I've played ladder off and on for about 10 years. Never have I felt it was so slow. I am curious if there are any stats about how quickly games are finishing, or even average turn speed, in today's ladder compared to 5 years ago. If there is a difference, is it because of the rating system, or something else?

The ladder is objectively faster with the 1d12h + 1d12h system compared to the old 3d system

The TrueSkill system incentivizes faster play, especially when compared with the old stall-friendly Bayesian Elo system

It is not my experience that the ladder is slower, especially when compared with what it looked like a decade ago

yea and ppl who boot get removed so there aren't a dozen players farming 3 days turns, but I mean for top 25

I think before there was high pressure at the top to finish games and try to rank up, now there is high pressure to play slow so others don't catch up

I play exclusively against top 25 ladder players (admittedly only on the 1v1 and Seasonal ladders) and have not experienced this

In the old days, stalling at the top of the ladder was absolutely egregious. It was essentially impossible to get to rank #1 unless you were utilizing new accounts (or accounts with a full three month cooldown) and various “sequencing tricks” to curate and present the best three month window possible. It is nowhere near that bad today.

Players with 800+ TrueSkill today do not need to manipulate the ladder to stay ahead of 500-600 scrubs. They’re just better.

By definition, at equilibrium, an 800 player will beat a 700 player 64% of the time, a 600 player 76% of the time and a 500 player 85% of the time. If they lose more than that implied rate they will drop out of the ladder. It’s an absolutely massive skill difference.

I think the ladder being a grind could be a contributing factor. I just rejoined but towards the end of my last stint I was procrastinating on every turn because I was just burned out.

Yes, exactly. I do understand I'm playing less games than I use to, so there could be a bias in the sense I'm like waiting on every turn. But I have a feeling it is generally slower. Maybe I'll collect the data of like 25-50 games from 5 years ago, and from 2 weeks ago, and compare. not the biggest sample siZe, but maybe it can give us an idea

this has nothing to do with skill level. I'm not saying people are stalling, I'm saying the system doesn't incentivise fast play, and I believe this means games on a whole are slower. why should I bother to play fast, when it has little or no impact. before, I feel there was much more pressure at the top

The games are faster due to the boot time.

Increasing your rating takes much much longer, so it’s harder to get into the top ranks. Especially when ratings don’t decay, then you can get dinosaurs returning and instantly being first.

Yeah the rating system makes it so that players will not be properly rated for years, and given the amount of commitment that takes potentially never. But that's not what Tacky is getting at. Tacky's perception is the actual games are slower. I think if anything it's the opposite but also don't really remember the old ladder.