If your’e SR is your personal skill rating why is it so heavily governed by the result of the match? If you play and absolutely horrible game personally but your team wins why do you deserve more points than a player on the losing side that played a great game?
If matchmaking is based on both MMR and SR wouldn’t that in itself cause issues? For example if you have four teams all at the same SR, two of the teams have a higher MMR and they would get matched together as would the lower two. After the two matches have finished the winner of the lower MMR match would have a higher SR than the theoretically more skilled team that lost the higher MMR match.
What would happen if your SR gain was determined on only your own actions but with a slight bonus if you win or slight reduction if you lose. I feel this would also lessen the impact of throwers and leavers.
The reason why winning and losing is the highest determining factor to calculate a skill rating adjustment is to incentivize team play. In theory, players who are better team players and works to win the match at any cost should be climbing the ranks. Now at Platinum and lower ranks here is a small factor where personal statistical performance is accounted for (this factor was removed from Diamond and higher ranks starting in season 8). However, that factor, along with the frequency of playtime, and how close you are to the 5000 SR mark, are small factors that go into calculating what SR adjustments are. Learn more about why skill rating adjustments work the way they do by checking out this guide:
I agree team play should be encouraged I just think it’s overemphasized. It’s so frustrating that (especially in solo queue and small groups) it’s a lottery whether you’ll get grouped with others that are willing to work as a team, or are even trying to win. The problem is then amplified by the fact it’s relatively easy for one person to cause a loss even if the 5 others on the team are working together.
That is a perfectly valid list of complaints with the system, but changing SR to work mostly off of individual performance isn’t going to do anything to help with that. The way to fix the problem for good is to make it significantly easier for players to find and make premade teams and play with them. That way, the team-based approach to the game is enforced by the player base, and throwers/trolls/etc will be punished by the community by not getting invited to groups.
Wins and losses are great, because they are such an absolute metric and a fantastic way to sort the great from the not quite so great.
I mean how do you get an absolute measure on someone’s contribution? You can get some measures sure, but did that hog’s 1 man ult at the end save a close game? Did Zen rushing in to stagger the enemy team and getting destroyed save the match? So many random factors, so difficult to know. Better just to measure off an absolute.
I don’t disagree with you but then why do they need to balance matches at all? Just get the first 12 people with the same rank put them in a game, then have a set amount of points given/deducted for a win/loss. With any luck it might stop people running into the enemy team chasing stats instead of coordinating with their team. In fact, in competitive, get rid of medals as well so players can’t use them as an excuse as to why it wasn’t there fault that their team lost.
Hey Raaskyl, don’t take this the wrong way but I’m not sure I get your point.
Are you talking about the removal of PBSR above 3000SR? That was introduced relatively recently and likely reduces the amount that people used to ‘stat pad’ to minimize their losses.
Yes you can gain or lose slightly more based on what the MM determines the skill difference between the teams is, but for the most part most of the SR gained or loss is simply based on whether you have the ability to win the match. (This can manifest itself in so many different ways, I don’t think anyone could count them all)
Now regarding PBSR for lower levels. I think (and this is just personal opinion) the game tried to reinforce playing characters the ‘right way’. The right way being whatever numbers the dev team plugged into the PBSR algorithm. There are some cracking posts on reddit and on youtube which actually break down what you should aim for at the different levels if you wanted to maximise your SR.
I get the feeling they still want to encourage people to play their characters a certain way (ie dying less, or staying on the point more, assists etc dependent on your character) because players below diamond still fumble around not knowing what to do. Naturally these players would climb as they started to exhibit the right behaviors which theoretically would also win them matches.
Now as far as balancing matches goes. I think in reality the difference between players skills isn’t sufficiently covered by rank (though it is a good starting point). I know I will just crush people more than ~250SR below where I am but this isn’t the same for everyone. I believe the MM probably just does a best effort trying to match people of what it perceives to be a similar skill level together. It is just that Rank (ie gold, plat etc) is too coarse, whereas the absolute MMR numbers are likely granular enough.
Now should people with a larger disparity in MMR be matched against each other? Maybe, maybe it is a great sanity check for the system you could do every now and then, or even on a regular basis to ensure that people’s rankings are fair. I know one of the streamers posted a great youtube video on the subject earlier about making the MM more fair:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxeuqOv6phg
I disagree with the group comments, because it is clear the youtuber wasn’t serious about grouping (ie regular schedule, practicing maps, laying out strategies working out synergies, regular scrims etc and was ad-hoc with their approach) BUT they do make some interesting points about the MM in general.
Anyway maybe the MM should be revisited, or maybe it should just be regularly tested, who knows maybe they do test it regularly to make sure it is still doing what it is meant to do?
If I have a team that is working together and or communicating well and we still get stomped I couldn’t care less, I know everyone was doing their best. It’s just frustrating as hell getting continuously lumped with inconsiderate idiots that have no desire to work with the team, often going out of their way to do the complete opposite and then having this directly effect the skill rating of the rest of the team and I.
Yes, you can report them, big deal. I’ve never had any acknowledgement of reports of that nature being acted upon (the two times I’ve reported people for blatant racism were acted upon very quickly). I just hope that this supposedly incoming “avoid as team mate” feature actually keeps track of how often particular individuals are avoided and that it has actual repercussions on these people that are ruining the game for others.