Ladder Season 4 incoming with 2 month seasons

[JackhammerIV]

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3279043205

Season 3 lock occurring week of October 10th and Season 4 starts the week of October 24th.

Not sure if it still matters to anyone anymore. Maybe the shorter seasons and quicker weeding of inactive players will lead to higher MMR thresholds for leagues....maybe. And their thinking about why shortening the season would lead to more activity might be flawed...
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3229387002#4

I imagine they're thinking "If each season the first 8 weeks have the most activity...then if we make 8 week seasons everyone will remain continuously active....." That might not be the case.

Possibly a case of "YES!!!! Got to 100 wins this season...oh....season ends soon...do i wanna go through it again to get 100 wins again...then again then again....6 times a year??" Shorter seasons might possibly lead to more inactivity.

EDIT: Just feel...meh about the whole ladder thing. Still don't like the whole hidden MMR thing. And it's become better to just use a third party website like sc2buddy or sc2analysis to keep track of things. As it stands now I know kind of where I'm at but not specifically. And as far as anyone knows I have a 100% winrate....cos losses don't matter below masters. Don't know if the people I'm playing are on the way up or down. Whole "even, favoured" thing still weird. "Even" with gold but also randomly "favoured" against one masters person. And the division thing adds more complexity. I guess I'll just remain consistently under 40 wins probably each season.

[Blazur]

I'm no longer an active SC2 player, but still wish to chime in by saying how much I hate these short ladder seasons. Constantly wiping our records is a great way of discouraging people from playing this game competitively.

[Peanutbutter]

I'm no longer an active SC2 player, but still wish to chime in by saying how much I hate these short ladder seasons. Constantly wiping our records is a great way of discouraging people from playing this game competitively.

Why's that?

[silencbank]

I'm no longer an active SC2 player, but still wish to chime in by saying how much I hate these short ladder seasons. Constantly wiping our records is a great way of discouraging people from playing this game competitively.

If ANYONE is trying to play this game competitively they do not care about ladder. They just use the ladder as a way to play games and the higher you go the less people care about winning/losing on ladder and more about just practicing certain things vs certain things. They use tourneys or practice games to judge themselves against fellow people. Ladder for most people is JUST a training tool or a way to play against other people for fun. Your hidden MMR remains the same after each reset so no matter what, you will ALWAYS play vs people who are the same skill after the reset that you were BEFORE the reset.

As for what Blizzard said about people playing MORE at the beginning of the season it is 100% true. All of my friends who do not play as much as they used to STILL get on for the first few weeks of a new ladder to try to get their new rank. But then after that they stop because they have other stuff come up or they get scared to ladder or they get a new game they want to play. While I am not sure it will "solve" the problem of people not laddering after the first few weeks but their reasoning for doing it makes perfect sense.

[Todie]

resetting the ladder mroe often probably means freezing thebonus growth more freuqnrly as well, and ofr a comparatively logenr duration; even if youre not quite active enought o keep spending your pool during teh season, at least it coming to a close rather fast and the 1ish week during witch the pool doesnt grow allows more players in divisions across all skill levels to spend their pools, wtich might translate to some close finishes and make points/rank appear to mean more over all (since it stops being as undermined by THAT many inactives with unspent bonus that have a much lower rating than they 'should')

.. idk if i care much though. ims till waiting for them to do something creative with the seaons finales / divisions

[JackhammerIV]

Hmmmmm....i thought the shorter seasons were meant to change up the map pool......
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3424692558

The transition between ladder seasons is generally a time when we take the opportunity to make adjustments to the ladder map pool. In Season 4, the 1v1 pool will remain unchanged, but we will be removing the following maps from the 2v2 map pool:

(4)Khaydarin Depths
(8)Tempest

They will be replaced with the following maps:

(4)Lunar Colony V
(8)Magma Core

We have chosen to remove Khaydarin Depths and Tempest from the 2v2 ladder pool because expanding can be a challenge for certain team compositions on these maps, and they aren’t as balanced as we would prefer for other team compositions. We also wanted to focus on maps that start 2v2 teammates closer together at the beginning of a match. Lunar Colony V and Magma Core are maps that should address these issues.

Or maybe....Blizzard is trying to support competitive 2v2 more by using more balanced maps in the 2v2 map pool.

[Duckyyy]

If ANYONE is trying to play this game competitively they do not care about ladder. They just use the ladder as a way to play games and the higher you go the less people care about winning/losing on ladder and more about just practicing certain things vs certain things. They use tourneys or practice games to judge themselves against fellow people. Ladder for most people is JUST a training tool or a way to play against other people for fun. Your hidden MMR remains the same after each reset so no matter what, you will ALWAYS play vs people who are the same skill after the reset that you were BEFORE the reset.

As for what Blizzard said about people playing MORE at the beginning of the season it is 100% true. All of my friends who do not play as much as they used to STILL get on for the first few weeks of a new ladder to try to get their new rank. But then after that they stop because they have other stuff come up or they get scared to ladder or they get a new game they want to play. While I am not sure it will "solve" the problem of people not laddering after the first few weeks but their reasoning for doing it makes perfect sense.

Thats a pretty un-supported comment tbh, i for one like too play competitively but i know im not good enough for tournies, the ladder is for casual competitive players...the tournies your mentioning are for the try hard competitive players.

[Kimera757]

One of those links is now dead

[silencbank]

Along with the start of season 4, Blizzard HAS made changes to the map pool (for the AM server at least). Metalopolis has been reinstated in the map pool, while Backwater Gulch, Typhon Peaks, and Searing Crater have all been removed. Not only that, but close positions on Metalopolis AND Shattered Temple have been removed as well. As of the time of this post Blizzard has not said anything official, but already countless tests within the community have been done confirming this. All of the changes are currently just for the AM servers, so hopefully SEA, EU and the other servers will receive these changes soon as well.

[JackhammerIV]

Along with the start of season 4, Blizzard HAS made changes to the map pool (for the AM server at least). Metalopolis has been reinstated in the map pool, while Backwater Gulch, Typhon Peaks, and Searing Crater have all been removed. Not only that, but close positions on Metalopolis AND Shattered Temple have been removed as well. As of the time of this post Blizzard has not said anything official, but already countless tests within the community have been done confirming this. All of the changes are currently just for the AM servers, so hopefully SEA, EU and the other servers will receive these changes soon as well.

LOL. Such a joke to pull after the Blizzcon tournament where people were still complaining for the umpteenth time about the imbalance of Shattered Temple close positions.

I played Shattered less than 10 times but just randomly getting close positions was so horrible I just vetoed the map. Then I'd see amazing games happen on Shattered Temple in tournament play. Games like KiwiKaki vs Stephano.

Might be bad to say it but I wish they didn't fix close positions Metal and Shattered. Cos you can't defend Blizzard saying it's difficult to implement that on a map. MLG "fixed" those maps as early as February for the MLG tournament season.
http://esfiworld.com/sc2/news/mlg-an...aft-2-map-pool
Just means since tournaments made a better version of the map they didn't feel it urgent to bring that to the ladder since it wasn't the tournament standard.