|
In 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.
Read more here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/18141070
|
Does bronze league still exist?
|
Bisutopia19235 Posts
Sounds good. Absolutely nothing controversial and only positive changes.
|
Finally Blizzard fixes their system.
|
This is just the confirmation that they will change something. No clear data on how the distribution will look like or when the change will be.
|
To be honest, all talk for now and most of it this post is ''You're wrong, it's working as intended''. Every minute longer that this takes to fix is bad for competitive SC2 playing for all it's consumers. Master League should not be 0.88% and Blizzard knows it.
|
Nice to see them openly acknowledging these ladder irregularities lately. Just frustrating it's taken this long.
On March 03 2015 03:44 Thalandros wrote:
To be honest, all talk for now and most of it this post is ''You're wrong, it's working as intended''. Every minute longer that this takes to fix is bad for competitive SC2 playing for all it's consumers. Master League should not be 0.88% and Blizzard knows it.
Huh? That's not what most of the post is. This post has specifically identified where certain issues are and, in most cases, outlined initial steps they are taking to try and correct some of the problems. Every freaking topic they listed made mention of the fact that things not working the way Blizzard wants them to.
|
Oh great another announcement about changes that haven't happened yet, Oh joy. Maybe now I can get excited about waiting even longer for Blizzard to care about SC2. "SOON" TM. -_-
|
On March 03 2015 03:43 graNite wrote:
This is just the confirmation that they will change something. No clear data on how the distribution will look like or when the change will be.
they said that they want to fix the ladder to how it was supposed to be at the beggining of HotS
|
I know this will make a lot of people happy, so I'm glad it's finally happening. Maybe it'll take less games for me to get back to my proper placement now when I play my token 50 ladder games per season.
|
United States12235 Posts
I've been working closely with Psione over the last few weeks about proposed ladder changes and I'm pretty satisfied with the route they decided to take. Removing MMR decay is pretty big, but it's necessary, glad they did it. Adjusting the initial seed value for 0-game players is also something that's been needed for a long time, since the league crunches have caused what used to be a mid/low-Gold first placement match to now be in Diamond. I don't know if they have other stuff in the works but I still have some more suggestions to propose. Very good work to Psione for spearheading this project on behalf of the community, he deserves a lot of praise.
|
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.
Wait, Blizzard created that matchmaking system and they are still understanding how it works and how "various factors affect league placement and matchmaking"? d:
|
On March 03 2015 04:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I've been working closely with Psione over the last few weeks about proposed ladder changes and I'm pretty satisfied with the route they decided to take. Removing MMR decay is pretty big, but it's necessary, glad they did it. Adjusting the initial seed value for 0-game players is also something that's been needed for a long time, since the league crunches have caused what used to be a mid/low-Gold first placement match to now be in Diamond. I don't know if they have other stuff in the works but I still have some more suggestions to propose. Very good work to Psione for spearheading this project on behalf of the community, he deserves a lot of praise.
Thanks for your work on this, Excalibur. Do you know why they're not doing midseason demotions in the face of these changes?
|
United Kingdom20285 Posts
You can't even be demoted now? wtf?
|
On March 03 2015 04:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I've been working closely with Psione over the last few weeks about proposed ladder changes and I'm pretty satisfied with the route they decided to take. Removing MMR decay is pretty big, but it's necessary, glad they did it. Adjusting the initial seed value for 0-game players is also something that's been needed for a long time, since the league crunches have caused what used to be a mid/low-Gold first placement match to now be in Diamond. I don't know if they have other stuff in the works but I still have some more suggestions to propose. Very good work to Psione for spearheading this project on behalf of the community, he deserves a lot of praise.
100 % agree. I hope you will release your other suggestions sometime in the near future. You have that way of explaining extremely complicated things 
|
United States12235 Posts
On March 03 2015 04:03 Defenestrator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 04:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I've been working closely with Psione over the last few weeks about proposed ladder changes and I'm pretty satisfied with the route they decided to take. Removing MMR decay is pretty big, but it's necessary, glad they did it. Adjusting the initial seed value for 0-game players is also something that's been needed for a long time, since the league crunches have caused what used to be a mid/low-Gold first placement match to now be in Diamond. I don't know if they have other stuff in the works but I still have some more suggestions to propose. Very good work to Psione for spearheading this project on behalf of the community, he deserves a lot of praise. Thanks for your work on this, Excalibur. Do you know why they're not doing midseason demotions in the face of these changes?
They want to keep it as is for now. Obviously these changes are going to have ripple effects so we'll have to see how it plays out. So far, they believe the positives outweigh the negatives with regard to no midseason demotions, but I think it's an issue that's still currently on the table.
|
On March 03 2015 04:08 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 04:03 Defenestrator wrote:On March 03 2015 04:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I've been working closely with Psione over the last few weeks about proposed ladder changes and I'm pretty satisfied with the route they decided to take. Removing MMR decay is pretty big, but it's necessary, glad they did it. Adjusting the initial seed value for 0-game players is also something that's been needed for a long time, since the league crunches have caused what used to be a mid/low-Gold first placement match to now be in Diamond. I don't know if they have other stuff in the works but I still have some more suggestions to propose. Very good work to Psione for spearheading this project on behalf of the community, he deserves a lot of praise. Thanks for your work on this, Excalibur. Do you know why they're not doing midseason demotions in the face of these changes? They want to keep it as is for now. Obviously these changes are going to have ripple effects so we'll have to see how it plays out. So far, they believe the positives outweigh the negatives with regard to no midseason demotions, but I think it's an issue that's still currently on the table.
Man, I would really like to see midseason demotions brought back. But honestly, all that really matters is getting people placed properly at the start and making sure the majority of matches are fairly even, skill-level wise.
|
Cool, hopefully I won't be matched with a former master who has apparently the same skill as a gold-league scrub (me) anymore 
|
Well, a step in the right direction, to let people know better where they stand.
|
On March 03 2015 04:14 Shtanjel wrote:Cool, hopefully I won't be matched with a former master who has apparently the same skill as a gold-league scrub (me) anymore
Hahahahaha, I played an unranked game for the first time in ages and as a former master, I felt really bad because of what a trounce it was. Definitely a problem.
|
On March 03 2015 04:19 ThomasjServo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 04:14 Shtanjel wrote:Cool, hopefully I won't be matched with a former master who has apparently the same skill as a gold-league scrub (me) anymore Hahahahaha, I played an unranked game for the first time in ages and as a former master, I felt really bad because of what a trounce it was. Definitely a problem.
Leagues in unranked ladder matter even less than leagues in regular ladder. The problem isn't whatever league icon someone has. The problem is if the system is improperly matching people's MMR, and by extension, trying to figure out a way to possibly deal with smurfs or people tanking their rating.
|
|
|
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM.
|
On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good.
This so much. Leagues will always create issues and shit. A pure number doesn't lie and is precise.
|
And cheaters can cheat still who need good mmr when barcode cheater is in 1 from 3 games....
|
Removing MMR decay is wonderful news for me as it means that team games are actually playable again.
|
On March 03 2015 04:32 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good. This so much. Leagues will always create issues and shit. A pure number doesn't lie and is precise.
Additionally you could have separate Elo ratings for all the matchups.
My TvZ could be 2000, my TvT 1900 and my TvP 2100.
My PvT would be 1100 .
|
On March 03 2015 04:32 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good. This so much. Leagues will always create issues and shit. A pure number doesn't lie and is precise.
my wet dream
i'd ladder just to look at those four numbers
|
|
|
I'm not sure mmr decay has to totally go, but certainly be reduced, or capped at a lower total (you only get so much worse from not playing for a while)
|
At last. I hope I get that masters icon again ^^
EDIT :
On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM.
quoted because it's pure common sense.
|
On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM.
I mean, this is basically what MMR is, no? It's just hidden. I don't really mind either way if it's hidden or not, I just want it to be accurate, and it sounds like they've potentially identified ways to make it more accurate.
Leagues are just a more visual/feel good way of measuring progress. Having just a number feels a lot more...clinical.
|
On March 03 2015 05:22 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM. I mean, this is basically what MMR is, no? It's just hidden. I don't really mind either way if it's hidden or not, I just want it to be accurate, and it sounds like they've potentially identified ways to make it more accurate.
But why would you hid it?
|
On March 03 2015 05:23 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 05:22 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM. I mean, this is basically what MMR is, no? It's just hidden. I don't really mind either way if it's hidden or not, I just want it to be accurate, and it sounds like they've potentially identified ways to make it more accurate. But why would you hid it?
Because in the end it doesn't matter what number/league/place you are, what matters is actually improving your play?
I mean, it doesn't bother me either way, but I can see why you would choose to hide the rating.
|
On March 03 2015 05:33 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 05:23 OtherWorld wrote:On March 03 2015 05:22 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM. I mean, this is basically what MMR is, no? It's just hidden. I don't really mind either way if it's hidden or not, I just want it to be accurate, and it sounds like they've potentially identified ways to make it more accurate. But why would you hid it? Because in the end it doesn't matter what number/league/place you are, what matters is actually improving your play? I mean, it doesn't bother me either way, but I can see why you would choose to hide the rating.
Hmm yeah but having it showed would allow for, for example, more precise choices in practice partners.
|
On March 03 2015 05:20 [PkF] Wire wrote:
At last. I hope I get that masters icon again ^^
so many people will be dissapointed after the changes
|
On March 03 2015 05:35 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 05:33 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 05:23 OtherWorld wrote:On March 03 2015 05:22 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM. I mean, this is basically what MMR is, no? It's just hidden. I don't really mind either way if it's hidden or not, I just want it to be accurate, and it sounds like they've potentially identified ways to make it more accurate. But why would you hid it? Because in the end it doesn't matter what number/league/place you are, what matters is actually improving your play? I mean, it doesn't bother me either way, but I can see why you would choose to hide the rating. Hmm yeah but having it showed would allow for, for example, more precise choices in practice partners.
This is probably the single best reason I've ever heard in favor of showing the rating.
|
I opened the stream of iNcontroL and i saw Diamond vs Grand Master.
Yeah. Things needs to be done.
|
On March 03 2015 04:32 RHoudini wrote:
Just get rid of this whole league business.
I'd rather just have an Elo rating.
Much more transparent, much easier to understand.
Like in chess, 1400 is rather bad, 2000 is rather good, 2400 is very good, 2600 is GM.
ELO ranking system is much more fair and robust. I like this idea...
Seé ELO in Age of Empires, community ranking system: http://aoe3.jpcommunity.com/rating2/
|
On March 03 2015 04:14 Shtanjel wrote:Cool, hopefully I won't be matched with a former master who has apparently the same skill as a gold-league scrub (me) anymore
Being a former master (though only skill-wise diamond atm) player in MMR decay pits I feel bad when I get matched up against someone who just outright loses to my first push. Neither one of us had fun.
|
On March 03 2015 05:45 FFW_Rude wrote:
I opened the stream of iNcontroL and i saw Diamond vs Grand Master.
Yeah. Things needs to be done.
As long as equal skill get matched together it isn't a huge deal (to me at least) what league/rank the player is in. The biggest issue is I have to go through about 40 games at the start of a season to get matched back up with people of similar skill because I didn't play for a few months.
Now if Inc crushed him and the guy was true Diamond -- yeah that means match making is messed up
|
I do understand the changes and definitely like them but the biggest issue affecting ladder play wasn't discussed. Map hacking is very prevalent and is the only reason I don't play the game anymore. I can't speak for others, but this is certainly the most demotivating part of laddering.
Also, the comment about ELO is definitely common sense and would probably make me play again regardless of the abundant hacking. At least for a little while.
|
Lol yeah the MMR is pretty messed up. I'm currently in Grandmaster right now, and one game i'm beating a grandmaster, and then the next game I get placed against a diamond...... we're both like what the fuck?!?!
|
On March 03 2015 05:51 Taidanii wrote:
I do understand the changes and definitely like them but the biggest issue affecting ladder play wasn't discussed. Map hacking is very prevalent and is the only reason I don't play the game anymore. I can't speak for others, but this is certainly the most demotivating part of laddering.
Also, the comment about ELO is definitely common sense and would probably make me play again regardless of the abundant hacking. At least for a little while.
Yeah I wish they'd at least acknowledge map hacking as a problem. Personally at my mid-tier level I don't *think* it is a huge deal but I'm sure if I climbed the ranks higher it would present a larger problem.
Another problem is when I am just wondering around with my army and happen to stumble upon someone's drop I'm immediately a hacker :/
|
On March 03 2015 05:55 Tenks wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 05:51 Taidanii wrote:
I do understand the changes and definitely like them but the biggest issue affecting ladder play wasn't discussed. Map hacking is very prevalent and is the only reason I don't play the game anymore. I can't speak for others, but this is certainly the most demotivating part of laddering.
Also, the comment about ELO is definitely common sense and would probably make me play again regardless of the abundant hacking. At least for a little while. Yeah I wish they'd at least acknowledge map hacking as a problem. Personally at my mid-tier level I don't *think* it is a huge deal but I'm sure if I climbed the ranks higher it would present a larger problem. Another problem is when I am just wondering around with my army and happen to stumble upon someone's drop I'm immediately a hacker :/
they did acknowledge it - apparently, according to Psione, they're working on a new system or something like that
|
I guess I'm one of the guys where MMR decay does not work "the desired way". Which is why I don't play 1v1 anymore, since I'm only capable of playing casually - and grinding my way from plat up with huge win streaks without getting promoted is not really what I (or my opponents) like.
|
On March 03 2015 05:57 Alchemik wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 05:55 Tenks wrote:On March 03 2015 05:51 Taidanii wrote:
I do understand the changes and definitely like them but the biggest issue affecting ladder play wasn't discussed. Map hacking is very prevalent and is the only reason I don't play the game anymore. I can't speak for others, but this is certainly the most demotivating part of laddering.
Also, the comment about ELO is definitely common sense and would probably make me play again regardless of the abundant hacking. At least for a little while. Yeah I wish they'd at least acknowledge map hacking as a problem. Personally at my mid-tier level I don't *think* it is a huge deal but I'm sure if I climbed the ranks higher it would present a larger problem. Another problem is when I am just wondering around with my army and happen to stumble upon someone's drop I'm immediately a hacker :/ they did acknowledge it - apparently, according to Psione, they're working on a new system or something like that
Oh well thats good news. Hopefully with KeSPA calling out Blizzard on the issue it has a bit more traction.
|
On March 03 2015 05:55 Tenks wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 05:51 Taidanii wrote:
I do understand the changes and definitely like them but the biggest issue affecting ladder play wasn't discussed. Map hacking is very prevalent and is the only reason I don't play the game anymore. I can't speak for others, but this is certainly the most demotivating part of laddering.
Also, the comment about ELO is definitely common sense and would probably make me play again regardless of the abundant hacking. At least for a little while. Yeah I wish they'd at least acknowledge map hacking as a problem. Personally at my mid-tier level I don't *think* it is a huge deal but I'm sure if I climbed the ranks higher it would present a larger problem. Another problem is when I am just wondering around with my army and happen to stumble upon someone's drop I'm immediately a hacker :/
Right. The issue being fixed would also eliminate the tangent issue of being accused of hacking just for winning.
I understand what you mean about not thinking it's a "huge deal" because of your skill level. As if to say it would only really affect GM level, as that's where most hackers end up. However, it certainly doesn't mean us lowbies don't encounter hacking. Upper leagues have a finite capacity so we will still see abundant hacking in masters because it seems these programs are so easy to obtain, use, and not get caught.
|
I was high Diamond last season and I didn't think it was a big problem. Possibly that is still too low to really have the issue manifest. Every loss I could point to mechanical mistakes or poor engagements on my end that resulted in the loss. But at high Master/GM where there are fewer mechanical mistakes and each side picks good engagements having complete vision would, of course, make it very difficult to win.
|
I am the last one to grammar nazi anyone, but you guys should really consider stopping all-capitalizing Arpad Elo's last name
|
On March 03 2015 05:35 Alchemik wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 05:20 [PkF] Wire wrote:
At last. I hope I get that masters icon again ^^
so many people will be dissapointed after the changes
I've been master forever and I was already pretty close (like 1400th EU when GM + masters was about 1300 people) so I think I have a pretty reasonable chance to get in. I won't be disappointed if that doesn't happen, I'll just keep trying to improve, there are still soooo many things I do awfully wrong.
|
I would like to see this changes:
1. Make leagues more equally spread percentage-wise. It just feels like everyone is gold and then some small ratio above, and some small ratio below.
2. For unranked, I would like to have an option to choose witch machups I play. I just hate ZvZ and would prefer not to play it at all. As it is now, I have to quit every ZvZ (which, btw, in my league and region is way above 33% of times).
|
Whoa wtf, they're taking out MMR decay? That doesn't sound like a good change to me.
|
On March 03 2015 05:45 FFW_Rude wrote:
I opened the stream of iNcontroL and i saw Diamond vs Grand Master.
Yeah. Things needs to be done.
I watched a ton streams lately. Saw this scenario everytime. Right now QXC is playing zerg in diamond, got Terran GM. Lost to 2rax :D
|
Canada11355 Posts
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.
I watched my friend play his placements as a first-time-player about a year ago. He lost the first 4 and was prepared to do so, as I had explained how placements work. His fifth game is an epic 45 minute wood-league vs wood-league game. My friend has a blast and wins the game. He had an average of 10-20 idle workers after the 10 minute mark with a peak of 42 idle workers (base was mined out)
He got placed in gold.
|
On March 03 2015 07:29 c0ldfusion wrote:
Whoa wtf, they're taking out MMR decay? That doesn't sound like a good change to me.
Until they can figure out a better way to do it, yes.
|
Re-evaluating the ladder system
In the longer term, we’re looking at what other changes can be made to the ladder around the Legacy of the Void time frame. This may include keeping some elements that we feel are working from the current ladder system and overhauling elements we feel could be improved. Our goal here is to ensure that the new system is more accurate and offers more transparency into player progress.
This sounds really good. Perhaps we'll get visible MMR of some sorts. I like transparency.
|
I think Blizzard got sucked into making a lot of changes they really didn't need to make.
They just need 2 of the change that they're proposing - 1. adjust the MMR of a new account and 2 revise the league MMR thresholds. The latter of which they're supposed to be actively monitoring and tweaking every season anyway.
|
On March 03 2015 08:16 c0ldfusion wrote:
I think Blizzard got sucked into making a lot of changes they really didn't need to make.
They just need 2 of the change that they're proposing - 1. adjust the MMR of a new account and 2 revise the league MMR thresholds. The latter of which they're supposed to be actively monitoring and tweaking every season anyway.
They made a lot of rather vague announcements but I'm pretty sure that in the end they'll just change the two points you mention and maybe deal with the other issues towards LotV. A lot of what is said indeed appears unnecessary, though as always with Blizz it's full of good intentions.
|
well, the "starting experience for new players" is *directly* related to the mmr decay! of course back in wings of liberty, if you won all of your placement matches you would correctly find yourself in gold or platinum league. now, thanks to mmr decay, "gold" and "platinum" is more like platinum and diamond from before the ladder changes implemented in heart of the swarm.
it's good that it's finally being ditched next season; it did way more harm than good. it will take several seasons for people to finally land into their correct leagues though, just as it took several seasons to screw everything up. hopefully it won't take as long to fix it as it did to break it.
|
Finally an update for the ladder system. Still there is stuff to work on but as broken as a lot of things were this is a very positive update and a step in the right direction.
So demoting is now enabled again or am I getting this wrong?
|
This is brilliant!
I'll finally get above gold in a season again. I only have time to play a few games a season due to work and other obligations, so I was stuck around silver level forever. I also can't remember the last game I lost, but apparently losing is fun...
|
8748 Posts
During our analysis, we found that [MMR decay] was helping create even matches for players who were coming back from breaks and looking to ease back into StarCraft II.
I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined.
One change I hope to see for LotV is a different system for top ranks on the ladder. I don't know why the top 200 gets locked out from the rest of the system. The transition from divisions and leagues to a straightforward numerical ranking needs to be smoother. I say make it top 1000 or something, so any player who is decent (as in has any chance of going pro in the near future) can be ranked, and definitely do not let it get locked up. Make a system where people enter and leave based on performance, not activity, all season long.
|
United Kingdom20285 Posts
I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined.
Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting ~silver-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players
|
8748 Posts
On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free.
Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on.
|
On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on.
This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013
The highlighted/important parts:
-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating.
-The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.
-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games.
If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward.
The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period.
Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said.
edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words
|
On March 03 2015 03:46 GGzerG wrote:
Oh great another announcement about changes that haven't happened yet, Oh joy. Maybe now I can get excited about waiting even longer for Blizzard to care about SC2. "SOON" TM. -_-
Pretty much lol
We already know all this shit is broken blizz. Just fix it already....
|
On March 03 2015 09:28 Za7oX wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 03:46 GGzerG wrote:
Oh great another announcement about changes that haven't happened yet, Oh joy. Maybe now I can get excited about waiting even longer for Blizzard to care about SC2. "SOON" TM. -_- Pretty much lol We already know all this shit is broken blizz. Just fix it already....
Well, at least they are telling us some of the initial steps they are taking.
|
On March 03 2015 05:53 Days wrote:
Lol yeah the MMR is pretty messed up. I'm currently in Grandmaster right now, and one game i'm beating a grandmaster, and then the next game I get placed against a diamond...... we're both like what the fuck?!?!
Iv'e vsd more GM's when i'm in diamond now, then when 2+ years ago when i was high master. I guess the lower player base has something to do with it.
|
Does that mean high diamond gonna be masters?
|
While you're at the matchmaking topic, have you noticed how imbalanced it is? Say you're diamond. What you may get in 3vs3 is like: you (diamond) with 2 silver/gold allies vs 3 platinums or something. Can you beat 1 of them? 2? Probably. But you may get outnumbered badly if they take your allies out early. They just can't defend themselves to a basic level. In other words, the problem is Blizzard's understanding of "average" in team games.
|
On March 03 2015 09:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on. This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013The highlighted/important parts:-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating. -The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward. The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period. Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said. edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words
Yeah, I think so too. Also we have no clue how the MMR really works. For example, it could just add MMR on top of MMR if you are winning. This means in the middle of the ladder with 50% winrate your MMR stays the same. With 55% it is growing and you are ranking up through the leagues.
Now if you are at the top of the ladder, you are going to have between 50-75% winrate, since there simply aren't many opponents better than you that you could be matched against. Now if the MMR works as simply as I said above - it just adds MMR when you win - that means that the top of the ladder has really high MMR. And that could mean that even a regular decay with a percentage of even fixed value over 4weeks might not be enough to really rank you down.
This is all just speculation and meant as an example to illustrate that MMR decay could work very differently for different players, in particular the ones at the very top and the very bottom of the ladder which are not in the 50% winrate equilibrium.
Unless blizzard tells us about their way to measure and influence MMR, we can never know and only report what we feel uncomfortable with.
|
Nice. I was diamond for about 11 seasons straight then took a long break. I have noticed working through gold league my games are either are me stomping someone, or me running into a former masters player in the same situation as me. So I am staying on gold league longer, and probably knocking down people that are suppose to be there out.
|
8748 Posts
On March 03 2015 09:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on. This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013The highlighted/important parts:-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating. -The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward. The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period. Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said. edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words
I see, but that still leaves unexplained some other things that can affect your effective MMR over time. I wonder what other factors have been at play that have made it seem as though MMR decay was doing more or less than that. If MMR decay is removed and those factors are still at play, then people will continue to observe weird things when they take breaks. If the idea is for people to be able to take any length break and always be able to match against the same people, then presumably the system needs to be adjusted in other ways.
|
But the mmr decay is helping out for me 
|
United States12235 Posts
On March 03 2015 12:02 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 09:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on. This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013The highlighted/important parts:-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating. -The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward. The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period. Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said. edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words I see, but that still leaves unexplained some other things that can affect your effective MMR over time. I wonder what other factors have been at play that have made it seem as though MMR decay was doing more or less than that. If MMR decay is removed and those factors are still at play, then people will continue to observe weird things when they take breaks. If the idea is for people to be able to take any length break and always be able to match against the same people, then presumably the system needs to be adjusted in other ways.
In the short term, and on an individual basis, decay is probably a fine thing. After all, you take a break, you come back rusty, you aren't going to be up to the task of playing against people that required your best game a month ago, so decay handles that for you. They ran the statistical models and found that after a month or more of inactivity, the average player's skill level falls to a point where opponents who were 75/25 matchups are now 50/50 matchups, so that's how it was tuned.
The ripple effects are far more damaging. Heart of the Swarm launched two years ago, that's two full years of decay and general rating deflation. Think about it: when you come back to play a game, you are much more likely to face an active player than another inactive one (obviously), and the outcome of that game impacts your opponent's rating positively or negatively. You are, on average, playing against a different tier of opponents and your games will push them up or down. Again, in the short term, that's probably okay because if you play only a few games your impact on the ladder around you is minimal, and if you play a lot of games you'll eventually climb back to where you used to be. But what happens if you decay again a few months later? And again a few months after that? That's exactly what's resulted in the ladder's current state, with mid- and high-level players decaying to the bottom and middle of the ladder after multiple seasons of inactivity.
In the immediate term, their fix is to adjust the league boundaries to match the target population percentiles, but that doesn't resolve the underlying issue. Each time they do this, it causes a league "crunch" where the rating ranges for the lower leagues become smaller and smaller (because if X rating range used to cover 8% of people and now it covers 20%, you need to find the new 8% intercept) while Diamond becomes a wide expanse collecting the chunks removed from the crunch, and that's untenable. Deflation and decay compounded over those two years have caused the league badges to mostly lose meaning, and that's important considering that's a player's only reference point.
|
Took Blizzard this long to figure out there was an issue? The awful matchmaking is the main reason I stopped playing.
|
Fucking MMR decay shouldn't be specific to a single unique ladder queue. If buddies A&B and buddies B&C often play together, but A&C much more rarely, there is no reason to put such a heavy MMR decay on A&C.
On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting ~silver-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players
Yeah, this exactly. Not so much a bad feeling, a good team morale booster actually, but eventually pretty repetitive.
Edit: Well, these days I'm playing a game with no matchmaking at all so I shouldn't complain too much ;D. No matchmaking at all in a team game with reasonably high skill ceiling is completely ridiculous.
|
On March 03 2015 09:01 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +During our analysis, we found that [MMR decay] was helping create even matches for players who were coming back from breaks and looking to ease back into StarCraft II. I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. One change I hope to see for LotV is a different system for top ranks on the ladder. I don't know why the top 200 gets locked out from the rest of the system. The transition from divisions and leagues to a straightforward numerical ranking needs to be smoother. I say make it top 1000 or something, so any player who is decent (as in has any chance of going pro in the near future) can be ranked, and definitely do not let it get locked up. Make a system where people enter and leave based on performance, not activity, all season long.
I had a similar experience with MMR decay on a smurf. I've also had a friend who 'decayed' from Master to Bronze, but that's because he got into Master after about 25 games the week HotS came out and then lost a placement game every season for a year. Most people crying about MMR decay probably haven't played enough games.
|
United States12235 Posts
On March 03 2015 14:50 ZenithM wrote:
Fucking MMR decay shouldn't be specific to a single unique ladder queue. If buddies A&B and buddies B&C often play together, but A&C much more rarely, there is no reason to put such a heavy MMR decay on A&C.
That's not the case. It's by queue, not by team composition. If A+B play every week and B+C play every week and A+C play every month, nobody will have decayed at all because every week A B and C are all playing 2v2. Read the language in the Dec 2013 Blizzard blog post again.
|
On March 03 2015 14:55 ZAiNs wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 09:01 NonY wrote:During our analysis, we found that [MMR decay] was helping create even matches for players who were coming back from breaks and looking to ease back into StarCraft II. I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. One change I hope to see for LotV is a different system for top ranks on the ladder. I don't know why the top 200 gets locked out from the rest of the system. The transition from divisions and leagues to a straightforward numerical ranking needs to be smoother. I say make it top 1000 or something, so any player who is decent (as in has any chance of going pro in the near future) can be ranked, and definitely do not let it get locked up. Make a system where people enter and leave based on performance, not activity, all season long. I had a similar experience with MMR decay on a smurf. I've also had a friend who 'decayed' from Master to Bronze, but that's because he got into Master after about 25 games the week HotS came out and then lost a placement game every season for a year. Most people crying about MMR decay probably haven't played enough games.
Well, MMR decay in the first place is by design a feature FOR people who don't play enough games. I don't want to win 10 games in a row to start to meet remotely challenging opponents...
|
On March 03 2015 12:02 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 09:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on. This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013The highlighted/important parts:-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating. -The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward. The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period. Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said. edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words I see, but that still leaves unexplained some other things that can affect your effective MMR over time. I wonder what other factors have been at play that have made it seem as though MMR decay was doing more or less than that. If MMR decay is removed and those factors are still at play, then people will continue to observe weird things when they take breaks. If the idea is for people to be able to take any length break and always be able to match against the same people, then presumably the system needs to be adjusted in other ways.
Those "other factors" you mentioned might be referred to in this section from this most recent post on ladder:
"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."
So, I suppose we just have to wait for the changes, and see if they make enough of a difference in the long run for everything to "feel normal" again.
|
When they say "this season" when will that be the case? right now? In couple of weeks?
|
On March 03 2015 15:07 zerK wrote:
When they say "this season" when will that be the case? right now? In couple of weeks?
That's the understanding, yes.
|
I love that they keep us posted. I don´t think it is a bad thing that little actual changes were introduced. They are just not ready yet and we were told in advance that they are aware problem of the problem, what the problem is in their opinion that they are working on it and how they plan to approach it and I appreciate it.
I don´t think the mid-season demotion is needed, since leagues are just a cosmetic thing. What I strongly dislike is the hidden MMR, not knowing where I stand. What should be implemented is matching cross-server if no opponent is found on current server, where one players gets reconnected to the other server, of course proper scaling would have to be initially done for the different MMRs. Another thing, that may already be implemented is adaptive MMR range based on opponents available.
|
Yes, pls fix it! Having recently started playing again 1v1 (usually I am playing diamond/masters) and 2v2 with a friend (usually plat/dia) who also just started again, we experienced weird shit concerning our matches. I got placed placed in gold 1v1 where I just facerolled everyone for 20 games now, while in 2v2 we got straight to plat and now play against masters/high diamond and get rolled ourself.
Please also relate the team MMR to the 1v1 MMR, if the player is active in both.
|
On March 03 2015 14:58 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 14:55 ZAiNs wrote:On March 03 2015 09:01 NonY wrote:During our analysis, we found that [MMR decay] was helping create even matches for players who were coming back from breaks and looking to ease back into StarCraft II. I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. One change I hope to see for LotV is a different system for top ranks on the ladder. I don't know why the top 200 gets locked out from the rest of the system. The transition from divisions and leagues to a straightforward numerical ranking needs to be smoother. I say make it top 1000 or something, so any player who is decent (as in has any chance of going pro in the near future) can be ranked, and definitely do not let it get locked up. Make a system where people enter and leave based on performance, not activity, all season long. I had a similar experience with MMR decay on a smurf. I've also had a friend who 'decayed' from Master to Bronze, but that's because he got into Master after about 25 games the week HotS came out and then lost a placement game every season for a year. Most people crying about MMR decay probably haven't played enough games. Well, MMR decay in the first place is by design a feature FOR people who don't play enough games. I don't want to win 10 games in a row to start to meet remotely challenging opponents...
If you haven't played many games, then you DO want to play challenging opponents. From what I can tell the system is (was?) very good at putting you where you deserved to be as long as you put in enough games. Not playing many games, being on a loss/win streak makes the system more 'uncertain' about your MMR being an accurate reflection of your skill, and when its uncertain it can pair you vs. stronger/weaker players in an attempt to get you where you should be quickly. Like if you get a new account you can be GM MMR if you go 20-0, but if you lose your 2nd match it'll take a lot more games to get to the GM MMR. From my understanding this is separate from MMR decay which just lowers your MMR, people just seem to mistake the system being uncertain about their skill as MMR decay.
|
Hmmm, yes, I don't get what that has to do with what I'm saying, I know how MMR works. While I get the reasoning behind decaying MMR to not "discourage" people who've been away from the game for some time (imo they should just suck it up but eh ;D), they're way overdoing it right now. With my friend we won like 20 games in 2v2 the other day, constantly being matched up against golds, until FINALLY Blizzard decided that maybe it was time to make us play against platinum. Ridiculous.
And one decay timer per ladder mode (1v1, 2v2, ...) and per team is obviously flawed anyway, regardless of how well you implement the actual decay.
|
On March 03 2015 19:38 ZenithM wrote:
Hmmm, yes, I don't get what that has to do with what I'm saying, I know how MMR works. While I get the reasoning behind decaying MMR to not "discourage" people who've been away from the game for some time (imo they should just suck it up but eh ;D), they're way overdoing it right now. With my friend we won like 20 games in 2v2 the other day, constantly being matched up against golds, until FINALLY Blizzard decided that maybe it was time to make us play against platinum. Ridiculous.
And one decay timer per ladder mode (1v1, 2v2, ...) and per team is obviously flawed anyway, regardless of how well you implement the actual decay.
What I was trying to demonstrate is that MMR decay isn't for people who haven't played enough games, but people who have stopped playing for a period of time. People love to blame MMR decay for everything when it's that they've never actually played a solid chunk of matches.
|
It depends what you call a solid chunk of matches. Imo if you played about a thousand 2v2s with the same teammate, that should do it :D
Edit: Now that I think about it, I seem to recall that there are some settings where Blizzard resets completely your MMR (this has nothing to do with MMR decay). Something like not having played any game in a season, right? That's maybe where my grudge lies then.
|
On March 03 2015 19:57 ZenithM wrote:
It depends what you call a solid chunk of matches. Imo if you played about a thousand 2v2s with the same teammate, that should do it :D
Edit: Now that I think about it, I seem to recall that there are some settings where Blizzard resets completely your MMR (this has nothing to do with MMR decay). Something like not having played any game in a season, right? That's maybe where my grudge lies then.
I think I read something along those lines before, I think it would have to be at least a year though. I do think 2v2 in general is a lot more inconsistent than 1v1 just because of how irregularly most people play it.
|
|
|
Haha so much for 2/18/20/20/20/20. I think that's what they were gunning for.
|
According Blizzard's post, they are "reevaluating the ladder system" for LotV.
Here's one way to fix up the ladder system: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/389449-improving-the-ladder-system-for-hots
This suggestion bends over backwards to accommodate Blizzard's ridiculous and distortionary bonus pool system and fixes up it within the constraints of Blizzard's supposed "feel-good", "positive-psychology" philosophy (although bonus pool does the opposite). Recently, the main gripe with the current system is league distribution. This suggestion would bring transparency with very clear, very simple, very understandable promotion criteria: If diamond is the top 20%, then if you're in the top 20%, you get put in Diamond (or above).
Of course, we could just abandon these overrated constraints by Blizzard, and do a more radical, but more effective, overhaul:
-Just rank by MMR accounting for uncertainty of MMR.
-Display this metric.
-Get rid of leagues and replace it with "ladder levels", where you are in ladder level X, when you're in X percentile (i.e. instead of 7 leagues, have 100 leagues, and instantly promote or demote based on percentile). End the charade, abolish leagues.
A clear, transparent, and most importantly, truthful and non-obfuscated comparable rank for everyone.
Of course, Blizzard mostly realizes the benefits of this system as it is what they're already using in Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm (except with uncertainty of MMR replaced by activity and 50 levels instead of 100).
2 unrelated points: Firstly, Blizzard's justification for removing MMR decay makes no sense. They praise it, but then they say that they decided to remove it. If people's skill decays due to inactivity, then MMR should decay too, because MMR measures skill. If it doesn't decay, then it is not accurate. Secondly, it beggars belief that Blizzard's system is so bad that they seemingly don't even know that their league distribution is off-target without people complaining on the forums, and then seemingly needing to manually check that it is true. In fact, it is surprising that they can't set up the logic of the system in such a way that it automatically enforces the league distribution approximately, without any manual intervention required. Moreover, Blizzard's fix appears to simply be calculating the MMR threshold based on the correct distribution for last season and applying it to next season. So why can't this simple computation (or whatever it is) be automated every season, instead of being triggered manually only when forum complaints flow in large volumes?
|
For me as an on-off player who has been playing in master / diamond for most of his sc2 life, the possible changes sound good. I've picked up the game again a few weeks ago and found myself in gold league, which wasn't really where I belonged. Got back to diamond with a 90% win rate, but I ran into lots of players who were complaining about opponents of higher skill level. Once you've reached a certain level, you just don't fall below that anymore. Especially if your mechanics are kind of solid. I really hope they'll get rid of mmr decay and make the whole ladder more transparent.
|
On March 04 2015 00:02 virpi wrote:
For me as an on-off player who has been playing in master / diamond for most of his sc2 life, the possible changes sound good. I've picked up the game again a few weeks ago and found myself in gold league, which wasn't really where I belonged. Got back to diamond with a 90% win rate, but I ran into lots of players who were complaining about opponents of higher skill level. Once you've reached a certain level, you just don't fall below that anymore. Especially if your mechanics are kind of solid. I really hope they'll get rid of mmr decay and make the whole ladder more transparent.
Yeah I agree. I got my overall level on the back of mechanics alone (mostly, I don't really play smart, nor am I interested in doing so), and that shit is like riding a bike, after 1-2 games I'm back to full speed and I don't need no damn decay to make me win 10 games in a row.
|
i just feel even talking about this is just creating drama and another 2 min waste of life. If you play the game a lot good or bad you will be placed against people fo similar skill, if you play now and again yes this will be kinda odd. I play a hell of a lot fo games and i can clearly tell you that i get about 2-4 mismatches per day, most days none. Its when you start flicking between ur ranked and your unranked or even other accounts where people start thinking there is a problem. My main account plays plats and dias with the occasional golds regularly, my other accnt which i dont play very much is dias and masters players mostly./ When i play i watch streams and they seem to be getting their leagues all time as well. noone on is complaining
so i have to ask., Who is actually complaining about the ladder? Lower people? If you are low then dont worry cos if you were better you would have the shiniest golden looking outline on your name or if not a glowing blue one . . . .just play the game youre only as good as you are. Im pretty sure all this is coming from those playwers who think they ought to be higher than they are with playing a few games. Play more games, after about 200 i would say ur mmr is exactly where it needs to be
|
United Kingdom20285 Posts
On March 03 2015 23:33 ZenithM wrote:
Haha so much for 2/18/20/20/20/20. I think that's what they were gunning for.
They changed it a while ago, making gold something like 35% target IIRC
however actual distribution is miles away from their targets.
Since people can't be demoted, if getting top 2% MMR meant masters promotion, the result would be an inflation in masters because there were people there that didn't deserve to be there, and new people got promoted in as they hit top 2% MMR. Masters would go to ~3-4% (the extra 1.5x for example from people who should be demoted, but have not been) but instead it's at like ~0.8%. It's way off
|
This might be the most vague statement blizzard has ever released. What are you going to do I wonder, you are just pointing out issues.
|
hey, that's cool. It actually makes me feel better to see that while we are "just plat" in 2v2 EU (the mode I play the most), we are among top 12.5 percent of teams (which sould have be diamond under the target percntages).
Still doesn't mean anything, but the Blizzard feel-good-system needs to be fixed so that more people feel good
|
|
|
On March 04 2015 00:54 opisska wrote:hey, that's cool. It actually makes me feel better to see that while we are "just plat" in 2v2 EU (the mode I play the most), we are among top 12.5 percent of teams (which sould have be diamond under the target percntages). Still doesn't mean anything, but the Blizzard feel-good-system needs to be fixed so that more people feel good
Oh you're right, it also applies to teams. Meh, that explains why platinum teams seemed actually decent to me ;D
|
Removal of MMR decay means I'll probably come back to playing with the new season. School prevents me from consistently playing for a month or more at a time, and it got to the point where I'd finally have time to play and I'd have to grind through 5+ one-sided games just to get back to playing someone remotely on the same level as me. I doubt it was fun for either side. I ended up playing more games trying to get back to my level than actual games at my level that felt competitive.
|
Czech Republic12129 Posts
On March 04 2015 00:46 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 23:33 ZenithM wrote:
Haha so much for 2/18/20/20/20/20. I think that's what they were gunning for. They changed it a while ago, making gold something like 35% target IIRC however actual distribution is miles away from their targets. Since people can't be demoted, if getting top 2% MMR meant masters promotion, the result would be an inflation in masters because there were people there that didn't deserve to be there, and new people got promoted in as they hit top 2% MMR. Masters would go to ~3-4% (the extra 1.5x for example from people who should be demoted, but have not been) but instead it's at like ~0.8%. It's way off
And that's basically it. I still don't understand how anyone on master or GM level is considerate "casual". I agree with Blizzard, demotions and showing winrate on your profile is bad for some casuals, and you can still access these values by few clicks, which is good. But anyone in top 2 % is not casual, there should be the possibility to be demoted from masters or GM.
I hope they fix the ladder 
|
|
|
On March 04 2015 00:48 JacobShock wrote:
This might be the most vague statement blizzard has ever released. What are you going to do I wonder, you are just pointing out issues.
Why do some people keep saying this? Did you even read the statement? They outlined areas of concerns, and steps they plan on taking immediately and in the future to try to resolve some of these issues. Frankly, this is the most specific statement we've ever heard from Blizzard on SC2 that wasn't a list of patch notes.
|
On March 04 2015 00:02 virpi wrote:
For me as an on-off player who has been playing in master / diamond for most of his sc2 life, the possible changes sound good. I've picked up the game again a few weeks ago and found myself in gold league, which wasn't really where I belonged. Got back to diamond with a 90% win rate, but I ran into lots of players who were complaining about opponents of higher skill level. Once you've reached a certain level, you just don't fall below that anymore. Especially if your mechanics are kind of solid. I really hope they'll get rid of mmr decay and make the whole ladder more transparent.
The frustrating part is when you're leveling up after decay you have no idea if they gold leaguer you are playing is a "true" gold player (ie: 50% winrate in gold) or like me who should be higher is is currently 22-3. So I scout like a hawk thinking this guy simply HAS to be spending his gold somewhere. I believe I'm getting bamboozled. Then I walk up with my medivac timing push and he actually only had 3 zealots 1 stalker and a sentry and loses.
|
This announcement refreshes my interest to ladder some games.
|
8748 Posts
On March 03 2015 13:57 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 12:02 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on. This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013The highlighted/important parts:-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating. -The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward. The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period. Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said. edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words I see, but that still leaves unexplained some other things that can affect your effective MMR over time. I wonder what other factors have been at play that have made it seem as though MMR decay was doing more or less than that. If MMR decay is removed and those factors are still at play, then people will continue to observe weird things when they take breaks. If the idea is for people to be able to take any length break and always be able to match against the same people, then presumably the system needs to be adjusted in other ways. In the short term, and on an individual basis, decay is probably a fine thing. After all, you take a break, you come back rusty, you aren't going to be up to the task of playing against people that required your best game a month ago, so decay handles that for you. They ran the statistical models and found that after a month or more of inactivity, the average player's skill level falls to a point where opponents who were 75/25 matchups are now 50/50 matchups, so that's how it was tuned. The ripple effects are far more damaging. Heart of the Swarm launched two years ago, that's two full years of decay and general rating deflation. Think about it: when you come back to play a game, you are much more likely to face an active player than another inactive one (obviously), and the outcome of that game impacts your opponent's rating positively or negatively. You are, on average, playing against a different tier of opponents and your games will push them up or down. Again, in the short term, that's probably okay because if you play only a few games your impact on the ladder around you is minimal, and if you play a lot of games you'll eventually climb back to where you used to be. But what happens if you decay again a few months later? And again a few months after that? That's exactly what's resulted in the ladder's current state, with mid- and high-level players decaying to the bottom and middle of the ladder after multiple seasons of inactivity. In the immediate term, their fix is to adjust the league boundaries to match the target population percentiles, but that doesn't resolve the underlying issue. Each time they do this, it causes a league "crunch" where the rating ranges for the lower leagues become smaller and smaller (because if X rating range used to cover 8% of people and now it covers 20%, you need to find the new 8% intercept) while Diamond becomes a wide expanse collecting the chunks removed from the crunch, and that's untenable. Deflation and decay compounded over those two years have caused the league badges to mostly lose meaning, and that's important considering that's a player's only reference point.
Has it ever been the case, or has it ever been considered, for inactivity to increase MMR volatility? It seems like the main complaint is players being "stuck" somewhere and having to play 20+ games, winning them all or losing them all, to get to where they belong. A pro player starting on a fresh account can expect at least 30 "free wins" before getting close to his true MMR. Maybe this was sensible when the game first came out, but it seems like for an ongoing system with players coming and going a lot, MMR volatility for "new" players (players returning from inactivity) should be much higher.
And I'm just curious, since I'm pretty certain that MMR did actually reset if the period of inactivity was long enough. Well, was that actually the case or am I misremembering? And with the removal of MMR decay, will that no longer be the case? Or is that form of MMR decay still going to exist?
|
"unofficially, we still think people who complain about hackers on ladder need to git gud, noob"
|
On March 04 2015 04:21 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2015 00:48 JacobShock wrote:
This might be the most vague statement blizzard has ever released. What are you going to do I wonder, you are just pointing out issues. Why do some people keep saying this? Did you even read the statement? They outlined areas of concerns, and steps they plan on taking immediately and in the future to try to resolve some of these issues. Frankly, this is the most specific statement we've ever heard from Blizzard on SC2 that wasn't a list of patch notes.
No, its my fault, I apologize :b I only read this thread and didnt follow the link. So I had no clue that there was more, so yeah guys if you haven't already, follow that link.
Still I would like to know how they are going to change the league distribution percentage wise.
|
On March 04 2015 04:55 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 13:57 Excalibur_Z wrote:On March 03 2015 12:02 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on. This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013The highlighted/important parts:-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating. -The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward. The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period. Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said. edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words I see, but that still leaves unexplained some other things that can affect your effective MMR over time. I wonder what other factors have been at play that have made it seem as though MMR decay was doing more or less than that. If MMR decay is removed and those factors are still at play, then people will continue to observe weird things when they take breaks. If the idea is for people to be able to take any length break and always be able to match against the same people, then presumably the system needs to be adjusted in other ways. In the short term, and on an individual basis, decay is probably a fine thing. After all, you take a break, you come back rusty, you aren't going to be up to the task of playing against people that required your best game a month ago, so decay handles that for you. They ran the statistical models and found that after a month or more of inactivity, the average player's skill level falls to a point where opponents who were 75/25 matchups are now 50/50 matchups, so that's how it was tuned. The ripple effects are far more damaging. Heart of the Swarm launched two years ago, that's two full years of decay and general rating deflation. Think about it: when you come back to play a game, you are much more likely to face an active player than another inactive one (obviously), and the outcome of that game impacts your opponent's rating positively or negatively. You are, on average, playing against a different tier of opponents and your games will push them up or down. Again, in the short term, that's probably okay because if you play only a few games your impact on the ladder around you is minimal, and if you play a lot of games you'll eventually climb back to where you used to be. But what happens if you decay again a few months later? And again a few months after that? That's exactly what's resulted in the ladder's current state, with mid- and high-level players decaying to the bottom and middle of the ladder after multiple seasons of inactivity. In the immediate term, their fix is to adjust the league boundaries to match the target population percentiles, but that doesn't resolve the underlying issue. Each time they do this, it causes a league "crunch" where the rating ranges for the lower leagues become smaller and smaller (because if X rating range used to cover 8% of people and now it covers 20%, you need to find the new 8% intercept) while Diamond becomes a wide expanse collecting the chunks removed from the crunch, and that's untenable. Deflation and decay compounded over those two years have caused the league badges to mostly lose meaning, and that's important considering that's a player's only reference point. Has it ever been the case, or has it ever been considered, for inactivity to increase MMR volatility? It seems like the main complaint is players being "stuck" somewhere and having to play 20+ games, winning them all or losing them all, to get to where they belong. A pro player starting on a fresh account can expect at least 30 "free wins" before getting close to his true MMR. Maybe this was sensible when the game first came out, but it seems like for an ongoing system with players coming and going a lot, MMR volatility for "new" players (players returning from inactivity) should be much higher. And I'm just curious, since I'm pretty certain that MMR did actually reset if the period of inactivity was long enough. Well, was that actually the case or am I misremembering? And with the removal of MMR decay, will that no longer be the case? Or is that form of MMR decay still going to exist?
I believe your MMR was reset only if you were inactive for two consecutive seasons. I assume that will still be valid. But now if your MMR was 2000 and you take three months off you'll come back with an MMR of 2000. Personally I'd rather lose a few games kicking the rust off than having to win 30 games to get back to a reasonable MMR.
|
On March 03 2015 13:57 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2015 12:02 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:23 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On March 03 2015 09:13 NonY wrote:On March 03 2015 09:05 Cyro wrote:I wish. I didn't play on an account for over 5 months, came back and matched against top 50 GM. I guess the evidence shows that it takes more than 5 months for MMR decay to activate but skill in SC2 certainly drops much quicker than that. And I imagine that many of the people complaining about MMR decay were talking about periods of less than 5 months, and thus crying wolf the whole time. Unless the behind-the-scenes picture is much more complicated (inconsistent) and even worse at accomplishing its goals than we imagined. Every time i play the game with a few friends (sometimes after having not played for ~2-9 months) our MMR has decayed to hitting bronze-golds in 2v2. We're pretty much all previous 1v1 master players, and that usually results in winning 5-10 games for free. Yeah.. I've just spent some time reading various accounts of MMR decay. I don't think there's any way so many people are inaccurately reporting. I'm leaning heavily toward the system being complex and faulty and obviously inconsistent. My hypothesis to explain at least part of it is that average MMR shifts and depending on when you quit and when you return, your MMR decay could either be nullified by the whole system shifting along with it or amplified by the whole system moving the other way. But if that's totally wrong, then there must be something else weird going on. This post from Blizz explains the MMR decay system: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/12055065/situation-report-the-starcraft-ii-multiplayer-ladder-12-18-2013The highlighted/important parts:-Each ladder queue is adjusted separately. For example, an absence from games in team queues will not adjust your 1v1 matchmaking rating. -The adjustment only kicks in after a player has played no games (ranked or unranked) in a given queue for more than two weeks.
-Once it kicks in, the adjustment ramps from zero adjustment to our maximum adjustment over a period of two weeks. There is no further adjustment after four weeks of inactivity.-At its maximum value, the adjustment is small; it’s the equivalent of losing a few games. If a player plays even a single game on the ladder every two weeks, their hidden rating will never be adjusted downward. The problem seemed to stem from people who only played a few games every 4+ weeks (like me!), which is beyond the max decay time. This would continually kick in the MMR decay system, causing those sorts of players to steadily fall over time. In your case, a period of not playing *at all* for a full 5 months would cause only that initial 4 week decay period. Someone else feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but this is how I understand everything to work, based on what Blizzard has said. edit: for some clarity and because I accidentally some words I see, but that still leaves unexplained some other things that can affect your effective MMR over time. I wonder what other factors have been at play that have made it seem as though MMR decay was doing more or less than that. If MMR decay is removed and those factors are still at play, then people will continue to observe weird things when they take breaks. If the idea is for people to be able to take any length break and always be able to match against the same people, then presumably the system needs to be adjusted in other ways. In the short term, and on an individual basis, decay is probably a fine thing. After all, you take a break, you come back rusty, you aren't going to be up to the task of playing against people that required your best game a month ago, so decay handles that for you. They ran the statistical models and found that after a month or more of inactivity, the average player's skill level falls to a point where opponents who were 75/25 matchups are now 50/50 matchups, so that's how it was tuned. The ripple effects are far more damaging. Heart of the Swarm launched two years ago, that's two full years of decay and general rating deflation. Think about it: when you come back to play a game, you are much more likely to face an active player than another inactive one (obviously), and the outcome of that game impacts your opponent's rating positively or negatively. You are, on average, playing against a different tier of opponents and your games will push them up or down. Again, in the short term, that's probably okay because if you play only a few games your impact on the ladder around you is minimal, and if you play a lot of games you'll eventually climb back to where you used to be. But what happens if you decay again a few months later? And again a few months after that? That's exactly what's resulted in the ladder's current state, with mid- and high-level players decaying to the bottom and middle of the ladder after multiple seasons of inactivity. In the immediate term, their fix is to adjust the league boundaries to match the target population percentiles, but that doesn't resolve the underlying issue. Each time they do this, it causes a league "crunch" where the rating ranges for the lower leagues become smaller and smaller (because if X rating range used to cover 8% of people and now it covers 20%, you need to find the new 8% intercept) while Diamond becomes a wide expanse collecting the chunks removed from the crunch, and that's untenable. Deflation and decay compounded over those two years have caused the league badges to mostly lose meaning, and that's important considering that's a player's only reference point.
Based on everything you're saying, a huge percentage of the ladder would need to be drifting in and out for months at a time for this to be a problem. Two seasons of inactivity resets your MMR completely I thought. A season is much longer than a month now - meaning for this to be the only root problem on ladder, massive chunks of the intermediate to high level players would need to grind out a significant number of games, stay completely inactive from the game for a handful of months, come back and grind out a significant number of games again, and repeat.
Regarding the league distribution, Blizzard is supposed to constantly monitor and adjust the league boundaries anyway. That's just an inherent weakness in the system they chose to implement. It requires active management.
Lastly there _should_ be some decay, otherwise you'll get MMR inflation on ladder from actual skill decay.
So I think the ultimate solution is actually pretty straight forward: make MMR decay strongly logarithmic and eliminate leagues and just display MMR.
In that scenario Blizzard is freed from having to constantly monitor and adjust league MMR boundaries and we avoid extreme deflationary scenarios that you described independent of user behavior while realistically modeling skill decay.
|
Why they didnot implement a system like Staircase, you play 5 games and with an evaluation of how good yous spend your minerals no supply blocked, efective apm and base saturation the system decide the league when you should be place
|
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,
Interesting that it is considered "Skill level" if you got 50% winrate.
I've seen enough one-tick ponys and cheesers to know that there is no skill involved in a lot of time. If the trick is discovered, there is no "skill" behind that.But I understand that the ladder cannot really be skillbased (you will not include something that reads build orders and their execution). However this 50% thingie leads to the simple fact that the "skill distribution" isn't accurate in the leagues up until diamond, since in lower leagues you just choose some bullshit and win your 50% until you get placed somewhere. Naturally the race with the most bullshit builds gets more high placements (because of these many one-trick-ponys) then the others.
Actually the only thing I wanted to say here: I don't see much correlation between skill and winrates in many if not most cases.
|
Improvements from Blizzard is always welcome of course, personally though I don't care too much about the ranking/matchmaking system though. Playing a game against a superior opponent teaches me a lot from time to time, just taking it one game at a time and trying to enjoy them is enough for me.
What I would care about Blizzard fixing though is the hackers, if its even telegraphed through proleague how big effect this is having on the korean SC2 scene then MAYBE its time for Blizz to protect their players and their community.
|
This is not accurate, use nios.kr for better numbers.
|
On March 04 2015 17:27 Rollora wrote:Show nested quote +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, Interesting that it is considered "Skill level" if you got 50% winrate. I've seen enough one-tick ponys and cheesers to know that there is no skill involved in a lot of time. If the trick is discovered, there is no "skill" behind that.But I understand that the ladder cannot really be skillbased (you will not include something that reads build orders and their execution). However this 50% thingie leads to the simple fact that the "skill distribution" isn't accurate in the leagues up until diamond, since in lower leagues you just choose some bullshit and win your 50% until you get placed somewhere. Naturally the race with the most bullshit builds gets more high placements (because of these many one-trick-ponys) then the others. Actually the only thing I wanted to say here: I don't see much correlation between skill and winrates in many if not most cases.
The ladder objectively measures your skill at winning ladder games of SC2. It says nothing about how you'd do in a series, a tournament, etc - but it is accurate for the purposes of predicting and quantifying who wins ladder games, assuming the system isn't broken.
People have this false arbitrary belief that "skill" means something other than your ability to win. If someone won GSL with mostly cheesy play or a single strategy, they'd still be the best player that season. A good player wins games, period.
|
On March 04 2015 17:51 Pokebunny wrote:This is not accurate, use nios.kr for better numbers.
Those numbers lead to very similiar conclusions, even if they differ by a couple of percent here and there.
|
On March 04 2015 18:45 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2015 17:51 Pokebunny wrote:This is not accurate, use nios.kr for better numbers. Those numbers lead to very similiar conclusions, even if they differ by a couple of percent here and there.
It seems that people still think that you can compare Blizzards target distribution to what those sites tell you, regardless how many times it is written in every forum that you can't.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/423477-ladder-analysis-activity-metric
|
I wonder how people would feel if blizzard actually relaxed the match making a bit. So you get a more wide variety of opponents. So if your MMR is at 2000 you can get +/- 500 from there opponents. Or a 25% variance. So if you're sitting in Diamond you could theoretically get a platinum opponent sometimes and other times you can get a Master opponent. The only reason I bring it up is Blizzard said one of the failings of the SC2 ladder is that the match making is "too good" and once you hit a relatively settled MMR every game you should have a 50% shot of winning it (for average players that is) and that leads to people getting stressed out because every game is (in their words) "epic." But what if every game wasn't epic?
|
United States12235 Posts
On March 05 2015 02:38 Tenks wrote:
I wonder how people would feel if blizzard actually relaxed the match making a bit. So you get a more wide variety of opponents. So if your MMR is at 2000 you can get +/- 500 from there opponents. Or a 25% variance. So if you're sitting in Diamond you could theoretically get a platinum opponent sometimes and other times you can get a Master opponent. The only reason I bring it up is Blizzard said one of the failings of the SC2 ladder is that the match making is "too good" and once you hit a relatively settled MMR every game you should have a 50% shot of winning it (for average players that is) and that leads to people getting stressed out because every game is (in their words) "epic." But what if every game wasn't epic?
That's actually already in, and has been ever since they expanded the default search range (remember that old blog post?). That search range expansion came as a result of players getting too stressed that every match was a 50-50 slugfest and wanting a little more variety in each game, but they canceled that experiment shortly after. However, rather than completely reverting it, they tweaked it and introduced a factor they call "jitter" which occasionally matches you against players a bit above or below you. It's designed to be a happy medium where not every game is a stress-inducing 50-50, and periodically you'll play a match that's a little easier or more difficult. I doubt it's as high as +/- 500, I could see +/- 315 though (75/25 or 25/75 matches).
|
Still nothing about hackers, the only important thing
|
On March 05 2015 05:11 SuperHofmann wrote:
Still nothing about hackers, the only important thing
It needs to be addressed. I can't recall if I said it here or on reddit but the worst part about hacking being so (at least perceived) rampant is that if you get lucky and stumble upon a proxy or an army you are suddenly a hacker, you get flamed and your opponent tells you out of game how you're a hacker and he's reporting you. Mind you I'm a super, super thick skinned online player. I can take you calling my mom promiscuous, I can have you call into question my sexual preference and I can have you question my virginity or lack thereof. However I don't like being called into question my cheating. I pride myself on incremental improvement and minimap and map awareness is constantly a thorn in my side. When I see your doom drop with my random marine in the map it is an immense feeling of pride that my hard work is paying off. But instead I'm rewarded with "Hacker. reported." Again I don't really care what the other player thinks of me that is of no consequence to me but it does kill my high.
Just today I was playing a TvT on Vanni. I 13 scouted, saw normal rax timings and just scooted out to the watchtower. A few moments later I notice an SCV just wonder past the watchtower my gold base. I thought it was curious so I went around with a marine and found his proxy port. Was called a hacker then. I even told him I owned the watchtower that is how I saw it. Called a hacker again. He sends Hellions to deal with my marine (I still own the tower) and I run them away once my SCV gets vision. Get called a hacker again. Roll him with my rine/tank/medivac push at his front base. Called a hacker. It is maddening. It isn't entirely uncommon either.
|
United States12235 Posts
It was extremely common in BW too. I'm not excusing that behavior or Blizzard's perceived inaction by any stretch, but BW veterans probably have an exceptionally thick skin particularly when it comes to absorbing cheat accusations. BW's design didn't have inherent cheat detection protocols, they basically had to be hacked in later via Warden deployment and even then it was full of holes. Each maphack developed was as simple as "locate the fog of war memory offset and disable it" and after a new patch, that memory offset would change and within hours a new hack would be out. That made it nearly impossible to reliably detect hackers and created a "cry wolf" culture so that most players basically went numb. Obviously we don't want to have this happen in SC2, a game which was built to fill in the technical exploit holes found in previous games, to learn from their mistakes, and there may be hope for it yet.
|
I don't see how things like maphacks and production tab hack can be stopped given the current architecture. That information is all on the client side. No matter how much Blizzard try to hide it locally if someone is determined enough he can get that information.
|
On March 05 2015 21:33 c0ldfusion wrote:
I don't see how things like maphacks and production tab hack can be stopped given the current architecture. That information is all on the client side. No matter how much Blizzard try to hide it locally if someone is determined enough he can get that information.
It is detected via Warden noticing you have a 3rd party application inspecting and modifying SC2's memory. Even though they can't really stop it they can enforce bans via better Warden detection and more pro-active banning instead of this "get a list and in 6 months perform a ban wave" stance they have.
The other argument is if they move SC2 to a more F2P (or at least have some cash shop to generate a flow of money) they could make it so instead of P2P utilize a client/server so it makes hacking far, far more complicated.
|
|
|
|
|
On March 06 2015 05:50 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:Damn I love ladder MMR decay.  + Show Spoiler +
Rofl, I dunno, I don't think it's fun. Looking forward to be able to take a break and still have even matches after the break.
|
On March 06 2015 05:53 Musicus wrote:Rofl, I dunno, I don't think it's fun. Looking forward to be able to take a break and still have even matches after the break.
yeah. I used to be master but I think my current skill level is high dia maybe. But it just isn't possible to be dia or master because I think I lose mmr faster than I get it
Current league: Plat. Low/mid plat.
|
On March 06 2015 05:56 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2015 05:53 Musicus wrote:On March 06 2015 05:50 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:Damn I love ladder MMR decay. + Show Spoiler + Rofl, I dunno, I don't think it's fun. Looking forward to be able to take a break and still have even matches after the break. yeah. I used to be master but I think my current skill level is high dia maybe. But it just isn't possible to be dia or master because I think I lose mmr faster than I get it Current league: Plat. Low/mid plat.
Yeah and it also sucks for the legit plat players that have to play you. Poor guys .
|
MMR Decay doesn't kick in until you haven't played any games for 2 weeks, right?
|
|
|
On March 06 2015 06:02 Mistakes wrote:
MMR Decay doesn't kick in until you haven't played any games for 2 weeks, right?
I think that's the case, yes.
|
Why do they start with SEA? Wouldn't it make more sense to start with the most active regions?
|
On March 06 2015 07:08 KeksX wrote:
Why do they start with SEA? Wouldn't it make more sense to start with the most active regions?
You start with the region you don't care about in case something goes wrong.
|
On March 06 2015 07:09 Stress wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2015 07:08 KeksX wrote:
Why do they start with SEA? Wouldn't it make more sense to start with the most active regions? You start with the region you don't care about in case something goes wrong.
Good point. But poor SEA.
|
Well, now this is starting to get annoying. Since I started playing again(3 days ago) ^(check my pics, 10 posts over me)^, I have now won 26 matches and lost 0. I get 10 points for winning. I will never get up ladder... And you know what? Im still playing vs plats. So far I have met 1 gold, 2 diamonds and rest are plats. WHY I CANT MEET SIMILAR LEVEL PLAYERS AND GET POOOINTS
This problem is similar in WoL. Two season I had like 130 wins and 10-20 losses ( YES, WoL ladder is ez). And I only got +2 - +4 points for winning and lost 30 for losing
You were right Musicus, this sucks
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3ckAE9D.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Zn9Q56t.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/x0zYVIg.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/o03JaRo.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/erONvQ1.jpg)
