Demoted after winning?

"Winterwolves;c-2386730" wrote:

"DarjeloSalas;c-2386699" wrote:

"harvestmouse;c-2386678" wrote:
I'm struggling a bit with this.

So as I understand it.

Divisions and leagues are run to stay at certain set percentages. However, during the season players go up and down depending on how many points they have. This messes with the divisional player percentages.

So at the end of the season 'squish' is used to re-set the 'set' percentages back to how CG wish to maintain them.

If this is the case, why are they squishing at the start of a new season, rather than the end of the last season? Or does K1 work differently as it's so far away from a '3' division squish magnet?

I’m struggling with it too, from a mathematical point of view.

I don’t understand how the number of players in Kyber 1 (and presumably Kyber 2) increases through a GAC season to necessitate the squish. Every GAC match has a winner and a loser (or 2 losers if nobody attacks), so it stands to reason that the number of people gaining and losing skill rating will be more or less the same across the season.

Do we get more and more players above the K1 threshold as a season progresses? If so, why is that happening?

I can only assume the devs didn’t do their sums correctly when setting up the thresholds and the points differential for winning / losing.

It is because the middle divisions are bigger. More players in div3 gain points than players in div 2 lose points, because the populations are different. The same goes for div2 over div1, and back in the other direction below div3 too. The total population migrates outwards from the larger central divisions over time. If they just set the divisions at 20% each this would not happen and the squish wouldn't be needed. Except maybe one player at the top of k1 might be able to give themselves a massive lead to never be caught again, I guess.

Why wasn't handled at the end of the season though? This is pretty irregular.

There seems little point squishing during the season as the number in Aurodium 1 at the end of the season determines what squish is needed.

So squishing K1 after 1 game of a new season seems pretty pointless unless something irregular is going on. E.g. something went wrong with the formula (as Darjelo stated) or they're playing around with the percentages again.

Also as you can't go up from K1 there should be very little need for squish, surely.

"Winterwolves;c-2386806" wrote:

"harvestmouse;c-2386735" wrote:
So what does that suggest? We have falling numbers? Less players were in A1 than in previous seasons. Therefore less came up, and as all K5s automatically went down, they had to redistribute the percentages?

Where as, usually a small percentage of K4 are squished into A1. As perennial low Kyber high Aurodium surfer. I've found it pretty hard to 'land' in A1. It never seems to happen. I'm always squished to A2. So I feel in the past they've tried cull A1 heavily (I'm guessing so limit the amount in the division at the end of the season).

You can't get squished between leagues. Promotion/demotion between leagues happens right at the end of the season. D1 goes up, d5 goes down.

The squish happens before the start of a season of GAC, but players division is left untouched until after their first match. When they only did moves between divisions at the end of a week, it was less noticeable than it is now, as you had 3 matches to make up for the squish. Leaving it until after a match is nice, as you keep your daily income for a few days.

Players also can't get squished from Kyber to Aurodium, because the squish moves all players towards the middle of their league. Players above the median (or mode?) score get squished down, players below get squished up. This sets the populations of the divisions to the spread they want. I can't recall for sure, but something like 10/20/40/20/10%.

Some seasons they have also shifted the boundaries of the divisions/leagues, which messes further with things. I haven't been watching to see if they've changed them again.

An important thing to note is that the squish happens across the whole league, moving everyone according to the same formula, so the players around you in the leaderboard will stay the same. No one gets squished up above anyone and it doesn't change who you will match with.

So my experience with Squish is different to the OPs experience.

At the end of the last 5v5 season I was demoted from Kyber. However, as I was demoted from K5 I was squished another 15 points so that I didn't start the next season in A1, but A2.

The OP though started this season in K1, was squished points at the start of the season and then after their first match was demoted to K2.

Is this a precedent? I've never heard of that happening before.

It's happened to me a bunch of times. There would be hundreds of players who it happens to each season. I used to bounce k1- k2 continuously, and it happened to me nearly every season. I'm sitting mid k2 last few months so haven't seen it.

It would also happen to a bunch of players in d4 squishing to d3, but it is much less likely to be noticed, as they would just think they earned it with a win. There would be some that even lost match 1 and still got squished d4 to d3. They are just not going to come here to question it.

I don't think there is a central league squish, but I'm not certain. I pretty sure they said the leagues were an even 20% split of players, so 10% going up and down should remain stable. But they have adjusted the point levels for the leagues in the past to keep the spread even. They don't announce it or give the full list of points anywhere that I am aware of, so it could have been happening. Being in the middle of my league, I'm not aware of it personally.

I guess new players entering at Carbonite and other players retiring from anywhere at all would require some adjustment at times to keep it split up. So maybe there is some kind of thing done?

Saying that made me think about retiring players and how they affect things. So I'm really just writing the following to get it straight in my mind.
Retired players don't sign up, which I now suspect is when the squish formula is applied to an account. But a non-signed up person has their skill rating decreased by the points of 2 losses for the week they didn't join, so they will sink over time, but never join, so no one will see them, unless they come out of retirement. At that point they will join at a new lower skill rating, get squished, and carry on from there. Then their opponent makes a post on the forums about matchmaking.