I'll start doing revisions today/tomorrow if noone will show up.
Meanwhile my questions are:
Is the in-division rank going to be displayed over/near the icon? Here is how SC2 does it
This would be a good incentive to keep climbing even if you aren't yet close to breaching into the next division, it's also quite necessary for the grandmaster rank as the amount of people there is small. I assume it will be 1800+ which makes sense, but just like in SC2 the difference between low GM and top GM is absolutely massive and that should be displayed using the rank number. I also heard some suggestions from nexus/tagada that there could be separate icons altogether for very top ranks, this could potentially be extended to leagues other than gm but that runs into a problem of people wanting to keep a high place in their league without advancing, hence just reserved for gm. The numbers representing rank within league should still be available for all leagues. I'm willing to make some extra highest rank GM icons if the code support for it will be there.
Having support for separate icons within the same league also would allow unique, possibly personal icons, very much like avatars. It's a tricky implementation but here's my idea:
- First of all, it only really makes sense in GM, this is how I imagine it. A season starts and everyone loses their division while their trueskill value is stored and used in placement matches, ideally with some deviation tweaks during this period, after those matches you are placed where appropriate, very likely just where you were last time and where you are supposed to be. This is roughly how SC2 does it, I asked ftx and the current idea is just dropping you to the lowest subdivision in your last season's division at the start of new season but this is bad because stagnant players that got lucky and happened to hit a higher league could stop playing once the next season hits while keeping their high league icon. You don't even need to advance, if you are happy with whatever icon you have you can just play in one season and relax.
- You play every season again to get an icon assigned along with a division, this is an incentive to play and the main difference from avatars. If you get placed in GM and you have a unique icon assigned then you also have it displayed, if you get placed in a lower league then you have your normal Master or whatever league icon until you can get to GM again.
- Ideally in the client somewhere there will be division icon manager area just like there is a window for managing avatars, there will also be a checkbox for " Use selected unique division icon" otherwise just use the unique icon by default.
- It only really makes sense in GM unless you check the trueskill of the person getting unique icon at that moment, or ideally not just at the moment but over time and assign him an "expected" league. Then if they play ladder and get placed in that league or higher they can wear their icon. Or they can wear normal icon if there is UI to manage that, that is incentive to play and also to not slack off with your gameplay.
The benefit of this over the avatars is that unlike avatars it actually would require you to be active to have your icon displayed. Also it will be high res instead of a tiny abomination. If it's GM only we could have big tournaments' prizes have unique division icons, if it's the "trueskill expectation" system then on top of that we can also do stuff similar to current ladder month and give out unique division icons based on whatever performance metrics, especially because ladder month will be obsoleted and the avatar/monetary rewards will be gone. Also makes a lot more sense to have division icon prize for ladder achievements, if you are very active you probably care more about that than a chat avatar. And to show it off you would have to play at least the placement matches for the next season where you actually get your unique icons.