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Ladder Revamp: We Give MMR So Revamp Is Not Needed

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paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-28 01:45:03
March 27 2016 17:12 GMT
#1
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
aQuaSC
Profile Joined August 2011
717 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 17:27:35
March 27 2016 17:26 GMT
#2
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?
TL+ Member
JimmyJRaynor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada17397 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 17:28:51
March 27 2016 17:26 GMT
#3
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?
Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20326 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 17:38:53
March 27 2016 17:31 GMT
#4
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.
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
JimmyJRaynor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada17397 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 17:41:30
March 27 2016 17:37 GMT
#5
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.
Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
neptunusfisk
Profile Blog Joined July 2012
2286 Posts
March 27 2016 17:44 GMT
#6
On March 28 2016 02:31 Cyro wrote:
Show nested quote +
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.


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
maru G5L pls
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20326 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 18:18:04
March 27 2016 18:12 GMT
#7
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
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Alluton
Profile Joined February 2015
Finland113 Posts
March 27 2016 18:29 GMT
#8
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?
BeStFAN
Profile Blog Joined April 2015
483 Posts
March 27 2016 18:52 GMT
#9
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?
❤ BeSt... ༼ つ ◕_◕༽つ #YEAROFKOMA #YEAROFKOMA #YEAROFKOMA ༼ つ ◕_◕༽つ
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12240 Posts
March 27 2016 19:04 GMT
#10
I decided to create a mockup of what I imagine the new ladder will look like. I'll explain the differences:

[image loading]

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.
Moderator
aQuaSC
Profile Joined August 2011
717 Posts
March 27 2016 19:09 GMT
#11
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.
TL+ Member
neptunusfisk
Profile Blog Joined July 2012
2286 Posts
March 27 2016 19:20 GMT
#12
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 ;___;
maru G5L pls
RvB
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Netherlands6271 Posts
March 27 2016 19:32 GMT
#13
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.
Heyjoray
Profile Joined September 2015
240 Posts
March 27 2016 19:41 GMT
#14
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
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20326 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 19:57:06
March 27 2016 19:46 GMT
#15
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.
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
JimmyJRaynor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada17397 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 20:02:05
March 27 2016 19:57 GMT
#16
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.
Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20326 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 20:02:16
March 27 2016 20:00 GMT
#17
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)
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
JimmyJRaynor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada17397 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 20:04:38
March 27 2016 20:02 GMT
#18
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.
Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"
neptunusfisk
Profile Blog Joined July 2012
2286 Posts
March 27 2016 20:06 GMT
#19
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
maru G5L pls
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20326 Posts
March 27 2016 20:33 GMT
#20
strawman after strawman
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Elentos
Profile Blog Joined February 2015
55568 Posts
March 27 2016 20:56 GMT
#21
On March 28 2016 04:41 Heyjoray wrote:
Show nested quote +
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

It does, but in certain cases it also doesn't. For example, for the ladder competition that was held before the WCS Circuit Winter championship, the current ladder system doesn't feel adequate, because you're judged by "ladder points". But you can have 400 wins, 100 losses and not enough ladder points for top 16. That kinda sucks.
Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes.
OtherWorld
Profile Blog Joined October 2013
France17333 Posts
March 27 2016 21:36 GMT
#22
Delete all leagues ; closed, ill-defined and badly sized entities like these are inelegant and hard to work with.
Show MMR, in addition to a continuous "stars" rating going from 1 to 10 stars to show your overall ranking, 1 star being equal to being better ranked than 10% of the playerbase. Once you're in the top 10%, add golden stars following the same principle to fine-tune the global ranking.
Problem solved.
Used Sigs - New Sigs - Cheap Sigs - Buy the Best Cheap Sig near You at www.cheapsigforsale.com
SetGuitarsToKill
Profile Blog Joined December 2013
Canada28396 Posts
March 27 2016 21:48 GMT
#23
On March 28 2016 06:36 OtherWorld wrote:
Delete all leagues ; closed, ill-defined and badly sized entities like these are inelegant and hard to work with.
Show MMR, in addition to a continuous "stars" rating going from 1 to 10 stars to show your overall ranking, 1 star being equal to being better ranked than 10% of the playerbase. Once you're in the top 10%, add golden stars following the same principle to fine-tune the global ranking.
Problem solved.

The first half of that was very Abathur
Community News"As long as you have a warp prism you can't be bad at harassment" - Maru | @SetGuitars2Kill
tokinho
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
United States792 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-27 22:52:44
March 27 2016 22:51 GMT
#24
On March 28 2016 02:12 paralleluniverse wrote:
Show nested quote +
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. Backpedelling 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.

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), and just revealing a confidence interval for MMR, 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


I've not liked most of your ideas about the ladder. I find most of your suggestions disappointing and like the current system better. The vast majority of players have other things than starcraft. If you kick everyone off the ladder every day who isn't player, to be honest you'd only have 10000 or less players on the global ladder. I don't really care so much about my ladder rank e-penis to sit and complain that i cannot show it often enough or that it doesn't show it as a percentile. I don't think you need your e-penis percentile to shove it in everyone's face. (MMR does this already, and you probably don't understand mmr which is why you are complaining) I like the bonus pool system, and see no reason to worry about the other leagues other than gm. If you aren't gm and want to kick out of other leagues you are wasting your time on things that aren't important and don't help the player base.
Smile
Greenei
Profile Joined November 2011
Germany1754 Posts
March 27 2016 23:22 GMT
#25
to be honest i'm actually pretty happy that they want to reveal mmr. finally. after however many years it has been.
IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA
FeyFey
Profile Joined September 2010
Germany10114 Posts
March 27 2016 23:27 GMT
#26
Hmm that may turn out super interesting.
jalstar
Profile Blog Joined September 2009
United States8198 Posts
March 27 2016 23:40 GMT
#27
Seems like the old LoL system (seasons 1-2) where you see your MMR but there are still leagues which correspond to certain MMR ranges.
Justinian
Profile Joined August 2012
United Kingdom158 Posts
March 27 2016 23:50 GMT
#28
People have been asking to see their MMR since SC2 came out. I don't think this is something to complain about.
paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-28 02:19:41
March 28 2016 01:57 GMT
#29
On March 28 2016 04:04 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I decided to create a mockup of what I imagine the new ladder will look like. I'll explain the differences:

[image loading]

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.

You are too optimistic.

1. Blizzard hasn't said bonus pool is being removed.

2. There's nothing to suggest points are being removed. My interpretation (and I know Blizzard hasn't been clear about this), is that there's no change to points, MMR will be revealed on top of points. In fact, new players and new seasons not starting with 0 MMR suggests to me that points are not being removed.

3. Leagues don't represent percentile of MMR, because bonus pool, no mid-season demotions, and huge percentile ranges given 3 tiers makes it inaccurate and imprecise as an estimate.

4. The mockup shows different tiers and even different leagues being mixed together. I highly doubt that would happen. I even doubt that there will be a ladder ranked by MMR. It will probably be ranked by points, like it is now.

5. Nothing suggests that anything will be done about inactive players, which when you look at most division ladders, clogs up most of the ranks. Although in practice, as you've noted, it is easily dealt with by changing how the ladder displays information. But nothing suggests Blizzard is interested in this issue. It's never ever been spoken about.

The ladder revamp is very likely nothing changes but leagues split into 3, GM updates daily, and MMR is revealed.

And how is knowing percentile not useful? Why is knowing MMR so useful? MMR is a meaningless number on it's own, it's only useful relative to other's MMR. And comparing you to others is exactly what a percentile does.

Nothing has happened for the last 4.5 months and according to David Kim implementation will start this week. The time for fancy or grandiose solutions is over. It's time for small and easy solutions: just revealing more information associated with MMR as listed in the OP.
paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
March 28 2016 02:05 GMT
#30
On March 28 2016 07:51 tokinho wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 28 2016 02:12 paralleluniverse wrote:
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. Backpedelling 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.

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), and just revealing a confidence interval for MMR, 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


I've not liked most of your ideas about the ladder. I find most of your suggestions disappointing and like the current system better. The vast majority of players have other things than starcraft. If you kick everyone off the ladder every day who isn't player, to be honest you'd only have 10000 or less players on the global ladder. I don't really care so much about my ladder rank e-penis to sit and complain that i cannot show it often enough or that it doesn't show it as a percentile. I don't think you need your e-penis percentile to shove it in everyone's face. (MMR does this already, and you probably don't understand mmr which is why you are complaining) I like the bonus pool system, and see no reason to worry about the other leagues other than gm. If you aren't gm and want to kick out of other leagues you are wasting your time on things that aren't important and don't help the player base.

Kicking inactive players off the ladder isn't literal. You could have a ladder with 2 filters: "all players", "all active players", where active players don't show up when using the 2nd filter.
digmouse
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
China6330 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-28 02:32:34
March 28 2016 02:22 GMT
#31
League groups and thus the "rank" out of GM should be removed as they are completely meaningless and do not represent player skill at all. I like what Halo 5 does for their ranking system: your rank is individual, and is split into 6 tiers within a league, similar to what DK is referring to, you rank gain and loss are shown after a game which gives players a clear view of their performance.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/community/blog-posts/enter-the-arena
TranslatorIf you want to ask anything about Chinese esports, send me a PM or follow me @nerddigmouse.
Excalibur_Z
Profile Joined October 2002
United States12240 Posts
March 28 2016 04:51 GMT
#32
On March 28 2016 10:57 paralleluniverse wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 28 2016 04:04 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I decided to create a mockup of what I imagine the new ladder will look like. I'll explain the differences:

[image loading]

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.

You are too optimistic.

1. Blizzard hasn't said bonus pool is being removed.

2. There's nothing to suggest points are being removed. My interpretation (and I know Blizzard hasn't been clear about this), is that there's no change to points, MMR will be revealed on top of points. In fact, new players and new seasons not starting with 0 MMR suggests to me that points are not being removed.

3. Leagues don't represent percentile of MMR, because bonus pool, no mid-season demotions, and huge percentile ranges given 3 tiers makes it inaccurate and imprecise as an estimate.

4. The mockup shows different tiers and even different leagues being mixed together. I highly doubt that would happen. I even doubt that there will be a ladder ranked by MMR. It will probably be ranked by points, like it is now.

5. Nothing suggests that anything will be done about inactive players, which when you look at most division ladders, clogs up most of the ranks. Although in practice, as you've noted, it is easily dealt with by changing how the ladder displays information. But nothing suggests Blizzard is interested in this issue. It's never ever been spoken about.

The ladder revamp is very likely nothing changes but leagues split into 3, GM updates daily, and MMR is revealed.

And how is knowing percentile not useful? Why is knowing MMR so useful? MMR is a meaningless number on it's own, it's only useful relative to other's MMR. And comparing you to others is exactly what a percentile does.

Nothing has happened for the last 4.5 months and according to David Kim implementation will start this week. The time for fancy or grandiose solutions is over. It's time for small and easy solutions: just revealing more information associated with MMR as listed in the OP.


You're misreading the image. Those icons represent season highs, not current position, just like DKim mentioned. I also mentioned that in my post hoping to clarify, no to avail it seems =( He also posted: 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. This means that rather than try to invent a new arcane and opaque system, it's much easier and better to just show MMR and use that as rank.
Moderator
Heyjoray
Profile Joined September 2015
240 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-28 05:05:50
March 28 2016 05:01 GMT
#33
On March 28 2016 05:56 Elentos wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 28 2016 04:41 Heyjoray wrote:
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

It does, but in certain cases it also doesn't. For example, for the ladder competition that was held before the WCS Circuit Winter championship, the current ladder system doesn't feel adequate, because you're judged by "ladder points". But you can have 400 wins, 100 losses and not enough ladder points for top 16. That kinda sucks.

That has nothing to do with the ladder system. With a winratio like that, you most likely played at 4 am in the morning as a pro. Playing against people below your level
paralleluniverse
Profile Joined July 2010
4065 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-28 05:15:30
March 28 2016 05:07 GMT
#34
On March 28 2016 13:51 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 28 2016 10:57 paralleluniverse wrote:
On March 28 2016 04:04 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I decided to create a mockup of what I imagine the new ladder will look like. I'll explain the differences:

[image loading]

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.

You are too optimistic.

1. Blizzard hasn't said bonus pool is being removed.

2. There's nothing to suggest points are being removed. My interpretation (and I know Blizzard hasn't been clear about this), is that there's no change to points, MMR will be revealed on top of points. In fact, new players and new seasons not starting with 0 MMR suggests to me that points are not being removed.

3. Leagues don't represent percentile of MMR, because bonus pool, no mid-season demotions, and huge percentile ranges given 3 tiers makes it inaccurate and imprecise as an estimate.

4. The mockup shows different tiers and even different leagues being mixed together. I highly doubt that would happen. I even doubt that there will be a ladder ranked by MMR. It will probably be ranked by points, like it is now.

5. Nothing suggests that anything will be done about inactive players, which when you look at most division ladders, clogs up most of the ranks. Although in practice, as you've noted, it is easily dealt with by changing how the ladder displays information. But nothing suggests Blizzard is interested in this issue. It's never ever been spoken about.

The ladder revamp is very likely nothing changes but leagues split into 3, GM updates daily, and MMR is revealed.

And how is knowing percentile not useful? Why is knowing MMR so useful? MMR is a meaningless number on it's own, it's only useful relative to other's MMR. And comparing you to others is exactly what a percentile does.

Nothing has happened for the last 4.5 months and according to David Kim implementation will start this week. The time for fancy or grandiose solutions is over. It's time for small and easy solutions: just revealing more information associated with MMR as listed in the OP.


You're misreading the image. Those icons represent season highs, not current position, just like DKim mentioned. I also mentioned that in my post hoping to clarify, no to avail it seems =( He also posted: 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. This means that rather than try to invent a new arcane and opaque system, it's much easier and better to just show MMR and use that as rank.

Sorry, I misread your image.

I know what Kim said, it's quoted at the top of the OP. Unspecified "potential problems". As I've said MMR doesn't reveal everything. In fact, there's nothing to suggest that there will even be a ranking of MMR, or that MMR will be used as rank. It's probably just a ranking of points, with MMR displayed on the profile.

I never propose "arcane and opaque systems". I propose transparent and accurate systems. But as I've said, I totally agree the time for that is over. It's time for simply displaying more information, instead of changing systems: displaying percentile of MMR out of active players, out of all players, displaying MMR thresholds for leagues/tiers, displaying a ranking of MMR, etc.
Spyridon
Profile Joined April 2010
United States997 Posts
March 28 2016 05:32 GMT
#35
On March 28 2016 02:26 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
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?


Blaming everything on their budget, aside from being completely presumptuous, does nothing to change the fact that they specifically their players to expect certain things and they now have decided against that.

It's crazy that you call it "alleged" backpedaling when they straight up made promises of these features at release... Yet in the same post you blame everything on "alleged" budget constraint (which is complete hearsay).

Fact is they aren't doing what they said. Again. How is that "alleged", and furthermore why are you defending that?
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