Seasons

[onealexleft]

(12-09-2012 05:46 AM)CombatEX Wrote:  

(12-09-2012 01:19 AM)2dhh Wrote:  

(12-08-2012 11:29 AM)onealexleft Wrote:  2. You will have to do 1 placement match to get put back into a new league/division.

So much importance put on one match! Stressing :/

I could be wrong but I don't think the game is actually weighted more heavily, it's just that after playing the game for a new season, based on your hidden-rating whether you get promoted or demoted is more flexible.

So for example, let's say the hidden rating range for Gifted players is 500-1000 and for Masters players is 1000-1500. In the normal season the system may only allow you to be promoted from Gifted to Masters if your rating reaches something like 1200. I know for a fact that in Starcraft 2 you aren't promoted when you're better than the worst player in the league above, but rather, when you're better than some fraction of the players in the higher league. Why? Surely if you're better than a player in a higher league you should be promoted to that league, right? Well the problem is that for players right on the border, winning and losing games at a 50/50 rate would then have them constantly promoted and demoted. By ensuring you're better than a reasonable fraction of players in the league above, this avoids that issue.

However, it is possible that with a new season the requirement for promotion or demotion is more lenient so that instead of needing that 1200 rating to get promoted from Gifted to Masters you only need a 1100 rating. In other words, the 1 placement game isn't actually weighted any more highly than any other game, but it is there as a transitional match into the new season. Essentially they could just leave your previous season league on your profile and let you play that one game as if it were any other game. It wouldn't make a difference. However, it's more for aesthetic reasons that they remove your league on a new season start to reinforce the idea that it's a new season.

Remember that this is just speculation though!

This more or less addresses it. Your placement match for the new season isn't using anything different to place you into a division. The only time we're using a different skill-matchmaking is when you first play Outwitters and your first 5 matches in the game are recorded. If you were in gifted before, you'll most likely be in gifted in the new season. Again, the people that are "teetering" on promotion might get moved, but this isn't any different if we had not started a new season they'd get promoted anyway.

To add a few things as to "why" seasons:
- gives you some semblance of your performance over the long term
- it weeds out players that have stopped playing in league play, so your division will become more active
- gives us a window to adjust or improve things to the league system without "screwing up" the current rankings. For example, in Season 2, points attribution will be changed slightly.
- point inflation is mimimized. A new player today entering a division has a decent chance of hitting #1 in their division sometime soon as opposed to right now where #1 has 2k+ points over the course of the last several months.