Blizzard's MM is bad and is not going to keep new players

General Discussion
101

Gonna clue you in on a magic secret: things are not only two perspectives.

You place your concern on assuming disagreement as a rationalization to assume content that isn’t there. You largely have no clue what I think regarding the matching system, but since you don’t see me deride it in these topics that post the same crap over and over again, you must think I must therefore ‘favor’ the system, or rather fault the user intead.

Here’s a take that might be short enough for even you to process:
if complaining doesn’t change the system, then someone else has to happen instead.

Regardless of what you think about blizzard’s assets, the modes, matching, ranking system or the like isn’t going to change. That doesn’t mean it is good, or can’t be improved, it simply means people can work with it, or rile themselves in misery with self-imposed tin-foil theories that set false dilemmas, cast perceived disagreement into “no true scottmans” fallacies, and generally fault any and everything else that doesn’t explicitly agree with them because they will not consider more two options.

“MMR” is a flawed metric, but it’s already what many systems use, and they aren’t going to change that largely because there’s a big disconnect from self-perception, and realization of that self. IF that is a problem, and it takes information people do not have to realize that there are options they haven’t considered, then it takes length to convey that.

However, some people are so offended by “words” that they make up superficial grievances to justify their ignorances, and then assume the ‘world’ is suddenly out to personally get them when other people do not fall privy to such incongruity and fault-finding.

Yea, I can 'squeeze 100 words" out of something, but it’s only ‘nonsense’ because you’re effectively illiterate, and are trying to hope other people don’t notice.

We can’t make you read better by posting this over and over again, much the same these concerns with matching aren’t going to change with another patch of the same complaints. “Logic” has so many ways to convey that people need to apply their efforts were change can be made, and one of the simplest outlets just takes people willing to open their eyes a little more, and see something for more than just blots of mustard and bad potatoes.

102

Again, you are missing the point, placement arrived to via simple win/loss scheme has little to do with quality of matches. Averaging the MMR is the laziest/simplest way to approach matchmaking and may sort of work if the population is huge, people don’t create new accounts, don’t boost each other, etc, etc, etc. I.e. it works in an ideal world, in a real environment, especially deteriorating one as it is now, it becomes very unstable.

That’s why I mentioned the AI, and specifically AI for SC2. You keep thinking of player evaluation as a 5th grader (stats which can be farmed, etc). The real approach would be analyzing the players game and decisions. That’s exactly how these AIs work, they look at different actions at any point in game, each action gets a “score” and then AI acts upon it, that’s how it beats the SC2 pros, that’s how cars can drive themselves. So the proper analysis would just analyze your game, not the stats. If you are GM on a bronze account and keep making perfect plays - it will figure it out in a few games, not a 100 (which otherwise you would need to climb creating 100s of crap matches along the way).

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103

Lol, I’ve heard it a million times in my life, except after I get finished with work all those arguments magically disappear. if you don’t know any better doesn’t mean better solutions don’t exist.

I’ve said it a number of times (in fact I said that a long time ago when they cancelled HGC and was trolled for it quite a bit), nothing is going to change, you either accept it or move on.

104

True, Role-matching is no guarantee of a balanced game, but the standard isnt getting to “perfect” the standard is getting to “better”. In all my SL games, both teams have the same role matchup 90% of the time. Why is that? (And no, its not because the playerbase is too stupid to know theres a better way). Do you want 40% of you matches to be close games, or 70%? Neither are perfect… but one is sure better than the other.

Let me reiterate the part of my last game that crystalizes the problem:

The matchmaker didn’t look for a good game for 7 minutes and then finally give up saying ‘sorry, this is the best game I can put together’. Its stopped looking after 20 seconds! The matchmaker thinks it gave me a game worth playing. That right there is the problem.

The only possible resistance to the idea of increasing the quality of games are:

  1. Its impossible.
  2. The slightest change to the matchmaker algorithm would explode wait times for everyone.

Neither of those 2 things are true… so what are we arguing about?

105

Cool; when you get around to posting that youtube vid or tik tok that Really shows what you had going on, then I’m sure you’ll win so many internets, you’ll be more legendary than nyan cat.

In the mean time, it looks like you’re posting more vague stuff and kinda forgot the point of what you were trying to convey.

106

I know it’s hard tracing 3 posts back, but the original point was a response to Narha stating that MM blows and it has nothing to do with a player’s perception of it, it’s a crappy system by design.

107

I dont think he had a point beyond whining.

I doubt he gets that the MM deals with the most unreliable and chaotic variable ever: humans.

He is most likely just a delusional bronzelord angry that the MM puts him in the team of other bronzelords or something. I dont care. The moment his argument was based on calling me a whiteknight when he didnt get the point then i know he’s a worthless waste of time.

108

Just played 4 games… won 2 and lost 2. All 4 were stomps. What a waste of time.

109

well I just played a quick match. 4 of my teammates had lifetime win rates of 25% or less. The lowest lifetime win rate on the other team was 66.7%. I’m sure glad I’m not the person who programmed matchmaking, because I would 100% kill myself for being such an unequivocal failure.

110

Lol this thread is still going its got substitutes for the original runners and everything.

Did we figure out who has the lines of code that spawns more players? Gonna have to be someone very intelligent. Maybe the OP gang or the false Jimmy guy whining abt stomps?

Cuz if you know exactly how a 20 minute game is going to end (in a loss) because you see all the factors so clearly (its not self sabotage and fear of control DUH) then you can probably just code the MMR system to spawn players thusly avoiding the longer queue vs better games QM problem since QM is for the brave ones

111

Actually, it’s because the community is not knowledgable enough or some just scared to play teams outside of normal comps.
There are no mandatory roles in HotS.

At Masters I had games where Tanks or Healers were missing from one side and those didn’t struggle but lead the fight.

Also there is a reason Double Healer, Triple Bruiser and similar teamsetups happen.

The game has moee variety and depth than what most ppl allow to their matches.

  1. Ppl don’t want QM to be more restricted.

(PS: you cannot say the first 2 is untrue.)

113

Lol, another attempt to defend crap algorithm with zero knowledge on the subject. I wonder how self driving cars deal with the most unreliable and chaotic variable ever: human drivers …

Instead of arguing the point you get personal and I am the angry one … :smiley:

114

Would that be a reliable approach? Considering your actions as a player relies very much on what your team is doing. Hero deaths for example sometimes matter and sometimes don’t. Also, every hero is different and sometimes you’d end up filling a role you normally wouldn’t be filling with the hero you picked when your team is being abysmal in their macro play for example. How would the system predict when a contingency plan like this has to be made by the player? It may seem crude but wouldn’t it be more reliable to measure how many times the player has won no matter what strategy they implemented?

Edit: now that I think more about it, an MM that depends solely on player choice would likely over-score players who play more flexible heroes like bruisers who are more capable of changing up their strategy to suit their game’s condition. The more choices you are capable of doing, the higher your score would be. Is this fair for a system with heroes that are limited in capacity? Ala what role they are capable of filling within their team?

115

I can just turn this back on you.

Another attempt to attack the matchmaker with zero knowledge on the subject?

Just pointing out potential facts that explains your problem.
Also you were the one that started out getting personal.

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116

It works everywhere else, why wouldn’t it be? Once you realize that these systems successfully work in a wide range of environments then you will see there is little difference. AI finds strategies to drive through a busy intersection with people, cars, wheelchairs, animals, whatever else might be (as random as those may seem), it works beating pro players in SC2 managing other player(s) decisions, a wide range of units, production, etc. It isn’t perfect, but it’s far far better than the existing system.

117

That’s generally where the AI (professed ones, not in-game) do suffer right now.

I haven’t followed the starcraft AI, but my understanding is that that’s separate ones particular to each race, and the gameplay has restrictions – some may favor the player to make it more ‘fair’, but it’s still not fully open ended to ‘all’ the possibilities, but it also doesn’t need to be.

I am more familiar with the DotA 2 one, and that has more restraints due to the large hero pool and likely makes a better comparison to HotS. That case history had points with the ai getting beat in particular ways, adapting to those, and winning. But it is a lot of resources in a restricted environment with dedicated assets to particular options. It also takes a lot of ‘time’ for the process to work for each iteration. While the main news highlight is beating the pro teams (with restrictions) they have still lost to other factors when the ai is limited in what information it can have with the full ‘rules’ of the game. It isn’t that ai can’t be made to expand to the full scope of the game, and then win, but rather the amount of cost/effort it would take to do so, and then sustain that.

Ai can ‘learn’ the game and be used to analyze play and then use that to predict outcomes for the players and evaluate their ‘ability’ accordingly, and that can be harder, or more demanding rather, to evaluate divergent roles were particular actions are not as readily ‘awarded’ for the choice made. Back in the performance-rating systems for mmr evaluations, the dev teams had their ai ‘learning’ the game and ran the comparisons in the background to see how it held up against the mmr they were using. Since it hasn’t been turned ‘back on’, there are likely issues with what they were finding between live and their ai, and that’s information that some here do not have, or do not recall, at the time mmr changes were being made to the live game.

The concept of data-tracked ai may have more integrity in the evaluation, but the realization of it (cost, time, etc) does not make it sweepingly ‘better’ and costs have certainly been a big issue for HotS.

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118

Yes, I’ve seen double tank teams win on occasion and I have lost to double healer teams… but I’d say if it was tried in a group of 5 random players… it would have a 20% win rate. High risk, high reward.

Both double healer and double tank are no secret… yet most player don’t choose that strat. Theres a reason.

I’ll take the excitement of repeated close games over the excitement of variety any day. Because with that variety comes the frequent stomps that have been killing this game for years.

They are certainly untrue for 98% of the playerbase. You are masters-level skill and therefore in that remaining 2%. Are you opposing change because that is whats in your own personal interest, or are you worried about the game as a whole?

119

Yep, my reason to quit, despite actually still having gems to buy heroes, as in, I actually got IRL money just to play heroes I like.
Bad matchmaking, but the forums dwellers and veteran zealots will say it’s all in your head!!!11!!

120

Yeah, Ive got 1 foot out the door right now.

In a year or so this game is going the same level of support as Diablo 3. Yet so many on this forum are desperate to keep the status quo and keep the game traveling towards its own demise. I’ve never understood why they were doing that until recently.

The people on this forum who always oppose any new idea or substantive change I think fall into 2 categories:

  1. Just playing the role of contrarian as it makes them feel more intellectual. If you had an idea that solved 99% of a problem… guess what their resistance will be based on? Yup, that remaining 1%.
  2. They are high level players that essentially have the game figured out and want nothing to do with anything that might change their experience.

Think about creating a thread on a substantive change to the current tax law in a forum full of hedge-fund managers. Do you think they are going to be open minded? No, they have the game already won and the system figured out… so there is absolutely no incentive to them to change that. (No matter how many inefficiencies you show in the current tax law).

121

You resort to name calling casue you cant win a debate againts anyone. Just face it dude.