EPTLeagues being adjusted - Page 4
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padfoota
Taiwan1571 Posts
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On May 11 2014 12:48 Blargh wrote: Making league (very rough) skill classes imo makes more sense than comparing oneself to the population. Saying "I am a gold Zerg" carries more meaning this way. ("I am an average Zerg player.") While the bell-curve portion is a good point, I think people are more concerned with where they are relative to other people, not so much what "skill range" they are at. On May 11 2014 12:48 Blargh wrote:Again, I think it'd be better to have even more precise tiers than just the 5.5 leagues (bronze - grandmasters). Or just giving an exact (MEANINGFUL) rating and percentile. Exact standing distracts from the actual game. (Are you playing the game or for a place in the ladder? Should players play for a high placement in the ladder, or rather enjoy the game?) | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On May 11 2014 22:49 Salient wrote: Please just display MMR. Leagues and seasons are silly. Just show the MMR like a chess Elo rating. There is no need for mysterious ladder rules. Just display MMR and show percentile ranking. Please don't show MMR. Having a somewhat higher MMR than another player does not mean one can beat him consistently, so it is not useful for comparison. MMR and confidence interval (the second parameter in this Glicko-liked system) are not always reflecting the actual current standing of a player anyway. | ||
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SoniC_eu
Denmark1008 Posts
1) Display MMR. And for some reason that isnt known, this is not possible. 2) For everyone stating "oh leagues dont matter, its how much skill you have". Are you skilled enough to know how much skill you have? If you win against what you think is a good player, are you skilled then? It is all relative, because everyone is in a dynamic position going up and down in skill. So I think knowing which league you are in, gives you an indication of what your skill lvl is AROUND, and that if you get a promotion, you know that your skill is getting better. How the fuck else are we supposed to know if we are improving, in a FACTUAL and logical way. 3) I welcome the old way WoL was in leagues, because having a rdiculous amount of ppl in bronze-gold isnt indicative of how much time and effort is being put into the game. I say this as a diamond player in WoL who had to fight his way through a lotta gold and plats (who play REALLY well, 1000s of games under their belt) and is diamond again in Hots just last season...only to be demoted to plat in the new season. So hell ye I will be the first to admit, I feel nice that my hard work is being rewarded by a shiny diamond badge. Is that so bad, in this ladder ranked system? | ||
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[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
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Fus
Sweden1112 Posts
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Excalibur_Z
United States12244 Posts
On May 11 2014 21:01 frajen86 wrote: Right, so just to be clear, the target percentages for HotS are (2/18/20/32/20/8) and they have been that way for a while. Blizzard didn't changing those targets. So this is what I have an issue with. The leagues are not "closer" to WoL... where is the evidence for this. The "league boundaries" that Psione is talking about in that bnet post relates to league threshold as MMR. Not the actual percentages that make things up. Just as an example (I'm completely making these numbers up)... Let's pretend these are the thresholds for leagues at the beginning of league creation. League - MMR range - (Percentage of active players) Masters - 1500-1800 MMR (2%) Diamond - 1200-1499 MMR (18%) Platinum - 1000-1199 MMR (20%) Gold - 700-999 MMR (32%) Silver - 400-699 MMR (20%) Bronze - 1-399 MMR (8%) Over time, there's MMR decay due to players being inactive. So maybe this happens: Masters - 1500-1800 MMR (2%) Diamond - 1200-1499 MMR (18%) Platinum - 1000-1199 MMR (20%) Gold - 700-999 MMR (26%) <- gold league inactivity means that their MMR has fallen Silver - 400-699 MMR (14%) <- silver league inactivity means that their MMR has fallen Bronze - 1-399 MMR (20%) <- so now the people who are in gold and silver league actually have an MMR that "belongs" in bronze league, due to inactivity. So to fix this, Blizzard changes the MMR thresholds so that the percentages work again. It changes the thresholds based on the MMR values of the active players in each league. (again, numbers made up) Masters - 1500-1800 MMR (2%) Diamond - 1200-1499 MMR (18%) Platinum - 1000-1199 MMR (20%) Gold - 400-999 MMR (32%) <- the threshold for gold is lower, so some players that used to be in silver end up in gold Silver - 200-399 MMR (20%) <- the threshold for silver is lower, so some players that used to be in bronze end up in silver Bronze - 1-199 MMR (8%) <- the active players that are truly at the bottom of MMR end up bronze, as expected The league distributions percentages end up the same as before, but the MMR threshold is different. Some percentages of those inactives will still be in Bronze, some in silver, and some in gold, and this is why relying on Nios and SC2ranks for league distribution numbers is really misleading. Ultimately, the distribution of active players is still HotS and not WoL (where it would be 20/20/20 for gold to bronze). When I read the original post, it came across as, "The league distributions are changed! This is for the better!" But for me, this was more of like, the league distributions got adjusted to deal with inactive players. Seeing a promotion is still nice, but the truth is you could have been promoted just because there were more new active players that had a lower MMR than you. Example: In the beginning, you have an MMR of 250. Let's say Bronze league was 1-300. Due to player inactivity, Blizzard changes the MMR range for Bronze league to 1-200. Silver is now 201-400 MMR. You play 1 game and lose. MMR drops to 240. But now you're in the silver league range, so you get promoted to silver. It feels good, but the numbers are just adjusting to fit the active player base. The real issue is that Blizzard doesn't post all the mechanics of this stuff anywhere AFAIK so we have to sit around semi-guessing about all this stuff lol Just to add to this a bit, when the adjustment happened a few months ago, Diamond ended up wider (up about 100 I believe, to 450). Now with this most recent adjustment, both Diamond and Platinum were probably widened (we'll have to see what the latest MMR-Stats parse says). Gold, Silver, and Bronze were almost certainly narrowed for a second time, and if these sort of adjustments become regular, those leagues may shrink even more. That could potentially create a new problem. Not to hyperbolize too much, but what constitutes a "Gold player" or "Silver player" could become even muddier over time. Back in Wings of Liberty, leagues were subdivided into division tiers, which you could think of as mini-leagues. The idea behind these tiers was to group similarly-skilled players together. Diamond covered an MMR range of about 450 back then too, but it consisted of 7 tiers roughly 63 rating in size. The reason division tiers were removed is because their estimates about player skill were too conservative, meaning the buckets were too narrow (if you deviated +/- 100 from your initial-placement MMR you could find it too easy -- or worse, too difficult -- to get any points). It would be really bad if Bronze, Silver, and Gold were to shrink that far a year or two down the line, reintroducing a previously-solved problem because of the deflation caused by MMR decay. The issue on the other side was that Diamond became an ocean, with skill ranges so wide that players felt they needed to create arbitrary "high/mid/low" Diamond markers, and that's another pitfall Blizzard needs to sidestep. The elegant thing about the Heart of the Swarm ladder distribution is that while it looks more like a bell curve in terms of percentages, the rating ranges for each league were actually pretty uniform. Now it seems like we could be straying away from that uniformity, and not in a good way. | ||
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RavingRaver
Canada57 Posts
On May 11 2014 21:01 frajen86 wrote: Right, so just to be clear, the target percentages for HotS are (2/18/20/32/20/8) and they have been that way for a while. Blizzard didn't changing those targets. So this is what I have an issue with. The leagues are not "closer" to WoL... where is the evidence for this. The "league boundaries" that Psione is talking about in that bnet post relates to league threshold as MMR. Not the actual percentages that make things up. Just as an example (I'm completely making these numbers up)... Let's pretend these are the thresholds for leagues at the beginning of league creation. League - MMR range - (Percentage of active players) Masters - 1500-1800 MMR (2%) Diamond - 1200-1499 MMR (18%) Platinum - 1000-1199 MMR (20%) Gold - 700-999 MMR (32%) Silver - 400-699 MMR (20%) Bronze - 1-399 MMR (8%) Over time, there's MMR decay due to players being inactive. So maybe this happens: Masters - 1500-1800 MMR (2%) Diamond - 1200-1499 MMR (18%) Platinum - 1000-1199 MMR (20%) Gold - 700-999 MMR (26%) <- gold league inactivity means that their MMR has fallen Silver - 400-699 MMR (14%) <- silver league inactivity means that their MMR has fallen Bronze - 1-399 MMR (20%) <- so now the people who are in gold and silver league actually have an MMR that "belongs" in bronze league, due to inactivity. So to fix this, Blizzard changes the MMR thresholds so that the percentages work again. It changes the thresholds based on the MMR values of the active players in each league. (again, numbers made up) Masters - 1500-1800 MMR (2%) Diamond - 1200-1499 MMR (18%) Platinum - 1000-1199 MMR (20%) Gold - 400-999 MMR (32%) <- the threshold for gold is lower, so some players that used to be in silver end up in gold Silver - 200-399 MMR (20%) <- the threshold for silver is lower, so some players that used to be in bronze end up in silver Bronze - 1-199 MMR (8%) <- the active players that are truly at the bottom of MMR end up bronze, as expected The league distributions percentages end up the same as before, but the MMR threshold is different. Some percentages of those inactives will still be in Bronze, some in silver, and some in gold, and this is why relying on Nios and SC2ranks for league distribution numbers is really misleading. Ultimately, the distribution of active players is still HotS and not WoL (where it would be 20/20/20 for gold to bronze). When I read the original post, it came across as, "The league distributions are changed! This is for the better!" But for me, this was more of like, the league distributions got adjusted to deal with inactive players. Seeing a promotion is still nice, but the truth is you could have been promoted just because there were more new active players that had a lower MMR than you. Example: In the beginning, you have an MMR of 250. Let's say Bronze league was 1-300. Due to player inactivity, Blizzard changes the MMR range for Bronze league to 1-200. Silver is now 201-400 MMR. You play 1 game and lose. MMR drops to 240. But now you're in the silver league range, so you get promoted to silver. It feels good, but the numbers are just adjusting to fit the active player base. The real issue is that Blizzard doesn't post all the mechanics of this stuff anywhere AFAIK so we have to sit around semi-guessing about all this stuff lol If Blizzard made these changes to deal with inactive players then I am fine with that too. Whatever the reason, I'm sure Blizzard knows something we don't know to warrant these changes in the league distribution. On May 12 2014 01:38 Excalibur_Z wrote: Just to add to this a bit, when the adjustment happened a few months ago, Diamond ended up wider (up about 100 I believe, to 450). Now with this most recent adjustment, both Diamond and Platinum were probably widened (we'll have to see what the latest MMR-Stats parse says). Gold, Silver, and Bronze were almost certainly narrowed for a second time, and if these sort of adjustments become regular, those leagues may shrink even more. That could potentially create a new problem. Not to hyperbolize too much, but what constitutes a "Gold player" or "Silver player" could become even muddier over time. Back in Wings of Liberty, leagues were subdivided into division tiers, which you could think of as mini-leagues. The idea behind these tiers was to group similarly-skilled players together. Diamond covered an MMR range of about 450 back then too, but it consisted of 7 tiers roughly 63 rating in size. The reason division tiers were removed is because their estimates about player skill were too conservative, meaning the buckets were too narrow (if you deviated +/- 100 from your initial-placement MMR you could find it too easy -- or worse, too difficult -- to get any points). It would be really bad if Bronze, Silver, and Gold were to shrink that far a year or two down the line, reintroducing a previously-solved problem because of the deflation caused by MMR decay. The issue on the other side was that Diamond became an ocean, with skill ranges so wide that players felt they needed to create arbitrary "high/mid/low" Diamond markers, and that's another pitfall Blizzard needs to sidestep. The elegant thing about the Heart of the Swarm ladder distribution is that while it looks more like a bell curve in terms of percentages, the rating ranges for each league were actually pretty uniform. Now it seems like we could be straying away from that uniformity, and not in a good way. Thanks for this analysis. It explains a lot that is not well known about how league distribution has changed from WoL to HotS. | ||
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SAlechko
Israel15 Posts
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On May 12 2014 03:10 SAlechko wrote: How significant is decay, anyway? I'm in gold, and played 10 games in total over the last three months. Won them all, no platinum in sight. Confidence interval. It widens when you don't play frequently. Before you get a promotion, you not only need the proper MMR, but also a small enough confidence interval. | ||
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RavingRaver
Canada57 Posts
On May 12 2014 03:10 SAlechko wrote: How significant is decay, anyway? I'm in gold, and played 10 games in total over the last three months. Won them all, no platinum in sight. I've heard that MMR decay starts to kick in after playing less than 1 game every two weeks if I'm not mistaken. | ||
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Shellshock
United States97276 Posts
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SAlechko
Israel15 Posts
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RavingRaver
Canada57 Posts
On May 12 2014 13:00 Shellshock wrote: Did they adjust it for 1v1s only or team leagues as well? I believe they adjusted it for 1v1s and team leagues from what I've been hearing through word of mouth, but I've heard no official statement on this. | ||
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Yorkie
United States12612 Posts
On May 12 2014 13:00 Shellshock wrote: Did they adjust it for 1v1s only or team leagues as well? Won't matter, you and Darkhorse will still be in Bronze | ||
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RavingRaver
Canada57 Posts
On May 12 2014 13:20 SAlechko wrote: So it's decay and confidence interval? Decay and confidence interval are often intertwined as confidence interval increases as decay increases. In other words, if you want a promotion it's best to not let MMR decay occur hence play at least one game every two weeks if I'm not mistaken. | ||
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FFW_Rude
France10201 Posts
On May 11 2014 04:27 aZealot wrote: I tried to tell a friend this, that almost all of us are just bad at this game, and it annoyed him. He is a bronze player who sometimes gets matched with silvers and he felt like I was putting down his play. Different people see this in different ways. Maybe because bronze players are ALWAYS reminded that they are indeed not worthy of playing the game. Just look around. I didn't play much and when i hit bronze (thx decay), everytime i was having a discussion on the game i got the : "You don't know what you are talking about you're bronze). (Of course it's even worse when the bronze kill the diamond player because you got to be a lucky bronze) All my bronze friends are really sensitive about their league because they don't want to be bullied everytime they play a game. Didn't play a lot at the end of the other season. Was ranked Gold with 68% WR at the end (i think). Played my placement match last week-end. I'm still Gold  I don't care about leagues mostly (unless i'm 80%WR for 2week and don't get promoted) but i understand why it's important to people to get promoted. It's a sense of achievement. A player that is promoted is likely to play again/more than a player that can be promoted at all. That's not true for every people. I see a lot of people saying they don't care about league and that it's meaningless but a lot of time, those people say there league proudly. The only downside with the league adjustement is that you need to be more carefull while recruting players in teams (i mean amateur teams). I wouldn't mind to have more things on leagues though. Like stats on how many bronze/silver/diamond/Master player you faced. How many did you beat. What league where you when it happened etc... Showing MMR is a not great idea since it's pretty hard to understand how it works and that would just be random numbers on your profile. | ||
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StatixEx
United Kingdom779 Posts
If you were GM ud barely lose untill u start seeing that GM colour next to your opponents, ir all intent and purpose . . ur gm. if im playing plat with the occasional dias . . .im plat! Its all about just playing the game against someone who is about as good as you and i think sc2 is possibly the best game ever to have this balance truly right. In my clan i dont beat the high dias, i dont ever beat the master players but im 50/50 against the plats . . so . . . yeah | ||
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THC Zerg
United States1 Post
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KOtical
Germany451 Posts
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