Protesting things though most certainly has an effect. Even if Fizzer does nothing, if anyone that stalls gets shunned from all invitational tournaments, and is shunned from joining clans, then that's also most certainly an effect.

Clearly its not having much effect. I'm in a clan, so is Odin and Beavers. Funnily you're not in one though. ;)

Horrible strawman argument. I'm no more clanless than you are.

not to mention if you're really going to try and argue that protesting things never has any affect then you're a complete and utter fucking dumbass.

You must have a problem with reading, or maybe you are just very desperate. Did I say protesting never has any effect? I said *your* protesting has had absolutely no effect. Has Fizzer changed anything in the ladder after hearing people like you moan and complain for months?

I'm not sure what you are doing here can even be called a protest. Denouncing Beavers will not help you a single bit in your quest for ladder changes. Instead all you are doing is making a fool out of yourself.

Anyway, keep your language clean. Its amusing but annoying watching people swear to compensate for their lack of intelligence. :)

I didnt have any idea that beavers was stalling, i dont think many others did. Thanks for pointing it out Naz horror, I wont invite him to any more games.

If anyone would be kind enough to tell me who this pulsey guy is, never seen him before.

his previous account was nike.

so... what did gneuf do? I have been fairly inactive but... how did I miss this? Also When was this?

Nauz - You did not call stalling cheating, but some did on page 1.

Looking at marc's run now (he got #1 on 7/9). He won 12 games in a row, lost to dunga (no stalling), beat Roo, then lost 2 more games, won and lost a couple more after. I did not see stalling in any of those games he lost (he took multiple turns in many days, no game went over 15 turns and all turns were done in almost back to back days).

Where are you getting this claim from Nauz?

Chris, I believe he's calling Angry Beavers out, not Johnny.

Real-time ladder is always going to be suspicious. You get to pretty much decide who your opponents will be. Have an opponent you're pretty good against that has a consistently high rating? Then join the ladder everyday when they do and because of the inactivity on that ladder you are almost assured to get him. Avoid players you know that can beat you, and players who could beat you and have a low rating.

Which is why it should only show you how many people have currently joined, not who they are

good idea for improvement

agree

It is suspicious that the RT ladder is so boring.

Players avoid joining in order (a) to game their rating by avoiding lower rated players, (b) to avoid playing certain people, or (c) to play people they think they can beat. It sure is fun sitting and waiting to play while half a dozen or a dozen people have their eyes on the queue but won't join. Fun shit.

Templates are boring. There should be two rules about templates:

(1) A maximum of one non-LD template per map and one LD template per map.
(2) If there haven't been at least three significant tournaments (not including practice tournaments for people trying to gain an edge right before a season begins) made using a template (or variation of a template), the template cannot be used. Who the fuck makes any games or tournaments on half the shitty ME seasonal templates? Supply the fucking demand! Don't try to create demand with a shitty supply.

Participation rates are low. Where is a fixxer when you need one? I already lost interest in the ladder. Boring templates. Long waits because people want to join but don't because they see the names of players. Boring ass ladder.

Edited 6/15/2014 04:05:17

Fix the templates.

Change the waiting system.

Introduce a minimum number of games per day (5?). Nobody wants to play Boston all the time as if he is the only player on WL.

Edited 6/15/2014 04:10:17

Yes please.

I only don't play the ladder because of those local deployment templates. There was already a vote on which seasonal templates to take out and the local deployment templates were voted as the 2 and third worst. So half the games being local deployment would not add to the amount of people playing.

However, I think there are two ways fizzer can make it much better because GUI is right, it is losing popularity currently:

A) take out local deployment and season 1,2, and possibly 3. Add Ancient Greece, phobia, china, strat turkey, etc. aka take out the less popular templates and put in more popular ones.

B) don't take out any if the current ones but add around 20 more templates that have some strategic value (Poland, Greece, ancient china, sumo wrestling, phobia, turkey, France, etc.) more variety tends to go over well because even if someone dislikes a few templates out of 30, it is not as bad as disliking 2/10.

Also, i agree that you should not know who is on the realtime ladder at the same time.

I want to play Boston all the time. He's so lonely in RT ladder. :(

Primary function of the ladder is to rank players. Not only games against much lower or much higher rated players are boring (we don't see in chess FM's playing against 1200 rated players), they are counterproductive. Algorythm functions much better if you play people close to your rating since you can achieve faster a reliable rating (check how the variation algorythm works, you'll see why), that is why I believe not only the change you are suggesting (reveal only the number of players on the ladder) is not helping, it hurts the system. As for 5 games minimum per day... I'd expect maybe 2 or 3 players would be rated on rt ladder if that happens. Considering some games may take up to 1 hour it is quite ridiculous to suggest this. As for adding new and more templates, I am all for it, however always announce it a week before you implement this. I personally think that rt ladder is not as popular as other ladders now, because it rates players much more accurately. It is a problem for many players who were accustomed to a possibility of inflating your rating by stalling and endless practise on one template. In any case I'll be curious if one prediction I have will be true. In 2 weeks I'll go in vacation mode and I'll be out of rt ladder for a month, I think that after I'm not there anymore more players will start playing again.