Forced 50% winrate is real and Blue Lied again

General Discussion
21

My big problem with believing this is I don’t see it happening the other way. I have had a 9 game losing streak in bronze and every game I’m still grouped with bronze, never a silver in sight much less a gold.

On the other side long win streaks never seem to detract from the ranks of my team mates.

Also I have watched several streams of people playing at all different ranks and I feel like especially at the top three leagues there is less difference in skill than people make it seem like.

Those are just my observations.

22

One difficulty with making even matches with newer players is that every new player who comes in is a complete unknown for the skill rating system. In order to place you in games with players of similar skill, the system needs to first learn your skill, and the only way it can do that is looking at the results of games you play. The general assumption of most Elo-like rating systems, including ours, is that better players win more, less skilled players win less often, and if a player is appropriately rating they will win about half of their games. Each game you play should be with players around your current rating, but if that rating is inaccurate the games could be uneven, and cause either winning or losing streaks for you. As your recorded rating becomes more accurate, this should level off.

We’ve seen some responses in this thread regarding a “Forced 50% win rate,” and we’d like to lay that to rest: The goal of the matchmaker and rating system is not to have every player win 50% of their matches, but rather to bring every player to skill rating where they are expected to win 50% of their matches due to being matched against other players of comparable skill. The matchmaker will not punish a player for winning a majority of their games by intentionally pairing them with other players of lower skill rating. If you are an excellent player and go on a 10 game winning streak, the matchmaker has no obligation to stop you from continuing to win. What will happen is that the game sees you performing at a higher skill level and will try to match you with and against higher skilled players to see if you can continue to win, or start to level off.

You mention wonky compositions, which is one piece of feedback we hear regularly. The Quick Match composition builder is not designed to form the absolute best composition for every player. Some heroes have higher winrates than others, are easier to play, or fit more in the current popular meta; we don’t want our systems to force compositions to always match the current professional composition trends. That means that you will see that wonkiness, especially if you play less popular, stranger heroes like Cho’Gall, Murky, Lost Vikings, or Abathur. I personally enjoy trying to find ways to make those strange compositions work, but if you prefer a bit more predictability in your compositions, I encourage you to look for parties in the New Player chat, on community sites, and among friends; you might also try the Unranked Draft mode, where you can more carefully plan a composition.

Regarding learning opportunities, I’d like to bring your attention to the series of Core Concepts blogs that we’ve recently began to publish. Heroes is a different beast from other MOBAs and puts a much stronger focus on certain aspects of the game which are highlighted in these blogs. (First and foremost, teamwork is paramount!) Much of this information has been available since the game’s inception, but the series aims to collect the major introductory points into a centralized location. To that end, we also acknowledge the feedback that this would be welcome info that’s provided within the game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/6j7yzp/blizzard_posted_a_official_statement_to_the_50/

is the matchmaker working in the way we want? Personally, I’m not going to attempt to answer such a question. I see places that could potentially improve, and to be perfectly honest I haven’t come away from this with absolute faith in the matchmaker. But at the same time, I’m not sure if such improvements can come without repercussions in the form of queue timer increases or, hell, even just that esoteric “game feel” that developers so frequently chase. What we have here is, after all, somewhere close to the general hope for any matchmaker: an appropriate mitigation of the worst combinations, not their outright erasure.

Yet at the same time, I pursued this project in the hopes that it would spark some discussion. So I’m going to end this with a few juicy statements to get the ball rolling. 1) You’re wrong: that rank whatever player did not actually throw the game for you. Or at least, it wasn’t the fault of their rank. It was more likely the fault of their attitude. Probability suggests you’ve played games with lots of rank whatevers and you haven’t even noticed. 2) You’re right: the matchmaker is sending you into a stomp now and then. Not a whole lot of them. In fact, it is most likely that the majority of stomps you’ve experienced were simply a throw in a game that could have gone either direction. But if you’ve played more than fifty games, probability suggests you’ve experienced a handful of inevitable outcomes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/392t3q/lets_talk_about_the_matchmaking_with_actual_data/

6 Likes
23

Considering the source of this statement is an engineer who works on the matchmaking, that should permanently put the issue to rest.

But as anyone who reads the forums knows, nothing will happen and the same thread will pop up every 3 days just like surrender threads.

People will complain about this “forced 50%” as long as the game will exist even when multiple developers say it isn’t true.

If shown examples like Fan who keep accumulating win after win without being “forced” to lose, they suddenly have nothing to say.
Or player profiles far, far below 50% especially in Bronze.

24

Any thread has a permanent link on reddit that cannot be removed, it can be accessed but will end up with [ removed ] if that specific topic was deleted manually by a mod or the OP themselves.

Terminated accounts do not automatically remove any topic that was there.

If you know the specific link for the post just replace reddit.com with https://removeddit.com/ in the link, its an automatic archive.

25

Should, which is why they issued the statement that way. Doesn’t mean it’s true. Just means Blizzard is making a more firm stance in their deceit. Before they tried to gaslight by stating the Dunning Kruger bs, but now they issue this because the posts persist.

People will complain about the “forced 50%” as long as the game will exist

Because it’s real.

26

That is a direct quote from the senior game designer for HotS, Adam Jackson.

1 Like
27

That has no bearing on my argument.
In fact it may prove why there is a forced 50% winrate, to break the streaks.
Just because winstreaks happen, doesn’t mean rank disparity should fluctuate as much as it does against your favor.

28

Did you even read this part?

You can always go on that topic and correct the developer with sources for why it isn’t false.

29

Yes, I’ve read it, which is why I made this thread. Blizzard is lying. I’ve seen my teammate ranks go down and my opponent ranks go up. How hard is this for people to understand? Seriously makes me want to cry from being surrounded by people that have no idea what they’re talking about.

30

You know what’s dumb about this whole theory, you are assuming the system is signalling you out and is trying to wreck your win rate and just your win rate and everyone else in the team was paired with you just for you to lose and you alone.

Like if this system were true then your entire team would need to be classed as ‘low ranked winners ready to lose’ and the enemy team as ‘high ranked losers who deserve to win’…

Don’t you see the contradiction in the whole scenario? You need a team of 5 that have each individually been winning massively but still have a relatively low rank and another separate team that have also been individually losing loads while still being at a much higher rank.

Not just that but how sophisticated would the system need to be to accurately and deliberately sabotage games.

2 Likes
31

I know. It’s ridiculous and shouldn’t happen! Yet it has several times to me.

32

You’re not very good at making arguments.
If you want to call the company liars you have to show proof, statistics, evidence.

The dev already said it’s not true. If you call him a liar then give proof of those lies.

Your only source so far is “because I say so”.

Nobody forces you to lose games.

3 Likes
33

I’m looking for someone that posted a comment in that thread that had the same experience as me. Why would I make this all up lol

34

Why would I make this up

Just yesterday someone complained that Blizzard should never have removed the surrender option. Except… There never was a surrender in HotS.

So, my guess is, people have awful memories, like to make up things to fit their narrative, or just plain enjoy lying?

It’s convenient to make up a reddit thread that doesn’t exist anymore (but in reality they never get deleted).

6 Likes
35

hehe
They removed team names from Team League and then Team League all together. I remember a lot.

36

There is no forced 50%. Seriously system like that would require insane amounts of data and skill. I will say this is purely garbage system we got but it’s not making you get 50% win rate by a design that forces losses intentionally. I play regularly with 2 friends who are in the master/GM level. We get constantly paired with bronze and silver players in QM/UD(we’ve been in top 50 of those modes according to hotslogs so talk about it as GM level for clarity). Us getting paired with those silver/bronze players isn’t because game is trying to force us to lose. It’s because game doesn’t try to make games of our level. Instead game makes plat level game so MM balances the MMR average of our team by giving us the potatoes. It’s horrible system because there is no max MMR difference, but it’s not because system has malicious intent to make us lose. This is what people do not seem to understand.

The further outlier you are in the MMR from the huge silver-plat population the worse miss match games you get for your skill. It’s because game doesn’t try to make bronze 5 game any more than it tries to make GM game in QM/UD, they are the extreme outliers of MMR. There are so non-existent populations searching for game at any given time at those ranks. QM in particular is absolute chitshow nowadays because que is 10s so there is zero effort put by MM to make high level game. If play solo my allies will range from gold to diamond on average. When I play with the said friends as trio we get the bronze-silver range allies on average. We are all fairly close to each other in MMR but game won’t find so many high end players in short time it searches. For system it’s way easier to simply choose lower MMR average for game it makes and find us the potatoes to balance MMR and face us against plats which has huge population than it’s to find another 7 high end players. It’s not malice nor is it system trying to force losses. It’s just badly designed system designed to work for majority at cost of minority outliers. The further you get from majority player pool the worse the system gets. It happens even in ranked but not to such extremes.
In ranked MMR difference is maximum of 2 ranks and ques aren’t forced to start so fast. As result you don’t get such extreme differences in skill within games in ranked(while it still has separate problems from MMR seeding, boosting accounts, sold accounts, smurfs, pre-mades and so forth) .

2 Likes
37

No.

Please go rant & rave on twitter or Facebook or whatever the conspiracy theorists are based in now.

2 Likes
38

I’ve commented dozens of times in support of Blizzard by denouncing these claims, so I’m an expert on the situation. See my wall of text as proof.

Wow, I certainly am impressed in your ability to shill product. Are you a youtube eceleb as well?

I’m not talking about rainbow matches with a glitter of ranks. I’m not talking about low population times. I’m talking about a winstreak breaker meant to push you toward 50% and stop your climb because the system thinks you belong in mid tier ranks. I’ve seen the ranks grow in range above me (opponents) and below me (teammates) as I continued to win. I’ve seen it multiple times over several years.

Everything you mention in your wall of text is SOME OTHER ISSUE which can be explained away as you have, but you cannot explain why the ranks grow apart above and below me as I win, making it more difficult for me to continue my streak.

39

And it is just as easy to say that you are lying about your experiences.

So where does that leave us?

2 Likes
40

I don’t have a vested financial interest in this game.