In light of recent events, this seems like an appropriate time. Let’s attempt to keep things civil while we discuss the current matchmaking and/or possible improvements/alternatives.
I’ll get things started with this: Why bother with previous seasons at all? Why not start all players at the same place and let it distribute from there? My instinct would be to start everyone at the bottom and have comp be a ladder to climb, but it might be more fair/fast to start everyone at the most common ranking (I think that is gold, but don’t quote me there) and let them rise or fall based off their skill level.
Obviously that will have it’s own problems, but that is why I put “Discussion” in the title… Let’s talk!
Yes, 2350 at least at some point was the median rank. However, this would be an awful idea.
Even if a 4.5k ranked player wins every match it would take them 30-40 matches to even get to mid diamond. That’s 30-40 matches where worse players will get absolutely stomped on. Eventually it would even out and people would be where they belong but why even wait for that “eventually” phase? I don’t see the point of doing a hard reset. It would only cater to the 5% of people who are delusional and think they belong higher when they don’t.
At the end of S17, I had 3 accounts with an SR range of 3506-3580. The system knows to place people correctly, people just don’t want to accept where they belong.
That’s a fair point, but what if it didn’t take 30-40 matches? Maybe there could be a win streak or a “holy cow you 1v6 stomped the other team” bonus (exact implementation isn’t terribly important, just a bonus) that would let really good players get to their “true” position in about 10 matches (the same as the old placements)?
This could even be possible starting all the way from the bottom, and it would avoid needing to make a lose steak penalty to be “fair”. Thoughts?
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS MY GOD. Nobody EVER listens to this.
I had a hardstuck guy come to me and he made up a whole story about how his account was flagged and they’re prevented from ranking up!1!1!1
Logged into that account and brought it from silver to plat in like 2 days. He’s not a forum member, that was actually a person I found in LFG. Needless to say that account was back in silver within the month.
I’m not saying the current, or rather the pre-role queue system, doesn’t work. In fact, I will state for the record that the system works just fine. Win and go up, lose and go down. I’m simply trying to say that I personally think it can be improved (or changed to provide better results).
Are you suggesting that the system is absolutely perfect and you wouldn’t change anything at all? (Not even something teeny tiny?)
In fact I don’t think I would. Good players in lower tiers have the benefit of PBSR and I’m not saying they should go out and try to get gold medals, but if they play well, and do all the right things, they’ll be rewarded more and punished less for their good gameplay.
My friend I will keep it civil as you have suggested. There must be a change to this matchmaker. They have place too many algorithms and logic to create “fair” match and it is not working. They should remove all logic and just only create team by SR and nothing else at all, it is the only way.
So your suggestion is, every season take accounts from where they belong, and put them somewhere they don’t belong. And you think this is a good idea…why?
More an idea than an actual suggestion, but the thought was that if everyone started at the same place it would feel a little more “fair”. No more of those “I won 9 of my placements and my friend won 2 but I got silver and he got plat… Wtf!!!” posts, plus it’s a little bit less mysterious than placements. You would know exactly where you would start each season.
Yeah. Instead of people complaining about smurfs, they could complain that they lose games because they have gm players against them that haven’t been placed correctly yet. Or actually, knowing these forums they’d probably say, “my account is flagged so I only face gms!!!”
It would feel the opposite of fair every season, until people were back to where they belong. I can’t fathom why anyone would want that. It’s just an idea that makes no sense at all.
At the end of S17, I had 3 accounts with an SR range of 3506-3580. The system knows to place people correctly, people just don’t want to accept where they belong.
in the same breath that you say you’re concerned about 30-40 matches where players are getting stomped, you’re talking about your multiple smurf accounts where you did the exact same thing. you, personally, contributed to what, 100+ matches where your opponents unfairly lost SR because you were intentionally smurfing. practice what you preach, risk your SR on your main, even in off-roles.
I dunno… I’m sure there will still be whiners in the forums (doubt anything will ever change that), but it might actually cut down on a bit of complaining because people will have a “valid” excuse of “Oh, they must have had a GM, I’m not actually bad.”
Might not change much outside of what type of whiner posts we get… What are your thoughts on everyone starting in the middle? With that, at least most of the playerbase would be at the right spot quickly and it will still have the greater appearance of “fairness”. Granted it won’t stop people from whining.
New accounts basically do start at the middle. Placements skew that rank a bit, and over the next x amount of games accounts climb/fall to where they belong. Why you would want to wipe that out and do it again every season, I’ll never understand.
That’s already what the system does. It starts you in gold and lets you either climb or fall to wherever your skill level is which is based on wins and losses which is based on how much impact you have on the games. The reason why they don’t do this every season is for two reasons. #1 it takes a lot of games for people to be sorted out where they should be. So before the sorting happens, there will be a lot of mismatched games going on. And #2 people do not get magically better or worse rapidly on a flip of a dime. So drastically altering someone’s rank by 1000 or 2000 points will not do anything but give a poor matchmaking experience.
Guess I’m asking, why not do it? If people end up in the same spot then they know that’s where they should be, plus most of the playerbase would have to do less “placement” matches. I guess I’m just in favor of a more transparent system. To each his own I suppose.
What’s the point? Blizzard will never listen to us low key players. Unless you are a OWL player or high sub streamer they don’t care about our thoughts or opinions. As far as they care they have made their money off us and can throw us to the side like a dirty diaper.