With Hotslogs MMR the lowest MMR person might be in Masters and the rest in Bronze. It’s a mess…
also wow. On my second account the MMR it gives me when I play a game is different than the MMR it lists for me in that gamemode.
~2800 instead of nearly 3000. Isn’t even internally consistent. QQ
huh. Now that game is over the “review game” page shows it as the proper MMR it was before that game, interesting.
weird!
and technically now high enough to be top 100 QM players, but ranked silevr. lol.
and lol. our just over 1100 MMR varian just carried me (now breaking 3k on the account) playing a very poor TLV and 3 people around 2200-2400.
edit: actually just under 1200 MMR. I misread an 8 and a 1.
Man, shame we had that 1100 MMR player. lol!
Hotslogs accurate! LOL!
Lol what do you think “real” matchmaking means? How do you want to balance out teams if not by averaging? Balancing out team MMR is what the matchmaking is trying to do and so far this is actually working.
Any game mode that lets players queue up as a premade group will automatically create some big baps between team mates because players are allowed to queue up together no matter what MMR they have. If a Master player wants to play QM with his bronze friends then he should be allowed to do so, right? This will create a rainbow match because there could be players from any ranks in the enemy team. Either the enemy team will have a Master player that will get matched with bronze players or they will get something in between like a a few gold players… Even when you solo queue for QM, you can’t expect to get matched with and against other similar players - you will be used most likely to balance out some other groups → If you are a high MMR player and you want to play solo QM then you will end up quite often with low MMR players. This can even happen in QM when all 10 players who got matched together went in solo…
The only game mode where you don’t get rainbow matches to this extend is a game mode that is strictly for solo players (no groups to mess things up): This was HL before the merge and it will be implemented in SL after the preseason.
If that person is account sinking sure. But not under normal situation.
This is ALL Blizzard’s fault for failing to grow the game in a way that didn’t sacrifice game quality. They cared too much for the Joe Schmoe-Gotta-Something-Else_To-Do-in-5-minutes and the Jane-Got-Diapers-To-Change-While-In-Q-For-HL. 29-death-David couldn’t wait for a team of same… no… gotta put him with team mates who play nothing like him cause David pays for the game… so David shouldn’t wait even a minute more. His team mates got sick and tired of players like David so they quit…
You may think well the “matchmaking” as it is… is some of sort of matchmaking but it never was… and applied to reality this is what happens. The pool got smaller and smaller.
The whole thing started in Masters then slowly creeped down into diamond and even plat.
The purpose of matchmaking or what it SHOULD HAVE BEEN was to make not only a fair game (which averaging FAILS TO DO) but also a fun game. Thats what real matchmaking is.
What Blizzard did was a lazy way of just lumping people together and making false assumptions. All the system of “matchmaking” did was essentially lump together for sake of “we got people in queue or piece of dog pooo player is in queue, he pays for skins/mounts so we need to give him a team to play with.” It was simply lumping people together. tht was all. Should have called it the lumpmaker. LOL.
They should have applied rules to people who group together which includes… allowing people who are single queing to opt out of those groups if they wanted.
No, Matchmaking is just making a match.
We’ve got to understand what terms mean if we want to have a meaningful discussion
Choosing how you will matchmake is a different thing.
gonna link you to this post (which has some forward about a post I’m linking to where I pointed out what I though were interesting parts of a former activision-blizzard employee who worked on matchmaking for SC2 Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, as well as WoW, I beleive Diablo and also multiple CoD games. Again, note he is not credited anywhere with working on HotS).
The relevant timestamp is:
from about the 13:45 mark in the video onwards.
But Matchmaking itself isn’t about the details, it simple describes whatever method you’re using to match players against each other. If it is completely random (well, as random as you can make it) or if it has factors it considers.
Matchmaking in any real world game involves putting people together of similar skill.
You are right… in this game … “matchmaking” wasn’t real it was just a game that started with 5 players in it regardless of skills. THAT IS WHY THIS GAME FAILED.
Do you have any clue or are you just complaining for the sake of it?
This is all way too late of course. Game died a long time ago… but If they ever wanted to get real with matchmaking in this game it would have had a lot of things… that some people wouldnt have liked including the following:
**** forced tutorial sessions no matter what.
**** unable to play heroes that you just purchased or low play time in certain game modes. No one cares you play one hour a month and just bought Jaina. In fact those types of players shouldn’t have been allowed in HL to begin with, they should have been kicked back to assessment mode.
**** working much longer towards competitive modes. Merely getting to level 30 which took all of 5 minutes to do wasn’t adequate enough.
*****some skill assessment on basics… such as making players play against increasingly difficult AI to assess skill shots and avoiding damage etc… (And before you say thats impossible it not… Blizzard has done this in other games like wow). This would have been an incredible improvement and solution to the problem of “we have no idea where new players are”… no but instead what Blizzard did was throw them directly into Diamond and allow a lot of these players to ruin games for other people. (P. S. the AI in this game even on hardest mode is an absolute joke and a half).
**** Kick back to assessment mode if your skill stats tend towards a strong statistic … eg. Jimbo always dies 8 times more than his team mates. He may be sorely misplaced. Keep him out of HL for a while till the game can figure out where he really belongs… or figure something else out.
*** reporting feature for players who are not where they should be. Combo of in skill stats and reports gets these players to assessmode faster. E. g. bronze Bobbie is playing his brothers account in masters…
*** implementing “working up” the ladder as the default rather than down… instead what blizzard did was worry about the 5% of players from other MOBA games. Had they actually done this game would have been 100% better standpoint of once you are past a certain level of player you don’t encounter them again simply because of the fact some player just started playing the game and Blizzard doesn’t know him/her yet.
Sure you could say well the win/loss rate will take care of this but no it wasn’t fast enough and it unfairly effected other players win rates, game quality and fun. You had a situation where a player got placed into diamond+ merely from being carried in 7 games then had to have 700 slow losses of him face checking bushes and other stupid things every single game before he reached bronze 2 where he should have been all along.
We know the system was designed for giving rewards or the sense of moving upwards in game… which is why Blizzard misplaced so many players. Same for why they matched total losers with winners… so those losers wouldn’t get frustrated and quit.
Not a total list of improvements towards real matchmaking but a touch on some of what they could have done. You get the gist.
Had Blizzard properly aligned their MO in this game… matchmaking and profits would have gotten along a lot better than it did.
So much misinformation in your post.
GREAT starting place. Want to improve they game.
But some of this is just pure garbage statements
As stated many times before. It’s not feasible to get a high mmr in this game in either QM or URD (and now also ranked) and solo queue. You will get used as a mmr buffer which means you will get in games with terrible players on your side which average players on their side a lot of the time. This would probably be okay if you could hard carry in this game, but you cant’. Match quality in HotS is pure garbadge and has always been.
Check my alt IGotYourEar on Hotslogs, there s only one you can find it. Storm League matches, the one on Cursed Hollow as Mephisto (only 3 happens to be uploaded, u cant miss)
If you cared enough to check it, you would have seen that it has a 500-600 average MMR gap between the two teams, in Storm League.
(I was in the team who supposed to be stomped, but hey we won against 600 MMR odds)
Yea, your whole thread is going down.
First off, the capacity to point out some of the few qualities of useful metrics hotslogs provides doesn’t magically make it better at anything else that isn’t those things. The fallback of “its all we’ve got” doesn’t make a hammer a worthwhile tool of choice for using screws.
The fundamental flaw of people trying to tell themselves that a terrible tool is the ‘best thing’ is a lie, and continues to be a lie by people that refuse to learn otherwise.
Second, others sites exist. However, between the lie people claim only hotslogs exists and the slump of interest in hots, a number of these other sources are shutting down despite these sites having significantly better resources for mapping trends over time, providing better archived information, sorting by patches, and a number of other things posters evidently didn’t bother to clue in about wanting to have better than hotslogs provides cuz “its all we’ve got”
– some of the effect of this can be seen in those who want to claim blues are ‘lying’ about certain numbers, but only look at low tier rates on hotslogs and not on information for players with hero levels above 10 –
While a number of sites have shutdown now, a few do still source hotsapi as an uploader service to providing things like recommended replays to watch (if wanting to improve with a hero) to suggesting personalized mmr per hero (ie, success with specific role/heroes) and so on. If people bothered to let better tools catch on, then they wouldn’t be so content to allow themselves to be held back by the schlop of hotslogs.
Thirdly, some of the concern I present is how far people are willing to endure hotslogs that they literally deny other relevant information: droth’s examples of player’s outside the mmr spectrum doesn’t post profile or match histories from in-game to add context to how far off hotslogs estimations of the player may be: people aren’t interested in why they were matched with a player in favor of just complaining about it.
Both showcases are low sources of information in hotslogs, so it has to assume barebone positions and even tacks on a couple hundred points to try to project better averages. That thing I posted before that hotslogs does that “doesn’t make sense” Well congrats, sometimes hotslogs tacks on a couple hundred points (or removes them) to better suit averaged numbers on team compositions. When the averages get too skewed, it adjusts other pieces to try to ‘look’ better because that’s how that system works: it knows matches were made, but it can’t ascertain outliers, exceptions, or adjustments HoTS proper does: so it has to assume variables.
If the players in question had more games than hotslogs lets on, then it gives more information where hots may be inclined to assume what their account is doing: maybe a friend boosted the account for games not on hotslogs — people wouldn’t ever know that to be a case , but ol Hotslogs is the ‘only thing we have’. The reverse could hold true too were an otherwise competent account is then played by a younger sibling or child or the like. In any effect, those sort of considerations are completely disregarded despite some information being readily available such that one account may not have been played in a year.
This isn’t to suggest that these observable inexperienced players are magically amazing to play up to the level demanded, but the point of concern is that people are content to draw bad conclusions from incomplete data and suggest that that is better than other possibilities of effect when the conclusion they’re trying to draw is essentially conflating cause and effect.
If these bad behaviors created by a reliance on hotslogs fostered a better interest in possibilities, a better interest in how mmr in games functions, or a myriad of other details, then I’d be less inclined to care how ‘inaccurate’ hotslogs can be.
However, the functional issue is that those that tend to sings its praises most do so out of practices of superstition and ignorance so the issues of where there inaccuracies become far more problematic than people ever consider cuz… if they knew better, they wouldn’t be so reliant on hotslogs in the first place.
Information analysis isn’t about making sweeping conclusions from a glance at the numbers, but that’s the sort of effect hotslogs enables for people, so they feel better informed and then deny other forms of information that could be used to ‘triangulate’ other concerns, patterns, and so on.
Depth, or the illusion of perspective is created from more than just a singular effect or source. Yet hotslog rants are more prone to deny other tools that would help provide that perspective in favor of repeating a mantra and blaming the rest of the world around them for their evident ignorance.
This is really the heart of it, no one really cares WHY it happens, they are just sick of it happening.
Literally everything else is irrelevant. It doesnt matter to the player. The player doesn’t want reasons/excuses for what is viewed as a bad match experience, they just want a good experience
Excellent points Xen. I would say for me it breaks down to:
-There is a noticeable phenomena of a huge player skill disparity within many if not most games played in HOTS.
-Blizzard has not, and will likely never, show in game MMR or explain how their system uses MMR for matchmaking games.
-Hotslogs is the most ubiquitous data collection system we have available.
I would like to understand what exactly is going on in these games, to really see if it is just my imagination, or a confirmation bias, or if the system really is pairing high MMR players & high winrate players with really low MMR/winrate players to make a “balanced” game. There is only so much information that checking in game profiles, win rates, and games played can provide. And often times this matches my assumption based on hotslogs (this is a really good player, or this is a really new player).
Therefore, I feel it is totally reasonable to use hotslogs as a resource to try and understand trends within the game. I am not aware of any other systems that collect data on the scale of hotslogs but I would be interested to hear about them.
I would argue hotslogs is more “a pair of old binoculars vs a telescope”.
It’s not from playing with friends, it’s from playing solo. 
It’s also not artificially inflated, HOTSLogs has my entire match history because I use an automatic uploader.
Been this way since 'nam. Been looking cross-eyed at hots vs. hotslogs forever. I firmly believe that mmr doesnt exist in hots and that rank is based purely on winning and losing. No evidence beyond a third party fan site has actually been produced to show that it does. We are simply going on faith that it does. Youve been told that God exists, but does he really exist? The world may never know…
You’re intentionally using smurfs as evidence for “HOTSlogs being inaccurate,” yet can’t see why that would be a complete logical fallacy. Outliers aren’t the norm, so you’re going to cherry pick a few outliers and say “Well, look at how inaccurate it is” when you know full well those few examples are not normal and well outside of the rest of the system.
So yes, go play your alts, intentionally don’t upload anything, then point to how inaccurate the system is. You have still refuted nothing.
I don’t have issues with people using hotslogs provided they point out the context of what information they’re using with an understanding that hotslog’s information doesn’t have any bearing on what the game proper actually does. Or realize the data skews when looking for more detailed information.
The amount of replays it gets are fine for sample sizes, but the lay person tends to think stats are hardline conclusions, and not facets that reflex change that need questions and analysis for trying to determine why figures go as they do. For pick and success rates, those figures are trends generally backed by people pumping information they saw from hotslogs back into hotslogs. MMR estimates, however, are estimations.
If someone backed a hotslog performance with a similar screencap of the in-game profile, then it gives a reference point of the extent of integrity to the information hotslogs has for appraising a player: if it shows 40 games logged, but the player has 200+ for that mode in-game, then hotslogs is going to skew low because of the lack of information – part of the issue of player trends for hotslogs is it does skew information based on how much it has or on whom a player may be anchored for their relative evaluation — as some mmr shifts are because other players hinged on that account information has gone down. (also, cuz K factor starting points)
Similarly, it does its own seasons or decay which may not reflect Hots mmr evaluations at all. Stormleage has a season shift on hotslogs as is so its already tacking/taking extra points due to its own “reset” of a mode that just started.
I personally don’t upload, so I don’t put much credence on its evaluation of me. However, if anyone looking at my profile sees the extent of information available, they’ll default to assuming the integrity is sound (or sound enough).
However, for the amount of games I have played, the sort of ‘anchor’ I have for hotslogs is impressively low: out of 4050 games shown, i’ve only been shown to have encountered 22 players more than 5 times – phrased differently, the amount of unique accounts I’ve played against is very high.
The effect of that reality isn’t generally going to occur to anyone else just skimming hotslogs, and in my case, because it professes I’m “diamond” I don’t get the “zomg you rank low on hotslogs therefore your opinion doesn’t count” that I used to get a few years back when my own upload exposure was low, so the mmr estimations were also low.
But since my ‘anchor’ is wide and shallow, I get stretches of uncertainty on hotslogs where hundreds of points swing one way or another as the game tries to retro-actively appraise me based on slim references.
Because I’m an example of unapparent uncertainty, I know to check for swings where mmr averages are much wider at one point in time, and then forcibly closer at another cuz that’s how hotslogs works.
Sure, I’ve had occassions where I think someone is ‘bronze’ in game, and find low counts on hotslogs, but I’ve also had the same turn of surprise where I see what I expect to be a one-trick newbie account have twice as many games to their name than I have. So because I have also been surprised to have found player/matches that surprised my expectation, I try to put a bit more stock into trying to figure out why some things come off as big as an outlier as they do.
For some players, they’re content to say 'gee look, game averages mmr" and then try to rationalize personal attacks against their own progress. However, when they do that, they only look at their own win/lose streaks, and they don’t look to see if there are streaks on the other players matched to directly offset their theory. They’re not interesting in seeing anything else but that their impulse is correct.
In that regard, I’m more inclined toward the hammer/screw analogy of the use of tools because doing such leaves unwanted holes 
and to reiterate, none of that suggests that blizzard’s mmr is fine/great/perfect/working/whatev.
But that does beg the question if the matching deviates much from what matching can actually do, and not fail to meet the superstitions of an audience that doesn’t care what the system could actually do, and then fault it for their strawmen.
The biggest issue of an mmr system is that it doesn’t know the difference between a hard-fought win, or that a bum climbing to the top of the pile of other bums is still just a bum.
There’s a lot of fantasy to the whole match-making expectations for looking at “skill” and people need to broaden their perspective with other details to realize their glass has the rest of its capacity filled with air, and not ‘empty space’
So sure, I’m not bemoaning the direct use of hotslogs, but I caution people to supplement their claims with other information they can use so that they’re actually looking at more than just confirmation bias and calling it something else.
I would be interested at looking at MMR of your games, if only because it is very curious if you always have a noticably higher MMR than people on your team per hotslogs.
Again, sadly, doesn’t seem to even let me try to search for it.
uh. You mean me? Because I’m using an account to practice heroes I think i’m bad at. TLV, lots of various assassins, malfurion, etc.
Or did you mean the player level 144 varian who was with two friends who were only about 250 player level…
I upload every single game I play, on both my accounts.
I’m not going to link to the alt because I don’t want people to know it is me.
My talk about it being near the top hundred QM players in MMR is more of a jab at how inaccurate hotslogs MMR system is.
My public hotslogs profile is very easy to see. You can even see I paid money to hotslogs in the search for Planar.
https://www.hotslogs.com/Player/Profile?PlayerID=1550278
https://www.hotslogs.com/PlayerSearch?Name=planar
I cannot find your hotslogs account at all. sadly
all I get searching drothvader is this: https://www.hotslogs.com/Player/Profile?PlayerID=11135835
which is clearly not accurate.
If by cherry pick you mean I got into a game while writing the post, and didn’t minimize until the end and saw that our star player was rated so lowly in MMR.
I literally just played the game and was shocked, well, not so shocked anymore, at how inaccurate hotslogs MMR was for the game.
I would like to note I also made a post about someone who is on the accounts friend list, and said to be of similar skill level: