• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EST 22:29
CET 04:29
KST 12:29
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
ByuL: The Forgotten Master of ZvT29Behind the Blue - Team Liquid History Book19Clem wins HomeStory Cup 289HomeStory Cup 28 - Info & Preview13Rongyi Cup S3 - Preview & Info8
Community News
Team Liquid Map Contest - Preparation Notice6Weekly Cups (Feb 23-Mar 1): herO doubles, 2v2 bonanza1Weekly Cups (Feb 16-22): MaxPax doubles0Weekly Cups (Feb 9-15): herO doubles up2ACS replaced by "ASL Season Open" - Starts 21/0258
StarCraft 2
General
Vitality disbanding their sc2-team How do you think the 5.0.15 balance patch (Oct 2025) for StarCraft II has affected the game? Team Liquid Map Contest - Preparation Notice ByuL: The Forgotten Master of ZvT Nexon's StarCraft game could be FPS, led by UMS maker
Tourneys
PIG STY FESTIVAL 7.0! (19 Feb - 1 Mar) RSL Season 4 announced for March-April Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament $5,000 WardiTV Winter Championship 2026 Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond)
Strategy
Custom Maps
Publishing has been re-enabled! [Feb 24th 2026] Map Editor closed ?
External Content
The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 515 Together Forever Mutation # 514 Ulnar New Year Mutation # 513 Attrition Warfare
Brood War
General
BSL 22 Map Contest — Submissions OPEN to March 10 battle.net problems Are you ready for ASL 21? Hype VIDEO BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Flash's ASL S21 & Future Plans Announcement
Tourneys
ASL Season 21 Qualifiers March 7-8 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues BWCL Season 64 Announcement [BSL22] Open Qualifier #1 - Sunday 21:00 CET
Strategy
Soma's 9 hatch build from ASL Game 2 Fighting Spirit mining rates Simple Questions, Simple Answers Zealot bombing is no longer popular?
Other Games
General Games
No Man's Sky (PS4 and PC) Path of Exile PC Games Sales Thread Nintendo Switch Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion The Story of Wings Gaming
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Mafia Game Mode Feedback/Ideas Vanilla Mini Mafia TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Mexico's Drug War Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine YouTube Thread
Fan Clubs
The IdrA Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
[Manga] One Piece [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books Anime Discussion Thread
Sports
Formula 1 Discussion 2024 - 2026 Football Thread TL MMA Pick'em Pool 2013
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Laptop capable of using Photoshop Lightroom?
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
FS++
Kraekkling
Shocked by a laser…
Spydermine0240
Gaming-Related Deaths
TrAiDoS
ONE GREAT AMERICAN MARINE…
XenOsky
Unintentional protectionism…
Uldridge
ASL S21 English Commentary…
namkraft
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 1859 users

Season 7 Matchmaking Debunk

Forum Index > Closed
Post a Reply
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next All
EnderSword
Profile Joined September 2010
Canada669 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-04-11 01:32:06
April 11 2012 00:25 GMT
#1
I know the season just started, and there's always a flood of 'This sucks' stuff coming in, just figured I'd point out the 3 main things you are going to see, and how they are or are not affected by the Match-Maker changes.

1) "I got Demoted!" This is not affected the the new match making, Your MMR just put you in that league...remember you must actually be actively improving just to stay in the league you were in before. New match making did not affect this, but the natural shrinking of active players does make it harder to stay high league since more casual Bronzes quit than Masters.

2) "Everyone is 'Favored'! Match maker Brokeneded!"

The start of all your seasons, most people have appeared as 'favored' and guess what, on their end, YOU were 'favored' Favored is not an objective system....BOTH players can see each other as favored. There's two reasons: First, because placement players tend to show as favored to give you the benefit of the doubt, and many people you play today will be doing their placement, secondly. It does not compare your rank vs rank or MMR vs MMR, it apparently compares Rank vs MMR. So it possible, especially early on, both players show as favoured.

3) "It's matching me only against better people!!" This might actually be true, but again isn't actually the new match maker, it's also always been true...depending where you rank. Unless you were close to promotion last season, you'll likely face tough opponents at the beginning of this season. There's a lot of stats reasons for this, but to put it simply, the Ladder just reset everyone to even (EDIT: I do not mean MMR was set to even, I mean everyone's points are now Zero)...now it's allowing the good people to go ahead again. So it's now letting you play against the #1 guy in your diviion who never quite got promoted, and that guy who just barely fell out of Masters. If it didn't do this, then the guy who was #1 would probably end up ranked 40th or 50th this season because he came in at 0 points and was already playing evenly matched much harder players....so it lets him play you for a bit. Just grin and take it for a few days.

So, New Match-making MAY be good or bad, but you're not going to be able to disntinguish that until about 2 weeks from today because today you don't really know how good anyone is.




Bronze/Silver/Gold level Guides - www.youtube.com/user/EnderSword
ElusoryX
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Singapore2047 Posts
April 11 2012 00:29 GMT
#2
Just remember that if you think you are always being matched against better people, your opponent is being matched with someone lousier. So your turn will come to fight lousier opponents.
xd
awu25
Profile Joined April 2010
United States2003 Posts
April 11 2012 00:32 GMT
#3
Did they change how placements work? I thought if you skip a season, you have to do 5 again?
EnderSword
Profile Joined September 2010
Canada669 Posts
April 11 2012 00:37 GMT
#4
I dont think any changes were made to anything like that
Bronze/Silver/Gold level Guides - www.youtube.com/user/EnderSword
Czech M8
Profile Joined April 2012
United States16 Posts
April 11 2012 00:39 GMT
#5
This is going to ruin ladder games. I have been on a loosing streak because I'm playing people who are way out of my league. This is stupid how they thought this will "fix" rank problems.
awu25
Profile Joined April 2010
United States2003 Posts
April 11 2012 00:42 GMT
#6
On April 11 2012 09:37 EnderSword wrote:
I dont think any changes were made to anything like that

I didn't place in 1v1 last season and now I'm staring at my main screen and it's telling me to play one match to placed into a division
vaderseven
Profile Joined September 2008
United States2556 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-04-11 00:44:34
April 11 2012 00:43 GMT
#7
On April 11 2012 09:25 EnderSword wrote:
3) "It's matching me only against better people!!" This might actually be true, but again isn't actually the new match maker, it's also always been true...depending where you rank. Unless you were close to promotion last season, you'll likely face tough opponents at the beginning of this season. There's a lot of stats reasons for this, but to put it simply, the Ladder just reset everyone to even...now it's allowing the good people to go ahead again. So it's now letting you play against the #1 guy in your diviion who never quite got promoted, and that guy who just barely fell out of Masters. If it didn't do this, then the guy who was #1 would probably end up ranked 40th or 50th this season because he came in at 0 points and was already playing evenly matched much harder players....so it lets him play you for a bit. Just grin and take it for a few days.

So, New Match-making MAY be good or bad, but you're not going to be able to disntinguish that until about 2 weeks from today because today you don't really know how good anyone is.


This is incorrect. You are still be paired vs people with the intention to get a 50% win rate. The reason why some people will still be able to climb the ladder faster is covered in your 2nd point.

Example: A former #1 GM player in a new season will see that his opponents are favored vs him for a very long time. This allows him to gain a very large amount of points for a win and lose very little for a lose. As his points approach where his MMR predicts/indicates he should be this effect will go away.

Here is a well written quote from ExcaliburZ's thread that explains this:

The important thing to remember is that "favored" does not always mean "better" unless both players' points have approximately reached their MMRs. Until that time, the "favored" indicator only serves to determine how many points a match is worth, and is not an indicator of skill.


I appreciate the effort in making this thread ender but I just had to correct that because its actually 100% false to say that the ladder resets anything that would result in you playing better (or worse) players than you were playing right before the reset. Its just factually wrong.

You are describing some kind of reset of MMR to a baseline per league and that is just not the case. MMR is not reset at all and MMR is what determines who you will face, end of story!
AGIANTSMURF
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
United States1232 Posts
April 11 2012 00:45 GMT
#8
On April 11 2012 09:32 awu25 wrote:
Did they change how placements work? I thought if you skip a season, you have to do 5 again?



This is true ONLY IF you also do not play solo-team games (random partner-2v2's 3v3's 4v4's) because your 1v1 MMR is somehow linked to your Team-game MMR

So if you didnt play 1v1 for a whole season and also did not play solo-team games, then yes, you would have to redo your 5 placement matches at the start of the new season
Thats "Grand-Master" SMURF to you.....
EnderSword
Profile Joined September 2010
Canada669 Posts
April 11 2012 00:45 GMT
#9
On April 11 2012 09:39 Czech M8 wrote:
This is going to ruin ladder games. I have been on a loosing streak because I'm playing people who are way out of my league. This is stupid how they thought this will "fix" rank problems.


I'm guessing you like read the title and just jumped down to add a post?
There is like zero chance you are feeling any impact of the new match making today unless you are a top 50 GM
Bronze/Silver/Gold level Guides - www.youtube.com/user/EnderSword
JAFF3R
Profile Joined March 2012
Australia7 Posts
April 11 2012 00:45 GMT
#10
I must say though, the placement system hasn't worked for me at all.
Playing on NA in S6 I was high silver, and in my placement for S7 I played against a platinum and won, yet still got placed into Silver.
Then on SEA I was in bronze in S6 (didn't play too much so just average rank, but almost all wins) and played against a Gold in S7 ranking, placed into bronze.

Seems as though you play someone two leagues above what you are before.
RCMDVA
Profile Joined July 2011
United States708 Posts
April 11 2012 00:45 GMT
#11

I think they needed to get this in this season... and test things out.

1st - due to the overall ladder participation decrease from season to season

2nd - in 5 weeks Diablo 3 comes out. And that will draw away alot more people.

So its better to get it in now, see how it works out... in advance of Season 8 when Diablo 3 will be live.

cozzE
Profile Joined September 2010
Australia357 Posts
April 11 2012 00:51 GMT
#12
I'm always for greater risk/reward. Even if you lose a few more games, you will always learn more playing against superior players (and when you play even more average players, it makes you realize how bad you used to be ).
EnderSword
Profile Joined September 2010
Canada669 Posts
April 11 2012 00:52 GMT
#13
On April 11 2012 09:45 JAFF3R wrote:
I must say though, the placement system hasn't worked for me at all.
Playing on NA in S6 I was high silver, and in my placement for S7 I played against a platinum and won, yet still got placed into Silver.
Then on SEA I was in bronze in S6 (didn't play too much so just average rank, but almost all wins) and played against a Gold in S7 ranking, placed into bronze.

Seems as though you play someone two leagues above what you are before.


You literally play a random person in the exact same way as literally every single ladder match. There is no difference whatsoever between any ladder match and your placement game.

The placement could not be less meaningful
Bronze/Silver/Gold level Guides - www.youtube.com/user/EnderSword
yomi
Profile Blog Joined June 2004
United States773 Posts
April 11 2012 00:58 GMT
#14
good post I don't think #3 is true though. match making is based on MMR which is not reset if you played at all last season. it does wipe MMR if you skip an entire season like I did two seasons ago.

So potentially there is an effect of high ranked players getting their MMR reset if they quit and are just coming back but I don't think what you think is happening is happening.
windsupernova
Profile Joined October 2010
Mexico5280 Posts
April 11 2012 01:10 GMT
#15
I thought the change was to give you more variety on ladder, which IMO is a welcome change. Most people reach their plateau and they all end up playing same skill ish opponents which gets kinda boring. With this you at least get more variety.

"Its easy, just trust your CPU".-Boxer on being good at games
ktimekiller
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States690 Posts
April 11 2012 01:15 GMT
#16
It is certainly annoying how I am matched against players low enough that I win roughly 20-30 points per win at the start of the season where I would normally get 40~ per win against equal opponents in a new season.
iamcaustic
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
Canada1509 Posts
April 11 2012 01:19 GMT
#17
On April 11 2012 09:25 EnderSword wrote:
3) "It's matching me only against better people!!" This might actually be true, but again isn't actually the new match maker, it's also always been true...depending where you rank. Unless you were close to promotion last season, you'll likely face tough opponents at the beginning of this season. There's a lot of stats reasons for this, but to put it simply, the Ladder just reset everyone to even...now it's allowing the good people to go ahead again. So it's now letting you play against the #1 guy in your diviion who never quite got promoted, and that guy who just barely fell out of Masters. If it didn't do this, then the guy who was #1 would probably end up ranked 40th or 50th this season because he came in at 0 points and was already playing evenly matched much harder players....so it lets him play you for a bit. Just grin and take it for a few days.

So, New Match-making MAY be good or bad, but you're not going to be able to disntinguish that until about 2 weeks from today because today you don't really know how good anyone is.

... Why would you write something that's completely wrong, without any sort of evidence to verify (which, had you tried to do so, would have let you know you were wrong)? o_O
Twitter: @iamcaustic
ChuCky.Ca
Profile Joined July 2011
Canada2497 Posts
April 11 2012 01:20 GMT
#18
when u start a new season its the same for everyone, everyone has the other player favoured for the first few days
Most Skilled Current esport Games Scbw>Sc2>Cs1.6>Dota2>Hon>Loopin Louie The Drinking Game>LoL
EnderSword
Profile Joined September 2010
Canada669 Posts
April 11 2012 01:23 GMT
#19
On April 11 2012 09:58 yomi wrote:
good post I don't think #3 is true though. match making is based on MMR which is not reset if you played at all last season. it does wipe MMR if you skip an entire season like I did two seasons ago.

So potentially there is an effect of high ranked players getting their MMR reset if they quit and are just coming back but I don't think what you think is happening is happening.


I don't mean the MMR is set to even, I meant everyone's points were set to 0.
It doesn't reset your MMR, but it essentially seems to facilitate the high folks ending up higher in points again. It's hard to explain exactly what it's mathematically doing without actually seeing the mechanism they use, but if all things were equal...a person ranked #1 last season, and person ranked #30 were to both just play a whole season with no improvement, instead of finishing 1 and 30, they'd both finish with basically the Bonus pool in points.
But that is not functionally what happens, the system allows the same gap in points to occur again even when it should theoretically be getting you both to 50/50.
It's as if the system tries to re-set you to 50/50 with an offset, like 50/50 +16 wins if that makes sence, mixing the percentage going forward while allowing a +/- offset in a raw number.

Bronze/Silver/Gold level Guides - www.youtube.com/user/EnderSword
EnderSword
Profile Joined September 2010
Canada669 Posts
April 11 2012 01:28 GMT
#20
On April 11 2012 10:19 stormfoxSC wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 11 2012 09:25 EnderSword wrote:
3) "It's matching me only against better people!!" This might actually be true, but again isn't actually the new match maker, it's also always been true...depending where you rank. Unless you were close to promotion last season, you'll likely face tough opponents at the beginning of this season. There's a lot of stats reasons for this, but to put it simply, the Ladder just reset everyone to even...now it's allowing the good people to go ahead again. So it's now letting you play against the #1 guy in your diviion who never quite got promoted, and that guy who just barely fell out of Masters. If it didn't do this, then the guy who was #1 would probably end up ranked 40th or 50th this season because he came in at 0 points and was already playing evenly matched much harder players....so it lets him play you for a bit. Just grin and take it for a few days.

So, New Match-making MAY be good or bad, but you're not going to be able to disntinguish that until about 2 weeks from today because today you don't really know how good anyone is.

... Why would you write something that's completely wrong, without any sort of evidence to verify (which, had you tried to do so, would have let you know you were wrong)? o_O


I didn't really set out to explain the system itself in entirety, people have done that in much longer posts with graphs and tons of math better than needs to be done here for the tweak to the matchmaker.

But just think about it from the reason of why it must work that way. If it didn't do something within leagues to allow higher MMR to get more points, then starting in Season 2, points wouldn't have had literally any relation to the person's rank.

It's a fairly rough relation now, but there would be quite literally no correlation if this function wasn't in it.

Again, it did not set eeryone to even MMR...it set everyone even points and ranks. Your MMR is completely unaffected by seasons changing.
Bronze/Silver/Gold level Guides - www.youtube.com/user/EnderSword
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Replay Cast
00:00
LiuLi Cup Grand Finals Playoff
LiquipediaDiscussion
Patches Events
23:00
Open cup capped at 5400 MMR
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
WinterStarcraft587
RuFF_SC2 219
ProTech142
Nina 87
StarCraft: Brood War
Bisu 7961
Sea 6690
NaDa 44
Icarus 3
Dota 2
monkeys_forever404
NeuroSwarm59
LuMiX1
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox570
Mew2King67
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor137
Other Games
summit1g8741
JimRising 527
C9.Mang0284
ViBE52
Organizations
Other Games
BasetradeTV41
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 15 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Hupsaiya 217
• davetesta210
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• RayReign 11
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Doublelift5242
Other Games
• Scarra995
Upcoming Events
Sparkling Tuna Cup
6h 31m
RSL Revival
6h 31m
Classic vs TriGGeR
Cure vs Cham
WardiTV Winter Champion…
8h 31m
OSC
9h 1m
BSL
16h 31m
Replay Cast
20h 31m
Replay Cast
1d 5h
Monday Night Weeklies
1d 13h
OSC
1d 20h
Replay Cast
3 days
[ Show More ]
The PondCast
4 days
Replay Cast
4 days
Replay Cast
5 days
CranKy Ducklings
6 days
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

ASL Season 21: Qualifier #1
PiG Sty Festival 7.0
Underdog Cup #3

Ongoing

KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 1
Jeongseon Sooper Cup
Spring Cup 2026
ASL Season 21: Qualifier #2
RSL Revival: Season 4
WardiTV Winter 2026
Nations Cup 2026
ESL Pro League S23 Stage 1&2
PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026
IEM Kraków 2026
BLAST Bounty Winter 2026
BLAST Bounty Winter Qual

Upcoming

ASL Season 21
Acropolis #4 - TS6
Acropolis #4
IPSL Spring 2026
CSLAN 4
HSC XXIX
uThermal 2v2 2026 Main Event
Bellum Gens Elite Stara Zagora 2026
NationLESS Cup
CS Asia Championships 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
PGL Astana 2026
BLAST Rivals Spring 2026
CCT Season 3 Global Finals
IEM Rio 2026
PGL Bucharest 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 1
BLAST Open Spring 2026
ESL Pro League S23 Finals
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.