February squish - we're under 2k in kyber 1! We... win?

The usual radio silence on all things balance related is unhelpful in this matter. The last official word we had was over a year ago where the squish was intended to "not have any impact on your Grand Arena experience" and is demonstrably false now.

Even if you win more than you lose (i.e go 5-4) you will still drop. This has affected both your ability to climb into or maintain in K1. The implications on the daily crystal payouts to players and the savings it generates for CG are obvious.

Yeah this is getting annoying, I've gone 6-3 and actually dropped for the next season. I have no idea how they calculate wins or why this happens. I'd love to hear if this is intentional, do they want just 100 people in k1 eventually?

They want zero people in k1 eventually.

IIRC meathead was notified (via more than just a ping here) so until proven otherwise it's WAI.

FWIW Meat just confirmed on discord that he's seen this thread. All we can do.

"Lumiya;c-2405123" wrote:

"TVF;c-2405066" wrote:
FWIW Meat just confirmed on discord that he's seen this thread. All we can do.

Did he say something else? Are they looking into it?

Not really. He was asked if he saw this thread, and he replied with "I did and made a note of it."

When pressed if it had been previously mentioned:

Many things get noted more than once. Note does not mean action can or will be taken on it, rather it's been documented and will be discussed with the proper people.

Basically, CG is fully aware of the squish, what it's doing, and how the community feels about it. Unclear if anything will change.

"StarSon;c-2405179" wrote:

"Lumiya;c-2405123" wrote:

"TVF;c-2405066" wrote:
FWIW Meat just confirmed on discord that he's seen this thread. All we can do.

Did he say something else? Are they looking into it?

Not really. He was asked if he saw this thread, and he replied with "I did and made a note of it."

When pressed if it had been previously mentioned:

Many things get noted more than once. Note does not mean action can or will be taken on it, rather it's been documented and will be discussed with the proper people.

Basically, CG is fully aware of the squish, what it's doing, and how the community feels about it. Unclear if anything will change.

Thank you very much! I appreciate it.

Then let's hope they will do something ??

@Lumiya

Did he say something else? Are they looking into it?

yes, they are looking into it. They've contacted us at 50ShardsOfKAM. They've specifically invited us to comment on mathematical techniques that would be better at accomplishing what they intend. Fortunately we have a couple professors and one person with experience in mathematical topology, so we're not a dumb group, but

1) It's hard for us to know (and by "us" I mean "people at 50SoK who aren't me since I'm not the math expert) exactly what would be better since we're not entirely sure of their goals,

and
2) Even if Tatiana or someone else comes up with a better mathematical transform, there's no guarantee that CG will think it's as good as we think it is.

So communication is happening. They're thinking at their end. Tatiana and other math experts are thinking at their end. What will happen? Who knows! But it's interesting for me to have a front row seat during mathematics debates I'm a couple semesters shy of understanding.

As players, we have an interesting relationship with CG. When we talk about them, they’re either omniscient, or idiots, and we don’t let them occupy the space in between… but really, they’re human beings doing their best :-)

When I think about my own job and how I determine my own priorities, it’s often on a “how much of an emergency is this?” basis. I have too many things that need to be done, and not enough time to do them in.

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about squish because it affects us and our guildmates. We’ve all talked with people who think they must have gotten worse at the game because their division has dropped, or who has tried to figure out why their kyber 2 fights are so much harder than they used to be. It matters in our hobby, so we spend our time digesting it, calculating it, explaining it.

CG is managing the experiences of hundreds of thousands of players. When 10k players a month were dropping out of kyber, they responded. My guess is the slow drip of a few hundred players out of kyber 1 each month probably just didn’t hit their radar, especially if they were visualizing on the league subdivided by division. I had to play with visualization tools for a while before figuring out how to clearly demonstrate the problem… even though it was my direct goal.

But it occupies our attention, because it is us and our guildmates. And because Kyber 1 is a status, and when we lose that status, it kinda hurts our feelings ;-)

The whole goal of the feedback section of the forum is to bring problems to CG’s attention that they might not otherwise realize ARE problems that matter. It looks like we’ve done that! Now we just have to hope we were convincing enough to jump it up the to do list.

Something about the system needs to change, as especially in the lower tiers there can be a 2-3x difference in GP. It does not feel competitive as I either am against a player that does not play or get swept. I am more than happy to stay in my current low division if it meant I actually got to play reasonably fair matches.