SCLegacy SC2Ranks Division Discussion

[Gradius]

Then they are renaming the Top 200 they keep doing every week the Grand Master League. So anyone in the top 200 that week gets to be in the Grand Master league for the week.

I hope that's not how it works. League placement should use the hidden ranking which reflects actual skill instead of points & how many games you spammed.

[GRUNT]

I hope that's not how it works. League placement should use the hidden ranking which reflects actual skill instead of points & how many games you spammed.

I think that the final solution will have to be a mix of both - otherwise, someone who is just really good, but (hypothetically) stopped playing, would just be sitting on that top 200 for ages .

[JackhammerIV]

It will work that way Gradius. Completely based off MMR. You will get a lot of great players but people who spam games like 1000-2000 wins have ammassed enough MMR by then to get in.

And GRUNT if they stop playing their MMR doesn't change. Then as the Grand Masters play more and win more than 50% of the time their MMR will slowly rise and that player who doesn't play on ladder much anymore slowly drops down until he leaves the Grand Master league. Plus an example of this kind of person would be Idra. Just beast his way beating so many people and reaching like top 20-30 then stops laddering for a month or two. Then he'll be like top 100. He's still good enough to be in the grand masters. Just no longer considered one of the best in there.

[Todie]

i think youre missunderstanding the concept of MMR jack; thats the hidden rating, that supposedly only changes when the actual skill level of the players change.

ofcoruse, we dont know if there is any inflation on MMR as there is on league rating, if so you would be right.

edit: when youve acutalyl made it into master or GM league, youll surely be ranked on rating points as in any league.

[JackhammerIV]

I think everyone is misunderstanding me. I was saying they use the MMR (hidden rating) to determine if you enter Masters or Grandmasters league. Like you can be 3000 point diamond but because your MMR is too low you might not be able to enter Masters or Grandmasters.

And if you notice the top 200 now is ranked by MMR. Just look at each player's points. Lower ranked players have more points that higher ranked players (in some cases). So the top 200 is ranked based on MMR. So i was saying ranking in Grandmasters would be the same with it being by MMR. For Masters it would be ranked like in diamond now being by ladder points in each division.

Then on the comment of someone being able to stay in GM league even though they don't play much you can see this now even in top 200. Some people with only 100 or so wins. Because they increased their MMR a lot by beating players with higher MMR then they get into the top 200. It doesn't perfectly show real skill. Like idra might play on ladder in US for fun and get top 50 with like 100 wins and then leave it alone for months since he's in korea. The ranking in GM would be based on idra's MMR rating. But as people play more their MMR rises or falls. The more you win the more your MMR rises. The amount it rises is lower if you're favoured and higher if you're not favoured. Same like ladder points though no one knows the exact algorithm.

Then about people who spam mass games. If they can get 1000 wins then they've basically worked their way into Masters or Grandmasters. They might not be the same skill level as the pro players like idra, select, inControl, etc but they put in the time to win a lot. And winning slowly increases their MMR until they qualify to be in masters or grandmasters. State of the game podcast was talking about this recently where you see the top 200 and in like the top 10 it's only around 3 pro players and the rest are mass gamers who have so many wins that their MMR is as high as a pro even though their skill isn't.

EDIT: Todie just to be clear on the MMR skill thing. It rises and falls just like ladder points. If you win it goes up. If you lose your MMR goes down. The exact amounts depends a lot on the favoured situation and the opponent's MMR. It's some weird algorithm thing. It's all in theory though since Blizzard keeps it hidden. This is all based on someone who did some research and proposed MMR was based on something called ELO algorithm or something like that. I'll try find the post now again.

Here's the extract of relevance. They talk a bit more about ladder rankings and ladder points as well:

MMR itself is never displayed and as such the details of its calculation are very hard to gleam. Assuming its similar to Elo, the system will increase a player’s MMR by more if they defeat a relatively more skilled opponent and decrease it by less if they lose to a more skilled opponent. The Elo-style math is a bit messy, but essentially the algorithm calculates a percentage chance that each player will win based on the players’ MMRs. The chance scales logarithmically with their differences; a 400 point rating difference might means A has a ten times greater chance of winning than B, eg, about a 90% chance to win. If a player wins, the system increases their MMR by the chance that they would lose times some system-wide constant, K, and does the opposite for their opponent. For example, if K is set to 12 and player A has a 90% chance of winning against B, and A does indeed win, his rating would increase by only .1*12=1.2, while B’s rating would decrease by the same. If B won, his rating would increase by .9*12=10.8 and A’s would decrease by the same amount. The system does not punish B very much for having to play A, but rewards him significantly if he does well.

http://lorehound.com/starcraft/starc...lained-part-2/

This makes sense to explain how mass gamers can get into the top 200 even though their skill level is not that high. They mass up MMR increases of like 1-2 points every time. Whereas pro players mass like MMR points of 10+ very quickly until they reach the MMR rating where other players of similar skill are at.

[Todie]

EDIT: Todie just to be clear on the MMR skill thing. It rises and falls just like ladder points. If you win it goes up. If you lose your MMR goes down. The exact amounts depends a lot on the favoured situation and the opponent's MMR. It's some weird algorithm thing. It's all in theory though since Blizzard keeps it hidden. This is all based on someone who did some research and proposed MMR was based on something called ELO algorithm or something like that. I'll try find the post now again.

im fully aware of this, im just saying its important to distinguish between the inflaton that occurs with ladder-rating points (due to bonus and arguably more points gained than lost at a win or loss respectively, to the same player) ... for your rating to improve you just have to keep playing and spend your bonus pool. but your MMR to improve its not enough to just mass games. i guess noone was saying that, but it deserves underlining; you need t consistently win more than you lose to players that currently have an equal or higher MMR in order to improve your own.

we dont know how the MMRs adjust but i wouldnt expect the MMR of those who are already "up there" to be increasing at any significant rate; winning enough to maintain it is hard enough.

... i think rating (with bonus) will be a better measurement of who's on-top and active.. once we have the new leagues for the higher MMR players (as currently, it seems bad to compare ratings of high MMR diamonds to those with a bit lower MRR, as the differences in points lost & gained from playing similar opnents can be huge)

This makes sense to explain how mass gamers can get into the top 200 even though their skill level is not that high. They mass up MMR increases of like 1-2 points every time. Whereas pro players mass like MMR points of 10+ very quickly until they reach the MMR rating where other players of similar skill are at.

i dont understand your reasoning here. i think you are not taking into account that regardless of whos playing, each consecutive win against a similar opponent will yield lower rewards. it seems youre seeing a hole in the system that i am not; i dont think there are any "game massers with a skill level hats not that high" with top MRR's ; the only way to get a high MRR is to beat good players. period. (if they can only get there by abusing certain risky hard to stop all-in strategies or whatever, thats a different matter; a gameplay atter not related to the AMM)

[JackhammerIV]

The hole i see is having a win ratio over 50% against opponents rated as "Teams even" by blizzard. Not so difficult as it may seem. Like if each win was worth 2 MMR points and each loss deducted 2 MMR points. Then even having a win:loss of 1.1:1 means they gain 0.2 MMR points every 2-3 games they play. Then imagine they play 2000-3000 games. The MMR rises.

That's the hole i am seeing. e.g. in the matchmaker now B+ player plays A and A+ players 5 games in a row. Loses all 5 games. Matchmaker panics and gives the B+ player tons of C level opponents to boost their win rate back up to 50%. Then it says ok i think i know his skill level. Let's try 2 A players now. Loses both times again. Then it panics and gives him tons of C level opponents again. Each loss to A level players is say -2. And each win vs a C level player is +2. Against B players say it is +3.

Since blizzard's matchmaker tries to give people a 50% win rate it ends up letting mass gamers sort of farm MMR points. I'm sure you've noticed how if you lose to a favoured opponent on SC2 then matchmaker gives you like a bunch of random easy opponents after that. I've had the same where i maintained a win rate over 50%. Everytime i had a tough opponent that i lost to it gives me like 4 gold league players in a row that i can beat 60-70% of the time.

This introduces the "hole" I said where you gain like a small amount of MMR points every 10 games you play. For a casual player that isn't much so the MMR better reflects skill. But for a mass gamer with thousands of games the constraint of matchmaker to give you a 50% win ratio allows them to farm MMR points and have the MMR points of an A player but only the skill level of a B+ player.

The thing is Todie that you're thinking you can't get much MMR points from beating easier opponents and to rise up in MMR you need to beat players as good as or better than you. That is true except in large numbers. They can turn a net gain of say 0.1 MMR points per win they get vs easier opponents into a large enough number cos of the design of matchmaker and cos they play so so many games. It's similar to how on ladder you just keep gaining points even if you feel you're not improving as fast as your points are going up. For MMR it happens much slower. But it still increases.

This of course is temporary. As people ladder more and more the Blizzard matchmaker eventually puts you where you belong in terms of skill. But to me i think it will take a year or two for it to have a good idea where you actually rank in terms of skill. Blizzard did say just keep playing more and the matchmaker can figure out better where exactly you belong. But those mass gamers had a headstart.

Basically the time it takes B.net 2 to figure out todie that you deserve an MMR of 1200 say would be like 1 year since you don't play so much. For those mass gamers since they gave B.net thousands of games of data they get up to 1200 in like a few months. And since they don't have much competition within those few months except pros (who generally don't ladder much) and other mass gamers they can maintain an MMR of 1200. Then in like a year of playing when casual players with an actual MMR of 1200 gets placed there by the matchmaker then those mass gamers will have competition and we'll see if they really deserve the 1200MMR rating. Does that make sense?

EDIT: You are right todie that those up there in top 200 the MMR doesn't increase significantly. It's like if you see the front page of SC:L now liquidret is like in the top 10 with 3 wins for every loss. His MMR jumped up like a raging beast and he has like around 200ish games played. Imagine a mass gamer with 3000 games played. Even if their MMR increase is insignificant like for every 2 games he gains 0.1 MMR. Liquidret beasts his way to the top getting like 10-20MMR with each win until matchmaker settles on where to put him then it slows down. Those mass gamers just keep getting that 0.1 and it just builds up bigger and bigger since they play so much. That's the point i am making. The "hole".

[Todie]

The hole i see is having a win ratio over 50% against opponents rated as "Teams even" by blizzard. Not so difficult as it may seem. Like if each win was worth 2 MMR points and each loss deducted 2 MMR points. Then even having a win:loss of 1.1:1 means they gain 0.2 MMR points every 2-3 games they play. Then imagine they play 2000-3000 games. The MMR rises.

how is this a hole? if you win, you are better and increase your MRR.
if you get higher MMR you need to beat even better people to rank up more MMR.

its in now way easy to play alot of games and win 55%+ its even harder if you take skill into account.

just look at our internal raking here; a few months aback many more of us had winrates of 55-60% but as we play more, the system pins us down and we start facing more challenging opponents more frequently.

im not picking your entire post apart but:

I'm sure you've noticed how if you lose to a favoured opponent on SC2 then matchmaker gives you like a bunch of random easy opponents after that. I've had the same where i maintained a win rate over 50%. Everytime i had a tough opponent that i lost to it gives me like 4 gold league players in a row that i can beat 60-70% of the time.

.. no this is just your experience and it has little if anyhting to do with how things really work.

... in my experience theres nothing magical about massing games, otehr than that it spends your bonuspoints consistently and gives a fairly high rating that way.


the very definition of a player with high MMR is that i gets matched against others with high MMR ... you cant just stereotype tehse players as "game massers" and try to imply taht tehy arnt actually that good; they wouldnt be tehre if they didnt win against good players and they have gotten to where tehy are beating palyers like you and me fairly conistently.


... this discussion is getting super silly. lets try using less words.

[JackhammerIV]

Ya this is getting really long. Ok simply put. Considering mass gamer is good like A- or A. Those mass gamers have an actual MMR. There are x number of players with a higher MMR. There are y players with a lower MMR. Right now for mass gamers, y>x and x+y represents the total pool blizzard matchmaker takes your opponent from.

Since the game is new and people haven't had time to play enough to raise their MMR to their skill ceiling this gives the mass gamer the situation of y>x. This means mass gamer played so much since release of SC2 he's hit his skill ceiling like months ahead of everyone else. So most times mass gamer faces someone with lower MMR and can beat them easily. Sometimes he faces people with higher MMR and loses to them a lot.

Now both x and y are growing slowly over time as people get better and learn the game and hit their skill ceiling. But the mass gamer is still playing tons of games so that he sort of "exploits" the fact that y>x. Since y>x he can slowly increase his MMR with every win he gets if he maintains win rate of over 50%. So he gains more MMR points and suddenly he gets ranked A+. There aren't enough A+ actual skill level players to push him down to his actual skill level of A or A- so he stays there.

Basically it is a temporary "hole" that gets fixed as people ladder a lot more. If this argument didn't convince you Todie then I guess let's just abandon this topic. We'll agree to disagree.

[Norfindel]

I hope that's not how it works. League placement should use the hidden ranking which reflects actual skill instead of points & how many games you spammed.

All leagues should be based on that, anyways.