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I have been wondering whether the time of the day has a significant effect on the skill level of the player-pool and therefore it makes people perform “better” in terms of wins vs losses, for example, at noon than in the evening. This may sound unwarranted, but let me discuss this bit further:
I have been playing casually since 2010. However, as I have kids and a job without defined work hours, I end up playing only when I can do it without too much hassle (and it’s not very often). Sometimes it’s at 11 am, sometimes at 9 pm. After a quite a lot of played games, I have developed this ‘gut feeling’ that I do much better when I am playing at 11 am than in the evening. I often get these 5 to 10 game winning streaks at noon whereas I lose 5 games in a row in the evening. I guess this would not be a big issue if I constantly played at these times. But I mostly play in the evenings and thus my MMR is ‘adjusted’ to the evening player-pool. Then, when I happen to play in the morning or at noon, the skill-level in respect to my MMR seems to be lower and I get much fewer losses. This, naturally, improves my MMR and then I am in a ‘trouble’ when I attempt to play again in the evening.
At first this seems to be just superstitious and I acknowledge that this may not be something ‘real’. However, in principle it is possible that there is something behind this gut feeling. I’ll give you a poor analog from another framework:
Assume that there are two bird species that have the exact same mating call but which cannot reproduce with each other. There is strong evolutionary tendency for the calls to evolve to become distinct from one another. This is because every time a mating call attracts an individual with which the caller cannot mate, then most of the resources spend on calling are lost. If the birds evolved distinct calls, then these mistakes could be avoided (and selection would favor individuals that are able to distinct the calls since these guys would only find suitable mates and thus have more offspring). However, the same mating calls would not be a problem if the species used them at different times (of the day or the year or so). Therefore it is possible that same features may co-exist in the same environment if they are separated by time. Selection would also select against individuals that started to respond to mating calls at wrong times (since these guys would not be able to reproduce with the callers).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JRGsQ.png)
Now, theoretically, it is possible that there could be different ‘species’, or let’s stick to the term player-pools, playing at different times. Naturally there are people playing at all times and throughout the day. But if there is a significant portion of players that play mostly in the morning/at noon and another portion of players that play only in the evenings/nights, then the shared feature of MMR between these pools would not actually correspond to the skill level of the whole player-pool but mostly to the player-pool that plays at the same time. Then, when a player plays at different from his/her normal playtime, he/she is matched with players that do not correspond to his/her skill level. From my personal experience I assume that, for a given MMR, the skill level is higher in the evening than in the morning (for various reasons which I won’t discuss because it is not the point. You can easily come up with potential reasons yourself). This would effectively force players that usually play in the morning to not be able to ‘enjoy’ the game in the evening (because of all the losses). And players that play only in the evenings might not have a chance to play earlier (because of studies, work, whatever). And it is not fun for players like me either (even though winning streaks are nice) since I feel that I am too often playing against players that are either too easy or too good. In general, a bias in the MMR and skill level for whatever reason is not good for the game or the gaming community.
If this is a real deal and not something astrological, then Blizzard could perhaps take it into consideration. Blizzard of course is also the only instance that can actually study it, and I do not know if they have ever considered this (or if this is even relevant). This is just a discussion…
Nevertheless, there is a bit of a professional interest for me here (which is why I wanted to make this topic). I challenge you guys who play mostly in the mornings or in the evenings, to play several games at the opposite time of the day (if you just can) and record and then publish your results here. If this is a real thing, then the win/loss ratio in general should not be close to 50/50 for evening players, for example. Other comments are welcome too, of course.
I want to emphasize that this might not be a real issue if the player-pools significantly overlap. It was just a mere thought I entertained a bit 
This is my first TL topic and I was not able to find a similar one with the search terms I used. I apology if this has been discussed before. Cheers and let’s keep Starcraft 2 alive.
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When the full moon is out I play like a BEAST.
Seriously though, interesting thoughts. I have wondered about this too.
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cant tell if this is a troll......
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I agree completely with you.
Just look at the time of my post (well, PST time, here, it's 4 a.m) I can guarantee you that I see a sharp decline in the ladder's level late at night.
That's a thorough post, I like it =)
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according to sc2gears i have in the evening hours a winrate around 65% while in the morning i am between 40-50%.
I am a relatevely good master player who plays whenever he can (around 8-10 games a day).
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At 9pm you probably lose because I ladder a lot at that time  Lol
However this is interesting. I have been playing online poker for about 7 years now and it's basically the same as starcraft if you think about the players. The pros are playing during the night because they don't need to get up early to work and during the morning there are other players playing obviously.
Generally I believe that the better players play during the evening/night.
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In warcraft 3 it was known that you climb the ladder(eu) faster, when you play late at night. Mostly one would meet strange people back then, usually not with the best connection.
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On November 10 2012 21:04 FYRE wrote:
cant tell if this is a troll......
there definitly has a different skill level at different time of the day. I remember it being the same for Dota garena as well.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On November 10 2012 21:04 FYRE wrote:
cant tell if this is a troll......
It's not, it's a decent idea.
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I can definitely say that later at night (early morning) I see a lot more cheese as opposed to macro play. Personally I have a nearly constant win-rate for all times of the day that I play, but that might just be that my skill at the time of day drops/rises along with the average player at that time because of how awake I am.
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Since you are matched with people that have roughly the same mmr as you do, no matter when you play, shouldn't they have the same skill level as you? Or do you suggest that mmr is not a reliable form of skill measuring? I guess it would be possible, given that your mmr is based on your opponents mmr. Ergo if there is a group of people only playing during the day, their mmr will be based on each others mmr, detatched from the rest of the player pool.
These sure are interesting thoughts.
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I know what you mean. I bought the game in 2010 and then my job made me move to Germany in 2011. I've only been able to play in the mornings. With the 6-9 hour time difference I'm fully rested while my opponents are starting to feel the effects of sleep deprivation. I think that I can attribute a lot of my wins due to that fact.
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On November 10 2012 22:22 Millet wrote:
Since you are matched with people that have roughly the same mmr as you do, no matter when you play, shouldn't they have the same skill level as you? Or do you suggest that mmr is not a reliable form of skill measuring? I guess it would be possible, given that your mmr is based on your opponents mmr. Ergo if there is a group of people only playing during the day, their mmr will be based on each others mmr, detatched from the rest of the player pool.
These sure are interesting thoughts.
They TRY to match you with people with the same MMR, but this is balanced by search time. If the population at a given time is small enough you will be playing a wider range of MMRs. I just looked at my last 600 games in sc2 gears and found that there was some correlation between time played and games won. Up until about 12-1 in the afternoon I win about 60% of my games, and as the day goes on that rate drops off a lot. The two possible reasons I can think of for this are:
1) As the day goes on I wear down and cant play as well
2) The server is less populated in the morning, and so I am playing people weaker than I normally would.
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From personal experience I can tell you that during the early hours of the morning eastern standard time from about 2 am to about 8am the skill level i get paired vs is definitely lower than if i were to play between 4pm -10pm.
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I have noticed this phenomenon as well or rather I have had a gut feeling that this is true for some time. I have gotten the feeling on many occasions that the games I play in the afternoon ~1-4 pm(after putting my son down for his nap, I work 4-12, son goes for nap at 1) are easier than the games I play after putting the kids to bed in the evening (after 8:30 until about midnight). All time EST.
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Not a troll. Happened all the time especially when you played the koreans in bw in the morning or late at night. I would always get freewins when i was playing at night since it was still the morning for the koreans and they weren't warmed up enough. It was getting more and more difficult as we were approaching the morning in europe 
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maybe the case in the lower leagues but definitely not in gm
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On November 10 2012 23:33 Kaitokid wrote:
maybe the case in the lower leagues but definitely not in gm
Why not ? I saw golden say something like it was the morning, and they weren't taking the game seriously even though it was ladder's games. Pretty sure he's not alone...
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I bet that not only Blizzard could attempt answer this but Skeldark could as well. I have also often wondered about similar effects.
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This reminds me of iccup... Everyone knew it was easier during foreigner hours, and way way harder during the time when korean kids were getting out of school.
Difference is, star2 has the matchmaking. And in spite of star2s other flaws, the matchmaking is really good. I doubt theskill level at a given mmr fluctuates very much either way
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Theres probably good and bad players in the same proportions pretty much always, but when the player pool is smaller I think youre more likely to be matched against a wider range of mmr, depending on your league.
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from my experience the players that play at night on NA are usually way worse or sometimes there are koreans that are way better than everyone. if i play during the day, the skill level is more consistent.
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I think this is true to an extent. For example, when I play during the weekdays after schoool (usually only 1-2 games a day), I have a really really high win rate, like this week, I won 7 1v1s in a row before Friday, and this Friday night, I decided to hop on and play a bunch of ladder matches, and I ended up breaking even in terms of points, but it was only because I had like 20 points of bonus pool, I lost 5 games in a row before winning any games.
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I would expect the evening player-pool to be made up of a higher percentage of casual players, as that's when most people have fewer commitments. But this wouldn't affect the skill-level of the opponents you meet, because however often they play, they are still matched to your MMR. Unless you're right the very top or bottom of the MMR ladder, any greater spread of opponents' skill levels should average out over multiple sessions.
There might well be some other reason why you play better in the mornings than evenings. You might be more awake/alert, more likely to be drinking caffeine, not distracted by kids, etc etc. Or it might just be confirmation bias at work after one or two unusually good/bad sessions. Interesting to think about but hard to pin down.
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In poker this is abundantly obvious. Before fascist America told it's peons they couldn't play the American game LOL ^^ The American economy was hemorrhaging money abroad to countries with a higher average intelligence. You had to be a complete moron not to play American evening time. Since they have the most money per braincell in the world. The difference in win rate was staggering. I still have a sleeping disorder derived from that truth ^^
I can only assume this is true on a smaller scale within the server you play starcraft on. When it goes global with HotS it will be even more pronounced. However in starcraft due to match making dilution it will never be as obvious as in poker.
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I do get a lot more easy wins late at night. I have a bad sleeping schedule and when I started laddering around 2 am (im fresh and awake still), I was bound to run into someone who is pushing their limit and is about to quit it for the night. I can get in a lot more hellion runbys/ other stupid shit. Living in California also helps this effect.
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EPT
