That’s the kind of math that the current matchmaker uses (except only within a 1000SR limit), however it’s not accurate. The GM+Bronze team will beat the Masters+Silver team at very nearly the same rate that an all GM team would beat an all Masters team.
The low skill players are no match for the high skill players and become a non-factor, leaving you with 3GM+ ‘3 warm bodies’ vs. 3Masters + ‘3 warm bodies’.
It kind of works in a typical plat+silver duo playing gold (the plat is more or less carrying a kind of ‘5.5v6’ game in gold which is reasonable) but it gets a lot more broken as you add players at the extremes of the range to the group.
1 plat + 5 silver for example will match much closer to the silver’s SR, the opponent might even be silvers depending on everyone’s exact SR, and that plat will dominate, while the silvers he is carrying will not even be dead weight, they’ll be just slightly worse than their opponents and very much able to contribute.
that seems to be stretching it a little, but I see what you’re driving at
kawumba says that game results are fed back into the system and SR gains readjusted as the computer learns win probabilities for different match ups
if the computer thought a certain player combination had a 1% chance of winning, but it’s seen 300 games and not seen a single victory, it would decrease the chances to 0.75% and readjust the SR rewards accordingly.
the idea is that match maker can never be wrong, because it is only fed off of inputs from the matchmaker itself
Well, I hope that’s true, but it certainly feels as if they are simply averaging the SR values. If they have a feedback like this then it should actually be getting more accurate and work out pretty well … statistically… even if it doesn’t feel good when you lose to someone from above your rank.
OP suggestion is just as if not more unfair. Sucks having a diamond in plat because they queued with their gold buddy, but if instead it brought their gold buddy into a diamond lobby that’s definitely worse.
500 seems too tight, I’ve had good or bad days where I’ve nearly swung that far in one long sitting. Maybe 750 though.
everything would be kosher if the MMR formula were public. Because ppl would say, “help there were Plats in my game and I’m only Silver.”
and then someone would answer, “Well if you just took a second to look at the math, you only lost 5 SR.” “so if you wanna complain about time wasted, I understand. But if you wanna complain about SR and unfairness, just look at the math again.”
500 SR is quite a skill difference no matter where you are on the ladder. If you think 1500 and 1000 SR is the same you havent played down there. High silver and low silver are quite different.
The amount of people I’ve seen as of late down 500 SR is just insane. People really need to learn when to stop queing when tilted. 3 games lost in a row regardless of how close they are should be a que to stop well queing.
…and I haven’t noticed a skill difference between a 700SR match and a 1200SR match. The only difference really, that I’ve seen, is that 1200SR has a lower chance of throwers and smurfs.
I know 1000 SR is not silver. I am simply stating that 500 SR is quite a gap in skill generally speaking across the whole ladder. 1500 and 1900 are quite noticeable. The majority of 1500 games for me are flat out trivial. 1900 is a different story.
You keep saying this, but now I’m not sure what you mean. You seem to be ascribing multiple functions to MMR.
MMR is a number from -3 to +3. It roughly approximates your skill in terms of standard deviations from 0, where 0 is average.
Jeff Kaplan reveals what MMR boundaries are in this interview:
So, there are two other things that also deal with MMR. The MMR gain or loss after a match, which Jeff has said is sometimes a gain / loss of 0. There’s THAT formula that might be made public, but I don’t think that would do anything but let people game the system to make their numbers go up.
Then, there’s another part of the system, which is the Matchmaker itself, and that is basically asking the question “who will play in a match?”.
This article talks quite a bit about the matchmaker, mostly in terms of how groups get involved, but I think there are some key phrases of value:
The following quote and others in the article lead me to conclude that the matchmaker is just trying to find a 50% win rate match for people as often as is possible while minimizing wait time.
The matchmaker was designed to try and create games with equivalent-sized groups,
Overall, though, the matchmaker tries to give you a game with a 50% win rate, but it has to compromise, and it won’t compromise past a 40% win rate.
There are limits to how much we compromise, however.
… If one of the teams doesn’t have at least a predicted 40% win rate, then we simply don’t create the game.
The problem with having the math available for SR gains (once again, not the same as MMR) is that people would game the system. There’s good honest reasons to keep this information vague and hand wavy.
And a reminder here: SR is not used by the matchmaker in any way.
I agree. More often than not the team with the gold-diamond duo loses because the gold is so far out of their league.
My theory is that the team without the duo has one diamond enemy player who is a bit better. Between six plats the one diamond enemy isn’t a big deal. However the gold player has six enemies who are all better than them so they get owned.
Haha I’m imagining 3 gold players playing in a diamond game. Friends who just want to q comp together losing every game. Already been said here, no diamond is going to carry an averaged game “get real”
I don’t have the data because I don’t work for Blizzard. I should have qualified my statement by saying it feels like that happens more often than not in my own games.
You are wrong about using SR in match making. The developers have explicitly stated on numerous occasions that SR is not used in match making. I will dig up the sources if you really want.
Perception is everything my friend. While the shiny logo is intimidating it may even have an effect on the enemy players mindset. Yes the diamond will pop off against plats but his friends in gold are going to keep feeding. This is balance, how hard can the diamond carry to where the feeding gold’s are doing just enough.
