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

[hyde]

I can see the ladders being stripped down and the real number of people playing will be funny.

For a game to be successful at e-sports it needs to have at least 1 million people playing per region.

Sorry but you're just talking out of your butt there DB.
I played professional CS 1.6 back in the hay day and almost made it to CAL invite / CPL levels. Outside of North America and a few parts of Europe....people were still way too busy with SC1 . Maybe had at most 1-2 million GLOBALLY.

There's always different "Scenes" , did SC e-Sports even pick up remotely close to how it was in Korea in Europe or North america? Hell no.
Street Fighter + Marvel + SNK + etc are just a prime example, doubt there's even a million active players GLOBALLY (Yes, including JAPAN) - but it's been going strong way before SC even made it to e-sports. Hell, there was a Canada Cup (For Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom) here recently and the most prominent Street Fighter players were here. I'm willing to bet there's more SC1/SC2 players in my city of Calgary, Canada than Street Fighter.

I realize you're always trying to add conversation to the forums here, but half the times you have biased/predetermined questions/statements - or like this - incredibly shallow and unbacked claims.
You always give off this impression of the joy of seeing Blizzard fail or seeing things just turn sour. There's a German word for that

Schadenfreude (pronounced /ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/ Audio (US) (help·info), German pronunciation: [ˈʃaːdənˌfʁɔʏdə]) is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others

Honestly, the ladders will be undetermined. The idea of a new ladder could spur new players to try - or like you said - be some "laughing stock" of esports and become the community joke.
OR there will just be less divisions - and the hardworking Platinium player will be in diamond....so on and so fourth..

[Twilice]

I wonder if it really work that way. Now I don't really know how active players are in bronze-platinum and how much they play. But could it not also be the other way around where players are being pushed bot because of less players playing?

[Gifted]

For a game to be successful at e-sports it needs to have at least 1 million people playing per region.

For a game to have a chance to be successful at e-sports, it needs to have at least 2 people playing in it's history of existence.

*winks* I figured I'd take his tactics and use them as well.

[flak4321]

I wonder if it really work that way. Now I don't really know how active players are in bronze-platinum and how much they play. But could it not also be the other way around where players are being pushed bot because of less players playing?

As a bronze I can say the top 1/3 seem relatively active, with perhaps 10-15% of the lower ranks at the same activity. I think it will depend also on how many people redo the 1 placement match quickly and how people will be redistributed throughout the divisions. (WALL WARNING) Here's a few plausible variables to consider:

Skill level

Previous League

How current divisions will transfer to new season (i.e. will all divisions be kept to leave open the possibility that all players will do their 1 placement match at least)

How players will be distributed among the leagues following replacement Theoretically, if we assume a top down (best to worst) distribution based on skill and a relatively even league to league distribution, there may be more interleague movement than you might expect, however the bulk of this movement would favor the direction of previously lowest populated league to previously highest among those who do the replacement match, assuming an even population distribution does not exist already.

For example, if the previously stated 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 18%, 2% distribution is used, the top 200 will stay the top 200 with few abnormal exceptions, but if we lose perhaps 50% of the population as "dead wood," the greatest amount of movement into a league will depend on how much of that 50% pop loss was contained in that league. If the pop loss is (in the extreme example) contained wholly in silver and bronze with only a small sliver in the upper leagues, players will see there league placement fall by default to ensure the population percentages are maintained.

Let's see some actual numbers to illustrate: at any time I log on, my bnet homepage says 500,000 to 1,000,000 people are signed into bnet w/ usually 12,000-18,000 games going on in my NA region. Let's assume 500,000 for some even math.

that distributes to :
100000 to bronze
100000 to silver
100000 to gold
100000 to platinum
90000 to diamond
10000 to master's

Assuming a 50% dead wood pop loss to 250,000, w/ the remaining population distributed as so:

30,000 bronze
40,000 silver
60,000 gold
60,000 platinum
50,000 diamond
10,000 masters

(does yield 250,000 players remaining)
Redistribution requires the following numbers be manufactured:
50,000 bronze
50,000 silver
50,000 gold
50,000 plat
45,000 diamond
5,000 masters

which means 5,000 masters would go down to diamond, 10,000 diamonds would return to platinum, 20,000 plats would go to gold, 30,000 players woulkd go from gold to silver, and 20,000 silver would go down to bronze out of necessity as opposed to skill, which negates also the value of the replacement match as anything but a starting point, i.e. your placement amidst the whole group will be point A in league X, but population redistribution overrules skill. The net result is a greater skill level necessary to rank up in league until such time as the dead wood returns. Further, maximum downward movement is one league, with about a 40% chance you will go down, assuming you have anywhere to go.

Of course, these numbers were chosen and used as an easy example. Precise numbers would look a little smaller and be a little less even. It should also be noted the placement factors seem a little more dynamic than this simplified example encompasses. There will most assuredly be some players who move up. Some may move down multiple leagues due to a combination of a replacement match result, recent win/loss %, and recent activity on the whole.

That said I will be eternally peeved by the occasional favoring of a player over me who has all of 15-30 games played to my 430 and climbing. I give some leeway for natural ability and have conceded to better players with lesser games played, but I should not see a 3W-16L player favored over me in the second match after I totally wiped the floor w/ him just 10 minutes ago.

@DustinBrowder: So long as the venture is profitable, it is a success.

[Todie]

nice writeup. bt i dont think th eone placment match will have any more say over placment than any ladder games does for chance of promotion/demotion. its a matter of match making rating; a rating that stays the same over the season shift.

differance being, as ilustrated by flaks example, that many have gone inactive and thus wont get placed until they play again.

however, we do not know if these inactives are taken into account when BNet or its architetcs "decide" how many players are to go in each league; we dont know if it'll go by active players only, or include inactives.

i would assume it includes inactives in the distribution calculation, as to avoid "wtf did i get demoted for" type frustrations. This would mean an increased disparity in numbers of divisions; if there are more inactives in bronze than in platinum, there will be more platinum divisions than bronze divisions (until these are filled up by returning inactives or new bronze-classed newbies)

bottom line: i believe establised MMR's corespond to a certain league


related question: will divisions reman random postreset, or organized by MRR in some way? ... it could concievably either seed divisions as to feature widest possible skillrange (as to make all divisions within a league as equal as possible) or it could do the oposite, and cluster divisions with those of as similar MMR as possible, to make the battle within each as tight as possible, feature natural clashes between ladder-position combatants, but result in polarized skill disparity between divisions.

[TheEconomist]

For a game to be successful at e-sports it needs to have at least 1 million people playing per region.

Oh, DB ... How you make us laugh.

Actually, like Gifted, said, only two people need to play the game. The rest just need to want to watch it. As long as there are enough people watching to make it profitable then it is a success. Obviously, judging by the amount of sponsorships and what not, StarCraft 2 has a looooooong way to fall before it can become even debatible to call it unsuccessful.

[flak4321]

@Todie: Actually, what I said in the example was the necessity to maintain population % figures would overrule the value of the placement match. I would like to note that the example I gave was strictly to illustrate 1 possibility among many, to say that movement could be more possible than what some might think.

My expectation is to see something similar to the way the first season started. My feeling is the replacement match will be almost meaningless, win or lose. The only players that may actually move to a new league are those on the borders currently. And even that is no guarantee. I honestly doubt we'll see more than a few change leagues, and none dramatically like a bronze suddenly in the grand master's league. Most movement may be in rank only, like seeing my #8 ranking drop a touch until I get some games back on the record.

[Todie]

Most movement may be in rank only, like seeing my #8 ranking drop a touch until I get some games back on the record.

note that everyone will start over at rating 0. thats what the reset is.


... the differences in sum of Rating + bonus will be much smaller during all of next season because peoples MMRs are rather stable by now and many win/loss ratios are near 50%

[SinsWage]

Thank you so much for the very well worked out math Flak. That puts into words what I could not with my faulty arithmetic skills.

Also DB, here's something to make your life easier http://randomfactgenerator.net/

I don't know if it will work for you, or Spychi for that matter, because the facts are actually, you know, correct.

[Genopath]

For a game to have a chance to be successful at e-sports, it needs to have at least 2 people playing in it's history of existence.

*winks* I figured I'd take his tactics and use them as well.

I was going to post this as well. You don't need 1 million people. You need at least two people. Here's how it would work:

Those two people need sponsors. Each sponsor requires an incentive to give money away to teams. This is where viewers come in.

Sponsors will have deals in which they'll give 1USD or (1Won) per X amounts of viewers. Consequently, sponsors will offer a player Y amount of dollars where Y=cX where c is a constant negotiated by the sponsor and the team.

As long as cX >= costs of team, the E-Sports game is sustainable.

Now that hardly means success but it's meant to show that you don't need players to play the game to become a successful E-Sport. While many viewers are players themselves it doesn't mean all players are hardcore players. Most of them only played a few multiplayer games, hell most of them only had time for the campaign. Think of Poker and its big success over the past 20 years. Many of us are casual poker players that will occasionally gather up with friends for a small game of poker or two but most of us aren't professional poker players that play full time. The biggest factor in its success was the promotion, or better said, the marketing behind it.