The Ladder is Broken

Nobody playing casually on the ladder up into Diamond knows how to do it “masterfully”.

Players literally making random picks or banning picks that nobody on the opposing team has any intention on playing doesn’t affect the outcome of the game.

You’re basically playing Fantasy Football where you have no player stats and you’re obsessing over “meta” compositions that aren’t really relevant at your level of play (non GM non Tournament).

The VAST majority of players are not Masters/GM. Not to mention most of those Masters/GM players that you can watch on streams are just goofballing to entertain their viewers. That is not the environment anyone should be pointing to as a shining example of exemplary play.

If you want to point at Tournament play as an example of best practices, that’s fine but it’s completely outside the context of Dopamine League.

Yeah I had one loosing streak and as a result got put into permanent detention with all the other bad kids.

Even still, playing 4-5 games per week at 100 points per game would require 100s of game an many years to make any amount of progress.

You guys forget that the ONLY reason why you make any headway on the ladder is because you obsessively play 100s of games over a season. Why? Because it’s not about competition, it’s all about engagement. Let the dopamine flow.

It’s not a ladder.
It’s not supposed to be. It’s a sorting system with the best players on the top, worst on the bottom, with temporary misplacements and resulting carnage / fun.

The ladder is the leveling and the 50 wins quest.
You play and go up. Bam.

You have been here, there, take it easy, play what you like, play what’s your best, visit the salt mines with individual stories, or threads.

But present your case better. I really don’t see what’s new to your problem.
Try and accept it, for your own happiness and zenness.

By the way, I’m descending the ladder quite nicely, one division per season. I’m S2-S3 this time. Here I thought at the start that getting to G5 dominantly was a sign for a bright future :smiley:

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Nope, it’s not. You’re correct there.

This I fully agree with. We aren’t entitled to better ranks just because we play more or are dedicated to the game.

There’s lots of dedicated people with 10k+ games who are stuck playing Bronze 4! And Grand Masters with barely 600 games under their belt who kick a­­ss at that rank.

Climbing is not automatic. Climbing ranks only happens when you become better than other players at your rank.

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Point was that it’s not either-or, 100 or 0, either one could do it or not do it, but there being levels to it. Question was, what is the difference between you and top players. It’s disingenuous to even claim nobody knows nor can explain it. I clearly can (for instance, months ago when I checked your replay, your positioning was really bad, some where you ‘walked into die’ moment).

In B7 maybe. Not in most rank I played on, ranging from Silver to Diamond (well, 2 games in Bronze recently). Picks matter. It’s quite simple to see why. Don’t know why some people say otherwise.

Context much? You seemed to have forgotten what you said. You said top players make the same mistakes as B5 does. My definition of ‘top players’ is GM/Masters. Doesn’t matter if you think it’s Diamond or Plat, whatever. They don’t make the same mistakes as B5 does.

Only Fan does. Not other EU streamers I watched. Well, some quite rarely do, but not to entertain viewers but because they felt like playing certain heroes.

That is an understatement to be sure. You would not drop to B7 with just one losing streak.

Being in the dark, not knowing when it ends, could be frustrating. That’s why I collected data on how B5 works. B5 has hidden ranks/layers baked into it, B6-B10.

B4→B5 : 5 lose/win : B5→B4
B5→B6 : 12 lose/win : B6→B5
B6→B7 : 12 lose/win : B7→B6
B7→B8 : 12 lose/win : B8→B7

So,

no, it doesn’t.

Even if I assume you’re in mid B7, net 6+12+5 = 23 wins would get you to B4. At that point, it’s 200 points per game, easier for you to see your progresss.

You’re assuming most of everyone has similar winrate as yours.

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Define “better”?

Is a win rate of 60% vs your peers considered “better”?

Top player play orders of magnitude more games that I do.

You’re deceiving yourself. Even in the Diamond games I was playing there was a significant amount of the smelling of one’s own farts involved in draft picks that ultimatley had no affect on the outcome of the game. Even in Diamond there’s always a significant number of players who, despite being explicitly told that joining the party meant that they agreed to one specific player being the shot caller and “captain”, they would still go out of their way to sabotage games because they thought it was a better idea to not be a team player.

All of this nonsense that higher ranked players have some superior skill and game knowledge is just pure fantasy.

What I mean that Bronze through Diamond are pretty much the same. The skill difference is mostly non-existant. Masters and GM players are the exception, not the rule, and even there, it’s a product of playing orders of magnitude more games to maintain those ranks that push the skills of those players above that of casual players. Even then, they are still making the same mistakes that ALL players make. There’s no special knowledge that they have over most other players that result in their better performance.

You try stabilizing after a large losing streak and see exactly what happens to your MMR and team-mate matches.

Even at 60% win rate, playing 5 games per week at 15 points a game would take 100 games (20 weeks) to earn 150 points.

At 60% win rate, playing 5 games per week at 100 points, would take 100 games (20 weeks) to earn 1000 points.

20 weeks.

Almost half a year to push one rank.

And that’s assuming the best possible statistical outcome for future matches.

let’s do the math again with whatever win rate you want.

At 5 games per week it’s still going to take you months to progress upwards on the Dopamine Ladder.

To define “better” it needs to be in relation to something, or compared to something.

For instance: “I am better than you” states that you are better than another person.
In the context being quoted “becoming better” means you either improve to the point you surpass something (another person, yourself, or whatever).

So to sum up, climbing only happens when you surpass the players around you (or in your rank) and hence you “become better”

If you’re at 60% wr you’re already climbing and are already (probably) better than others in your rank. If that’s really true, what are you complaining about? and how would having a 60% wr make the ladder broken?

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Surpass them at what though?

Skillshots?

Lone wolfing all the camps every game to the detriment of your enemies morale?

Kill to Death ratio?

Cheesing forts and keeps?

Manipulating the results of playing on a fresh account to have the best possible MMR in the shortest number of games?

I’m curious to hear which version of “better” you think is relevant to progress on the ladder.

Streamers do. They also play against players magnitude better than your opponents. And even then, they have quite high winrate (ex pros are in another level). And that’s not because of their team.

Still didn’t see proof of it, circumstance more indicating you were in Silver, not Diamond.

If you base your whole premise that you indeed were Diamond, I can see how one would think such. You have no idea how good ex pros are though. Players who fly in SL can even be bad in pro tournaments (that’s GM in SL). Not really the case other way around.

No, they don’t. And yes, they do. Sorry, your understanding of the game is currently limited, hence may not he able to see the difference.

And as I said, it’s not few losing streaks you need to drop to B7. From bottom S5, you would need around 42 net loss to drop to mid B7. That is quite a lot. If you dropped from Diamond, that is ridiculous amount of net loss you would need, only showing you never belonged in that rank.

Blah blah blah. At least try to understand what the other person is saying, will ya? I was specifically saying that is not how it works.

Didn’t want to link my own thread, which was why I was just briefly going over it, but whatever at this point. Just take a look,

Do not let points gain/lost fool you. 5 / 12/12/12/12/12, that’s it. Your points gain will increase as you rank up. It took Fan 8 days to get out of B5 (and its hidden ranks) at lower position than you (mid B9).

Ok let’s try something for fun. Show me the replay and we can see if you outplayed your teammate and don’t deserve to be in the rank you are.

@Op’s idea (genuine or not) is that there is a simple and general tactic that works for everyone and if you do that, you should climb, you don’t, you should fall.
Again, genuine or outright trolling, not sure, @Op fails to realise how complex this game is, and how far he is in all its aspects to be good.

This isn’t about me or whether or not i can “outplay” my peers. You armchair quarterbacking a game with 20/20 hindsight doesn’t address any of the comments I posted above.

So there are still idiots out there who think this game has hard carry potential. Classic.

The people who spout off “Hey I climbed from Bronze 5 to GM. You just need to get good” are no different from than pompous rich execs who spout off “Hey I built my business from nothing, living out of my car. Now I’m a billionaire. People just need to work harder.”

You can hard carry in every aspect of the game and still lose. It all depends on how favorable the spreadout is of the bad players on both teams. How else do you explain us losing a game where you have 0 deaths, most kills, most soak, most camp captures, more hero damage than everyone put together, and most objective time?

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It would be like trying to get them to explain their belief in religion.

And how in the heck did you come up with that conclusion from reading my comment may I ask? You simply can’t unless you put words in my mouth, strawman, had some kind of built-up complaint and wanted to lash out to anybody. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t read what I said at all.

Mention of Fan’s B2GM in my link was as a tool. I don’t have account in B6-B10, I can’t do the testing myself, Fan’s B9toB4 run is what I needed to see the layout of B5, the hidden ranks in it. It was never about one being able to climb from B2GM if the player had skills. You seemed to have taken as such, which, consequently makes your comment nonsense in everyway.

This too as well. Point was how it wouldn’t take OP 20 weeks or whatever with 60% winrate, of how his calculation is wrong because his basis is wrong.

then they didnt “hard carry”.

I could count the amount of times I picked up a box, but that doesn’t mean I carried it from point A to point B. Some of the backlash people have with games stems from term conflation making them thnk going through a motion — or stat padding — must determine specific outcomes.

Having a bunch of kills, camp clears, and standing on an object doesn’t mean those were numbers that were put into the primary objective: destroying the core.

Players that stall out games, especially for getting camps, have more opportinities to pad their stats for circurlar reasoning. “ i did therefore it’s [anyone elses fault] that we lost” is just another blame cycle so people don’t actually consider how they can improve on something.


Explanaing actual relgious conviction isnt hard, or fabricated. However, you’d think it impossible to do as such because it suits the same flaw you repeat time and again in these topics. People post processes, you assert you “did that” and thus thr method must be flawed, people aren’t correctly telling how “to climb” and its the fault of any and everything that isnt you observation, execution, and intention.

“It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools”

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The sad thing is you are too on these games. The difference is that you can’t apply that same level of scrutiny when people rightfully call out your lack of skill and ability. You’ve deluded yourself into thinking you’re just the same as them, when to most players, you are laughably not.

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it’s apparently easier then explaining how an individual win a game of HotS, that’s for sure.

Literally don’t care what “most players” think.

And just to clarify, I really don’t care about rank. I just want an actually competitive ladder instead of this engagement garbage.

Of course you don’t care, lol, that’s sort of required in order for the delusion to keep going.

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That you care so much to insert it into a discussion that has nothing to do with my rank is pretty strange.