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David Kim:
The more we dug into the topic of making the ranks, divisions, and leagues as accurate as possible, the more we realized that there were other potential problems that we could have introduced. Since we have the MMR available already, we think it might be best to just show it as the most accurate measurement of a player’s skill.
"We give you MMR in the ladder revamp, so the ladder revamp is not needed."
This is the excuse Blizzard gives for backpedaling out of the ladder revamp. It's the excuse they give about why it's OK that ranks are inaccurate, and why it's not going to be fixed.
The ladder "revamp" has been reduced to merely splitting leagues into 3, making GM update daily, and revealing MMR. This isn't a revamp, it's a few tweaks plus revealing MMR. But by Blizzard's logic, if it's OK that ranks are inaccurate because you're going to reveal MMR, why even bother with the first 2 changes? Just reveal MMR and be done with it.
But revealing MMR is not a good excuse for ranks to be inaccurate, and unspecified "potential problems" is not a good excuse for backpedaling out of accurate ranks, because revealing MMR is not good enough:
1. MMR does not show how good you are compared with the playerbase, i.e. your percentile out of all players, and your percentile out of all active players. If lots of data were somehow collected then it would theoretically be possible for people to estimate it, but this should really be in the game. Accurate ranks/leagues would do that. Backpedaling from 10 tiers to 3 won't.
2. MMR doesn't reveal uncertainty about MMR. Two players can have very similar MMR, but it's possible that the system is highly certain of the first player's MMR, but not so certain of the other player's MMR. Revealing MMR doesn't provide this information.
3. MMR also doesn't tell you how close you are to promotion. If you collect lots of information you can estimate the MMR required, but people shouldn't have to jump through hoops, it should just be known.
Accurate ranks as I've suggested (which must include removing bonus pool, reintroducing mid-season demotions, and frequent updates of all leagues not just GM) would deal with these issues.
Given such an unambitious, diminished scope for the ladder revamp, I hope Blizzard solves these problems even if it's the lazy way of just revealing the percentile of MMR (out of all players and active players), just revealing a confidence interval for MMR, just revealing the MMR threshold for promotion, like how they're going to just reveal MMR.
That is my core suggestion to salvage what little remains of the ladder revamp after all this disappointing backpedaling.
Further reading: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/20743005369?page=6#117
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On March 28 2016 02:12 paralleluniverse wrote:
MMR does not show how good you are compared with the playerbase, i.e. your percentile out of all players, and your percentile out of all active players
In my opinion this should remain narrowed to only GM players - it's safe to say that GM league is much more active and plays more games on weekly basis than other leagues on average - showing percentile of entire playerbase is inaccurate in telling where you place, almost as much as it is inaccurate to tell how good someone is by comparing an consistently active player to someone rarely playing or a player that played few games and stopped playing.
That is my core suggestion to salvage what little remains of the ladder revamp after all this disappointing backpedaling.
Do you know what they were originally preparing? I haven't seen any information about that, any source?
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we don't know their budget and its probably too expensive to put much more into a "revamp" without introducing new problems that take more resources to solve.
i'd rather they spend time improving automated tournaments rather than "revamping" the ladder. if they can't afford to make automated tournaments better then i'd rather they just leave everything as is. the automated tournaments are pretty darn fun as they work right now.
i'm pretty happy with the ladder and the multiplayer experience in general. i'm not at all disappointed with this alleged "backpedaling".
what do you want for a lousy stinkin' $40 any way?
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
what do you want for a lousy stinkin' $40 any way?
The "it's cheap therefore it's ok to be low quality" argument doesn't sit very well with me. I'm here having invested thousands of hours of my time into Starcraft - like many others - and that has way more worth than $40 or $100. It's worth tens of thousands of dollars at minimum wage.
If they absolutely need more money to provide a good experience then they should directly ask for it or provide ways for the playerbase to finance improvements like other game developers. The nova mission packs & co-op things are a step towards that, but it does not adress multiplayer or arcade.
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Blizzard produces top notch quality in very low quantity. For much of their history they only made 1 game at a time.
as soon as i found out LotV was going to be $40 i adjusted my expectations. any rational customer adjusts their expectations based on the price of the product.
this "backpedaling" about the "ladder revamp" is another symptom of the problem with "being more transparent with your users/customers". Every nuance of every word written in every "community feedback" post is examined and pondered.
That said, DK provided a rational explanation for why the ladder revamp was going in the direction it is going.
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On March 28 2016 02:31 Cyro wrote:The "it's cheap therefore it's ok to be low quality" argument doesn't sit very well with me. I'm here having invested thousands of hours of my time into Starcraft - like many others - and that has way more worth than $40 or $100. It's worth tens of thousands of dollars at minimum wage. If they absolutely need more money to provide a good experience then they should directly ask for it or provide ways for the playerbase to finance improvements like other game developers. The nova mission packs & co-op things are a step towards that, but it does not adress multiplayer or arcade.
So you're paying blizzard by enjoying their product and that entitles you to get any wish you want from blizzard?
Seems like a fair line of reasoning to me
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
Read what i said again. Another $20 really doesn't matter relative to the investment given to the game - "You get what you pay for" is pretty shit if you can't choose how much you pay
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So what were you exactly hoping for?
Dividing league into 3 sub leagues makes leagues even more accurate then before( which at least in my opinion they already are) Showing mmr will let players know how close or far from promotion they are. And fixes those constant reddit complaints about people in different leagues playing against each other since now you can see that their mmr was actually close to yours. We are even getting separate mmr for different races.
I don't know what else you could hope for?
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Ladder already fulfills its purpose: matching appropriate players quickly with each other.
Everything that's bitched about is mainly perception...
"My opponent has this badge that makes me feel bad about playing vs him."
"My badge does not match what I feel is the appropriate badge for me."
"I feel like this ranking and badge does not validate me enough."
If everyone's getting games and the wait times aren't too long then ladder is fine. Why does the community need hand holding about arbitrary things?
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United States12257 Posts
I decided to create a mockup of what I imagine the new ladder will look like. I'll explain the differences:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VTKxnxs.png)
1. No bonus pool.
2. "Points" replaced by MMR.
3. Tier specified directly in the header.
4. Icon representing highest tier achieved for the season next to each player's name.
Is this different from your expectation? Honestly I think this looks pretty good. It has all the information we need without any clutter or confusion.
I don't think uncertainty needs to be shown (if indeed that's what you're proposing). It's too "mathy" and rather unnecessary, plus it makes comparing ratings too nitpicky. "Yeah you may be 10 rating higher but my uncertainty is lower so really I'm higher than you!" That's if the average player can be bothered to decipher what uncertainty is in the first place.
Knowing the percentile isn't useful either. That's what the leagues will represent loosely anyway, and the community will ultimately craft its own definition for what MMR threshold is colloquially considered "good".
If you want to double down on activity, you could have a player's rating grayed-out if they haven't played for a week.
If indeed they implement everything in the above mockup, I don't really have any complaints. Let's roll with it.
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I read most of your post on battle.net, and to response to your mocking suggestion:
This is an awful move to backtrack on accurate ranking. People will feel bad if they get demoted? OK, I have a solution to solve that. Instead of reducing it from 10 to 3 tiers per league, how about INCREASING it from 10 to 300 tiers per league. Then people will move up and down all the time, after every game and it becomes a fluid ranking system like points.
To this I have another equally mocking, and bringing nothing into discussion response:
MMR doesn't reveal uncertainty about MMR. Two players can have very similar MMR, but it's possible that the system is highly certain of the first player's MMR, but not so certain of the other player's MMR. Revealing MMR doesn't provide this information.
I suggest that Blizzard forms a team that will regularly check-up with players after they log in and ask how they are feeling, what their mental state is. Then, when they will hear things like "my friend died" or "I feel really sleepy" they will adequately adjust their MMRCL (Match-making rating confidentiality level). It could make the rating system pretty accurate, since everyone knows how raw-skill and mechanically-demanding the game is, often one moment of distraction can cost you the game.
/s - don't take it too seriously - I'm just trying to point out that mocking the opponent that you disagree with in a discussion is not really good in my opinion.
Bringing every single player into the rating system will make the system inaccurate on itself, since as I said in previous post that system counts every single player that player at least one 1v1 (or 2v2 or others) game. Measuring GMs skill in comparison to a person that touched the game once or is rather poor is rather poor idea, I think leaving the rating system that the player sees on day-to-day basis being more about his whereabouts of the ranking is better. If the best, I don't know.
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On March 28 2016 03:12 Cyro wrote:
Read what i said again. Another $20 really doesn't matter relative to the investment given to the game - "You get what you pay for" is pretty shit if you can't choose how much you pay
Thank you for your concern! However, I'm afraid that my reading comprehension is adequate. I read what you wrote several times, and it still says the same thing: You still feel insulted by blizzard for not implementing the ideas you posted on a third-party forum despite you having played one of their games for millions of hours ;___;
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MMR tells you all you need to know and the community will figure out fast enough what MMR corresponds to which skill level. I don't see a problem.
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On March 28 2016 04:32 RvB wrote:
MMR tells you all you need to know and the community will figure out fast enough what MMR corresponds to which skill level. I don't see a problem.
The current system tells you everything you need to know
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
On March 28 2016 04:20 neptunusfisk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2016 03:12 Cyro wrote:
Read what i said again. Another $20 really doesn't matter relative to the investment given to the game - "You get what you pay for" is pretty shit if you can't choose how much you pay Thank you for your concern! However, I'm afraid that my reading comprehension is adequate. I read what you wrote several times, and it still says the same thing: You still feel insulted by blizzard for not implementing the ideas you posted on a third-party forum despite you having played one of their games for millions of hours ;___;
Why do you think that i feel insulted by blizzard? I don't even think that there's a problem with the ladder system. The only thing that i was disagreeing with is the argument that we should expect a poor quality product because of the price on the game box right now, an argument that i've seen dozens of times for Starcraft.
If you're coming to that conclusion then i don't think it's adequate at all; you completely misunderstood both my message and my feelings and then misrepresented them to attack me.
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On March 28 2016 04:46 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2016 04:20 neptunusfisk wrote:On March 28 2016 03:12 Cyro wrote:
Read what i said again. Another $20 really doesn't matter relative to the investment given to the game - "You get what you pay for" is pretty shit if you can't choose how much you pay Thank you for your concern! However, I'm afraid that my reading comprehension is adequate. I read what you wrote several times, and it still says the same thing: You still feel insulted by blizzard for not implementing the ideas you posted on a third-party forum despite you having played one of their games for millions of hours ;___; Why do you think that i feel insulted by blizzard? I don't even think that there's a problem with the ladder system. The only thing that i was disagreeing with is the argument that we should expect a poor quality product because of the price on the game box right now, an argument that i've seen dozens of times for Starcraft. If you're coming to that conclusion then i don't think it's adequate at all; you completely misunderstood both my feelings and my message.
when did i say it was a poor quality product? what i'd expect is LESS quantity of a high quality product for $40. So had the game been $60 i'd expect a bigger campaign. More Co-op missions. a more in depth ladder system. etcetc. i expect the quality to remain the same because the last thing ATVI will do is let something like Starcraft (that produces very little revenue) ruin their brand that they use to collect billions each year.
i'd rather have them improve automated tourneys and leave the ladder as is. i get matched with similarly skilled opponents and that's good enough for me.
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
A lesser quality product, not neccesarily poor. People use that same argument against both. A lot of people (like me) are happy to pay more for better quality & features, but the opportunity is not there. Those people like me have paid somewhere around $130 for SC2 so far (wings, heart, legacy)
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Nova Covert Ops is coming out in 2 days 
i think the quality of LotV is sky high and in line with the quality of Blizzard's other work over the past 20 years.
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On March 28 2016 05:00 Cyro wrote:
A lesser quality product, not neccesarily poor. People use that same argument against both. A lot of people (like me) are happy to pay more for better quality & features, but the opportunity is not there. Those people like me have paid somewhere around $130 for SC2 so far (wings, heart, legacy)
Interesting, guess the overwhelming majority of people that play free or substantially cheaper games are wrong then, good luck informing them about the errors of their ways
PS, do you have any secret insight/some other forum or so for your claim of many people wanting to pay for your ladder suggestions? Because that argument seems a bit loosly founded
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
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EPT
