momuuu wrote:I do know the EP ladder thing was planned a long time ago, the quicksearch argument was never really given. The ladder was specifically made with this goal in mind, and thus they made a seperate EP ladder. If they had had the qs EP ladder in mind, they probably would have made a seperate EP QS ladder, wouldn't they? It wasn't tried because it wasn't planned and isn't tried because the code is not even in place for it. As to why the EP ladder wasn't tried: I think it was decided that the ladder needs quite a bit of time to reach a decent point of equilibrium. It's been a year (or something like that) and the ladder has only barely reached a stable point (and honestly, I'm not sure the EP ladder has). If you were to force a quicksearch ladder right now, you'd need at least a year for it to reach stability and be useful.
Err no. QS with ladder was planned the moment we started discussing about the rated and the qs map pools. There isn't any extra code needed really because it all works around the maps.
Actually I don't see any increase in EP activity. More specifically, the playerbase of people that play EP at all doesn't seem to have increased and is (as I mentioned a post up) still very small. I also think there have been more esoc events, that were also more regular, before the ladder was released than afterwards. As far as numbers go theres this figure: There are less people watching tournament streams now than before the ladder was released. In the light of that fact it's not possible to simply conclude that 'people are getting used to esoc'.
That has nothing to do with the EP, really. It's just the game losing players overall, especially after the remakes were announced.
The fact that the EP activity increased (and it actually did with the last patch iteration) despite the overall game decline is a good sign.
I don't know if the rating problem is easily solved. The EP ladder is not very accurate right now actually. For example, MCJim (at best a low captain) has a higher ELO than Yurashic (lt col?) and Hwoarang (major-lt col?) or than me (while I think I lost one out of maybe 20 games we played together). Bwinner (beat hwoarang in 2nd chance) is below 1600 ELO for example, and stanley winston (lt col) is even further below 1600 elo. You're in top 5 elo, while I think even you yourself know that it's odd to place you way above Lordraphael, Mitoe and Kaiserklein. Kynesie is rocking a 1620 ELO or something. Look tom (major, at least) has 1400 ELO lol. Macaco_albino (surely a major) is rocking 1500. Masterchif is well below 1600 too. Marco (captain at least) is below pikilic (master sergeant) at the moment. At the moment, the entire ladder represents literally nothing, and we've had this ladder for a long time now. Going way over the top with EP QS will mean you'll have an absolutely meaningless ladder. The community is too small for EP QS to work, you need to specifically reach out to people to play an EP game. If you force EP QS to seed people right now, you'll simply be seeding people that managed to get lucky. For example, I could easily feed my pr on RE and then play EP QS (if this even sorta became a thing) at =-4 pr range from a 1st lt perspective or maybe even as a pr 23 or sth. Then, I'll only be facing 1st lts and captains, which means I'll be easily winning 90% of my games. The difference in elo won't be large though, and I'll just be taking elo from those at 1600 ELO (which probably is them being overrated at that point, since they'll be at the bottom of the community) which can easily result in me just taking the number one spot on the ladder when the first tournament happens. That'll just be nonsense, don't you think. It will get a lot of people angry when someone like h2O is in group stages while some random captain that played a bit against other captains/1st lts and did well will be seeded in the RO32. To be honest, I think the community playing EP is too small (its 16 pages comapred to 1600 pages of official ladder) for the system to really work properly. At best you can maybe sustain 1800 elo and at worst you'll get to 1300 or something, and then one game will just matter too much.
What you're refering to here is not accuracy. The EP ladder is already fairly accurate, without any specific incentive to use it. For sure it is better than the RE ladder which has lot of noise from old ratings, to cheaters, to uncompetitive conditions and so on.
I mean, the examples you make are simply due to the fact that those guys didn't play much games at all. In that sense, it is just fair that someone with 5x the games of another player and against a larger variety of players has a higher elo. If those players start playing just a bit more the elo fixes very quickly.
Basically the EP ladder is simply more volatile at the moment, which is totally fine given that its employment hasn't been encouraged whatsoever. And comparing it to the JP ladder is pointless because that one is running from 2010 when the player base was also way bigger. If we just clear up the RE ladder and restart it we get exactly the same volatility of the EP ladder except the ladder wouldn't be legit at all, with all the cheater, shit maps, shit MUs, etc.
Also, we should start thinking of elo as something temporary and not set in stone. If one player is more active at the moment there is a good chance he's actually performing better. This concept also opens up to periodic resets of the ladder, which again can be used to run ESOC events.
I think it seems pretty evident how switching to EP QS elo only right now is silly. If you want to do it, you at the very least need to make an EP QS ELO and let it settle for a bit, but for that you'll need people to play on it which isn't happening and won't happen. It could be a tiny incentive, but to be honest in practise there usually aren't even 3 people on EP. You host, then someone sees that game and hops on over. Sitting in quicksearch for long times (while keeping an eye on it so you dont go ingame while afk) seems like something nobody would do. It just won't work.
Well QS is in place exactly to avoid the wait. None likes to whisper people all the time to get games. Point is, again, that in order to populate QS you need to force people somehow. And the strongest incentive has always been tourneys. It's a simple prisoner dilemma game. Player would all be better if they were playing on the EP but since everyone thinks for itself none is going to host/wait on the EP so they end up playing on the RE patch, which is the suboptimal outcome. We just need an exogenous coordination method.
and by the way, your skecptiscism is misplaced I think. Everyone was saying the same about EP maps and guess what, now we're using EP maps almost exclusively. Same thing for the EP itself.
I mean, those kind of decision must be taken by people with vision. Good analytics and vision, actually. With your low profile and skeptical attitude we wouldn't have a competitive scene at all.
edeholland wrote:I think that will just mean we lose 50% of our tournament sign-ups.
See, this is what I'm talking about. This is simply not true. The only way we can possibly fail with this is if we don't give enough time to the mechanism to start working properly.
Mine was just an example. It hasn't to be exactly the next tourney. But in future we need to use the EP ladder as an asset for ESOC growth, otherwise not only we are missing huge growth opportunities but we are also making the ladder useless.
