I agree, that is the problem.
You mean solo queues? Yeah probably.
There is no valid reason for MMR to exist in the first place.
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I mean actually all the queues…like 6 stack you win 7 games and then get rolfstomped. So I suspect that in the end they will match winning teams against each other. And something weird also happens when you start to lose…you just lose more no matter what.
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Your characterization of my thoughts is incorrect, and surprising, actually. We both agree its, at best, extremely unlikely for 12 people of the same skill level to be in a game or even on the same team. This is why I don’t dispute your charactication of handicapping (other than overdramatic).
I have already made it clear that all the individual players are very unlikely to be of equal skill. If you have the impression that I think it’s possible that’s because possible and extremely unlikely aren’t mutually exclusive. I do think the system attempts to put people of the same MMR together in a match where you don’t. I’m not sure why you think this. You agree that MMR can make 50% matches, after all it’s the core of your thesis. The easiest way to do that would be to have everyone have the same MMR in the match. Neither of us think that’s really possible which is why I dismissed it as a “agree to disagree” type of thing. In the end we agree that people of various skills are distributed in a match to create equally able teams, i.e. a 50% match, i.e. a completely uncertain outcome.
It is true that I think an effective balance system should be used. I also think that a winrate based system could be used (though with many negative consequences, post 241 again). My problem with your OP is that you are basing your judgement on the modern skill rating based system simply because it doesn’t work like the more common winrate system, that is it doesn’t use wins and losses to rank you.
Again, and as many times as you need my friend, it’s simply not the case that the ranking system is based on a record of victory/defeat. It’s based on where on the ladder you can maintain a 50% winrate.
It’s a technical error. One that understandably leads you to a value judgement that favors the system you understand. I would agree that a system that uses wins and losses to rank you shouldn’t be set up to attempt a 50% win rate. Precisely ZERO people would ever gain SR in that system. It would be impossible.
But things aren’t bad simply because you don’t understand them.
It’s the same with all sports. What makes it a sport are the rules. What makes it competitive is fair rules. It’s precisely the rules that make it fair that separate our fearful reaction of war from our aspirational drive of sport.
I stand by my assertion that if you think we should treat our fellow players in OW as enemies to be destroyed rather than colleagues to be bested, we are working on a completely different set of assumptions here.
No one really cares here if you have a gold border and a silver chevron, man.
And if they do you can safely ignore and report them. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.
We play this game for fun. The vast majority of us aren’t schoolyard bullies trying to be mean to you. You don’t have to treat us as enemies of your game in the process.
If you can’t get over that then I’m sorry. You should try another game that doesn’t hurt your feelings so much and leave us “donkeys”, as you put it, alone enjoy improving and ranking up in this game, and teaching others how to do so as well.
I’ve reached my goal several times. I have a Discord server where LOTS of people have. I’m on to a new one this season. I assure you it’s not impossible. You’ll never get there by thinking that MMR make it impossible for you to gain SR though.
That’s not realism, that’s defeatism.
And I’m truly sorry you feel that way.
I think you are misunderstanding, how is giving you players with the same MMR not handicapping? If you are at the rank you are supposed to be then yeah thats great balanced games, but what if you aren’t. Then you will play at a skill level thats not even matching your current rank but if your SR changes your MMR will as well. So basically you are in an Elo Hell. This could be any rank as long as you are playing better or worse than you should for your rank.
Honestly this is just a waste of time discussing over something that feels rigged. MMR should be removed for the simple reason of it being hidden. Most players don’t play competitive only to be challenged, they want to see how good they are.
But they won’t because SR will only show them a number that goes up and down depending on if they win or lose without any context.
Protecting lower ranked players from smurfs is good and all but I think many players would rather lose because they got unlucky than lose because the game wants them to have a winning chance of 50%.
Yeah this might feel good for bad players because they will have easier games if people carry them until they reach their real rank. But this just feels horrible for good players who have to carry bad player to reach their desired rank. This just makes supposedly easy games hard which is unnecessary.
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Let’s imagine a game where we are of exactly equal skill. It’s not hard to imagine as there are a lot of games like that. The kid’s card game War, for example. Lets simplify that game so that we each draw a card, the highest card wins a point, equal cards are discarded with no points awarded either way.
In this game, if we play 100 games each of us will win 50 of them. We are of equal skill. No one wins more than another. Losses are truly “unlucky”. Each person has an equal chance to win each game.
Lets move on to checkers. If you win MORE games than me that’s in fact because you are better than me. If you are JUST AS good as me, you will win half of your games against me.
What I’m getting at here is that 50% chance, equal skill, and uncertain outcome are different words for the exact same phenomenon.
The game puts teams of equal estimated skill together. The game wants people to have a winning chance of 50%. The game creates games with unpredictable outcomes. These sentences are all saying the exact same thing in different ways.
In fact, what I think people think of as the weird randomness of the game is precisely THAT, like the card game, whether you win or lose is pretty much up to chance if everyone in the game is in fact correctly ranked.
Note that I didn’t say that it’s up to chance if you are under ranked. If you are underranked you have a large effect on the game.
This is a common and worthwhile question. So common that I should have it bookmarked rather than go back and find it again. Short answer, if you aren’t correctly ranked then the games aren’t actually balanced. It happens. A lot.
Or, you know, just unhide it. For an explanation of why they do it like this see the following. I’m not trying to argue for or against here, just explaining why. I’d venture to say very few people see hidden MMR as anything better than unnecessary. Even I’ve come around to the view that having it visible would at least allow open source bug checking.
MMR doesn’t protect from smurfs. Smurfs throw games to lower their MMR to have easier games. It’s true that your games will be VERY hard at the appropriate MMR. So hard that half your games will be losses. You will have no easy games unless you are misranked, which is why smurfs intentionally get themselves to the wrong rank.
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I’m not sure I can say it any clearer than my original post.
Then you rank up because you win more than you lose. Like you are doing. Your record last season was 71-38-2. What, are you mad that you’re not ranking up faster? I don’t know if you are truly new to the game, or if you are posting from an alt, but a 65% win rate is pretty good for this game. There are many random factors in each game which makes it difficult for one person to completely determine the outcome unless they are grossly misplaced or hard throwing.
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You blizzard shills need to stop, but you obviously get paid to defend them, otherwise why would anyone to go such lengths to always defend the indefensible and constantly deny all the things the entire community hates? If you aren’t paid shills astroturfing this thread, I’d be both surprised and would feel bad for you doing Blizzard’s work for free. You reply to absolutely everything with a string of dillusions, misinformation, lies, and complete misunderstandings of everything said by others for no logical reason. Nobody is that oblivious, right? You guys must be getting paid. I hope its more than minimum wage. Citizens United hires people like you for at least $15/hr to do it on Reddit/Twitter/Facebook, so make sure you leverage yourself friends. Even though nobody believes your BS, you do seem to try hard, and it’s gotta be difficult to try explaining away the most obvious things consistently.
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You mean, they actually understand that MMR & MM are not handicapping? Nobody is getting payed for “defending” the system.
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Just implement it like it is in WoW where you see both your own rating and the match making => both visible. And please Blizzard remove all (possible) other factors affecting who you are against. Or just remove the whole match making stuff.
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Are you going to call people pointing out how wrong you are disinfo agents next? I’m not posting here because I care about defending Blizzard; I doubt anyone is posting here because they think Blizzard needs advocates against uninformed forum threads. You’re getting these long posts explaining things because people are annoyed at how misinformed, biased, and plain wrong you are. You’re complaining about features of a typical competitive ladder, and therefore basically complaining about EVERY competitive system.
It’s really no surprise that your complaints and theories in this thread could be found scattered across forums in every competitive game in threads posted by people who are very obviously suffering from Dunning–Kruger syndrome; whether you gripe about teammates that are too bad, enemies that are too strong, a system that is pointlessly malicious, or desiring basically unbalanced matches entirely in the mistaken belief it will benefit you, it always boils down to thinking that you’re really more skilled than your current rank indicates.
Just to give a food for thought, you do realize these statements are the reason we are having this debate at all.
Precisely, you should have a large effect on the game.
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Those stats say nothing because its my smurf and I’m not even trying to rank up anymore but if you wanna know why I am mad its because most oft those 38 games were lost at ~1500 SR and boy were those games unwinable. Its not even the elo its this stupid MMR system that gives you those impossible games when ever you are playing too good or give 100%.
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I understand that you want to discredit the arguments, but ad homonym does not help the message or the argument that this thread is trying to convey.
It doesn’t matter if they are paid. Arguments are made, points are disputed. Attacking the people does nothing for either side.
I will not dispute that Dunning-Kruger does indeed effect some arguments. But, to blanket it across everything, like you seem to want to do, again, like above, does not help your argument.
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I feel safe estimating it is the root of MOST of the arguments.
Orrot, I’m not sure if you saw my deleted post earlier, but I didn’t mean to send it. I basically butt-posted it…story for another time.
Perhaps the phrase “outsized effect” would have been more accurate. You shouldn’t expect to have more effect on your games than your teammates. If you think otherwise go play a game that’s not team based, please, as you’re probably a selfish teammate anyway.
Having a outsized effect on the game and having teammates and opponents that are just as skilled as you are mutually exclusive concepts. You can’t carry a game where you are well matched, only where you are mismatched.
I understand quite well that it’s often the case that what people say they want, what they actually want, and what is actually possible can be totally different things. The way people tend to describe how they want the system to work is basically how it actually works.
Most of the complaints are about an imaginary system, one that would never work and can only exist in your imagination, one that can only be believed by those who claim they can’t climb but pass off those who have climbed as a lying, boosted shills.
This is why so many of these posts devolve into the ad hominem mess that you see. Inevitably, at some point, those angry at the imaginary system realize that system can only exist if large amounts of people are deceiving them. Once people move into conspiracy theory territory, though, I don’t waste my time trying to educate them. There’s no coming back from that toxic thought loop.
Really, you just need to look at people who have climbed to know that this whole thread is based on an idea that doesn’t match reality. If the system is really how Cuth describes it, that you are ranked based on wins and losses but accurately held to a 50% win ratio, no one would ever climb (or fall, actually.)
Not that there aren’t problems, but it’s really hard to accurately rank people. Some natural problems and variations are going to arise. Some games will be stomps. Some games your teammates really will be idiots. You will have bad days. People sometimes will be bad actors, etc.
People need to realize that this MMR/SR system works very well in the aggregate but it’s not a promise to make every game perfect every time. When we get data, it shows what we expect, that your win rate will increase the lower in SR you go and decrease the higher you go. Not become easy, but easier. 50% to 50.1% if you are slightly underranked. In short, people’s expectation is completely unrealistic. Look at that Meliodas above, complaining about a 65% winrate that 35% of the games were unwinnable. Yep, and? I think more realistic expectations are in order here.
It’s also not real clear what 1SR means, especially in gold. It’s quite possible that people from, say, 2100-2400 are essentially indistinguishable in terms of skill. I discussed this in more detail here: How Competitive Skill Rating Works (Season 11) - #56 by OzoneOOO-1681
I do think Blizzard has kinda focused on the wrong parts of the explanation. Using engineer and scientist language to describe this stuff but then not being consistent with it. But that brings me to my next point:
I think maybe you underestimate the prevalence of illusory superiority. It is accurate to say that we ALL suffer from it. In fact, if you have answered anything other than “I have no idea” or “My test score was X” to any question about how much you know about anything, you probably did the same. No worries, we ALL do it, even those that always know better, like me 
Seriously though, when confronted with an objective determination of skill most people either accept it or try to improve. A small minority reject that the test is truly objective. It may not be Dunning-Kruger, necessarily, there are a couple forms of illusory superiority bias. It really is true that around 90% of people say that they are above average in various studies on the matter.
So far no one has debated me on whether a skill based vs win-rate based system is better. I don’t think it would be much of a debate, as a win-rate based system isn’t really possible, but I guess someone could try to convince me otherwise.
This is an education on how what people say they want is what they already actually have (or sometimes how what they want is unrealistic).
I’ll explain how a skill based rating system works all day. I truly understand how the concept is foreign to people. I’ll explain how a win-rate based system cannot work in this instance as well, as many times as need (actually already have, post 241, again…big post).
People want to be matched with people of their skill level and for their skill level to be reflected in their SR. Well, that’s how it is my friends.
Back to your earlier post that I missed, sorry again:
First, I’m going to define some words. You may not agree with my definition but it’s what I’m using for discussion.
TrueMMR= Your ACTUAL ability at the moment you are playing a game. This can change from game to game and even within a game, though some people erroneously believe it to be stable over periods as long as a month. Over longer periods of time it’s generally expected to increase unless neglected.
MMR=The games guess as to what your TrueSR actually is. In theory, two persons whose MMR=TrueMMR will have equal chances of winning any given 2 person game if matched based on their MMR.
TeamMMR= The games guess as to how well a team will perform. Though any set of MMR can comprise a team, it is expected that teams having the same TeamMMR will have equal chances of winning any given match.
misranked (Over/under)=A situation where your MMR =/= your TrueMMR. Over if TrueMMR<MMR, under if TrueMMR>MMR.
Sort of. Going from a 50% chance to win to a 51% chance to win is “easier” but again that’s in the aggregate. Each individual game may not actually be easier. I think if more people understood this they may be less likely to tilt, which essentially lowers your TrueMMR.
This is a common misunderstanding. The 50% condition only applies if MMR=TrueMMR and TeamMMR is accurate (I’ll get to this in a second). That is, if you are misranked, the 50% condition isn’t the case…which you acknowledge in the sentence above, actually. If your TrueMMR stays the same but you drop in the ladder the games should be “easier”, meaning that you don’t actually have a 50% condition, right?
Now, some will say that the system is SUPER accurate and that it somehow really, truly KNOWS your TrueMMR and matches not on MMR, but TrueMMR because it’s so gosh dern good (in fact, if you take the OP and swap MMR for TrueMMR and SR for MMR, it actually makes a lot more sense). This is where my bit about the imaginary system not matching reality. If the system somehow knows your TrueMMR (first, how?) why wouldn’t it just keep putting you in your TrueMMR matches? If it did that, you would win exactly 50% of the time. If you did that, you wouldn’t rise or fall at all.
You rise and fall and notice games get easier and harder (see: Smurfs), therefore it doesn’t match on TrueMMR. Besides, that’s silly. It can’t predict the future.
Alternatively, some people seem to believe that all that is true but Blizzard is evil and manipulating your results, that is, it does match on TrueMMR but manipulates it so you play more games. That doesn’t explain why games get easier and harder when you go up and down in SR, though, which is why they then resort to people who claim otherwise to be part of the conspiracy.
I think you have it backwards. Despite peoples’ vehement claims to the contrary I think it’s far more likely that tilting causes a decrease in TrueMMR which causes you to be overranked. No doubt it’s a self repeating cycle. Now, I’m not saying that’s the ONLY reason people are misranked, in fact everyone is always misranked for a large variety of reasons. It’s just that people think that they should win 100% of the games where they have a 51% chance to win and that unreasonable position can cause the tilt which leads to even more misranking.
Welcome to TeamMMR. Look, does it really matter if you have in internal 4999 SR difference in one of the teams as long as TeamMMR is equal between the two teams?
No.
This is what drives me nuts about the whole handicapping argument. Cuth says it’s all super accurate and all, but when it comes to putting a team against another one suddenly you’re “carrying” the lower player. How do you know that the other team isn’t in the same position as you? What does it matter, actually, as long as the TeamMMR is the same, that you have a 50% chance to win?
It doesn’t.
People come up with crazy unrealistic sets of SR on a team as examples that it’s not fair, but then go on to say that each team has a 50% chance to win.
Look, if the TeamMMR matches the composition of the teams is completely irrelevant, yet people still act like a 50% chance to win is somehow different if you’re the highest MMR player in the match. Each person STILL has to play in a way that their TrueMMR meets or exceeds their MMR.
Who cares? You already have, as part of your premise, indicated that the match is even. The TeamMMRs are the same. You’re in the exact same position as if it were two evenly matched people.
See? You did it here. If the match is even then offsetting the lower end person is baked into that cake. It’s not a problem, by definition, because the match is even. You can say that it’s unlikely that the match is actually even, but then you no longer think that the match is handicapped. You’re not “carrying” that person anymore than if you were on a team where all the MMR were the same.
There are two responses to this.
First that having large MMR ranges in a team may make for an even match, but not very fun. This is a fair argument and why I think the 1000SR range for groups is extreme, but that argument can be made without resorting to “handicapping”, having unfun but fair matches doesn’t affect your ranking, it’s a QoL issue.
Second, as you said, some think that it’s more about whether people know that they are on teams that are evenly matched and of different MMRs, but if that were the case the proper response would simply be education, not calls for an abolishment of the entire system.
Now, if someone is misranked, the team with the misranked person is more likely to win/lose than is estimated, but that’s how it all is supposed to work, keeping in mind that it’s all in the aggregate. Each individual match isn’t all that important. It may FEEL bad to lose, but if you let that affect you you will end up actually misranked.
In fact, smurfs thrive on creating a condition where their TrueMMR is far in excess of their MMR. Throw games, lower MMR but not TrueMMR. Play games where you are overranked and games are easy. Miserable for the opposing team, but easy for the smurf.
If you want easy games, though, don’t smurf, just play a different game. This game is hard and it should be, that’s what makes it fun.
If the system can determine your skill sufficiently to put ENTIRE TEAMS into 50/50 matches, it’s doing a GREAT job of determining individual skill. Once your skill is determined your skill can be ranked from highest to lowest. If your skill is accurately ranked from highest to lowest, it’s perfectly acceptable for competitive play. That’s why it’s called Skill Rating.
If you want to claim that it doesn’t do a good job of making 50/50 matches and therefore your ranking isn’t accurate, that’s fine, but that’s the OPPOSITE of Cuthbert’s argument.
The truth is that’s it’s good at determining skill under conditions that aren’t always the case but are impossible for the system to account for (playing drunk, for instance). We’re all a little misranked and that’s perfectly fine.
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Which part of MMR just being SR without decay do you not understand?
I did, even had a couple of side bits quoted, but then saw you removed it so I decided to wait. 
There are forces behind the scenes that, in all fairness, does feel like this is true. But, it is not true that the system gives you a 50% win ratio. feeling and observing bias, does come into it.
My, personal, stance is that its not impossible to climb. It allows you to do so, but the adherence to the 50% match ups, do add that one to 5 wins to climb up when you start becoming the outlier.
I am also a part of that. 
It happens, and as you said its ingrained. But my point is that there are some good points, and not all of it is hot garbage.
The only time you should win 100% in OW ladder is if you have a 6 stack of smurfs in bronze…
Seriously though, that took a bit of time and energy to write. Its good to see the logic behind things, and you have given me a bit to chew on.
The Human Condition of being total sinkers is, shockingly, outside of a lot of formulae in skill rating systems /s
This makes smurfs, throwers, and leavers, all the more problematic to an otherwise stable environment.
The outliers will impact the median. If the matches are even, and one side has an outlier and the other does not, the non outlier team has members that are closer to the mean of the two groups.
Unless the MMR groups people in matches by a set range, then scrambles them up and then determines the outcome, giving the % deviation from 50%… throwing out anything with a >60% match up in the “Lobby” to re establish from the pool…hmm… That’s a thought pickle.
I play OW because it is fun, because I like to challenge and push. I also have a tendency to obsess. OW is it at the moment lol.
“Its not a tumor!” -Kindergarten Cop.
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To help with your pickle, don’t think of it as outliers and median. Don’t even think about ranges of MMR/SR.
Imagine a data set of 6 SR values. The individual numbers can range from 1-5000*. There are 5000^6 possible combinations. Add to that an additional set of numbers of the same properties giving you (5000^6)^(5000^6) possible sets of that 6x2 array. That’s 1.5625e+22^1.5625e+22, btw. Google won’t do that math. It’s a lot of possibilities.
*I’m not a programmer or that advanced in math, btw, the numbers may not be right, notation is almost certainly wrong, and I realize that the scale may not actually go from 1-5000.
There exists some members of that 6x2 array of SR values where a game of the first set against the second set will have a completely uncertain outcome.
We know by definition that arrays consisting of all the same number will meet this criteria. [1,1,1,1,1,1 x 1,1,1,1,1,1], etc. Edit: We also know matching pairs will meet this criteria, e.g. [1, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000 x 1, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000].
What we don’t know prima facie is what other sets also will also result in a 50% chance of winning. People talk of averages or medians or whatever…no.
The only way to know this would experimentally.
If only there were some way to run this experiment… 
Maybe build a multiplayer game, build the teams, and look at the data? Before you freak out that Blizzard has been experimenting on us remember that these systems have been in existence for a long time. One MS Trueskill patent was in 2005. https://patents.google.com/patent/US7050868B1/en
I don’t know what 6*2 arrays end up having an exactly 50% win rate. But whatever it is, the experimental precision of that likely far exceeds the precision of our own ability to play consistently as long as a certain range of values isn’t exceeded. Edit: I mean as long as it’s not something stupid like a GM and 5 low bronzes against 6 silvers…not that that mix would necessarily be unbalanced but that such extremes would be rare occurrences that would be extreme extrapolations of the data to estimate.
Btw, a related patent is called “Determining relative skills of players”.
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2007094909A1/en
Sound familiar? I’m not just making this all up. The idea that the formula behind MMR is “hidden” or “unknowable” or “secret” is flat out incorrect.
Just play the game… All these speculation nonsense.
If you’re stuck in bronze then you are a bronze player.
Same goes for the rest of the ladder.
Don’t blame the system. Blame yourself.
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