After coming back to HotS after a several year break, my friend and I just did our storm league placements together, all (why?) 3 games. We won all 3 games. My friend, who hasn’t played any ranked since the very, very first season, and placed Gold there, was put into Platinum. I played in a far greater number of seasons, and only once ended lower than Diamond, with my last two seasons in Master. The placement system put me into Silver. We played the same placement games, but got very different, and very counter-intuitive, placements.
Now, this isn’t a salt thread. Honestly, I’m amused by the low bracket games, and it helps my friend feel more comfortable, since they haven’t played competitive mode for most of their Hots career. However, it’s pretty concerning for a “ranked” mode that the placement system can be THAT far off from historical performance, at least when a player comes back from a long break. My games today seem to corroborate this, as players of the same middling skill rating seem to have hugely vast skill gaps. I’m not sure what could cause the discrepancy in the intuitive placement results, but it might be worth looking into.
My friend, who hasn’t played any ranked since the very, very first season, and placed Gold there, was put into Platinum.
Has he played other modes after the first season in 2015? Because if you have played ranked before, you will be seeded from Unranked MMR. (fresh accounts wont) since 2016.
Future seasons will use Unranked Draft Mode MMR to seed into Ranked matchmaking.
If you have not played a single match in any mode for 3 years, decaying to silver sounds normal.
It definitely does not. The decaying system is only for diamond+, so if he was master player he should’ve got at least diamond5.
But the system is a complete joke. Lots of players who quit 2-3 years ago and were around master 10k are coming back now and getting placed on master 10k, while others are getting placed into gold/plats.
The system just doesn’t make any sense at all. Pretty sure it is just random.
But he has quit HotS before rank decay limit was even introduced. His rank could have started decaying as early as 2017. Rank decay (limited to Diamond 5, 0 points) was introduced in late 2018.
Though if someone can come back after 3 years and still be Master 10 thousand points, the system must be broken, because automatic decay should have lowered them to Diamond 5.
edit- I thought highest placement was Master 1000 (10 thousand will put someone at the very top of the GM list, current GM#1 has only 9600 points.)
There was no decay back then, you just would stay at the same rank. When it was introduced it didn’t work for players who didn’t do placements (you could literally just never do placements and never decay). It’s been a year since it now affects unplaced players.
Actually the decay is EXTREMELY slow. For example, I have friends who were high GM (like GM#50+) when hgc was alive. They quit for like a year after they killed hgc. When they came back, they decayed like 3-4k points but were still high GM ;p
But yeah, the system is broken and it is a joke. We’ve seen streamers getting placed into master 10k and others getting placed into plat, while both of them were always high GM for many seasons and they quit for basically the same amount of time. It’s just really messy.
It was master 1k back then, but they changed it cause it was not fair. Pretty sure they changed it when they got rid of PRA points, which was the worst thing they ever did (literally GMs with very negative winrate 35-40% but still climbing because of PRA).
literally GMs with very negative winrate 35-40% but still climbing because of PRA
I saw that in a few lower ranks as well, it seems there are still some people with like 35% who keep climbing each season despite decaying to D5.
It seems unfair and odd (each season their wr is sub 40% yet they never drop, they actually rise in rank, these teammates generally feed and afk a lot).
At first, I thought their account is bugged somehow.
Normal players don’t get so much personal rank adjustment they can just lose 65% of their games and steadily climb back to master each season. Most I’ve ever seen is ~40 points.
Don’t get confused, there is no PRA anymore. PRA happened when your mmr and your rank were away from each other, but this was extremely buggy. You could have negative winrate up to diamond1, but once you hit master your PRA would start being positive for no reason at all and most people there would just get +40 each match. You just needed to hit master
There is an adjustment now, which already existed before as well, but it is not PRA.
I was so happy to see the end of PRA, such an annoying thing. They should show again at the end of the game the favored/unfavored adjustments. This gives you an idea of just how well the MM was at balancing the MMR for both teams.
Something controversial to say. But first I don’t know how the ranking/placement system works. However…
If you consider a lower player base game such as hero’s. It makes more sense to place a less skilled/less experience player in a higher rank to motivate them to play more games. And a higher ranked person in the past in a lower rank level to fuel them to also play more games. Already said before me, but. If you got to masters bravo dude! You will climb back eventually and will help populate other leveled tiers. In addition you have the potential and opportunity to teach lower level guys tips, strats, comps, obj timings, the list goes on. So in actuality you are given a great opportunity if you look at it with optimism and positivity.
Still. Sorry dude.
