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Idea: Separate matchmaking rating for each matchup

Forum Index > BW General
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niteReloaded
Profile Blog Joined February 2007
Croatia5281 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-07-09 13:11:14
July 01 2017 21:24 GMT
#1
Remaking the opening post, aimint to be more clear.
+ Show Spoiler [original OP, if interested in] +

I googled, and it seems matchmaking in Starcraft is not already being done this way.

The idea is to have separate rating for each matchup.
EDIT: to clarify, I'm not arguing for separate Ladders for each matchups, but only suggesting that 'under the hood' numbers, only visible to Blizzard, should be calculated this way.


Say, I can love TvZ and be great at it, but suck against protosses.
Then, losing majority of my games against Protoss, while winning majority vs Zerg would make my rating constantly match me with Zergs than can't challenge me, and protosses that I can't challenge.

I know, I'm talking about a hypothetical situation where my skill difference vsZ and vsP is vastly different and there's unlimited amount of players, and the system matches me with my exact equal.
But still, while the reality doesn't match this hypothetical scenario, it doesn't mean matchmaking system shouldn't be as well thought out as possible, especially if the suggestion doesn't require significant increase in resources from Blizzard.


What do you think of the idea to have separate rating scores for each of your matchups?
TvZ, TvP, TvT, PvZ, PvP, PvT, ZvZ, ZvP, ZvT.

I think it would make the game simply better.
It's common to have differing skills for different matchups.

Also, it would make offracing seamless, and FUN for the player as he wouldn't have to endure getting crushed by stronger opponents or worry about lowering his rating of his main race, or resort to custom games with no matchmaking at all.

We all know that a game vs different races is almost like a different game.
Mechanical skills are the only thing that stretches across all matchups.
Each matchup requires strategic knowledge, tactical prowess, knowledge of openings (build orders), etc.

I think mathematically, there's no obstacle to implement this.
Should it be implemented, are there reasons not to, is there something difficult about implementing it, are there drawbacks to it?



I'm curious about pros and cons that come to your mind, and I'll add a poll to see the reactions.

- - - -

There are 2 different important numbers in Starcraft2 (and expectedly SC:R) ladder system.
  1. Ladder points, and I will not talk about this much.
    The purpose of ladder points is to 'flirt' with showing level of skill, while in reality it also serves the purpose of motivating the player to play the game more.

  2. MMR points (matchmaking rating), which serve the purpose of gaugeing a player's skill for the purpose of matching the player with others of similar skill.


The premise I'm starting from is that SC skill is a sum of skills 'in 3 different games'. Playing vs Zerg, Terran and Protoss.
Building on this, it is faulty to use one universal MMR for games against all races.
It would much more serve the purpose of good matchmaking to have separate MMR for games vs different races. MMR vs Z, MMR vs P, MMR vs T.
This would, it's logical to expect, result in more evenly matched games, less 1 sided stomps, more fun.

It seems to me that there is nothing debatable in this so far.


There remains the question of ladder points, and how they would be calculated and displayed in case the MMR starts getting calculated in this new way.
About ladder points, personally I don't care, as I see them as a 'dilluted' indicator of skill, as, like I said, Blizzard made the formula in a way that encourages people to play more. Which means the more you play, the better you'll seem, while your real skill is determined by MMR, which players have no access to.

To think of a formula for ladder points seems trivial, and as it's an almost made up number, it cannot be fucked up much if some thought is invested.


(poll shows results after voting)

Poll: Would you like matchup-specific matchmaking?

(Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): Not sure


Ziggy
Profile Blog Joined June 2013
South Korea2105 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-07-02 07:01:21
July 01 2017 21:48 GMT
#2
Race-specific matchmaking / matchup-specific matchmaking would make the ladder artificially saturated, which, in my opinion, makes rankings slightly less meaningful and generally makes it harder to evaluate one's skill in comparison to the rest of the player pool. Give it a couple of months, see how it goes, create the poll again.
WriterDefeating a sandwich only makes it tastier. @imjustziggy
niteReloaded
Profile Blog Joined February 2007
Croatia5281 Posts
July 01 2017 22:03 GMT
#3
On July 02 2017 06:48 ZiggyPG wrote:
Race-specific matchmaking / matchup-specific matchmaking makes the ladder artificially saturated, which, in my opinion, makes rankings slightly less meaningful and generally makes it harder to evaluate one's skill in comparison to the rest of the player pool. Give it a couple of months, see how it goes, create the poll again.

Oh, I was focusing only on the 'under the hood' numbers, matchmaking rating, those ELO-like numbers.
That number which is responsible for everyone playing interesting games vs similarly skilled opponents.
My focus in this thread was not at all on ladder points.

Ladder points can be done in multitude of ways, even while using the matchup-specific matchmaking.
Like, your ladder points could be a simple average of your matchup-specific ELO ratings, for your strongest race. That's one idea of the top of my head.
HaFnium
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United Kingdom1074 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-07-01 23:02:38
July 01 2017 23:02 GMT
#4
The main problems I feel will be with random players and racepickers(if they would allow that).
BW forever!
EsX_Raptor
Profile Blog Joined February 2008
United States2801 Posts
July 02 2017 02:46 GMT
#5
One problem is that people would be able to race-pick: Say I am Terran. I could purposely lose a great number of games against Protoss and Terran and play my best against Zerg. Then I will be matched against good Zergs and bad Terrans and Protosses and I could lose every other game against the latter two, effectively giving me a TvZ account.
arb
Profile Blog Joined April 2008
Noobville17921 Posts
July 02 2017 02:54 GMT
#6
by race yeah, matchup no
Artillery spawned from the forges of Hell
TT1
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada10005 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-07-02 04:28:27
July 02 2017 04:10 GMT
#7
That's way too many stats and overall it makes ranks/ratings feel less meaningful and more casual. The ladder is a competitive arena, if you have ladder anxiety or wanna offrace for fun then just play melee games or maybe even unranked (if they implement an unranked matchmaking system).
ab = tl(i) + tl(pc), the grand answer to every tl.net debate
niteReloaded
Profile Blog Joined February 2007
Croatia5281 Posts
July 02 2017 12:59 GMT
#8
On July 02 2017 08:02 HaFnium wrote:
The main problems I feel will be with random players and racepickers(if they would allow that).

Choosing random could be made to affect directly your total rating.

What's problematic about racepicking before clicking 'find game', you don't know which race you'd get matched with anyway.

On July 02 2017 11:46 EsX_Raptor wrote:
One problem is that people would be able to race-pick: Say I am Terran. I could purposely lose a great number of games against Protoss and Terran and play my best against Zerg. Then I will be matched against good Zergs and bad Terrans and Protosses and I could lose every other game against the latter two, effectively giving me a TvZ account.

Where's the problem in that scenario?
Your total rating would be low as you'd have low scores vsT and vsP.

Only somebody who wants to f* up their gaming experience would do that.

On July 02 2017 11:54 arb wrote:
by race yeah, matchup no


On July 02 2017 13:10 TT1 wrote:
That's way too many stats and overall it makes ranks/ratings feel less meaningful and more casual. The ladder is a competitive arena, if you have ladder anxiety or wanna offrace for fun then just play melee games or maybe even unranked (if they implement an unranked matchmaking system).



I'm not arguing there should be ladders for each matchup, but that the 'under the hood' MMR should be calculated that way.
niteReloaded
Profile Blog Joined February 2007
Croatia5281 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-07-02 13:01:41
July 02 2017 13:01 GMT
#9
-mistake-
Poly_Optimize
Profile Joined March 2016
Canada156 Posts
July 02 2017 13:55 GMT
#10
A mmr for every race would be perfect. My protoss skills are way better than my zerg's skill. It would be cool to simply switch race and not be completely stomped!

Another cool thing would be to select the match up you want to play. I can't stand mirror matchup
Endymion
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United States3701 Posts
July 02 2017 14:18 GMT
#11
sc2 does it by race atm i think??? so like if you que as zerg you have a zerg specific mmr, whereas if you que as toss you get your toss mmr.

however, it doesn't do it on a MU specific basis... most of the time on fish/iccup people self regulate that anyways, ie if you're good at zvt you're willing to play vs an A level terran while you might be bad at zvp and only want to play vs max C level protosses. i think if you put that into mmr it would be too confusing though, because even within each MU there are different kind of players.. like i'm really good vs normal terran openings in zvt but i might be worse vs proxt fac openings, but each build obviously can't have its own mu... idk, i personally wouldn't see a use for it beyond what we already have (ie saying you're good at one mu but bad at another). if anything, i would rather play vs protosses on the level of my terran opponents because i would fix my mistakes faster
Have you considered the MMO-Champion forum? You are just as irrational and delusional with the right portion of nostalgic populism. By the way: The old Brood War was absolutely unplayable
FyRe_DragOn
Profile Blog Joined November 2006
Canada2056 Posts
July 02 2017 18:29 GMT
#12
I want the ability to racepick. If a ladder forces me to play any off matchups, its not an accurate portrayal of my skill and needs improvement. Although I dont know if having a different ladder for each matchup is the way to do it. Ive never played sc2 or any other matchmaking system, I donno how it works. However I imagine it will force me to play pure one race which im not happy about.
aka DragOn[NaS]
NeonFlare
Profile Blog Joined September 2008
Finland1307 Posts
July 02 2017 21:17 GMT
#13
Separate for each Race would probably be the way to go, though I'd love to have preference where you can swap a matchup since I dislike ZvZ and even PvP to play as another race but I doubt they will allow that.
Kadungon
Profile Joined June 2017
41 Posts
July 02 2017 22:43 GMT
#14
I don't understand the arguments against this. And if they were more properly worded and were actually understandable, I am sure a similar version of them can be made exactly against having the same MMR for someone off-racing.

Of course, race-picking should be deliberately blocked. Nothing more annoying than two Z players who play TvZ, and then they get into a fight who gets to be T and who to be Z when they face each other.

Or worse, People who deliberately avoid a certain ON-race matchup. Consider a T player avoiding TvT. And consider another T player avoiding PvT. Both select T. The one T player picks P, then the other T player picks P. Then the first player switches back to T again.


Just pick your race first. And then you can randomly face any race; Z, P, T or R. And give every players one rank for their own race; Z, P, T or R.

But Blizzard is Blizzard. Even their fans cannot get it right. Let alone their schizophrenic corporate personality.
Dazed.
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
Canada3301 Posts
July 03 2017 00:40 GMT
#15
Assuming we had a population size that would make it viable (and ill leave that question to people who know, and im not one of them), why not? Personally, I hate all mirrors. Why should I not be able to dodge a one hour TVT or the stupidity of just chucking zerglings at my opponent (zvz), if I want to?
Never say Die! ||| Fight you? No, I want to kill you.
XenOsky
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
Chile2267 Posts
July 03 2017 07:13 GMT
#16
why overcomplicate things, let bw the way it is...
StarCraft & Audax Italiano.
Cascade
Profile Blog Joined March 2006
Australia5405 Posts
July 03 2017 07:34 GMT
#17
On July 03 2017 09:40 Dazed. wrote:
Assuming we had a population size that would make it viable (and ill leave that question to people who know, and im not one of them), why not? Personally, I hate all mirrors. Why should I not be able to dodge a one hour TVT or the stupidity of just chucking zerglings at my opponent (zvz), if I want to?

It's not enough to have many players, you also need about as many players wanting to play each side of each matchup. For example if there are 100k players wanting to play ZvT but only 10k players wanting to play TvZ, then it won't work, as 90k of the ZvT players will be waiting at any point in time. My example is extreme, but I definitely think that one side is more popular for most matchups, especially when you look within a skill level and region (maybe ZvT is more popular than TvZ in low level Europe for example).

For by-mu MMR though, I guess that is possible in theory? It would soft-force everyone's winrate to 50% in all matchup, but maybe that isn't a problem.
Drake
Profile Joined October 2010
Germany6146 Posts
July 03 2017 07:45 GMT
#18
no it would make the ranking basicly impossibel to show ur elo it would just be a number again its all we not wanted
Nb.Drake / CoL_Drake / Original Joined TL.net Tuesday, 15th of March 2005
Kadungon
Profile Joined June 2017
41 Posts
July 08 2017 21:40 GMT
#19
On July 03 2017 16:13 XenOsky- wrote:
why overcomplicate things, let bw the way it is...



You mean, just having a win-loss-disc rating and nothing else?


What a stupidity.
Qikz
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United Kingdom12022 Posts
July 08 2017 21:45 GMT
#20
On July 03 2017 16:45 Drake wrote:
no it would make the ranking basicly impossibel to show ur elo it would just be a number again its all we not wanted


Genuinly I think games would be better without a ranking. People take those things far too seriously.
FanTaSy's #1 Fan | STPL Caster/Organiser | SKT BEST KT | https://twitch.tv/stpl
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