At the bottom of the Bronze League there is a strange phenomenon. Players can be up against a player who is favorite and win and earn 2 points. Only one of those points are real. The other is taken from said players bonus pool.
It completely baffles me, and I think that Blizzard risk scaring away the players who have still a lot to learn. Its very demoralizing to not get rewarded for the few wins you really do manage to get.
I agree, there really might be a risk for blizzard scaring away these folks.
ReplyDeleteBut with that amount of sold games there might be a slight chance for them to not care at all. Don't you think?
Easy explanation. The number of people at the "0 point" is very high. Therefore, it is easy for the matchmaking algo to find a match... who also has ~0 points. Even if they have 1 or 2 points, they will likely be expressed as a "favorite". If you win, however, you aren't really doing much for your score because they were "favored" by so very little.
ReplyDeleteIt's just like Dave described. Once you get to a level where your opponents have 20-30 points, you should start getting normal amounts of points for your wins.
ReplyDeleteAlso, just discovered your blog as I've been looking for SC2 blogs to add to my own blog list. Feel free to check out mine at thelittlezergling.blogspot.com.
There is definitely something wrong here
ReplyDelete@Dave That is crazy. On the load screen the game tells you that the opponent is favored. When you lose, you get a huge deduction in your score because you are the favorite. _Clearly_ a bug somewhere.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore: The first game I won I got like 44 points. Winning against an equal opponent should generate at least 10-20 points. It does so on gold and higher level. Obviously it should do so too for bronze players.
@Apollo "Once you get to a level where your opponents have 20-30 points". See the problem here is that these low level bronze players have a win rate on roughly 50%. In order to get 20-30 points on their own score they would have to win 10-15 games in a row. That is not very likely.
So they are stuck in an endless loop. Playing their peers and winning 2 points here and there, then losing them all at the first loss they get. On average a huge number of players have no points at all even if they win 45-55% of their games.
@Fafner I would argue that if they are winning approx 50% of their games, then they are at the right level of players for their skill set. If they started jumping up in points, they'd start being matched against people more skilled than themselves and the games wouldn't be nearly as fun.
ReplyDeleteAs far as winning 15 games in a row, it's indeed possible once they've progressed in skill to something above their current set of opponents. Get good enough at the game and you'll rise in the ladder, slowly but surely.
As a bronze level player it may be discouraging, but you have to remember, you can only go up. you have to keep at it and remember to give yourself a break once and awhile and learn from your losses. When you lose look at what ur opponent did and how fast he did it.
ReplyDeleteNow speedling rushes, zealot rushes and void ray rushes, those are just plain dirty at that low bracket, do your best to find out how to beat em back, i know easier said than done.
One thing i heard consistenly about how to move up into gold and platinum from bronze and lower is this, and i tried it and it seriosuly worked for me, MACRO MACRO MACRO. Getting a bigger army than your opponent is key at bronze silver and halfway through gold. jsut ignore macro, ignore spell casters and concetrate on your core units.
Protoss, Zealots and stalkers with forge and Twilight council upgrades
Zerg: Roaches and hydralisks, see how fast you can get them up.
Terran: the dreaded Marine, Marauder, Medivac(MMM) mix of units is deadly against any opponent.
This worked so well for me, in beta i was silver, when it came out and i did my placement matches, i got platinum, i was 5-0.
If you ever want a practice match let me know, Acacia 465
Well one thing to remember is that The Scale doesent function linear , like if you are favored vs me (om myend) it doesent mean that it is gonna be the same at your end, you might only be slightly facvored or qeual to, some times ive even seen ppl where a was favores vs b on b's screen and on a screen b was favored against A so the complete oppisite, that seems quite brokken to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah the way it functions in the very low end of bronze seems really brokken, but everyone appart from the very low bronze seems to be working well, but yeah they need to fix taht if they want new players to play some 1 on 1.
@Apollo Everyone else goes up when they are at 50% winrate.That is what the bonus pool ensure. It creates inflation in points. And while they may be matched-up against the right opponents, it doesn't really create an internal ranking among them as they are all on 0-2 points. Isn't that what the ladder is for?
ReplyDelete@Wingweaver Sure, we can practice except I think you are on NA and not EU, right?
Yeah after i posted the comment i realzed you were probably on the eu servers.
ReplyDelete