The tendency clearly has changed from my previous comment about the issue. I am not playing at my usual SR right now, thanks to insane loss period. My hypothesis stands - matchmaker manipulates your win chance by shifting team SR. It actually pushes me up now - the games are MUCH easier and coordinated, than they were even 3 days ago. Explanation - team SR difference is in my favor almost constantly.
This is really good. For a multi-million dollar company Blizz doesnât like to properly post statistics or documentation regarding Competitive all around or Character Information. The hero gallery should have a breakdown of the damage amount of every ability and standard damage per character. A small gif showing what the ability does. (I saw new D.vaâs that didnât know anything about DM) Your entire post should be pinned to the top of the Competitive Forum or have a Blizzard version made, but the mods are too busy deciding if some slightly argumentative post needs to be locked.
You have enough data so that we can start to see this in action.
Here is your data from season 11:
As your team SR becomes higher [lower] than your enemy SR, you gain less [more] points on a win, and lose more [less] points on a loss. The trend lines are clear, though noisy due to the effect of performance SR. The trend lines are also fairly slight, reflecting the rather slow change in expected win percentage with differences in SR.
If I divide this into quadrants, you have:
Top Right: Wins where you were expected to win: 23 +/- 4.8
Bottom Right: Losses where you were expected to win: 24 +/- 4.9
In theory you should have won more than you lost, but the error bars are big.
Top Left: Wins where you were expected to lose: 21 +/- 4.6
Bottom Left: Losses where you were expected to lose: 32 +/- 5.7
It seems you have lost more than you should have, but the error bars are big.
Maybe you are tilting when you see that you are underwater with respect to SR. But the error bars are pretty large. Maybe youâve just been unlucky.
Breaking these numbers into bins of 10 SR:
Iâd love for this plot to have the clear expected trend line, but it doesnât and the error bars are way too big. But hey, if youâd like to play a couple hundred more games and give me the data, Iâll happily crunch it. Iâve wanted plots like these for a long time, and this is the first time Iâve seen data that has even started to approximate what Scott is describing.
Your data representation is very informative, thanks for the effort.
By âyou were expected to win(lose)â you mean games, where SR difference was in my favor? It seems, Scott has something like that in mind.
Your second graph clearly shows, that:
Either PBSR bonuses and team difference bonuses are insufficient to compensate for SR differential.
Or it is a huge mistake - to allow SR differential past 10-15, because average players, like myself, suffer from it.
I strongly argue for both. For example:
https://imgur.com/a/Driy7vg
Two games, same heroes, same SR. Team SR difference actually, I just canât find other words, robbed me of 6 SR. Was it necessary to create a game with so much difference in team SR in the first place? My personal performance was obliterated, but I know I was very good in both matches, on fire most of the time. Second match actually had worse stats in K/D and overall eliminations. But I got rewarded for it. And this is most obvious example. Another one:
https://imgur.com/a/kfmtwd4
Matches without SR difference (1 or -1 isnât much). One with insane performance is lost. Whatâs the bonus? NONE. One with good performance is one. Whatâs the bonus? at least 4 SR. What is the incentive to put effort into games??
Iâll continue to update my spreadsheet, the link is permanent. You are free to use the data as you see fit, but I would love to get mentioned somewhere near your analysis of it.
The limits on win probability is between 40 and 60%. That seems restrictive enough to me. I donât know what SR differential that represents.
Enemy_SR_B - team_SR_B - (Enemy SR_A - team SR_A) = 20 SR. Reading from my first plot, that means a expecting win percentage difference contributed ~20 * (.0697) = 1.4 SR to your change in SR upon victory. Since there was actually 6 SR of difference, the majority of that likely came from performance metrics. I havenât been able to quantify performance metrics, with substantial effort. Itâs certainly not as simple as K/D, and the developers have said that âon fireâ is not how they derive the number. See my original post, âPerformance Modifierâ for more information. Performance metrics generally just show up as noise in my plots. It shows up here as a significant amount of scatter in the first plot.
A âneutralâ game, with no expected win differential, and no performance modifier, no other funny business, gives +/- 24 SR (at low diamond, probably true here as well). So you gained 2 SR due to performance on your loss, and gained 3 on your win. So, more than none. But making the performance modifier bigger tends to reward stat hunting rather than winning and team play. Again, see the âPerformance modifierâ section in the original post.
Because you like winning? Because youâll rank up if you win more? Because putting effort in makes it more fun and valuable to you?
Thanks. I always reference my source data, but sometimes it is behind a link or two.
@kaawumba I got my NiteOwl alt during this last sale. I havenât played on it yet (I moved recently, donât even have a desk right now) but before I relegate it to my âI know Iâm playing like crap right nowâ alt Iâd be more than willing to run an experiment or two. Just let me know. So far zero games played in any mode. Honestly, I donât even think Iâve logged into OW with the acct. I bought it and shut down my computerâŚ
Probably the most useful thing for me would be if you try-hard when doing placements and up until you start gaining/losing ~ 24 SR per game. Maybe 30 games, including placements. Do it all in one season. Also write down the ranks (gold/plat/unranked/etc.) of each opponent and ally. Unfortunately, with private profiles, you canât really track everyoneâs SR reliably.
I donât care how you level to 25, but let me know what you do.
LFG adds unknown factors (Iâm currently either exploiting the LFG system, or finally getting the recognition I deserve, or LFG just uniquely suits my play style, or being lucky, not sure which), so please avoid that for the 30 games, and solo queue only.
One other thing: itâs easiest to record team and enemy SR and ranks by taking screenshots (printscr on windows). Just donât be doing something on your other monitor when trying to take the screenshot or it wonât work.
Thank you.
I think, we can come up with a recommendation for players now: if you see, that the enemy team has lower SR, everyone should play their mains and try harder.
I personally think MMR is HEAVILY still stat based. I learnt to recognize lose streaks just after a âbad stats performanceâ and win streaks after a good one. In my opinion this is definitely true even if Blizzard deny it because it would incentivate char swapping to farm stats. I personally focus on stats farming when I realize iâve been placed in unwinmable matches for 2 times in a row and this definitely shortens the lose streak durations. Someone could say im a thrower but the reality is that Iâm only tryin to do my best ignoring team composition. Itâs selfish? Yes but it works so itâs Blizzard fault not mine and for sure I wont stop doing it until the day that theyâll stop defining âperfectly normalâ a 500sr fluctuation.
My suggestion is to fill when the team works and be completely uninterested in team comp when you realize that it donât, in this case analyze what could be the hero that would give you more stats and go for it. Sometimes I even suprizingly carry the game to an unexpected win.
p.s with this attitude iâve achieved master rank and drastically reduced the duration of lose streaks that could have eventually sent me back in the worst place of the entire ladder, low diamond.
p.p.s ofc mmr is hidden because Blizzard still donât trust it and because you would easily realized what I previously told you.
Blockquote
If a playerâs MMR is wrong and too lowâŚ
âŚwhich will cause his MMR to rise over many games playedâŚ
âŚwill then be placed with stronger and stronger opponents (and stronger and stronger allies) until his MMR is correctâŚ
The above is concerning - as it seems like this is the main reason why people get stuck in lower ranks. Especially if you start getting matched to players in the lower rank that are closer or equal to your actual skill. If this happens it is highly possible that youâll never leave the rank since youâll win a few and lose a few (around the 50%). Unless the amount of SR you gain for each win is massive and far more than the loss, progress will be zero.
Factor in some bad luck and people fall all the time from proper locations to whole ranks below - and then remain there for the duration.
Iâm thinking it makes far more sense to allow players to stomp lower players and send the up the ranks vs leaving them in the ranks and matching them with similar players in that rank. Let the similar players meet up when they all reach the proper rank.
I might be missing something but it seems that change would send smurfs up ricky-tick - and while lower ranks might get a few serious beatings at the beginning of the season it would in theory over time balance. Especially if the win/lose SR at their proper rank drops keeping properly matched people closer together for longer periods.
Nothing more frustrating than being in a lower rank and having to constantly battle and carry a lot of the work for a few games only to start getting matched to better players, and ending up in the win 1 lose 1 back and forth.
On top of that, placements feel like teams are randomly matched and being tracked by individual performance. However, your performance is seriously underrated a lot of times because ⌠a lot of times ⌠the team comps and skills are so out of wack that there is zero teamwork.
shrug⌠all the math and many measurements and what not⌠and it really just doesnât feel like it works⌠maybe thinking simpler instead is the actual solution?
Statistical performance has zero effect on rating in diamond and above. Overwatch Forums
Maybe your current play style is winning more games or keeping you less tilted, but it doesnât have anything to do with you exploiting the ranking system somehow.
This doesnât happen, on average. It will only happen on accident when two misplaced players randomly are matched against each other. They are equally likely to be placed on the same team, and totally stomp to victory. So a player who doesnât belong in their rank, will climb with enough games played (assuming they arenât throwing).
He means the mmr is affected, allowing better teammates. He isnât talking about SR gains and losses.
I believe what he is doing is the âsandbaggingâ approach I talked about ages ago. Just turns out heâs master class in other roles too so itâs even more notable when mmr gets wobbly from him changing things up. Either way though, you can test this and document results.
âEspecially at the higher levels of online competition where every point of SR matters, we want players to not be distracted and worry about how to optimize around the personal performance adjustment. They should just be trying to WIN. So after we get back from the holidays on January 2nd weâre going to turn off the personal performance SR adjustments for players in the Diamond skill tier and above.â â Scott Mercer Overwatch Forums
Scott did not say, âWe are making the relationship between performance and rating even more obscure (have high stats so youâll get better teammates so youâll rank up) so only the really clever people can figure it out and exploit the system.â
What actually happens varies of course.