Blizzard Algorithms

Blizzard needs to put more money and time into better algorithms for matching in games, and for finding smurfs.

Edit: And we’re here.

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Well nice to see nothing has changed in this area of the game…-_-

you expected change in 19 days? its been a year since 222 and they have only just started balancing for it.

Ya okay sure. It’s been a month and there has been no change to any match making algorithms. This whole game is not balanced. The “algorithms” are using the wrong data when making matches in any game mode. Pitiful.

Are you sure? Can you be certain about that? I would suspect it is much better than you are giving it credit for.

No it is not because I work in algorithmic technology and statistically speaking win rates and levels of accounts your face should all be based on your win rate and people you have faced in the past. And there has been no change to that based off of how often I lose and the amounts of smurfs I face.

Define algorithmic technology. That can be one of a hundred things.

If you ask me they need to get rid of some of there algorithms because machine learning is great and all but sometimes the simpler solution is best. Unless the machine learning has amassed enough data and it’s prediction/analysis of what what constitutes “good playing” is good enough that Blizzard can create an AI team of bots that uses that data to defeat pro players then yes that AI would be acceptable. Anything less than that is prone to error & not up to par of going with the simple natural route.

Now algorithms for finding Smurfs, cheaters, throwers, that’s fine.

Not really that simple. The algorithm you are describing misses some of the key components to the Blizzard MM algorithm, which are both essential and very important to even attempting to do what you want it to do.

There is also your personal play to factor in, because we are talking either QP or pre Diamond competitive. If you are winning 60% of your games but playing terrible then I would expect minimal movement in your MMR. Meanwhile in order to try to adjust people to where they belong faster they system takes into account HOW well you are playing and shifts you accordingly with greater movement happening at the start (think of a standard deep learning algorithm where once it feels set on what is correct the shifts).

However, the very thing that makes it able to place you correctly is the very thing that lets it be open to abuse by people who want to be placed lower and stomp bad players. Now detecting that an initial pass is going to be inconsistent (after all maybe someone was just a really bad Doomfist and switching to Hanzo is more in line with what they are good at) and they can likely not take action. However, if a player is routinely playing far higher than their SR suggests they should be and then drops like a rock just to do it again, THAT the system can flag and action but it takes time to flag those.

This is going to sound cold but think of a diagnostician in medicine: they are basically are doing something that every other doctor has to do but are considered more specialized. Every decent software engineer makes their own algorithms (or puts them together based on already existing creations), but if there were a difference I would probably say that most have a Statistics degree which still is not that much of a difference because it is not uncommon to also have a Math degree as a software engineer.

Agreed it would be nice, it would make the fan base have more people and them overall making more money

Algorithmic technology can be as simple as creating a hello world program, to as complex as creating a full compiler, or even as different as analyzing database functions, or go so far as to create actual hardware. Algorithmic technology is like saying you’re the guy with the shirt, in a room full of guys with shirts.

By itself it BASICALLY means, computer technology.

do you know that ‘algorithms’ mean nothing here?

It’s just a bunch of parameters decided by HUMANS to be equal, there is no algorithms here.

The flaw is not the code, the flaw is the human thinking behind it. The human thinking of what is correct/balanced/good is flawed here, not the ‘algorithm’ which is just a bunch of code really.

That is garbage. Because if the current crap algorithm places me against smurfs or better players then I will continually never win that many games to progress and get my self out of the whole blizzard has dug for me due to their algorithm.

In turn therefore never be able to get better cause I will always be stuck down in low ranks (comp) or playing the worst players for my style in QP because of the terrible matching.

So this deep learning algorithm needs to learn than I not “getting better” therefore needs to place me against worse players so I can start at “the bottom” again. So I am able to climb back up as if from 0 even though I have various hours of play time on whatever hero or modes.

You are bumping this post, WHICH IS AGAINST COC

Except your rant fundamentally fails at the basic level as you are taking the classic victim mentality approach that you are only ever facing smurfs and playing with throwers when in reality it is relatively evenly split.

If we deal in a more reality-based conversation then you have a situation where about 20% of games are unwinnable by you regardless of what you do and 20% of games are unlosable regardless of what you do which leaves about 60% where you control your own destiny. Simply be better than where you are and you will win more of those games, how much of the 60% you will win depends on how much better you are.

Hmm is 24 days really a bump? In the scheme of things it is not THAT old.

I think the matchmaker is very accurate. If you watch unranked to GM vod’s you can see them rise rapidly through the lower ranks. Sometimes they get stuck in Diamond or Masters for a bit, but that is usually due to how meta the hero is that they are demonstrating.

The main problem with the matchmaker is that it sometimes gives up too easily and just starts throwing teams together in order to make a faster game. That is an explicit set of configuration that Blizzard has decided is best for the game as a whole. In most ranks it’s not a big deal, but the higher you go up, the difference in play skill difference of 500SR is night and day can make for awful experiences.

It’s disgusting to have a game with diamonds, plats, and a gold in it. It’s so much pressure on the tanks to carry the gold. D.va can’t carry, likes just mathematically can not carry, so this is just yet another autoloss to deal with for dva mains most of the time.