[G] Comprehensive SC2 League and Ladder Guide

Number of bronzes yesterday on LA server: 55,5%
Number of bronzes today: 54,1%

It will take probably more than 1 month to the leagues to get into the right track, but at least they will pretty soon

(numbers from sc2ranks)

NA also had 38% 2 weeks ago and now have 29,9%, pretty huge difference for only 2 weeks.

yomi United States. May 11 2011 00:33. Posts 772

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Sorry if this has been asked before, I tried to skim for it.

The OP says:

Master: Top 2% of active players
Diamond: Next 18% of active players

I thought Master was top 2% of diamond, not 2% of the total player pool. What is correct?

Azzur Australia. May 11 2011 00:39. Posts 5839

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On May 11 2011 00:33 yomi wrote:
Sorry if this has been asked before, I tried to skim for it.

The OP says:

Show nested quote +

I thought Master was top 2% of diamond, not 2% of the total player pool. What is correct?

Master is top 2% of total player pool

Excalibur_Z United States. May 11 2011 04:38. Posts 10283

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On May 11 2011 00:33 yomi wrote:
Sorry if this has been asked before, I tried to skim for it.

The OP says:

Show nested quote +

I thought Master was top 2% of diamond, not 2% of the total player pool. What is correct?

There was a blog post on the Battle.net website that erroneously said that Master was the top 2% of Diamond. All the other blog posts on the topic have correctly said top 10% of Diamond or top 2% of players. It was a typo.

platorepublic United Kingdom. May 11 2011 11:48. Posts 344

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Uh lol... do any bronze players here care? I only read for the stats.

Even though I've never met you, I still miss you.

101toss May 11 2011 11:52. Posts 2289

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In regards to the intercept graph in the OP:

I was smurfing on my friend's bronze league account, and after going on a 16-0 win streak, I began consistently hitting gold players. Is a larger-than-1 league differential supposed to happen?

Last edit: 2011-05-11 11:52:29

I'm in masters (also diamond ELO) so obviously I know what I'm talking about

SDream Brazil. May 11 2011 11:57. Posts 896

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On May 11 2011 11:52 101toss wrote:
In regards to the intercept graph in the OP:

I was smurfing on my friend's bronze league account, and after going on a 16-0 win streak, I began consistently hitting gold players. Is a larger-than-1 league differential supposed to happen?

Yeah, well, the system will not just choose a player, it will choose a player that is online at that exact moment, so in LA region I can beat a platinum, then beat a silver, then beat another silver, just because they are online at that time, and then my win rate go up, but I don't actually move into the ladder. Anyway, it's not just about ideal conditions, it's also about who's there.

drop271 New Zealand. May 11 2011 12:59. Posts 276

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Really interesting stuff.

Does this mean that for SEA, which currently has the following distribution: 44.1/19.7/13.7/10.8/9.2/1.9 from Bronze to Masters, that over time approximately halve of bronze will become silver and the current silver players will trend toward Gold?

I know its a crude example, but I'm curious if I have the principle correct?

SDream Brazil. May 11 2011 13:12. Posts 896

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On May 11 2011 12:59 drop271 wrote:
Really interesting stuff.

Does this mean that for SEA, which currently has the following distribution: 44.1/19.7/13.7/10.8/9.2/1.9 from Bronze to Masters, that over time approximately halve of bronze will become silver and the current silver players will trend toward Gold?

I know its a crude example, but I'm curious if I have the principle correct?

sc2ranks only shows the total number of players. The 20/20/20/etc is not meant to be total player base, but active player base, and as we have no idea what an active player is we also have no idea how far from it the servers are, were or will be, that said, we just don't know it's a wait and see.

drop271 New Zealand. May 11 2011 13:18. Posts 276

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On May 11 2011 13:12 SDream wrote:

Show nested quote +

Thanks, thats an important clarification. However, would my point stand if we assumed* that the league distribution for active players was the same as for innactive players (thereby making SC2ranks an accurate indicator)?

*of course we all know thats a big assumption as I'm guessing Bronze players are far more likely to be inactive than masters players

edit: Thanks for your answer below

Last edit: 2011-05-11 14:22:32

SDream Brazil. May 11 2011 14:01. Posts 896

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On May 11 2011 13:18 drop271 wrote:

Show nested quote +

Then the answer is probably yes. Keep in mind that the system isn't perfect, but Blizzard can tweak the numbers as they see fit at any time through hotfixes.

So let's say that we end up with 3% in masters, 13% in diamond, 16% platinum, 20% in gold, 21% in silver and 27% in bronze. Then Blizzard go check there and changes whatever they think should be changed again so that the system reach their objective of 20/20/20/etc.

So it could take some time, but Blizzard will make it happen if they truelly wish it to happen. So yeah it will happen but it might take some seasons

Belisarius Australia. May 11 2011 14:56. Posts 1753

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This is a really great article.

Just out of interest, do we know how blizzard ended up handling the ladder reset with respect to MMR?

We obviously didn't see everyone earning 20+ for each win after the reset, which is what I'd expect if MMR carried over and points didn't, but at the same time it seemed to place everyone pretty accurately back where they were.

I apologise if this has been previously explained.

Excalibur_Z United States. May 11 2011 15:23. Posts 10283

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On May 11 2011 14:56 Belisarius wrote:
This is a really great article.

Just out of interest, do we know how blizzard ended up handling the ladder reset with respect to MMR?

We obviously didn't see everyone earning 20+ for each win after the reset, which is what I'd expect if MMR carried over and points didn't, but at the same time it seemed to place everyone pretty accurately back where they were.

I apologise if this has been previously explained.

MMR stayed the same. People were earning 20+ points per win, at least in Master league. In the other leagues I think that was mitigated somewhat by division tiers because people just got placed in new tiers that better suited them.

Hristiyan May 11 2011 16:53. Posts 98

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Impressive, however is this just an assumption of how the MMR system works or does it have some degree of certainty ?

I there a way to calculate how far away from promotion i am?

Last edit: 2011-05-11 16:54:07

DusTerr Finland. May 11 2011 18:20. Posts 1804

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On February 22 2011 15:13 Excalibur_Z wrote:

Promotion
By outperforming the rest of your league, it is possible to get promoted into a higher league. If you are in Bronze but playing against Gold players, you would expect to be promoted to Gold, but that doesn't always happen immediately.

This is because the system requires a certain degree of confidence before players can be moved to a new league, otherwise they would bounce around from league to league too frequently for leagues to be meaningful. That confidence is measured in two ways:

First, the player must prove that he is capable of maintaining a certain level of skill. This is done by measuring the moving average of a player's MMR. The below image should help demonstrate. When this moving average stabilizes within the confines of a league, a player can be promoted into that league.

[F_]aths Germany. May 11 2011 20:46. Posts 2763

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On May 11 2011 16:53 Hristiyan wrote:
Impressive, however is this just an assumption of how the MMR system works or does it have some degree of certainty ?

I there a way to calculate how far away from promotion i am?

You cannot calculate it, but guess if when you check against which league you play games. Before I was promoted to Silver, I got both Bronze and Gold opponents. Now as I stabilized in Silver, I get almost only Silver opponents. The Gold players I got before were bad Goldies, short before their demotion.

You don't choose to play zerg. The zerg choose you.

GWEEDZ United States. May 11 2011 23:12. Posts 12

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I have a question about Grandmaster league. You stated taht one could only be demoted if they achieved a certain bonus pool. Does this mean that even if they lose a lot of games and their MMR goes down, that they would still be in grandmaster even though they could having less than a 50% ratio against masters players?

SO MANY BANELINGS-Artosis

MoreFaSho United States. May 12 2011 00:07. Posts 1408

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On May 11 2011 23:12 GWEEDZ wrote:
I have a question about Grandmaster league. You stated taht one could only be demoted if they achieved a certain bonus pool. Does this mean that even if they lose a lot of games and their MMR goes down, that they would still be in grandmaster even though they could having less than a 50% ratio against masters players?

Yes, but they do have to eventually win some games to use their bonus pool.

Last edit: 2011-05-12 00:07:34

BlueInkAlchemist United States. May 12 2011 02:29. Posts 69

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This is stuff I didn't know. Glad this got stickied so I can occasionally remind myself of how this works.

"Speed is the essence of war." - Sun-Tzu

fishjie United States. May 12 2011 03:22. Posts 559

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Oh cool, so back when I was still in diamond, I was in the top 20% of north america? that's cool. Too bad i'm platinum now.

Question: I didn't see it in the article, but the player skill distribution graph looks like a bell curve/gaussian/normal distribution or whatever you call it. Is that correct? So majority of players are within one standard deviation of gold? My statistics is garbage, so sorry if I didn't use terms correctly.