EPTRecently, I've seen a lot more crying about how awful the division system is from people who likely don't know what the fuck they're talking about. I'm going to go ahead and quote what I said months ago here. This will be edited for clarity (because it's one big post instead of several) and there may be some mention of division numbers (a system which is no longer in place); in addition, spoilered parts are things I've said that may be confusing in the context of this one long post, but that may prove interesting to read. In the case that a post of mine was in response to a quote from another poster, I will explain the post I was responding to inside "=====" if I feel the quote is too long and will reduce the clarity of what I'm saying.
I hope this turns into an educational read and, further, I hope that it will quell some of the whining about how awful the division system is. Anyway:
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Your division is a sample of the entire population of the league in which you place. This means that your rank in your division is, over a long period of time with many games played by the community as a whole, indicative of your rank as a whole compared to everyone in your league by percentile
That means if you play 300 games and you're rank 89 in your division... You're as good as 89% of the other people in your league.
I'm not sure if that wording was really very clear. What I mean to say is that someone who, over time, becomes #1 and holds it is very likely in the top 1% of the league as a whole (they may be the #1 player, or the #2, or the #231, but it's top 1%), and someone who is consistently and over time rank #2 is very likely in the top 2%, etc. The division system is NOT perfect, but it is a MUCH better indicator of actual skill than a more traditional "everyone's in the same ladder" style of ranking when viewed at a glance.
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Edit: I suppose this means that, over many many many thousands of games played (in total - perhaps a few hundred per person), division rank is in fact a VERY good indicator of skill. For now, though, due to the small population size (relative to the number of people that will play when the game is released) and constant ladder resets, rating IS a better indicator of skill.
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To explain my next post, it was in response to someone who thought that divisions were not capped at 100 people. He then said "Oh. Well in that case ratings are rather more comparable, but there's still the possible issue of different divisions being full of much higher quality players than another" to which I responded thus.
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Well, since the matchmaking system doesn't take your division into account I can't imagine how being in a division with less skilled players would matter at all. By their very nature you'll have a division with someone who's bad relative to the total population of the league and someone who is very good relative to the total population of the league. There may be some overlap, which I think is what you were getting at, but it will be very minor in the grand scheme of things - in the cases in which the top two players are both, perhaps, top 1% of the league, their rating will be more reliable forms of comparison between the two players than their rank.
Again, though, a top 1% player will more than likely have rank 1 anyway, so in this case you would use rating 100% of the time anyway since rank 1 = rank 1 otherwise.
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This next part was in response to someone who I don't think understood percentiles, though my original response may be confusing. In this case I will clarify in (bold).
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I'm not sure you're using percentiles in the correct way here. Someone who is rank 3 platinum over a long period of time will be in, I suppose, the 97th percentile or the top 3% of all platinum players. They will actually very likely be in a percentile of less than 1 relative to the total population of players, and saying "you're in the top .003% out of everyone!" is a lot less helpful than "you're in the top 3% of those against whom you actually compete." (If this is unclear, I'm simply stating that an overall percentile of your rank relative to everyone is a meaningless statistic since you aren't competing against everyone that plays, only those in your league)
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Being a low level player myself I have to say the division system has been very discouraging to me. The reason is that the leagues I am placed in are essentially dead, with only 5-10 players racking up more then 20 games (in a silver league, it's probably even more inactive in bronze and copper).
Being ranked against people that are not playing is heart breaking and has made me feel like somewhat of a fool. "I guess I shouldn't be playing, nobody else this bad is".
Being ranked against people that are not playing is heart breaking and has made me feel like somewhat of a fool. "I guess I shouldn't be playing, nobody else this bad is".
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I think you're misinterpreting what the division system means.
If you're, say, rank 8 in your division, that doesn't mean much for this beta. Over a long period of time with no resets, rank 8 would be a very good indicator of your skill.
For now, though, your rating should likely be considered a better indicator of skill than rank simply because of what you described - many people (though probably not most) are inactive, so the data is a bit unreliable. I think blizzard may implement some way to weed out inactive accounts from the calculations for rank in the future.
As more games are played, your rank will become a much more significant indicator of your overall skill level in comparison to your league.
You also seem to assume that you only get matched against people in your division. This is not true. In fact, if you do well, you begin to be match against people who aren't even in your league. Due to the fact that this is a short period of time relative to how long you might be playing at release, this amount of time matched against higher leagues is insignificant. It does, however, invalidate your ranking until you are promoted (or, alternatively, you begin to lose again and the matchmaking system begins to match you with players at your new rating and current league) and have the chance to play many more games in that league.
Overall, I feel the division system is (or perhaps has the potential to be) a MUCH better way of indicating player skill level than other systems.
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I do think that low numbered divisions are better btw. Not by purpose but simply because they were created earlier and people that reached platinum the first few weeks are generally better than people only reaching it right now
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Also keep in mind that the beta has fewer players playing fewer games than the game will at release, and thus is susceptible to flaws such as the one you have described for new divisions.. Over a period of perhaps a few weeks, though, the division system will not mean anything other than a convenient way to see how well you play in comparison to people in your league. It may end up being even shorter than that, perhaps a few days, given the large number of people who will be playing. (note: this is still pertinent now and will be after each reset Blizzard does post-launch, even without division numbers!)
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This is another response to the person to whom I explained percentiles and value of information a few responses above. This time he says,
I just made up some numbers to demonstrate. With the way the bonus points work, older divisions are generally always going to have more points than younger divisions, simply because they have had more time to accumulate bonus points. The younger divisions can feed off this to some extent by earning more points for winning, but I don't think it fully compensates. I would also expect the older divisions to contain more people who placed directly into a league, while the younger divisions contain people who were promoted. The older divisions should have more points in this situation (because they are generally better players, which is basis of the OP), but the ranking does not reflect this. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the top 10 players of the first few divisions are better than the top players of the last divisions, simply because the last divisions were probably created from promotions, while the early divisions were placed directly.
But I suppose you are right about the total population of players. On the flipside, copper players probably don't want to see they are worse than 95% of all players. I still think showing your percentile for your league would be excellent, and it would allow a direct comparision between divisions (and finally give us an empirical clue as to how the point distribution really works between them)
But I suppose you are right about the total population of players. On the flipside, copper players probably don't want to see they are worse than 95% of all players. I still think showing your percentile for your league would be excellent, and it would allow a direct comparision between divisions (and finally give us an empirical clue as to how the point distribution really works between them)
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The thing is, though, that your rank IS your percentile for your league. If you're rank 3, you're in the top 3% of the players in your league. That is why the division system is so good an indicator of skill - it just requires some time to get to that point.
Regarding the bonus pool - isn't the bonus pool only very large for newly-qualified people (and maybe promoted? my rating reward is massively bugged right now so rather than being promoted for doing well I'm losing many many many times more points than I should per loss vs people two leagues higher than me - 62 points vs a gold team when it should have been only two, so I haven't been able to be promoted) and people who are inactive for an amount of time?
Someone could, then, purposely wait or go inactive in order to have a high bonus pool, but it must be kept in mind that the bonus pool IS limited, and so when they start to be matched against players of higher skill, they will be brought down to their appropriate rating/ranking once again. They may be promoted if they're in the right position, but, again, they will be quickly demoted when the system decides that they can't perform in the league to which they are promoted.
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Here, I've responded to someone who refuted my statement that rank is percentile.
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I see what you're saying, but I also think you're misinterpreting what I'm saying. Right now, due to relatively small populations and inactivity, ranking is not really the most reliable way of rating yourself. However, in the release, there will be more players, and so the chance of a top 1% player being in any given league is a lot higher (given, perhaps, higher population caps for leagues, but this would make interpreting rank much harder to do for a player). This means that a player capable of top 1% play will quickly overtake a player who is incapable of such play. There is a chance, though, that NO player in any given league is capable of such high level play, and THEN you can use ELO/rating to decide who the better player is. For the most part, though, ranking will become a very good indicator of overall performance relative to the league in which a player is playing.
While rank is certainly relative to your division, the way the rating/ranking system works essentially means that most (though not ALL) rank 1 players should be in the top 1% of players in any given league. Also keep in mind that people shuffle in/out of leagues due to promotion/demotion, and so there is always the opportunity for a better player to enter a division and overtake the rank 1 player, increasing the validity of the rank as a way to compare a player to their league
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This is perhaps the post I enjoyed writing most in this thread. Here's the quote:
This is where we disagree I think. My view is that old divisions will contain players who placed directly into a league. For platinum, my hunch is that these players are better than players who get promoted from a lower league. Is there a reason you disagree with my hypothesis?
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Although obviously I can't offer real data for why I disagree, I think simply thinking about it a little bit will show why your hypothesis is flawed.
We know that matchmaking is entirely independent of which division you've placed. This means that you get matched one one of two (or perhaps more) criteria: 1.) your rating. This is used most often for most people. 2.) how well the matchmaking system thinks you're doing and what it thinks your true rank SHOULD be. This system is not perfect, but it allows people who are perhaps wrongly low-ranked or low-rated (perhaps a person newly promoted in to a league). In the first case, you play against people who are only slightly better than you (and when it gets to the point that they start beating you - slightly worse). In this way, you have a fairly consistent rank that is a good indicator of your place in your league.
In case number two, the system has to make a few guesses. This system is necessary, though, to allow rankings to be a more significant indicator of rank. This system is made more effective by way of the favored/slightly favored system and bonus pool. A player who qualifies into a league has an easier time of increasing their rank than someone who plays consistently and often. This may seem somewhat of a bad idea at first consideration, but upon further thought, you should find that it is a very good way of running the system. A player who jumps too high in ranking will quickly begin losing games and will be brought down to their appropriate ranking fairly soon. In a similar regard, a player who SHOULD be much higher will have an easier time of ranking up, and thus bonus pool encourages players who were perhaps wrongly placed to actually continue playing. It allows the amount of games necessary to play to be much lower than it would be without bonus pool, and so the game grind is, in fact, less of a grind.
Now, what this means is that a player who is promoted into a league is allowed to more quickly begin playing against people who placed into a league. What this means is that any player who may be promoted into a league is just as good as a player who placed into a league given that their ranking is the same. This is why the number attached to a division is irrelevant in the consideration of what a player's ranking really means. Because these promoted players are playing people who placed into these leagues, their rank is just as indicative of their skill as the player who placed into the league in the first place (again, given a fairly significant volume of games played at the rating at which they belong).
I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here.
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This is in response to someone complaining of the matchmaking system, which is not really what this post is about. I found it interesting, though, so I'll share here. Here's what he said:
the system itself is flawed in the match making system imo.
you have games were u are having a quailty match far to few inbetween the crap were you either get rolled by someone better, or smash someone who has no clue wat they are doing (yes there still there in plat)
you have games were u are having a quailty match far to few inbetween the crap were you either get rolled by someone better, or smash someone who has no clue wat they are doing (yes there still there in plat)
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Yes, this is true to an extent. I feel that with more players, this will happen less and less often. I'm sure they'll also make the system more reliable - keep in mind that we are here to test the matchmaking system's quality just as much as the balance of the game.
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This discussion began to wind down with my last post. Here are the responses. Anything by me will be bolded here for clarity.
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My head hurts now
. I'll have to think about this some more.I'll hope you end up realizing how great the division system is in comparison to other systems. Have fun!
<3,
Issorlol
I droped out of some of my 5 placement matches, so i got into silver. When I moved up from bottom silver to top silver to top gold, I honestly could tell little to no difference in skill. I hope that upon release your league will actually reflect your skill level more. In my opinion the highest rank you can get into off of your placements should be silver or gold. To get any further you would have to show you good enough to compete there. I know i should just play more games and try to move up to platinum, but it is still annoying to play platinum players who are clearly worse than numerous players in gold/silver.
I agree. I feel that the highest league is something you should have to be promoted to, but don't they have something like that set up for release? (FUKKEN CALLED IT?)
From what i understand the highest league (pro league) will be extreamly exclusive and not something that normal players will be able to get to. While im not sure about this it seems like what blizzard was implying.
I hope that is the case. I doubt I have much of a chance of ever getting in to such a league (I'm silver-quality right now, and perhaps gold with some more practice), but it should make finding good replays a lot easier.
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Here, the discussion was furthered a little more, so I tried to explain the benefits of division systems once again. The post I'm responding to:
Another problem i have with matchmaking is that the division one isn't necessarily better than division 100. Although division one has been around for way longer and therefore probably has some pretty good players, but when a new player finishes their placement matches or ranks up from a previous rank, they might get placed right at division one.
Keep in mind i am talking mostly about levels below platinum, as platinum players will most likely not leave their division. When release hits and there are thousands and thousands of divisions you will really have no idea what your overall rank is because you are in the exact same slot as thousands of people who could be better, or worse than you.
I would like to see some kind of overall ranking system besides just points.
I know this isn't a great example because of the huge difference in player size, but in ICCUP you can know your exact place in the ladder, something that I really liked.
Keep in mind i am talking mostly about levels below platinum, as platinum players will most likely not leave their division. When release hits and there are thousands and thousands of divisions you will really have no idea what your overall rank is because you are in the exact same slot as thousands of people who could be better, or worse than you.
I would like to see some kind of overall ranking system besides just points.
I know this isn't a great example because of the huge difference in player size, but in ICCUP you can know your exact place in the ladder, something that I really liked.
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As I've said in a few other posts, this rank is actually not very indicative of your overall place with so many people. The division-based rank is very close to what percentile you are of all of the players in your league, and so is a much better indicator of your relative rank in your league than a number like 3560/46031.
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Anyway, back to less-serious-stuff-time. Again, my responses will be bolded.
Has anyone discovered it division actually affects Rating? I used to hear things like divisions with more people would gain ELO at a different rate then divisions with less people or something like that.
That would remove all meaning behind the ranks and, thus, the reason for using divisions, so I highly doubt that is the case.
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After this there was some small explanation that happened, but it's mostly just a restatement of what I said because someone decided not to read anything I wrote.
I hope that this post will prove useful in defusing some of the hatred for the division system. Enjoy~
PS: The original thread, if anyone is interested, is here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=124085
PPS: If anyone has any further insight, or disagrees with what I've said here and can back it up with logical, well thought out sentences, feel free to post here! I'd love to read it.
