When are the team rating changes going live?

11/19/2012 04:51 PMPosted by Themperor

You know, when they said more active teams would benefit from playing more often and how they said they would energize ladder teams etc etc

The new system should be arriving in patch 5.1.

Update: I was just informed that the rating inflation system still needs refinement, and so will very likely not make patch 5.1. Apologies for the miscommunication, all.

11/19/2012 06:22 PMPosted by Misbelief

So your ratings will no longer be based on how well you do but how much you play?

No. Excerpted from the blog here:

However, we took a hard look at the way we measure Team Rating, and came to the conclusion that our formula doesn’t do a good enough job of measuring the potential for improvement over the course of a season. While your skill may not necessarily improve over the course of a season, your gear definitely does, and that should have an effect on the relative power of your team. We’re currently working on a change to allow Team Ratings to grow faster over time, as long as you keep playing. We don’t have any specifics to share yet, but this correction will have the added benefit that players who continue playing will be capable of reaching higher Team Ratings, and therefore potential access to rewards, than someone who stops playing and sits on their rating.

As a potential example let’s say the Fatty Goat Steaks have a Team Rating of 2700 and the Mushan Tongues have a Team Rating of 2500. The Fatty Goat Steaks decide their Team Rating is high enough that they’re going to sit out the rest of the season. The Mushan Tongues keep playing each week, their gear gradually improves, and they continue to win many of their matches. Because of the new inflation component, their Team Rating rises, let’s say, 300 additional points to 2800. They are now higher ranked than the Fatty Goat Steaks. If the Fatty Goat Steaks decide to jump back into Arena matches, they can benefit from the inflation as well, but they’re going to have to play and win to catch up. It’s not going to be a system where you have to play every day just to defend your rating, but certainly one where you can’t sit at the top doing nothing and collect your rewards at the end. We’ll have more details on exactly how this system will work as we get closer to its implementation.

We believe this adjustment to the Team Rating formula will have a similar benefit to the “rating decay” that some of you have been asking for, but will feel more positive – rather than feeling like you must keep running just to stay in place (i.e. keep your current score), players that continue participating will be rewarded with higher Team Ratings. As a season wears on, this should also make upper brackets more active as well.

Update: I was just informed that the rating inflation system still needs refinement, and so will very likely not make patch 5.1.

Apologies for the miscommunication, all.