1v1 ladder transparency

in that case a simple commander kill/death ratio may have been better for league play ....

I think you're vastly overestimating people. Watch the numbers? I think you falling into the trap of thinking other people think like you.

And more importantly, I think the whole rank/rating thing is a red herring. People don't give a **** about that, they want to see themselves move after every game. That won't happen by linking rating to rank, and I don't think exposing the numbers changes anything because I don't think it's the real issue.

Well as it stands people rightfully have no chance at all to understand anything at all. That's far worse than showing whatever numbers are used to sort.

Going "you are too stupid for this, I won't even allow you to try" is a pretty bad thing.

Minimalism != thinking people are stupid. Throwing numbers at people is not good design. You put the numbers out there then there needs to be a way for them to draw meaning from them, you can't just dump them in the UI and say "figure it out".

If you want to display ratings then you don't use Glicko, you use ELO.

Ofc it isnt super good design to throw numbers at people.
Not showing any information at all however is far worse and adding a few columns with the relevant numbers and a short tooltip that gives a rough idea why they exist isn't much work.
If time were a non issue then ofc doing it starcraft 2 like would be great.
But time is an issue, and at least showing the raw numbers would be much better. Currently you do not see ANY CHANGE at all after many games you play. That is really the worst possible solution. At least seeing that some numbers changed somewhere by a tiny margin is much better mentally. At minimum people will understand that "points go up" is good. Why they go up by how much exactly might be complex, but just seeing a number increase is a good feeling.

In my opinion, the ladder needs:

a) a good old fashioned reset, since the balance has changed significantly since it's current "season" began
b) more visibility in terms of who is on the ladder and where (IE full ladder list view plz)
c) ranks to be universally displayed before the match starts, so you can have an idea of what level you're up against and what you might expect from the outcome in terms of rank movement
d) some tweaks so it doesn't feel like you have to grind to earn a rank up; maybe some form of value decay for victories over time? at the moment, it looks like those who start at the top, stay there

I agree that something should be shown, I just don't think it should be Glicko. I'd unhook the entire ranking/rating thing and have rankings separated. Have leagues determined by rating but position within the league setup in a way which encourages play rather than being tied so directly to rating.

games played k/d ratio?

The issue is people are expecting the system to work like with paladder.com, where wins add points and loses subtract. Issue is this system isn't trying to do that. It's setup to find your position relative to the rest of the players and use that for matchmaking. Once you find your position you're going to be fixed there.

The only way to climb would be to significantly improve your skill (which becomes less likely as you gain experience).

The rank positions are then arbitrarily superimposed on top based on a % value of total players. The rank is fairly meaningless, though as exodus pointed out in their article blizzard hit a nice trick by putting a more traditional ladder on top of the matchmaker so it feels to players that they are progressing.

TLDR.. this 'ladder' is designed to fix you in a position, rather than allow players to climb.

Are the numbers not buried in the ui or game files somewhere?

Why even use glicko? Just have a win/loss ratio and only match people against people in their rank, and just start them at the bottom instead of placement matches.

Because it's a proven mechanism for the assessment of relative skill levels. Not all wins are equal, which is why systems like ELO, Glicko and TruSkill exist.

The fact I came into this thread not even knowing the ladder was a skill measure and not a ladder by the definition of every other strategy game I've played is testament enough that something needs to be done to make the mechanisms clearer.

This does allow me to make more sense of the way the ladder works, but unfortunately it's not sense I like. As you say Quitch, people like to see themselves move on a ladder, and so that's what Uber should be aiming for: a system where playing a few competitive games gets you a lot of satisfaction if you win. I know I personally, and quite a few others, have got really frustrated with the system due to moving in unexpected ways after wins or losses.

Now I know why, but it seems that if it is a measure of skill it makes no sense whatsoever to have it on an arbitrary discrete scale: far better to simply display the actual values publically and give a precise reading. As a science student who spends a lot of time writing lab reports, displaying a continuous variable on an arbitrary discrete scale is just about the most annoying imaginable way of presenting data.

Edit: along with only displaying the data from the top few percent of arbitrary data brackets. I can't stop picturing the ladder as a bar graph now and it's making me angry.

Wins are equal if you are only matched against your own skill group.

Sadly the low number of players means chances are you'll not be playing against your skill very often, so at least the rating system can cope with that

I've got no idea why the OP is so butthurt over this.

The ranking system should be the based on sticking you on the ladder in an appropriate position based on how good of a player you are. Fu ck anything else.

Have you even read the OP. Nothing about that seems butt hurt at all.

Some people care about rank and numbers and some don't. That's great. Everyone is different. So stick it in so it makes them people happy. The players that want to see points and play ranked most likely feel the same about an AI or galactic war. Different strokes different folks and all that.

Me I love numbers, scores, stats and all that stuff. It would make me play more knowing how many points I need to get to move up a position. It would make me and like minded people play more, which helps the people that don't care about points because of quicker queue times. Which in turn helps everyone.

CS:GO doesn't show Elo score, or how much games effect Elo, etc... I think the point is actually just to prevent people from creating perfect ways to rank up.

Well that's just speculation on our part . Dota 2 shows mmr (another valve game).

There is never any exploitative way to 'rank up' in a ladder unless the system is badly designed in the first place. And if it is, then full disclosure of information helps discover and fix these issues on a more timely basis.

Wouldn't you want to know whether the system is flawed before you spent time in it?

Which is why you need Glicko (or equivalent), how else are you measuring what someone's skill level is?

There's a reason games have been gravitating towards constant rewards. Players like it. Movement provides a reason to keep playing, simply holding spot X forever isn't as interesting. For some people it's just about playing the game, but others like the meta game too.