The ladder is going to be a very different place for Season 2

[SinsWage]

So in short the idea of leagues is fine it's the divisions that are screwing up the clarity?

[Todie]

I havnt ever seen any blizz rep say anything about how BNet actually decides who goes in what league, n'or have i become convinced that the division are very homogenized with concerns to MRR as is.... even if they are, that was all from initial placment, meaning its not very acurate for S1, compared to what it could be in s2.


Gradius:

The difference is, the ratings as they are in S1 accumulated during everyone's development; i think everyone whose played a decent amount since day 1 has improved a lot more than what we might improve during season2. some players are surely quite stagnated by now. Rating + bonus gave a decent gauge on skill within each league, but now, it resets.

MMR does not reset... players with 3500 rating+bonus will still get matched against each other alot, only they'll have 0 rating (+reaped bonus and inflation). same as those same-league players who had 2500... if these players improved during s1, they might climb to 2600 faster than the 3500 players climbed to 3600; thats fine, that still gives an OK gauge.

... but in S2, nothing is actually stooping whomever in whatever league to get more points faster than clearly better players; higher MMR illustrated by higher rating(+bonus) during S1.


... i dont think people at large will understand thism, the whole system will be misunderstood and thousands of noobs will get cokcky over high ratings and rankings; improve fast enough or mass games enough to get enoguh points to top their division and again get confused about why they arnt getting promoted (while players rated lower may get promoted....)

... its just... now that i think about it, the system looks like it correlaes very badly with this reset concept.

bottom line is, reset ratings but stabilized and vastly differntiated MMR's make for an artificially level playing-field. random division placement would be horrible.


... the more i think about this, the more i get the feeling they've got this all figured out; what'd make sense is to homogenize each division with as similar MMR's within it as possible.

[JackhammerIV]

So in short the idea of leagues is fine it's the divisions that are screwing up the clarity?

Exactly sinswage. That's the problem of the skill comparison. Master > Diamond > Platinum > Gold > Silver > Bronze. But you don't know if Diamond Player A>Diamond Player B without watching them play each other and find out.

That's the point of the suggestion I had. Basically since a division has two names like Alpha Kerrigan or some such. At the moment that name is randomised. I suggest that basically for example in order of highest to lowest skill:
Alpha
Beta
Gamma
Delta
Epsilon
etc
Following greek alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet)

So if i'm in Delta Raynor and you're in Alpha Kerrigan then i just check the greek alphabet list and i know you're better than me. It gives a way to measure skill within a league. But currently Blizzard doesn't do that. That was confirmed back when people figured out the division modifiers. I put up a link to that article which is buried somewhere in a thread. I hope they implement that. The normal "casual" players won't even know about it but it gives the more hardcore players an easier way to rank themselves.

EDIT: Good point todie. Another reason why division name correlating with skill would be a good measure. Like you see a 2000 Master player but he's in an Omega (last letter of greek alphabet) name division so you can say "Oh so he's not the tip top of Master league". One problem of my suggestion is that there is no movement between divisions during a season. But if they regularly have new seasons that problem would be fixed. Like 3 month seasons would be ideal but 6 month seasons would be ok. The fixing of more precise division placement would only really matter to those whose skill have stagnated so that they can't get promoted up a league. Or if Blizzard allows for movement between divisions.

[hyde]

Exactly sinswage. That's the problem of the skill comparison. Master > Diamond > Platinum > Gold > Silver > Bronze. But you don't know if Diamond Player A>Diamond Player B without watching them play each other and find out.

That's the point of the suggestion I had. Basically since a division has two names like Alpha Kerrigan or some such. At the moment that name is randomised. I suggest that basically for example in order of highest to lowest skill:
Alpha
Beta
Gamma
Delta
Epsilon
etc
Following greek alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet)

So if i'm in Delta Raynor and you're in Alpha Kerrigan then i just check the greek alphabet list and i know you're better than me. It gives a way to measure skill within a league. But currently Blizzard doesn't do that. That was confirmed back when people figured out the division modifiers. I put up a link to that article which is buried somewhere in a thread. I hope they implement that. The normal "casual" players won't even know about it but it gives the more hardcore players an easier way to rank themselves.

EDIT: Good point todie. Another reason why division name correlating with skill would be a good measure. Like you see a 2000 Master player but he's in an Omega (last letter of greek alphabet) name division so you can say "Oh so he's not the tip top of Master league". One problem of my suggestion is that there is no movement between divisions during a season. But if they regularly have new seasons that problem would be fixed. Like 3 month seasons would be ideal but 6 month seasons would be ok. The fixing of more precise division placement would only really matter to those whose skill have stagnated so that they can't get promoted up a league. Or if Blizzard allows for movement between divisions.

Like you said, all they have to do is to have a League recycle/refresh once or twice a month. Where it will reshuffle everyone WITHIN the Divisions (master/diamond/plat/etc) into corresponding Alpha, Betta, etc divisions.

If they don't do that, it's pointless having ranked divisions because of the movement problem.

[JackhammerIV]

Like you said, all they have to do is to have a League recycle/refresh once or twice a month. Where it will reshuffle everyone WITHIN the Divisions (master/diamond/plat/etc) into corresponding Alpha, Betta, etc divisions.

If they don't do that, it's pointless having ranked divisions because of the movement problem.

Moving it every 1-2 months is too fast though. People might just be on a heavy winning streak and not actually deserving of going to a higher ranked division. Leaving more time for it to adjust and more matches to be played can result in a more accurate division placement within a league. And it discourages casual gamers since they might only have like 5 games played a week.

Perhaps that's Blizzard's view and they're taking the really long term goal of letting everyone keep playing for 1-2 years then only sort them into the skill level they actually are at then make this public. Doubt it though.

[Gifted]

It would make sense to approach it in a "long term" mentality based on what they've stated as the long term goals not realized. They are approaching this as a game that will last for 5-10 years at least.

It's also important to note that the entire reason for divisions has not been realized yet. The "tournament patch" is still a ways off, and will provide a reason for division rankings to exist. At the end of a season the division top 8 will have a personal tournament, to determine the division champion. That's how it's been told in the past when the tournament patch was mentioned.

That's part of the reason why divisions seem pointless right now, is because the entire reason for their "build up" doesn't exist yet.

HOWEVER, in light of how they are approaching season 1 and 2, I feel that they may have to reimagine divisions in the future. Because part of the fun of having a division is being able to build up rivalries over time. There is no familiarity so far in what exists now if they reset divisions every season.

[Todie]

[...]in light of how they are approaching season 1 and 2, I feel that they may have to reimagine divisions in the future. Because part of the fun of having a division is being able to build up rivalries over time. There is no familiarity so far in what exists now if they reset divisions every season.

Yes, though, this is assuming divisions will not be homogenized with conerns to MMR; if they are, the more stabilized MMR season 2 and later should provide much higher chances of players of similar skill=similar MMR to end up both playing against eachother, and being rated within the same division, as long as their skill has stagnated at a similar level and/or they keep improving at a similar rate.

... even so, its quite far fetched to have this happen below masters; even if MMR's within a division are tight as hell, how likely is it to be searching for a game at the same time as one of those hundred at any given time? - when there are surely many players NOT in your division, curently searching, that is close enough in MMR to warant a match- how likely is it that you recognize their name from the ladder or previous games? ... if this is what they hope to have happen, there should probably be a graphical representation to remind the players whenever there is an in-division derby..

[Gifted]

Valid point Todie.. but my thought is regarding the ending of a season. Think over the course of 3-4 seasons if you had the same core 8 people vying for top 8. It could be a chance that you'd actually care about them then. I still feel this approach is inefficient and part of why I think a reimagining should happen.

Let's face it, something as subtle as "custom divisions" in some form allowing all of us on this forum to sign up for a private/approval or public division may have more semblance as long as a basic rule such as "have an account at SC:L" or "join chatroom legacy fight club" could be a tool to encourage more community competition.

This could be beside the core divisions which could stand some innnovation. For example.. a flag that a player could say saying "I'd like to stay in this division" could work well if the divisions would put preference in placing you in a division with your friends. That way if a friend is in a division, and someone would like to be in it, they can be placed in it, replacing/shifting someone who doesn't care to stay in that division. It'd be logistically hell, but the idea of being placed in a division with people whom you care about is something that I think would be great.

[hyde]

I played 3 games this morning before school and got into Diamond 2v2.
I checked everyone's profile that we played ( so a sample size of 12 people ). The majority of them were gold/plat 2v2 last season but now they're all diamond.

I'll see what happens tonight if I get the time to play 1's. I think there was a lot of "dead wood" in the diamond divisions.

[Gifted]

I played 3 games this morning before school and got into Diamond 2v2.
I checked everyone's profile that we played ( so a sample size of 12 people ). The majority of them were gold/plat 2v2 last season but now they're all diamond.

I'll see what happens tonight if I get the time to play 1's. I think there was a lot of "dead wood" in the diamond divisions.

Interesting results, keep us posted. Anyone else with other likewise interesting results as well?