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Hello Team Liquid, I have not really posted a thread in the SC2 General section in a long time, and I don't usually write things this long. I posted this on Blizzard's website and I feel that I have hit some valid points and would like to open it for discussion here as well. Please keep in mind this is from my experience on SC2 ladder with over 15 thousand 1v1 ladder games on several accounts, Thank you.
So I created a topic last night that I guess was "against the forum guidelines" , which is understandable since I was extremely angry. This topic I will be more professional and level headed.
About me: I have played SC for 15+ years, since SC1:BW. I was never a top foreign player in SC1:BW but I was above the average Joe.
I have played SC2 since WOL Beta, so 4+ years. I am a 18 Times Masters player and have never been promoted to GM. Last season I was stuck in Diamond, played almost 800 games and towards the end of the season I was playing ONLY GM / Masters players, still not getting promoted. This season I played 29 games and was immediately promoted to Masters with 21-8 record. When I got promoted to Masters it placed me at rank 18, 130-137 points or so. I continued to win but after being promoted only receiving +4 / +8 points a game, so I continued to win 2-3 games , +4 , +8, +4. Then I lost the next two-three games. The next two games the amount of points I lost is ridiculous. -18,-21,-16, and so on. Even when I have an above 50% W/L ratio (Which the ladder system attempts to force upon every player) , the point distribution does not seem to be fair at all. And now from 130-137 points , I am now sitting at 30 points (LOL) , Because of the poor point distribution, even when I am above 50% W/L ratio. Please do not reply saying " Well just keep playing , the point distribution will level out", AND THEN WHAT? Another Season I cannot get GM because the ladder point distribution is broken?
How can I possibly ever get to GrandMasters when every single player in my division has around the same if not worse W/L ratio than me but my point distribution is not level with the people in my division? The people in my division are not gaining +4,+6, +8 points a game and then losing -18,-21,-16 points EVERY loss, even vs ex GM, ex masters, ECT.
The problem is not just dedicated just onto the point distribution, the problem is also the amount of HACKERS that I am playing on ladder every single day, and it is not questionable hacking , it is 100% obvious never scouting, 100%HARD COUNTERING builds. I am not the only person who has been complaining about this issue, there are several threads on Teamliquid, and on Reddit about this issue.
The hackers are not just MapHacking, they have Production tab hacks, you cannot even prove that they hack really when they never look through fog of war, the only way that it can be proved is through extreme analysis, and Blizzard's "Warden", but I regret to inform that I think the "Ban Waves" are not ideal, and I don't think Blizzard's "Warden" Anti-Hack is ideal either.
There is a long list of hacks and exploits now that Blizzard needs to address to make laddering an even somewhat enjoyable experience.
List of Hacks and Exploits and Problems in Ladder and in general. :
-MapHacking
-Production Hacks
-Resolution Hacks( This is a hack that gives the player a larger more zoomed out screen, he can see more of the screen than normal, like the Blizzard Observer Mode IN GAME., I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.)
-Blink Hack (Automatically blinks stalkers for the player, giving protoss huge micro management advantage)
-Auto Inject Hack (Automatically injects queens for you, is pretty easy to notice, if the Zerg player has NO EXTRA energy on his queens ALL GAME.)
-Players glitching / exploiting ladder by logging into SC2 on another game while they are in a game, which causes the game to not show in the match history, and causes the player to not receive a loss, many players have gotten to Masters and GM using this glitch, which in turn makes the ladder distribution even more broken.
-Account boosters in public / Blizzard channels. (People spamming channels saying they will boost accounts for money, generally these players are hackers, exploiters, and fake GM players, they most likely were boosted to GM or cheated to get there.
-Ladder distribution / point system / promotional system is broken. ::: I am living proof of this issue ( go back to the top of the page for more description on my specific ladder issue, or just look into my profile....)
-- --Once again I do not know if this is caused by the player over playing ruining his MMR(Which is ridiculous and I don't think this is the issue) , or that the system is just poor and needs to be totally revamped, a GREAT example of a GREAT working ladder was in SC1:BROODWAR, ladder servers like PGT(Pro Gaming Tour) , Gamei (Korean Ladder Server), SC2GG ( SC1 Server before SC2 was released with auto match making), iCCup, ect. ALL of these SC1:BW ladder servers were a way more efficient system, better way to track improvement and promotions felt more rewarding , (Do any of you remember how difficult you were fighting to get that A- rank in broodwar? Yeah, so do I. When was the last time you felt that way? I haven't felt this way since I got put in Masters back in like WOL Beta / Early stage of WOL. , and even then it as not nearly as rewarding.)
-- -- -- Last season was a prime example, Masters was only the top 1% of players, GM was full of hackers, boosted accounts, Diamond was full of ex masters (Like me last season) , and Masters full of Diamonds. A midst of the broken ladder system, we were given the Dream Pool. Derp.
-The majority of the maps have been not been very good, the Dream Pool was a prime example of this. ALL of the maps during Early WOL , Beta, and really up until this point have been poorly designed, imbalanced, too short of rush distance, ect. And even now the maps are so unorthodox and all of them have relatively difficult to reach 3rds.
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I only play 1v1 ladder, I do not play team games, I do not play custom games, I play solely ladder because for the last 4+ years I have been trying to reach the top of the ladder, been trying to get to Grand Masters, but I almost feel that it is impossible for me, I don't know if it is because the MMR on my account is ****ED because I have over 11 thousand games and my account is totally messed up, or it is the ladder, but one of the two is completely broken, if not both.
What am I supposed to do? Buy another account and cross my fingers that this next 4 years and next 11 thousand 300+ games will go better this time?
As I stated before my last thread was closed for being inappropriate so I worded this one more professionally and made sure I followed the guidelines, I have been one of your biggest supporters since SC1:BW Blizzard, I have played 15+ years, and I promote StarCraft my entire life, but I regret to inform that my gaming experience is being ruined by the poor ladder system, hackers, cheaters, boosters, ect.
I would politely ask that PSIONE, Blizzard, or both PLEASE, PLEASE take into consideration MY ACCOUNT SPECIFICALLY, if there is an issue with it then PLEASE FIX IT. And if not then to take into consideration the ladder system. I think that Blizzard needs to take a little more from StarCraft 1's Past, like the very best thing, the LADDER SYSTEM.....
EDIT : Updated OP with Blink / Auto Inject Hack.
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Link to the full thread on battle.net : http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/15699466115?page=1
Poll: Should SC2's Ladder be Reworked?Yes, but a completely different system. (194) 55% Yes, more like one of the Ladder Systems in BW. (96) 27% No, it should stay the same. (63) 18% 353 total votes Your vote: Should SC2's Ladder be Reworked? (Vote): Yes, more like one of the Ladder Systems in BW.
(Vote): Yes, but a completely different system.
(Vote): No, it should stay the same.
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I've been feeling for a while that the only way forward is for the sc2 community to create leagues/ladders separate from the official blizzard one, and force people to run invasive anti-cheat software on their computer for the wins to count. I believe ESEA does something similar for CS:GO - they basically ask you to install a rootkit on your machine. This isn't really ideal, but unfortunately sc2 is so poorly designed that there is no realistic hope of blizzard ever stopping cheaters. I never played BW at a competitive level but I can only assume that there must have been similar software developed at that time...
If we keep waiting for blizzard to save us, we're going to be very dissapointed. They appear to have neither the interest nor ability in keeping their games cheat-free. It's all on us to do something.
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The way leagues and divisions work don't feel that great, but the SC2 ladder system is extremely good at putting you where you deserve to be very quickly. All you need is like 30 games and you'll be where you should be.
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On January 17 2015 16:03 ZAiNs wrote:
The way leagues and divisions work don't feel that great, but the SC2 ladder system is extremely good at putting you where you deserve to be very quickly. All you need is like 30 games and you'll be where you should be.
That is not the case, which is what ggzerg is writing about.
The system matches you up with the right people (most of the time) but your rank (dia/m/gm) is not an accurate display of your current skill level in the higher leagues.
Hackers and boosters take spots and overall screw with the system. There needs to be more and better diversification between the leagues so you actually see improvement. Losing 5 games of points worth in one loss is discouraging for somebody trying to motivate himself to get a higher rank...
I can certainly see what ggzerg talks about. What would your ideal alternative be?
Also note, Unranked accounts have a wider range of searching for opponents, which might be an explanation for the phenomenon of you losing tons of points in a game and gaining little: the matchmaking tries to get you a match fast and as a result you often play far lower ranked players.
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Can someone tell me what the Brood War laddering system was?
And I totally agree with the current ladder system. Its flawed and relatively uninteresting.
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On January 17 2015 15:48 GGzerG wrote:
The next two games the amount of points I lost is ridiculous. -18,-21,-16, and so on. Even when I have an above 50% W/L ratio (Which the ladder system attempts to force upon every player) , the point distribution does not seem to be fair at all. And now from 130-137 points , I am now sitting at 30 points (LOL) , Because of the poor point distribution, even when I am above 50% W/L ratio. Please do not reply saying " Well just keep playing , the point distribution will level out", AND THEN WHAT? Another Season I cannot get GM because the ladder point distribution is broken?
How can I possibly ever get to GrandMasters when every single player in my division has around the same if not worse W/L ratio than me but my point distribution is not level with the people in my division?
The problem is not just dedicated just onto the point distribution, the problem is also the amount of HACKERS that I am playing on ladder every single day, and it is not questionable hacking , it is 100% obvious never scouting, 100%HARD COUNTERING builds. I am not the only person who has been complaining about this issue, there are several threads on Teamliquid, and on Reddit about this issue.
The hackers are not just MapHacking, they have Production tab hacks, you cannot even prove that they hack really when they never look through fog of war, the only way that it can be proved is through extreme analysis, and Blizzard's "Warden", but I regret to inform that I think the "Ban Waves" are not ideal, and I don't think Blizzard's "Warden" Anti-Hack is ideal either.
There is a long list of hacks and exploits now that Blizzard needs to address to make laddering an even somewhat enjoyable experience.
List of Hacks and Exploits and Problems in Ladder and in general. :
-MapHacking
-Production Hacks
-Resolution Hacks( This is a hack that gives the player a larger more zoomed out screen, he can see more of the screen than normal, like the Blizzard Observer Mode IN GAME., I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.)
-Blink Hack (Automatically blinks stalkers for the player, giving protoss huge micro management advantage)
-Auto Inject Hack (Automatically injects queens for you, is pretty easy to notice, if the Zerg player has NO EXTRA energy on his queens ALL GAME.)
-Players glitching / exploiting ladder by logging into SC2 on another game while they are in a game, which causes the game to not show in the match history, and causes the player to not receive a loss, many players have gotten to Masters and GM using this glitch, which in turn makes the ladder distribution even more broken.
-Account boosters in public / Blizzard channels. (People spamming channels saying they will boost accounts for money, generally these players are hackers, exploiters, and fake GM players, they most likely were boosted to GM or cheated to get there.
I'll try to be as brief in my response as I can ... but.. hmm..
#1: The system is working as intended. The higher rank you get the more the system tries to drag you down. That's why you see GM players gaining +4 with BP and then losing -20+ some games, even vs other high GM players. For instance, when I was top 16 GM I'd lose vs a top 50 GM player and lose nearly 30pts sometimes. That's the system. It applies the same to you just at a different league.
As unfortunate as it is for me to inform you, even if you have a good w/l record it means very little, and in fact, it means even less at lower leagues. What is most important is who you are losing to. So, when you lose those -20 games then it is obvious you will not be getting to GM because that is just how the matchmaking system works. Logically speaking, if you're saying you're beating masters/GM players then why would you complain about losing to ex-gm players? Just beat them also! It is obvious to imagine that you'll need to beat players of this caliber to eventually get into GM.
#2: Hackers, yes. There are a lot. In fact, I am in the same boat as you completely on this one. The hacker issue on NA is a joke. It has honestly completely ruined the top 200 masters through the top 50 GM for me and I will not be laddering again until both that and the map issue is fixed. The game is simply not enjoyable, especially for protoss players under such circumstances.
#3: As angry as you may be, and as angry as many others of us may be, it is up to blizzard to implement actual anti-cheat or provide safe usage of 3rd party programs that would at least detect others hacking. The only way I ever see this happening is if there is a large protest directly to, and aimed at, these issues. However, nothing of the sort has been done yet, and honestly, I don't think Blizzard cares enough to invest money in such a thing when only 6(?) people work on WCS from blizzard.
Simply put, the issue will never go away so either try to mobilize something yourself or just quit. If they don't gain revenue from games they need to rethink how to make them or gain the money.
-just some thoughts from me, but please don't misunderstand the first part, I am not happy with blizzard overall at this point either.
oh and edit: I did notice that this season seems to be quite messed up in terms of league placements. I was playing quite a few players on a smurf that were in diamond but I wasn't losing nearly any pts though they were masters last season O.o didn't make much sense since the acc has like top 100 gm mmr.. lol
also, many of the people who boost accounts are "legit" in that they do it, so please don't throw players under the rug. The amount of people they impact in lower leagues is incredibly minimal, and honestly, rather negligible.
In terms of people glitching ladder... I've heard of no one doing this to get to GM O.o The only people who had no match history were clear hackers from imbaQQ, many of whom still have not been banned.
On January 17 2015 16:19 iMrising wrote:
Can someone tell me what the Brood War laddering system was?
And I totally agree with the current ladder system. Its flawed and relatively uninteresting.
on ICCUP you could pick who you played, when you wanted to play them, what map, and what race. So, hypothetically speaking, you could get to the "highest rank" only playing 1 map and 1 race match up... say PvZ on overgrowth over and over vs different high ranked people, for example. (You are restricted by rank to a certain channel to look for other players, and once you gain enough pts you are raised from that channel to the next where you can play vs any of those players if they agree, then u just set up a lobby and it tracks it)
#plschaoslauncherpls
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On January 17 2015 16:20 -Kyo- wrote:
I'll try to be as brief in my response as I can ... but.. hmm..
#1: The system is working as intended. The higher rank you get the more the system tries to drag you down. That's why you see GM players gaining +4 with BP and then losing -20+ some games, even vs other high GM players. For instance, when I was top 16 GM I'd lose vs a top 50 GM player and lose nearly 30pts sometimes. That's the system. It applies the same to you just at a different league.
As unfortunate as it is for me to inform you, even if you have a good w/l record it means very little, and in fact, it means even less at lower leagues. What is most important is who you are losing to. So, when you lose those -20 games then it is obvious you will not be getting to GM because that is just how the matchmaking system works. Logically speaking, if you're saying you're beating masters/GM players then why would you complain about losing to ex-gm players? Just beat them also! It is obvious to imagine that you'll need to beat players of this caliber to eventually get into GM.
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... Hmmm Kyo kinda contradicting -_-
EDIT : It seems like you really like to mention the fact you are GM, and I don't really think it is relevant now to be honest.
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You are not being promoted into GM simply because you arent good enough. System does not always match you against somoene of equal skill. You gain little points against a lower skilled player and more point against a GM/higher skilled one. Your +4 +8 points won suggest that those opponents are lower skilled despite their rank, rank and points does not matter in such cases.
Ive never had a problem with not being promoted into GM back when i was actually decent. Ive noticed that i often got promoted during the start of the season or when i was beating GMs consistently. Are you beating GMs consistently atm? If you arent then your not good enough to be promoted into the league, although i do agree that hackers took up alot of the spots.
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you're blaming the ladder for not getting GM? cmon man.
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My personal opinion about ranking system's is that a certain property, namely transparency for the user, is very important and often overlooked ( often the discussion is only about how accurate the system rates).
Personally, i am only speaking for myself, beeing able with little effort to understand why you are ranked where you are and why you win/loose so much points are very important factors for me, even more than a very accurate ranking system.
Therefore i prefer simple ELO style ladder sytems ( with only one ladder) and no other special provisions.
I think there will always be abusers using some ways to gain a high rank in an unintented way but if your system is very transparent this means little because everyone will see at a glance that the rank is not justified(without a deep investigation needed, by a look at the match history for example)
Concerning the Sc2 ranking system, i do prefer as written a simpler system, but i still think its not bad, has its ups and downs as already mentioned, comes down to personal preference i guess.
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No i'm not blaming the ladder for not getting GM that is not the point and you know it isn't, and we both know about you and your spiteful posts Gamegene, just take a gander. The point is the system in general, it is ridiculous to say "You can't lose to someone lower league / ranked " than you because you cannot play perfect 100% of the time, there are smurfs, and there are hackers. Which is why if you read the whole thread you would have already understood that. The system needs to be reworked all together, it isn't about me I was just using myself as an example. There are a lot of random masters players that get in GM and have very few games all season, so yes it is basically a joke of a system.
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It's a good point of discussion, but with you whining in every single section of the OP it certainly does give that impression that this is more you venting your own personal frustrations.
Personally speaking, I feel like people are missing the main point of the matchmaking system, which is to be an easy and quick way to get games with equally matched opponents and the ladder does it very well aside from unranked match making being able to match with ranked. If you stripped out all the leagues and the ranks and the badges, the main function is still fulfilled; hackers are a separate problem that weasel their way into everyone's matches but the system by itself is fine.
Given that other free games are getting it right with how they deal with rank appearances, it's more than reasonable to want the ladder leader boards to be clear and understandable when it comes to who has the highest (hidden) MMR. But I feel like most people would feel a lot better about themselves and their diamond opponents if they just stopped caring so much about these little icons.
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The ladder system works as intended. It does need to be reworked though(bonus pool should not determine staying in gm, league divsions need to be removed, etc.).
You get +4 and -18 because it is the start of a new season. It is more based on your mmr and not your opponent until you get closer to your supposed true point value. My first 30 games are all +24/-0 regardless of who I play because my mmr is high. My friend last season was 110-100 with 1 point and I was at like 10-5 with 350 points. Pretty sure the +24/-0's caused one of the koreans to get in a lot of trouble a few years ago(rock paper scissors to see who wins?)
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Stop caring about your ladder rank, no ladder is ever an accurate depiction of people's skill, it's a way of life. Broodwar wasn't. Instead of looking at ladder as a validation of your skill level just use it as the practice tool it is. Some Terrible players cheese everyday all day to get gm and they neve actually create the skill knowledge or muscle memory to be good overall players. It's all meaningless and there is very little that cold be done to change that.
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I was Masters and i stopped playing solo because of freaking hackers. They are everywhere now and i got a bit dissapointed with Blizzard not doing anything and I have more than 10-15k games or more played. Solo is just no more fun. Hope they do something but lol maybe another year at best or they never address the hackers problem.
No freaking point playing hard in 1v1 and losing to hackers.
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On January 17 2015 16:31 GGzerG wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 16:20 -Kyo- wrote:
I'll try to be as brief in my response as I can ... but.. hmm..
#1: The system is working as intended. The higher rank you get the more the system tries to drag you down. That's why you see GM players gaining +4 with BP and then losing -20+ some games, even vs other high GM players. For instance, when I was top 16 GM I'd lose vs a top 50 GM player and lose nearly 30pts sometimes. That's the system. It applies the same to you just at a different league.
As unfortunate as it is for me to inform you, even if you have a good w/l record it means very little, and in fact, it means even less at lower leagues. What is most important is who you are losing to. So, when you lose those -20 games then it is obvious you will not be getting to GM because that is just how the matchmaking system works. Logically speaking, if you're saying you're beating masters/GM players then why would you complain about losing to ex-gm players? Just beat them also! It is obvious to imagine that you'll need to beat players of this caliber to eventually get into GM.
. ... Hmmm Kyo kinda contradicting -_- EDIT : It seems like you really like to mention the fact you are GM, and I don't really think it is relevant now to be honest.
Clearly you either didn't care for anything I actually said or just don't like me if that is all you pulled away from what I said here O.o
I gave you an example of when I would lose to someone and then hoped you would imply, especially given that I even said in the very next sentence, that in your case to increase your ladder rank you would, just as anyone else does, have to minimize your losses to those people whom you would lose -20 than to the other people whom you would lose -5 to...
OF COURSE!!!!
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playing games from blizzard for 15+ years doesnt make MORE interessting for Blizzard. If you are not making it into GM...well than you have to play more or better. Or do you want to say that players like ForGG and TLO are hacking cause they are on GM Ladder? Of course there are Hackers on ladder...but this is an never ending fight.
From my point of view the ladder system works right...but to be honest i play this game for fun so i dont give a damm about my ranking, since i dont have to pay my bills with this like you.
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Well yea It was a complaint on my own personal level as well since I did post it on Blizzard intention in the hope that I would get an answer about my account specifically because it didn't make sense to me, that part I should have mentioned.
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I agree with you on the hacker part. However the only explanation to you not being GM is prolly because youre not GM-level. The ladder system might seem sadistic as fuck in some ways, but if youre good enough you should be gm.
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This is all true I guess, a more informative system in general would be what i'm interested in I guess....
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Also want to point out something.
I don't play as much anymore, but GGZerg knows me and knows I'm a master player and can hang with the best of them as far as foreign players.
However, whenever a season restarts and I do my placement it throws me into silver or gold or something random at the lower ranks. I end up going anywhere from 10-30 straight wins before I'm even put into platinum, where I have to start climbing very slowly. This applies for both 2v2 and 1v1.
It's honestly a waste of time and it sucks for the lesser skilled players in my games when they want an evenly matched system as well. In order to try and save time I just resort to rushes and 2 base timings to end games quickly because I know regardless if it's a macro game or not it's going to take me 50+ games to even get close to my real ranking.
I believe there are 2 factors at work here. 1 the ladder integrity is shit because of the fact that casual mode and ladder mode can be matched together in the same game. One person is playing for points and the other isn't. People try to say it doesn't matter or it's fair or whatever, but I know that it's not. You don't let people play on a ladder when they aren't playing for anything, intuitively it's just bad and morally or honorably or whatever you want to call it, it's just wrong. It fucks with the ladder, I'm sure of it. (Especially in team games, people just leave a game instead of trying to win.)
The other is the MMR decay bullshit. There is something seriously wrong with it, it's caused me to decay into lower leagues so far. And since I don't play 10+ games every day, it resets all the time or something. And since I don't grind a shit ton of games like Telecom does, that means I get career summaries filled with platinum, gold, diamond, or just whatever purely based on the amount of games I decided to play that season. It's not indicative of my skill level whatsoever. So really, the metal ranks are completely arbitrary and useless. Kyo, even you were judging me before and after the LOTV games we played simply because of the fact that my portrait icon had a gold border or whatever.
IMHO, I should be able to challenge the ladder. Like each season have the option to play 3-5 matches versus people in a metal league of my choice (which would be 1-2 above yours at the least). And if I can win the majority of these games, I should automatically be promoted to that league.
PS- I can also tell that many of the people in 2v2 mode that I play who are ranked gold or whatever are not really silver or gold players. They have good macro and high apm to where I know they should be at least platinum or diamond. The system is really fucky. There seems to be at least 30-40% players who are clearly misranked and then the rest are right where they should be.
TBH, Maybe sc2 should just get rid of the ladder all together. BW did fine without it, people who were hardcore enough just made their own ladder systems which worked better and were more maintained as far as hacks and updates.
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9x Master player here. Having gotten KR, EU and NA Master, my experience is that you need to be playing and beating GMs in order to get a promotion to Master. It's ridiculous.
To get promoted to Master I needed to be Rank 1 Diamond on the whole server by a significant margin with a 60% winrate and playing/beating GMs. How is this a good system?
Master has only gotten smaller since then too. It's literally half the size it was intended to be.
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On January 17 2015 16:31 GGzerG wrote:
EDIT : It seems like you really like to mention the fact you are GM, and I don't really think it is relevant now to be honest.
Quoted for extreme irony.
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It's funny, people are always asking why there are no good foreigners. Maybe it's because instead of working hard to get to GM, foreigners just whine that the system is flawed and that they deserve to be GM. I mean, oh my god, you have to beat people who are good to get to Master's League? The horror.
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It's almost as if you could practice and get better instead of writing long, whiny posts about how life isn't fair.
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On January 17 2015 19:05 ninazerg wrote:
It's funny, people are always asking why there are no good foreigners. Maybe it's because instead of working hard to get to GM, foreigners just whine that the system is flawed and that they deserve to be GM. I mean, oh my god, you have to beat people who are good to get to Master's League? The horror.
GM from today is not the same as 2 yrs ago. It was great and now a big disaster. Being in GM feels very unrewarding and so wrong. I wish they remove GM.
Most "new" people quit this game or play 90% less few days after promoting to GM. The only one pleasure in GM is the chance to play vs superstars. Nothing else.
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Seriously, why don't they just rank people based on pure MMR?
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On January 17 2015 19:36 Korakys wrote:
Seriously, why don't they just rank people based on pure MMR?
Amen.
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On January 17 2015 18:50 RPR_Tempest wrote:
9x Master player here. Having gotten KR, EU and NA Master, my experience is that you need to be playing and beating GMs in order to get a promotion to Master. It's ridiculous.
To get promoted to Master I needed to be Rank 1 Diamond on the whole server by a significant margin with a 60% winrate and playing/beating GMs. How is this a good system?
Master has only gotten smaller since then too. It's literally half the size it was intended to be.
Not really. If you're in diamond and playing GMs, they're either boosted accounts or playing unranked (which is dumb, I agree), or if they're "legit low GMs" playing ranked, you get like -1 or -2 to the point that it doesn't hurt you at all losing to them. I've been laddering on a smurf for a while as a random lately, and slowly got it promoted from diamond to master, so I know what I'm talking about. Never played a single GM. Playing masters 50% of the times and winning 50% of the times against them is enough. Plus I'm a high master (~1700 pts last season) on EU as protoss and even then I play against diamond like 1 game out of 20, and get +2/+3 points at best.
If you are GM, you aren't expected to lose to a top diamond player more than 1 game out of 10-20 anyway, which is fair.
It's funny though, that every time I talk with diamond league players, they say "look! I beat a top master player and I don't get promoted! Ladder is broken!!!" then I look at that account, and it's like rank 10 in a shitty division with the same amount of points as the bonus pool available. Yeah, top master...
Master league right now is 5x smaller than what it was back in the day. In 2012/2013, it was impossible for a legit top diamond to even play a legit low GM on ladder. Now it is, although very very rare.
Having to get rank 1 in the whole server is perfectly normal because if you can't achieve it, then there's someone higher than you who wasn't promoted, so it would be wrong if you got promoted before them.
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On January 17 2015 20:03 KingAlphard wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 18:50 RPR_Tempest wrote:
9x Master player here. Having gotten KR, EU and NA Master, my experience is that you need to be playing and beating GMs in order to get a promotion to Master. It's ridiculous.
To get promoted to Master I needed to be Rank 1 Diamond on the whole server by a significant margin with a 60% winrate and playing/beating GMs. How is this a good system?
Master has only gotten smaller since then too. It's literally half the size it was intended to be. Not really. If you're in diamond and playing GMs, they're either boosted accounts or playing unranked (which is dumb, I agree), or if they're "legit low GMs" playing ranked, you get like -1 or -2 to the point that it doesn't hurt you at all losing to them. I've been laddering on a smurf for a while as a random lately, and slowly got it promoted from diamond to master, so I know what I'm talking about. Never played a single GM. Playing masters 50% of the times and winning 50% of the times against them is enough. Plus I'm a high master (~1700 pts last season) on EU as protoss and even then I play against diamond like 1 game out of 20, and get +2/+3 points at best. If you are GM, you aren't expected to lose to a top diamond player more than 1 game out of 10-20 anyway, which is fair. It's funny though, that every time I talk with diamond league players, they say "look! I beat a top master player and I don't get promoted! Ladder is broken!!!" then I look at that account, and it's like rank 10 in a shitty division with the same amount of points as the bonus pool available. Yeah, top master... Master league right now is 5x smaller than what it was back in the day. In 2012/2013, it was impossible for a legit top diamond to even play a legit low GM on ladder. Now it is, although very very rare. Having to get rank 1 in the whole server is perfectly normal because if you can't achieve it, then there's someone higher than you who wasn't promoted, so it would be wrong if you got promoted before them.
Thats very interesting and a good one, i havent played for years now. I dont ever remember playing a diamond player when i was in GM and almost never lost to a master player.
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On January 17 2015 18:07 Luolis wrote:
I agree with you on the hacker part. However the only explanation to you not being GM is prolly because youre not GM-level. The ladder system might seem sadistic as fuck in some ways, but if youre good enough you should be gm.
But if half of GM is infested by cheaters then Players who deserve it dont get GM logic...... Cause cheaters have always better record ......
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1) The ladder system works VERY well. You get matches with more or less equally skilled opponents, usually in less than a minute (unless you're top GM).
2) That your ranking doesn't reflect your own perceived skill level, is a problem we all face :D.
3) Cheaters are there, but probably not as many as you think... the number of times I've been accused of "hacking" by Protoss players just because I build 3 turrets in my main hard countering their oh so predictiable Oracle and DT timings...
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I'd pay money for a rework, because thats the only way we could get it. I want hacking to be a non-issue. Everything else can be tweaked via the current system, but the hacking is what gets me the most.
Even if there aren't that many hackers out there, the fact that they are there and it takes ages to ban them is a problem. It destroys SC2 as a game AND as a legit eSports.
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I think that a big problem here is that many people posting don't understand the ladder well enough. Here is an example that I want to quote.
Last season I was stuck in Diamond, played almost 800 games and towards the end of the season I was playing ONLY GM / Masters players, still not getting promoted.
So, promotion system depends a lot on adjusted points, aka your points minus the spent bonus pool.
When you just got promoted, you have +73 adjusted points. Which usually means that if your adjusted points are <+73 and you are active in league X, you're " low X ". For >+73 adjusted points, it depends from many factors.
Luckily we have a wonderful website called nios.kr where you can easily check how many adjusted points you need to be close to promotion.
If you played 800 games and don't get promoted to master, clearly you're not good enough. If you're MMR decayed, there's that terrible thing where you get +6/-18 every single game or something like that. But it's ok, because you are decayed so you are playing against worse opponents. If you really belong in master league, you should go into a 50 games winning streak (which is still too much, but not even close to 800) that would get you in the +300~+400 adjusted points range and get back into master.
If you're low master, then you will lose quite a few games especially when top diamond, so this number can easily increase. However you shouldn't think about getting GM if you're low master so this isn't important.
Being diamond with 800 games and playing only masters/GMs, is impossible, at least in my EU/NA experience.
When I got promoted to Masters it placed me at rank 18, 130-137 points or so. I continued to win but after being promoted only receiving +4 / +8 points a game, so I continued to win 2-3 games , +4 , +8, +4. Then I lost the next two-three games. The next two games the amount of points I lost is ridiculous. -18,-21,-16, and so on. Even when I have an above 50% W/L ratio (Which the ladder system attempts to force upon every player) , the point distribution does not seem to be fair at all. And now from 130-137 points , I am now sitting at 30 points (LOL) , Because of the poor point distribution, even when I am above 50% W/L ratio. Please do not reply saying " Well just keep playing , the point distribution will level out", AND THEN WHAT? Another Season I cannot get GM because the ladder point distribution is broken?
Take 2 players who get placed in master league at the beginning of a season. One was top 16 GM last season, and one was a low-mid master player who miraculously didn't get demoted into diamond. Both play 50 games and win half of them. What's gonna happen?
The top 16 GM player will have something like 400 adjusted points. Why? Because ladder distribution is broken? No, because he has a higher MMR but 0 adjusted points so the system tries to fix that by making him go +20/-4 against even opponents.
The low master player will have still 0 adjusted points. Why? Because ladder points distribution is broken? No, because his mmr is very low, and he deserves to have 0 adjusted points.
What does the winrate of a player tell you? If a player has a positive/negative winrate this season, then probably it means that his MMR increased/decreased. It still doesn't tell you anything about the MMR he has now.
So, it appears that your problem is that you're low master, and the ladder is working as intended in this case.
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On January 17 2015 20:50 KeksX wrote:
I'd pay money for a rework, because thats the only way we could get it. I want hacking to be a non-issue. Everything else can be tweaked via the current system, but the hacking is what gets me the most.
Even if there aren't that many hackers out there, the fact that they are there and it takes ages to ban them is a problem. It destroys SC2 as a game AND as a legit eSports.
yeah, but I fail to see how this is a ladder issue. Blizzard runs their cheat-detection on the current ladder. Changing the ladder doesn't change their anti-cheat system.
I think blizzard's approach against cheating is reasonable, though obviously slow. After all, I'm not an programming expert but I imagine it is extremely difficult to consistently detect every-chaning hack software. And the more obvious you work against it - like banning the people very fast - the faster the software is probably going to be optimized to not be detected.
Also it is not just a blizzard problem. It's first and foremost a problem of a community that seems to breed idiots.
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Is this really a thread for you to whine about not making GM? As others have said, it appears the ladder is working in your case. I suggest just playing more, not worrying about what league you are placed in, and get better.
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Well their main issue is that they trust their client on issues that should be on serverside. Take the "RESULTS DISAGREE" thing. That shows how bad their practice really is.
Usually it should be like this:
One client disconnects
Server recognizes disconnect, assigns win to other client
But in Blizzard's code apparently it is like this:
One client disconnects
Server recognizes disconnect, ends game
Both clients send win
Server things "well wtf this can't be" and we get "RESULTS DISAGREE"
I think that it is a ladder issue because in custom games, servers are hosted via players and these kind of things don't happen. I never had "RESULTS DISAGREE" or anything similar in a custom game, just ladder.
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-MapHacking
-Production Hacks
-Resolution Hacks( This is a hack that gives the player a larger more zoomed out screen, he can see more of the screen than normal, like the Blizzard Observer Mode IN GAME., I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.)
-Blink Hack (Automatically blinks stalkers for the player, giving protoss huge micro management advantage)
-Auto Inject Hack (Automatically injects queens for you, is pretty easy to notice, if the Zerg player has NO EXTRA energy on his queens ALL GAME.)
Never understood really why all these aren't actually built into the game. All this dumb mechanical stuff is like "fightning-the-controls", isn't it? Why can't marines split automatically? Why do banelings roll into Marauders when Marines are around?
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On January 17 2015 21:35 Haukinger wrote:Show nested quote +-MapHacking
-Production Hacks
-Resolution Hacks( This is a hack that gives the player a larger more zoomed out screen, he can see more of the screen than normal, like the Blizzard Observer Mode IN GAME., I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.)
-Blink Hack (Automatically blinks stalkers for the player, giving protoss huge micro management advantage)
-Auto Inject Hack (Automatically injects queens for you, is pretty easy to notice, if the Zerg player has NO EXTRA energy on his queens ALL GAME.) Never understood really why all these aren't actually built into the game. All this dumb mechanical stuff is like "fightning-the-controls", isn't it? Why can't marines split automatically? Why do banelings roll into Marauders when Marines are around?
why do i have to remember and execute BOs if AI could just do them itself without bothering me???
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I think you should be able to choose what level you want to play against when doing placement.
So for example if you feel rusty and were masters last season, just choose to get matched with diamond.
In your case you´re just too inconsistent, loosing against lesser players but winning against higher ranked ones. And also i think if you are "veteran" in your division, mmr seems to throw more up-and-coming players at you, who are often smurfs and sometimes hackers
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On January 17 2015 16:42 Gamegene wrote:
you're blaming the ladder for not getting GM? cmon man.
It's GGZerg. Everybody's a hacker and it's all a big consipiracy and he's the smartest guy ever on TeamLiquid.
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And yea, it sucks when there are three bunkers up as your hatch finishes on a four-player map, but not that much you can do about it because Blizzard isn't able to detect all of the hacks. F10+n and move on ...
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Hacking is obviously a huge fundamental problem, and there is no way blizzard can "fix" that in a convincing way, no matter how much they charge. So well, don't hold your breath for that. Train with people you know if you want to avoid it, it's a better training method than only massing ladder games anyway.
Regarding ladder ranking, I feel it'd be better to just show the MMR to the users... MMR is a great measure of skill for an active player (deacy has some issues, but not relevant to this thread), so let's use it! I really don't see why not. The "people don't want to feel bad when they suck" argument isn't really applicable as they already demote people into lower leagues, which obviously makes people such as the OP feel bad.
And regarding "I beat an GM, I must be good!!", Once you are in GM in the start-of-season, they essentially only kick you out for inactivity, right? So accounts that are boosted/cheated into GM, and then played without boost/cheat can get their MMR a lot lower than what is needed for GM, but will still show up as GM in the match history. Or I think that is how it works, someone confirm please?
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On January 17 2015 21:35 Haukinger wrote:Show nested quote +-MapHacking
-Production Hacks
-Resolution Hacks( This is a hack that gives the player a larger more zoomed out screen, he can see more of the screen than normal, like the Blizzard Observer Mode IN GAME., I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.)
-Blink Hack (Automatically blinks stalkers for the player, giving protoss huge micro management advantage)
-Auto Inject Hack (Automatically injects queens for you, is pretty easy to notice, if the Zerg player has NO EXTRA energy on his queens ALL GAME.) Never understood really why all these aren't actually built into the game. All this dumb mechanical stuff is like "fightning-the-controls", isn't it? Why can't marines split automatically? Why do banelings roll into Marauders when Marines are around?
Why can't I just select a build order and alt-tab? It's almost like this is a game that requires strategy, control and decisions in real time.
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Well the system promotes those who earn it. If you are really upset get a new account. I think with 15000 games, maybe 10.000 of them in Masters, OP is simply not cut out for GM, no matter the points earned/lost.
On the lower end:o
Basicly Ladder suffers from most active players being "too good". Ladder has no purpose unless you try hard to get better or enjoy the game in general, not matter the rank.
My experience to get a win in 2014 at WC3-TFT was: Not happening. I never played WC3 competetively i did not follow pro scene, the heck, I dont even finished the campaign. But today there is no one like me playing WC3-TFT. I guess I have to read 2000 pages of WC tactics and dig out hours of Khaldor's audio commentary. To get close.
Is there an actual number of copies Sold/Month of SC2? Or newly created accounts?
2010:
Bronze: You did not attack your own structures ! Great !
Silver: You got to 100 o Supply once ! Great !
Gold: You now know how2 4Gate. Great !
Platinum: Actuall Micro/Macro + 2 BO/MU
Diamond: So you played BW huh? IdraIdraIdra
2014:
All stepped up. Even Bronzes now know what a BO is.
Newcomers who watch their workers for 5 minutes get a high5, in the face, with a shovel. Back to Campaign it is.
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Ok so i checked on some data.
On sc2 ranks it says that globally for the current season there are: Source
per 2 Gm we have 22 Masters, 119 Diamonds ... 256 ... 751 .... 839 ... 421
So considering there are 200 Gm slots that would give us a global total of 2200 Master League players.
And a Total active player base of: 482000 Players, Globally.
Now, Source in 2015 we have 125 Professional Sc2 Players listed in the WCS Ranking. These players are legitemally good enough to maintain 1 Main account and 1 Smurf in Their respective GM leagues and unless you are cheating or a Pro yourself you wont get promoted to Gm over these.
(tho the actual number of Pro MIGHT be somewhat higher this is the MINIMUM of pro players we HAVE to account for.
So we know that no pros play on Sea- that means we have 600 Gm slots to spend from which 250 are alread occupied by Pros, leaving us with 350 GM slots TOTAL remaining.
So to get master league or GM respectively you have to beat out 481800 or 479800 Players.
If of these players 1% is Hacking, and we have to assume they are somewhat decent and dedicated players to even go so far, we have 4818 Hackers that are competeing with you for 350 Gm and Master slots. And thats not counting their Smurfs. So you see, even if just 0.1% of the playerbase is Hackers, and they WILL! inevetably accumulate in High Master League, you have 481 Hackers to beat before you get Gm. Also remember that there is a huge amount of former Pros and BW guys out there .... so:
Good Luck and Have fun. We all struggle.
EDIT: if I look at my friends and how many of them used to be in Masters and are now struggling to even get diamond, and im only concerned about the ones that actualy stayed active, i have to say the only logical conclusion is that Master league, over the course of Hots either got a lot smaller, cut in half or more, and or that Hackers are occupying the higher up spots.
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ye i feel this way all the time, i play hundreds of games . . hundreds of them and i dont get promoted, they always seem to have more stuff, i feel my games consistent i win some i lose some . i do believe i am getting better but the the thing is i am not getting that promotion. the thing is the ladder might be broken in itself in terms of where you place but i dont think the mmr is. i dont care personally that im in such a league, as long as the game is challenging enough and i can seriously understand and make up some excuse that on how i lost.
anyways, i still think its broken i deserve to be in silver at least
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On January 18 2015 00:33 StatixEx wrote:
ye i feel this way all the time, i play hundreds of games . . hundreds of them and i dont get promoted, they always seem to have more stuff, i feel my games consistent i win some i lose some . i do believe i am getting better but the the thing is i am not getting that promotion. the thing is the ladder might be broken in itself in terms of where you place but i dont think the mmr is. i dont care personally that im in such a league, as long as the game is challenging enough and i can seriously understand and make up some excuse that on how i lost.
anyways, i still think its broken i deserve to be in silver at least
Sorry mate, Silver and Bronze are just Mathematically uneffected by Hacking... you will just have to improve your Game.
Edit: sorry about the german Grammar... sometimes its really hard to stop writing nouns in Capital Letters...
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QQ i can't get GM post. A long one at least and ranting on hackers doesn't hurt (even if it's probably totally useless).
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why the fuck would anybody want to get rid of the current match making? besides the fact from league promotions the its one of the best systems out there.
One thing people should remember is when you step over to an elo based ranking is that you then match off points, and have fun playing against top wcs players and still lose the same as you would lose to if your opponent is broze.
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I think Starcraft II would benefit from some third party action in terms of anti-hacks. I feel like the community, especially at Team Liquid, would be more then willing to pour efforts into designing anti-hacks that would serve to improve ladder play immensely.
On a funnier note I believe  ClouD from way back in Wings quit laddering because the system refused to rank him out of platinum.
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Let me just start saying Hackers and Script kiddies are 2 very very very different things... and what you are describing is a script kiddie using someone elses work to exploit the game....
I hate script kiddies probably more than everyone on this post that specifically try to exploit video games.... its retarded if you want to cheat the game play against the computer.... doing it in a competitive setting ( Unless is a hacking competition Ghost in the shellcode i'm looking at you  ) is completely revolting but even in saying that there are GMs out there like Demuslim that can play against hackers and win ez pz because they rely on the hack which actually creates a certain threshold where just plain being the better player is all that matters....
In short accept your loss learn from it move on so you can learn to improve....
PS People that grind an insane amount of games more times than not are just bashing their head against the wall because they don't stop to try to fix their play not saying thats what you are doing but you should do a self examination and be honest with yourself....
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On January 18 2015 00:50 sabas123 wrote:
why the fuck would anybody want to get rid of the current match making? besides the fact from league promotions the its one of the best systems out there.
One thing people should remember is when you step over to an elo based ranking is that you then match off points, and have fun playing against top wcs players and still lose the same as you would lose to if your opponent is broze.
the matchmaking is freaking amazing. Replacing leagues by mmr would be really cool too but I understand why it's not the case, and ladder is just a practice tool anyway.
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I think knowing our MMR would be better actually i think that would fix everyting
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On January 18 2015 00:30 alpenrahm wrote:Ok so i checked on some data. On sc2 ranks it says that globally for the current season there are: Sourceper 2 Gm we have 22 Masters, 119 Diamonds ... 256 ... 751 .... 839 ... 421 So considering there are 200 Gm slots that would give us a global total of 2200 Master League players. And a Total active player base of: 482000 Players, Globally. Now, Source in 2015 we have 125 Professional Sc2 Players listed in the WCS Ranking. These players are legitemally good enough to maintain 1 Main account and 1 Smurf in Their respective GM leagues and unless you are cheating or a Pro yourself you wont get promoted to Gm over these. (tho the actual number of Pro MIGHT be somewhat higher this is the MINIMUM of pro players we HAVE to account for. So we know that no pros play on Sea- that means we have 600 Gm slots to spend from which 250 are alread occupied by Pros, leaving us with 350 GM slots TOTAL remaining. So to get master league or GM respectively you have to beat out 481800 or 479800 Players. If of these players 1% is Hacking, and we have to assume they are somewhat decent and dedicated players to even go so far, we have 4818 Hackers that are competeing with you for 350 Gm and Master slots. And thats not counting their Smurfs. So you see, even if just 0.1% of the playerbase is Hackers, and they WILL! inevetably accumulate in High Master League, you have 481 Hackers to beat before you get Gm. Also remember that there is a huge amount of former Pros and BW guys out there .... so: Good Luck and Have fun. We all struggle. EDIT: if I look at my friends and how many of them used to be in Masters and are now struggling to even get diamond, and im only concerned about the ones that actualy stayed active, i have to say the only logical conclusion is that Master league, over the course of Hots either got a lot smaller, cut in half or more, and or that Hackers are occupying the higher up spots.
Finally having the time to seriously 1v1 again, I've definitely noticed the change in ladder balance that Blizz implemented. A year ago, I was a solid mid/high Diamond and with properly aged cheese could take out low masters players. Now I'm a Platinum (mid-level at best), and I don't chalk that up to rusty mechanics, given that I've got a few weeks under my belt again. I'm actually going to have to practice to get back into Diamond! Gold and most of platinum used to be a joke but it seems like anybody high-Gold and above can pull off passable macro, micro, and strategy these days.
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when ur stuck in diamond, you are nowhere CLOSE to be gm.
If you never got promoted to GM, you are probably not good enough. The system is acutally not -super- bad. I consider myself a low gm player and was in gm 14 times. how come?
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On January 18 2015 00:47 sAsImre wrote:
QQ i can't get GM post. A long one at least and ranting on hackers doesn't hurt (even if it's probably totally useless).
sorry mate along with adblock turn on that kappa meter this has gone undetected
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On January 18 2015 02:05 KalWarkov wrote:
when ur stuck in diamond, you are nowhere CLOSE to be gm.
If you never got promoted to GM, you are probably not good enough. The system is acutally not -super- bad. I consider myself a low gm player and was in gm 14 times. how come?
Veteran Script cheating kid confirmed? since you r GM and i have never seen you in any competition (not under CoralWarKOv atleast)
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On January 17 2015 22:16 Scarecrow wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 21:35 Haukinger wrote:-MapHacking
-Production Hacks
-Resolution Hacks( This is a hack that gives the player a larger more zoomed out screen, he can see more of the screen than normal, like the Blizzard Observer Mode IN GAME., I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.)
-Blink Hack (Automatically blinks stalkers for the player, giving protoss huge micro management advantage)
-Auto Inject Hack (Automatically injects queens for you, is pretty easy to notice, if the Zerg player has NO EXTRA energy on his queens ALL GAME.) Never understood really why all these aren't actually built into the game. All this dumb mechanical stuff is like "fightning-the-controls", isn't it? Why can't marines split automatically? Why do banelings roll into Marauders when Marines are around? Why can't I just select a build order and alt-tab? It's almost like this is a game that requires strategy, control and decisions in real time.
Well, it first and foremost requires control. I bet, if you're fast enough, you can beat any pro out there, without any strategy or decision involved.
I'd like to be able to select a bo and alt-tab and see the game evvolve. You'd be able to focus on strategy and decisions, then, when to move out, where to position your army-groups...
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i really like WC3:ROC ladder, brutal but honest
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On January 18 2015 02:30 Haukinger wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 22:16 Scarecrow wrote:On January 17 2015 21:35 Haukinger wrote:-MapHacking
-Production Hacks
-Resolution Hacks( This is a hack that gives the player a larger more zoomed out screen, he can see more of the screen than normal, like the Blizzard Observer Mode IN GAME., I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.)
-Blink Hack (Automatically blinks stalkers for the player, giving protoss huge micro management advantage)
-Auto Inject Hack (Automatically injects queens for you, is pretty easy to notice, if the Zerg player has NO EXTRA energy on his queens ALL GAME.) Never understood really why all these aren't actually built into the game. All this dumb mechanical stuff is like "fightning-the-controls", isn't it? Why can't marines split automatically? Why do banelings roll into Marauders when Marines are around? Why can't I just select a build order and alt-tab? It's almost like this is a game that requires strategy, control and decisions in real time. Well, it first and foremost requires control. I bet, if you're fast enough, you can beat any pro out there, without any strategy or decision involved. I'd like to be able to select a bo and alt-tab and see the game evvolve. You'd be able to focus on strategy and decisions, then, when to move out, where to position your army-groups...
So, how do you manage that automatically kiting and splitting marines actually get to a position and stay there when you want it? Because the moment they see a unit, your whole moveout is going to be backwards running marines.
I understand what you mean, but
a) there is a certain beauty in microing units. Not only mechanically, but also the decisions are beautiful and meaningful. Blinking all your stalkers forward to kill a tank, or blinking them 1 by 1. Or blinking them all at once to get the hell out of there. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
b) it is not realistically implementable. As I claim above, how does the AI differentiate between 1 baneling and 50 and when it has to split? Well, you can program that. Which is a decision making process that you give in the hands of the AI. Does it still just amove against 10banelings? Even if you only have 10marines?
You see, you'd have to basically program it out very well... which means you just optimize a program that plays the whole game for you with your decisions. Eventually, the program will be perfect. That's it, game solved.
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THANK YOU SO MUCH
For writing this post.
I am also 18+ times Masters player who has simply stopped playing ranked for the reasons you described.
For me the worst offender apart from hackers which are rampant in the higher leagues is the ridiculous MMR decay and the shrinkage of the Masters league, which seemed to have been implemented purely for the sake of WCS.
I do not play a lot, therefore it is inevitable that I will suffer MMR decay. This means that unless I fully commit one season I am more than likely demoted. (I have been demoted to Platinum once). Now what does that mean:
a) In no shape or form am I a platinum player. So in order for me to go back to Masters I need to stomp through the plats and low/mid diamonds.
b) Complete bullshit and unfair for the real low/mid diamonds and platinums.
c) I am also facing other ex-Masters player with lowered MMR and so we are essentially fighting master league level games in low diamond MMR. Making our progress even slower.
d) Takes ages for me to be promoted to Masters (I have been in Masters for a total of 19 times on NA (4 times) and EU (15+ times) Server. This isn't even an issue for me personally, Masters is a guarantee (as I retook it once or twice) but the amount of times I have to play is ridiculous (50 games+). And I play Mech Terran so each game is over 40 minutes long, sometimes over an hour.
e) Even when I do get my Masters icon back, I need to consistently be playing in order to not get demoted again after a season. As if I will lose skill, which just isn't the case for players who already have proved themselves by reaching Master league on multiple occassions. At one point I believe it took me approximately 75 games with a win ratio of 60%+ to get it back.
f) Eventually I've given up on ranked and just played unranked which means once again I am stomping lesser players siince I do not play enough to keep my MMR at a stable level. At least now I don't have to reach a goal any more.
TLDR version: MMR Decay is too much and fucks over all players.
PS: Looks like MarlieChurphy is in the same exact situation as I am.
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Blizzard has the obligation to satisfy their customers to keep us to be loyal customers, as an organization blizzard already makes enough money and reworking their ladder may requires a budget to keep a small amount of the population who play sc2 satisfy.
The main reason why you are diamond because low level player quits this game and so you are in diamond league. It is reasonable seeing how every season the population of this game gets smaller and smaller, not to mention a person may have multiple accounts in master or gm league.
If you really deserve master league or even higher, you have to practice and learn from your mistakes instead of blaming of hackers or the ladder distribution.
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On January 17 2015 22:23 plgElwood wrote:
2010:
Bronze: You did not attack your own structures ! Great !
Silver: You got to 100 o Supply once ! Great !
Gold: You now know how2 4Gate. Great !
Platinum: Actuall Micro/Macro + 2 BO/MU
Diamond: So you played BW huh? IdraIdraIdra
2014:
All stepped up. Even Bronzes now know what a BO is.
Newcomers who watch their workers for 5 minutes get a high5, in the face, with a shovel. Back to Campaign it is.
If not anything else, this should make people who make it to gold/platinum/diamond, and all the 'omg ur so bad that ur only diamond' ranks, more proud of their achievement. I mean before, you had a rank named after the most valuable compressed-carbon substance in the world, and it was equated with shit. Maybe it's time to be okay with diamond.
In StarCraft: Brood War, many very low-ranked people have an idea of what build orders are. Both games have the aspect of being competitive, and it's the same with everything. You can't just sit on your ass through all of your school years then walk out onto a football field and play, because you're gonna suck. The campaign is basically you kicking the ball around in your own backyard.
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On January 18 2015 05:28 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 22:23 plgElwood wrote:
2010:
Bronze: You did not attack your own structures ! Great !
Silver: You got to 100 o Supply once ! Great !
Gold: You now know how2 4Gate. Great !
Platinum: Actuall Micro/Macro + 2 BO/MU
Diamond: So you played BW huh? IdraIdraIdra
2014:
All stepped up. Even Bronzes now know what a BO is.
Newcomers who watch their workers for 5 minutes get a high5, in the face, with a shovel. Back to Campaign it is. If not anything else, this should make people who make it to gold/platinum/diamond, and all the 'omg ur so bad that ur only diamond' ranks, more proud of their achievement. I mean before, you had a rank named after the most valuable compressed-carbon substance in the world, and it was equated with shit. Maybe it's time to be okay with diamond. In StarCraft: Brood War, many very low-ranked people have an idea of what build orders are. Both games have the aspect of being competitive, and it's the same with everything. You can't just sit on your ass through all of your school years then walk out onto a football field and play, because you're gonna suck. The campaign is basically you kicking the ball around in your own backyard.
Yep, over time SC2 bnet is going to look more and more like ICCup, and that's a good thing.
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On January 18 2015 05:28 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 22:23 plgElwood wrote:
2010:
Bronze: You did not attack your own structures ! Great !
Silver: You got to 100 o Supply once ! Great !
Gold: You now know how2 4Gate. Great !
Platinum: Actuall Micro/Macro + 2 BO/MU
Diamond: So you played BW huh? IdraIdraIdra
2014:
All stepped up. Even Bronzes now know what a BO is.
Newcomers who watch their workers for 5 minutes get a high5, in the face, with a shovel. Back to Campaign it is. If not anything else, this should make people who make it to gold/platinum/diamond, and all the 'omg ur so bad that ur only diamond' ranks, more proud of their achievement. I mean before, you had a rank named after the most valuable compressed-carbon substance in the world, and it was equated with shit. Maybe it's time to be okay with diamond. In StarCraft: Brood War, many very low-ranked people have an idea of what build orders are. Both games have the aspect of being competitive, and it's the same with everything. You can't just sit on your ass through all of your school years then walk out onto a football field and play, because you're gonna suck. The campaign is basically you kicking the ball around in your own backyard.
True true. Though with the reasoning given, one would expect football to go extinct. But it doesn't because there are tons of organizations catering to the younglings.
In sports, even for the 10th most popular sport in your country you are going to find a club in a bigger city. In Starcraft, even without the regional requirement to actually come together, it is pretty hard to train in a fitting enviroment as a scrub.
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On January 18 2015 00:37 alpenrahm wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 00:33 StatixEx wrote:
ye i feel this way all the time, i play hundreds of games . . hundreds of them and i dont get promoted, they always seem to have more stuff, i feel my games consistent i win some i lose some . i do believe i am getting better but the the thing is i am not getting that promotion. the thing is the ladder might be broken in itself in terms of where you place but i dont think the mmr is. i dont care personally that im in such a league, as long as the game is challenging enough and i can seriously understand and make up some excuse that on how i lost.
anyways, i still think its broken i deserve to be in silver at least Sorry mate, Silver and Bronze are just Mathematically uneffected by Hacking... you will just have to improve your Game. Edit: sorry about the german Grammar... sometimes its really hard to stop writing nouns in Capital Letters...
Mathematically isn't a noun. 
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I think the MMR system is actually one of the things blizzard got right in this game. I do think the whole divisions thing for non-GM leagues is silly. Blizzard most likely will never crack down on the hacks/exploit issues though :c
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On January 17 2015 21:56 pigmanbear wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 16:42 Gamegene wrote:
you're blaming the ladder for not getting GM? cmon man. It's GGZerg. Everybody's a hacker and it's all a big consipiracy and he's the smartest guy ever on TeamLiquid.
It's very unironic considering this is the attitude of most ladder heroes and ESPECIALLY those who stream ladder but do not actually compete (ie: avilo, various casters who shall not be named).
Mass fucking excuses for everything. I think people could take a fucking hint from the smash community who don't have the luxury of an online ladder: "no johns".
edit: actually i guess avilo does participate in qualifiers, but most of his activity/notoriety centers around his ladder stream.
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On January 18 2015 06:47 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 00:37 alpenrahm wrote:On January 18 2015 00:33 StatixEx wrote:
ye i feel this way all the time, i play hundreds of games . . hundreds of them and i dont get promoted, they always seem to have more stuff, i feel my games consistent i win some i lose some . i do believe i am getting better but the the thing is i am not getting that promotion. the thing is the ladder might be broken in itself in terms of where you place but i dont think the mmr is. i dont care personally that im in such a league, as long as the game is challenging enough and i can seriously understand and make up some excuse that on how i lost.
anyways, i still think its broken i deserve to be in silver at least Sorry mate, Silver and Bronze are just Mathematically uneffected by Hacking... you will just have to improve your Game. Edit: sorry about the german Grammar... sometimes its really hard to stop writing nouns in Capital Letters... Mathematically isn't a noun.
Totally True ... I Will Just Revert To Using Capitals All The Way Because Thats Way More Convinient And Much Less Confusing Unlike That Bullshit mathematical grammar.
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On January 18 2015 06:58 FXOTheoRy wrote:
I think the MMR system is actually one of the things blizzard got right in this game. I do think the whole divisions thing for non-GM leagues is silly. Blizzard most likely will never crack down on the hacks/exploit issues though :c
I think it would be pretty cool if the division actuallly were filled with people i knew. Every time i get someone from my fl in my 1v1 division there s some hefty rivalry going on. And damn points matter.
On January 18 2015 07:03 Gamegene wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 21:56 pigmanbear wrote:On January 17 2015 16:42 Gamegene wrote:
you're blaming the ladder for not getting GM? cmon man. It's GGZerg. Everybody's a hacker and it's all a big consipiracy and he's the smartest guy ever on TeamLiquid. It's very unironic considering this is the attitude of most ladder heroes and ESPECIALLY those who stream ladder but do not actually compete (ie: avilo, various casters who shall not be named). Mass fucking excuses for everything. I think people could take a fucking hint from the smash community who don't have the luxury of an online ladder: "no johns". edit: actually i guess avilo does participate in qualifiers, but most of his activity/notoriety centers around his ladder stream.
Avilo is just participating to make himself look a legit contender. The fact that he didn´t get a spot tho is a lot more telling.
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I think a lot of you are missing the point I was trying to make and I apologize for making this sound like this is all about me not being able to get into GM, I don't think I am GM level yet but I also think all the ex GM level players I beat were not GM level either....
The point I was trying to make is that the way the ladder system works, it is extremely hard to even attempt to get to promoted to GM with how unforgiving the ladder system treats only certain players, it is not delegating the same point system to every single player it seems.
There is only 1 week to move up in rank to get promoted to GM, and it seems nearly impossible when you go on a great winning streak and go for example...
Win +4 , Win +4 , Win +6 , Win +8, and then you face a barcode hacker 3 times in a row and lose 3 games....
-21 , -18 , -12... at this point I start to tilt and am extremely angry after watching the replays and realizing this person never scouted, hard countered everything perfectly and obviously hacked. Begins the slump. Lose a few more games because you are now not thinking correctly...
-12, -16... Manage to pick yourself up, win two more games...+8, +4...
Play a few more games and you lose two... -12, -18
At this point, you were promoted to Masters, but the system is making it extremely difficult to ever get promoted to Grand Masters, but I don't think that the system makes it so difficult for every single player. There are so many bad players in GM on NA server, it is not a good 'indicator of skill '.
The ladder system was not even working properly last season so I don't know why anyone would defend it lol, there was a defecit in the amount of players and that is why Masters league was only top 1% of players , that's why last season we had so many Diamonds in Masters, and so many Masters in Diamond, and so many of the leagues that were not properly balanced.
The ultimate point I was trying to make is that the point distribution and ladder system seems flawed, whether or not I am good enough to get into GM is not really the point I was trying to make, even though I do feel good enough.
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you keep on coming back to losing to hackers. I think that's the core of the problem, not the system.
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Can't do a long post on my phone but ladder has been broken for a long time now. It's one of the reasons why people don't play as much anymore and we have this "dead game" scenario. The fact that Blizzard doesn't even bother addressing them shows how little they care for us. A Reddit poster mentioned that even the Twitter account is rarely active compared to other Blizzard games.
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On January 18 2015 08:31 Big J wrote:
you keep on coming back to losing to hackers. I think that's the core of the problem, not the system.
Even if you are losing to hackers, the point system also seems flawed...
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On January 18 2015 07:11 alpenrahm wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 06:47 Cascade wrote:On January 18 2015 00:37 alpenrahm wrote:On January 18 2015 00:33 StatixEx wrote:
ye i feel this way all the time, i play hundreds of games . . hundreds of them and i dont get promoted, they always seem to have more stuff, i feel my games consistent i win some i lose some . i do believe i am getting better but the the thing is i am not getting that promotion. the thing is the ladder might be broken in itself in terms of where you place but i dont think the mmr is. i dont care personally that im in such a league, as long as the game is challenging enough and i can seriously understand and make up some excuse that on how i lost.
anyways, i still think its broken i deserve to be in silver at least Sorry mate, Silver and Bronze are just Mathematically uneffected by Hacking... you will just have to improve your Game. Edit: sorry about the german Grammar... sometimes its really hard to stop writing nouns in Capital Letters... Mathematically isn't a noun. Totally True ... I Will Just Revert To Using Capitals All The Way Because Thats Way More Convinient And Much Less Confusing Unlike That Bullshit mathematical grammar.
You didnt capitalise "mathemical" and "grammar".
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Only a 3rd Party Bnet will resolve these issues. Everything else wount be changed.
Play unranked. You get the same enemys, but you dont care about points. I dont know how to solve the issues else.
Blizzard does not care at all. Why do I say this?
Look a Dota or LoL: how many maphackers are there? Nearly zero. Why?
Because the client does not know what is behind the fog of war. In SC II since WoL Beta the client of each player knows the whole map and just fogs it. Easiest to hack, just extract the informations, you client allready has from the server. Same for the production tab hack. They just extract the informations out of their clients, because this really bad netcode sends them the whole information about their enemy. And you even do not need these informations. Blizzard knows this since brood war or at least since the "ban waves" in wc3 times. But they never cared and continued with this bad netcode and clientsystem.
And why do they? A guy who cant hack would not play their game. A Hacker that gets banned, buys the game twice. More profit. They would serious engange their bad netcode and tune up their anticheat, if they wouldnt think that it hurts their income.
The problem with the MMR and the pointsystem will only be solved via external battlenets. I hope they will come fast, otherwise this game dies.
We see clearly, that blizzard doesnt even understand these demands. Wooohooo they get automated tournaments as a BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE for LotV. Hey this BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE... i saw it somewhere, oh year, in WC3 tft 12 years ago.
Serious. This game will not survive without non blizzard multiplayersystems. Broodwar needed ICcup, Fish and Co. Wc III needed WC III Arena. SC II will need its own thing. And better fast, because the status quo will be the status dead.
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On January 18 2015 05:47 pigmanbear wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 05:28 ninazerg wrote:On January 17 2015 22:23 plgElwood wrote:
2010:
Bronze: You did not attack your own structures ! Great !
Silver: You got to 100 o Supply once ! Great !
Gold: You now know how2 4Gate. Great !
Platinum: Actuall Micro/Macro + 2 BO/MU
Diamond: So you played BW huh? IdraIdraIdra
2014:
All stepped up. Even Bronzes now know what a BO is.
Newcomers who watch their workers for 5 minutes get a high5, in the face, with a shovel. Back to Campaign it is. If not anything else, this should make people who make it to gold/platinum/diamond, and all the 'omg ur so bad that ur only diamond' ranks, more proud of their achievement. I mean before, you had a rank named after the most valuable compressed-carbon substance in the world, and it was equated with shit. Maybe it's time to be okay with diamond. In StarCraft: Brood War, many very low-ranked people have an idea of what build orders are. Both games have the aspect of being competitive, and it's the same with everything. You can't just sit on your ass through all of your school years then walk out onto a football field and play, because you're gonna suck. The campaign is basically you kicking the ball around in your own backyard. Yep, over time SC2 bnet is going to look more and more like ICCup, and that's a good thing.
You mean empty and virtually vacant, or are you referring to the ranking system? Because, if you don't know, a bunch of Brood War nerds were crying for a match-making system "like sc2". The irony is that now sc2 people want a ladder like iCCup. It just seems like the same shit on both sides of the fence: noobs are losing games, and decide to blame the system for not winning.
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The grass is greener on the other side.
Or, in a more contemporary formulations, haters gonna hate.
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Actually the match making algorithm works very well, I like it a lot.
The ranking system (hidden MMR and stuff) lacks a lot of things for sure. Just show the player's MMR and make a real ladder like it's done for Warcraft 3 (http://classic.battle.net/war3/ladder/w3xp-ladder-solo.aspx?Gateway=Northrend). That's it.
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While I am of course disappointed you didnt name WGTour in your BW ladder list (nah I m kidding it s ok :p), I agree with you.
The ladder seems broken, more now than even before.GM is a special case as only 200 players can get in, but all the way down to bronze there are issues. It s harder and harder to find a balanced game nowadays, it feels either you crush your opponent super easily or you get crushed yourself. A lot of people I know on every league told me the same...
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On January 18 2015 02:38 Big J wrote:
b) it is not realistically implementable. As I claim above, how does the AI differentiate between 1 baneling and 50 and when it has to split? Well, you can program that. Which is a decision making process that you give in the hands of the AI. Does it still just amove against 10banelings? Even if you only have 10marines?
You see, you'd have to basically program it out very well... which means you just optimize a program that plays the whole game for you with your decisions. Eventually, the program will be perfect. That's it, game solved.
Why make it complicated? Simply ALWAYS split by moving away from every melee unit and kite. BTW it already exist... here's an example.
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On January 17 2015 16:14 SC2Toastie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2015 16:03 ZAiNs wrote:
The way leagues and divisions work don't feel that great, but the SC2 ladder system is extremely good at putting you where you deserve to be very quickly. All you need is like 30 games and you'll be where you should be. That is not the case, which is what ggzerg is writing about. The system matches you up with the right people (most of the time) but your rank (dia/m/gm) is not an accurate display of your current skill level in the higher leagues.
The ladder system is working, and I think it's the best/most fair ranking system ever for a game. The leagues are nearly completely useless and meaningless, the only thing that matters is the opponents you face. I have never been far out of 50/50 win/loss for the 4 years I've been playing, you mostly only see that towards the top. Which is incredibly for a game with so many factors and incorporating 3 distinctly different races.
But completely fair does not always equal most fun. Losing 50% of my games over 4 years can be rough in it self and is not for most people...
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On January 18 2015 23:23 varsovie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 02:38 Big J wrote:
b) it is not realistically implementable. As I claim above, how does the AI differentiate between 1 baneling and 50 and when it has to split? Well, you can program that. Which is a decision making process that you give in the hands of the AI. Does it still just amove against 10banelings? Even if you only have 10marines?
You see, you'd have to basically program it out very well... which means you just optimize a program that plays the whole game for you with your decisions. Eventually, the program will be perfect. That's it, game solved. Why make it complicated? Simply ALWAYS split by moving away from every melee unit and kite. BTW it already exist... here's an example.
Yeah, that would work so well in all scenarios, would it?
Ever heard of that thing called Broodlord? Good luck when your marines are kiting broodlings and never getting in range of the broodlord because they keep bouncing forward until they get shot and then kite backwards and repeat.
Or you have a drop behind a mineral line and zerglings approach? Better have them marines run and split, so the zerglings gain more surface area, lol.
The only time marines want to split is against splash. And the only time marines want to kite is when the main bulk of opponents is in melee. If it is a mixture of ranged and melee (like zealots and colossi) bio often doesn't want to kite backwards but forwards and targetfire the ranged units behind the melee buffer. You know, just kill that 350HP Colossus first and kite afterwards instead of killing the 10zealots with 1500HP while the Colossus has a field day with its 9range. You know, concious decisions and judgment of situation. Strategy, Tactics, Experience. Winning by using your head.
The automaton simulates amoved banelings vs marines that are optimized vs amoved banelings. Now make a big zergling army. The marines will split and allow extreme surface area. The zerglings now win a battle that they'd lose brutally if the marines just stood there in a ball and stimmed. Or maybe they still don't win, but they are much more efficient now because the marines split, while they should rather form a perfect ball.
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On January 18 2015 08:25 GGzerG wrote:
I think a lot of you are missing the point I was trying to make and I apologize for making this sound like this is all about me not being able to get into GM, I don't think I am GM level yet but I also think all the ex GM level players I beat were not GM level either....
The point I was trying to make is that the way the ladder system works, it is extremely hard to even attempt to get to promoted to GM with how unforgiving the ladder system treats only certain players, it is not delegating the same point system to every single player it seems.
There is only 1 week to move up in rank to get promoted to GM, and it seems nearly impossible when you go on a great winning streak and go for example...
Win +4 , Win +4 , Win +6 , Win +8, and then you face a barcode hacker 3 times in a row and lose 3 games....
-21 , -18 , -12... at this point I start to tilt and am extremely angry after watching the replays and realizing this person never scouted, hard countered everything perfectly and obviously hacked. Begins the slump. Lose a few more games because you are now not thinking correctly...
-12, -16... Manage to pick yourself up, win two more games...+8, +4...
Play a few more games and you lose two... -12, -18
At this point, you were promoted to Masters, but the system is making it extremely difficult to ever get promoted to Grand Masters, but I don't think that the system makes it so difficult for every single player. There are so many bad players in GM on NA server, it is not a good 'indicator of skill '.
The ladder system was not even working properly last season so I don't know why anyone would defend it lol, there was a defecit in the amount of players and that is why Masters league was only top 1% of players , that's why last season we had so many Diamonds in Masters, and so many Masters in Diamond, and so many of the leagues that were not properly balanced.
The ultimate point I was trying to make is that the point distribution and ladder system seems flawed, whether or not I am good enough to get into GM is not really the point I was trying to make, even though I do feel good enough.
Sorry, you're just wrong about this and I pointed it out in my post. Everyone at EVERY level plays people who are both very below and very above their level. That is the point of the system, if you're good you will win more to the higher level players and get promoted faster. Or, if you were misplaced or are not playing so well you will be moved down. The % of smurfs who impact this number is negligible - tho I may agree that at top 200/GM there is a reasonable # of hackers. You cannot blame "not playing 100% every game" as a 'real' excuse for why you lose to those lower ranked players and then lose -20 3 times. If you really feel like you're tilting then don't play, it's really that simple. Tilting is, in essence, your own problem so you should deal with that rather than blame the ladder for it making you angry(?).
The reason there are so many horrendous players in GM in NA is because they either hack or just do builds where you die if you get a bad scout pattern on a certain map and they do a certain build. This happens a lot and is why certain zerg players who are even all the way up at top 20 GM get there. They do things like ling all in on 3/4 player maps every game. Who cares though, ladder doesn't win them anything and if you're good enough you should be beating any player who does builds like this at least a margin of the time you play them. If you do so your MMR will balance out and, again, it then becomes negligible.
You, and others say, that Masters is only the top 1% or 2% or GM is the top% but regardless of the %s if you're good enough to be in that league you WILL be promoted, it is literally that simple. It does not matter about the # of players who are currently in there. So, in short, you can 'feel' however you want but unless you're beating the people who you'd lose -20 to much more often than not then you won't be getting promoted there any time soon. That's generally how any ranking system works...
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On January 19 2015 00:11 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 23:23 varsovie wrote:On January 18 2015 02:38 Big J wrote:
b) it is not realistically implementable. As I claim above, how does the AI differentiate between 1 baneling and 50 and when it has to split? Well, you can program that. Which is a decision making process that you give in the hands of the AI. Does it still just amove against 10banelings? Even if you only have 10marines?
You see, you'd have to basically program it out very well... which means you just optimize a program that plays the whole game for you with your decisions. Eventually, the program will be perfect. That's it, game solved. Why make it complicated? Simply ALWAYS split by moving away from every melee unit and kite. BTW it already exist... here's an example. Yeah, that would work so well in all scenarios, would it? Ever heard of that thing called Broodlord? Good luck when your marines are kiting broodlings and never getting in range of the broodlord because they keep bouncing forward until they get shot and then kite backwards and repeat. Or you have a drop behind a mineral line and zerglings approach? Better have them marines run and split, so the zerglings gain more surface area, lol. The only time marines want to split is against splash. And the only time marines want to kite is when the main bulk of opponents is in melee. If it is a mixture of ranged and melee (like zealots and colossi) bio often doesn't want to kite backwards but forwards and targetfire the ranged units behind the melee buffer. You know, just kill that 350HP Colossus first and kite afterwards instead of killing the 10zealots with 1500HP while the Colossus has a field day with its 9range. You know, concious decisions and judgment of situation. Strategy, Tactics, Experience. Winning by using your head. The automaton simulates amoved banelings vs marines that are optimized vs amoved banelings. Now make a big zergling army. The marines will split and allow extreme surface area. The zerglings now win a battle that they'd lose brutally if the marines just stood there in a ball and stimmed. Or maybe they still don't win, but they are much more efficient now because the marines split, while they should rather form a perfect ball.
I guess the context wasn't clear. I meant "AI" as a mean to cheat, not as an AI able to play a whole game. Actually if all you want is ez marine split a simple potential field works. See lings, hit a key and let the rines auto-kite. :D
As for a total AI able to "play the game" it has already been done. Maybe not able to win GSL (yet) but certainly able to cope with gold leagers.
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On January 19 2015 08:18 varsovie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2015 00:11 Big J wrote:On January 18 2015 23:23 varsovie wrote:On January 18 2015 02:38 Big J wrote:
b) it is not realistically implementable. As I claim above, how does the AI differentiate between 1 baneling and 50 and when it has to split? Well, you can program that. Which is a decision making process that you give in the hands of the AI. Does it still just amove against 10banelings? Even if you only have 10marines?
You see, you'd have to basically program it out very well... which means you just optimize a program that plays the whole game for you with your decisions. Eventually, the program will be perfect. That's it, game solved. Why make it complicated? Simply ALWAYS split by moving away from every melee unit and kite. BTW it already exist... here's an example. Yeah, that would work so well in all scenarios, would it? Ever heard of that thing called Broodlord? Good luck when your marines are kiting broodlings and never getting in range of the broodlord because they keep bouncing forward until they get shot and then kite backwards and repeat. Or you have a drop behind a mineral line and zerglings approach? Better have them marines run and split, so the zerglings gain more surface area, lol. The only time marines want to split is against splash. And the only time marines want to kite is when the main bulk of opponents is in melee. If it is a mixture of ranged and melee (like zealots and colossi) bio often doesn't want to kite backwards but forwards and targetfire the ranged units behind the melee buffer. You know, just kill that 350HP Colossus first and kite afterwards instead of killing the 10zealots with 1500HP while the Colossus has a field day with its 9range. You know, concious decisions and judgment of situation. Strategy, Tactics, Experience. Winning by using your head. The automaton simulates amoved banelings vs marines that are optimized vs amoved banelings. Now make a big zergling army. The marines will split and allow extreme surface area. The zerglings now win a battle that they'd lose brutally if the marines just stood there in a ball and stimmed. Or maybe they still don't win, but they are much more efficient now because the marines split, while they should rather form a perfect ball. I guess the context wasn't clear. I meant "AI" as a mean to cheat, not as an AI able to play a whole game. Actually if all you want is ez marine split a simple potential field works. See lings, hit a key and let the rines auto-kite. :D As for a total AI able to "play the game" it has already been done. Maybe not able to win GSL (yet) but certainly able to cope with gold leagers.
Ok, that makes sense.
What I responded to originally was a comment that said that the game should just automatically kite/split for you. That there are ways to automate such stuff is clear, however, it isn't just "mechanical ape"-stuff that shouldn't be in the game anyways, because those actions are meaningful in the sense that they imply decisions in the first place. It's not just stuff that is like, say, you need to give an attack command 5times instead of once to make a unit attack.
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On January 19 2015 06:22 -Kyo- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2015 08:25 GGzerG wrote:
I think a lot of you are missing the point I was trying to make and I apologize for making this sound like this is all about me not being able to get into GM, I don't think I am GM level yet but I also think all the ex GM level players I beat were not GM level either....
The point I was trying to make is that the way the ladder system works, it is extremely hard to even attempt to get to promoted to GM with how unforgiving the ladder system treats only certain players, it is not delegating the same point system to every single player it seems.
There is only 1 week to move up in rank to get promoted to GM, and it seems nearly impossible when you go on a great winning streak and go for example...
Win +4 , Win +4 , Win +6 , Win +8, and then you face a barcode hacker 3 times in a row and lose 3 games....
-21 , -18 , -12... at this point I start to tilt and am extremely angry after watching the replays and realizing this person never scouted, hard countered everything perfectly and obviously hacked. Begins the slump. Lose a few more games because you are now not thinking correctly...
-12, -16... Manage to pick yourself up, win two more games...+8, +4...
Play a few more games and you lose two... -12, -18
At this point, you were promoted to Masters, but the system is making it extremely difficult to ever get promoted to Grand Masters, but I don't think that the system makes it so difficult for every single player. There are so many bad players in GM on NA server, it is not a good 'indicator of skill '.
The ladder system was not even working properly last season so I don't know why anyone would defend it lol, there was a defecit in the amount of players and that is why Masters league was only top 1% of players , that's why last season we had so many Diamonds in Masters, and so many Masters in Diamond, and so many of the leagues that were not properly balanced.
The ultimate point I was trying to make is that the point distribution and ladder system seems flawed, whether or not I am good enough to get into GM is not really the point I was trying to make, even though I do feel good enough. Sorry, you're just wrong about this and I pointed it out in my post. Everyone at EVERY level plays people who are both very below and very above their level. That is the point of the system, if you're good you will win more to the higher level players and get promoted faster. Or, if you were misplaced or are not playing so well you will be moved down. The % of smurfs who impact this number is negligible - tho I may agree that at top 200/GM there is a reasonable # of hackers. You cannot blame "not playing 100% every game" as a 'real' excuse for why you lose to those lower ranked players and then lose -20 3 times. If you really feel like you're tilting then don't play, it's really that simple. Tilting is, in essence, your own problem so you should deal with that rather than blame the ladder for it making you angry(?). The reason there are so many horrendous players in GM in NA is because they either hack or just do builds where you die if you get a bad scout pattern on a certain map and they do a certain build. This happens a lot and is why certain zerg players who are even all the way up at top 20 GM get there. They do things like ling all in on 3/4 player maps every game. Who cares though, ladder doesn't win them anything and if you're good enough you should be beating any player who does builds like this at least a margin of the time you play them. If you do so your MMR will balance out and, again, it then becomes negligible. You, and others say, that Masters is only the top 1% or 2% or GM is the top% but regardless of the %s if you're good enough to be in that league you WILL be promoted, it is literally that simple. It does not matter about the # of players who are currently in there. So, in short, you can 'feel' however you want but unless you're beating the people who you'd lose -20 to much more often than not then you won't be getting promoted there any time soon. That's generally how any ranking system works...
And the only reason you support this system is because you yourself are GM and so prideful.
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On January 20 2015 13:42 GGzerG wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2015 06:22 -Kyo- wrote:On January 18 2015 08:25 GGzerG wrote:
I think a lot of you are missing the point I was trying to make and I apologize for making this sound like this is all about me not being able to get into GM, I don't think I am GM level yet but I also think all the ex GM level players I beat were not GM level either....
The point I was trying to make is that the way the ladder system works, it is extremely hard to even attempt to get to promoted to GM with how unforgiving the ladder system treats only certain players, it is not delegating the same point system to every single player it seems.
There is only 1 week to move up in rank to get promoted to GM, and it seems nearly impossible when you go on a great winning streak and go for example...
Win +4 , Win +4 , Win +6 , Win +8, and then you face a barcode hacker 3 times in a row and lose 3 games....
-21 , -18 , -12... at this point I start to tilt and am extremely angry after watching the replays and realizing this person never scouted, hard countered everything perfectly and obviously hacked. Begins the slump. Lose a few more games because you are now not thinking correctly...
-12, -16... Manage to pick yourself up, win two more games...+8, +4...
Play a few more games and you lose two... -12, -18
At this point, you were promoted to Masters, but the system is making it extremely difficult to ever get promoted to Grand Masters, but I don't think that the system makes it so difficult for every single player. There are so many bad players in GM on NA server, it is not a good 'indicator of skill '.
The ladder system was not even working properly last season so I don't know why anyone would defend it lol, there was a defecit in the amount of players and that is why Masters league was only top 1% of players , that's why last season we had so many Diamonds in Masters, and so many Masters in Diamond, and so many of the leagues that were not properly balanced.
The ultimate point I was trying to make is that the point distribution and ladder system seems flawed, whether or not I am good enough to get into GM is not really the point I was trying to make, even though I do feel good enough. Sorry, you're just wrong about this and I pointed it out in my post. Everyone at EVERY level plays people who are both very below and very above their level. That is the point of the system, if you're good you will win more to the higher level players and get promoted faster. Or, if you were misplaced or are not playing so well you will be moved down. The % of smurfs who impact this number is negligible - tho I may agree that at top 200/GM there is a reasonable # of hackers. You cannot blame "not playing 100% every game" as a 'real' excuse for why you lose to those lower ranked players and then lose -20 3 times. If you really feel like you're tilting then don't play, it's really that simple. Tilting is, in essence, your own problem so you should deal with that rather than blame the ladder for it making you angry(?). The reason there are so many horrendous players in GM in NA is because they either hack or just do builds where you die if you get a bad scout pattern on a certain map and they do a certain build. This happens a lot and is why certain zerg players who are even all the way up at top 20 GM get there. They do things like ling all in on 3/4 player maps every game. Who cares though, ladder doesn't win them anything and if you're good enough you should be beating any player who does builds like this at least a margin of the time you play them. If you do so your MMR will balance out and, again, it then becomes negligible. You, and others say, that Masters is only the top 1% or 2% or GM is the top% but regardless of the %s if you're good enough to be in that league you WILL be promoted, it is literally that simple. It does not matter about the # of players who are currently in there. So, in short, you can 'feel' however you want but unless you're beating the people who you'd lose -20 to much more often than not then you won't be getting promoted there any time soon. That's generally how any ranking system works... And the only reason you support this system is because you yourself are GM and so prideful.
Dude what? My whole point in this thread is that regardless of your league the system operates in the same way for all players regardless of league. Have you even been reading my posts? lmao
tl;dr If you play well more often than you play worse you will gain leagues and eventually reach GM. The outside/limiting factors like hackers are moot in the totality of how long the game has been released.
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I've always hated the sc2 ladder, it has slowly improved, but how you described it-a revolution needs to happen-and NOW!
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I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.
I really hate when people say this. Do your work. Then when you get home create a decent and proper thread on TL.
Don't shed responsibilities at work to create a half-assed and rushed TL thread, it short changes your employer and TL.
But yeah, hackers suck. I recommend playing in tournaments (especially local offline tourneys if they are around) and using (and looking at the ladder) as just a practice system. Makes the game a lot more fun. And then when do beat up GM's, it actually means something because your name moves on, and they do not.
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On January 20 2015 14:04 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote + I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.
I really hate when people say this. Do your work. Then when you get home create a decent and proper thread on TL. Don't shed responsibilities at work to create a half-assed and rushed TL thread, it short changes your employer and TL.
Agree very much. Specially since those promised replays very rarely actually turn up after work... :/
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On January 20 2015 14:04 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote + I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.
I really hate when people say this. Do your work. Then when you get home create a decent and proper thread on TL. Don't shed responsibilities at work to create a half-assed and rushed TL thread, it short changes your employer and TL. But yeah, hackers suck. I recommend playing in tournaments (especially local offline tourneys if they are around) and using (and looking at the ladder) as just a practice system. Makes the game a lot more fun. And then when do beat up GM's, it actually means something because your name moves on, and they do not.
Yea and if you checked the actual thread on battle.net you would have seen I posted the replays. This was a reference to that thread only, and you would have known that if you had read the entire post.
EDIT : Also I have been posting them in the GM / Master hacking thread, I think it is obvious by now theres a hacker infestation and posting more replays in this thread rather in the ones already made would be obsolete.
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On January 20 2015 15:09 GGzerG wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2015 14:04 BronzeKnee wrote: I do have replays to prove this and will post them when I get home, I am at work ATM.
I really hate when people say this. Do your work. Then when you get home create a decent and proper thread on TL. Don't shed responsibilities at work to create a half-assed and rushed TL thread, it short changes your employer and TL. But yeah, hackers suck. I recommend playing in tournaments (especially local offline tourneys if they are around) and using (and looking at the ladder) as just a practice system. Makes the game a lot more fun. And then when do beat up GM's, it actually means something because your name moves on, and they do not. Yea and if you checked the actual thread on battle.net you would have seen I posted the replays. This was a reference to that thread only, and you would have known that if you had read the entire post. EDIT : Also I have been posting them in the GM / Master hacking thread, I think it is obvious by now theres a hacker infestation and posting more replays in this thread rather in the ones already made would be obsolete.
So to resume you post relevant information everywhere BUT where the reader would look i.e. directly in the concerned thread...
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Me (no where good as the OP, only 6 times masters) and at least one friend of mine (17x masters) are in the same boat as the OP.
As a terran player I took several long breaks from HotS during the early periods where terran was just shit on. (5 - 21 weeks). My MMR is totally fucked. I'm literally playing platinum - GM players. I've played platinum players that have never hit diamond, platinum players that are 5-8 times masters players, diamond players that are ex masters, current masters, current masters that really shouldn't be masters and 2 Current GM players. I have no clue what is going on, like why even have a ranking system if it isn't going to correspond with your mmr in the slightest...
Then the hackers... omfg... I have not encountered anyone I would have considered to have been hacking from WoL launch up until when I started playing again two weeks ago. And in those two weeks I've encountered 2 players that were blatently hacking and it makes me question every game I play. Like one guy was just blatantly map hacking and another guy who's blink stalkers would literally blink away the second I targeted a stalker if the amount of damage would have been lethal (Like they would blink perfectly just after loosing shields which isn't suspicious by itself, but if I target fired a stalker with more than enough marauders to kill it, the stalker I targeted would blink as soon as I issued the right-click command. :\. ).
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
GM promotions can be solved pretty easily.
So Blizzard doesn't want to demote casual players, because this is too big punishment. OK, so why not to demote the HC players on the top, GM only? When you are boosted to GM and then you are playing like a scumbag, system should demote you and since you were in GM you are super gamer who doesn't fear of losing, therefore the system can demote you over and over and over again until you are in the league where you are supposed to.
Edit> Demoting system would be applied only to the season when you were in the GM so you can, ehm ehm, sell the account(or switch race) without being punished
Also banning hackers would be great, but I don't understand the logic, that we demote so ELITE players only for inactivity.
If this system has been changed, please ignore my post 
(I don't care 'bout GM, I don't have the skill to be there)
Also, I would appreciate if you all, who are reading only the QQ not GM part, would start reading the post as a whole. The thread would be a nicer place. Oh, silly me, we are on the internets ><
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On January 18 2015 09:50 Clonester wrote:
Only a 3rd Party Bnet will resolve these issues. Everything else wount be changed.
Play unranked. You get the same enemys, but you dont care about points. I dont know how to solve the issues else.
Blizzard does not care at all. Why do I say this?
Look a Dota or LoL: how many maphackers are there? Nearly zero. Why?
Because the client does not know what is behind the fog of war. In SC II since WoL Beta the client of each player knows the whole map and just fogs it. Easiest to hack, just extract the informations, you client allready has from the server. Same for the production tab hack. They just extract the informations out of their clients, because this really bad netcode sends them the whole information about their enemy. And you even do not need these informations. Blizzard knows this since brood war or at least since the "ban waves" in wc3 times. But they never cared and continued with this bad netcode and clientsystem.
And why do they? A guy who cant hack would not play their game. A Hacker that gets banned, buys the game twice. More profit. They would serious engange their bad netcode and tune up their anticheat, if they wouldnt think that it hurts their income.
The problem with the MMR and the pointsystem will only be solved via external battlenets. I hope they will come fast, otherwise this game dies.
We see clearly, that blizzard doesnt even understand these demands. Wooohooo they get automated tournaments as a BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE for LotV. Hey this BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE... i saw it somewhere, oh year, in WC3 tft 12 years ago.
Serious. This game will not survive without non blizzard multiplayersystems. Broodwar needed ICcup, Fish and Co. Wc III needed WC III Arena. SC II will need its own thing. And better fast, because the status quo will be the status dead.
I just don't care 'bout the ladder matchmaking problem.
However, what said in the quote above is just IMO the ONLY core of the problem. If you fix that, you fix the whole problem (not speaking 'bout kids blaming ladder system for their loss, tho. And I am not saying this is the case of OP.)
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Honestly this seems to boil down to just play better. The leagues are pretty much meaningless. If you're raging after losing and you're starting to tilt, you don't deserve to face better players. It's as simple as that.
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There are many problems with the ladder system and it should be overhauled, but none of the problems are the ones listed in the OP. In fact, everything the OP complains about is working as intended and an optimal ladder system would work in the same way as the current system does in these respects.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On January 20 2015 19:54 paralleluniverse wrote:
There are many problems with the ladder system and it should be overhauled, but none of the problems are the ones listed in the OP. In fact, everything the OP complains about is working as intended and an optimal ladder system would work in the same way as the current system does in these respects.
Honestly, I don't see any reasoning to keep players "safe" spot in the top league in an optimal ladder system. If you are a horrible player or in a slump, get out, let others in.
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This seems to be a two part deal. First is the ladder next is hacking. Personally I really like the SC2 ladder system. I think it works great. You can ballpark your skill until you get to the point where you actually want to know (high Master / GM) and then you can pinpoint it a bit better.
The latter needs to be addressed. It is no fun losing to someone with seemingly superhuman awareness. I don't know how prevalent hacking is on the ladder exactly or if a few rotten apples are spoiling the bushel but as long as there is the possibility to production and map hack the thought will always be there.
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I was extremely hopeful that they would have the Pre 1.15 warcraft 3 Ladder system on sc2 launch since it was limited to 1 account. The only reason it was changed in warcraft 3 (said explicitly by blizzard) was to combat smurfing.
1.14 AMM (Automated matchmaking) was absolutely amazing for anyone that remembered it. Basically there were levels. Beating a higher level player would grant more experience, and losing to a lower level player would result in a larger penalty. You could only match somebody within X levels of you (war3 initially had this set at 7), and would only expand to that high based on search times.
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It's a pity this topic popped up while I was on vacation. A lot of good points in the OP. Skimmed a couple pages and didn't see anything mentioned about smurfs. I think that's a main culprit in delegitimizing the ladder. Also, encountered auto inject today.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/15354636929
We get 6 free mmrs. MMR takes a long time to adjust (dozens of games). So what's happening is high level players matching low level players on accounts that haven't leveled out or that were purposely tanked. Bottom line: ranked should NEVER match unranked.
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Northern Ireland26265 Posts
This is a personal issue for me, perhaps doesn't affect that many.
The MMR decay is much, much too steep. I'm so fucking inactive now due to the accursed realm known as 'real life', come back and grind 30-40 games over a day or two, stomp the majority of opponents in one-sided BS games, start to get back league wise to a bit below my 'peak'. Then I have a period of inactivity that sets me back to square one after a week or so of not playing.
I can still hang with many of the guys I used to play with, or at least not get stomped and those guys are active Dia players on the most part. When I go to ladder I'm stuck playing my way from silvers upwards. It's really not fucking fun at all. The only game mode I particular enjoy is 1v1 and I like testing myself against random opponents instead of always customing so there's less of a metagaming element (although I do like that too).
I literally don't play at all anymore because it seems unless I'm playing steadily I'll be undergoing the fucking trial of Sisyphus for the rest of my laddering life.
To be honest I'm mystified this isn't mentioned more often among the semi-regular ladderers among us.
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United States12240 Posts
I'm actually surprised that I didn't see this thread until now. Thanks for bumping it.
So, a lot of people like to blame MMR decay, and it's evident that MMR decay has caused deflation in the overall ladder, but I think in a lot of individual cases MMR decay isn't a factor at all. Not playing for one week doesn't impact your MMR at all. Taking a week off is completely fine. Even taking 2 weeks off is completely fine; no decay. It's only after that point that you start decaying, but it's only at a rate of about 1.5 games per day, and that caps out after another 2 weeks. But, MMR decay exists and people know it exists, but they don't always have the facts so you get players who are fearful of not playing for a day or they'll end up in Bronze. That's not to say that MMR decay isn't a problem in its current state, because it is.
The GM demotion requirement is a legitimate problem as well that needs to be addressed. The initial concept of a bonus pool threshold made sense because at the time, bonus pool was only spent through wins, meaning you had to win. Now that bonus pool is also spent through losses, you run into bizarre issues where a boosted GM player can stay in the league for the entire season (but obviously the booster has to get them in first) without winning a single game. That's not in the spirit of what the GM league represents.
I had my own ideas for what should be changed about MMR decay specifically which I posted on the Bnet forums.
My recommendation would be something along these lines:
- Wins double (or triple or quadruple?) the amount of MMR gained until the total gain, not the net gain, is equal to the amount decayed. This means that if you decayed -315 and your MMR changed +64 per win and -16 per loss, after your fifth win you'd revert back to +16 per win, even if your record by that point was 5-20.
- Losses drop MMR as normal.
- Decay has a hard and permanent cap of 315 rating. Not just per decay segment, but overall. No more "serial decayers" who drop further and further down the ladder due to inactivity streaks. However, if you were at -315 one month and played back up to -100, after another month of decay you would fall back to -315 instead of -415.
- Arranged teams do not decay.
- Random teams decay at the same rate as 1v1, but their decay timers are shared with 1v1 and with each other.
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What bugs me is the constant adjustment of league distributions. It's annoying. It is really hard to know where you stand and what progress you are making (or if you are making some).
Apart from that, just give me a matchup picking feature for unranked and I'm happy, overall I like how the MMR/ladder works. Just that I'd like to have a permanent benchmark and when I don't want to rank up, that I can play the matchup I want to play.
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The point system also needs some adjustment. Almost all of my games are +8 when I win and -20 when I lose. That's a big reason why some players just immediately log off after burning bonus pool. Even if I play 30 games a day and maintain a 70% winrate, I probably only moved up 5 ranks in my division. It's too damn frustrating, it makes me feel like I did not improve/learn anything at all
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The issues with players getting boosted to GM and then just camping there are rampant. Everyone and their cousins know who these players that got boosted to GM are.
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Blizzard said that ladder will be fixed soon. Starcraft 2 is all about "soon" nowadays.
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On February 10 2015 11:31 Big J wrote:
What bugs me is the constant adjustment of league distributions. It's annoying. It is really hard to know where you stand and what progress you are making (or if you are making some).
There has not been frequent adjustments from Blizzard's side. But as global MMR is decreasing due MMR decay and other lesser reasons, the players are slowly but surely drifting towards lower league MMR ranges.
The major league offset / threshold change times have been following during HotS era (if there has been more changes they have been very small):
2013-03-12: HotS offsets #1 (HotS release / start of season 12)
2013-06-10: HotS offsets #2 (Start of season 14)
2014-01-24: HotS offsets #3 (21 days after start of season 17, 2 days after patch 2.1)
2014-05-01: HotS offsets #4 (17 days after start of season 18)
Based on community managers on Bnet forums Blizzard is planning to do new offset / threshold changes in the coming weeks. But those changes have not arrived yet.
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Without a proposal, there is no alternative for us to choose between.
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ICCUP allows me to not have to play ZvZ, sc2 ladder system is shit in comparison
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On February 10 2015 13:00 Cricketer12 wrote:
ICCUP allows me to not have to play ZvZ, sc2 ladder system is shit in comparison Not sure if sarcastic
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On February 10 2015 11:19 Excalibur_Z wrote:
- Decay has a hard and permanent cap of 315 rating. Not just per decay segment, but overall. No more "serial decayers" who drop further and further down the ladder due to inactivity streaks. However, if you were at -315 one month and played back up to -100, after another month of decay you would fall back to -315 instead of -415.
That is a really really good idea!
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On January 18 2015 09:50 Clonester wrote:
Only a 3rd Party Bnet will resolve these issues. Everything else wount be changed.
Play unranked. You get the same enemys, but you dont care about points. I dont know how to solve the issues else.
Blizzard does not care at all. Why do I say this?
Look a Dota or LoL: how many maphackers are there? Nearly zero. Why?
Because the client does not know what is behind the fog of war. In SC II since WoL Beta the client of each player knows the whole map and just fogs it. Easiest to hack, just extract the informations, you client allready has from the server. Same for the production tab hack. They just extract the informations out of their clients, because this really bad netcode sends them the whole information about their enemy. And you even do not need these informations. Blizzard knows this since brood war or at least since the "ban waves" in wc3 times. But they never cared and continued with this bad netcode and clientsystem.
And why do they? A guy who cant hack would not play their game. A Hacker that gets banned, buys the game twice. More profit. They would serious engange their bad netcode and tune up their anticheat, if they wouldnt think that it hurts their income.
The problem with the MMR and the pointsystem will only be solved via external battlenets. I hope they will come fast, otherwise this game dies.
We see clearly, that blizzard doesnt even understand these demands. Wooohooo they get automated tournaments as a BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE for LotV. Hey this BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE... i saw it somewhere, oh year, in WC3 tft 12 years ago.
Serious. This game will not survive without non blizzard multiplayersystems. Broodwar needed ICcup, Fish and Co. Wc III needed WC III Arena. SC II will need its own thing. And better fast, because the status quo will be the status dead.
You do not realize what you are talking about.
Transferring only the relevant data to each player would necessitate simulating each game on blizzard server. See how 1 game can max out your CPUs. Now imagine dozens thousands of games (1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4) at the same time on blizzard servers for a game with no subscription plan, or auction house or anything. That would be extremely costly and the game would have never been released. And I am not even talking about the gameplay impact and the amount of cry and whine when the server would get laggy.
I am working on an improved anti maphack RTS netcode with a few friends, but let me tell you that such a thing has deep (unavoidable) impact on the game design. Such a game would pretty much not be starcraft.
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After almost 5 years of SC2 I wont accept any other league system as an ELO-like ranking as a good solution. Any other system is lying to the players or just making them believe there is progress through more playing although there isnt.
On February 10 2015 15:10 freakhill wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 18 2015 09:50 Clonester wrote:
Only a 3rd Party Bnet will resolve these issues. Everything else wount be changed.
Play unranked. You get the same enemys, but you dont care about points. I dont know how to solve the issues else.
Blizzard does not care at all. Why do I say this?
Look a Dota or LoL: how many maphackers are there? Nearly zero. Why?
Because the client does not know what is behind the fog of war. In SC II since WoL Beta the client of each player knows the whole map and just fogs it. Easiest to hack, just extract the informations, you client allready has from the server. Same for the production tab hack. They just extract the informations out of their clients, because this really bad netcode sends them the whole information about their enemy. And you even do not need these informations. Blizzard knows this since brood war or at least since the "ban waves" in wc3 times. But they never cared and continued with this bad netcode and clientsystem.
And why do they? A guy who cant hack would not play their game. A Hacker that gets banned, buys the game twice. More profit. They would serious engange their bad netcode and tune up their anticheat, if they wouldnt think that it hurts their income.
The problem with the MMR and the pointsystem will only be solved via external battlenets. I hope they will come fast, otherwise this game dies.
We see clearly, that blizzard doesnt even understand these demands. Wooohooo they get automated tournaments as a BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE for LotV. Hey this BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE... i saw it somewhere, oh year, in WC3 tft 12 years ago.
Serious. This game will not survive without non blizzard multiplayersystems. Broodwar needed ICcup, Fish and Co. Wc III needed WC III Arena. SC II will need its own thing. And better fast, because the status quo will be the status dead.
You do not realize what you are talking about. Transferring only the relevant data to each player would necessitate simulating each game on blizzard server. See how 1 game can max out your CPUs. Now imagine dozens thousands of games (1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4) at the same time on blizzard servers for a game with no subscription plan, or auction house or anything. That would be extremely costly and the game would have never been released. And I am not even talking about the gameplay impact and the amount of cry and whine when the server would get laggy. I am working on an improved anti maphack RTS netcode with a few friends, but let me tell you that such a thing has deep (unavoidable) impact on the game design. Such a game would pretty much not be starcraft.
isnt it possible to encrypt the data that is not visible to the player?
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// double post, pls delete
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On February 10 2015 14:54 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2015 13:00 Cricketer12 wrote:
ICCUP allows me to not have to play ZvZ, sc2 ladder system is shit in comparison Not sure if sarcastic
Actually being able to choose who you play for ranked games and avoid obvious hackers and people you can black list or block is worth alot. And while some might argue that grinding one match up you are good at up the ladder would be abusive to some degree, at least it's a much better training environment and dare I say more fun than rolling the roulette of terrible online bull shit?
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On February 10 2015 15:51 Caihead wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2015 14:54 RampancyTW wrote:On February 10 2015 13:00 Cricketer12 wrote:
ICCUP allows me to not have to play ZvZ, sc2 ladder system is shit in comparison Not sure if sarcastic Actually being able to choose who you play for ranked games and avoid obvious hackers and people you can black list or block is worth alot. And while some might argue that grinding one match up you are good at up the ladder would be abusive to some degree, at least it's a much better training environment and dare I say more fun than rolling the roulette of terrible online bull shit?
I agree with blocking, I don't agree with 1 MU only for ranked(!), but if you desire, you should play 1 MU only for no points, but with ranked people and with ranked matchmaking system. Now, if you use unranked, you have much wider range of enemies, resulting in playing against people who cannot defeat you no matter what they try(and vice versa, obv. the 2nd extreme)
I still think you are supposed to use blocking(the chat ignore thing) to not play anymore vs. the player, it is easy system to use.
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On February 10 2015 15:40 graNite wrote:After almost 5 years of SC2 I wont accept any other league system as an ELO-like ranking as a good solution. Any other system is lying to the players or just making them believe there is progress through more playing although there isnt. Show nested quote +On February 10 2015 15:10 freakhill wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 18 2015 09:50 Clonester wrote:
Only a 3rd Party Bnet will resolve these issues. Everything else wount be changed.
Play unranked. You get the same enemys, but you dont care about points. I dont know how to solve the issues else.
Blizzard does not care at all. Why do I say this?
Look a Dota or LoL: how many maphackers are there? Nearly zero. Why?
Because the client does not know what is behind the fog of war. In SC II since WoL Beta the client of each player knows the whole map and just fogs it. Easiest to hack, just extract the informations, you client allready has from the server. Same for the production tab hack. They just extract the informations out of their clients, because this really bad netcode sends them the whole information about their enemy. And you even do not need these informations. Blizzard knows this since brood war or at least since the "ban waves" in wc3 times. But they never cared and continued with this bad netcode and clientsystem.
And why do they? A guy who cant hack would not play their game. A Hacker that gets banned, buys the game twice. More profit. They would serious engange their bad netcode and tune up their anticheat, if they wouldnt think that it hurts their income.
The problem with the MMR and the pointsystem will only be solved via external battlenets. I hope they will come fast, otherwise this game dies.
We see clearly, that blizzard doesnt even understand these demands. Wooohooo they get automated tournaments as a BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE for LotV. Hey this BRAND NEW BATTLENET FEATURE... i saw it somewhere, oh year, in WC3 tft 12 years ago.
Serious. This game will not survive without non blizzard multiplayersystems. Broodwar needed ICcup, Fish and Co. Wc III needed WC III Arena. SC II will need its own thing. And better fast, because the status quo will be the status dead.
You do not realize what you are talking about. Transferring only the relevant data to each player would necessitate simulating each game on blizzard server. See how 1 game can max out your CPUs. Now imagine dozens thousands of games (1v1 2v2 3v3 4v4) at the same time on blizzard servers for a game with no subscription plan, or auction house or anything. That would be extremely costly and the game would have never been released. And I am not even talking about the gameplay impact and the amount of cry and whine when the server would get laggy. I am working on an improved anti maphack RTS netcode with a few friends, but let me tell you that such a thing has deep (unavoidable) impact on the game design. Such a game would pretty much not be starcraft. isnt it possible to encrypt the data that is not visible to the player?
Nope it is not, in any meaningful way
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On February 10 2015 10:31 Wombat_NI wrote:
This is a personal issue for me, perhaps doesn't affect that many.
The MMR decay is much, much too steep. I'm so fucking inactive now due to the accursed realm known as 'real life', come back and grind 30-40 games over a day or two, stomp the majority of opponents in one-sided BS games, start to get back league wise to a bit below my 'peak'. Then I have a period of inactivity that sets me back to square one after a week or so of not playing.
I can still hang with many of the guys I used to play with, or at least not get stomped and those guys are active Dia players on the most part. When I go to ladder I'm stuck playing my way from silvers upwards. It's really not fucking fun at all. The only game mode I particular enjoy is 1v1 and I like testing myself against random opponents instead of always customing so there's less of a metagaming element (although I do like that too).
I literally don't play at all anymore because it seems unless I'm playing steadily I'll be undergoing the fucking trial of Sisyphus for the rest of my laddering life.
To be honest I'm mystified this isn't mentioned more often among the semi-regular ladderers among us.
I've been complaining about this exact issue for some while, although for team games. So no, you are not alone.
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Northern Ireland26265 Posts
Perhaps we should complain more vociferously
I have my issues with the whole league system, think it distorts the way people play a bit as so many have their egos tied into their league, would prefer it be done away with. To the extent that midseason demotions got removed to stop people complaining.
Besides that gripe, ladder used to work well for me no matter how inactive I was I tended to get decent, competitive games. Hasn't been the case for a hell of a long time for me since the current decay was instituted.
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Points mean almost nothing. If you are wanting to get GM, then work on what you need to work on. Grinding games on the ladder isn't the best way to get better. Custom games with better players, going over replays, working on your fundamentals/mechanics etc. etc. This is coming from a top 20-30 Grandmaster player.
As for smurfing/boosting. You'll just have to get over it. Consider it, "better practice." Some boosters hack, but most don't. I boost accounts for money, a friend of mine boosts accounts for money and neither of us hack nor do any other boosters we know of personally. Hell, if one of your accounts is {Ever}IIIIIIIIIII I even played you while boosting an account and you were salty as fuck, and that's definitely not the way to improve.
You also mentioned the hacker problem. I'll admit, the hacker problem is much worse than say a year ago or more, but its not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
I don't want to say "l2p n00b," but saying the ladder and your account is broken is pretty retarded. The ladder is working as intended. You win some, you lose some. That's it. Just focus on you and what you need to do to improve.
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On February 10 2015 19:33 WarreN95 wrote:
Points mean almost nothing. If you are wanting to get GM, then work on what you need to work on. Grinding games on the ladder isn't the best way to get better. Custom games with better players, going over replays, working on your fundamentals/mechanics etc. etc. This is coming from a top 20-30 Grandmaster player.
As for smurfing/boosting. You'll just have to get over it. Consider it, "better practice." Some boosters hack, but most don't. I boost accounts for money, a friend of mine boosts accounts for money and neither of us hack nor do any other boosters we know of personally. Hell, if one of your accounts is {Ever}IIIIIIIIIII I even played you while boosting an account and you were salty as fuck, and that's definitely not the way to improve.
You also mentioned the hacker problem. I'll admit, the hacker problem is much worse than say a year ago or more, but its not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
I don't want to say "l2p n00b," but saying the ladder and your account is broken is pretty retarded. The ladder is working as intended. You win some, you lose some. That's it. Just focus on you and what you need to do to improve.
What you are saying makes a lot of sense for someone playing a lot with the purpose of improving and climbing the ladder. For that group, including you, hacking would be the largest problem I guess.
For someone that only plays every now and then for the fun of it (like me), the situation is a bit different. Then you lose a lot of the fun, which is the main purpose for this group of players, by serial MMR decay and/or smurfs like you. I'd imagine hacking is less of an issue in lower leagues, although I am not sure, and it may be server dependent.
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the ladder has been a mess ever since hots came out, and will only get worse unless some changes are made. i'm not talking about stupid league redistributing either. really, it needs to go back to the wol system before anything can get better.
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On January 17 2015 15:48 GGzerG wrote: I have played 15+ years, and I promote StarCraft my entire life, but I regret to inform that my gaming experience is being ruined by the poor ladder system, hackers, cheaters, boosters, ect.
I would politely ask that PSIONE, Blizzard, or both PLEASE, PLEASE take into consideration MY ACCOUNT SPECIFICALLY, if there is an issue with it then PLEASE FIX IT.
i've played a lot over the last 15 years and i'm resigned to the fact that Blizzard can not really win the war with maphackers.
they might improve the maps and the ladder system though.
The maphacker war is a losing battle. Blizzard won't commit the resources required to "manage" the problem because the revenue generated by SC does not warrant it. and all they can do is "manage" the problem. it'll never go away.
the cost of getting nailed for hacking has been steadily declining from a peak of ~$80 on the day HotS was released.
the $80 penalty was a mild deterrant. now the penalty is about $35.
as the price of WoL+HotS continues to decline more and more peopel are just saying WTF and hacking like crazy.
a lot of these guys are just flat out bored. if Blizz revokes their keys a lot of them won't rebuy. they are bored to tears with the real game and get their jollies hacking and cheating.
and if they do have to rebuy their way back in .. well i'm not a rocket surgeon but last i checked $35 << $80.
the price will temporarily increase with LotV. and this will help matters for a short time.
fewer people will want to lose their nice shiney brand new LotV keys... and fewer will want to pay the $60 price tag for getting caught.
if u want as hack-free an experience as possible then get LotV on day 1 and play like crazy. eventually it'll descend into the murky waters we are in right now with HotS. so enjoy the purity of LotV while it lasts.
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Anyone remember BigBadNewbie from BW who'd automate ladder matches against himself every single season filling it up with countless accounts. He single handily made BW ladder unplayable. SC2 ladder will ultimately go that way too.
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well there's ICCUP for bw, ESEA for cs, why not go this way for starcraft?
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Just make the MMR public and we'll be good to go ; no more false importance given to leagues and shit, only raw MMR number.
On February 10 2015 23:14 boxerfred wrote:
well there's ICCUP for bw, ESEA for cs, why not go this way for starcraft?
Wouldn't Blizzard try to shut something like this down?
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21 times master here. I am STUCK
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I only now seen this topic. This explains why ggzerg started playing Grey Goo :D
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On February 10 2015 15:51 Caihead wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2015 14:54 RampancyTW wrote:On February 10 2015 13:00 Cricketer12 wrote:
ICCUP allows me to not have to play ZvZ, sc2 ladder system is shit in comparison Not sure if sarcastic Actually being able to choose who you play for ranked games and avoid obvious hackers and people you can black list or block is worth alot. And while some might argue that grinding one match up you are good at up the ladder would be abusive to some degree, at least it's a much better training environment and dare I say more fun than rolling the roulette of terrible online bull shit? Well, it IS abusive to the ladder system. And it was frequently abused in BW.
If there were an unranked option for choosing specific maps and matchups and you were willing to play against players of wildly disparate skill levels to cut down wait times, then I'd be all for it. Matchup selection in ranked play is a definite no-no though.
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On February 10 2015 23:33 Fus wrote:
21 times master here. I am STUCK
That's because you need the two other words to unleash your power.
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On February 11 2015 01:51 FFW_Rude wrote:That's because you need the two other words to unleash your power.
Hahaha made my day
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The ladder system is quite good imo. People complaining about it usually don't understand how it works.
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OP, you're not GM cos you dont deserve it, being masters 18 times in a row or 2 times doesnt matter. Points has nothing to do with promotion wtf. MMR is reset after 2 seasons of inactiveness so if you actually believe its cos of your year old games play on another acc for 2 seasons. Go back and realise youre not worthy. This thread pisses me off, accept youre bad, spend your time practising instead of writing angry and posts on TL and you might actually get GM. Flame me if you want idgaf
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Security and anti-cheat are a separate matter from the ladder itself. If Blizzard implements a new anti-cheat system I would be all for it, but the game isn't exactly overrun with hackers. I'd say that a higher percentage of GM players are legit than not.
The ladder system actually seems quite good. Within a few dozen games you find out where you stand. It's not like you're a bad player, GGzerG, but I've watched your stream many times and my opinion is that you're not quite GM material. There's a massive difference between being a high master player and being top 200 in your region, especially when your region is EU or KR. The quality of players is insanely high now and there are limits to everybody's skill.
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On February 11 2015 02:28 Dumbledore wrote:
OP, you're not GM cos you dont deserve it, being masters 18 times in a row or 2 times doesnt matter. Points has nothing to do with promotion wtf. MMR is reset after 2 seasons of inactiveness so if you actually believe its cos of your year old games play on another acc for 2 seasons. Go back and realise youre not worthy. This thread pisses me off, accept youre bad, spend your time practising instead of writing angry and posts on TL and you might actually get GM. Flame me if you want idgaf
Youve been flamed...bitch
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On February 11 2015 02:57 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 02:28 Dumbledore wrote:
OP, you're not GM cos you dont deserve it, being masters 18 times in a row or 2 times doesnt matter. Points has nothing to do with promotion wtf. MMR is reset after 2 seasons of inactiveness so if you actually believe its cos of your year old games play on another acc for 2 seasons. Go back and realise youre not worthy. This thread pisses me off, accept youre bad, spend your time practising instead of writing angry and posts on TL and you might actually get GM. Flame me if you want idgaf Youve been flamed...bitch
He gives no fucks.
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On February 10 2015 23:14 OtherWorld wrote:Just make the MMR public and we'll be good to go ; no more false importance given to leagues and shit, only raw MMR number. Show nested quote +On February 10 2015 23:14 boxerfred wrote:
well there's ICCUP for bw, ESEA for cs, why not go this way for starcraft? Wouldn't Blizzard try to shut something like this down?
Blizzard preemptively shut this down by never allowing it in the first place. Without a LAN system there really isn't much the community can do to run their own ladder. Anti-cheat systems also don't just develop themselves. There needs to be a person or people with the incentive to do it. Without a community-run ladder system I don't see the incentive to develop an anti-cheat system for the purpose of protecting competitive integrity.
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On February 11 2015 03:14 dUTtrOACh wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2015 23:14 OtherWorld wrote:Just make the MMR public and we'll be good to go ; no more false importance given to leagues and shit, only raw MMR number. On February 10 2015 23:14 boxerfred wrote:
well there's ICCUP for bw, ESEA for cs, why not go this way for starcraft? Wouldn't Blizzard try to shut something like this down? Blizzard preemptively shut this down by never allowing it in the first place. Without a LAN system there really isn't much the community can do to run their own ladder. Anti-cheat systems also don't just develop themselves. There needs to be a person or people with the incentive to do it. Without a community-run ladder system I don't see the incentive to develop an anti-cheat system for the purpose of protecting competitive integrity.
Blizzard just released the new WCS handbook that has a section saying it might be required for competitors to install additional software to make sure they aren't cheating. It isn't too far fetched to assume they are working to implement this into lotv to combat the hacking problem.
On February 10 2015 10:31 Wombat_NI wrote:
This is a personal issue for me, perhaps doesn't affect that many.
The MMR decay is much, much too steep. I'm so fucking inactive now due to the accursed realm known as 'real life', come back and grind 30-40 games over a day or two, stomp the majority of opponents in one-sided BS games, start to get back league wise to a bit below my 'peak'. Then I have a period of inactivity that sets me back to square one after a week or so of not playing.
I can still hang with many of the guys I used to play with, or at least not get stomped and those guys are active Dia players on the most part. When I go to ladder I'm stuck playing my way from silvers upwards. It's really not fucking fun at all. The only game mode I particular enjoy is 1v1 and I like testing myself against random opponents instead of always customing so there's less of a metagaming element (although I do like that too).
I literally don't play at all anymore because it seems unless I'm playing steadily I'll be undergoing the fucking trial of Sisyphus for the rest of my laddering life.
To be honest I'm mystified this isn't mentioned more often among the semi-regular ladderers among us.
In my experience complaints like these fall on deaf ears. I have seen a lot of people (including myself) that have complained about this. Usually the answer I get and/or see is "ladder more" or, "mmr decay doesn't work like that you are just bad" etc.
For me it's not like I HATE beating gold leaguers on my way back to diamond, it's more of the fact I have to play so many games to get back to the level that I earned. Especially when I only have a chance to play 6-7 days out of the month, if that. It was such a good feeling to get diamond league for me. Real life happens, I work too much, etc; I come back, silver league? Any sense of accomplishment I had, gone completely.
I would like to see a maximum league drop for inactivity, one league. If you earn a league but go inactive the last month of the season to achieve full mmr decay, you should only drop one league, not two or three. If you don't play an entire season then 2 leagues would be acceptable. Diamond to silver was super harsh. That begs the question though, is mmr decay entirely to blame or does the placement system need to be looked at as well? I'm ignorant to how it works but then again the entire system seems like rocket science.
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On February 11 2015 03:49 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 03:14 dUTtrOACh wrote:On February 10 2015 23:14 OtherWorld wrote:Just make the MMR public and we'll be good to go ; no more false importance given to leagues and shit, only raw MMR number. On February 10 2015 23:14 boxerfred wrote:
well there's ICCUP for bw, ESEA for cs, why not go this way for starcraft? Wouldn't Blizzard try to shut something like this down? Blizzard preemptively shut this down by never allowing it in the first place. Without a LAN system there really isn't much the community can do to run their own ladder. Anti-cheat systems also don't just develop themselves. There needs to be a person or people with the incentive to do it. Without a community-run ladder system I don't see the incentive to develop an anti-cheat system for the purpose of protecting competitive integrity. Blizzard just released the new WCS handbook that has a section saying it might be required for competitors to install additional software to make sure they aren't cheating. It isn't too far fetched to assume they are working to implement this into lotv to combat the hacking problem.
I didn't say that Blizzard wouldn't develop their own AC, or work with a partner in developing AC. I said that a community-run ladder with its own AC will never exist, because Blizzard won't allow it to exist and thus nobody would likely develop the AC software out of the kindness of his heart.
In fact, I hope that some measures are taken in-house by Blizzard to implement some form of anti-cheat by the release of LotV. It would be nice if they had done it sooner, but hell... what more can I do but buy each expansion on its release day and give them the maximum amount of money possible?
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On February 11 2015 04:15 dUTtrOACh wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 03:49 Ctone23 wrote:On February 11 2015 03:14 dUTtrOACh wrote:On February 10 2015 23:14 OtherWorld wrote:Just make the MMR public and we'll be good to go ; no more false importance given to leagues and shit, only raw MMR number. On February 10 2015 23:14 boxerfred wrote:
well there's ICCUP for bw, ESEA for cs, why not go this way for starcraft? Wouldn't Blizzard try to shut something like this down? Blizzard preemptively shut this down by never allowing it in the first place. Without a LAN system there really isn't much the community can do to run their own ladder. Anti-cheat systems also don't just develop themselves. There needs to be a person or people with the incentive to do it. Without a community-run ladder system I don't see the incentive to develop an anti-cheat system for the purpose of protecting competitive integrity. Blizzard just released the new WCS handbook that has a section saying it might be required for competitors to install additional software to make sure they aren't cheating. It isn't too far fetched to assume they are working to implement this into lotv to combat the hacking problem. I didn't say that Blizzard wouldn't develop their own AC, or work with a partner in developing AC. I said that a community-run ladder with its own AC will never exist, because Blizzard won't allow it to exist and thus nobody would likely develop the AC software out of the kindness of his heart. In fact, I hope that some measures are taken in-house by Blizzard to implement some form of anti-cheat by the release of LotV. It would be nice if they had done it sooner, but hell... what more can I do but buy each expansion on its release day and give them the maximum amount of money possible?
The problem with anti-cheat sistems is that they have to scan the computer to see if theres any other programs running in the background, now that is fine and all if it wasn't for all the paranoia regarding big companies and personal information, if they released a program in the ladder that scans the computer of the players Blizzard could be accussed of getting personal information from the computers in this way and Blizzard isn't willing to go throught all the legal problems that it will bring. A lot of people wouldn't think is stupid but you would be surprised the amount of people that is willing to take even the smallest of things to sue a big company, not to mention the paranoic people that are, well, paranoic (every week I see some news about facebook being an evil company that steals the information and sells the souls of its users)
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On February 11 2015 04:27 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 04:15 dUTtrOACh wrote:On February 11 2015 03:49 Ctone23 wrote:On February 11 2015 03:14 dUTtrOACh wrote:On February 10 2015 23:14 OtherWorld wrote:Just make the MMR public and we'll be good to go ; no more false importance given to leagues and shit, only raw MMR number. On February 10 2015 23:14 boxerfred wrote:
well there's ICCUP for bw, ESEA for cs, why not go this way for starcraft? Wouldn't Blizzard try to shut something like this down? Blizzard preemptively shut this down by never allowing it in the first place. Without a LAN system there really isn't much the community can do to run their own ladder. Anti-cheat systems also don't just develop themselves. There needs to be a person or people with the incentive to do it. Without a community-run ladder system I don't see the incentive to develop an anti-cheat system for the purpose of protecting competitive integrity. Blizzard just released the new WCS handbook that has a section saying it might be required for competitors to install additional software to make sure they aren't cheating. It isn't too far fetched to assume they are working to implement this into lotv to combat the hacking problem. I didn't say that Blizzard wouldn't develop their own AC, or work with a partner in developing AC. I said that a community-run ladder with its own AC will never exist, because Blizzard won't allow it to exist and thus nobody would likely develop the AC software out of the kindness of his heart. In fact, I hope that some measures are taken in-house by Blizzard to implement some form of anti-cheat by the release of LotV. It would be nice if they had done it sooner, but hell... what more can I do but buy each expansion on its release day and give them the maximum amount of money possible? The problem with anti-cheat sistems is that they have to scan the computer to see if theres any other programs running in the background, now that is fine and all if it wasn't for all the paranoia regarding big companies and personal information, if they released a program in the ladder that scans the computer of the players Blizzard could be accussed of getting personal information from the computers in this way and Blizzard isn't willing to go throught all the legal problems that it will bring. A lot of people wouldn't think is stupid but you would be surprised the amount of people that is willing to take even the smallest of things to sue a big company, not to mention the paranoic people that are, well, paranoic (every week I see some news about facebook being an evil company that steals the information and sells the souls of its users)
Paranoid delusion aside, gamers are typically willing to accept the inner workings of an anti-cheat system as long as they're able to enjoy a cheater/hacker-free online gaming experience. Many Steam games, for example, have additional anti-cheat software that people accept as a necessary evil that ensures a fair playing field. If you're going to site paranoia as a reason not to have anti-cheat I'm not sure if we can have a serious discussion... The bizarre workings of a lunatic's mind don't factor in to most of my decision making, and I'm pretty sure they won't need your Social Security Number and Credit Card Info to ensure you're not cheating at SC2.
I'd say a more common complaint from people is that the anti-cheat system causes additional lag / strain on the resources of the computer. Luckily for us, Starcraft 2 is optimized very well and the impact of adding an anti-cheat system would be minimal if not unnoticeable.
EDIT: I fear we're veering a bit off-topic here anyway. This thread was about how GGzerG can't be GM with the current state of the ladder system. I think the anti-hacker / anti-cheat portion of the OP was just a rant.
I have a proposition: Make GM the top 10,000 players in a region. That way, everybody can be GM.
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The problem with anti-cheat sistems is that they have to scan the computer to see if theres any other programs running in the background, now that is fine and all if it wasn't for all the paranoia regarding big companies and personal information, if they released a program in the ladder that scans the computer of the players Blizzard could be accussed of getting personal information from the computers in this way and Blizzard isn't willing to go throught all the legal problems that it will bring. A lot of people wouldn't think is stupid but you would be surprised the amount of people that is willing to take even the smallest of things to sue a big company, not to mention the paranoic people that are, well, paranoic (every week I see some news about facebook being an evil company that steals the information and sells the souls of its users)
You should read the battle.net terms and agreements they already say they can do whatever they want..
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MMR decay is a problem I believe. I can admit that I really don't know to what extent the decay affect MMR in detail, just like many others find it strange that are so many people in a waaay lower league than they should be just based on league history.
So the other possibilities are 1) people got insanely worse at the game 2) the higher leagues shrunk like... A LOT. Raises the question; can really leagues be viewed as a measure stick of skills when there are former diamond and even MASTER players in silver/gold roflstomping every opponent they meet in a neverending cycle of roflstomp --> inactivity + mmr decay --> roflstomp --> inactivity + mmr decay and so on. Keep in mind that a LARGE portion of SC2 players are rather inactive. Who knows how much this is messing shit up. Wont deny, the thought of the two occasional master players squaring it off in Silver league while battling their MMR decay is somewhat comical.
Just give us real transparancy with the MMR rating already and end the confusion. Many of us just want to know how good we are compared to; ourselves months ago, and others now. And we'll never know at this rate.
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United States12240 Posts
Showing MMR doesn't actually shed any light on wacky matchups caused as a result of decay. Instead of a former-Master Silver playing against a former-Master Silver, you see a 500 MMR vs a 500 MMR. That doesn't actually tell us anything. And knowing what their old MMR was doesn't really help either because it's not relevant to the current matchup.
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Regarding being stuck in "lower" leagues:
I enjoy not being in masters for the first time (after a long SC2 break). If I ever get promoted it will feel a lot more rewarding. GM was never in reach, and masters felt too easy. So for the first time I have motivation to improve my play.
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On February 11 2015 09:34 Shah420 wrote:
MMR decay is a problem I believe. I can admit that I really don't know to what extent the decay affect MMR in detail, just like many others find it strange that are so many people in a waaay lower league than they should be just based on league history.
I don't like MMR decay but for one simpler reason, there's already a system designed to reward active players without being felt as a punishment for others, it's the bonus pool system. If you max out and don't harvest them they're literally lost.
Also MMR decay as a cap and the volatility of your MMR should increasing, you shouldn't be "stuck" in way lower league for long.
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MMR decay has been ruining me as well, last season i was 50-32 (although at one point i was at like 29-3 or something stupid), and this season i am 32-12, with my first page of match history 13-4 and on a winstreak. I'm really tired of grinding out games, and the players have been inconsistent as well. Sometimes I'll play against players who are about my level and i'll go even or lose, but then I'll meet players that are significantly worse than me. I know that after 10-20 more games I should face opponents who i'll go 50/50 against, its just depressing to have to grind before I can do this. I do feel its unfair to my opponents as well, as many of them realize that I do not belong in their league after checking my profile.
As a sidenote, for some reason sc2 ranks never updates my profile on their site either.
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As a sidenote, for some reason sc2 ranks never updates my profile on their site either.
I think nios.kr is more reliable of a source these days, I could be wrong.
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On February 11 2015 12:50 GGzerG wrote:Show nested quote +
As a sidenote, for some reason sc2 ranks never updates my profile on their site either.
I think nios.kr is more reliable of a source these days, I could be wrong.
yeah it seems like I am at least up to date on nios
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On February 11 2015 13:09 stink123 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 12:50 GGzerG wrote:
As a sidenote, for some reason sc2 ranks never updates my profile on their site either.
I think nios.kr is more reliable of a source these days, I could be wrong. yeah it seems like I am at least up to date on nios
Nvm Search is my friend
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On February 11 2015 12:35 stink123 wrote:
MMR decay has been ruining me as well, last season i was 50-32 (although at one point i was at like 29-3 or something stupid), and this season i am 32-12, with my first page of match history 13-4 and on a winstreak. I'm really tired of grinding out games, and the players have been inconsistent as well. Sometimes I'll play against players who are about my level and i'll go even or lose, but then I'll meet players that are significantly worse than me. I know that after 10-20 more games I should face opponents who i'll go 50/50 against, its just depressing to have to grind before I can do this. I do feel its unfair to my opponents as well, as many of them realize that I do not belong in their league after checking my profile.
As a sidenote, for some reason sc2 ranks never updates my profile on their site either.
Exactly, the disparity of the players in the leagues is huge. Former 21 times masters in platinum, no wonder he wins. Also the amount of smurf accounts is insane, 300 apm silver players with fantastic micro facing diamonds. People who are currently playing sc2 are imho die hards. I can totally understand that a lot of players dont want to play anymore, and new players dont want to invest a lot of time in this game if leagues arent working well.
Hope they will improve things because diamond at the moment is just a silly league with former gm's and masters in it.
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On February 11 2015 11:54 varsovie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 09:34 Shah420 wrote:
MMR decay is a problem I believe. I can admit that I really don't know to what extent the decay affect MMR in detail, just like many others find it strange that are so many people in a waaay lower league than they should be just based on league history.
I don't like MMR decay but for one simpler reason, there's already a system designed to reward active players without being felt as a punishment for others, it's the bonus pool system. If you max out and don't harvest them they're literally lost. Also MMR decay as a cap and the volatility of your MMR should increasing, you shouldn't be "stuck" in way lower league for long.
While there is a cap on the decay it starts again if you just play a few unranked games. Also you dont even have to be inactive, you can play 1k+ teamgames in a season and your 1v1 decays anyways. And if you play 1v1--->4v4 and a few AT teams there is a lot of mmr to keep from decay.
But as you said, there already is a really good system for this in the bonus pool, but somehow someone on blizzard decided that it was not enough.
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On February 11 2015 11:17 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Showing MMR doesn't actually shed any light on wacky matchups caused as a result of decay. Instead of a former-Master Silver playing against a former-Master Silver, you see a 500 MMR vs a 500 MMR. That doesn't actually tell us anything. And knowing what their old MMR was doesn't really help either because it's not relevant to the current matchup.
Showing MMR will let you know the exact extent of the decay if you go from an active period to an inactive one, so I still see it being helpful. Let's say I play everyday for a couple of months and have a MMR of 1300, then I go inactive for a month and my MMR drops off to say 1000. According to the MMR decay I have dropped x percentage in skill, in this case my skill after a month of inactivity is 1000/1300 of my former skill, which in my case wouldn't reflect the exampled scenario at all. Maybe for the first 2-3 games. It seem the rate of which MMR decay drops your MMR compared to how fast you regain it is unrealistically unbalanced for higher level players who just want to play casually. I think MMR transparency doesn't hurt at least.
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United States12240 Posts
On February 12 2015 00:57 Shah420 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 11:17 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Showing MMR doesn't actually shed any light on wacky matchups caused as a result of decay. Instead of a former-Master Silver playing against a former-Master Silver, you see a 500 MMR vs a 500 MMR. That doesn't actually tell us anything. And knowing what their old MMR was doesn't really help either because it's not relevant to the current matchup. Showing MMR will let you know the exact extent of the decay if you go from an active period to an inactive one, so I still see it being helpful. Let's say I play everyday for a couple of months and have a MMR of 1300, then I go inactive for a month and my MMR drops off to say 1000. According to the MMR decay I have dropped x percentage in skill, in this case my skill after a month of inactivity is 1000/1300 of my former skill, which in my case wouldn't reflect the exampled scenario at all. Maybe for the first 2-3 games. It seem the rate of which MMR decay drops your MMR compared to how fast you regain it is unrealistically unbalanced for higher level players who just want to play casually. I think MMR transparency doesn't hurt at least.
Being 1000 now and 1300 then doesn't mean you're 1000/1300 of your true skill, that's not how rating is read. Dropping from 600 to 300 doesn't mean you're half as good as you used to be. A 200 player is not twice as good as a 100 player, a 2000 player is not twice as good as a 1000 player. It is the distance between two values that translates to an expected win percentage, not the values themselves. If 1000 vs 1300 meant that you have a 25% chance to win, 1000 vs 700 would then mean that you have a 75% chance to win, just as a 700 player would have a 75% chance to win against a 400 player, and a 400 player has a 75% chance to win against a 100 player. As you get near the very top of the ladder and even matches are found less frequently, meaning you earn fewer rating for beating those lower than you, then obviously a 300 rating difference becomes difficult to maintain because your win rate has to be that much higher.
Revealing MMR would indeed be very helpful. However, it doesn't address the root problem caused by decay, which is why other things would need to happen in order to restore the ladder.
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Gotta say I echo this sentiment.
I am a top diamond player who only really started ladder seriously and bought hots last summer.
ever since I started laddering competitively, progress through rankings have been benchmark and solid "proof" of my improvement and I enjoyed the challenge of climbing through ranks the first season I started.
Then I hit the diamond to masters wall 2 seasons ago. After working through 2 seasons of being top diamond and finishing within top 40 of diamond on Nios while going against legit low-mid gms like that bm ass plsleaveduck and others, being "evenly matched" against other masters league players with positive win record, even getting completely smashed against RuFF, whom I enjoy watching, a few times.
I dont really feel rewarded anymore. Diamond seems to be purgatory where even a good win streak ends when it inevitably matches you up until you hit higher gms to get crushed to start back again.
After a season and half of this, it gets bit draining after initial excitement of "oh my god I am facing legit gms!". You feel like you aren't going anywhere with being rewarded and all for your performances. It feels like a chore and motivation to get better saps away little by little.
anyway, while ladder is working as intended, its carrot that dangles in front of players isnt working as well. One of my friends had to go on 20+ win streak against mid gms to even get promoted from diamond to masters with his final game being win against sirrobin who is a solid gm player.
Doesnt really make sense for a person to need to consistently win against players 2 tiers higher on ladder ranks to even get shot of promotion does it?
On February 10 2015 19:33 WarreN95 wrote:
Hell, if one of your accounts is {Ever}IIIIIIIIIII I even played you while boosting an account and you were salty as fuck, and that's definitely not the way to improve.
I don't want to say "l2p n00b," but saying the ladder and your account is broken is pretty retarded. The ladder is working as intended. You win some, you lose some. That's it. Just focus on you and what you need to do to improve.
Lol I saw that ever Barcode get salty as hell after getting rekt by supernova's mass viking trollgame and told him to learn to play.
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On February 12 2015 04:28 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2015 00:57 Shah420 wrote:On February 11 2015 11:17 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Showing MMR doesn't actually shed any light on wacky matchups caused as a result of decay. Instead of a former-Master Silver playing against a former-Master Silver, you see a 500 MMR vs a 500 MMR. That doesn't actually tell us anything. And knowing what their old MMR was doesn't really help either because it's not relevant to the current matchup. Showing MMR will let you know the exact extent of the decay if you go from an active period to an inactive one, so I still see it being helpful. Let's say I play everyday for a couple of months and have a MMR of 1300, then I go inactive for a month and my MMR drops off to say 1000. According to the MMR decay I have dropped x percentage in skill, in this case my skill after a month of inactivity is 1000/1300 of my former skill, which in my case wouldn't reflect the exampled scenario at all. Maybe for the first 2-3 games. It seem the rate of which MMR decay drops your MMR compared to how fast you regain it is unrealistically unbalanced for higher level players who just want to play casually. I think MMR transparency doesn't hurt at least. Being 1000 now and 1300 then doesn't mean you're 1000/1300 of your true skill, that's not how rating is read. Dropping from 600 to 300 doesn't mean you're half as good as you used to be. A 200 player is not twice as good as a 100 player, a 2000 player is not twice as good as a 1000 player. It is the distance between two values that translates to an expected win percentage, not the values themselves. If 1000 vs 1300 meant that you have a 25% chance to win, 1000 vs 700 would then mean that you have a 75% chance to win, just as a 700 player would have a 75% chance to win against a 400 player, and a 400 player has a 75% chance to win against a 100 player. As you get near the very top of the ladder and even matches are found less frequently, meaning you earn fewer rating for beating those lower than you, then obviously a 300 rating difference becomes difficult to maintain because your win rate has to be that much higher. Revealing MMR would indeed be very helpful. However, it doesn't address the root problem caused by decay, which is why other things would need to happen in order to restore the ladder.
Indeed. Decay is what drove me away from the game. It got to the point where I felt like I was solely fighting decay and never progressing. Once in a while, school would prevent me from playing for a month or two and when I came back I'd have to play a bunch of uneven games just to get back to having some semblance of competition in my games. Sure, the first time it was amusing to have a huge win streak, but eventually it simply turned into a time sink getting back to where I was, plus I can't imagine it being fun for the person I was matched against. Just like it isn't fun for me to be matched with someone who massively outclasses me.
You don't go from being a master or diamond level player to a gold or platinum level player if you don't play for two months. That's the issue. The system seems to assume you do.
If they removed decay once and for all, I'd be back in a heartbeat. But as it stands, I simply can't commit myself to playing that much right now so I would likely end up fighting decay again, and that's not worth my time.
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So I realized, Blizzard does have a way to fix the ladder, which is implemented in Hearthstone. Basically every time you go on a win streak, it gives you a bonus "star", which essentially doubles the MMR gained per win. This would really help fix the grind, as you begin to promote very quickly through ranks if you truly don't belong. However, by the way things are moving they probably plan to implement it in LotV.
Also I managed to finally get my promotion into plat after going 33-12, not sure I'm up for playing exGM to get into diamond though....
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jesus christ dunno what to say about this post, u should change game dude, try some moba... and blaming blizzard for not getting gm, wow :Å amazing is all i can say.
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EPT
