My source is this thread, and I assume the quote is real:
The quote I am referring to: “However, this still meant that it took several games for players to get to where they belonged. To improve this, we added a streak modifier system that tracks a moving average of a player’s win rate. When a player wins more than 50% of their matches, we start to increase their MMR faster. This levels out once we see the player’s MMR value has them joining fair matches, which corresponds to a 50% win-rate. With this change, we’ve seen that new and returning players reach a 50% win-rate with much fewer matches than before.”
The problem here is, that MMR and SR is NOT the same. This means, that a player going on a win streak more quickly will get moved up SKILLWISE, but not Rank-wise.
This means, that f.ex. a Diamond player starting in Gold might reach, say, low Platinum when his MMR is so heavily adjusted, that he will meet his match and start getting 50/50 games. But he is meeting his match in Platinum, not in Diamond where he belongs.
Since he is meeting his match here, his further climb might be impossible.
Well, this is from the horse’s mouth, it is an admission to how at least a part of it works.
From there further deduction (like the one I did) is pretty easy IMO.
Pretty sure ELO hell is now at Bronze/Silver since they’ve reduced how high you can get now at the start. The average player was in Plat/Diamond and now in OW2, it’s much much more lower. Isn’t that great that new players or Plat/Diamond are all lumped together. Now new players get to experience ELO hell first thing when trying to climb.
It doesn’t matter at what level, I only used an example.
It is a relevant example though, seeing how many high level players have been pushed into Silver and Gold (both ex-Diamonds and ex-Masters) by the beginning-of-season adjustment.
ELO hell can still be true, even if it is unintentional.
SR is adjusted fairly quickly to fall in line with MMR, even if you’re still matched with equal skilled opponents and break even in your games’ winrate. In Season 1, I initially placed Silver 5. The next adjustment put me in S2; the next in G3 and so on. Whenever your SR finds itself out of sync with your MMR, like with this sham of a soft reset they decided to implement for every season, it’s made to catch up without much trouble as long as you “put in a bit of work” – a.k.a. as keep being engaged.
Are you sure about that? Because if SR doesn’t matter and is not considered in any way, wouldn’t his MMR be set after the competition he is facing? And since he is facing Diamond-level competition in low Plat (if we stay with my example), he will simply stay where he is as he continously faces 50/50 games, while his MMR is equally adjusted to nothing, because he is playing at an MMR that corresponds to his skill (which is Diamond).
There is no guarantee that your statement is true. I would love to believe it, but who knows? We have Blizzard’s word for it, but they never divulge any proof.
And seeing what this company has been doing for so long in Overwatch (this exact system was also working in Overwatch 1), I have absolutely ZERO faith, both in Blizzard as a company as well as in the devs abilities.
While he’s facing equally rated opponents and, therefore, his winrate vacillates around 50% with MMR staying relatively the same, his SR increases a lot after wins and decreases but a little after losses. This is why we had all those “lololol, I just went 7 and 14 and my SR tier still went up” posts in Season 1.
The observable results fall neatly in line with what the Devs have been revealing about this particular mechanism for the past six years. Rating systems associated with competitive matchmaking are fairly straightforward mathematical constructs, there’s little reason to rationally doubt the veracity of the information provided by Blizzard in this regard.
Oh really? Patents and all, and we are just supposed to take their word on this matchmaker that every single player in the game knows is faulty like hell?
Sure, why not.
The hell does this even mean? Let me play out a scenario;
A GM player gets placed in gold, with gold MMR.
Is this GM:
Going to absolutely curbstomp and carry every game ( + Maxium MMR Increase per game)
Be an equal contender, however still win ( + Optimal MMR Increase per game)
Get carried however still win ( +/ Minimal to No MMR Gain or Loss )
Then if we consider that MMR is used to calculate rank update, he’s going to win until the MMR system grants enough to at least masters. Or am I just huffing paint here?
Okay? Lets say in this theoretical world that this diamond player is stuck with the rank plat, but still playing diamond games, why does the rank icon not changing bother you so much?