Dear Support,
I’ve opened an official battlenet ticket, because I was playing with a friend, both on the same mmr in BG duos and we are in a team, we get same placement in every game, but after a few games I’ve noticed that we became 300 mmr apart, all while playing together and getting the very same placement against the very same players with the very same amount of rating. The support for the ticket have said that I should make a bug report here. My friend had a higher rating last season, is there some kind of secret climb mechanic, to reach your previous season’s rating faster, that is undocumented, or is there some kind of bug with my account? I am afraid to que in bg, because I only get like around +20 for 2nd place, and get +80 for 1st place while he gets like +100 for 2nd and even more on 1st placement. We’ve wanted to climb high this season, but I do not seem to climb at all.
Please help me.
Best Regards,
Yumeiki
Sounds like your friend played some games without you.
Sure in the 2-3 hours that we played together non stop in an afternoon. Please do not take me for a fool. I was also able to find these replies to similar threads on the internet. No, he did not play any games without me, because these games were back to back games, as soon as we finished we played another, and the last game we both checked how much we got. I got around +28 where he got more than 100.
Thank you for your reply, but this does not help.
The rating you see visible isnt the main one used for matchmaking anyways, that one is hidden, devs confirmed this years ago;
- External rating: this rating is shown in your Battlegrounds lobby interface. The main purpose of this rating is to provide seasonal “progression”, as well as partially or fully reflect your actual skill.
- Internal rating: this rating is invisible to you. The main purpose of this rating is to help us estimate your actual skill at all times and thus create fair matchmaking.
- We will match players based on their internal rating only,
as it is designed to always truly represent your actual skill. During the match building phase, we will try to select eight players with the closest internal rating to ensure the match is as fair as possible for everyone.
- Meanwhile, external rating plays no role in the matchmaking process.
Therefore, it is possible a player with 7000 external rating is in the same game as a player with 1000 external rating, if their internal rating values are close. If you see a player with 0 rating in a high level Battlegrounds game, it’s because they have a high internal rating and are likely just getting started with the Battlegrounds season!
Dear LilyMrgglton,
Thank you for your reply. I’ve seen this hidden rating mentioned already, but everytime it comes up it is for explaining strange rating differences and solo matchmaking. I do not have any issues with players with 7000 rating or players with 0 rating in our lobbies. I am only concerned about the rating I gain at the end of a match.
It should be calculated based on your rating (internal or external) and the rating of the averages of the other players. The fact remains that I get waaaay less rating than my friend for the same placement as my friend in the same lobby against the same players (doesn’t matter if they are 7k rating or 0 rating, there should be an average which it will use in the rating calculations). Let’s say my internal rating is 4k, and my friend’s is 8k, the enemy player’s (team’s) average rating is 6k, then I should get more rating for that win, because it was harder for me as a 4k internal rating, than my friend. Does this mean that my internal rating is much higher than his? But he plays much more, I have missed seasons, I would think that my internal rating should be lower. I also see good streamers climbing faster (getting more points for the same placement) while their internal rating should be much higher than mine.
We can try to guess around what is happening, but things don’t really add up, and that is why I’ve opened a support ticket, and (after support’s request) this bug report.
I would really appreciate it, if someone would either look into it or verify the behind mechanics which are in play here (let that be climbing-helper rating gains from previous seasons or lower rating getting lower points wining against higher rating, or anything really).
This was mentioned in the link;
Specifically, when your pre-calculated rating gain is positive, it would be multiplied a factor called a “rate gain modifier”. This modifier is proportional to the discrepancy of your internal rating and external rating, when your internal rating is larger than your external rating. You can think of this as a “chasing” process, as the external rating is “chasing” the internal rating. If your external rating exceeds your internal rating, the chase stops.
Meaning; your friend getting more season rating than you, means their internal score is higher than their season “external” score - opponents set the baseline external reward you are going to get - the internal score amplifies this if its higher than what your current seasonal “external” rating is.
You referred to the seasonal rating as “MMR” and this is just wrong, as that is not what is used for matchmaking live, as I explained, and also linked to.
I cant speak based on your anecdotal evidence or theoretical ranks, as the fact of the matter is the internal rank does not equal the external seasonal rating. It is NOT the same number, so you cannot know this.
Missing seaons has nothing to do with this. Internal rating does NOT reset. Season rating - the external visual one - does.
Again, thank you for the explanation. I think I understand, so HS BG does not use the usual ELO system like what Chess uses, where you get more rating when you beat higher rating, but HS BG just accumulates rating regardless. So basically I would have to arrive to the rating of my friend somehow little by little, by playing a huge amount of matches, because the system disregards the rating difference and then, we could climb together in the next season.
Example in a standard ELO system: if my friend has much higher rating than me, the system searches for players/teams with much higher average rating me, thus I get more rating for playing in a more difficult game/match, than my skill, to faster arrive to my skill floor.
It is not the case in HS BG, I get around the same points playing duos alone as playing duos with him and he gets more points than me (instead of less). At least you could confirm that there is a mechanic that helps players climb faster at a season reset. That was what I was already guessing could be behind the discrepancies.
EDIT:
I’ve just read what you’ve linked and they clearly state it, that they are not using ELO here:
As a final note, for our algorithm experts out there, I also wanted to clarify why some widely used matchmaking algorithms such as Elo or Glicko are not a good option for us. We ran many simulations and the results showed that our algorithm had the fastest runtime (ensuring that matchmaking happens quickly) and the highest accuracy (ensuring that you have a more positive play experience). Elo and Glicko are also primarily designed for 2 player games, not 8 player games.
Edit2:
I’ve modified the ticket category to discussion as this does not seem to be a bug anymore, it is just a strange (at least for me) matchmaking and rating system. Thank you for your help and sorry for the inconvenience I might have caused.
It does (its not ELO, but it uses the higher opponent for more rating gain mechanic), but its not the only system, hence where weird results can appear
none at all, no worries lol