Not sure why you think there is resistance. And I never implied that people with a high paragon would be at the top. My point was simply that I don't know how useful this information would be. If rank was a result of paragon level then sure. But I imagine both are a result of time played. I would be more interested in seeing time played vs paragon vs rank. Also played with groups (2, 3 & 4) vs paragon vs rank.
Having information is always interesting. But if somebody would have to collect this then I would like something a little more telling than paragon vs rank.
The point is that if there really is little correlation between main stat inflation from paragon and board placement, one would expect to see a wide distribution of player levels that is not proportional to rank. And since we know that paragon level itself is not necessarily a substantial determinant of skill, we shouldn't see a very tight correlation between level and rank unless something else significant is going on, namely artificial power creep due to main stat inflation. But I agree with you that time played is an important part of the equation as well, and that can also be extracted from people's leaderboard profiles.
We know that paragon level is not necessarily and perhaps not even often a result of time played, skill level, or relevant experience, because it has been increasingly easy to obtain paragon levels through the current season. I think what you will find is that rank is highly correlated to paragon level, though, which therefore means that the competition is not based only on time played, skill level, and/or relevant experience, as it should be. (This is assuming gear is relatively consistent in the comparison, which it generally will be for anyone placing on the boards. If not, the stat inflation from paragon must be even more pronounced to compensate.)
Even if there was a coloration, I do not think it would qualify as causation. It makes sense that the players at the top of competitive play would have played a lot resulting in high paragon levels. This does not mean they would not have been at the top even if the paragon level was capped.
I guess you meant correlation rather than coloration. But anyway, of course there are other variables involved in leaderboard placement, but it's simply naive to think that 1000 main stat per 200 paragon levels past 800 has no substantial causative impact on the ability of someone to clear a greater rift. And paragon level is certainly no determinant of time played or skill level, as in the current era/season it has been incredibly easy to gain paragon levels with very little effort. So if paragon level is no determinant of dedication or skill, why should it have so much impact on someone's ability to compete?
Also, this is an issue impacting the entirety of the competition, not just the "players at the top of competitive play". Last I checked there are 1000 ranks on each current leaderboard and 2000 on each previous era/season board. My original post was about examining the data for every board placement, not just those at the top. And I said nothing about a cap, only examining the data, but your logic is reversible anyway. Just because someone has played a lot and has high paragon level does not mean that person would have been at the top with a paragon cap either. But the players who would have been at the top anyway are not even relevant to the discussion. It's the players that wouldn't place as high without the impact of main stat inflation from paragon that would be the point of the analysis, and it's probable that there are very many of those with the system the way it is - especially with the ease unskilled and inexperienced players have obtained power through paragon this era/season.
If there is indeed no "causation", then why the resistance to even look into it and prove it so or not?
If someone is paragon 800 at the end of the season, do you think he will be in top50 ladder if there will be cap at 800? No! Stop this whining everywhere.
I'm not really sure the point of your question, as my thread has nothing to do with answering it, nor did I say anything about implementing a paragon cap. The only one who is whining here is you.
Since it seems to be difficult for many people to understand the probable impact paragon >800 has had on power creep in the game, I'm wondering if anyone has compiled snapshots of paragon corresponding to leaderboard placements for this era/season. As of patch 2.3, a "Hero Details" snapshot is now available (at least on the in-game boards if not on the website) from the time someone placed on the leaderboards, which shows the build that was used as well as the paragon level of the hero at the time. This would be useful information to demonstrate the effect of main stat inflation due to 800+ paragon, which has been particularly impactful this era/season due to the developers' inexplicable, compounding decisions on xp accumulation mechanics over the past couple seasons.
I would have expected sites like diablo3ladder or diabloprogress to be compiling this information, but unless I missed it they are not. Hopefully Ghostwheel or someone else with knowledge of these sites or some other extant compilation can respond with more information.
If this patch goes live in January it will be a disaster of bugs and imbalance.
Contrary to the bugfree, balanced game right now?
I know, right? It's just that I wouldn't consider the game itself a disaster. But with all the substantial changes/additions in the upcoming patch, a month or two ptr is really a joke. Personally I don't think this development team cares one bit about balance in any aspect of this game and/or they are too inept to actually accomplish it. They'll be lucky to get all the major game breaking mechanics and bugs out by the end of the year.
Yeah, this would actually be interesting. Although it doesn't really help much, it's an obvious result that people who play much are high paragon and people who play much are on top of the leaderboards. It's kind of a nice thing to see for people who go crazy about statistics and numbers (me me me!), but irrelevant for this discussion.
The reason I brought it up in this thread and that it seems relevant to this discussion is that it might demonstrate through hard data what is already suspected, that the main stat inflation that occurs after p800 is a major factor in leaderboard position. This to me is THE major flaw with the paragon system as it currently exists - that it distorts the fairness of the competitive environment and essentially invalidates the leaderboards. I don't think anyone is denying that people who play more should have more power and therefore more advantage, but the p800+ main stat inflation is grossly more advantage than is justified - especially given the exacerbating problems you point out in the OP about how much easier it is to level above 750 and 2000 relative to below.
If someone who mines this data would simply publish each player's paragon level with their leaderboard position, that would do it, and I have no idea why they don't. I realize that until 2.3 when full snapshots are available, paragon would still be a dynamic number in such rankings whereas GR-based position would be static. However, I still think publishing both together now would shed some statistical light on a major reason the paragon system needs rework.
As far as I'm aware no one has made that correlation (leaderboards position/paragon) yet. It would be something that the websites that already datamined the leaderboards and its individual players could do; the API in itself does not have support for leaderboards and won't get an update for D3 in the near future (link).
Note that any of such correlation should be done *after* the season/era ends though. I know of many high-paragon players that aren't doing anything but speed greaters until the 2 weeks notice hits - and they'll blow away the leaderboards then. Expect some crazy rift clears once the announcement is there...
Ok, so if the API doesn't support leaderboards, then sites like diabloprogress and diablo3ladder are mining the leaderboard positions manually? I would think then that it would be trivial to mine paragon at the same time since they are already mining paragon anyway for their paragon boards. It would be interesting to get a comment from someone who does this, as I know little about the mechanics.
It's a good point about waiting until the season/era ends, but I would think getting the data at several regular intervals during the season/era would produce some useful information - especially post 2.3 when snapshots will be available.
This is an interesting topic. Normally I just post on the official forums and lurk on this one and reddit, but I had a question related to this topic and couldn't find it answered elsewhere.
There has been a lot of consternation over main stat inflation after p800, but has anyone actually mined the data correlating paragon level to leaderboard position? It's something I would expect d3ladder to have, but I couldn't find it there. Of course, until 2.3 when there will be snapshots of this data, we will only have the data as it exists when it is mined rather than when the leaderboard placements were achieved. But it would be interesting nonetheless to see how current paragon correlates to leaderboard placement.
Regarding this topic, my view is that the xp curve itself is not necessarily a problem. If required xp gains were continually exponential without corresponding exponential growth in the ability of players to achieve them, there would be little incentive to continue playing the game. The problem is certainly the main stat inflation starting at p800 and how relatively easy it is to gain power starting at p800 compared to prior. It seems like blizz should have seen this coming when they allowed multiplicative xp gains in GRs to persist. Prior to that they probably didn't anticipate many people even achieving p800 in the near future, but to have allowed the multiplicative gains to persist without some sort of plan in place to mitigate the power creep after p800 was extremely shortsighted on their part.
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The point is that if there really is little correlation between main stat inflation from paragon and board placement, one would expect to see a wide distribution of player levels that is not proportional to rank. And since we know that paragon level itself is not necessarily a substantial determinant of skill, we shouldn't see a very tight correlation between level and rank unless something else significant is going on, namely artificial power creep due to main stat inflation. But I agree with you that time played is an important part of the equation as well, and that can also be extracted from people's leaderboard profiles.
We know that paragon level is not necessarily and perhaps not even often a result of time played, skill level, or relevant experience, because it has been increasingly easy to obtain paragon levels through the current season. I think what you will find is that rank is highly correlated to paragon level, though, which therefore means that the competition is not based only on time played, skill level, and/or relevant experience, as it should be. (This is assuming gear is relatively consistent in the comparison, which it generally will be for anyone placing on the boards. If not, the stat inflation from paragon must be even more pronounced to compensate.)
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I guess you meant correlation rather than coloration. But anyway, of course there are other variables involved in leaderboard placement, but it's simply naive to think that 1000 main stat per 200 paragon levels past 800 has no substantial causative impact on the ability of someone to clear a greater rift. And paragon level is certainly no determinant of time played or skill level, as in the current era/season it has been incredibly easy to gain paragon levels with very little effort. So if paragon level is no determinant of dedication or skill, why should it have so much impact on someone's ability to compete?
Also, this is an issue impacting the entirety of the competition, not just the "players at the top of competitive play". Last I checked there are 1000 ranks on each current leaderboard and 2000 on each previous era/season board. My original post was about examining the data for every board placement, not just those at the top. And I said nothing about a cap, only examining the data, but your logic is reversible anyway. Just because someone has played a lot and has high paragon level does not mean that person would have been at the top with a paragon cap either. But the players who would have been at the top anyway are not even relevant to the discussion. It's the players that wouldn't place as high without the impact of main stat inflation from paragon that would be the point of the analysis, and it's probable that there are very many of those with the system the way it is - especially with the ease unskilled and inexperienced players have obtained power through paragon this era/season.
If there is indeed no "causation", then why the resistance to even look into it and prove it so or not?
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Since it seems to be difficult for many people to understand the probable impact paragon >800 has had on power creep in the game, I'm wondering if anyone has compiled snapshots of paragon corresponding to leaderboard placements for this era/season. As of patch 2.3, a "Hero Details" snapshot is now available (at least on the in-game boards if not on the website) from the time someone placed on the leaderboards, which shows the build that was used as well as the paragon level of the hero at the time. This would be useful information to demonstrate the effect of main stat inflation due to 800+ paragon, which has been particularly impactful this era/season due to the developers' inexplicable, compounding decisions on xp accumulation mechanics over the past couple seasons.
I would have expected sites like diablo3ladder or diabloprogress to be compiling this information, but unless I missed it they are not. Hopefully Ghostwheel or someone else with knowledge of these sites or some other extant compilation can respond with more information.
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If this patch goes live in January it will be a disaster of bugs and imbalance.
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The reason I brought it up in this thread and that it seems relevant to this discussion is that it might demonstrate through hard data what is already suspected, that the main stat inflation that occurs after p800 is a major factor in leaderboard position. This to me is THE major flaw with the paragon system as it currently exists - that it distorts the fairness of the competitive environment and essentially invalidates the leaderboards. I don't think anyone is denying that people who play more should have more power and therefore more advantage, but the p800+ main stat inflation is grossly more advantage than is justified - especially given the exacerbating problems you point out in the OP about how much easier it is to level above 750 and 2000 relative to below.
If someone who mines this data would simply publish each player's paragon level with their leaderboard position, that would do it, and I have no idea why they don't. I realize that until 2.3 when full snapshots are available, paragon would still be a dynamic number in such rankings whereas GR-based position would be static. However, I still think publishing both together now would shed some statistical light on a major reason the paragon system needs rework.
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Ok, so if the API doesn't support leaderboards, then sites like diabloprogress and diablo3ladder are mining the leaderboard positions manually? I would think then that it would be trivial to mine paragon at the same time since they are already mining paragon anyway for their paragon boards. It would be interesting to get a comment from someone who does this, as I know little about the mechanics.
It's a good point about waiting until the season/era ends, but I would think getting the data at several regular intervals during the season/era would produce some useful information - especially post 2.3 when snapshots will be available.
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This is an interesting topic. Normally I just post on the official forums and lurk on this one and reddit, but I had a question related to this topic and couldn't find it answered elsewhere.
There has been a lot of consternation over main stat inflation after p800, but has anyone actually mined the data correlating paragon level to leaderboard position? It's something I would expect d3ladder to have, but I couldn't find it there. Of course, until 2.3 when there will be snapshots of this data, we will only have the data as it exists when it is mined rather than when the leaderboard placements were achieved. But it would be interesting nonetheless to see how current paragon correlates to leaderboard placement.
Regarding this topic, my view is that the xp curve itself is not necessarily a problem. If required xp gains were continually exponential without corresponding exponential growth in the ability of players to achieve them, there would be little incentive to continue playing the game. The problem is certainly the main stat inflation starting at p800 and how relatively easy it is to gain power starting at p800 compared to prior. It seems like blizz should have seen this coming when they allowed multiplicative xp gains in GRs to persist. Prior to that they probably didn't anticipate many people even achieving p800 in the near future, but to have allowed the multiplicative gains to persist without some sort of plan in place to mitigate the power creep after p800 was extremely shortsighted on their part.