So it’s RARE i play ranked. 99% of my gameplay time over the years has been Quick-matches. Today after like forever, i decided to play some ranked again for the current “season”. I had to “place” first so i just did three matches today and lost one. When it “placed” me, i was instantly in Gold. Whoa!
I only had three matches and had lost one of them. Yet evidently the system thinks i’m a Gold-level player? ok, lol. I was expecting to be Silver for a while till i got Gold again. I wonder HOW exactly the system determines this.
Well, players used to abuse mmr in quick games, which carried over into ranked games. I do not know if this still worketh. But the Blizzard limited the maximum rank to gold (previously, people “flew” after calibration into diamond and even in master. What is thy win rate in quick matches?
Now there’s a cap at Gold5 for the First Placement. After the first, your next Placements can take you anywhere, depending on your MMR (SL MMR, QM has a separate, the two has barely anything to do with each other after your first ranked match).
Since @Op played ranked before, their QM mmr is no longer meaningful, and they’re probably in Gold because that’s where they left. Since MMR decay doesn’t exist in the lower ranks.
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math.
If you win some games, mmr goes up. If you lose some games mmr goea down. Based on the distribution of thise mmr up/downs it sets a “rank” indicated by a precious material.
Placement matches these days are just games with slightly more points than a usual game. Iirc the adjustment is about half a rank, so winning two and losing one made a slight adjustment on whatever previous mmr you had prior to this season.
There used to be a “reset” if people avoided ranked entirely for a season (didn’t place) but that isn’t the case anymore. There can be a loosening of mmr adjustment (eg unceetainty) that widens the amount gain/lost from games, but the mainstay of ranked is playing several games in the season to stabalize mmr and not ride waves of K peaks.
I think it still takes your QM MMR in ranked if you are not placed. I think he never placed in SL before, so his QM MMR would be used (Capped at Gold5), then after that, he will get massive adjustments (up to 500+ points total) on the first streak of wins/losses until his win rate averages out, then he will earn points regularly. This is how the system places new SL players I believe. Your adjustment period also seems to come back after you haven’t played SL in a while (dunno how long triggers it).
I also believe that for matchmaking purposes, new SL players have looser MMR ranges than veterans. This is to determine where their MMR “anchor” will be at a baseline once MMR confidence is established. The anchor moves when you establish a new level of baseline win/loss ratio. That’s why you can get a streak of wins or losses, raising your MMR, but barely moving your anchor. Then you start getting less points won and more points lost. Until you have a streak of ~50%WR in an MMR range, moving your anchor towards that new baseline, increasing points on wins and reducing points on losses (Baseline of 200).
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Could also be that the default placement is “the average player”, which is gold 3 I guess.
This is the answer to the OP’s question. There is a very slow and small amount of rank decay for ranks under Diamond.
If the OP ended last Season in Gold and didn’t play for even a month before doing placements again this season, they would still rank back into Gold.
The OP said that they had played ranked last season and had ranked into Gold. They won 2 out of 3 placement matches, so even if they had suffered some small amount of rank decay, those 2 wins would have easily placed them back into Gold.
I mention the rank decay, because if you haven’t played for a couple of months in ranks below Diamond, MMR confidence is lowered and in your first 10 or so matches it will award a player more rank points for wins, or take away more for losses.
Using my experience as an example, I was Plat last season, but as only two days passed between the last time I had played and the new season, my wins and losses were the standard 200 points per game and I ranked back into the same rank and division that I had been the previous season.
When I haven’t played for a month or so, new season or not, I will usually gain and lose more points in my first few matches, as there is slow and hidden rank decay for Plat and below.
This is my 2nd time getting Gold actually. I lost it the first time when the season reset. That was a while back.