Post by wittyscorpion on Aug 12, 2012 20:17:56 GMT -5
UPDATE (10/08):
Did some Google searches and found the following:
"David vahndehaar has comfirmed there will be two playlists within league play. One that is 6v6 with killstreaks enabled, another that is 4v4 without killstreaks. He did mention that not all maps in the game will be played in the league playlist. Also the 6v6 playlist can be played solo, while the 4v4 cannot."
and this article published on 08/30: www.clkclq.com/?p=151
and this Q&A with OpTic Ray Rambo:
callofdutyesports.com/optic-ray-rambo-does-black-ops-2-qa/#/vanilla/discussion/embed/?vanilla_discussion_id=0
UPDATE (10/08):
From this video: Optic_NadeShot SR and SMG game play and interview
He revealed the following about League Play: there are 2 types of leagues: 6v6 and 4v4.
------
UPDATE:
The video mentioned below has been taken out. Below are my notes of what I saw in the video that are related to League Play:
On the upper left side:
FIND MATCH: find a match against similarly skilled opponents
CHANGE LEAGUE: choose league to compete in
CREATE A CLASS: customize your loadout (When doing this, the players seemed to have all items at his disposal. So it is possible (and likely) that all items are unlocked in League Play to ensure total fairness)
SCORE STREAKS
Middle left:
TEAM IDENTITY
LEAGUE LADDER
Lower left:
TWL (Treyarch World League): this is probably a placeholder for region based league setup.
Once the game ships, you probably will see different choices like "Americas", "Europe", "Asia", etc just like SC2 on Battle.net
Lower right:
1) 4 Placement Matches Required, with "4" inside a pentagon shaped icon.
I believe once a player played all placement matches and have a "division" assigned, this will change to the corresponding division icon
2) "Solo: ShruggedPage70"
I believe that this indicates that the current entity in League Play is "solo" player ShruggedPage70 (gamer tag)
Should this be a party, it probably will be something like "Party: player1-gamer-tag, player2-gamer-tag, ..." or "Team: player1-gamer-tag, player2-gamer-tag, ..."
----
UPDATE, new video that gives a glimpse of what "League Play" screen looks like:
You can see the "League Play" screen at the very beginning and very end.
-----
UPDATE (based on Joystiq interview video at www.joystiq.com/2012/08/29/treyarch-game-design-director-david-vonderhaar-talks-black-ops-2/, between 2:10 and 4:56):
"League Play works like this: when you play, you do what we call placement matches. What that allows us to do is to try to understand how good you are relative to the entire player population. Once you have gone through your placement matches, we will actually put you into a division of skill. So if you are in the middle, you might be in something
like the silver division by way of example. What that is is a smaller community of players around your skill level using skill-based match making. We put you there so you are competing with people at your level. When you are playing with people at your level the games are actually fun because you'll win half of the time and lost half of the time."
After repeating what he said several times in the past on how great "skill-based" match-making is going to be, he went on and said
"This (League Play) is a very transparent experience. You don't have to go create a team on a web site or schedule a match to meet at 3:30. You go to the League Play, press a button to select the league you are playing, and this is just happening and we will just take care of it"
"League Play does NOT replace the normal matchmaking experience that you know. that still exists... as the core experience" (vs. League Play as a new experience that they will put into a separate place and see how successful it can be without jeopardizing the core experience the players know and love. Just like what the did in BO1 to make Wager Matches and Combat Training separate, and because they were successful in BO2 they are now part of the core experience)
-----
UPDATE:
In League Play: "A team can come together and play games to earn skill rating of which they will always move up a league and get into a new division"
Source: www.charlieintel.com/2012/08/21/black-ops-2-innovates-with-league-play-and-cod-casting/
UPDATE:
"BO2's League Play is similar to SC2's system, in how players are ranked, how games are played. Will have similar settings and similar matchmaking as SC2."
Source: Machinima VS - OpTic Nadeshot 's YouTube video:
Not sure what his source is.
UPDATE:
The game supports traditional matchmaking as you know it and league play separately.
Source: oneofswords.com/2012/08/16153/
UPDATE:
In-depth article: www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/14/3230713/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-esports-shoutcasting-league-play
UPDATE:
This is now officially confirmed by the BO2 twitter:
Roy Brown @valort: "@blackopsiinews will there be ranked and unranked playlists?"
@blackopsiinews: "@valort_ There are no unranked playlists but there is League Play, a new skill-based matchmaking system that sorts players into divisions."
I am sure that everybody is wondering how this could work out (how to measure skills, how to prevent cheating, etc, etc, etc). Look forward to seeing more details on this.
-----
UPDATE:
08/13 teaser from David Vonderhaar's tweet:

"Top 2%. Or as I refer to it ... possibly better than @opticscumpii. Are you World or Pro? "
Also just for completeness, here are the other emblems that appeared in his earlier tweets:

In the order of appearance: Left -> right, top -> bottom.
Tweets that went along with them:
----
David Vonderhaar from Treyarch has been twitting teasers recently, and TMarTn made a video to hypothesize that BO2 could be introducing Truskill skill based ranking, and/or skill based leagues based on TruSkill system:
Looks like for this year's holiday season on XBL it is going to be the battle of BO2 vs. Halo4 to compete for players' play time, and hopefully both will try to make a move on introducing some form of skill-based matchmaking. Whichever game can pull it off would have a significant edge.
Did some Google searches and found the following:
"David vahndehaar has comfirmed there will be two playlists within league play. One that is 6v6 with killstreaks enabled, another that is 4v4 without killstreaks. He did mention that not all maps in the game will be played in the league playlist. Also the 6v6 playlist can be played solo, while the 4v4 cannot."
and this article published on 08/30: www.clkclq.com/?p=151
and this Q&A with OpTic Ray Rambo:
callofdutyesports.com/optic-ray-rambo-does-black-ops-2-qa/#/vanilla/discussion/embed/?vanilla_discussion_id=0
UPDATE (10/08):
From this video: Optic_NadeShot SR and SMG game play and interview
He revealed the following about League Play: there are 2 types of leagues: 6v6 and 4v4.
------
UPDATE:
The video mentioned below has been taken out. Below are my notes of what I saw in the video that are related to League Play:
On the upper left side:
FIND MATCH: find a match against similarly skilled opponents
CHANGE LEAGUE: choose league to compete in
CREATE A CLASS: customize your loadout (When doing this, the players seemed to have all items at his disposal. So it is possible (and likely) that all items are unlocked in League Play to ensure total fairness)
SCORE STREAKS
Middle left:
TEAM IDENTITY
LEAGUE LADDER
Lower left:
TWL (Treyarch World League): this is probably a placeholder for region based league setup.
Once the game ships, you probably will see different choices like "Americas", "Europe", "Asia", etc just like SC2 on Battle.net
Lower right:
1) 4 Placement Matches Required, with "4" inside a pentagon shaped icon.
I believe once a player played all placement matches and have a "division" assigned, this will change to the corresponding division icon
2) "Solo: ShruggedPage70"
I believe that this indicates that the current entity in League Play is "solo" player ShruggedPage70 (gamer tag)
Should this be a party, it probably will be something like "Party: player1-gamer-tag, player2-gamer-tag, ..." or "Team: player1-gamer-tag, player2-gamer-tag, ..."
----
UPDATE, new video that gives a glimpse of what "League Play" screen looks like:
You can see the "League Play" screen at the very beginning and very end.
-----
UPDATE (based on Joystiq interview video at www.joystiq.com/2012/08/29/treyarch-game-design-director-david-vonderhaar-talks-black-ops-2/, between 2:10 and 4:56):
"League Play works like this: when you play, you do what we call placement matches. What that allows us to do is to try to understand how good you are relative to the entire player population. Once you have gone through your placement matches, we will actually put you into a division of skill. So if you are in the middle, you might be in something
like the silver division by way of example. What that is is a smaller community of players around your skill level using skill-based match making. We put you there so you are competing with people at your level. When you are playing with people at your level the games are actually fun because you'll win half of the time and lost half of the time."
After repeating what he said several times in the past on how great "skill-based" match-making is going to be, he went on and said
"This (League Play) is a very transparent experience. You don't have to go create a team on a web site or schedule a match to meet at 3:30. You go to the League Play, press a button to select the league you are playing, and this is just happening and we will just take care of it"
"League Play does NOT replace the normal matchmaking experience that you know. that still exists... as the core experience" (vs. League Play as a new experience that they will put into a separate place and see how successful it can be without jeopardizing the core experience the players know and love. Just like what the did in BO1 to make Wager Matches and Combat Training separate, and because they were successful in BO2 they are now part of the core experience)
-----
UPDATE:
In League Play: "A team can come together and play games to earn skill rating of which they will always move up a league and get into a new division"
Source: www.charlieintel.com/2012/08/21/black-ops-2-innovates-with-league-play-and-cod-casting/
UPDATE:
"BO2's League Play is similar to SC2's system, in how players are ranked, how games are played. Will have similar settings and similar matchmaking as SC2."
Source: Machinima VS - OpTic Nadeshot 's YouTube video:
Not sure what his source is.
UPDATE:
The game supports traditional matchmaking as you know it and league play separately.
Source: oneofswords.com/2012/08/16153/
UPDATE:
In-depth article: www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/14/3230713/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-esports-shoutcasting-league-play
UPDATE:
This is now officially confirmed by the BO2 twitter:
Roy Brown @valort: "@blackopsiinews will there be ranked and unranked playlists?"
@blackopsiinews: "@valort_ There are no unranked playlists but there is League Play, a new skill-based matchmaking system that sorts players into divisions."
I am sure that everybody is wondering how this could work out (how to measure skills, how to prevent cheating, etc, etc, etc). Look forward to seeing more details on this.
-----
UPDATE:
08/13 teaser from David Vonderhaar's tweet:

"Top 2%. Or as I refer to it ... possibly better than @opticscumpii. Are you World or Pro? "
Also just for completeness, here are the other emblems that appeared in his earlier tweets:

In the order of appearance: Left -> right, top -> bottom.
Tweets that went along with them:
Top right: I have 2 Silver guns, one for each of ya.
Bottom left: Gold, getting gold.
Bottom mid: 3 stars, not bad, not bad at all
Bottom right: < 18%
----
David Vonderhaar from Treyarch has been twitting teasers recently, and TMarTn made a video to hypothesize that BO2 could be introducing Truskill skill based ranking, and/or skill based leagues based on TruSkill system:
Looks like for this year's holiday season on XBL it is going to be the battle of BO2 vs. Halo4 to compete for players' play time, and hopefully both will try to make a move on introducing some form of skill-based matchmaking. Whichever game can pull it off would have a significant edge.










