Excalibur_Z Profile Joined October 2002 United States 11881 Posts #1 To Build A Ladder: The SC2 Revamp



I've spent years trying to understand and communicate how the Starcraft II ladder works. I actually found it so fascinating that I gained an interest in competitive ranking systems as a whole. The news of a revamp is very exciting, particularly with the announcement that



If you don’t know what’s scoped for the upcoming 2016 Starcraft II ladder revamp, you can learn more by reading this blog post. Here’s a brief summary of the current plan:

League population redistribution (currently 4/23/23/23/23/4)



10 subdivisions per league with linear progression (promotion goes from 10th Silver subdivision to 9th Silver subdivision, for example)



Division system scrapped (100-player groupings replaced by a single list with no player cap)



Unified Master and Grandmaster league with a top 200 separation (also considering a locked GM league that updates weekly)

I've spent years trying to understand and communicate how the Starcraft II ladder works. I actually found it so fascinating that I gained an interest in competitive ranking systems as a whole. The news of a revamp is very exciting, particularly with the announcement that MMR will be visible when it rolls out. First, let's take a step back and try to enumerate what a ladder does and should be. What is a ranking system supposed to do?

A ranking system's primary purpose is simple: rank players accurately . Some systems force players to play matches on a regular basis to defend their position or keep their skill definitions up to date. Sure, some player may have been the best a while back, but how good is that same player now? This approach is designed to supplement the primary goal of rating accuracy while simultaneously promoting activity and player retention.



The other thing a ranking system needs to do is present information transparently . Players should never need to question what the system is doing, how it works, or why the matchmaker found the opponent it did. Players only care about whether the match is statistically fair, and the system needs to present that information without ambiguity.



A ranking system's primary purpose is simple:. Some systems force players to play matches on a regular basis to defend their position or keep their skill definitions up to date. Sure, some player may have been the best a while back, but how good is that same playerThis approach is designed to supplement the primary goal of rating accuracy while simultaneously promoting activity and player retention.The other thing a ranking system needs to do is. Players should never need to question what the system is doing, how it works, or why the matchmaker found the opponent it did. Players only care about whether the match is statistically fair, and the system needs to present that information without ambiguity. What is the intent behind the Starcraft 2 ladder?

First, some background, since context is important. Systems designers are very different from game designers, and they have different goals. A systems designer builds the framework, makes it as flexible and project-agnostic as possible. The game designer wants to keep players in the game, engaged and motivated, and the two sides work together to come up with a system that accomplishes both aims. In SC2’s case, two parallel ranking systems were created, one visible and one invisible. The visible one retains players, the invisible one ensures things are fair.



First, some background, since context is important.are very different from, and they have different goals. A systems designer builds the framework, makes it as flexible and project-agnostic as possible. The game designer wants to keep players in the game, engaged and motivated, and the two sides work together to come up with a system that accomplishes both aims. In SC2’s case, two parallel ranking systems were created, one visible and one invisible. The visible one retains players, the invisible one ensures things are fair. Where is the ladder succeeding?

SC2's matchmaker has always been very strong. Having a matchmaking rating and an uncertainty factor to govern search range is very effective, not to mention elegant. It’s simple and it works.



The bonus pool is a strong retention mechanic, ensuring that players need to keep coming back to stay on top, and it effectively fulfills that supplemental activity role. Bonus pool doubles the points you get for a win while simultaneously absorbing point losses, making it no-risk.



SC2's matchmaker has always been very strong. Having a matchmaking rating and an uncertainty factor to govern search range is very effective, not to mention elegant. It’s simple and it works.The bonus pool is a strong retention mechanic, ensuring that players need to keep coming back to stay on top, and it effectively fulfills that supplemental activity role. Bonus pool doubles the points you get for a win while simultaneously absorbing point losses, making it no-risk. Where is the ladder weak?

Transparency is the big one. Points drift toward MMR, making them a delayed indicator of skill, but the bonus pool adds directly to points, which confuses their meaning. Players never know how close they are to the next league because MMR is hidden and the rating calibration phase (a player's first 25 matches in the ladder) hinders movement. Downward progress is limited because demotions are disabled, leading to matchmaking confusion over why a player might face someone who appears to be far beyond his league. Because of all these things, the league system starts out from a bad place and gets more convoluted from there, having to be held together with stopgaps like the now-removed confidence buffer and manual bandages like the league change point reset constant or distribution reviews.



Transparency is the big one. Points drift toward MMR, making them a delayed indicator of skill, but the bonus pool adds directly to points, which confuses their meaning. Players never know how close they are to the next league because MMR is hidden and the rating calibration phase (a player's first 25 matches in the ladder) hinders movement. Downward progress is limited because demotions are disabled, leading to matchmaking confusion over why a player might face someone who appears to be far beyond his league. Because of all these things, the league system starts out from a bad place and gets more convoluted from there, having to be held together with stopgaps like the now-removed confidence buffer and manual bandages like the league change point reset constant or distribution reviews. What should be changed?

Ah, the big question. What should be added, dropped, or modified? Let's reflect on the demographic a little bit:



Starcraft II is a Ah, the big question. What should be added, dropped, or modified? Let's reflect on the demographic a little bit:Starcraft II is a competitive real-time strategy game, specifically an real-time strategy game, specifically an eSport , currently in its , currently in its third iteration with a with a six-year ladder history .



There are new players joining SC2 with Legacy of the Void, to be sure, but there are a whole lot of hardened veterans who have been playing for years. The number one thing that veteran audience wants is to know where they stand. Ranking accuracy is king.



1. Add a ranking/progression indicator

Players need to know exactly where they stand and should never need to ask "how close am I to the next rank?" The original WoL ladder was built so that promotions and demotions would be anomalies, but once players heard about the possibility of promotions, that was the only conversation players were interested in having. Players have ambition, and in some cases far-reaching ambition ("I'm Bronze, what do I have to learn to get into Master?"), and this wasn't being satisfied with the division ranking system.



Visible MMR will help here (I can't stress that enough, it will help a ton), but there's still too much guesswork when it comes to finding out the inevitably-crowdsourced target breakpoints. It's not enough that I can see I have 1440 MMR if I have to find out from TL or Reddit that I need 1450 to rank up, I need the UI to reflect that openly.



Ranking directly by MMR would help even more, but this requires a slight refactor of the current listing method. Enter the next bullet point:



2. Modify the bonus pool system so that it no longer influences leaderboard rank

I actually like the idea and flexibility behind the bonus pool a lot. I like that it's measured in terms of points rather than number of games (spending 20 bonus pool could take one game or several). The one thing I don't like is that it interferes with ranking transparency. These are the parameters I'm thinking for a replacement system:

Reservoir of "points" which accumulate over time, just like the current bonus pool, but are kept separate from rank



Caps at some value equivalent to a week's accumulation



Spendable only through wins, and the amount spent depends on the rating gap between you and your opponent



Tuning would target something around 5 average-spend wins per week (therefore 10 games per week), probably half or one-quarter that requirement for team formats



Appears only in the unified Master-Grandmaster league



Players hitting the cap are ejected due to inactivity and must play a placement match to return to the ladder



Freshly-placed players will have their reservoir return to 0.

The object here is very simple: keep the ejection requirement of the current Grandmaster league, make it apply to Master as well, but dissociate that measurement from the rankings. As long as you're winning your 5 games per week, you shouldn't be at risk of hitting the cap. If you do hit the cap, it's no big deal, you just drop from the ladder until you play another game, and there's no penalty attached. This also relieves pressure for players below Master league to play since there are no consequences for falling behind.



One thing I might suggest to augment this is to show how many consecutive days a player has been in Grandmaster league for the season. This might encourage players to continuously spend their points rather than hit the cap and play a placement to come back week after week.



Note that this is only necessary if retention is still a goal under the new system. It very well may not be, and may not need to be.



3. Enable demotions

With how fluid rank changes will become once subdivisions arrive, there is no longer a need to protect a player’s high rank artificially. When players are capable of rising in rank after only a few games, losing a rank in as many games is not the stress headache that a full league demotion was, particularly because the confidence buffer rule is no longer in effect. The goal should be rapid, measurable change in both directions within the new ecosystem, with players averaging out over the same few subdivisions. That is, it will be common for a solidly average Silver player to jump around between the 3rd and 7th Silver subdivisions, but over a large amount of games, not deviate too far from that.



4. Remove the rating calibration period (or “New Player Logic”)

Similar to the above, rank changes will happen much more frequently when the player buckets get smaller. Because of this, it’s unnecessary to keep the promotion-freezing and placement-lowballing elements of the rating calibration phase. The wider uncertainty early on (and for streaks) is probably fine since it’s important that players get to their plateau point fairly quickly, but this might necessitate some UI support, maybe a differently-colored MMR value?



5. Contingency plan, in case lower-league activity suffers following these proposals: daily quests for a grindable currency

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the Senior Producers’ and upper managers’ worries are right: that removal of the bonus pool, adding back demotions, and ranking directly by MMR really does turn the lower leagues into a barren wasteland where nobody plays games because the ladder has become too serious. I’ve got a backup plan for that: grindable (or “soft”) currency.



Soft currency would be used to buy cool or fun cosmetic stuff: portraits, unit skins, /dance actions, decals, you could even make an argument to include DLC like the Nova Covert Ops missions. Players would acquire soft currency either by reaching certain race levels or completing daily quests.



The daily quests themselves would be very benign and nothing that would influence in-game decisions or behaviors, things like “Win 3 matchmaking games as Terran (they could be ranked, unranked, team games, vs AI, etc.)”, “Harvest 50,000 resources (cumulative over multiple games)”, or “Produce 200 units (cumulative over multiple games)”. You could even promote other game modes with things like “Play and review an Arcade map.” The types of quests chosen are very tricky, because you couldn’t have “Win a game in less than 10 minutes” due to encouraging rush play, “Play (not Win) X games” due to cheesing by instantly leaving each game, or “Deal 20,000 damage in a single game” due to encouraging long games. There are ways to make it work, the quests just have to be somewhat varied while still remaining neutral. The bottom line is that the opportunities for sustained activity and retention are huge, and these are proven systems for many other games.



There are new players joining SC2 with Legacy of the Void, to be sure, but there are a whole lot of hardened veterans who have been playing for years. The number one thing that veteran audience wants is to know where they stand. Ranking accuracy is king.Players need to know exactly where they stand and should never need to ask "how close am I to the next rank?" The original WoL ladder was built so that promotions and demotions would be anomalies, but once players heard about the possibility of promotions, that was the only conversation players were interested in having. Players have ambition, and in some cases far-reaching ambition ("I'm Bronze, what do I have to learn to get into Master?"), and this wasn't being satisfied with the division ranking system.Visible MMR will help here (I can't stress that enough, it will help a ton), but there's still too much guesswork when it comes to finding out the inevitably-crowdsourced target breakpoints. It's not enough that I can see I have 1440 MMR if I have to find out from TL or Reddit that I need 1450 to rank up, I need the UI to reflect that openly.Ranking directly by MMR would help even more, but this requires a slight refactor of the current listing method. Enter the next bullet point:I actually like the idea and flexibility behind the bonus pool a lot. I like that it's measured in terms of points rather than number of games (spending 20 bonus pool could take one game or several). The one thing I don't like is that it interferes with ranking transparency. These are the parameters I'm thinking for a replacement system:The object here is very simple: keep the ejection requirement of the current Grandmaster league, make it apply to Master as well, but dissociate that measurement from the rankings. As long as you're winning your 5 games per week, you shouldn't be at risk of hitting the cap. If you do hit the cap, it's no big deal, you just drop from the ladder until you play another game, and there's no penalty attached. This also relieves pressure for players below Master league to play since there are no consequences for falling behind.One thing I might suggest to augment this is to show how many consecutive days a player has been in Grandmaster league for the season. This might encourage players to continuously spend their points rather than hit the cap and play a placement to come back week after week.With how fluid rank changes will become once subdivisions arrive, there is no longer a need to protect a player’s high rank artificially. When players are capable of rising in rank after only a few games, losing a rank in as many games is not the stress headache that a full league demotion was, particularly because the confidence buffer rule is no longer in effect. The goal should be rapid, measurable change in both directions within the new ecosystem, with players averaging out over the same few subdivisions. That is, it will be common for a solidly average Silver player to jump around between the 3rd and 7th Silver subdivisions, but over a large amount of games, not deviate too far from that.Similar to the above, rank changes will happen much more frequently when the player buckets get smaller. Because of this, it’s unnecessary to keep the promotion-freezing and placement-lowballing elements of the rating calibration phase. The wider uncertainty early on (and for streaks) is probably fine since it’s important that players get to their plateau point fairly quickly, but this might necessitate some UI support, maybe a differently-colored MMR value?Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the Senior Producers’ and upper managers’ worries are right: that removal of the bonus pool, adding back demotions, and ranking directly by MMR reallyturn the lower leagues into a barren wasteland where nobody plays games because the ladder has become too serious. I’ve got a backup plan for that: grindable (or “soft”) currency.Soft currency would be used to buy cool or fun cosmetic stuff: portraits, unit skins, /dance actions, decals, you could even make an argument to include DLC like the Nova Covert Ops missions. Players would acquire soft currency either by reaching certain race levels or completing daily quests.The daily quests themselves would be very benign and nothing that would influence in-game decisions or behaviors, things like “Win 3 matchmaking games as Terran (they could be ranked, unranked, team games, vs AI, etc.)”, “Harvest 50,000 resources (cumulative over multiple games)”, or “Produce 200 units (cumulative over multiple games)”. You could even promote other game modes with things like “Play and review an Arcade map.” The types of quests chosen are very tricky, because you couldn’t have “Win a game in less than 10 minutes” due to encouraging rush play, “Play (not Win) X games” due to cheesing by instantly leaving each game, or “Deal 20,000 damage in a single game” due to encouraging long games. There are ways to make it work, the quests just have to be somewhat varied while still remaining neutral. The bottom line is that the opportunities for sustained activity and retention are huge, and these are proven systems for many other games. Competitive Analysis

Hearthstone

Hearthstone's transparency is very good, and its system is very simple. You see your rank, you are matched with other players within 1 rank of yourself, and progression is measurable. The disadvantage to the Hearthstone system is that the ladder compacts with every season roll, so 26 ranks get condensed into the lowest 9 at the start of the month. This means that you need to grind back up to where you were each month, and matches may not necessarily be very even for a short time after the new season begins. This is somewhat offset by the "win streak" aspect where players who win 3 or more games in a row will receive bonus progress, so top-end players can get back to the top more quickly.



Heroes of the Storm

Heroes of the Storm also has a fairly transparent ranking system, but it's also double layered like SC2. In Heroes, you have a hidden MMR and your ranking points chase your MMR, just like SC2. The greater the gap between your MMR and your ranking points, the greater the change in ranking points per game (up to a max of 300). The difference with Heroes is that each rank is 300 ranking points (or about 3 games' worth) rather than a range of MMR. Your rank may not reflect exactly what your MMR is, but it will be fairly close after a dozen or so games post-placement, once your ranking points per game even out at around 100. The key to the Heroes system, though, is the predictability of reaching the next rank, and the UI accommodates quite well.

Note that this model, with its ranks of equal size, will most closely resemble the revamped SC2 ladder as Blizzard has described it.



Street Fighter IV

SF4 uses two separate ratings, one for the player and one for the selected character. Player Points are a traditional Elo model and presented clearly. The gap between your Player Points and your opponent's Player Points dictates the degree of change, and the result is always zero sum. The best overall players will have the highest Player Points. The character-specific Battle Points rating is weighted across predetermined breakpoints which correspond to letter grades. For example, it is impossible to lose Battle Points at D grade, your gains outweigh your losses at C grade, and they're roughly equal at B and A grade. The degree of change is based on the gap between your BP and your opponent's, but also modified by your grade. BP, therefore, is more based on grinding up to a certain point. It's an interesting system where it's possible to estimate a player's overall skill by his Player Points rating, while simultaneously gauging how experienced he is with his selected character by his Battle Points.



Dota 2

Dota 2 uses a matchmaking rating as well (plus a separate one for queuing with friends). It is the most straightforward of all: a single, basic number that increases when you win and decreases when you lose. The advantage here is simplicity and transparency. The "downside", and I use that loosely, is there is no retention driver, no incentivizer (Dota fans will tell you that the game itself is--and should be--its own reward system, because when you log in, you just wanna play some damn Dota), nothing to keep players coming back to Ranked beyond the allure of the game. There are leaderboards exclusively for the highest echelon of players, but nothing else. It's actually very unusual in modern systems design to not use a carrot on a stick, but millions of players play Ranked Dota anyway and invent their own milestones ("I'm 3k MMR going for 4k") to compensate for the lack of a more guided experience.



This would be the same section where I'd normally include the ranking systems of League and CSGO, but I don't play either of those games so I can't be as detailed as I want to be, sorry!



Thoughts? Feedback? Post your opinions and ideas. I only ask that you be objective and provide logical reasoning for your idea, because if it makes sense, I’ll add it. The goal of this post is to crowdsource positive changes for the ladder as a whole and present that information openly in order to enact change. Hearthstone's transparency is very good, and its system is very simple. You see your rank, you are matched with other players within 1 rank of yourself, and progression is measurable. The disadvantage to the Hearthstone system is that the ladder compacts with every season roll, so 26 ranks get condensed into the lowest 9 at the start of the month. This means that you need to grind back up to where you were each month, and matches may not necessarily be very even for a short time after the new season begins. This is somewhat offset by the "win streak" aspect where players who win 3 or more games in a row will receive bonus progress, so top-end players can get back to the top more quickly.Heroes of the Storm also has a fairly transparent ranking system, but it's also double layered like SC2. In Heroes, you have a hidden MMR and your ranking points chase your MMR, just like SC2. The greater the gap between your MMR and your ranking points, the greater the change in ranking points per game (up to a max of 300). The difference with Heroes is that each rank is 300 ranking points (or about 3 games' worth) rather than a range of MMR. Your rank may not reflect exactly what your MMR is, but it will be fairly close after a dozen or so games post-placement, once your ranking points per game even out at around 100. The key to the Heroes system, though, is the predictability of reaching the next rank, and the UI accommodates quite well.SF4 uses two separate ratings, one for the player and one for the selected character. Player Points are a traditional Elo model and presented clearly. The gap between your Player Points and your opponent's Player Points dictates the degree of change, and the result is always zero sum. The best overall players will have the highest Player Points. The character-specific Battle Points rating is weighted across predetermined breakpoints which correspond to letter grades. For example, it is impossible to lose Battle Points at D grade, your gains outweigh your losses at C grade, and they're roughly equal at B and A grade. The degree of change is based on the gap between your BP and your opponent's, but also modified by your grade. BP, therefore, is more based on grinding up to a certain point. It's an interesting system where it's possible to estimate a player's overall skill by his Player Points rating, while simultaneously gauging how experienced he is with his selected character by his Battle Points.Dota 2 uses a matchmaking rating as well (plus a separate one for queuing with friends). It is the most straightforward of all: a single, basic number that increases when you win and decreases when you lose. The advantage here is simplicity and transparency. The "downside", and I use that loosely, is there is no retention driver, no incentivizer (Dota fans will tell you that the game itself is--and should be--its own reward system, because when you log in, you just wanna play some damn), nothing to keep players coming back to Ranked beyond the allure of the game. There are leaderboards exclusively for the highest echelon of players, but nothing else. It's actually very unusual in modern systems design to not use a carrot on a stick, but millions of players play Ranked Dota anyway and invent their own milestones ("I'm 3k MMR going for 4k") to compensate for the lack of a more guided experience.Thoughts? Feedback? Post your opinions and ideas. I only ask that you be objective and provide logical reasoning for your idea, because if it makes sense, I’ll add it. The goal of this post is to crowdsource positive changes for the ladder as a whole and present that information openly in order to enact change. Moderator