Favoreditism

[Hav0x]

But before I beat 10 (or whatever) silvers and the game promoted me, I beat 9 silvers, didn't I? If 10 is good enough to be in Silver myself (at the top, no less), 9 ought to be good enough for Bronze, shouldn't it?

So why did I have 9 silvers under my belt but was still in Copper? This is what strikes me as buggy.

Also, let's say the game is ranking us on who we beat... so if I beat silvers all the time, I get promoted to silver. Well, once the release hits, I'm not going to be fighting silvers. I'd have been fighting players around my skill level (or what the game perceives my skill level to be) which would have been coppers. So I wouldn't have been promoted anyway?



Oh, I'm not expecting perfection. I just want to see if others have some insights on how this thing works and why it works that way, and such... so that my bug report can be as informed as possible.

The thing you are missing is that it doesn't re-evaluate your league placement after every game. It does it every so often (blizzard hasn't said how often) so its not a surprise that after beating 9 you weren't promoted but after beating 10 you were. That 10th one more than likely triggered the system to analyze your placement and decide if it should move you or not.

[Nicol Bolas]

So why did I have 9 silvers under my belt but was still in Copper? This is what strikes me as buggy.

You could regress that logic all the way back to your first silver win.

It seems to me that what denotes league placement is not win/loss ratio, but the detection of more intangible things. I lost the game right before I was promoted from upper-mind Bronze to mid Silver. They're probably looking at how you play, not necessarily who you win or lose to.

[pure.Wasted]

The thing you are missing is that it doesn't re-evaluate your league placement after every game. It does it every so often (blizzard hasn't said how often) so its not a surprise that after beating 9 you weren't promoted but after beating 10 you were. That 10th one more than likely triggered the system to analyze your placement and decide if it should move you or not.

At one point I was 18-31. I went on a number of win streaks* (highest consecutive being 11) and finally ended up with 64-51, when the game promoted me. That's AT LEAST 66 games without a reevaluation (can't remember how many I lost after being buried in Copper, since I started in Bronze). Doesn't 66+ games strike you as a bit much?

*the reason I bring this up is that had my win streaks been shorter and come later, we might have guessed that the game tried to reevaluate me at, say, a hypothetical 25-35 but found no substantial differences. If anything, my win streaks have petered out of late, so the 66+ games wait is genuine.

You could regress that logic all the way back to your first silver win.

It seems to me that what denotes league placement is not win/loss ratio, but the detection of more intangible things. I lost the game right before I was promoted from upper-mind Bronze to mid Silver. They're probably looking at how you play, not necessarily who you win or lose to.

It's completely reasonable that the game focuses on intangibles rather than tangibles. That said, it still doesn't address the fact that my intangibles were good enough for Bronze dozens of games before they were good enough for Silver.

[Hav0x]

At one point I was 18-31. I went on a number of win streaks* (highest consecutive being 11) and finally ended up with 64-51, when the game promoted me. That's AT LEAST 66 games without a reevaluation (can't remember how many I lost after being buried in Copper, since I started in Bronze). Doesn't 66+ games strike you as a bit much?

*the reason I bring this up is that had my win streaks been shorter and come later, we might have guessed that the game tried to reevaluate me at, say, a hypothetical 25-35 but found no substantial differences. If anything, my win streaks have petered out of late, so the 66+ games wait is genuine.



It's completely reasonable that the game focuses on intangibles rather than tangibles. That said, it still doesn't address the fact that my intangibles were good enough for Bronze dozens of games before they were good enough for Silver.

Like I said we have no idea how often they analyze and reevaluate a person.I went about 200 games at the top of copper league before being promoted to bronze. And when I was promoted a lot of the people in my division were promoted with me. For all we know it may not even be based on games played but manually triggered every so often.

[Xyvik]

To throw another weirdness in here, I won a match and was demoted from bronze to copper. I think it may have been because I was favored.

I hope it is more win/loss against opponents than intangibles. If I find myself playing against somebody I'm obviously better than (as in the case of the game I won but was demoted) I tend to grab map control and then try things out that I normally wouldn't. In this case I tried some strategies I was fairly certain wouldn't win, but just wanted to see how they did. They failed, so I moved to the sure-win, and won, and was demoted.

Maybe because I didn't beat him in less than ten minutes I was demoted lol.

[pure.Wasted]

For all we know it may not even be based on games played but manually triggered every so often.

If this is the case, I wonder if it's Beta-exclusive or how they plan to have the system work into retail. This system seems to strongly discourage players from... well, playing. There's a reason they separated leagues into pools of 100 (or whatever) players each. That way you're always advancing, instant rewards for your playtime (as long as you're winning).

A manual trigger every, say, 7 days would be counter-productive to that "instant rewards" policy for anyone who's securely in the top 10.

I hope it is more win/loss against opponents than intangibles. If I find myself playing against somebody I'm obviously better than (as in the case of the game I won but was demoted) I tend to grab map control and then try things out that I normally wouldn't. In this case I tried some strategies I was fairly certain wouldn't win, but just wanted to see how they did. They failed, so I moved to the sure-win, and won, and was demoted.

This is a great point I'd thought about before (but forgot). I also play worse against opponents that are noticeably weaker than I.

[Nicol Bolas]

That said, it still doesn't address the fact that my intangibles were good enough for Bronze dozens of games before they were good enough for Silver.

Were they?

Before I got bumped up to Silver, I had dramatically improved my play. I started off with about 10-20 games in Bronze where I was pretty much stuck in the 40-70 range, while I learned how to actually play again. Once I got used to playing and the units and so forth, I started face-stomping people and rapidly climbing the ladder. I was around 10-th place when I was bumped up.

So, can you honestly say that you are playing no better now than you were before?

[pure.Wasted]

Oh, I'm absolutely playing better. But I think I started playing better immediately following the 18-31 score (two days later I was 37-35). That was when I reconsidered my BO and how I was going to approach upcoming games. I'm sure I'm continuing to improve, but nothing as drastic as that jump was. In which case we've solved the riddle of why I was bumped up to Silver instead of Bronze, but not the riddle as to why it took 66+ games to do it.

[Gifted]

Information I've been able to "glean" from JD over time. Some of this may be out of date and not used now, but I wouldn't be surprised if much of it is.

1. The ultimate goal was that personal skill, not win/loss stats, would determine your league. This would ensure that if you're #1 of a league you didn't get promoted to the next league because you're beating everyone of your own skill level... because they're YOUR own skill level.

2. Stats that they were looking at to help determine skill is "available resources" over the first 5 minutes of a game (to ensure you know how to do a solid build order), APM, Unit stats (Are you agressive enough?), overall resources, lack of "spikey" data transitions (think line graph, it doesn't spike down often and typically stays consistent), dynamic adjusting to trends (As the skill of other people are determined, it flexes the boundaries of leagues to ensure that it is an accurate portrayal of skill levels).

They also examined skill of opponents defeated as a separate stat and it played into it, but on a different level unrelated to the above consideration.

I also know a third "stable" stat existed as a control, variables that were more constant/global that they could tweak as needed to help control the flow of the skill levels and prevent much of it's flexibility if needbe as bugs came up.

What I DON'T KNOW is how much of this made it into beta, and how much of it got cut or shifted. I also DON'T KNOW a lot as this subject was one of those "random subjects" I had and never got in depth with.

I have no clue how much of the above information actually made it in and I know it had "many forms that they theoretically tested. I also know that IN TESTING they wanted to make a judgement over a significant amount of games to help justify a promotion or demotion and it was based on hitting a threshold of some sort to trigger to examination.

I know it's not perfect, but it's the best information I have for you... and even then it's sparse and potentially out of date in many ways... Sorry about that. At least it could be a good direction to move forward though in the discussion.

[BnetGamer77]

Just wanted to add in, least in my personal opinion why Blizzard would 'not' reveal this information.

The intent is to avoid people on focusing on how to advance divisions rather then focusing on enjoying the matches and playing people as close as possible on their level of skill.

IF you reveal information on what they track, then you 'know' for a fact people will find ways to exploit those to temp rankings in their personal interest(whether it's to drop rankings or dramatically raise them). Be it needing a certain amount of apm or as Gifted mentioned, possible builds/gameplay in a set amount of time within the match.

There is NO gain for people to know these hidden variables, unless they are those would peel over and die without all the information in the world of a subject they take interest too. It honestly boils down to players focusing on things non-relevant then enjoying a match with a player they have a fair chance at, while still having to play to the best of their current ability to not lose. -This is beta, so the way they set matches up is being tested, so of course it's gonna be buggy, not too boot more crazy with a small payer base to set matches up with.

You can't let known information seep out that allows players use tricks to rev up or spike down their division ranks or favoritism levels; this doesn't mean people won't find out, but - even then if Blizzard never reveals this information publicly...they can change it as well if need be without ever having to explain in details.