Big Winstreak = Big Loss-streak

General Discussion
83

But that’s exactly what a perfect matchmaker would give you. 50% wins and 50% losses.
This is what I understand least about these people complaining about matchmaker while being up the “forced 50% winrate tree”.

And, scroll up to where I talked about Trueskill and Trueskill2.

Or I can link to the post once I get home and on a computer.

Judging a players “true skill” per Microsoft’s system in a shooter game like Halo, in a 4v4 takes 46 games normally, and up to 138 games in some cases.

Making it 5 players would increase that number… and that is before you look at the fact that Halo/multiplayer shooters generally don’t have vastly different characters.

So you might be looking at 50-150 games to judge you “true skill” at one character.

I went into more and nuance earlier, as stated

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84

It takes the average within a range of MMRs.

To use made up numbers, say that the MMR average of all players is 1500, with a standard deviation of 400.

If you’re queueing at say, 1900 MMR, it will likely at first:
-look for 9 other players within 1800-2000 MMR.

As the queue gets longer, that may expand, to 1700-2100 MMR. It is likely instead expanded once minor bumps.

But stating it just averages is a gross oversimplification and misrepresents how the system works.

There are a number of other factors.

What I have from a source is part of the reason they don’t reveal how the matchmaker rules work is because that causes people to alter their behavior, which causes the matchmaker even more trouble.

Like this:

This is all wrong. Because the level of skill difference is much lower. You’re more likely to get something like this:
1700 1800 1800 1750 1750 [1760]
Against
1900 1800 1700 1700 1700 [1760].

Or in an extreme case:
2000 1600 1600 1900 1600 [1740]
V.
1740 1740 1740 1740 1740 [1740]

Note how how the numbers as percentages are much closer than you example, this is because MMR/ranking/etc is far more nuanced.

Now, it might be 1.740 or 17.4, etc. but your example is hideous in how is misrepresents things.

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85

I mean, if you’re taking about quick match, Blizzard made it way better but people complained queues were to long.

If you mean ranked, probably 80-90%, if not more, of this lopsided comes from people losing in draft, or someone just having a bad day.

Both things the matchmaker cannot sanely account for.

2 Likes
86

How dare you! My example is just as good as yours! Yours simply has more numbers.

2 Likes
87

No. Your example grossly misrepresents the skill differential, or rather the MMR of players.

Using unrealistic numbers to make it look far worse than it is.

My example is probably a bit too close in MMR, but, well, i typed it on my phone. Same with all my responeses in this thread except the original one about trueskill, and let me link it now:

And to get a more realistic wide range average here we go:

team 1 MMR: 1711, 1801, 1757, 1695, 1736 = 1740
versus
Team 2 MMR: 2015, 1500, 1596, 2005, 1584= 1740

Here we have an inbalance like you talked about earlier, although slightly differnet.

However, notice that the best player and the worst player are within ~500 MMR, or about 75% of the top players MMR. This is a far more fair way to describe an example than using a 1, 5 and 10.

This also puts the difference from the best player on team 1 to team 2 at about 200 MMR, or about 10-12%.
And the difference between each teams worst players at about 200 MMR, or about 11-13%.

88

The high points are too high and the low points are too low in this game. I seem to either feel invincible or incapable of doing anything from night to night. And i play pretty regularly with the same 5-7 people so it’s not like there’s this massive fluctuation in the MMR of me and those i play with.

It certainly would be nice to have more consistency from match to match. I’d much rather win 1, lose 2, then win 3, then lose 2, win 1, lose 4, etc…

As it were it seems like the wins and losses come in major clumps. Having a night with 6 or 7 wins in a row is great, but if the next night you get 6 or 7 losses in a row that’s bad.

In the end, it really does do a good job of keeping overall win rates where they should be (50% in a perfect world with a perfect match maker). It’s just not ideal how it gets you to that point.

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89

This is one of the few games that has MMing where with each consecutive win you have, the worse your teammates become. I can almost feel the average IQ of my teammates drop until they are nothing but drooling idiots and I go on a losing streak.

During a big losing streak you can feel and know that it isn’t because of YOU. These are the games where it doesn’t matter what hero you played or how well you played it was going to be a loss. the outcome of the match is out of control because your teammates are just that bad. When you go on a win streak you are supposed to be matched against and WITH better players.

My theory on the MMing is they put players on a win streak with players on a losing streak. Eventually streaks will get broken whether its a winner or a loser.

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90

Never once have they said that. And never once has anyone brought up evidence it does.

91

Yes, that’s why God does exist and aliens too. No one brought up evidence they didn’t.

92

“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

I believe aliens exist, I have no evidence or proof. It is merely my belief. I have conjecture and theories as to why I believe they exist… But I have no proof.

God or Gods, well. That’s a topic that could easily devolve into an argument or discussion that could go against the Code of Conduct. So I’ll cite the Code of Conduct and leave it be.

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93

You got my point; this is all about faith when it comes to endorse the actual MM. Streaks are a fact, and a sad fact. Rest is faith in the MM and shenanigans.

But you’re right, call the censorship to prove I and so many players are wrong.

94

I mean, I’ve talked with people on the HotS team about the Matchmaker.
I wasn’t just spouting off my opinion when I described this:

To be more clear, this was part of a response I got when asking for confirmation that Expanded Search had multiple parts to it. And the answer was yes, the longer the queue goes, the more the matchmaking rules of what is an acceptable match widen.

This is almost certainly true for ranked also, although you have a case where only MMR and rank expand as time goes on. And they have hard caps if I remember correctly.

Yes, but the ability of the matchmaker to deliberatly make streaks where there are so many factors that it does not consider is hilarious.

In QM it only considers roles not heroes, with a few exceptions (Varian being listed as a Bruiser, but being counted as a tank, for example).

In ranked, it cannot even consider your hero, or how you will draft. Because those things happen after the match is made.

???

I only referenced the Code of Conduct about religion because I though any talk of evidence or lack of evidence for god or gods could get participants in that discussion in trouble.

95

I always read you with respect and interest and was surprised of this output. So things are clear now and I may have misunderstood you, probably since english is not my main language.

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96

I had my profile silenced for a day for making this topic. I just wanted to add that my longest win streak in this game was 14 while my longest loss streak was 12. But of course streaks of 5-8 are commonplace. The stompyness of the game can be very frustrating.

97

Like an in game silence, or a silence on the forums? Can they even do that? Do they even do that just for making a topic that they don’t us to discuss? Why don’t they just delete the topic?

98

Yet you made posts today, 1 day ago and 2 days ago. ???

99

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100

This is not so short, but a rough summary is given.

I cannot find the 2 threads that were done here roughly a year or so ago? A player with a decent mathematical background (meaning at least 3rd yr collegiate or better) did an empirical, statistical test that showed that at minimum, he was seeing much of what is complained about in terms of ‘why am i all of a sudden getting plubs’? Is this random? The result was NO. It was not. It was not some look at these 3 games kinda thing. It was several hundred game sample at minimum.

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101

Right, but it doesn’t cover HotS. And the video is from 2012. Which is clearly outdated.

link to the video that talks about the slides mentioned:

The slides are interesting, probably the best place to point people at is the point mentioned in the slides:

some other good quotes from the slides:

will go through video and pull some interesting timestamps!

102

A quick forward about the video: The presenter, Josh Menke, is not credited with having worked on or with HotS. Not though online seaching, or watching through all the credits.

So while this video may have impact on how HotS does matchmaking, J_osh Merke did not work on HotS matchmaking, so these exact design choices cannot be directly applied to HotS, not without some tinkering/thinking._

I will be attempting to keep my opinions out of this and merely focus on what is being discussed:
Timestamps:
2:00-2:20 about new and old players and possible matchmaking issues.

5:15-6:10 about how using simple stats can be problematic and an example

7:10-7:30, why finding skill quickly is important

8:30-8:40 elo versus unnnamed “state of the art” (likely a CoD system based on his game credits i could find).

9:20-9:50 how to judge how well calibrated a matchmaking system well, in terms of match prediction

11:45-12:10 about if a skill distribution is normal allows you to make fake players to test matchmaking/etc changes accurately.

12:30 graph of over 2 million players nearly fitting an expected normal distrubion. (Likely in a CoD game per Josh Merke’s credits)

12:40-12:50 most games he has worked on have had very near to a normal distribution in player skill rating.

12:30-12:45 About the Online Bayesian Ranking and being a good place to start for making a faster [than elo] ranking system.

13:50-14:15 about matchmaking and having issues with both large and small player bases.

14:55-15:30 about communicating to players what is happening with a search, and how lots of canceling and restarting searching is bad.

15:35-16:10 about how long until giving a worse match. brings up specifically shooter and moba, with vague guesstimates of time.

16:30-16:40 about putting monetary value on each player for each match, Josh at the time did not think that anyone knows how to do that (possibly still does think no one knows?)

18:50-19:30 about matchmaking over time and current “Global Optimizer”.

20:05-20:45 Matchmakers and complicated, using fake player matches to test them (debugging) and testing ranking.

21:05-22:15- tight matchmaking versus random matchmaking

22:45-23:10 how matchmaking correctly lets you create skill depth in game.

23:35-24:35 about how to make groups and playing with friends work. (please note, from what HotS team has said about matchmaking in groups, it sounds like HotS does not use the exact “solution” that Josh Merke presents here)

25:10-25:40 issues of people playing with friends followed by solo

26:00-37:00 about three different ways to reveal a players skill to the player.
timestamps in this:
—26:10-28:05 about loading screens and ranking systems
—30:05-30:50 more about loading screens and matchmaking
—32:00-32:15 probably the kind of system that HotS uses
—32:20-32:45 about hiding versus showing true skill
—33:10-33:20 we can simulate these ranks
—33:50-34:10 pure skill system for matchmaking example
—34:50-35:10 why matchmaking on rank can have issues
—35:25-35:40 how you can get good matchmaking with rank and skill

-37:10-42:20 about how Josh Merke likes to do things (I split out some sub points that relate to HotS and how his work may have influeneced HotS design team)
—>>>38:10-38:45 about placement matches
—>>>39:15-39:45 about broad ranks and winrates between players of different ranks against each other
—>>> 41:00-41:35 how Josh Merke likes to distribute rankings of players

Or i’ll do it now while i wait for some large files to download… please note i am only listening the questions, although the times given include the answer
Q1: 42:30-44:20 about server sending lots of games versus sending one game to the client. also about player churn between these two.

Q2: 43:25-46:00 have you ever been privy to any goals or motivation for not having a 50/50 win-loss goal?

Q3: 46:05-47:20 The skil system you talked about based on win/losses, similar to elo, have you though about using more in game metrics to rank players, like about different roles and position in moba’s?

Q4: 47:25-48:30 experience on small player games–how large does the playerbase need to be to make a skill based matchmaking system make sense?

Q5: 48:30-50:30 What are your thoughts on decay, about skill being lowered the longer someone does not play. such as if someone doesn’t play a moba for a month the meta changes, even if the individual player’s skill does not.

Q6: 50:35-51:10 It seems like a player’s skill variance would account for someone not playing for a while, so why decay the rating? Isn’t the math supposed to handle that?

Q7: 51:15-50:40 When you matchmake, you do it on the chunks right? Not granularly? Like if you’re going to match anyone in silver, you just match them against anyone in silver–or do you do 2200 versus 2300?

Q8: 51:40-52:25 The popularity of the hybrid system, I feel like LoL and these games are like going to go through this progression based system, and then transfer you over when we’re sure you’re ready, because we don’t want you to drop or bounce because we’re seeing this number go down. Can you talk a little bit more about that, because you were saying “oh, just go skill” which is obviously a seductive thing if you’re making an esport kind of game, but you’re just worried about people just bouncing from the game.

Q9: 52:30-53:40 Do you have critical mass issues in games? how you weigh the tradeoffs between giving people matches that are not great for them to wait long, versus making them wait to get a better match, and how you balance those factors?

Q10: 53:45-55:15 So for some games that have different roles, players might have different skill levels, depending on what they end up doing. Any thoughts on hwo you can matchmake and determine skill based on the roll they end up playing? both about situations where the role is pre-chosen and is post-chosen of mathmaking

Q11: 55:20-56:50 What are the dynamics of skill over time? So if you start off with a given skill distribution, you showed high skill players at a constant skill, but bad players skill creeping up over time earlier. Do you see the opposite effect where everyone is normally distributed that the variance of skill narrows, or feels constant over a game?

Q12: 56:55-58:25 How do you think ranked reset effect hybrid models? Once a year you reset, and good players get a higher rank to start, and lower players a lower rank. For example in HS, players reset every month. Players get caught up in the middle after reset and causing discomfort in bad players.

Q13: 58:30-59:25 But do you think maybe you would have, just a larger difference in reset? Say if i was a 11 player in HS who resets to rank 15, if i set them at rank 12 instead, where they’re unlikely to meet up with newer players, or bad players, do you think there are different ways like that?

Q14: 59:30-1:00:40 How would you deal with players who might intentionally lose to “smurf” to try to play against worse players?