EPTIn recent months, we’ve seen many discussions regarding the StarCraft II ladder. We wanted to make this post to detail the ladder changes we have planned for the next few seasons and beyond.
First, we’d like to catch everyone up to speed. We’ve seen a lot of valuable discussion from the community regarding the StarCraft II ladder, and we’d like to provide clarity concerning the top issues being discussed.
League Distribution
We’ve seen many reporting potential inconsistencies with league placement across all regions. Last year, we made league boundary adjustments that helped balance overall league distribution percentages. With league distribution being affected by the amount of players participating in ladder and their level of activity, we mentioned at the time that a similar adjustment may be necessary again in the future to help maintain our desired target percentages. After reviewing the league distribution percentages, we found that our target percentages were indeed inconsistent with our desired values.
“MMR Decay”
In a previous ladder update, we mentioned that we’d take a look at how ladder was being affected by what players call “MMR decay.” This is the slight adjustment to a player’s hidden rating that occurs after a player has been inactive for a certain period of time. During our analysis, we found that this feature was helping create even matches for players who were coming back from breaks and looking to ease back into StarCraft II. During our more recent ladder analysis, we found that while this feature is still helping many players, there are situations where it’s not having the desired effect.
New Player Experience
We’ve also seen many new players express concerns that their placement on the ladder is too high for their skill level. After investigating, we’ve found that the default starting point for new players had slowly shifted over time. As such, the entry MMR for new players is now representative of a much more skilled player than was initially intended.
Other Factors
As we’ve gathered more data over the years, our analysis has allowed us to more precisely understand how various factors affect league placement and matchmaking over time. As part of this, we’ve identified a few internal functions that we feel can be adjusted or removed to improve the overall experience and allow for more consistent matching with evenly skilled opponents.
While investigating these areas, we also took a careful look at player win-rates. When looking at players who are consistently active on the ladder, win-rates are right around 50%. However, players who are playing only a handful of sessions per season may be seeing less accurate matches, due to both a less measureable skill level, and also due to some of the topics discussed above. With all of these things in mind, there are a number of changes that we have arranged to roll-out in the coming future.
First, we’d like to catch everyone up to speed. We’ve seen a lot of valuable discussion from the community regarding the StarCraft II ladder, and we’d like to provide clarity concerning the top issues being discussed.
League Distribution
We’ve seen many reporting potential inconsistencies with league placement across all regions. Last year, we made league boundary adjustments that helped balance overall league distribution percentages. With league distribution being affected by the amount of players participating in ladder and their level of activity, we mentioned at the time that a similar adjustment may be necessary again in the future to help maintain our desired target percentages. After reviewing the league distribution percentages, we found that our target percentages were indeed inconsistent with our desired values.
“MMR Decay”
In a previous ladder update, we mentioned that we’d take a look at how ladder was being affected by what players call “MMR decay.” This is the slight adjustment to a player’s hidden rating that occurs after a player has been inactive for a certain period of time. During our analysis, we found that this feature was helping create even matches for players who were coming back from breaks and looking to ease back into StarCraft II. During our more recent ladder analysis, we found that while this feature is still helping many players, there are situations where it’s not having the desired effect.
New Player Experience
We’ve also seen many new players express concerns that their placement on the ladder is too high for their skill level. After investigating, we’ve found that the default starting point for new players had slowly shifted over time. As such, the entry MMR for new players is now representative of a much more skilled player than was initially intended.
Other Factors
As we’ve gathered more data over the years, our analysis has allowed us to more precisely understand how various factors affect league placement and matchmaking over time. As part of this, we’ve identified a few internal functions that we feel can be adjusted or removed to improve the overall experience and allow for more consistent matching with evenly skilled opponents.
While investigating these areas, we also took a careful look at player win-rates. When looking at players who are consistently active on the ladder, win-rates are right around 50%. However, players who are playing only a handful of sessions per season may be seeing less accurate matches, due to both a less measureable skill level, and also due to some of the topics discussed above. With all of these things in mind, there are a number of changes that we have arranged to roll-out in the coming future.
Read more here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/18141070
