Come on in, the water’s fine
As mentioned in previous articles, the only option players have at the moment when playing Starcraft II is multiplayer.
This, in turn, has made even Beta-league competitions fast and fierce. Granted, this will all be reset soon, but that doesn’t stop people from going at it full-force for the time being.
The ladder system, in which we have determined we occupy the lowest tier above “practice”, has spawned a great deal of posting on the Blizzard official Beta forums, with much speculation about what exactly the criteria are to move up or down a league, and how points for each match are calculated.
Thanks to a handy interview with Bashiok, one of Blizzard’s community managers, a lot of these issues were clarified. First, it was determined that getting placed in a league was, not surprisingly, determined by the 10 placement matches done before a league spot was selected. What was interesting was that even after the first few matches, Blizzard makes no effort to scale the matches to your performance. You could be pitted against the most wet-behind-the-ears Terran, or the most grizzled Protoss commander, and you had no way to know until the game got up and running.
If you died before the 5 minute mark, chances are you got owned.
Once you’ve shown what you can (or can’t) do, you get set up in a league. What many players have been wondering, especially as they approach the upper edges of their competitive bracket, is how to move up a level.
Based on Bashiok’s information, the answer appears to be “wait and see”. It seems that Blizzard has chosen as system of random performance review, which will then be used to determine if you’re fit to go up a level. If you’re the top-performer in your silver league, it could be one day, four days, or two weeks until you’re moved up to gold – it all depends on when Blizzard chooses to review the leagues. This is deliberately being done at random, so as to limit complacency, and prevent players from waiting until just before the review to perform their best.
The other question addressed was points. Often, a player’s win/loss ratio will not be the determining factor in their league position. Some of the top-ranked players in the glamorous copper league have an almost equal win-loss ratio, but a great many more points than we do. How does this happen?
First of all, the more matches played, the more points accumulated. Second, players are not always matched with others of equal skill. Sure, you’re most often going to be set up against someone with a similar performance background, but there will be times you get an “easy” match or a “hard” match, just to keep things interesting. If you lose a match that should be easy, you’ll get very few or no points. If you win one you really should have lost, you’ll get extra points.
In addition, it was revealed that top-level players in a particular league will often be pitted against players from a league above them, in an effort to keep them challenged. There is no rhyme or reason to this – just another way to keep players coming back for more, and to see if they’re fit to move up.
But wait! Doesn’t this mean that players who don’t play a lot are totally boned when it comes to gaining ground in a league? Nope.
Blizzard has introduced the concept of the “bonus pool” and “bonus points” which, until a few patches ago, were mislabeled as “rested points”. This called up images of inns, Orcs, and some sort of World, maybe “of Warcraft”.
But, back to the point. About the points.
They function essentially as a boost to players who have not been around for a while. The pool accumulates the longer you have been away, and will match any points won in a match, up to the maximum of your pool. For example, if you fight a battle, win 20 points and have a 50 point bonus pool, you will get 20 extra points to match the 20 you actually won, dropping your pool to 30.
Overall, this is good way to keep players with busy schedules (or “a life”, as it is known outside the world of SCII) competitive, without giving them an unfair advantage. They’ll be able to at least get back in the game, but won’t be able to overtake a leader position without some serious work.
Though the system isn’t perfect, Blizz is in the process of fine-tuning, and it should run like a Terran SCV by the time this thing goes to launch.
Plus, we hear they’re building a bonus hot tub.
