Squish is getting squishier, what about my placement?

I'd like to thank Meathead for doing the follow up here. I have talked to some people who are withholding judgement since we know so little about the new formula and its effects. That's fair, as far as it goes. But there's obviously been a lot of back and forth and Meathead didn't let it go. That's important for a community manager. Without saying anything about how happy I am with the changes (since we haven't seen them yet), I do want to give a hearty shout out to Meathead for sticking with the issue and for giving us notification of the change when it was ready for implementation.

Meathead? Cheers to you and all the other folks who have worked on the malformed squish to knead it back into shape.

My recommendation? Make yourself some homemade focaccia, call in sick, and celebrate.

The problem in Kyber affects maybe 1% of players. The problem it looks like they’re going to fix (league distribution drastically drifting from the original intent) impacts something like 80% of players. While you may not care about it, it’s probably worth fixing the big problem that impacts everyone before worrying about 30 extra crystals for the folks that already benefit most from GAC.

"Joebo720;c-2447177" wrote:

"Lumiya;c-2447167" wrote:
Just wait and see how it will evolve now:

https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/266696/grand-arena-championship-update-kyber-squish#latest

It's a lot of words amounting to nothing. Problem lies within Kyber, K1 is now tiny. The post mentions more people getting into Kyber, not how they are fixing Kyber.

furthermore we should all know by now to wait and see what actually happens

reminder that crumb said the squish would not affect our experiences

"Joebo720;c-2447177" wrote:

"Lumiya;c-2447167" wrote:
Just wait and see how it will evolve now:

https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/266696/grand-arena-championship-update-kyber-squish#latest

It's a lot of words amounting to nothing. Problem lies within Kyber, K1 is now tiny. The post mentions more people getting into Kyber, not how they are fixing Kyber.

It seems their intention is to redistribute the player population back to their original segmentation goals. That's how they're going to (attempt to) fix Kyber. This is the meat of the post:

I worked with the Data Team to create a new formula that will take the GAC Leagues and segment them to around the original intent of the Kyber Squish introduction.
At the end of the day, we want more people in Kyber, but we also want more people progressing towards Kyber. I believe the new formula we will be implementing is setting us up to accomplish that.

Granted, that's completely devoid of details on the "how" - But if we take their stated intentions at face value, I don't see a way to achieve those goals (more people in Kyber, more people moving toward Kyber, correct the population segmentation) without growing Kyber, and Kyber 1 with it.

I've heard a lot of people say "It's a lot of words amounting to nothing." I think that's unfair. We found out a few things in that post. We found out that meathead has been working this issue all along. We found out that CG feels it's important enough (and problematic enough) to make a change. We got a high level view of the solution. People have been begging for communication about this for months - and when we get it people complain that... its too many words? People can't be pleased.

But I'm grateful for the comms, and thankful that meathead made the post as it does in fact answer some questions that have come up over and over again. If we take nothing else from the post we can at least be assured that CG has known about the problem and does indeed view it as a problem.

"herd_nerfer;c-2447186" wrote:
This is the meat of the post:

And also the post of the meat.

every change causes more threads about unfair matches lol

"Dawnsinger;c-2447232" wrote:
The top 3 leagues are all less than what CG said they wanted them to be, 20% of the total population. Growing Kyber (and Chromuim, and Aurodium) by 33% so they’re all 1/5 of active players won’t change the matchups at all. You’ll still get matched with the exact same players, you’ll just be in a higher league and receive better rewards.

The only real difference besides rewards will be how many teams you need to set.

"Joebo720;c-2447200" wrote:

"Dawnsinger;c-2447199" wrote:
K1 is currently about .3% of the player base. The 1% I’m talking about are the 3k players that would be in K1 if it was the size it was supposed to be. The rest of the divisions in Kyber are fine, it’s only K1 that’s a significantly smaller size than it should be based on what CG said their goals are.

K1 being small has gotten a lot of attention because so many highly engaged players are there. I’m one of them. But it’s genuinely not a significant portion of the playerbase.

As am I. But i would think kyber as a whole is about right? I think the lower divisions are where they are supposed to be. Kyber is hard enough to be in as it is. Putting people from lower divisions in Kyber is just going to cause more threads about unfair matches.

Hopefully this is exactly the change they make. It may not seem like a big impact, but it’ll trickle down and hopefully a significant proportion of players end up in the appropriate league and they can maintain the proportions originally stated in the long term.

"svirve;d-266705" wrote:
So the squish is getting squishier.

But what about my placements?
The squish matters little if you don't know what you're placing in GA.
And won't know until the squish happens and everyone is signed up for the next round.

Right now the last round of each GA isn't taken into account for your final placement.
Not even in terms of reward.

Example; Going into my last round I was at 3799 rating, #164.
I won the round and bumped up to 3833 rating, but my placement is still 3799 and #164.
End of season rewards where distributed as 3799 and #164, despite winning the last round.

In this case it made no difference except my e-peen is an inch smaller because I'm not officially top 100.
But in the case of being top 50 or not, top 250 or not. And in the case of being promoted to another league, I would see substantial loss of rewards.

This is not a new problem, and has hilarious results. My guildmate was #160 in k2 after match 8, then won and got promoted to k1. Because the rewards placed him at #160, but then in k1, he got top 250 rewards. I've also benefitted from being in top 500 and lost, so would have gotten normal k1 rewards but instead got the 50 more crystals. At this point Im not holding my breath that it ever becomes a high enough priority for them to fix. I'm much happier that I don't have to stress about teetering between k1 and k2 (as I went 0-6 in matches 3-8 last 3v3 after peaking at like top 250 and thus dropped like a rock way into k2).

I’m happy things are changing but like many holding my breath on the results. The one thing I wish I knew is why there is a need for a squish. Gac already has seasons, so just set each league at 20 percent and each division at 10/25/30/25/10 levels and run the season. Rinse repeat and rinse. I’m sure there are reasons why this doesn’t work but I can’t see them.

"nfidel2k;c-2447264" wrote:

"Drathuk916;c-2447259" wrote:
I’m happy things are changing but like many holding my breath on the results. The one thing I wish I knew is why there is a need for a squish. Gac already has seasons, so just set each league at 20 percent and each division at 10/25/30/25/10 levels and run the season. Rinse repeat and rinse. I’m sure there are reasons why this doesn’t work but I can’t see them.

Because skill ratings don't reset. So, at either end of the global ladder, you have accounts that can accumulate (or lose) skill points to an eventuality where they can lose constantly and not change position, or win constantly and not move up. Squish is supposed to keep the ratings within a competitive range.

You’ve explained a reason for an adjustment to the skill rating not a reason for hard level entry points to the various leagues and divisions. It’s also a flawed argument imo. No matter the amount of points they take away from Aesop, they’ll remain in the top 5 as long as they want.

The squish doesn’t make it easier for me to get to the mountain top. It just makes it look not as steep.