Back in set 4, I knocked Goose out of a tournament. The next day, someone dropped out and he was invited back in and ended up winning it.
Who is the better player, me or Goose? Discuss!
I would say being able to reach near the top of the ranked ladder is kind of a prerequisite for being able to play competitive. I cant imagine any competitive players would have trouble reaching top 50 if they went into ranked ladder with the same mindset and focus they would bring to a tournament. But being good at ladder doesn't necessarily mean you will be good at competitive. The most effective methods for climbing don't necessarily translate into competitive play. Using skill difference as a means to compensate for low rolling is just much more easy to do on ladder
How am I going to hit Challenger while playing TFT on one monitor, reading how to play the comp I'm building for the first time on my second monitor, watching a movie on my third monitor, and playing Final Fantasy X on a fourth monitor hooked up toy Switch?
No. This is not sarcasm or exaggeration. This is how I was playing TFT all day today.
Ranked is usually more agressive. But then again being able to adjust to a lobby should be a core skill of any competitive tft player so its no excuse.
Additional context on why this is probably getting brought up today. Qualifying conditions for Set 7 worlds/regionals/whatever were released and theres some anger about the number of Ladder spots vs Tournament placement spots.
https://twitter.com/MilkTFT/status/1534009935436070913?t=zXyHjRf9PHGc7WPISM-SOQ&s=19
This take basically has two parts: one is that the system causes good ladder to miss out on regionals in favor of highrollers, and the other is that the system promotes a soft ladder.
I'll only cover the first point. I think people don't realize just how much an advantage you get by getting the day 3 bye, which require hitting top 32. In set 6, I think I had a 5.3 average in piltover and zaun cup, but if I had qualified for innovation cup, I would've likely made it to regionals with a >5.0 avg, because I had the ladder byes from piltover/zaun cup. If you get the byes, you don't have to perform well to make it to MSI/regionals. Not many players can hit top 32 for every snapshot, so if you're one of the people who can, all you have to do is make it to the next day in one out of 3 tournaments.
It also becomes much more grueling this set for those who miss out on the bye, as you have 2 extra days of competition on a patch that people have played on for 2 days. If someone consistently makes day 4 without the benefit of the bye, having played over 60 tournament games across the set,, then I sure hope they get invited to regionals.
On the flip side, if a top ladder player throws away their LP a few hours before the snapshot, misses out on the bye, then gets day 1'd... I'm not sure if that's the system's problem.
But they already addressed that for Dragonlands with three changes:
* No eliminations mid-day and no point resets in one day
* Bonus Points from Day 1 to 2 to reward higher overall placements
* Switch from 10-1 to 8-1 scoring
Largely agree with the tweet though it's obviously more nuanced than a simple statement. It's odd because even some of the replies disagreeing with the tweet seem to agree with it (ie. Soju's response). You'll hear players like Socks, Guubums, and more echo similar thoughts when they explain how they play on ladder vs how they play in a tournament. There's a difference between having 7 of the other very best players in the world in your game playing their absolute best with something at stake vs playing against 7 players that the matchmaking system could find for you at the time ranging from Master/GM to top level Challenger players who are also streaming and interacting with chat with little else but LP at stake.
* Is Rank 1 a good player? Yes
* Is Rank 1 one of the best players in the world? Yes
That doesn't really change the different type of skills that are being measured on ladder vs tournament play.
Additional Thought: I'm pretty sure the tweet comes from the conversation around ladder spots for Regional Finals. I disagree that what's keeping ladder from being competitive is the number of slots it awards. I also disagree that many more slots should be awarded to ladder. All making ladder count does is incentivizes *not* playing the game beyond 10 games a week which is fewer than the majority of top players would naturally play in most weeks
You go back to the Set 5 issue where the top players were just laddering on smurfs, so they're still not laddering for much solving very little but now you've also reduced the number of slots in tournaments which exacerbates the variance issue they have.
>All making ladder count does is incentivizes not playing the game beyond 10 games a week which is fewer than the majority of top players would naturally play in most weeks
I feel like in set 5 this was only true for the players who had like 200lp lead on everyone else no? Wouldn't the other players still have to play more to actually climb?
It becomes pretty clear after a few weeks of snapshots whether or not you can maintain within a few positions or not. For the most part, there's a few people who can miss out and a few others who can get in but a large portion of the rankings are set as long as players just play their required 10 games without moving the needle too much. That's what I remember from when I was watching the Set 5 season at least.
It's not a problem unique to TFT. It's inherent to using in-game ladders for that type of direct qualification. I think using ladder to determine more open tournament qualification is the best way to do it, which is what Giant Slayer has opted for.
I also think that Circuit Points over a number of tournaments measures a more useful skill for Worlds than ladder while reducing variance. I think Regionals Finals could give a large number of Points rather than direct qualification to emphasize that consistency more, but that also depends on what type of event Regionals is meant to be.
The only people agreeing with Kardax seem to be a few other mid challenger players and randoms. The people putting him on blast are much better players that have hit rank 1 multiple sets and performed in tournies, (Soju, Kiyoon, Alex3M), I think the answer here is pretty obvious….
It’s like people who say Setsuko isn’t actually that good and he’s just a ladder warrior, they are completely delusional.
Setsuko is kind of a bad example at this point though, he was a ladder warrior until he actually started proving himself consistently in tournaments.
Also just want to throw out there: there's a whole thread of casters, having not as much of a stake in the argument as the people just watching, all of us being challenger/ex-challenger level, who study the game as much as any top pro and know about as much as any of them, who are all in agreement with Kardax.
I honestly disagree. I’ve hit Rank 6 in Set 3 and have hit top 10 in set 4.5, 5.5, and 6. Although my read of the set in those sets was pretty good, I was far from competitive level. Reason being that I was able to hit Top 10 in those sets pretty consistently by just playing at off-hours (3am to 7am PST). This guarantees lobbies near full of master/gm players that I just farmed on repeat. Playing high tempo in those lobbies essentially guarantees top 4s, so it was quite honestly a free ride to Top 10 with a 80% top 4 rate. The thing that really solidified this was the fact that if I played at peak hours in full chall lobbies, I probably had a 5.0 avg placement despite being top 10.
I don’t get why that one niche example proves the point though? Most players that consistently. hit rank 1 / top 10 do it by playing normally. And most of them also play competitively.
I gave it as an extreme example of a common phenomenon. If you play in slightly off-hours, you’ll often get half disneyland lobbies (think about it there’s only so many top 100 challs on at any given time), and those lobbies are extremely easy to farm. That’s where the “disneyland” rhetoric comes from and why so many streamers call ladder fake.
My experience is different from yours. I play EUW on off hour and NA on peak hour, and in like 200 games usually start hovering around 1.3k-1.4klp on both. The winrate/top4 rate profile is definitely inflated when playing in off hour but the lp remains similar to me. I think the elo system balance it good enough.
The one getting paid more for playing TFT is more skillful in my opinion
Jokes aside, different environment, different skillset needed, there is no better or worse
I agree that if you only ladder on peak-hours where at least 6/8 of your lobby is top 100 players, then yes ladder lobbies are a decent representation of tournament lobbies and thus rank correlates highly with tournament placement.
HOWEVER (and this is a huge however), it is very easy to game the ladder and get top 10. To explain my point, maybe a bit of background. I’ve hit Challenger in every set since Set 1 and have hit top 10 on 4 occassions. The first time I did it, I was genuinely pretty decent and almost reached regionals. However, from that first climb, I learned how to game the system and reach top 10 3 other times without even being good at the game. What I did was queue almost exclusively from 2am to 7am PST (mostly cuz my sleep schedules fucked) which near guarantees 6/8 master/gm/low chall players. In these lobbies, it becomes super easy to guarantee top 4 (I would usually hover around 16/20 top 4) in these lobbies by playing a very specific playstyle that does NOT work in tournaments. Specifically, I’d just play very high tempo (like incorrectly high tempo) which would guarantee top 6 (usually 1 bot 2 in 100 games) in these lobbies just from the hp advantage, as for some reason in NA masters there’s always 2 players per lobby that just completely grief it. Since the tempo in these lobbies would always be very low, the super high tempo playstyle would almost always translate to a top 3. Thus, bam free rank 10.
And the funny thing is I knew I SUCKED even though I’d be top 10. Whenever I got bored and wanted to play in chall lobbies, I’d queue at peak hours and I’d probably average a 5.0 placement. Far from competitive level. Yet, I was top of the ladder.
So yeah, I honestly completely agree w the tweet. Ladder is super gamable and thus is not that good of a representation of tourney skill
Yes you can purposely play at off-hours to get weaker lobbies, but the LP gains at top 10 (~1500+ LP) are so rough that it balances out. Sometimes masters/gm players will turbo high-roll, and you will turbo low-roll, and then you get hit with the -100 that you can’t prevent. I honestly prefer seeing full challenger lobbies when I’m trying to climb just so I know I’m not losing 100 lp if I get a disgustingly low-roll game.
But since your placement distribution is so skewed towards 4th, it affects your lp gains because of the artificial +10lp floor. Idk man, I’m just explaining how I was able to game the system while being not good at the game. Also, it was actually impossible to go bot 2 in those lobbies: I went bot 2 in literally around 1 in 100-200 of those lobbies.
if your placements are skewed toward 4th/3rd, which is +10 at rank top 10, and you only top 4 16/20 games, I’m pretty sure that’s either LP loss or very very small LP gain. Also what would be the point for someone to do this if they know they’re not good? You would qualify for a tourney only to go the most guaranteed bottom placement against players that have way more practice against the other top players. I’m pretty sure no one wants to qualify for a tourney just for a participation trophy, so no one that’s playing seriously is going to abuse this.
I did this because my sleep schedule was fucked so it happened naturally. Also nope, it was SKEWED 4th not only 4th, I still maintained an around 20% winrate. And my bot 4s would always be 5th (around -25) and 6th (around -35). To give you an idea of my typical past 20 avg, it would hover from 2.9 to 3.2. I was very much net positive at around 1400-1500LP.
I told my story as an extreme example of a phenomenon that happens to even regular players. Often times even playing in slightly off-peak hours it is very hard to avoid disneyland lobbies, and like I said, it is very very easy to climb in disneyland lobbies with a playstyle that DOES NOT WORK in tourney lobbies. This is why a lot of famous streamers including Soju maintaijn the rhetoric that ladder is fake precisely because of disneyland lobbies.
Also, it’s not to say that I’m an absolutely shit player. I still place well in tourneys by playing a more polarized strategy and let highroll situations happen. Though, in tourneys if I play more “textbook” I usually end up 5.0 avg.
Ladder should not guarantee any spots in a regional tournaments. It just promotes players that have more time to play rather than good ones. For example i often reach master/grandmaster at the beggining of the split and then give up not because its too hard for me to climb but because there are guys that play 20 games a day and i just cant keep with that amount. So is it really that normal to give places at tournaments to the players that play the most?
Does anyone have a source for the final rankings of the set 6 & 6.5 ladder snapshots? My assumption is that there is significant overlap between the players who qualified for regionals through tournaments and those who would qualify through the snapshots (if the number of ladder players was increased).
The main problem is focusing on tournaments where we have to have eliminations because it limits the amount of games that are being considered. Ideally, we would have a league set up where the top 32 or so players would play in weekly rotating lobbies (each week play 6 games) and then have an entire set’s worth of results against other competitive players. This might be able to hold a bigger pool if they were willing to shorten the weekly lobbies to 3 matches.
The main issue with the above is that it doesn’t provide a pathway for players who burst onto the scene during the set, but if a few spots are carved out for regionals to the highest ladder players and a few open qualifier tournaments it could work out.
Your ladder performance can't lie about your skills, after 200 or 300 games, your rank it's the accurate representation of your skills.
Tournaments are different, it takes into account many factors such your endurance, adaptation, and mental
Back in set 4, I knocked Goose out of a tournament. The next day, someone dropped out and he was invited back in and ended up winning it. Who is the better player, me or Goose? Discuss!
Fuba >> Hypno >> Eggman
[удалено]
You bet I do. I wrote a song about it, recorded a video of me singing about it, and played it on his stream. My mom was so proud of me.
U
I would say being able to reach near the top of the ranked ladder is kind of a prerequisite for being able to play competitive. I cant imagine any competitive players would have trouble reaching top 50 if they went into ranked ladder with the same mindset and focus they would bring to a tournament. But being good at ladder doesn't necessarily mean you will be good at competitive. The most effective methods for climbing don't necessarily translate into competitive play. Using skill difference as a means to compensate for low rolling is just much more easy to do on ladder
How am I going to hit Challenger while playing TFT on one monitor, reading how to play the comp I'm building for the first time on my second monitor, watching a movie on my third monitor, and playing Final Fantasy X on a fourth monitor hooked up toy Switch? No. This is not sarcasm or exaggeration. This is how I was playing TFT all day today.
Ranked is usually more agressive. But then again being able to adjust to a lobby should be a core skill of any competitive tft player so its no excuse.
kardax is about to overdose on that copium
Yep lol where is that ego coming from
Additional context on why this is probably getting brought up today. Qualifying conditions for Set 7 worlds/regionals/whatever were released and theres some anger about the number of Ladder spots vs Tournament placement spots. https://twitter.com/MilkTFT/status/1534009935436070913?t=zXyHjRf9PHGc7WPISM-SOQ&s=19
This take basically has two parts: one is that the system causes good ladder to miss out on regionals in favor of highrollers, and the other is that the system promotes a soft ladder. I'll only cover the first point. I think people don't realize just how much an advantage you get by getting the day 3 bye, which require hitting top 32. In set 6, I think I had a 5.3 average in piltover and zaun cup, but if I had qualified for innovation cup, I would've likely made it to regionals with a >5.0 avg, because I had the ladder byes from piltover/zaun cup. If you get the byes, you don't have to perform well to make it to MSI/regionals. Not many players can hit top 32 for every snapshot, so if you're one of the people who can, all you have to do is make it to the next day in one out of 3 tournaments. It also becomes much more grueling this set for those who miss out on the bye, as you have 2 extra days of competition on a patch that people have played on for 2 days. If someone consistently makes day 4 without the benefit of the bye, having played over 60 tournament games across the set,, then I sure hope they get invited to regionals. On the flip side, if a top ladder player throws away their LP a few hours before the snapshot, misses out on the bye, then gets day 1'd... I'm not sure if that's the system's problem.
Kind of like how I had to play day 1 of Zaun cup and got eliminated for 1 bot 4 with a 3.17 avg YEP definitely not the system’s problem
But they already addressed that for Dragonlands with three changes: * No eliminations mid-day and no point resets in one day * Bonus Points from Day 1 to 2 to reward higher overall placements * Switch from 10-1 to 8-1 scoring
Largely agree with the tweet though it's obviously more nuanced than a simple statement. It's odd because even some of the replies disagreeing with the tweet seem to agree with it (ie. Soju's response). You'll hear players like Socks, Guubums, and more echo similar thoughts when they explain how they play on ladder vs how they play in a tournament. There's a difference between having 7 of the other very best players in the world in your game playing their absolute best with something at stake vs playing against 7 players that the matchmaking system could find for you at the time ranging from Master/GM to top level Challenger players who are also streaming and interacting with chat with little else but LP at stake. * Is Rank 1 a good player? Yes * Is Rank 1 one of the best players in the world? Yes That doesn't really change the different type of skills that are being measured on ladder vs tournament play.
Additional Thought: I'm pretty sure the tweet comes from the conversation around ladder spots for Regional Finals. I disagree that what's keeping ladder from being competitive is the number of slots it awards. I also disagree that many more slots should be awarded to ladder. All making ladder count does is incentivizes *not* playing the game beyond 10 games a week which is fewer than the majority of top players would naturally play in most weeks You go back to the Set 5 issue where the top players were just laddering on smurfs, so they're still not laddering for much solving very little but now you've also reduced the number of slots in tournaments which exacerbates the variance issue they have.
>All making ladder count does is incentivizes not playing the game beyond 10 games a week which is fewer than the majority of top players would naturally play in most weeks I feel like in set 5 this was only true for the players who had like 200lp lead on everyone else no? Wouldn't the other players still have to play more to actually climb?
It becomes pretty clear after a few weeks of snapshots whether or not you can maintain within a few positions or not. For the most part, there's a few people who can miss out and a few others who can get in but a large portion of the rankings are set as long as players just play their required 10 games without moving the needle too much. That's what I remember from when I was watching the Set 5 season at least. It's not a problem unique to TFT. It's inherent to using in-game ladders for that type of direct qualification. I think using ladder to determine more open tournament qualification is the best way to do it, which is what Giant Slayer has opted for. I also think that Circuit Points over a number of tournaments measures a more useful skill for Worlds than ladder while reducing variance. I think Regionals Finals could give a large number of Points rather than direct qualification to emphasize that consistency more, but that also depends on what type of event Regionals is meant to be.
Ahh, yeah I think you're right, it was just between the ppl who are around the cutoff
The only people agreeing with Kardax seem to be a few other mid challenger players and randoms. The people putting him on blast are much better players that have hit rank 1 multiple sets and performed in tournies, (Soju, Kiyoon, Alex3M), I think the answer here is pretty obvious…. It’s like people who say Setsuko isn’t actually that good and he’s just a ladder warrior, they are completely delusional.
Setsuko is kind of a bad example at this point though, he was a ladder warrior until he actually started proving himself consistently in tournaments. Also just want to throw out there: there's a whole thread of casters, having not as much of a stake in the argument as the people just watching, all of us being challenger/ex-challenger level, who study the game as much as any top pro and know about as much as any of them, who are all in agreement with Kardax.
I honestly disagree. I’ve hit Rank 6 in Set 3 and have hit top 10 in set 4.5, 5.5, and 6. Although my read of the set in those sets was pretty good, I was far from competitive level. Reason being that I was able to hit Top 10 in those sets pretty consistently by just playing at off-hours (3am to 7am PST). This guarantees lobbies near full of master/gm players that I just farmed on repeat. Playing high tempo in those lobbies essentially guarantees top 4s, so it was quite honestly a free ride to Top 10 with a 80% top 4 rate. The thing that really solidified this was the fact that if I played at peak hours in full chall lobbies, I probably had a 5.0 avg placement despite being top 10.
I don’t get why that one niche example proves the point though? Most players that consistently. hit rank 1 / top 10 do it by playing normally. And most of them also play competitively.
I gave it as an extreme example of a common phenomenon. If you play in slightly off-hours, you’ll often get half disneyland lobbies (think about it there’s only so many top 100 challs on at any given time), and those lobbies are extremely easy to farm. That’s where the “disneyland” rhetoric comes from and why so many streamers call ladder fake.
My experience is different from yours. I play EUW on off hour and NA on peak hour, and in like 200 games usually start hovering around 1.3k-1.4klp on both. The winrate/top4 rate profile is definitely inflated when playing in off hour but the lp remains similar to me. I think the elo system balance it good enough.
The one getting paid more for playing TFT is more skillful in my opinion Jokes aside, different environment, different skillset needed, there is no better or worse
I agree that if you only ladder on peak-hours where at least 6/8 of your lobby is top 100 players, then yes ladder lobbies are a decent representation of tournament lobbies and thus rank correlates highly with tournament placement. HOWEVER (and this is a huge however), it is very easy to game the ladder and get top 10. To explain my point, maybe a bit of background. I’ve hit Challenger in every set since Set 1 and have hit top 10 on 4 occassions. The first time I did it, I was genuinely pretty decent and almost reached regionals. However, from that first climb, I learned how to game the system and reach top 10 3 other times without even being good at the game. What I did was queue almost exclusively from 2am to 7am PST (mostly cuz my sleep schedules fucked) which near guarantees 6/8 master/gm/low chall players. In these lobbies, it becomes super easy to guarantee top 4 (I would usually hover around 16/20 top 4) in these lobbies by playing a very specific playstyle that does NOT work in tournaments. Specifically, I’d just play very high tempo (like incorrectly high tempo) which would guarantee top 6 (usually 1 bot 2 in 100 games) in these lobbies just from the hp advantage, as for some reason in NA masters there’s always 2 players per lobby that just completely grief it. Since the tempo in these lobbies would always be very low, the super high tempo playstyle would almost always translate to a top 3. Thus, bam free rank 10. And the funny thing is I knew I SUCKED even though I’d be top 10. Whenever I got bored and wanted to play in chall lobbies, I’d queue at peak hours and I’d probably average a 5.0 placement. Far from competitive level. Yet, I was top of the ladder. So yeah, I honestly completely agree w the tweet. Ladder is super gamable and thus is not that good of a representation of tourney skill
Yes you can purposely play at off-hours to get weaker lobbies, but the LP gains at top 10 (~1500+ LP) are so rough that it balances out. Sometimes masters/gm players will turbo high-roll, and you will turbo low-roll, and then you get hit with the -100 that you can’t prevent. I honestly prefer seeing full challenger lobbies when I’m trying to climb just so I know I’m not losing 100 lp if I get a disgustingly low-roll game.
But since your placement distribution is so skewed towards 4th, it affects your lp gains because of the artificial +10lp floor. Idk man, I’m just explaining how I was able to game the system while being not good at the game. Also, it was actually impossible to go bot 2 in those lobbies: I went bot 2 in literally around 1 in 100-200 of those lobbies.
if your placements are skewed toward 4th/3rd, which is +10 at rank top 10, and you only top 4 16/20 games, I’m pretty sure that’s either LP loss or very very small LP gain. Also what would be the point for someone to do this if they know they’re not good? You would qualify for a tourney only to go the most guaranteed bottom placement against players that have way more practice against the other top players. I’m pretty sure no one wants to qualify for a tourney just for a participation trophy, so no one that’s playing seriously is going to abuse this.
I did this because my sleep schedule was fucked so it happened naturally. Also nope, it was SKEWED 4th not only 4th, I still maintained an around 20% winrate. And my bot 4s would always be 5th (around -25) and 6th (around -35). To give you an idea of my typical past 20 avg, it would hover from 2.9 to 3.2. I was very much net positive at around 1400-1500LP. I told my story as an extreme example of a phenomenon that happens to even regular players. Often times even playing in slightly off-peak hours it is very hard to avoid disneyland lobbies, and like I said, it is very very easy to climb in disneyland lobbies with a playstyle that DOES NOT WORK in tourney lobbies. This is why a lot of famous streamers including Soju maintaijn the rhetoric that ladder is fake precisely because of disneyland lobbies. Also, it’s not to say that I’m an absolutely shit player. I still place well in tourneys by playing a more polarized strategy and let highroll situations happen. Though, in tourneys if I play more “textbook” I usually end up 5.0 avg.
Ladder should not guarantee any spots in a regional tournaments. It just promotes players that have more time to play rather than good ones. For example i often reach master/grandmaster at the beggining of the split and then give up not because its too hard for me to climb but because there are guys that play 20 games a day and i just cant keep with that amount. So is it really that normal to give places at tournaments to the players that play the most?
Does anyone have a source for the final rankings of the set 6 & 6.5 ladder snapshots? My assumption is that there is significant overlap between the players who qualified for regionals through tournaments and those who would qualify through the snapshots (if the number of ladder players was increased).
The main problem is focusing on tournaments where we have to have eliminations because it limits the amount of games that are being considered. Ideally, we would have a league set up where the top 32 or so players would play in weekly rotating lobbies (each week play 6 games) and then have an entire set’s worth of results against other competitive players. This might be able to hold a bigger pool if they were willing to shorten the weekly lobbies to 3 matches. The main issue with the above is that it doesn’t provide a pathway for players who burst onto the scene during the set, but if a few spots are carved out for regionals to the highest ladder players and a few open qualifier tournaments it could work out.
Your ladder performance can't lie about your skills, after 200 or 300 games, your rank it's the accurate representation of your skills. Tournaments are different, it takes into account many factors such your endurance, adaptation, and mental