Originally Posted by MoooveZiiig

I don't like SC2's system, and I don't like this system either. I think you're overthinking it, and the amount of changes you'll have to do to it over time will be mindboggling. Moreover, you added this gem:



That is such a terribad idea. You know your system creates outliers - people that do not belong to a certain Elo, but end up there through happenstance and luck. You're locking these outliers up in a group where they don't belong.

Okay, outliers that aren't lucky and lose more than they should, and then climb back up won't be affected. But those that win a lot of placement matches out of nowhere and are placed in gold, might then spend the entirety of the season making gold players' life miserable by playing at a significantly lower skill level than them, all the while being unable to go back down to Silver or Bronze where they belong so they can actually have some fun instead of getting wrecked and yelled at all the time.

Unless matchmaking is absolutely separate from skill ranking, and that Bronze players can be matched with Gold players because, behind, Elo doesn't change. Which brings the point - why even bother?

Because if Elo is how you calculate matchmaking, you'll have to tweak the weight of Elo in the calculation of league points, if Elo is still the main measure of matchmaking, else you'll end up with players standing at a much higher Elo compared to the other players of their league, but will remain unable to advance because they're playing for 50%, at their Elo. A Plat level player, at a Plat level Elo, stuck in a Gold league because he spends his days playing Plat level opponents.

So either you end up with bad players, who end up being statistical outliers, stuck playing against players out of their league for a long period of time - yet bragging of their skill rank! - creating horrendous matchmaping nightmares for everyone concerned, or you end up with a system that shows a very poor representation of actual skill.

I'm calling it right now. The first change you'll have to make to your system is that you'll have to make a "Relegation Series" (call it something happier if you want) happen when players hit 0 points in the lowest league of their skill level (or lower, calculated in some hidden metric so that players that just join a new skill rank don't face a relegation immediately if they lose a game).

If, also, the system is weighted in that if you are of an higher Elo than what your skill rank, or division is, you'll end up with some poor shmuck stuck in gold that just kept losing because he didn't belong there, his Elo drifted back to 1100 and now he just can't leave 1st division, no matter what. In fact, him regaining 200 Elo wouldn't help him (if the system is weighted correctly), or he'd hit Platinum skill rating once his Elo hit 1500. Both are quite undesirable, I must say.

I hope you tested this thing thoroughly. Because the way I see it, no matter the way you set it up you're opening one hell of a can of worms.