where? when? Source? Cite?
Actually, I think I’ll now lead with a quote from the paper I link at the very bottom:
So, here Microsoft, making a matchmaking algorithm used in dozens (hundreds?) of games, and even when the system is tuned and tested with a specific game (read the PDF for info) it still doesn’t have nearly the accuracy you would want.
Trueskill isn’t perfect, but it is not bad by any means. But Microsoft, spending billions of dollars on Xbox and it’s brand and games… Got these results. But hey, except Blizzard to do better.
(to be fair,I do imagine HotS team has an equally good, if not better system myself, if only due to being able to tailor directly to the game. The issue is the many heroes that can be chosen make it much harder. Someone might be a Diamond level when playing most supports, but is at Silver level when playing a tank).
I don’t think you understand how matchmaking works:
- it will try to set up two teams that each have as close as possible to 50% chance to win.
- If it is QM it doesn’t pay attention to things like Illidan being against all auto attack heroes. Or giving a team Lucio as a healer against a team full of Burst damage.
- If it is a draft mode, it doesn’t (and cannot) take into account the heroes people will draft. It could in theory be looking at the roles and heroes they draft and possibly make adjusts on that. But I find it doubtful.
I expect most of these “forced losses” are the result of people making poor drafting decision.
Anyhow, back to the point, Matchmaker should be getting you closer to 50% winrate the more games you play, as your true skill is discovered.
While not related to how HotS does things directly, you could read about a, presuambly similar, matchmaking system as HotS uses for draft modes here:
And actually, if we go directly to Microsoft’s website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/trueskill-ranking-system/
) we get a far more interesting statistic:
Now, the thing is, here, HotS would in theory every person need at minimum 46 games to get their skill accurately nailed down.
HOWEVER, this would likely be on a per hero basis. So basically, until you’ve got enough games to hit level 10, it is unlikely Blizzard could even accurately assess how skilled you are with a single hero much less in a draft where you have any number of heroes to choose from.
Now, this is obviously not the system that HotS uses, but the general gist of it is almost certainly similar.
edit, and if you want to see how deep looking at a matchmaking system can go, here, how trueskill 2 works: