Tuesday, February 24, 2009

I still suck - a rant about ranking

I've been quiet for a while playing 1v1s again on iC Cup. And I still suck. For a while I thought that everyone except me was playing as Terran and I was thinking that I was slowly improving.

It may sound as a small accomplishment, but my APM once a rock iccupsolid 60 has climbed to 85 and I am eyeing 100, wondering if I will ever get there. I've also gotten some build-order wins. Not many, but a few. Then I ran into a bunch of Protoss players and realized that I still suck at mirror matchups.

The skill level difference on D is huge and at least two players who beat me was playing with APMs above 240. They were waaay better than me. It makes playing depressing. I think what is wrong is that many people start out new accounts just to beat up sucky players like me or maybe they are just cruising through the lower levels until they reach their level. I think there must be a better system.

Back when I was playing chess competitively I know that clubs, to some degree, could hand out start ratings to new players. To sort of seed them right. Some were given 1100 and others 1400. It made it more fun for those at 1100, that they did not have to play other newbies who were clearly a lot better.

Recently I got in to the Quake 3 Live beta. They do a calibration when you create your account and then they use that to match you against other humans. I guess they measure stuff like how long does it take you to get 20 kills, what is your aim accuracy and other things. I don't really know how well it works for Quake Live, but I like the idea. Obviously it can be abused, but I would like to see something similar for Starcraft II.

Posted by Fafner at 19:36
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4 comments:

  1. MichaelFebruary 25, 2009 at 8:21 AM

    This really bothers me. I want to do what I can to help you become better

    ReplyDelete
  2. FafnerFebruary 25, 2009 at 2:42 PM

    Thanks, I really appreciate it. I just don't know what you can do. I have this idea that there is something stupid that I am missing out on and if I just could figure that out, I would become a lot better. I just don't know what it could be?

    Soon I'll collect some of my recent defeats and upload them. I think some good comments would help. Unfortunately a replay does not show what I am looking at, what keys I press and so on. Sad...

    ReplyDelete
  3. MichaelFebruary 25, 2009 at 4:37 PM

    I had the same exact feeling.

    In a game against the computer just cycle through your buildings over and over as fast as you can (so there is something always queued up or money is low), and then try to keep it up by handling a group of units at the same time. That's pretty much all there is to it, you aren't so bad at build orders.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMarch 5, 2009 at 9:45 AM

    I was actually very disappointed with the match making system in Quake Live. I was hoping for a sliding rating/ladder-type matching system but instead they have implemented a very rigid bucked-type system.

    This is my understanding of it:

    While playing the calibration game the bot AI is constantly changing it's difficulty level trying to find a level which fits you. Based on this level you are placed in one of five (I believe) buckets. You are matched against all players in that bucket. You can change bucket if you do sufficiently bad or good against the other players in your bucket.

    The result was I was placed in the highest skill level bucket because i owned the AI and then got absolutely murdered when playing 1v1 against the best players on maps i never tried before.

    It kinda put me off the game even tho I'm an oldschool q3 player really looking forward to some good experiences with the old lady again.

    ReplyDelete

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