Whatever happened to ladder league/Divisions?

[biass]

When i was new to playing ladder as opposed to gap teamgames, a driving motivator was the divisions system and the avatars associated with them, as well as seeing what division you were in in aeolus (which is now a random blue rectangle

I always loved seeing how much score i needed to earn the next shiny unit icon next to my name and always wanted to have a T3 one (i made it to pillar before the system died) which made me end up grinding out ladder games far more then i otherwise would have, i think the system added a drive and competition into ladder which helped it live on a little further and without it its down to just rating (which we all know is totally broken atm)

So my question is a little more of a discussion, if you're a player:
Did you like division system?
Do you miss it?
Why?

And if you dev:
Can you give a little insight as to why it is gone and what would need to be done to fix it?

Also, if you're new, look here to see what i'm on about:
http://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?tit ... der#Ladder

[Zock]

Can you give a little insight as to why it is gone and what would need to be done to fix it?

I made a reworked system for it a long time ago that we agreed to implement, but there isn't anyone with time and skills to code it. Would need some server and some UI work, but i can't really talk about the technical details.

I too think, it would be great and important to have it back in a functional way.

[speed2]

Can you give a little insight as to why it is gone and what would need to be done to fix it?

I made a reworked system for it a long time ago that we agreed to implement, but there isn't anyone with time and skills to code it. Would need some server and some UI work, but i can't really talk about the technical details.

I too think, it would be great and important to have it back in a functional way.

Share with us please?

[Zock]

I spent too many hours explaining the details to a few people who were interested in coding it (but didn't), so i'm not going to do that again, but here is a basic outline (Its similar to league of legends but then, any system with leagues will be ):

FAF Ladder system:

The ladder is divided into 5 leagues: Scout, t1, t2, t3 and t4 (or EXP). The t4 league is different to the others.

Each league (except t4) is again divided into five divisions.

At the start of each season, all players that played at least one ranked game are put into the leagues (except t4, it stays empty) based on their trueskill rating: Scout up to 500, T1 500-1000, t2 1000-1500, t3 1500+


Advancing in the divisions/leagues: At the beginning, everyone starts with 50 points. If you reach 100 points, you advance to the next division, if you reach 0 points you drop one division lower. In both cases you will start with 50 points again.

How many points you win or lose per game depends on your and your opponents trueskill. The base value for two equal opponents is 10.


The t4 league: The t4 league is limited to 15 players. The 1st division of the t3 league allows you to gather more than 100 points. The 15 players with the most points (but at least 100) from the t3 league will advance into the exp league. Whenever a person from the t3 league achieves more points than the last person in the t3 league, they will switch positions.


A ladder season lasts 6 months, then it starts over and players get distributed into their leagues again. The long term map rotation changes happen together with the ladder restart.

Different avatars or achievements will be handed out that show your league and/or division at the end of the the season.


Either the top players at the end of the season, or the players who held the top spots for the longest time period can get a cash prize at the end of the season.

It'd allow to hide the trueskill (and with it all the confusion it causes) and only use it for what it is made for, the matchmaking. And avatars for everyone who played 1 ladder game this season, top10,50,100 etc. during the season. Similar avatars and more, including special ones like most draws, at the end of the season..lots of potential to spike up ladder activity.

Other part would be the UI, i made a (very basic, since i dont do any html at all) html page as illustration, here is a screenshot:



Should include a pop-up message if you reach a new divsion, to increase motivation and feeling of reward for doing so, and all this kind of stuff..and having the "top league" empty at the start hopefully increases motivation of good players to get there (and have to do it again in 6 month) - on top of the cash prize motivation at the end.

But i already go too much into details. I have much more of this kind of stuff, for ladder map pool too e.g, or a page to display statistics about players/faf, or ideas for the matchmaker i made for Zep at the time..