Ranked vs. Unranked

On March 30 2020 03:12 neatpete wrote:
Okay, the reason for the frustration is that I don't have a 50% chance of beating them if they actually play the game. Say the player is a no-mirror player (a fair number immediately leave TvT). For the sake of argument, let's say you leave every mirror, and that mirrors are roughly a third of the games you play. In 100 games, you expect to play 33 TvTs, of which you'll lose 33. You have 17 losses remaining in the 100 games, which gives you a 50/67 = 74% win rate in games you actually play.

Being on the receiving end, I need to remember that when these players beat me, I'd have an otherwise inflated win rate from every person who ever left a game in the first four seconds. It's just more frustrating to know that I'm going to lose a ten minute game than it is satisfying to get free ladder points.

On March 30 2020 03:12 neatpete wrote:
Okay, the reason for the frustration is that I don't have a 50% chance of beating them if they actually play the game. Say the player is a no-mirror player (a fair number immediately leave TvT). For the sake of argument, let's say you leave every mirror, and that mirrors are roughly a third of the games you play. In 100 games, you expect to play 33 TvTs, of which you'll lose 33. You have 17 losses remaining in the 100 games, which gives you a 50/67 = 74% win rate in games you actually play.

Being on the receiving end, I need to remember that when these players beat me, I'd have an otherwise inflated win rate from every person who ever left a game in the first four seconds. It's just more frustrating to know that I'm going to lose a ten minute game than it is satisfying to get free ladder points.

On March 30 2020 03:10 Riner1212 wrote:
i dont like this concept of losing mmr to unranked players cuz they have nothing to lose...

On March 31 2020 00:47 brickrd wrote:
you're overthinking something that probably happens not that often and probably is less dramatic than you're imagining

i play unranked and i get people constantly accusing me of being a "GM smurf" and other such nonsense just because i beat them. i assure you it's in your mind. you have no idea why people's unranked MMR is what it is - maybe they only play shitty strats, maybe they play stoned, or maybe they're just on your level and you're making up excuses for losing

even on ranked you can hit a 600 MMR gap sometimes. stop imagining that you're entitled to always play someone who's "evenly matched" to you. each player is unique, simply do your best to beat whatever opponent you get instead of being in your own head about imaginary "fairness" rules. 9/10 of your games are still going to be against someone within 200 MMR anyway

i've played good games and beaten people 600 above me, and ive played crap games and lost to people 600 below me. why deny yourself the diversity of competitive ladder? if you're so obsessed with the idea of unfair matches then YOU should be the one playing unranked

tl;dr there's nothing unfair about unranked, i play unranked now and i get even matches exactly as often as when i played ranked. if you want to rank up then you have to play better. losing one game to someone playing unranked who you suspect of being "too good" for you is not making the difference of what league you're in, so why do you care?

On March 31 2020 00:55 Excalibur_Z wrote:


They have unranked MMR to lose. It's not like it stays static.

On March 31 2020 02:54 Nakajin wrote:
I wish they just deleted unranked entirely, now that there's separated mmr for each race there's no good reason for it and it just feed people who tank their unranked mmr just to crush people for shits and giggles.

The ladder should just put you against people of your skill level.

On March 31 2020 02:54 Nakajin wrote:
I wish they just deleted unranked entirely, now that there's separated mmr for each race there's no good reason for it and it just feed people who tank their unranked mmr just to crush people for shits and giggles.

The ladder should just put you against people of your skill level.

On March 31 2020 03:41 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


The entire reason for unranked to exist is purely psychological, so that people don't have to look at their MMR (and not necessarily because they're assholes who want to stomp noobs). There's no reason someone couldn't tank their ranked MMR and do the exact same thing. So unranked MMR still has whatever value it originally had.

On March 31 2020 04:46 Nakajin wrote:


Well if they tanked their only MMR they couldn't just hop back to another MMR and play vs people at their level when they want. (although I guess they could have multiple account).
I have to say I never really cared about MMR in particular, I guess it can relax some people to play unranked.

On March 31 2020 05:09 deacon.frost wrote:

Many people, myself included, have the ladder anxiety. Seeing your MMR drop, losing points and eventually losing W/R isn't fun. One of the reasons why i moved to unranked is that I had for 4 seasons 48 % win rate. 4. seasons. in. a. row.

Imagine that. You losing more than you win, you know that and yet ladder is giving you every time harder and harder enemies. I was on a losing w/r in the diamond league and occassionally i have seen masters. AFTER LOSSES.

MAybe my account was broken, maybe I was just unlucky(hots, hidden MMR), who knows. All I know is that now with unranked I
1) Don't care about losing
2) Don't do warm up games(because now I can jump into the game after a winning streak and who cares, so I lose)
3) Can leave mirrors I hate(especially PvP and Protoss used to be my main, it also used to be the most represented race in the diamond in hots, one time i left 14 games in a row - all PvPs)
4) Can select all the maps(as I can leave a map if it's a bad map for certain MU, hey, Blizz, gimme banning maps based on the MU)

It actually works. Give me a button so I don't have to play mirrors(in unranked, why not?) and I stop leaving games. Oh, yeah, I leave against barcodes, but that's like a game in a dozen

Edit> 48 % and I played a lot of games, it wasn't a case of the system not knowing me well. Every season I had at least 200 games(usually more). The ladder wasn't fun experience on ranked. Not at all and I doubt it will be now with adepts and disruptors.

On March 31 2020 06:53 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


As an aside having a 48% winrate isn't that unlikely. If you assume every game is a perfect coin flip and you played 1000 games you still have a 10% chance of having a 48% or smaller winrate.

Furthermore MMR doesn't guarantee a 50% winrate. You could have a 30% winrate due to constantly getting matched up with players that are much better than you are or conversely a 70% winrate due to constantly getting matched up with players that are much worse than you are, and still not gain or lose MMR (though due to how matchmaking works in Starcraft that most likely only noticeably happens to players at the two extremities of the bell curve).

But w/e as long as you're happy with unranked.

On March 31 2020 07:08 Big J wrote:
Let people on unranked veto matchups.
No more leaving and people can train matchups properly.
Solves the problem.

On March 31 2020 07:19 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


I'm not convinced that people leaving to avoid matchups is the main reason for people leaving games. Additionally allowing vetoing match-ups is a complete nightmare for matchmaking and queue times, so if I was Blizzard I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

On March 31 2020 07:29 Big J wrote:


After 10 years of laddering SC2 ranked or unranked I can count the times someone has left as a non-mirror against me on one hand.
I feel like TvT you have a 10% chance these days the opponent will leave and I have seen worse in ZvZ.

If it is not mainly a question of matchup it would be much more evenly distributed.

About queue times: everyone who wants to play all matchups profits, because they don't get matched, go to loading screen, opponent leaves and then have to match again. Everyone who does not want to play all matchups does so at their own expense. It is a win-win, unless people would greatly change their behaviour with that feature. Which would prove more than anything that it would be a good feature to begin with, if it was heavily welcomed.

On March 31 2020 08:48 Justinian wrote:
In my experience, unranked players are smurfs far more often than ranked players are (whether intentionally or unintentionally - e.g. leaving matchups they dislike). I'd like to see it abolished or moved into a separate matchmaking queue.

On March 31 2020 00:55 Excalibur_Z wrote:


They have unranked MMR to lose. It's not like it stays static.

On March 31 2020 07:19 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


I'm not convinced that people leaving to avoid matchups is the main reason for people leaving games.

On March 31 2020 13:37 vik7 wrote:
This is a slight sidetrack from the OP, but is unranked even necessary these days? With the game being free to play, just make an alt account to practice new strategies.

On March 31 2020 11:16 brickrd wrote:

you think that's your experience because your mentality is to seek an excuse for a loss, and when you see someone is unranked you decide "i lost because their MMR was false" instead of "i lost because i played worse." again, your mentality is the problem. easy fix!

On March 31 2020 07:19 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


I'm not convinced that people leaving to avoid matchups is the main reason for people leaving games. Additionally allowing vetoing match-ups is a complete nightmare for matchmaking and queue times, so if I was Blizzard I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

On April 01 2020 15:16 washikie wrote:


I think it would also lead to some match ups seeing hardly any play time. it would be especially bad in the current balance where Z>P>T>Z so everyone would do a targeted mu ban and maybe a mirror ban too leaving almost no available opponents. This feature just cant work in a game like this. Don't get me wrong, Id be happy if I never had to play another TVP ever again, I realy dislike that mu and only stick with Terran because TvZ and TvT are realy fun and rewarding. but... It just cant work a ban system like that wont work. If their is a perceived imbalance a race could just get locked out for most of the ladder and where does that leave us? Also if it provides players a competitive advantage when ranking up they will do it almost 100% of the time, and so you penalize any one who does not. It would just be dumb.

On March 31 2020 14:51 Ben... wrote:

It is 100% the reason I leave games, and I'm sure is for the majority of others. Like a lot of others here have mentioned, I play unranked and leave all PvPs. I play mostly Protoss and if I had to play out PvPs I'd probably quit SC2 or switch races rather than keep playing. PvP's the worst matchup in the game. It's not fun at all and hasn't been for a long time. Even in the recent GSL Super Tournament all the PvPs were horrid. From the pro level down, PvP has regressed back into either cheese, proxies, or all-ins off one or two bases and it's become a game of rock paper scissors that is not fun and seems like it is mostly based on luck.

If they enabled not matching mirrors I would never have to leave a game ever. Heck, I play ZvZ when I play Zerg. I find ZvZ fun because other than few early rushes, there's a lot of stability and it can become a fun matchup with a lot of close games. That's never the case with PvP. Most PvPs are "they did some bullshit and it worked because you either guessed wrong or missed scouting one tiny spot on your half of the map" or "you did some bullshit and it worked because they guessed wrong or missed scouting some tiny thing". It's like if the 2018 PvT proxy cyclone meta was an entire matchup.

On March 31 2020 13:37 vik7 wrote:
This is a slight sidetrack from the OP, but is unranked even necessary these days? With the game being free to play, just make an alt account to practice new strategies.

On March 30 2020 03:10 Riner1212 wrote:
i dont like this concept of losing mmr to unranked players cuz they have nothing to lose...

On September 02 2020 14:20 Did_The_Game_Die wrote:
You're not joking. I just "played" about 10 games queing unranked. It placed me against people playing ranked literally every match. I asked them over ALL chat and once they said they were playing ranked, I left. My reason is that I don't want to play against people trying harder than I am for ranked wins than I ever would while playing unranked. Is this game really that dead or is this just the dumbest way to match people up for a competitive match ever dumped out of Blizzard's ass?

On September 02 2020 14:20 Did_The_Game_Die wrote:
You're not joking. I just "played" about 10 games queing unranked. It placed me against people playing ranked literally every match. I asked them over ALL chat and once they said they were playing ranked, I left. My reason is that I don't want to play against people trying harder than I am for ranked wins than I ever would while playing unranked. Is this game really that dead or is this just the dumbest way to match people up for a competitive match ever dumped out of Blizzard's ass?

On September 02 2020 14:40 Slydie wrote:
It is probably to reduce the waitingtime to get a match. Especially playing "unranked", getting a good game at certain MMR-ranges might be next to impossible. Playing ranked on alt-accounts or off-servers might be a better idea than unranked.