100% agree. GM league will probably be accurately reflect skill for the first few weeks while everyone is laddering, but as nirvana says (or perhaps asks?), if you go inactive for two weeks and hit 180 bonus, you lose all your points and have to start from scratch. Personally, whenever I get busy at work for a few weeks, my bonus pool shoots over 180 in no time.
So as Xeen said (and nirvana alludes to) the guys up the top of GM league will be those who can afford the time to consistently ladder every week, week in and week out, non-stop, the entire season.
What is the alternative? There is a superficial attraction to displaying actual MMR rather than points (eg a proper ELO rating), but the obvious problem is that someone could have a very high rating early on in the season, then stop playing, and by the end of the season their high rating may not be justified in light of the increase in average player skill over the season. This is the problem the bonus point system (which is in reality a decay system) intends to address ("unjustified rating problem").
I actually think a decay system (read bonus point accumulation) is necessary to avoid the unjustified rating problem, but at the moment it seems to me the rate of ladder decay is too high (ie bonus pool accumulates too rapidly). Blizzard could halve the rate of decay (even if for GM league only) and still adequately address the unjustified rating problem. They already recognised this problem in arranged team games, where the bonus pool accumulating has now been considerably reduced as it was simply not possible for higher rated teams to play enough games to use up their bonus pool.
One reason why the bonus pool currently accumulates so quickly is because in a normal distribution, many people would be sitting at 0 (or theoretically negative) points. But by the time we're dealing with GMs league, I think its time for people to suck it up for the sake of accuracy.
Believe it or not, most of us at the top of the ladder the past season only played around 5-10 games a week. Just spend your bonus and that's pretty much all you had to do to maintain ur rank....and when the points get higher and the distribution is closer to people's mmr, it would only require 5-10 games a week to maintain ur rank in the top 10.
The reason for this is because the SEA ladder at the top isn't very active. What you get is usually +1 to +4 points when no one else at the top is playing, that means you will lose -20 to -23 points a game if u lose. Without bonus, it's not a very effective way to gain points and hence most people just dont play lol.
Believe it or not, most of us at the top of the ladder the past season only played around 5-10 games a week. Just spend your bonus and that's pretty much all you had to do to maintain ur rank....and when the points get higher and the distribution is closer to people's mmr, it would only require 5-10 games a week to maintain ur rank in the top 10.
The reason for this is because the SEA ladder at the top isn't very active. What you get is usually +1 to +4 points when no one else at the top is playing, that means you will lose -20 to -23 points a game if u lose. Without bonus, it's not a very effective way to gain points and hence most people just dont play lol.
*cough* emphasize 5+ minute waits *cough*
80% of the people i vs on ladder are on my real ID friend list .
Believe it or not, most of us at the top of the ladder the past season only played around 5-10 games a week. Just spend your bonus and that's pretty much all you had to do to maintain ur rank....and when the points get higher and the distribution is closer to people's mmr, it would only require 5-10 games a week to maintain ur rank in the top 10.
I'm not sure if you mean this literally, but it doesn't seem to add up. Assuming 1 to 4 points per win, that equates to 1 to 4 bonus points per win. 90 bonus points accumulate per week, which means you need to win 23 to 90 games per week to keep up with the rate of bonus pool accumulation, with a mid point of 45 wins.
Assuming you win 60% of the time, you would need to actually play just over 80 1v1s per week to keep up with your bonus pool if you are in the top 10 (using Roz's assumed average points per win).
That seems to me to be a lot of games, but I suspect the assumption of 1 to 4 points per win is a little low.
Last edited by Tom; Tue, 12th-Apr-2011 at 8:50 PM.
I'm not sure if you mean this literally, but it doesn't seem to add up. Assuming 1 to 4 points per win, that equates to 1 to 4 bonus points per win. 90 bonus points accumulate per week, which means you need to win 23 to 90 games per week to keep up with the rate of bonus pool accumulation, with a mid point of 45 wins.
Assuming you win 60% of the time, you would need to actually play just over 80 1v1s per week to keep up with your bonus pool if you are in the top 10 (using Roz's assumed average points per win).
That seems to me to be a lot of games, but I suspect the assumption of 1 to 4 points per win is a little low.
Maybe Roz is just referring to games in which he doesn't 4gate.
___________________________________ Brendan "TAdeL" Ferguson Clan TA | Twitter | YouTube
Yea you can tell who is really the best out there with the W/L ratios
i wish they left W/L in BSGPD
I could get an account with 200-20 into GM (lose 20 to drop to lowest of bronze, then win the next 200), doesn't make me "better" than many of the players that would have a "worser-looking record". Win percentage does give a nice indication of skill, as well as looking so damn pretty, but it has always been overrated as they don't seem to tell the overall story(like a "hot girl" in a bikini):
1) Players with absolute "sick records" generally spend less time laddering and more time "training" or "custom-gaming" which aren't recorded, this also creates a "elite" effect of how little games they seem to have played, they still appear to be freaking good.
2) There are ways that you can manipulate the system for a nice win percentage record, so that people who really care and aim for those records are going to get it.
I don't agree with Blizzard taking the W/L out of BSGPD, I really think they should have at least an option to display it to others or only to yourself. But I guess this way it motivates more BSGPD players to play, a very good marketing ploy.
Gogogo SEA GM!
Last edited by nGenLight; Wed, 13th-Apr-2011 at 3:09 AM.
I like the idea of not seeing W/L for leagues under Masters as that also means you can't see your total games played. Less guilt from seeing how much time I spend on SC2
I'm not sure if you mean this literally, but it doesn't seem to add up. Assuming 1 to 4 points per win, that equates to 1 to 4 bonus points per win. 90 bonus points accumulate per week, which means you need to win 23 to 90 games per week to keep up with the rate of bonus pool accumulation, with a mid point of 45 wins.
Assuming you win 60% of the time, you would need to actually play just over 80 1v1s per week to keep up with your bonus pool if you are in the top 10 (using Roz's assumed average points per win).
That seems to me to be a lot of games, but I suspect the assumption of 1 to 4 points per win is a little low.
What i mean is the reason we don't mass games is because of the low point gains if we do. However, like Edge said, a lotta times we just play when we see someone on our friend list search and we know they will give us decent points if we win.
At first I was just being dramatic by saying we'd have to play all the time.
Now I see that my games are going to be +4/-20 against other GMs around my rank. Let's assume I go 50% wins - that's a lot of games I need to play to continually keep bonus down. As a chore.
God forbid I do anything else and thus come back to having to clear 100 bonus at once.
What's stupid is according to Blizzard's post on the GM league, they specify people will remain in the GM spot until the season ends unless their bonus pool piles up. By that rule, people could lose 100 games in a row to bring their MMR down to a Bronze level, then win a lot of games to keep their bonus pool down, while still maintaining the GM league status.
(Blizzard never mentioned there was a demotion, they only said once you're in, you stay in)
90 BP a week means 12.85 BP a day. If you won 2-3 games a day (depending on if you're favoured or not) then that's not hard to maintain. The stupid thing is once you're in, you can be vsing players from Bronze, and maintaining GM League (according to Blizzard...)
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