Feedback Regarding Ladder System, Rank, and Smurfing

General Discussion
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Warcraft 3 REFORGED: Interview w. Pete Stilwell, Senior Producer - New Feature Revealed!

In the interview above Pete Stilwell makes a specific request for the community to discuss issues regarding the ladder system, rank, and smurfing (if you are a veteran of WC3 multiplayer ladder system you will know what that means).

I hope this thread can serve as a vehicle for pointed feedback. Please respond in regards to what system you would like to see. It seems from the video the devs might be open to suggestions that may affect the outcome.

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My personal desire is for them to adopt an Elo styled rating system for multiplayer ladder. I think elaborate rank systems with multiple parallel “leagues” or “brackets” are gimmicky at best. I think an overall rating system is simple, straight forward, and is better as grading fine differences between levels of skill.

Of course ratings can then be “bucketed” into bronze, silver, gold, etc. for cosmetic purposes if that makes people feel better.

Having a hidden “MMR” as it is in HOTS is counter-productive and leads to toxicity. I think an “out in the open” MMR/Elo rating system where everyone’s rating is well advertised basically solves a lot of the issues surrounding the “Dunning Kruger” effect. Further, this also eliminates much of the incentive for “smurfing”, which is particularly punishing to new, casual, and learning players.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. I hope we can discuss this more thoroughly as I think the old WC3 ladder system was not very good and newer systems like the “leagues” and “rank” systems found in HOTS obscure valuations of a player’s skill.

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Not sure how much you remember of wc3 in its prime, but it sort of already had that but labeled differently. If you ever played Halo 2, the system operated similarly and a lot of players started to want the old leveling system from Halo2 and Halo3 once they started seeing where the franchise was going (league/elo rated).

Everyone has a level. You can gain or lose your level based on w/l. Very high end players can hit rank 40+. it was very very rare for a average person to go past 30. People who didnt understand the game barely made it past 10. Has an algorithm to set a match based on Level/w%. It tries to measure Playtime/understanding and then expands over time.

The only reason the system is broke is because its meant to operate off a much larger player pool. Give it time, the higher the player pool, the better the system is. Only real issue is smurfs in this situation and I know if you do away with that then a lot of the dedicated few would have lost a LOT of time… cough Kodos and AKM cough

Overwatch has a kind of system like youre talking about and when its off peak hours, you had those instances of those High GM/master players matching against plats. The system is good, give it time to sort itself out. Try it with a higher player pool and you’ll see its not so broke. ^^

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I did play WC3 back then and what I remember from playing 1v1 ladder was an XP based ladder that was based partly on your win/loss w/ more XP for beating higher level players but it was also based on the volume of how much you played.

I got into the top 1,000 on the US Server East back around 2004/2005 I think it was (around the time I started playing WoW) and that was when I last played.

I got that rank by playing a lot of games and just pushing my XP up by volume. Maybe I deserved to be in top 1,000 back then but I remember specifically just playing a lot to do so early in the ladder season to push that XP level.

In other words, I kind of gamed the system.

I never really knew how good I was, or wasn’t.

If I had an actual “rating” (not a rank or league), I would have known what my real skill level was because it would be on a finely granular rating system that can separate players better due to a broader scale.

40 “levels” or 40 ranks wouldn’t really do that.

In HOTS everyone has an internal MMR rating (which is really like an ELO) rating but it’s not visible. This leads to a lot of confusion and gaming of their rank system.

I say just do away with all the BS and just display ratings and let people play for that. If your rating is low, improve it by beating better players.

Chess seems to do this and it’s a widely used way to do it for stuff like this.

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wouldn’t you be losing game after game since you were higher than your actual skill?

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Eventually yes, but you had to play a lot of games to get to that point because you only got so much XP per win if I remember correctly. I played a lot of games to “ladder up” and I would not be surprised if I surpassed people who may have been better than me but didn’t play the volume of games I was doing at the time.

I haven’t played much since 2005 so I have no idea what system they use now.

On the flip of this are people who play for “win/loss” record, which is even worse as it encourages “smurf” accounts which punishes new and up and coming players as they are matched against experienced players on new “smurf” accounts that are not recognized and matched for their true skill level.

This brings me to believe that in WC3RF there should be one parent account that contains and displays your true MMR/Elo rating so that people can’t easily smurf and avoids the abuse that goes on with that. You can change your “screen name” but the MMR/Elo follows you around and you are matched accordingly.

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Do you remember what your win% was?

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I may want mechanics the same but how bnet displays stats, skill and stuff is where I would want to see changes. So im not about everything just HD, this doesnt affect the mechanics and needs some. My ideas are, a bit cosmetic but more useful too:

  • Replay system, just copy SC2’s already and allow replay to continue even if Alt Tabbed not pause it like now
  • Total ‘MMR’ can be displayed like in SC2 and translate into cosmetics like league system, imo more interesting than just level and icon, while the level still remains as corresponding to the MMR. Right now SC2 has race Level which is competely meaningless, unless they want to use it just for ‘how much you have played that race’

Separate MMR/Level per Race? Ive Mixed feelings. I reinstalled war3 and clicked 1v1 and im like lol I played Random, Orc mirror hahaa and that on main level.

In SC2 it annoys me a bit when Master player plays on same account separate race at lower league whereas his mechanics are same or better than same league player with main race. So a master Terran or Zerg can play me better Protoss than a real Protoss of my MMR range.

But still better than starting new accounts for that. Thus, im for it, and not like now, start Bnet, on sheet i didn’t change race so Im Random on same level.

I dont like mass smurfing accounts, in SC2 I proposed secretly the game knowing or forcing you to link your main MMR account to the smurf account (only Bnet knows it other players do not), so as to directly push your smurf account closer to main account. yes this would make levels Obsolete or you will be Level 10 but rating same as high levels.

Seeing mass losses to lower your rating should be noticeable and this brings me

  • Match history would be nice

WINRATES
Make them separate, im like now playing Hu, cant see Per Race with 1 race… Again better as it is in SC2.

DEMOTIONS
This was for years removed in SC2, the DECAY. In war3 it still stays, I am not too much fan of not playing 1-2 weeks = decay. It is better above certain level/league. And decay and DEMOTION of level at any time is IMO how SC2 should have been too, i.e Mid-Season demotions rather than reach a league, never get demoted even after 100 losses, wait for next season, No, War3 demotion is better.

And also a main account would be nice to not get reset to 0 after a long time no play, if you will add cosmetics and stuff to it. I dont remember how long an account had to be inactive for that but still.