Originally Posted by Kestrel
If everyone under 1800 suddenly quits, the 2k teams beat other 2k teams to stay at 2k. This is what win-trading is based upon, that if you lose and win equally against an equally rated team you both stay at the same point. If everyone 1800 is a hermetically sealed group, where the people at the bottom of the bracket lose most of the time, but win a few improbable battles and are rewarded heavily for those wins, than nothing changes. Now if a new team comes along and moves up into the 2000 bracket, those points need to come from somewhere. But if everyone under 1800 quits, then the average of active arena teams will be something like 2000, and it will *stay* at 2000 so long as nobody else enters or leaves the system.
Likewise, a team that falls to 1300 and then stays at 1300 ISN'T pumping points into the system, at least not while they hold steady at 1300.
|
But to assume it's a hermetically sealed group is a bit naive, no? I'm not great at arena by any means - usually right around 1500 with my lock/pally 2v2, and I tend to win most all of my matches at 1480, and lose most all of my matches at 1530. If you took away the sub 1500 teams so that I was only playing 1500-1530 teams, I'd start to lose a lot more than I won, which would inexorably drive my rating down. In turn, the teams that were beating me at 1530 to stay at 1550 would now get less points for beating me, and their ratings would drop. Eventually, all the ratings would depress.
Now, if you were only playing at your level, and you alternated winning and losing each game, then no, dropping the bottom out wouldn't have any effect. But in my experience that hasn't been the case( I don't have any experience at higher levels though, so I might be mistaken ).