be expensive. They wanted an easy cheap fix that could just be slapped on to the current system with no other changes, and that's what it is.
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On December 19 2013 19:06 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 18:50 gondolin wrote:On December 19 2013 03:51 Excalibur_Z wrote:
That's exactly what it means. If a season is 3 months long and you play on day 1, day 29, and day 57, then by the end of the season you will have decayed around three leagues' worth of rating. How can someone implement a system where playing a few games every months decays more than playing no games at all is beyond me (I was in low master/high dia mmr and I played a few unranked games every month and now I am facing bronze players...) As a software developer 'm not at all surprised. What's really needed is a new variable stored in every player profile that keeps track of accumulated decay. This however would require a change in data structures, databases and communication protocols. It would take time and would be expensive. They wanted an easy cheap fix that could just be slapped on to the current system with no other changes, and that's what it is.
That Excalibur_Z guy is just theorizing. No one knows exactly how it works except Blizzard.
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On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."
Probably based on historical comparisons in numbers. As has been pointed out repeatedly (and flat out ignored by Terrans trying to whine about balance) Protoss has always had a strong presence on the ladder, even when Terran was so strong it was roflstomping absolutely everybody in Code S. This is due to the nature of Protoss in blind best-of-one format against unknown players along with the diversity of Protoss all-ins which tend to be amazing on the ladder.
Therefore if the current ladder data shows no statistically significant difference to that historical data then there is nothing to worry about. No matter how much people cry about the percentages there just isn't a problem.
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On December 19 2013 18:57 kheldorin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 18:11 ander wrote:On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." when stats clearly shows there are over 10% more Toss players in GM and Masters than it suppose to be. Beside, on all leagues except Bronze Terrans are least performing race ?
GM league Toss players -
America 94/199
Europe 92/200
Korea 81/198
Taiwan 88/198
SE Asia 7/13
China 82/198
Global 444/ 1006
44% Protoss global GM
Masters League -
US
P - 37%
T - 24%
Z - 36%
KR
P - 36%
T - 28%
Z -32%
EU
P - 37%
T - 27%
Z - 34%
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ? At this point, I have no idea if Blizzard's team is blinded by ignorance, a lack of resources, or simply stupidity. Or maybe, it's the "I'm-smarter-than-Blizzard" misinterpreting things AGAIN. He was responding to someone who claimed that 90% of active ladder players are Protoss which implies that the guy is facing only Protoss players when he plays and thus doesn't get to play any other match up. And that's just not true. There is an even number of active Protoss players as any other race.
And this statement of yours is also simply not true. According to sc2ranks the overall distribution of players might be close to even (there are roughly 4.5k less T players compared to P overall), but as you go up the leagues, you should notice an increasing trend of fewer T players, resulting in a huge difference of ~10% between T and P in GM/Masters, whereas in a balanced situation the numbers should be way more equal.
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On December 19 2013 14:13 storywriter wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 03:57 Incubus1993 wrote:On December 19 2013 00:38 storywriter wrote:
I think the 6% figure is if they only count people who are active. A lot of people play very few games per season and have kept their leagues that way for a long time . That doesn't mean those people have gotten so bad they need to be placed two or three leagues below their original league. They should be demoted though, their slots should be open for people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game. There are so many "Masters" players that play their placement game and leave it at that for the entire season. This inactivity used to inflate masters league but since league placement only takes into account active players, no one would have been robbed of their spot in a higher league. The inflation was kinda annoying and I get the reasoning behind MMR decay but at the moment, it must be horrible to play on the ladder as a lower ranked player.
Only grandmaster league has spots. Other leagues use static league MMR thresholds. These thresholds changed last time in the beginning of June (or if there has been changes since they have been very small). If your MMR rises above a certain league threshold you will be promoted regardless how many other players there already are in that league.
On December 19 2013 16:54 Danglars wrote:I really view this as a reaction against the research TLers have done into MMR decay. They downplay its widespread effects and pound it in time after time. It's MMR decay and the inability to be demoted out of leagues (the adjusted promotion metric). Let's look forward to their changes to fix: Show nested quote +For various reasons since that announcement, the distribution of players across leagues slowly shifted to no longer match those desired targets. Currently the lower leagues like bronze and silver have a larger percentage of players than desired. Meanwhile the upper leagues like platinum and diamond are under-represented. One of the reasons this occurred is due to the way that we maintain those target percentages. Altogether too many paragraphs spent on Show nested quote +Please don't think matchmaking screwed up for inactive players or that we're to blame for tougher lower leagues Blizzard can do better, even in blog posts.
Yes. Blizzard has a long history of using 'PR / marketing language' in their statements. They downplay potential problems in their statements to a point where it often becomes misleading. And masses accept those statements without thinking themselves (for example there is already consensus in the main Reddit thread that MMR decay adjustment is only worth of 'few games').
For example statement: "At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games." The actual adjustment is equivalent of about ~20 losses (unless they have changed it silently during this season). There is plenty of data to back this up (MMR tool data for several seasons). Also if people think logically they could deduct it themselves, that it is not "slight" adjustment.
For example if we think about a character account that only plays one placement match during each season. If that character was two seasons ago diamond, it would have placed either in platinum or gold last season. This season it would have placed either in silver or gold (slight change of high bronze too). If the adjustment each time was indeed worth of 'few games' the league system would not matter. It would mean that to get from bronze to diamond you would need only ~10 wins (if few would mean e.g. '2'). In reality to pass each league's MMR range typically requires ~20 wins more than losses (Size of MMR ranges for different leagues differ slightly).
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MMR decay is not the cause of this mess of leagues I think.
The main reason is the diminution of player base + the unranked play.
1) noob players quit so better players are ranked in low league belonging to newbs that left
2) people play more and more unranked therefore MMR is more inacurate. remember that MMR as any learning machine algorithm is more performant when he have a lot of data. If you play often you will have a pretty accurate MMR but you can't escape to face people with a pretty inaccurate MMR of the same level as yours. This explain the I easily beat this guy or this guy was really better than me.
The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is the league distribution because in theory it should have stay close to what they desire.
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On December 19 2013 19:41 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." Probably based on historical comparisons in numbers. As has been pointed out repeatedly (and flat out ignored by Terrans trying to whine about balance) Protoss has always had a strong presence on the ladder, even when Terran was so strong it was roflstomping absolutely everybody in Code S. This is due to the nature of Protoss in blind best-of-one format against unknown players along with the diversity of Protoss all-ins which tend to be amazing on the ladder. Therefore if the current ladder data shows no statistically significant difference to that historical data then there is nothing to worry about. No matter how much people cry about the percentages there just isn't a problem.
No. So much protoss on ladder is kinda new. Stop making up fact please.
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On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." when stats clearly shows there are over 10% more Toss players in GM and Masters than it suppose to be. Beside, on all leagues except Bronze Terrans are least performing race ?
GM league Toss players -
America 94/199
Europe 92/200
Korea 81/198
Taiwan 88/198
SE Asia 7/13
China 82/198
Global 444/ 1006
44% Protoss global GM
Masters League -
US
P - 37%
T - 24%
Z - 36%
KR
P - 36%
T - 28%
Z -32%
EU
P - 37%
T - 27%
Z - 34%
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ?
Very simple. Ignore the Master/GM phenomenon and take the whole player base worldwide:
Race Statistics (Total):
T 29.25%
(77,615 Users)
Z 30.28%
(80,349 Users)
P 31.39%
(83,305 Users)
R 9.09%
(24,119 Users)
And lo, magically the problem disappeared. If someone points out Master/GM again, insert a finger in your ears and start singing very loudly.
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On December 19 2013 23:08 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." when stats clearly shows there are over 10% more Toss players in GM and Masters than it suppose to be. Beside, on all leagues except Bronze Terrans are least performing race ?
GM league Toss players -
America 94/199
Europe 92/200
Korea 81/198
Taiwan 88/198
SE Asia 7/13
China 82/198
Global 444/ 1006
44% Protoss global GM
Masters League -
US
P - 37%
T - 24%
Z - 36%
KR
P - 36%
T - 28%
Z -32%
EU
P - 37%
T - 27%
Z - 34%
On what basis Blizzard states " "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players."" ? Very simple. Ignore the Master/GM phenomenon and take the whole player base worldwide: Race Statistics (Total): T 29.25% (77,615 Users) Z 30.28% (80,349 Users) P 31.39% (83,305 Users) R 9.09% (24,119 Users) And lo, magically the problem disappeared. If someone points out Master/GM again, insert a finger in your ears and start singing very loudly.
You are missing the point. High skilled top players represents the balance and how well the game was designed, therefore, GM and MASTERS are the most important part of the ladder.
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On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
You are missing the point. High skilled top players represents the balance and how well the game was designed, therefore, GM and MASTERS are the most important part of the ladder.
That was sarcasm. He got the point.
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On December 19 2013 23:02 Faust852 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 19:41 -Celestial- wrote:On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." Probably based on historical comparisons in numbers. As has been pointed out repeatedly (and flat out ignored by Terrans trying to whine about balance) Protoss has always had a strong presence on the ladder, even when Terran was so strong it was roflstomping absolutely everybody in Code S. This is due to the nature of Protoss in blind best-of-one format against unknown players along with the diversity of Protoss all-ins which tend to be amazing on the ladder. Therefore if the current ladder data shows no statistically significant difference to that historical data then there is nothing to worry about. No matter how much people cry about the percentages there just isn't a problem. No. So much protoss on ladder is kinda new. Stop making up fact please.
People have been complaining about Protoss overrepresentation on ladder since almost the start of WoL. Your assertion that "no its a new thing" is the new thing. Again, if its not a statisically significantly difference from past numbers then it isn't something to be worried about. Stop making up things to allow you to keep whining please.
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On December 20 2013 01:28 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 23:02 Faust852 wrote:On December 19 2013 19:41 -Celestial- wrote:On December 19 2013 04:00 saltis wrote:
Can somebody explain, how according Blizzard representative Kaivax "There isn't an exaggeration of Protoss players." Probably based on historical comparisons in numbers. As has been pointed out repeatedly (and flat out ignored by Terrans trying to whine about balance) Protoss has always had a strong presence on the ladder, even when Terran was so strong it was roflstomping absolutely everybody in Code S. This is due to the nature of Protoss in blind best-of-one format against unknown players along with the diversity of Protoss all-ins which tend to be amazing on the ladder. Therefore if the current ladder data shows no statistically significant difference to that historical data then there is nothing to worry about. No matter how much people cry about the percentages there just isn't a problem. No. So much protoss on ladder is kinda new. Stop making up fact please. People have been complaining about Protoss overrepresentation on ladder since almost the start of WoL. Your assertion that "no its a new thing" is the new thing. Again, if its not a statisically significantly difference from past numbers then it isn't something to be worried about. Stop making up things to allow you to keep whining please.
Source or you lie. I never felt that there were that much protoss in GM/ML. And I'm pretty sure i'm right.
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United States12235 Posts
On December 19 2013 22:46 klup wrote:
MMR decay is not the cause of this mess of leagues I think.
The main reason is the diminution of player base + the unranked play.
1) noob players quit so better players are ranked in low league belonging to newbs that left
2) people play more and more unranked therefore MMR is more inacurate. remember that MMR as any learning machine algorithm is more performant when he have a lot of data. If you play often you will have a pretty accurate MMR but you can't escape to face people with a pretty inaccurate MMR of the same level as yours. This explain the I easily beat this guy or this guy was really better than me.
The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is the league distribution because in theory it should have stay close to what they desire.
The distribution is correct in terms of what they're currently recording, which is based on activity in terms of unspent bonus pool. If you were to filter out all players who have more than ~2 weeks unspent bonus pool, you would see the percentages as pretty close to (but not exactly) 2/18/20/32/20/8. The problem is that decay records inactivity in a different way, so as long as their existing metric doesn't factor that in, they wouldn't have been able to detect it.
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The response to threads like these lead me to despise the player base. Over-entitled gamers, desperate to blame anything and everything on game developers.
It's an MMR rating system that matches you up with roughly equivalent skilled people. It's impacted by a steadily declining player-base, and the fact that if there wasn't a decay in place, there would be plenty, if not more, 'fuck blizzard' posts talking about how the game is stupid and the experience is shit for not factoring in
The vase majority of the whining is just symptoms of the usual Dunning-Kruger effect, leading to selection bias and over-entitlement.
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I don't think it's unreasonable to complain when the new system is inferior to the old one. Even blizzard seems to agree now. And I don't really recall any "fuck blizzard" posts - as above poster puts it - pertaining to the fact that people found it unreasonable to lose a few times when returning to the game after a longer break due to rustiness.
Also to the people who claim that league has nothing to do with MMR, you are sorely mistaken. In the old system MMR and league had correllation. In the new system too, but the relationship has been severely shifted. The fact that this happens after roughly 3 years of relative stability in what the players can expect as far as league placement goes, it's no wonder at all that people are upset. In the end this is a competitive game, and people care about what league they are in.
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While I can appreciate that Blizzard is acknowledging there are problems and are looking toward solutions, their blatant denial of how broken some of these problems are only hurts their perception in the community rather than saving themselves face from a PR standpoint.
It's very similar to their bogus "when we factor out player skill* the ladder is quite balanced" claims. Even with all of Blizzard's attempts to obfuscate ladder data, people are still able to gather enough data to see there are significant issues, whether it's league distribution, racial representation, MMR decay rates, or what have you.
* The idea that one can simply "factor out" such an ambiguous variable as skill with a single magic calculation is absurd, particularly since the calculation, in Blizzard's admitted case, doesn't take into account how people win their games. When it comes to skill, it is all about how someone achieves victory.
For the curious, they displayed this calculation at Blizzcon 2010.
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That's all great Blizzard, good job. I just care about one thing...get rid of the cheaters please.
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nice blizzard really nice idea with the 2 weeks inatcivity thing... so heres my problem. my pc is broken, and i have to wait around 6 to 8 weeks for my new parts... so i guess i can find myself in silver next season... ty blizzard for forcing people to play! that seems really a good idea expecially for non pro gamers... *ironie off*
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On December 20 2013 18:58 KOtical wrote:
nice blizzard really nice idea with the 2 weeks inatcivity thing... so heres my problem. my pc is broken, and i have to wait around 6 to 8 weeks for my new parts... so i guess i can find myself in silver next season... ty blizzard for forcing people to play! that seems really a good idea expecially for non pro gamers... *ironie off*
Why would you have to wait that long for pc parts?
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On December 20 2013 18:58 KOtical wrote:
nice blizzard really nice idea with the 2 weeks inatcivity thing... so heres my problem. my pc is broken, and i have to wait around 6 to 8 weeks for my new parts... so i guess i can find myself in silver next season... ty blizzard for forcing people to play! that seems really a good idea expecially for non pro gamers... *ironie off*
I guess when you have a forced break of 2 months or more it's a good deal to be able to start in silver ~ I mean if you're good you rise quickly and otherwise it's a good way to get back into the game. Or would you rather have the same opponents after the break? I don't think so!
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lose a few games brb getting sent back 3 leagues and losing your current league every season
Yeah
OK BLIZZARD WHATEVER YOU SAY
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On December 20 2013 18:58 KOtical wrote:
nice blizzard really nice idea with the 2 weeks inatcivity thing... so heres my problem. my pc is broken, and i have to wait around 6 to 8 weeks for my new parts... so i guess i can find myself in silver next season... ty blizzard for forcing people to play! that seems really a good idea expecially for non pro gamers... *ironie off*
Why are people so obsessed with leagues? What do they mean anyway? Do you play for that league icon or because you are having fun?
If this break really puts you below your real skill, 5 games will rectify that. I'd say: Relax, play the game, have fun and forget about some icons. If you are not grandmaster, nobody cares anyway!
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On December 20 2013 23:35 testthewest wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2013 18:58 KOtical wrote:
nice blizzard really nice idea with the 2 weeks inatcivity thing... so heres my problem. my pc is broken, and i have to wait around 6 to 8 weeks for my new parts... so i guess i can find myself in silver next season... ty blizzard for forcing people to play! that seems really a good idea expecially for non pro gamers... *ironie off* Why are people so obsessed with leagues? What do they mean anyway? Do you play for that league icon or because you are having fun? If this break really puts you below your real skill, 5 games will rectify that. I'd say: Relax, play the game, have fun and forget about some icons. If you are not grandmaster, nobody cares anyway!
because people do care! I want a masters icon next to my name as then id be able to release content videos and the community would accept that im not bad at the game!
That icon is a symbol of improvement, of course it matters. i used to think like this, and i didnt really care but i soon found out its the only measure you have to see if ur getting better. #1 of league or go home!
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On December 19 2013 05:25 _SpiRaL_ wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2013 05:16 NonY wrote:On December 19 2013 05:04 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
Also I have no idea why they want win rates to be 50% after taking time off. It's about not discouraging players from playing SC2. If someone hasn't played for three weeks, would they rather lose a bunch of SC2 games in a row or play some other game that might be more rewarding and less stressful? The more they procrastinate their return to SC2, the harsher it's going to be and so the less likely they'll return. Unless their MMR decays. Of course, not every player has the same psychological approach to the game, so this doesn't apply to everyone. The more competitively-minded players will accept their rustiness and work hard to get back in shape and win again. On the other hand, the same is true of Silver players being matched up against MMR-decayed Diamond players: the more competitively-minded players won't mind (and might even enjoy) the opportunity. On December 19 2013 05:05 _SpiRaL_ wrote:
"In my specific case it hardly affected me much at all so I don't see the big deal".
Amazing lack of perspective. Well done. Wtf... you just advocated getting rid of MMR decay entirely without even knowing a single reason it was implemented. If you come back worse after a break, your MMR will drop and your win rate will return to 50% quickly. This is the whole point of MMR. Trying to somehow massage things to "guess" what a players MMR might be after a break is a huge problem to the fundamental point of the system. I know exactly why it was implemented and just put a whole post about why that reason makes no sense and why it in fact damages the whole matchmaking system by artificially introducing a system which undermines MMR's self righting mechanism (as we have clearly seen). The MMR decay has arguably discouraged people from laddering even more than before it was implemented (certainly did for me and others I know). Their goal is not just not being met, it is doing the opposite of what they intend.
I agree.
In addition the MMR decay will kick in even if you are playing in other regions. Thus if I play for a while in EU but not in NA the MMR decay will lower the MMR of my NA account even though there has been no decay. This is an example of one of the problems they're introducing by trying to mess with MMR other than through simply having people play games.
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On December 20 2013 23:35 testthewest wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2013 18:58 KOtical wrote:
nice blizzard really nice idea with the 2 weeks inatcivity thing... so heres my problem. my pc is broken, and i have to wait around 6 to 8 weeks for my new parts... so i guess i can find myself in silver next season... ty blizzard for forcing people to play! that seems really a good idea expecially for non pro gamers... *ironie off* Why are people so obsessed with leagues? What do they mean anyway? Do you play for that league icon or because you are having fun? If this break really puts you below your real skill, 5 games will rectify that. I'd say: Relax, play the game, have fun and forget about some icons. If you are not grandmaster, nobody cares anyway!
It's not that I care so much about the league, it's that people who are taking breaks are being overdemoted and the matchmaking system is a mess.
It boils down to wanting the following two things:
- A matchmaking system that matches you up against people of roughly the same ability (this is how Blizzard uses MMR)
- A way to understand if you are improving (this is how Blizzard uses the leagues)
I think many of the posts here are expressing disappointment with the failure of one or both of these aspects. Blizzard did a good job trying to fix the small issue with the first aspect for people who take breaks by introducing MMR decay, but it went overkill and is now also affecting the second aspect. The distribution of leagues is so far off whack that people who are actually improving quite a bit are stuck in the same league forever, and still randomly playing the entire spectrum from noobs to masters.
I for one was a former high plat, now in silver after some time playing sparingly. That was fine at first, but now I'm playing more seriously again and know I'm improving (and playing at the same or better level I was before my break) but there is no league promotion anywhere in sight. This isn't a huge problem for me, I know I'm getting better and I can look at various benchmarks and my opponents record to see that. I'm holding my own against the former diamond players and stomping the true bronze silver players I keep getting matched up against.
The problem is some people aren't as good looking through all that information and will get discouaraged with the random matchmaking and never see any signs of improvement.
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So guys, now that the new season has started, how are your league placements?
I'm only able to see for myself tomorrow, but I'm kinda curious to see if there are signs of Blizzard making changes to the ladder distribution. So please post your end of season result, and your placement after your placement match of this season!
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man played my freakin placement game was master back then but duo to mmr decay i dropped to plat then i played my up to diamond last season and got a good finish with a 70% winrate and this season i just won my placement against an 1578pkt zerg and still got diamond...
There was no patch fixing this shit or im just bad at this game its frustrating me i was always able to keep up with masters and i still do for example my last 12 games were all against 1200pkt + master players but who cares i have to have a 100% winrate to get master league to bad im not jaedong
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Additionally, to address the misconception that the majority of players are being adjusted in this way, the data shows that less than 6% of all StarCraft II games played on Battle.net are affected by this adjustment.
"To address the misconception that the majority of apples are round, the data shows that most bananas are oblong."
Well done answering a different question blizzard.... sigh.
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There is interesting Blue quote on US forums. Somebody commented: "You, like most of the community, will be disappointed when 2.1 releases and it's the same bad ladder with poor league distributions." He got response from Kaivax:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/11039723988?page=2#24
Only we've got a change to how the leagues are apportioned in patch 2.1.
After 2.1 goes live, you'll play one match and then be adjusted. Some players may not be adjusted much. Others will get to skip up the ladder.
I know we can't yet say precisely when the patch will go live. It's in a stage where we're busy with quality assurance on it, and since we never know how long that will take, we don't set firm dates for the following stages of patching.
But this sort of negative rumor-mongering doesn't help anyone, and doesn't make these discussion forums a better place to commune with others.
Leviathan is doing an excellent job here, and should be commended. All of those who are trying to help other players understand the game and catch up with what's going on are greatly appreciated.
Interesting word of choice: "Some players may not be adjusted much. Others will get to skip up the ladder." Could this mean that it is not necessarily only offset/threshold change, but also other factors would affect how much a player is affected by the change. Of course it might be that Kaivax used simplified language and just meant that some would be promoted regarding the leagues and some would stay in their old league.
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United States12235 Posts
I think it's just a league boundary change. It's unclear whether they're changing anything regarding decay.
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All i know is i was former master come back after 2 season i get silver league... I did not decay to silver and to get promoted to platinum took 50 games.. bit rediculous btw almost everyone i played was former diamond/master -.- this needs fix fast!!!!!
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At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
Yesterday I played a zerg player who was in master league for 12 seasons and finished last season of 2013 as a top 16 diamond player. And I am currently on gold/plat level. I played a lot of games and worked my way up to rank 1, then I met this guy and even though he is miles better than me I was losing 15-16 points every time I got matched against him. I started WoL from bronze and worked my way to high diamond/low master. I know how playing genuine gold player looks like. The system obviously thought he is worse than me (his MMR is probably lower) even though in reality it was a one sided stomp. And I got unlucky and played him 3x in a row, losing around 50 points in total.. All my effort from previous games washed away.
So how is 12 season master vs. borderline gold/plat an equivalent of losing a few games? Who are they kidding?
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On January 08 2014 16:55 korona wrote:There is interesting Blue quote on US forums. Somebody commented: "You, like most of the community, will be disappointed when 2.1 releases and it's the same bad ladder with poor league distributions." He got response from Kaivax: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/11039723988?page=2#24Show nested quote +Only we've got a change to how the leagues are apportioned in patch 2.1.
After 2.1 goes live, you'll play one match and then be adjusted. Some players may not be adjusted much. Others will get to skip up the ladder.
I know we can't yet say precisely when the patch will go live. It's in a stage where we're busy with quality assurance on it, and since we never know how long that will take, we don't set firm dates for the following stages of patching.
But this sort of negative rumor-mongering doesn't help anyone, and doesn't make these discussion forums a better place to commune with others.
Leviathan is doing an excellent job here, and should be commended. All of those who are trying to help other players understand the game and catch up with what's going on are greatly appreciated. Interesting word of choice: "Some players may not be adjusted much. Others will get to skip up the ladder." Could this mean that it is not necessarily only offset/threshold change, but also other factors would affect how much a player is affected by the change. Of course it might be that Kaivax used simplified language and just meant that some would be promoted regarding the leagues and some would stay in their old league.
Since they will adjust the league percentages it means that people who are high bronze, silver, gold etc. will probably be moved 1 league higher but people who are low-mid level players in their respected leagues will remain where they've been.
But I am not sure this will be enough. MMR decay was a bad idea in general. In WoL if you took a longer break, your MMR would reset anyway and you would have to play 5 placement matches again and slowly work your way up. You wouldn't really get stomped by players of your former skill. Now with decay they actually make it harder for both active players but also returners who can't gradually get tougher opponents but often play people of their former skill level as well because their MMR also decreased.
So in reality, although it is a good idea to help people who return with some sort of MMR adjustment, right now, the system is doing it on expense of 99% of other players.
As a person who stopped playing in August 2012 and only recently came back, I can safely say that I would get more encouraged to get back into the game with the old WoL system than with the Hots system.
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On January 08 2014 21:36 Qwerty85 wrote:
At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
Yesterday I played a zerg player who was in master league for 12 seasons and finished last season of 2013 as a top 16 diamond player. And I am currently on gold/plat level. I played a lot of games and worked my way up to rank 1, then I met this guy and even though he is miles better than me I was losing 15-16 points every time I got matched against him. I started WoL from bronze and worked my way to high diamond/low master. I know how playing genuine gold player looks like. The system obviously thought he is worse than me (his MMR is probably lower) even though in reality it was a one sided stomp. And I got unlucky and played him 3x in a row, losing around 50 points in total.. All my effort from previous games washed away.
So how is 12 season master vs. borderline gold/plat an equivalent of losing a few games? Who are they kidding?
That guy down ranked himself or was playing with his unranked mmr. There is no evidence that mmr decay would ever send a player from top diamond to gold in one season.
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On December 20 2013 22:11 kinsky wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2013 18:58 KOtical wrote:
nice blizzard really nice idea with the 2 weeks inatcivity thing... so heres my problem. my pc is broken, and i have to wait around 6 to 8 weeks for my new parts... so i guess i can find myself in silver next season... ty blizzard for forcing people to play! that seems really a good idea expecially for non pro gamers... *ironie off* Why would you have to wait that long for pc parts?
I went through the same situation. My laptop broke and I decided to build my own PC, which took me a couple of months to get all of the parts/ put it together. The reason being for the time frame, money.
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I'm starting to play again (took a few weeks off) and I'm going to just play unranked until this is resolved. Leagues were kind of meaningless to start with, now they mean absolutely nothing due to there being no consistency in matchmaking anymore. I have a busy schedule for university, so having to fight MMR decay just to play decent opponents in ranked is unrealistic for me at this point.
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On January 08 2014 23:08 Ben... wrote:
I'm starting to play again (took a few weeks off) and I'm going to just play unranked until this is resolved. Leagues were kind of meaningless to start with, now they mean absolutely nothing due to there being no consistency in matchmaking anymore. I have a busy schedule for university, so having to fight MMR decay just to play decent opponents in ranked is unrealistic for me at this point.
I believe decay functions the same in unranked.
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On January 08 2014 22:59 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 21:36 Qwerty85 wrote:
At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
Yesterday I played a zerg player who was in master league for 12 seasons and finished last season of 2013 as a top 16 diamond player. And I am currently on gold/plat level. I played a lot of games and worked my way up to rank 1, then I met this guy and even though he is miles better than me I was losing 15-16 points every time I got matched against him. I started WoL from bronze and worked my way to high diamond/low master. I know how playing genuine gold player looks like. The system obviously thought he is worse than me (his MMR is probably lower) even though in reality it was a one sided stomp. And I got unlucky and played him 3x in a row, losing around 50 points in total.. All my effort from previous games washed away.
So how is 12 season master vs. borderline gold/plat an equivalent of losing a few games? Who are they kidding? That guy down ranked himself or was playing with his unranked mmr. There is no evidence that mmr decay would ever send a player from top diamond to gold in one season.
He maybe down ranked himself (he didn't play unranked since he gained points), but I heard about many golds who play diamonds and platinums who play master league players. As I said, I was away for more than a year and my skill dropped about 2 leagues in that whole period - from high dia to high gold at the moment. So even skipping an entire season which is 3 months of inactivity at best can't really reduce your skill so much that you play people so much higher on the ladder than yourself.
So even if my example is a bit drastic, the decay is certainly not the equivalent of losing a few games as Blizzard says. The decay is strong enough to usually result in demotion at the start of the new season. You don't get demoted for losing a few games.
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On January 08 2014 23:16 JacobShock wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 23:08 Ben... wrote:
I'm starting to play again (took a few weeks off) and I'm going to just play unranked until this is resolved. Leagues were kind of meaningless to start with, now they mean absolutely nothing due to there being no consistency in matchmaking anymore. I have a busy schedule for university, so having to fight MMR decay just to play decent opponents in ranked is unrealistic for me at this point. I believe decay functions the same in unranked. I'm aware of that possibility. If I played ranked how it is now, by the time I hit February break I will be in silver league or something, so for me there is no point even doing ranked play. I know once assignments kick in I am not going to be able to play more than one session every couple or three weeks. My league already decayed from Master to Diamond to Gold over the last two seasons. With unranked, I can just play when I have time and not have to worry about league at all, decay be damned.
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What I dont understand is why you have to be punished so hard for being beaten by a player in a higher league. As top platinum ive played masters players and when I win its + the normal points but when they beat me I get -14-16 points... Why the hell is that happening. He is 2 leagues above me ffs. When I lose to another top platinum I can lose less points than against a masters. So weird
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Plz fix unranked games. Unrank shouldn't have his own MMR but it has to be the same than the ranked one, expect losing or winning unranked game doesn't change it. People use to free lose on unrank because they don't want to play some MU. Could be better too if you can choose your MU you want to play.
At this moment as rank vs unranked exist bronze meet diamand/master and it's very frustrating for both.
A button with " i off race " could be cool too, which permit players to play at a lower MMR to discover a new race, and warn the other that his opponent is not a real dimand/master. Could be less frustrating.
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On January 08 2014 23:43 Tyrhanius wrote:
Plz fix unranked games. Unrank shouldn't have his own MMR but it has to be the same than the ranked one, expect losing or winning unranked game doesn't change it. People use to free lose on unrank because they don't want to play some MU. Could be better too if you can choose your MU you want to play.
At this moment as rank vs unranked exist bronze meet diamand/master and it's very frustrating for both.
A button with " i off race " could be cool too, which permit players to play at a lower MMR to discover a new race, and warn the other that his opponent is not a real dimand/master. Could be less frustrating.
That button would be too easy to abuse.
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The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay.
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On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay.
I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d
I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again.
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On January 08 2014 23:58 HaRuHi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay. I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again.
If you had a long break your MMR would reset anyway even in WoL so you would basically start over after 5 placement games. So the decay feature was not really needed at all.
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On January 09 2014 00:25 Qwerty85 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 23:58 HaRuHi wrote:On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay. I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again. If you had a long break your MMR would reset anyway even in WoL so you would basically start over after 5 placement games. So the decay feature was not really needed at all.
Agreed. I suspect this has happened to a number of people who went from 'masters/diamond to silver'
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On January 09 2014 01:06 tili wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2014 00:25 Qwerty85 wrote:On January 08 2014 23:58 HaRuHi wrote:On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay. I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again. If you had a long break your MMR would reset anyway even in WoL so you would basically start over after 5 placement games. So the decay feature was not really needed at all. Agreed. I suspect this has happened to a number of people who went from 'masters/diamond to silver'
even so, there's something fishy about how long it is taking for people to return back to a higher rank.
In WoL it wouldn't give you 27 gold players in a row. After a bunch of consecutive wins it tries to challenge you and find an even footing. something else is effecting this, and I find it hard to believe that MMR decay is the primary cause.
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On January 09 2014 01:10 Oboeman wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2014 01:06 tili wrote:On January 09 2014 00:25 Qwerty85 wrote:On January 08 2014 23:58 HaRuHi wrote:On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay. I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again. If you had a long break your MMR would reset anyway even in WoL so you would basically start over after 5 placement games. So the decay feature was not really needed at all. Agreed. I suspect this has happened to a number of people who went from 'masters/diamond to silver' even so, there's something fishy about how long it is taking for people to return back to a higher rank. In WoL it wouldn't give you 27 gold players in a row. After a bunch of consecutive wins it tries to challenge you and find an even footing. something else is effecting this, and I find it hard to believe that MMR decay is the primary cause.
Well that is my point exactly. MMR decay system as it is now is bad both for returning players (so it basically has the opposite effect) and for active players. In WoL you would start over, play 5 placements and probably got back to your league sooner than now in Hots.
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On January 09 2014 01:29 Qwerty85 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2014 01:10 Oboeman wrote:On January 09 2014 01:06 tili wrote:On January 09 2014 00:25 Qwerty85 wrote:On January 08 2014 23:58 HaRuHi wrote:On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay. I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again. If you had a long break your MMR would reset anyway even in WoL so you would basically start over after 5 placement games. So the decay feature was not really needed at all. Agreed. I suspect this has happened to a number of people who went from 'masters/diamond to silver' even so, there's something fishy about how long it is taking for people to return back to a higher rank. In WoL it wouldn't give you 27 gold players in a row. After a bunch of consecutive wins it tries to challenge you and find an even footing. something else is effecting this, and I find it hard to believe that MMR decay is the primary cause. Well that is my point exactly. MMR decay system as it is now is bad both for returning players (so it basically has the opposite effect) and for active players. In WoL you would start over, play 5 placements and probably got back to your league sooner than now in Hots.
^^, Well, half of those 27 Goldplayers were platinum/daimond/masters at some point, maybe it is more difficult to get promoted when the players you usually have to beat to get promoted are not rated higher than gold themselfes. But Blizzard said only 6% are effected by mmr decay, maybe they did not use current active players but all registered players?`And since mmr decay does also effect teamgames, maybe most of those 6% are 1v1 players? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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On January 09 2014 01:45 HaRuHi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2014 01:29 Qwerty85 wrote:On January 09 2014 01:10 Oboeman wrote:On January 09 2014 01:06 tili wrote:On January 09 2014 00:25 Qwerty85 wrote:On January 08 2014 23:58 HaRuHi wrote:On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay. I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again. If you had a long break your MMR would reset anyway even in WoL so you would basically start over after 5 placement games. So the decay feature was not really needed at all. Agreed. I suspect this has happened to a number of people who went from 'masters/diamond to silver' even so, there's something fishy about how long it is taking for people to return back to a higher rank. In WoL it wouldn't give you 27 gold players in a row. After a bunch of consecutive wins it tries to challenge you and find an even footing. something else is effecting this, and I find it hard to believe that MMR decay is the primary cause. Well that is my point exactly. MMR decay system as it is now is bad both for returning players (so it basically has the opposite effect) and for active players. In WoL you would start over, play 5 placements and probably got back to your league sooner than now in Hots. ^^, Well, half of those 27 Goldplayers were platinum/daimond/masters at some point, maybe it is more difficult to get promoted when the players you usually have to beat to get promoted are not rated higher than gold themselfes. But Blizzard said only 6% are effected by mmr decay, maybe they did not use current active players but all registered players?`And since mmr decay does also effect teamgames, maybe most of those 6% are 1v1 players? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Huh, the active vs inactive distinction does make sense... But it seems almost deliberately misleading if that were the case.
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On January 09 2014 01:10 Oboeman wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2014 01:06 tili wrote:On January 09 2014 00:25 Qwerty85 wrote:On January 08 2014 23:58 HaRuHi wrote:On January 08 2014 23:49 LordYama wrote:
The situation seems to boil down to basically this: The problem that Blizzard was trying to solve - players losing games when coming back after inactivity - was a much smaller problem than the problem they have now created with their solution.
They have created a situation where the MMRs are much less reflective of true skill than before, leading to active players taking a lot of beatdowns from players much more skilled than them presumably because those players have "decayed" down to an MMR that is way lower than their true skill, causing a lot more unhappiness than the original "problem" ever caused.
The problem is that this comes at a time when a lot of the player base is probably already dropping out due to the normal lifecycle of a game, this kind of thing will only accelerate that.
I for one would be much happier if the current ladder system was scrapped entirely and switched back to the one they had right before MMR decay. I am like 27 - 2 after they dropped me from daimond to gold...must say I enjoy it, even though I probably should not. :d I don`t know when they changed it, because I came back after a long long long long long break, but I really like that they started to show loses and wins in lower leagues again. If you had a long break your MMR would reset anyway even in WoL so you would basically start over after 5 placement games. So the decay feature was not really needed at all. Agreed. I suspect this has happened to a number of people who went from 'masters/diamond to silver' even so, there's something fishy about how long it is taking for people to return back to a higher rank. In WoL it wouldn't give you 27 gold players in a row. After a bunch of consecutive wins it tries to challenge you and find an even footing. something else is effecting this, and I find it hard to believe that MMR decay is the primary cause.
There is nothing fishy regarding how long it takes to reach your pre-decay MMR. MMR changes much more rapidly only if you have played small amount of matches after fresh start or MMR reset (It takes ~25 matches or little more before MMR change rate normalizes after a 'blank MMR' start). But as you have played more, your MMR changes in normal pace. The current MMR ranges for different leagues are actually smaller than they were in WoL. It takes roughly 20 straight wins to pass one league range (size of different leagues differ little bit, except that master is much larger).
You wondered why you mostly face people only from your league. The matchmaker was also changed regarding this when HotS was published. It not only takes account your MMR, but also your league. It primarily matches you with opponents from same league who have similar MMR as you and secondarily opponents from other leagues who have similar MMR as you.
I am sure many have realized this when they have been promoted. Before promotion most of the opponents are from the old league, but after the promotion the opponents are mostly from the new league. Remember that when you are promoted, you have just passed the lower MMR threshold of your new league (exception new accounts/accounts that faced MMR reset). If the league would not affect matchmaking then roughly half of your opponents would be from your old league and half from your new league.
One purpose for this change was surely to hide the effects of MMR decay. You can imagine how many complaints there would be when players would return from their 4+ weeks hiatus and suddenly would be mostly facing one or two leagues lower opponents than before. They would quickly realize that their MMR has been changed (max decay corresponds roughly little more than one typical league range in MMR). But as this mechanic is in place, the decayed players do not necessarily realize that their MMR has been dropped before they play their next placement matches in the beginning of the subsequent season and get demoted.
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That's good, because I just like to play this game for fun. I am busy with work and my career so when I log on I play a game and get STOMPED, I fucking LOVE it! This game is SO much fun. I mean... nothing makes me want to play this game more than losing my one game every 3 days and not having my MMR decay to adjust to my skill level. No just keep sending me up against people who play 20+ games a day. Like how da fuq? TWO FUCKING WEEKS!?! FUCK YOU! If I have to wait 2 fucking weeks I might as well not play the fucking game. It's dying anyways. That is why people are so upset! They used to be this rank and that, but people are quitting so the percentages are skewed and now people are dropping ranks and don't like it and your system can't handle the decline in population.
Edit: The REAL reason the ladder system is so fucked up is because all these plat/diamond Terran and Zergs are switching to Protoss and fucking up everyone's MMR when they lose.
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On January 08 2014 23:08 Ben... wrote:
I'm starting to play again (took a few weeks off) and I'm going to just play unranked until this is resolved. Leagues were kind of meaningless to start with, now they mean absolutely nothing due to there being no consistency in matchmaking anymore. I have a busy schedule for university, so having to fight MMR decay just to play decent opponents in ranked is unrealistic for me at this point.
You realize you only need to play one game ever 2 weeks and no decay at all? The ladder is perfectly fine for me, I play a few games a week and have been diamond all the time (which is where I should be). Ladder was fucked first 2 seasons of hots, was master back then, wasnt worthy.
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On January 08 2014 23:47 Lurtzer wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 23:43 Tyrhanius wrote:
Plz fix unranked games. Unrank shouldn't have his own MMR but it has to be the same than the ranked one, expect losing or winning unranked game doesn't change it. People use to free lose on unrank because they don't want to play some MU. Could be better too if you can choose your MU you want to play.
At this moment as rank vs unranked exist bronze meet diamand/master and it's very frustrating for both.
A button with " i off race " could be cool too, which permit players to play at a lower MMR to discover a new race, and warn the other that his opponent is not a real dimand/master. Could be less frustrating. That button would be too easy to abuse.
You should just have three different MMR, one for protoss, one for zerg and one for terran. Whenever you ladder, you should be able to choose which race you want to play as (whether it be only one race, two races or all three races) and bnet should try to pick a suitable opponent for you.
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Yeah I was masters season 2, dropped to diamond season 3, dropped to plat season 5, now dropped to gold in season 7. Each season I played 1-2 games to get placed. That's pretty ridiculous.
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On January 14 2014 05:32 NintendoStar wrote:
Yeah I was masters season 2, dropped to diamond season 3, dropped to plat season 5, now dropped to gold in season 7. Each season I played 1-2 games to get placed. That's pretty ridiculous.
Same Here i started somewhere in platinum when the game launched, then i played up into masters where i stayed for 3 seasons, then i basically stopped playing 1v1 and since hots i just got downranked every season.
the reason for it is simple, ladders are placed in percentages, and since a lot of people stop playing, (at least 1v1 ladder) there are not as many people to rank in masters (wich is 2% of all server players) so its obvious that a gold player hast to play against a diamond or plat player because there are not as many people left to play with....
the only hope i have is that blizzard trys to make the game simply more fun to play, easier to access by new players and a good final expansion
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United States12235 Posts
On January 14 2014 07:09 Pandarama wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 05:32 NintendoStar wrote:
Yeah I was masters season 2, dropped to diamond season 3, dropped to plat season 5, now dropped to gold in season 7. Each season I played 1-2 games to get placed. That's pretty ridiculous. Same Here i started somewhere in platinum when the game launched, then i played up into masters where i stayed for 3 seasons, then i basically stopped playing 1v1 and since hots i just got downranked every season. the reason for it is simple, ladders are placed in percentages, and since a lot of people stop playing, (at least 1v1 ladder) there are not as many people to rank in masters (wich is 2% of all server players) so its obvious that a gold player hast to play against a diamond or plat player because there are not as many people left to play with.... the only hope i have is that blizzard trys to make the game simply more fun to play, easier to access by new players and a good final expansion
That's not correct, and it's been explained why several times already.
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Finally hit bronze (Yay!) after playing a few games every season. My hots winrate is 72% with 57 games played. Last time I lost more than 1 game per Season was in platinum.
Season 2 2013 - diamond
Season 3 2013 - diamond
Season 4 2013 - platinum
Season 5 2013 - gold
Season 6 2013 - silver
Season 1 2014 - bronze
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Yeah the big problem here is not the fact that mmr deflates over time. I understand why it would and it makes sense, and the fact that it has a limit to how much it can deflate is a very good thing that would limit it from going overboard. But the problem is obvious in what happened in my situation. I didn't just stop playing and come back months later. I stopped playing a lot, but I would play 1-2 games a season. Therefore every time I played a game, the system would see me as an active player again. Then after that game it would see me as going inactive and take off 300 mmr. This would happen every single season, and in the end that resulted in me going from master to gold. Over time. This needs to be changed.
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On January 21 2014 10:19 NintendoStar wrote:
Yeah the big problem here is not the fact that mmr deflates over time. I understand why it would and it makes sense, and the fact that it has a limit to how much it can deflate is a very good thing that would limit it from going overboard. But the problem is obvious in what happened in my situation. I didn't just stop playing and come back months later. I stopped playing a lot, but I would play 1-2 games a season. Therefore every time I played a game, the system would see me as an active player again. Then after that game it would see me as going inactive and take off 300 mmr. This would happen every single season, and in the end that resulted in me going from master to gold. Over time. This needs to be changed.
or you could, like just win 10 games in a row and get promoted again. I mean you stoopped playing for a while, and 1-2 games is not really playing. What rank would you like to see yourself? In my eyes, your situation seems pretty fair.
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On January 21 2014 10:56 MysteryMeat1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2014 10:19 NintendoStar wrote:
Yeah the big problem here is not the fact that mmr deflates over time. I understand why it would and it makes sense, and the fact that it has a limit to how much it can deflate is a very good thing that would limit it from going overboard. But the problem is obvious in what happened in my situation. I didn't just stop playing and come back months later. I stopped playing a lot, but I would play 1-2 games a season. Therefore every time I played a game, the system would see me as an active player again. Then after that game it would see me as going inactive and take off 300 mmr. This would happen every single season, and in the end that resulted in me going from master to gold. Over time. This needs to be changed. or you could, like just win 10 games in a row and get promoted again. I mean you stoopped playing for a while, and 1-2 games is not really playing. What rank would you like to see yourself? In my eyes, your situation seems pretty fair.
Not everyone plays enough to "like just win 10 games" as a small fraction of their games. The problem is very real for people that don't play frequently. I think it is pretty common to play a few (for example 5) games every now and then (say every 2-3 weeks) when you happen to have time. Your skill will be pretty constant (as you never were that good anyway, so not playing for month wont change much), but almost all the games you play ever will be bashing noobs as your MMR keeps decaying.
And that is 1on1. Then team games with separate MMR and decay timers (or have they fixed that now?) for every group of people is where the real problem is.
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On January 21 2014 11:06 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2014 10:56 MysteryMeat1 wrote:On January 21 2014 10:19 NintendoStar wrote:
Yeah the big problem here is not the fact that mmr deflates over time. I understand why it would and it makes sense, and the fact that it has a limit to how much it can deflate is a very good thing that would limit it from going overboard. But the problem is obvious in what happened in my situation. I didn't just stop playing and come back months later. I stopped playing a lot, but I would play 1-2 games a season. Therefore every time I played a game, the system would see me as an active player again. Then after that game it would see me as going inactive and take off 300 mmr. This would happen every single season, and in the end that resulted in me going from master to gold. Over time. This needs to be changed. or you could, like just win 10 games in a row and get promoted again. I mean you stoopped playing for a while, and 1-2 games is not really playing. What rank would you like to see yourself? In my eyes, your situation seems pretty fair. Not everyone plays enough to "like just win 10 games" as a small fraction of their games.
Also note that 10 straight wins is not enough.To overcome max decay you need roughly 20 wins more than losses. It is rare that someone wins 20 in a row. Also if winrate after max decay would be 60%, it would require roughly 100 matches (60W - 40L). And this was only to overcome 1 max decay...
On January 21 2014 11:06 Cascade wrote:
The problem is very real for people that don't play frequently. I think it is pretty common to play a few (for example 5) games every now and then (say every 2-3 weeks) when you happen to have time. Your skill will be pretty constant (as you never were that good anyway, so not playing for month wont change much), but almost all the games you play ever will be bashing noobs as your MMR keeps decaying.
And that is 1on1. Then team games with separate MMR and decay timers (or have they fixed that now?) for every group of people is where the real problem is.
And yes. If you play 5 games in a row every 3rd week & win all of them, then your MMR is decreasing. 5 wins against similar MMR opponents is not enough to overcome the decay from 3 weeks inactivity (roughly 10 straight wins would do it).
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On January 14 2014 07:09 Pandarama wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 05:32 NintendoStar wrote:
Yeah I was masters season 2, dropped to diamond season 3, dropped to plat season 5, now dropped to gold in season 7. Each season I played 1-2 games to get placed. That's pretty ridiculous. Same Here i started somewhere in platinum when the game launched, then i played up into masters where i stayed for 3 seasons, then i basically stopped playing 1v1 and since hots i just got downranked every season. the reason for it is simple, ladders are placed in percentages, and since a lot of people stop playing, (at least 1v1 ladder) there are not as many people to rank in masters (wich is 2% of all server players) so its obvious that a gold player hast to play against a diamond or plat player because there are not as mhttp://www.teamliquid.net/any people left to play with.... the only hope i have is that blizzard trys to make the game simply more fun to play, easier to access by new players and a good final expansion
Sounds like you stopped playing a lot?Then it should take you no time at all to get back to Diamond at least. Unless you are really rusty.
Iv'e never encountered the MMR decay problem. I didn't play much so i got moved from Dia to Plat then worked my way back up with fairly balanced matches.
I'm hoping this patch moves me from High Diamond to masters lol :D Probably wont yet though.
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On January 21 2014 11:42 Za7oX wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 07:09 Pandarama wrote:On January 14 2014 05:32 NintendoStar wrote:
Yeah I was masters season 2, dropped to diamond season 3, dropped to plat season 5, now dropped to gold in season 7. Each season I played 1-2 games to get placed. That's pretty ridiculous. Same Here i started somewhere in platinum when the game launched, then i played up into masters where i stayed for 3 seasons, then i basically stopped playing 1v1 and since hots i just got downranked every season. the reason for it is simple, ladders are placed in percentages, and since a lot of people stop playing, (at least 1v1 ladder) there are not as many people to rank in masters (wich is 2% of all server players) so its obvious that a gold player hast to play against a diamond or plat player because there are not as mhttp://www.teamliquid.net/any people left to play with.... the only hope i have is that blizzard trys to make the game simply more fun to play, easier to access by new players and a good final expansion Sounds like you stopped playing a lot?Then it should take you no time at all to get back to Diamond at least. Unless you are really rusty. Iv'e never encountered the MMR decay problem. I didn't play much so i got moved from Dia to Plat then worked my way back up with fairly balanced matches. I'm hoping this patch moves me from High Diamond to masters lol :D Probably wont yet though.
Sounds as if you weren't affected much, so it's unlikely. Best of luck, though.
I was beginning to think there were just way less people playing than about a half a year ago. Got decayed from dia-plat to silver, and then to bronze. Over 30 games in and still playing random-skill opponents from silver to plat.
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I honestly don't see a problem with the MMR. I'm fairly active and I'm top gold, and all my matches are against people I feel I have a chance to beat, or if I lose I feel I made mistakes that lost me the game and not that I was playing against an overmatched opponent. Even when I was in Silver re-learning the game I would play people that had reached Diamond or Masters previously, or so it said on their profile, but who knows how much of that was from someone leveling their account? Or who knows how much they've actually played or where their skill set actually is currently? There might have been 1 or 2 games where I felt my opponent was just way better than me, but even then I had made many mistakes that put me at a big disadvantage, so I think a lot of this MMR stuff is just complaining and over-exaggeration. If you only play 1-2 games a season, you shouldn't be ranked into Masters league because that is taking a spot from someone who is playing everyday and someone who is active. If everyone who played 1-2 games a season were placed into Masters based on those 2 matches, if you were actually an active player in Masters you would never find an even match.
And if you are in Gold league actively playing every day, and are on a current win streak of say, 7 games, it's a good test to play someone who has placed into Diamond before, or even Masters for that matter, and test your skill level against better competition. So what if you lose one game? Watch the replay and learn from mistakes you made, because if you fix some of those mistakes you will definitely be able to beat players of that skill level soon enough. I think MMR is fine, but one thing that could change is the in-season demotions not being allowed, and maybe something that helps indicate improvement over-time. I really like the implementation of the "stars" on the post-game review page that indicates you did better than your average in certain areas, and all the graphs and different post-game options is a very good tool. All in all, there are just minor tweaks that could be done, but overall I think the system is fair.
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On January 22 2014 05:13 ArTiFaKs wrote:
I honestly don't see a problem with the MMR. I'm fairly active and I'm top gold, and all my matches are against people I feel I have a chance to beat, or if I lose I feel I made mistakes that lost me the game and not that I was playing against an overmatched opponent. Even when I was in Silver re-learning the game I would play people that had reached Diamond or Masters previously, or so it said on their profile, but who knows how much of that was from someone leveling their account? Or who knows how much they've actually played or where their skill set actually is currently? There might have been 1 or 2 games where I felt my opponent was just way better than me, but even then I had made many mistakes that put me at a big disadvantage, so I think a lot of this MMR stuff is just complaining and over-exaggeration. If you only play 1-2 games a season, you shouldn't be ranked into Masters league because that is taking a spot from someone who is playing everyday and someone who is active. If everyone who played 1-2 games a season were placed into Masters based on those 2 matches, if you were actually an active player in Masters you would never find an even match.
And if you are in Gold league actively playing every day, and are on a current win streak of say, 7 games, it's a good test to play someone who has placed into Diamond before, or even Masters for that matter, and test your skill level against better competition. So what if you lose one game? Watch the replay and learn from mistakes you made, because if you fix some of those mistakes you will definitely be able to beat players of that skill level soon enough. I think MMR is fine, but one thing that could change is the in-season demotions not being allowed, and maybe something that helps indicate improvement over-time. I really like the implementation of the "stars" on the post-game review page that indicates you did better than your average in certain areas, and all the graphs and different post-game options is a very good tool. All in all, there are just minor tweaks that could be done, but overall I think the system is fair.
I don't think the issue most people are having is being matched unfairly against better or worse players (even if it does happen), but the fact that your ladder rank doesn't display your skill the same way it did in Wings of Liberty. The player distribution has been skewed significantly towards lower leagues for the past months, to the point where Bronze league contains more than 40 % of the players (compared to the 8 % Blizzard were targeting). This is a problem because it means that a lot of players will be demoted despite playing actively and becoming better. As an example, I was platinum in WoL, got to Diamond in the first few months of HotS, and I have since become demoted to Silver despite being active and improving a lot.
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took me something like 120 games to get back to my league from last season (I was active except for the two weeks off for holidays)
the fact that I played over 120 games in the last two weeks should say something about how active I usually am...
I like the idea of inactivity decay... but it really shouldn't be as bad as it is! (unless it's more an issue of the league bounds).
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EPT
