EPTWhat if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range.
Ladder Deflation and MMR Decay - Page 27
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Excalibur_Z
United States12238 Posts
What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range. | ||
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-Celestial-
United Kingdom3867 Posts
On January 23 2014 09:11 almart wrote: This whole system has discouraged me from playing because I am either facing diamond/masters players or players way below my skill level. Pretty much the same for me honestly. Although I wasn't as high as you were. And I probably dropped way further. My most recent "batch" of playing was around 20 games over a couple of days and I hit a 90% win ratio. Two losses, one against an unscouted all-in from a player who used to be on my level but had also decayed and one when I thought I'd be silly and I cannon rushed a Terran who turned out to be from a higher league than I used to be and actually knew how to respond (whilst yelling BM all the time but whatever). I can't imagine it was much fun for those I was smashing. | ||
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Firkraag8
Sweden1006 Posts
On January 23 2014 23:21 Excalibur_Z wrote:What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range. That would make it kind of hard for a decayed player to advance back into his real league wouldn't it? If he only plays other decayed people that is. The best option would be to just remove MMR decay, we were fine without it. | ||
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Excalibur_Z
United States12238 Posts
On January 23 2014 23:57 Firkraag8 wrote: That would make it kind of hard for a decayed player to advance back into his real league wouldn't it? If he only plays other decayed people that is. The best option would be to just remove MMR decay, we were fine without it. That's true, I imagine the whole point is that they don't play against other decayed players for exactly that reason. It's far too early for me to be doing any critical thinking, it seems. | ||
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Spirit09
United Kingdom38 Posts
On January 24 2014 00:01 Excalibur_Z wrote: That's true, I imagine the whole point is that they don't play against other decayed players for exactly that reason. It's far too early for me to be doing any critical thinking, it seems. They have to look at things logically rather than reactively, and I'm not convinced they are doing that. It seems like they see the primary problem as being people are upset because they are in a lower league, and they don't like to have a whiny player base. That may be a secondary problem but its not the main one! The issue is 99% to do with people with very different skill levels being matched together because they have somehow got the same MMR. Its exacerbated now because we have months of decay pushing the ladder further away from a skill rating. It is surely fundamental to a skill rating being effective that the only input it takes is based on match results. They have to fix this problem by removing decay, and probably they now have to reset everyone's (or Gold and lower) MMR and have us all start from 5 placements again. Given that they won't even admit there is an issue I can't see them ever doing this, or if they do they will have to fabricate some other reason for why they are doing it to save face. Only after they have got us all back to our proper MMR can any reset of league boundaries be effective. Alternately they really do see no issue with decay, which would be in-line with their statements about how they now see returning players hitting 50%. When they post about this it seems like they are patting themselves on the back for making a good call on introducing decay and perfectly solving the issue right off the bat. Hence they are diametrically opposed to reversing it because they are so proud of doing it in the first place. Should decay exist? Or rather, should some consideration to returning players exist? Well, is there a problem? Lets see the data for how bad of a losing streak these players really end up with? Next, you could presumably have MMR decay, but only if it were a much much smaller effect than it currently is. Perhaps requiring longer before it starts happening (so fewer players get it), being slower to take effect and giving a bonus to MMR changes for the next few games so it can be counteracted faster. However, it seems to me this is catering for something unnecessary. We don't cater for people on losing streaks because they are having an off day, so why this? Better not to interfere with the system at all. Six years on from Blizzard refusing requests to make MMR unhidden and we're still lurching from crisis to crisis as a result of that "decision". | ||
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Mercy13
United States718 Posts
On January 24 2014 01:52 Spirit09 wrote: They have to look at things logically rather than reactively, and I'm not convinced they are doing that. It seems like they see the primary problem as being people are upset because they are in a lower league, and they don't like to have a whiny player base. That may be a secondary problem but its not the main one! The issue is 99% to do with people with very different skill levels being matched together because they have somehow got the same MMR. Its exacerbated now because we have months of decay pushing the ladder further away from a skill rating. It is surely fundamental to a skill rating being effective that the only input it takes is based on match results. They have to fix this problem by removing decay, and probably they now have to reset everyone's (or Gold and lower) MMR and have us all start from 5 placements again. Given that they won't even admit there is an issue I can't see them ever doing this, or if they do they will have to fabricate some other reason for why they are doing it to save face. Only after they have got us all back to our proper MMR can any reset of league boundaries be effective. Alternately they really do see no issue with decay, which would be in-line with their statements about how they now see returning players hitting 50%. When they post about this it seems like they are patting themselves on the back for making a good call on introducing decay and perfectly solving the issue right off the bat. Hence they are diametrically opposed to reversing it because they are so proud of doing it in the first place. Should decay exist? Or rather, should some consideration to returning players exist? Well, is there a problem? Lets see the data for how bad of a losing streak these players really end up with? Next, you could presumably have MMR decay, but only if it were a much much smaller effect than it currently is. Perhaps requiring longer before it starts happening (so fewer players get it), being slower to take effect and giving a bonus to MMR changes for the next few games so it can be counteracted faster. However, it seems to me this is catering for something unnecessary. We don't cater for people on losing streaks because they are having an off day, so why this? Better not to interfere with the system at all. Six years on from Blizzard refusing requests to make MMR unhidden and we're still lurching from crisis to crisis as a result of that "decision". I mentioned this a couple days ago, but for some reason decay didn't affect my account during a 6 or 7 month break. As a result, when I started playing again I was placed right back in diamond, and have been facing people much better than me. Currently I've won 4 out of 33 games, many of them absolute curb stompings. I'm having to force myself to play, and it's not very fun. Maybe my experience is unusual though and most players coming off a break aren't as awful as I am : ) Anyway, some amount of decay may have prevented this, though it sounds like the system blizzard implemented isn't very good. | ||
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ant-1
Canada149 Posts
Frankly, decay should not exist, and I would fix it by just asking people returning from an extended break (more than one month, say) to tell the system using a simple radio-button choices form what went on and how they should be treated : one league lower? Half a league lower ? Re-evaluated completely (throw away past MMR, redo placement)? Unchanged? Sometime trusting people is the best idea. | ||
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korona
1098 Posts
On January 23 2014 23:21 Excalibur_Z wrote: What if the matchmaker were to prefer that decayed players are matched against other decayed players first? I wonder if the matchmaking pool is large enough to handle that. Then, if it can't find a suitable decayed opponent within your search range in a minute or so, expand the search to active players at a narrower skill range. Actually it might happen in practice quite often. I am not meaning that the matchmaker searches for decayed opponents, but still matches decayed players against each others for other reasons, if decay happened mid season and the decayed player became active before end of the season. As mentioned earlier the matchmaker seems to prefer opponents from your own league (it is still matching based on MMR, but there seems to be some kind of league prioritization). Let's take one of my personal character accounts as an example (so I don't have to spent time to find some other good example). Last time it faced max decay was in the end of season 14 in August. I had played plenty of matches in June and then did not play for 56 days with that account. That account was in diamond league and its MMR was hovering just above the bottom border of diamond. I started playing with it again when ladder lock period started in August to spent its bonus pool. Thus that account faced max decay and its MMR was dropped to high gold (near platinum border). At the time I did not know about the decay or how it worked and thought for some time that the account still had diamond range MMR. I played 27 matches after the inactivity period before the end of the season. 15 of the opponents were diamonds, 8 were unranked players, 2 were plats, 1 was gold, 1 was unknown. From the gold player it was possible to calculate my MMR (indicated high gold MMR). So 15 of my opponents were diamonds whose MMRs were somewhere close to high gold range. It is likely that many of those diamond opponents had been decayed (to drop a league range in MMR would normally require roughly 20 losses more than wins. Only one of those diamonds had ~20 loss more than wins, few had ~10 loss more, but most had about the same amount of wins as losses). I even played roughly with 50 % win-rate so the opponent quality did not seem that off, even if some opponents seemed like 'free wins' (I had been active with other accounts during my 'inactivity period' so I was not that rusty). In the start of following season I was placed in platinum (had risen with those 27 matches to plat MMR range before the end of the season) and most my opponents became other platinums (mix of normal plats & decayed players). Nowadays it is not as clear cut regarding the opponents. I checked quite a lot of decayed accounts from last season's data, and their opponents were more mixed regarding their leagues (still it seemed to prefer people from their own league). This potentially could either be due a) there are less active players and to provide fast matchmaking the matchmaker needs to pick close MMR opponents from other leagues more often, b) potential fine-tuning of the 'league prioritization' of the matchmaker. | ||
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Spirit09
United Kingdom38 Posts
It would seem like there are easier solutions. Not hiding MMR and not having things like bonus pool. But even easier is just to introduce lots of tool tips that appear when hovering on items in game that explain things. I suggested early on that Blizz should have more in depth information on things like rank, league, bonus pool, inactivity (obviously), placement games, promotion etc etc that was available in game and it might reduce the number of people upset and venting on forums. They asked for constructive feedback, but never seemed to respond when it was offered. I honestly get the sense that Blizzard really don't like to have a "community" and don't have the first clue of how to work with one... | ||
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korona
1098 Posts
On January 24 2014 04:07 Spirit09 wrote: What would be the benefit for prioritising selection of an opponent on league? Do you think this has some advantage or perhaps they just do it to reduce the number of people upset because they lost to someone in a higher league without understanding that they had the same MMR as them? Personal view: To further obfuscate the skill ratings. Blizzard seems to want to hide the actual skill ratings (make comparisons between players hard) and aim that players focus on their visible ladder leagues, ranks & points. Before HotS players could often deduct when their MMR was closing a league border (opponents became mixed from different leagues). Now you usually cannot deduct this based on leagues of your opponents. In the past people who did not understand how the matchmaking system worked often complained when they were matched against players from different leagues. They did not realize that their opponents usually had comparable MMRs as them as they only saw the league badges. Now as the MMR decay was added into the mix, people would immediately notice a change in their opponents after the decay. This would lead to even more complaints than before. Obviously they also wanted that the players would not know about the MMR decay (They did not mention it when they originally published info regarding the changes to the HotS ladder system. It also took them nearly 4 months to admit it even existed after the community had deducted it by themselves). -- Edit: Also based on MMR tool records it seems that nowadays (after HotS) people are immediately promoted when they pass league thresholds. Before HotS promotions happened after the player had stabilized in the new league range (based on MMR moving average). Now the speculative part (have not put effort to actually verifying this): If opponent leagues are prioritized, then when the player approaches the upper border of his current league, he starts on average gaining less MMR from wins & lose more from losses. This would happen if he is mostly matched against opponents from his league. Such opponents would on average have equal MMR or lower MMR than the player. If the opponent had higher MMR, he would potentially have already passed the upper league threshold and been promoted. This would sort of replace the 'stabilization' requirement of the past (you need to be 'better' than top of your league to advance aka having higher win-rate against them). To 'graphically' present this speculation ('U' = upper league low border, 'P' = players MMR, '.' = search range regarding MMR with respect of same league players, 'L' = lower league high border): U...P.............. L And the full search range without prioritization would be: ..........U...P.............. L | ||
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zerotol
Belgium508 Posts
I used to play some in WOL got platinum max, but didnt play that much now i start in HOTS and am even worse then before, i had to play 5 games won 4 lost 1 (played over some weeks don't know if that had influence) so my MMR should have reset i get placed in silver but i start to play and get a diamond - high plat - diamond. They just smash me. Why am i getting these opponents ? I was never around this MMR.?? This isn't fun at all  | ||
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Firkraag8
Sweden1006 Posts
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/11423622282?page=1#1 | ||
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korona
1098 Posts
On January 24 2014 13:43 Firkraag8 wrote: Another update by Blizzard. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/11423622282?page=1#1 And update regarding MMR tool league offset calculations based on SC2 v 2.1 data. Diamond-master & master-gm offsets seem either the same as before or very small increase: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=20662717 | ||
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aZealot
New Zealand5447 Posts
On January 24 2014 06:08 zerotol wrote: well i have been demoralised by this system now. I used to play some in WOL got platinum max, but didnt play that much now i start in HOTS and am even worse then before, i had to play 5 games won 4 lost 1 (played over some weeks don't know if that had influence) so my MMR should have reset i get placed in silver but i start to play and get a diamond - high plat - diamond. They just smash me. Why am i getting these opponents ? I was never around this MMR.?? This isn't fun at all If it means anything, just keep playing. It sucks, but in the end you should stabilize to opponents of comparable skill level. It may take a while, though. At least this was my experience. | ||
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KerriganSon
7 Posts
Thanks. | ||
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Spirit09
United Kingdom38 Posts
On January 24 2014 15:01 aZealot wrote: If it means anything, just keep playing. It sucks, but in the end you should stabilize to opponents of comparable skill level. It may take a while, though. At least this was my experience. I agree this is the only way you can approach this... but that said I'm not convinced you can stabilise (as you could in WoL) unless you get into some high league like current Platinum or something. In Gold or below it seems to me that there is such a massive range of skill of players that the outcomes of my matches are highly random. I watch the replays and when I win its usually because my opponent made fatal unforced errors. When I lose its usually because my opponent played at a much higher standard than me. I personally believe few games outcomes are as a result of my skill or lack of... Excal says I've overestimated, he's probably right, and clearly I have no data, just feelings, but its hard to shake this view when I look at the replays to analyse what happened. And even if you do stabilise what does that even mean? Leagues have lost all meaning and rank never had any to begin with. Blizzard seem as determined as ever to deny any real view of comparative skill despite their protestations to the contrary, now they've added poor matchmaking to the mix too. I just can't understand their point of view. I don't think they are stupid. I don't know what to think. They must obviously believe this is the right approach, yet it is so plainly the exact opposite of the right approach... Best guess is they made some honest bad decisions early on and they have the most stubborn streak of any company in history, their sticking to the ship no matter how badly its taking on water and be damned if they're going to change course. Even this I find hard to believe though. In any case, even giving them the benefit of the doubt you have to wonder about their risk assessment... or lack of. Apologies. I'll be sure to make this my very last rant post!  On January 24 2014 21:51 KerriganSon wrote: Hi, I've created a petition on Blizzard forums asking to make MMR visible (EDIT: but they deleted it! So forget it.) What are they so desperate to hide.  | ||
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Firkraag8
Sweden1006 Posts
We are the [CORE] players in this division if it helps anyone with data: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/260647/1/Firkraag/ladder/152089 | ||
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GunLove
Netherlands105 Posts
I too got promoted (around midnight this night). When I checked my division, about 60 out of a 100 players (including me) were at the exact same points total: 415. Even though I had around 500 points in my previous division one league lower. It seems like some predetermined points total. Also in the general chat at that time there were quite a few others that got promoted, most of them had quite good win/loss ratios (like I do too). A friend of mine in the same league did not get promoted. He has a winrate closer to 50/50. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Blizzard implemented some new adjustments and it resulted in some 'mass' promotions for those who were doing relatively well in their leagues. | ||
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JacobShock
Denmark2485 Posts
On January 25 2014 09:31 Firkraag8 wrote: Ok, me and 3 clanmates all got promoted at the same time a few games ago to where we should be. I think they did something on EU. It's funny because we were all just grinding some ladder and now we're in the same Diamond division since we all got at basically the same time. We are the [CORE] players in this division if it helps anyone with data: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/260647/1/Firkraag/ladder/152089 I got promoted to diamond again as well, with around a 60 percent winrate. Had a good ladder run, but I guess it could be blizzard's patch. | ||
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coL.hendralisk
Zimbabwe1756 Posts
So basically giving a fake bonus pool or something? Not sure if intentional | ||
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