Kyber 1 Shrinking?

"Lumiya;c-2391686" wrote:

"nfidel2k;c-2391654" wrote:

"Fieldgulls;c-2391646" wrote:
The squish is to help CG control overall crystal income in its entirety (i.e. player base).

This is the part I don’t understand. If you are referring to the skill squish doing this, it would have to be affecting a player’s rank. It doesn’t track that CG would do this either, as they already have direct control over the overall crystal income and therefore no need to create a mechanism to control it indirectly. I might be missing something, but so far as I can see the league size dropping because the overall GAC population is dropping is the likely culprit, which matches the explanation CG gives for the setup.

It does indirectly affect their rank. If you get squished and have now less points than the minimum for the division you are in, you have to win or you get demoted, where as before it wouldn't have dropped you out of your division, or which also happens to players, even if you win you get demoted because you lost so many points with the squish that even a win is not enough to keep you where you were. I would say that very much affects a players and just because it only takes effect after the first fight it doesn't mean that it was not the squish that caused a player to get demoted.
This creates a downward spiral. You need more and more wins to get/stay where you were and in a system that is designed for 50/50 that will eventually lead to players falling.

I disagree with the logic, but only because it doesn’t eliminate all other possible explanations for the change. While I understand where you are coming from about the squish and the skill cutoffs, there’s no guarantee that if you had lost that match without being squished that you wouldn’t have dropped.

In my opinion, it still all ties back to the population shrinking and league/division size changes. My wild guess about the graph changes is that CG was tweaking the skill rating cutoffs for the leagues, but left Carbonite/Bronzium alone, in an effort to normalize the leagues. This still can’t be tied directly back to skill squish, because skill squish would have to move players between divisions in order to be able to create an effect like overpopulation.

Basically, we need to push more people to sign up for GAC. More people means larger division/league sizes; people move up instead of dropping down. Spiral averted.