Over the last few days I have played the most SC2 I EVER have and I feel have been improving rapidly.
However what continues to frustrate me is I have no clear idea of where I am apart from 'Platinum Rank 1' and the 'Favoured, Slightly favoured and Teams Even' indication. I went from Gold > Platinum at the start of this season after placement. Ever since then I think I have gone ~50-18 or so in games, with MASSIVE win streaks and one fairly large loss streak. Yet I seem to be placed against golds sometimes where it says teams even... Also when I play Diamonds sometimes I am favoured, clearly ones MMR can very heaps within one league, presuming MMR is what the indication is based off.
Why can't we see it?
In almost every other game you have a clear idea of where you are and where your opponents are and I feel SC2 really needs this. What players gets discouraged after seeing they are say 700 ELO? If they're playing the game for fun they don't care. With only 7 leagues and a HUGE variety of skill there is so much guess work in where you really are. It boggles my brain to know why we can't have a better indication of where you are at...
In games even like CoD on console you can see other people K/D and rank etc and probably gauge someone skill better than on SC2. Especially around Platinum/Gold league where I feel the vareity of skills is largest. I keep feeling like I am so close to that promotion, going on ~8 win streaks only to be tilted by some cheese and engulf myself in an utter rage after seeing that I lost to cheese from a Gold player that said 'Teams even.' Also over the last year I have been playing the game I feel as though not once I have been promoted mid season, do Blizzard want people to lose a sense of reward for playing? Or a paints for ladder that are seemingly meaningless all that matters?
I am almost finding the more I play now the less motivated I am to go back after I stop as there is a complete lack in sense of achievement. You don't unlock anything, you get a mediocre victory screen (at least HotS looks more vibrant and worthwhile) and some points, yippee.
Clearly I am on tilt as I am writing this but I feel as though my points are still valid.
TLDR: Why can't we see MMR, no logical reason. GG.
___________________________________
I keep it real bruv.
Points are a pretty accurate measure at any given time (assuming you're comparing people who have all spent their bonus pool), but their dependence on the time in the given season is super annoying. If someone tells me they are 1000 points on NA, I have no idea what that actually means unless I'm currently playing enough on NA to spend my own bonus pool (and even then it's just a ballpark "worse than me/better than me/is actually jaedong". Being able to see MMR would solve this problem.
Kez makes a good point. The points are pretty much why they don't show your actual MMR. Points ARE, as far as you should be concerned, your MMR. Or at least a representation of it.
I feel this is actually quite accurate. Blizzard trialed the concept of standardising all ladders, a process which made the start of the ladder season it occurred in murderously difficult as all ladders were based off of a single tier rather than a 4 or 5 tier system of MMR.
While I am not sure if Blizzard actually rescinded this system, it made for an interesting and more challenging ladder experience that both frustrated, and gave a greater feeling of improvement. Some arbitrary representation of you MMR (ladder points and/or the league of the opponents you face) generally should suffice for the real figure.
Assuming they do not correlate to MMR however, points (and by proxy, the inflated bonus pool) allows for higher level, and lower level players to have the illusion of progress whether they are advancing or not, and gives Blizzard a MUCH easier way to qualitatively represent people's standings in a league table.
I played vs Titan on ladder the other week for example, (and got destroyed) and that was maybe a day after my promotion to diamond. Simply, if you are playing well and your MMR is higher, you will play versus better opponents. If you are regularly playing versus people in a higher league, and beating them, then there is a good chance that you will get a promotion.
In the mean time, patience is worth using. If someone as terrible as me can make diamond, anyone can!
Promotions aside, MMR is a number that most (casual) players would not understand if they saw it, so it could be possible for Blizzard to implement a system that allows you to see your MMR on your Bnet profile page, however, given how much work they need to put into other things it's not something important enough to imagine being implemented in the near future.
All the best with your laddering though. Keep hitting that button!
___________________________________ Vice-captain of the Fusion Slugs
Member of the Masters of Koreign casting team.
The tool has just been taken over by new people, and they have had to make a lot of changes to coincide with the new Diamond and Masters threshold so I don't know if its 100% accurate yet (it was working great previous seasons) but it will still give a pretty close ballpark MMR figure as well as the thresholds for each league.
I gave up with random assumptions on my climb to diamond,
The pattern that I found in Platinum-Diamond promotions is that promotions were rapidly handed out to active players and rank1
I was rank 2 for 3 days beating masters and nothing.
Got rank 1 and won two games - Promotion.
Sorry if it's not what you were after, but rank 1 is your best chance amigo :/
I love this. Everyone says this about their own league haha and how the hardest skill jump is whatever league they're in right now :P
It does make sense that people would think that as their current league is the league they have the greatest understanding of at that time. It's also what gives them the most difficulty.
On a side note, I like the look of SC2gears. I might have to try it out later myself.
___________________________________ Vice-captain of the Fusion Slugs
Member of the Masters of Koreign casting team.
The problem with points is that its not an accurate measure of how close you are to a promotion. On SEA especially, where the player base is low and the points in top 8 are far lesser than on NA its difficult to gauge where exactly you are at. I can say on NA im 1000 points and I'd be mid master, but on SEA you'd be by far rank 1. It's not so much for top end players that you need an MMR calculator, but in the lower leagues it is something which would be interesting to look at and accurately decipher your skill level.
The problem with points is that its not an accurate measure of how close you are to a promotion. On SEA especially, where the player base is low and the points in top 8 are far lesser than on NA its difficult to gauge where exactly you are at. I can say on NA im 1000 points and I'd be mid master, but on SEA you'd be by far rank 1. It's not so much for top end players that you need an MMR calculator, but in the lower leagues it is something which would be interesting to look at and accurately decipher your skill level.
On NA currently I am at 402 points, the next closest is 293 and I am rank one . Went form like 41-6 yesterday to 63-25 at the end of today... Still no promotion and it is killing me on the inside T_T Most my loses were to plats though from memory I beat every Diamond so far bar one.
___________________________________
I keep it real bruv.
Even the smallest donations help keep sc2sea running! All donations go towards helping our site run including our monthly server hosting fees and sc2sea sponsored community tournaments we host. Find out more here.