Rating Decay

#1 - Sept. 19, 2012, 9:02 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Rating Decay seems to be a regular brought up topic among the arena community these days as people try and look at ways to improve the arena system. The main problem which they are trying to address is the whole AFK on ladder for months on end without penalty.

Anyways i had this idea about using rating decay with a time bank twist. Here is how the system would work. At the start of a season or when you create a new team. You receive a time bank so if you cant play games one week you don't instantly start losing points, you instead lose time off your time bank. Once your time bank runs out you then start losing rating. The time bank system is used a lot in online chess.

So lets look at this with some numbers as an example for people to follow.
* Team starts with 100% time bank.
* In order to not lose any of your time bank you need to play 5 games a week.
* Each game missed each week loses 5% time bank. So if you play 0 games one week you
lose 25% of your time bank. (basically you get 4 weeks time bank per 6 season)
* Once your time bank is gone you then start losing 20 rating per game missed, so missing all games one week without any time bank left means -100 points.

That is the basic's of the system, the numbers are not that relevant they are just there for an example. The system is designed to make people have to play a small numbers of games each week and also cater for a 4 weeks AFK over 6 months.

Verdict??
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Community
#7 - Sept. 20, 2012, 11:25 a.m.
Blizzard Post
As has been said before, rewarding players for not actively participating in arena is something that we don't like. Players in season 11 were sitting on their rating due to its length and because they were waiting on Mists, but also while they would like to play arena more they feel there is too high a risk of losing the rating that they achieved. This is definitely a part of the system we feel can be improved upon.

There has to be caution taken with changes to the rating system though. If it is made to punish people for not playing, it may end up punishing players for going on a holiday or being ill which is something that we would like to avoid as well.