Demoted by not playing?

Hey, I'm new here but I've played a good amount of 1v1 and 2v2 games on starcraft and was wondering about a specific aspect of the ladder system in starcraft 2.

My friend recently place into the gold league with 3-2 on his placements, but he's at place 100 in his division. He doesn't consider himself "gold-level" per se, and so instead of just losing over and over, he and I were wondering this (this brings us to the main question):

Can you be demoted from a league simply by not playing?

Meaning could the fluctuation of demoted platinums and promoted silvers and gold players shifting around in his league force him back down to the silver league, or can you only be demoted by losing games or until the 'secret number' of the ladder system demotes you?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

You lose rank, yes. But your league? ummmmmm.....

 

Honestly, im not sure, but think no, you can't!

Otherwise ask your friend one simple question: Does he want to play 1v1 or not? If he wants, he needs to wait weeks or even month until he goes down 1 league (you always start of with 0 points in a ladder, therefor are last). Or is he willing to take a few losses, learn something, go down to silver and wipe his enemys asses?! That would take him max. 1 week! And maybe hes better than he thinks?

I'd say, play a few games and see!

 

That's kind of what I thought. I figured losing would be the only way to get demoted, seeing as how more divisions in each league can be made to accommodate more players moving around.

Still, does anyone have a definitive answer? Thanks.

 

You do not lose league level by being inactive. You only lose league level if you play and lose consistently to your level or lower

 

Is this posted somewhere by blue?

It seems to me you would HAVE to be able to be demoted for inactivity....or to be more precise, by other people in your division remaining active and moving up. Otherwise couldn't a league in a division become locked out by inactive players....since I thought each division's league was capped at 100 players?

Maybe I just got it all wrong, but here is how I understood it:

Each league consists of:
100 diamond players
100 plat players
100 gold players
100 silver blayers
100 bronze players.

When a new person becomes active in ladder they are placed into the next available spot in the most recent division. If a division has filled out (not enough spots in the league the game wants to place them in) a new division is created. Your spot in division is depended on how well/poor you do relative to other people, in other words someone moving up can 'move' you down. Thus if you go inactive eventually people will move 'up' past you, and you gravitate to the bottom league and bottom spot of your division (at least to the point where your inactive stats are still better than other people's active stats...if that's possible).

Is this not how things work?

On the other hand, now that I think about it, I do seem to remember my division number changing....so do people moving up just get assigned a different division when they go up a league?

And do they ever shuffle people in diamond league into a new division?

 

No, the number is your ranking in the division, which is a part of a league. What I think happens is when you go inactive you will eventually be shifted to the bottom of your division, but never demoted to a lower league. When you are promoted, you switch divisions and numbers. I am now positive that inactivity does not affect LEAGUE standings, but does affect division standings.

EDIT: Also, leagues do not work like that. Leagues are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Plat, and Diamond. HOWEVER, they divide players into divisions OF 100 people within each league.

 

@Khayman ....dude that would mean only 500 people play...by that logic....

But again you DONT drop down a ladder rank based on activity. There are thousands of divisions in each league so theres not like some sort of space limitability (to our knowledge now a curious question would be to find out all the prefix/suffixes for division names to find out the max number of divisions

 

@LunaticWoda

No, not really. It would be 500 times the number of divisions there are, not including people who don't participate in ladder.

Basically I was looking at things backwards, where a division would be the overarching category with 5 leagues of 100 people each IN that division.

It sounds like it is the opposite. The leagues are the overarching category, with X amount of divisions in each league.

But if that is true, it means there *should* be a rank ordering to the divisions too, which I think is what Betrayer might be suggesting. Presumably division 2 in gold league is higher than division 5 in gold league?

I'm still not sure I buy that. I was under the impression divisions were created incrementally based on capacity needs.

Is there a discussion of collective experiences on this somewhere, or a blue post on it?

 

Good question. Me and my buddy finally got to Diamond league last night and were put into 9th place, We called it a night and when I get on this morning We're in 37th! Would be nice to know that you can't lose your league from inactivity, but at the same time I would think you could if people were getting higher scores than you.