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.