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What if players' overall MMR was broken into 3 separate ones per opponent's race?
I just noticed that in this season in one matchup I've twice the win-rate vs another. I suppose that is an extreme case, but surely most people feel quite differently confident in different matchups.
Current MMR aims for 50% win-rate altogether, with the allowing for variance in win-rates among the matchups - but the variance may be quite high. MMR per opponent's race would aim to stabilize at 50% for each matchup and thus allowing for more fun games.
The overall ladder MMR could simply be an average of these 3 MMRs.
This would allow for closer and better games no matter what the current balance is. Even when the game is well balanced for the pro players, there have been large disparities in win-rates for lower skill levels. With separate MMRs per matchup, this problem would be solved.
This may even help with ladder anxiety, not having the mindset that the player is already in a disadvantage before the game starts when facing the race with lowest win-rate against.
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No because people would give up some MU that would displease them, but now they are ""forced"" to play to keep their MMR.
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There's a good reason why you don't have 9 (or 16) MMR categories. You're supposed to be concentrating on improving in areas where you're weak.
Suppose that a protoss player is currently at .3 ZvP, .5 PvP, and .7PvT. In other words, he's where he should be.
Then step two, he plays 5 games in a row of PvT.
Now, he's going to lose his next games to Zerg so badly that he'll be right back where he started.
Or, consider as the second step, he plays 5 games in a row of ZvP.
Now, he's going to win his next games vs. Terran so handidly that he'll be right back where he started.
The point is this: Ladder is designed so that you can only improve when you improve your worst matchup. This is good design, and it's good for SCII. It aslo guarantees us that the best people on ladder (GM) are actually the best - supposing races are balanced, which is another topic.
As for ladder anxiety, it's just a symptom of infated ego (direct quote from Artosis and Tasteless cast). Stop looking at MMR, or only "own" the lowest MMR you tend to be at. For me, that's usually a good 200 MMR below where I think I deserve to be at.
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I think this is a good idea. This happened to me where i had 85% winrate vs one race and like 20% vs another and I call tell you this is not fun getting crushed or winning to easily every game. You can improve better when you play even games.
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On March 13 2018 08:16 KR_4EVR wrote:
Suppose that a protoss player is currently at .3 ZvP, .5 PvP, and .7PvT. In other words, he's where he should be.
Yes, I am in this situation. However, I am simply failing to improve the PvZ winrate (even when studying [e.g replays, Gemini's guides]) that due to the frustration I took a break (at least until the drops are nerfed) and got a Wow subscription after years. It was due to me wanting to play more, but being frustrated with the matchup that I came up with the idea how much would it be better had the MMR been different. (on the other hand, PvT feels unfair, and PvP feels as the only actually fun match, even after large amounts of games this season)
On March 13 2018 08:16 DieuCure wrote:
No because people would give up some MU that would displease them, but now they are ""forced"" to play to keep their MMR.
I don't understand - give up how? If give up as not to try to improve, how can you improve when the games are one-sided? With separated MMRs, it would still be necessary to improve the worst MU to increase the overall MMR. For the overall MMR, it is the same in both cases.
On March 13 2018 08:16 KR_4EVR wrote:
The point is this: Ladder is designed so that you can only improve when you improve your worst matchup. This is good design, and it's good for SCII. It aslo guarantees us that the best people on ladder (GM) are actually the best - supposing races are balanced, which is another topic.
Now, you can also be on a GM ladder with very low winrate in the worst matchup. As mentioned, the overall MMR would be the same in either system, I am just proposing matching players per their skill in the different matchups. It's almost the same, only fragmenting the system in a little bit to aim for closer games.
On March 13 2018 08:16 KR_4EVR wrote:
As for ladder anxiety, it's just a symptom of infated ego (direct quote from Artosis and Tasteless cast). Stop looking at MMR, or only "own" the lowest MMR you tend to be at. For me, that's usually a good 200 MMR below where I think I deserve to be at.
I have heard that cast and I disagreed with them. I do not want to derail the thread - but I believe that it has nothing to do with ego, but rather with fearing the unknown. It comes from not knowing current timings and risks, which is why it is disappearing after playing more - not because one's ego is adjusting, but because the player is getting more familiar with the current meta and the dangers that come with it. For example, there's more ladder anxiety when new maps come out. I believe it was Pig (but can't find the vod now) who talked about it this way (contrasted with Tasteless.)
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On March 13 2018 08:54 Keirden wrote:
I think this is a good idea. This happened to me where i had 85% winrate vs one race and like 20% vs another and I call tell you this is not fun getting crushed or winning to easily every game. You can improve better when you play even games.
I second this. I feel like this is one of the main reasons why some players refuse to play the game. They crush in one matchup but get crushed in another which is extremely demotivating. At least playing someone with even skill will make you feel like you're playing somewhat decently
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On March 13 2018 08:16 DieuCure wrote:
No because people would give up some MU that would displease them, but now they are ""forced"" to play to keep their MMR.
Before I load the game I open up the chat.txt file and copy the first line if I plan to play as Protoss. It says "I don't like vsP & vsR". And I paste that line into the chat after the game is loaded and leave right after. If I plan to play as Terran or Zerg, I copy the 2nd line which says "I don't like mirrors". In case of randoms I leave once I discover the race.
If Blizzard would allow me to select which MU I don't want to play it would save some time of my opponents. Once I played the same guy 4 times in a row.
And sometimes I am leaving multiple games in a row even when I'm not playing the same enemy again & again  And this isn't helping as the next few games are easy for me and almost unwinnable for the opponent.
But hey, I'm probably the exception 
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This is a really good idea. My TvP win rate has been around 30% in LoTV. The matchup seems extremly unfair.
This solution would solve all balance problems on ladder without messing up balance on pro level.
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I like this idea.
There is a problem though, if a player is not active enough, there will be even less games per mmr, and the system will stay in provisional mode longer.
But I would accept this.
I also like (deacon.frost's and many others) suggestion to change the matchmaking to allow the user to select the matchup.
That might lead to longer queues unfortunatelly if there aren't enough players at any given time and the matchup preferences are not distributed evenly 'enough', e.g. too many guys want to play ZvT and there aren't enough Ts online.
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This is a sensible idea, but not so easy to actually put elegantly in the game.
Just breaking the mmr pose the problem of the leagues. Do you take the average of the 3 (4?) mmr to put in leagues ? Do you get a league per match up as now you have a league per race ?
But what's good in this idea is the frustration of losing against player too good for you in one matchup while winning against too weak opponents in your best matchup.
For me at some point it was ZvT (worst) and ZvZ (best). I probably had 200 mmr difference beteen the two. Games where usually not so interesting in each matchups.
On March 13 2018 08:16 DieuCure wrote:
No because people would give up some MU that would displease them, but now they are ""forced"" to play to keep their MMR.
Right now, I consider resigning ZvT. Never playing T, I'm so bad at it. And as there's no T on ladder, it's hard to practice it consistently especially for me, a Dia 2-1 occasionnal player (once a week in average probably).
But if I was playing T with even 100 less mmr, There would be games to play
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This should have been in the game right from the start as I have been saying since like 2011. The very point of the matchmaker is to give you good games and this gives you better games, thus better experience, which makes people play more, stay longer in the game ... overall a great win.
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The promotion MMR should be the average of your 3 matchup MMRs. But the actual matching would be based on your
TvT
TvP
TvZ MMR.
I see no downside with this solution. It would solve so many problem.
Obviously this should only be for 1v1 and not for team games.
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On March 13 2018 19:52 MockHamill wrote:
The promotion MMR should be the average of your 3 matchup MMRs. But the actual matching would be based on your
TvT
TvP
TvZ MMR.
I see no downside with this solution. It would solve so many problem.
Obviously this should only be for 1v1 and not for team games.
You don't want to fix the problem that when you play Z with TTP you lose more often to ZZTT? Yeah, teamgames would get out of hand pretty fast.
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I play random and I disagree. I always have one race that I lose most games with and one that I win most games with. The good race keeps my MMR up, so I can get good practice while I refine my strategies. Getting weaker opponents too quickly was one of the most frustrating experiences I had in WoL season 1.
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Maybe we could have option for setting the ladder difficulty as well.
Hard: MMR search range is slightly above your normal MMR search range.
Normal: As it is now.
Easy: MMR search range is slightly below your normal MMR search range.
That way people that want a more challenging experience could get it and people that want slightly easier opponents could get it as well. And the rest would just have the same experience as they have now.
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This would work provided that it would only pair Hard with Easy and default to normal if offer doesn't meet demand. Otherwise it would make the experience of people who want fair games worse. But if implemented in the correct way, it would be nice.
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I have a similar problem of having weaker matchups. However, I disagree with the OP's potential solution. Generally speaking, players around the same MMR have similar macro mechanics. If you are super weak in a matchup and play weaker opponents because of it, then every game would either be a loss to an all-in or you would roll them over in a longer game. You would not improve under those conditions.
I think the real fix should be on the players themselves. Simply do some research. Watch a few replays and do some reading on Liquipedia for builds and counter-compositions.
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On March 13 2018 21:26 esReveR wrote:
I have a similar problem of having weaker matchups. However, I disagree with the OP's potential solution. Generally speaking, players around the same MMR have similar macro mechanics. If you are super weak in a matchup and play weaker opponents because of it, then every game would either be a loss to an all-in or you would roll them over in a longer game. You would not improve under those conditions.
I think the real fix should be on the players themselves. Simply do some research. Watch a few replays and do some reading on Liquipedia for builds and counter-compositions.
Sure, but that doesn't work for caual players like me.
I used to play a lot, everyday, and spend time watching my own replays, looking for builds and so on.
Now I'm only playing once or twice per week, maximum. I have troubles to adjust to the meta.
That's my biggest problems. I'm Dia 1 but i can face lower mmr T, if they play mech I will lose 70% of the games.
What you say is only relevant if you play the game often. I won't spend time on the game that is not playing it, because I don't spend so much time on the game already.
If my ZvT mmr was 100 points below (I'm around 4k 4k2), I would probably be around 50% winrate, the time to adjust to the meta. Once I've adjusted, my mmr would go up anyway and I would not crush my opponents.
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I would rather have some tool on unrank to choose the MU you want to train even if it means waiting longer
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I would rather have some tool on unrank to choose the MU you want to train even if it means waiting longer
For training point of view I understand the idea. But for a casual point of view, I'd rather have 3 mmr. Cause I don't have time to train. I want to play for the fun. And there's no fun in alternating too easy and too hard games.
But I do agree. At times I wanted to train in a specific matchup, like ZvT, my worst by far, I was annoyed by the fact that I would only play 1 T over 10 games, maybe sometimes 2 in a row, you feel like you get started with the matchup and then a Z (because EU) and the games is so different you're completely off again in ZvT.
It could be very interesting to have a possibility to choose your MU in unranked
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Maybe another good solution is to actually balance the game.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On March 14 2018 00:57 xongnox wrote:
Maybe another good solution is to actually balance the game.
That doesn't work on lower levels and vice versa. On lower levels you can play almost anything anyway.
To give you an example - from WoL times I am very good at TvP. I can read the game very well and have good guesses unless meta rapidly changes. But PvZ is by far my worst MU. It's not about balance, but if I see a spire and a hydra den, I have to decide(well, in LotV it's already decided by that time ). It's not about balance, it's my problem of reading Zerg.
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On March 14 2018 00:57 xongnox wrote:
Maybe another good solution is to actually balance the game.
I think the issue stems from the impossibility of balancing the game across all levels at the same time. The game is (rightly) balanced for the pros, which then creates imbalance among races for lower levels.
In different tiers and for different races, scouting, fast reactions, macro mechanics, etc. have different weights.
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True but not-that-true at the same time, in lower levels mechanics is the overwhelming deciding factor regardless of balance and MU, and so you have an "easy" way to improve in every MU.
So i think we see more very unbalanced MU ratios per individual in masters and diamond than in gold. Still, i agree that the balance for even top masters or low GM players is not the same than at pro level, but maybe not that much away neither.
In fact if we read this tread and others it's nearly always the same story : P wining vs T and loosing vs Z. Well, it's kinda the same bias at pro level...
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I respectfully disagree. In lower leagues, some things can just be suddenly very hard, completely turning the balance on its head. As a gold P I had a period when I would win the majority of PvTs and PvPs and lose almost all PvZs, because I just couldn't defend against mutas for my dear life.
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Canada8989 Posts
On March 14 2018 00:57 xongnox wrote:
Maybe another good solution is to actually balance the game.
Well no, having a balance game dosen't mean you are suppose to be equally good in every match up.
Plus LOTV has been pretty balance in the last two years.
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United Kingdom20303 Posts
It's been a problem since the start of the game IMO - ESPECIALLY since race distributions can be so far from balanced. You can be far more likely to run into one race than another - at some points in history some races have been more than twice as popular as others for certain MMR's and regions; i've played through a few.
It's possible for the MMR of a player to continually rise for months while their winrate in their weakest matchup actually drops.
If (example made up matchups and numbers) PvZ is far more common than PvT on the ladder, having a 35% winrate against terran and a 65% winrate against zerg actually results in a continually rising MMR since there are far more zerg games. You'd play 100 games, beat 35% of terrans and at the end of it you'd be at a higher MMR, playing against harder terrans and now winning fewer terran games because of being unable to improve at PvT as fast as your MMR rose; a slight strength against the popular race paired with a massive weakness against the unpopular one would artificially and incorrectly balance each other out and the system would aim to keep both matchups unfair forever.
It's also only natural that you'd improve more in 45 games of PvZ than you would in 25 games of PvT when you've played 100 games total on the ladder. This isn't a weakness in any player, it's just math. Playing a matchup more often is correlated with being better at it; playing it less with being worse - this situation is mathematically encouraged so not something that only some bad players may slip into.
If you played 1 protoss for every 1 zerg for every 1 terran on the ladder it would be far less of an issue (Being weak in 1/3'rd of games will hold you down much more than being weak in a matchup that only shows up in 1/5'th of games so the problem can't get so big so easily) but still worth closely looking at IMO. In the current state i think it severely compromises the competitive gameplay experience at times.
A fix could tighten up the relative winrates in different matchups on average - giving each player around a 50% overall as well as 50% in PvZ, PvT and PvP winrate - and could be a notable benefit on average but a huge benefit for edge cases where people reach 60%+ in a certain matchup.
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The issue with most people is the number of games. On an actual 5k3 mmr decent active account i already play people as low as 4700 and as hight as 5650. And I kinda happen to win vs some 5k6 while still loosing sometimes 4k8 people..
So with gold level players playing like 30 games a month, the incertitude will already be super-high, and dividing the number of game per MMR account by 3 will not help at all.
So this could only be really useful for 1/people with lots of game 2/people with spectacular different level MU.
I think another solution could be to let the player choose the preferred opponent possible(s) race(s) while matchmaking. I know this could lead to some unbalance (more people wanting to play TvZ than ZvT for example) but it's probably kinda manageable.
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I have something relevant to share. I only play random.
I have had trouble in both TvZ and ZvT, but not in any other match up. There is no balance patch that can fix that.
Me making choices about which race I want to play will need to be adjusted to which race I'm getting for myself. Maybe I don't want to play ZvT and TvZ (not true, but see it hypothetically). Which order will the match up have?
1. I get my own race and then the match making system starts looking for opponents
2. I get matched with an opponent and get assigned a fitting race.
Option 2 will be a bit of a problem if we both are random. There would be a need for a second control to assure that we both get a fitting match up.
If MMR is vs race dependent, will I get 9 MMRs for my random? If so, I would have to get my race assigned before the system starts looking for an opponent. There would also be a really long time of uncertainty about MMR for new random players. Assuming you play each mu equally often (highly unlikely) it would take 9 times as many games to assert each specific MMR.
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You can always make it a correction: first determine a MMR, when you have enough data, do the per matchup correction. Really people are dwelling here on technicalities that are easily solved with a bit of thinking, which should be left to the software engineering team.
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Yes, for example, if this change was too radical, it could be as simple as after 100 games played, it is possible to get a relative MMR bonus/handicap for certain matchups if their win-rate is excessively low/high.
But the extend and the details would be up to the team which has more XP and mainly data. But generally, there only seems to be upsides and virtually no downsides to a change of this kind.
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In a game that features assymetrical balance and is heavily influenced by which maps are played and allow you to veto almost half of them, this seems like a pretty terrible idea.
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EPT
