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On September 07 2012 20:45 boxman22 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2012 18:48 speknek wrote:
Although it's a good change, your ranking is still inaccurate and I don't understand why they don't just show your mmr. If it somehow scares off casuals, just put it somewhere hard to find or requestable by a /rating ingame or whatever. I really have no idea why they don't do this. Has Dustin Browder or anyone ever answered why?
Yes, they have, several times. It's because your MMR is relatively stable, and they argue that (1) casuals would get their feelings hurt by seeing a quantifiable declaration of how bad they are, and (2) seeing a stable value doesn't motivate casuals to play more, acquiring more meaningless points just for playing does. Big numbers and shiny badges and sparkles hooray!
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Haven't played TDA in so long... will probably be better than Shak now hopefully
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shakuras and condemned ridge must be removed to due obvious imbalance. All 4 player maps should be made either vertical spawns only or cross spawns only. Antiga in particular should be cross and talda, entom could be vertical. Neutral depoes pls, these are the minimum. I do not want to waste time on ladder thnx!
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Tiers are probably being removed because there are fewer players playing overall now and they are no longer needed. It is a good change though. Gives a better indication of how you're doing in your division.
I love that they are switching up some fo the 3v3/4v4 maps as that's where I spend most of my play time. 
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On September 07 2012 15:55 Excalibur_Z wrote:
Added an explanation to the OP since it seems people aren't really sure what this is going to mean. It's sort of sad that a significant amount of research is basically going to waste, but this is for the best. One effect of this change is that promotions will probably come more quickly because it's not going to hold your promotion in the event that you're bouncing between Tier 1 and Tier 2, there is only one tier now so promotions should come about as quickly as they do going from (high-tier) Diamond into Master.
Well, that research was still able to be useful for a year (very roughly), so it's not tooo wasted I would say!
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France9034 Posts
Well, as a T, I think I'll start vetoing TA...
Otherwise the Ladder Tier removal is a good thing ! Glad they removed it !
But no mappool change ? Really ? How do they even choose... ?
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Wow an improvement, this is a fresh change of pace. While you're at it GIMMIE MY FUKIN LOSSES BACK!!!
Thanks for mentioning sc2ranks ^^
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On September 07 2012 22:38 Iranon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2012 20:45 boxman22 wrote:On September 07 2012 18:48 speknek wrote:
Although it's a good change, your ranking is still inaccurate and I don't understand why they don't just show your mmr. If it somehow scares off casuals, just put it somewhere hard to find or requestable by a /rating ingame or whatever. I really have no idea why they don't do this. Has Dustin Browder or anyone ever answered why? Yes, they have, several times. It's because your MMR is relatively stable, and they argue that (1) casuals would get their feelings hurt by seeing a quantifiable declaration of how bad they are, and (2) seeing a stable value doesn't motivate casuals to play more, acquiring more meaningless points just for playing does. Big numbers and shiny badges and sparkles hooray!
No I mean that's an explanation for why it's not obvious. But how about if you had to go out and ask for it or something like that?
(edit: also I hate that they argue your mmr is relatively stable.. so what? I'd rather see if it's stable or if I'm improving, I've gradually worked my way from bronze to high diamond although it's probably high in a low tier, I hate that I have no idea from now for a while if I'm actually improving or staying at the same place, luckily getting rid of the tiers will at least help a little)
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On September 07 2012 22:03 Starshaped wrote:
Bullshit, if they wanted to be transparent they would remove all the eye-candy that is league/rank. Just let me know my MMR, let me know my level, my global rank, whatever, anything but these silly leagues and divisions.
Just make the SC2 ladder like the WC3 ladder, simple and to the point, with profiles showing wins and losses for each race and win percentage as a total and for each race. Then maybe add map win percentages and frequency and other interesting data. Seriously, SC2 fails really hard in so many ways when it comes to online play.
I mean, theres no reason why games ten+ years older than SC2 should have much, MUCH better online experiences.
I played chess online 1994 almost 20 years ago. They had a ladder where you could see your exact rating among all players in the world. They also had a separate rating for games <3 minutes , games between 3 and <15 min, for 15+ games & a separate rating for each chess variant like bughouse, suicide etc. Which would equate to a rating per race per XvX. Oh no a few bytes more per player to store on server oh the horrors... Maybe it cuts into the smurf account business?!? Some players have like 7 accounts.
I cannot understand how they think. If you can see your rating increase with every little improvement you make. People would play much much more I think. They could still keep the metals and stuff just make master league X thousand best , diamond Y thousand best etc.
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Rocks removed from the third base for all starting locations. With current popular gameplay, having rocks in the third is no longer viable.
yeah, current.... anyway, still a shit map
the removal of the tier thing is a good thing i would say.
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Oh my god!
I never expected that this would ever happen. Finally, points are comparable for the bottom 98% of players. Finally, we can get an accurate global ladder using sc2ranks. This is the best change that Blizzard has made to the ladder system, ever since they started hiding virtually every statistic.
At least for now... ranks are back!
However, what I found very puzzling is this statement
After this change, climbing to (for example) Rank 2 Diamond will mean that you are in the top 2% of all Diamond players, and you are very close to moving into the Master League. Similarly, Rank 50 Platinum is in the top 50% in the Platinum league, and so forth.
Either this is a miscommunication, or Blizzard is completely clueless on how their own ladder works. If you're rank 2, it does not mean that you're in the top 2% of the league. The skill of your division can be higher or lower than the average, based on who the RNG assigned to your division. Skill can also change over time, so that some divisions are more skilled than others. The correct statement would say: "at the start of the season, on average, players who are rank 2 are in the top 2% of the league.."
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I wonder what they will do with the waves of player moving from one division to another. Before, they will open new masters divisions to accommodate all the players moving up from diamond. This gave rise to some divisions being really low tier. If they don't want to have low tier divisions, they must find a new way of accommodating the players moving up divisions.
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On September 07 2012 22:03 Starshaped wrote:
Bullshit, if they wanted to be transparent they would remove all the eye-candy that is league/rank. Just let me know my MMR, let me know my level, my global rank, whatever, anything but these silly leagues and divisions.
Just make the SC2 ladder like the WC3 ladder, simple and to the point, with profiles showing wins and losses for each race and win percentage as a total and for each race. Then maybe add map win percentages and frequency and other interesting data. Seriously, SC2 fails really hard in so many ways when it comes to online play.
I mean, theres no reason why games ten+ years older than SC2 should have much, MUCH better online experiences.
Absolutely agreed.
The SC2 ladder system is a convoluted system that currently hides everything that is related to accurately ranking players. It's impossible to compare ranks of 98% of players, there's no win-loss ratio breakdowns, no stats. It treats us like babies, too afraid to see our true ranks for fear it would hurt our feelings and give us ladder anxiety.
Ultimately, the current ladder is absolutely pointless, if you can't compare your skill with others in a competitive game, then there is no point in playing a competitive game. That's why I quit SC2 a long time ago. It was pointless, because the ranking system makes it impossible to actually rank players.
For 2 years, Blizzard has removed and hid more and more stats, even as recently as 1.5. So this is a significant and positive move in the opposite direction, at least points will be comparable across divisions, making a global ladder possible through sites like sc2ranks.
The system is still garbage, designed to coddled those who are too fragile to learn of their true rank and have their gameplay stats shown.
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Excal_Z edit: This ladder change is going to mean that all of the leagues will now become just like Master league (except for showing losses). There will still be divisions of 100 players each, but they'll all be equal and therefore no longer apply hidden offsets. Therefore, in an ideal environment with the skill of all players evenly distributed across divisions (meaning you don't have Division 1 with all GSL Code S players and Division 2 with all GSL Code B players) and as long as everyone is spending all their bonus pool, what Blizzard says is accurate: rank 1 would roughly equate to the top 1% of the league.
Incidentally, this is going to make sites like SC2Ranks far more accurate as a means to gauge how you rank among the rest of your league.
Note that promotions will still be determined by MMR, the removal of division tiers only affects the points that are displayed in divisional rankings.
Except it's virtually impossible to get a uniform distribution of skill in all divisions by grouping players into skill quintiles and randomly throwing them into divisions.
So what Blizzard says is false. It is only true on average, and only true at the beginning of the season because skill can change over time, whereas divisions don't, unless there's a reset.
You can also remove the assumption that players use up their bonus pool. Top 1% of the league, doesn't mean top 1% of skill in the league, it means top 1% of points, which is a hybrid skill+activity measure.
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I'm still seeing several people complain about no win/loss info. Has no one noticed that it returned with 1.5??
Not sure how it works for people who play 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 but, I only play 1v1 and it tells me on my Profile page how many games I've played this season and in the Leagues & Ladder page how many wins I have. A little math and I have my win/loss info. The downside is they took away how many career wins we have.
I guess it's just not obvious enough and it was never announced, which they probably did on purpose. It's kind of funny though because so many people complained about it being taken away and then didn't even realize it came back, albeit in a round about way.
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On September 08 2012 00:24 WarEagle wrote:
I'm still seeing several people complain about no win/loss info. Has no one noticed that it returned with 1.5??
Not sure how it works for people who play 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 but, I only play 1v1 and it tells me in game how many games I've played this season and how many wins I have (Silver btw). A little math and I have my win/loss %
I guess it's just not obvious enough and it was never announced, which they probably did on purpose.
Win ratio is pointless.
It's a reflection of how well the matchmaker is, it's not a reflection of your skill. It provides no information about skill, unless you're at the top or bottom where the matchmaker can't always find an equal skilled opponent because the search times would be too long.
So working out your win ratio is worthless and pointless. Now, what isn't pointless is win ratio broken down by race, or by map or by game time, or by race by map by game time. The matchmaker makes everyone's win ratio (except at the top and bottom, because of search times) approximately 50%, but that doesn't stop the fact that you may have a 70% win ratio against T, 50% against Z, and 30% against P. And this is very valuable information.
The reason why the removal of the win ratio was a terribly bad move was not because it's useful, but because it meant that Blizzard will never release these very useful win ratios broken down by these categories, because it would be possible to reconstruct the overall win ratio with it. And that would hurt the fragile feelings of players with ladder anxiety, which is clearly the real reason why win ratios were removed.
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Another thing worth pointing out with this change is that MMR can be worked out and compared by simply subtracting bonus pool from points, as long as you've played several games in the season.
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On September 08 2012 00:35 paralleluniverse wrote:
The reason why the removal of the win ratio was a terribly bad move was not because it's useful, but because it meant that Blizzard will never release these very useful win ratios broken down by these categories, because it would be possible to reconstruct the overall win ratio with it. And that would hurt the fragile feelings of players with ladder anxiety, which is clearly the real reason why win ratios were removed.
Browder has said in interviews (regarding HotS) this year that he would like more stats in the game, so I assume they will add that in.....sometime (LotV maybe?).
I honestly feel like Blizz has been gradually getting better about listening to the players and giving them what they want; this new ladder season info makes a great point of that. If they want to compete in this market, which has changed dramatically since the BW days (and since the release of WoL, too), they will have to continue making changes like this.
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I'm confused what does this actually change?
If i'm in Division 1 for say, and i'm rank 1 at 900 points doesn't mean i'm top 1%? There could be another division where the top 8 begins with 900 points at least?
Why not put everyone in 1 division? like a couple a thousand players in 1?
Edit: typo's
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United States12235 Posts
On September 08 2012 00:20 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +
Excal_Z edit: This ladder change is going to mean that all of the leagues will now become just like Master league (except for showing losses). There will still be divisions of 100 players each, but they'll all be equal and therefore no longer apply hidden offsets. Therefore, in an ideal environment with the skill of all players evenly distributed across divisions (meaning you don't have Division 1 with all GSL Code S players and Division 2 with all GSL Code B players) and as long as everyone is spending all their bonus pool, what Blizzard says is accurate: rank 1 would roughly equate to the top 1% of the league.
Incidentally, this is going to make sites like SC2Ranks far more accurate as a means to gauge how you rank among the rest of your league.
Note that promotions will still be determined by MMR, the removal of division tiers only affects the points that are displayed in divisional rankings.
Except it's virtually impossible to get a uniform distribution of skill in all divisions by grouping players into skill quintiles and randomly throwing them into divisions. So what Blizzard says is false. It is only true on average, and only true at the beginning of the season because skill can change over time, whereas divisions don't, unless there's a reset. You can also remove the assumption that players use up their bonus pool. Top 1% of the league, doesn't mean top 1% of skill in the league, it means top 1% of points, which is a hybrid skill+activity measure.
You're correct, but I think that will impact the lower leagues less than it does Master. In Master league, the skill gap of players can be very large because Master divisions will include Grandmaster players for the first week. In Gold, it's a lot smaller. Anyone who's outperforming would have been placed in Platinum instead. I suppose we'll have to see how it works out, but I don't know if we'll get the "divisions of death" for which Master is known in the other leagues.
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EPT
