I'm a high ranked Diamond player. Just defeated a guy who was favored... I checked him out afterwards and he's in Platinum, with only a 12-10 1v1 record. The weird thing is, he was favored to win and I got 26 points out of it. What's going on?

My match history:

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The game:

His rank:

My rank:

Stratos_speAr

United States6959 Posts

August 03 2010 22:11 GMT

The system is terrible. I've been favored once in all of the games I've played across all different leagues.

Excalibur_Z

United States12240 Posts

August 03 2010 22:13 GMT

You actually won 13 points (plus 13 bonus points [well, unless you used up the remainder of your bonus pool, but you get the idea]). A 12-point gain or loss means you are dead even, anything higher means either you or your opponent were favored. The ends of the spectrum are 4 and 20 as I recall. If he was favored, that means his matchmaking rating was slightly higher than yours. It probably means he's close to promotion.

Arrian

United States889 Posts

August 03 2010 22:20 GMT

there have long been suspicions that something is wacked out in the points/favoring systems but nobody can produce anything concrete (i.e w/numbers) because blizzard doesn't reveal anything about their methods (TruSkill).

jiabung

United States720 Posts

August 03 2010 22:38 GMT

I really doubt he was FAVORED to win. You should check his match history and see if he lost ~16+ points for that game.

SoL[9]

Portugal1370 Posts

August 03 2010 22:49 GMT

Dont try to understand i play people with more 150 points than me that show "Even Match"

waxypants

United States479 Posts

August 03 2010 23:19 GMT

It seems like I've played a lot of tough matches vs. people I'm favored against and I have raped a lot of people who are supposed to be favored vs me -_-

ZapRoffo

United States5544 Posts

August 04 2010 00:56 GMT

The favored indicator compares his hidden rating to your displayed rating, so the system expects him to max out somewhere above 500 platinum. It basically just tells you if you should expect to win 12+ points or fewer, and if you haven't played many games, it generally matches you against "favored" people, who may or may not be truly favored based on hidden rating. Generally once you start getting "even match" games, the system thinks your rating is approaching your real skill (hidden rating). At that point favored starts to mean something, until then it's a crap shoot because your rating is not representative of your skill (you are still climbing to get there).

ZannX

United States70 Posts

August 04 2010 00:58 GMT

It compares your displayed rating to your opponent's MMR (which is hidden) to determine favor. It's quite possible at this point that both sides are 'favored' which is why you see such ridiculous point gains right now.

Why? Because your displayed rating is drastically lower than your MMR at the start. Over time your displayed rating equalizes with your MMR (which is the goal). This is in effect so bonus pool doesn't inflate MMR and only affects the displayed rating.

prototype.

Canada4215 Posts

August 04 2010 01:01 GMT

#10

Blizzard obviously thinks you suck at the game.
+ Show Spoiler +

lol, just joking. Yes, the favoring system is buggy

Morayfire73

United States298 Posts

August 04 2010 01:35 GMT

#11

The system is buggy besides just favoring. As a silver in 1v1 I was placed against a platinum, no way should I be facing someone two leagues above me. This was right after finishing placement matches too.

red_hq

Canada450 Posts

August 04 2010 01:56 GMT

#12

A wierd thing happened to me like this, I was bumped u pto gold leauge from silver staright into #8, After loosing one game (oppenent heavily favored) I move UP to #2 on gold. Like that time in silver I was heavily favored against a high plat player.... etc etc. From what I've heard things should start making sense after you play roughly 30 games.

robertdinh

803 Posts

August 04 2010 01:57 GMT

#13

The point system is similar to the wow arena system.

It is intentionally designed to create inflated ratings and to make people feel like they are constantly progressing.

There are occasionally exceptions but for the most part when you play the risk vs reward is always very favorable.

I think people can go like 50% and easily continue to climb.

FC.Strike

United States621 Posts

August 04 2010 02:07 GMT

#14

I believe there was a large community post about this in the beta that seemed to have hit the nail on the head. I have no reason to believe it's not either correct or close to correct.

All players have two ratings:
1. Their actual ladder ranking
2. A hidden true ELO ranking that exists behind the scenes

As long as your win percentage is above 50% against people at your level or higher, your hidden ELO will be higher than your actual ELO. When matching, the system puts your hidden ELO against your opponent's listed ELO to determine who's favored.

Doing this accomplishes a few goals:
1. The game is constantly seeking to put you against people at your skill level, even if your rank wouldn't normally put you against those people.

2. If the game messed up and is putting you against people worse than you, those people you're facing won't lose tons of points losing to you.

As your win percentage begins to reach 50% versus people at a certain skill level, your hidden ELO will begin to equal your listed ELO. At this point, the game will start giving you an appropriate number of points for your wins and losses and you'll find your score begin to level off.

Over long periods of time, even if you don't improve relative to everyone else, your score will gradually increase due to the presence of the bonus pool, which everybody benefits from. This is the inflation effect robertdinh was discussing in the post above.

This analysis of the ladder might not be perfect, but I think it's acceptable.

onionchowder

United States137 Posts

August 04 2010 02:16 GMT

#15

Slightly off-topic: Can somebody explain to me what the Bonus Pool does?

On August 04 2010 10:35 Morayfire73 wrote:
The system is buggy besides just favoring. As a silver in 1v1 I was placed against a platinum, no way should I be facing someone two leagues above me. This was right after finishing placement matches too.

That's not a bug, the matchmaking system occasionally matches players in different leagues to determine who should be promoted/demoted.

FC.Strike

United States621 Posts

August 04 2010 02:25 GMT

#16

On August 04 2010 11:16 onionchowder wrote:
Slightly off-topic: Can somebody explain to me what the Bonus Pool does?

Show nested quote +

That's not a bug, the matchmaking system occasionally matches players in different leagues to determine who should be promoted/demoted.

The bonus pool, while on the surface is designed to assist players who haven't played in a while, actually serves to inflate all player rankings in a very gradual manner. Over time, players will show an improvement in rating even if they haven't actually improved.