March 28, 2024

Pratamiklas

Business – Your Game

Starcraft 2 League System – How it Works

As soon as you start playing, you will find out that the Starcraft 2 league system is completely different from the original ladder system of the original Starcraft. Here is how it works:

After playing 5 “testing” games, you can be assigned to one of five divisions: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, or Diamond. Bronze is the lowest-ranked league while Diamond is the highest ranked.

Once you are assigned to a league, you are given a rank from 1-100 and are able to see how you stack up against other similarly ranked players. Winning games awards you points that allow you to move up and down in your division. However, the biggest question on everyone’s mind is: How can I move up from one Starcraft 2 league system to the next?

The answer is not as straight-forward as you might think it would be. You are not guaranteed to move from the Bronze league to the Silver league just because you are ranked #1 in your division and win a game. You can be over 100 points ahead of second place and still not move up!

The biggest factor seems to be wins over higher ranked players. When you are in the Bronze league, not all of your games will be against fellow Bronze league players, but rather against Silver and sometimes even Gold players. The new Starcraft 2 league system tracks your wins versus higher ranked players and adjusts your actual league accordingly.

In other words, if you are in the Bronze league, the criteria for ranking up is not beating other Bronze leaguers, but securing wins against Silver and Gold players.

I have verified this via experiment. I am normally a Diamond league player but after a ladder reset, I lost all my games during placement and landed in the Bronze league. My first game, I ended up versus someone in the Gold league (not many people were online in beta at the time!) and instantly was promoted to the Silver league after a single win! To make things more interesting, I was ranked 98th in my division at the time of that win! I was almost dead last place but moved up a league because of a win over a significantly higher ranked opponent.

After that win, I wound up at the bottom of the Silver league. I won three more games in a row and was promoted to the Gold league (all my opponents were again in the Gold league). At the time of my promotion I was only ranked 7th in my division.

Meanwhile, in 2v2, I was stuck in Platinum league. I was in the number one spot in my division and 100 points higher than my closest opponent in the Starcraft 2 league system. Despite that, no matter how many wins I received, I was unable to move up to Diamond. It was only after I defeated two Diamond ranked opponents was I promoted.

In short, the fastest way to move up in the ranks is not to amass division points but rather to beat players in leagues higher than your own.