Some unexpected ladder shifts may happen over the next few days

[CombatEX]

This isn't like Starcraft's system. In SC2 you can get demoted after a loss, yes. But where SC2 differs is for players who make new accounts. From reading this thread I've seen many people with near flawless records who got demoted to low leagues. In SC2 if you have a 90%+ w/l, it doesn't matter if your account is new and you've only played 15-20 games. If you place in Diamond, you'll stay in Diamond and eventually get promoted to Masters if you keep up your high w/l record. In the mean time they'll continue placing you against diamonds, and likely start putting you against some masters if you have such a high w/l ratio. If your w/l dips much below 50% then you'll start playing platinum players, maybe golds if you've been losing a lot to platinum players. Eventually you'll get demoted.

What doesn't happen is a player who goes 19-2 after placing in Diamond getting demoted to Gold. The thing is, yes, if you're good you'll eventually work your way back up, but in the mean time you and your opponents are having a boring time as you steam roll the next 50 games.

SC2 tries to give players a 50% w/l. I think if you place in Masters and maintain above a 50% w/l as you continue getting matched against Masters, then you should be allowed to stay in Masters.

The philosophy that players should be demoted to avoid boring games is plain wrong.

By demoting players to a lower league who have 75%+ w/l playing at a higher league just because they only have ~15-20 games makes no sense. I understand that you also are trying to get rid of the 3-2 placement match Super-Titans, but demoting everyone else too doesn't help. Why? So let's say you don't make these radical demotions. What will happen? The players who placed too highly will have boring games because they'll get crushed until they're eventually demoted to their correct league. This is the problem you are trying to solve, only, it doesn't work. Now, what happens with the demotions you did decide to put in place? THE EXACT SAME THING. Players still have to play boring games where they crush their opponents, but just in the opposite direction. Instead of false high league players getting crushed down to their rightful leagues you have false low level players crushing their way up to their rightful leagues. The difference? The way you chose to do it is much less intuitive and downright frustrating.

In the case where you don't make these demotions, the players who placed too highly will lose and get demoted. It makes sense. Eventually they'll start winning ~50% and settle in their rightful league. In the case where you do make these demotions (aka what you're doing), the players who get demoted despite their high w/l will be confused. They've been winning most of their games, if anything they're still in too low a league, not too high of one. Yet then they win yet another game and find themselves demoted. It makes no sense.

[Harti]

The pivot point we're disputing about is:

- getting demoted to clean the leagues
- after a WIN
- TWO leagues down.


Yes, this is awkward. But really, are we discussing because the color, name and shape of our league isn't as bling-bling as it was before?


Like I said before, OML could have reset the whole leagues and divisions just like they did it last week, too! They had to do something about the situation anyway, so there's only very limited solutions.


From my point of view it really does _NOT_ matter if it's

1) your league stats getting reset, you have to do 1 placement match (and get placed in a much lower league afterwards if you were in the wrong place before)

or

2) keep going, you will probably get demoted if you're in the wrong place.
/edit: 2b) keep going, you will probably get demoted when you lose your next game. Only one league down but mind you, the next game you lose will demote you, too! (seriously?)


Both will result in you being assigned one or two leagues lower than you've been before. The only difference it makes is that (1) would have affected EVERY player, even those whose hidden ratings were okay for their league (= annoying, people first think their game is broken, then bitch about the pointless reset), and (2) would only affect the players who didn't deserve to get into their league in the first place but got there through a system glitch (= frustrating, people bitch about getting demoted).

It was OML's call, I sort of dislike both solutions but after what happened last week (after we all had to do 1 placement match) was just horrible (the leagues were reset completely with 5 placements to go and some old games not counting towards these 5), so... I'd really rather go for (2). Which is what I'm defending currently.


Again, Gifted League shall be the highest you can get through your placements, which is why it's named "gifted" after all. Take it you're a natural in this game and feel honored.
How can you "master" a game you just started playing? Makes absolutely no sense!

So please calm down, face reality (i.e. the fact that you can't be considered a master at a game you just went 19-2 in), convert your anger and hatred into motivation and begin to climb your way up. :O

[ArtNJ]

The whole demotion thing is a red herring. That happened because OML messed up and the original system was broken. In an ideal world, the necessary demotions would have happened all at once with a well-crafted explanatory message. But we dont live in that world, OML is 2 people, so lets get over that.

The question for now is whether the current system is actually working. That, I think, is the more serious issue. What League would you end up in in Starcraft if you went 20-0? Would that be enough for the highest League?

[Kamikaze28]

(07-17-2012 05:53 AM)mkaen Wrote:  If you're in Titan, winning >90% of your games, don't you belong in Titan as it's your best hope of finding challenging opponents to bring your record closer to 50%?

With the second half of your statement, you seem to understand, that people were in Super-Titan who did not have the skill/experience to actually play on that level - therefore the first half of your sentence loses its relevance.
If you were placed in Super-Titan and won 90% of the time against other Super-Titan players (who were actually playing on a Gifted/Master level) that does not justify or support your own position in Super-Titan League. The best inference you can take from this history is that you are probably better than Gifted League.

(07-17-2012 05:28 AM)Harti Wrote:  Yes, this is awkward. But really, are we discussing because the color, name and shape of our league isn't as bling-bling as it was before?

This. You should worry less about what league you are in and more about the level of the opponents you get matched with. At the end of the day, that's what that whole shebang is all about: getting matched with challenging opponents.

[ArtNJ]

Mkaen, your still talking about the demotions, and that is not the issue. The issue is that the League assignment system doesnt think 25-1 or anything of that sort should get you into Super Titan. So yeah, the person that went 24-1 might get a demotion when they win (because the system never thought they earned Super Titan, but there was a bug), but this is just a side effect of enforcement of the standards that OML intended in the first place, but that didnt happen because of a bug. So the real issue is why isnt 25-1 enough for Super Titan? That person is likely getting bored, cant we get them quality opponents faster? The demotions are just a side effect of the system's current standards.

[Kamikaze28]

(07-17-2012 06:29 AM)mkaen Wrote:  

(07-17-2012 05:59 AM)Kamikaze28 Wrote:  

(07-17-2012 05:53 AM)mkaen Wrote:  If you're in Titan, winning >90% of your games, don't you belong in Titan as it's your best hope of finding challenging opponents to bring your record closer to 50%?

With the second half of your statement, you seem to understand, that people were in Super-Titan who did not have the skill/experience to actually play on that level - therefore the first half of your sentence loses its relevance.

Right, and those people will lose against the people who *do* have >90% win rates, and will subsequently be matched against lower-rated players, and will be demoted if they continue losing. If they are there and they haven't lost, it does not follow that they should be demoted or double-demoted because there were some Gifted-level players who crept into Titan early on. So the first half of my sentence has lost none of its relevance, unless you're suggesting that people in Titan are only matching against in-Titan-but-actually-playing-at-Gifted-level players.

Alex said in the original post of this thread, that the ranking/placement system was too eager to put people in Master/Super-Titan League. That was unintended behavior. What OML now did (from my understanding) is fix the underlying problem which resulted in the demotion of many people from STL or ML.
Implementing your approach would have been an exception to the corrected system. Lots of work.

(07-17-2012 06:29 AM)mkaen Wrote:  

(07-17-2012 05:59 AM)Kamikaze28 Wrote:  If you were placed in Super-Titan and won 90% of the time against other Super-Titan players (who were actually playing on a Gifted/Master level) that does not justify or support your own position in Super-Titan League. The best inference you can take from this history is that you are probably better than Gifted League.

Well, by this logic, no one currently deserves to be in Titan; a winning record in that league is meaningless.

Not necessarily - there were people in Super-Titan with the required skill rating (and confidence rating) to *only* be demoted to Master League and had to win their way back to Super-Titan League. No winning record is meaningless, it's just a question of what the system makes of it.

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(07-17-2012 06:29 AM)mkaen Wrote:  

(07-17-2012 05:59 AM)Kamikaze28 Wrote:  You should worry less about what league you are in and more about the level of the opponents you get matched with. At the end of the day, that's what that whole shebang is all about: getting matched with challenging opponents.

I'm personally not worried about what league I'm in. Let me just make that clear. What is concerning is that people in ST have been demoted, skipping an entire league, after having zero losses in ST.

Are you suggesting that this is the correct way to match them with opponents of similar skill? They're winning in ST, but we better drop them to Gifted so they can find the best-matched opponents there? You must agree, this doesn't support the cause of "getting matched with challenging opponents"!

Once again - the system was too lenient in the beginning and winning in ST was no waterproof justification for not being demoted.

[Bren92787]

There's still a total lack of clarity about how players get promoted. OK, so everyone is getting demoted, sometimes after wins, sometimes two whole leagues. I'm one of those people--I got two demotions (even though I was winning about 50% in Master). I've been grinding away in Gifted, and I'm winning almost every single game. I'm hovering around 5th in my division with 200-something points, and number 1 has almost 700 points. What does it take for him (and me!) to get promoted to the next level? The answer appears to be something very secret and clandestine, much more complicated than, "Just keep winning."

[Kamikaze28]

(07-17-2012 07:24 AM)Bren92787 Wrote:  What does it take for him (and me!) to get promoted to the next level? The answer appears to be something very secret and clandestine, much more complicated than, "Just keep winning."

First of all, ranking and points are not directly correlated to promotions or demotions as far as I know.
Once the matchmaking system puts you up against players from the league above your current one, continue winning and you will eventually be promoted. There is no clear cut checklist of things you need to accomplish to be promoted and due to the way the system works, there probably never will be.
It's just like knowing when the train is supposed to come doesn't make it come any faster - it only frustrates you when it's not on time. It will come eventually (hopefully).

[Harti]

*Originally* assigned to Gifted League with a 3-2 record (from test games shortly pre-release), I had to win more than 60 league games to climb up to Master League after release. That was way too much (and should be far less today) but I still followed the "keep winning" instructions. It worked eventually, only shortly after I was about to lose faith.

Then I had to win another 40 matches and that one placement match pre-reset, the placement got me into Super-Titan league. Then the system was reset and after the 5 placements I found myself in Master League with roughly 110 wins.
Guess when I got promoted to Super-Titan league. Yes that's right, at 203.

"ooooh I'm 19-2 and in Gifted", "ooooh I'm 45-1 and still in Master" :bitchplease:

[onealexleft]

This ladder shift affected about 3% of the player population (even less because I was only focusing on 1v1). Of that 3%, there is the possibility of a small subset being on the borderline of "needing a reset vs in the clear" skill-rating wise that might've fell on the wrong side of that. Sorry to those people effected.

Good news is I just pushed an update to the server so that climbing between league tiers should be much easier now, so if you feel you deserver a higher league tier, it shouldn't take as long to get back to where you think you should be if that's truly the case.

We're listening to feedback and trying to adjust the league system, based on that, based on our own server statistics, and a few other factors.