[aztecx]

Does anyone else think that the ladder promotion hotfix is just fking retarded? When I used to play 2v2r a lot last season, I would have been able to tell you which players were going to be promoted to masters just by their skill as they were all a league above the rest. There was a HUGE difference in skill between a master and high diamond player in 2v2r. The fact that it was so hard to get into masters really gave the achievement a sense of prestige. This hotfix has effectively turned SEA into the NA server, where masters is basically the equivalent of our (previously) mid/high diamond with ******* shit players everywhere. I'm not sure what the hotfix exactly did and if it had the same effect on all ladders but in 2v2r I think that it lowered the MMR required for promotion making it far easier.

I don't even feel like logging on again and getting my 1v1 into masters which I've leveled from bronze into diamond over the past two weeks. Something which would have brought me a sense of accomplishment has now been reduced to nothing. Why would I want to make masters if it's so ******* easy? I'm a competitive person and want something to show for my efforts. As well as this, I want to make masters just as every other player before me did, and not because of some ******* gay hotfix since blizzard believes that getting there is too hard. Soon they're going to remove bronze-diamond league and everyone's going to be a ******* grandmaster at this game.

[ETL.Santi]

Have you try getting into grandmasters?

[Monk]

Is there any source on this hotfix? Or is it just speculation?
I noticed in my 1v1 I was promoted to plat in a new division.. Maybe the player base is growing and people are getting promoted into these new divisions.. Because you know, divisions are sorted on a percentage of players.

[Tom]

Source of the hotfix: http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/125992601

Yes the hotfix was extremely noticeable. The arranged team 2v2 ladder overnight went from having around 20 teams in one division to two divisions with around 150 teams (last time I checked). The good thing about all these new "masters" is that it is suddenly easy to get points in 2v2 again. aLtGuc and I stomped our way to #1 in a couple of hours.

Also, is it just me or did Bliz lower the Grandmaster MMR bar at the same time? I noticed a whole lot of new players got placed in GMs league (as indicated by the "!"), and suddenly everyone I play is "slightly favoured" and I'm getting lots of points. This will probably sort itself out after a few more games (remember when Masters was first introduced and everyone got mass points until their points aligned with their MMR). The hotfix seems to have raised the par by 100-200 points for the same MMR, so everyone got a leg up.

[aztecx]

Originally Posted by Tom

Source of the hotfix: http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/125992601

Yes the hotfix was extremely noticeable. The arranged team 2v2 ladder overnight went from having around 20 teams in one division to two divisions with around 150 teams (last time I checked). The good thing about all these new "masters" is that it is suddenly easy to get points in 2v2 again. aLtGuc and I stomped our way to #1 in a couple of hours.

Also, is it just me or did Bliz lower the Grandmaster MMR bar at the same time? I noticed a whole lot of new players got placed in GMs league (as indicated by the "!"), and suddenly everyone I play is "slightly favoured" and I'm getting lots of points. This will probably sort itself out after a few more games (remember when Masters was first introduced and everyone got mass points until their points aligned with their MMR). The hotfix seems to have raised the par by 100-200 points for the same MMR, so everyone got a leg up.

Yeah the AT 2v2 ladder has changed a lot too. Meh blizzard continuing to **** shit up as usual.

Originally Posted by Santi

Have you try getting into grandmasters?

Shouldn't be hard after this new hotfix.

[Tom]

Well I just did a search of sc2ranks.com - Team = Arranged 2v2, Activity = last 30 days. There are now 199 teams, constituting 1.9% of active 2v2 teams. So in fairness to Blizzard, given their aim of having 2% of players by game-type in Masters, it looks like their fix was spot on.

In actual fact, the previous MMR bar for arranged team Masters league was unrealistically high for SEA, such that far less than 2% of teams were in Masters. The main problem I think was Blizzard's "moving average" system. There are so many teams that worked their way up with mass games, that it would take many more months of consistent high level play to get their "moving average" over the threshold. Coupled with the fact that there are so many random ways you can die in team games, only a very few teams were able to make the cut off.

This created a big problem for those who did place in Masters actually getting any points (especially last season before Blizzard tweaked the bonus point accumulating rate for arranged teams). So whilst placement in Masters was a very good indicator of skill, ranking in the division was almost meaningless. For example, the average points per game for nGenStarhunt and I was 0. Sometimes we would be lucky and get 1 (+1 bonus). I remember one day playing 10 games over 3 hours, and watching our bonus pool accumulate faster than we were using it.

[Benji]

I can mirror what Tom said about 2v2, myself and Xeen were trying to maintain the top 8 rankings in our division, however getting +1(+1) for a win and -20 for a loss means going 9-1 means we are losing points, whilst somehow other teams are still getting +12 for a win whilst ranked higher.

[aztecx]

Originally Posted by Santi

Have you try getting into grandmasters?

Originally Posted by Tom

Well I just did a search of sc2ranks.com - Team = Arranged 2v2, Activity = last 30 days. There are now 199 teams, constituting 1.9% of active 2v2 teams. So in fairness to Blizzard, given their aim of having 2% of players by game-type in Masters, it looks like their fix was spot on.

In actual fact, the previous MMR bar for arranged team Masters league was unrealistically high for SEA, such that far less than 2% of teams were in Masters. The main problem I think was Blizzard's "moving average" system. There are so many teams that worked their way up with mass games, that it would take many more months of consistent high level play to get their "moving average" over the threshold. Coupled with the fact that there are so many random ways you can die in team games, only a very few teams were able to make the cut off.

This created a big problem for those who did place in Masters actually getting any points (especially last season before Blizzard tweaked the bonus point accumulating rate for arranged teams). So whilst placement in Masters was a very good indicator of skill, ranking in the division was almost meaningless. For example, the average points per game for nGenStarhunt and I was 0. Sometimes we would be lucky and get 1 (+1 bonus). I remember one day playing 10 games over 3 hours, and watching our bonus pool accumulate faster than we were using it.

Yeah I totally agree with the division ranking but personally that never mattered to me because I understood that it is just points and doesn't reflect your actual skill. The thing is, there will always be teams that are completely favored over 95% of their opponents and masters was generally full of teams like that. This is what gave it the prestige that it had and made it so hard to obtain for a lot of people. Making it much easier to gain masters now really makes it harder to differentiate between the mid/high diamond teams and those that really are a league above the rest. I guess once everyone has used up their bonus pool the better players will rise to the top but even then I have never really used division ranking as an indicator of skill. This is because I have found that mass gaming can get you to the top of your division without you actually being the best.

Personally I don't give a **** about division ranking.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by aztecx

Yeah I totally agree with the division ranking but personally that never mattered to me because I understood that it is just points and doesn't reflect your actual skill. The thing is, there will always be teams that are completely favored over 95% of their opponents and masters was generally full of teams like that. This is what gave it the prestige that it had and made it so hard to obtain for a lot of people. Making it much easier to gain masters now really makes it harder to differentiate between the mid/high diamond teams and those that really are a league above the rest. I guess once everyone has used up their bonus pool the better players will rise to the top but even then I have never really used division ranking as an indicator of skill. This is because I have found that mass gaming can get you to the top of your division without you actually being the best.

Personally I don't give a **** about division ranking.

When it was nearly impossible to gain points for some arranged teams, certainly division ranking meant very little.

But in 1v1, division ranking has always mattered (assuming you are comparing players active enough to use up or keep their bonus points low). Take Grandmasters league for example, I doubt anyone here would seriously consider a rank < 100 GM to be even remotely comparable with a top 10 GM. Let me tell you from personal experience, the skill level of a SEA top 10 GM is exponentially higher than the top 50 GM even.

Now that it is possible again to gain points in 2v2, I think rankings will become just as important in this format of the game (assuming of couse we are comparing teams who are active enough to have used their bonus pool). I suspect also that the distribution will be a lot like GMs league, with an elite group at the very top who are not really comparable to the bottom 50 (or 90), despite all being "Masters".

[pikk0n]

Just a quick thought on the topic in regards to division rankings. If rankings mattered that little, why would Blizzard give special symbols to those in the top 50, 25 and 8? It's because Blizzard wants to make rankings matter more, that's why the hotfix was done. Otherwise, that change from Blizzard would be obsolete. This alone should be enough motivation for people to ladder more. Who doesn't like the shiny star at the bottom of their masters league symbol? As for your argument about people who ladder too much but have little quality, how many games do you reckon those pro-sc2 players played to get to where they are? If you want to be good, you just have to play more. Practice more. SC2 isn't going to grow if it's filled with masters players like you who refuse to play because their opponents are 'crap'. How else can these 'crap' opponents get better if they do not play against quality opponents? Sorry, but I just didn't like this tone of arrogance from someone who's good but rather selfish. You might think that those players are crap now but 2 months down the track, I am willing to bet that they'll start beating you and you'll be the one who's bad in their eyes. If I offended you in any way, I certainly didn't mean to do so. It's just an argument about the point you made and in defence of Blizzard and the change implemented.

Also, like what Tom was saying, this is an incentive for the existing masters players to play more team games and be appreciated for their achievements (through the extra points gained and the nice top 8 star that comes with being a highly ranked masters player).

[aztecx]

Originally Posted by pikk0n

Just a quick thought on the topic in regards to division rankings. If rankings mattered that little, why would Blizzard give special symbols to those in the top 50, 25 and 8? It's because Blizzard wants to make rankings matter more, that's why the hotfix was done. Otherwise, that change from Blizzard would be obsolete. This alone should be enough motivation for people to ladder more. Who doesn't like the shiny star at the bottom of their masters league symbol? As for your argument about people who ladder too much but have little quality, how many games do you reckon those pro-sc2 players played to get to where they are? If you want to be good, you just have to play more. Practice more. SC2 isn't going to grow if it's filled with masters players like you who refuse to play because their opponents are 'crap'. How else can these 'crap' opponents get better if they do not play against quality opponents? Sorry, but I just didn't like this tone of arrogance from someone who's good but rather selfish. You might think that those players are crap now but 2 months down the track, I am willing to bet that they'll start beating you and you'll be the one who's bad in their eyes. If I offended you in any way, I certainly didn't mean to do so. It's just an argument about the point you made and in defence of Blizzard and the change implemented.

Also, like what Tom was saying, this is an incentive for the existing masters players to play more team games and be appreciated for their achievements (through the extra points gained and the nice top 8 star that comes with being a highly ranked masters player).

It's the same players that were playing just as much in diamond league, the only difference is they get a shiny new icon and fill up the divisions. As well as this, cause masters to lose its prestige. I do agree with Tom's argument though and I can already see that the better players will always dominate the top of the leagues. One thing I have noticed is that everyone that got promoted has an over-inflated MMR, which means I'm getting rather easy games against players that are apparently favoured against me.